Rolling Jazz Thread 2020

Listening to this Alabaster DePlume now. Excellent and heavy as hell. I can totally hear the Ethio influence.

Also, why wasn't I named Alabaster DePlume, ffs?

yeah Whiskey Story Time is Ethio-folk as fuck. Very nice.

Supposed to go see Christian Scott at the Blue Note in NYC tomorrow night. No news of a cancellation yet...

Yeah this is great, IA strikes again. Interesting that they're signing London records now.

Was supposed to see Jamie Branch tonight, weighing out if I should go out or not. May be the last chance to see live music for months. I'm honestly kind of shook and don't know how to process at the moment.

If it's easy to get to, absolutely go. My qualms w/r/t the Scott show is that it'll require two trains (NJ Transit, followed by the subway) in each direction. Also, NY's governor just said all gatherings over 500 are banned, and all gatherings of fewer than 500 (like a jazz club) must reduce admission by 50%. So they're only going to be letting like 60 people into the club and I don't know if guest list will get priority.

https://longsongrecords.bandcamp.com/album/solar-winds

new Raoul Björkenheim Trane themed guitar violin quartet is good.

Hm, making me think a bit of Sonny Sharrock?

I like Björkenheim generally, and that's an interesting concept. Might check that one out.

yeah some fine Sonny Sharrock energy bubbling up on occasions!

Mike Longo’s got the virus.

hi phil, got an “industry” (for lack of a better word) question for you: have you ever had any contact with william parker, or his people, or know anything about what that’s about ?

there’s an email address on his website, but i’m not sure how he’d react to me, a stranger, cold inquiring about releasing some tapes he has in his possession of some unreleased recordings with don cherry.

Yeah, I'm pretty close with William, actually. Drop a line to centeringmusic at earthlink dot net. He'll get back to you one way or the other.

thanks very much !

Mike Longo’s got the virus.

Really great album, full of hooks & vamps. Rhythmically it's very rooted in rock, though jazz credentials are clearly in full effect.

https://shiftingparadigmrecords.bandcamp.com/album/blood-moon

(full disclosure, I'm friends with a couple of these guys, but really impressed with this in spite of that)

Daniel Carter, Matthew Shipp, William Parker, and Gerald Cleaver today announced the release of Welcome Adventure! Vol. 1, the quartet's first ever album released together despite playing together in different iterations over the last several decades.

The track "Scintillate" will be released on May15th, 2020 and the full album will be out on CD/LP/Digital on June 5th, (on) 577 Records...with volume two scheduled to be published in the near future.
Credits
Daniel Carter - Tenor Saxophone, Trumpet, Flute
Matthew Shipp - Piano
William Parker - Bass
Gerald Cleaver - Drums

Tracklist
1. Majestic Travel Agency
2. Scintillate
3. Ear-regularities

Preorder
https://danielcarternyc.bandcamp.com/album/welcome-adventure-vol-1

Contact
Press: Cody DeFalco cody at northern-spy.com
Radio: Jeff Conklin radio at clandestinelabelservices.com

Did you all hear this? It's truly the vault-emptying era. Really picks up at the Lee Morgan solo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7PDD6gB2EM

The Blakey album is good. It's Art Blakey in 1959; how could it not be? Release date pushed back to June, I think.

https://www.npr.org/2020/03/31/824801424/wallace-roney-intrepid-jazz-trumpeter-dies-from-covid-19-complications-at-59

RIP Wallace Roney

“heliopolis” (1970) by cairo free jazz ensemble with harmut geerken / salah ragab is finally being reissued. label says “high quality remaster from the original tapes” but i’m skeptical. even so, i’ve always wanted to hear it so will probably buy.

https://www.soundohm.com/product/heliopolis-lp

Reggie Workman won a Guggenheim fellowship.

finally some well deserved good news in this world.

otm. dude is underrated imo

Øyvind Skarbø, Fredrik Ljungkvist, Kris Davis, Ole Morten Vågan ‎– Inland Empire

^^^

really good album is this

https://thetrapset.libsyn.com/265-makaya-mccraven

The new Jeff Parker, mentioned upthread a couple times, has instantly taken/held me for more of a first spin than any other album of recent release. No great solos, none needed, when grooves keep forming and flex like this. The most distinctive/least familiar element, to my ears, is the way he uses his Korg (etc.) for a sort of held, luminescent fluid effect, at the center, or to the side, or wherever it needs to go. He says he doesn't want to sit down and "fall into writing patterns," but the music is patterned, just enough. Also 'ppreciate what the drums bring to the mesh, no matter who is playing: McCraven, Jamire Williams, Jay Bellerose, Parker himself.
https://intlanthem.bandcamp.com/album/suite-for-max-brown

Well I guess I wouldn't mind "great solos" to take it further, but they don't seem nec. here, it ain't about any kind of solos,

Of course it was the first spin, but ooo infatutation is fun.

Also infatuation.

