Category: Album Reviews – Archive

August 3, 2015 / Album Reviews - Archive

Billie Holiday: The Centennial Collection (Columbia) Cassandra Wilson: Coming Forth by Day (Sony) Ben Goldberg: Orphic Machine (Bag) How did a woman with a smallish voice and modest range come to be celebrated as one of the twentieth century’s greatest singers? It seems unthinkable in the era of TV talent…

July 30, 2015 / Album Reviews - Archive

Astral Transference/Seven Dreams (Orenda) Los Angeles has a habit of throwing up musicians at odds with the mainstream. Ornette Coleman’s free jazz revolution began there, for instance, and Frank Zappa’s genre-bending body of work is among the twentieth century’s most distinctive. This is the third Daniel Rosenboom opus reviewed in…

July 29, 2015 / Album Reviews - Archive

Souvenance (ECM) In the six tumultuous years since Anouar Brahem’s last album the Tunisian has watched his homeland explode amid the hopes and horrors of the Arab Spring. This double-album for quartet and string orchestra is his response. In no sense programmatic, it is rather the considered musical thoughts of…