Author Archives: Mel Minter

Seven Pianists Honor the Late Diane Moser on ‘For Diane’

Top: Satoko Fujii by Bryan Murray, Carol Liebowitz. Center: Dred Scott, Mara Rosenbloom by Sherry Rubel, Kazzrie Jaxen. Bottom: Virg Dzurinko, Ricardo Gallo

Diane Moser, who passed away last December, was a radiant member of the New York music scene. On For Diane, seven stunningly original pianists have contributed solo performances to honor her memory and legacy. Musically Speaking first encountered her very late in her life, but very happily, through her recording Birdsongs, and can attest to her remarkable qualities as a composer, performer, and gracious human being.

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Fresh, Disarming Music from Sarah Wilson

Sarah Wilson

On Kaleidoscope, trumpeter, vocalist, composer Sarah Wilson offers up an album of gratitude, dedicated to the people who have supported her. We, too, should be grateful for the support that helped shape this artist, whose post-bop jazz chops are shaded with influences from avant pop, Afro-Latin grooves, and indie rock.

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New-Found Musical Land from Sorry for Laughing

Gordon H. Whitlow of Sorry for Laughing

Accordionist/organist/composer Gordon H. Whitlow, a member of the avant-garde audiovisual collective Biota, has a distinguished résumé creating what I like to call adventurous music, music that opens previously unknown or unexplored territory. See It Alone, his latest album, introduced to me by Denver guitarist Janet Feder, leverages a group of collaborators he calls Sorry for Laughing. The album vividly occupies a fascinating musical space previously unknown to me.

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Ben Goldberg Puts New Clothes on Old Form

Ben Goldberg

Clarinetist Ben Goldberg composes slippery, well-structured music that invites wide improvisation, with a modern sound that subsumes a variety of influences drawn from the well of the past. He describes his latest album, Everything Happens to Be, as an exploration of the facets conjured by the word chorale, touching on a range of influences from J. S. Bach to Louis Armstrong, Ornette Coleman to Paul Motian.

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