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Thread: Jon Cowherd, Mercy

  1. #1

    Jon Cowherd, Mercy



    My review of Jon Cowherd's wonderful leader debut, Mercy, today at All About Jazz.

    It's always difficult for an artist who has become so intimately associated with a group—especially if he or she has been a significant compositional contributor—to build a separate identity outside of that group. It might be one of the reasons that Pat Metheny Group keyboardist Lyle Mays—who not only contributed compositions of his own, but also co-wrote some of the group's most well-known and well-loved material—has released so few recordings under his own name.

    Pianist/keyboardist Jon Cowherd is nowhere near as joined at the hip to Brian Blade & The Fellowship Band, heard most recently on the characteristically superb Landmarks (Blue Note, 2014); in addition to his tenure with a band first documented under the ubiquitous drummer's name on the 1998 debut, Fellowship (Blue Note), but increasingly represented by Blade, in subsequent years, as a group whose name tells the true story, Cowherd has appeared, on record and/or on the road, with everyone from Cassandra Wilson, Lizz Wright and Kellylee Evans to Rosanne Cash and Iggy Pop. Still, the Fellowship Band—where Cowherd regularly contributes compositions and who, since the group's second record, Perceptual (Blue Note, 2000), has co-produced every album alongside Blade—is the group that has somehow come to truly represent the pianist's true musical personality.

    Or so it seemed. Mercy, released digitally in late 2013 by ArtishShare and only now seeing hard CD issue as a collaborative effort with Blue Note, supports the idea that the Fellowship Band may be Cowherd's true home but, at the same time, it also suggests that there's even more to this talented composer/performer than his work with Fellowship has already amply demonstrated.

    Continue reading here...

  2. #2

    Disc Availability

    Quote Originally Posted by jkelman View Post


    Or so it seemed. Mercy, released digitally in late 2013 by ArtishShare and only now seeing hard CD issue as a collaborative effort with Blue Note, supports the idea that the Fellowship Band may be Cowherd's true home but, at the same time, it also suggests that there's even more to this talented composer/performer than his work with Fellowship has already amply demonstrated.

    Continue reading here...
    I'm curious what the collaborative effort with Blue Note means. Will the disc become available through the usual CD distribution channels, or does that just mean that the physical disc will now become available from ArtistShare?

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