Reviews

There is a certain poise about this release. I was expecting it to be far more avant garde, whatever exactly that means. It isn’t although there are passages that verge on that direction. But it operates in a space which is certainly modernistic, in its dour, floating textures and a language that draws more on minor tonalities, unfinished sentences and a blueness.

Higher and higher – the Elevation approach continues to be convincing: Lucian Ban (piano), John Hébert (bass), Abraham Burton (tenor sax), Eric McPherson (drums)

Romanian pianist and composer Lucian Ban, 57, moved to New York in 1999 to study at The New School, immersing himself in the city’s jazz and wider creative communities. He formed Elevation with New York saxophonist Abraham Burton in 2006 as a vehicle for his compositions, bringing together his European musical heritage and experience of the city’s jazz scene. The quartet has since become a long-running vehicle for Ban’s music, with bassist John Hébert and drummer Eric McPherson completing the current line-up. Alongside Elevation, Ban’s work has ranged across jazz, contemporary classical music, European folk traditions and free improvisation, with collaborations including Mat Maneri, John Surman, Alex Harding and Evan Parker.

Elevation’s recorded history includes Mystery (Sunnyside, 2013), recorded live at Cornelia Street Cafe, and Songs From Afar (Sunnyside, 2016), which brought Romanian folkloric influences further into the group’s sound.

Back in the day: In the video Elevation – Lucian Ban (piano), Abraham Burton (tenor sax), John Hébert (bass) and Eric McPherson (drums) play the powerful ‘Farewell’ which was on their album Songs from Afar issued a decade ago.

The overt Romanian element here is found on ‘Golden Oriole’ featuring the ancient sounding folk vocals of Gavril Tarmure that work very movingly indeed.

Ban and Burton have also recorded as a duo on Blacksalt (Sunnyside, 2021), and the real dynamo of interest on this latest is certainly to be found in the core rapport of piano and sax. I kept thinking of Coltrane and McCoy Tyner in mood if not completely style.

Ban’s interest in reinterpreting the music of Romanian composer George Enescu has produced Enesco Re-Imagined (Sunnyside, 2010) and Oedipe Redux (Sunnyside, 2023).

Elam Friedlander, Sound​-​Elements, Cellar Live ***1/2

Gone for this Burton: On staggering form again it’s worth remembering a release too from last year led by bassist Elam Friedlander that Abraham Burton is on.

This new album just issued was recorded in August 2024 and includes compositions dedicated to Abdullah Ibrahim, Andrew Hill, Larry Willis and Billy Strayhorn.

It is a recording that connects the pianist’s Romanian background with the history and continuing possibilities of New York jazz without making either side feel like a separate point of reference.

Ban certainly develops his ideas fully. On the Hill piece ‘Serenade for Andrew’, the improvisation goes deeper once the theme has been stated, opening out gradually rather than simply moving into a conventional soloing sequence. It is far more serene than I remember Hill sounding when I heard him live towards the end of his life, at a festival in Finland with musicians like trumpeter Byron Wallen in his band, as if Ban has gently ironed out some of the abstractions that could emerge more obliquely in Hill’s playing without in any way cheapening the effect. Burton’s very fine, spiritualised saxophone playing adds further to this complexion of rhapsody and artistic exposure at this portion of the album.

There is a vulnerability too on ‘Cristina’s Hope’, a tune also worth hearing on Ban’s album Ways of Disappearing (above) where it is a bit more gospelly soulful. Here the feeling is more exposed, with the melody given room to breathe and the improvisation retaining a sense of fragility rather than pushing towards resolution. It is one of those pieces where Ban’s restraint becomes part of the expression, allowing the emotional weight to accumulate without overstating it.

It isn’t all dreamy and melancholic. There is a punchiness to the title track, ‘Rush’, while ‘Congestion Tax’ brings out the more experimental, avant garde side, full of darting clusters and cross-patterns.

I’d pick out ‘Chakra’ too for its Coltranian solemnity. Ban has recorded the piece before with Alex Harding, and hearing it again here suggests a composition with enough depth to accommodate different readings rather than simply being revisited. Neglecting Ban should be banned! Because a remarkable artist proves himself yet again in so many disparate ways with this fine set of musicians.

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It was a bit of a coup for Blake’s to be a vessel to host the for-the-ages voice of Lisa O’Neill last night. The Cavan singer told us that this was her Fermanagh debut – a remarkable fact really given how far she has travelled and performed down the years. I myself saw her at the Festival Hall in London at the 1916 centenary concert attended by the then President of Ireland Michael D. Higgins.

The initial idea was to host the gig in the old Victorian Church Street side bar which is an absolute pearl of a space. But it is tiny. And the Franciscan styled Atrium is bigger. And demand necessitated the move.

Laytha opened – the folk duo who are in residency in the old bar on Wednesday nights at the long running Folk Club. They sang Aslan’s ‘Crazy World’, The Corrs’ ‘Runaway’ and more in close harmony.

Lisa who played banjo and guitar in addition to her spectacularly wise and deep toned seer-like vocals was backed by Mic Geraghty from Dublin on harmonium and guitar, Joe Doyle from Co. Kildare on double bass and Brian Leach from Co. Cork banging a drum but even more interestingly on the unusual hammered dulcimer, a gift from a Chinese friend who left it behind.

The main music opened with ‘Well Below the Valley’ a song Lisa told us she learned from Christy Moore – his version is above – who had learned it from John Reilly. She described it as “biblical – some say the story is wrapped around Mary Magdalene.”

Socially conscious in her talks to the audience between songs she mentioned how society is dealing with a lot of domestic violence against women and her song ‘Silver Seed’ seemed to me like an amulet against such cruelty.

I was only able to dip into the set for the first half dozen songs and couldn’t stay to the end but was blown away by Lisa’s voice, tickled immensely by the dainty dance steps she took at times accompanied by daring thrusts and face contortions transforming herself as if she had somehow became a good fortune bringing (or maybe not) púca. I liked ‘Pothole in the Sky’ – and the moving ‘Violet Gibson’ about a woman who tried to kill Mussolini. A new song dedicated to Frederick Douglass a visionary African American abolitionist, orator, author and statesman who was fêted in Ireland when he visited in the Daniel O’Connell era also worked well. And the version of Randy Newman’s ‘I Think It’s Going To Rain Today’ was also very satisfying.

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This new live album captures intimate duet performances from pianist-composer Kevin Hays’ residency at John Zorn’s avant-garde New York venue. Serving as the first vinyl release for AHT Records nyc, an independent record label founded by musician and producer Adrien H. Tillmann, the project features tunes and improvisational dialogues involving multi-keyboardist Craig Taborn, last heard by this blog playing with The Bad Plus at the Barbican during their farewell tour, guitarist Gilad Hekselman whose Downhill From Here was a thrill last year, saxophonist Ben Wendel whose work I like with Tom Ollendorff, and drummer Kenny Wollesen known for his collaborations with ‘Don’t Know Why’ songwriter Jesse Harris.

Hays, 58, was born in New York City and raised in Greenwich, Connecticut. He began performing in New York clubs while still at high school and enrolled at the Manhattan School of Music in 1986 but stayed only a short while. He then began his recording career as a leader in 1990 with the nowadays very hard to hold in your hands El Matador for real. That was with Joe Henderson, Steve Wilson and Scott Colley. Later on Blue Note he released 7th Sense and Go Round.

That scratches the surface as it is indicative of only some of his prodigious output down the years and Hays has also maintained a trio partnership with bassist Doug Weiss and drummer Bill Stewart.

