Born in Barcelona, Spain and based in New York City since 2012, pianist, composer, and improvisor Eva Novoa has recorded as a leader in a variety of configurations, and with particular emphasis on the trio. On May 16, 577 Records is releasing the second volume of her stimulating interactions with bassist Masatoshi Kamaguchi and drummer Gerald Cleaver. The three-way dialogue is enriching throughout as Novoa plays acoustic piano and Fender Rhodes, bangs a Chinese gong, and even whistles a bit. Like the previous installment, Novoa / Kamaguchi / Cleaver Trio, Vol. 2 is out on vinyl (shipping around June 9), compact disc, and digital. Copies of Vol. 1 are also still available in all formats.

The majority of Eva Novoa’s prior work has been issued by the Fresh Sound New Talent label, including her first record leading a trio, an eponymous recording featuring Masa Kamaguchi on bass and Marc Lohr on drums. Two years later came a quartet album, also eponymous, followed by two more by her Ditmas Quartet, one a studio set released in 2016 (Butterflies and Zebras) and the other a live date that came out in ’18 (Live at IBeam). Satellite Quartet was issued in 2020.

In this decade, Novoa’s focus has shifted back to the trio, at least on recordings, all on 577 Records, with the first documentation of this triumvirate with Kamaguchi and Cleaver emerging in 2023. In March of 2024 came Novoa / Gress / Gray Trio, Volume 1 with Drew Gress on bass and modular synth and Devin Gray on drums, followed by Novoa / Carter / Mela Trio, Vol. 1 with Daniel Carter on an array of horns and Francisco Mela on drums and vocals.

Novoa can conjure up some clamor on the keys with an underlying sense of control, but she gets there gradually on Vol. 1, as the conversations value space and an atmosphere of calm that’s appreciated in our current environment. With “Modus Vivendi,” Vol. 2 offers an immediate contrast with an angular variation on a compositional structure that can be traced back to the classic piano trio model.

Read More »

VIA PRESS RELEASE | “Diamond in the rough” doesn’t begin to describe the number of carats this long-lost jazz treasure wields, nor the depths of its humble origins. Originally released in 1982 on the budget Everest label, Jazz Patterns was all-too-carelessly assembled collection of 1970 live recordings from saxophonist Joe Henderson’s Quintet, re-titled to give trumpeter Woody Shaw co-billing to capitalize on his subsequent commercial success.

A few copies were made, sold for under 5 bucks each, and that was that. But, as Skip Heller’s liner notes (which we’ve added) reveal, what this shoddy little package (it didn’t even have the correct song titles for two of the tracks and misspelled the one it got right) actually contained was, get this, previously unreleased performances from the same September 24–26, 1970 stand at The Lighthouse Café in Hermosa Beach that yielded Henderson’s revered 1970 release If You’re Not Part of the Solution, You’re Part of the Problem!

Turns out Milestone label head Orrin Keepnews had turned around and sold these 2-track reference mixes (recorded by Bernie Grundman!) to Everest owner Bernie Solomon, who went ahead and did his usual down-market, take the money and run thing. That’s George Cables on electric piano, Ron McClure on bass, and Lenny White (using a bass drum fashioned from an oil can) on drums, by the way.

We’re reissuing this fantastic post-bop find for the first time ever, complete with the aforementioned liner notes, the correct song titles, and a new remastering job by Kevin Chubirka that sounds about a hundred times better than the original.

The following albums are four recent audiophile vinyl jazz reissues from the Acoustic Sounds Series.

The New Stan Getz Quartet featuring Astrid Gilberto, Getz Au Go Go It’s hard to explain to pop music fans today how much of a phenomenon the Brazilian music craze of the early-to-mid-’60s was at that time. Not even the explosion of The Beatles and the British Invasion could slow down the musical juggernaut.

While there were many people involved in popularizing the sound, perhaps the four most important figures were Brazilian artists Antonio Carlos Jobim, husband and wife Joao and Astrid Gilberto, and American jazz saxophonist Stan Getz. The albums that launched and solidified the popularity of the sound were those that Getz recorded on Verve, that included the Gilbertos and others in various combinations.

These studio albums, particularly Getz/Gilberto, released in 1964, often receive the audiophile treatment, but the live album that was part of the series, Getz Au Go Go, hasn’t until now. It was produced by Creed Taylor and primarily recorded at the long-shuttered and legendary music venue that featured a wide variety of music during its heyday in the 1960s, the Café Au Go Go in Greenwich Village. The tiny club was the perfect venue for the gentle and sultry intimacy of this music.

What makes this album featuring Getz and Astrid Gilberto even more than a live celebration of the bossa nova craze was the addition of the rest of the band, bassist Gene Cherico, drummer Joe Hunt, bassist Chuck Israels, drummer Helcio Milton, and Kenny Burrell on guitar on four tracks. But the real bonus to all those great players was the addition of Gary Burton on vibes. While Antonio Carlos Jobim did sit in with the band during its long run at the club, he is not on the album.

Read More »

Remembering Bobby Darin, born on this day in 1936. —Ed.

Although quite far afield from our current pop charts, Bobby Darin and Johnny Mercer were once thoroughly of the commercial mainstream. However, their full-length collaboration, originally released on Atco in 1961, finds the pair in a nostalgic and jocular mood. Loaded with older tunes and a theatrical, at times vaudevillian rapport, Two of a Kind succeeds through expert delivery, obvious mutual respect, the bulls-eye backing of Billy May and His Orchestra, and the production expertise of Ahmet Ertegun. 

Waxing autobiographical as a record reviewer can be a dangerous move (though rock scribes have often successfully flouted the “rule” against it), but in considering Two of a Kind’s saturation of personality it feels appropriate to plunge deep into the realm of the first-person. And so; allow me to confess that pre-rock pop vocalizing in the big band mode has never been my favorite scene, and has in fact persistently nagged around the edges of blind spot.

