Nouveau Jazz Showcase

[Originally published in June, 2019] Sometimes in music, especially jazz, we call a particularly ambitious new album “a project,” especially when the music is something more, the perfect vehicle to deliver an impactful story. With 400: An African American Musical Portrait, bassist Avery Sharpe hasn’t just released a new album—he’s unveiled a serious project.

June 22, 2020. Inspired by the protest music of the '60s that helped dismantle the codified racism of that era, bassist Marlene Rosenberg’s latest album, MLK Convergence, released almost exactly a year ago, presents a new catalogue of socially conscious compositions with the exigency of our current moment in mind, taking aim at the vestiges of institutionalized prejudice that continue to link America to its original sin.

June 15, 2020. In 1998, bassist and bandleader Christian McBride composed The Movement Revisited: A Musical Portrait of Four Icons as part of a musical commission. At the time, he considered it a musical portrait of the Civil Rights Movement; it became much more than that.

June 8, 2020. From founding the Captain Black Big Band in 2009 to replacing Ethan Iverson as The Bad Plus’s pianist in 2018, Philadelphia native Orrin Evans has never shied away from taking a leap into the musical unknown.

June 1. 2020. Renowned vibraphonist, pianist, composer, and arranger Christian Tamburr went uber-creative for his seventh independent release, The Awakening/ Sounds for Sculpture. This album features 10 original pieces of music, each inspired by (and named after) a bronze sculpture by artist Seward Johnson, which stand at Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton, New Jersey.

May 26, 2020. Assembled here for Voice = Power—the follow-up to bassist Nicholas Krolak’s 2018 debut Chicory Root—are the component parts of the traditional Art Blakey-style hard bop quintet. Combine that with the fact that Krolak’s most notable side work has been with local heavyweights like Larry McKenna, John Swana, and Tony Miceli, and it’d be reasonable to assume the 10 tracks and 50 minutes of Voice = Power would be a mostly straight-forward affair.

Saxophonist Bobby Zankel has spent decades demonstrating inspiration and influence from a lifetime commitment to the free jazz movement of the 1960s.

May 18, 2020. The Airmen of Note are at it again—this time as the historic band celebrates 70 years of dazzling audiences worldwide with the commemorative release, Air Power. Be it live tour performances or special broadcasts, The United States Air Force Band's big band jazz ensemble continues to make its music accessible to everyone.

April 27, 2020. For a youngish tenor saxophonist, Ken Fowser’s recording output’s been nothing short of prodigious, leading five albums for Posi-Tone Records and co-leading another four with star vibraphonist Behn Gillece. His latest, Morning Light, is further support for the rock-solid reputation the South Jersey native has built since hitting the New York City scene 15 years ago.