Author's posts
New Music Monday for January 14, 2019
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify. Juno Award-winning saxophonist, composer and arranger Allison Au was born to a Chinese father and Jewish mother, and was raised in the multicultural metropolis of Toronto. Exposed to a wide array of musical styles growing up, Allison was captivated by the unhinged freedom of jazz, which became …
New Music Monday for January 7, 2019
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify. Bassist and composer Iris Ornig is one of the most original female voices on today’s New York jazz scene. Since her arrival in 2003 from Germany, she has played with an impressive roster of some of the most influential contemporary jazz musicians in New York, including Ambrose Akinmusire, …
New Music Monday for December 31, 2018
“The Lion, Camel & Child” is the second release from Toronto saxophonist Johnny Griffith’s all-star quintet—a band made up of four of Toronto’s leading jazz lights, along with legendary New York trumpeter Jeremy Pelt. Griffith drew inspiration from the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche—specifically his book, “Three Metamorphoses.” As the reedman explains, “Metamorphoses is …
New Music Monday for December 24, 2018
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify. German-born, Canada-raised Johannes Wallman spent his twenties and early thirties making his living on the New York jazz scene, teaching at NYU and the New School. He moved to Oakland in 2007 and, since 2012, Wallman’s been based in Madison, where he serves as Director …
New Music Monday for December 17, 2018
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify. John Shifflett (1953-2017) was a beloved bassist, well-known as THE sideman in many of the San Francisco Bay Area’s foremost ensembles and for traveling jazz dignitaries. Born and raised in Dubuque, John got his start teaching at the University of Iowa, his alma mater. He played on …
New Music Monday for December 10, 2018
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify. Jazz duo recordings can provide an exceedingly wide range of musical expression including, but not limited to, profundity, humor, tenderness, introspection and exuberance. This type of mercurial interplay is on full display on “Montreal Memories,” a previously unreleased live set from saxophonist Frank Morgan and pianist George …
New Music Monday for December 3, 2018
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify. While it was captured over the course of a single night, there’s a rich lifetime’s worth of music packed into “The Iron Man—Live at Smoke.” If it’s a slight overstatement to say that the album represents an autobiography in song, that’s only because 82-year-old Harold Mabern tells …
New Music Monday for November 26, 2018
Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify. “Jazz Bata 2” marks a new peak for composer, pianist and bandleader Chucho Valdes, even as it revisits the small-group concept of his 1972 Cuban album “Jazz Bata.” The new disc is both rhythmic and lyrical at once. The six-hand complexity of the bata repertoire—the deep classical music …