Rolling Jazz Thread 2020

Heh, p4k reviewed the Dezron Douglas / Brandee Younger:

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/dezron-douglas-brandee-younger-force-majeure/

Just saw childhood friend Nic Cacioppo (son of composer Charles Cacioppo) mentioned as the drummer on the JD Allen Trio record that came out this year. Going to have to pick it up, sounds pretty good!

He's great on it (and on Barracoon from last year).

Archie Shepp and Jason Moran have a duo album coming out in February; the first track was posted on YouTube on Friday:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzU75hKYvLA

Good to know, unperson. He had a lot of competition when we were growing up, always getting second chair to another good friend. The latter ended up getting horrible tendonitis that multiple surgeries couldn't resolve, and now works for A&R for some record company. Glad Nic was able to stick it out.

New Charles Lloyd had me going back through his last few releases, what a run for an octogenarian. That 'I Long To See You' release by his country/folk band w/Frisell is just gorgeous.

Great to know about Shepp-Moran, thanks! Shepp and pianist Horace Parlan also made at least a couple of duet albums drawing on deep river music, Trouble In Mind and Goin' Home.

Sittin’ In: Jazz Clubs of the 1940s and 1950s, recently published by Harper Design, is a testament to the bygone American nightlife culture that thrived at midcentury — years before the full realization of a Civil Rights Movement, but well into a more casual arc of racial integration.

The book, a featured item in the WBGO December fund drive, amasses hundreds of souvenir photos, handbills and other memorabilia from clubs across the continental United States: iconic rooms like The Three Deuces on 52nd Street in Manhattan as well as lesser-known spots like Gilmore’s Chez Paree in Kansas City. Through the images and ephemera — and several in-depth interviews, with Rollins and others — the book presents a complicated portrait of America in the two decades bracketing the second World War.
...This is a difficult book to classify. In a way, it’s a coffee table book, because of all of these incredible images. But it’s also a really keen work of jazz history and scholarship...That last bit opens an interview w author:https://www.wbgo.org/post/sittin-jazz-clubs-1940s-and-1950s-opens-portal-past-and-dialogue#stream/0

new Cortex album is excellent.

Getting around to checking out this Dezron Douglas/Brandee Younger quarantine album, this is gorgeous. Didn't expect to enjoy this nearly as much as I do.

i'm down with anything brandee does, period.

one album I liked at the time but somehow foolishly forgot about for ages was Quin Kirchner's The Shadows and The Light. It's one of the best.

Advance track from xpost Shepp-Moran. If link doesn't work, look for their "Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child" on youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJuO7v20dWQ
Let My People Go Tracklist:
01.Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child
02. Isfahan
03. He Cares
04. Go Down Moses
05. Wise One
06. Lush Life
07. Round Midnight

Of course he really means the best on bandcamp, leaving out quite a few that I would have picked, although does inc. Irreversible Entanglement's Who Sent You?, which is exemplary Moor Mother and International Anthem just for a start, and Mary Halvorsen's Code Girl's Artlessly Falling, which is also very satisfying, though he says it's "a Robert Wyatt homage of sorts," which had not occurred to me even with Wyatt himself appearing (to good, lingering effect) on several tracks, and p. sure I wouldn't think of him if he hadn't. Need to check most of these for the first time:
https://daily.bandcamp.com/best-of-2020/the-best-jazz-albums-of-2020

Holy shit, this Angel Bat Dawid live album is incredibly powerful.

Got Got $2.5 million lying around? You could live in Cecil Taylor's old house....5 million lying around? You could live in Cecil Taylor's old house...

Some really nice Rhodes & drums duets:
https://deedsone.bandcamp.com/album/bookends

Matt Shipp has written a very interesting piece on what he calls the Black Mystery School of pianists. The school consists of Thelonious Monk, Herbie Nichols, Mal Waldron, Randy Weston, Cecil Taylor, Andrew Hill, Hasaan Ibn Ali, Sun Ra, and Horace Tapscott, with partial credit given to Dave Burrell, Geri Allen, Rodney Kendrick, and Ran Blake (who is white). What's just as interesting as who's in is who isn't — Ellington, Bud Powell, Horace Silver, Mary Lou Williams, McCoy Tyner...read the whole thing. It's a fascinating window into how Shipp thinks about the piano.

Wow, very interesting, thanks.

Hasaan Ibn Ali - here's someone you don't see getting mentioned very often, he was a big influence on Monk and was clearly brilliant on the evidence of his one album with Max Roach. But he faded into obscurity and iirc he was homeless when he died.

aka The Legendary Hassan

BTW, RIP Stanley Cowell, apparently - another pianist you don't see mentioned often but who did a lot of interesting work as an improviser and composer

RIP Jeff Clayton, too.

xp okay Shipp is including Those who cultivate a certain mysterioso air and vibe to go with a high level of (sufficiently, for him) autodidactic idiosyncracy and proficiency and stylistic distinctiveness and apparently dramatic flair, innkeepers of thee flame, proprieters and high priests of the mystery religions of the Ancient World as Now(also "fock the world")--but, although he keeps referring to Waldron, doesn't say what brings him into this circle, or Randy Moses, compared to some who are excluded. Maybe he'll write some more about it, or could be drawn out by an interviewer (unperson?)
Don't (yet) know that this is a very useful way to think about these artists, or ones excluded, beyond obvious connotations. Obviously some kinds of playing are more likely to be successfully taught.

