I don’t like doing the comparison thing. It’s an easy target for snark, practically asking to be rebuked, and, when you get to the heart of it, it’s a lazy writing device. BUT… not for nothing, when I listen to Winds of Change, it’s like the rush of springtime and hope and rejuvenation that I feel when listening to a classic hardbop recording like Duke Pearson’s Sweet Honey Bee. There’s nothing quite like an album with melodies that loft upward as if given wings, harmonies that stir up gentle breezes that are somehow both warm and cool, and tempos that elicit a sense of what a walk through the park in low-gravity conditions might do for the soul. Alexa Tarantino brings all this on her 2019 release. There’s something delightfully old-school about this recording, and sometimes that’s everything.
Your album personnel: Alexa Tarantino (alto & soprano saxophones, alto flute), Christian Sands (piano), Joe Martin (bass), Rudy Royston (drums), and Nick Finzer (trombone).
I’ve written negative reviews of three musicians on this site. They were as follows: Bill Frisell, Bobby Hutcherson, and Matt Ulery. Frisell and Hutcherson are jazz giants, and responsible for landmark recordings, and over the course of their careers have been instrumental in the advancement of jazz. I ripped…
Sometimes putting words to things drains them of their magic. Laboriously describing every detail of a kaleidoscopic display will never impart the beauty of its unfolding and rejoin. A vivid dream of whole new mythological lands is likely to lose some of its majesty when the dream is scribbled…
The mercurial personality of Crosswinds contrives to never fully reveal its true nature. It holds something back at all times, and the apex of the album’s homestretch doesn’t manifest a ringing clarity. It’s as if words Christoph Irniger devised a complex jigsaw puzzle that purposefully omitted a few strategic…
Jan 18 2020
Best of 2019 #69: Alexa Tarantino – “Winds of Change”
Your album personnel: Alexa Tarantino (alto & soprano saxophones, alto flute), Christian Sands (piano), Joe Martin (bass), Rudy Royston (drums), and Nick Finzer (trombone).
Released on Posi-Tone Records.
Music from New York City.
Listen | Read more | Available at: Amazon
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By davesumner • Recap: Best of 2019 • 0 • Tags: Alexa Tarantino, Best Jazz of 2019, New York City, Posi-Tone Records, Rudy Royston