Michaeö Jackson 2022

A renowned poet has a new album out Friday titled “The Gospel According To Nikki Giovanni.” In addition to publishing dozens of poetry works, Nikki Giovanni has recorded several spoken word albums over the course of 50 years. But this time, she’s doing something a little different. The new album, a collaboration with saxophonist Javon Jackson, is a collection of gospel hymns and spirituals set to jazz. Growing up in the Baptist church, Giovanni says gospel music was instrumental to understanding herself as a poet. “The spirituals had a message,” she says. “They weren't just some people woke up one morning or came from working in the evening and said, ‘Oh, let's sit down and sing.’ They were sharing information with each other.”

Avid Jazz here presents four classic Milt Jackson albums, including original LP liner notes on a finely re-mastered double CD.
‘The Jazz Skyline’, ‘Milt Jackson Quartet’, ‘Telefunken Blues’, ‘Plenty Plenty Soul’ plus three tracks with the Thelonious Monk Quartet. ‘The Jazz Skyline’ finds Milt in 1957 in a relaxing blowing session, perhaps a thousand miles away from the more structured and complex music he was making with his other ‘day’ band, John Lewis and The Modern Jazz Quartet. For the ‘Quartet’ sessions two years earlier in 1955 Jackson is joined by Horace Silver, Percy Heath and Connie Kay in a set comprising mostly standard material, but none the less intriguing for that…

During 2020 I noticed that I was gravitating - as a listener - to more intimate, human-sounding music. Nick Drake. Joni Mitchell. I wanted to hear skin on guitar string, or a voice that sounded as clear and close as if that person were sitting right next to me. Looking back, it makes sense that I was seeking out that human touch in a time that was so robbed of it. Just like everybody, it was a hard time for me. Christmas had been loving but distant, it was a bloody cold winter. In my head, so many conflicting thoughts were twisted around one another as I was trying to make sense of the situation. I needed to vent. And so, in January 2021 I started writing. Like therapy, pretty much. I wanted to make something warm, something soothing. A blanket I could throw around myself and snuggle into. And not only that: I wanted to share it. And so to help me finish this album, I called on many old friends who lent their musicianship to these songs which means that now (for me) this record is fuelled not by solitariness, but friendship instead.