Aidan Levy

Aidan’s Contributions

05/22/13 Albums

Cuban Crosshatching
Arturo Stabile

As the title indicates, this is not strictly an Afro-Cuban jazz record, but flits between styles, incorporating straight-ahead and Latin influences. Named for the artistic technique that uses parallel lines to create shading and depth, Arturo Stable’s varied...

05/09/13 Features

Bassist and Singer Brandi Disterheft Finds 'Gratitude'

A world of invention within straight-ahead jazz

05/08/13 Concerts

“The Crosby, Stills & Nash Songbook” at JALC

Another successful fundraising collaboration for Wynton and orchestra

03/27/13 Albums

Mechanical Malfunction
Weasel Walter/Mary Halvorson/Peter Evans

Weasel Walter must take comfort in chaos. On this followup to Electric Fruit , this trio’s debut, he revels in it, creating a carnival-esque hall of mirrors: theater of the absurd with Walter as ringmaster, or the ferryman over the river Styx, depending...

03/22/13 Albums

Of One's own
Jeff Holmes Quartet

It may be his first small-group recording, but veteran composer, educator and arranger Jeff Holmes isn’t exactly a late bloomer. The director of jazz and African-American music studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has written for the likes...

03/15/13 Albums

It's Time
Stanley Cowell

Prior to 2010’s Prayer for Peace , 71-year-old Stanley Cowell had focused on his teaching career at Rutgers and had taken a sabbatical from recording for well over a decade. It’s Time is another reminder of the imaginative versatility we’d been missing in...

03/06/13 Albums

TheKillMeTrio
Shayna Dulberger

Shayna Dulberger must have a death drive. “Improvisation” opens the album with an out-of-time clangor of cymbals, low-register bass and keening alto saxophone grating on each other in increasing levels of postmodern percussiveness. Dulberger, saxophonist...

02/28/13 Features

David Virelles: Time Way Out

The pianist makes waves as a leader with temporally daring original music

02/25/13 Features

After the Storm: The Jazz Community and the Post-Sandy Struggle

How the devastating hurricane affected venues and musicians

02/16/13 Albums

Mahoroba
Akiko Pavolka & House of Illusion

If Mahoroba is a type of Japanese utopia, Akiko Pavolka and her sextet, House of Illusion, do everything they can to get there. An understated bliss pervades the album, her fifth as a leader, with the soft timbre of Loren Stillman’s alto saxophone complementing...

02/08/13 Albums

Star of Jupiter
Kurt Rosenwinkel

The decidedly new age concept for Kurt Rosenwinkel’s 10th album as a leader, a cosmology-infused double-disc collection of originals for quartet, came to him in a dream. “The ‘Star of Jupiter’ was given to me as a key to transcend the cycles of form, illusion...

02/01/13 Albums

90 Yrs.
Toots Thielemans

Arguably the most recognizable stylist on the harmonica, 90-year-old jazz icon Toots Thielemans continues to tour around the world—this recording is culled from a series of live dates during the past five years—and he hasn’t lost the boyish sense of wonder...

01/31/13 Albums

Arts for Life: My Life is Bold
Various Artists

“Poetry makes nothing happen,” W.H. Auden quipped, but it has long been the bailiwick of artists to make something happen long after the dust has settled and no one else will. Poetry is in fact the basis of the Arts for Life release My Life Is Bold , a compilation...

01/16/13 Albums

Triumph
Ferenc Nemeth

The cover of Ferenc Nemeth’s third album as a leader depicts Hungary’s leading jazz percussionist juggling 13 drumsticks, all suspended in midair, a fitting image for this vertiginous collection of polyrhythms and odd time signatures composed entirely by...

01/15/13 Undertones

Artful Joy
John Daversa

The Los Angeles jazz scene has a briskness, muscularity and cosmopolitanism to it that trumpeter and composer John Daversa has absorbed by osmosis. Though he’s toured internationally, the California native never strayed far from his Hollywood home base...

01/03/13 Undertones

Granular Alchemy
Jacob Anderskov

The prolific pianist and composer Jacob Anderskov specializes in creating spontaneous order. It’s not that his tendency toward cacophony and his percussive style are particularly organized. Rather, through the spontaneity of it all, Anderskov’s elaborate...