Rolling Jazz Thread 2022

They are planning on doing one near the house in Philly where he lived from 1962-1966, too.

That's fantastic.

I got into most of The Bad Plus instantly, but liked it a little less each time since. Still enjoy all of "The Dandy" and "Sick Fire," and really most of the rest in part, but Chris Speed's xp long tones weigh it down, like a speech---can be a poignant, even noble speech---"Fore score and seven years ago..."whereas Tony Malably's sax is speech, and not like Honest Abe giving you a folksy pitch: it can be lyrical, or skronky, or just pitting phrases with breath and punctuation and irregular line-lengths, more of the moment than Speed ever sounds---and he stimulates Monder much more as well, or maybe Monder thinks it just wouldn't be fittin' to play on TBP the way he does on much of Monder/Malaby/Rainey's https://benmonder.bandcamp.com/album/live-at-55-bar I get that it's "So-and-So plays guitar, Monder plays music," and I appreciate his playing on the former album, but enjoy it more on this one. (On both, he makes me think of young McLaughlin in space, between Miles and Mahavishnu.)
Nevertheless, so far. 55 Bar's three-part suite is three long treks, and sometimes seems a little too repetitive---would like to have Malaby sit in for Speed, playing Bad Plus compositions, and see how that goes (guys?)
More than either of those, I'm totally into Breath of Air's s/t, with Brandon Ross, guitarist of my fave jazz etc. power trio, Harriet Tubman, times violinist Charles Burnham and drummer Warren Benbow, both of Ulmer's Odyssey The Band: all bold, self-reliant, interdependent, promptly responsive while focused in what seems totally impromptu---times electricity and a live audiencehttps://breathofair.bandcamp.com/

Currently listening to Titan To Tachyons' Vonals: agree w unperson's upthread comment that its excellence is not jazz per se, but obviously there are some jazz-related devices, like chord voicings in an intro here, certain tempo changes and translucent tonalities there---but these are set-ups for the sucker punch, the grabber squeezed into bursts ov noize: set the charge. light the fuse, can't tell just what might happen---I mean you can know if you've listened enough, but not really how it's going to feel this time, the way your nerves will be splattered with impressions in the headphones, guitar strings, talons, dragging a little ways after.
Only reservation (if that's what it is) far: sometimes the sequence of sections seems arbitrary, although there's not much time to notice and don't yet know if it matters that much. having accepted the sense of ritual on the way to a master take (Gates says one of these was completely improvised in the studio, others built up at least in part via improv.)
(Nothing free on Banccamp; I'm listening to the promo, but CD's on BC and, along with digital, on Amazon yeah dirty word but that's at least one where they put it.)

Thanks for listening to the Breath Of Air album. (It’s on my label.)

may have more to say about it later, but anyway strongly suspect it'll be in my Top Ten, Twelve, somewhere in there.

(Also Titans)

Thurston Moore shared a clip of this on Twitter. It's really good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QU6RVY-vxfQ

niiice, gotta check out some more Art Farmin', thanks.

meanwhile,

For your autumn headspace, I've compiled *five hours* of the densest, dankest post-Bitches Brew fusion grooves the planet has to offer. @aquadrunkardhttps://t.co/htQKo3ijqm

— Brent S. Sirota (@BrentSirota) October 10, 2022

The Sonny Rollins bio coming out in December is a fucking doorstop. I now know what he did pretty much every day of his life from the late 1940s to the early 1980s. After that, the author starts fast-forwarding some, but honestly someone should have sat him down and explained the difference between “exhaustive” and “exhausting”.

enjoying “at scaramouche”

Wayne Shorter & Milton Nascimento, October 2022

📸 Augusto Kesrouani Nascimento
h/t Milton Nascimento’s IG pic.twitter.com/o6Ge6opImz

— jeff (@jazyjef) October 14, 2022

“Two Centuries” is the first recorded collaboration between jazz legends Wadada Leo Smith and Andrew Cyrille, with rising electronic experimentalist, composer, and drummer, Qasim Naqvi.

Qasim Naqvi is the former drummer for Dawn Of Midi, a really good minimalist piano trio. Check out their album Dysnomia from a few years ago. It rules.

Cosign the Dysnomia recommendation. Brilliant record.

My latest Stereogum column is out, featuring an extended interview with bassist Eric Revis and reviews of some new albums (I came around on the quartet version of the Bad Plus big time).

Wow, there’s even a mention of Doug Wamble in there, a rarity in these parts.

Oooh this Dysnomia record is very good indeed! Thanks for the tip.

Unperson I just asked my local library to buy your book. Hopefully they don't decide it's too 'niche'. I want to read it!

they'll probably say, "why would we order that when we already have all these great books by ted gioia?"

night 1 of the BRIC jazzfest was a good time.

