Rolling Jazz Thread 2020

Christian Scott has a live album, Axiom, out tomorrow. It was recorded in March at the Blue Note in NYC. I was supposed to go to one of those shows, but the word was coming down about corona - the city reduced nightclubs to 50% capacity the night I was supposed to go, and I told the publicist to pull my name off the guest list. I don't regret my decision, but I'm very excited to hear what I missed. There's a 1CD version with 9 tracks, running 74 minutes, and a digital version that's 14 tracks and runs 2 hours 19 minutes.

http://christianscott.bandcamp.com/album/axiom

Excellent Chicago drummer Quin Kirchner released his first album a few months ago, listening now and it's pretty varied and cool:
https://quinkirchner.bandcamp.com/album/the-shadows-and-the-light

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/03/arts/music/jazz-protest-academia.html

Of the more than 500 students who graduate from American universities with jazz degrees each year, less than 10 percent are Black, according to Department of Education statistics compiled by DataUSA. In 2017, the last year with data available, precisely 1 percent of jazz-degree grads were Black women

Just now exclaimed over Nubya Garcia's brand-new Source over on Moses Boyd thread---wasn't getting first two tracks, but now I am, and rest of it swept me away immediately.

I got this yesterday, wasn't super impressed by her debut, even though it was nice enough, but this on a whole different level! I'd say it's best new album I've heard this year in any genre.

I love Georgia Anne Muldrow aka Jyoti and the -Mama, You Can Bet!- album is exactly hitting the spot for me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSi8Gcioh-o

GAM has never really clicked for me, which is odd since I used to be a big Stones Throw fuxxor, but I'm curious about that one; the review I read ticked all the right influence boxes.

Has anyone mentioned the new Greg Foat album Symphonie Pacifique yet? It might be too smooth for some tastes, but I really enjoyed it (the smooth is balanced with some good drumming, including by Moses Boyd). It reminds me a bit of the Resavoir album on International Anthem that I adore.

The new Garcia is very good, but I think I agree with dow about the opening tracks--the title track is really something though.

I love this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1ek4siKqn4&feature=share&fbclid=IwAR3dyrcPW6yrLzizsR_hbU2Q-GsNGGlLuTEdRoPdC8zpTKxDKA1meSyX1j0

what is it?

The link is black

I saw it yesterday, I think it was a woman doing carnatic scatting along with the studio version of Giant Steps?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1ek4siKqn4

That's fascinating and sent me down a rabbithole to learn more about carnatic theory!

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/03/arts/music/jazz-protest-academia.html

Of the more than 500 students who graduate from American universities with jazz degrees each year, less than 10 percent are Black, according to Department of Education statistics compiled by DataUSA. In 2017, the last year with data available, precisely 1 percent of jazz-degree grads were Black women

This reminded me of a song my friend's punk band had back in the late 90s: "All the Kids Who Listen to Ska Get Good Grades And Are in Lots of After-School Activities." One might as well have replaced "ska" with "jazz." Even though I loved jazz then and still love it now, obv, the snarky song title rang true: at least in the US, from my observation and from my time in a music conservatory, much jazz music education is given to white, suburban kids. It's a ridiculous shame.

I do remember that Don Byrd was actively trying to recruit more Black students for the program at my alma mater, though don't know how his efforts went.

I was just talking about the issue of jazz education with bassist Luke Stewart (from Irreversible Entanglements, James Brandon Lewis's group, Heart of the Ghost, and other acts). He got his undergrad and master's degrees in international relations, started out playing electric bass in punk bands (which was where he met Moor Mother), and eventually switched to upright and started playing jazz, but that DIY/punk mindset is all over his sound and style. And frankly I wish there were more players like him, because he demonstrates that you can just...start playing jazz, without having to get a goddamn master's degree or win the Thelonious Monk competition first. It's an attitude I see coming out of the London scene as well; even the players there that have gone through school (Shabaka Hutchings has all kinds of classical clarinet training) are able to shrug off the straitjacket of tradition and play music that means something to them. I'm sure Nubya Garcia could play the hell out of "Giant Steps" if she felt like it, but could your average New School or New England Conservatory jazz student throw down over a dub rhythm or a cumbia groove the way she can?