His duo work to look at that and pertinent in the current context includes Hope with Benin icon the Herbie Hancock guitarist Lionel Loueke. While Loueke is Franco and George Benson inspired, however, Hekselman on Live at the Stone and elsewhere ploughs a different furrow and is far more of a fiery bebopper in the Peter Bernstein mould stylistically. In 2015, KH began incorporating his own singing more prominently into his work with New Day, an album that brought together his piano playing, compositions and voice.

Turning to the new release tunes are fourfold. Firstly, it is Hays’ ‘Bob Dylan’ spookily arrived at after what comes over like a siren – the melody eventually revealed in a nasally vocalised sounding synth setting followed by some wonderfully grandiose power chords towards the 7 minute mark after the rustling Kenny Wollesen early scene setting thickets of the sonic undertow.

Secondly, there’s Hays’ and Craig Taborn’s ‘Presence’ which seems like an improvisation in character (I doubt that it is spontaneously 100 per cent composed on the spot, is there really a need to attempt this feat?) – it is jointly credited.

Taborn is a very different, far more oblique and essentially more avant-garde pianist to Hays (who seems more interested in melodicism, Brahmsian Mehldau-iana and minimalism at a certain level) but they mesh well together. The work of Taborn’s I love most is when he was in Dave Douglas’ band and I also liked him with Chris Potter & Nasheet Waits at the Pizza Express in Soho in 2021. The piece I think is like futuristic and is highly complex. It sits well if you are an electronica listener or – let’s go out on a limb and offer up a hunch – like Steve Lehman’s spectral experimentations.

Then, thirdly, the Stone set sequences Gilad Hekselman’s ‘The Dove Will Fly High’ that has a synth that sounds like a tubular bell at the beginning. No I am not going to be “literal” and go down a Mike Oldfield rabbit hole today. Tubular bells often make me come over Christmassy or think about buying a cape & magic carpet and being preposterous again. But you’ll hear some, or the effect at least, a bit differently on a fine new Mari Wilson album quite enjoyably in the pop idiom by the way on current marlbank track of the week ‘Good News’ that isn’t ludicrous at all. What Hays does here mercifully isn’t prog or pop.

Watch the brief video above as it’s useful in discovering Hays’ personality when he presents what it is he trying to do in terms of the preparation and process behind jazz solo performances. Footage is from Porto’s Casa Da Musica concert hall in Portugal where Hays has performed

The Trio Grande version of ‘The Dove Will Fly High’ (no bells, Esmeralda, this time) begins with a trundling guitar figure and then the Metheny-esque motif reveals itself quickily. Trio Grande: What’s Left was released at the end of May. Trio Grande are the guitar-sax-drums combination of Hekselman from Israel, the Englishman Will Vinson and American Nate Wood. They play The Yard, Manchester on 2 November, Ronnie’s on the 3rd, Magy’s Farm, Northern Ireland on 4 Nov and the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff on the 5th.

The piece is very differently arranged to the Trio Grande version from an earlier release this year largely because the main theme does not emerge until about 3 and a half minutes in. That’s after the fascinating increasingly church bell-like tolling build-up whereas the main theme appears early on in the TG treatment.

Fourthly, it’s the very beautiful Hays ballad, ‘Remember Me’. Referring to the last of these Live at the Stone pieces which to me is the best thing on the album the ‘Remember me’ version has an electronic keyboard sheen to it – sort of modular monophonic sounding with a woozy “vocalisation” fed in – that’s extremely appealing before peeling off into a piano continuity passage after the hazy introduction and then an incredibly tender Ben Wendel solo. When Hays comps later on before opening up with some trebly piccolo-like lines it’s in a Mehldau-eseque vein engagingly.

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Canada’s Cellar Music put out a lot of albums. To be frank a lot of these this year aren’t my cup of tea much – I thought their output last year overall was stronger – but RePaved certainly is an album I admire and enjoyed listening to and underlines despite sometimes switching off from their output from time to time what an important record company for jazz Cory Weeds’ indie is. Baker’s album from my knowledge of the label is one of Cellar Music’s finest achievements.

Jeremy Pelt, Woven, HighNote *****

Why? Perhaps it’s because I liked vibist Jalen Baker’s role in the Jeremy Pelt sound on Woven (and fittingly Pelt produces); perhaps it’s because Paul Cornish is on piano. That last point is probably the most significant here; other recommendable factors in what is a very good record indeed include the arrangement on ‘Kashmere’ – the broader ensemble at play has flute, violin, viola and cello in addition to the rhythm section. Baker’s solo when it comes is full of character. And character is what this album is all about. Baker recorded the album over two days in January at a studio in Long Island City, New York. He composed the project in response to the gentrification transforming Houston’s 3rd, 4th, and 5th Wards.

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Norwegian bassist Terje Gewelt reunites with Scottish tenor saxophonist Tommy Smith – the two go back to their days with Forward Motion at Berklee in Boston in the 1980s.

The quartet is completed by pianist and keyboard player Erlend Slettevoll and drummer Erik Smith, no relation to Tommy – he grew up in Hønefoss near Oslo.

There is a reflective quality to much of the music, with Smith’s tenor carrying the melodic line over Gewelt’s bass and Slettevoll’s spacious piano voicings. The album doesn’t have a heavy groove and is loose enough in feel to allow for a lot of melodic mobility and extensive improvisation grounded in a gloomy Scandi tonality that anyone into Jan Garbarek (who adapted it from Coltrane) will be happy with.

The title track is followed by ‘Woodland’, ‘Sentinel’, ‘Last Leaf Falling’ (with tin whistle a folkloric twist), ‘Landmark’, ‘Oak Wisdom’, ‘Longevity’, ‘Cycle Of Life’ and ‘Ogham’. The writing is predominantly “spiritual jazz”, emotive in some of the most passionate soloing eg on ‘Oak Wisdom’ most. An emphasis on space and relatively uncluttered quartet interplay gives it a certain gravitas. It isn’t portentous.

Smith’s tenor has a poise that reflects the Coltrane and 1970s Jan Garbarek influence that has long been part of his musical vocabulary in his Scottish National Jazz Orchestra days. In the overhead canopy of tree lined traceries there are also echoes of the open, spacious sound associated with his ECM work that branch out organically, particularly his recordings with Arild Andersen and Paolo Vinaccia (who died in 2019). And if you like the Jarrett “Belonging Band” recordings and interpretations like Keith based on these since – particularly Branford Marsalis‘ sterling work in that domain – then surely The Old Tree will also appeal on a certain deep level.

Born in Oslo in 1960 and raised in Larvik, Gewelt began on guitar before moving to electric bass and then double bass. He studied with the aforementioned giant of Scandi bass Andersen and subsequently attended the Bass Institute of Technology in Los Angeles and Berklee College of Music in Boston. At Berklee he formed Forward Motion with Smith, pianist Laszlo Gardonyi and drummer Ian Froman. The group recorded The Berklee Tapes, made in 1984, and later Progressions.

After returning to Norway, Gewelt worked with musicians including Michael Shrieve, Billy Cobham and Misha Alperin. He established Resonant Music in 1998 and has released much of his own work through the label.

Slettevoll is impressive as a foil to the main lead lines and adds his own often significant touches in a dynamic way. A graduate of the jazz programme at the Trondheim conservatoire, the 44-year-old pianist surfaced in the mid-2000s as part of the exciting Trane inspired outfit The Core. Slettevoll was on Gewelt’s tremendous 2022 trio date Dusk Till Dawn alongside long time Norway residing Englishman the sax and bass clarinet icon, John Surman whose must hear work down the years includes his significant role found on John McLaughlin’s late-1960s classic and debut as a bandleader the ferociously compelling Extrapolation.

