Jazzwise Choices,
Jazzwise Editor's Choices - June 2022
The latest Editor's Choices from Jazzwise Magazine available to buy at Presto include the double-bill of Amaryllis and Belladonna from guitarist Mary Halvorson, Trish Clowes' latest album A View With a Room (read our interview with Trish here), and Alexander Hawkins teaming up with Shabaka Hutchings for Break a Vase.
"Hopefully, one of the last releases – although certainly one of the best – born from the disaster that was the pandemic lockdown. Clowes, without sentimentality, but with much craft and no little passion, has found some sweetness amid the pain and loss."
Available Format: CD
"Together these tracks comprise an album of classy, inventive jazz improvisation that’s pretty near perfect."
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
"Amaryllis buzzes and hums as the sextet relishes Halvorson’s written-through parts but obviously is bursting to improvise: ‘Night Shift’ has an irresistible line, underwritten by Fujiwara’s fabulous drums until the trombone, very Roswell Rudd style, wins out. Halvorson’s guitar is less prominent than on Belladonna, but her writing liberates this extraordinary band…"
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
"…on the melancholic modes of ‘Moonburn’ [Halvorson] grows more emphatic throughout, but as a parasitic mistletoe threads and winds about its host, so Halvorson finds her guitar separate yet utterly reliant on the string structure for its existence. The closing title track has intimations of Bartok and Hermann in the strings, but we're not allowed to settle as the guitar goes astral above them."
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
"The release of either of these albums would be significant: but to have them released simultaneously is a major musical event."
Available Format: 2 Vinyl Records
"Two enormously productive UK musicians, Hawkins and Hutchings, join together (alongside bass hotshot Neil Charles, aka Ben Marc) for this intriguing album which takes its inspiration from West Indian poet Derek Walcott's famous Nobel Prize acceptance speech: "Break a vase, and the love that reassembles the fragments is stronger than that love which took its symmetry for granted when it was whole.""
Available Format: CD
"This then is Brian Jackson, as he has been for several decades and is today, with his illustrious history very much relevant to contemporary black music."
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
"…but it is Pelt’s trumpet playing and vision that define the album’s class. He is joined by flute on the two part 'Lighter Side/Darker Side', plays beautiful Harmon mute on the ballad 'I Love Music' and is angular and loquacious on 'Shifting Images'. The downbeat 'You and Me' closes the set, firmly secured by hip-hop beats."
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
"The busy separate schedules of these four players makes regular gettogethers on Ches Smith's ventures inevitably rare, so Interpret It Well is a particularly precious document."
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
"This is a big listen, not to be shuffled, but the satisfying richness of the music makes it well deserving of the attention it demands."
Available Format: 2 CDs
Joshua Lee - Jazz Content
