by Nick DeRiso Though not the hoped-for third-act triumph, Ella and Oscar still has its enduring charms. See, Oscar Peterson, a hard-banging piano genius as bluesy as he was inventive, should have made the perfect foil for Ella Fitzgerald on this stripped-down date, set for reissue on March 15 by Concord. It seems that too much time, however, had passed [...]

by Nick DeRiso A lot of singers have sung this one, from Nat “King” Cole and Johnny Mathis to Diana Krall and the Orioles, the post-war R&B vocal quartet. For me, though, Nancy Wilson’s has always been the definitive reading. She nails the sense of hopeful anxiety that surrounds Dec. 31 every year, even while continuing to display a hushed [...]

by Something Else Reviews After a long winter’s nap, let’s rock a while to some of our Yuletide favorites — from the jazzy (Ramsey Lewis and Joe Pass) to the downhome (Koko Taylor and Kermit Ruffins), from the offbeat (the Temptations tearing up “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer”) to the undiscovered (Erwilian, a terrific new find) … Click through the [...]

by Nick DeRiso While much of Tony Joe White‘s new recording “The Shine” feels so bare-bones as to be undercooked, the muscular “Tell Me Why” bubbles up with the rough moral drama of a storyteller’s yarn. Still standing, despite years unjustly spent outside fame’s spotlight, White hasn’t stopped believing in himself, and in his work: “It’s all about the song, [...]

Photo: Shawn Brickbill/High Two by Pico It’s been quite a while since the bassist and composer Michael Formanek has led a date but with his ECM debut The Rub And Spare Change, he’s more than made up for lost time. Out since October 12, The Rub marks his return as a leader since the solo bass recording Am I Bothering [...]

by Pico Even as a small child growing up in Japan, jazz pianist Hiroe Sekine loved to pick out melodies she heard, such as the Japanese folk tunes emanating from her Mom’s pedal organ. Today represents a culmination of that life long passion with the release of her debut album A-mé, which means “rain” in Japanese. Sekine chose to present [...]

By Nick DeRiso One of three jazz-legend siblings, Hank Jones was perhaps as unassuming as his brother Elvin (nine years younger, famously of the John Coltrane group) was the outsized extrovert. Feathery light, then concisely powerful at the piano, Hank concluded an intellectual, often overlooked eight-decade career on Sunday when he died at age 91. It wasn’t just because he [...]

by S. Victor Aaron This article makes it twenty-three albums covered in the span of eight days, which put a nice dent in my backlog, and there’s just a couple more to go before turning our attention to the year 2009 in music. The batch of records covered here draws attention to jazz veterans and rooks alike who are off [...]

by S. Victor Aaron Last year we spotlighted a trio of CD’s that made up the maiden releases by a new record label, the artist-run collective Brooklyn Jazz Underground Records. A year later last June, there were three more BJU records to examine. And here we are less than six months after that, and there are now four more new [...]

by Nick DeRiso Julian “Cannonball” Adderley, a spirited, bluesy and always fun performer, seemed to burst out from a series of early live recordings during a period when that was rare. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, there were just too many logistical nightmares, from getting good takes in the smoky, raucous atmosphere of a nightclub, to finding a [...]