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Michael Formanek: New Digs
by Glenn Astarita
Michael Formanek has never been content to anchor a bandstand and call it a career. Over decades of work--from sideman stints with Stan Getz and Joe Henderson to the long-running Thumbscrew trio with Mary Halvorson and Tomas Fujiwara--he has operated as a composer and architect, building rooms rather than merely inhabiting them. New Digs recorded over two days in Torres Vedras, Portugal, stands as an ambitious project via this seven-piece trans-Atlantic ensemble shaped by a precise sonic design.
Continue ReadingInternational Jazz Day Special
by Maurice Hogue
This edition of One Man's Jazz landed on April 30th, the date on which International Jazz Day is celebrated. The 2026 festivities are the 15th such event, but this show has been pumping the tires of international artists for many more years than that. Nevertheless, any excuse for a special show, yes? You'll hear music from many different places that includes several new releases. Pianists Alexander Hawkins (UK), Felix Hauptmann (DE) & Simon Nabatov (RU/DE), a pair of flautists in ...
Continue ReadingOlie Brice: All It Was
by John Sharpe
Bassist Olie Brice convenes an all-star quartet on All It Was, bringing together pianist Alexander Hawkins, saxophonist Rachel Musson, and drummer Will Glaser. The ensemble's chemistry yields music that is both architecturally sound and fiercely spontaneous, balancing Brice's penchant for crafted frameworks with his immersion in the free-improvised tradition. Brice has long navigated the space between structure and freedom--whether in chart-driven ensembles like Loz Speyer's Inner Space and Nick Malcolm's Out Front, or in open trios with Musson, ...
Continue ReadingOlie Brice Quartet: All It Was
by Mark Corroto
Bassist Olie Brice wears the title of Mr. Inside/Mr. Outside with remarkable ease. Equally adept in free improvisation and structured composition, Brice moves fluidly between extremes. His work with improvisers such as Tobias Delius and Mark Sanders on Somersaults (Two Rivers, 2015), or with Paul Dunmall on The Laughing Stone (Confront, 2023), exemplifie his outside approach. Meanwhile, his release Fire Hills (West Hill, 2022), where he composed material for both trio and octet, showcases his talents on the more structured ...
Continue ReadingAlexander Hawkins: Song Unconditional
by John Sharpe
Where on the first solo outing by British pianist Alexander Hawkins, Song Singular (Babel, 2014), his influences strode in plain sight, and the second, Iron Into Wind (Intakt, 2019), in its austerity, nodded toward Hawkins' classical schooling, Song Unconditional feels simultaneously more personal and more welcoming. It finds Hawkins not only consolidating the vocabulary of his earlier output but distilling it into something strikingly self- assured. Since that initial unaccompanied foray, Hawkins has become one of the most ...
Continue ReadingAlexander Hawkins: Song Unconditional
by Mark Corroto
Heraclitus once said, “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man." That may be true for most of us, but it does not quite apply to the music of pianist Alexander Hawkins. Despite navigating many musical rivers--trios, quartets, large ensembles, and collaborations with visionaries like Nicole Mitchell, Evan Parker, Anthony Braxton and Louis Moholo-Moholo --Hawkins remains unmistakably himself. His identity as an artist holds steady, even as ...
Continue ReadingStephen Davis Unit: The Gleaming World
by Ian Patterson
Belfast-based drummer-percussionist Stephen Davis' debut album for 577 Records takes its name from a line in a Seamus Heaney poem. The Irish Nobel laureate drew deeply on his rural surroundings, and, as these song titles suggest, so too has Davis. In late 2023, Davis spent time as a musician-in-residence at The Courthouse, Tinahely, in County Wicklow--an Improvised Music Company scheme that provides musicians with the support, time and space necessary to follow their artistic muse. Davis tapped into the natural ...
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