The second album from Alden Hellmuth doesn’t deal in aura, vibe or chill. Instead, the evocatively named NYC alto saxophonist brings in a remorseless funk drummer and two bassists, delivering a burly, sharp-cornered album of aggressive, punk-informed jazz that still makes room for melody and introspection. You could call it Blitzkrieg Bebop, if you wanted. Just don’t call it ambient.
Category: Jazz
The Tomeka Reid Quartet :: Dance! Skip! Hop!
The Tomeka Reid Quartet has been together for twelve years. And it shows. Released earlier this year via the Richmond, Virginia based Out Of Your Head Records, Dance! Skip! Hop! finds Reid, Mary Halvorson, Jason Roebke, and Tomas Fujiwara moving through five compositions where written form and improvisation become nearly indistinguishable.
John Coltrane Quartet :: Ballads (1963)
The central mystery of Ballads is how an album of standards, recorded during one of the most radical periods in jazz history, feels every bit as profound as Coltrane’s more adventurous work. In this installment of the Midnite Jazz column, we explore the mystery of John Coltrane’s Ballads, its place in his discography, and the power of restraint.
Victor Vieira-Branco’s Bark Culture :: The Giant Is Awkward
A new voice enters the conversation. Enthralling, mysterious, and beautifully disorienting, The Giant is Awkward finds Bark Culture widening its range and sharpening its identity as pianist Sam Yulsman opens new possibilities within the group’s sound. It’s a significant step forward for a band already operating from a position of uncommon chemistry.
Sam Gendel & Sam Wilkes :: Unrelated
On their fourth LP together, Unrelated, the West Coast duo trades saxophone and bass for synthesized textures, artificial tones, and strange tropical pulse. A wobbly set that ventures deeper into the Uncanny Valley.
SML :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview
With Spontaneous Music Live, their new album for International Anthem, SML finally documents that experience in full: two sprawling, unedited performances recorded at Zebulon that capture the band shape-shifting in real time. Ahead of SML’s June 26th and 27th performances at Teragram Ballroom celebrating Aquarium Drunkard’s 21st anniversary, we gathered all five members together to discuss improvisation, groove mechanics, communication, martinis, and more.
Stolen Moments From A Life Well-Lived :: Sonny Rollins, 1930-2026
From Birdland broadcasts and bridge-side practice sessions to late-night television, Leonard Cohen collaborations, and a final summit meeting with Ornette Coleman, Sonny Rollins spent nearly seven decades treating improvisation as a form of spiritual inquiry. In the wake of his passing at 95, we revisit a handful of essential films, broadcasts, and performances that capture the humor, velocity, deep concentration, and eternal forward motion of a musician who never stopped searching for the unknown.
Jeff Parker ETA IVtet :: Happy Today
If The Way Out of Easy marked the emergence of the ETA IVtet as an entity separate from the site of the band’s origins, Happy Today serves as another milestone: It’s the first ETA IVtet record taped somewhere other than Enfield Tennis Academy. Capturing a 2025 set at the much-larger Lodge Room, the third album from guitarist Jeff Parker, saxophonist Josh Johnson, bassist Anna Butterss and drummer Jay Bellerose shows a band with more room to move and more space to listen. Over two meditative, grooving and restless long improvisations, Parker and the ETA IVtet hone their connection, deepen their focus, loose their restraints and continue their determined yet serendipitous transformation.
Stix Hooper :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview
As a member of The Crusaders, drummer Nesbert “Stix” Hooper’s life in music is a testament to the power of the groove. With his rhythms at the foundation, the band blended R&B, jazz, rock, funk, and eventually fusion, and his playing would go onto provide crucial samples for beats utilized by artists like J Dilla, Madlib, Three Six Mafia, and many more, making him, according to his label, “arguably the most sampled drummer of all-time.” He joins Aquarium Drunkard to discuss his new album and storied history—and one necessary ingredient that should be in every pot of gumbo.
Lee Shook on the Sun Ra Day Festival :: 2026
Everyone knows he came from Saturn. But his earthly form, that of a young jazz prodigy Sonny Blount, was born on May 22, 1914, in Birmingham, Alabama. And Birmingham is where the the Sun Ra Day Festival, a multi-day, multi-city event—with outposts in London and Nashville—is rooted. Commemorating the 112th anniversary of his earthy arrival, the festival’s aim is to explore and expand the cosmic legacy of Ra with film screenings, talks, and a performance by his Arkestra, under the leadership of the 102-year-old saxophonist Marshall Allen, who studied directly with Ra for decades. Organizer Lee Shook joins us to discuss.
Charles Mingus :: A Modern Jazz Symposium of Music and Poetry
An overlooked experiment from a remarkably ambitious late fifties period of bassist Charles Mingus, 1958’s A Modern Jazz Symposium of Music and Poetry doesn’t actually include poetry in the traditional sense. Episodically exploring the Harlem-based narrator’s relationship with jazz, the elongated “Scenes in the City” features spoken word vignettes by actor Melvin Stewart and was partially penned by Langston Hughes. In addition to the piece’s music cues of Mingus and his band, the rest of the material drops the verbal experiments in favor of equality enticing tracks that went on to inform the seminal Mingus Ah Um.
Sun Ra Arkestra :: Live In Berlin, 1970
Off-axis early peak expansion. Captured at a moment when the Arkestra was stretching further into its own woozy mythos, Berlin 1970 hangs in low orbit, charged with a sidelong electricity. Grooves materialize, then fracture the frame—sliding from radical abstraction to something that starts to hold.
Laurindo Almeida Quartet Featuring Bud Shank (1955)
Before landmark bossa nova records like Antônio Carlos Jobim’s The Composer of Desafinado, Plays (1963) and Getz/Gilberto (1964), there was Laurindo Almeida Quartet Featuring Bud Shank (1955). This quiet trailblazer of Braz-jazz not only meets all the criteria for Midnite Jazz, but also captures the nocturnal side of midcentury Brazilian samba/West Coast Jazz fusion.
Gregory Uhlmann :: Extra Stars
The SML guitarist moves away from the instrumental collective’s fragrant, glitched-up grooves on his new solo album, instead charting a path through weirder waters. Featuring a wealth of pedals, loops, samples and synths, Uhlmann creates a strikingly diverse yet surprisingly simple world, one in which wisdom and naivete strike a tentative balance. Though his sound may be warped and stretched, Uhlmann’s peculiar emotional resonance rings clear and true.
Florian Pellissier Quintet :: Pacifiques Biches
Jazz grip. Via Paris, the Florian Pellissier Quintet dropped their fifth long-player, Pacifiques Biches, in the waning days of last year, casting a subtle, if luminous, glow over the tinsel-lit holiday hustle. Echoing the reflective sophistication of 1970s European jazz, the album weaves atmospheric textures and interplay into a nuanced tapestry of understated restraint. Impressively, and this is no small feat, its nine tracks maintain a contemporary edge without slipping into the well-trodden traps of obvious pastiche.