Music
Lonnie Holley’s music on MITH sounds like a choir of better angels whose multi-layered voice is hard on the outside and soft on the inside, like so much Alabama clay.
One of the distinguishing characteristics of this set is the smart, energetic, and ever-changing, relationship between bass and drums.
Kamasi Washington’s music connected viscerally with a Royale audience that was packed with young people — or at least way younger than those normally seen at a jazz concert.
In this album, saxophonist Ethan Helm has achieved a very personal balance between highly composed sections and solos rooted in harmony and free playing.
Aside from his seemingly effortless technique, Roustem Saïtkoulov struck me as a poet of the piano. Music seems to be his first language.
Why this team up? Other than that both Luciana Souza and the Yellowjackets have been nominated for multiple Grammys?
“The pressure, I believe, is the responsibility to work on your gift. It’s God’s gift, a calling for me to share.”
Daniel Carter’s disc revolves, splendidly, around a process of self-discovery.
As good an interpreter of large-scale forms as he’s becoming, Andris Nelsons has always been a terrific conductor of new music.
Pianist Daniil Trifonov’s Rachmaninov album is magnificent; the Münchner Rundfunkorchester do right by Franz von Suppé’s overtures, and the Romantic Piano Concerto series continues to unearth gems.
The Annual Francis Davis Jazz Critics Poll at Mid-Year: Warming Up a Riff — How It Happened, and Why It Matters