Fred Kaplan

February 2021 Jazz Record Reviews
Music and Recording Reviews
Thomas Conrad, Fred Kaplan  |  Feb 05, 2021  |  10 comments
Diana Krall: This Dream of You, Ella Fitzgerald: Ella: The Lost Berlin Tapes and Charles Mingus: @ Bremen 1964 & 1975.
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January 2021 Jazz Record Reviews
Music and Recording Reviews
Larry Birnbaum, Thomas Conrad, Fred Kaplan  |  Dec 31, 2020  |  2 comments
Fred Hersch: Songs from Home, Horace Silver Quintet: Further Explorations, Juliet Kurtzman/Pete Malinverni: Candlelight: Love in the Time of Cholera and Matthew Shipp Trio: The Unidentifiable.
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Recording of January 2021: Rainbow Sign
Recording of the Month
Fred Kaplan  |  Dec 15, 2020  |  3 comments
Ron Miles: Rainbow Sign
Ron Miles, cornet; Jason Moran, piano; Bill Frisell, electric guitar; Thomas Morgan, bass; Brian Blade, drums.
Blue Note (CD, 2LPs). Ron Miles, prod.; Colin Bricker, eng.
Performance *****
Sonics *****

If Ron Miles lived in New York instead of Denver, he would have become a jazz star long ago. With Rainbow Sign, his 12th album as a leader but his debut on a major label (at age 57), now's his time—or should be anyway.

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December 2020 Jazz Record Reviews
Music and Recording Reviews
Thomas Conrad, Fred Kaplan  |  Dec 04, 2020  |  0 comments
Dave Pietro: Hypersphere, Thumbscrew: The Anthony Braxton Project, Bobby Hutcherson: The Kicker and Raphael Pannier: Faune.
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November 2020 Jazz Record Reviews
Music and Recording Reviews
Thomas Conrad, Fred Kaplan  |  Oct 30, 2020  |  1 comments
Maria Schneider Orchestra: Data Lords, Keleketla, Joel Ross: Who Are You? and John Zorn and Jesse Harris: Songs for Petra.
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Revinylization #10: Bill Evans's Live at Montreux
Music and Recording FeaturesRevinylization
Fred Kaplan  |  Sep 22, 2020  |  11 comments
The late pianist Bill Evans may be the most reissued jazz musician in the catalogs of audiophile record labels. There are reasons for that: He played standards, mainly ballads (many audiophiles shun the avantgarde), almost never in groups larger than trios (stereo systems often do best with small-scale ensembles). Whether by design or chance, his best recordings were miked by superb engineers. Perhaps because of that, proprietors of high-end labels have cherished Evans's music with heightened passion.
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Manfred Eicher: "You Can't Record Everybody"
InterviewsMusic and Recording Features
Fred Kaplan  |  Oct 31, 2019  |  12 comments
There has never been a record producer like Manfred Eicher, founder and sole proprietor of ECM records, the German-based jazz (and sometimes classical) label that celebrates its 50th anniversary this month.

Eicher doesn't quite win the all-time prize for longevity. Edward Lewis started Decca (UK) in 1929 and owned it until 1980. David Sarnoff controlled RCA from 1919–1970. William Paley did the same at Columbia from 1938-1988. But unlike those other, financially heftier titans, who deferred to department heads and studio producers, Eicher has supervised every single one of ECM's albums—more than 1600 of them.

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The Best Jazz Albums of 2018
Fred KaplanMusic and Recording Features
Fred Kaplan  |  Dec 17, 2018  |  4 comments
Sorry I've been away from this space for so long. My day gig (national-security columnist for Slate) has kept me busy (as you can imagine), and I've got a tight deadline on a new book. Still, as Congreve observed, "Musick has Charms to sooth a savage Breast," and there's plenty of breast-beating savagery out there, so I've continued to listen, and here is my dispatch on the Best Jazz Albums (10 new and two historical discoveries) of 2018.
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Fred Hersch Trio, Live in Europe
Fred Kaplan
Fred Kaplan  |  May 23, 2018  |  5 comments
At age 62, pianist Fred Hersch is playing as rousingly and rivetingly as ever. His latest disc, Live in Europe (on the Palmetto label), may be his best trio album to date.
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Miles & Trane, The Final Tour: Copenhagen on LP
Fred Kaplan
Fred Kaplan  |  May 02, 2018  |  6 comments
The Final Tour, Volume 6 of Columbia Legacy's Miles Davis Bootleg Series—documenting Miles' quintet, featuring John Coltrane, live in Europe in March 1960—is one of the most revelatory new-old jazz albums in recent years. Of the five concerts on the 4-CD boxed set, one of them—the March 24 date in Copenhagen—is now out on 180-gram LP, and not only is the music thrilling, the sound quality is extraordinary: as vibrant as just about any live album in the Miles catalog.
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