Thomas Conrad
Thomas’s Contributions
08/03/12 Albums
Live at Art D'Lugoff's Top of the Gate
Bill Evans
In the new millennium, archival albums of previously unreleased music have become a jazz record phenomenon. They are so prevalent that most jazz polls have now changed their “reissue” category to “historical/reissue,” so that new recordings do not have to...
08/01/12 Albums
Songs and Portraits
Third World Love
Omer Avital can instigate a band like few bass players. He has quietly become an important bassist-bandleader in the tradition of Charles Mingus and Dave Holland. Avishai Cohen, with his tantalizing tart tone and well-formed fresh ideas, may be the most...
07/24/12 Albums
Suite of the East
Omer Avital
Duke Ellington made Far East Suite in 1966. Omer Avital’s Suite of the East was recorded in 2006 but not released until now. The differences between the two albums reveal how the jazz art form evolved over 40 years. Far East Suite is sophisticated orchestral...
07/18/12 Albums
Celebration
Arild Andersen
Celebration is an atypical ECM album. It is a live big-band recording and a “greatest hits” project, and its somewhat distant sonic perspective on the orchestra lacks the intimacy of the “ECM sound.” But the more you listen the more sense it makes. Arild...
07/16/12 Albums
The Matador and the Bull
JD Allen Trio
The Matador and the Bull is JD Allen’s fourth straight tenor trio album with bassist Gregg August and drummer Rudy Royston. That may be a record. For most tenor saxophonists, the trio is an obligatory, occasional challenge. For Allen it is an orchestra...
07/03/12 Albums
Family Ties
Ivo Perelman/Joe Morris/Gerald Cleaver
Ivo Perelman is a commitment. You must be willing to put yourself through hell and alienate your neighbors in order to arrive at his brutal version of beauty. Most free jazz contains enough external reference points or internal recurrences to give your imagination...
06/29/12 Albums
Signing
Joe Locke/Geoffrey Keezer Group
The special hook-up between vibraphonist Joe Locke and pianist Geoffrey Keezer is based on shared assets like chops, listening skills and a gift for communicating the joy of making music. Signing is the second record by a quartet including bassist Mike Pope...
06/28/12 Albums
Permutation
Enrico Pieranunzi
Many jazz musicians continuously reinvent themselves, and it creates challenges for their fans. Think Miles Davis. Every time he created a new style he built a new fan base. And every time he moved on, they felt abandoned. Enrico Pieranunzi has a new trio...
06/25/12 Albums
Sunrise
Masabumi Kikuchi Trio
When you first hear the drummer in the right channel, whispering then falling silent then stirring again, you know it’s Paul Motian and it hurts to feel his absence from the world. Sunrise , by pianist Masabumi Kikuchi with Thomas Morgan on bass, was one...
06/17/12 Before & After
Before & After with Francesco Cafiso
At the Rigas Ritmi festival with the Sicilian saxman
06/16/12 Albums
Year of the Snake
Fly
Tenor saxophone with bass and drums is a jazz format with a wild and woolly tradition. For tenor virtuosos like Sonny Rollins and Joe Henderson, trios have been opportunities to risk everything, to dance on a tightrope with no net. The tenor trio that calls...
06/06/12 Albums
Woody's Delight
Steve Turre
It seems impossible that Woody Shaw died as long ago as 1989. He was one of the fallen, a unique flame of brilliance, extinguished too soon. Steve Turre made 14 records with Shaw, and attributes the realization of his own artistic identity to Shaw’s guidance...
05/23/12 Features
Ryan Truesdell: Unearthing the Cool
Bringing newly discovered Gil Evans music to life
05/07/12 Albums
The Lost 1974 Sessions
Peter Appleyard and the Jazz Giants
What fun. We are in a recording studio in the middle of the night in Toronto in 1974. Vibraphonist Peter Appleyard has just played a concert at the Ontario Place Forum with fellow Benny Goodman sidemen Zoot Sims, Bobby Hackett, Urbie Green, Hank Jones, Slam...
05/07/12 Albums
Frog Leg Logic
Marty Ehrlich's Rites Quartet
Marty Ehrlich is a uniquely erudite, civilized outcat. Like outcats everywhere, he slashes and burns and lives on the edge. But his jagged abstractions and flaming trajectories take place within carefully organized forms. The opening title track, a crashing...
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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.