By: Edward Blanco Heartmony is Bulgarian-born guitarist Hristo Vitchev’s fourth album as leader and a constant on all of his music, is Brazilian-born Weber Ribeiro Drummond, a Latin Grammy-nominated classical jazz pianist who later changed his last name to Iago in honor of the Roma people (Gypsies). Both men are fixtures of the San Francisco
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By: Edward Blanco Vocalist Sue Halloran and saxophonist Ken Hitchcock have spent decades in the music business with credits on Broadway, movies and TV, and for the most part doing so separately. Their paths have crossed only a few times with both being members of the New York Saxophone Quartet and the Red Parrot Night
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Artist: Hulon Title: After Hours Genre: Smooth Jazz Label: Premier Musique Group Release Date: Product Link: http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/hulon2/from/muzikman Website: http://hulon.com Source Link: http://www.muzikreviews.com/reviews.php?ID=2027 After Hours is an interesting mix of contemporary R&B with smooth jazz.  The two vocal tracks are very much in the adult contemporary R&B genre, while the rest of the album straddles the
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Liner notes for STRIKE UP THE BAND CDby Tom ChesekDeep in the heart of New Jersey, just 30 miles from Times Square and a shell’s throw from the Atlantic Ocean, there’s a happening little town called Red Bank. A destination town; where folks flock to the many shops, restaurants, bars, parks and theaters that have
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Glenn Astarita Similar to the touring be-bop all-stars of yesteryear, the post-modern sensibilities of today’s improvising musicians often derail semblances of the tried and true. This drummer-less quartet featuring prominent improvisers, generate progressive jazz-based undertones and semi-controlled interactions, largely entrenched within avant-garde type persuasions. Here, the band is captured at a live venue during New
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By: Edward Blanco Internationally-recognized recording artist Harry Allen is an award-winning tenor saxophonist with over thirty albums to his credit. Rhythm On The River is his third recording on the Dutch Challenge Records label, and as per Challenge executive Chris Ellis’s opinion, “we think it’s his best yet and that is saying something.” A water-themed
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Glenn Astarita With her impressive 2011 debut as a leader “Devil’s Dress” (TOAP Music) and involvement in various European projects, highly-educated trumpeter Susana Santos Silva looms as a nascent voice within progressive-jazz circles. Here, the Portuguese artist works within the trio format. It’s a democratic engagement modeled on structure and deft expressionism akin to a
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by Bill Donaldson Unusual, yes. Unknown, no. Lorraine Feather’s most recent album, Tales of the Unusual, with full-blown oddness takes listeners even deeper into spookiness than her previous ones suggested. Feather’s interests, which are explored endlessly in movies and novels but not so much in music, involve those known but confined recesses of human personality
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Glenn Astarita These celebrated musicians offset the conventional or perhaps anticipated stylizations of jazz piano trio fare by personalizing, reconfiguring, and injecting a host of enchanting events into the grand schema. As the story goes, the premise for these compositions are based on the exchanges the musicians had with master chef Paul Canales and his
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By John Stevenson In a year of countless remarkable recordings, Radio Jumbo will be remembered as one of 2011’s most distinctive jazz recordings. London is known for its staggering array of cultures and genres of music. However, accomplished London-based, Dominican-born guitarist, Cameron Pierre, has certainly helped to place the French Caribbean strains of Kadans, Meringue,
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