Rolling Jazz Thread 2020

I'm late, but the Vision Festival has an online version ending this evening. Unfortunately ticket access gets you only 24 hours for replay. Right now I'm listening to last night's set by the Andrew Cyrille Quartet with Bill Frisell, Davis Virelles, and Ben Street. Great inside/outside set, so grateful Cyrille is still with us on the planet.

Should have listened more before posting, re opening epic "Episone 18" and next two:
Was just thinking about how frustrated I've so far found the guitar-dominated tracks in first half of the new Starebaby, although some of may be sound quality of the mp3 promo--I enjoy some other jazz w big hairy guitar, most recently Harriet Tubman, also the first Ceramic Dog album (more recent one had odd sound too), Sharrock, Cosey---for the metal-tending, Yakuza---should prob try Liturgy again---anyway, I do enjoy the new Starebaby very much when guitarist is more of a team player, responding to others, texturing and maybe
metal-appropriately infusing-polluting the fluid music, which I imagine as a lake. Will listen more, of course, maybe the big stuff will grow on me too.

It did grow on me, although still takes a minute or two to adjust to indie jazz budget sound; I associate this kind of guitarrrr w more stereo depth, but might be promo download, as prev. speculated. But right off, guitar is big bug trying to fly its way out my bony labyrinth, but can't because headphones and this is a recording, nevertheless zooming in and away, also spinning around and unravelling X+Y axis in here, then swabbing walls of this sqaut
---and duh to self "Dawn" has the kind of interactivity I'd previously picked up on later on, ditto "The Long Diagonal"----though some of the guitar interjection in my original getting-into-alb-point, "A Taste of Memory," still seems too stiff, static, though late schematic becomes what the moving finger writes, then into the long fade: that works.

And like I posted before, the rest was never any problem.

― dow, Friday, September 18, 2020

*squat*, of course, dammit, sorry.
The Ceramic Dog set I referred to was YRU Still Here? They also have a new EP on Bandcamp, album out next year, gotta check those.

ymmv depending on how rough edged you like your sound, but i think HH, the new lionel loueke herbie hancock cover album, is unsurprisingly great
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyK1XW6Va-c

Will check, thanks! Also to which ever Rolling Jazz cat turned me onto this last year:
https://kevinhays-lionelloueke.bandcamp.com/ KH's piano river sometimes too much of a good thing, but it all works out.
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Sunday flashback: that time I went proselytizing for a lot of good old music still in no danger of overexposure. Written in '06 or '07, trying to balance for jazz-curious noobs and jaded geezers, both of whom might benefit from this fix, offered in my collegetown altweekly sieze-the-day emergency filler way (prob at editor's request, after some Star suddenly cancelled an interview and/or show).

BOBBY PREVITE’S JAZZ-WITH-ATTITUDE STARSHIP TROUPERS

Drummer-composer Bobby Previte was already an r&b and rock bar band veteran when he entered SUNY Buffalo in the 70s, encountering the progressive likes of Lukas Foss, also conceptual chef John Cage. All of which served him well in late-70s-to-80s New York City, as he jumped aboard the escalating jazz of what Lou Reed tagged in passing "the downtown crowd." Technically accomplished as the hard bop revivalist Young Lions (AKA "Jazz In Suits"), and the equally confirmed fusionists, Previte and cohorts were less or differently concerned with boundaries. Some of them appeared on Late In The 20th Century: An Elektra/Nonesuch New Music Sampler, which definitely conveys a sense of hip, black-clad Late-as-News approaching a shadowy border in time, at least calendar-wise. In this zone, Previte was a magnet for (for instance) New Music composer John Adams, adventurous conductor Michael Tilson-Thomas, punk jazz guitar exemplar Sonny Sharrock, and Tom Waits.

