"Music doesn't go seasonable to me." Rolling Jazz Dm7♭5 Thread 2017

My February column for Stereogum is up. It's a special Black History Month edition, kinda.

xp vaguely tangential biz gossip to that jazz piece:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/marchershberg/2017/02/22/fired-ny-times-drama-critic-fires-back/#3bada4176859

If you like the Count's Rock Band debut, also check Steve Marcus's Tomorrow Never Knows--back cover's messed up on my ancient yard sale LP, but guitarist sounds like Coryell. Also check yard sales for those early Eleventh House records (Coryell's gaudy fusion band), his early solo albums of course, and a live Free Spirits album that finally surfaced just a few years ago (not the suits-fucked-with Free Spirits studio album, which they disowned). Also Herbie Mann's Memphis Underground, with Coryell and Sharrock.

Oh, I'm definitely a fan of that last one!

http://www.everycontactleavesatrace.net/2016/09/06/the-process-marvin-tate-joseph-clayton-mills/

more of an audio collage, but oh boy

Good BBC WS Arts Hour on New Orleans here featuring the impressive Christian Scott. If it doesn't work in the US then the beeb will have to stop calling it World Service ffs!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04tbvlc

Christian Scott shares a fairly shocking personal anecdote about police harassment and there is a discussion about aggressive gentrification in NO, as well as music and stuff about the Mardis Gras. It is good stuff.

I'm working on setting up an interview with him for Burning Ambulance soon.

He comes across like someone with a shitload of good stories/opinions, so should be a good interviewee. He said something on that WS program about how he had inherited his grandad's position on the Mardis Gras parade, which is something I don't know much about - but it sounds way impressive.

Got all five Throttle Elevator Music CDs in the mail today. TEM is a studio-based project led by Gregory Howe, owner of the Wide Hive label. The two main bandmembers are Matt Montgomery (bass and piano) and Kamasi Washington (saxophone), with other folks cycling in and out depending on the album. The music is a mix of free jazz, dub, funk, and garage rock - kind of like The Thing, if they had keyboards and were into dub. The latest album, Retrorespective, is the last one, I think. It includes Ava Mendoza on guitar.

I'm enjoying the new David Weiss/Point of Departure album. I don't think it would be overpraise to say a lot of it scratches my Miles 2nd Quintet itches.

Went to the Jazz Standard last night to see George Coleman, with Charles McPherson as special guest. Jeb Patton on piano, David Wong on bass, George Coleman Jr. on drums. I also interviewed Coleman on Tuesday; that'll be up on Burning Ambulance next week. The set was all standards - McPherson opened it up with "What Is This Thing Called Love," then Coleman Sr. joined and they played a Latin-ish tune written by Lee Morgan (I didn't catch the title), "Crazeology," a ballad I think was called "Dedicated," and finally "A Night in Tunisia." They might have played one more tune, but that was when I left - I had a train to catch. It was a fun set. McPherson and Coleman have known each other for something like sixty years, and they played together pretty well, especially on the fast bebop stuff. But I think the ballad might have been my favorite piece of the night. The version of "Tunisia" wasn't great; Coleman Jr. didn't really have a grip on the rhythm (although he was really good on other tunes - he's a powerful, bomb-dropping player).

Cool, thanks

Here's my interview with George Coleman.

This Salon article about the damage being done to NYC's jazz scene by the Times basically giving up on covering it is worth a read.

― Don Van Gorp, midwest regional VP, marketing (誤訳侮辱)

fuck, i scrolled too far and accidentally hit the comments. :(

2CD Jaco Pastorius live album coming in April/May. It's a previously unreleased 1982 big band performance, 2 CDs or 3 LPs. I'm not a Jaco fan, but I'm sure lots of folks will be really excited about this.

Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock shred:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22i57u2eMDE

Just been blasting out that DEK trio album w/ K Vandermark on it, really blistering and delicate and quite extraordinarily good imo.

anyone get a chance to hear the (last?) arthur doyle record, which was released late last year? recordings are from 2012, doyle died in '14 i think. it's still blowing my mind, still my favorite buy of the last six months:

https://soundcloud.com/amishrecords/arthur-doyle-with-his-new-quiet-screamers-call-out

label hype:

On what would have been his 72nd birthday, Amish is very proud to announce 'First House' (AMI 048), the final recordings from free jazz legend and Birmingham, Alabama native, Arthur Doyle.

Recorded live at the Stone July 11, 2012, these six pieces are backed by His New Quiet Screamers, a Brooklyn-based ensemble adding muscle and movement to Doyle’s always already free, non-linear saxophone, flute and vocal lines.

Ben Ratliff has a really good write-up on Monk's Music on Pitchfork today.

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22961-monks-music/

Thats the one that starts with a short + beautiful Abide With Me, It's an absolute personal fave is that album. Possibly a rare click for P4k coming from me.

He barely reviews the album, but it is an excellent read on Monk.

Thanks, Phil. Do you know where the thread title quote comes from?

Of this thread, to be clear

my rushed post - whilst cooking and drinking - probably sounds a bit uncharitable. FTR I thought that was a really great piece that took me right down a'57 wormhole and made me forget it was an album review was what I meant to say.

Google says it's a quote from Coleman Hawkins.

Yeah, exactly. Found it in the Robin Kelley Monk bio.

really appreciating the stereogum column, 誤訳侮辱. i used to keep up with jazz new releases via seth colter walls's semi-regular roundup on rhapsody, but that seems to be now defunct. glad pitchfork is reviewing jazz now, too.

The Arthur Doyle clip on Soundcloud was great!

Just received this link to Art Ensemble taking Ayler's "Ghosts" for a ride and vice-versa: they do their own thing without obliterating thee original, if that's even possible. Wish they'd done a whole album of Ayler. With Lester Bowie etc, 22 minutes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rM-6-02mAz8

Just bought two more of those Complete Remastered Albums on Black Saint & Soul Note box sets: a third volume of David Murray and a second of Max Roach. (I have the first two Murray boxes, but don't have the first Roach box.)

The Murray includes Interboogieology, Live at Sweet Basil Vol. 1 and 2, Children, Southern Bells, and The Healers; the Roach has Pictures in a Frame, In the Light, Live at Vielharmonie Munich, Scott Free, Easy Winners, and It's Christmas Again.

Also picked up Cannonball Adderley's Complete Live in Tokyo 1963, a 2CD set with the band that included Nat Adderley, Yusef Lateef, Joe Zawinul, Sam Jones and Louis Hayes.

Thanks for the Monk link - excellent stuff. I always think of Geoff Dyer's But Beautiful whenever I read about Monk. For all the dubiety I have about that book, this passage on Monk is magnificent.

"You had to see Monk to hear his music properly. The most important instrument in the group - whatever the format - was his body. He didn't play the piano really. His body was his instrument and the piano was just a means of getting the sound out of his body at the rate and in the quantities he wanted. If you blotted out everything except his body you would think he was playing the drums, foot going up and down on the hi-hat, arms reaching over each other, His body fills in the gaps in the music; without seeing him it always sounds like something's missing but when you see him even piano solos acquire a sound as full as a quartets. The eye hears what the ear misses...

Part of jazz is the illusion of spontaneity and Monk played the piano as though he'd never seen one before. Came at it from all angles, using his elbows, taking chops at it, rippling through the keys like they were a deck of cards, fingers jabbing at them like they were hot to the touch or tottering around them like a woman in heels - playing it all wrong as far as classical piano went. Everything came out crooked, at an angle, not as you expected...Played with his fingers splayed, flattened out over the keys, fingertips almost looking like they were pointed upward when they should have been arched.

He played each note as if astonished by the previous one, as though every touch of his fingers on the keyboard was correcting an error and this touch in turn became an error to be corrected and so the tune never quite ended up the way it was meant to. Sometimes the song seemed to have turned itself inside out or to have been entirely constructed from mistakes...

