| Jazz |
Howard Mandel, from Jazz Journalist Association: «Michael Jackson is a poly-talent whose music is Witty, upbeat well-constructed and original as his writing, photography and printmaking. He knows that jazz is about rhythm, melody and high spirits. All abundant in Gal From Ochi, fun to listen to as it surely was for this starry team to play.»
On a humid Chicago evening, the kind when sound seems to hang in the air just a second longer than usual, the opening bars of The Gal From Ochi unfold with deliberate patience. A saxophone line rises, warm, searching, before settling into a groove that feels at once Caribbean and unmistakably Midwestern. The rhythm lopes forward, unhurried yet insistent, as if it knows exactly where it is going. By the time the ensemble locks in, the room, real or imagined,has shifted. Geography blurs. Chicago begins to sound like Kingston by way of the South Side, like Lagos refracted through Bronzeville.
Michael Jackson is an artist of many dimensions, a musician whose work, like his writing, photography and printmaking, is animated by wit, propulsion, structural intelligence and a deeply personal originality. He understands something essential about jazz: that melody and joy are not ornamental qualities but foundational ones. Those qualities are abundant on The Gal From Ochi, an album as pleasurable to absorb as it must have been for this finely tuned collective to create.
There are moments when the record feels like Manu Dibango raised in the Bronx, having absorbed reggae at close range before channeling it through an urban American lens. And yet, for all its stylistic wanderings, this is unambiguously jazz. Not jazz as museum artifact, nor jazz as nostalgic recreation, but jazz as living language.
Michael Jackson here is not the pop icon whose name evokes stadium lights and choreographed spectacle. He is the Chicago-based saxophonist and composer who leads his ensemble with supple authority, threading lilting, almost breezy rhythms through harmonically intricate terrain. The structures are sophisticated, layered and occasionally knotty, but they never lose sight of the body. Complexity coexists with invitation. One hears the architecture; one also feels the urge to move.
Rhythm and breath are the album’s twin engines. Each track carries the persuasive undercurrent of a dance floor summons, music capable of wearing down the boards well past midnight. But this is not a record built for passive listening. Jackson draws unapologetically from a vast cultural reservoir, jazz, funk, calypso, reggae, Brazilian music, Chicago blues, free improvisation, balladry and spoken word, allowing these forms to converse rather than compete.
In doing so, he situates himself within a distinctly Chicago lineage. The city that nurtured the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) has long prized experimentation grounded in community and tradition. Where New York often embraces spectacle and stylistic brinkmanship, Chicago’s musical identity tends toward rootedness: innovation tethered to history, avant-garde impulses anchored in blues feeling and neighborhood realities. That sensibility permeates The Gal From Ochi. Even at its most exploratory, the music feels lived-in.
The album’s 18 contributors, all Chicago-based, reinforce that communal ethos. Among them are some of the city’s most compelling voices: drummer and producer Makaya McCraven, whose rhythmic elasticity reshaped contemporary jazz discourse; trumpeter Corey Wilkes, steeped in AACM tradition; the mercurial vocalist Johnny Showtime; and poet Marvin Tate, whose spoken-word passages infuse the record with sly mysticism. Their presence ensures that this is less a leader-with-side-players session than a collective statement.
Indeed, the album’s 11 tracks function not as discrete offerings but as chapters in a larger narrative. The compositions unfold with choreographic logic, their structures suggesting movement,bodies in motion, scenes shifting, emotions reframed. The spoken texts heighten the cinematic quality, adding ambiguity and poetic tension. One can easily imagine contemporary dance interpreting these pieces, their layered rhythms and tonal contrasts providing fertile ground for physical storytelling.
The Gal From Ochi unfolds like a novel, or perhaps a film without images, serving as an aural portrait of contemporary Chicago, shaped by migration, cultural overlap and layered identities. Listening can feel like driving across the city with the windows open: turning a corner in Hyde Park, passing through Pilsen, gliding toward Uptown, each block offering a different soundtrack. Reggae echoes from one sidewalk; calypso drifts from another; blues lingers in the background like a permanent undertone.
To fully appreciate this album is to embrace surprise. It rewards listeners willing to relinquish rigid expectations, to favor uncertain journeys over predictable routes. Its density demands attention; its hybridity asks for openness. But for those prepared to meet it halfway, the rewards are substantial.
This is not simply another jazz release. It is a carefully constructed, culturally attuned, and quietly daring work, an urban poem set to rhythm, subtle in its gestures yet expansive in its reach. In a musical landscape often segmented by genre and algorithm, The Gal From Ochi insists on something more fluid: a conversation across histories, neighborhoods and diasporas, carried on the breath of a saxophone and sustained by a city that has long understood how to turn tradition into forward motion.
Thierry De Clemensat
Member at Jazz Journalists Association
USA correspondent for Paris-Move and ABS magazine
Editor in chief – Bayou Blue Radio, Bayou Blue News
PARIS-MOVE, February 12th 2026
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Track List:
The Gal From Ochi
Scoobie Doobie
One For Junior
Pop Tart
Blue Stew
Sonny the Squirrel
Mose Def
Bugsy (Goes to Brazil)
Wolfgang
Stepping Stones
Scoot Ya Butt
Musicians:
Michael Jackson (sax/composition/production/artwork)
Andrew Zallar (keys, vibraphone, bass)
Aaron Koppel (guitar)
Makaya McCraven (drums)
Xavier Breaker (drums)
Jake Vinsel, Jason Roebke, Greg Nergaard (electic/acoustic bass)
JoVia Armstrong, Geraldo de Oliveira (congas, percussion)
Johnny “Showtime” Janowiak (trombone)
Andrew Zelm (trombone)
Marvin Tate, Lady B (spoken word/vocals)
Alfie Jackson (vocals)
Kara Bershad (harp)
Rick Gehrenbeck (keys)
Corey Wilkes (trumpet)
Recorded at CRC Chicago by Freddie Breitberg