The “Paramount” in Joe Lovano’s new quartet can be interpreted as a statement of intent. “I feel like at this point I’m on the rise,” Joe says, seemingly unaware of the decades of experience and several dozens of leader-recordings under his belt. “We’ve arrived at this unique place with this quartet – It’s very special. It’s a new thing. And those cats, they play with a real global awareness.” The “cats” in question are guitarist Julian Lage, Asante Santi Debriano on bass and drummer Will Calhoun (otherwise known for his part in the American rock group Living Color) – all players who help shape a striking, adventurous new chapter in Joe Lovano’s expansive oeuvre on Paramount Quartet.
Reviewing the group’s show in London from days before the recording session…
Category: jazz
Combining different genres through your music has become something of a norm these days, the effectiveness and quality relying mainly on two artistic variables – the level of the artist’s knowledge and understanding of the genres they are combining and the ability (including technique) and inventiveness to make such a combination work. The above might sound a bit dry and scientific, but then, it all comes down to the results, and Norwegian pianist, organist and composer Ruth Viggen makes it all art turn into music as art on her second solo album Open Plains.
Throughout the seven piano/ rhythm section compositions, Viggens shows all her knowledge of everything from jazz and classical music to prog and post-rock and at an inventive…
On their new duo album, Michael Wollny and Emile Parisien invite listeners into a conversation shaped by trust, intuition and complete artistic freedom. Recorded in concert as part of the Bodenseefestival 2025, the album captures two singular musical voices meeting in a space where nothing is controlled, nothing is predetermined, and every gesture becomes a response to the moment.
“Here, you are invited to witness one of our many conversations with Michael Wollny, in complete freedom and spontaneity. I feel the rare privilege of sharing this space with such an exceptional musician – someone with a profound sense of listening, where everything becomes possible. It is an honor to have met him and to be able to express myself in this way by his side…
London Jazz Classics originally came out in 1993 – the first album ever to be released on Soul Jazz Records. The album brought together rare and obscure dance tracks in a unique mix of jazz dance and fusion, funk, Brazilian and Latin grooves.
The album was ironically titled – none of the music was from London, none of the music was traditionally classified as jazz, and all of the tracks were at the time practically unknown to most people. Instead, these were tracks that were filling dancefloors in a nascent jazz dance scene in London being created by a small group of DJs – Paul Murphy, Gilles Peterson, Sylvester, Patrick Forge and a few others.
As demand for these rare groove jazz tracks grew, previously unknown records…
Fragments: The Complete 1969 Salle Pleyel Concerts restores a night that sat in legend for decades to its full, disorienting glory. On 3 November 1969, Cecil Taylor brought his working Unit to the 8th Paris Jazz Festival and, instead of offering a polite festival sampler, delivered two full sets of unbroken invention at Salle Pleyel.
Here, for the first time, those performances are heard complete: no editorial fades, no selective excerpts, just the sustained pressure and turn‑on‑a‑dime responsiveness of a band at absolute peak. The lineup alone signals the gravity of the event – Taylor on piano, Sam Rivers on tenor and soprano saxophones and flute, Jimmy Lyons on alto saxophone, Andrew Cyrille on drums – but it’s the way they inhabit the room…
The word ‘immersive’ can be overdone or feel forced when applied to artistic endeavours, be it a theatrical performance, an exhibition or indeed an album. Yet, it feels like the natural descriptor for Partisan Ship, the latest offering from LA born, Brooklyn-based pianist, composer and bandleader Phillip Golub.
Golub has become an essential artist for fans of experimental avant-garde jazz. He has collaborated with other contemporary visionaries such as Vijay Iyer and is currently on a particularly prolific run – having released two records in 2025.
With Partisan Ship, which can loosely be seen as a concept album about a sea voyage – Golub continues his exploration of unusual microtonal scales. This time he performs with…
…Music of the Terrazoku: Ethnographic Recordings from an Imagined Future is the brainchild of drummer-composer Will Glaser, who has assembled a wide array of experimental musicians to help him execute his vision. There’s pretty much everything here, from ambience to industrial music, free improv to early 20th-century jazz. The idea is that such musicians have lived through a climactic event that has wiped away all reference points, and are recreating music from scratch, a metaphor for rebuilding a fractured society.
The very first sounds are like a Geiger counter and a human playing on found containers before breaking into an array of junk drums: just what one might expect for the re-origins of music. Isn’t this how our primitive ancestors started?
With a discography approaching 200 releases, it might be tempting to imagine saxophonist Ivo Perelman as a kind of jazz gunfighter, in the lineage of Charlie Parker or Coleman Hawkins, stepping into one cutting contest after another. But that image misses the mark. Perelman’s recordings are rarely about competition. Instead, they are grounded in creation, collaboration and deep musical partnership. The closest he comes to that rough-and-tumble spirit is in his long-running exchanges with pianist Matthew Shipp, where the intensity of their rapport can resemble a friendly but fierce sparring match.
With Trifecta, Perelman presents three studio sessions, each pairing him with a different guitarist: Marc Ribot, Elliott Sharp and Joe Morris.
Ava Mendoza is simply one of the best guitarists around today. She has played with a murderer’s row of improvisers and experimentalists over the last 20 years, across styles incorporating rock, blues, jazz, bluegrass, metal, and the avant-garde.
