Rolling Jazz Thread 2020

^ 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.

Oho, this just in:

Ingrid Laubrock releasing new double-disc album for chamber orchestra and small ensemble

Dreamt Twice, Twice Dreamt out November 20th via Intakt Records

Ingrid Laubrock–the Brooklyn-via-Germany saxophonist/composer–will be releasing a new double album, Dreamt Twice, Twice Dreamt, November 20th, 2020 via Intakt. The album follows Ingrid Laubrock's critically acclaimed landmark orchestral album Contemporary Chaos Practices from 2018 (Intakt CD 314). Ingrid Laubrock presents on this double album five compositions in double version. The first disc features the EOS Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Susanne Blumenthal and the second disc is small ensemble featuring Sam Pluta (electronics), Cory Smythe (piano and quarter-tone keyboard) with Zeena Parkins (harp), Adam Matlock (accordion) and Josh Modney (violin).

The two CDs of Laubrock's works contrast, diverge and complement each other. Ingrid Laubrock expands on the CD liner notes: “While the small-group versions were composed first, I did not just re-arrange those compositions for the orchestra but rather re-imagined them. As I wrote the large-scale pieces, I often zoomed-in on a detail in a small-group version to generate a materially different large-group piece.”

As a whole, the two CDs paint fascinating musical panoramas, inspired by the composer's dream worlds, characterized by Laubrock's ability to compose and the individual colors and shades of the soloists.

Ingrid Laubrock is an experimental saxophonist and composer, interested in exploring the borders between musical realms and creating multi-layered, dense and often evocative sound worlds. A prolific composer, Laubrock was named "one of the most distinctive rising compositional voices" by Point Of Departure and a "fully committed saxophonist and visionary" by the New Yorker.

Her main projects as a leader are Anti-House, Serpentines and Ingrid Laubrock Sextet. Laubrock has performed with Anthony Braxton, Muhal Richard Abrams, Jason Moran, Kris Davis, Tyshawn Sorey, Mary Halvorson, Tom Rainey, Tim Berne, Dave Douglas and many others. Laubrock has composed for ensembles ranging from duo to chamber orchestra.

Awards include Fellowship in Jazz Composition by the Arts Foundation in 2006, the2009 SWR German Radio Jazz Prize and the 2014 German Record Critics Quarterly Award. She won best Rising Star Soprano Saxophonist in the Downbeat Annual Critics Poll in 2015 and best Tenor Saxophonist in 2018. Laubrock is one of the recipients of the 2019 Herb Alpert Ragdale Prize in Music Composition and has received composing commissions by The Shifting Foundation, The Jerwood Foundation, American Composers Orchestra, Tricentric Foundation, SWR New Jazz Meeting, The Jazz Gallery Commissioning Series, NYSCA, John Zorn's Stone Commissioning Series and the EOS Orchestra.
Links:
http://ingridlaubrock.com/
http://www.intaktrec.ch/

# # #

For media inquiries please contact (cody at clandestinelabelservices.com)

Yeah, I'm really looking forward to diving into that one. Contemporary Chaos Practices was amazing.

i saw her last year free-improving, spitting the absolute fire on tenor (she played the soprano, also) as a duo with Tom Rainey. they were unstoppable as soon as they started playing. would gladly listen to a record from this couple right now; hopefully that ensemble will do too

https://ingrid-laubrock.bandcamp.com/album/stir-crazy-episodes-1-15

it's going on 27 already! had no idea. thanks!

you're welcome.

tonight i'm pretty into this recording of joe mcphee w/ decoy at cafe oto from last year:

https://soundcloud.com/cafeoto/otoroku023cd-decoy-with-joe-mcphee-acdc-sample

John Edwards / bass
Alexander Hawkins / hammond b3
Joe McPhee / pocket trumpet, alto sax, voice
Steve Noble / drums

from the archives---ilx alum geeta on xpost Milford Graves and Full Mantis:

https://4columns.org/dayal-geeta/milford-graves-full-mantis

And Greg Tate on Swirling, first new Sun Ra Arkestra album since the 90s:
https://www.4columns.org/tate-greg/sun-ra-arkestra

I'm late, but the Vision Festival has an online version ending this evening. Unfortunately ticket access gets you only 24 hours for replay. Right now I'm listening to last night's set by the Andrew Cyrille Quartet with Bill Frisell, Davis Virelles, and Ben Street. Great inside/outside set, so grateful Cyrille is still with us on the planet.