Kalia Vandever (who regularly plays out with Emmanuel Wilkens and Joel Ross) is a pretty great composer and bandleader. Her music is as inconsolably melancholic as dischordant trombone can be with a fascinatingly meandering POV. Her guitarist, Lee Meadvin, evokes Frisell methinks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G32tejPN5_o

Freelance are an eight-piece soul jazz crossover combo that was having a good enough time that it was easy to play along. They closed with this extremely fun cover of BBD's "Poison"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFNmvQBIP5s

K3yanna was the real find of the night for me, a virtuosically mannered guitarist whose playing was intricate and punk with a fully-developed and still surprisingly abstract style. She said that the new direction she's going in is inspired by the last two months of COVID and I dunno, this shit slaps and I want to hear more of it but there's nothing available yet! Anyways, she's a badass and I think she's gonna be a name soon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKMPw4vnGuo
https://www.instagram.com/p/Cikgrd-uS8H/

Joel Ross had a ridiculously good combo. Lizz Wright's voice is a dense, sweet, gracious and capacious as the whole of a maple tree.

Going again tomorrow.

Very jealous you got to see Kalia Vandever. Her new album Regrowth came out in May but has been pretty overlooked. She has great restraint and tone. Agree she can lean melancholic but there are moments of joy throughout her music, in a late night speakeasy kind of way.

The PBS documentary on Ron Carter was pretty interesting. Not the typical career overview/hagiography. He seems like a pretty prickly dude, and very sure of his own worth, to put it mildly.

Kind of what I may have heard, won’t say where.

I'd been chasing an interview with him for a while, but watching this I don't think we'd get along at all and will probably abandon the attempt.

I thought the doc was very well done, thought I wish they'd mentioned the records he'd made with Dolphy...but then, with Carter, if every "I wish they'd mentioned that he played with ___" request was honored, it would be a 12-hour miniseries.

He seems like a pretty prickly dude

I didn't get that impression in the least. The only (slight) flashes of prickliness I noticed were in Jon Batiste's story about meeting him ("Hello, Mr. Ron Carter"), and a moment of mild frustration during a recording session. The former sounded like some jokey hazing of a precocious kid, and the latter has probably happened hundreds of times in his career. And ffs, he practically apologized to one of his assistants -- "I might be short with you" -- because his son had died days earlier.

very sure of his own worth

Well...yeah. He knows what he accomplished, he knows that many people know what he accomplished, and he is keenly aware of the struggle behind that. As he says in the film, even in his 80s he still thinks about a conductor calling him "the colored boy" when he was at Eastman.

Heard a story on Questlove's podcast the other day (interviewing Bob Power) where they were saying similar things, not in a bad way. They wanted him to play on D'Angelo's 'Shit Damn Motherfucker' and as soon as he found out the title it was a hard no.

Also learned that it's Larry Grenadier on that record instead!

Forks thanks for the report, will check those out—hadn’t heard of them until now. Please report on tonight!

Since I was probably going to forgo Big Ears this year I was thinking of going to Winter Jazzfest as a substitute.

Any Ilxors go on a regular basis? Are venues really spread out? Are there festival passes, and if so, is there a danger of not getting into a desired show?

I've gone a few times. The venues are generally pretty close together, like, within a few blocks of each other, more or less. Some shows are in Brooklyn but most are in the Village. You can buy festival passes — for the whole thing, or just for one night — but there's always a *slight* danger of not getting into a particular show because sometimes they'll put someone into a too-small space. I've only been shut out once or twice, though; it's not like I've gone and not been able to get into anything I wanted to see. Usually it's not a problem.

Thanks!

I believe another ILX0r is closely related to someone who works for the festival.

Marc Maron interviewed Ron Carter but I'm scared to listen

It's actually not too bad, at least not compared against some of his other musician interviews. I think his clear admiration for Carter kept some of his worse instincts in check.

Youtube digging yesterday led me from Johnny Hammond 'Gambler's Life', to looking up the drummer, to watching this beautiful drumming by Greg Bandy (and if those are college students, they're killing)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hK9H8wBHW-I

The PBS documentary on Ron Carter was pretty interesting. Not the typical career overview/hagiography. He seems like a pretty prickly dude, and very sure of his own worth, to put it mildly.

― but also fuck you (unperson), Saturday, October 22, 2022 7:49 AM (three weeks ago) bookmarkflaglink

Saw this yesterday and quite honestly thought it was a snooze, and a poorly edited snooze, at that. Almost tedious. I don't regret watching it because there is some good live footage and some revealing (if redundant) interviews, but I came away knowing little more about Ron Carter than I did going in, and I found the lack of any attempt at a narrative arc really frustrating. It's one of those films that, by the halfway mark, seems like it's drawing to a close four or five different times, only to pivot to some new, unconnected, unnecessary scene.

