January 2021
Resonance 2048
Format: CD
Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment
Instrumental virtuosity can be a mixed blessing, even if some of us would put it in the category of “nice problem to have.”
CD Music
December 2020
The Nels Cline Singers: Share the Wealth
Blue Note 0737079
Format: CD
Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment
Dave Douglas: Marching Music
Greenleaf Music 1078
Format: CD
Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment
Jimi Hendrix’s epochal “Machine Gun” in the time of Richard Nixon, the Clash’s unforgiving “Clampdown” in Margaret Thatcher’s Britain, Bruce Springsteen’s elegiac “Long Walk Home” in response to George W. Bush: musicians frequently have created some of their best work in response to autocratic leadership and social oppression. Those artists who employ vocals can easily make their opposition known; for composers who work in instrumental settings, it’s a higher bar.
November 2020
Copperline 105
Format: CD
Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment
At 60, drummer Cindy Blackman Santana has had an exceptionally varied career that has seen her perform at both massive arenas and tiny clubs. The former came courtesy of her long tenure with singer-guitarist Lenny Kravitz, whom she first played with in 1993, the latter from her long apprenticeship as a jazz musician. In an interview, she once told me that the primary difference was what happened before and after the shows.
- Details
- CD music
October 2020
Blue Note B003239502
Format: CD
Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment
Jazz is both blessed and cursed with a creation myth, which is so oft-repeated that you might be able to recite it with me: born in New Orleans, it spread north to Chicago on the first waves of the Great Migration, and then east to New York City. Except, as jazz historian Mark Miller eloquently proved in his 1997 book, Such Melodious Racket, it’s not true.
- Details
- CD music
September 2020
Palmetto 2196
Format: CD
Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment
I heard about drummer Matt Wilson before I heard his music, and what I heard about him made me anticipate that first interaction as I had for few other musicians. What I heard about Wilson was that he brought intense joy to everything he played, along with a sense of curiosity, and technique that made him sound like no other drummer on the scene.
July 2020
SteepleChase 31899
Format: CD
Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment
If you’re a regular here, or on any of the other SoundStage! Network sites, it’s safe to assume you love music and listen to a lot of it. It’s also likely that you appreciate the subtleties in the characteristics of various musicians -- whether you like jazz, rock, classical, or country. Your ear, to say nothing about your equipment, is sensitive enough to tell the difference between Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Page, or Carla Bley and Paul Bley, even if they’re playing the same composition.
June 2020
ECM 2679
Format: CD
Musical Performance
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Overall Enjoyment
Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn. Pat Metheny and Lyle Mays. Jazz has produced some highly productive and long-lasting collaborative relationships, but none has lasted as long as the one between bassist/composer Steve Swallow and guitarist John Scofield. They’ve worked together, off and on, since Scofield’s 1980 recording, Bar Talk, so it seems appropriate that the guitarist turn to Swallow for both inspiration and collaboration on his debut for ECM Records.
April 2020
Blue Note B0031597
Format: CD
Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment
Blue Note Records built its stellar reputation on many factors. Francis Wolff’s in-studio photography, Reid Miles’s iconic cover design, and Rudy Van Gelder’s impeccable soundstage all went into the mix.
February 2020
Skirl 44
Format: CD
Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment
In this era of social media dominance, it’s still possible for artists to mature and develop a distinctive voice and musical approach in relative isolation. At least, that’s true in a country as large and regionally self-sufficient as Canada. The proof is in my discovery of Gordon Grdina, a Vancouver-based string player.
January 2020
Legacy/Sony Music 598277
Format: 5 CDs
Musical Performance
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Overall Enjoyment
Fifty years ago, Jimi Hendrix found himself in a quandary. As he entered the final year of his short life and approached his 27th birthday, he was at a crossroads. For a musician who had been on the road almost constantly since leaving the army in 1962, he was uncharacteristically idle. He didn’t have a single concert between a Harlem benefit show on September 5, 1969, and the first of a two-night/four-set stand at New York’s Fillmore East on New Year’s Eve. For someone whose time in the international spotlight lasted only 1430 days, that 122-day span of concert inactivity represented a massive chunk of time.