That makes sense to me, unperson. I minored in music comp at the conservatory, coming in late, but my major (and my pursuit in life at this point) was Creative Writing, with an emphasis on poetry. My music composition mentor took a shine to me mostly because I approached composition from the perspective of someone who wasn't the most trained or studied, but someone who really cared about sound, and whose interests were and continue to be all over the place. Not that I'm an exceptional musician— far from it!— but the specialization that happens in the conservatory model is limiting when it should be expansive.

Here's some video I've never seen before, of the Lounge Lizards live in 1982. This is one of their straighter lineups - post Arto Lindsay but pre Marc Ribot:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBD9j9pcla4

always good to hear a new Eric Revis album with his some of his usual partners in crime including Kris Davis and the new one (Slipknots Through a Looking Glass) sounds excellent on my first listen.

Nice, bold choice to do jazz arrangements of all Slipknot and Philip Glass pieces

i think it is a lovely title but a bit misleading I'm afraid!

Ha! You're going to have to wait for the followup, Iowasquaatsi
(That Revis album had already caught my ear--already bought the advance single, but am prob going to buy a few of the unstreamable tracks blind right now, which can be fun)

It's on Spotify and it's really nice & unexpected (but still buy it if you can, obv)

RIP Stanley Crouch

Unfortunately, the decimation of public school instrumental music programs plus the conservatory-ization of jazz favors privileged kids, who are disproportionately going to be white.

Listening to Reid Anderson's album from last year with Dave King and Craig Taborn. It's not 'jazz', no improvising and all synths & electric bass. All melodies and odd times. So, I guess this is a prog rock album?

I mean, I've always thought of the Mahavishnu Orchestra and Return To Forever as prog, so...sure, absolutely. I like that record. Here's the BC link for anyone who wants to check it out:

https://goldenvalleyisnow-intakt.bandcamp.com/album/golden-valley-is-now

It's really good. 'Solar Barges' is my cut, with that slightly distorted Rhodes.

I read Considering Genius a few years ago and couldn't even bother to finish, I was so put off by his complete dismissals of stuff like all of Miles' electric era output and latter Coltrane. Not to mention his refusal to call Amiri Baraka by his preferred name. I think I finally gave up completely when he disparaged Public Enemy as a "racist rap group". I get that the cranky contrarian was his whole deal, and I can accept that, but I need some insight somewhere that I can buy into.

Has anybody read the first volume of Crouch's Charlie Parker bio? I have not yet but am glad to see the second volume is listed as coming out in January.

I haven't (I don't care that much for/about Parker) but like you, I'm glad it's coming out.

I just read this Jazz Times essay on "mainstream jazz" and there's a lot of wisdom there. Plus, it's got me listening to Duke Ellington's "Controversial Suite" (it's on the album Ellington Uptown, and on Spotify the two halves are only listed by their subtitles, "Before My Time" and "Later"), which rules.

His Parker bio is tremendous. It’s meticulously researched, and I haven’t read anything else nearly as vivid about Parker’s Kansas City years. That said, because he’s Stanley Crouch, he arbitrarily shoehorns in swipes at stuff he hates, e.g., “Parker realized then and there that he had to embark on an arduous practice regimen. You know who doesn’t practice? Those so-called hip-hop ‘artists.’”

Mahavishnu is improvisatory yet something about it just doesn't *feel like jazz* and it's hard to put a finger on why.

You can't? Really?

Village Voice once published a letter of mine on Public Enemy somewhat in the Crouchian vein

New album by the group from Dan Weiss's jazz-metal Starebaby (Mitchell/Monder/Taborn/Dunn): https://danweiss.bandcamp.com/album/natural-selection?utm_campaign=danweiss%20album%20natural-selection&utm_content=fanpub_fnb_pr&utm_source=album_release&utm_medium=email

I'm listening to the sample tracks now. The last album was my aoty of that year and they were phenomenally tight live.

Both sample tracks (which are about 15 minutes each) are great.

yep I loved that last album as well, this band rules

some nice late-morning acoustic / drone / cosmic vibes

https://nakataniparishrowden.bandcamp.com/album/live-at-static-age-records

Tatsuya Nakatani - percussion
Shane Parish - nylon string guitar
Zach Rowden - double bass

adam wrote this on thread Rolling Jazz Thread 2018 on board I Love Music on Jan 25, 2020

astral spirits is such a sick label start the thread

yes !! and what i just posted is only one of a handful of things they released today:

https://astralspirits.bandcamp.com/

Can recommend that Quin Kirchner record (I think I just posted about it upthread). Also one of the few album covers that deviates from their '70s paperback design aesthetic.

