Tomeka Reid's Low End Theory
The cellist reflects on twelve years with her quartet, the making of their fourth album, 'dance! skip! hop!', a family archive of Black life in Wyoming, and the two figures named CeCe who bookend her path in jazz.
Jazz
Heaven in a Semicircle — Ben Wendel and the New Mallet Generation
Placing himself in the middle of four distinct mallet improvisers, Wendel discusses how 'BaRcoDe' turned the trance-inducing logic of bars, effects pedals, and extended technique into music he describes as living "in its own little universe."
Bellbird Answer the Wild
Claire Devlin and Eli Davidovici of Montréal jazz combo Bellbird discuss how the quartet turned the loudest bird call on earth into compositional raw material for 'The Call,' with political conviction and collective authorship shaping everything that follows.
Juanma Trujillo — A Cantaclaro in Barcelona
'Música Para Quinteto: Live at Jazz Cava' captures Juanma Trujillo's Barcelona quintet at full burn, following a prolific decade of recordings and a deliberate exit from New York for a life the Venezuelan guitarist believes feeds the music.
Imaginary Space, Real Feeling — Bayeté's Electric Gospel
Reissued more than fifty years after its creation, Bayeté's 'Seeking Other Beauty' finds the Bay Area composer tracing the line between his grandmother's church organ and the electric possibilities that pulled him away from the jazz masters.
Shelf-Worthy — Patrick Smith and His Technicians of Tone
The Toronto saxophonist joins guitarist Dan Pitt and drummer Lowell Whitty on 'Words Underlined,' a live session cut in a beloved Toronto bookstore that became, almost accidentally, one of the year's most assured jazz records.
Graphical Jazz — The Unsung Canvas of Prestige Records
Bob Weinstock believed in treating music and album covers equally as serious art, and 'WAIL,' by Chris Entwistle and Mark Havens, reveals how that conviction produced a graphic legacy still being imitated today.
From Sacred Space to Silent Film — Noah Franche-Nolan Serves the Music
On 'Rose-Anna,' the Vancouver pianist honors his great-grandmother's church-organ tradition through compositions that move between meditative prayer, silent-film themes, and post-bop propulsion.
Rahsaan Roland Kirk's Bright Moments — Shining New Light on the Multi-Horn Prophet
Through the archival efforts of Zev Feldman, two lost recordings surface: 'Vibrations in the Village', taped at New York's Village Gate in 1963, and 'Seek & Listen', captured at Seattle's Penthouse four years later, both documenting Kirk's ability to loop jazz history into one great sphere.
Whose Sound Is Whose? The Collective Method of SML
The LA quintet's second album, 'How You Been', unfolds through the distillation of live improvisations into moments where individual voices dissolve into collective sound.
Astronomy Harmonie — Patricia Brennan's Celestial Chamber Jazz
The vibraphonist's 'Of The Near And Far' superimposes constellations over the circle of fifths to generate pitch collections for a ten-piece ensemble while signaling her background in orchestral percussion, alternative rock, and the chamber works of Glass and Xenakis.
Jeremy Rose and the Open Sound of Australian Improvisation
The Sydney saxophonist's album 'Infinity II' emerges from fully improvised sessions with no charts, no discussion, and no overdubs—what Rose describes as humanist minimalism, where four musicians function like a living system.