ECM Records will be capping its 50 year anniversary celebration tonight with an epic concert live from Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City. Featuring a who’s who of modern jazz cognoscente including Joe Lovano, Craig Taborn, Vijay Iyer, Ravi Coltrane, Bill Frisell, Mark Turner, Larry Grenadier, Ethan Iverson, Fabian Almazan, Dezron Douglas, Shai Maestro, Ziv Ravitz, Nasheet … [Read more...]
Our Top Picks at the 2019 Montreal International Jazz Festival
The Montreal International Jazz Festival kicks off its 40th edition this week, starting June 26th, with a line-up sure to delight the most diverse of musical tastes. Often jazz festivals can be criticized for not showcasing enough jazz per se, but this year’s Montreal edition is particularly fruitful and ripe with a great selection of actual jazz artists. We’ve highlighted a few … [Read more...]
Brad Mehldau Trio – ‘Seymour Reads the Constitution!’
The Brad Mehldau Trio -- Mehldau on piano, Larry Grenadier on bass, and Jeff Ballard on drums -- have not released an album together in four years, 2014's Blues and Ballads. You know how it goes-- artists create, move onto other ideas, take time creating on their own until the time is right to bring something just so to your usual collaborators. Sure, Mehldau spent the last … [Read more...]
DeJohnette, Grenadier, Medeski, & Scofield – ‘Hudson’
Jack DeJohnette, Larry Grenadier, John Medeski, and John Scofield share not only extremely high-level improvisational ability, but also the Hudson River Valley as a home. Good news for us, as they've joined up to put together a new album, Hudson, that will be released in June. The first track, "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" is now available to stream at their bandcamp site. … [Read more...]
“And I Love Her”: A Critical Analysis of Covers
Brad Mehldau has a reputation for building beautiful piano trio versions of pop songs, notably including a lot of Beatles material. His trio release from earlier this year, Blues & Ballads, includes a fantastic version of "And I Love Her" with Larry Grenadier and Jeff Ballard. More recently, Gilad Hekselman, Petros Klampanis, and Ziv Ravitz played a trio concert with that … [Read more...]