Criss Cross Jazz new release March 2024

By titling his eighth Criss Cross album Over Here, trumpeter Jim Rotondi picks up on the sentiments he signified with The Move (Criss 1323), his seventh for the label. “It doesn’t necessarily mean moving somewhere else, but rather returning home, playing tunes with a lot of straight-ahead swing and interesting chord sequences with guys I’m comfortable with,” Rotondi stated in the liner notes I wrote for that kinetic 2009 recital.
 

That’s an effective description of what transpires on Rotondi’s latest swinging affair. But although he wasn’t misdirecting, he wasn’t telling the whole story. As it turned out, The Move indeed foreshadowed Rotondi’s decision in 2010 to leave New York for Austria for a position as Professor of Trumpet at the University of Graz. As indicated by the current title (which references George M. Cohan’s 1917 flagwaver “Over There” and Rotondi’s father’s service in Europe during World War 2), Rotondi is ensconced on the Continent thirteen years later, augmenting pedagogical responsibilities with several trips a year to New York and other U.S. waystations, and also touring the jazz clubs of central Europe, Italy, France, Spain and the U.K.
 

In fact, Over Here stems from a ten-day sojourn by a band of four New York-trained masters that opened with a jazz cellar gig in the Viennese suburb Bruck an der Leitha, proceeded to Neuberg, Germany, doubled back to Vienna’s prestigious Porgy and Bess club, continued with a drive to tenor saxophone maestro Piero Odorici’s club in Bologna, and then transitioned to Udine for the recording session.
 

The tour gestated from Rotondi’s desire to create a European group with tenor saxophonist Rick Margitza, based in Paris since 2003, as his front line counterpart, and pianist Danny Grissett, a five-time Criss Cross leader who’s resided in Vienna since January 2013. “I’ve known Rick virtually since I moved to New York in 1987,” the 60-year-old master recalls. “We’ve played many sessions together, but never a gig, and I thought it was time for us to do something."

Manuel Valera advises his students at New York University to write music every day. “I tell them that composition is essentially another instrument – the more you practice, the better you get at it,” says the 42-year-old piano master, who, by his count, has generated some 200 recorded pieces since he entered the fray in the early aughts.
 

Vessel, Valera’s second album for Criss Cross, showcases eight recent works, each “honoring a different person who’s influenced my music.” Valera made it in January 2023, nine years after presenting another eight originals on In Motion (Criss 1372) which featured a slamming iteration of his New Cuban Express ensemble, whose eponymous first CD had earned a 2013 Grammy nomination for “Best Latin Jazz Album.” The pieces on that straight-eighth oriented session mixed elements from various Afro-Cuban dialects with postbop, fusion jazz, funk and R&B, incorporating intricate beat modulation, odd meters, and intriguing ensemble color.
 

On In Motion, as on most of his 16 albums since 2004, Valera established the compositions as “the complete framework for the improvisations – although the solos, of course, are also important.” But here, as indicated by the title, Valera diverges, constructing pieces that are “vessels for improvising, like they wrote them on the old Blue Note records. You play the tune, you blow over the tune, then you play the tune again – the improvisation is as important as the composition. A lot is going on, but there’s still that connection to the older tunes – and a couple sound like they could have been from way back.”

Since he emigrated to the United States from Russia in 1991, Alex Sipiagin has earned an exalted international reputation as a no-technical-limits improvisor, sustaining a gorgeous sound throughout the trumpet’s registral range, navigating harmonic and rhythmic complexity with precision, passion, and abiding lyricism. Most of Sipiagin’s 12 previous albums for Criss Cross also showcase his contrapuntal, harmonically comprehensive compositions, full of interesting melodic twists and turns. On them, he projects the same voice that he improvises with but written out for more instruments.
 

For his 13th Criss Cross date, Mel’s Vision, the 55-year-old master – joined by A-listers tenor saxophonist Chris Potter, pianist David Kikoski,, bassist Matt Brewer and drummer Johnathan Blake – contributes two wonderful originials. But Alex addresses the session primarily as an opportunity to focus on interpreting music by others – a song by Potter, a Ukrainian folk song and four rarely covered gems from the jazz canon.
 

The project gestated after the 2016 release of Moments Captured (Criss 1395), when Criss Cross founder Gerry Teekens suggested that Sipiagin record a standards album. Before a contract could be executed, Teekens passed away in 2019. When his son, Jerry Teekens, Jr, reestablished the label, Sipiagin recorded Swing On This (Criss 1406), the fifth Criss Cross date by Opus 5, the cooperative quintet in which he interacts with tenor saxophonist Seamus Blake, pianist David Kikoski, bassist Boris Kozlov, and drummer Donald Edwards, all Criss Cross leaders and alumni of the Mingus Big Band. He took advantage of that occasion to remind Teekens fils of the standards project, and received a go-ahead.
 

The Standards From Film album was released on CD (Criss 1410) in October 2022.
 

Since August 18, 2023 the album is also available as a 2-LP set on 180 grams black vinyl with gatefold cover, as part of the Criss Cross Jazz vinyl (re-)release plan.
 

Joined by a rhythm section of generational contemporaries, each at the top of the jazz pyramid, (Sullivan Fortner, piano; Matt Brewer, bass; Obed Calvaire, drums) Moreno deploys a variety of attacks and tonalities to create dynamic tension in lyric declamations that he delivers with his signature plush, resonant tone, sublime articulation, and harmonic intelligence.