After a long hiatus, I’m relaunching this blog from my new home in Miami. After two moves over the last four months, I’m settling into my new gig at the Frost School of Music. I’m grateful to all the musicians and promoters who’ve stuck with me as I’ve hustled to get to a place that would support the kind of work I’ve always wanted to do with this blog. I think I’m finally there.

In addition to an ongoing site redesign, I’m experimenting with new content. I’ve added a recent releases page that tracks the albums that I’m sent. Because I’m still unpacking — and prepping for three upcoming research presentations at Fall conferences — I’m starting small this month with a list of noteworthy new records. Early September featured some characteristically excellent releases by stalwarts like Darcy James Argue, Kris Davis, Steve Lehman, James Brandon Lewis, Terell Stafford, and Mark Turner. At the end of the month there were quite a few excellent releases by lesser known musicians, including some who were new discoveries for me. (On the 29th Matana Roberts also released the next installment in the Coin Coin project; I didn’t have advanced access to it, so it’s not included here. One day isn’t enough time to listen to that record and write about it in a meaningful way.) In this post I’m focusing on some albums that might not have garnered as much attention as some of the more high-profile releases.

Feel free to share your favorites from this month in the comments below and if there’s an upcoming release that you’d like me to feature, you can reach out here.

Thanks for reading!

The Month in Review – September 2023

I decided to list these records alphabetically, so for some listeners I may not even be starting with a “jazz” record. Frankly I don’t think that matters. Whatever genre someone might try to assign to this album, it’ll still be excellent music. Bernard and Custer have been collaborating for a long while and it’s clearly audible on Sky. Their music is inviting, inventive, and very intimate. Along with the imaginative writing and improvisation, the album’s exemplary production helps to draw the listener in, faithfully capturing the wide range of subtle gestures Bernard and Custer employ (across a range of instruments, performance techniques, genre allusions, and timbral shifts) in this thoroughly satisfying project.

My first introduction to trumpeter Itamar Borochov was with the Yemen Blues project. Arba is Borochov’s fourth album as a leader, but the first on which he sings and also the first on Dave Douglas’s label Greenleaf. The album reflects as much about Borochov’s travels in his career thus far as it does his experiences as an immigrant and his family’s cultural and musical traditions. Listeners unfamiliar with jazz improvisation that incorporates alternate tuning systems, scales, and time signatures might start in the middle of the album with “Bayat Blues,” where Borochov’s double-time, bebop-heavy trumpet solo is nestled amid some of the dance-based rhythmic cells and modal passages associated with the Middle Eastern traditions from which Borochov draws. I’m more than a little in awe of how seamlessly this group moves between so many changes. It’s not just to their collected musicalities but also to Borochov’s credit as a composer and arranger that such varied music remains coherent and compelling throughout. As with most masterfully realized intercultural jazz projects, there’s a lot to unpack here. I’m going to be spending more time with this excellent record — and hopefully talking with Borochov soon — so there’s more to come.

The balance that veteran pianist Marc Copland achieves on Someday reflects a career of thoughtful choices and seasoned ears for superior musicianship. Copland, a frequent collaborator with John Abercrombie and Gary Peacock, has assembled a solid quartet for an album that’s just the right mix for a “straight-ahead” record: a careful balance of invoking tradition, meeting listener expectations, a clear vision for the project, and fresh perspectives from adept musicians. Bassist Drew Gress, drummer Mark Ferber, and saxophonist Robin Verheyen join Copland on a set of six original compositions, bookended by two standards popularized by Miles Davis (the title track and “Nardis”).

The first time I moved to New York City — in the mid aughts — I completed a master’s degree in jazz history (at Rutgers Newark) while managing a jazz club and playing around the City. My master’s project was on African American and Latin American collaborations in jazz music, so I spent a lot of time at shows where Carlos Henriquez held down the bass chair. That history of collaboration between African American, Puerto Rican, and Nuyorican musicians is at the heart of Henriquez’s latest project. He’s the perfect musician to address the complicated history between San Juan Hill and Lincoln Center, which is central to the album’s concept. While trumpeter Terell Stafford–who plays on this album–released his own excellent recording this month that aligns more with the Inventions and Dimensions branch of the latin jazz tradition, this Henriquez album reflects his deep knowledge and love for Afro-Caribbean and Puerto Rican traditions. There’s cha-cha-cha, bugalú, latin soul and funk, bolero, salsa, plenty of danceable tunes, as well as some of the message-driven lyrics that have defined Nuyorican musical culture over the last 75 years.

This record was a total surprise for me. I’d never heard of Krasilnikov but discovering — and introducing others to — talented musicians is one of the reasons I created this blogspace 10 years ago. Bloody Belly Comb Jelly features a striking instrumentation of quartet-plus-larger ensemble that simultaneously shows off the deep connections among Krasilnikov’s small group and the leader’s talents as arranger and composer. Krasilnikov’s attention to the interplay of timbres is one of the album’s highlights, especially his writing for woodwinds. I’m really caught up on this album: I alternate between just reveling in a deeply satisfying listening experience and wanting to deep-dive into transcription and the scores to figure out what makes it tick.

