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2 months ago | 
theabsolutesound.com | Derk Richardson |Kris Davis Trio
A A A Most tribute albums feature multiple artists covering one musician’s songs. Pianist Kris Davis takes a different tack on Run the Gauntlet, her first trio recording as a leader in a decade. Joined by bassist Robert Hurst and drummer Johnathan Blake, she pays homage to women jazz pianists who have profoundly influenced her.
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Jan 24, 2025 | 
acousticguitar.com | Derk Richardson |Greg Cahill |Adam Perlmutter |Kenny Berkowitz
Fingerstyle guitarist Dylan Fowler straddles multiple worlds, collaborating closely with musicians from Finland, India, Turkey, and across the Celtic diaspora. On this solo album, his first in more than a decade, he brings it all back home, finding his inspiration in American jazz (Keith Jarrett’s “My Song”), Brazilian pop (“Joy”), Bulgarian folk (“Erghen Diado”), and Indian classical (“Six Thaal”) while remaining close to his folk-trad roots in Wales, where he’s lived most of his life.
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Sep 20, 2024 | 
theabsolutesound.com | Derk Richardson |Alice Coltrane
A A A On February 21, 1971, a week after the release of her iconic Journey in Satchidananda, pianist/harpist/composer Alice Coltrane appeared at Carnegie Hall. Coltrane (aka Turiya) put together a band of 60s avant-garde masters: Pharoah Sanders (saxophones, flute, fife, percussion), Archie Shepp (saxophones, percussion), Cecil McBee and Jimmy Garrison (basses), and Ed Blackwell and Clifford Jarvis (drums), plus Tulsi Reynolds (tamboura) and Kumar Kramer (harmonium).
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Sep 15, 2024 | 
acousticguitar.com | Adam Perlmutter |Greg Cahill |Derk Richardson
Near the beginning of the video to her recent song “Act Natural,” singer and songwriter Margaret Glaspy appears to pull off the impossible feat of changing instruments as often as every beat, cycling through a Danocaster, Rickenbacker, Teisco, National, and others in dizzying sequence. It feels like a celebration of the electric guitar, and, come to think of it, so too does Glaspy’s work in general.
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Aug 22, 2024 | 
theabsolutesound.com | Derk Richardson
Before he died in September 2022 at 81, tenor saxophonist Pharoah Sanders was top of mind thanks to his final album, Promises, made with Sam Shepherd (aka Floating Points). Luaka Bop then decided to reissue the coveted 1977 album Pharoah. The new LP is packaged with a second vinyl disc of two previously unreleased live versions of the signature piece “Harvest Time,” a selection of artifact reproductions, and a 24-page booklet.
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May 3, 2024 | 
theabsolutesound.com | Derk Richardson
A A A A multifaceted percussionist who came to prominence in multicultural settings alongside Don Cherry, Yusef Lateef, Pharoah Sanders, Jon Hassell, and others, Adam Rudolph has been recording as a leader since 1992, and with his Go: Organic Orchestra and Hu Vibrational projects since 2002. Rudolph is a master of time and space, which he makes pulsate hypnotically through canny orchestrations of acoustic and electric instruments and elegant electronic processing.
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Feb 23, 2024 | 
acousticguitar.com | Kenny Berkowitz |Derk Richardson
Sometimes it feels almost inevitable that a classical guitarist will eventually record a “Bach album” during their career. Solo guitar arrangements of J.S. Bach pieces have been de rigueur since Segovia first recorded various works in the late 1920s—and then made Bach a vital part of his performing repertoire for the rest of his long, influential career. The appeal and the challenges of playing Bach’s pieces are self-evident.
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Jan 26, 2024 | 
acousticguitar.com | Derk Richardson |Mark Kemp |Kenny Berkowitz
A longtime member of the San Francisco Bay Area fingerstyle guitar community—as well as a writer/editor at Acoustic Guitar for 16 years before co-founding the stringed instrument lesson site Peghead Nation in 2014—Teja Gerken records infrequently, but when he does it’s always a cause for celebration.
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Jan 3, 2024 | 
acousticguitar.com | Derk Richardson |Kenny Berkowitz
Ain’t it funny how time slips away? Fifty years ago, Willie Nelson was on the verge of a Nashville breakthrough, recording his tune “Sad Songs and Waltzes” (from the album Shotgun Wille) on a still-shiny Trigger [his then-new Martin N-20 nylon-string], while Jimmy Day played weeping pedal steel in the background. Fast-forward to the present, more than 100 albums later, and Nelson is giving his picking fingers—and a battered but intact Trigger—a well-deserved rest.
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Oct 12, 2023 | 
acousticguitar.com | Kenny Berkowitz |Derk Richardson |Michael England
Martin Simpson and Thomm Jutz, two highly respected guitarists steeped in traditional music, have joined forces to craft an exceptional new album with Nothing But Green Willow: The Songs of Mary Sands and Jane Gentry. This collection features 13 ballads sourced from the works of singers Mary Sands and Jane Gentry, as documented by the prominent English folklorist Cecil Sharp and his assistant Maud Karpeles in their 1917 publication English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians.
