Rolling Jazz Thread 2020

"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!

sounds a bit like Verisimilitude is my first impression, like it!

curious that such a good release has gone completely under the radar. Even with the Rona on the run still loads of shite is getting reviewed!

apparently this sextet performed this live in early March. 4 weeks is a long time in the era of pandemic.

It slid under the radar because it was a surprise release at the time. That doesn't work as well in jazz as it does in pop.

he's got the laziest twitter account in the world - he doesn't even announce his new releases on it. But I respect that!

https://jewishinsider.com/2020/04/checking-in-on-the-village-vanguard-the-worlds-oldest-jazz-club/

My latest Stereogum column is up. A litany of the dead, and 15 awesome new albums to listen to.

https://www.stereogum.com/2081658/the-month-in-jazz-april-2020/franchises/ugly-beauty/

Excellent column Phil. BTW, have you ever seen Robert Altman's "Jazz '34: Remembrances of Kansas City Swing"? It was made from the performance footage he shot for his otherwise poorly-received "Kansas City." Great documentary, it was hailed by the few film critics who reviewed it, but unfortunately it never got decent distribution and it remains out-of-print due to licensing issues. (When Arrow Films in the UK tried to include it in their new reissue of "Kansas City" on Blu-Ray, they found out the music licensing for "Jazz '34" was poorly done - everything was short-term and thus expired, and the cost to re-license made it impractical for them to pursue it further.) I bring it up because Hal Willner was the music supervisor for that entire project after previous musical consultants had dropped out. He handpicked the players from all over the jazz and R&B world, which created some on-set tension when the musical sensibilities of certain individuals were at odds with each other. Some quit early on, but things seemed to calm down once they saw themselves on screen. It's probably my favorite project he's done.

I know of it, but have never seen it. I did see the Kansas City Big Band live at Town Hall in NYC in 1997, though I was more excited to see the opening acts, Charlie Haden's Quartet West and Joe Henderson (with George Mraz and Al Foster).

I posted this on the New Orleans brass thread, but someone got Derrick "Kabuki" Shezbie (formerly of the Rebirth Brass Band, and 26 years ago recorded his previous solo album as a teenager, when he was supposed to be the next New Orleans trumpet star a la Wynton, Terrence Blanchard, Nicholas Payton) to record a trad album. It's not necessarily a great album but I'm always happy to hear him play, this is my fave cut:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-_9YPzP2PQ

Jaimie Branch at the last show at Roulette before they closed. I had tickets and opted out.
https://vimeo.com/407212407/822e55b8ee

https://www.soundohm.com/product/lena

new Anna Högberg Attack album is fantastic. Mats Gustafsson is raving about it in the link above.

Nice! I loved their first album.

yes it was ace. I definitely need to dig that one out again

Guitarist Hedvig Mollestad, whose long-running trio combines heavy fusion with monster blooze-rawk riffage, has a new album coming out next month with a different, larger ensemble: trumpeter Susana Santos Silva, Marte Eberson and Erlende Slettevoll on keyboards, Torstein Lofhus on drums and Ole Mofjell on percussion. Mollestad wrote the music for the Vossa Jazz festival in Norway in 2019, and after the performance they recorded a studio version. It's really good — kind of a cross between Zappa and early '70s Santana, with the trumpet up front and some really out, noisy electronics at times. On Rune Grammofon.

oh hell yeah, I love Hedvig Mollestad

International Jazz Day, panel and concert streaming tomorrow on jazzday.com:
International Jazz Day Panel with host Nate Chinen, featuring performer Marcus Miller and South African vocalist Sibongile Khumalo.
Time: 1:30 p.m. ET
International Jazz Day Global Concert
Marcus Miller, Lang Lang, Charlie Puth, Cécile McLorin Salvant, John McLaughlin, Dianne Reeves, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Sibongile Khumalo, Alune Wade, John Beasley, Ben Williams, Lizz Wright, John Scofield, Igor Butman, Evgeny Pobozhiy, Youn Sun Nah, A Bu, Jane Monheit, and Joey DeFrancesco, among others.
Time: 3:00 p.m. ET
Leading up to the virtual Global Concert, there will be a free series of educational masterclasses, children’s activities and discussions via web conference featuring renowned educators and jazz artists, streamed live via jazzday.com.
more info: https://jazzday.com/

A live audience will be able to submit questions throughout the session. NPR will co-host a live stream of the virtual International Jazz Day activities.

