Rolling Jazz Thread 2021

See here:

I love you Milford graves!!!

Oh, sorry!

I need to remember to actually check New Answers more often— I rely on bookmarks too much.

From Luaka Bop:

On this day we are incredibly proud to announce Promises, a new album by Floating Points and Pharoah Sanders, featuring the London Symphony Orchestra and artwork by Julie Mehretu.
https://www.listentopromises.com/

Interviewed Joe Chambers today for my podcast. He has Some Shit To Say on the subject of Milford Graves, let me tell you.

Looking forward to that

Oh that rules, I love his new world album.

Intriguing excerpts from Data Lords via this check-in w Maria Scneeider: at first omninous, zoned, later sardonic, then positive instrumental response to unheard poetry---stream/download:
https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2020/08/11/maria-schneider-data-lords

It's *all* instrumental themes, anti-voxxers have no fear (some have popped up on RJ threads of recent years)

This came into the world today, I'm enjoying myself quite a lot.

https://astralmitchellreed.bandcamp.com/album/the-ritual-and-the-dance

My least favourite of the three Palladino/Mills advance singles released so far, but even this Afrobeat/Latin Playboys situation is solid enough to me:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXQUVKko5J8

That Roscoe Mitchell/Mike Reed one is on tap for this afternoon, currently working my way through the Jeremiah Cymerman/Charlie Looker one, A Horizon Made of Canvas. Pretty good.

Uh-oh, just now got the memo:

Last Chance to Access Legacies of Excellence

Legacies of Excellence
Hosted by Catherine Russell
Available on demand through tonight
Ticket price: $20
Member price: free–$15

The first performance of the spring concert season is available to view for just one more day! Vocalist Catherine Russell hosts an extraordinary ensemble of jazz musicians in this concert for families and student audiences. The contributions of iconic jazz artists suc
h as Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald will be explored in a performance demonstrating their lasting legacies
Catherine Russell, host/vocals
Sean Mason, piano
Russell Hall, bass
Rob Garcia, drums
Bruce Harris, trumpet/music director
Camille Thurman, saxophone/vocals
Mariel Bildsten, trombone.
Trailer or something, also ticket link:
https://jazzatlincolncenter.squarespace.com/virtual-season?utm_source=wordfly&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=MKT21%3AFeb.24Newsletter&utm_content=version_A&promo=#catherinerussell

"One More Day" but today is last day/evening.
And speaking of Camille Thurman, excellent singer/saxophonist and vice-versa, judging by Jazz Night In America:
Don't Miss Camille Thurman at
Dizzy's Club

Camille Thurman and the Darrell Green Quartet
Thursday, Feb 25
7:30pm ET
Suggested ticket price: $10 / Free for JALC Members

Jazz at Lincoln Center's new live concert experience, Live From Dizzy’s, allows you to enjoy a night of beautiful music from the comfort and safety of your own home.

Experience the multi-talented Camille Thurman, a formidable saxophonist who recently took second place in the prestigious Sarah Vaughan Vocal Competition. Thurman is known for her stylistically varied mix of classic repertoire that highlights her chops as both a singer and instrumentalist; recent albums have featured songs by Sarah Vaughan, Wayne Shorter, Wes Montgomery, Jimmy McHugh, Milton Nascimento, Hoagy Carmichael, Cole Porter, Angela Bofill, and others. Don't miss your chance to experience the full scope of Thurman’s artistry!
Tickets etc.: https://jazzatlincolncenter.squarespace.com/camille-thurman-darrell-green-trio?utm_source=wordfly&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=MKT21%3AFeb.24Newsletter&utm_content=version_A&promo=

My least favourite of the three Palladino/Mills advance singles released so far,

Heh, it's definitely my favorite one so far. Probably the least ECM-y?

xpost Oh and dig the line-up!
Camille Thurman, Tenor Saxophone & Vocals
Darrell Green, Drums
Marvin Sewell, Guitar
Tom DiCarlo, Bass
Wallace Roney Jr., Trumpet

Sewell of course quite good w Moran, De Johnette, Qassandra, Brian Blade, still need to check the one w Tom Harrell, prob more

Damon Locks' Black Monument Ensemble has a new album, NOW, coming out in April (due to printing delays, the physical versions won't be out until July), and it's amazing. It's like a cross between the last two SAULT albums, Archie Shepp's Attica Blues, and an Adam Curtis documentary. There's a track streaming on International Anthem's Bandcamp page:

https://intlanthem.bandcamp.com/album/now

Very promising!

