Rolling Jazz Thread 2021

incredible set, a lot of it really had a Brian Blade Fellowship jazz-Americana vibe You might like Charles Lloyd and the Marvels' Tone Poem, which opens with Ornette's "Peace," cautious, shrewd and flexing, then xpost "Ramblin'" sets off, having decided the coast is clear enough for now---only thing that bothers me is Frisell's effects-laden loop de loops, apparently influenced by steel guitar, sometimes seem superfluous---well even more superfluous--next to the actual and no-b.s. steel guitar of Greg Leisz. On well, I cna listen around him, and he can bear down and knows, as they all do, not to gild the already gilded "Ay Amor," or fuck aronnd with "Monk's Mood, " for instance. Current fave is "Anthem" (by L.Cohen), which, despite its title, is pretty down to earth and grabbed me right away. Lloyd is not the most distinctive soloist, but he knows when just to shade and inflect this and curve around that, rather than bring on thee groovy noodles (although there's some of those, not too many)

Tim Daisy has really been killing it this year, like Zorn-level release schedule, it's almost too much. Those Ikue Morie duets are one the best releases.

I do like those recent Charles Lloyd records, and went in on them earlier this year, thanks! I'll have to go back to that one.

Interviewed Anthony Braxton for my podcast this morning. It went great. (We didn't talk about politics.) The episode will be out next Friday.

Looking fwd to that. re the interview you linked, I agree with him to an extent, but if he's going to talk about it at all, better to put in context of how systemic racism, and other forces that incl. divide and conquer, screw w perspectives. And harping on the Simon and Garfunkel advocacy don't help, in terms of coming off like a contrarian. I once some some festival footage where he was talking about Beefheart and Hendrix, saying he'd never met a musician who didn't like them---maybe he doesn't want to be that hipster-typical anymore? Read an article, maybe in Musician, that tagged him as being tagged as too out for the out---at another festival: "Hey, guys!" AEC: "Oh, you're here too, huh." But what he says in the linked interview about being a trainspotter as a kid, not being able to socialize conventionally, may have always affected him to some extent, like he seems eager but off-kilter in the interview, articulate, but yeah, if you're going to get into that stuff at all, you can't be hasty.

Speaking of Lloyd, when we were talking about him way up this thread, or last year's, I linked what was then the only bandcamp freebie from his Manhattan Stories: two mid-60s NYC concerts, with Ron Carter, Gabor Szabo, and Pete LaRoca. Now the other tracks are free-streaming too, and I sure hope they're anywhere near as good as the aforementioned 17:49 opener, "Sweet Georgia Bright" (sporting a video, even).

Ah, 1965: The Judson Hall recording comes from the archives of Resonance founder George Klabin, whose trove has previously yielded treasures from Bill Evans and Jimmy Giuffre. The Slugs' performances were recorded by Bjorn von Schlebrugge, who accompanied Lloyd to his Manhattan gigs.
https://charleslloyd.bandcamp.com/

That Grammy interview felt like clickbait tbh. Not much on the music either. If I was being generous, I'd say that the interviewer just doesn't understand systemic racism or structural analysis, but I think an anti BLM/CRT agenda comes through pretty clearly. The framing makes some of Braxton's comments look more reactionary than they are. There was nothing in Braxton's comments that supported the editorialising about BLM being an "insidious separatist movement". Braxton has always resisted reductive categories or received ideas of what he as a black musician should be about, so I can understand why he'd be critical of separatist or nationalist movements, but it's not clear that's what he thinks BLM is - that's all on the journalist. Braxton took the question about racial essentialism in good faith, but I'm not sure it was presented as such given the overall line being pushed, i.e. the implication that BLM and CRT are essentialist or separatist. Braxton certainly wants to talk up America, but I don't think anyone could seriously mistake his liberal patriotism for MAGA.

I don't think there's anything contrarian about his advocacy of S&G - he's always embraced a wide range of music and Simon's writing is a pretty neat fit into an extended Great America Songbook. The Latin shuffle Alex Hawkins puts under Bridge Over Troubled Water is refreshing after decades of over-earnest readings, while Old Friends, with Braxton's almost microtonal pitching, is genuinely moving.