Should have listened more before posting, re opening epic "Episone 18" and next two:
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.

It did grow on me, although still takes a minute or two to adjust to indie jazz budget sound; I associate this kind of guitarrrr w more stereo depth, but might be promo download, as prev. speculated. But right off, guitar is big bug trying to fly its way out my bony labyrinth, but can't because headphones and this is a recording, nevertheless zooming in and away, also spinning around and unravelling X+Y axis in here, then swabbing walls of this sqaut
---and duh to self "Dawn" has the kind of interactivity I'd previously picked up on later on, ditto "The Long Diagonal"----though some of the guitar interjection in my original getting-into-alb-point, "A Taste of Memory," still seems too stiff, static, though late schematic becomes what the moving finger writes, then into the long fade: that works.

And like I posted before, the rest was never any problem.

― dow, Friday, September 18, 2020

*squat*, of course, dammit, sorry.
The Ceramic Dog set I referred to was YRU Still Here? They also have a new EP on Bandcamp, album out next year, gotta check those.

ymmv depending on how rough edged you like your sound, but i think HH, the new lionel loueke herbie hancock cover album, is unsurprisingly great
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyK1XW6Va-c

Will check, thanks! Also to which ever Rolling Jazz cat turned me onto this last year:
https://kevinhays-lionelloueke.bandcamp.com/ KH's piano river sometimes too much of a good thing, but it all works out.
******************************************************************************************
Sunday flashback: that time I went proselytizing for a lot of good old music still in no danger of overexposure. Written in '06 or '07, trying to balance for jazz-curious noobs and jaded geezers, both of whom might benefit from this fix, offered in my collegetown altweekly sieze-the-day emergency filler way (prob at editor's request, after some Star suddenly cancelled an interview and/or show).

BOBBY PREVITE’S JAZZ-WITH-ATTITUDE STARSHIP TROUPERS

Drummer-composer Bobby Previte was already an r&b and rock bar band veteran when he entered SUNY Buffalo in the 70s, encountering the progressive likes of Lukas Foss, also conceptual chef John Cage. All of which served him well in late-70s-to-80s New York City, as he jumped aboard the escalating jazz of what Lou Reed tagged in passing "the downtown crowd." Technically accomplished as the hard bop revivalist Young Lions (AKA "Jazz In Suits"), and the equally confirmed fusionists, Previte and cohorts were less or differently concerned with boundaries. Some of them appeared on Late In The 20th Century: An Elektra/Nonesuch New Music Sampler, which definitely conveys a sense of hip, black-clad Late-as-News approaching a shadowy border in time, at least calendar-wise. In this zone, Previte was a magnet for (for instance) New Music composer John Adams, adventurous conductor Michael Tilson-Thomas, punk jazz guitar exemplar Sonny Sharrock, and Tom Waits.

Twenty-odd years after the advent of the downtown heyday, Previte’s latest release, Coalition Of The Willing, is surprisingly fresh, despite its now-familiar-to-collectors personnel, production elements, and political implications.
Trumpeter Steve Bernstein, once musical director/wrangler of NYC’s hot, cool “fake jazz” fashion plates, The Lounge Lizards (remembered by surviving guitarist Marc Ribot as "a psychotic Boy Scout troop"), is also a key member of the calmly audacious Sex Mob, tasty shredders of James Bond motifs, among other keepsakes. Keeping faith with Previte's mob, Bernstein doesn’t let energy get in the way of thought or feeling---no stretch, considering the way his dynamic Diaspora Soul taps the improvisational and emotional resources of klezmer.
Stanton Moore, duet drummer with Previte on several tracks here, is also a member of New Orleans jam band Galactic, who morphed to the occasion while backing exiled Algerian rai rocker Rachid Tahid, on his blistering, defiantly ingenious Made In Medina, along with producer-guitarist Steve Hillage, of improv-friendly proggers Gong and subsequent electronica ventures. (Songlines Magazine reviewer Nigel Williamson considered Made... to succeed where Unledded, the Jimmy Page-Robert Plant expedition with North African musicians, failed.).
Multi-instrumentalist Skerik sticks to subtle sax on Previte's project, but his more varied work with the sardonically moody Critters Buggin, especially on their 1998 Bumpa, might be another key precedent to this album's approach. Toward the end of Bumpa, there’s a sense of looming enclosure, but it’s made to resonate with deep, flexing, metallic tones.

