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Love…and Other Subjects
While only one of the albums featured in this month’s vocal CD reviews is entirely devoted to the subject of love, all four discs touch upon the topic. Thomas Cunniffe comments on new albums by Camille Bertault, Alexis Cole, Kate McGarry and Norma Winstone.
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Me & You: More Duos
Jazz duos offer a format where cooperation and communication are found in their purest form, and where each musician has the responsibility to make his partner sound good. By the same token, each musician must retain his own individuality and find places in his partner’s style where a dynamic interaction can take place. Thomas Cunniffe…
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Memories and Memorials
The words memory and memorial come from the same root, but they hold different connotations. In this month’s instrumental CD reviews, Thomas Cunniffe examines how these concepts are contrasted and combined in albums by saxophonists Jimmy Greene, Houston Person and Dayna Stephens.
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Some Nice Things We’ve Missed
Jazz History Online receives several promotional CDs every month, and due to our limited resources, we aren’t able to review every notable album in the month of its release. Thomas Cunniffe reviews three superb recordings by Tom Harrell, Geoff Keezer and Frank Potenza, all released in the last 6 months and just too good to…
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Mostly Ballads
Archie Shepp once said Ballads are the biggest challenge. You can hear every minute of every hour of every year a guy has put in on his horn with a ballad. Many musicians find one or two formulaic ways to handle ballads, but they must find several approaches when they plan an album with several…
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New York City Piano
As Billy Joel’s song has it, New York City is as much a place as it is a state of mind. This month, Thomas Cunniffe reviews new albums by three outstanding (and considerably different) pianists from the Big Apple: Bill Charlap, Steve Kuhn and Leslie Pintchik.
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Old and New Songs
Our vocal CD reviews cover music by three generations of singers. Emilie Weibel’s Omoo is an intriguing collection of sonic tableaus, Jackie Allen performs an arresting collection of standards, original and pop tunes on My Favorite Color, and Barbara Morrison, Ernie Andrews and the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra play a rollicking concert on LA Treasures Project.…
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Combining the Old and New
The three instrumental CDs reviewed this month reveal a strong connection to jazz’s past while exploring the outer edges of the music. While trumpeters play a pivotal role on all three of these albums, reviewer Thomas Cunniffe notes that these recordings by Avishai Cohen, Hush Point (with John McNeil) and Ron Miles all have their…
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One For The Men
Female jazz vocalists have always outnumbered male jazz singers by a considerable margin, and if anything, the situation has become worse over the past few years. So with all due respect to the ladies, here are Thomas Cunniffe’s reviews of albums by three outstanding male vocalists: Michael Dees, Kurt Elling and Ku-umba Frank Lacy.
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Originals
Jazz compositions have been around almost as long as jazz improvisers. While improvisation is rightly considered as an essential component of jazz, soloing without some sort of pre-arranged structure would be little more than strings of meaningless notes. In this essay review, Thomas Cunniffe examines new recordings by Lynne Arriale, Leslie Pintchik, Renee Rosnes and…