Andrew Gilbert, San Francisco Classical Voice Ben Winkelman Trio | April 30–May 1 I wasn’t familiar with Australian-reared, New York pianist Ben Winkelman until receiving a copy of his recently released fifth album Balance (OA2 Records), which left me determined to catch him in performance. A startlingly impressive trio session focusing on his original tunes, the album brims with … Read More
Roger Levesque, Edmonton Journal Weiss “makes sense” in jazz Ask David Weiss about his musical origins and he will tell you that “none of it makes sense.” The prolific, progressive jazz trumpeter was raised in the Queens borough of New York with few familial influences beyond his grandmother’s push to take a few years of piano lessons. … Read More
By: James Read, UKVibe.org ‘Cimarrón’ the third album from Afro Dominican jazz pianist, composer and arranger Josean Jacobo provides an expansive canvas for the artist to lay down the varied hues of his palette. The Dominican Republic may be a comparatively small nation but thanks to its location and history many musical traditions coexist and … Read More
By: Brian Morton, Jazz Journal The personnel reads like a firm of arbitrage lawyers. Lieb does the arrangements and the honours in introducing the concept – repertory performance of radical music possibly needs some kind of justification – but it was saxophonist Jeff Coffin who thought up the project and booked the top-flight Nashville band … Read More
Jackson Sinnenberg, JazzTimes Pianist and educator Ellen Rowe strolls into “Ain’t I a Woman,” the first track on her new record Momentum: Portraits of Women in Motion, with a rolling Pentecostal piano line. It’s like hearing the first puffs of a steam engine beginning to roar, the wheels slowly shaking off their torpor. Soon Rowe and … Read More
Anthony Dean-Harris, Nextbop Vocalist Vivian Sessoms is preparing to release the second part of her debut album, Life, a project that started out as a jazz album and found new threads of genres to fit in along the way. What results from the Chris Parks co-produced album is a different sort of covers album that finds … Read More
A Night of Jazz, Blues and Folk at the Coolidge: Grace Kelly, Livingston Taylor and James Montgomery Anchor Second Fred Taylor Scholarship Fund Benefit Concert, Produced by Pazz Productions in Brookline, MA on June 19th at Coolidge Corner Theater Pazz Productions and the Fred Taylor Scholarship Fund is pleased to present an Evening of Jazz, … Read More
Bill Milkowski, Paste Magazine Brandee Younger, Soul Awakening (brandeeyounger.com) Photo by Erin O’Brien The classically trained harpist and fearless improviser follows in the footsteps of jazz harpist pioneers Dorothy Ashby and Alice Coltrane on her beautifully crafted fourth release as a leader while showing some decidedly modernist twists along the way. The stirring opener, “Soulris,” composed by … Read More
Dave Rogers, WTJU Ben Winkelman Trio – Balance (OA2): Pianist/composer Ben Winkelman offers his fifth release and it is quite fine. He states the he was been “developing a concept for piano trio that seeks an elusive balance between composition and improvisation, structure and spontaneity, ideas and emotions….looking for ways to feature the three instruments, not only as … Read More
by Matt Micucci, Jazziz Genre-defying harpist Brandee Younger’s fourth album, Soul Awakening, is a collection of eight unearthed gems surfacing years after they were originally recorded, that blend freewheeling improvisation and spiritual jazz with classical and experimental music. Produced by acclaimed bassist Dezron Douglas and featuring such first-rate musicians as saxophonists Ravi Coltrane and Antoine Roney, … Read More
