Steve Cole: Smoke And Mirrors

Smooth Jazz, although now confined to the niche, is painfully, yet somehow reassuringly, still with us; one of those still...

Reviewed in issue July/2021

Veronica Swift: This Bitter Earth

Bryan Carter | Veronica Swift | Emmet Cohen | Yasushi Nakamura | Armand Hirsch | Aaron Johnson

Veronica Swift's second album for Mack Avenue is an eclectic, unforgettable delight, with the singer's out-and-out virtuosity perfectly matched by...

Reviewed in issue March/2021

Emmet Cohen: Future Stride

Emmet Cohen | Melissa Aldana | Kyle Poole | Marquis Hill | Russell Hall

An unexpected surprise from pianist Cohen, now in his very early 30s but clearly aware of all of jazz history....

Reviewed in issue February/2021

Yellowjackets with the WDR Big Band: Jackets XL

Bob Mintzer | Russell Ferrante | William Kennedy | Dane Alderson

Mintzer is a long-time associate of the WDR band. However, the Mack Avenue releases have emphasised the Jackets' small group...

Reviewed in issue December/2020

Billy Childs: Acceptance

Billy Childs

Childs' last new release, 2017's Rebirth, was greeted with considerable pleasure in Jazzwise 218 and with nothing less than a...

Reviewed in issue October/2020

Christian Sands: Be Water

Christian Sands

Marcus Miller has an eponymously titled track dedicated to him; and Lalo Schifrin wrote a memorable soundtrack in the 1970s...

Reviewed in issue September/2020

Erroll Garner: Magician

Erroll Garner

Preceding Plays Gershwin and Kern, the concluding record in this reissue series of Garner's Octave recordings (reviewed in the July...

Reviewed in issue September/2020

John Beasley MONK’estra: MONK’estra Plays John Beasley

John Beasley

John Beasley has an impressive CV – work with Miles Davis, Freddie Hubbard, Herbie Hancock, Al Jarreau, Steely Dan and...

Reviewed in issue September/2020

Erroll Garner: Plays Gershwin and Kern

Kelly Martin | Jimmie Smith | Erroll Garner | Charles ‘Ike’ Isaacs | José Mangual | Eddie Calhoun

This final album in the 12-record series of Garner's Octave records from the 1960s and 70s begins with a version...

Reviewed in issue July/2020

Erroll Garner: That's My Kick

Charli Persip | Milt Hinton | Jerome Richardson | Jimmie Smith | Bernie Glow | Erroll Garner | Marvin Stamm | Johnny Pacheco | George Jenkins | George Duvivier

The first of these albums, That's My Kick, marks Garner's return to the studio in 1966 after a five-year gap.Despite...

Reviewed in issue June/2020