Articles by Michael Anderson

How often do we hear about an album getting a real ‘sequel’? Well, actually it has become a bit of ‘a thing’ in rap in recent years, but for the most part the results show it is an ill-advised trend at best. And Meatloaf started with a classic and ended up with a second sequel that included Celine Dion covers. So the history is not great! But now legendary jazz guitarist John Scofield is set to release UberJam Deux on July 2nd, so I wanted to go back and look at his 2002 release UberJam.

If I was to make a list of musical artists whose stuff I enjoy and who have influenced me through the decades, two names that would certainly be on the list are Pat Metheny and John Zorn. I have followed Metheny since the late 70s and have enjoyed most of his group and solo works; Zorn I discovered with ‘Naked City’, but since then have enjoyed sampling his voluminous output through the years. Yet in spite of each artist collaborating with tons of other musicians, they had never worked together – until now! Tap is from John Zorn’s Book of…

Back in 2010 Jon Wirtz impressed me and many others with his debut recording ‘Sea Level, featuring mature solo piano work that evoked comparisons to reknowned pianists such as Keith Jarrett, Vijay Iyer and Matthew Shipp. Now he has returned with his ‘Nuskool’ trio on an album of strong and diverse compositions called ‘Tourist’. The album had a ‘soft launch’ back in April but I have been enjoying it on my iPod for even longer. Let’s take a look!