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A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
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Jazz CD reviews
New CDs reviewed by Chris Parker
For the full review click on the CD title.
Lew Tabackin Quartet
Jazz at Prague Castle
After
an introduction from Václav Klaus, the President of the Czech Republic
(David Cameron please note), saxophonist/flautist Lew Tabackin proceeds
to give what amounts to a master class in hard-bop/modern mainstream trio
jazz (his Europe-touring band completed by Italians Giuseppe Bassi on bass
and drummer Roberto Gatto, with guest trumpeter Flavio Boltro) in this concert
recorded at Prague Castle in 2009.
Asaf Sirkis Trio
Letting Go
Asaf
Sirkis – as anyone who's heard his intense, subtle, musical drumming,
either with Gilad Atzmon or fronting his own trios, will already know –
is a class act, and this album, which features his working band (Tassos
Spiliotopoulos on electric and acoustic guitars, Yaron Stavi on electric
bass), is a treat from start to finish.
Stacey Kent
Raconte-moi...
Stacey
Kent's previous Blue Note album, Breakfast on the Morning Tram was
apparently her most successful in terms of sales (300,000 worldwide); it
also established her in France, containing as it did a couple of Serge Gainsbourg
tracks, plus a song featured in Lelouche's film Un Homme et une Femme.
Jacky Terrasson
Push
Pianist
Jacky Terrasson describes his move to Concord (after eleven albums with
Blue Note) as a chance to 'do things differently … another sound … different
grooves, beats and vibe', and certainly Push (seven originals, two
Monk tunes, two standards, one mixed with Michael Jackson's 'Beat It') rings
the changes between the joyously funky ('Gaux Girl', 'Morning'), the hectic
hurtle ('Beat Bop') and the downright poppy (two tracks featuring vocals,
'Say Yeah' and 'O Café, O Soleil').
Jon Irabagon The
Observer
Saxophonist
Jon Irabagon was the winner of 2008's Thelonious Monk International Jazz
Competition and, as a consequence, has been able to assemble not only a
Rolls-Royce rhythm section – pianist Kenny Barron, bassist Rufus Reid
and drummer Victor Lewis, most readily associated with the late Stan Getz
– but also a world-class production team – Don Sickler and Rudy
Van Gelder – for this, his Concord debut.
Tessa Souter
Obsession
Biographical
accounts of singer Tessa Souter always bristle with hyphens (London-born,
New York-based, Anglo-Trinidadian), but perhaps the most significant one
lies between 'award' and 'winning'. While her world-citizen status does
seem to have opened her ears to a refreshingly wide variety of musical styles...
Barry Cleveland
Hologramatron
The
press release accompanying this, guitarist/sound sculptor Barry Cleveland's
fifth album as leader, identifies its chief musical inspirations as 'art
rock, psychedelia, metal, ambient, world music, trance and funk', and Hologramatron
does indeed leave the impression that Cleveland (an influential editor with
Guitar Player magazine and something of a production freak –
hence his interest in UK 1960s legend Joe Meek, manifest here in a lively
visit to the late man's classic 'Telstar')...
Stéphane Kerecki Trio
Houria
From
the opening vibrant bass solo onwards, and throughout its subsequent thirteen
tracks, Houria delivers top-drawer, tough collectively improvised
music from leader/main composer Stéphane Kerecki and his tight, lively
band, completed by saxophonists Tony Malaby (soprano/tenor) and Matthieu
Donarier (ditto), and drummer Thomas Grimmonprez.
Spin Marvel
The Reluctantly Politicised Mr James
The
group sound on this, drummer Martin France's Spin Marvel's second album,
is described by him as 'not locked into a conventional grid of pulse or
beat, but mov[ing] away from this format and out into a different space'.
The resultant music's most obvious stylistic reference point is the European
free/ambient music perhaps most readily associated with Scandinavia and
most famously manifest (in the UK, at least) in the music of one of France's
old Loose Tubes bandmates, Iain Ballamy (in his Food mode).
Anthony Braxton
19 Standards (Quartet) 2003
Taken
from recordings of live concerts by Anthony Braxton's quartet (completed
by guitarist Kevin O'Neil, bassist Andy Eulau and drummer Kevin Norton)
all over Europe in 2003, these four CDs document the celebrated multi-instrumentalist's
ongoing dialogue with both the Great American songbook (here represented
by the likes of 'Body and Soul', 'It's You or No One', 'East of the Sun',
'Nancy with the Laughing Face') and jazz classics such as Monk's 'Ruby My
Dear', Jackie McLean's 'Little Melonae' and Coltrane's 'Mr. P.C.'. It also
contains an improvisation, 'G. Petal', recorded in Brussels.
