Mike Shanley
Mike’s Contributions
May 2010 • Features
Allison Miller: Explosive Material
Drummer-composer Allison Miller and band perfect an inside-outside approach with Boom Tic Boom
May 2010 • Albums
Initiate
The Nels Cline Singers
It’s easy to focus on Nels Cline’s jack-of-all-trades work ethic, but what really makes the guitarist so significant is the consistency he brings to all these projects: a singular voice that occasionally goes heavy on the effects pedals, but uses them to...
03/10/10 • Albums
November Man
Ernie Krivda
After Ernie Krivda’s quartet devoted a considerable amount of time to “A Night in Tunisia” and “’Round Midnight” at the Detroit International Jazz Festival last September, two things became clear: In the right hands, those well-worn classics can still sound...
03/10/10 • Albums
Yesterday’s Man
Saltman Knowles
Mark Saltman (bass) and William Knowles (piano) lead a revolving group of musicians who perform contemporary jazz while maintaining the sense of adventure of current straightahead players. Most interesting is the use of soprano steel pans (drums) in both...
November 2009 • Albums
Brewster's Rooster
John Surman
John Surman’s “return” to jazz, after recording in genres such as early music and classical, reunites him with longtime collaborators Jack DeJohnette on drums and John Abercrombie on guitar. Bassist Drew Gress, a young buck by comparison, completes the lineup...
09/16/09 • Concerts
Detroit International Jazz Festival
The largest free jazz fest in the U.S. celebrates its 30th
May 2009 • Albums
Meditations on the War for Whose Great God Is the Most High You Are God
Fat Cat Big Band
The Fat Cat Big Band didn’t earn its name from the stature of its members, but from its birthplace, New York’s Fat Cat club, which began originally as an extension of Smalls. Guitarist Jade Synstelien leads the 11-piece orchestra of relatively unknown young...
May 2009 • Albums
Thin Air
Mary Halvorson & Jessica Pavone
Sentimental meets edgy on this guitar-viola outing
April 2009 • Albums
Plant Life
Odean Pope
A saxist draws inspiration from Coltrane's Atlantic period, but holds back
April 2009 • Albums
Proverbs for Sam
Bill Cole
Bill Cole, Coltrane scholar and player of several exotic double-reed instruments, salutes his late friend and collaborator alto saxophonist Sam Furnace on this collection of extended live performances. The disc features four 2001 cuts on which both men share...
April 2009 • Albums
Apti
Rudresh Mahanthappa’s Indo-Pak Coalition
The Indian-jazz connection from another angle
April 2009 • Albums
Harmonic Disorder
Matthew Shipp Trio
Closing an album with a track titled “When the Curtain Falls on the Jazz Theatre” could be construed as a political statement. For two and a half minutes, low arco bass drones and snare rolls set a mournful mood that climaxes in a wall of thundering chords...
April 2009 • Albums
Solar Forge
Totem>
A warning flag should go up anytime a CD’s liner notes include a sentence like this: “Of course the electric guitar trio is the paradigmatic power trio to the extent the format naturally favors amplification, energy and timbral expansion.” Aside from this...
02/25/09 • Concerts
Mostly Other People Do the Killing in Pittsburgh
To be sure, the quartet that goes by the name Mostly Other People Do the Killing consists of jazz progressives. They refer to themselves as a “terrorist bebop über-jass band.” They spoof album covers by Art Blakey and Ornette Coleman. As four music school...
January/February 2009 • Albums
Complete Anthony Braxton Arista Recordings
A treasure trove of avant-garde
December 2008 • Albums
Appearing Nightly
Carla Bley Big Band
Carla Bley’s humor shapes a good portion of her music, but it never becomes the main focus of a composition. “Awful Coffee,” the second of a two-part suite commissioned a festival devoted to “dinner music,” references six food-titled standards. Yet it’s...
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ReportAbout Mike Shanley
Mike Shanley wishes there were more hours in the day to just sit and listen to music, probably with some coffee close at hand. A native of Pittsburgh, he served as arts & entertainment editor at two of that city's alternative newsweeklies, InPittsburgh and Pulp. In addition to JazzTimes, he freelances for Pittsburgh City Paper, Blurt and maintains a blog at www.shanleyonmusic.blogspot.com where he rambles on about whatever has landed on the turntable or disc player at that moment. His writing has appeared in Harp, Pittsburgh Magazine, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and on the website PopCity.com. He has also played bass guitar in a number of Pittsburgh indie rock bands over the past two decades.