Various Jazz Styles - CD Reviews (260)
In Your Own Time is all about the groove. You can hear it in every track, in how everyone just settles down and plays in the pocket. There’s not a lot of showy, t…
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Maki Watanabe is a bassist who also has outstanding skills of composition and arranging. The first song is Maki's original composition "Three colors". This piece demonst…
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Happy jazz is what came to mind when I first listened to Joe Friedman’s debut offering, Cup O’ Joe, and that’s despite his blues under- and overtones. His …
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Ro is truly, as the promo material shouts, a great eclectic mix of straight-ahead, Indian, and modern jazz that ranges from hard-swinging post-bop to free jazz …
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The catz of Big Bear Lake, California are not those of the untamed variety, though wild they may be at times. Rather, these catz, who happened to wear fedoraz, are trained …
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Jazz Piano at UArts is a showcase for five exceptionally talented piano students from the renowned Philadelphia music school. With the exception of one freely imp…
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The epithets for Sonny Rollins defy improvement, e.g. "saxophone colossus" and "the greatest living musical improviser." He is an icon of the tenor saxophone, having pla…
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This is a fantastic CD from Chie Imaizumi (pronunciation help: Chee-ay Ee-my-zoo-me), a bright rising star in the jazz composer heavens. A native of Japan, Imaizumi is a…
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Intuition is a varied, inventive and energetic album whose sound seems larger than that of a quartet and whose accessibility belies the complexity of some of the met…
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Johnny Katchoolik describes himself as an independent recording musician and composer. He began playing the guitar but eventually learned the bass, keyboard, percussion …
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Guitarist Stew Cutler gets all of his stuff out in one live recording. Trio/Live is betwixt and between jazz and avant-garde, blues and soul, rhythm & blues. Along w…
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Superstar diva Norah Jones sings on the stunningly beautiful, dream-laden piece titled "Lonely Lament." But that component of this Louisville, KY., based band signifies …
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There is a pecking order to recorded jazz. Of course, first and foremost are the musicians who must be possessed of a talent which makes you want to be captured, to list…
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Occasionally one will find a track repeated on an album in a slightly different format, for instance it might first appear as a vocal track and close out the record as a…
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Band leader composer and saxophonist Tevet Sela has straightforwardly produced some of the most mindful modern jazz in Israel. Indeed, Tevet Sela performs as a soloist/l…
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Baron Tymas, Assistant Director of Jazz Studies at North Carolina Central University in Durham, NC, is a fluent and inventive guitarist with a gift for composition. Blue…
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Drummer Stanton Moore’s "III" is one of the funkiest albums to slide down the pike in many a year. With Robert Walter on a killer Hammond B3 and Will Bernard on a…
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"Never judge a man's actions until you know his motives." (Anonymous). Zvonimir Tot (z-VON-e-mere TOTE) made the moves from his home of Vojvodina (the northern province of …
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Frøy Aagre has done it again, she has put together a blend of compositions that further demonstrates her skill and talent. But more than showcase her own gifts, they inc…
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The cover of Norman Hedman’s new CD, Garden of Forbidden Fruit, features a bold, colorful illustration of a woman in a lush tropical setting, but there’s an unexpect…
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