One of the busiest musicians in jazz today, Lewis Nash is the first-call drummer for some of the greatest artists in this music. Since moving to New York in the early '80s, the Phoenix, Arizona native has appeared on more than 400 recordings, from his earliest dates with the late great Betty Carter to his decade as a member of the Tommy Flanagan trio to his recent effort as a member of the Blue Note 7...

Imagine the opening credits to a summer blockbuster movie that starts out in space looking down at the earth. As the camera moves in you recognize North America, then the east coast comes into frame and finally the island of Manhattan. The camera pans across the skyscrapers, down, down, down to Chinatown between the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges. Finally, you see 13 Monroe Street at street level. You notice an old building, first you here the chanting, then you see the American Buddhist Association. Carefully look down and to the left or you'll miss a true national treasure, the Downtown Music Gallery...

Jazz and classical musics should be friends. They have much in common. It is conceivable that a synthesis of the two could be achieved as successfully as that existing between jazz and rock. However, most attempts to meld jazz and classical have yielded mediocre results. Some headway has been made. The recent appearance of pianist {{Enrico Pieranunzi = 10297}}'s Enrico Pieranunzi Plays Domenico Scarlatti (Cam Jazz, 2009) shows a more urbane dissolution of the two genres into one another. There are several other recent recordings qualitatively reaching the same results dealt with here. The artists display vastly differing modes to achieving the same goal: the synthesis of jazz and classical music...

Some of 2009's jazz is being made far from Manhattan Island, home to a number of the genre's biggest labels. However, the revolution is also happening on the other side of the East River, where the artist collective Brooklyn Jazz Underground is making its own breaks and its own discs. BJU just released their second brace of CDs, and there's no sophomore slump to be heard anywhere...

Drummer Bill Bruford announced his retirement in March 2009, but he has left a treasure of remarkable composition and improvisation with these intriguing time-capsule tidbits. Another name for the collections, which chronicle the majority of Bruford's musical exploits from 1978 through 2008, could be "Seasons of Excellence...

Mark Soskin Quartet with Ravi Coltrane The Kitano Hotel New York, NY May 2, 2009 Mark Soskin is one of the more underrated pianists working today. Perhaps best known for his sideman work alongside greats like Sonny Rollins and Herbie Mann, Soskin combines an always melodic approach with a rich vocabulary that draws on a wide range of influences...

On an August morning in 1958, a 33-year-old photographer named Art Kane gathered 57 jazz musicians together on the steps of a Harlem brownstone. The resulting picture, known as "A Great Day in Harlem," appeared in the January 1959 issue of Esquire and has become the most famous image in jazz history. The photograph lacks the emotional intimacy of many famous jazz portraits--Coltrane at the Vanguard, contemplative with sweat on the brow; Miles in the studio, hungry behind great bug eyes; Monk at the Five Spot, the mystic, bearded and behatted--but it captures the family bonds that define both jazz bands and the jazz scene. When you see a close-up of Monk's enigmatic face, you see a singular genius; When you see Monk slouching next to Milt Hinton and Mary Lou Williams in "A Great Day in Harlem," you see a musician who's part of a continuum and a community...

There is no place for fear or doubt in pianist Craig Taborn's playing--such states are banished from a mind that seeks to explore the musical possibilities of each moment with maximum freedom. Taborn's improvisational playing is a continual creation where the journey is the thing, and words like beautiful, ugly and mistake have virtually no meaning. True improvisers like Taborn, with the ability to take the leap into the unknown, have always been a fairly rare breed...

When renowned jazz critic Leonard Feather was asked about this record, he said something favorable. And thus has become the general consensus since its release in late 1959, early 1974, 1989, 1998, and finally in 2004. I'm certain that upon hearing it, you'll feel the same. The fates aligned when this session was recorded. Not only did Miles Davis discover three additional skinny ties he'd forgotten that he'd bought, but Rudy Van Gelder snagged a really sweet parking spot right in front of the studio and he found a nickel in the drink machine coin return. Drummer {{Max Roach = 10725}} received some good news from his sister, further cementing his place in jazz history...

A day off is something drummer {{Jim Black = 5035}} rarely takes. At Skirl Party V in April, he played two sets with different bands, recorded with one the next day and left the day after that to tour Europe with another group. Next, it was Australia for several shows during the Melbourne Jazz Festival with a new trio and a concert and recording with local musicians. Black then flew straight back to Europe and picked up a last-minute gig before hitting the road with still another band, leaving himself one day off in six weeks...

Phish Fenway Park Boston, Massachusetts May 31, 2009 When the sun broke through the clouds just as Trey Anastasio took his first solo of the night May 31st, there seemed to be no other place to be than Fenway Park in Boston listening to Phish. In their first show since their triumphant return to performing in March of this year in Hampton VA, the quartet appeared genuinely happy to be playing together again, flexing their muscles through two generous sets though not doing any heavy lifting, at least during the first two hours...

{{John McLaughlin = 9281}} and {{Frank Vignola = 11070}} present different approaches to the guitar and the music they subscribe to. McLaughlin has explored several musical idioms. He was the fire that ignited trumpeter {{Miles Davis = 6144}}'s Bitches Brew (Columbia, 19690, and he found the soul of Indian music and gave it a prominent voice not only on his own recordings but also through the group {{Shakti = 4221}}. He is at home in jazz, blues, fusion, flamenco and the several streams that flow in the wide swath of Indian music. Vignola too plays within several genres and that includes jazz, classical and bluegrass...

