Rolling Jazz Thread 2022

https://alexanderhawkinsintakt.bandcamp.com/album/break-a-vase-2

new Alexander Hawkins album out on friday with his usual band from the previous sextet albums including guitarist Otto Fischer and Shabaka Hutchings.

xp

lol I can think of few places where Ted Gioia can stick his paywalled list

I keep going back to the Kenny Garrett album, it rules. Wish I would have come across it in time for the ILM poll.

Been listening to Charles Brackeen's Silkheart albums from the late '80s; they're great. Half Ornette, half Ayler, and the bands are killer. Brackeen, Dennis Gonzalez, Malachi Favors and Alvin Fielder on Bannar, and Brackeen, Olu Dara, Fred Hopkins and Andrew Cyrille on Attainment and Worshippers Come Nigh. Also been listening to the two ECM albums he made with Paul Motian (and David Izenzon), Dance and Le Voyage. I'm not the world's biggest Motian fan, but those albums are really good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5o4JAKMBZ8

Angel bat Dawid 2022 Winter Jazz fest live

I interviewed South African jazz drummer Ayanda Sikade for Bandcamp Daily, with additional quotes from pianist Nduduzo Makhathini and saxophonist Linda Sikhakhane:

http://daily.bandcamp.com/features/ayanda-sikade-umakhulu-interview

Missed seeing the November 2021 death of spiritual jazz flautist Lloyd McNeill, a dc born guy, who was also a painter/ artist, designed concert posters, and hung out with Picasso and Andrew White

https://amsterdamnews.com/news/2021/11/11/artist-and-flutist-extraordinaire-lloyd-mcneill-jr-passes-at-86/

I do always find something new from Fred Kaplan's year-end list and playlist.

Yeah, and I agree about the one I already knew, Shepp-Moran's Let My People Go. The musical and emotional range just keep unfolding, giving us the whole picture, so we get the thoughtful spirituals and Ellington-Strayhorn's jewel of The Far East Suite's"Ishtafan" (originally "Elf" before they played Iran), and "Wise One," the non-obvious Trane pick, which fits just fine with all the above and with "Lush Life" and "'Round Midnight," and even a radio edit of the opener, "Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child," because the Lord helps those who help themselves.

Yeah I big upped the Shepp album on the Floating Points thread.

My latest Stereogum column is up now. I talk about Kenny G; explore my decades-long suspicion of the critical love for Fred Hersch; eulogize Mtume, Charles Brackeen, Khan Jamal, and Fred Van Hove; plug my book; and more, so check it out if you like.

Paul Steinbeck
@steinbeckpaul
Just arrived in the mail: Timo Hoyer's astonishing new book ANTHONY BRAXTON / CREATIVE MUSIC.
#aacm #creativemusic #experimentalmusic #wolkeverlag
https://wolke-verlag.de/musikbuecher/timo-hoyer-anthony-braxton-creative-music/

It’s in German though right?

Yeah, I replied to that tweet saying I’m waiting for a translation, as my wife can read German but has no interest in Braxton.

David Kikowski is dueting with this monster bari player I never heard of before named Jason Marshall at Smalls right now and it is sounding amazing.

This guy: https://www.bestsaxophonewebsiteever.com/bari-sax-master-jason-marshall-players-dont/

From my Brussels buddy John W.: ...yesterday I learned of the existence of this Black Belgian woman,Peggy Pierrot, and I listened to last night's podcast (her playlist is at the link below; the podcast went online even though she herself couldn't go on mic because she's home in bed with Covid; I assume her occasional voiceover readings in both English and French had been recorded in advance). As you would expect from her inclusion of tracks by Drexciya and Detroit-homeboy allies like the Aquanauts, she's into the underwater-aquatic end of Afrofuturist myth. But in her mix she achieved a terrific balance between Detroit electro beats, what people are now calling "spiritual jazz" (one highlight being the Joe Henderson / Alice Coltrane track; another being "Old and New Dreams" by the Old and New Dreams Quartet, and in context it wasn't just Dewey's Chinese musette that sounded spooky, but even Blackwell's drumming) and the music of the whales[!] without being goopy NewAge sentimental about it. If a link to stream the podcast shows up, I'll alert you. Meanwhile, here's her playlist:
http://www.q-o2.be/en/event/songing-with-our-ancestors-live-radio-session-with-peggy-pierrot/
Live radio session with writer, radio dj and educator Peggy Pierrot.
From Drexciya and other Detroit techno bands, to historians and science fiction writers, to Solomon Rivers, author of speculative and literary fiction such as The Deep, the Atlantic Ocean – known here as the Black Atlantic – has been the crucible for stories of loss and flight, abduction and rebirth. This radio program invites us to dive into this black ocean in search of these sounds and stories.

Playlist of the Radio Show:

Vangelis -Sauvage et Beau, le chant des baleines
Clipping – The deep
Ed Blackwell / Don Cherry / Charlie Haden / Dewey Redman – Old dream and
new Dreams
The comet is coming – The Prophecy
Drexciya – Intro: Temple Of Dos De Agua
the Aquanauts – Aquatic Kamikazi
Drexciya – Hydro Theory
Earth – Sonar and Depth Charge
Joe Henderson & Alice Coltrane – Water
Shabaka and the Ancestors – The Sea
Mr. Bubble – Bubble Beats
Sun Ra – Lanquidity
Le chant des baleines – Killer Whale, Orcinus Orca
Ras-G – Been Cosmic
Le chant des baleines – narwhal Whale, Monodon Monoceros
Sons of Kemet – in remembrance of those fallen
Extracts from The deep by Rivers Solomon in french and in english.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FKahqdmWUAMfgUz?format=jpg&name=small

beautiful album is this.