Marlbank previously reviewed Then and Now, Gewelt’s stunning collection of recordings made between 1998 and 2022 which is textbook bass and an album that should be required listening for any student of the instrument who wants to inhabit this idiom and compose in its wake. It brought together Gewelt with musicians including Karin Krog, John Surman, Billy Cobham, Christian Jacob and George Garzone.

The Old Tree is superb.The appeal is in the familiarity between Gewelt and Smith but also found in the space given to the quartet and the way the folk inflections sit within the contemporary jazz setting so naturally.

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Encouraged no end to hear very fine long time Londoner American guitarist Matt Backer – best known as part of ABC down the years and on Rumer classic Seasons of My Soul – sounding so great in action with the Neasden Queen of Soul, none other than Miss Behive herself – the very same – pop star Mari Wilson.

This new album is full of Wilson co-writes and it opens very well with the ultra positive tubular bell bedecked Kate Garraway documentary Derek’s Story inspired ‘Good News’ fattened out by meaty grooves from Tim Goodyear and the sparkling keys of Adrian York who co-writes the songs with Wilson who is now 71. The high quality persists throughout.

Dressing up’s what we stand for, sings Mari Wilson

There’s a bit of psychedelia and it kind of feels like the 1980s in spirit but don’t hold that against it if 80s phobic. If so, you have probably arrived at the wrong album. Other notable songs include a nod to clubbing at the Camden Palace and the relationship reflection ‘Tomatoes in the Fridge,’ ‘Come On Out’ plus “lovely” tracks like the Philly Soul inspired ‘Love Letter’.

But everything here is lovely and indeed lovable and isn’t dumb pop at all. Surely it will pick up airplay on all sorts of radio stations, or am I being just naive or delusional again?

Wilson first rose to fame in the early 1980s as well known as anything else for her spectacular barnet, band The Wilsations and chart hits like ‘Just What I’ve Always Wanted’ and ‘Cry Me A River’ that ended up on the very credible Showpeople. She’s done musical theatre roles in Taboo and Dusty The Musical and recorded the Coupling theme ‘Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps’ and worked with pride of Rochdale lovely Barb Jungr and the great jazz singer Claire Martin in Girl Talk too. Always a retro-ist Girl About Town also reels in the years but doesn’t care how throwback the sound turns out or is indeed considered. As any mug knows after all fine writing and playing like this isn’t going to go out of fashion any time soon.

• Mari Wilson plays London’s Cadogan Hall on 4 October and tours

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Another album to add to and thus update *yet again* the best UK releases of 2026 parlour game of a list. (I typed “parlous” there instead for a moment, oops, fat fingeredly.) The only thing parlous about the strength of the UK jazz out there is the neglect it habitually receives from the mainstream music industry. But that’s another story and I am preaching to the converted – dear jazz blog reader, niche genre consumer.

I enjoyed Momentism a good deal. The title undersells it a bit and yet is a confident declaration. A feast of riches this year on the jazz piano front 2026 has proved (the year is nearly over – most releases dry up in mid-November and the major ones are nearly all out), I liked it even more than Julian Joseph’s Voyage of the Faithful, Paul Edis and Noa Levy’s Evansian explorations and even Zoe Rahman’s to Hull and back live album.

UK – 2026 – best of jazz… so far

But look these lists aren’t exactly facts, are they, just a listener user guide when few such frequently updated view points exist in a welter of hucksterism, bizarre marketing and client journalism elsewhere. However, without being at all hairshirt Uriah Heep-like about it glance again kind flâneur at the list and you’ll note that Momentism – however you accent it, I prefer the emphasis heavy on the first syllable, more is mo, as it were – the highest placed album led by a UK pianist. So, pretty decent, huh, fair play and richly deserved.

Jazz is a pastness kind of music on one level for the language, unless you want to be surface and think that anything created before breakfast is old hat and a present kind of music on another for the instinct and creative flair that is largely absent if you are a plodder and know about 1 and a half chords massacred regularly on a half tuned uke.

The only name I managed to pluck from the air who Safir sounds like a bit occurred to me on ‘The World in the Evening’ when thoughts of Barry Green intruded. Green did a very good album with Ian Shaw and Tony Kofi called An Adventurous Dream exploring Strayhorn and Ellington – and there is a Strayhorn homage in the nomenclature on one key track in all serendipity here. In other words he has integrated his influences into his own sound mostly as generally speaking you can’t pin his sound to anyone directly much and bang on about being “esque” or in the vein of even in a non barking way.

One, then to explain why I haven’t curbed my enthusiasm, in the reasoning for being positive, skill. 2. taste 3. a playing togetherness (that’s to do with the band thing) 4. command of the acoustic jazz language 5. ear for a tune 6. looseness where necessary (so there is flow) 7. a discipline in creating an arc to the tunes 8. wit – “beard” tune ‘Hirsute Pursuit’ is a good example as is the nod to a staircase drat-ness – thinking of the perfect witty comeback or reply only after the moment has passed elsewhere 9. tenderness ‘Black Star Sapphire for Strayhorn’ 10. joy (found especially in the crazed shuffling that dominates ‘Clocker’ smuggling in a fast samba of a beat) are the reasons I like it.

Safir, 34, who hails from Manchester, a handy place to be from these days even if long since exiled not even under Andily to London, composed ten of the 11 tracks on the album, ‘Boulevardier’, ‘Zacharius’, ‘Hirsute Pursuit’, ‘Duke Balington’, ‘Black Star Sapphire’, ‘Clocker’, ‘The World In The Evening’, ‘Mad Sad Bad’, and ‘Espirit D’Escalier.’ The meekly affecting title track like a lovely slice of Viennoiserie itself is a trio setting so the album operates a little even in pared back form. They all sit well together. Nothing jars. The remaining track, ‘Amethyst’, was co-written with vocalist Emma Smith. Read a review of Smith and Safir in 2021 when the pair played Soho club Crazy Coqs.

Momentism is shaped around a quartet and has Conor Chaplin on double bass (best heard in a bit of isolation on ‘Black Star Sapphire’) and Luke Tomlinson fairly unobtrusively but tastefully enough in an Ianto (Ian Thomas) kind of style on drums. Conor, a reformed punk jazzer circa early World Service Project when he played bass guitar in recent years has worked extensively with Norwegian new generation sax eminence Marius Neset.

Loose Tubes icon Ballamy, 62, continues a musical partnership with Safir that dates back to 2018. The influential Somerset based tenorist’s first volume of Riversphere issued last year by Oliver Weindling’s reborn Babel label was one of 2025’s very best albums – it has just been nominated for a Parliamentary Jazz Award. For once common sense among the geniuses who decide these things (and the parliamentarians who vote on them) prevails.

Momentism surely a candidate for future award recognition too was recorded in just a single day at Master Chord Studio in Finchley in February. It’s an excellent record. I miss the presence of Ian Shaw that’s the only thing. Let’s hope Safir, Ballamy and Shaw do another record next in the pipeline. But is this as good as What’s New? even without the St. Asaph syncopator? Actually I think it is. Ballamy’s soloing on ‘Zacharius’ makes me think fondly of his masterpiece All Men, Amen (B&W, 1995), an album that is as rare as hen’s teeth and not as far as I know available on any format alas and alack. Lost? That essential sound is found coaxed out by Safir’s writing and in bud once again.

