The Jazz.com Blog
June 30, 2009 · 0 comments
The Best Tracks of the Month
Five times every week, jazz.com features an outstanding recent track on its home page as the Song of the Day. These are drawn from the hundreds of new CDs heard by our team of reviewers, with the aim of alerting fans to significant music from the many current releases on the market.
Some of the artists featured this month (see below) will be familiar names. For example, one of the tracks highlighted comes from Freddie Hubbard’s Without a Song: Live in Europe 1969, previously unreleased music that captures the trumpeter in fine form. Other musicians on our June tracks—Chick Corea, Stanley Clarke, Chuck Mangione—similarly need no introduction.
But we also aim to showcase exciting young talent, such as pianists Gerald Clayton and Hiromi; established players who deserve to be better known—for example, Laurence Hobgood, Bobby Broom, Ralph Bowen and Enrico Pieranunzi; and provocative players pushing the envelope.
In the latter category, you will find Tom Abbs who built his recent album by randomly pairing 22 musical fragments—the results, according to reviewer S. Victor Aaron are compelling but “a little creepy sounding.” Meanwhile, our resident connoisseur of the transgressive Mark Saleski calls attention to a track by Gebhard Ullmann's Basement Research that sounds like “music that plays during the freaky scene in the movie when the spirit of Albert Ayler and his crazy cousins come back to inhabit the instruments lying around on the practice room floor.” You can hear it yourself . . . if you dare!
You will also find some releases a few steps outside the jazz idiom, such as tracks by blues master Otis Taylor, the great singer from Mali Oumou Sangare, and the difficult-to-categorize but fascinating-to-hear band Cyminology. In short, the selections for June represent an eclectic but interesting group of performances—a useful playlist for sampling the current state of the art.
And as always, the links below take you to a review with full personnel and recording info, a rating based on our 0-100 scoring system, and a link for (legal) downloading.
Happy listening!
Featured Songs: June 2009
Oumou Sangare: Sukunyali
Reviewed by Ted Gioia
Shea Breaux Wells: Oh Yes, I Remember Clifford
Reviewed by Scott Albin
Ralph Bowen: Canary Drums
Reviewed by Ralph A. Miriello
Jakob Dinesen: Come Sunday
Reviewed by Eric Novod
Otis Taylor: Country Boy, Girl
Reviewed by Ted Gioia
Laurence Hobgood: Que Sera Sera
Reviewed by Ralph A. Miriello
Brian Woodruff: Chorale
Reviewed by Mark Saleski
Enrico Pieranunzi: Scarlatti Sonata K377 & Improv
Reviewed by Ted Gioia
Rondi Charleston: Bewitched, Bothered & Bewildered
Reviewed by Scott Albin
3Play+: Bulletrain
Reviewed by Mark Saleski
Bobby Broom: Ask Me Now
Reviewed by Ted Gioia
Grant Geissman: Chuck and Chick
Reviewed by Ted Gioia
Tom Abbs: Torn
Reviewed by S. Victor Aaron
Gerald Clayton: Two Heads One Pillow
Reviewed by Greg Marchand
Gian Tornatore: Hearing Triangles
Reviewed by Mark Saleski
Duck Baker: Everything That Rises Must Converge
Reviewed by S. Victor Aaron
Freddie Hubbard: Blues by Five
Reviewed by Ted Gioia
Guilherme Monteiro: Air
Reviewed by S. Victor Aaron
Cyminology: Niyaayesh
Reviewed by Ted Gioia
Gebhard Ullman: Kreuzberg Park East
Reviewed by Mark Saleski
Stanley Clarke (with Hiromi): Sakura Sakura
Reviewed by Ted Gioia
Jennifer Lee: Quiet Joy
Reviewed by Mark Saleski
This blog entry posted by Ted Gioia
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