"fuck" the world, that is.

RIP Diane Moser too. Probably not known to most of you. I used to go see her big band sometimes on Tuesdays at the John Birks Gillespie Auditorium. https://www.njarts.net/jazz/diane-moser-jazz-pianist-composer-bandleader-and-educator-has-died/

new Cortex album is excellent.

― calzino, Thursday, December 10, 2020 10:21 AM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

Are you referring to the 70s jazz-funk band with the album Troupeau Bleu? Regardless, thanks, calz: because of your post, I discovered Troupeau Bleu and am loving it.

Love the Shipp essay, and I wouldn't be inclined to argue as if he's setting up some sort of objective criteria. It's clearly his personal canon and a really interesting read. Also intuitively makes sense, there are artists in every genre who set up their own world with its own rules, and their influence tends to be more spiritual since trying to use their language directly is an obvious copy (maybe this is true about, say, Prince?).

Jordan otm.

More interesting to me than 'Sincerity' in Music

Seems like he has used that term before he wrote that essay.

RIP Jeff Clayton, too.

Now Kurt’s friend Patti Austin

xps

lol no PBKR. I meant the Scando acoustic-skronk meisters with Gard Nilssen on the sticks latest album called Legal Tender! But I wouldn't be surprised if there is some vague connection or influence there!

I was wondering as it seemed heavier on the funk than the jazz. It's a great album!

I will check out the newer Cortex, thanks.

So this is very, um, cellular, but micros v. gradually reveal a vein of continuity, as B's bass instruments become seamless shades of his other reeds' full tones, no squeals---I snoozed out briefly, but woke up & got more and more tuned in past the 20-minute mark of first track (had been tuned into some segments before)---now about 3/4 way through second track, which flows from first:
released June 4, 2020

Anthony Braxton: sopranino, soprano, alto, baritone, bass, and contrabass saxophones, contrabass clarinet

Eugene Chadbourne: Gibson Marauder electric, Gibson acoustic, bajo sexto, Deering 5-string banjo, Deering fretless 5-string banjo, Regal 5-string banjo, prepared guitar

1.
Improv One 57:38
2.
Improv Two 54:13

3.
Improv Three 56:14
4.
Improv Four 57:07
5.
Improv Five 57:42
6.
Improv Six 59:48
7.
Improv Seven 54:05
8.
Improv Eight 59:26

https://newbraxtonhouse.bandcamp.com/album/duo-improv-2017

Chadbourne's good too, esp, high picks and pecks x bass instruments (fave is that "tuba" sound, now to sopranino, banjo not that far from "You Really Got Me" riff before arpeggio)

One for the true headz, but/and if you think you might like it, you probably will, at least some of the time.

(Later today I'm gonna check xpost Thumbscrew's The Anthony Braxton Project, also on bandcamp.)

Basser still!

and now, along w hungry bass beasts, prepared guitar, I take it, is what's going from "snaredrum" figures to strumming, picking...

bass gettin' lonely, some subterranean blues suggested, crisp kinda-Spanish strings say, "That's the breaks, bass." I'll shut up now.

lol no PBKR. I meant the Scando acoustic-skronk meisters with Gard Nilssen on the sticks latest album called Legal Tender! But I wouldn't be surprised if there is some vague connection or influence there!

― calzino, Saturday, December 19, 2020 5:59 AM (sixteen hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Thanks, this Cortex is great as well.

Great band at Smalls right now.

Will prob just take their word for the Metheny, but the rest of this looks pretty appealing: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/dec/21/the-10-best-jazz-albums-of-2020. Some Brits I hadn't heard of, though did already know several now on Blue Note Re:Imagined, and glad to see it here---not as far-ranging as Soul Jazz Records comp Kaleidoscope, but v. fortifying.

Was it here that someone rec'd the Shiroishi 'Descension' record? It's making my afternoon, such deeply felt playing and processing.

hell yeah @ braxton / chadbourne

Dave Kikowski playing Xmas tunes at Smalls right now in a duet with Matt Clohesy.

Was it here that someone rec'd the Shiroishi 'Descension' record? It's making my afternoon, such deeply felt playing and processing.

I'm not super familiar with Shiroishi, but I reviewed a duo album he did with drummer Dylan Fujioka, Neba Neba, for The Wire this summer. Pretty good stuff.

Really appreciate this thread guys