…Alive Alone, Alive Together collects Mendoza’s recent live recordings from four different events. Half are duets with drummer Hamid Drake from the Summer Bummer Festival in Antwerp, while the rest are solo performances from the US and Italy. Despite what might be thought of as a limited sound palette, there is little repetition throughout the album.
‘Sun Gun’ is one of the duets, with Mendoza picking distorted lines in a heavy blues style accompanied by Drake’s nonstop barrages.
Live albums are either superb or meh. Luckily, vocalist Catherine Russell sounds amazing, whether in a studio, jazz club or theatre setting. Live at Jazz at Lincoln Center exhibits the singer’s soulful vocals as well as wonderful backing support from the musicians joining her: guitarist Matt Munisteri, pianist Ben Paterson, bassist Russell Hall, drummer Domo Branch, trumpeter Jon-Erik Kellso, trombonist John Allred and Evan Arntzen on tenor sax and clarinet. Russell’s usual style is prevalent throughout the project. The mix of vintage New Orleans jazz, swing, rhythm and blues is always sure to delight a variety of listeners.
Whether it’s a slower melody or an upbeat, toe-tapping tune, the pieces are sung with emotion and sensitivity.
A rare and never before released live performance by Chet Baker and his European quartet, including his long -term associate Nicola Stilo on flute and guitar. Recorded in Ferrara, Italy on the 9th of December 1987, just five months before Chet’s passing, this live performance finds the legendary trumpeter at his creative and performance best and captured in sound quality more akin to a studio session. Captured in superb sound quality, this 2CD set in deluxe digipak presentation includes an extensive booklet containing liner notes and rare photographs. As a first-time release recording, it will, undoubtedly, be much sought after by jazz collectors generally and the legions of Chet Baker fans in particular. Recorded live by Gianni Grassilli on the December 1987, Ferrara, Teatro Estense.
For his second solo album, Blue Morpho, Ed O’Brien has teamed up with several excellent collaborators, notably Paul Epworth and Dave Okumu, who take the Radiohead guitarist into the new musical vistas that the narrative around the album indicate he was seeking. Finding himself seeking a new purpose and a sense of spiritual connection at a new phase in his life, the opportunity to painstakingly create Blue Morpho during sessions in Wales seems to have come at the perfect time for him. The sense of freedom and creativity on the one hand and sheer songwriting and performance quality on the other shines through throughout the record. This is at least the equal of Radiohead’s recent output and perhaps more pertinently firmly establishes O’Brien as a solo artist in his own right.
How do you make a documentary film about a man who was also a myth? About a musician who was more than a musician? About someone who asked us to trust our intuition more than our rational minds? This double LP contains the entire soundtrack to the accompanying PBS documentary! Includes liner notes from executive producer Bradford Smith about the making of Sun Ra: Do The Impossible, interviews from members of the Arkestra and a BluRay DVD of the doc!
Firelight assembled an incredibly talented team headed by Director/Producer Christine Turner, and six years later in June of 2025, our documentary, Sun Ra: Do The Impossible had its world premiere at the Tribeca International Film Festival. Our goal was to make a film…
The MerKaBa Brotherhood are Roman Norfleet (The Cosmic Tones Research Trio, Be Present Art Group) and Andre Raiah (Brown Calvin of Brown Calculus, Be Present Art Group).
If you copped Norfleet’s debut album, 2023’s Mississippi-released Roman Norfleet and Be Present Art Group, you’ll know broadly what to expect here. In fact, Raiah showed up on that album too playing keys, prompting the duo to focus and expand their collaboration. So, drawing from “esoteric texts, sacred imagery, and mystic thought” they strip down the bluster and follow their own rhythm, layering tape-fucked bells and chimes with circuitous Rhodes repetitions, marrying their geometric improvisations with effervescent soundscapes and psychedelic FX.
Who is music for? Listener – or musician? Is a perfect record what matters, or the journey to make it? These are questions Dutch DJ/producer Martyn stirs in his latest album Music for Existing, released via his record label 3024. Described as “a love letter to the communal act of making music together”, the record features a sprawl of collaborators and friends including Duval Timothy, Dan Only, Lucinda Chua, Mark Cisneros, Mischa Porte, Cees Bruinsma andMusa Okwonga.
Music for Existing is a record dedicated to re-establishing connection in an increasingly insular world, whilst simultaneously demonstrating Martyn’s “profound love and appreciation for jazz, both in sound and approach.” While not inherently new, the fusion of the regimented,…
Drummer Peter Erskine, who began his productive career with the Stan Kenton Orchestra in the last century, is a master craftsman who is comfortably at home in groups large or small.
Along the way, he has recorded more than forty-five albums as leader or co-leader of various ensembles, always embracing his assignment with proficiency and taste.
On Peregrine, Erskine is in a trio setting with a pair of gifted colleagues, pianist Alan Pasqua and bassist Scott Colley, performing what Erskine describes as “a collection of tributes.” There are eleven in all, including four written by Pasqua and three by Erskine. Keith Jarrett wrote “Bop Be,” Brian Wilson and Tony Ascher penned “God Only Knows,” Phoebe Snow ‘s contribution…