Category: Reviews

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Another positive review for Nick Hempton “The Business”…

http://www.criticaljazz.com/

“I don’t like jazz but I like that…”
Sound familiar? Nick Hempton’s sophomore release from 2011 is text book straight ahead swing with as a label executive friend of mine is fond of saying, “more hooks than a fisherman’s hat!” It is called the record business for a reason. Nick Hempton and his band can blow, they swing hard with a lean and mean attack of lyrical intensity and melodic grooves that could raise the dead or at least get their toes tapping.
While the quintet is rock solid, Hempton turns in a stellar performance as he does not subscribe to the speed is king mentality nor does he languish in odd meter in the self indulgent attempt to become the next flavor of the month. Opening with “Flapjacks In Belo” Hempton’s keen sense of melody and harmonic development is spot on. A slight blues infusion in spots keeps the tune interesting and the lyrical movement captivating. Hempton moves between alto and tenor throughout this release with the ease and grace of a musical chameleon. Pianist Art Hirahara turns in a harmonically driven solo with the forward sense of motion that drives the swing straight ahead and never allows the ensemble to jump the sonic track. “Gee Baby, Ain’t I Good To You” is that perfect late night nasty blues tune that screams last call!Hempton’s tenor tone is a musical happy place somewhere between Stanley Turrentine and Ben Webster and strikes an immediate sweet spot for fans of the more blues infused jazz closely associated with the two giants. “Cold Spring Fever” brings in six string phenom Yotam Silberstein with a deft touch and clean single note articulation that adds to the texture and ambiance so carefully crafted throughout this release. “Carry On Up The Blues” has just the right amount of pop to close out a straight ahead showcase.
Making old school become new cool is a daunting task for some musicians. Nick Hempton blows…in a good way. This is as far from a commercial release as you can get, Hempton owes no apologies for an amazing lyrical voice that simply can’t help but attract an audience. Commercial, accessible or contemporary are all misleading when it comes to the talent of Nick Hempton.
The Business is a classic straight ahead delight that screams, “You don’t have to go home but you gotta get the hell out of here!”
A 5 Star swing party of the highest caliber.
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Lucid Culture reviews Ehud Asherie “Upper West Side”…

lucidculture.wordpress.com

Ehud Asherie and Harry Allen’s Magical Upper West Side

What does the thought of New York’s Upper West Side conjure up for you? Homeless Iraq war vets panhandling at the subway station at 72nd and Broadway? Cops frisking teens for contraband twenty blocks north in order to meet the quotas of cheap arrests arbitrarily imposed by NYPD brass? Brand-new multimillion-dollar condos infested with bedbugs? Such is the state of the Upper West Side, 2012. For those who prefer a Woody Allen-style Upper West Side of the mind, pianist Ehud Asherie and tenor saxophonist Harry Allen have a new duo album by that title just out from Posi-Tone that conjures up a vastly more enjoyable, suavely urbane milieu. Imagine spacious prewar buildings, low lights, wood paneling, red wine and purist jazz and you are on the right track.

The two make a good team. Allen is the rake and Asherie is his wingman. Allen’s misty shtick works as well as it does because he happens to be a hell of a blues player, and will surprise you here and there with the occasional detour into gracefully edgy microtonal swoops and dives. Among the new breed of jazz organists, Asherie is a standout player with impeccable rhythm and an intuitive feel for melodic basslines. What makes this album different is that on all the midtempo and upbeat tracks here, he’s basically playing stride piano – but with a judicious, tight swing rather than a careening barrelhouse attack. After all, if you’re doing an album of standards, you have to put your own mark on them.

The opening track, Learnin the Blues perfectly capsulizes the appeal of the album, setting a mood within the first few bars with casually steady, precise piano providing a solid framework for Allen’s slinky, warmly melodic lines. It Had to Be You picks up the pace; O Pato is a caffeinated bossa tune with some jaunty, carnaval-esque, chromatic tinges by Allen that Asherie winds down with an unexpectedly whispery, starlit outro. Gershwin’s Our Love Is Here to Stay has some especially choice, impressionistic rubato piano that sets up a mutually relaxed, satisfied groove, echoed even more vividly on the album’s strongest track, Strayhorn’s Passion Flower, Allen reaching back for a Ben Webster bluesiness.