That Grammy interview felt like clickbait tbh. Not much on the music either. If I was being generous, I'd say that the interviewer just doesn't understand systemic racism or structural analysis, but I think an anti BLM/CRT agenda comes through pretty clearly. The framing makes some of Braxton's comments look more reactionary than they are. There was nothing in Braxton's comments that supported the editorialising about BLM being an "insidious separatist movement". Braxton has always resisted reductive categories or received ideas of what he as a black musician should be about, so I can understand why he'd be critical of separatist or nationalist movements, but it's not clear that's what he thinks BLM is - that's all on the journalist. Braxton took the question about racial essentialism in good faith, but I'm not sure it was presented as such given the overall line being pushed, i.e. the implication that BLM and CRT are essentialist or separatist. Braxton certainly wants to talk up America, but I don't think anyone could seriously mistake his liberal patriotism for MAGA.

Agree with all of this. No need to be generous, either. I follow the writer on Twitter and he's definitely a conservative — not a MAGA psycho, but the kind of asshole who thinks "cancel culture" and "virtue signaling" are real things. Between that and the hyperbole young music journalists are addicted to (Julian Lage is the best guitarist of the decade!), he's pretty annoying. And I feel like he kinda poisoned the well w/r/t Braxton, for other writers. After that interview was published, it took me two weeks to get mine re-scheduled.

That's interesting. My interview took place a few days before the Grammy piece was published. He talked about being a "proud American", which in retrospect could be seen as an attempt to set things straight. Perhaps I'd have responded differently if the interview had been done after the Grammy one was published, but I didn't pursue that line at the time because it came across as "we're not all right wing assholes and there are things about America worth celebrating", which is fair enough. As Graham Lock's Forces In Motion shows, Braxton has nuanced and insightful things to say about racial politics, particularly in the contexts of jazz and classical music. It would be interesting to sit down and engage with Braxton on today's politics, but a white conservative is definitely not the best person for the job.

Tbf to younger journalists, there are structural reasons for the hyperbole and clickbait. Not that it's anything particularly new - I grew up with the UK music press telling me Oasis were genius and jazz didn't exist. Thank goodness for The Wire and the internet!

Nothing wrong with him liking whatever music, and if he can find something fresh, maybe revelatory, like Charlie Parker with "Cherokee," Coltrane with "My Favorite Things," that's great, but like I said, talking about them (and no other specific artists) in the context of that interview/framing device, struck me as seeming more ocntrarian, but no, certainly not some black MAGA head, it's just that, if you're gonna talk about *black* separatists (or the ones you see that way), better not leave out the white ones--and who knows, maybe he didn't, maybe that writer edited the transcript for his own pruposes---but, however it came about, that's how it looked--certainly not like Kanye or Qassandra though.

His comments were fine imo. A lot of intelligent and progressive-minded people have reservations about critical race theory or cancel culture, or like Simon & Garfunkel. People don't need to contextualize everything they say.

75 Dollar Bill's live ateliers claus, out this year, starts with tracks from a 2016 show, right after the election: Chen says he's pissed with himself because he didn't see it coming, but takes out his frustrations in acerbic, swirling, African-influenced folk-rock-jazz, steadfast and developmental (sometimes sounding like two guitars), while Brown's found crate is very supportive. Later, in 2019, Chen also plays the lower register of soprano sax, while Andrew L.'s wide-ranging contrabass arco and Brown's "homemade horns" join in. One of their most consistent collections, https://75dollarbill.bandcamp.com/album/live-ateliers-claus

This piece clarifies things a little. He finds certain aspects of today's social justice movements divisive, but as I expected, this comes from his own experience of being denounced as not black enough during the height of black power. I might not agree with everything he's saying, but I can respect his viewpoint and understand where he's coming from. As it happens, I don't think Braxton would necessarily have an issue with CRT per se - his comments on the racial politics of sweat in jazz photography, for example, fits right in with it. https://www.npr.org/2021/06/17/998656406/jazz-elder-statesman-anthony-braxton-continues-to-defy-expectations?t=1623948810962

He definitely mentioned critical race theory twice in a negative light in the Grammy interview but idk maybe there are interpretations of it he would agree with.

I started listening to 12 Comp (ZIM) 2017 and was thinking it sounded great - then noticed it consists of 12 compositions, each one between 40 to 73 minutes in length! So that's two mammoth sets he's dropping!

Yeah, there's no getting around the comment about CRT being "far out" but I suppose the question is what he thinks it is. One of these things that would need to be unpacked carefully - which isn't something that conservative Grammy kid is interested in.

Anyway, both box sets are wonderful and it was a joy to go deep on them with him. https://thequietus.com/articles/30084-anthony-braxton-interview

He taught at Wesleyan for over 20 years; I imagine he's not just basing his opinion on Youtube but it's true that it wasn't probed in depth in that interview. Will read your piece.

