This year’s honors go to the appropriately titled album of Scotsman Peter Johnstone and his International Organ Quartet.
Personnel
Peter Johnstone (trumpet), (Tommy Smith, tenor saxophone), Joe Locke (vibraphone), Alyn Cosker (drums)
Recorded
in 2025
Released
as PJ in 2025
Track listing
Resistance Is Futile / New Beginnings / Fleeting Dreams / Shape Shifters / When You Were Born (For Logan) / Beyond Everything / The Riddler / The Four Horsemen
Something clicks, as they say, on Peter Johnstone’s coupling of Hammond organ with vibraphone (Joe Locke!) and tenor saxophone (Tommy Smith), as they move through challenging themes with command and verve. He sets up a flexible avant groove, climaxing with the sizzling Beyond Everything, further uplifted by the flame throwing Tommy Smith. Johnstone’s palette also includes lullaby-ish moods, notably When You Were Born, defined by engaging conversations between Johnstone and the constantly creative Locke.
A very rare combination, organ and vibes. Some Johnny Hammond Smith records featuring Lew Winchester or Freddie McCoy and vibraphonist Johnny Lyttle plus Milton Harris come to mind. Johnstone, pianist, organist and composer, part of the Scottish Jazz Orchestra, takes a different path than classic soul jazz, refreshingly building on a tradition of progressive organ jazz and giving his own spin to the aesthetic that makes the Hammond organ an equal melodic and harmonic partner to the other instruments. Excellent effort.
Adam Scone – Low & Slow (2021) / Brother Jack McDuff – Live At Parnell’s (2022) / Steve Snyder Trio – Prime Vintage (2023) / Mike LeDonne – Wonderful! (2024)
This month, I spoke with photographer Ron Eckstein (pictured above with Celia Cruz in the background) about his unique career as a photographer of jazz, Latin jazz, blues and rock & roll in Hawaii and New York. Eckstein started taking shots of New York city life when he drove a cab in the 1980’s. Soon, he became the house photographer of clubs in the New York area, taking photographs commissioned by, among others, The New York Times.
The Dam Jawn manages to come up with something refreshing time and again, here in cooperation with ace American trumpeter Jeremy Pelt.
Personnel
Jeremy Pelt (trumpet), (Martin Diaz, alto saxophone), Frank Groenendijk (tenor saxophone), Joan Fort (guitar), Philip Lewin (bass), Nitin Paree (drums)
Recorded
on February 26, 2025 at Wisseloord Studios, Hilversum
Released
as Dox 703 in 2025
Track listing
Sooryast / Triphasic / Sinkin’ / Floatin’ / Influx / Checkin’ / Hotel / I Got A Boogaloo / Don’t You Know I Care / Tongue Twister
Trisaphic? Thrashfisch? Ah, what the hell. A killer record by The Dam Jawn, that’s for sure. An acute expansion of the tradition. After Master St. (2023) and Forward (2024), guitarist Joan Fort, alto saxophonist Martin Diaz, tenor saxophonist Frank Groenendijk, bassist Philip Lewin, drummer Nitin Paree, Amsterdam cats who’d bonded in Philadelphia for a while with the top-rate altoist Dick Oatts, meet with another American class act, Jeremy Pelt on trumpet.
Starting a band is no cinch, the challenge is to keep it in business and as you can see and hear, The Dam Jawn has met demands. Pelt, with his remarkable strong tone and fluent improvisations, is like a fish in the water of the neo-modernist bunch. Paree’s Sooryast, built on a hypnotic polyrhythm that one can easily imagine would’ve been nicked/re-shaped by J. Dilla or MF Doom, provided they’d still be alive, a tune that travels a misty path somewhere between Bitches Brew and Woody Shaw’s Blackstone Legacy, and Diaz’s title track, a stately melody with tinges of both military ceremony and elegy, provide Pelt with ample room to demonstrate his versatility, formerly his vibrant meanderings under a dark purple sky, latterly his canny less-is-more lyricism.
Chockfull of strong tunes, equally divided between band members, evidently Triphasic is a step forward for The Dam Jawn, alternating for instance between Fort’s Latin-ish Hotel 17, marked by beautifully off-beat but perfect movements that steal your heart away, and Paree’s Floatin’, which does justice to the title, a song that rocks like a little sailboat. They’re keeping it real with the neo-bop of Diaz’s Tongue Twister and Ellington’s ballad Don’t You Know I Care.
Here, Fort reminds of the René Thomas sound – could be worse. Other times, the guitarist uses pedal effects, at one time perhaps a bit overdone, but in general, his edgy sound contributes cannily to the album’s progressive attitude. The Dam Jawn’s got it made and its adaptation to American greats seems limitless.
Cory Weeds & Jerry Weldon (tenor saxophone), Miles Black (piano), John Lee (bass), Jesse Cahill (drums)
Recorded
on October 28, 2024 at Warehouse Studios, Vancouver
Released
as Cellar in 2025
Track listing
Hey Lock! / Princess / Toy / Olé / Just As Though You Were Here / Oh Lady Be Good / I Had The Craziest Dream / One Flight Down / 323 Shuter
Cory Weeds’s Cellar label features some of the best tenor saxophonists in the business, Eric Alexander and Grant Stewart among those, young guns like Jacob Chung and not least veteran class act Jerry Weldon, New Yorker that played with Lionel Hampton, Brother Jack McDuff, Cedar Walton, George Benson. Big man with a big sound, and a head full of hot ideas, teaming up with Weeds himself on Weeds Meets Weldon in a band that worked together for a handful of gigs, featuring pianist Miles Black, bassist John Lee and drummer Jesse Cahill.
