Month: March 2026

(Dave Burrell at the piano on 3/13/2026 at Loove Labs Annex, Brooklyn; photo by James Koblin)

On March 13th, I had the pleasure of seeing the pianist Dave Burrell in a solo set, and I’ve been thinking about what makes Dave Burrell so special ever since. Burrell is an unforgettable stylist, but he’s not alone. There’s a whole school of playing that draws on multiple streams and styles from the vast piano literature, synthesizing history into a kaleidoscope at the keys. A summary of this school of musicians could fill a book; I’ll mention players like Jaki Byard, who brought a modernist approach to older styles like stride, or Don Pullen, who came to this synthesis from the outside, combining percussive technique and abstract clusters with the ability to summon Duke or Monk. Many other players can (and do) channel this history, but nobody does it with more authenticity than Dave Burrell. For the most stark example from Burrell’s discography, consider that on August 13, 1969, Burrell recorded Echo (Actuel 20), a free jazz noise fest which Burrell said was based on an “unstable interval of an augmented fourth” that he heard in police car sirens. Four months later, he was back in the studio recording his version of Puccini’s La bohème (Actuel 30, La Vie de Bohème). Setting these recordings side by side is a wild snapshot of extremes in tonality.  Unquestionably, Burrell’s music has mellowed, but to my ears, what I hear now is even better — he combines the mindset of an avant-gardist with a love of tonality that makes his music authentic in a way that many mix-and-match stylists don’t achieve. 

I’ve loved Burrell’s playing for years, but I’ve never seen him perform, so finally catching Burrell live was a must. The March 13th show that included Burrell’s set was part of Out Fest, a three-day festival of creative music ideally poised between the June’s Vision Festival (also hosted by Arts for Art) and January’s NYC Winter JazzFest. With the fierce winter we’ve had in NYC, we need more nights of jazz to hasten Spring! You can check the lineups here. The show took place at Loove Lab Annex in Brooklyn, which has a wonderful cozy vibe and every seat in the house is right up near the music. On March 13th, I was able to also catch a set of spoken word and poetry from Arts for Art leader Patricia Nicholson Parker (with turntablist Val Jeanty) and to close out the evening, Blue Reality, which featured Poughkeepsie jazz legend Joe McPhee and the wonderful trumpet player Ted Daniel (I missed the opener XXE, which is pianist Mara Rosenbloom, drummer Tcheser Holmes, and violinist gabby fluke-mogul). But I was there to see Dave Burrell, and was so happy to appreciate the worlds of sound he can still create. 

Burrell started his set with “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”; maybe that sounds cloying, but Burrell balanced the melody with spiky dissonance and didn’t play it long. After a couple minutes, he abruptly stopped mid tune and spoke to the audience, talking about bassist Jimmy Garrison, who Burrell has eulogized in his song “Teardrops for Jimmy,” first recorded in 1977 and included in his jazz legendary opera, Windward Passages. Using that song as a springboard, Burrell played for a seemingly stream-of-consciousness and uninterrupted 50 minutes, one idea progressing into another. Burrell explored familiar melodies from the American songbook – he introduced and then deconstructed “April in Paris,” returning to the first 8 bars (the “A” section of the tune) multiple times, but each time varying the tempo and harmonies, and breaking the melody up with percussive piano interludes. Gradually, he incorporated the melody of “Body and Soul,” but again slowing the tempo and suspending the song in a disembodied form that felt like an investigation of sound as much as melody. Several times, Burrell seemed to reach a suitable end point, but then kept on going, returning to the bridge of “April in Paris,” and then back to those first 8 bars, playing its repeated notes with chromatic overtones. The performance was meditative, cerebral, and quite beautiful. It also was another glimpse into the aesthetic throughline of Burrell’s music, where the rendering of melody is closely connected to interrogating song structures, and in virtually every Burrell performance, you’ll hear both of those modes presented, really two faces of the same coin. He’s an avant-garde romantic, in whose music you can hear attractive melody along with noise, catch echoes of opera and free jazz, but all without any irony or synthetic postmodernism. Instead, Burrell uses both dissonance and harmony to advance the pursuit of catharsis and beauty, something achieved through the cauldron of in-the-moment creation. He is an original, and at the age of 85, I can’t recommend highly enough that when you can go see him play, go.

