Jim Hynes

Etienne Charles’ “Creole Orchestra Featuring René Marie” fuses Caribbean influences with big band jazz, reflecting his Trinidadian heritage and memories of American music played on Trinidadian radio. The album features diverse tracks including originals, covers, and collaborations, showcasing Charles’ skill as a composer and arranger on an 80-minute, multi-artist journey.

Matthew Whitaker On Their Shoulders: An Organ Tribute MOCAT If you’ve ever attended a Matthew Whitaker show, you know that the young pianist/organist/drummer Matthew Whitaker has a more than engaging rapport with his audience. They are often on their feet dancing from his first few notes. Whitaker is still only 23 years old and has […]

John Escreet the epicenter of your dreams Blue Room Music John Escreet’s 2022 trio album Seismic Shift (covered here) was so bold and impactful that it likely made it difficult to return with the trio and produce a similarly startling result. Pianist and composer Escreet was wise enough to recognize this and although returning with […]

Oded Tzur My Prophet ECM It’s long been said that some of the greatest saxophonists such as Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, and Coleman Hawkins are easily identifiable in just the first few notes they play. While we’re not yet putting the Israeli-born and raised New York City based saxophonist Oded Tzur in that ‘all-time […]

Fernando Huergo Big Band Relentless Whaling City Sound Bassist and composer Fernando Huergo leads his 18-piece big band on Relentless, a set of compositions inspired by Luke Mogelson’s article in the New Yorker, titled “Relentless Absurdity.” These pieces reflect not only the absurdity of war but societal struggles, oppression, discrimination, and environmental challenges. Huergo aims […]

Alex Sipiagin Horizons Blue Room Horizons is trumpeter/flugelhornist and composer Alex Sipiagin’s twenty-seventh album as a leader. Having covered just two of those, both on Posi-Tone – Upstream (on these pages) and Ascent to the Blues, Sipiagin impressed with his challenging compositions, fiery playing, and improvisational talent.  This is his second for Blue Room, following […]

Bruno Råberg Tentet Evolver Orbis Music Sweden-born, U.S. based bassist/composer Bruno Råberg has made 14 recordings as a leader and more than 50 as a sideman since coming to the U.S. in 1981. For this project, Evolver, Råberg returns to a large ensemble format for the first time in 22 years with players familiar to […]

Jake Hertzog Longing to Meet You Self-released Guitarist and composer Jake Hertzog has performed and composed across multiple genres and served as musical director for pop stars. For Longing to Meet You he convened a jazz quartet comprised from their mutual time attending the Manhattan School in New York. They are altoist Matt Woroshyl, bassist […]

Koppel Blade Koppel Time Again Cowbell Music This organ trio emerges surprisingly. We’ve gotten used to the trio albums, three of them, from altoist Benjamin Koppel, drummer Brian Blade, and bassist Scott Colley. We’ve also witnessed that same threesome performing in front of Anders Koppel’s brilliant symphonic piece, The Mulberry Street Symphony. Yet, close followers […]

The Bobby Broom Organ-Sation Jamalot Steele This year’s reviews from yours truly are not as heavily populated with organ trios as in years past but this throwback album by Bobby Broom’s Organ-Sation may well compensate in spades. These are live performances from 2014-2019 of familiar pop songs and standards, in the tradition of his once […]

Nir Felder III la.reserve In a year when we’ve been blessed by so many terrific guitar records from the likes of Julian Lage, Bill Frisell, Gilad Hekselman, and others, we welcome back Nir Felder with his third solo release, III, now on a new label, the burgeoning la.reserve. The Katonah, NY native enlists mostly the […]

Tony Romano Three Chord Monte TRM With a play on words, from Elvin Jones’s “Three Card Molly,” and the card game of a similar name, guitarist Tony Romano entitles his own solo jazz album, filled with original compositions, Three Chord Monte. Romano has spent most of his career as a sideman for vocalists but issued […]

