Channeling the linear rhythmic energy of Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk, the reflective harmonic spirit of Keith Jarrett and Bill Evans, and the romantic spirit of Latin music, pianist Edward Simon presents a comprehensive portrait of his unique musical concept on his first trio album since 1995. Simon is accompanied by the great John Patitucci (Waynte Shorter's bassist) and drummer Eric Harland.
Terrible Animals is perhaps the most compositionally ambitious and daringly performed of Lage Lund's five albums on Criss Cross. Joined by a never-before-convened, top-of-the-pyramid rhythm section (Sullivan Fortner, piano; Larry Grenadier, bass; Tyshawn Sorey, drums) the 39-year-old presents ten far-flung originals that elicit the full measure of their creativity over the 68-minute program, spurring Lund, who makes ingenious use of effects within his flow, to some of his most dynamic and varied playing on record.
Tim Warfield's peers consider he 33-year old a singular voice on the tenor sax. On this, his third Criss Cross release, he is accompanied by trumpeters Nicholas Payton & Terell Stafford, as well as the top-shelf rhythm section of Cyrus Chestnut, Tarus Mateen and Clarence Penn. Warfield displays his full range of vocal inflection, a drummer's sense of time, and the ability to build solos full of tension and drama.
Part of a new breed of jazz artists expanding the mainstream language in fresh and stimulating ways, trumpeter Ryan Kisor's "Awakening" returns to the organ combo as heard on his debut Criss Cross set "Battle Cry" (CRC #1145). This time around however, Kisor leaves the standards behind and opts for his own originals, which cover a good deal of ground - from the ballad tempo of "Halem Moon" to the bop-inflected "Effing Blues." in addition to Kisor's own bristling solo work, organist Sam Yahel, guitarist Peter Bernstein, and tenor saxophonist Grant Stewart are heavily featured throughout this fervent showcase. On drums is the great Willie Jones III.
This new trio, featuring pianist David Kikoski with the great Russian bassist Boris Kozlov and the legendary drummer Jeff "Tain" Watts, presents a program of all Kikoski originals executed in the solo, duet, and trio format. It's a beautiful album showing US the different sides of a great jazz pianist.
Ralph Peterson is one of the great drummers of our time. He possesses the power of Art Blakey and the creativity and swing of the late Tony Williams. This burning album has Jeremy Pelt on trumpet, Jimmy Greene on tenor saxophone, the great Orrin Evans on piano, and Eric Revis on bass. This is Ralph's second outing as a leader on Criss Cross.
A 2004 Grammy nominee for his solo work on Maria Schneider's Concert 'In the Garden,' Donny McCaslin performs more often as a sideman extraordinaire (Steps Ahead, Danilo Perez, Brian Blade, Maria Schneider Orchestra, Mingus Orchestra) than as a leader. Criss Cross. 2006.
An increasingly visible force on the New York scene in recent years, guitarist Mike Moreno makes his Criss Cross debut on a program mixing choice selections from the jazz songbook (Shorter, Henderson, Strayhorn) and his own evocative originals. Propelled by Moreno's fellow Houstonian, drummer Kendrick Scott, and young veterans pianist Kevin Hays and bassist Doug Weiss, Moreno plays throughout with characteristic melodic elegance, rhythmic drive, and harmonic nuance.
Brace yourselves for the Art of Organizing, the very first appearance onCriss Cross by organ master Dr. Lonnie Smith. Guitarist Peter Bernstein and Billy Drummond, one of the more prolific and sensitive drummers of our time, completes the lineup. From his early days with George Benson and Lou Donaldson to the present day, Dr. Lonnie Smith has always been a driving force in jazz. The Art of Organizing, featuring Smith and trio on standards and a batch of strong new originals, is another contribution that will remain timeless.
Guitarist Lage Lund made his first Criss Cross leader debut in 2008 with the brilliant Early Songs (CRC 1307). Paring down from a quintet to quartet, he returns with Unlikely Stories, a vibrant set of mainly original tunes with a superb supporting cast: pianist Edward Simon, bassist Ben Street and drummer Bill Stewart. The first-ever electric guitarist to attend Juilliard, Lund possesses a staggering harmonic sophistication and a singularly fluid voice as a soloist qualities that leap out on Unlikely Stories and, no doubt, on many more releases to come.
A leading bassist of his generation, Matt Brewer has distinguished himself in groups led by Greg Osby, Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Vijay Iyer, John Escreet and many others. His Criss Cross appearances on Mike Moreno's First In Mind and David Binney's Anacapa have also left a lasting impression. On Mythology, his debut as a leader, the Oklahoma City-born, Albuquerque, New Mexico-raised Brewer leads a sextet with some of the fiercest individualists on the jazz scene today: alto saxist Steve Lehman and tenorist Mark Turner in the frontline; guitarist Lage Lund and pianist David Virelles as ensemble voices and featured soloists as well; drummer Marcus Gilmore bringing a flexible, swinging, highly structured rhythmic vocabulary to the table.With his mostly original pieces Brewer reveals an adventurous, lyrical bent as a composer. The band's uptempo reading of Ornette Coleman's "Free" truly catches fire as well.
On his third leader release for Criss Cross, guitarist Lage Lund returns to the quartet format that he navigated on the brilliant 2010 release Unlikely Stories (CRC 1321), recruiting young piano giant Aaron Parks to join world-class bass-drum partners Ben Street and Bill Stewart. It's another triumph for the 2005 Thelonious Monk Guitar Competition winner, who puts his lovely tone to work on a program of six originals and three off-the beaten track covers marked by informed harmonic dialogue, keen attention to melody, and an endless will to swing.