• Hear Safir at Ronnie Scott’s on Monday 14 September.
  

The album brings together bassist Linda May Han Oh and tenor saxophonist Melissa Aldana in a duo setting. It’s quite “simple” and unadorned in approach – but there is complexity in the simplicity. Ultimately I gravitated as much towards the originals as luxuriating in the familiarity of the standards.

Both musicians bring substantial experience to the meeting. Malaysia born, Australia raised Oh, 42, has worked with Pat Metheny, Kenny Barron, Joe Lovano, Terri Lyne Carrington, Vijay Iyer, Geri Allen and Dave Douglas. Her own recording career has included Sun Pictures, Walk Against Wind, Aventurine, The Glass Hours and the more recent Strange Heavens, made with Tyshawn Sorey and Ambrose Akinmusire. She has also been recognised with awards including the Herb Alpert Award and Deutscher Jazz Preis, and is a Grammy Award winner.

Chile born Aldana, 37, came up through the Santiago jazz scene before moving to the US to study at Berklee. In 2013, aged 24, she became the first female instrumentalist and first South American to win the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Saxophone Competition. Her 2019 album Visions brought a Grammy nomination, and she was a founding member of the Blue Note all-star collective Artemis although is no longer in the band. Her subsequent Blue Note albums have included 12 Stars and Echoes of the Inner Prophet. Her most recent album, Filin, was reviewed by Marlbank in February.

Beneath Lifted Skies was produced by Oh and recorded over two days in February at studios in Acton, Massachusetts, a historic New England town around 25 miles northwest of Boston and close to Concord.

As to repertoire on this quietly released album issued in August, the tunes draw a line through several generations of jazz. It opens with ‘Anthropology’, the Charlie Parker/Dizzy Gillespie bebop classic built on the chord changes of George Gershwin’s ‘I Got Rhythm’, followed by Bud Powell’s ‘Hallucinations’ also known as ‘Budo’ when Miles Davis played it. ‘Infinite’, credited to Oh and Aldana, is an improvised piece in the sense of spontaneous composition. Also here is Charles Mingus’ Changes One classic ‘Duke Ellington’s Sound of Love’, Mingus’s 1975 released tribute to Ellington who died in 1974 a matter of months before that album was recording.

Sam Rivers’ ‘Cyclic Episode’, from his 1965 album Fuchsia Swing Song, points towards the freer and more harmonically mobile jazz of the 1960s. Walter Smith III covered the piece on his album Casually Introducing Walter Smith III 20 years ago – Aldana shares something in common with Smith although when I hear her sound I usually think most of Joshua Redman.

Herbie Hancock’s ‘The Sorcerer’, associated with Miles Davis’s 1967 album of the same name, and Wayne Shorter’s ‘Dance Cadaverous’, first recorded during the sessions for Speak No Evil, continue that post-bop thread.

John Coltrane’s ‘26-2’, based on the changes of Charlie Parker’s ‘Confirmation’, takes bebop material into more advanced harmonic territory.

A transcription of the 2012 Aldana version of ‘I’ll Be Seeing You’

The older popular-song tradition is represented by ‘I’ll Be Seeing You’, written by Sammy Fain and Irving Kahal for the 1938 Broadway musical Right This Way.

Aldana has already recorded the great song on her earlier 2012 album Second Cycle which is hard to find. ‘Social Call’, by Gigi Gryce, brings in a bluesier 1950s jazz sensibility.

Maybe there are too many tunes. The thought crossed my mind! Thelonious Monk’s ‘Introspection’ and ‘God Bless the Child’ are here, and another Oh and Aldana tune, ‘Shoulder to Shoulder’, is also included. ‘Winter’, credited to Oh, closes the album.

I liked it well enough overall but was frustrated by the small-scale setting. I found myself trying to imagine hearing the duo live and how I would feel about that as a full concert. As one half of a concert it would be better and probably highly stimulating, but a full one? You need a bigger band to flesh all this out.

Some of these tunes are so familiar you feel you have heard them a million times but somehow, in the main, the duo manage to keep them interesting.

The tune I return to most? That is Oh’s ‘Winter’. I thought of Charlie Haden a few times when thinking of Oh’s sound and especially here. I’ll be listening to Beyond the Missouri Sky – Haden’s glorious album with Pat Metheny (with whom Oh has worked extensively) again this morning. It is perhaps telling that the piece that stays with me is an original composition. The duo display the knack of being faithful to very old material but inserting their own originality and freshness so naturally.

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What was it Toots Thielemans said. “I like that little place between the smile and the tear. That’s me. I like to get excited and play exuberantly, with many fast notes, but I feel most at home with a slow ballad.”

Toots’ fellow harmonica player Mathias Heise may well agree. Here with guitarist Pelle von Bülow they make for a well matched duo on Repertoire. Both are from what I gather prominent figures on the Copenhagen jazz scene, with Heise, who celebrates his 33rd birthday this week, having come to wider attention after winning a world harmonica competition in 2013, and von Bülow a few years younger emerging from a prominent Danish jazz family and the city’s bebop and swing scene.

Live footage of the duo performing in Copenhagen jazz club Montmartre, above.

Heise carries most of the melodic weight, while von Bülow moves between accompaniment and soloing. The format keeps things intimate, no need for guessing on that front.

Neither will you struggle to recognise most of the tunes as the repertoire folds in ‘Bésame Mucho’, ‘Bluesette’, Stevie Wonder’s ‘Overjoyed’ and even more familiar fare. Wonder is a formidable harmonica player himself and to be frank I was won over by this album by Heise’s channelling of Wonder on opener the just mentioned 1985 In Square Circle classic.

And yet while nearly everything is familiar I’d never heard the perky ‘Angel Zoo’ by Danish R&B duo Phlake (not at all flaky as it turns out) which is clearly the least familiar of the numbers certainly to anyone who doesn’t happen to live in Denmark. Overall I liked the delicate treatment of the Pat Metheny 1990s Secret Story piece ‘Always and Forever’ best of all.

After a few spins I went back to a similar album from Dutch duo Hermine Deurloo and Anton Goudsmit and their album Unfiltered reviewed earlier this year. But while newer to me and I haven’t lived with it for as long Repertoire seems better, a bit hipper and more up to date but yet works in a similarly unforced, intimate setting to what the intrepid Dutch veterans created just as admirably. Heise’s clear melodic lines are set against von Bülow’s understated guitar playing.

Hermine Deurloo and Anton Goudsmit, Unfiltered, Challenge ***1/2

It’s a low key kind of release – can you get more stripped back than a mouth organ and guitar album wrapped inside minimal post-production bells and whistles? – and like the Dutch antecedent Repertoire isn’t pretentious at all just full of good vibes and positivity with a few bittersweet moments along the way to prevent it all being insufferably lush and smug. There’s real rapport between the two and it’s an album that provokes immediate affection.

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The dark, brooding Slavic underpinnings of the mood and compositional style gives Endless a passionate melancholia

Among the top new releases, Adam Bałdych returns with Endless, a drummerless quartet studio recording full of the Pole’s originals on which he is joined by Italian bandoneon player Daniele di Bonaventura – who is with Maciek Pysz on the ultra melodic Pont de Vie released this year – Swedish pianist Jacob Karlzon and French double bassist Michel Benita – the bassist also features on Andy Sheppard’s upcoming trio album Salt Catchers.