Richard Rodgers’ Have You Met Miss Jones has the duo reverting to assigned roles, picking up on I Want to Be Happy, Asherie’s righthand accents cleverly mimicking a pulsing, staccato horn arrangement. Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams has a sly Brother Can You Spare a Dime reference and a practically imperceptible crescendo; they keep I’m in the Mood for Love on the straight and narrow as Allen goes breathy, with a nice impressionistic Asherie outro. Eubie Blake’s Love Will Find a Way blends smokiness into its ragtime tinges; they close with a brisk but measured take on My Blue Heaven, a terrific choice to end the album on a note that stops just thisshort of breathless. With its thoughtful if not radical rearrangements, solid playing and chemistry between the two musicians, this one’s for the purists from Lincoln Center all the way up to Columbia and probably a lot further uptown as well. And while we’re at it, make that the east side too

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The Jazz Word on Steve Horowitz “New Monsters”….

thejazzword.blogspot.com

Anchored by Steve Horowitz’s fretless bass, New Monstersexplores quirky grooves and thematic material with plenty of room for open-ended improvisation. Along with Horowitz, The San Francisco-based quintet features the dueling saxophone front-line of Steve Adams and Dan Plonsey—who composes the groups material—, pianist Scott Looney and drummer Jim Bove.

Tight, two saxophone harmonies are prevalent and give the music a unique character, at times deliberately harsh, certainly ear catching and a lot of fun. Plonsey’s writing is at its best when things happen quite unexpectedly, as with “Dragon of Roses” and “New Boots for Big Foot,” moving from pseudo-ethnic dance rhythms to out-of-nowhere abandonment of form. Plonsey and Adams burn it up on the title track showcasing a penchant for free blowing.

The sci-fi/horror theme of the track titles and the cover art coincide with the overall unusualness of the music to create a refreshing listening experience.

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Phil Freeman on Doug Webb “Swing Shift”…

http://burningambulance.com/2012/02/21/doug-webb-ehud-asherie/

Also in 2009, on April 24 to be precise, saxophonist Doug Webb went into Entourage Studios in North Hollywood, California with bassist Stanley Clarke (yes, that one) and drummer Gerry Gibbs. Three different pianists—Joe Bagg, Mahesh Balasooriya and Larry Goldings—stopped by for a few hours each. The trio and its guest pianists recorded nearly 40 songs that day, many of them standards but others written by Webb or Clarke. Eight were released on 2009′s Midnight, eight more on 2010′s Renovations, and six more (one of them the 22-minute “Patagonia Suite”) on Swing Shift, the fiercest and most free of the series to date.

Webb may not be particularly famous, but his saxophone sound is one of the most widely heard on Earth: you see, he’s the “voice” ofLisa Simpson on The Simpsons. All those little solos in the opening credits? Webb. (I’ve thought for years that someone should string all of those together into one long piece—call it the “Lisa Simpson Concerto for Saxophone” or something similar. Now that I know who played them all, the idea seems even more appealing.) The first two volumes in this apparently ongoing series were much more romantic and relaxed than this one; they featured renditions of dusty relics like “Fly Me to the Moon,” “You Go to My Head,” “I Can’t Get Started,” “Satin Doll,” “They Can’t Take That Away from Me,” and the like, all swinging with great power and grace but little fervor. Indeed, at their mellowest moments, these albums would fit comfortably alongside the work of Charlie Haden’s Quartet West. But Swing Shift is a very different animal. It’s got the shortest track of the trilogy, “Rizone,” a 2:40 sax-and-drums workout somewhere between John Coltrane‘s “Countdown” from Giant Steps and Charles Gayle‘s Touchin’ On Trane, but it’s also got the longest by far, the aforementioned “Patagonia Suite,” on which Webb starts out playing soprano, but after giving Clarke and Gibbs a moment or two to express themselves, the latter man heading into almost William Parker-ish string-yanking territory, returns on tenor with some fierce, even discordant blowing that would make even David S. Ware lift his head and take notice. This is no mere post-bop collection of standards; Swing Shift proves that Webb and his bandmates can speak any dialect of the family of languages known collectively as jazz, and do so with fluency and undiminished expressive power. Highly recommended to those who want to witness real adventure, paired with undeniable swing.