On Coalition... ,, this kind of rebelliously cellular sound (with persistently flickering treble added, so it also evokes the interstellar wake of John McLaughlin’s eerie, 1970-unbound Devotion ) sports a political context. Along with the Iraq War-inspired album title, several tracks (like “The Ministry Of Truth”) reference 1984.
Still, COTW doesn’t rely on righteously retro stereo rhetoric, or any other kind of default setting. Stu Cutler adds occasional harmonica, minus bluesy clichés. Charlie Hunter abstains from his Blue Note albums’ eight-string guitar, and the effects box that makes him sound like a (so-so) organist. (Why bother, when an actual organist, the judiciously theatrical Jamie Saft, is always lurking nearby, and with his own guitar as well.) Here, Hunter plays a well-fingered six-string Telecaster, and a twelve-string guitar that sounds nothing like The Byrds: it chimes like an evil, elegant parody of Big Ben. Meanwhile, Previte’s lean, hungry beats and bright colors (keyed by electronic touch pads) continue to find their way through dark, shifting backdrops and corridors.
Coalition of the Willing is a body language thriller, saluting all observers.

I love the new James Brandon Lewis album and the Okuden Quartet (Walerian/Shipp/Parker/Drake) which is a bit of a long sprawl, but often goes into some really good places.

So Keith Jarrett is retired; he had two strokes in 2018 that he never told anybody about, and can no longer play piano with his left hand. This interview is interesting, but if you're a non-fan (as I mostly am), he says some shit that makes it hard to miss him. Calling himself "the John Coltrane of piano players"...it's a good thing McCoy Tyner's already dead, is all I can say about that.

Speaking of Bobby Previte, did anyone hear the latest collab with Charlie Hunter? It was sold online for a short time and comes as a gift if you sign up for his Patreon page, which I didn't do.

Eh a little bravado from KJ at this point makes me smile, given his situation. So sad (same with Sonny Rollins not being able to play).

So Keith Jarrett is retired; he had two strokes in 2018 that he never told anybody about, and can no longer play piano with his left hand. This interview is interesting, but if you're a non-fan (as I mostly am), he says some shit that makes it hard to miss him. Calling himself "the John Coltrane of piano players"...it's a good thing McCoy Tyner's already dead, is all I can say about that.

― but also fuck you (unperson), Wednesday, October 21, 2020 7:07 AM (nine hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Well, I don't think McCoy Tyner is the John Coltrane of piano players either if that's what you mean, nor would he want to be seen that way, nor would John Coltrane want "the John Coltrane of piano players" in his band. But yeah, that level of self-congratulation really makes him the Donovan of jazz blowhards.

lol, I literally just had this stream of thought: "Well, he did do some pretty incredible stuff with Miles in 1969... ... ... wait that was Chick Corea"

lol, I literally just had this stream of thought: "Well, he did do some pretty incredible stuff with Miles in 1969... ... ... wait that was Chick Corea"

Nonprofit the Afro Latin Jazz Alliance (ALJA) teams up with today's foremost jazz, classical, and global artists alongside preeminent speakers for a "get out the vote" initiative, Notes 4 Votes , to be broadcasted on ALJA's Facebook page facebook.com/afrolatinjazzalliance this Sunday, October 25, 2020 (8:30pm EST). Notes 4 Votes spotlights performances and/or speeches from Terence Blanchard, Vijay Iyer, Carla Bley, Dr. Cornel West, Oscar Hernandez, Simone Dinnerstein, Steve Swallow, Dr. Shana Redmond, Matt Shipp, The Villalobos Brothers, William Parker, Kikirikí Biquéy, Ayodele Casel, Akua Dixon, Jen Shyu, Ganavya Doraiswamy, Crystal Joseph, Tiffany Austin, Mimi Jones, Caridad "La Bruja" De La Luz, Luis Perdomo, and more.

https://wfubaa.bandcamp.com/album/luke-stewart-exposure-quintet

tremendous album is this

It is really good. I interviewed Stewart about it (and many other things); when Bandcamp posts the feature, I'll link it here.

I see he's also in Irreversible Entanglements, also on that latest excellent James Brandon Lewis album, he's everywhere!

He really is. He's also got a band called Heart Of The Ghost that are really good, and he's in a trio with Jaimie Branch (trumpet) and Mike Pride (drums) that hasn't recorded anything yet, but I've seen them live.

lol, I literally just had this stream of thought: "Well, he did do some pretty incredible stuff with Miles in 1969... ... ... wait that was Chick Corea"

He did play with Miles though, often at the same time as CC?