- Keith Jarrett: "Munich 2016"
- Bruce Cockburn: "Crowing Ignites"
- Bill Frisell: "Harmony"
- Bruce Springsteen: "Western Stars"
- Various Artists: "Jazz Fest: The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival"
- Michael Gregory Jackson Clarity Quartet: "WHENUFINDITUWILLKNOW"
- Van Morrison: "The Healing Game (Deluxe Edition)"
- Jeanne Lee & Ran Blake: "The Newest Sound You Never Heard"
- Joe Lovano: "Trio Tapestry"
- Eric Dolphy: "Musical Prophet: The Expanded 1963 New York Studio Sessions"
- Ingrid Jensen and Steve Treseler: "Invisible Sounds: For Kenny Wheeler"
- Rudy Royston: "Flatbed Buggy"
- The Band: "Music from Big Pink (50th Anniversary Edition)"
- Mark Turner and Ethan Iverson: "Temporary Kings"
- Dave Alvin and Jimmie Dale Gilmore: "Downey to Lubbock"
- Willie Nelson: "Last Man Standing"
- Miles Davis & John Coltrane: "The Final Tour: The Bootleg Series, Vol.6"
- Jimi Hendrix: "Both Sides of the Sky"
- Stephane Wrembel: "The Django Experiment III"
- Joe Satriani: "What Happens Next"
- Mavis Staples: "If All I Was Was Black"
- ECV: "Sticks and Stones"
- Living Colour: "Shade"
- Gregg Allman: "Southern Blood"
- Vijay Iyer Sextet: "Far from Over"
- Randall Bramblett: "Juke Joint at the Edge of the World"
- Steve Coleman's Natal Eclipse: "Morphogenesis"
- Valerie June: "The Order of Time"
- Delbert McClinton & Self-Made Men: "Prick of the Litter"
- Brian Eno: "Reflection"
- BassDrumBone: "The Long Road"
- Keith Jarrett: "A Multitude of Angels"
- Norah Jones: "Day Breaks"
- Metalwood: "Twenty"
- Nels Cline: "Lovers"
- Paul Simon: "Stranger to Stranger"
- The Allman Brothers Band: "Live from A&R Studios, New York, August 26, 1971"
- Pat Metheny: "The Unity Sessions"
- Wes Montgomery: "In the Beginning"
- Charles Lloyd & the Marvels: "I Long to See You"
- David Bowie: "Blackstar"
- John Abercrombie: "The First Quartet"
- Billy Gibbons and the BFGs: "Perfectamundo"
- Keith Richards: "Crosseyed Heart"
- Blue Buddha: "Blue Buddha"; Dave Douglas Quintet: "Brazen Heart"
- Jason Isbell: "Something More Than Free"
- Ryan Adams: "Ten Songs from Live at Carnegie Hall"
- Emmylou Harris & Rodney Crowell: "The Traveling Kind"
- Laura Marling: "Short Movie"
- Ted Kooshian: "Clowns Will Be Arriving"
- Suzie LeBlanc: "La Veillée de Noël"
- The Villains: "A Little Something for the Pain"
- Henry Mancini: "Music for Peter Gunn"
- Barb Jungr: "Hard Rain: The Songs of Bob Dylan & Leonard Cohen"
- Jeremy Fox: "With Love"
- Will Kimbrough: "Sideshow Love"
- A.J. Croce: "Twelve Tales"
- The Iveys: "Jenna's Song"
- The Dave Miller Trio with Rebecca DuMaine: "Better Than Anything"
- Bob Dorough: "Eulalia"
- Charlotte de Rothschild and Danielle Perrett: "Christmas Lullabies"
- Tchaikovsky/Duke Ellington-Billy Strayhorn: "Nutcracker Suites"
- Tianna Hall and Chris Cortez: "Noel"
- Tim Warfield: "Tim Warfield’s Jazzy Christmas"
- Gina Kronstadt: "Come Over"
- The Swingle Singers: "Weather to Fly"
- Tierney Sutton: "After Blue"
- Cheryl Bentyne and Mark Winkler: "West Coast Cool"
- Lorraine Feather: "Attachments"
- Lyn Stanley: "Lost in Romance"
- Randi Tytingvåg: "Lights Out"
- Vincent Cross: "A Town Called Normal"
- Nancy Harms: "Dreams in Apartments"
- Abigail Riccards: "Every Little Star"
- George Shearing & Don Thompson: "George Shearing at Home"
- Matthew Morrison: "Where It All Began"
- Thisbe Vos: "Under Your Spell"
- Mustered Courage: "Powerlines"
- Denise King & Olivier Hutman: "Give Me The High Sign"
- Thomas Gansch and Georg Breinschmid: "Gansch & Breinschmid Live"
- Ben Sidran: "Don’t Cry for No Hipster"
- Raquel Bitton: "Rhythm of the Heart"
- Frank Vignola & Vinny Raniolo: "Melody Magic"
- Laila Salins: "Elevator into the Sky"
- Tim Mahoney Band: "Shine Through"
- The Summarily Dismissed: "To Each!"
- Will Scruggs Jazz Fellowship: "Song of Simeon: A Christmas Journey"
- Dallas Wind Symphony; Jerry Junkin, Conductor: "Horns for the Holidays"
- Jacqui Sutton: "Notes from the Frontier: A Musical Journey"
- Barluath: "Source"
- Letizia Gambi: "Introducing Letizia Gambi"
- Fiona Apple: "The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do"
- Susie Arioli: "All the Way"
- Georg Breinschmid: "Fire"
- Hiroe Sekine: "After the Rainfall"
- Jamie Ousley: "A Sea of Voices"
- Bill Toms: "Memphis"
- The SSJ All-Stars: "From California With Love"
- Dale Ann Bradley: "Somewhere South of Crazy"
- Duda Lucena Quartet: "Live"
- Stevie Nicks: "In Your Dreams"
- Megan Slankard: "A Token of the Wreckage"
- Take 6: "The Most Wonderful Time of the Year"
- "Christmas with The Washington Chorus"
- Esperanza Spalding: "Chamber Music Society"
- John Escreet: "Don't Fight the Inevitable"
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