Last week was pretty much a personal wipeout, although I suppose bad. The long-awaited 11th Jazz Consumer Guide was published with no major glitches. I got all my files updated, so now I'm ready to go after #12.
I sent a year-end ballot in to Francis Davis for the Voice's jazz poll. I wrote some annotation to the ballot to be published as a sidebar to the poll results. I got an F5 column done.
I made latkes, chopped liver, and salt-cured salmon for Hanukkah. I managed to blog something every day, and got a bit of jazz prospecting done, although I made damn little progress on my year-end research. I also finally cracked open the new 8th edition of the Penguin Guide and started to chart differences.
No final grades on records I held back this week. It's early in the cycle and best to keep an eye on what's new. Starting to get 2007 advances.
This will probably remain slow over the next two weeks as holidays interfere with my schedule, guests come and go, and year-end Recycled Goods looms large.
Jazz Yule Love II (2006, Mack Avenue): If Christmas music really outsells jazz, as I've seen reports claiming, I guess this is one way to help pay the bills. Seems useless to me, but I've heard far worse down at the local mall.
The roster includes familiar names from the label's recent releases, plus two I hadn't noticed: Oscar Brown Jr. and Bud Shank. No dates provided.
Brown died in 2005, with his last album in 1998. Shank is 80 now, still active, with a good live record last year joined by Phil Woods. Here he makes the Cory Weeds on alto sax, Bill Coon on guitar, Chris Gestrin on the famous organ, and Denzal Sinclaire on drums.
My impression is that the two groups alternate rather than play together, excepting that Sinclaire sings one song with each. There's some good news here. Another is Coon's guitar, although the others, notably Hubert, strike me favorably.
Still useless. Sfz): Subtitled "invigorating musical novelties for woodwinds, piano, and percussion." Featuring Erik Lindgren, the piano player, who is best known from one of the first landmark experimental rock groups, Birdsongs of the Mesozoic.
Don't really know what to make of this one, which seems neither classical not go-go, but rather something Includes pieces from usual suspects Erik Satie and Raymond Scott, a gloss on Edgar Winter's "Frankenstein," and originals, including one close to "Tomorrow Never Comes." Not without interesting bits, (2006, Telarc): I have him rather stuffily filed under classical, since that's what a quick glance at discography, at least since 1987's Reflections on Bach, reads like. Bach represents about half the list, but I also note Handel, Mozart, Chopin, Satie, and Ravel.
But there's nothing stuffy about this record. I don't know the classical readings, so it's hard for me to tell where the texts end and the jazz begins, but surely the walking bass wasn't Expolorations: Classic Picante Regrooved, Vol. 1 (2006, Concord Picante): Better than the usual back catalog remix project, probably because most of the originals are so awash in beats they hardly need remixing.
Surprising because Picante had turned into something of a retirement home for salseros, so maybe we should hand it to the A-list remixers, who evidently know how Not sure what SMS stands for, but the website motto is "Straight Ahead," and that's clear enough. (OK, Sheet Music Shoppe, a music store Weiss owns.) Weiss played a little sax in his youth, giving it up when he turned 30, and picking up the clarinet again when he turned 65.
He plays bright, bouncy swing, working here with an of old standards. The booklet details a series of legal hassles used to promote the record, but only when you hear the record do NYC-based, in a quintet with saxophonist Seamus Blake, guitarist Nate Radley, bass, and drums. Wrote all the material except for Mal Waldron's "Soul Eyes.
" Straightforward: the rhythm section has a little swing to it, the two-horn stuff meshes nicely, I like his tone and lyricism, and the guitarist gets in a couple wind up producing an A-list album. This piano quartet with Jordi Matas on guitar may be the one. Right now my main reservation is his vocal on the closer, "Everyday Is a New Beginning.
" He's not much of a singer, although he tries to make up for it in passion. Reminds me a bit of Annette Peacock, but not as skillful. But his command of the piano continues to advance, and I have no complaints about the Fender Rhodes he credits first either.
His compositions offer interesting ideas, and he's moved to the point where it's hard to pigeonhole him. He has his own sound, he's prolific, and he's on a role.
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