There's some really nice stuff on this Tim Daisy comp (of his compositions with different bands throughout the years):
https://timdaisyrelayrecords.bandcamp.com/album/tim-daisy-a-forward-line-original-sounds-2004-2020-relay-digital-011

I wrote about the new Anna Högberg Attack album, which I bought on Friday during Bandcamp's fee-waiving day.

great album is that. I've had it on repeat rotation for the last week.

Thanks for the heads-up, Phil (and for continuing to cover great artists like her)

I indeed thought the same thing in terms of that 10-min tune on her new one sounding very Conquistador!, but wasn't sure to what degree my thinking that was due to Henry Grimes having passed away a week and a half before her album dropped...

Yes, and as what unperson calls the creepy groove things stalk the leash-singeing trumpet in track 2 (unperson trans. "It IS Not Too Late"), I think of Gil Evans & Miles Davis, *if* they'd gotten together later (in an official, upfront-type presentation, not w Gil's un-or under-credited input to Miles records, as actually seemed to happen, some say), except Miles didn't usually stick so much to lower, wider notes like this (at moments reminding me of Masekela's flugelhorn on the amazing recent release w Tony Allen--but again, not too close).
Also thinking of Gil, the faster side of Gil, during bluesy balancing act portions of "Dansa Margit"---and when the horn gets softer, and everybody else comes swarming back in, kind of like when the cop show hold-out finally lowers his weapon..."Antigen" has this good use of contrast, dynamic development too---and yeah those opening notes of track one are for all time.

unperson trans. "It Is...," not "It IS," sorry. the notes begin to decay like the reed is dissolving also like how other instruments can go through this in diff. time cycles, as is surely the way of nature, not always but ultimately, after the boom-boom ('appreciate they don't automatically lock into blazing finales, like some free-stylized jazz)

if the title of Moses Boyd's Dark Matter suggests a science fiction soundtrack, you're on the right trek: "Nommos Descent," feat. Nonku Phiri and Nubya Garcia, is like Quincy Jones of Young London Presents the New Nocturnal PostFreeBop Pop--that's the one that The Guardian calls "over produced," but I don't think so, it fits perfectly after the gruff, vivid social observations over circular jagged beats and recurring sax fiber of "Dancing in the Dark" feat. Obongjayar, the dubbier drive of "Only You," (incl. roil of looped[?] drums), and "Far Gone"'s flexing core times the rippling ricochet piano of Joe Armon-Jones. Elsewhere we get well-chosen bits of conversation, overblown flute, tough guitar---so far I'm only underwhelmed by the opener, which incl. tinny muted trumpet, not good to start w anticlimax.
I guess early works of Soul II Soul and Massive Attack might also be suggested, but this seems more consistently expansive and energized, in a cool, wider-ranging-record-collection way.
https://mosesboyd.bandcamp.com/album/dark-matter-2

One of my favorites this year for sure

agreed! the shape of acid jazz to come: MOSES BOYD's Dark Matter

How it's done:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDpHbc50oM0&feature=youtu.be

This should work better (new Youtube video of Monder doing a spacey solo version of "Never Let Me Go"):
https://youtu.be/UDpHbc50oM0

I'm catching up with some of Eric Hofbauer's more recent releases. This was really pleasant wake-up music this morning (goes down much easier than the solo Ghost Frets - which I also like): https://soundcloud.com/erichofbauer/sets/remains-of-echoes