Michael Ullman

Jazz Album Review: Chet Baker Trio’s “Live in Paris”

April 24, 2022
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Live in Paris: The Radio France Recordings 1983-1984 is an example of solid, appealing late Chet Baker, doing what he did best with standards and the occasional original.

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Album Review: “Mingus: The Lost Album from Ronnie Scott’s” — A Rich Centennial Treat

April 18, 2022
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The centenary of bassist/composer Charles Mingus’ birthday is days away and I am listening to the beautifully packaged and processed and richly annotated 3 lps of Mingus’s Lost Album, recorded live at Ronnie Scott’s London club in 1972.

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Jazz Album Review: Danilo Pérez featuring The Global Messengers — Projecting Light in a Dark World

March 24, 2022
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This cooperative music is deliberately international in instrumentation and personnel and theme, proffering its own characteristic, and often quite beautiful, mix of sounds.

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Jazz Album Review: “In Common III” — Adventures of an All-Star Rhythm Section

March 5, 2022
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With their shifting textures and compositional variety, the relatively short pieces show the ways — in this case mostly gentle and lyrical — five musicians can fruitfully interact.

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Jazz Album Review: Oscar Peterson Quartet — “A Time for Love”

February 21, 2022
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Oscar Peterson always seemed at his best live, which is how we find the pianist in this beautifully recorded, newly issued set.

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Jazz Album Review: Avishai Cohen’s “Naked Truth” — Meditating on the Last Things

February 18, 2022
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To this listener, the quartet generates a drama of gradual enlightenment, as if extroversion signified some sort of illumination.

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Jazz Album Review: Pianist Cecil Taylor — Lightning in a Piano

February 9, 2022
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“When you play with authority, then that’s what the music is about, like ooooh baby, and sing it.” — Cecil Taylor

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Jazz Album Review: Emile Parisien Sextet’s “Louise” — Deeply Lyrical, Disciplined, and Free

January 10, 2022
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Soprano saxophonist Emile Parisien’s new disc is deliberately, and satisfyingly, international.

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Jazz Album Reviews: A Trio of Recordings That Put String Quartets in Jazzy Settings

January 9, 2022
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The rewards of these and other recordings provide ample proof that, with its shape-shifting qualities, the string quartet will continue to be a powerful asset for talented jazz composers.

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Jazz Album Review: Art Pepper and Zoot Sims — A Sweetly Swinging “Jam Session”

January 7, 2022
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Whether playing together or apart, on this 1981 recording the two saxophonists couldn’t sound more gracefully inspired or more compatible.

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