Criss Cross New Releases

[mjzee]

Release date May 17:

[mjzee]

Glad to see they're still around.  Release date May 15:

On his second Criss Cross record, From Here To Here, guitar master David Gilmore picks up where he left off on his well-received 2017 label debut, Transitions (Criss 1393). Here, joined by a quartet of New York all-stars comprising pianist Luis Perdomo, bassist Brad Jones, and drummer E.J. Strickland, Gilmore navigates 8 recently-penned originals as well as Sam Rivers' Cyclic Episodes and the Bill Evans-Jim Hall classic Interplay. Throughout the proceedings, Gilmore unfailingly displays virtuosic technical and conceptual chops, exhaustive harmonic knowledge, melodic gifts, luminous sound, and sense of focus and proportion. These qualities made him an indispensable sideman several decades ago during long-term engagements with Steve Coleman and Wayne Shorter -- they've only developed and evolved over time.

[bertrand]

On 4/25/2019 at 6:59 PM, mjzee said:

Release date May 17:

Max Light is brilliant.

[mjzee]

Release date August 20:

Donald Edwards Quintet with Donald Edwards on drums, Anthony Wonsey on piano, Ben Wolfe on bass, David Gilmore on guitar and Abraham Burton on tenor saxophone. Guest appearances by Sophia Edwards (vocals on track 1 and Frank Lacy (vocals on tracks 2 - 8). All compositions and arrangements by Donald Edwards. The album was recorded January 31, 2020 at the Samurai Hotel Recording Studio and mixed and mastered by Mike Marciano at the Systems Two Recording Studios. The album The Color of US Suite is the second Criss Cross Jazz release after the death of former owner Gerry Teekens Sr. Tracks: 1. Little Hopes [2:24], 2. Red [5:32], 3. White [6:55], 4. Blue [5:06], 5. Intro To Black [2:11], 6. Black [9:46], 7. Brown [4:15], 8. Tan [3:24], 9. Finding Beauty [7:22], 10. Hurricane Sophia [8:20]

[mjzee]

Release date June 3:

With Swing On This, the all-star quintet Opus 5 presents its fifth Criss Cross album, and first since 2015, when Criss-Cross released Tickle [Criss 1383), which itself was preceded - in backwards chronology - by Progression [Criss 1369], Pentasonic [Criss 1351], and Introducing Opus 5 [Criss 1339], each recorded a year apart. The 'all star' sobriquet is not an exaggeration - the collective discographies of trumpeter Alex Sipiagin, tenor saxophonist Seamus Blake, pianist David Kikoski, bassist Boris Kozlov, and drummer Donald Edwards, all international first-callers, total more than 30 Criss Cross leader dates. The Album was recorded September 7, 2021 at the Samurai Hotel Recording Studio in NY. Recording engineer Mike Marciano who also did the editing, mixing and mastering at Systems Two in NY. Tracks: 1. Swing On This [4:39] 2. Pythagoras [7:41] 3. Moonbay [7:17] 4. Fermata [10:58] 5. Finger Painted Swing [8:44] 6. Sight Vision [6:19] 7. The Great Divide [5:49] 8. In Case You Missed It [8:34]

 

[mjzee]

Release date October 7:

With Sky Continuous, Downbeat Critics Poll Winner 2022 (Rising Star Alto Sax) Noah Preminger, presents his 3rd album as a leader for Criss Cross. Sky Continuous is an exceptionally compelling trio recital with bass virtuoso Kim Cass, who has performed on 10 of Preminger's 11 prior albums (including Criss Cross releases Genuinity and After Life) and drumset Bill Stewart, who had never before shared a bandstand with Preminger. The music, which includes eight Preminger originals, is logically structured but adventurous and open - ended. The Album was recorded November 9, 2021 at the Samurai Hotel Recording Studio in NY. Recording engineer Mike Marciano also did the editing, mixing and mastering at Systems Two in NY.