I wouldn’t say it has too much jazz language on it or as much as some of his earlier recordings but Endless certainly sits easily alongside my regular jazz listening choices and I don’t mind at all its heterodox approach stylistically. Isn’t that what originality is about, to break “the rules”. It is stupid to get hung up on generic barriers and the strength of this style is the way it roams freely across jazz and classical. But I could imagine classical stations playing this release more. The kind of jazz station that wants groove and relentless riffery or manufactured “smoothness” would balk at playlisting this, however, and would probably ignore it given their quest is for a style that approximates in some Frankenstein way to an analogue of pop music.

The Endless sessions took place at the Krzysztof Penderecki European Centre for Music in Lusławice, a village 230 miles south of the Polish capital, Warsaw.

A feature of the recording which isn’t at all a taxing listen but nor is it dumbed down wholesomeness either is Bałdych’s use of the Renaissance violin, an instrument offering a lower tuning and distinct acoustic resonances compared to its modern counterpart.

Bałdych has integrated a low-register renaissance violin into his core sound for nearly a decade and his specific instrument is custom-configured and tuned a seventh lower than a standard classical violin. He debuted this setup on the 2017 album Brothers with the Helge Lien Trio and expanded the approach on this historical crossover with Sacrum Profanum in 2019, leveraging the ancient character of the violin to reinterpret sacred classical compositions from the Middle Ages and Renaissance. By 2021, Bałdych was using the instrument’s breathy tone to contrast the jazz brass of trumpeter Paolo Fresu on Poetry. He then pushed the technical boundaries on Legend in 2022, pitching his deep-register instrument against a brilliant 1755 Gagliano violin to record stereophonic reinventions of Henryk Wieniawski‘s classical works. Most recently, on his 2024 duet album Passacaglia with piano genius Leszek Możdżer, the renaissance violin served as a primary structural voice, locking into the lower harmonics of both standard and prepared grand pianos.

Endless tunes are very strong and include ‘Michalina’ written to celebrate the birth of the violinist’s youngest daughter. More generally beyond the familial, thinking about the way he has named these, the titles form a lexicon of movement, distance and possibility. So look at what they are called. ‘Long Way Home’, ‘Wanderer’, ‘Traveler’, ‘Horizon’ and ‘Between Here and Forever’ suggest a journey without specifying its destination; while ‘Endless’, ‘Shine’, ‘Rainbow’ and ‘The Stars Are Closer Than We Think’ push that journey beyond geography into ideas of perception, aspiration and transcendence. The album’s titles act as signposts on an open-ended journey, moving between the personal and the universal, the immediate and the unreachable.

Born in Gorzów Wielkopolski to the north west near the German border a long drive distant from where this album was made, the 40-year-old leader studied at the Academy of Music in Katowice, and started to gain wider recognition through his 2012 album Imaginary Room. Poland has a rich tradition of jazz violin from Zbigniew Seifert (1946-79) to Michał Urbaniak (1943-2025). AB stands on their shoulders.

The material on Endless ranges from original compositions such as ‘Long Way Home’, ‘Horizon’, and ‘The Stars Are Closer Than We Think’ to an appealing adaptation of Erik Satie’s ‘Gnossienne’. Is it possible to ever tire of Satie?

But I don’t think with the exception of ‘Traveler’ that the bandoneon element of the sound comes through enough. And there isn’t really a strong element of jazz language to it overall. However ‘Traveler’ is interesting in that it smashes notions of easy categorisation. And so you can feel the momentum of the piece on the verge of tipping into something far more experimental but restraining itself from doing so which becomes stimulating as you follow the idea.

Actually there aren’t many albums that approximate to the same idiom with the same instrumentation as here. It’s not the same at all but listen to Argentinian pianist Pablo Murgier’s Pazdera Quintet and their recording Gare du Sud from 2022 to discover how things could be very different. If you do you will find this is far more rhythmical, certainly more South American sounding, and actually has more jazz language.

However that all said, Endless I’d prefer perhaps because the violin is more at the heart of the album even with the caveat that bandoneon isn’t well enough exposed. The tunes seem to have a greater emotional impact to them. Ultimately there is no doubt that anything Bałdych does is worth prioritising given the warmth and expressiveness of his sound and the sheer ingenuity of his interpretations and a compositional voice that burns brightly in the forests of the night.

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Some tracks of this cool slice of soulful lounge jazz are on Bandcamp, but all are on Spotify. It’s a daytime jazz radio kind of listen as much as a very late night one, a feat in itself. Physical formats are due soon. There is a lot of depth to the sonics even on a digital format.

Stevie Wonder’s ‘If It’s Magic’ and Tears for Fears’ ‘Mad World’ are among the songs which also bring Robert Glasper who opens the new Blue Note in London soon back once again into a central role in influential fellow American singer Gretchen Parlato’s oeuvre.

Glasper co-wrote ‘Rainbow’ and ‘Block The Sun’, arranged ‘If It’s Magic’ and plays piano and Rhodes on several tracks. He is one of a core group of collaborators that also includes Gerald Clayton, Parlato’s husband Mark Guiliana and long time Glasper associate from their H Town days in Texas, Alan Hampton. Houston, we don’t have a problem with any of this!

Parlato’s out of this world associations with Glasper go back more than 20 years. He co-produced her 2011 album, The Lost and Found.

On The Wise Ones, Glasper appears on ‘Rainbow’, ‘The Wise Ones’, ‘If It’s Magic’, ‘Already Gone’ and ‘Block The Sun’. He plays Rhodes on ‘Rainbow’, ‘If It’s Magic’ and ‘Already Gone’ and piano on ‘The Wise Ones’ and ‘Block The Sun.’

The album opens with Hampton’s ‘Capricorn’ followed by Parlato’s ‘Never Come Down’, co-written with Guiliana.

‘Never Come Down’ features bass guitarist Meshell Ndegeocello – who has new album Synonym out on Blue Note soon – and Guiliana.

The title track, ‘The Wise Ones’, is co-written by Parlato and Amber Navran, a founding member of the alternative R&B and neo-soul trio Moonchild – you might know Moonchild number ‘The List‘ (22m + views on YouTube alone) – with Navran and Glasper featured. Other original material includes ‘It’s You’ by Hampton and ‘Already Gone’, written by Parlato with Max Bryk and Navran.

1982 hit ‘Mad World’, written by Roland Orzabal, is arranged by Parlato and Becca Stevens, who also contributes vocals and kora. The closing tracks are ‘In My Bed’ and ‘Landslide’, both written by Josh Mease and featuring Hampton. Mease, who hails from Houston, when he does dream pop is known as Lapland.

The personnel also includes Jacob Mann and Max Bryk on synthesisers, Mease on guitar, and Marley Guiliana (Parlato and Guiliana’s son) and Lauren Desberg on additional vocals and handclaps. Mark Guiliana plays drums and percussion throughout.

Recorded in Los Angeles, The Wise Ones is Parlato’s first album under her own name singly since Flor in 2021, following the excellent 2023 collaboration Lean In with Beninese jazz guitar icon the Franco and George Benson influenced Lionel Loueke.

GP’s previous solo albums include In a Dream (2009), The Lost and Found mentioned earlier and Live in NYC (2013).

The Wise Ones exudes a laidback feel that makes me think of soul music a bit. But the outcome isn’t that really at all given how much more jazz “core” – not weaselly “adjacent” at all – the direction proves. But traditionalists won’t see that.

I am still processing my thoughts on all this having lived with it ONLY for a few days. But I know the way my reaction curve works and mitigate against impetuosity where necessary but firmly believe it’s an instant classic. And instinctively I also think it’s GP’s strongest to date having been a bit meh about her work now and then in the past yet blamed myself for not getting it more than anything she happened to do.

