Michael Ullman
Each month, our arts critics — music, book, theater, dance, television, film, and visual arts — fire off a few brief reviews.
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This Craft reissue is welcome for the presence and distinctness of its sound, and for the state-of-the-art playing. Art Pepper will be going through my head for days.
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Jazz, in particular, seemed to not merely satisfy Justin Freed’s inner cravings for beauty, but it led him outwards, to others, eventually inspiring some of the key relationships in his life.
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The music comes out of an extended personal crisis; the compositions found here are a testament to a musician regaining his voice.
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The advantage to listening to the recorded Unstuck in Time: The Kurt Vonnegut Suite is that on disc pianist Jason Yeager writes beautifully for septet: the textures he evokes in his arrangements are curiously varied and invariably moving.
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Vince Guaraldi isn’t the heaviest of jazz pianists: he played at a time when McCoy Tyner and Bill Evans were omnipresent. But his tunes, his gently humanist approach to music, meant that he reached listeners that others couldn’t or didn’t.
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This collection, Newvelle Records’ first series release in two years, features original compositions by Elan Mehler, Michael Blake, Dave Liebman, and Nadje Noordhuis.
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Given Keith Jarrett’s current disability, this new ECM recording is an unexpected gift to his fans.
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The sound of both musicians is indelible: trumpeter Enrico Rava is warm and rounded; pianist Fred Hersch, often icy, is fetching and detailed.
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Music Feature: The Best Jazz Albums of 2022
The magazine’s jazz critics look back over the past year and highlight their favorite albums.
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