(click to view full size)So what do {{Randy Brecker = 5276}}, {{Stanley Clarke = 5737}} and {{Lenny White = 11316}} have in common with Kid Rock, {{Eric Clapton = 5722}} and Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top? All were part of the {{Allman Brothers Band = 17165}}'s three-week musical extravaganza at New York City's Beacon Theater celebrating the band's 40th anniversary. This year's list of surprise guests also included {{Johnny Winter = 11475}}, {{Taj Mahal = 8981}}, Sheryl Crow, John Hammond, {{Boz Scaggs = 16621}}, {{Chuck Leavell = 17147}}, Levon Helm, {{Bruce Hornsby = 15319}}, Southside Johnny, The Juke Horns, {{Buddy Guy = 7304}}, {{Susan Tedeschi = 4858}}, Bonnie Bramlett, {{Jimmy Herring = 17411}}, {{Robert Randolph = 14841}}, {{Sonny Landreth = 8569}}, {{Bob Margolin = 9066}}, John Popper, {{Trey Anastasio = 15623}}, and members of Los Lobos, Cowboy, Wet Willie and The Grateful Dead...

Jonas Kullhammar The Half Naked Truth (1998-2008) Moserobie 2009 In celebration of its tenth anniversary, Swedish saxophonist {{Jonas Kullhammar = 2731}}'s quartet drops an eight-disc set of live tracks and studio recordings. It traces the group's development as this energetic quartet comes to terms with a formidable musical legacy that includes everything from bebop virtuosity to New Thing exploration. The fact that their music is successful speaks to how well they have assimilated and transcended their history and that of the music they play...

Jerry Garcia left us in August of 1995 but the weight of his presence, real or imagined, still casts a heavy shadow every moment his song is sung. At the Gorge Amphitheater on May 16th, a tour came to an end but the music was celebrated in a way perhaps not felt since his passing. That might be part nostalgia but the band is hitting new heights and creative territories with a youthful spirit and vengeance not felt and seen since 1990...

Theo Jorgensmann, the German free jazz clarinet maestro likes to quote the Austrian cultural historian, Egon Fridell: "pure originality has no great value--it is like a sheep with two heads." Fridell, who committed suicide in 1938 as the SA arrived at his door, was fond of illustrating his thinking with vivid and elliptical images of this type. It is a characteristic that Jorgensmann seems to share, as I discovered during a series of email exchanges that we conducted earlier this year...

Led Bib Norwich Arts Centre Norwich, England June 5, 2009 Led Bib's five band members ambled on to the stage of the Arts Centre and looked friendly enough. They began playing "Yes, Again," and the delicate opening bars from Toby McLaren's keyboard drifted gently across the auditorium. But barely a minute later, as the alto saxes of Chris Williams and Pete Grogan kicked in and the rhythm section of Mark Holub on drums and Liran Donin on bass guitar drove the tempo upwards, the audience were suddenly reminded of why this exciting and original group have been labelled "punk jazz." Over the rest of their two sets Led Bib also made it clear that this label is far too conservative and restricting to come close to describing their sound...

Emil Viklicky Emil Viklicky 60 Multisonic 2009 Imagine Barack Obama introducing, say, keyboard player {{Herbie Hancock = 7381}} for a live concert at the White House on the occasion of Hancock's 60th birthday (a milestone, incidentally, that Hancock will reach on April 12, 2010). Pianist Emil Viklicky's latest CD was created under somewhat analogous circumstances. The analogy is admittedly a bit strained, and not just because Czech president Vaclav Klaus doesn't wield the sheer power or claim the international prestige of President Obama. To strengthen the comparison, Obama would need to have been in office for six years, since 2003, and in that time sponsored more than 50 jazz concerts at the White House featuring luminaries like pianists {{Chick Corea = 5920}}, {{Dave Brubeck = 5391}} and {{Keith Jarrett = 7984}}, saxophonist {{Branford Marsalis = 9095}}, trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, vibraphonist {{Gary Burton = 5485}}, and the late pianist {{Oscar Peterson = 10250...

Nathan Davis The Best of Nathan Davis '65-'76 Jazzman 2009 The concept of a "Best Of" album seems like it should be set aside for those musicians who have entered the popular consciousness to the degree that a sampler disc would be an easy sell. In jazz, canonical artists like trumpeter {{Miles Davis = 6144}}, saxophonist {{John Coltrane = 5851}}, bandleader {{Duke Ellington = 6521}} and pianist {{Thelonious Monk = 9507}} have seen the "Best Of" and "Greatest Hits" treatment several times over. Of course, such a sampling of their oeuvre is necessarily barely a scratch on the sheen of each artist's career...

Leonardo E. M. Cioglia Contos Quizamba Music 2008 The following words probably do Brazilian bassist, composer and bandleader Leonardo E. M. Cioglia no favors, because it lays the weighty burden of expectation upon him and his group of young musicians. But no other words say precisely this: Contos showcases an acoustic jazz ensemble that so deftly features each individual voice, while naturally integrating each voice into an organic ensemble sound, that Contos continually evokes the legendary {{Gary Burton = 5485}}-{{Chick Corea = 5920}}-{{Pat Metheny = 9350}} meeting of the acoustic Like Minds (Concord, 1998)...