Jazzland is Tim Warfield's ninth Criss Cross album, and his third encounter on the label - following 2007's One For Shirley and 2010's Sentimental Journey - on which he frames his singular tenor and soprano saxophone sound with the magisterially funky and swinging rhythm section of Hammond B3 master Pat Bianchi, Philadelphian drum titan Byron "Boogie" Landham, augmented as on Sentimental Journey by Bronx-born percussion wizard Daniel Sadownick. Trumpet titan Terell Stafford, a frequent Warfield partner, shares the front line.
Terrible Animals is perhaps the most compositionally ambitious and daringly performed of Lage Lund's five albums on Criss Cross Joined by a never-before-convened, top-of-the-pyramid rhythm section (Sullivan Fortner, piano; Larry Grenadier, bass; Tyshawn Sorey, drums) the now 45 - year old presented ten far-flung originals that elicit the full measure of their creativity over the 68-minute program, spurring Lund - who makes ingenious use of effects within his flow - to some of his most dynamic and varied playing on record. The Album was recorded April 27, 2018 at the Systems Two Studio in NY. Recording engineer Mike Marciano also did the editing, mixing and mastering at Systems Two in NY. He also did the vinyl remastering. Cover drawing by Robbin Veldman.
Some might think that guitarist Oz Noy, a celebrated voice in jazz-fusion over the last quarter century for applying his formidable guitar chops to funky rhythms and blues-based changes on 13 leader albums and hundreds of plugged-in concert performances, is not an obvious fit for Criss Cross, whose 420+-album catalog connects almost exclusively to the various tributaries of the hardcore acoustic jazz river. Noy, 52, begs to differ. "I've known about Criss Cross since my brother brought home albums when I was a teenager, " he says, discussing the back story of his label debut, Fun One, a creative, sophisticated and, shall we say, swinging trio encounter with pianist David Kikoski, bassist James Genus and drummer Clarence Penn. "I know Peter Bernstein's albums and Adam Rogers' albums. I love Mike Moreno's last album. I know how the albums sound. I started to study jazz chords and harmony when I was 13. I started making a living playing pop and rock music when I was 15 or 16, and for all my years in New York I've had an electric trio that plays groove music mixed with jazz and funk that's enabled me to get a record deal and make albums. But I've been playing standards and jazz all my life, and probably since 2017 with this quartet. I've just never recorded it." From 2017 until March 2020, when COVID shut down New York City, the group's encounters transpired on Thursday nights at the 55 Bar, the Greenwich Village basement where high-level practitioners like alto saxophonist-composer (and frequent Criss Cross artist) Dave Binney and guitarists Mike Stern and Wayne Krantz held years-long weekly sinecures. After the Christopher Street landmark shut down two years later, Noy "moved our operation" to the Bitter End on Bleecker Street, a signpost venue in the development of comedy and various streams of second-half-of-the-20th-century popular music where Noy has played regularly with his power trios for more than two decades. From the beginning of 2024 until the end of July, when Noy recorded Fun One, he frequently workshopped this repertoire there "with some form of this band." The Album was recorded July 26 / 27, 2024 at the Samurai Hotel Recording Studio, NYC. Recording engineer Mike Marciano. Sound engineer Mike Marciano also did the mixing and mastering at Systems Two in NYC. Photography by Anna Yatskevich.
I sat very near to or next to the greats at the Village Vanguard on many occasions, says the eminent drummer-composer-bandleader Bill Stewart, by way of contextualizing his - and the Criss Cross label's - first-ever live-at-the-Vanguard recording. During his early years in New York, before he ever played the hallowed basement, Stewart, now 58, frequently arrived early to claim the behind-the-drumkit position on the red banquette that runs along the Vanguard's west wall all the way to bandstand stage right to get a bird's eye view of Elvin Jones, Tony Williams, Roy Haynes, Billy Higgins, and a host of other masters whose recordings he'd played along with as an adolescent and teenage aspirant in Des Moines, Iowa. "When you sit close, you get the body language, the whole vibe of the drummer who you want to check out, " Stewart says. "That's the place." It's a sure bet that more than a few drum aspirants took pains to assess Stewart's vibe from that privileged perch between September 18 and September 23 in 2023, when he convened bassist Larry Grenadier and tenor saxophonist Walter Smith III for their third weeklong trio engagement at the Vanguard, following residencies in April 2017 and in October 2018. The latter engagement transpired around the trio's first album, Band Menu, a studio date that marked Stewart's first leader endeavor without a chordal instrument. "My first six recordings before the last one had piano, including two with Larry Goldings and Kevin Hays on keyboards, " saysStewart, who has made numerous organ trio albums with Goldings and guitarist Peter Bernstein, either led by Goldings or Bernstein or under the collective billing Goldings-Bernstein-Stewart. "I wanted to work with the open sound of the tenor trio. Not having a piano or guitar gives me the option to fill up more space with the drums or allow more space in the music. I was also thinking of the famous tenor-bass-drums recordings by Sonny Rollins and Joe Henderson at the Vanguard. So I felt it was time to document the trio playing in the room." The Album was recorded September 22 / 23, 2023 Live at the Village Vanguard, NYC. Recording engineer: James Farber. Mixing by Tyler McDiarmid. Mastering by Nate Wood. Produced by Bill Stewart. Photography by William Brown. Line up: Bill Stewart (drums) - Walter Smith III (tenor saxophone) - Larry Grenadier (bass)