He did play with Miles though, often at the same time as CC?

Yeah, Volume 3 of the Bootleg Series is a set of four concerts by the 1970 band:

Miles Davis – trumpet
Steve Grossman – tenor saxophone, soprano saxophone
Chick Corea – Fender Rhodes electric piano
Keith Jarrett – Fender Contempo Organ, tambourine
Dave Holland – electric bass
Jack DeJohnette – drums
Airto Moreira – percussion, flute, vocals

The same band is also on Black Beauty.

Also on Live-Evil and one of the Fillmore records, right?

Corea was gone by the time of the Cellar Door recordings that made up most of Live-Evil, and Miles Davis at Fillmore was edits from the performances that now exist in full on the Bootleg Series set I mentioned. There are two studio tracks on Live-Evil that have Corea, Jarrett and Herbie Hancock all in the band at once, though.

Yeah, he was okay with Miles, but seems not to have liked playing so much electric, and in somebody else's band.
xxpost Luke Temple! I wanted to showcase the collectivism of the sounds produced in that first meeting. With that in mind I listened back to the first recording and transcribed different movements, motifs, and themes, plus added a few original composition ideas. We then recorded these collective compositions, first in a private recording session, second in front of an audience at Elastic Arts, where the Quintet first met. Good plan! So he gets back with Chicago heads and it all works out, at least on these first two spacious performances. Wonder if Baker plays his ARP on any of the rest? Will have to check.

Sorry, I meant xxxp Luke Stewart, as referenced/linked above.

There is a Luke Temple with music on Bandcamp, but I haven't heard it.

I know the guys but this is p good on the post-rock/jazz fusion tip imo: https://internetcelebrities.bandcamp.com/album/celebs

And yeah, I like the Dan Weiss album a lot. Like that Monder gets some more space to solo and that there are more extended tracks.

My interview with Luke Stewart is up now. I was really fascinated by this quote (which is why I made it the closer):

To Stewart, the point is to break away from the hierarchy—still prevalent even in supposedly free music—of the composer and the musicians who execute his vision. “When you listen to a field recording of a pygmy ensemble in the Congo, the question’s never ‘Whose song is that?’ or ‘Who is that?’,” he explains. “It’s more ‘What is that?’, which I think is a better question to ask when it comes to music and doing this work of breaking down hierarchies. Because when you’re asking who, you’re placing it in an individual zone, where even if there’s an ensemble of five, nine, eighteen, up to a full orchestra of music, the question is always, who wrote this music? And even if they did write it, is that music still theirs if someone else is playing that music and putting themselves into that music? How much of it can you say is yours? The band is improvised, and it’s a group. It’s not just me, it’s this band, and it’s me versus the collective legacies of these four titans of music, so it’s like, the concept of instilling your will upon a musician, upon a person’s imagination, upon a person’s creativity and then calling it yours. That’s sort of the concept that I’m thinking about and trying to fight against…to highlight the non-hierarchical nature of free improvisational music ensembles and also in essence [challenge] the concept of the capital-C composer and how it affects our perceptions of music, for better or for worse.”

“When you listen to a field recording of a pygmy ensemble in the Congo, the question’s never ‘Whose song is that?’ or ‘Who is that?’,

Maybe it should be though?

Wasn't going to get into it but yeah, that example would be a lot stronger if he were referring to how Pygmies in the Congo think about their musicians.

P cool Gioia-recommended out jazz trio from Toronto: https://ovalwindowrecords.bandcamp.com/album/clich-s-vol-i-trio-music . Clarinet, bass, percussion, no chordal instrument. They do an Ornette tune and a Lacy tune in addition to some originals. I like Houle's clarinet sound a lot; he and bassist Meger sound like they're in different keys at times but I think it's pretty strong melodically and mostly stays rhythmically grounded.

new joel ross album is good

The next volume of the Spiritual Jazz compilation series is called Now! and it's all new tracks: not exclusives, but tracks from the past few years. Includes stuff from Angel Bat Dawid, Shabaka & the Ancestors, Idris Ackamoor & the Pyramids, Black Flower, Damon Locks, Makaya McCraven, Steve Reid, Jamie Saft, etc., etc. 24 tracks in all across two CDs or however many LPs. Out in January.

another decent Kahil El’Zabar album out (America The Beautiful) and possibly featuring one of the last appearances of Hamiet Bluiett.

Any of yall heard the new Thumbscrew?? Looking good here:

https://downbeat.com/reviews/detail/the-anthony-braxton-project