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Sultry singer Stacey Kent's new album is a collection of romantic ballads, including standards from the American songbook by George & Ira Gershwin, Rodgers & Hart, van Heusen & Burke, Henri Mancini, Johnny Mandel & Dave Frishberg and others. She has a beautiful and sweet, almost innocent, voice with a whispery vibrato and excellent diction. She doesn't shout, but uses subtlety to get into the heart of a song.
The title of the album is descriptive, with songs dealing with dreams, memory and past romance. She's backed on the album by a talented quintet, including husband Jim Tomlinson on tenor sax, clarinet and flute, Colin Oxley on guitar and David Newton on piano. Each of these instrumentalists get some nice solo space on several of the tunes.
— Alan Lankin, November 2001
Dreamsville
Release Date:
May 2001
The reissue of
Andrew Hill's record
Lift Every Voice
includes an additional unissued session with a similar makeup as a bonus. Both sessions were recorded by a jazz quintet combined with a seven or nine-piece mixed voice choir. Hill uses the voices like horns, but with a bit of gospel element. Some tunes use vocalese; others have lyrics, which can sound a bit dated. His tunes here feature the dissonant, assymetric lines and driving rhythms characteristic of his work—despite their unusual makeup these sessions are not fundamentally different from his other work of this time.
There's good playing here, with some searching Hill solos and good playing from his horns—on the first session there's some burning playing Carlos Garnett on tenor and Woody Shaw on trumpet. On the second session we hear from Bennie Maupin on tenor, bass clarinet and flute and from the quick-fingered trumpeter Lee Morgan.
I've observed a mixed reaction amongst Hill fans to this release—some like it a lot and some seem to be distracted by the voices. This may not be Hill's best effort, but is well worth a listen for Hill fans.
— Alan Lankin, November 2001
Lift Every Voice
Release Date:
13 February 2001
Andrew Hill's classic album Point of Departure was both a description of his own approach to music and an invitation, one appropriately addressed by the preeminent avant-gardist Anthony Braxton. The resulting headline might be "Visionary saxophonist meets and responds to exemplary hard-bop-and-beyond composer."
It took a few listenings, but I became overwhelmed by Nine Compositions. It was disconcerting at first to hear Braxton inside of hard-bop motifs, but that was overcome by the depth of his appreciation for Hill's structures and the varying methods for incorporating and then deconstructing them.
Adding a second alto, Steve Lehman, gave an additional depth to several pieces, works where sometimes-Hill-companion Eric Dolphy was exhumed and appreciated. Paul Smoker's trumpetry ran from post-bop and lyrical to his characteristic smears and buzzsaw sounds, and Kevin O'Neill is a tremendously gifted electric guitarist, inside or "out." From finger-snapping statements of snaking melody to time-less passages of free improvisation, Braxton and companions assay and excel in the world of Hill's music and that great landscape of modern jazz.
— Jules Epstein, October 2001
Nine Compositions (Hill) 2000
Distributed by Cadence/North Country (www.cadencebuilding.com)
Release Date:
7 August 2001
Bobby Zankel has been in the post-Cecil Taylor jazz ambience for more than a quarter century. On the scene for years in Philadelphia, his signatures were his devotion to eastern religion, his beard and kufi-type hat, and an alto that keened and burned fire-bright.
Transcend & Triumph lives up to and beyond its name. Zankel transcends categorization, sounding of/from Ornette Coleman, delving into recurring if desert-sand-shifting patterns of funk as he plays on top of, outside of and worlds beyond the rhythm, and even engages in his own two-voiced call and response, a tour de force on "Scrupulosity."
Especially engaging is the trio format/instrumentation, with the alto offset yet matched by guitarist Rick Iannacone, a brilliant avant-gardist who is adept at rhythm-a-ning, an art learned from time with Sun Ra and as a touring musician for seventies soul musicians; and drummer Craig McIver, a percussionist who is a generator of sound as much as pulse. Zankel's title piece is particularly noteworthy for the avant-gardist's warm melodicism on the title cut, an elegaic rumination that gradually accelerates and intensifies. Even more noteworthy is "Truth & Reconciliation," a poignant alto declaration atop tom-tom drumming that gradually becomes more elaborate and a pattern of discordant but supportive guitar multi-note strums.
Zankel and companions have sculpted a marvelous statement of modern jazz. Check them out, as well as their label, one uniquely supportive of musicians' free choice.
— Jules Epstein, November 2001
Transcend & Triumph
Distributed by Cadence/North Country (www.cadencebuilding.com)
Release Date:
7 August 2001
EZ Pour Spout is a decidedly off-beat cover band, playing funky covers of pop and rock songs and employing elements of rock and free jazz with a sense of humor and fun. Formed by a group of downtown musicians who've played together frequently (band members have been in Sex Mob, the Lounge Lizards, Kamikaze Ground Crew, etc.), the band has recorded the album Don't Shave the Feeling for the new Love Slave label.
The CD includes a wide assortment of tunes, ranging all the way from the "A-Team" theme, to a slow, grungey version of Nirvana's "Heart Shaped Box" with screaming horns; to AC/DC's "Back in Black," played with a funky beat and a growly trombone solo. Their performance of Led Zepellin's "Kashmir" includes a sour and echoey alto sax solo and their version of Cream's "Politician" is appropriately raucous. The rather cheesy or campy "I Can't Take My Eyes Off You," done by both Franki Valli and Engelbert Humperdinck in the mid-late 1960s, goes insane with echo and screaching sax by the end.
They also play two Burt Bacharach tunes associated with Dionne Warwick: "Don't Make Me Over" has the melody played by Krauss and then goes into an organ solo. A slow version of "Walk on By" deconstructs the melody amongst sax, trombone and guitar.
These wild mixtures of tunes and styles are weird, but fun.
— Alan Lankin, November 2001
Don't Shave The Feeling
Distributed by Cadence/North Country (www.cadencebuilding.com)
Release Date:
June 2001
Personnel:
Briggan Kraus / Curtis Hasselbring / Jamie Saft / JA Granelli
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last update 8 November 2001