Undertones
01/24/13 By Carlo Wolff
Mzansi
Sunnyside
Adam Glasser’s playful yet plaintive style makes him one of the harmonica’s new masters. As debonair as Toots Thielemans, as soulful as Stevie Wonder and as romantic as Gregoire Maret, he’s also distinctively pungent. As a pianist, Glasser is percussive...
01/19/13 By Lloyd Sachs
Snakelust (To Kenji Nakagami)
Clean Feed
Sounding like it was lifted from the middle of the 2011 Lisbon concert this album documents, Snakelust (to Kenji Nakagami) begins so unceremoniously you almost have to laugh. If you woke up saxophonist Peter Brötzmann in the middle of the night and pushed...
01/15/13 By Aidan Levy
Artful Joy
BFM
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...
01/11/13 By Lloyd Sachs
Tiresian Symmetry
Cuneiform Records
Following up his strong 2010 album The Two Faces of Janus , saxophonist Jason Robinson basically doubles the exceptional band featured on it, resulting in a sound of unusual depth and density featuring (at times) dual clarinets (Marty Ehrlich and JD Parran...
01/07/13 By Michael J. West
Jetway Confidential
High Two
For all the cunning with which they assemble it, Sonic Liberation Front’s musical patchwork still feels like a mess. But it’s a glorious, enchanting mess. Boasting a range of guests and instruments (especially horns and percussion) so complex it literally...
01/03/13 By Aidan Levy
Granular Alchemy
Ilk
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...
12/30/12 By Michael J. West
Wah-Wah
ArtistShare
Eschewing his usual saxophone partners, Wah-Wah finds Danish guitarist-composer Torben Waldorff leading an American band (keyboardist Gary Versace, bassist Matt Clohesy, drummer Jon Wikan) that’s long on melody but also on texture and atmosphere. Only the...
12/27/12 By Lloyd Sachs
40Twenty
Yeah-Yeah
On the heels of his amazing one-man gospel album, The Heavens , trombonist Jacob Garchik returns to exploring group settings in 40Twenty, a new Brooklyn quartet including that other notable young Jacob, pianist Sacks. Named after the classic jazz club practice...
12/23/12 By Lloyd Sachs
Journeyman
Posi-Tone
Tenor saxophonist Brandon Wright came out of the gate locked and loaded with a big, hard-hitting, classic sound on his debut, Boiling Point , and he’s got plenty of ammo left for Journeyman . Joined by three of his associates from the Mingus Big Band—veteran...
12/19/12 By Britt Robson
Anvil of the Lord
Skirl
Ben Holmes is a trumpeter-composer who blends his investigations of Eastern European music with a patient, open-ended swirl of Euro-classical composition and jazz improvisation. This follow-up to his critically praised trio debut adds trombonist Curtis Hasselbring...