Recently posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxM980ocuCw

🖼

beautiful album is this.

Just got my download of the Peter Brötzmann/William Parker/Milford Graves live set, Historic Music Past Tense Future, recorded 3/29/02 at CBGBs' 313 Gallery. Available from Black Editions on vinyl and digitally, though the former is likely to sell out fast. It rips, of course.

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a0994075720_10.jpg

So we were talking about Michael Brecker's overplaying---here's an exception I should have thought of: not brilliant, but it works (and I'd like to hear an all-instrumental version of this song),
Garland Jeffreys, "I May Not Be Your Kind"---from Ghost Writer(1977)

Oops!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knPYobziFmg

New Kamasi Washington tune:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xzrkerz1SW8

Sounds like Kamasi Washington. He should make the trumpet player a full-time band member.

"Sounds like Kamasi Washington" is enough for me, tbh.

Btw, unperson, looking forward to your book arriving later this week!

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

Note that Ted Gioia's brother, Dana Gioia, was once the US poet laureate, and is also a notorious fucking asshole.

...and that's how you get the gig

xp

Which one?

Making a Rational Funk joke about the Julian Lage video (which is great)

Oh, okay. I miss the days when I would see Jorge all the time. And would also see a friend from Mexico who studied with Randy Vincent who also taught Julian Lage and would tell him about this kid who was really talented.

I overlooked his trio album from last year, need to give that some time.

Speaking of Dave King, just got tix to see the new Ben Monder + Chris Speed version of the Bad Plus at a small venue here next month.

Cool.

I feel like the Bad Plus are on the downward slide and just don't want to admit it yet. I mean, swapping Orrin Evans in when Ethan Iverson left/was fired is one thing, but to bring in Monder and Speed, neither of whom has shown much interest in the past in being part of a steady, hard-touring band... it feels kinda desperate, and I don't see it lasting very long. Plus, it's too big a structural change. People (rightly) think of TBP as a piano trio, so to now become a sax-guitar-bass-drums quartet runs the risk of alienating a whole lot of the audience, many of whom were originally drawn in by piano-trio covers of rock songs and only incidentally converted to fans of original jazz music...which was still presented in piano trio format!

This has nothing to do with the merits of the music, of course. I hope they make a record soon, 'cause I'd love to hear it. Monder's skronk on top of a rhythm section that hard-hitting? I'm 100% on board for that.

A guy I know produced this. I really like it

https://theofficialcowmusic.bandcamp.com/album/live

Yeah, I'll listen to Monder play on anything but I don't get how this is still the Bad Plus.

The Bad Minus Plus Plus Plus

Add Ben to (X)

Finally got the Courvoisier/Halvorson album from last year: https://sylviecourvoisiermaryhalvorsonpyroclastic.bandcamp.com/album/searching-for-the-disappeared-hour . It really is marvellous, almost like a bizarro world Undercurrents. The connection between the two of them is really strong throughout, no matter how intricate they get.

Ah! you mean the Jim Hall Bill Evans Undercurrents, I take it:

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61gr6T-rTuL._SL1200_.jpg

Yes, exactly. Obv a lot further out.

The Courvoisier/Halvorson album is so, so good.

I feel like the Bad Plus are on the downward slide and just don't want to admit it yet. I mean, swapping Orrin Evans in when Ethan Iverson left/was fired is one thing, but to bring in Monder and Speed, neither of whom has shown much interest in the past in being part of a steady, hard-touring band... it feels kinda desperate, and I don't see it lasting very long. Plus, it's too big a structural change. People (rightly) think of TBP as a piano trio, so to now become a sax-guitar-bass-drums quartet runs the risk of alienating a whole lot of the audience, many of whom were originally drawn in by piano-trio covers of rock songs and only incidentally converted to fans of original jazz music...which was still presented in piano trio format!

I'm inclined to agree with all that, yeah. On the other hand, they've gotta eat, and I'm looking forward to hearing the new lineup play the old material. Also since I've seen both Chris Speed's trio with Dave King and Broken Shadows (including Chris/Dave/Reid) recently, it'll be interesting to hear how different they sound in context as 'The Bad Plus'.

Also I guess TBP did do that record with Joshua Redman already, but that's one of their projects I've listened to the least.

I really like a few things on that Redman/Bad Plus record, I actually enjoyed it more than some of their other material.

love this one especially
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmQTZb81qQ8

Youtube has been very concerned that I should watch this Ari Hoenig video, and I'm glad I finally did

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1zPpLdc-Go

Can't tell who he is playing with there.

Credits say:

Tom Ollendorff - Guitar
Conor Chaplin - Bass

Not familiar, but they're great, especially that trading with the bass player.

Francis Davis comments on the year in jazz, and his own ballot, a little longer than usual, as he says, with several I hadn't heard of, looking good:
https://artsfuse.org/244710/the-2021-jazz-critics-poll-only-the-best/

Saw a great Christian Scott Atunde show last night

Think Matt Wilson may be touring on the Xmas thing.

Or so he told me a little while ago.

At the Birdland Theater.

This 19 year-old college student on vocals is amazing. Kind of a star is born thing, although maybe somebody else already knows who she is.

https://www.anaisreno.com/

That Matt Wilson xmas set is fantastic. Love him and almost forgot how musical and fun his groups are. I was going to say they should put this out as a record but I see they did a studio version of it in 2010.