Jazz emerged from the African-American experience in the United States, so it is not surprising that it has been socially relevant since its earliest manifestations. Sonny Rollins put the matter succinctly: "jazz is protest music."
In 1923, Bessie Smith sang songs based on her experience of racism and sexism. In 1939, Billie Holiday recorded "Strange Fruit," a chilling song about a lynching. Charles Mingus's 1959 classic "Fables of Faubus" secured a permanent place in music history for the…
Igor Osypov; Jason Lindner; Brandon Farmer
Those who had heard Igor Osypov in the Tabard with the high school band and John Hollenbeck's George needed to hear more. That opportunity came in a presentation in a club called Mama Kin. The band was Osypov on guitar and electric bass, Jason Lindner on keyboards, and Brandon Farmer on drums. They met for the first time at their only rehearsal on the day of the concert.
Osypov is one of the most creative under-40 guitarists in Europe. He is one of the few Ukrainian jazz musicians who is…
George: Letters to George (Out Of Your Head)
Vân-Ánh Võ featuring Kronos Quartet: Three-Mountain Pass (Innova)
Igor Osypov Quintet featuring Logan Richardson: I (Unit)
Orrin Evans: The Magic of Now (Smoke Sessions)
Kassa Overall: I Think I'm Good (Brownswood)
Mark Guiliana: The Sound of Listening (Edition)
Ambrose Akinmusire: A Rift in Decorum: Live at the Village Vanguard (Blue Note)
On Keep Your Courage, Natalie Merchant sounds like a 59-year-old woman who has been through some rough health. But that reflection of reality is what makes Keep Your Courage so good: Merchant refuses to hide her humanity and openly celebrates her distinctive, poetic mind while pondering the mysteries of love and the innate strength of women.
It's been almost 30 years since Merchant fronted the band 10,000 Maniacs. She has…
Almost five years after they released the first recording in their Prism series, the Danish String Quartet gives us Prism V. As in previous installments, the DSQ has paired a late Beethoven string quartet—here the extraordinary, final String Quartet No.16 in F major, Op.135—with a related fugue by J.S. Bach and a quartet by a later master.
What has changed is maturity.…
Sasha Matson is a unique thinker. Among the things he thinks about are jazz, rock, classical music, blues, film scores, and opera, to name just six of the genres he frequents. Sometimes he visits several genres in the same composition. His pivots can be jarring.…
The Prime was fitted with a Lyra Helikon SL cartridge (ca $2500, discontinued), driving a reasonably priced phono preamplifier: the…
Those who, like me, hauled ourselves through college music courses will remember being told that the Byrd Mass for five voices is a masterpiece, a claim soon belied when we were played a performance by some desiccated, monochromatic chorus. Had a recording like the new one by The Gesualdo Six been played instead, we might have agreed more readily with the academic judgment.
Simply by singing…
When my wife and I got engaged, we each bought each other a "bubble-back" Rolex watch from an antique shop in San Francisco. Mine was a 1939, hers was a 1940; both watches still run fine, though I am not sure for how much longer, as Rolex no longer services watches that old. My respect for Swiss engineering is based in part on my experience with the Rolexes. So I readily agreed when Editor-in-Chief Jim Austin proposed that I spend some time with the current version of the I1 Universal integrated…