By J.D. Considine, JazzTimes In 2015, violinist Tomoko Omura released an album called Roots, which offered jazz takes on 10 Japanese folk and pop songs. It was a clever way of situating herself as a Japanese musician working in the North American jazz milieu, but there were also moments—the walking bass beneath the sing-song vocal … Read More
By J.D. Considine, Downbeat The cover for In Common 2 is identical to its predecessor, except the outsized heads of pianist Micah Thomas, bassist Linda May Han Oh and drummer Nate Smith are photoshopped onto the bodies of the first album’s rhythm section. In other words: same concept, slightly different players. Read this full review … Read More
By J.D Considine, Downbeat Canada has produced a striking range of trumpet greats, from Maynard Ferguson to Kenny Wheeler. And in recent years we can add the singular Ingrid Jensen, free-jazz poet Lina Allemano, singer/trumpeter Bria Skonberg and avant-garde experimentalist Steph Richards to that list. Rachel Therrien might not have garnered as much attention as … Read More
By J.D Considine, DownBeat Typically, when we think of eco-conscious music, what we imagine is built around acoustic instruments. To some extent, we can credit this to the Paul Winter Consort’s “Earth Music” albums of the late ’60s and early ’70s, which used saxophone, flute, English horn and cello to articulate the composer’s intent. Those … Read More
by J.D. Considine, JazzTimes o say that Randy Weston was underappreciated is not the same as saying he wasn’t appreciated; instead, it’s to acknowledge that the honors he received, which include being named a National Endowment of the Arts Jazz Master, never quite matched the enormity of his achievements in connecting jazz to its African roots. The Rhythms … Read More
J.D.Considine, JazzTimes Strings are the connectors on bassist Ben Wolfe’s Fatherhood. Not heartstrings, mind, but violins, viola, and cello. Wolfe’s father Dan was a violinist, and the bassist credits his dad with having introduced him to jazz. Thus Wolfe’s use of a string quartet on here has sentimental, not just instrumental, import. What Wolfe does … Read More
J.D. Considine, JazzTimes On his third album, drummer Curtis Nowosad celebrates his move from Winnipeg, Manitoba to New York, N.Y. by updating his sound. Where his first two albums were solidly straight-ahead, applying a hard-bop aesthetic even to pop tunes such as Michael Jackson’s “The Way You Make Me Feel,” this one is slick and … Read More
J.D. Considine, JazzTunes As album concepts go, guitarist Eric Hofbauer’s Five Agents project is pretty solid. Taking inspiration from Wu Xing, an ancient Daoist precept that sees the world as being composed of five cyclic elements or agents, Hofbauer decided to compose and record a series of albums honoring each agent in turn. Although Chinese … Read More
J.D. Considine, Downbeat In the seven decades since John Cage’s “Sonatas And Interludes” instructed pianists to “prepare” their instrument by placing screws, coins, pencils and other objects on the instrumnent’s strings, prepared piano has become a common enough concept that it even has leaked into the realm of rock music. By contrast, Sam Newsome’s prepared … Read More
J.D. Considine, JazzTimes Say the words “gospel jazz,” and what comes to mind is likely something along the lines of Nat Adderley’s “Sermonette”: bluesy, down-home, and uplifting. But when saxophonist Jordan Pettay offers her take on “I Surrender All”—a classic hymn that has been recorded by everyone from Mahalia Jackson to Cece Winans to Michael … Read More