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Burning Ambulance reviews Ehud Asherie “Upper West Side”…

http://burningambulance.com/2012/02/21/doug-webb-ehud-asherie/

Israeli-born pianist Ehud Asherie‘s latest Posi-Tone release (his fourth) is a collection of standards arranged for piano and tenor saxophone, the latter instrument played by Harry Allen, who previously worked with Asherie on 2010′s Modern Life, a quartet album that also featured bassist Joel Forbes and drummer Chuck Riggs. That disc was recorded in June of 2009, and ended with a duo rendition of Billy Strayhorn‘s “A Flower is a Lovesome Thing”; this disc, possibly inspired by that performance, was recorded in October 2009.

Upper West Side is an extremely conservative, genteel album; it would sound perfect playing in the background of a Whit Stillmanmovie. Asherie’s piano playing is very much in a stride style, reminiscent of Fats Waller, Willie “The Lion” Smith and other figures of similar vintage. Allen’s saxophone sound meshes perfectly with this old-style approach, flowing thick and romantic like Ben Webster, Lester Young or Coleman Hawkins. Everything is very well played, and the album glides smoothly from one appealing, familiar standard to the next—”It Had to Be You,” “I’m in the Mood for Love,” “Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams,” “Our Love is Here to Stay”…it’s dinner music, basically. Which is fine. Every jazz album doesn’t have to be a tiny revolution. But from a player as young as Asherie (he was born in 1979), this insistence on wearing his grandfather’s clothes, so to speak, is a little disconcerting. It starts to make you wonder if he listens to any new music, or if he has any interest in jazz of the post-swing era. Perhaps he should record something a little more out next time, if only to avoid being pigeonholed as “that old-timey guy.”

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JazzWrap on Ehud Asherie’s new CD “Upper West Side” featuring Harry Allen…

jazzwrap.blogspot.com

Ehud Asherie & Harry Allen: Upper West Side

 Ehud Asherie (piano)
Harry Allen (sax)
Upper West Side (Posi-Tone Records; 2012)
A classic sound and supreme mastery from Ehud Asherie and Harry Allen on their duet album, Upper West Side. This album shines with a series of standards that are performed exquisitely but aren’t just your regular revisit of past benchmarks. This is a session that swings with vibrancy and class.
The session has a lovely bebop vibe that is warm and inviting.  The classic “It Had To Be You” has bouncy and humour sprinkled throughout. Allen’s playing is fresh and big. It reminds a little of Tuby Hayes. Asherie is strict and direct on the keys but knows how and where to place the playful notes. “O Pato” with it’s Latin origins allows the duo to expand with strong (and should I say, funkier) passages. This is a tune they both carry with high energy and pleasure.
Billy Strayhorn’s signature “Passion Flower,” always a difficult piece to tackle; is performance with grace and precision. Both musicians capture the depth within the piece but Asherie’s solo in the middle is a wonderful statement of his ability as performer and interpreter of standards. It has all the passion and emotion you are looking for in a ballad. Allen’s soft touches both in the beginning and the end add richness to outlines of the piece.The always consistent “My Blue Heaven” jumps in the hands Asherie. It’s peppered with an almost Bud Powell inflection. There’s a small bit of improvising in the middle bridge before Allen joins in and the two travel along exchanging some delightful rhythms back and forth.

Upper West Side is one those highly enjoyable sessions that doesn’t try re-invent the past as much as it pays homage. But while it’s a look into our musical history, it is also a beautiful document of two excellent performers. Ehud Asherie and Harry Allen are well-known within the jazz circle but this is a record all your non-jazz friends should definitely own. Tell them all…
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John Barron at The Jazz Word weighs in on Doug Webb “Swing Shift”…

thejazzword.blogspot.com

Doug Webb – Swing Shift

2011 Posi-Tone

Los Angeles-based saxophonist Doug Webb delivers a muscular set of high-end jam session jazz on Swing Shift, his third release of material taken from a marathon recording session in April, 2009. Along with bass legend Stanley Clarke and drummer Gerry Gibbs, Webb invites a trio of guest pianists to augment the disc’s six tracks of original and familiar pieces.

The lengthy “Patagonia Suite” finds Webb and company in a Coltrane frame of mind, with extended modal workouts and free-form excursions. The unrelenting and highly responsive rhythm section of Clarke and Gibbs, on full display here, propels Webb’s command of both soprano and tenor. The veteran woodwind man of countless studio sessions displays acute knowledge of the jazz saxophone lineage. “Patagonia Suite” and Frank Foster’s “Simone” also feature jaw-dropping piano solos from Mahesh Balasooriya.