The Stevie Wonder influence is foundational. To me her best thing before this is her version of Herbie Hancock’s ‘Butterfly’ that appeared on In a Dream way back. Beyond that observation and going back to my earlier comment about this being both a daytime jazz radio and a night time one, to enlarge upon this The Wise Ones exudes a laidback feel that makes me think of soul music a bit. But the outcome isn’t that really at all given how much more jazz “core” – not weaselly “adjacent” at all – the direction proves. But traditionalists won’t see that. That term used earlier “lounge jazz” is better and while not a bossa nova affair at all sits well with soft samba stylings elsewhere.

The Glasper contributions are quite brilliant and the comping whether from him or Clayton are textbook as is the drum feel. Glasper stands on the shoulders of Herbie Hancock without fear of understatement – for a long time he made that connection overt by playing Herbie tunes a good deal. While often operating beyond jazz in R&B and hip hop he is so influential on jazz pianists – for example new generation players like Zak Irvine owe him a big debt.

As for Guiliana père think back to Alive the first and greatest Phronesis album which Guiliana is on – itself an outlier as the drummer in Phronesis is the also credible Anton Eger – or his work with Brad Mehldau on Mehliana, the brilliant Taming the Dragon. Here he’s not the main draw but obviously important. Obviously? Because all jazz comes from the drums first and fundamentally (and we believe that piano is 88 tuned drums in a strong sense). Parlato given how highly rhythmical she is knows this instinctively. Her grasp of syncopation is masterly.

Final word for now: clearly one for the list makers among us and The Wise Ones shoots to the top of the best vocals albums of the year list that any self respecting jazz fan might keep. And even given the excitement of something that is new it’s not at all rash to realise if paying attention at all that this is something special and so contemporary sounding too. Nobody can say anything here seems dated which sometimes is an accusation thrown at even the best jazz vocals releases. If Parlato has a mantlepiece it’s make room time surely for a few new arrivals when awards season comes around. Mystic Meg, eh.

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The twist is this isn’t just re-telling it’s finding a context that’s true but not replication and one that finds proper space for vocals that does justice to the instrumentalism.

A slice of live Slovak action that’s twice as nice as it sees a coming together of one of the most credible jazz rock fusion bands since Weather Report in tandem with one of the most applauded male jazz singers since Mark Murphy in Kurt Elling – to reiterate a claim often made in these pages: he is up there with Gregory Porter and Ian Shaw all masters at work and a triumvirate who have fully flowered since the Velvet Fog departed this vale of tears as if he passed on the baton to them.

Kurt Elling and the Yellowjackets have joined forces for a bold, live reimagining of some of Weather Report’s most enduring compositions, captured on Play Weather Report Alive in Europe + Bonus Studio Recordings, out today via Elling and Bryan Farina’s label Big Shoulders Records, his home after a lengthy stint at English indie Edition illuminated most of all by his superb collaboration with Panamanian master Danilo Pérez – Secrets Are the Best Stories and there is a link to that in the glassy stillness and shared communion found on ‘The Fanfold Hawk’ and ‘A Certain Continuum’ lashed together to become a tapestry of dream weaving.

This latest album, recorded during the 50th anniversary of the Bratislava Jazz Days, finds Elling bringing his distinctive vocal approach and original lyrics to a repertoire defined by Wayne Shorter, Joe Zawinul and Jaco Pastorius, while the Yellowjackets supply their signature blend of acoustic fluency and electric groove.

Shorter’s compositional voice is represented most tellingly within ‘Pallas’ Palace (Palladium)’, which is just brilliant the soaring, harmonically rich piece from Heavy Weather (1977) providing scaffolding. That was Weather Report’s best‑selling album and a landmark of jazz‑fusion that also featured ‘Birdland’ and ‘Teen Town’. ‘Palladium’ has an admirably raucous opening in this arrangement. I prefer the live version to the studio one – Elling’s vocalese here is breath taking and deserves a hatful of awards for just that portion of the number.

The audience start to go a bit potty for ‘Palladium’. After all – you want atmosphere on a live album and you get it here.

Shorter’s influence is further felt in the group’s interplay and improvisatory approach throughout the set. Joe Zawinul’s presence is marked by ‘Current Affairs’, taken from the final Weather Report studio album, Weather Report (1982), a track that blends Zawinul’s synth‑led textures with Shorter’s saxophone lyricism.

For years I thought the natural successors to Weather Report, however different their sound, were Snarky Puppy. But this live recording where Yellowjackets place their tanks on the lawn with hefty authority and conviction debunks such armchair general thinking.

Nestled among these Weather Report classics is ‘Intrigue’, a Bob Mintzer original that first appeared on the Yellowjackets’ 2022 album Parallel Motion – a sleek, jazz‑funk number that sits comfortably alongside the fusion heritage of the main repertoire.

Elling is Zelig like in being in all the right places at all the right times whether it’s in a crowd of rhythm or rattling around in a lonelier avenue of gaping space that only he knows how to fill

The collection is completed by three bonus studio recordings that offer a more intimate, refined counterpoint to the live energy. They are certainly cleaner and less febrile, the yin to the yang of the equally terrific Slovak ones. Featuring Elling with pianist Joey Calderazzo, guitarist Mike Moreno, bassist Dane Alderson and drummer Marcus Finnie, these tracks are ‘The Elegant Ride’, ‘Pallas’ Palace’ and in-one’s-cups ditty ‘The Face in the Barroom Mirror’. The studio ‘Elegant Ride’ is better than the live one, mainly because of the use of sticks on glistening cymbals at the outset rather than the thump of toms on the live opening and the slightly more exacting feel.

‘The Face in the Barroom Mirror’ is another Shorter composition supplemented by Elling’s Waitsian lyrics and isn’t on the live tracks, its moody harmonic landscape providing a fitting close to the album’s dual live and studio narratives. Rating: ****

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A secular hymnal to modernity: rapid fire clusters and dartingly uneasy modernisms wrap the core approach in uncomplacent rhythm

“When the hope of the world stood withered.”

Personally I find the name of this trio off putting. I looked up what it is supposed to mean and certainly finding this out satisfies me a bit but not that much.

Apparently the notion is that the PVP word salad derives its name from combining one distinct word from each member’s native language to reflect their individual origins alongside their collective musical philosophy.

The first element, “Punkt”, is the Swedish word for “point” [the bassist is Swedish] or “dot”. This is paired with the Slovenian word “Vrt”, meaning “garden” [the pianist is Slovenian], which apparently symbolises a fertile creative space where raw musical ideas can be planted and cultivated. Finally, the German word “Plastik” [the drummer is German – he would be, wouldn’t he] connotes the concept of plasticity, denoting the flexibility and physical shaping of sound structures.

Phew. Don’t say we don’t spoil you with slightly abstruse explorations on a Saturday evening as a warm womb of post Lughnasadh darkness envelops the boreens down here in the marlbank neck of the woods where the land is really a lough. The scene and this nevertheless not that overly gloomy release chimes with what Beckett wrote memorably in his novel Malone Dies, part of the great miserabilist’s 1950s trilogy: “The little cloud drifting before their glorious sun will darken the earth as long as I please.”

Lost in translation any of this? Boo. I am being unnecessarily facetious. But it’s not a malign tendency. And the great thing about music – as indeed also, see above, clouds – is things very rarely are lost in translation. So, I wouldn’t have a clue if all this was spoken word in Slovenian, Swedish and German but do get it when the language is avant jazz.

