Browse some recent OA2 Reviews.
Shelly Rudolph - The Way We Love
by George W. Harris, Jazz Weekly
Vocalist and composer Shelly Rudolph creates a rich mix of parlor portraits on this personal album with a rotating team of pianists cellist David Darling, guitarist Chance Hayden, bassist Dave Captein and a variety of guests. At times, Rudolph displays a tone similar to Norah Jones, folksy with Captein and Hayden with some Asian harmonics on "Close Enough" the waltzing "Humanity" and on the Nashville reflective of "Calling Me Home." Darling is... read more
Tom Tallitsch - Medicine Man
by Adam Greenberg, All Music Guide
A nice sophomore set from Philadelphia area saxman Tom Tallitsch, Medicine Man casually grooves its way through a series of original compositions while making full use of the accompanying band. Indeed, Tallitsch is heard less than one might expect on an album that he leads. Not that he's absent in any way from the proceedings, but this is definitely an ensemble album, not a solo project. The opening title track starts out the affair with a... read more
Libby York - DreamLand
by C. Michael Bailey, Wild Mercury Rhythm
It is an accomplishment when a jazz singer finds a comfortable center in presenting material in an understated, yet authoritative manner. New York vocalist Libby York has made a career specializing in this type of singing. It was been nine years since the release of Memoir (2014, Libby York Music), and York has taken a road less traveled for her Dreamland. Rather than the first or second-string standards, York has put much thought into selecting... read more
Gail Pettis - Here in the Moment
by Melissa Goldberg, O, The Oprah Magazine
Gail Pettis can't explain the difference between Lydian and Dorian scales, but that doesn't concern the 58-year-old jazz singer one bit. Because when Pettis saunters up to a microphone and unleashes her rich alto on a Nat King Cole classic, technicalities are the last thing on her mind. "Jazz is about expressing what's inside you in a real way,"she says. "When I sing, I feel like I'm doing what I was born to do. It's how I imagine flying... read more
Tom Tallitsch - Medicine Man
by Forrest Dylan Bryant, JazzTimes, July/August 2008
Expanding from a duo setting to a quintet for his sophomore CD release, Tom Tallitsch offers up pleasant, unassuming original compositions that keep the proceedings casual but agreeably propulsive. With Tony Miceli's brisk vibraphone and Victor Baker's uncluttered guitar supporting his throaty tenor saxophone tone, Tallitsch's band frequently takes on an airy, levitating quality. But there's a surging intensity at work too, as crosshatched... read more
Mai-Liis - Kaleidoscope
by C. Michael Bailey, Wild Mercury Rhythm
By the time Canadian vocalist/composer Mai-Liis (my LEASE) recorded her debut recording Mai-Liis On Life (OA2 Records, 2021), it had taken her 30 years to become an overnight sensation—and she may be skeptical of that. Refreshing is the fact that there is not one jazz standard on either her debut or its follow-up, Kaleidoscope. That fact alone places Mai-Liis in a class by herself. As a songwriter, critics have compared her to Joni Mitchell,... read more
The Taylor / Fidyk Big Band - Live At Blues Alley
by Jack Bowers, All About Jazz
Here's a second impressive album by the outstanding Taylor/Fidyk Big Band, in every respect a worthy successor to its superlative studio date, A Perfect Match, from three years ago. The same basic ingredients -- exhilarating charts by co-leader Mark Taylor, inspired blowing by the ensemble -- are amplified this time around by the adrenaline rush induced by the presence of an audience at Blues Alley in Washington, DC.
As before, the band is... read more
Owen Chen & Eternal Wind - The Ghibli Collection
by George W Harris, Jazz Weekly
Guitarist/composer Owen Chen brings perfectly blends tones of Asian with modern jazz on this luminous album. His band Eternal Wind includes Andrew Cheng/g, Cy Leo/harm, Cole Palenskuy/ts, Carlin Lee/p, Sean Hannon/b and Anton Kot/dr and together create rich tapestries of tone.
Some of the pieces such as "One Summer Day" and "My Neighbor Totoro" have a kind of Pat Metheny-esque landscape to them, lyrical yet gently dance, with strings crying... read more
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