If Monk had built a bridge he'd have taken away the bits that considered essential until all that was left were the decorative parts - but somehow he would have made the ornamentation absorb the strength of the supporting spars so it was like everything was built around what wasn't there. It shouldn't have held together but it did and the excitement came from the way that it looked like it might collapse at any moment..."

angelica sanchez,michael formanek,tyshawn sorey - float the edge

^^
on first spin this is sounding rather good.

I've downloaded it, but haven't listened to it yet.

In other news, I interviewed Paal Nilssen-Love (with bonus quotes from Mats Gustafsson) for Bandcamp.

Late last night on the radio, a couple of tracks by Jeremy Pelt feat. Ron Carter woke me up. Attractive description of the album here, I'll have to check out the whole thing:
http://www.chicagoreader.com/Bleader/archives/2016/02/26/trumpeter-jeremy-pelt-collaborates-with-bass-great-ron-carter

Recently reviewed on Fresh Air, this is proving worthwhile:
Frank Carlberg Large Ensemble, Monk Dreams, Hallucinations and Nightmares

https://f-a-t-a-k-a.bandcamp.com/album/a-field-perpetually-at-the-edge-of-disorder

interesting context for John Tilbury

Yeah, that's a good one; I wrote about it for Burning Ambulance back in 2014.

http://dcist.com/2017/03/local_jazz_legend_buck_hill_dead_at.php

Buck Hill could have been a jazz big name playing in NY and touring, but he instead stayed in DC working as a Postal Service letter carrier by day, sax blower by night

There's a 2LP/2CD set of previously unreleased Thelonious Monk music - his soundtrack to Roger Vadim's 1960 movie Les Liaisons Dangereuses - coming out 4/22 on vinyl (for Record Store Day), and digitally on 5/19. I'm listening to it now, and it's fantastic. The band includes both Charlie Rouse and Barney Wilen on tenor sax, Sam Jones on bass, and Art Taylor on drums; it might be the swinging-est Monk music of that era, and the two-saxophone thing is totally unique, I think. The songs aren't that surprising: "Rhythm-a-Ning," "Crepuscule with Nellie," "Well, You Needn't," "Pannonica" (in both solo and quartet versions), "Ba-Lue Bolivar Ba-Lues-are," and "Light Blue," but there's also a blues improvisation called "Six in One" and a solo version of "We'll Understand It Better By and By." And the recording quality is beautiful. This is pretty much a must-own.

My latest Stereogum column is live. Includes my thoughts on the whole Robert Glasper/Ethan Iverson thing, plus track premieres from Christian Scott and his former guitarist Matthew Stevens (and trombonist Joe Fiedler), and lots of other good stuff.

Hmmmm I wish I liked that Christian Scott track better, the last record had a nice sense of an active rhythm section w/one of the drummers playing samples. This is more static and reminds me of some of those old Graham Haynes records. It's also in that uncanny valley zone where it's so close to beat-based music that it really has to sound amazing. Still curious to hear the rest of the record though.

This album is definitely a programmed-rhythms mood piece, but eventually it seeps into your brain and takes over. It's his Tutu, in a way.

Get thee to Mezzrow, where still-back-from-the-dead Tootie Heath is playing tonight and tomorrow.

Also came to post that Cannonball Adderley's Fiddler On The Roof, which I heard on WKCR while waiting to pick up my daughter at band practice, is my new jam.

A good piece on that Monk soundtrack - http://wbgo.org/post/new-thelonious-monk-album-emerges-soundtrack-classic-french-film#stream/0

What did you guys think of the Darcy James Argue from last year? I bought it on Bandcamp's ACLU day, eager to hear a 12-tone big band album. I've been playing it a fair bit; it's all at least interesting. I don't know if I'm as sold on some of the funk moves and don't really know what to make of the spoken bits.

I've actually been really getting into this.

seeing 75 dollar bill and company tonight and jazz passengers tomorrow; living that roulette life

Seeing Supersilent (first NYC show since 2004!) and Matana Roberts (solo) tonight.

i'll be at supersilent as well, pretty psyched tho i hate that venue

That lineup sounds amazing!