Allexa Nava – No Language (Jazz re:freshed)
The fine, young, UK-based players keep coming! Seeing Ezra Collective collecting a BRIT a few weeks ago felt like a great accolade not just for the phenomenal band themselves but…
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Yazz Ahmed – A Paradise in the hold (Night Time Stories)
Blue Note Supergroup return with excellent 3rd album
James Brandon Lewis – Apple Cores (Anti-)
The super-prolific, genre-dodging, powerhouse tenor king that is James Brandon Lewis delivers again with a trio album dedicated to Don Cherry and Amiri Baraka. Informed by the rhythms and…
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Marshall Allen – New Dawn (Week-End Records)
Saxophonist Marshall Allen has just won a place in the Guinness Book of Records. At 100 years old he is, by some good distance, the oldest person EVER to release…
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Kenny Wheeler Legacy – Some Days Are Better: The Lost Scores (Greenleaf)
Kenny Wheeler is one the great original compositional voices of contemporary jazz. The use of the present tense is deliberate because the Canadian born, but English adopted trumpet player…
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Ambrose Akinmusire – Honey from a winter stone (Nonesuch)
To introduce this extraordinary project it feels right to lead with Ambrose Akinmusire’s own words about the project: “This album is about the fears and struggles I personally face,…
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Renee Rosnes – Crossing Currents (Smoke Sessions)
The classic canon of the Brazilian master composers has of course been familiar ground for jazz players since the 1960s. But just occasionally an album comes along that stands…
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Ronald Snijders – Penta (Night Dreamer)
A very belated Happy New Year and to kick things off in an up-beat mood (despite what’s going on in Washington today) our Chosen One comes from veteran Dutch-Surinamese multi-instrumentalist…
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Out Of/Into – motion1 (Blue Note)
Blue Note. What a label. Its contemporary releases as enticing as its peerless catalogue. 85 years of jazz bangers! Whatever the opposite of resting on your laurels is – that’s…
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Shabaka – Possession (Impulse)
Anyone who was worried when this time last year Shabaka announced he was taking an indefinite leave from playing saxophones that he’d be absent from our musical lives needn’t have…
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Jessica Lauren – Film (Impressive Collective)
When I first listened to keyboard player Jessica Lauren’s new release FILM I assumed it was a brand new recording. In fact it was recorded in 1997. Standout track “Uptown”…
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