Alone Together is vocalist Catherine Russell’s seventh album, and with each release she seems to inhabit more fully a liminal space between past and present. Without indulging in sentimentality, she captures the spirit of the era out of which the pieces she sings emerged. Part of the timeless yet vintage quality of her music flows…Read More

The first notes of Fyah, the debut album from U.K. tuba player Theon Cross, hit with all the metallic force of a Nine Inch Nails industrial anthem. “Activate,” the opening track, would fit right into a DJ set at one of the clubs in which London’s current jazz movement was born, with Nubya Garcia’s exuberant…Read More

The title of Eric Reed’s new album has a double meaning—as in, everybody understands the blues, and everybody feels down from time to time. “Your blues may not be my blues, but everybody gets them,” he writes in the liner notes. True enough, but this album is too joyful for that to be the parting…Read More

This is just a lovely album. Bassist Mats Eilertsen has had his trio with pianist Harmen Fraanje and drummer Thomas Strønen for a decade, but And Then Comes the Night is only the group’s second release and its first for ECM. It’s also Eilertsen’s second album as a leader for that label, though the Norwegian…Read More

The mission statement of the RareNoise label is “to detect and amplify contemporary trends in progressive music.” Since 2008 it has been prolific in the production of confrontational records with a bias toward electronics, groove, and the jumbling of genres. Jamie Saft looms large on the label. You Don’t Know the Life is Saft’s 18th…Read More

When guitarist/vocalist John Pizzarelli last paid tribute to his primary musical inspiration with 1999’s P.S. Mr. Cole, he was in his late thirties, and Nat Cole probably still cast an imposing shadow as a legendary jazz master. P.S. was his second release honoring his hero, following not long after 1994’s Dear Mr. Cole, a swinging…Read More

Amirtha Kidambi’s name received a bit of a boost last year when she put a voice to Mary Halvorson’s lyrics on Code Girl. It was just one aspect of an already productive career that includes studies of classical and Carnatic music, and performances with saxophonist Darius Jones. Elder Ones’ debut, Holy Science (2016), featured Kidambi…Read More

When the story of this era’s jazz masters is told, West Coast tenor man and bandleader Ernie Watts ought to be prominently featured. Watts, perhaps once underappreciated because of the overtly commercial bent of many of his ’70s and ’80s recordings, has evolved into a saxophonist whose sound is simultaneously brawny and beautiful, an instrumentalist…Read More

If name-dropping were a crime, keyboardist Keiko Matsui would have a helluva time promoting Echo. The album features a string of well-known artists, including guitarist Robben Ford, saxophonist Kirk Whalum, vocalist Gretchen Parlato, bassists Marcus Miller and Kyle Eastwood, drummer Vinnie Colaiuta, and percussionist Luis Conte. Suffice to say, Matsui never wants for good company…Read More

Pianist Marc Copland treats the compositions of bassist Gary Peacock with a respectful intimacy on this stark solo album. The two artists, who first met in Seattle back in 1983, share a quiet but sturdy iconoclasm. Copland also shares many of the virtues common to the three other pianists with whom Peacock has had especially…Read More