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Best Jazz Of 2014: 25-21
Welcome to Burning Ambulance’s annual rundown of the best jazz albums of the year. As we did last year, we’ll be listing five albums per day. Let’s get started! 25. Vinnie Sperrazza, Apocryphal (Buy...
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Best Jazz Of 2014: 20-16
Our week-long countdown of the best jazz releases of the year continues with #s 20-16. Let’s go! 20. Wadada Leo Smith, Red Hill (Buy It) and The Great Lakes Suites (Buy It) Trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith...
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Best Jazz Of 2014: 15-11
Burning Ambulance’s week-long countdown of the year’s best jazz albums continues with #s 15-11. Shall we? 15. Rudy Royston, 303 (Buy It) The players Rudy Royston’s assembled for his debut as a leader...
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Interview: Chris Potter
Saxophonist Chris Potter‘s new album, Imaginary Cities, came out on ECM last week. (Buy it from Amazon.) It’s his second release for the label, following 2013’s The Sirens, and like that one, it’s a...
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Jeremy Pelt
Trumpeter Jeremy Pelt has released an album for the HighNote label every January since 2010. The first three—2010’s Men of Honor, 2011’s The Talented Mr. Pelt, and 2012’s Soul (reviewed here)—were made...
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Red Garland
Pianist Red Garland first came to fame in 1955, when he joined trumpeter Miles Davis‘s quintet alongside saxophonist John Coltrane, bassist Paul Chambers and drummer Philly Joe Jones. These five men...
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Eero Koivistoinen
Finland’s Svart Records has rapidly earned a reputation as one of the best labels around for doom, occult folk, rock and metal, and other heavy musics. But lately, they’ve been broadening their scope...
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The Mars Volta
The Mars Volta‘s second album, Frances the Mute, was released March 1, 2005. Seen in retrospect, it marked the group’s creative peak. On subsequent albums, guitarist Omar Rodríguez-López‘s startling...
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Dial Records
Dial Records was just one of many small, independent jazz labels to spring up in the immediate aftermath of World War II. There was a void to be filled: due to price changes and scarcity of materials,...
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Sonny Rollins
It’s strange, the way a brief moment in a long career—a detour, even—can become the object of intense focus after the fact. An album that isn’t seen as a landmark, or a triumph, when it’s first...
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Best Jazz Of 2015: 15-11
We’re at the midpoint of our countdown of the 25 best jazz albums of 2015. (Click to read Part 1; Click to read Part 2.) Let’s keep going! 15. Nick Hempton, Catch And Release Amazon Australian alto...
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Best Jazz Of 2015: 10-6
All this week, we’re counting down the 25 best jazz albums of 2015. Here’s Part 1. Here’s Part 2. Here’s Part 3. We’re just about to kick off the top 10, so let’s go! 10. Christian Scott Atunde Adjuah,...
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Food
Norwegian/British duo Food has just released their third album with ECM, their eighth overall, This Is Not a Miracle. (Get it from Amazon.) The core group consists of Thomas Strønen on drums,...
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Shareef Clayton
Trumpeter Shareef Clayton has performed with Macy Gray, Melody Gardot, and Bobby Sanabria; he also played on Sanabria’s 2012 album Multiverse, which was nominated for a Grammy. Originally from Miami,...
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Jeremy Pelt
Trumpeter Jeremy Pelt is on a regular schedule at this point: Every January, he puts out an album, like clockwork, and for the last five years, each one has been very different from the one before. In...
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Interview: Freddie Hendrix
Photo: Anastas Tarpanov Freddie Hendrix is a veteran trumpeter who’s making his debut as a leader 20 years after emerging onto the East Coast scene. Strongly influenced by Freddie Hubbard and Woody...
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Dan Weiss
Drummer/composer Dan Weiss‘s new album Sixteen: Drummers Suite will be released next week on Pi Recordings. Each track is named in tribute to a particular drummer, and takes a piece of that drummer’s...
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Interview: Lisa Hilton
Pianist Lisa Hilton is one of the most relentlessly productive artists in jazz, but the critical class seems wholly ignorant of her work; her name never seems to pop up in discussions of who’s...
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Michael Formanek
Part of what makes jazz such an endlessly renewable form is its mutability. Compositionally, instrumentally, and improvisationally, jazz has no fixed center. From solo piano to a full jazz orchestra...
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Miroslav Vitous
Despite his unceremonious ousting from Weather Report, a group he helped found alongside saxophonist Wayne Shorter and keyboardist Joe Zawinul, bassist Miroslav Vitous has not shied away from...
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