This album is a re-issue on International Anthem Records of Ben LaMar Gay’s first album, which was a compilation from seven albums that LaMar Gay had recorded in seven years, but never actually issued. The eclectic music on this album [...]
Anything by trumpeter Kenny Dorham instantly commands attention, and this Record Store Day release, on vinyl from Resonance Records, immediately moved to the top of my wish list. Resonance has a flair for finding and releasing rare sessions, unheard since [...]
Jazzdor, based in Strasbourg, fosters a spirit of collaboration and co-operation across national boundaries. In addition to its annual ‘home’ festival, it added Berlin more than 15 years ago. The Budapest festival is a relatively new addition, run in partnership [...]
The news that the Mack Avenue Music Group has acquired the rights to the legendary musician-run label Strata-East is followed by a special Record Shop Day vinyl release of the Pharoah Sanders‘ 1969 recording for the company, ‘Izipho Zam’, translated [...]
What a long way Sultan Stevenson has come. I cast my mind back to the first time I heard his trio in September 2021. They were in a potentially tricky slot, playing as support for Billy Cobham at the Jazz [...]
This set of rare and rather amazing soul classics has a lot going for it straight out of the gate. To start with, it comes courtesy of Ace Records, a magnificent label to be celebrated for its lovingly curated compilations, [...]
Amina Claudine Myers is one of those rare musicians where the music of the blues, gospel and jazz stretching out at its most adventurous is in the blood, and this came over no better than in her solo live performance [...]
Like the recent release of McCoy Tyner and Joe Henderson’s ‘Forces of Nature: Live at Slugs’ from 1966, Freddie Hubbard’s 1967 date at Sylvia Robinson’s Bronx club, the Blue Morocco, is a superior recording that wholly deserves its belated disinterment. [...]
One of the great early artistic successes of the ECM catalogue and a foundational text for contemporary solo jazz piano, Chick Corea’s ‘Piano Improvisations Vol 1’ (and come to that, Vol 2, which hasn’t been added to this Luminessence vinyl [...]
The alchemy of top-flight groups seen at close quarters really is a miraculous thing. I recently had the pleasure of interviewing John Patitucci, and he talked about his memories of more than two decades with the Wayne Shorter quartet, and [...]
