Jason Yaeger

Jason Isbell and The 400 Unit released audio of their February 29 performance from the 2020 Innings Festival in Tempe, Arizona via Bandcamp. The Leap Year Day set marked The 400 Unit’s last show before stay at home orders went into place. The show features a nearly career-spanning set from Jason Isbell and The 400 Unit and kicks off with “Go It Alone” from their 2011 album, Here We Rest. The band then delivered more recent material with “Hope The High Road” from their 2017 album, The Nashville Sound, followed by the title track from Isbell’s 2015 LP, Something More Than Free.

The adventurous pianist, composer, and bandleader Jason Moran added guitarist Marvin Sewell to his band on 2005's Same Mother. Sewell is back and melding further with his own funky blues-based playing on Artist in Residence, which is a far-reaching jazz record combining elements of post-bop, New Orleans jazz, funk, blues and even post-20th century classical music to Moran's array of shades and colors to play with. The repetitive sampled spoken word loop by Adrian Piper which acts as the ground for both the opener "Break Down" and "Artists Ought To Be Writing" is a bit h jarring when the band lights up under her. As she chants "Break down the barriers/Break down, misunderstanding/Break down, the artworld/Break down, the artist/Break down, the general public . .," the band uses it (looped continually through the piece, even in the solos) to ground everything in a circular rhythmic principle…

Jason Moran's fourth Blue Note album, a highly idiosyncratic solo piano venture, attempts to reconcile a staggeringly diverse set of influences into a cohesive artistic vision. Beginning with stride master James P. Johnson's "You've Got to Be Modernistic," the omnivorous young pianist then takes that title to heart by personalizing everything from Robert Schumann's "Auf Einer Burg" to Muhal Richard Abrams' "Time Into Space Into Time" to Afrika Bambaataa's "Planet Rock." Among the originals are two more chapters in Moran's ongoing "Gangsterism" series, as well as the closing "Gentle Shifts South," one of his simplest, most affecting melodies. Not unlike Brad Mehldau's Largo, which was released around the same time, Modernistic explodes jazz piano conventions by addressing the issue of sound…

Grammy Award-winning singer, songwriter and musician Jason Isbell and his band the 400 Unit release their highly anticipated new album, Reunions, via Southeastern Records / Thirty Tigers. Produced by Grammy Award-winning producer Dave Cobb and recorded at Nashville’s historic RCA Studio A, the album features 10 new songs written by Isbell.