ANGUS REID, ANDY HEDGECOCK and MARIA DUARTE review On The Sea, A Useful Ghost, Brunello: The Gracious Visionary, and Pinocchio Unstrung
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Best of 2020: Jazz albums
JAZZ HISTORIAN: Lafayette Gilchrist
[Luigi Rosa/CC]
RON JACOBS enjoys a great tale, told by a US communist, of the lives of working-class New Yorkers
BRENT CUTLER searches a new history of contemporary Iran for an understanding of the Islamic Republic, finding both interesting detail and glaring omissions
MARIA DUARTE recommends the true story of the remarkable woman who sued Donald Trump for sexual assault not once, but twice
KENNY MacASKILL is disappointed by a polemical, rather than factual, account of the Lone Star State and its political path since the civil war
PAUL DONOVAN is fascinated by the lives of Charles and Mary Bagot, and the insight this biography shines on the morals of pre-Victorian society
GORDON PARSONS appreciates fine performances and a feel for ambiguity, but misses the music of the dialogue
THREE albums of 2020 are not only powerful jazz artefacts that challenge and break through many musical norms and genres but are also resonating commentaries on today — the year’s key moments expressed in raw and beautifully inventive sounds.
Pianist Lafayette Gilchrist is from Baltimore, a city steeped in resistance to racism, and that experience is starkly intoned on his trio’s double album Now in such tracks as the rampaging Assume the Position.
“When you come to Baltimore,” he says, “you need to show some respect for the struggle within the town and how strong the people are on the ground here.”
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