Music and Recording Reviews

Adam O'Farrill: For These Streets
O'Farrill, trumpet, flugelhorn, compositions, arrangements; seven others
Out of Your Head OOYH034 (CD). 2025. Spencer Murphy, prod.; Chris Krasnow, Alex Conroy, Nicky Young, engs.
Performance ****½
Sonics ****

Adam O'Farrill has gained well-deserved recognition as a leading light among contemporary jazz trumpeters. But as far as I'm concerned, nothing in his discography foreshadows the scale or vision of his new octet project. For These Streets is a work of extreme ambition and originality.

It's a concept album, inspired by O'Farrill's fascination with music, literature, and film from the 1930s. Concept albums must be taken on faith. We may never understand how Henry Miller's novel Tropic of Cancer or Charlie Chaplin's movie City Lights filtered into this edgy, 21st century jazz—or tease out the melodic shards and rhythmic echoes that O'Farrill reportedly draws from Ravel and Weill. What matters is that O'Farrill's intriguing, unsettling pieces feel like a suite—an arc—unified by a single motivation.

Most composers who use octets are interested in scale, but O'Farrill says he seeks intimacy, noting that "there are only a few moments where all eight people are playing." On a piece like "Swimmers," he proves again that, as an improvising trumpet soloist, he can pin you back in your chair. On "Streets," O'Farrill and guitarist Mary Halvorson are essentially alone for five volatile minutes. "The Break Had Not Come" is a captivating juxtaposition of Halvorson's obsessive strumming and Patricia Brennan's lingering vibraphone vibratos. More representative are movements like "And So On" and "Rose," where the focus shifts from solo voices to the quietly seething ensemble.

For These Streets is shadowy, atmospheric chamber music. The eight musicians play 12 instruments, and while the palette is varied, colors are mostly muted. As listeners, we never resolve this album's mysteries. Instead, we sit rapt as scenes shift and pass by us, cinematically.—Thomas Conrad

Billy Mohler: The Eternal
Mohler, bass; Devin Daniels, alto saxophone; Jeff Parker, guitar; Damion Reid, drums
Contagious Music CGM011 (CD). 2025. Dan Seeff, prod.; Pete Min, eng.
Performance ****
Sonics ****

Remarkably for a thriving metropolis, Los Angeles hasn't really been a hotbed of jazz—except for the 1940s, when Central Avenue in the city's Black community was thriving, and the 1950s, when West Coast "Cool" jazz was much in vogue.

But a new, edgy energy is audible in town. It's loosely associated with the Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz, clubs like Sam First, and players like Dan Rosenboom, Julien Knowles—and the four people on The Eternal.

Billy Mohler's resumé is atypical. A Berklee-trained jazz bassist, he's been a session bassist for pop stars like Lady Gaga and Dolly Parton. His quartet here is new, but it shares a quality with Mohler's previous bands: The quartet's jazz is hardcore, but it suggests a pop sensibility, which makes the groove more accessible.

Most of the tunes are assertive anthems like "Destroyer" and "Those Who Know," with a big beat from Mohler, surging drums from Reid, and killing solos from alto saxophonist Devin Daniels and guitarist Jeff Parker. But there is variety. "Hawk Wind" is suspenseful, moving deliberately, tense with withheld force. "Reflection" is a brief, rapt, burning ballad with no solos but with Mohler's bass at its center, powering it.

You'll be hearing more about Daniels. He is a merciless improviser. He already has his own sound, one that slashes the air like a switchblade. His quick, fresh ideas keep coming at you; around him, you can never relax.

Parker, with his intelligent comping and vivid solos, is the voice of reason in this band. Mohler threads five solo bass interludes—iterations of "Eternal"—throughout the album. All five are dark and gripping. They are the anchors of the album, around which the band pieces flow.—Thomas Conrad

Louis Stewart/Jim Hall: The Dublin Concert
Louis Stewart, Jim Hall, guitars Livia LRCD2402 (CD). 2024.
Dermot Rogers, prod.; Gerald Davis, Daire Winston, engs.
Performance ****
Sonics ***½

Maybe it's the decades spent hustling, but jazz musicians don't seem to know how to take time off. Case in point: this newly unearthed recording of a 1982 Boxing Day concert by guitarists Louis Stewart and Jim Hall, captured while Hall was on holiday in Dublin. Livia Records founder Dermot Rogers hastily arranged the gig at a Jewish community center, the only venue available the day after Christmas in a country that at the time was highly religious. Now back in business, the Livia label has compiled highlights from that concert.

In 1982, Hall was one of the most revered guitarists of the postbop era, with nearly three decades of performances behind him. Stewart, 13 years younger, had come up through the British jazz scene with Tubby Hayes in the late '60s and was active on both sides of the Atlantic. The material on The Dublin Concert is drawn from the jazz and Great American Songbook canons, most of it well-trodden by both guitarists. Though this gig seems to have been their only encounter, Stewart and Hall play with a jubilant, empathetic connection. Particularly charming are their exchanges of single-note lines on "Stella by Starlight" and "How Deep Is the Ocean." Their take on "St. Thomas," by Hall's former boss Sonny Rollins, is remarkable. After a relatively straightforward intro, the pair first deconstruct the theme into its percussive elements then move into a long section of broad chords, eventually sounding like a lost track from John McLaughlin's Extrapolation.

The sound is surprisingly good for what was essentially an archival recording, not intended for public release. There's some minor distortion in louder passages, and the between-song announcements—likely not miked—are sometimes hard to make out.—Andrey Henkin

Denny Zeitlin: With a Song in My Heart
Zeitlin, piano
Sunnyside SSC 1781 (CD). 2019/2025. Zeitlin, prod.; Vadim Canby, Zeitlin, engs.
Performance ****
Sonics ****½

From 2009 through 2019, Denny Zeitlin gave an annual solo piano concert at the Piedmont Piano Company in Oakland, California. Half of With a Song in My Heart was recorded at his final appearance there, in 2019; the other half comes from sessions in his home studio. In both settings but especially at Piedmont, engineer Vadim Canby ably captures the vivid, tactile presence of Zeitlin's piano.

As an artist, Zeitlin blends many virtues: chops, fearless creativity, taste. As a man, he is a force of nature. Today, at 87, he still works as a clinical psychiatrist and goes ballroom dancing twice a week. When he recorded this album, on which he plays his ass off, he was only 81.

From 2014 on, each of Zeitlin's concerts at Piedmont focused on a single composer, selected by the company. In 2019, the spotlight was on Richard Rodgers. Zeitlin takes bold liberties with Rodgers's material. His expansive introductions often feel freely improvised, but the melodies always emerge. On the patient, searching prologue to "Falling in Love with Love," the theme gradually coalesces from scattered fragments. He frequently surrounds the composer's harmonies with new counter-lines and unexpected digressions.

Occasionally, Zeitlin gives tunes new time signatures. In 7/4, "I Didn't Know What Time It Was" takes on a quirky, impulsive new personality. "This Nearly Was Mine," composed as a waltz, has always been a poignant song, but in Zeitlin's 5/4, its sadness has grandeur. "Wait Till You See Her" keeps its original time signature of 3/4 , but Zeitlin slows it down and turns it crystalline.

Perhaps the most literal reading is the title track. But Zeitlin, with his clean, strong touch, ingenious modulations, and imaginative addenda, cannot touch a song without making it his own.—Thomas Conrad