The intrepid three don’t need words so bypass that difficulty entirely. But they do tough love however veiled the impersonation given the tenderness that’s something of an iron fist [the punkish maelstrom of the drum line] in a velvet glove [the magical realism of the piano lines]. Controversially they actually do at least in part resort to melody in a feat of no small harmonic and rhythmical prestidigitation kept artfully under wraps. Because there are – listen hard – melodic stretches on ‘MariaTorget 87’ credited to Eldh and apart from the outlier that is the old Swedish hymn my favourite track.

Eldh was “discovered” by Django Bates and belonged Gollum like “his precious” to the Beckenham genius – exiled to the land of the Toblerone these past years – in Django’s wonderful Bird loving trio, Belovèd.

I read somewhere unreliable but which paradoxically seemed credible that the title refers to the atmosphere of Stockholm’s Maria Square [English for “Torget”] back in the 80s. Let’s hope it’s not fiction. Reader it is a place in any case. Eldh seems fairly roused by thoughts of whatever it is that inspires him. The piece regardless allows one’s imagination to run away with itself beyond his nibs’ own.

PVP’s heyday was before Lockdown

Looky, looky: above they play Berlin in 2017 three blessed years before anyone even began to think about wet markets in Wuhan – let alone look up the place on Google Maps

No strangers to the very serious Swiss hardcore avant and free improv loving jazz gnomes of Zurich, Intakt – earlier albums of this imaginative trio’s where their story began – are Punkt.Vrt.Plastik (2018) and Somit (2021), as well as their live recording Zurich Concert (2022) – one the take the zug to, clearly. No leaves on the track there. Or worse, going all Nobbsian for a minute as thoughts turn inevitably back to Blighty “twenty-two minutes late, badger ate a junction box at New Malden.”

Alexander Hawkins, No Nation but Imagination, Intakt Records ***1/2

Quite. But pianist Kaja Draksler is quite brilliant at doing disquiet setting the piano lines up pervasively on Kompress – a German word meaning compressed or closely packed. Think Kris Davis or Alexander Hawkins as kindred spirits. This is better than AH’s nevertheless decent one for the cellar, No Nation But Imagination, methinks. While on drums Christian Lillinger reminds one of the admirably wonky style of cult avantist Jim Black.

Surprises? Yes. Fellow muppets, there are some. Just who would have predicted that a hymn or what sounds very much like one would pop up – let’s go hurdy gurdy, hurdy gurdy, gurdy for a minute to try to say out loud ‘När världens hopp förtvinat stod.’

Oh to be a polyglot. But instead puzzled I looked it up and found that it translates to English as: “When the hope of the world stood withered.” A hymn it turns out indeed – the language archaic Swedish. There is no lyric obvs as this is an instrumentals only album but it reverts to a traditional Swedish Christian hymn written by Samuel Johan Hedborn in 1813. I found an orchestrated version of it online shared at the top of this review.

Needless to say the only thing in common with that version by Swedes the Östergötlands Sinfonietta is the melody which then PVP drive a horse and cart through in not at all destructive fashion. Reader if you listen to both versions back to back you will realise instantly and relatively simply how futuristic Punkt Vrt. Plastik are without being at all performative.

Innovation is the name of the game and it’s a game these intuitive Europeans know experly well.

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“Love’s the greatest healer to be found” – Willie Nelson

In The Blink of An Eye is a balladic vocals and piano conception that represents the first formal musical pairing for the duo of Philly cousins Ray Benson (75) and Marc Copland (78). To jazz listeners Copland is far better known. He built his reputation as a modern jazz pianist and composer, while to country listeners the nexus of involved interest swivels around a different axis, as Benson spent his career fronting Asleep at the Wheel, an American roots-music group formed in 1970.

Based in Austin, Texas Asleep at the Wheel do Western swing, a genre that blends traditional country, blues and big band jazz elements. With Benson as the central, consistent member through numerous lineup changes, the band has released more than 20 albums and received 10 Grammy Awards over its 55-year history. Their work focuses heavily on preserving and performing traditional American roots music, highlighted by signature hits like their US country chart success ‘The Letter (That Johnny Walker Read).’

By contrast Copland initially worked as a jazz saxophonist in New York during the 1960s before taking a decade-long hiatus to completely retrain on the piano. Since debuting as a leader as Marc Cohen with the 1988 quintet album My Foolish Heart, he has amassed a prolific discography of over 40 albums. His career is distinguished by extensive recordings for the prestigious ECM label and enduring collaborations with jazz icons such as Gary Peacock, John Abercrombie and Joey Baron. I very much liked his 2019 album And I Love Her [click for a review] with Drew Gress and the Frisellian Baron. I often go back and listen to beautiful old Steve Kuhn records especially today Three Waves when I think of Copland’s sound somehow trying to excavate it in my mind – but without resorting – honest, guv in this instance – to an algorithm.

Turning to this new release: it was recorded live at Benson’s Texas studio and involves renditions of original compositions, jazz standards and acoustic interpretations of songs by Willie Nelson and Hank Williams.

I think Benson utilises his fairly deep voice, where you will sometimes also find hints of Mark Murphy in the timbre perhaps, to evoke the stylings of Tony Bennett on several tracks best. And given the skill of the piano accompaniment that approach has authenticity, gravitas and a context. Copland’s sound is as expressive as Fred Hersch‘s and as modally compelling as the man from Plainfield, New Jersey himself – dear Bill. The album’s inclusion of ‘Some Other Time’, ‘But Beautiful’, and ‘Waltz for Debby’, the obvious and striking musical reference point for the project is Tony Bennett’s historical duet collaborations with Evans.

The title track, a Benson original, is quite poignant and one of the best numbers emotionally. However, it steps out of the main core direction of the album a little bit, as does the country song ‘I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry’, which I didn’t take to so much although I do like some jazz covers of it including Jack Walrath‘s brilliant treatment many years ago on Master of Suspense.

 “I patched up your broken wing, and hung around a while, trying to keep your spirits up, and your fever down” – Willie Nelson

The tracklist of this new release includes intimate treatments of country staples, including Willie Nelson’s poignant Honeysuckle Rose ballad ‘Angel Flying Too Close To The Ground’ which lots of people have covered including Alison Krauss and Bob Dylan whose version is simply wonderful.

In the Blink of an Eye (issued on Benson’s very own Bismeaux Records) is a credible work that is stronger when it sticks to the Bennett and Evans type material but the country inflected material isn’t without merit either and given Benson’s expertise in the area that’s a genre mash up that resonates. An album that sounds more like a jazz album than a country one starts a weekend of new listening on the right footing.

★★★½☆

Leaving such a panoramic, magisterially involving recording as this for posterity is quite the way to say goodbye. The latest addition to our top choices of a year of jazz listening

With the Frankfurt Radio Big Band, the project marked the American big band composer and arranger Jim McNeely’s final recorded work before his death last September. He worked as the German ensemble’s composer-in-residence.

A Chicago born jazz pianist and composer, McNeely after graduating from the University of Illinois moved to New York in 1975. He gained a reputation playing keyboards for groups led by Thad Jones and Mel Lewis, Stan Getz and Phil Woods.

Over his long career, he received 12 Grammy nominations and won a Grammy Award in 2008. He also directed the BMI Jazz Composers’ Workshop for 16 years.

Mentored by Bob Brookmeyer, McNeely developed a bold writing style. He blended rich post-bop harmonies with complex, multi-layered arrangements. His signature sound features fast saxophone runs, punchy syncopated bass lines and dramatic brass accents.

