Ian Carey Quntet, Contextualizin' (Kabocha). Carey's self-deprecation in his liner notes would have you believe that he's not much of a trumpet player. It depends on what you mean by playing. True, there's not a double high C anywhere on the album and no jet-speed series of gee-whiz chord … [Read more...]

New York Art Quartet, Old Stuff (Cuneiform). As brash, iconoclastic and good-natured as the day it was born, the NYAQ comes roaring out of 1965. Trombonist Roswell Rudd, alto saxophonist John Tchicai, bassist Finn von Eyben and drummer Louis Moholo affirm that if free jazz is going to jettison … [Read more...]

Martin Wind New York Quartet, Live At Jazz Baltica (Jazz Baltica). Bassist Wind returned to his native land in 2008 for Germany's Jazz Baltica Festival in Schleswig-Holstein. With the addition of the astonishing multi-instrumentalist Scott Robinson, the Bill Mays Trio with Wind and drummer Matt … [Read more...]

Sam Stephenson, The Jazz Loft Project (Knopf). In the late 1950s and early '60s, a loft on New York's Sixth Avenue was headquarters for master photographer W. Eugene Smith and hangout for dozens of musicians including companions as various as Zoot Sims, Pee Wee Russell, Thelonious Monk and Bud … [Read more...]

SFJAZZ Collective, Live 2009 (SFJazz). Last year's tour by the all-star septet was built around their arrangements of music by pianist McCoy Tyner. It also included new compositions by its members, Joe Lovano, Miguel Zenón, Dave Douglas, Robin Eubanks, Renee Rosnes, Matt Pennman and Eric Harland. … [Read more...]

Eddie Thompson and Brad Terry, Eddie and Me (Living Room). Thompson, a blind British pianist, spent ten years in the US before he returned home in 1972. He performed often around New York with Terry, a peripatetic clarinetist whose brilliant work would be better known if he had pursued a … [Read more...]

Henry Threadgill Zooid, This Brings Us To, Volume 1 (PI Recordings). Threadgill names his band Zooid after a cell "that is able to move independently of the larger organism to which it belongs." Accordingly, five musicians simultaneously and freely invent within, around and through structures … [Read more...]

Masters of American Music: The Story Of Jazz (Medici Arts). An opening montage cleverly synchronized to Ellington's "It Don't Mean a Thing if it Ain't Got That Swing" introduces the first in a series whose other initial subjects are Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk. The programs … [Read more...]

Terry Teachout, Pops: A Life Of Louis Armstrong (Houghton Mifflin). Teachout is a consummate biographer. His books about H.L. Mencken and George Balanchine proved that. With Armstrong, he exceeds himself. Teachout combines the advantage of unique access to Armstrong's archives with deep musical … [Read more...]

Carla Bley, Steve Swallow, The Partyka Brass Quintet, Carla's Christmas Carols (Watt). Bley arranges nine classic carols with tenderness, wit, harmonic brilliance, wide dynamic range and a wry sense of nostalgia. She adds two of her own pieces, the gorgeous "Jesus Maria" and "Hell's Bells", a joyous … [Read more...]

Chris Potter, Steve Wilson, Terell Stafford, Coming Together (Inarhyme). This was to have been the recording debut in 2005 of the young tenor saxophonist Brendan Romaneck. That year he died at 24 in a traffic accident. In his memory, saxophonists Potter and Wilson, trumpeter Stafford and a fine … [Read more...]

Miles Davis, Kind of Blue (Columbia). Okay, this is the zillionth reissue, and it's not the first to include alternate takes, false starts or a second CD of performances by the classic Davis sextet. The difference? Columbia got the sound right - no forced reverberation, echo, clipping, compression … [Read more...]

Woody Herman, Live in '64 (Jazz Icons). This captures Herman on British television long after he stopped naming or numbering his Herds. It was one his most exciting bands, driven by drummer Jake Hanna and bassist Chuck Andrus. Upstate New York terrors Joe Romano and Sal Nistico are fascinating in … [Read more...]

Helene La Faro-Fernández, Jade Visions: The Life and Music of Scott La Faro (North Texas). There will be other books about the most important young bassist of the last half of the twentieth century. Their authors will mine this invaluable first biography. The insight La Faro's sister gives into … [Read more...]

New York Trio, Always (Venus). This is pianist Charlap's other trio, with bassist Jay Leonhart and drummer Bill Stewart rather than his Blue Note companions Peter Washington and Kenny Washington. In his eighth CD for the Japanese label he honors Irving Berlin by lovingly playing the melodies of ten … [Read more...]

Miguel Zenón, Esta Plena (Marsalis Music). The alto saxophonist and composer illuminates and elevates la plena, the peoples' music of his native Puerto Rico. Zenón augments his quartet with percussionists playing pandero, seguidor and requinto drums to provide the music's rhythmic heart. Zenón's … [Read more...]

Red Mitchell, Warne Marsh, Big Two (Storyville). Bassist Mitchell (1927-1992) and tenor saxophonist Marsh (1927-1987) played as a duo for two nights in 1980 at the Fasching Club in Stockholm. In this intimate recording, Storyville engineer Nils Edström captured the brilliance and inventiveness of … [Read more...]

Art Farmer, Live in '64 (Jazz Icons). Farmer's quartet with guitarist Jim Hall was one of the greatest small groups in jazz history. For this television appearance, he featured pieces never released in the quartet's recordings. Among them are an exhilarating "Bilbao Song," Sonny Rollins's "Valse … [Read more...]

Art Pepper, The Art History Project (Widow's Taste). This is the latest segment in Laurie Pepper's guided tour of her husband's musical life. It begins in 1950 with the alto saxophonist on Stan Kenton's band and ends a year before his death in 1982. About a third of the music is previously … [Read more...]