Thomas Conrad
Thomas’s Contributions
April 2009 • Features
Stolen Moments
Are private recordings undercover classics, audio catastrophes, or both?
April 2009 • Overdue Ovation
Arild Andersen: Burning in the Cold, Dark North
"I think I've finally found it," says this ECM artist
April 2009 • Albums
Farewell Walter Dewey Redman
Mark Masters Ensemble
This album was supposed to be a collaboration between Dewey Redman (as composer and tenor saxophone soloist) and Mark Masters (as arranger for a 15-piece ensemble). But it became a tribute album when Redman died on September 2, 2006, four weeks before this...
April 2009 • Albums
Cube
Renolds Jazz Orchestra
Cube is a suite whose subject is “the Deity’s great effort to restore peace and union with mankind.” The international orchestra includes top players like Randy Brecker, Miroslav Vitous, Greg Tardy, Donny McCaslin, Tommy Smith, Steven Bernstein and Adam...
03/04/09 • Concerts
Amina Figarova Sextet in San Diego
Refined and sophisticated, a veteran but "new" pianist-composer showcases her latest songs.
March 2009 • Albums
Yesterdays
Keith Jarrett/Gary Peacock/Jack Dejohnette
A quarter-century in, the trio remains a creative force.
March 2009 • Albums
New York Days
Enrico Rava
Thomas Conrad reviews the most recent release from Italian trumpeter Enrico Rava.
March 2009 • Eighty-Eights
Plays the Music of Irving Berlin (Except One)
John Bunch Trio
This album sounds utterly effortless—like these guys went into the studio and hit the switch and just let it flow. They are pianist John Bunch (swinging his ass off at 86), guitarist Frank Vignola, bassist John Webber, and, on six tunes, flautist Frank Wess...
March 2009 • Eighty-Eights
Silent Strength
Chantale Gagné Trio
Chantale Gagné is a young pianist from Quebec with the sound judgment to bring in Peter Washington and Lewis Nash as the rhythm section on her debut recording. Washington’s time is like Big Ben’s, and Nash’s energy is a crisp tailwind. They make Gagné’s...
March 2009 • Eighty-Eights
The End of a Summer
Julia Hülsmann Trio
Like all the most important record producers, Manfred Eicher of ECM is a major talent scout. His latest discovery is the German pianist Julia Hülsmann. It is easy to hear what drew Eicher to Hülsmann and her trio. She is an artist inclined toward the darker...
March 2009 • Eighty-Eights
Delaware River Suite
Inventions Trio
Inventions is a different piano trio: Bill Mays on piano, Marvin Stamm on trumpet and flugelhorn, and Alisa Horn on cello. Delaware River Suite is a different album: a seven-part musical and spoken-word pastorale about a river. Mays wrote the music and the...
March 2009 • Eighty-Eights
Live at Caramoor
Jovino Santos Neto & Weber Iago
A studio recording cannot capture the tone of an occasion like a live recording. The tone of this occasion sounds ecstatic. There is a category of consumer that needs to own this record: audiophile piano addicts. Live at Caramoor is an immersion in the aural...
March 2009 • Eighty-Eights
Some Other Time
Greg Reitan
Pianists in their debut recordings rarely sound as poised and centered and fully formed as Greg Reitan. He waited until he was 35 to make Some Other Time, and he is a thoroughly schooled musician with an extensive résumé as a composer for film and television...
March 2009 • Eighty-Eights
For Andrew
Michael Jefry Stevens Trio
Remember the line from Butch Cassidy and the Sun-dance Kid: “Who are those guys?” How can a piano trio be this cool and not be famous? But, of course, this is jazz: You can play all over the world for 30 years and appear on 58 CDs, like Michael Jefry Stevens...
March 2009 • Eighty-Eights
Conversations
Michael Tracy/Harry Pickens
The most striking feature of this duo recording is its intimacy. Conversations not only puts you in the same room with Michael Tracy’s saxophones and Harry Pickens’ piano—it puts you about five feet away. You hear every nuance of Tracy’s pronunciation on...
March 2009 • Eighty-Eights
Michael Wolff’s ‘Joe’s Strut’
A risk-taking chameleon wins some, loses some
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ReportAbout Thomas Conrad
His day gig notwithstanding (Senior Vice President/COO of Magnolia Hi-Fi, a subsidiary of Best Buy), Thomas Conrad was an active jazz journalist for 20 years, as liner note author, columnist for CD Review, and regular contributor to Downbeat. Beginning in 2005, after foreswearing day gigs forever, he became more prolific. His work currently appears in Stereophile (where he is a Contributing Music Editor), JazzTimes (where he writes the “Eight-Eights” column on piano recordings), and All About Jazz—New York. He travels frequently to international destinations and much of his writing in recent years has dealt with jazz originating outside the borders of the United States. Another recurrent preoccupation in his work has been the audiophile world as it pertains to jazz. Conrad divides his time between Seattle, Washington and Palm Springs, California.