Twenty-odd years after the advent of the downtown heyday, Previte’s latest release, Coalition Of The Willing, is surprisingly fresh, despite its now-familiar-to-collectors personnel, production elements, and political implications.
Trumpeter Steve Bernstein, once musical director/wrangler of NYC’s hot, cool “fake jazz” fashion plates, The Lounge Lizards (remembered by surviving guitarist Marc Ribot as "a psychotic Boy Scout troop"), is also a key member of the calmly audacious Sex Mob, tasty shredders of James Bond motifs, among other keepsakes. Keeping faith with Previte's mob, Bernstein doesn’t let energy get in the way of thought or feeling---no stretch, considering the way his dynamic Diaspora Soul taps the improvisational and emotional resources of klezmer.
Stanton Moore, duet drummer with Previte on several tracks here, is also a member of New Orleans jam band Galactic, who morphed to the occasion while backing exiled Algerian rai rocker Rachid Tahid, on his blistering, defiantly ingenious Made In Medina, along with producer-guitarist Steve Hillage, of improv-friendly proggers Gong and subsequent electronica ventures. (Songlines Magazine reviewer Nigel Williamson considered Made... to succeed where Unledded, the Jimmy Page-Robert Plant expedition with North African musicians, failed.).
Multi-instrumentalist Skerik sticks to subtle sax on Previte's project, but his more varied work with the sardonically moody Critters Buggin, especially on their 1998 Bumpa, might be another key precedent to this album's approach. Toward the end of Bumpa, there’s a sense of looming enclosure, but it’s made to resonate with deep, flexing, metallic tones.

On Coalition... ,, this kind of rebelliously cellular sound (with persistently flickering treble added, so it also evokes the interstellar wake of John McLaughlin’s eerie, 1970-unbound Devotion ) sports a political context. Along with the Iraq War-inspired album title, several tracks (like “The Ministry Of Truth”) reference 1984.
Still, COTW doesn’t rely on righteously retro stereo rhetoric, or any other kind of default setting. Stu Cutler adds occasional harmonica, minus bluesy clichés. Charlie Hunter abstains from his Blue Note albums’ eight-string guitar, and the effects box that makes him sound like a (so-so) organist. (Why bother, when an actual organist, the judiciously theatrical Jamie Saft, is always lurking nearby, and with his own guitar as well.) Here, Hunter plays a well-fingered six-string Telecaster, and a twelve-string guitar that sounds nothing like The Byrds: it chimes like an evil, elegant parody of Big Ben. Meanwhile, Previte’s lean, hungry beats and bright colors (keyed by electronic touch pads) continue to find their way through dark, shifting backdrops and corridors.
Coalition of the Willing is a body language thriller, saluting all observers.

I love the new James Brandon Lewis album and the Okuden Quartet (Walerian/Shipp/Parker/Drake) which is a bit of a long sprawl, but often goes into some really good places.

So Keith Jarrett is retired; he had two strokes in 2018 that he never told anybody about, and can no longer play piano with his left hand. This interview is interesting, but if you're a non-fan (as I mostly am), he says some shit that makes it hard to miss him. Calling himself "the John Coltrane of piano players"...it's a good thing McCoy Tyner's already dead, is all I can say about that.

Speaking of Bobby Previte, did anyone hear the latest collab with Charlie Hunter? It was sold online for a short time and comes as a gift if you sign up for his Patreon page, which I didn't do.

Eh a little bravado from KJ at this point makes me smile, given his situation. So sad (same with Sonny Rollins not being able to play).

So Keith Jarrett is retired; he had two strokes in 2018 that he never told anybody about, and can no longer play piano with his left hand. This interview is interesting, but if you're a non-fan (as I mostly am), he says some shit that makes it hard to miss him. Calling himself "the John Coltrane of piano players"...it's a good thing McCoy Tyner's already dead, is all I can say about that.

― but also fuck you (unperson), Wednesday, October 21, 2020 7:07 AM (nine hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Well, I don't think McCoy Tyner is the John Coltrane of piano players either if that's what you mean, nor would he want to be seen that way, nor would John Coltrane want "the John Coltrane of piano players" in his band. But yeah, that level of self-congratulation really makes him the Donovan of jazz blowhards.

lol, I literally just had this stream of thought: "Well, he did do some pretty incredible stuff with Miles in 1969... ... ... wait that was Chick Corea"

lol, I literally just had this stream of thought: "Well, he did do some pretty incredible stuff with Miles in 1969... ... ... wait that was Chick Corea"