Jon Gordon 7th Ave. South ArtistShare Having spent quite a bit of time in NYC in the early to mid-1980s, it’s certainly easy to relate to saxophonist and composer Jon Gordon’s salute to the mecca of jazz in the city at that time, 7th Ave. South. The street was lined with jazz clubs, the venerable […]

Jason Robinson Ancestral Numbers 1 Playscape Recordings Saxophonist and composer Jason Robinson just released the first part of a comprehensive project tracing the roots and branches of his family tree on Ancestral Numbers 1 with the second part to follow in October. It’s an intriguing concept and one that’s rarely if ever been set to […]

Roger Kellaway Roger Kellaway Live At Mezzrow Cellar Music Group The renowned pianist, composer, and arranger Roger Kellaway mentions in the liners to his live album Roger Kellaway Live At Mezzrow something that makes the utmost sense but rarely mentioned, and at least here, rarely thought about. The pianist has, for the past twenty years, […]

Ivo Perelman and Matthew Shipp Magical Incantation Soul City Sounds Magical Incantation is astoundingly the nineteenth duo collaboration between Brazilian saxophonist Ivo Perelman and pianist Matthew Shipp. The duo began in 1996 with the saxophonist’s Bendito of Santa Cruz. Obviously at this point in their collaborative tenure, they can anticipate the other’s moves like the […]

Jack Walrath Live at Smalls Cellar Music Group Trumpeter, composer, and arranger Jack Walrath joins the legends in the SmallsLive Living Masters Series, leading his long-running conventional jazz quintet in this live gig. This is a group that Walrath has been leading since 2010 – Abraham Burton on tenor saxophone, George Burton on piano, Boris Kozlov on bass, and Donald Edwards on […]

Marta Sanchez Trio Perpetual Void Intakt Maybe it was the glut of albums releasing at the same time or not enough focus on the music a couple of weeks ago when Perpetual Void from pianist Marta Sanchez’s Trio was released but Sanchez, a member of David Murray’s new quintet impressed so much on Murray’s recent […]

Wadada Leo Smith & Amina Claudine Myers Central Park’s Mosaics of Reservoir, Lake, Paths and Gardens Red Hook Two musicians inextricably linked to Chicago’s Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) pay homage to their favorite places in NYC’s Central Park. Rather remarkable, since it is decades since they first met, this is the […]

Mute After You’ve Gone Endectomorph Music This is the second offering from the Asian-American quartet Mute, who made their debut with their self-titled album in 2019. While they are the essence of postmodern jazz, they make a few nods to tradition on this one, After You’ve Gone, named, of course, for the iconic standard. The […]

Josh Lawrence Measured Response Posi-Tone Trumpeter Josh Lawrence leads the classic jazz quintet configuration of trumpet, tenor, piano. bass, and drums on Measured Response, his sixth album as a leader on Posi-Tone. He has co-led two with the Fresh Cut Orchestra on Ropeadope and has received three Grammy nominations, most notably with Orrin Evans’ Captain […]

John Dokes Our Day Swing Theory Entertainment Last year in an interview with female jazz vocalist sensation Samara Joy, Christian McBride playfully asked, ‘where are all the guys?”  Since that time but only coincidentally in response to the playful jibe, we’re heard great albums from baritone Paul L. Chambers, Allan Harris, and mainstays Kurt Elling […]

Yelena Eckemoff Romance of the Moon L & H Production Pianist and composer Yelena Eckemoff’s 2023 Lonely Man and His Fish was one of the year’s most charming albums, a human-pet story set to music and covered on these pages. Her latest, Romance of the Moon, het twentieth album, may seem different on the surface […]

Zaccai Curtis Cubop Lives! Truth Revolution Pianist and composer Zaccai Curtis, like others with Afro-Cuban heritage, plays in so many different contexts that it’s sometimes easy to overlook the foundation of his style. In the past year, Curtis has been the pianist for rising saxophone star Lakecia Benjamin. In Newport 2019 he was in the […]

