CA(C)sar Cardoso: Bottom Shelf

"AlA(C)m" starts unceremoniously, almost mid-tune, tenor sax and guitar evoking a sultry m: Stan Getz mood. The labyrinthine structure of the title track adds to its appeal and benefits from strong playing with a feisty guitar solo. m: CA(C)sar Cardoso's soprano on "A'nica" evince... [ read more ]

Dave Douglas Quintet: Brazen Heart

Leading a quintet whose debut recording, Be Still (Greenleaf Music, 2012) was an elegiac song cycle dedicated to his late mother, m: Dave Douglas' Brazen Heart, sadly, finds the trumpeter / composer in mourning once again. Damon Douglas, Dave's brother, passed away in June 2015. Yet, the... [ read more ]

Double Basse: This Is Not Art

Although the group moniker might suggest two bull fiddles, in fact it describes the French pairing of bassist m: Benjamin Duboc and contrabass clarinetist m: Jean-Luc Petit. No strangers to each other (Petit appears on the bassist's leadership debut under his own name on Prim... [ read more ]

Filip Jers Quartet: Filip Jers Quartet Plays Swedish Folk

A difficult one, this: harmonica player Felip Jers and his quartet the latest in a long line of artists attempting to put a jazz slant on Swedish folk music. It all started in the 1960s when pianist Jan Johansson scored a massive hit with an EP and later an LP titled Jazz PA Svenska (Jazz In Swedis... [ read more ]

Beat Funktion: Olympus

The seventies brought many things: bell-bottoms, Lee Majors, Farrah Fawcett, Disco, Nixon and Carter, The Godfather, the Ramones; Billie Jean King and Phyllis Schlafly to NOW and the ERA; from the Energy Crisis to Roe v. Wade. The Seventies is an incisively provocative and commonly misunderstood era... [ read more ]

Georgia Mancio: Live At ReVoice!

The name at the top of the cover of Live At ReVoice! is that of Georgia Mancio, the London-based vocalist who appears on every one of the 12 tracks. A quick glance lower down the cover adds a dozen more names--a list of Mancio's accompanists that reads like a veritable "Who's Who" of the UK jazz sce... [ read more ]

Mundell Lowe / Lloyd Wells / Jim Ferguson: Poor Butterfly

Few people could ever claim to have played and/or recorded with such a storied list of performers as m: Sarah Vaughan, m: Ben Webster, m: Billie Holiday, m: Charlie Parker, m: Carmen McRae, m: Ella Fitzgerald, {{m: Blossom Dearie... [ read more ]