Liner Notes
Dock in Absolute: [Re]Flekt
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by Brian Morton
I wonder if I'd get away with it? An old friend was famous for his ability to turn out newspaper columns at lightning speed and with no notice, often after a generous lunch that had stretched on until near deadline time. He'd gruffly concede that yes, that's what they paid him for, yank out a few sheets of typing paper and without so much as a musing glance upwards, start pounding the keys. Ten, fifteen minutes later, the sub-editors were ...
Continue ReadingFrancesco Bearzatti and Federico Casagrande: And Then Winter Came Again
by Brian Morton
This liner-note begins, unusually, with a charitable appeal. Music reviewers and critics labour in obscure conditions, but this is not an appeal for better pay or more respect. Many of these poor souls suffer from a deeply embarrassing ailment that directly bears on their ability to function at all. As first the co-author and later sole author of a very large jazz reference book, I've had the symptoms for years. The condition is known to the very few doctors who ...
Continue ReadingMichel Reis: For A Better Tomorrow
by Brian Morton
It's always possible to get hung up on definitions, or metaphors. In modern jazz terms the most famous description of a piano is probably Cecil Taylor's “88 tuned drums," a clever way of characterising the instrument's percussive power and of removing it from the strong gravitational pull of European art music. I've always preferred Leigh Hunt's lovely description of the piano as a harp in a box. It's not clear whether Hunt meant it seriously, or as a sly put-down. ...
Continue ReadingWillie Morris: Unbound Inner
by Willie Morris
This album is a culmination of much more than just the compositions, the solos, or the time spent in the studio. It is the coming together of many years of life experience between the musicians featured, the producers, the engineers, and hopefully the listeners. It is a small piece added to an ongoing stream of conscious and unconscious desire to find peace within and fully allow ourselves to embody and express who we are. This music centers on people, their ...
Continue ReadingAltin Sencalar: Unleashed
by Altin Sencalar
Unleashed is an album that captures my overall headspace as an individual. This year I turned 30 years old and welcomed my firstborn child into the world, John Altin Sencalar. Two major milestones in any person's life, but especially mine this year. Unleashed represents my playing, my personality, and my overall attitude towards my career development. When thinking about this album, I take many chances that I would not have done in the past specifically playing the trombone in an ...
Continue ReadingFractal Sextet: Sky Full Of Hope
by Mike Jacobs
Calling Stephan Thelen's music an extension of the Swiss Minimalist movement may have once seemed appropriate. However, in the years since his band Sonar and Fractal Guitar projects have come to the fore, that characterization has increasingly become inadequate. Proximity, influence, and linkages exist but Thelen's copious activities in the last decade show such a deepening of his root concepts coupled with an embrace of the new, the notion is virtually moot. One of the projects that most ...
Continue ReadingEleonora Strino: Matilde
by Brian Morton
There isn't much training around for young arts interviewers, but one bit of advice that is usually thrown out is never to ask “Where do you get your ideas?" It's a seemingly banal question that can only attract banal--and sometimes very sarcastic--answers. And yet sometimes, in context, it's exactly the right question to ask. More often than one might expect, novelists, poets, and musicians are more than happy to say that the new body of work being considered began in ...
Continue ReadingHindsight: Enrico Pieranunzi, Marc Johnson and Joey Baron
by Brian Morton
Sometimes we're reduced to throwing down old bones and seeing what messages they deliver back. Maybe noticed at the time, but the recording of Hindsight, by the trio of maestro Enrico Pieranunzi, master bassist Marc Johnson and time-lord Joey Baron took place almost exactly sixty years after one of the most famous jazz piano sessions of all. When most admirers think of Bill Evans, their minds go first to the famous Village Vanguard sessions of June 1961, with Scott LaFaro ...
Continue ReadingBen Patterson Jazz Orchestra: Mad Scientist Music
by Dan Bilawsky
"Mad Scientist Music"--the tag that Harry Schnipper, owner of venerated D.C. jazz venue Blues Alley, admiringly applied to Ben Patterson's creations--is an apt description for this trombonist's work. Synonymous with pure innovation, the titular field is all about pushing the limits, exploring the unknown, and making bold calculations before throwing caution to the wind and letting nature take its course. “I like the idea of my office where I write being a mad scientist's laboratory, a place where I'm creating ...
Continue ReadingRodney Whitaker: Mosaic: The Music of Gregg Hill
by Michael Dease
At just fifty-six years young, Rodney Whitaker has cemented his legendary status as a sought-after bassist extraordinaire and, arguably the pre-eminent jazz educator of his generation. The Detroit, Michigan native, recently elected to the hallowed ranks of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, that includes such innovators as Benjamin Franklin and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., continues to firmly establish himself as a superb interpreter of original music, notably through his fruitful association with composer Gregg Hill. Mosaic is ...
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