Here’s another great example why the melange of r&b, soul, hip-hop, and jazz works so well. The fat bass and drum foundation of the 2:30-minute “Small Moves Interlude” has all the right ingredients and the perfect groove; complete with cool keys it just has this uncompromising sound and mood where any genre or category is…
German-born vocalist Theo Bleckmann, in New York since 1989, has recorded his first ECM album (released in January) which isn’t your regular vocal jazz album, but more like a sound experiment where the overall mood and sonic palette is one of intense beauty and calmness that is so fitting with what we’ve come to expect from the…
José James has gone back to “contemporary R&B” on his new, appropriately titled album “Love In A Time Of Madness”. He says that “there’s a resurgence of something I haven’t seen since the ’90s or ’00s, when hip-hop, R&B, and pop were converging in really thrilling ways through folks like Tribe, Erykah Badu, or D’Angelo. There’s…
Guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel has recorded his new album “Caipi” in Berlin’s Heartcore Studios and has named his own, new label Heartcore Records. The first release on his new imprint is his own album where he not only plays acoustic and electric guitars, but electric bass, piano, drums, percussion, synth, and casio, and where he sings….
Never a vocalist to focus solely on the Great American Songbook, but rather focussing on what’s going on around us by writing her own lyrics, singer Carmen Lundy has come up with twelve new songs for her “Code Noir” album. Her plea to “wait awhile” until things will maybe get better on the mystical opening…
The start of a new year isn’t complete without the annual 3-CD box “Luxury Soul”, once again compiled by Ralph Tee and opening with a super-sexy, light house/soul club tune, “Don’t Judge A Book By It’s Cover” by SouLutions, produced by Steve Lee and Louise Mehan. A superb, ultra soulful opening cut. The 12 tracks from…
French pianist Baptiste Trotignon and Argentinian percussionist Minino Garay (who has lived in Paris for over two decades now) have come up with a lively and fresh take on songs by Leonard Bernstein, Paul McCartney, Thelonious Monk, and Charlie Parker, among others. They both met for the firrst time in South America in 2011 and have…
The jazz harp will forever be associated with Alice Coltrane first and foremost, but there is also Brandee Younger (her “Wax And Wane” album still resonates big time) and Carol Robbins, whose latest album, “Taylor Street”, is dedicated to her mother Emilia Crostini who grew up on that particular street in Chicago’s Little Italy. (And…
The eight-piece group Breakwater recorded two brilliant albums back in 1978 and 1980, during a period that was one of the richest and satisfying in soul music. One of the members of the group, keyboardist and songwriter and composer Kae Williams, Jr., was later part of The B.B. & Q. Band and wrote unforgettable songs…
Gabrielle Stravelli was one of only ten finalists selected internationally for the 2011 SHURE Montreux Jazz Festival Vocal Competition and she was also 1st runner-up in the 2009 Jazzmobile Vocal Competition in Harlem. In the ensuing years, she has received numerous awards, has toured the world over, opened for Cassandra Wilson and Esperanza Spalding, was in…