This Week At Media Room

The publishing week began with my review of Windflower by Ayumi Tanaka (piano), Thomas Morgan (bass), Thomas Strønen (drums). I wrote:

Ayumi Tanaka has found her voice in Nordic jazz’s spare intensity, inflected with the profundity of classical Japanese music.

She travelled 5000 miles to “make the air feel alive,” eventually rediscovering the ancient music of home.

Wildflower will be released on ECM Friday. Media Room’s review will be published at All About Jazz tomorrow.

On Wednesday paid subscribers received a preview of the upcoming re-release of Ken Russell’s controversial 1971 movie The Devils, including a discussion of Cardinal Richelieu and the Huguenot migration to Canada.

You can watch the first few minutes above. That’s Louis XIII himself (Graham Armitage) dressed as Venus, acting out Botticelli’s famous painting for Richelieu (Christopher Logue) in a court pageant.

The film accurately portrays the king as a witless manchild who turned the nation’s affairs over to a cabal of corrupt sycophants. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

For the first time in 900 years, the Bayeux Tapestry is in England.

On Wednesday, Media Room’s free subscribers and subscribers to Great Lakes Opinion received a 2024 book review about The Battle of Hastings and the transition to Norman England as portrayed in the thousand year-old linen.

On Thursday, Media Room Live! interviewed Amber Weekes, whose album of music by singer, composer, and civil rights leader Oscar Brown, Jr., To Oscar With Love, was released August 7.

Amber is a delight. In the clip above she talked about her childhood in the heart of the Harlem Renaissance and her father introducing her to Billie Holiday’s music.

On Friday, Media Room published its deep dive into Caroline Rose’s 2018 synth-pop banger “Jeannie Becomes A Mom,” above.

The post includes “Yip Yip Yow,” an early single from her upcoming Gentling the Horse at the Walt Whitman Mall.

On Tuesday August 18 Media Room will publish its review of Fifteen, the first album from the trio of saxophonist and flutist Henry Threadgill, pianist Vijay Iyer, and drummer Dafnis Prieto, to be released August 21, 2026 on Nonesuch.

Above is an early single, “Gently Trapped.”

Vijay will be joining me at Media Room Live! Thursday, August 28. He was the “TBD” guest referred to in “August at Media Room Live!” now confirmed.

Speaking of Media Room Live, on August 20 I will meet with bassist and composer Linda May Han Oh to talk about Beneath Lifted Skies, to be released on Blue Note August 21. It includes fifteen standards performed by Oh and saxophonist Melissa Aldana.

Regular Media Room readers may remember Linda from our September 2025 interview, “Music In The Moment.”

Above, the duo performs “Hallucinations” by Bud Powell (1950).

On Friday Media Room will publish its review of The Magic Faraway Tree starring Claire Foy and Andrew Garfield, opening in theaters Thursday.

It is about a family that relocates to the countryside where a magical tree transports them to fantastic lands, rekindling their family bond.

Nashville’s Judah & The Lion dropped its sixth album, I Am A Prism, Friday. They play us out with “Gravel Roads.”

Cover image: Still image from ‘The Magic Faraway Tree.’ Delilah Bennett-Cardy (Beth Thompson). © Vertical Entertainment.