This lush, gorgeous piano trio recording is a stellar example of how precise music can also be stunningly beautiful. The tone is everything here.
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Tributes are one way that lesser known musicians can establish their credentials, but Jesse Van Ruller has plenty of cred already. He’s a guitarist’s guitarist whose ease of playing makes him a delight.
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You need a sense of nostalgia and a couple of shots of booze to fully appreciate Bloodest Saxophone, a wild sax-full group that ranges across the musical spectrum. With those under your belt, Bloodest Saxophone is a great, big kick.
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Pitch-perfect and beat-perfect Latin jazz is rare, but increasingly being taken up as a life work by musicians not from Latin countries. One of those is Mari Koga, a marvelous vocalist and bandleader born in Osaka, but relocated to New York for the music.
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The vibraphone is such a gorgeous sounding instrument, and even more so in the right hands. Toshihiro Akamatsu has the right hands.
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Solo piano is a hard way to garner an audience or even produce a CD in this day and age. Consumers tend to want heavy, intense sound, something big for their money.
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Hitomi Nishiyama’s CDs are all elegant jazz, but “Shift” just might become many people’s favorites. The recording starts off with “Rock Out” an intriguing piece with a very unusual rhythm.
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Drummers are often stereotyped as large and muscled, but Bomi Choi, who hails from Korea, is anything but that. Her sound, though is big and muscular, and powerful enough to drive the New York jazz heavyweights she records with on this marvelous CD.
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Concept albums run the risk of the concept deflating or the music becoming subservient or contrived. Hikari Ichihara’s concept album, “Dear Gatsby,” though avoids those pitfalls and delivers eleven stunning tracks of modern jazz devoted to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famous novel “The Great Gatsby.”
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They did it again. And it is a very good thing they did.The stylish, sophisticated furniture design company Time & Style and the stylish, sophisticated pianist Key Akagi collaborated once more. The result, a stylish, sophisticated album, Circlepoint.
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Reviewing two CDs together never seems to offer enough space to each work, but these two recordings, made two days apart, go together marvelously. “Vol. One” features Arimasa’s and Hara’s own compositions, while “The Days of Wine and Roses” features standards.
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