Author Archives: Mel Minter

Tiny Census Concerts Promote Census Completion and Offer Work for NM Musicians

  • Joy Harjo
  • Rosalind Sanders Jones
  • Lara Manzanares
  • Larry Mitchell
  • Chris Dracup and Hillary Smith
  • Jackie Zamora

Beginning on Wednesday, April 8, at noon, the first of five weekly Tiny Census Concerts (TCC) on I Count NM’s Facebook page will take place. Sponsored by the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Complete Count Committee, the concerts will leverage the influence of New Mexico musicians to encourage citizens to complete the census form and will provide generous remuneration for their services. The first concert’s slate includes Joy Harjo, Rosalind Sanders Jones, Lara Manzanares, Larry Mitchell, Hillary Smith/Chris Dracup, and Jackie Zamora. Artists can apply for future concerts in the series by visiting the TCC website.

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New Releases from a Trio of Trios

  • Gilfema: Massimo Biolcati, Lionel Loueke, Ferenc Nemeth
  • Kenny Barron and Dave Holland. Photo by Sylvain Gripoix.
  • Johnathan Blake. Photo by Hans Speekenbrink.
  • Romain Collin, Bill Frisell, Grégoire Maret. Photo by Neutrø.

Jazz speaks in many dialects, or maybe it’s more accurate to say that different musical genres find it easy to apply jazz techniques to their native material. Gilfema (Lionel Loueke, Massimo Biolcati, Ferenc Nemeth) applies them to a West African musical palette; the Kenny Barron|Dave Holland Trio, Featuring Johnathan Blake, to a collection of compositions squarely in the mainstream of the American jazz tradition; Grégoire Maret, Romain Collin, and Bill Frisell, to a range of material in the Americana songbook. In sum, we have three outstanding trios offering three satisfying new recordings across a range of sensibilities.

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Fresh New Jazz from Kirk Knuffke and Ernesto Cervini

  • Kirk Knuffke. Photo by Dago Ulloa.
  • Ernesto Cervini

Kirk Knuffke and Ernesto Cervini take acoustic and electric approaches, respectively, in their sophisticated and accessible new releases. Both deliver terrific new compositions (Cervini adds a jazz standard and a Vince Mendoza song), and the compelling performances give me hope for the future of jazz just when I was beginning to think that every solo I was hearing sounded just like the previous one and that complex vacancy was the order of the day.

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Grooves from Paul Bryan and Collisions from Eunhye Jeong

  • Eunhye Jeong
  • Paul Bryan

The word jazz embraces music of many different styles and concepts. Pianist Eunhye Jeong’s The Colliding Beings, CHI-DA, explodes familiar forms with freely improvised compositions that marry avant-garde concepts with Korean folk traditions, while Cri$el Gems from bassist Paul Bryan takes an electric, groove-based approach to more familiar forms.

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Jazz Invites the World: New Releases from Oded Tzur and Tobias Hoffmann

  • Oded Tzur. Photo by Caterina di Perri.
  • Tobias Hoffmann

Who says jazz isn’t world music? On saxophonist Oded Tzur’s meditative Here Be Dragons, recorded in Italy, we have an Israeli playing East Indian–inflected music on an instrument invented by a Belgian in the context of American jazz. With Tobias Hoffmann’s lively Retrospective, recorded in Vienna, we have a native German writing tunes rooted in American jazz, playing an instrument invented by a Belgian, and working with Swiss and Austrian musicians. Unlike football, baseball, or the United States Constitution, jazz has rooted itself in the imagination of people everywhere, just like its progenitor, the blues, and its younger siblings, R&B, soul, and rock and roll.

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