Nonprofit the Afro Latin Jazz Alliance (ALJA) teams up with today's foremost jazz, classical, and global artists alongside preeminent speakers for a "get out the vote" initiative, Notes 4 Votes , to be broadcasted on ALJA's Facebook page facebook.com/afrolatinjazzalliance this Sunday, October 25, 2020 (8:30pm EST). Notes 4 Votes spotlights performances and/or speeches from Terence Blanchard, Vijay Iyer, Carla Bley, Dr. Cornel West, Oscar Hernandez, Simone Dinnerstein, Steve Swallow, Dr. Shana Redmond, Matt Shipp, The Villalobos Brothers, William Parker, Kikirikí Biquéy, Ayodele Casel, Akua Dixon, Jen Shyu, Ganavya Doraiswamy, Crystal Joseph, Tiffany Austin, Mimi Jones, Caridad "La Bruja" De La Luz, Luis Perdomo, and more.

https://wfubaa.bandcamp.com/album/luke-stewart-exposure-quintet

tremendous album is this

It is really good. I interviewed Stewart about it (and many other things); when Bandcamp posts the feature, I'll link it here.

I see he's also in Irreversible Entanglements, also on that latest excellent James Brandon Lewis album, he's everywhere!

He really is. He's also got a band called Heart Of The Ghost that are really good, and he's in a trio with Jaimie Branch (trumpet) and Mike Pride (drums) that hasn't recorded anything yet, but I've seen them live.

lol, I literally just had this stream of thought: "Well, he did do some pretty incredible stuff with Miles in 1969... ... ... wait that was Chick Corea"

He did play with Miles though, often at the same time as CC?

He did play with Miles though, often at the same time as CC?

Yeah, Volume 3 of the Bootleg Series is a set of four concerts by the 1970 band:

Miles Davis – trumpet
Steve Grossman – tenor saxophone, soprano saxophone
Chick Corea – Fender Rhodes electric piano
Keith Jarrett – Fender Contempo Organ, tambourine
Dave Holland – electric bass
Jack DeJohnette – drums
Airto Moreira – percussion, flute, vocals

The same band is also on Black Beauty.

Also on Live-Evil and one of the Fillmore records, right?

Corea was gone by the time of the Cellar Door recordings that made up most of Live-Evil, and Miles Davis at Fillmore was edits from the performances that now exist in full on the Bootleg Series set I mentioned. There are two studio tracks on Live-Evil that have Corea, Jarrett and Herbie Hancock all in the band at once, though.

Yeah, he was okay with Miles, but seems not to have liked playing so much electric, and in somebody else's band.
xxpost Luke Temple! I wanted to showcase the collectivism of the sounds produced in that first meeting. With that in mind I listened back to the first recording and transcribed different movements, motifs, and themes, plus added a few original composition ideas. We then recorded these collective compositions, first in a private recording session, second in front of an audience at Elastic Arts, where the Quintet first met. Good plan! So he gets back with Chicago heads and it all works out, at least on these first two spacious performances. Wonder if Baker plays his ARP on any of the rest? Will have to check.

Sorry, I meant xxxp Luke Stewart, as referenced/linked above.

There is a Luke Temple with music on Bandcamp, but I haven't heard it.

I know the guys but this is p good on the post-rock/jazz fusion tip imo: https://internetcelebrities.bandcamp.com/album/celebs

And yeah, I like the Dan Weiss album a lot. Like that Monder gets some more space to solo and that there are more extended tracks.

My interview with Luke Stewart is up now. I was really fascinated by this quote (which is why I made it the closer):

To Stewart, the point is to break away from the hierarchy—still prevalent even in supposedly free music—of the composer and the musicians who execute his vision. “When you listen to a field recording of a pygmy ensemble in the Congo, the question’s never ‘Whose song is that?’ or ‘Who is that?’,” he explains. “It’s more ‘What is that?’, which I think is a better question to ask when it comes to music and doing this work of breaking down hierarchies. Because when you’re asking who, you’re placing it in an individual zone, where even if there’s an ensemble of five, nine, eighteen, up to a full orchestra of music, the question is always, who wrote this music? And even if they did write it, is that music still theirs if someone else is playing that music and putting themselves into that music? How much of it can you say is yours? The band is improvised, and it’s a group. It’s not just me, it’s this band, and it’s me versus the collective legacies of these four titans of music, so it’s like, the concept of instilling your will upon a musician, upon a person’s imagination, upon a person’s creativity and then calling it yours. That’s sort of the concept that I’m thinking about and trying to fight against…to highlight the non-hierarchical nature of free improvisational music ensembles and also in essence [challenge] the concept of the capital-C composer and how it affects our perceptions of music, for better or for worse.”

