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Jesse Davis Quartet: Reflections
by Pierre Giroux
<em>Reflections</em> by alto saxophonist Jesse Davis, joined by pianist Spike Wilner, bassist John Webber, and featured guest drummer Lewis Nash, was recorded at GB’s Juke Joint in Long Island City in March 2025 and is the kind of album that doesn’t announce itself loudly. It just feels lived in. Unhurried, assured, yet steeped in memory and shaped by the long arc of experience. It is delivered with the easy authority of someone who knows who he is.A Davis ...
Continue ReadingJesse Davis Quartet: Reflections
by Jack Bowers
New Orleans-bred Jesse Davis delves into the soulful side of the alto saxophone on Reflections, his tenth album as leader and one that was recorded on New York's Long Island, far from Davis' home base of Verona, Italy, where he has lived for more than 20 years with his wife and daughter. One of the perks of recording in New York is the accessibility of blue-ribbon rhythm sections, and Davis has checked that box by enlisting the services ...
Continue ReadingSpike Wilner Trio Contrafactus: The Children & The Warlock
by Jack Bowers
A parodist might quip that Trio Contrafactus is simply another name for a quartet, as that is what pianist and entreprenuer Spike Wilner is leading on his new recording, The Children & the Warlock, wherein Wilner and his rhythm section (Paul Gill, bass; Anthony Pinciotti, drums) are flanked by renowned tenor saxophonist George Garzone. Wilner writes that the album is a tribute to one of his teachers, the late pianist and composer Harry Whitaker, who wrote its ...
Continue ReadingSpike Wilner Trio: Contrafactus
by Pierre Giroux
Pianist Spike Wilner, bassist Paul Gill and drummer Anthony Pinciotti have crafted an exquisite jazz listening experience in their release Contrafactus. Recorded in a single session, with only one take at GB's Juke Joint, the spontaneity and cohesion of the trio are manifest throughout the eleven compositions which seamlessly blend Wilner's original compositions with some better-known standards. The album opens with a Wilner original, “At First Blush," which is a lively and infectious swinger. Wilner dashes ...
Continue ReadingGeorge Coleman: Live At Smalls Jazz Club
by Jack Bowers
Tenor saxophonist George Coleman, one week past his eighty-seventh birthday when Live at Smalls Jazz Club was recorded in March 2022, has not yielded an inch to Father Time, skating up and down his horn with the awareness and agility of someone many years his junior. It is entirely appropriate that this album should be a part of the Smalls Living Legend series, as Coleman easily qualifies for that honor. Before appraising the music, a brief side ...
Continue ReadingGeorge Coleman: Live At Smalls Jazz Club
by Pierre Giroux
If you are an aficionado of tenor saxophonists with a big, bold, biting tone who can run changes in the blink of an eye, then George Coleman is your man. Now in his 88th year, over the course of his long career, he has had a gamut of experiences including B.B. King (1952/1955-56), Max Roach (1958-59), Slide Hampton (1959-61) and Miles Davis (1963-64). His discography both as a leader/co-leader as well as a sideman covers a panoply of well-known jazz ...
Continue ReadingJesse Davis: Live at Smalls Jazz Club
by Jack Bowers
Alto saxophone master Sonny Stitt always chafed when he was called “little Bird," a reference to the greatest alto of them all, Charlie Parker. “I'm not a little Bird," he would say, “I'm me; Sonny Stitt." In similar fashion, Jesse Davis would probably shrug off any comparison to another of the instrument's esteemed patriarchs, the late Julian “Cannonball" Adderley. Even so, such a connection is hardly misplaced. To some ears, Davis is the nearest thing to Cannonball since...well, Cannonball himself. ...
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