Although it’s hard to know whether Zu themselves will be happy to hear this image being invoked, there’s something slightly eerie about one of the first sounds on the opening track of their latest album sounding more than a little like the whirring of helicopter blades. Recalling a key image of the first major news story of the year feels like one of their strange but apt alchemical coincidences that great artists can sometimes conjure up. Italian trio Zu are true musical alchemists. Their singular jazz-punk/experimental rock sound takes base materials (saxophone, bass and drums) and turns them into something wondrously radiant; a heavy, meditative, groovy and spiritual fusion whose formula belongs to them alone.
While the band have plied their singular trade…
Category: jazz
…Amaika Rude’s album, The Ska and the Abstract Truth, evokes happy head nodding to the tunes found on Oliver Nelson’s masterpiece Blues and the Abstract Truth (1961). The original album, released in February 1961, featured Nelson on saxophone and included such jazz luminaries as Freddie Hubbard, Eric Dolphy, Bill Evans, Paul Chambers and Roy Haynes. With a lineup like that, is it any wonder why many jazz publications have given it 5-star accolades?
Amaika Rude’s remake adds a new dimension — the ska beat — to the mix, hopefully attracting new listeners to this timeless set of compositions. The band, comprised of Inigo Elexpuru (drums), Inigo Imatz (bass), Andres Navascuez (piano/organ), Borja Goni (guitar), Joan Gonga…
Iain Ballamy’s new album Riversphere, released late 2025, is a fluid, textural exploration between improvisation and composition. Featuring performances by Rob Luft, Conor Chaplin, Corrie Dick, Laura Jurd and introducing Charlie Ballamy.
…The cross-generational lineup and captivating ideas of Riversphere, his first solo release in years, testify to exactly why he has stayed there for 40 years. In their 20s, Ballamy and pianist/composer Django Bates frequently joined forces as two mavericks, skilfully respectful of the classic jazz tradition while adventurously and often mischievously transforming it. They were key figures in a gifted UK generation that created some of the sparkiest European jazz of the 1980s and 90s, most influentially in…
In November 2025, producers Zev Feldman and George Klabin’s Resonance Records released two unissued live recordings by Rahsaan Roland Kirk. Vibrations in the Village: Live at the Village Gate is the first, captured live in 1963. The tapes were cut for a documentary soundtrack about Kirk’s life, which was never made. The tapes survived for more than 60 years in the care of engineer Ivan Berger. When Feldman received them, he initially contacted saxophonist James Carter who, impressed, made the case for release. Feldman then contacted Kirk’s indomitable widow Dorthaan Kirk (whose wonderful liner essay here is titled “My Life with Rahsaan”); she enthusiastically approved.
Recorded over two nights in November 1963, Kirk used three different pianists:…
In November 2025, producers Zev Feldman and George Klabin’s Resonance Records released two unissued live recordings by Rahsaan Roland Kirk. Seek & Listen: Live at the Penthouse is the second. A double disc, it was recorded in 1967. Kirk’s band included pianist Ron Burton, bassist Steve Novosel, and drummer Jimmy Hopps in 11 selections. The set opens at the tail-end of the rowdy “The Jump Thing,” then gives way to Burt Bacharach’s and Hal David’s “Alfie.” Burton embellishes Kirk’s gorgeous tenor lines with graceful elegance as the rhythm section walks behind him. “Mingus-Griff Song” is an original. At over 12 minutes, this band fires on all cylinders. Whether Kirk is playing tenor, manzello, stritch, flutes, or whistles, his creative intensity is total. Tenor sings…
Niia Bertino’s V marks her return to jazz after several years spent exploring indie pop, edgy R&B, and neo-soul. Its striking black-and-white cover photo reveals her posing with a heretic fork around her neck. The implement was a torture device used during the Middle Ages to punish people who challenged orthodox rules.
The set was co-produced by Spencer Zahn and Lawrence Rothman. Both wrote or co-wrote songs for the set, as did Chloe Angelides and the date’s saxophonist Nicole McCabe.
Niia‘s vocals and piano are backed by an assortment of contributors including bassist Anna Butterss, McCabe, drummer James McAlister, trumpeter Jon Natchez, and brass multi-instrumentalist CJ Camereri.
The influential saxophonist Tim Berne leads a new explorative trio called Capotosta, taking listeners on a sonic journey filled with hidden treasures. Berne enjoys the inventive support of two other creative visionaries: guitarist Greg Belisle-Chi, a recent yet highly compatible collaborator, and drummer Tom Rainey, a longtime associate who played an important role in Berne’s acclaimed avant-jazz trios Big Satan and Hardcell.