Sure - I wasn't suggesting he was. I guess it could be said he's trying to get beyond the broader campus battle lines.

Has the NTS series on Japanese jazz been linked here? Absolutely heroic work:

https://www.nts.live/shows/japanese-jazz-week

Avant-jazz thing from Terraza last night looks real good. I thought about going but it was a little late for me these days. The full thing is available on their FB page.

International Anthem launching a podcast, starting with Angel Bat Dawid. Sounds great!

https://anchor.fm/international-anthem

Harpist Brandee Younger's Impulse! debut, Somewhere Different, will be released August 13. The first single will be out on Wednesday. The core band is trumpeter Maurice "Mobetta" Brown, tenor saxophonist Chelsea Baratz, flutist Anne Drummond, bassist Rashaan Carter and drummers Allan Mednard and Marcus Gilmore (switching off, I guess). Ron Carter plays on two tracks, one of which is called "Olivia Benson," and Tarriona "Tank" Ball from Tank and the Bangas (a UK group I've never listened to) is on one song.

excited for that, though I actually wasn't all that thrilled by that duo album on Intl Anthem

This is better. Fuller arrangements, actual production.

ha "actual production" is probably all I needed

Oh man, I absolutely loved that duo record with Dezron Douglas. I think the key was approaching it less as an "album" and more as a focused compilation pulled from their really charming streaming sets. I though the fondness for each other and the music really shone through on that one. Really excited for that Impulse! debut though, that's a great lineup.

I really did want to like it more than I did, maybe it was a little *too* cozy for me? anyway, I'm excited to hear what she does with a full palette

Her 2019 album (recorded in 2013 and shelved) is really good, too.

I had no idea that existed, thanks!

Tarriona "Tank" Ball from Tank and the Bangas (a UK group I've never listened to)

They're a New Orleans band

https://lionmilk.bandcamp.com/album/o-t-s

new live jazz thing from a younger LA crew

I liked his quarantine solo Rhodes album, will check that out, thanks

Still need to check those Brandee albs on bandcamp, thanx for reminders.
Following up on their well-received 2017 ESP-Disk’ album backing poet Amina Baraka, The Red Microphone added guitarist Dave Ross to its roster and went into the studio with Ivan Julian (guitarist of punk icons Richard Hell & the Voidoids). A few other veterans of the downtown NYC jazz scene joined in to help accompany the provocative, political poetry of John Pietaro, who doubles on voice and drums.
credits
released April 23, 2021
And I Became Of The Dark is so much thee 2020a incarnation of a certain kind of 1960s ESP-DISK, a funky, stimulating harvest of beatnik wordage, hipster humor and jazz resources, maybe with some busking experience to keep it engaging and freewheeling. The combo, incl. several multi-instrumentalists and a couple of guests, who don't overstay their welcome, on viola and bari, is always tight and exuberant; don't know how much of the de facto arrangements come from good drummer Pietaro, who is also listed as musical director, but they are usually worth listening around his voice when need be. He's better the closer he gets to actual singing and emphatic chanting, but even when he's just intoning, he never gets in the way that much. "Revenge of the Atom Spies" is perfect opener, should be the single. Gotta check their album with Baraka, which I think is on the ESP-DISK bandcamp. Nu Cantu En Esperanto!
https://theredmicrophone.bandcamp.com/

My wife designed the CD for the Baraka album. It's a good one.

omg edicated to Saint Escrava Anastacia.
credits
released June 19, 2021

All instruments, vocalz, and synths performed, produced, recorded, arranged & mixed By Angel Bat Dawid.
https://intlanthem.bandcamp.com/album/hush-harbor-mixtape-vol-1-doxology
First encounter w this, and don't know of course if it will seem as amazing now that I know what to expect (nothing like what I did expect from several titles, which is prob the point), but so far it's immediately compelling, often beguiling, with an eerie, tranquil intensity, and some shifting surfaces and perimeters (for inst, what's happening to the vocals going around the room---"I know I should be grateful"---in " 'Goree,' or Slave - Stick"---we also get the improbably redemption of overt Auto Tune sometimes, or maybe keys, emphasizing the inflection (of male group vocals? Or herself treated?) that suggests a African-Hebraic-Isalmic chain, rattling a little (the clarinet encourages this). One of the most affecting tracks is her untreated, a capella , "Bet"--followed, in a plausible way, by a calmly killer finale trilogy. None of this is an onslaught of sounds though; each room is only as full as need be. Seems like a rec to fans of adventurously historical clarinetists John Carter and Matana Roberts (her Coin Coin series, and maybe all of his Roots and Folklore: Episodes in the Development of American Folk Music, although the album from that I'm thinking of, and most familiar with, is Fields).

