Jan 30 2020
Best of 2019 #22: Gerald Cleaver & Violet Hour – “Live at Firehouse 12”
In a modern jazz world where the forms of expression have become more varied and strange and untethered from the original sounds that marked the first giant steps of jazz, it’s a welcome experience to encounter a recording to remind us what got us all crazy about this music in the first place. Gerald Cleaver’s live performance recording at Firehouse 12 with his Violet Hour ensemble swings like mad as it charges straight ahead. The solos make you wish they’d never end except when the sextet comes back together and makes you wish for them to never part ways again. The production is such that it brings the electricity of the live environment right into your home without any drop-off, and, yet, also leave you a bit jealous of those who were there to hear it in person. This is Jazz today, this is Jazz as it ever was.
Your album personnel: Gerald Cleaver (drums), J.D. Allen (tenor sax), Andrew Bishop (bass clarinet, soprano & tenor saxophones), Jeremy Pelt (trumpet), Ben Waltzer (piano), and Chris Lightcap (bass).
Released on Sunnyside Records.
Music from New York City.
I wrote about the album for The Bandcamp Daily.
The compositions of 
Precise like origami, swift as a knife fight, and cryptic as midnight: These are the qualities that 
Feb 15 2020
Best of 2019 #06: Guillermo Klein’s Los Guachos – “Cristal”
Guillermo Klein is counted among those giants. The pianist has been responsible for some of the most stunning, beautiful music of the modern era. No better proof of this claim are the recordings made with his Los Guachos ensemble. Klein brings about a communion of modern post-bop and Argentinean folk, and is capable of generating epic melodic journeys and sublime harmonic reveries all within the span of one piece, no one element outshining the other, and all feeding into one another, like stars sharing the role of lighting up the night sky. As I summed up for The Bandcamp Daily, “Cristal is yet another sign that we no longer have to wait for the next anything. [And] when historians attempt to pinpoint the modern equivalent to 1959, they will almost certainly select a year that saw a Guillermo Klein Los Guachos recording hit the shelves. Hell, it may even be 2019.”
Your album personnel: Guillermo Klein (piano, vocals), Miguel Zenon (alto sax), Bill McHenry (tenor sax), Chris Cheek (soprano, tenor & baritone saxophones), Diego Urcola (trumpet, flugelhorn), Taylor Haskins (trumpet, flugelhorn), Sandro Tomasi (trombone), Ben Monder (guitar), Fernando Huergo (electric bass), Jeff Ballard (drums), and Richard Nant (percussion, trumpet).
Released on Sunnyside Records.
Music from New York City.
I wrote about the album for The Bandcamp Daily.
Listen | Read more | Available at: Bandcamp – Amazon
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By davesumner • Recap: Best of 2019 • 0 • Tags: Best Jazz of 2019, Guillermo Klein, New York City, Sunnyside Records