Criss Cross Jazz new releases January 2023

Release date: January 6, 2023

CRISS 1413 CD

MICHAEL FEINBERG - BLUES VARIANT -

An intriguing element of Michael Feinberg’s superb Criss Cross debut is that the leader could easily have titled it “Bassist In The Background” (Fans of Duke Ellington’s wonderful 1960 LP "Pianist In The Background" will know what I mean). Throughout Blues Variant – which includes six tunefully percolating originals by Feinberg, one by tenor saxophonist Noah Preminger, and one by pianist Leo Genovese – the 35-year-old bass maestro hews to the mantra, “If you want to hear me solo, come to a gig, where I often play a solo on every tune”.

 

The album was recorded January 17, 2022 at the Samurai Hotel Recording Studio in NY. Recording engineer Mike Marciano also did the editing, mixing and mastering at Systems Two in NY.

Release date: January 27, 2023

CRISS 1414 CD

ALEX SIPIAGIN - MEL'S VISION -

Since he emigrated to the United States from Russia in 1991, Alex Sipiagin has earned an exalted international reputation as a no-technical-limits improvisor, sustaining a gorgeous sound throughout the trumpet’s registral range, navigating harmonic and rhythmic complexity with precision, passion, and abiding lyricism. Most of Sipiagin’s 12 previous albums for Criss Cross also showcase his contrapuntal, harmonically comprehensive compositions, full of interesting melodic twists and turns. On them, he projects the same voice that he improvises with but written out for more instruments.

 

For his 13th Criss Cross date, Mel’s Vision, the 55-year-old master – joined by A-listers tenor saxophonist Chris Potter, pianist David Kikoski,, bassist Matt Brewer and drummer Johnathan Blake – contributes two wonderful originials. But Alex addresses the session primarily as an opportunity to focus on interpreting music by others – a song by Potter, a Ukrainian folk song and four rarely covered gems from the jazz canon.

 

The album was recorded April 22, 2022 at the Samurai Hotel Recording Studio in NY. Recording engineer Mike Marciano also did the editing, mixing and mastering at Systems Two in NY.

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CRISS 1411 CD

Noah Preminger - Sky Continuous -

Noah Preminger brings with Sky Continuous, 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 (Criss 1397) and After Life (Criss 1404), and drumset icon 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, containing numerous portals for free expression – it never feels confined. Surprisingly, it’s only Preminger’s second documented exploration of the tenor saxophone trio function.

Sky Continuous came to be when Preminger reached out to Jerry Teekens, the namesake son of Criss Cross founder Gerry Teekens, who passed away in 2019. “Before Gerry died, we were talking about doing another record together, and he said, ‘You would sound great with Bill Stewart. Have you ever played with him?’ I said, ‘No, but I really enjoy his playing and that would be nice.’ So he said, ‘Why don’t we do a trio record with Bill and Kim Cass?’ He knew that I loved Kim’s playing. After Jerry decided to continue the label, I told him about his father’s suggestion."

CRISS 1410 CD

Mike Moreno - Standard From Film -

Like a well – wrought character in a Hollywood movie, Standards From Film, guitarist Mike Moreno’s fourth Criss Cross album, exists atop a solid, cogent back story. Recorded in December 2021, when the world and New York City – Houston-born Moreno’s home for more than two decades – were no longer on COVID lockdown, it documents the leader’s exhaustive investigations into the provenance of ten iconic standards that, as he puts it, “are the summer jazz workshop tunes” – they say you have to learn these songs if you want to be a jazz musician. You learn them very young or in the beginning days of your journey into this music.

 

The album was recorded December 22, 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.

CRISS 1409 CD

Misha Tsiganov - Misha's Wishes -

Misha Tsiganov, who lived in Leningrad in the former Soviet Union until he emigrated to the U.S. in 1991, at 25, has never shied away from a challenge. That’s apparent from the levels of complexity that Tsiganov embeds in the 18 arrangements and 9 originals on his three prior Criss Cross albums – The Artistry of the Standard (Criss 1367), Spring Feelings (Criss 1384), and Playing With The Wind (Criss 1401).