Larry Goldings takes over the piano chair for Mal Waldron’s “Soul Eyes,” swinging hard and settling into a fiery up-tempo groove with Clarke, whose bass presence is characteristically larger-than-life throughout the recording. A soulful, straight-ahead reading of “Where or When” features the stripped-down duo of Webb and pianist Joe Bagg.

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Tom Reney provides some amazing coverage for Ehud Asherie and his new CD “Upper West Side”…

http://jazztimes.com/sections/jazzalamode/articles/29465-is-ehud-asherie-in-town

Is Ehud Asherie in Town?

Tom Reney blogs about emerging piano talent

Ehud Asherie is one of the musicians I look for whenever I’m in New York, and if he’s not on the road, I usually get lucky and find him at a piano somewhere in town. On a recent visit, I had the good fortune of hearing him two nights in a row, first at the weekly Louis Armstrong celebration at Birdland, and then a solo set at Smalls Jazz Club, where he usually plays the 7:30-9:45 p.m. slot every other Thursday. At Birdland, Ehud joined David Ostwald’s Gully Low Jazz Band to play “Black and Blue,” “After You’ve Gone,” and other tunes associated with Pops; Gully Low’s personnel often changes from week to week, and on this occasion included Wycliffe Gordon and Anat Cohen.

The following night, Asherie was on his own at Smalls for a couple of sets that included material by Fats Waller, George Gershwin, Ellington, Bud Powell, Monk and Leonard Bernstein. Ehud channels the stride masters as well as the modernists, and the lineage that runs from James P. Johnson and Jimmy Yancey to Monk and Errol Garner figures prominently in his work. Not surprisingly, he’s an insightful listener. The first time I met Asherie and mentioned how Dave McKenna had opened my ears to solo jazz piano, he expressed awe not only over McKenna’s two-fisted attack but the subtler internal voicings that are often overlooked by listeners wowed by his rumbling bass lines and dazzling technique.

Asherie, who turned 32 in December, was born in Israel in 1979. His family moved to Italy when he was three, and six years later to New York. In his early teens, Ehud began hanging out at Smalls and studying with the veteran pianist Frank Hewitt, a Smalls regular who’s now deceased. Ehud spent a few years working with Grant Stewart’s Quintet, which is where I first heard him, and he’s recorded with Stewart and Harry Allen, another bonafide keeper of the flame. Asherie and his colleagues explore the seemingly endless possibilities of theme and variation inherent in the 12-bar blues and 32-bar song forms, and they swing like mad. Here’s a clip of Ehud and Harry stretching out on the Vincent Youmans classic, “Hallelujah.” And here’s a solo version of “My Heart Stood Still” which Asherie played at the Arbors jazz party in Florida three years ago; a year later, he recorded this solo collection of New York tunes for Arbors that I’ve been playing regularly on WFCR.

Last week Posi-tone Records released Upper West Side, a duo recording by Asherie and Allen that’s destined to become another chart-topper on Jazz à la Mode. Let’s hope we’re not the exception, for beyond a devoted circle of fans, players like Asherie and Allen and Stewart rarely garner much attention in the jazz press. When I mention their names to writers and deejays, or to players of an edgier bent, they readily acknowledge their mastery but often leave it at that. Rarely are they reviewed by the Times or even mentioned in the paper’s Friday arts listings, yet they’re almost always working in town. But they’re not the kinds of players who are bellwethers of the latest trend, so assignment editors and those for whom straight-ahead jazz just isn’t enough tend to overlook them. One senses that Ehud and his colleagues are not unaffected by this lack of wider recognition, that they’re well aware of the jazz buzz ringing elsewhere. But as Asherie told me recently, “I love the music I play,” to which I thought,”There’s no small reward in that.”

Here’s Ehud at the Kitano Hotel introducing “One for V,” a tune based on his hero James P. Johnson’s “Old Fashioned Love.” Wrap your heart around the freshness of this old-fashioned-ness and savor the choice quote from “Manhattan” he uses to signal the end of his solo.

Asherie will be with Gully Low on the 8th and 15th of this month at Birdland, and he’s back at Smalls on Thursday, February 16 with his trio. Smalls, by the way, is operated by former Hampshire College student Spike Wilner, a fine pianist in his own right whose venue offers the cozy feel of a clubhouse. For many, it’s probably a second home. In addition to its primary function as a performance venue, Smalls operates a record label, provides a live internet video stream for a nominal annual fee, and presents up to three different acts and a jam session seven nights a week in its location at the bottom of a steep flight of stairs at 183 West 10th Street in Greenwich Village.