[mjzee]

Release date January 13:

[mjzee]

Release date June 23:

[mjzee]

Release date October 20:

By titling his eighth Criss Cross album Over Here!, trumpeter Jim Rotondi picks up on the sentiments he signified with The Move, his seventh for the label. "It doesn't necessarily mean moving somewhere else, but rather returning home, playing tunes with a lot of straight-ahead swing and interesting chord sequences with guys I'm comfortable with, " Rotondi stated in the liner notes I wrote for that kinetic 2009 recital. The Album was recorded May 10, 2023 at the Artesuono Recording Studio in Udine (Italy). Recording engineer Mike Marciano did the editing, mixing and mastering at Systems Two in NY. Photography by Mauro Cionci

[mjzee]

Release date November 3:

In 2021 Criss Cross owner Jerry Teekens called to ascertain Lund's interest in making another album. For Lund, 45 when the Most Peculiar session transpired in June 2022, the offer was an opportunity to reunite with a band he launched in 2014. Pianist Sullivan Fortner (35) and drummer Tyshawn Sorey (41), both among the most gifted practitioners ever to improvise on their respective instruments, contributed their unique mojo to Lund's 2019 Criss-Cross release, Terrible Animals. Virtuoso bassist Matt Brewer (39), played on Lund's first leader date in 2006, had Lund play guitar on his own Criss Cross debut (Mythology-Criss 1373), and recently played on a Lund trio covers recital. The Album was recorded June 17, 2022 at the Samurai Hotel Recording Studio in Astoria, New York. Recording engineer Mike Marciano also did the editing, mixing and mastering at Systems Two Studio in New York. 

[Niko]

Curious about the Lund album... I didn't like Terrible Animals that much but apparently Melissa Aldiana liked it so much she got Lund/Fortner to play on her own 2022 album to recreate the sound... And that album I like a lot, one of my most played recent jazz albums....

[mjzee]

Release date March 22:

"This was a dream band to write for and play with," alto saxophonist Michael Thomas says of Manuel Valera, Matt Brewer and Obed Calvaire, his A-list rhythm section on Illusion of Choice, his Criss Cross debut, and fourth leader album. "These musicians can play any style and sound like it's the only thing they play. I wanted to explore these different areas and cohere them into an album, not sound like tunes stuck together for a CD. Everything was on the table. I wasn't afraid to develop whatever ideas I came up with, and see where they went."

 

[Rabshakeh]

I feel like there should be a thread, similar to the Modern / Avant thread, for discussion of recent releases in whatever genre Crisis Cross, Smoke Sessions, modern Steeplechase, HighNote, Cellar, etc. cater for (i.e. recent hard bop genre work releases; as distinct from 'modern' takes on the bop tradition, the new sorts of hybrid styles, or the current taste for retro-spiritual jazz, that together seem to constitute the current jazz critical mainstream). 

It's not really my world, but I do find that I enjoy the releases that come up here about or almost as much as I enjoy recent music coming from Jazz's and Improvised Music's other reliable networks / pipelines.

Edited January 17 by Rabshakeh

[Dub Modal]

On 10/23/2023 at 12:52 AM, Niko said:

Curious about the Lund album... I didn't like Terrible Animals that much but apparently Melissa Aldiana liked it so much she got Lund/Fortner to play on her own 2022 album to recreate the sound... And that album I like a lot, one of my most played recent jazz albums....

Could be the horn making it palatable. Streaming this new one and maybe it’s just me, but like Terrible Animals it fails to rise above pleasant background music. 

[Niko]

I tend to agree, like the Aldana album much more than those two Lund albums... Heard Aldana's group live this weekend actually, quartet without piano, Lund was outstanding... and she mentioned the next album of her music with Lund would come out in April

Edited January 18 by Niko

[mjzee]

Uncertain about the release date:

Lovabye follows Groover's formidable first full-length album, Negro Spiritual Songbook, Vol. 2 (The Message), performed by his excellent Boston band in quartet or quintet configurations, contains Groover's arrangements of, as he then wrote, "Black America's praise music through jazz's evolving language to produce a radical theology that connects you to a higher power, ". Recorded in August 2019, it was released two years later, as society unwound from the Covid-19 pandemic. During the lockdown, Groover had generated a group of "love songs and songs of people I love." In spring 2023, he brought this music to Walter Smith III, who Groover had idolized as a teenager, and is now his friend and colleague at Berklee School of Music, their mutual alma mater, where Groover serves as Assistant Chair of the Ensemble Department. "I told Walter I'd like to play with some of my other heroes and peers, " Groover recalls. "He said, 'What's stopping you? The music is there.' Luckily for me, everyone who I wanted to record with was available and happy to do it." The Album was recorded August 16, 2023 at the GSI Studios, NYC. Producer Walter Smith III. Recording engineer Chris Allen. Sound engineer Mike Marciano did the mixing and mastering at Systems Two in NYC. Photography by Saito Ogata.

