Category Archives: Reviews

Late-Night Benjamin Herman

Benjamin Herman, Café Solo (Roach Records)
A Review

Dutch alto saxophonist Benjamin Herman’s latest album, Café Solo, couldn’t be simpler in concept: get a swinging trio together, record a collection of standards live, and make the sound of the horn the focal point of the
album. Sitting in a comfortable chair, with Ernst Glerum (bass) and Joost Patocka (drums) behind him, Herman delivers a series of relaxed performances that take the
listener all over the saxophone.

There’s a compelling intimacy in the performances that makes it easy to imagine the three are playing a final set in a near-empty club in the middle of the week. They’re playing for
themselves, and kissed by midnight, the performances have a moving honesty shorn of
affectation.

Continue reading →

Antonio Sanchez Flows Free and Easy

Antonio Sanchez, New Life (CamJazz)
A Review

You know the old joke: “What do you call a guy who hangs out with musicians?”

“A drummer.” Fid-a-boomp.

Maybe we should reformulate that: “What do you call musicians who hang out with drummer Antonio Sanchez?”

“Lucky.”

That reworking comes on the heels of listening to New Life, the latest release from this melodic drummer, whose résumé includes outstanding work with Pat Metheny, Danilo Pérez, Gary
Burton, and Miguel Zenón, among others. The album delivers an affirmation of hope and
confidence, showcasing Sanchez’s rich compositional talents as well as the improvisational mastery of the top-drawer lineup: David Binney (alto sax), Donny McCaslin (tenor sax), John
Escreet (piano and Rhodes), and Matt Brewer (bass), with special guest Thana Alexa (voice).

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Pictures at an Exhibition

A Review:  Kevin Harris Project, Museum, vol. 1

One of the great pleasures of reviewing
music is learning how much you don’t know. Over the years, a large number of unsolicited CDs have come in over the transom,
introducing me to artists I had never heard of or knew only vaguely by name. Every so
often, popping one of these discs into the player for a quick sample, I hear something that demands closer inspection.

I remember, for example, getting Omar Sosa’s Mulatos for potential review from an editor. The disc sat on the shelf for weeks. I didn’t know much about Sosa, and I thought the artwork on the cover was goofy. Finally, one day, grudgingly, out of obligatory curiosity, I put the disc on to have a quick listen—and got my mind blown. Now, Sosa is an icon around this house, and I’ve even grown to love the Mulatos artwork.

Pianist/composer Kevin Harris may be headed for the same fate with the Kevin Harris Project’s release of Museum, vol.1. Continue reading →

hONEyhoUSe Heats Up the Sweet Spot

I swung by vocalist Hillary Smith’s house to pick up the new hONEyhoUSe CD, which was
waiting for me in an envelope stashed behind the fountain by her front door. With
characteristic generosity, Smith had left two copies, and that only made me doubly nervous.

I had been so over-the-top smitten by the trio’s first album, Sun, that I was afraid to cut the plastic wrap on this one. What if their first album had just been lightning captured in a bottle, and not a sun at all? How would I tell these musical friends that I didn’t dig it?

Photo courtesy of hONEyhoUSe.

I slid the CD into the slot on the dashboard, turned up the volume, and held my breath. It wasn’t too far into the first track, “Kansas,” that the goose bumps began to pop on my
forearms. Near the end of the song, where the hONEyhoUSe gospel choir takes us to church, the hairs on the back of my neck erected in sympathetic vibration, and I was in full voice accompaniment. (What an inspired choice, made in the studio on the fly by
producer John Wall and Smith, to multitrack the trio into a glorious choir.)

I herewith publically apologize to Mandy Buchanan, Yvonne Perea, Hillary Smith, and their djembe-playing percussionist Savannah Thomas for ever having had a doubt. Medicine Lodge burns hotter and sweeter than Sun. Continue reading →

CD Release Party for Floozy’s “Open Can of Super Days”

In the last couple of years, three new female trios have sprung up in Albuquerque, each with its own sound and sensibility, each feeling like it couldn’t have happened anywhere else, and each feeling like it has the potential to take another step.

First, there was hONEyhoUSe, then Jeez LaWeez, and now comes Floozy: Teresa Esguerra (Local Honey), Bronson
Elliott (Sexy Mother Pluckers), and Tanya Nunez (Tommy Rickard, Stu Nevitt).

Until a few weeks ago, I knew very little about these last three ladies, and now I can’t get their songs out of my head. Their first album, Open Can of Super Days (Flophouse Records), will be unleashed Saturday with a release party at the Outpost. It’s a big wet kiss of an album—exhilarating and dangerous, messy and calculating—a lipstick-smeared excursion into electro-acoustic folk-punk, with a shot of Thelma and Louise. Want to go for a ride with the top down? Continue reading →

Musically Speaking

An avid listener’s observations