The Walsh Set Trio’s brand new album, Three, is unlike any trio incarnation I know. The band’s leader, Brian Walsh, has become synonymous with the most creative and boundary-pushing element of modern music in Los Angeles over the last decade. With a tone and virtuosity steeped in contemporary classical music, and an improvisational aesthetic far more adventurous and effortless than most, Brian has raised the bar in the LA scene as an individual, and on Three he puts his unique compositional aesthetic on full display.
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Gavin Templeton is the kind of musician who’s singing sound transcends time and space, captures the imagination, and leaves his listeners spellbound. On his latest release, Some Spinning, Some At Rest, his trio captures the essence of what jazz is at its very best: a exploration of musical and improvisational communication, rooted in song, and flowing from the heart.
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Jon Armstrong is a musical wizard. I don’t mean this as hyperbole. I mean that in every context in which I’ve witnessed Jon Armstrong make music he elevates himself, his band-mates, and his audience to a state of spiritual expansiveness while keeping his music grounded, earthy, and genuine. There is a simplicity and tunefulness in his voice that cuts straight to the soul and somehow takes the imagination to outer space!
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When I first met Alexander Noice, I knew he was a special character and a brilliant musician, but when I first heard his brainchild, Falsetto Teeth, I knew he was a visionary. It was one of those moments where you see a close friend break into a new plain of realization and bust open a world of potential you never knew waited within them. I’m not sure if it was their first show, but it was certainlyone of the first, and the promise it held was incredible! A promise that comes to full fruition in their brand new avant pop rock masterpiece, Boiling High Idol.
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A motivating factor for many artists is the desire for self-expression, a need to represent either explicitly or through abstraction the philosophy and/or biography of one's life. With the release of Southern California-based tenor saxophonist Jonathan Rowden's debut album, Becoming, he manages to do so in one concise, dramatic, heartfelt gesture.
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