“When you listen to a field recording of a pygmy ensemble in the Congo, the question’s never ‘Whose song is that?’ or ‘Who is that?’,

Maybe it should be though?

Wasn't going to get into it but yeah, that example would be a lot stronger if he were referring to how Pygmies in the Congo think about their musicians.

P cool Gioia-recommended out jazz trio from Toronto: https://ovalwindowrecords.bandcamp.com/album/clich-s-vol-i-trio-music . Clarinet, bass, percussion, no chordal instrument. They do an Ornette tune and a Lacy tune in addition to some originals. I like Houle's clarinet sound a lot; he and bassist Meger sound like they're in different keys at times but I think it's pretty strong melodically and mostly stays rhythmically grounded.

new joel ross album is good

The next volume of the Spiritual Jazz compilation series is called Now! and it's all new tracks: not exclusives, but tracks from the past few years. Includes stuff from Angel Bat Dawid, Shabaka & the Ancestors, Idris Ackamoor & the Pyramids, Black Flower, Damon Locks, Makaya McCraven, Steve Reid, Jamie Saft, etc., etc. 24 tracks in all across two CDs or however many LPs. Out in January.

another decent Kahil El’Zabar album out (America The Beautiful) and possibly featuring one of the last appearances of Hamiet Bluiett.

Any of yall heard the new Thumbscrew?? Looking good here:

https://downbeat.com/reviews/detail/the-anthony-braxton-project

That Thumbscrew Braxton album's a good 'un.

In other news, I just got this seemingly obscure email:

Creatures of Earth,

It is impossible to transform a creature of gross animal nature into a perfected spirit by some mysterious act of creative magic. When the Creators desire to produce perfect beings, they do so by direct and original creation. The creators never undertake to convert animal-origin and material creatures into beings of perfection in a single step. In a certain sense, all fifty-six of the encircling worlds of Jerusem are devoted to the transitional culture of ascending mortals. The seven satellites of world number one are more specifically known as the “Mansion Worlds”. I am writing to tell you all that I have been to these Mansion Worlds. I have seen and learned of the knowledge. I have yet to divulge to the mortal space-time creatures of (Earth).

I am RED | eleven.thirteen.twenty

The Planetary Prince

I take this to mean that pianist Cameron Graves is releasing an album next Friday. If it's the record that was sent to me late last year under the title Seven, it rules. It's got Stanley Clarke and Kamasi Washington on it, among others, and it sounds like if Chick Corea played a Steinway with Return To Forever, and covered Meshuggah songs.

Just recorded a 75-minute interview with Tim Berne for the next Burning Ambulance podcast. It's gonna be a good one.

RIP Andrew White-Howard U grad, sax player w/ his own band, & 5th Dimension, Julius Hemphill, & many more. John Coltrane solo transcriber, independent label owner, performer @ dc space, Kennedy Center and elsewhere, author,

Looking at an old Jazz Times article on Andrew White— guy was eccentric but skilled

My latest podcast went up today - it's a long (75 minutes or so) interview with Tim Berne. Links to listen are below.
Osiris: https://bit.ly/3kq9B0r
Apple: https://apple.co/3nme99Z
Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3pn4zp3

In recent ECM news, I really wish Elina Duni would stick to reworkings of (mostly Albanian) folk songs and give up on trying to be an urbane songstress – she just sounds superficial in that role.

anyone listened to the new sprawling Nels Cline lp? I was busy doing things while it was playing but caught some nice dubby/edm stylings.

Oh wow, I didn't know there was one. Thanks, listening now.

Which one? Bow Shoulder?

Share The Wealth

DC guitarist Anthony Pirog who has listened to some Nels Cline has a new trio effort out called Pocket Poem

Thx, calz. Just added it to my list.

First couple tracks are very good and psychedelic and free of EDM elements, somewhat to my relief tbh.

There are parts that are reminiscent of electric Miles/Macero. Acc to this, though, even a lot of these were the product of live improv, not studio prost-production: https://www.jazzhalo.be/articles/new-the-nels-cline-singers-share-the-wealth/

Petition to cancel critics who describe things as "atonal" when they clearly don't know what that means. Language is a virus, y'all: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/the-nels-cline-singers-share-the-wealth/

Petition to cancel critics who describe things as "atonal" when they clearly don't know what that means.

Here:
http://chng.it/HmCJwzPPwM

Haha someone signed.