Paul Bryan Western Electric Self-released Paul Bryan is a Grammy-winner, producer, composer, arranger, bassist, and multi-instrumentalist. He’s made records with Aimee Mann and Elvis Costello but is more often associated with genre- blurring artists such as Jeff Parker Josh Johnson, or Jeremy Cunningham. He’s toured with headlining acts, but as he did on his solo […]

Behn Gillece Stick Together Posi-Tone This is vibraphonist Behn Gillece’s seventh album for Posi-Tone, many of which we have covered on these pages. Sometimes Gillece is in a leading role and in others as a sideman. You may want to reference his Between the Bars (2023), Art Hirahara’s Open Sky, the Wayne Shorter tributes, Citizen […]

Luke Stewart Silt Trio Unknown Rivers Pi Recordings Unknown Rivers is bassist and composer Luke Stewart’s debut for Pi Recordings and for this magazine. Stewart is a force in the creative music scene as co-leader of such bands as Irreversible Entanglements, Exposure Quintet, Blacks’ Myths, Heart of the Ghost, and Heroes are Gang Leaders. If […]

Isaiah Collier & The Chosen Few The Almighty Division 81 Be transported to the late ‘60s with Chicago/Brooklyn-based saxophonist Isaiah Collier’s The Almighty. We rarely hear this kind of aggressive, passionate spiritual jazz these days, especially since Shabaka has disbanded his saxophone focused groups. Sure, there are examples – Kenny Garrett, Lakecia Benjamin, Nduduzo Makhathini, […]

Andy Milne and Unison Time Will Tell Sunnyside Pianist and composer, Andy Milne follows up his 2021 Juno Award winning Jazz Album of the year for Group, The ReMission (2020), (covered on these pages) with Time Will Tell, rendered by his same Unison trio of bassist John Hébert and drummer Clarence Penn.  While the previous album was themed on his cancer […]

Jacqui Naylor Treasures of the Heart Ruby Star Innovative jazz vocalist Jacqui Naylor returns with her twelfth album, Treasures of the Heart. We covered her The Long Game (2021) on these pages.  Her accompanists are her husband, pianist Art Khu arranging all fourteen tracks, ten of which are originals, on which he is the co-writer. […]

Alyssa Allgood From Here NEXT Chicago-based jazz vocalist Alyssa Allgood delivers her fourth album, From Here, with ten of the dozen as originals, a step up from previous efforts, and surrounds herself with top tier accompaniment. GRAMMY winners, bassist John Patitucci and pianist Geoffrey Keezer, drummer Kendrick Scott, saxophonist Greg Ward, and producer, jazz vocalist Jeff Baker.  Keezer, Scott, and Ward are […]

Owen Broder Hodges: Front and Center Vol. 2 Outside in Music Somehow, despite this writer’s affection for that sweet sound of Johnny Hodge’s alto saxophone that graced so many of Duke Ellington’s major records, we missed the first installment from two years ago in Owen Broder’s tribute to the altoist, dubbed “Rabbit.” Though the origins […]

Obed Calvaire 150 Million Gold Francs Ropeadope Obed Calvaire is one of jazz’s renowned drummers who made his mark with the SF Jazz Collective and Wynton Marsalis’ Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, among other ensembles.  On 150 Million Gold Francs Calvaire leads a quintet in an especially timely project, given the ongoing strife in Haiti, […]

Noah Haidu Standards II Sunnyside When jazz listeners think of Standard Trios, they likely gravitate toward the legendary Keith Jarrett’s Standards Trio or the long-running trio of Bill Charlap.  Now with this second offering from pianist Noah Haidu, Buster Williams, and Billy Hart, we must make way for a respectful next entry in that conversation.  […]

Fred Hersch Silent, Listening ECM Like Keith Jarrett, Chick Corea, Craig Taborn, Paul Bley and several others, Fred Hersch now adds his name to the vast solo piano catalog of ECM, with Silent, Listening. His is a mix of composition and improvisation with originals and a few standards as well. Hersch was inspired by his […]