Rolling Jazz Thread 2020

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!

Really digging the Kurt Elling Cocktail Hour, every Friday at 6PM EST. He doesn't sing but chats, plays recordings and has a guest to talk to.

Seeing a lot of sad news about Henry Grimes on Twitter tonight but haven't seen it reported in any major outlets yet? I spun Unit Structures.

yeah confirmed unfortunately .. RIP Henry. He's contributed to so many absolute classic albums.

Cecil Taylor: piano
Jimmy Lyons: alto saxophone
Archie Shepp: tenor saxophone
Henry Grimes: bass
Sunny Murray: drums
Ted Curson: trumpet
Roswell Rudd: trombone

absolute ridic band on Into The Hot

at this rate there won't be any mid-20th century legends and relics left by the end of the year:(

Grimes teamed up with all the major jazz musicians of that time: Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, Albert Ayler, Cecil Taylor, Bill Dixon, Frank Wright and Roswell Rudd (and this is only a narrowed-down list). No matter what the musical context was, he played with an intensity that musicians like Dennis Charles thought “his bass was about to explode“.

otm

bummer news.

just yesterday i was spinning “sonny’s time now” with murray and albert ayler, he’s sharing double bass duty with lewis worrell on that one.

i’ve still never heard his record on ESP. nor have i heard the live recordings with rollins / cherry in europe. i will search for them.

RIP henry grimes

I got to see Grimes play with Cecil when he re-emerged. Pheeroan akLaff on drums. Being a Cecil Taylor bassist is often a thankless job, but Grimes found a space for himself and refused to yield any ground. I saw him one other time, too, but I can't remember the other musicians or the context.

He was great with Marc Ribot and Chad Taylor and Roy Campbell on the Spiritual Unity album. And there's a trio album from after Campbell's passing that's pretty good, too.

just listening to that Ted Poor debut with both Andrews Bird and D'Angelo, it's quite unexpectedly fab. Thought it might be a quite dry chamber-jazz type project but it certainly ain't that!

Went to Pi Recordings' Bandcamp and saw that the digital version of the Marc Ribot Trio Live at the Village Vanguard album I mentioned has 3 more tracks - about 30 minutes of music. So I bought it and listened to it while walking around (post office, dollar store, grocery store). It's pretty great.

https://www.nydailynews.com/coronavirus/ny-coronavirus-giuseppi-logan-nyc-jazz-musician-dies-20200418-gbfkozi54jed3ialerdk73pz2i-story.html

its funny to read jimmy macbride's name in an ilx thread. i went to a jazz camp with him in connecticut -- i was in HS and he was like, 9 years old or something?

he was a known drum wizard at that point, at any rate

@espdisk-April 17
yes, sadly #GiuseppiLogan has risen into the eternal today. we here, in gratitude of Mr. Logan's music is offering it today, as a free download, as we mourn the loss, and hope you can take positive solace in his spirit sonics...
https://giuseppilogan.bandcamp.com/album/the-giuseppi-logan-quartet

@natechinen
Henry Grimes and Giuseppi Logan were both born in Philadelphia in 1935. Each made a major impact in the jazz avant-garde in the 1960s, disappeared for some 30 years, and returned to a hero’s welcome. We lost both this week. #RIP

i was in HS and he was like, 9 years old or something?
He's all of twenty-eight years old now.

Henry Grimes did a tour with David Murray and Sunny Murray in 2004. I caught them in a small club in Utrecht, Holland and it was amazing.

Did anyone check out the Unfiltered release from Tyshawn Sorey? It was released in May but I haven't read much about it (it was mentioned in a live review in the latest edition of The Wire).

Thanks for the new Sorey album alert, can't wait to get it!