Parker and two who played on his album, Josh Johnson and Rob Mazurek, recently teamed with Chad Taylor for the first new Chicago Underground Quartet set since early 00s. Good Days has a good late night deep focus, cheerful and shaded,tone set by the elusive Alan Shorter's '69 "Orgasm"as opener, extended via dorsal fin sky roll of "Strange Wing," by far the longest track, moving right along like all. Marurek's cornet provides submarine lights when needed, Taylor's "solo log drum" piece "Lormé" fits right into the canopy----it's really not nec. late night weedio; my maiden voyage was midday, sober as I'll ever be:
https://astralcuq.bandcamp.com/album/good-days

Looking fwd to spending more time w/ that new Chi Underground Quartet!
So far am liking its sustained mood more than Suite For Max Brown as a whole
(although for me Parker's newest one's highs are super-high, for instance I am blown away by "Go Away" and to a slightly lesser extent the earlier track that adds, uh, electronic swirl to the same bass ostinato/groove, "Fusion Swirl")

“Go Away” rules

Yeah, and speaking of Rob Mazurek, I just now remembered doing a show preview when he played Columbus with Sao Paulo Underground in 2012:Tres Cabecas Loucuras was their most recent album, maybe the first. Not sure because ads on discogs are messing with my computer---looks like most recent was in 2016 ( a couple of releases listed for 2014 incl. Pharoah Sanders), 2013 album is on bandcamp, will have to check this---here's what I wrote, such as it is (does convey some of their appeal):
Sao Paulo Underground 09/23
Brazil’s Sao Paulo is one of the world’s biggest cities, with a somewhat surreal, rough-edged industrial vitality, an intriguingly compatible challenge for Midwestern composer/performer Rob Mazurek, veteran of hardy collective Chicago Underground. Sao Paulo Underground, which is Mazurek and three versatile Brazilian instrumentalists, also reflects his time with UK synth-pop combo Stereolab and Chicago’s jazz-influenced Tortoise, often tagged as "post-rock." Most typically, SPU evokes the spirit of Miles Davis’s trans-genre, shape-shifting seismic grooves, as Marzurek’s cornet makes a rich, sometimes darkly smoldering impact on the urban earth of 21rst Century Brazilian acoustic/electric/electronic soundscapes.
09/23 @ Wexner Center Performance Space, 1871 N. High St., 7 p.m.

listening now to the 2016 one, Cantos Invisíveis

really, thank you dow

Mazurek does some really interesting stuff. I saw him play with his group Black Cube SP (a sort of offshoot of São Paulo Underground - all the same members, plus Thomas Rohrer playing rabeca, a large Brazilian violin-like instrument). I shot some video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLJaxSL_RKc

Thanks for posting your vid, Phil--love that keyboard bass underpinning the whole thing.

just listening to the latest Aruán Ortiz/Andrew Cyrille joint and liking it rn.

Alexander @hawkinsmusic has made his albums @Bandcamp pay-what-you-want: https://t.co/UcQRRSBz81 -- they're all great. Go to, and pay something, if you're able?

— destination: OUT (@destinationOUT) April 15, 2020

You're welcome, gaudio, and thank you, unperson, for unwrapping some Black Cube. Thought this might be dirgey, given the back story, but no----"Return The Tides (excerpt)," which makes me think of early 70s Miles making his band learn Black Sabbath, is bouncier than the others, but plenty motility among all these proffered sounds (must get whole thing):https://cuneiformrecords.bandcamp.com/album/return-the-tides-ascension-suite-and-holy-ghost

RIP Lee Konitz

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bacgAEmcFK4

Oh, man, RIP. What a player, what a personality.

I...acknowledge his importance. RIP.

It looks like the great Sheila Jordan (check out "Portrait of Sheila," GREAT album) found out via Birdland's FB post too.

So sorry to hear this. I wish I had caught more performances, but I did see Konitz once, with Dan Tepfer. It was only a few days before he turned 90, but it was unmistakably him, a beautiful player to the end. His exchanges were Tepfer were absolutely wonderful - a highly memorable performance.

FWIW, it was an outdoor show, and some people further back in the audience wanted him to play into a mic, but every time a stage hand approached him with one, he'd walk away, still playing. (They finally gave up.) Towards the end, he wanted to try his hand at scat singing - I never heard him sing before, so I can't say if he was ever consistently good at singing, but every now and then, his voice wouldn't be up to the melodies in his head, and he'd respond with a raspberry. Tepfer eventually sat with him and they both scatted a bit on the last song. It was touching - the guy has done enough to fill two lifetimes of great work, if he wanted to try singing on his last number, it was well earned.

If you need to start somewhere, I highly suggest MOTION, a widely-hailed masterpiece ("one of the great modern jazz records") and rightfully so.

Also check out 'Lee Konitz: Conversations on the Improviser's Art,' which is one of the great jazz books as well - essential reading for jazz enthusiasts.

Motion is indeed an awesome album

This is a Chicago trumpet player's group, pretty killing: https://connorbernhard.bandcamp.com

"A mountain ain't nothin' but a tombstone for a fire."
Who Sent You? they said from their liquid cryo-chamber, from a low-light induction field cobbled together with lithium rods, with melted down Romare Bearden and Howardena Pindell paintings, stitched with chaos fibers and placed in the center of the carrion husk of a burnt out shanty town. They took time to scrape ashen samples of what was, their souls the residue thick and caked on, that still climbs those new high-rise condominiums like moss—the only evidence that they were once there, that they were baked into the fabric of this planet—they were there fixing elevators and tossing wrenches into quantum fields until they were stopped! frisked! and turned into weird, 100-foot martyr murals on the backside, the north side, of supermarket walls—Who Sent You? is how the matrix modulation works.

"I remember stealing back the night, and we took as much as we could: every blue-black inch, gasping for air."

Camae Ayewa - voice, texts
Keir Neuringer - saxophone, percussion
Aquiles Navarro - trumpet, percussion
Luke Stewart - double bass, percussion
Tcheser Holmes - drums, congas

"We are more than circles."

https://intlanthem.bandcamp.com/album/who-sent-you

"No mas, no more. No longer."

def not just settings for words, or vice-versa: love the sounds of this whole thing!