There are of course exceptions, most of them jazzy and female, but the flat fact is I’ve never been that enthusiastic over Bing. Or Sinatra. Or Bennett. Or Dean (sorry, Nick Tosches). Or Torme. Though I do like Louis Prima, especially with Keely Smith (that better, Nick?) And hey, as relevant to this piece, I’ve long been fond of Bobby Darin.

Due to his early hits, Darin is sometimes pegged as a rock ‘n’ roll-era figure who broadened his horizons upon youth music’s decade-closing stumbling block, but he was actually a singer-songwriter, and a solid one at that; “Splish Splash” was reportedly co-written on a dare, and “Dream Lover” stands up as a likable example of ’50s teen pop crooning.

Read More »

VIA PRESS RELEASE | High Moon Records is excited to unveil The Final Solution—Just Like Gold: Live At The Matrix, the first-ever anthology from groundbreaking San Francisco psychedelic scene pioneers The Final Solution, available now on CD, LP, and digitally.

Newly transferred from reels and expertly mastered by 10x GRAMMY® Award-nominated engineer Dan Hersch, the collection captures the band at the height of their powers in a blistering July 1966 live performance at legendary SF club, The Matrix. Both the CD and LP come with a lavish booklet containing photos from Herb Greene and Bill Brach, rare posters, and a detailed essay from GRAMMY® Award-nominated compilation producer Alec Palao. The CD further includes an additional live bonus track along with six tracks recorded in their rehearsal space in November 1966 with The Great! Society’s Jerry Slick on drums.

The Final Solution was among the more intriguing of the legions of bands populating the mid-1960s San Francisco rock scene. Though they rarely recorded, Just Like Gold: Live At The Matrix showcases a legendary Bay Area folk-punk quartet that never even got to release a record, yet whose cutting-edge sound and style brims with the heady air of early psychedelia.

The Solution was formed in 1965 by bassist Bob Knickerbocker and guitarist Ernie Fosselius, friends at San Francisco State, then a melting pot of personalities which would fuel San Francisco’s young-adult bohemian scene. Rounding out the band were John Chance on drums and John Yager on guitar and vocals. The group began by playing Haight-Ashbury dives like Haight Levels, but their constant rehearsals and growing notoriety soon bagged the Solution a month-long residency at the famed Red Dog Saloon in Virginia City, NV.

Read More »

Remembering Gil Evans, born on this day in 1912. —Ed.

Pianist, arranger, composer, bandleader: Canadian-born Gil Evans stands as one of the most important orchestrators in the history of jazz. Perhaps most famous for his work with Miles Davis, Evans was a versatile creator who could easily adapt to new stylistic developments and then push the music further forward. Cut in 1957, Gil Evans & Ten is his debut as a leader, establishing his work as vivid and distinctive. 

Gil Evans is the arranger on Miles Davis’ Birth of the Cool, which features recordings made in 1949-’50, most of them released on a series of 78rpm discs but compiled on LP for the first time in ’57 by Capitol, the same year that Miles Ahead, Evans’ second collaboration with Davis, which brought the trumpeter together with a 19-piece orchestra, was released by Columbia.

The knockout success of Miles Ahead and the rekindled interest in Birth of the Cool were certainly a major factor in Evans recording his first album as leader that same year. Miles Ahead was cut over a series of sessions in May of ’57 (released in October) while Gil Evans & Ten was recorded across three sessions in September and October of ’57 (released early the following year), with the albums sharing a handful of personnel.

Heard on both are trumpeter John Carisi, trombonist Jimmy Cleveland, French horn player Willie Ruff, alto saxophonist Lee Konitz (listed on Evans & Ten under the pseudonymous anagram Zeke Tolin), and bassist Paul Chambers. For his debut, Evans sits down at the bench, which was frequent on his own early releases (for Miles Ahead, it’s Wynton Kelly on piano).

Read More »

Mark Fry was just 19 years old when he recorded his debut album in 1971, a set that stands today as a left-field psych-folk classic. More details on that album are below, but his latest release Not on the Radar is out May 16 on vinyl, compact disc, and digital through the Second Language label. Those who only know Fry from his debut might be surprised by how together he is across these 10 tracks. If not as gripping as his early stuff, Fry’s new one is still warm and satisfying as it thrives on a wide stylistic range.

For over 35 years, Mark Fry was known by a select number of record collector cognoscenti for Dreaming of Alice, a rare and extremely pricey LP in its original pressing released in 1972 by It, an Italian label with connections to RCA Records. Fry wrote the songs, sang them, and played guitar on a psych-folk excursion that was remarkably consistent and essentially lacking in cringe-worthy passages, a notable omission given the record’s proximity to the loner/outsider fringe.

Cut after Fry dropped out of art school, Dreaming of Alice garnered nothing in the way of immediate response, its cult status accruing incrementally and getting a significant boost with its first in a series of reissues in 2000. Fry’s second album emerged two years later, less a follow-up than a fresh start. Leaving the bent atmospheres of his debut behind, Shooting the Moon is an extremely coherent and orderly batch of singer-songwriter folk.

The change was admirable but ultimately lesser than Dreaming of Alice, a circumstance that was still preferable to an attempt to recapture or even extend from the bottled lightning of youthful vigor. Subsequent releases have sharpened Fry’s mature approach. Not on the Radar’s opener “Only Love” is gorgeous and reflective as it gently unfurls, a beauty move deepened in the next track “Big Red Sun” as the focus shifts from guitar to piano; a six-string does gradually emerge to deliver a sweet capper of a solo.

Read More »