Drifting back closer to the avant-garde territory that they cut their teeth on, Medeski, Martin & Wood explore percolating sonic textures on The Dropper. Released by Blue Note in late 2000, the jazz trio’s seventh album is a complex blend of Latin jazz, haunting soundscapes, hip-hop grooves, and…
As the only jazz band to be accepted by the neo-hippies of the HORDE ’90s, Medeski, Martin & Wood pulled off the strange coup of being embraced by rock and jazz audiences, who both loved their endless improvisations. They managed to walk the fine line dividing between the two…
Vocalist Cassandra Wilson has used her 15 years at Blue Note to explore the interpretive range of her voice, whether singing tunes by Van Morrison, Robert Johnson, Lewis Allan, Miles Davis, or Hoagy Carmichael. In many ways, Wilson has offered a new view of the standard by using classic…
Cassandra Wilson’s swinging for her own creative fences this time. The sultry, gentle, acoustic guitars on her last five recordings have been largely jettisoned for a more keyboard-and percussion -friendly approach — which includes lots of programming and loops. To that end, she’s enlisted flavor-of-the-year producer T-Bone Burnett and…
Cassandra Wilson has garnered a deserving reputation for her soulful, visionary reads of songs by legendary composers old and new, from Robert Johnson to Van Morrison. On Glamoured, Wilson composed half the album, and her songs are as provocative and deserve the same weight of grace critically afforded her…
Cassandra Wilson continues to move down a highly eclectic path on Belly of the Sun, the somewhat belated follow-up to Traveling Miles. While displaying a jazz singer’s mastery of melodic nuance and improvisatory phrasing, Wilson draws on a variety of non-jazz idioms — roots music, rock, Delta blues, country,…
Singer Cassandra Wilson, who has had a rather diverse career that has ranged from the free funk of M-Base to standards à la Betty Carter, has in recent times adopted a folk-oriented style a little reminiscent of Nina Simone. On New Moon Daughter her repertoire ranges from U2 to…
A tribute album by Cassandra Wilson to Miles Davis seems like a very logical idea, but this CD is actually less than one would expect. Wilson’s deep voice gives a downbeat feel to the music, her lyrics for such Davis-associated songs as “Miles Runs the Voodoo Down,” “Seven Steps…
Cassandra Wilson has steadfastly refused to be pigeonholed or confined to any stylistic formula. Her highly anticipated Blue Note debut may stir renewed controversy, as she is once again all over the place. She begins the set with her intriguing version of “You Don’t Know What Love Is.” Then…
