Minnesota mainstay Connie Evingson is preparing to release her new album, Hornucopia, and she was kind enough to share a couple tunes in advance with Jazz88. Evingson sent along two songs that feature the recently deceased jazz saxophone legend Benny Golson including “Whisper Not.” The Hornucopia album focuses on the great songs written by horn players and...Read More

Guitar phenom Cory Wong connected with the Metropole Orkest for his latest effort Starship Syncopation and the sound is rich, full and at times hypnotic. On the tune “305” Wong also tapped in saxophonist Chris Potter and the Miami mainstay quartet Electric Kif. The tune is six minutes full of groove with the band luxuriating in the...Read More

Guitarist, Joel Shapira, is back at it with a quartet he last recorded with almost two decades ago. The new record is called Sleepless Montage and the band sounds really comfortable diving back into a new set of tunes penned by Shapira. I was first drawn to the title track at first cause of the...Read More

Music is the ultimate conjurer of emotions. The sounds of “Fireflies” off of L.A. Buckner and BiG HOMiE’s forthcoming record “Norfside” conjures a lifetime of triumph into three and a half minutes of music like the groove downed three espressos before the second measure and as the group navigates the various sections there is a...Read More

We are so lucky to have Zacc Harris in the Twin Cities. Harris is a top-flight guitarist, composer and educator. He also manages to run a premier record label that releases world-class music which represents our local scene and the larger international jazz scene. Through some scheduling miracle, Zacc Harris was able to connect with...Read More

I spent an inordinate amount of my teen years listening to a record by David Fiuczynski called Lunar Crush. It came out in 1994 and it featured John Medeski’s keyboard work all over it. Much of the joy of this record can be found in how wide the palette of sounds is. Multiple keyboards, percussion appearing...Read More

There are some great transcontinental collaborations happening in the Twin Cities Jazz scene! Technology has made it feasible for arrangers from all over the world to get their charts performed and recorded by a topflight big band without having to muster all the players individually. Adi Yeshaya, Ned Kantar and other arrangers in town have...Read More

Jazz bands don’t last long enough. So many times you only hear the alchemy between a given ensemble for one recording and then things change up before the next trip to the recording studio. It is so rewarding when you hear an ensemble stick together and grow. Joan Hutton and Sue Orfield did just that...Read More

The world is paying enough attention to Cory Wong. . .but is Minnesota? Cory Wong is a bona fide festival headliner all around the world with accolades and ticket sales that match or exceed some of the titans in the world of jazz. But perhaps because he hails from Minnesota and is still based here,...Read More

After a long drought from any studio releases, the internationally celebrated Minnesota-based group Happy Apple has a new album out titled New York CD. The tone of this album is definitely leans to moody side with Michael Lewis’s saxophone frequently taking center stage supported by the interplay between bassist Erik Fratzke and drummer Dave King. Happy Apple...Read More