I’m getting so much enjoyment out of this record. Part of it is that I’m going through a piano trio phase, but it’s also just an excellent album. Danish former piano prodigy Linnert turns in his first trio recording with two immensely sympathetic improvisors, bassist Richard Andersson and drummer Allan Mednard. The program features some top-notch tunes by modern jazz standouts, some Linnert originals, and three spontaneous improvisations from which the album takes its title, which appears to be Persian for “shade” or “shadow.”
It opens with two covers, Carla Bley’s melodic, melancholy “Ida Lupino” (which I might’ve guessed was a sad Bowie ballad), and Paul Motian’s equally blue but forward looking “Once Around The Park,” on which Mednard, brushes in hand, subtly flexes his chops. One high point for me is “Nefertiti,” Wayne Shorter’s great tune that became the title track of Miles Davis’s last great acoustic album; Andersson and Mednard sit in a deep groove as Linnert limns cool piano lines, and Andersson delivers a tasty, tuneful solo. Another is Thelonious Monk’s playful “Boo Boo’s Birthday,” which is recognizably Monk-ish but not a slavish imitation.
Both of Linnert’s compositions are pensive affairs. “Thelious” has an abstract, elegiac feel; and the album closer “Nūr-e chashm” is a short and bittersweet late night blue ballad that hearkens back to early Bill Evans. 
Altogether Sayeh is a solid set that covers a lot of ground, but stays grounded in solid musicianship that’s not afraid to convey deep emotions.
Trumpeter Joe Magnarelli has been a New York scene stalwart for something like four decades, playing with seemingly everyone in everything from small enembles to big bands. This time out with Concord, his third outing on SteepleChase, he’s put together a quartet featuring a rhythm section of younger players for an energetic double handful of originals and standards. Magnarelli has known each of these three players since they were youngsters just starting out, and played in club settings with each separately, but it’s the first time together as a rhythm section for pianist Victor Gould, bassist Paul Sikivie and drummer Rodney Green.
This is a splendid program that highlights Mags’s casual tone and venerable chops as player and arranger. Opening with two upbeat swingers, Ted Forrest’s “It’s A Blue World” and Magnarelli’s bopping “Veneration,” the hornman impresses with his vision and feeling on the deceptively demanding “Moonlight In Vermont.” The whole band swings mightily on Mags’s muted tribute to the late trumpeter “Hargrove (For Roy).” Some standards are hard to put to wax without sounding corny, but this bunch manages the task with respectful but fun arrangements of a couple of chestnuts, Jerome Kern’s “Look For The Silver Lining,” and the even hoarier “Baubles, Bangles And Beads,” here re-arranged in waltz time, which certainly made me sit up and pay attention. A shoutout to pianist Gould, a semifinalist in the 2006 Thelonious Monk International Piano Competition and recipient of Berklee’s Herbie Hancock Presidential Scholarship; he turns in some superb solos himself.
The title track is also the closer. With its Latin boogaloo beat and generally upbeat mood, it perfectly illustrates the definition of “concord”: agreement or harmony between people or groups. Concord is small group jazz at its best.
For his fourth leader date overall and his first for SteepleChase, vibraphonist Tony Miceli plays 10 originals with a sympathetic ensemble of Paul Bollenback on guitar, Lee Smith bass and Byron Landham drums.
In the liner notes, fellow vibraphonist David Friedman pays this ensemble a great compliment when he notes, “he’s chosen musical colleagues who share his infectious, joyful style of direct communication, free of empty virtuosic self-aggrandizement.” Guitarist Bollenback in particular does everything he can to enhance Miceli’s compositions, playing in a wide variety of styles and sounds that always focus on the tune and on meshing with the other players. On the opening track, for example, the tour de force 
“Winter Blues,” he sets the tone to “surf,” with a certain amount of airy echo against which Miceli’s vibes romp. Next, on Wes Montgomery’s title track, he switches to an unexpected Hawaiian slide blues sound during one solo as Miceli comps a syncopated pattern and Landham drums up a storm, as but one episode on this dreamy tune.
This is a whole album full of immensely listenable upbeat jazz. Standouts for me include “Have A Sense Of Humor,” a charming melodic bop which finds everyone in classic mode — rapid runs from Miceli, warm clear tone from Bollenback, deep groove from Smith and Landham; the louche, swinging “Vince Guaraldi”; and the samba-rific “Sambarific,” a warm tropical breath in the middle of the set. Top of the heap is Miceli’s contrafact on the standard (and one of my favorites) “On Green Dolphin Street,” which he amusingly titles “Green Dolphins Treat,” played here as a zippy hard bop guaranteed to raise a smile.
The vibraphone seems to have a lot of technical aspects to it that I don’t pretend to understand. But I know what I like, and Tony Miceli’s Nico’s Dream is full of that.
(Hobby Horse Records, 2025)
(SteepleChase, 2025)
(SteepleChase, 2025)
