After a summer overstuffed with seven-day work weeks, I am now trying to catch up on my listening. To speed things along, I’m limiting myself to short reviews. So here are reviews of new albums from the Tyshawn Sorey Trio, Dafnis Prieto (featuring Luciana Souza), and Steven Bernstein and the Millennial Territory Orchestra—plus a new single from Isaac Aragon.
Musically Speaking runs, for the most part, on free time, of which I’ve had precious little in the last two or three months, primarily due to a heavy workload. The renaissance of the Baltimore Orioles, who require my constant attention to keep the wins coming, has further reduced my time for careful listening. I did recently manage to sneak in a listen to worthy releases from the Susan Holmes Brotherhood and Chris Burton/Frederick Aragón.
Back in May, at the New Mexico Music Awards, bassist Terry Burns introduced me to vocalist/songwriter Julie Christensen, and although her name was unfamiliar to me, the fact that she was a former backup singer for Leonard Cohen, as Terry had told me in advance, was all I needed to know to take a listen to her latest album, 11 from Kevin: Songs of Kevin Gordon. To call it a “masterpiece”—there’s a word I try to stay away from—in no way overstates its quality.
Continue readingTwo splendid recordings, one from bass clarinetist Todd Marcus’s nonet and the other from cornetist Kirk Knuffke’s new trio, each bring to life the expressive intelligence of both the leaders and their colleagues.
Bernstein’s back, and he’s taken the lid completely off the pot with Manifesto of Henryisms, the third of four installments in his Community Music project, available on Bandcamp. Dixieland, funk, R&B, contemporary jazz—they’re all here, and they all share a native ground: New Orleans.
