A drummer first, but a bandleader foremost, Brandon Sanders leads his urbane, hard-swinging quartet on his third solo album, 2025’s Lasting Impression. Once again working with producer and fellow drummer Willie Jones III, Sanders has delivered what feels like the third in a trilogy of albums that began with 2023’s Compton’s Finest and continued with 2024’s The Tables Will Turn, astutely executed acoustic productions that evoke the classic Blue Note LPs of the 1960s. Although his band lineup has shifted slightly over the three albums, one constant has been vibraphonist Warren Wolf, a star in his own right, whose rounded, bop-infused lines smartly evoke the sound of masters like Milt Jackson and Bobby Hutcherson. His presence here adds a distinctive…
Category: jazz
Pianist Aaron Parks returns to Blue Note with By All Means. The quartet includes drummer Billy Hart and bassist Ben Street who, as a trio, recorded 2017’s excellent Find the Way on ECM. The newcomer is saxophonist Ben Solomon, best known for his stint with Wallace Roney’s band between 2012 and 2017; he joined this group in 2023.
Simply put, By All Means is a straight-ahead jazz date. Parks has been pursuing the creation of a body of compositions in his own post-bop vernacular. He did it first with drummer Eric Harland and bassist Matt Brewer on the self-released Volume One and Volume Two in 2022. While each of those albums contained standards and tunes by the trio’s members, By All Means was composed entirely by the pianist.
EarthBall is a collective from Vancouver Island, Canada, which fully improvises their sessions and performances, veering from unhinged psych-rock to noisy, chaotic free jazz.
Outside Over There is their third official album for Upset the Rhythm, not counting several limited cassettes. It arrives mere months after Actual Earth Music, Vols. 1 & 2, a live album featuring recordings from a gig opening for Wolf Eyes, and a date at London’s vaunted avant-garde venue Café OTO that featured legendary improvisers Steve Beresford and Chris Corsano as guests. Outside Over There is a hair-raising, face-peeling effort that bombards and nearly suffocates. It’s loud, raucous, and messy, with even the record’s quieter moments being highly unnerving.
Nina Simone burst into the world with 1959’s Little Girl Blue, and music would never be the same. For over five decades, Nina entertained, enthralled, and educated listeners across her extraordinary recording and performance career.
After a triumphant concert at New York’s Carnegie Hall in 1992, Nina was approached by Elektra A&R executive Michael Alago (whose previous work at the label included Tracy Chapman and Metallica). When asked if Nina was ready to record again, she replied, “Get me the money… then we can talk!” Modeled around two of Simone’s favorites, Frank Sinatra’s A Man Alone (The Words and Music of Rod McKuen) and Billie Holidays’ Lady in Satin — with the common element that both were recorded with full orchestral accompaniment,…
The Cosmic Tones Research Trio make the kind of music that just makes sense at this moment in history. It’s not zeitgeisty, it doesn’t riff off current fads or aim blows at current examples of political injustices. There is no arch post-modern self-referentiality and no arbitrary attempts at engaging with future technologies.
Instead, the Portland, Oregon trio construct vibrating pathways of sound that lift you clear of those contemporary concerns. Their expansive brand of spiritual jazz arrived fully-formed on last year’s debut All Is Sound, an album that combined meditative structures and supremely detailed micro-passages in a way perfected by the likes of Don Cherry, Alice Coltrane and John Coltrane.
The current arc of spiritual and cosmic jazz…
A jazz artist stepping into the studio to record some Thelonious Monk can approach the task from different angles. They can go all in and make a statement with solely Monk tunes. Pianist Ran Blake’s Epistrophy (1991) is one example of this approach. Or the artist can pick one of their favorite Monk classics (or two or three) and present them alongside a batch of originals and/or tunes by other artists to create a set list. Almost everybody with a substantial discography has paid homage to the legend in this way. Or, as is the case with bassist Dayna Stephens, the Monk songbook can be examined for some lesser-known jewels to be molded into an (almost) all-Monk show.
That disc is Monk’d, and as described, we find not so much his more familiar work…
Bassist Stephan Crump and drummer Eric McPherson, two of jazz’s most forward-thinking rhythmists, form the core of the Borderlands Trio alongside pianist Kris Davis. After three acclaimed albums with that group, the pair decided to continue their collaboration, this time summoning powerhouse alto saxophonist Darius Jones — a central figure in New York’s avant-garde scene known for fusing modern expressiveness with old-school improvisational spirit.
Together, they form Otherlands Trio, an improvisation-centered ensemble whose elliptical and sectional journeys yield revelatory musical discoveries. Star Mountain, their debut, features five tracks — two expansive (of approximately 15 minutes) and three concise explorations.
When Aberdeen-raised drummer and composer Sebastian Rochford’s star rose around the millennium, he quickly made an impact with his precocious and inclusive awareness of 1950-1960s Monk-and-Miles jazz grooves, rock, funk, global music and more. From 2002, Rochford’s unique sax-led quintet Polar Bear began earning nominations for Mercury, Mobo and Urban Music prizes, as well as the kind of fame rare in instrumental jazz. He also played key roles with Acoustic Ladyland, Basquiat Strings, Fulborn Teversham, Sons of Kemet, and as a sideman with Damon Albarn, Brian Eno and Adele.