Full Bad Plus set:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9M-633spvk

I'm happy to go through the thread later or read unperson's columns, but if any jazz head is kind enough to throw in a couple recommendations for EOY listening, it would be much appreciated (I'm hoping that others have the secret same wish and would benefit as well).

Only things I've heard this year are Comet, McCraven, and Makhathini. There was plenty last year that I liked (Karoline Wallace, Floating Points, Muriel Grossman, Jaubi, SoK, Nala Sinephro, Irreversible Entanglements, Ill Considered, Koma Saxo), my problem is really timing / dedication.

Some thoughts on Sunday's Henry Threadgill/Anthony Braxton double headliner in London:

https://thequietus.com/articles/32347-anthony-braxton-henry-threadgill-london-jazz-efg-festival?fbclid=IwAR16qfGx1SH7yFBPn62ssyAQ0qZ0xrXG5BfKWVI_vIr6NgUf7xZB7zDZCps

This is not a great list because I haven't really been keeping up, but here are a few things to check out:

Julian Lage - View with a Room
The Bad Plus - s/t
JD Beck & DOMi - NOT TIGHT
Mary Halvorson - Amaryllis
Ari Hoenig Trio - Golden Treasures
Joshua Redman/Christian McBride/Brian Blade/Brad Mehldau - LongGone
Jeff Parker/Eric Revis/Nasheet Waits - Eastside Romp

2021 jazz records that I found and listened to a ton in 2022:
Nicholas Payton - Smoke Sessions
Kenny Garrett - Sounds from the Ancestors

Julian Lage is so fucking good, I've seen him play with his own band and as a sideman and he's totally in that tradition of players who seem constantly surprised and overjoyed at what they're able to do with their instrument. Not showing off, more like, HOLY COW THAT WAS COOL.

otm

One of the times I've seen him was with the "Songs for Petra" band at Big Ears this year, which I went to partly because my son wanted to see Petra Haden. He'd never heard of Julian Lage, who restrained himself to one or two tasty solos a song, but about three songs in my son was like, "That guy is great."

a friend invited me to go see J lage, it was very fun to watch him. i've seen a few videos on youtube and enjoyed those, too. what a sweet guy. but unfortunately i have never, ever felt like listening to his records.

anyway, this is the stuff that i've liked so far this year. i guess in certain ways it's been kind of a "mellow" year for me:

chloe jackson-reynolds - the winter concert
Nduduzo Makhathini - In the Spirit of Ntu
peachfuzz - peachinguinha
brodie west quintet - meadow of dreams
joel ross - parable of the poet
andrew cyrille / william parker / enrico rava - 2 blues for cecil

Thanks for all the recommendations. Nduduzo Makhathini is in town this weekend, I will try to catch him.

The Muriel Grossmann (Universal Code) is good to very good. Totally in the vein of Coltrane down to track titles, married to a smoother loungier "Nordic" side, but impeccable play and feel, nice rhythmic section, organ probably could take one step back. Don't ask me to tell the nine titles apart, but they each have a little piece of spiraling eternity.

Nduduzo Makhathini is in town this weekend, I will try to catch him.

Definitely go if you can. He's got some great players touring with him and his music is really beautiful live.

Stew, thanks so much for your xpost report on the Braxton/Threagill double-header! Hope some recordings of that show emerge---in the backstory, was most struck by this:

The last time I saw Braxton was in Berlin in 2019, where he performed Sonic Genome, a six hour sound environment featuring 60 musicians. Between orchestral set pieces, the musicians would wander off to form smaller groupings, interpreting scores from Braxton’s “Ghost Trance” series. The audience members, or “friendly experiencers” as Braxton puts it, could choose their own adventure, following one group before moving on to another, or finding a spot to soak up the sound clash from the different ensembles moving around the space. In the final hour, Braxton strolled into the atrium, forming an impromptu trio with another saxophonist and a bassist. As their improvisation came to an end, the building reverberated to the sustained tones of the entire ensemble moving around the space, as if the walls themselves were singing. It remains one of the greatest musical experiences of my life, profoundly moving yet tremendous fun.

Thanks Dow. You can watch all 6 hours of the Berlin Sonic Genome here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBSLVPD8AL8

Of course, it's just one interpretation of events, but you get some idea of how it worked. Braxton talks about it as a theme park - an avant-garde Disneyland!

Awesome, thanks so much!!
xpost That is, I've seen and read about those artists forming and performing with recombinant subgroups, drawing from a pool of musos onstage and in the wings, but not letting the troops do their own thing, or not to the extent you indicate.

Yes, it's fascinating the extent to which it democratises the compositional process - taking the AACM's radical subversion of the hierarchy of composer-conductor-performer to a logical conclusion perhaps. And then allowing the audience to choose their own adventure through it all. I guess the next step would be to have the audience members join in the improvisations too, but I'm not entirely sure what that would add musically. Giving the audience the chance to shape their own experience is itself part of the composition.