You get two flavors for the price of one, Weldon’s bossy and energetic style and Weeds’s lean, more Mobley-ish way of playing, firmly based in the hard bop vein, stretching its limit with the challenging ‘sleepers’ by Clifford Jordan, Princess and Toy. Just As Though You Were Here is rich with nuance and melodic invention, for minute after minute, a prime example of Weldon the balladeer. Miles Black speaks his witty and buoyant piece in Freddie Redd’s Latin-tinged Olé.
They all find joy in the archetypical changes of Weeds’s fast-paced 323 Shuter, a kinetic ending of a sympathetic effort to carry on the rich tradition of the tenor duet.
Quartet of Amsterdam-based bassist and composer raises its game, inspired by desperation and confusion.
Personnel
Floris Kappeyne (piano), Aleksander Sever (vibraphone), Omer Govreen (bass), Wouter Kühne (drums)
Recorded
on January 20 & 21 at Reservoir Studios, NYC
Released
as JMI 25 in 2025
Track listing
Side A: All Things Equal / The Pole/Call / For Granted / Side B: Comfort / Rivers (Intro) / Narrowing / Waiting For Wouter
You’re a musician and sick of diseases and the disease or you have childhood traumas that are strong as the jawbones of a hyena, you’re transfixed by the beautiful eyes of the moon, the toilet is clogged and the rent is due and the lamp post asks you to dance or you’re Jewish bassist Omer Govreen, based in Amsterdam, in a good place, sidekick to luminaries as Michael Moore and Tineke Postma, but you’re in the middle of global chaos and trying to make sense of what essentially is senseless, either way, love or the leaking faucets of fate or war, you can’t help but spill some of this in your work, outlet for various emotions.
Equilibrium between intense and melancholic, enervating and cathartic, All Things Equal, the second album of Govreen’s quartet following 2022’s Maya featuring pianist Floris Kappeyne, vibraphonist Aleksander Sever and drummer Wouter Kühne, is a sound to behold. All cats equal, so to speak, they wander freely through Govreen’s expressionist landscape, never losing the big picture and with a clear focus obviously gained from experience of playing together for a long time.
Among many delights, the elegiac All Things Equal is beautifully brought to its conclusion with a repetitive strain that is worked out dynamically by all concerned, The Pole/Call is a painting that mixes the sweetest pink with spots of deep purple, Narrowing a sparkling and subtle polyrhythmic spree. Here and there, the link between bop and Ornette Coleman is skittishly defined, a playful side to a record that depends strongly on Govreen’s flexible and warm-blooded bass playing.
You can’t imagine someone else, a trumpeter, a guitarist, joining this outfit. This is it, this is as it should be. An acoustic jazz quartet that inventively strives for the way Radiohead or Edward Munch worked up strong emotions. High praise.
Hep cat Sam Ghezzi and his European compatriots of blues and swing are gathering steam this year. Trento-born Ghezzi has been part of the Amsterdam jazz and blues scene since the late 2010’s and is currently based in Paris. During a talk that we recently had for the Dutch Jazzism magazine, Ghezzi said: “From everywhere in the world, freaks that focus strictly on certain periods of swing and bebop are gathered in Paris. Scenes within scenes, so to speak. I’m kind of a free bird and jump from one to the other. This way, I’m learning a lot of stuff.”
Nothing but the truth. And it needs to be said that the singer, saxophonist and blues harp player performs with verve and wit. Entertainment value is high, Ghezzi pushing crowds and band mates to the zestful limit as a bug-eyed cross between Speedy Gonzales and Louis Prima, without loss of musicianship, a combination all too rare these days.
Ghezzi fronts several bands, most of which also consist of the sassy rhythm section of bassist Cesar Fuente and drummer Joe Korach. The Hi-Stakes is an uplifting jump ‘n’ blues ‘n’ jive ‘n’ boogaloo outfit, based on guitarist Linus Eppinger’s nifty tunes. It recently released its second album Do It!. Bad Boy is the outlet for Sam Ghezzi Blues Band, featuring local hero Dusty Cigaar on guitar.
The Roaring Cats, featuring Mo van der Does on clarinet, seems inspired by the good ol’ swing and dance band days of Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Jimmy Lunceford, Jean Goldkette, Raymond Scott… Good ol’ stuff in a spanky jacket, all original tunes. Play Roaring Cats is super-witty, remarkably hot, while Ghezzi stretches out flexibly and frivolously with a voice that blends with its septet like whipped cream and hot chocolate.
In the 1970’s, tenor saxophonist Scott Hamilton made his entrance in the jazz world as a young player with a remarkable sense of swing and a warm-blooded saxophone sound reminiscent of the great swing saxophonists. Very prolific ever since, Hamilton withstood every trend and remained true to his original way of dealing with the Great American Songbook.
Hamilton has always been warmly received in Europe. In The Netherlands, he played and recorded with Rita Reys, Rein de Graaff and The Metropole Orchestra, among others. Currently, Hamilton is linked with The Ghost, The King & I, the trio of Dutch pianist Rob van Bavel, one of Europe’s greatest pianists, guitarist Vincent Koning and bassist Frans van der Geest. The Ghost, The King & I have started a crowdfunding campaign to make the release of a new album possible in the near future.
A good match, positively a win-win situation. Over the years, The Ghost, The King & I has succeeded in breathing new life into standards and evergreens in a quite imposing and graciously swinging way. Their last album is We Got Rhythm from 2024, a new look at the work of Gershwin.