Yikes Too is a double album with two distinct parts. The first disc features ten studio tracks recorded at Firehouse 12 in New Haven, while the second captures a live concert performance in Seattle. The album’s mixing and mastering are handled by guitarist and producer David Torn, Berne’s collaborator in the Sun of Goldfinger…
The steady, incremental rise of UK-based vibraphonist Jonny Mansfield continues with the release of his latest album, Light Finds a Way In, an album as ambitious as the ones that preceded it. Issued on Edition Records in 2019, Elftet, his auspicious debut, saw him fronting an eleven-piece ensemble. The Kenny Wheeler Jazz Prize winner followed that with The Air in Front of You (on Resonant Postcards, which he founded in 2023), an album that boldly integrated strings into a jazz context, the result a heady chamber-jazz fusion, and then Quartet! Live at Pizza Express, where a slightly smaller outfit became an exciting live conduit for his vision. With Light Finds a Way In, Mansfield presents a sequel of sorts to The Air in Front of You by reinstating…
The title of Kinda Out West nods, of course, to Sonny Rollins’ influential 1957 album Way Out West, but it’s just as importantly Edmonton jazz artist Aretha Tillotson‘s homage to her native Alberta and the province of British Columbia. The acoustic bassist’s follow-up to 2024’s Introducing Aretha Tillotson partners her with drummer Dave Laing and the Nanaimo, BC-born sisters Ingrid and Christine Jensen. The hardships prairie residents endure inhabiting the land make them strong and resolute, and it’s not stretching things too far to suggest said qualities are part of Tillotson’s DNA and the music she creates. In keeping with someone who grew up surrounded by large open spaces, the pieces on her sophomore effort are similarly expansive in providing…
We thought that this was a concluded trilogy, but here comes Polarity 4, further Brooklyn encounters between tenorman Ivo Perelman and trumpeter Nate Wooley. They sustain this intimate concept quite well, discovering new tube-depths to plunge, fresh structural windings to entangle. Space is the place, as each player always leaves ample instants for their sonics to settle in the ears of the concentrating listener. As with previous sessions, the horn tones retain an allegiance to jazz tradition, but it’s the structures, interactions and breakneck intuitiveness that edge this music towards the free zone.
Now on number 4, this pair are fully embraced in creation. Softness can be partnered with a burr, and often each player will choose…
The Philadelphia collective Untethered embraces what its drummer Grant Calvin Weston calls “spontaneous creative composition,” which is another way of saying that the music the quartet plays is fully improvised. You could say that the group is making music from thin air, but that discounts the years of experience its members have spent listening, growing, and inventing.
So the air is quite thick, actually, teeming with countless elements from which their groove-oriented music draws. Weston, of course, is a deeply seasoned marvel, a musician who at 17 became a member of Prime Time, the paradigm-shifting electric band of the legendary saxophonist, composer, and thinker Ornette Coleman. He has gone on to work with…
In 2011, the venerable Cuneiform label released Flashpoint: NDR Jazz Workshop April ’69, an audio and video document of John Surman‘s live ten-piece jazz orchestra delivering five hard original tracks that reveal his canny depth and diversity as a young composer, arranger, and bandleader. The saxophonist was busy throughout 1969: He’d just completed recording his second album, How Many Clouds Can You See (released in 1970) and played on 11 additional albums in 1969, including John McLaughlin’s Extrapolation.
2025’s Flashpoints and Undercurrents amounts to a historic document. It contains the five selections from the 2011 release — here, all are extended takes — and replaces the video with a second audio disc from the same sessions that…
Back in 2018, Omnivore Recordings collected The Complete Warner Bros.-Seven Arts Recordings of jazz pianist-composer-Peanuts legend Vince Guaraldi. Now, the label is breaking out one of the albums contained in that set for CD and vinyl reissue. 1968’s Oh, Good Grief! was built around his familiar compositions for Charles M. Schulz’s legendary characters, but those tunes were subtly updated as Guaraldi added electric guitar and electric harpsichord to his trio (piano/bass/drums) format. Kevin Gray has remastered these vibrant new editions.
In his first album for Warner Bros., Vince Guaraldi serves up another delightful, though pitifully short (28 minutes) helping of his themes for the Peanuts TV specials. By this time, like…
If you’re worried that you’re a latecomer to the work of uncategorizable Chicago musician Ben LaMar Gay, take solace in the certainty that you’re not alone. Gay’s new album, Downtown Castles Can Never Block the Sun, supposedly draws from seven of his previous records, with curious names like Grapes, Benjamim e Edinho, and Confetti in the Sky Like Fireworks. But when you start googling, not one of these albums surface. In this age of Bandcamp and Soundcloud, the cornetist, composer, and vocalist recorded seven albums in seven years but never let anyone outside of his inner circle hear them. Instead, he worked with jazz and experimental artists like Joshua Abrams’ Natural Information Society, Nicole Mitchell, Jaimie Branch and Bitchin Bajas while…
Tenor saxophonist Eric Alexander delivers a soulful modern tribute to Stanley Turrentine with his album Like Sugar. Recorded at the renowned Van Gelder Studios in Englewood Cliffs, NJ, with longtime collaborators David Hazeltine on piano, Dennis Carroll on bass, and George Fludas on drums, the album reinterprets Turrentine’s spirit rather than simply copying it, resulting in a deeply swinging and cohesive set that blends tradition with contemporary artistry.
Alexander begins this session with one of his originals, “Jave,” and incorporates the shout chorus from Turrentine’s signature tune “Sugar,” using it as a melodic springboard. The outcome is an energetic romp where Hazeltine’s solo bridges classic hard bop with modern harmonic…
Heat On is Lily Finnegan’s debut as a bandleader and composer. In fact, while this CD is credited to a band called Heat On, the quartet played several gigs under the name Lilly Finnegan Quartet before it took on its current moniker.
Finnegan is an emerging presence on the Chicago scene. Since moving back here after school in 2022, she has drummed with every iteration of Ken Vandermark’s Edition band, and has participated in other combos with locals Katie Ernst and Sarah Clausen, among others. She’s also curated concerts for the Option Series, a schedule of salon-style concerts hosted by Experimental Sound Studio, is a member of the musician’s collective, Catalytic Sound.
If that combination of playing and organizing…