Joshua Redman brought the complete Compass Double Trio out last week for shows from New York City to Boston to Albany. The Boston Globe says Redman "put on the show of his life" at Boston's Berklee Performance Center. "Redman has always been an entertaining musician, but Thursday he played more confidently and powerfully than ever." The Boston Herald says that with "four of the best rhythm section players in the business ... Redman navigated a constantly changing rhythmscape with the serene intensity that has marked his career." The Schenectady Daily Gazette describes the Friday night set in Albany as "50 minutes that encapsulated the history of
post-Sonny Rollins jazz" and reached "heights only the best jazz bands
can reach."

The Christian Science Monitor has dubbed Rokia Traoré "Africa's answer to Joni Mitchell." In its staff picks for the week's best arts offerings, the Monitor declares that with Tchamantché, "her exquisite new album," Rokia has created "something timeless. But it's Traoré's voice that pulls one into the musical vortex. Though she sings in Bambara and French, you won't need a translator to discern the joy and ache in her voice."

After performing the second of two consecutive nights at New York's Highline last night, Joshua Redman and his Double Trio head up to Boston to play the Berklee Performance Center tonight, then out to Albany for their last show with all five musicians featured on Redman's new album, Compass. Previewing Friday's show at Albany's The Egg, the Schenectady Daily Gazette writes of Redman's successful venture with the double-trio format: "The idea worked so well on record that now Redman is experimenting with the double-trio format live." Metro Canada gives Compass three-and-a-half stars.

Joshua Redman and his Double Trio—bassists Larry Grenadier and Reuben Rogers and drummers Brian Blade and Gregory Hutchinson—all of whom play together on the recently released Compass, play their second consecutive night at New York's Highline Ballroom tonight. The New York Times calls the new album "superb" and finds Redman "making some of the best music of his career." In last night's set, "Mr. Redman worked fast and fluid, never exhausting his options," says the Times. "At almost every turn he seemed intensely focused but unpressured and completely in command."

Allen Toussaint, who celebrated his 71st birthday last week, celebrated once more at the 2009 Celtic Connections festival Monday at Glasgow's finely refurbished Old Fruitmarket. Scotland's Herald gives the performance five stars, exclaiming: "Toussaint produced the kind of gig for which this venue was saved. Funky, celebratory and above all downright real, Toussaint's music has the spirit of a Mardi Gras street party running through it and the Fruitmarket is, after all, only one generation of slight gentrification up from being a street itself."

Joshua Redman marks the release of his latest album, Compass, in his first live performances with the double trio featured on the record, bassists Reuben Rogers and Larry Grenadier and drummers Greg Hutchinson and Brian Blade, tonight and tomorrow at New York City's Highline Ballroom and in Boston and Albany later in the week. The New York Times recommends the concerts, saying that the album's double-trio format leads to "a result that feels rewardingly loose ... the sort of jazz interaction that can only be further clarified by live performance." The Boston Globe calls the ensemble "a fascinating sonic experiment" that both displays its "supple touch" and creates "churning crescendos."

Rokia Traoré is the subject of a feature on PRI's weekday news magazine The World, in which she discusses her new album, Tchamantché, particularly her decision to include the American Gretsch guitar, with its unmistakable signature sound, throughout the record. "I wanted something electric but sweet at the same time," she says. "Electric, but not aggressive in the same time. The day I tried it, the Gretsch guitar, I knew very quickly that that was the sound I was looking for."

Joshua Redman's latest Nonesuch release, Compass, out this past Tuesday, earns four stars from the Financial Times, which lauds Redman's "rigorous intellect and gritty edge ... while his saxophone entices with its mix of classical purity and multi-noted wails." The review cites the "extra excitement" that comes from the album's pioneering use of a double-trio format. The Evening Standard gives the album four stars as well, stating that Redman's "writing and playing is brilliantly lucid."

Rokia Traoré's Tchamantché hits stores worldwide tomorrow after its European release late last year led to its inclusion in many critics' year-end best lists. The New York Times picks the album for this week's Critics' Choice, crediting Rokia for "creating her own radically delicate fusions" and calling the album her best, with music that "carries the plucked modal patterns of Malian tradition toward contemplation and intimacy." The Canadian Press calls it "a quiet, subdued album whose genius lies in each song's arrangement, the combination of modern and traditional elements and the intensity of Rokia Traoré's voice ... It's an album you'll want to maintain in a prominent place among your music collection." The Scripps Howard News Service gives it four stars and says the power of her music comes not from belting out but from "her persuasive use of subtlety ... the power of understatement."

New York Times music critic Jon Pareles visits some albums he missed in 2008 amidst the deluge of new releases and recommends Sam Phillips's Don't Do Anything as one that was "worth the wait." Through the songs' Beatles-esque sound and "casual, confiding side" of Sam's vocals, says Pareles, comes "the terse elegance of songs about love gone bad and the lessons and possibilities it leaves behind, songs that only become more telling because they stay so deliberately unadorned."

Mandy Patinkin began his ten-day residency at the Duke of Yorks Theatre in London's West End last Thursday. The Independent gives the production four stars, saying this "meaty solo show" features "a programme that reveals not only Patinkin's range of emotional colours but also his technical virtuosity. From the baritonal hinterland of his vocal engine to those trademark high notes, the skirmishes between registers simply dissolve and the sound is as pure as breathing. Numbers that demand leaping nimbleness and difficult tonal coloration ... are despatched with seamless liquidity and utter conviction."

Since the last Nonesuch Journal entry of 2008, which laid out scores of year-end best-of lists featuring Nonesuch albums and artists, still more critical praise has come in placing this music among the year's best.