Jazz
On this disc, trumpeter, singer, and composer Sarah Wilson serves up music that is warm, a little funny at times, and very well played in an unassuming manner.
William Parker, the 69-year-old composer, multi-instrumentalist, author, and all-around presence on the progressive jazz scene churns out challenging music with prolific abandon.
To my ears, veteran guitarist John McLaughlin is both a jazz and a rock player, and more besides.
Davis solos less on Merci Miles than I wish he had, but he plays with precision, taste, and expression.
Long Tall Sunshine pulls off a delightful paradox: it combines in-your-face vigor with subtlety, probing free improvisations with appealing compositions.
Saxophonist Harold Land has been a major contributor to the rich tapestry of jazz. Check him out.
Vocalist Anaïs Reno and Mark Masters and his big band supply compelling homages to the brilliance of Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn.
Ivo Perelman and Matthew Shipp’s duets will draw in and fascinate listeners who are open to intelligent, virtuosic, and intimate improvisations, simultaneously logical and free.
Bassist Dave Holland’s new album, Another Land, will take you to interesting places. Clarinetist’s Ben Goldberg’s latest, with its guitar/bass/drums core, might do the same.
Each month, our arts critics — music, book, theater, dance, and visual arts — fire off a few brief reviews.
Arts Remembrance: Sonny Rollins, Jazz’s ‘Saxophone Colossus,’ Dies at 95