Category Archives: Reviews

CD Review: Kali Z. Fasteau’s “Piano Rapture”…new works on piano

Kali Z. Fasteau CDArtist: Kali Z. Fasteau
Title: Piano Rapture
Label: Flying Note Rec
Genre: jazz/improv

CD Review by Matt Cole

Kali Z. Fasteau is an accomplished composer and multi-instrumentalist, having traveled all over the world learning and playing various woodwind and string instruments and absorbing the music of the many places she has lived and created. On Piano Rapture, she returns to her first instrument, presenting nearly an hour of spontaneous compositions for both solo piano and small ensemble. Her collaborators on this project include reed players Kidd Jordan, L. Mixashawn Rozie, and J.D. Parran; and percussionist Ron McBee.

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CD Review: The Bushwick Hotel…”the saxophone is woven into a genre where most people are (erroneously) convinced the saxophone does not belong”

Bushwick Hotel CD coverArtist: The Bushwick Hotel
Title: Graffiti of the Young Man’s Mind
Label: self produced
Genre: indie rock

CD Review by Dawoud Kringle

One of the most interesting, although potentially incongruous, manifestations of American music is when jazz musicians play rock / pop music. Of course, there is nothing new about this. Frank Beecher of rock & roll pioneers Bill Haley and the Comets was a jazz musician. The musicians who played on the Motown soul and R&B hits of yesteryear came from a jazz tradition. And who can forget Steely Dan, who mixed jazz to pop, and unintentionally had young rock audiences believing they’d invented major 7th chords? When jazz musicians enter the rock/pop world, they invariably make a contribution to the music that rock musicians along rarely can.

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Follow Up of the Dark Circuits Festival 2014: First Videos

Dark Circuits FestivalText by Hans Tammen (producer of the Dark Circuits Festival 2014)

Date: Saturday, June 14 through Monday, June 23, 2014
Venues: Harvestworks, REVERSE, Silent Barn, Outpost Artists Resources, Spectrum, MakeMusicNY, The Firehouse, Eyebeam and Shapeshifter Lab.
Genre: contemporary electronic music

Hi all,

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Another Concert Review: The Road to Jajouka featuring the Master Musicians of Jajouka w/Bachir Attar, Billy Martin, Marc Ribot, Shahzad Ismaily, DJ Logic, and opening set by Eliot Sharp and Bachir Attar

IMG_0119Date: June 15, 2015
Venue: Le Poisson Rouge (NY)

Review and photos by Keith Brooks and Ann Fawcett Ambia

Thanks to a couple of free tix from Sohrab Saadat Ladjevardi, my friend Ann and I got to see the Road to Jajouka performance at Le Poisson Rouge on June 15th. For those, like us, who were not familiar with the Master Musicians of Jajouka, (although Ann and I caught a brief glimpse of their music when they appeared at the Ornette Coleman tribute at Prospect Park a few nights before) perhaps the first question to be addressed is : who are they, and why have so many diverse musicians sought them out to play and record with going back to 1971?

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