I haven't pulled the trigger on that one yet. I am slowly coming around to the idea that I like the idea of Dawid a lot more than I like listening to her actual records.

I feel that way about the International Anthem roster (except Irreversible Entanglements).

The Heat Warps, the site that's posting every available bootleg of electric Miles, has a great interview with Lonnie Liston Smith.

Yeah, that 2019 Brandee Younger album on bandcamp is really satisfying; thanks for the link. Looking fwd to the August release. Speaking of jazz harp, several of Dorothy Ashby's albums have been reissued fairly recently, and here's a good 58 minute survey of her career, ranging from late 1950s bop/modal contexts to late 1960s outings influenced by mysticism and soul. Stream, also download, with Chrome's Sound Pirate, for inst:
https://indianapublicmedia.org/nightlights/fantastic-jazz-harp-dorothy-ashby.php

So, over on A catch-all thread for the current jazz scene in London, including Shabaka Hutchings, Yazz Ahmed, Moses Boyd, Nubya Garcia, Camilla George, Theon Cross, Zara McFarlane, Daniel Casimir, SEED Ensemble, , I was carrying about Nérija trombonist(-composer-arranger) Rosie Turton's own recent refreshingly airy, fluid, robust, succinct (even w remixes) EP, Expansions and Transformations, Part I & II: https://rosieturton.bandcamp.com/---which led me to Jennifer Wharton's Bonegasm, which is four trombomnes, piano/Fender Rhodes, bass, and drums: promising, but so far seeming overloaded sometimes, on {defensively titled?) Not A Novelty, their second album, so they've had a while to get it together, although maybe it's Second Album Slump; I haven't tried the debut yet. Or maybe it's just me, esp. re the leader's bass trombone, which is very much with us--I had a similar problem with the tuba on some of Your Queen Is A Reptile, but loved Black To The Future right off.
Still, I'm already struck by this Bonegasm ballad all the way through:https://jenniferwharton.bandcamp.com/track/twinkle
And the finale, with Kurt Elling! They should do much more with him, whom I've never heard like this:
https://jenniferwharton.bandcamp.com/track/the-day-i-tried-to-live Especially like it when he "blah-blah-blaah" 's the trombones dogging his depressed heels.

That's fun I guess, but don't come at me with four trombones unless you're a trombone shout choir (also ugh, that name):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1QnzTnhcw0

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

Yeah, that's better!

My favorite jazz releases of the first half of 2021:

Jaimie Branch, Fly or Die Live
Anthony Braxton, Quartet (Standards) 2020
Broken Shadows, s/t (reissue)
Fire!, Defeat
Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders & The London Symphony Orchestra, Promises
Amaro Freitas, Sankofa
Cameron Graves, Seven
Hearth, Melt
Julius Hemphill, The Boyé Multi-National Crusade for Harmony
Vijay Iyer/Linda May Han Oh/Tyshawn Sorey, Uneasy
James Brandon Lewis Red Lily Quintet, Jesup Wagon
Damon Locks Black Monument Ensemble, Now
Charles Mingus, Mingus at Carnegie Hall (reissue)
Hafez Modirzadeh, Facets
Hedvig Mollestad Trio, Ding Dong. You’re Dead.
Monder/Malaby/Rainey, Live at the 55 Bar
Jason Moran/Milford Graves, Moran/Graves Live
Bheki Mseleku, Beyond the Stars
Ivo Perelman Trio, Garden of Jewels
Wadada Leo Smith/Douglas R. Ewart/Mike Reed, Sun Beans of Shimmering Light
Sons of Kemet, Black to the Future
Cecil Taylor Ensemble, Göttingen
Various Artists, Indaba Is
Various Artists, J Jazz: Deep Modern Jazz from Japan Volume 3
Various Artists, Spiritual Jazz 13: Now

Liking the Julian Lage album

Oh he’s got a new one? Hadn’t noticed. He is great. Like that he made good on his prodigy origins.

Big ears and not just fast fingers.

Wonder who else is playing in it, maybe usual suspects

yeah Lage album is more than decent decent, can hear echoes of Johnny Smith in his playing style.

Hafez Modirzadeh, Facets

^^^

this is the one is my personal fave of the year.

only meant one decent!

Another call for Facets - absolutely stunning album, formally innovative but beautiful with it.

The Ahmed album needs more love. Pat Thomas can do no wrong.