 

Tsiganov’s latest, Misha’s Wishes, doesn’t eschew technical complexity. But the feel of this sophisticated, emotionally nuanced program – performed by old friends trumpeter Alex Sipiagin, tenor saxophonist Seamus Blake, bassist Boris Kozlov and drummer Donald Edwards, themselves leaders of multiple Criss Cross dates, with whom Tsiganov feels such simpatico that he once postponed a recording session until all were available – is different than its predecessors.

CRISS 1408 CD

David Binney - A Glimpse Of The Eternal -

The tenth Criss Cross album with David Binney’s imprimatur, A Glimpse of the Eternal, is, he says, “completely different than anything I’ve ever done – chilled out, an honest and pleasant vibe, nothing too complicated or intense.”

 

If that self-description seems at odds with the intense, complex tonal personality that Binney has presented on his 30-album discography since 1990 ... well, that was his intention. He explains: “Initially, I wanted to do something like those almost commercial records from the ’50s or ’60s or ’70s, like a Gene Ammons record I have where he plays these ballad- like tunes for 2½ - 3 minutes.” He adds: “All the guys were super-enthusiastic about doing a straight-ahead ballads record.”

 

But as Binney researched and culled repertoire, he changed course. He decided to incorporate a few “more energetic” tracks and to record some covers of “obscure tunes that meant something to me.”

CRISS 1407 CD

Donald Edwards - The Color Of US Suite -

Timing is everything, and as Donald Edwards continues to make recordings, we are able to hear the clarity of his development as a composer and artist. This recording The Color Of US Suite carries with it the total range in expressions of the freedom concept, the obsession with hope through the infatuation of dreams - the disappointment, anger, and love for the framing of our evolving paradigm from within the prism of democracy. Donald captures those gradations of condition in a high-minded representation of passion, delivered with high-skilled precision, and soulful highs that are as exciting to the gutbucket enthusiast as it is intriguing for the high-brow aficionado.

The Color Of US Suite signifies the idealism of being in pursuit, eye on the prize, and evince a passion for study, discipline and integrity required to handle this music’s greatest demands. Donald Edwards and fellow musicians Anthony Wonsey, Ben Wolfe, David Gilmore and Abraham Burton have succeeded, and we are edified all the more higher for them having done so.

CRISS 1406 CD

Opus 5 - Swing On This -

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.

 

Opus 5 gestated in 2010, when Sipiagin and Blake, brainstorming over drinks at the bar in Chicago’s O’Hare Airport during a between-flights layover, decided to organize a new band to play original music that did not reference the music of Charles Mingus that they’d been playing together for many years in the Mingus Big Band, which Kozlov has music-directed since 2004. They recruited Kikoski, Kozlov and Edwards, each a colleague of long standing in the MBB. Edwards suggested the name, signifying on Kozlov’s big band arrangement of Mingus’ Opus 4 that all members admired. They contacted Criss Cross proprietor Gerry Teekens, who knew them all, and green-lit that first album in 2011. Through the next six years, “the five bandleaders and five sidemen,” as Kozlov puts it, enhanced their already considerable chemistry on periodic tours in Europe and Russia, developing material that they documented from one date to the next.

 

During the seven-year gap that separates Tickle from Swing On This, the members found fewer opportunities to play. Everyone was busy with other projects. Covid-19 made it problematic to convene. Blake and Sipiagin relocated to Europe. Then, last summer, when Blake scheduled a trip in New York to conduct personal business, Opus 5 seized the opportunity to go in the studio to record eight pieces with engineer Mike Marciano. With a single brief rehearsal under their belt, they navigate the repertoire with fluent mutual intuition and deep commitment, as though they’d been probing it for months.