I also was introduced to the music of trombonist Audrey Ochoa this month. She’s earned many accolades for her first three albums. The latest, Head of a Mouse, feels like a great introduction to Ochoa because of its breadth. This album takes a different approach to “telling your story” than Borochov’s Arba: whereas Borochov has synthesized a wide range of travels and experiences into a singular aesthetic, on this album Ochoa shows her range by highlighting her musical influences and sides of her personality one-at-a-time — across such a diverse range of genres and instrumentations. The resulting album impressed me as deeply personal, artistically rich, and a lot of fun.

Like Ochoa pianist Olivia Pérez-Collellmir draws on a combination of multiple cultural influences and training in Western art music with her debut album. The NYC premiere for this record will be October 4th at the DROM, one of my favorite venues in the City and the perfect setting for Olivia, which is connected to multiple traditions of improvised music, including jazz and flamenco. Pérez-Collellmir moves through a range of moods on the album, transverses instrumentations and musical genres, and highlights the sonic similarities among a carefully curated list of tracks. The album coheres around her impressive pianism and thoughtful writing. This is one of the albums I listened to most this month.

This one is personal for me. Richmond, Virginia, was where I started my professional performance career. The featured vocalist on this album, Laura Ann Singh, and I started at the University of Richmond the same year; only to find out that the majority of the jazz musicians our age were at VCU where Richards was teaching. Over seven years there I performed with most of the musicians on this album (including Singh and trumpeter Taylor Barnett, the current head of VCU Jazz). I’m thrilled that this record is widely available and that so many will hear what I’ve known for decades – that Richmond is home to a superb jazz scene stocked with talented musicians, many of whom Richards has taught. The magic in this record emerges not just from Richards’ inventive and compelling charts, Singh’s voice, or any of the individual instrumentalists, but also from the collective uplift, care, and collaboration of several generations of musicians coming together in support of one of their beloved mentors.

I’ve been a fan of Sara Serpa for a while but especially since I saw her live in duo with pianist Ran Blake. On Night Birds her musical partner is guitarist Andre Matos with whom she’s recorded twice before. The couple’s child Lourenço is heard on the album, as are collaborators pianist Dov Lanski, cellist Okkyung Lee, vocalist Sofia Jernberg, and drummer João Pereira. It’s difficult to capture this album’s expansive beauty in a paragraph: on one hand, “just listen” suffices; on the other I can’t imagine what I could write that might evoke just the smallest bit of the magical simplicity and supreme artistry that Serpa and Matos evoke out of “Counting.” As with much of Serpa’s work (including her mentoring and activism) Night Birds carries thoughtful messaging: the album serves in part as a platform for ecocriticism, arguing for more mindful engagement with the planet and all its lifeforms. Ten years on and Serpa is continuing to open my ears. This album is masterful.

Most of the albums I hear are sent via promotional emails but I learned about this one from the artist herself: Kavita and I are connected on Facebook, and I’m so grateful for that. Because of my research interests in the archipelagos of the Eastern Atlantic (aka Macaronesia), I’m sure I would have discovered this album sooner rather than later, but thanks to Kavita’s own publicity work, I heard it right away. I don’t have the benefit of press releases on this album, but I can tell you that this is the most beautiful music I’ve heard all month. Shah’s homage to Cesaria Evora — including recording with some of the late vocalist’s long-time collaborators — is full of reverence, love, and moments of supreme artistry that took my breath away. I will be coming back to this album again and again. Congratulations, Kavita!

Now that I’m teaching at Frost, I’m part of a music school that includes a great jazz writing program (run by my friend and fellow Londonderry High School alumnus Steve Guerra) . This semester I’m teaching a course populated by mostly incoming first-year Frost students, including some jazz students. Introducing my students to new music is one of my favorite things about teaching. When I played Feast Ephemera for them, those Frost students loved this album, too. Chicago-based bassist Sommers’s album deserves all the love — and the study. Nine tracks of exquisite writing for a large-ish, 12-piece ensemble that’s just the right balance of carefully scored tutti passages, driving grooves, lush textures, and break-out moments for individual soloists and smaller divisions of the ensemble. With this album Sommers is making a strong statement as bandleader and writer.

Picking a relatively short list of albums to feature in this piece was difficult. I keep a log so, amid starting the new job and moving, I know I listened to at least 60 new records this month (not including the old ones). Marike van Dijk’s Stranded was one of the first I checked out; and I can’t stop thinking about it. If I hadn’t been so committed to working through my list, I definitely would have listened to it more often (and I will…next month). This album is a recorded version of a 2020 commission from the North Sea Jazz Festival, but its premiere was delayed til last year. Like the Krasilnikov album, I’m caught between just loving this album and studying it. Stranded is a little “out” and quirky. van Dijk and the nonet take the listener to some unexpected places that are both perplexing and immensely gratifying. The record is both tons-of-fun and, in a more “serious” sense, creative genius at the forefront of jazz composition.