The start of January is often a hibernatory write-off after the excesses of the festive season. Ambitious New Year’s resolutions are not yet abandoned and the world is temporarily restrained: exercising more, eating better, drinking less. This early year ascetic [...]
Aaron Davis Hall, City College of New York. Most albums are more than simply the next tranche of songs by an artist, but This Rock We’re On: Imaginary Letters – a double-CD opus from Mike Holober & The Gotham Jazz [...]
There are four musicians in The Billy Mohler Quartet. Yet after leaving their gig at Rizzoli bookstore on Sunday 19 May, I couldn’t help feeling that the name was a little misleading; their sound and energy felt more like a [...]
NYC’s Winter Jazzfest may be best known for its Marathon nights – multi-venue evenings of parallel programming that go on into the small hour – but its showcases events are just as valuable. Both formats can squeeze in a diverse [...]
NYC’s Winter Jazzfest is celebrating 20 years of midwinter programming this January, and doing it in style, with Shabaka as artist-in-residence. For an NYC-based Londoner, this is of course a point of pride – the London scene being so respectfully represented [...]
The baritone — too often an unsung member of the saxophone family — deserves more attention. For an intimate audience at Brooklyn’s 440 Gallery on Sunday, Josh Sinton set about demonstrating both the versatility of the instrument and the ingenuity [...]
When you think of musical Supergroups, you likely think of 60s and 70s rock. So to have a trailed supergroup like Dinner Party take the stage at Blue Note seems somewhat noteworthy. In jazz, the particular constellations of musical personnel often [...]
Album launches are interesting events: they highlight the excitement of spontaneous live performance at the same time as promoting a painstakingly-worked recording; they are celebrational events which give musicians an opportunity to demonstrate their excitement about a new work, but [...]
The first time I heard Irreversible Entanglements was by accident, during NYC Winter Jazzfest in January 2019. I was sitting tucked into a back row of a sparsely populated SoHo Playhouse past 1am expecting a different act. Inevitably, the schedule had [...]
Blue Note doesn’t often release work from another record label, but Transmissions from Total Refreshment Centre is a rare exception. This LP is an opportunity for Blue Note to share the unique sounds of Total Refreshment Centre. Founded by Alexis [...]