To celebrate Dave Burrell’s music, on my radio show “Where Is Brooklyn,” I’ve put together a two-part, four-hour radio program of Dave Burrell’s music. Part One will air this Sunday morning, March 22, at 2 a.m., and Part Two next Sunday, March 29, at 2 a.m. Tune into Vassar College radio, wvkr.rog or if you’re near Poughkeepsie, New York, listen at  91.3 FM. 

Try and tune in, and if you can’t, make sure keep listening to the great Dave Burrell!

February, despite being the shortest month, surprised New Yorkers this year with the heaviest snowfall and lowest temperatures in years. With all that time indoors, and maybe as a refuge from the dark events in the world at large, there was ample opportunity to immerse oneself in music. Just as importantly, there was also time to think about that music rather than simply rush onto the next album. And a lot of great music to listen to! Here are a few of my favorites.

Kaja Draksler Octet – Bare, Unfolding
(Zavod Sploh and Clean Feed Records, released January 16, 2026)
Laura Polence – voice, mouth organ
Björk Níelsdóttir – voice, mouth organ, wood block (3), gong (1, 8)
Ada Rave – tenor saxophone, clarinet
Ab Baars – tenor saxophone, clarinet, shakuhachi
George Dumitriu – violin, viola
Kaja Draksler – piano, cowbell (3)
Lennart Heyndels – double bass
Onno Govaert – drums and percussion

Pianist and composer Kaja Draksler’s Bare, Unfolding is one of the remarkable albums of the year so far. Genre mixing is by this point its own genre – much of it can be thrilling, but blending old and new, high and low, can also produce music that’s simply inauthentic. So it was a revelation to hear how deeply Draksler has integrated disparate elements like Baroque music (two pieces are based on Handel), the haiku of Matsuo Basho, the aesthetic of art song, Eastern sounds, Western tonality, and experimental music practices – and make all of these elements feel so essential. Draksler has been exploring these ideas with these musicians for at least a decade, and building on Gledalec (2017) and Out For Stars (2020), Bare, Unfolding feels like the most fully realized statement from this group yet.  There’s real pathos on tracks like “Come See” (set to the haiku “Come, see real flowers of this painful world”), and in particular I’ll single out the reed playing of both Ada Rave and Ab Baars and the voices of Laura Polence and Björk Níelsdóttir. But the whole band is fantastic; I’m sure I’ve never heard anything like Bare, Unfolding. Certainly one of my 2026 favorites.

Tomeka Reid – dance! skip! hop!
(Out Of Your Head Records, released February 13, 2026)
Tomeka Reid – cello
Jason Roebke – bass, cassette
Mary Halvorson – guitar
Tomas Fujiwara – drums

I’ll join the chorus of praise for Tomeka Reid’s wonderful dance! skip! hop!, which is sure to top all the jazz polls. This is Reid’s fourth album with her state-of-the-art quartet, and here she further develops the striking concept of matching her cello with strings (Mary Halvorson’s guitar and Jason Roebke’s bass) plus Tomas Fujiwara’s detailed and conversational drums. I hardly need to add that Tomeka Reid and Mary Halvorson are one of the great pairings in music, and their alternating solos and comping lock into a shared wavelength few musicians can match. The simple and elastic melodies have an insouciant buoyancy, set against that rhythmic flexibility and fierce swing. It’s all delight and immensely replayable. Not to be missed.

Masayo Koketsu, Nava Dunkelman – Veins of Rain
(Relative Pitch Recordings, released February 20, 2026)
Masayo Koketsu – alto saxophone
Nava Dunkelman – percussion

Another album that warmed the cold winter days was Veins of Rain, a meeting of saxophonist Masayo Koketsu and percussionist Nava Dunkelman. Incredibly, this is their first time playing together, from the same session (as a trio with Tim Berne) documented on Poiēsis, also on Relative Pitch. A very productive session! Veins of Rain is led by Koketsu’s powerful and rich sound, which kicks off in burning mode, but as the album progresses  goes into a meditative, trance-like space that I found really rewarding. An ideal duet partner, I love the resourceful and elegant ways that Dunkelman finds to accompany the different approaches of the saxophonist. Veins of Rain is also beautifully paced, traversing a nuanced path from ecstatic blow-out to tranquil beauty. I look forward to more music from this powerful duo.