Finding Ways follows 2023’s A Short Diary (a duo album in partnership with pianist Kit Downes) in dealing with the death in 2019 of…
Take Brian Jackson and Gil Scott-Heron’s iconic track “The Bottle”, add a sublime vocal performance from UK soul legend Omar, and put it in the hands of house music pioneers Masters At Work-and you get a version that’s both timeless and urgent, filled with joy, fire, and social consciousness, and built for the dancefloor.
Driven by Masters At Work’s signature attention to detail, and elevated by the calibre of the musicians and vocalists involved, this reimagining of “The Bottle” evolved into something truly epic. In fact, the final mix turned out too long to fit on Brian Jackson’s upcoming 3LP album, Now More Than Ever-but everyone agreed: fans had to hear it in its full glory. So here it is, released exactly as intended on this twin 12″ vinyl and digital EP.
…Trombonist, singer, and producer Nils Landgren had long dreamed of celebrating a musical Christmas with good friends. In 2006, this dream became reality: Christmas with My Friends was released and quickly became one of the most popular and successful Christmas albums in European jazz — and a beloved tradition.
Since then, the series has appeared every two years, accompanied by regular tours. Now, with Christmas with My Friends IX, the series enters its ninth round.
“Someone once asked me: is there not an end to Christmas songs?” recalls Nils Landgren. His answer is simple: “The answer is simple: no, there is not. As long as we celebrate Christmas, there will be songs celebrating the occasion in…
Bugge Wesseltoft’s solo piano album It’s Snowing On My Piano (1997) is one of the most successful albums that the ACT label has ever released. For many people – especially in Germany and Norway – this music, made with such care and love by the affable and generous-spirited Norwegian, has become an essential part of their holiday season. And yet, for a Christmas album, it is anything but typical. From the very first note, the meditative strength of the music is palpable. Wesseltoft creates a locus of peace and tranquillity – a state of being which seems even more precious today than it did when the album first appeared. In the intervening years, Bugge Wesseltoft has played the music from the album many times in concert. Each time, he reinterprets the music…
The multi-hyphenate Nicholas Payton premieres a new trio, recording alongside eccentric bassist Esperanza Spalding and straight-ahead luminary Karriem Riggins, a roster enough to whet any forward-thinking listener’s appetites. Payton, beyond his wildly successful sideman stints with Oscar Peterson, Mulgrew Miller and Milt Jackson, has also made great strides to define his own worldly, idiosyncratic style as leader and solo artist, drawing from both his bopping lineage and the moodier, atmospheric ambitions of his peers. He parades confidently through no-nonsense bop and funk alike, contemporary fusion and hip-hop—nothing fazes him. Payton is insatiable, varied, defined only by a cohesive formalism, a workmanlike approach to performance…
…Limited Edition CD features an exclusive bonus track.
Just Us began, as so many classic jazz albums have, with a cruise. Besides being a Grammy-nominated (tellingly not in any categories that include the word “jazz”) saxophonist with the term “Smooth Jazz” in the title of one of his albums, Dave Koz also helps run festival cruises, all of which focus on music of the velvety variety. (Is there a live album documenting one of these cruise concerts that features fusioneer Jeff Lorber and lots of stage patter, you ask? 2019’s Dave Koz Presents: Live from the Dave Koz Cruise has the content you crave.) Koz invited Bob James, the legendary pianist, Quincy Jones protégé, arranger and composer of the chillest TV theme song…
For nearly two decades, Lebanese experimental musicians and composers Raed Yassin and Paed Conca have been developing a thrilling hybrid of Arabic working-class popular music and psych-adjacent free jazz as PRAED, fusing their love of Egyptian shaabi with fried electronics, minimalist composition, and adventurous ambition. For Antwerp’s Summer Bummer Festival in August 2022, the duo assembled an international cast of players – many of whose names will be immediately familiar to followers of contemporary avant-garde currents rooted in the MENA region – to work up the exhilarating suite that comprises The Dictionary of Lost Meanings.
Three elaborate large orchestral compositions are interspersed with more exploratory…
Gard Nilssen was born in June 1983 in Skien, Norway, and raised in a musical family consisting of drummers. With a background of marching bands and big bands, it was no surprise that drums became his instruments of choice. He got his musical education on the jazz program at Trondheim Musikkonservatorium. Later on, he became a performer, composer, producer and bandleader and moved to Oslo, becoming one of the most sought-after and active drummers on the European scene.
On June 14th 2014 at Engfeldt & Forsgren Studio, Oslo, Nissen, double bassist Petter Eldh and saxophonist Andre Roligheten recorded the seven tracks that comprise the album Firehouse which was released on Clean Feed in…
On his sophomore long-player, London-based jazz composer and keyboardist Yoni Mayraz retains his seamless contemporary melding of modern jazz, hip-hop, and electronics in settings that retain the spontaneity of live performance yet offer detailed arrangements.
Following Dybbuk Tse!, his 2022 debut, Dogs Bark Babies Cry expands the approach, focusing on his trio’s interplay (bassist Tim Dreissler and drummer Zoe Pascal). He also appends the cast with special guests. Recorded at London’s Konk Studios, the set is released by Pino Palladino and David Passick’s New York-based PPK Records.
Opener “Darwish Records” walks the tightrope between slick, soulful fusion, post-bop, and contemporary jazz. Mayraz weaves together…