Joe Block: going places fast – photo, artist’s own website
This week’s podcast
Track of the Week ‘Another Day’ by The Espen Eriksen Trio
Somebody should – must – write lyrics for ‘Another Day’. Got a lot of “soft singing” potential in the Chet Baker mould if it becomes a vocal. But beautiful neverthless as an instrumental keeping it simple and sensitively interpreted by the EET. Drawn from Almost There.
Album of the Week Joe Block, There is Always Hope, Blue Engine ****
Block hails from Philadelphia and plays his originals here.
I think of a contemporary UK player like the McCoy Tyner influenced Sultan Stevenson that sits well with ‘The Opening’ if wondering about an allied approach as a provisional bit of thinking to begin. But I am sure other reviewers will pluck lots more points of comparison from the air to place the sound casting around for a context near or far and projecting from their own listening base and knowledge which is fair enough. Do wear a suit while listening – only kidding. But There Is Always Hope does have something of the Young Lions style to it, a suited and booted era and style period when you definitely didn’t sport jim jams with your trainers as your preferred gig clobber as a rule.
Block became interested in jazz as a teenager through the Philadelphia Clef Club of Jazz and Performing Arts and the Kimmel Center’s Creative Music Programme. He subsequently studied in New York at Columbia and Juilliard under Geoffrey Keezer, Marc Cary, Ted Rosenthal and Frank Kimbrough (1956-2020).
In the video the Joe Block Quintet play the mournful album title track – the pianist leader with trumpeter Noah Halpern, saxophonist Chris Lewis, double bassist Nathan Pence and drummer Christian McGhee – back in 2021 in Block’s hometown of Philadelphia at Chris’ Jazz Cafe.
Block has performed with icons like Wynton Marsalis, Kurt Rosenwinkel – who is on the record – and Gary Bartz, among others and in 2025 was associate musical director and pianist for the Broadway production of George Clooney’s Good Night, and Good Luck. Newcomer Noah Halpern is on trumpet, Chris Lewis on tenor and soprano saxophones, Morgan Guerin and Dylan Band on tenor, Abdias Armenteros on soprano saxophone, Samuel Harris on bass and Christian McGhee on drums, with the Eric Clapton endorsed Rosenwinkel making a special appearance on ‘Ungrounded’. Armenteros’ soprano contributions are particularly fine.
Leave a comment