Israeli tenor saxophonist and composer Oded Tzur has released his first album on the prestigious ECM label. Oded, who is working in or from New York since 2011 (where else?), debuted in 2015 with “Like A Great River” which was followed in 2017 with “Translator’s Note”. It seems as if his new-found home at ECM…
When I went to Bremen for the annual Jazzahead convention in 2015, there was this big hype about 12-year old pianist Joey Alexander who was about to release his debut album “My Favorite Things”. Alas, I wasn’t impressed and his showcase left me cold. But he wasn’t really to blame for it. After all, when…
As nobody knows where exactly the current corona crisis will lead us and since official warnings change every day, I just wanted to copy the latest info from two of New York’s West Village clubs, the Blue Note and Le Poisson Rouge, about their precaution measures etc. I went to see Baby Rose in concert…
Luxury Soul 2020, your reliable source for the best indie soul, has finally arrived and the three-disc collection is once again the best overview of quality modern-day soul that you can get. Lots of familiar names on this one, like Glenn Jones, featured with a 2009 recording by producer and writer Herb Middleton (“Better Man”)…
Tal Arditi, guitarist and composer from Israel, will open this year’s garden concert matinee season in Berlin’s Gartenlokal Alte Baumschule on Sunday, April 19th, at 1pm. Recognised as a young guitar prodigy, Tal started to study at Rimon Music University when he was only 16. At the age of 18, he graduated with a Jazz…
In the liner notes to McCoy Tyner‘s 2000 trio album with Stanley Clarke and Al Foster, Donald Elfman writes: “It’s been some forty years since McCoy Tyner changed jazz piano. Moving away from the post-bop and hard-bop stylings of the 50s, he created a massive, volcanic orchestral approach to soloing in the John Coltrane Quartets…
The last time Pat Metheny recorded with an orchestra was in 1993. Jeremy Lubbock’s arrangement were part of still amazing compositions like “Finding And Believing” (with Gil Goldstein on accordion), the outstanding “The Longest Summer”, or “Always And Forever”. Many albums and tours have gone by since then (and his own “Orchestrion” project of 2010)…
The years from 1978 up until 1983 are the most exciting years in soul and R&B I think. Not only because those were the years I started to seriously listen to and collect records, but it was such a rich and substantial period, with many legendary producers in their prime years, like Leon Sylvers, Nick…
Telling her Berlin audience that being in love is still the greatest feeling, put a smile on some of the faces of a relatively small crowd last night at Berlin’s Kantine am Berghain. Whether it was the current hysteria because of the corona virus or not, doesn’t really matter in the end. Those who were…
What a blessing and a relaxation this album is. Trumpet meister Jeremy Pelt, one of the most prolific artists on his instrument, has come up with a collection of ballads that is food for the soul. The modern jazz and bop intonation on his almost dozen albums on the HighNote and Savant labels makes way…