On Kaleidoscope, trumpeter, vocalist, composer Sarah Wilson offers up an album of gratitude, dedicated to the people who have supported her. We, too, should be grateful for the support that helped shape this artist, whose post-bop jazz chops are shaded with influences from avant pop, Afro-Latin grooves, and indie rock.
Like Louis Armstrong, drummer/composer Matt Wilson makes no distinction between high art and low art. He probably wouldn’t even accept the use of those terms. So he finds beauty and meaning in just about any piece of music, and he manages to satisfy both the demanding jazz veteran and the tentative jazz newcomer. His quartet—composed of four leaders who manage to work together seamlessly—is always fun, always surprising, and always communicating something behind the music, as it does on the new release, Hug!
Continue readingJoe Fiedler’s low-brass quartet Big Sackbut (sackbut: an early form of trombone used in Renaissance music) enjoys an amphibian lifestyle, while Dave Glasser’s quartet takes classic jazz into fresh territory.
On Marbles, pianist/composer Falkner Evans employs a sextet (occasionally septet) of stellar and well-known New York musicians to produce richly colored harmonies across nine original compositions. On Tides, the Swiss quartet Phraim, fronted by vocalist Nina Reiter, delivers a robust collection of distinctively original compositions that blend elements of rock, jazz, and art song.
Three of the more original voices in the jazz world—drummer Matt Wilson, trumpeter Taylor Haskins, and trombonist Joe Fiedler—have new releases that show three different faces of jazz. Continue reading