Archie Shepp (must check out the new alb w Moran): I'm surprised that he regrets having made music maybe more "difficult" than nec. to get his ideas across, back in the day---Attica Blues, for instance, was one I could play at parties for distinctly non-arty types, as w several others in the 70s; his musical approach overall always seemed accessible by nature, compared to some others for sure:
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/feb/24/archie-shepp-on-jazz-race-and-freedom-institutions-continue-to-abuse-power

But at the end of that, he does respond that he's proudest of Attica Blues.

I interviewed him a long time ago for Red Bull Music Academy and he said the same thing about older female relatives (his mom and an aunt) being unable to relate to his more "out" stuff, causing him to reconsider his attitude toward the blues.

Come to think of it, he said in Leroi Jones's Black Music (unless it was Blues People)that when he had a chance to jam wit some out cats very early on, like maybe when he was still majoring in playwriting, they laughed at "my Stan Getz shit," but when he went into a blues, they said yeah, that was right." Something he may have thought of again after his relatives' response---and I've always heard his path through it as going with the way my older Black customers in CD etc stores used it: they could be looking for BB King and/or Bobby Blue Bland, sure, but just as likely Smokey Robinson, Junior Walker, Nat King Cole (with his trio and/or as croomer). So with Shepp you get blues and bluesoid elements in different contexts, incl. "Mama Too Tight" (w new thing solo im midst of tight 60s groove), to Attica Blues, Litte Red Moon, the albums with Horace Parlan, and the rustic metamorphosis on Charlie Haden's duets collection, The Golden Number (also in some of his work with Cecil Taylor).

jam *with*, also "they said, yeah, that was right" closed quote(or "they said yeah, that that was right" was the part of his sentence I meant to quote, though still may be imprecise, decades after last reading the piece).

Nir Felder trio with Antonio Sanchez and Matt Penman at Smalls Live sounding great right now.

I loved that Matt Penman Good Question album a few years back

Listened to that Blue Note Re:Imagined record with LDN musicians; it's all a bit tasteful and wine bar-y but still some good stuff.

Unperson, I listened to your Christian McBride podcast and when he was listing every drummer in the world who had played with Rollins, I couldn't believe he didn't mention Steve Jordan. I guess it's more of a Spinal Tappian drum chair than I thought, but I was under the impression that Jordan was his guy for the '00s. Clearly that's not the whole story, but since he was on Rollins' last studio album and was with him the one time I saw him (at Ravinia), and from listening to recent interviews with Jordan, I assumed he was the first call.

https://hafezmodirzadeh.bandcamp.com/album/facets

the new Hafez Modirzadeh album has got Tyshawn Sorey(on piano), Kris Davis and Craig Taborn involved.

That Modirzadeh record is really good; I interviewed him about it for Bandcamp Daily. I imagine it'll run in a week or two. (I may put the full transcript of our conversation on my Patreon page, as we covered a lot of ground.)

Fire! Orchestra does nothing for me (unsurprisingly, since I dislike 95% of big band jazz), but the new Fire! is very much to my liking.

yeah it's a bit different to their last trio one but good stuff nevertheless. I can't listen to Fire Orchestra either.

xp

not even Duke Ellington, pom?

Duke Ellington is the main reason I left myself a bit of wiggle room with that 95%.

I think New Orleans Suite is one of the greatest ever and think it contains the last ever recorded playing of Johnny Hodges. I play it to death and then I play it to death again after a short break.

Turns out my Hafez interview just went up.

