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Below, you'll find a compilation of all album reviews done by local KIOS jazz and blues staff.

Last Call Label Spotlight: Cuneiform Records

Cuneiform Records continues to release some of the most daring and visionary progressive jazz recordings of our time. Two new efforts are of special interest to jazz fans.

Living By Lanterns presents drummer Mike Reed and vibraphonist Jason Adasiewicz, essential members of Chicago's jazz scene, leading an ensemble of Chicago and New York musicians for a studio date, with is Old Myth, New Science. Together,the ensemble explores tunes written by Reed and Adasiewicz based on a previously unknown 1961 Sun Ra rehearsal tape.  The results are dynamic, unexpected, but always brilliant--distilling the essence of Sun Ra's genius into the 21st Century and beyond. Solid stuff.

For saxophonist/composer Jason Robinson’s polydirectional masterpiece Tiresian Symmetry, the saxophonist doesn’t seek to tell the ancient soothsayer’s story. Instead he explores the nature of the story itself in a jazz context on this, his seventh album as a leader. Tiresias, the blind prophet of ancient Greek stories and myths, was blessed and cursed by the gods, living as both a man and a woman over the centuries. Robinson incorporates mythology, odd meters and complex writing while allowing his bandmates plenty of space to improvise. In doing so he reminds the listener of the excellence of bandleaders like Charles Mingus and Henry Threadgill. It is truly an ambitious work. 

For more information you may visit  http://www.cuneiformrecords.com/

Chris Cooke has been a voice on radio in Omaha since 1988. While at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, he studied radio broadcasting, history and religion. Working at KVNO-FM, Cooke hosted a weekend adventuresome jazz show on the station in addition to duties as an on-air announcer on overnights, weekends and holidays. He also worked at KBLZ (the then student-run radio station) as well as KYNE-TV, and The Gateway as a reporter.
In November 1992, Cooke signed on at KIOS-FM and has been there ever since. He has hosted the Tuesday and Thursday editions of Jazz in the Afternoon since 1996 and has also hosted Last Call since that year. A long time fan of jazz music, Cooke enjoys talking with the musicians who make jazz music. He has interviewed Horace Silver, Roy Haynes, Wayne Shorter, David Liebman, Airto Moreira, Jessica Williams and Karrin Allyson, to name a few. While not at the station Cooke maintains a web design consultancy business that has served a number of non-profit and music clients for over 20 years.