Sometimes Pharoah Sanders came back and played like a primordial saxophone deity, cutting into the rhythm section like an act of penetration.
Jazz
Arts Remembrance: Eric Jackson, Boston’s Voice of Jazz (1950-2022)
Longtime GBH host Eric Jackson passed away earlier this morning.
Concert Review: The High Standards of Michael Formanek’s Elusion Quartet
To hear free music so beautifully contained and expressed in such inventive forms isn’t unheard of (Henry Threadgill? Vijay Iyer? Wadada Leo Smith?). But bassist Michael Formanek has his own way.
Jazz Retrospective: The Indelible Impact of “Emergency!” by the Tony Williams Lifetime
If you don’t know those 1969 originals, get them and listen to them. And if you know the recordings well, listen to them again. No matter how familiar this 50-year-old music is to you, you’ll be struck by its timelessness.
Jazz Album Review: Tony Williams’s “Play or Die” Gets Full Release, 40 Years On
The shadow of Weather Report looms over this groove session of consonant harmonies, the only documentation of a short-lived band that should have had the chance to burn more brightly.
Jazz Album Review: Enrico Rava and Fred Hersch’s Winning “The Song Is You” — Suffused With Tact and Grace
The sound of both musicians is indelible: trumpeter Enrico Rava is warm and rounded; pianist Fred Hersch, often icy, is fetching and detailed.
Jazz Album Review: Miguel Zenón’s “Música de las Américas” — A Buoyant Musical Adventure
The saxophonist has the slithery facility of a bebopper, but I also hear something of the forthright stance of Coltrane in his playing, despite the rhythmic complexity of his writing — and his distinctively varied use of his Puerto Rican background.
Jazz Album Review: Barre Phillips and György Kurtág Jr. Go “Face à Face”
To my ears, these beautifully recorded improvisations — with their unique sequences of tones and subtle interactions — are never less than intriguing.
Book Review: “Dangerous Rhythms: Jazz and the Underworld” — A Tale of Mobsters and Musicians
Guitarist Eddie Condon quotes a mobster on jazz: “…it’s got guts and it don’t make you slobber.”
Festival Review: 2022 Newport Jazz Festival — A Relaxed Musical Vibe, Communal and Diverse
To some degree, everything fit under the resilient umbrella that the late George Wein raised at the edge of Newport Harbor.