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

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!

RIP Arthur Blythe, after a long battle with Parkinson's Disease.

I have only heard a bit of his 70's - 80's stuff Lennox Ave, Illusions + In The Tradition and they are all a+. I should listen to some more really.

The Giant Is Awakened is such a killer album.

I have his first four Columbia albums, and the two India Navigation albums that were combined onto a single CD.

75 dollar bill were great though first hour was definitely superior to second. lotta sound!

Supersilent and Matana on the same bill is straight up unfair.

It was a really interesting show. Matana played solo, without the video projections, loop pedals, and other stuff that she's been using lately. Just horn and two microphones, one of which she used to monologue. She talked about the death of her parents, how her dad got her into avant-garde jazz (which she hated as a child), and other stuff. She also got the audience to hum on pitch, and conducted us with one arm while playing sax that harmonized with our humming.

Supersilent were everything I hoped they'd be. They started out really quiet and beautiful, with Arve Henriksen taking the lead as one of the other dudes filled in very soft Fender Rhodes around him. Gradually it got into an early 70s Tangerine Dream zone, but then it started to get louder and louder. By the 20 minute mark Henriksen had put on a headset mic and was ranting into it while the music sounded almost like Autechre - really loud and pounding/scorching in an abstract and almost arrhythmic way. Crazy stuff.

If I wasn't already jealous...

I did se Matana do something similar at an ATP (GY!BE, I think) - very sultry, bluesy and beat. She was captivating.

Recently on Jazz Night In America: (Georgia Anne) Muldrow Meets Mingus (with Jason Moran and full band). She is with the Afrocentric current that flows through underground hip-hop, avant-R&B and psychedelic soul... a singer, rapper and beat-making producer. Fits the Mingus selections pretty well. Stream it while you can: http://www.npr.org/event/music/521222975/muldrow-meets-mingus

She also got the audience to hum on pitch, and conducted us with one arm while playing sax that harmonized with our humming.

She did this when I saw her in 2013! About 40 cents above Bb iirc?

(I checked that with a tuner, to be clear. Not claiming to have identified the number of cents by ear, although I was lucky enough at guessing the approximate pitch.)

Which reminds me, this is posted now---another one from Night Lights, source of that Mal Waldron spotlight show I linked on last year's Rolling Jazz (still available, when I streamed it again recently):

In the 1980s a new generation of women jazz musicians emerged who expanded their predecessors’ push against the patriarchal boundaries of the jazz world. On this edition of Night Lights we’ll hear music from pianist Geri Allen, singer Cassandra Wilson, drummer Terri Lyne Carrington, guitarist Emily Remler, and saxophonist Jane Ira Bloom, as well as recordings from women who were already jazz veterans, including Marian McPartland, Carla Bley, and Joanne Brackeen. The only one I hadn't heard: Emily Remler, whom I skipped during her brief career(RIP), because she carried on about Wes Montgomery in several interviews, and in general seemed like such a zealous noob---but the track here is pretty startling; I better start catching up.
http://indianapublicmedia.org/nightlights/jazz-women-1980s/
Still not really getting into Jane Ira Bloom though.

There's only one Remler album on Spotify, and it's called East to Wes. It's...fine. Good band - Hank Jones on piano, Buster Williams on bass, and Marvin "Smitty" Smith on drums.

75 dollar bill were great though first hour was definitely superior to second. lotta sound!

― Bobson Dugnutt (ulysses), Tuesday, March 28, 2017 10:08 AM (four hours ago) Bookmark

this isn't really jazz content but i have to ask -- did Mind Over Mirrors open? If so, that would explain the first hour being better than the second, haha! (Unless 75 Dollar Bill played for 2 hours?!?)

xpost The track selected for Night Lights may or may not be all that representative, but she's playing rhythm-as-lead, zigzagging between the others without jostling; seemed closer to mid-60s live Velvet Underground or McGuinn getting ready for "Eight Miles High" than to Wes, but yeah some of his influence in there as well---also seemed like a track Mary Halvorson might be into.

xp to lechera: they played for two hours! but with a lotta very solid guest artists including jim pugliese, cheryl kingan and karen waltuch... most of the show was nine musicians. ended with everybody walking through the crowd shaking maracas and too much time on ilx but all i could think was
http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f163/courtneykaehler/maracas.jpg

damn that sounds awesome
1) i love maracas and 2) i am going to see them a week from saturday!!

to clarify, them = the band, not maracas
i have my own maracas at home to shake whenever i please (tbh i injured my right elbow and broke a cymbal with my maraca-enthusiasm so i am taking it a little easier these days)

you should bring your maracas with you they might get a workout.
Both sets were enjoyable but the second was more noisy and generally less filled with moments of rapture. They did a lot of 3-d sound, wandering in the audience type stuff.

am i on the outside in reading 75 dollar bill as "jazz"? I suppose they're technically "new music" or "instrumental" but i kinda lump all that stuff together these days, at least as far as my internal genre meter goes.

I def wouldn't call it jazz -- probably somewhere on the improvised/experimental spectrum, which is sort of a sonic catch-all whereas jazz has traditions and whatnot.

Showing up to the show armed w my maracas is both appealing and the most embarrassing possible thing I could do. Can't throw them in my bag without giving myself away, gotta commit or submit!

Did Mind Over Mirrors open?

nah, just jumped directly in with both feet and did a duet with rick and che
they closed with an ornette coleman song for the first half with chanting. loads o fun.

https://soundcloud.com/emptyeditions/sets/last-signs-of-speed

not jazz, I don't know what to call it

I interviewed trumpeter Christian Scott for Burning Ambulance. He's doing 3 albums this year; the first one comes out today.

Will check that---first of all, came here to exclaim over last night's rerun of Piano Jazz, with Mose Allison in 1988, at 62 and the top of his game---zingy ruminations of course, but as usual what really gets me going is the playing; a couple of times he even comes off something like the Professor Longhair of bop, like on a 4/4 "Tennessee Waltz" (McPartland's right in there too on that 'un)---stream the whole thing here:http://www.npr.org/2013/04/05/176333998/mose-allison-on-piano-jazz

Meanwhile over on Night Lights, last night's fabulous new Dorothy Ashby show hasn't been posted yet, but here's the recent one on Nica and others: http://indianapublicmedia.org/nightlights/nicas-tempo-hipsters-flipsters-onthescenesters/

Mainly the ace compositions dedicated to her.

Word From Mose has been my fave MA album so far, he was absolutely classic! I really dig his accent as well.

Night Lights' aforementioned Dorothy Ashby saga is now posted: http://indianapublicmedia.org/nightlights/fantastic-jazz-harp-dorothy-ashby/ On the earliest sides, the flute is most effective with long sustained notes around the harp, but more occasional tootling can get in the way (and sounds like the suits have her kinda mixed down on some of the early fluteless segments, like she's basically backing the male flautist), but lots of upfront Ashby too, especially with just bass and drums, that's all she needs--later things get more cosmic, but never too filigree, and when she starts singing, look out now.

Tonght's Night Lights is on Herbie Hancock in the 60s.

Very interesting Bad Plus news; Ethan Iverson is leaving, and Orrin Evans is replacing him. I'll be honest - I've never listened to the Bad Plus. I've always meant to at least check them out, but just never gotten around to it. But now I want to - both the original trio and the new incarnation. And this article, by Nate Chinen, is fantastic - really revealing quotes from everyone.