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.

The track I'm including in my Stereogum column is "Acinna," which reminds me of King Crimson.

And here's the column. I talked about Gary Peacock, Stanley Crouch, the Thelonious Monk live album that's finally out, and a bunch of new releases, including Artemis, Starebaby, the Blue Note re:imagined compilation, and more.

^ enjoyed that, thanks

here's an interesting one i came across via the horace tapscott thread: mekala session, current drummer w/ PAPA and son of saxophonist michael session, with two other folks doing sprawling, funky synth jazz

https://humanerrorclub.bandcamp.com/

DIEGO GAETA - CASIO CZ-1, CASIOTONE 301, KURZWEILL V2000
JESSE JUSTICE - FENDER RHODES, ROLAND HS-60
MEKALA SESSION - DRUMS

^ enjoyed that, thanks

Yeah, and speaking of Joe Armon-Jones (real good on prev Young London gateway comp We Out Here and this year's ditto Kaleidoscope), he and his usual combo served as *excellent* house band for most of the following, which I mentioned on the Moses Boyd thread---first part is pasted from bandcamp, then my comments and youtube link, which sounds better to me though bandcamp is are the good guys:

Gilles Peterson Presents MV4
Taken from a day of live sessions in London’s legendary Maida Vale Studios - studio MV4 to be exact, it was originally intended just for Peterson’s BBC radio show broadcast on 20th October 2018. Struck by what a special moment the sessions captured, Peterson has decided to mark the results with a release proper on his Brownswood imprint.

A limited special double vinyl release(download also, from bandcamp & elsewhere) it features a diverse, all-star cast of some of the acts celebrated by Peterson in recent years, in a series of freewheeling and off-the-cuff recordings, several of the tracks backed by the group of Brownswood signee, Joe Armon-Jones. Featuring Dylan Jones, James Mollison, Mutale Chashi, and Marijus Aleksa as well as guest turns from Fatima, Asheber, Nubya Garcia, Hak Baker, and Oscar Jerome, plus a double track special from Bristol based collective, Ishmael Ensemble.
Think all of this is thread-relevant, esp, tracks w guest vcx: right off, the strong yet never overselling lungs of Asheber on "New Day," likewise plus driving rhythm-guitar-as soloing-instrument of xpost Oscar Jerome on "Do You Really", hope and urgency of Fatima on "Only."
Then Hak Baker's phrasing combines dancehall, maybe hip-hop, improvised-seeming exchanges with the rhythm section in a way I've never heard, though I'm not from around here. That's "Thirsty Thursday," more romantic than you might think re title.
Whole thing is morning coffee for basking & grooving.
Will spare you the cover "art," but here's where I listened
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=Xjo10l5gjTM&list=RDAMVMhTQ8IgAXwp0

― dow, Wednesday, August 19, 2020

Think it was here I posted while listening to Monk, Rouse etc. at Newport, def ready for their Palo Alto, thanks for the reminder.

From Adult Swim of all places

https://www.adultswim.com/music/new-jazz-century

1. Yazz Ahmed - Dawn Patrol
2 Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah - Huntress
3. Anna Webber - Copland
4. Anteloper - Hideouts
5. Jessica Ackerley - Theia's Mark
6. Sons of Kemet - Nyabinghi Order
7. Matana Roberts - Dreamed
8. Eivind Opsvik - Den Store Roen
9. Angel Bat Dawid - Insurrection Love Fury for the Innocent
10. Sarathy Korwar - At the Speed of Light
11. Gloatmeal - Flailer
12. Yelfris Valdés - Supernova
13. Colin Stetson - When We Would Run (All Our Futures Embrace)
14. Nate Mercereau & Dave Harrington - Things Move Quickly When They Feel Right
15. Makaya McCraven - Crash Course

Looks great; trying to get it to load now.

yyyeah, any luck? I also can't get it to run.

It loads slowly. Leave the tab open for 15 minutes or so and you should be fine. I listened to the first 4 tracks before I had to do other things. Wish it was downloadable.