Category Archives: Reviews

Let’s Go to the Movies: Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Bill Evans, and Omar Sosa (Updated)

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I can’t hardly believe it’s been a month, dear reader, since we last met. In the interim, I traveled back east to visit my mom and then up to New York to hang with friends old and new. While in the city, I trekked out to Brooklyn on the F train for a concert at iBeam, a musician’s cooperative in Gowanus. The program featured three piano duos—Carol Liebowitz with saxophonist Nick Lyons, Kazzrie Jaxen with guitarist Adam Caine, and Virg Dzurinko with trumpeter Ryan Messina—and it was a night to remember. More than any other medium, music for me has the capacity to open doors deep in the psyche, and at iBeam that night, doors were swinging open left and right.

Which brings me to today’s subjects: Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Bill Evans, and Omar Sosa. Each of them has keys to those doors, and each is the subject of a film worth seeing and supporting. Continue reading

Scott and Johanna Hongell-Darsee and Kevin Herig: Songs Old and New

As much and as long as I’ve been praising the accomplishments of New Mexico’s musical community, I am still sometimes caught off-guard by the quality of the work. Here are two releases that did just that. On The Mountain King, Scott and Johanna Hongell-Darsee carry songs that are centuries old, laden with the mythic and supernatural, into the modern world, while on All You Can’t Control, Kevin Herig writes brand-new songs that get between the lines of everyday life, love, and loss. Continue reading

Pianists Perdomo, Wilner, and Pintchik: Different Strokes

Luis Perdomo, Spike Wilner, and Leslie Pintchik, decidedly different pianists, have at least one thing in common: each has recently released an engaging new album and finds an approach to their instrument to match their artistic vision. Continue reading

Birds of Chicago: ‘Real Midnight’ Sings to the Wolves at the Door

Birds of Chicago: J.T. Nero and Allison Russell

Birds of Chicago: J.T. Nero and Allison Russell

Real Midnight, the new release from Birds of Chicago—the collective of musicians that centers on the peripatetic singer/songwriters J.T. Nero and Allison Russell—demonstrates that words and music put together in just the right way can melt hearts, heal wounds, and stiffen backbones. Again and again on Real Midnight, Nero and Russell, who will be in concert in Santa Fe and Albuquerque this week, manage to snare big feelings in the tiniest details (“He can see her now he can see her now/Sunlight through her camisole”), memorialize hallowed moments of youth in a handful of words (“We watched you fade/Dim star of the palisades/Drowning in the sun”), and celebrate truths that can make you shudder (“Nobody keeps anything/Nobody gets to keep anything/I’m trying to catch a feeling/I’m just trying to catch a feeling”). Continue reading

Three Quickies: Reviews on Releases from Ralph Alessi, Tom McDermott and Aurora Nealand, and Herlin Riley

Short reviews of the latest releases from these masters. Continue reading