New Release Round-up,
Jazz New Release Round-Up - 14th February 2020
Welcome to another look at the latest jazz new releases. We kick off with Aaron Diehl’s The Vagabond on Mack Avenue, a subtle piano trio session reminiscent of the golden age of pianists like Errol Garner, George Shearing and Art Tatum, and trumpeter Eric Vloeimans delivers a lesson in modern jazz-funk. Pat Metheny releases his first album in six years with the epic From this Place, and Indian master drummer Trilok Gurtu proclaims God is a Drummer, without spilling a jar of hubris all down himself. And Sleepy Night treat us to some prime, post-flower power Maynard Ferguson… no that’s not a kid letting air out of a balloon, it’s a trumpet!
There’s a low-key, thoughtful mood to this trio date from gifted pianist/composer Aaron Diehl that I found pretty special. For a start, it avoids the aimless comping that plagues many a piano trio recording and the fact that the blurb mentions John Lewis as an influence makes perfect sense; I can hear similarities between the jewel-like brilliance that Lewis brought to the Modern Jazz Quartet, and Diehl’s understated yet crystal clear playing.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
From This Place is Pat Metheny’s first album since 2014’s Kin, and he’s clearly been bottling up lots of ideas for this project which verges on progressive rock in some of its more dramatic moments. Metheny says of the project “From This Place is one of the records I have been waiting to make my whole life…. presented in a way that offers the kind of opportunities for communication that can only be earned with a group of musicians who have spent hundreds of nights together on the bandstand". It certainly feels like a culmination of all the various strands in Metheny’s music over the past forty years (aside from the free experiments with Ornette Coleman and Derek Bailey), with a sense of grandeur.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Dutch trumpeter Eric Vloeimans has been a consistently interesting figure in European jazz since the nineties. Classically trained, he moved to New York to study with Donald Byrd, and became a member of the Mercer Ellington and Frank Foster big bands, as well as playing on the city’s downtown jazz scene with stalwarts like Marc Johnson and Joey Baron. He also successfully mixed baroque music with jazz on an album for Channel Classics a few years ago, but with Party Animals Vloeimans focuses on jazz fusion, in a set full of his clear cut, beautifully articulated playing, backed by an electric band. Check out the impressive opening track Airchair for a taster, which sets up a super-cool sounding, Germanic 'motorik' groove for Vloeimans to subtly blow over.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC
Faithless said God is a DJ, and now master drummer Trilok Gurtu is telling us God is a Drummer... quite some claim, but one I can’t argue with considering the man has been fusing Indian classical music, Western jazz and funk, African and Brazilian music into his own unique shapes for the past fifty years. His twentieth recording as a leader, Gurtu pays tribute to some fallen colleagues and role models who have guided and inspired him along the way, including keyboardist and Weather Report co-founder Joe Zawinul, Brazilian percussionist Nana Vasconcelos, jazz drumming great Tony Williams and his mother, the Indian classical singing star Shobha Gurtu.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Matt Groom - Head of Jazz