His most celebrated work spans several decades of top-tier big band recordings. He made an immediate mark with East Coast Blow Out in 1989, a groundbreaking suite recorded with the WDR Big Band, guitarist John Scofield, Bass Desires icon Marc Johnson and Sco head Adam Nussbaum, the revered sticksman later known for his work in The Impossible Gentlemen and with Linley Hamilton.

As chief conductor of the Danish Radio Big Band, McNeely produced the Grammy-nominated album Nice Work. During his long tenure with the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, he also crafted albums like Lickety Split and Up from the Skies.

As I listen a few times I think of some of the arranging style of Kenny Wheeler a little and reflect on how the sound customised into a new space entirely by McNeely conveys a certain lost in time quality without seeming dated at all such is the essential modernity and panoramic sweep of the ideas.

And there are interesting curveball choices that send me into another space entirely – for instance the rickety use of harp [Miroslava Stareychinska] that releases a curious microtonalism at the beginning of ‘At Twilight’ that leads into a glorious trumpet – or is it flugel, one can’t be quite sure – melodic foray & Gil Evans like response from the wider trumpet section.

During his career, McNeely delivered sweeping symphonic collaborations, including 2022’s Rituals with saxophonist Chris Potter and as here the Frankfurt Radio Big Band.

The great strength of jazz made in Germany is its jazz big band heritage which has no equal anywhere in Europe in terms of quality and quantity at the highest, sustained, level of production and performance curated by a range of broadcasting organisations and supported by the listening public year in year out.

For Expeditions the recording took place in a live setting at Frankfurt’s Hessischer Rundfunk [Hesse broadcasting] Sendesaal studio/hall in June 2024. The very absorbing compositions range from fanfares and counterpoint to solo features across the brass, woodwind and rhythm sections.

The Expeditions suite is tailored directly to the playing styles of the Frankfurt Radio Big Band’s individual members. Principal players include Steffen Weber, Martin Auer, Heinz-Dieter Sauerborn and Martin Scales. But the collectivism in the music making is all and there’s a whole lotta love found here expressed on so many levels.

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I reviewed a record of Thomas Morgan’s recently called Io Pur Respiro that I very much enjoyed. Probably actually more than this. But Windflower is better than pianist Ayumi Tanaka’s earlier release from 2021, a recording called Subaqueous Silence more to the point.

Tanaka made a firm impression on the fine Thomas Strønen Lockdown era album Bayou which I think is still her best showing on record.

On Subaqueus Silence she was with a different bassist and drummer. But Strønen – best known to British audiences perhaps for his work with saxophonist Iain Ballamy in Food – appears on this latest and clearly there is a lot of rapport between the two. His open colouristic sound suits her free roaming modernistic urges well.

Tanaka shares something in common stylistically with the sparse and weighty avant-garde traditions of a Masabumi Kikuchi-like world compellingly entered into and isn’t afraid to manipulate silence for effect.

Elias Stemeseder and Thomas Morgan, Io Pur Respiro, Squama **** recommended

Morgan as on his album with the Austrian Stemeseder referred to above is a fascinating player capable of operating completely adrift from an obvious pulsar framework without becoming marooned in some sort of dull morass.

Windflower isn’t dull. But equally won’t get the party started. It isn’t built much for jazz supper clubs that require more of a groove and entertaining vibe. The acres of sonic spaciousness require patience but experiencing these is worth it if in the right frame of mind when you can be cast away on to its desert island of solemnity and lose yourself in its sealed in oxygen. There is a lot of improvisation here in the spontaneous performance sense which is in its great favour but that is surprising given how controlled and often unspontaneous sounding the album somehow seems. The album was recorded at La Buissonne studio in France last year. It is best suited for late night solitary home listening or long uncertain road trips into the darkness when deep thinking and a distraction from the harshness of the night are required.

Fun. Can’t remember ever beginning a review with that three-letter classic.

It is. Slipped out quietly at the end of July – I found it on Bandcamp, although curiously it doesn’t seem to be available there at the moment apart from the listings and album cover. But it is on Spotify and available on vinyl.

This invigorating affair was captured during a series of performances at the Blue Note jazz club in New York in early November last year. Cory Wong produced, mixed and mastered the recording.

The line-up has Wong on guitar and Joshua Redman on tenor and soprano saxophones with Taylor Eigsti on Rhodes and keyboards, Kevin Gastonguay on organ and keyboards, Yohannes Tona on bass guitar and Petar Janjic on drums.

Most of the tunes are Wong’s, with co-writes in the selections too involving Eigsti and others.

Apparently Wong specifically wrote all-new material exclusively for this residency, which ran from 4–9 November. I wonder if there is still more material from the residency to be released in the future.

The two-keyboard setup of Eigsti on Rhodes and Gastonguay on organ gives the album a firm retro 1970s jazz-funk texture, so if you are a Vulfpeck fan and not so much a jazz one, it’s far more jazzy than what Vulfpeck do.

The whole album is streaming on YouTube – the excitement of the audience adds a good deal to the sense of belonging the storming and even at times tender performance engenders – and I’d thoroughly recommend all this “randomness” that lands faraway from throwaway casual.

What a very absorbing and satisfying generous helping of avant tonalities and in places Ornette Coleman like bluesiness this all proves.

This flute and alto sax, piano and drums recording was made last November at a studio in Mount Vernon not far from New York City produced by pianist Vijay Iyer.

I agree wholeheartedly with what Kevin Le Gendre writing in Jazzwise describes as the “sometimes unassuming but penetrating emotion and structural focus quality” of the outcome.

Fifteen is the trio’s first studio release and takes its name from the fifteen years the trio have been performing together.

Structurally democratic, the compositional blueprint is prised wide open and shared out fairly evenly, handing three tracks to the jagged, angular soundscapes of saxophonist and flautist Henry Threadgill, three to the progressive harmonic directions of pianist Vijay Iyer, and two to the texturally expansive open sound of drummer Dafnis Prieto. Shifting metres and soaring, unhurried melodies seamlessly transform into heavy, seething crescendos. It isn’t a groove/riff kind of record at all. There’s a strong elegiac feeling on ‘Perfect Victims’ one of the most impactful pieces. While a very abstract expressionist work emotion isn’t absent and certainly on this piece there is a lot of feeling.

The tracks are: ‘Trio Piece’; ‘Last Night’; ‘I Wanted a Map’; ‘Where Coconuts Fall’ which I think has some of the strongest connections with the innovations that Ornette Coleman brought in to jazz in the 1950s; ‘Gently Trapped’; ‘Fire City’; ‘Perfect Victims’; ‘On the Way.’

Threadgill, 82, has maintained a steady creative output over the last few years. Alongside this trio release, he is releasing Cut You Where You Was via Pi Recordings, featuring the return of his ensemble Zooid. This follows the publication of his autobiography, Easily Slip into Another World: A Life in Music.

Vijay Iyer & Wadada Leo Smith land in this week’s track of the week spot with their elegiac Procession from Defiant Life

Pianist Vijay Iyer, 54, has spent recent years expanding his work with both his standard trio and various duos. He recorded the duo album Defiant Life on ECM with trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith, following his 2024 trio release, Compassion. On the compositional front, he also premiered What Isn’t Hard to See, a set of violin and piano nocturnes.

Drummer Dafnis Prieto, 52, marked a dual milestone with the release of 3 Sides of the Coin via his own Dafnison Music label. The project celebrated his 50th birthday and 25 years since moving to New York, reuniting his Sí o Sí Quartet to explore rhythmically complex Latin jazz concepts.

• Vijay Iyer plays solo at the National Concert Hall, Dublin on 7 November