Nomad War Machine and Susan Alcorn – Contra Madre
(VG+ Records, released January 30, 2026 )
Susan Alcorn – pedal steel guitar
Julius Masri – drums
James Reichard – fretless guitar

February also brought an unexpected surprise in the form of a posthumous release from the great pedal steel guitarist Susan Alcorn. Alcorn tragically died just over a year ago, and like the passing of jaime branch, I think we’ll feel the void more acutely as time passes. So the release of Contra Madre, an unlikely collaboration of Alcorn with “these metal guys from Philly” (Alcorn’s words), is welcome. Those guys are drummer Julius Masri and guitarist James Reichard, who are Nomad War Machine, and their improv metal makes an interesting listen next to Alcorn’s transcendent tones. For me, the draw is hearing the uncanny beauty of Alcorn’s pedal steel again, and while I did enjoy this combination, I kept yearning for more space for Alcorn’s music to breathe. Make sure you go back and check out Alcorn classics like the solo albums Soledad and Curanera (“O. Sacrum Convivium” is one of the great moments in 21st-century music), and the excellent quartet album Pedernal. But Contra Madre is a welcome reminder of Alcorn’s greatness.

Mariel Roberts Musa – Sunder
(New Focus Recordings, released February 6, 2026)
on sunder: Conor Hanick, piano with field recordings
on Lightning Field: Mariel Roberts Musa, cello and Felix Fan, cello

Another perfect soundtrack to a snowy month, Sunder by Mariel Roberts Musa is a bold album, by turns atmospheric and intense. The title piece is a seven-movement suite where Roberts Musa concentrates on composition rather than cello, and features the piano of Conor Hanick. Hanick’s duet partner is field recordings made with Jacob Kirkegaard, that were created using microphones planted on the US-Mexico border wall. But the politics are only latent; the resulting ghostly shadows envelop the piano in subtle but otherworldly effects. For the album closer “Lightning Field,” Roberts Musa returns to cello, playing along with fellow cellist Felix Fan.

Pat Thomas & XT – Strata, Act (Joy Contemporary)*
(We Jazz – WJLP82, released January 30, 2026)
Pat Thomas – piano and electronics
Paul Abbott – “real and imaginary drums”
Seymour Wright – “actual and potential saxophone” (alto)

One of the best albums of 2022 was Attitudes of Preparation (Mountains, Oceans, Trees), a collaboration of Oxford, UK pianist and electronic musician Pat Thomas with XT, which is the duo of percussionist Paul Abbott and alto sax player Seymour Wright. I placed that album at #18 in my year-end round-up, but in hindsight, I really undervalued its intense channeling of Cecil Taylor and should have put it at the top of my list. So I was quite excited to listen to the new album from Thomas and XT, Strata, Act (Joy Contemporary)*, a massive release documenting five sets of live music from 2022 played at London’s Cafe Oto and Rote Fabrik in Zurich. I’m still listening and absorbing this abstract and fascinating music, but what’s really grabbed me so far is how Pat Thomas has integrated his approaches to acoustic and electronic music. This is especially apparent on the hour-long set from Cafe Oto that opens this collection (and is the focus of the vinyl edition). Here, Thomas constantly moves back and forth between electronics and piano, setting synthetic and organic music side by side. To my ears, this is a new chapter in Thomas’s music-making, and we also get to really hear the influence on Sun Ra on Thomas’ electronics, something he talks about in the interview I did with him. While I’m hearing Thomas as the lead voice, it is very much cooperative music – Seymour Wright structures the sounds with his unmistakable sax blasts that suddenly appear and then leave behind a suggestive silence (maybe what Wright means by “potential saxophone”). This is music defined by listening (for the band as well as the audience), and that silence is an important element. Abbott’s percussion greatly supports this evocative space, as he favors textural and structural elements over linear pulse-keeping. All quite fascinating, as I said, I’m still absorbing it. Thomas and crew never fail to surprise!