I disliked big band jazz for a long time, but Ellington finally cracked open for me a few years ago, and Count Basie's mid '30s recordings are pretty amazing too. I also like some modern big band stuff like Darcy James Argue's Secret Society and the Michael Leonhart Orchestra — a lot of that is more indebted to 1970s movie scores and modern classical than to big band tradition, so it's very interesting without the obligation to swing.

I like Fire! and Fire! Orchestra; the latter's version of Penderecki's Actions is a lot of fun.

I like Mingus’s big band stuff, and some of Sam Rivers’s and Charlie Haden’s as well. Count Basie is absolutely classic, of course. But yeah, skepticism is my default attitude towards the genre.

obv Carla Bley is exempt from criticism as well imo. Do the large avant-garde ensembles of Henry Threadgill count as big bands? god knows idk shit tbh! but they have done some incredible work.

his record label describes it as the “little big band” sound

whenever people say they don't like big band jazz, i direct them to this video and they go, "okay, so yeah this rules"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmALIF7c3lY

that link isn't working this side of the atlantic Table!

Oh of course Gil Evans as well

ignore me it is working now!

Such Sweet Thunder was the album that got me into Ellington, it's fucking awesome!

I even had that as my ringtone for years!

This was always pretty fresh and engaging, though haven't listened in a whie---take it away, wiki:

Far East Suite is an album by Duke Ellington that won the Grammy Award in 1968 for Best Instrumental Jazz Performance – Large Group or Soloist with Large Group. Ellington and Billy Strayhorn wrote the compositions. The album was reissued in 1995 with four previously unreleased alternate takes.[1] In 2003, Bluebird Records issued the album on CD with additional bonus takes.

Strayhorn died in May 1967, making Far East Suite one of the last albums recorded during his life to feature his compositions. Was especially struck by "Blue Pepper,"which uses a backbeat for Ellingtonian purposes--he does not play that rock 'n' roll, doesn't need it.
'

On the other hand, Xgau's right about this early stuff, incl. the rock appeal of some:
The Best of Early Ellington [MCA, 1996]
Although it doesn't approach RCA's long-lost Flaming Youth and touches fewer famous classics than Columbia's fainter, cleaner two-CD Okeh Ellington, this warm, scratchy disc leads out of his tangled discography into his '20s music, which traffics in a rinky-dink novelty more rock and roll than his glossy big-band dance charts. At first only a few familiar tunes stand out from the delicate audacity and raucous detail of the sound. But soon every theme kicks in, every silky clarinet solo and bumptious plunger mute. Ellington called this jungle music because white folks would never have believed he heard the modern city so much better than they did. They learned, kind of. A oops not really big band, but big enough, and couldn't resist slipping it in.

whenever people say they don't like big band jazz, i direct them to this video and they go, "okay, so yeah this rules"

Yep. "La Plus Belle Africaine" -- any recording, but especially this one -- is easily one of my all-time favorite Ellington works. So many of his pieces have incredibly evocative and affecting twists and turns, but this one just goes into whole other worlds of...well, Ellingtonia, I guess.

"worlds of Ellingtonia" is such an edifying and pleasing phrase!

Yeah, love Such Sweet Thunder. The slink of the title track is just perfect. The Star-Crossed Lovers is so swoony.

My issue with Fire! Orchestra isn't that it's a big band, more that it doesn't do the big band thing particularly well - it's surprising, cos Gustafsson has been involved with some terrific large ensembles, but the things that work really well for the Fire! trio - hypnotic riffs, an engagement with slow burning rock and blues forms - don't really work scaled up. That Orchestra album with the ridiculous Scandi prog vocalist was a chore, and the episodic structure didn't really lend itself to satisfying group interplay. I generally think Gustafsson is at his best in small groups, particularly when it allows him to be subtle. Hearing him do these extended technique and extreme timbres at a low volume is really exciting - the latest Underflow being a case in point.

new Joe Chambers album Samba de Maracatu (on blue note) is cool as..

xp

absolutely concur with you there, Stew