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Richard Kamins Step Tempest review for Ehud Asherie “Upper West Side”….

steptempest.blogspot.com

Israeli-born pianist Ehud Asherie teams up with tenor saxophonist Harry Allen for an 11-pack of standards, most, if not all composed before either player  was born.  “Upper West Side“, the second CD the duo has recorded for Posi-Tone Records;  they worked with a rhythm section on 2010’s “Modern Life.”  If you have only heard Asherie as a organ player, you should be impressed by his formidable piano work.  There are moments when his left hand has the power associated with “Jelly Roll” Morton or Art Tatum (listen to him fly on (“I Want To Be Happy“)  and one can hear a healthy dollop of Teddy Wilson.  At times, a touch formal but he can be quite playful  (i.e. his “Spanish tinge” on Jobim and Silva’s “O Pato.”)  As for Allen, he’s the perfect foil with his breathy Ben Webster tone and calm demeanor, bluesy smears and airy high notes. He dances his way through his solo on “Learning The Blues” bouncing over the rumbling piano bass and trilling high notes.   His “old world” charm works just fine on “Our Love Is Here ToStay” and does he ever caress Billy Strayhorn’s “Passion Flower” (with more than a hint of Johnny Hodges in his approach.)

“Upper West Side” is a positive experience from beginning to end. By returning to the blues roots of 1930’s piano jazz, Ehud Asherie shows his continuing maturity as a player – his playing throughout command’s one attention.  Harry Allen makes no bones about his roots or “throwback” tenor style.  He also loves melody and his solos are often quite hummable.  Together, they sound as if they are having the best of times; the listener should laugh, sing along and tap his/her feet.  What depression?  This music will drive your “blues” right out of the house.  To find out more, go to www.posi-tone.com.

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Dan Bilawsky’s AAJ review of Ehud Asherie “Upper West Side”…

http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=41385

The closing track on pianist Ehud Asherie’s Modern Life(Posi-Tone, 2010), whether intentional or not, came to serve as musical foreshadowing for this album. Modern Lifehas Asherie leading a crack quartet through a program of largely lesser-performed gems by cream-of-the-crop composers like George Gershwin, Jerome Kern and Tadd Dameron, but when the album reaches its conclusion the rhythm section is relieved of its duties, while tenor saxophonist Harry Allen stays onboard for an emotionally riveting two-man take on Billy Strayhorn’s “A Flower Is A Lovesome Thing.” Three months later, this pair would find itself in a Brooklyn recording studio, ready to make more duo magic with the music of Gershwin, Strayhorn and many others.

That music from that session, which would come to be called Upper West Side Story, sat on the shelves for two-and-a-half years, but it couldn’t have been due to a lack of quality. This is Grade A jazz performed by two consummate, classy musicians with an intimate knowledge of this repertoire and each other’s mannerisms. They casually work their way through the Frank Sinatra-associated “Learnin’ The Blues,” turning up the heat and grit as they go, deliver playful lines when they visit Brazil (Jayme Silva’s “O Pato”), fly through “I Want To Be Happy,” and converse via traded solos at various points throughout the album.

While Asherie has shown his (post) bop chops and organ abilities on other albums, he has built his reputation on his skills as a practitioner of the lost piano arts which are on display here. He’s often a man out of time, performing in a style that one would sooner associate with the early twentieth century than now, but that’s what makes him so special. Allen, who has his own throwback sound that occasionally touches on stylistic hallmarks of early masters like Ben Webster and Coleman Hawkins, is in a similar headspace and, though both men can hold their own in modern digs, it’s a pleasure to hear two musicians of this caliber, willing to stop and take a look back.

While the pair finds success on every track, the emotional—and literal—centerpiece of the album comes with another Strayhorn-made musical scenario. Allen is Johnny Hodges to Asherie’s Duke Ellington on “Passion Flower” and despite Allen playing a larger horn he still manages to capture the mood and spirit that surrounded the famous Ellington-associated altoist.

Viewed in its entirety, Upper West Side Story is a program of delightful duo music that doesn’t try to win anybody over with outré ideals, surprise twists or forced displays of showmanship. Allen and Asherie simply play the music, and they do so with clarity, class and charm.