Category: Album Reviews – Archive

July 30, 2015 / Album Reviews - Archive

Astral Transference/Seven Dreams (Orenda) Los Angeles has a habit of throwing up musicians at odds with the mainstream. Ornette Coleman’s free jazz revolution began there, for instance, and Frank Zappa’s genre-bending body of work is among the twentieth century’s most distinctive. This is the third Daniel Rosenboom opus reviewed in…

July 29, 2015 / Album Reviews - Archive

Souvenance (ECM) In the six tumultuous years since Anouar Brahem’s last album the Tunisian has watched his homeland explode amid the hopes and horrors of the Arab Spring. This double-album for quartet and string orchestra is his response. In no sense programmatic, it is rather the considered musical thoughts of…

July 22, 2015 / Album Reviews - Archive

Solo (ABC) You sense a depth here from the opening notes. Paul Grabowsky has never recorded a solo piano album before and you hear the resolve to make the opportunity count. His harmonic extrapolations on the delicate Angel are so rich and surprising it is like turning the pages of…