Blake Lyman, Anthology, For Now

2012 | Label: Blake Lyman / CD Baby

By Dave Sumner eMusic Contributor

02.10.12 Titling his debut album Anthology, For Now displays the amusing sense of self-deprecation that generally characterizes young musicians. But the confident voice multi-reedist Blake Lyman displays on the recording? That came out of nowhere.

Atypical of a young jazz musician’s debut, Lyman performs own compositions. On songs like “End of the Search,” a slow blues tune with a cool stroll, “Carthage,” with its velvet bass clarinet bisecting cyclical tenor sax notes, and “Pastoral,” a love song for the perpetually heartbroken, Lymon not only displays a remarkable depth of vision, but also doubles down on its strength by including one cover, Joe Henderson’s “Black Narcissus.” The song enhances the album’s identity rather than diluting it by demonstrating Lyman’s distinct curatorial sense. Lyman’s… more »

Eroica Trio, Eroica Trio

2011 | Label: EMI Classics

By John Schaefer eMusic Contributor

02.10.12 The classical music press has often seemed suspicious of ensembles consisting of attractive, stylish young women. So this early record (1997) from the Eroica Trio was an important statement: It not only stakes out their musical territory, it also dispels any sense that the trio’s early success was based solely on their looks. That musical territory is explicitly mapped in the opening tracks, a convincing performance of trio arrangements of the Gershwin preludes, originally, for piano. These works take the sounds of American jazz and blues as a compositional given, a part of the music’s DNA. Arranged for the Eroica Trio, these familiar preludes benefit from the novel tone colors the violin and cello add. Their reading of the Ravel Piano Trio is… more »

Mark Turner, SOLOS: The Jazz Sessions

2012 | Label: Original Spin Music / A-Train

By Charles Farrell eMusic Contributor

02.10.12 The early 21st century has produced few more intelligent voices in contemporary jazz than saxophonist Mark Turner’s. A measured, yet emotionally evocative player, Turner has synthesized some of the structural improvisatory methods provided by Warne Marsh and Wayne Shorter and added language that’s entirely his own. SOLOS: The Jazz Sessions is an enlightening opportunity to hear Turner play unaccompanied as he talks (in the form of short “interviews”) about the theoretical components that he uses in building solos. Not surprisingly, Turner speaks with great clarity and insight about the nature of saxophone improvisation. But SOLOS is no dry piece of didacticism. His tenor playing is often moving and beautiful. Recorded particularly close, the listener hears every breath, every finger click;… more »

Philip Glass, The Essential Philip Glass

2012 | Label: Sony Classical

By John Schaefer eMusic Contributor

02.10.12 Glass fans may find the title of this three-CD collection from Sony a little presumptuous, lacking as it does any of Glass’s “essential” recordings for Nonesuch Records (Koyaanisqatsi, Mishima, Music In Twelve Parts, any of the symphonies or string quartets). However, the Sony catalog does include the trio of so-called “portrait operas” — Einstein On The Beach, Satyagraha and Akhnaten — as well as such emblematic works as Songs From Liquid Days and Glassworks, all of which are effectively excerpted here. Someone could quibble with the selections and sequencing, but of course that’s always part of the fun of any best-of collection. This someone wishes they’d included “Confrontation” from Satyagraha, and that “Tolstoy Farm”… more »