Christine Tobin & Liam Noble Tapestry
Unravelled
Regular
Vortex patrons will remember the August 2009 concert, performed by Christine
Tobin and pianist Liam Noble, of Carole King's seminal album Tapestry
as one of the most affecting gigs of the year. I see that my own reaction
to the occasion (see
Christine Tobin sings Tapestry) mentioned Tobin's gift for burnishing
songs to a satisfyingly rich glow, and here, on this twelve-track CD (which
contains one Tobin composition as well as eleven by King and her various
associates) this gift is in evidence from first to last.
Tim Richards Trio
Shapeshifting
Tim
Richards identifies 'the unique combination of freedom and discipline' as
the most seductive feature of the jazz piano trio, and this album (his first
trio recording since 2003's Twelve by Three) contains twelve good
illustrations of the form's attractions. The material addressed by Richards
and his rhythm section (bassist Dominic Howles, retained from the aforementioned
previous recording, and drummer Jeff Lardner) is a mix of five originals
(four by Richards, one by Howles), imaginative visits to standards ('You're
My Everything', 'Love for Sale' intriguingly played over a descarga bassline),
and lively versions of jazz classics...
Compassionate Dictatorship
Cash Cows
Guitarist
Jez Franks and saxophonist Tori Freestone both teach at Leeds College of
Music, and their longstanding musical partnership lies at the heart of the
vibrant but sophisticated approach of their band, Compassionate Dictatorship,
completed on this recording (the band's second) by bassist Jasper Høiby
and drummer Ben Reynolds.
Chris Biscoe
Profiles of Mingus
Like
his recent Trio album dedicated to the music of Eric Dolphy (Gone
in the Air see CD Reviews), this fourteen-track album inspired by
another 20th-century jazz great, Charles Mingus, is clearly a labour of
love for saxophonist Chris Biscoe. Mingus Moves, a sextet formed in 1996,
is at the heart of this recording...
Jonathan Bratoëff Quartet
Mindscapes
A
new version of Jonathan Bratoëff's quartet finds him fronting a rhythm
section comprising long-time associate Tom Mason (bass) and drumer James
Maddren, and sharing front-line duties with saxophonist Mark Hanslip, but
the guitarist's great strengths are still much in evidence on this, his
fifth album as a leader:
Philip Clouts Quartet
Sennen Cove
Philip
Clouts is perhaps best known as the pianist in Zubop, a band at the heart
of the so-called 'world jazz' strand within the music that manifested itself
from the 1980s onwards. On this album, on which he is joined by fellow musical
traveller (in this context it is important to distinguish between tourists
and travellers), saxophonist Carlos Lopez-Real, bassist Alex Keen and drummer
Paul Cavaciuti, Clouts has allowed the natural beauty of his home base,
Charmouth in West Dorset, to inspire his ten compositions...
Food
Quiet Inlet
Food
(now whittled down from a quartet to a core of saxophonist Iain Ballamy
and drummer/live electronics operator Thomas Strønen) have now made
six albums of what might be termed freely impovised ambient music, but this
is the first for a label that might seem to many to have been their natural
home all along: ECM.
Stan Tracey Octet
The Later Works
Two
of the many special commissions that Stan Tracey has received over the years,
the Hong Kong Suite and the Amandla Suite appear here (on one CD each) in
versions recorded in December 2009 by a band comprising the composer on
piano, Simon Allen (tenor), Mornington Lockett (tenor, soprano), Sammy Mayne
(alto), Guy Barker (trumpet), Mark Nightingale (trombone), Andrew Cleyndert
(bass) and Clark Tracey (drums).
Ketil Bjørnstad
Remembrance
Given
the long ECM track record of each participant in this session – pianist/composer
Ketil Bjørnstad made Water Stories, his first album for the
label, back in 1993, and subsequently made a number of ECM recordings with
the Sea Quartet; saxophonist Tore Brunborg appears regularly on the label's
albums, most recently on Manu Katché's Third Round; Jon Christensen
is almost the ECM 'house drummer' – it is perhaps unsurprising that
Remembrance at first blush seems to distil all the musical qualities
frequently associated with Manfred Eicher's project: wistful lyricism, moody
evocativeness, contemplative melancholy.
douBt
Never Pet a Burning Dog
The
musical CVs of the trio of musicians forming douBt provide an entirely reliable
guide to the band's sound: keyboardist Alex Maguire has played with Hatfield
and the North, Elton Dean and Michael Moore; guitarist Michel Delville with
the Wrong Object and the Belgian/Dutch rock quintet the Moving Tones, as
well as with Elton Dean et al.; drummer Tony Bianco with a number of free-jazz
luminaries (Paul Dunmall and Alex von Schlippenbach prominent among them).
Chris Parker
Chris Parker was commissioning editor for Quartet Books jazz list and
publisher of Wire magazine and has written on jazz forJazz Review
and Jazzwise, the Independent, the Daily Telegraph
and The Times).
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