 

[mjzee]

Release date July 19:

I'm proud to be part of Criss Cross, Antonio Farao says of his maiden voyage for the label. For the occasion, which transpired in Meudon Studios in Paris in July 2023, the Milan-based pianist, then 58, convened an equivalently virtuosic trio comprising bassist John Patitucci and drummer Jeff Ballard, presented them with eight originals and two standards, and let them loose. Each member operates at a creative peak on this lyric, kinetic, beautifully proportioned 65-minute recital. Titled Tributes, Fara•'s Criss Cross debut is closer in feel and attitude to the albums Black Inside, Thorn and Next Stories, recorded for Enja between 1998 and 2001, where Fara• joined forces, respectively, with top-of-the-pyramid, New York-seasoned masters Ira Coleman and Jeff Watts, Drew Gress and Jack deJohnette, and Ed Howard and Gene Jackson. Functioning completely as a peer, he addresses the dialects of his pianistic heroes - universal "postbop" influences as Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, McCoy Tyner, Keith Jarrett, Bill Evans and Kenny Kirkland, as well as Oscar Peterson, Erroll Garner, Lennie Tristano, and Martial Solal - on their own terms of engagement, with the fluency of a native speaker. He assimilates their styles, refracts them into a personal argot, alchemizing challenging rhythms and highbrow harmony into graceful melodies. He eschews ironic deflection and gratuitous structural complication, sustaining an attitude of in-the-moment creation and a fierce will to swing. The Album was recorded July 26, 2023 at Studio de Meudon, Paris. Recording engineer Julien Basseres. Sound engineer Mike Marciano did the mixing and mastering at Systems Two in NYC. Photography by Marco Glaviano.

 

Release date August 16:

Like it's predecessor, Painter of Dreams features two highly reworked standards along with six recent melody-forward compositions, to which Tsiganov applies his signature blend of radical reharmonization, mixed meters, shifting tempos, and changing keys. Otherwise, this ambitious recital presents documents several "firsts." For one thing, Tsiganov expands beyond the saxophone-trumpet-piano-bass-drums format, scoring five of the eight selections for either three or four horns. For another, he broadens his tonal palette beyond the almost entirely acoustic soundscape of his prior Criss Cross oeuvre, liberally weaving the Rhodes and Minimoog into the flow, as well as the preternaturally flexible voice of Hiske Oosterwijk, who also contributes two lyrics. Also, for the first time as a leader, Tsiganov augments the luminous trumpeter-flugelhornist (and 13-time Criss Cross leader) Alex Sipiagin on the front line with alto sax titan Miguel Zen¢n, who plays for the entirety of the proceedings, and - on three pieces - the transcendent Chris Potter on tenor and soprano saxophones.

[Niko]

that Gregory Groover Jr album looks interesting with Matthew Stevens, Joel Ross and Marcus Gilmore... no idea about the release date either but it's on spotify

[mjzee]

Release date November 29:

When eminent jazz practitioners with shared histories convene in the studio without rehearsal or preparatory gigs, a perfunctory, by-the-numbers session is often the outcome. That is decidedly not the case on Solid Jackson, whose personnel, four of whom participated on the well-wrought day-after-Christmas of 1994 Criss Cross album titled Consenting Adults, reside in any hardcore jazz connoisseur's "top-five." This second gathering of M.T.B. (titled for the surnames of Brad Mehldau, Mark Turner and Peter Bernstein, and to signify upon the late '80s "young lion" band OTB) is an intense, focused recital that reinforces the exalted position each member holds in the 2024 jazz landscape. Everyone listens. No one overplays or goes for "house." The ambiance is one of concentrated excellence.All in all, the session is, as the cliche goes, "all killer, no filler, " performed at a level that might have provoked Charlie Haden to respond with a hearty "Solid Jackson." "There was a natural blend, " Bernstein says. "We all go way back, and everyone was very comfortable being around each other. One thing I like about making a record is that you're able to spend a day with people you've been meaning to hang out with for a long time. It's not just a party. You're working, too. But that's how we interact socially - by playing music. I was amazed. It's 30 years after we did the first one, but everyone is relatively intact. It's really a miracle. We're all still here; we get to play together again."The Album was recorded November 25 / 26, 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.

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.

Edited November 4 by mjzee