Rolling Jazz Thread 2024

"Blakey taught me how to play the drums when I play. Rhythm is it. It’s what makes soloists different, what makes Sonny Rollins or Bird so great. I understood how time worked when I left Art.”

– Branford Marsalis

I've now listened to all 2 hours of the David Murray/Questlove/Ray Angry album 'Plumb' now that it's streaming (what, was I going to buy the vinyl for $150?). It's good! Questlove isn't a jazz drummer, but I like the tension of hearing him in this context, since his whole thing is minimalism and not overplaying or stretching out. And when he plays a groove there's so much detail and weight in it. And just consistency of sound, it's kinda crazy how you can hear every Roots record in his bass drum (but it's also nice to hear the inconsistencies in this mode, he's human too).

Ray Angry is really the mvp, I'd never heard him before. Great keyboard & synth sounds (which is super rare for jazz pianists!), and he's really holding it all together on every cut with the basslines & chords, especially since they're all jams.

Thanks for the thoughts on that, I was curious when it came out but kind of stopped caring when I saw the only option was the $150 vinyl (not even a digital download option either, afaict).

Not to derail the thread, but this particular release (along with a few others I encountered in 2023) irks me where we've come to a point where the options are sort of pulling to the two extremes - either streaming only or catering to the vinyl fetishists at a ridiculous price point, with nothing in between. Like, hey guys, I dig your music and I'd really like to support you with more than the meager portions of pennies my streams will get you, but uh $150 ain't it dudes.

Agree 100%. If I could have bought that release on Bandcamp, I would have. But I wound up only listening to some of that, because when something is only on streaming platforms, my attention span gets a lot shorter — I'll listen to a track or two, then bail. If I put a CD on, I let it play through. Similarly, if I put a Blu-Ray in the player I'll watch a movie front to back. If I pull something up on Netflix, I might watch 15 minutes, get distracted, and quit.

Last year, Concord reissued Woody Shaw's debut album, Blackstone Legacy, on vinyl. It's a long double LP, so they had to cut a couple of minutes out of two of the longer tracks to fit it on a single CD (which I own). But fortunately, HDTracks.com had the digital files for the remastered reissue, giving me everything at full length.

Thanks for posting about Plumb I had no idea it was streaming, it's cool, man I love Murray and Ray Angry is great...not sure it really needs to be 2 plus hours, seems like it could been pretty great album as a normal length cd but what do I know

Jordan otm on Plum--where all the tracks are like 13-14 minutes long, except for all the tracks that are like 4 minutes and change, except for the one that's like 2:30, and it all seems right---can see how you might have to listen in chunks, unperson, but keep goin' back in!

from end of the year Noms thread:

Tracks:
Jason Kao Hwang--Dragon Carved Into Bone
Susan Alcorn, Septeto del Sur--El Derecho de Vivir en Paz
Alex Sadkin--Parker's Mood
Alex Sadkin--Bird of Paradise
(16/40)

JKH: electric violin, electric guitar, drum kit: fluid, fluent, digging in.
SA: pedal steel & combo: Chilean folk melodies x improv, with vocals on this one track, the best, I think.
AS: come for more from jazz pedal steelist xpost Dave Easley and drummer Jay Bellerose, stay for whole crew on "Parker's Mood," where everybody has the blues, especially that violin, and troubled ballad "Bird of Paradise." (For the second half Flight, Sadkin employs different line-up, more conventional-looking, but I didn't listen to much of that.)

From Rolling Psych Freak Drone 2023:

Co-sign on this year's Sunwatchers, fastnbulbous: once again they made my Uproxx ballot, and will be on others. This afternoon at nice quiet library, dipped a toe in two (out of three) of this year's 75 Dollar Bill reissues, from the beginning. A couple ov faves so far:

When my guitar part finally breaks form it’s just to signal the end. As for the long track that takes up the whole first side of this tape, it was named in homage to Najeeb, a young Tunisian man with Down Syndrome I’d met a few years earlier while traveling in Kairouan, Islam’s 4th holiest city. Najeeb would hang out at the cafe all day and the other guys would buy him sodas while he’d crack them up with fantastical and occasionally lewd bits about physical love, flying airplanes and tourists. Never missing an opportunity for a send up of the local religious piety, he’d attempt to order a drink you couldn’t get at this cafe, or anywhere as far as I know, وسكي بالحبرورش or “Whiskey with Hail." - CC

https://75dollarbill.bandcamp.com/track/whiskey-with-hail

I had seen Karen and Andrew playing around town and admired their playing, and finally got to meet them while playing amplified strings in a Tony Conrad ensemble circa 2012, right around when Rick and I were starting to play together. They were probably the first people to come rehearse with us and appear here on what has become our most often played (and recorded song) “WZN#3."
Andrew Lafkas: contrabass on "WZN#3"
Karen Waltuch: viola on "WZN#3"

https://75dollarbill.bandcamp.com/track/wzn-3

https://artsfuse.org/285195/the-18th-annual-francis-davis-jazz-poll-the-state-of-our-union-could-be-better/

Jazz critics poll of 2023 releases (with separate breakouts for Latin jazz, jazz vocalists, and more) . reissues . 159 critics contributed.

the top 10 of the top 50 albums list with Lewis at #1

James Brandon Lewis /Red Lily Quintet, For Mahalia, With Love (Tao Forms) 303.5 (47)
Jason Moran, From the Dancehall to the Battlefield (Yes) 226 (32)
Steve Lehman & Orchestre National de Jazz, Ex Machina (Pi) 201.5 (30)
Tyshawn Sorey Trio, Continuing (Pi) 191.5 (32)
Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society, Dynamic Maximum Tension (Nonesuch) 186 (30)
Matana Roberts, Coin Coin Chapter Five: In the Garden (Constellation) 183 (29)
Kris Davis, Diatom Ribbons Live at the Village Vanguard (Pyroclastic) 179 (28)
Henry Threadgill Ensemble, The Other One (Pi) 159 (27)
Jaimie Branch, Fly or Die Fly or Die Fly or Die ((World War)) (International Anthem) 154.5 (23)
Myra Melford’s Fire and Water Quintet, Hear the Light Singing (RogueArt) 133.5 (24)

Chuck Eddy is one of the critics. Didn’t think he was so into jazz.

He has gotten into jazz big time the last few years.

https://accidentalevolution.wordpress.com/2024/01/05/150-best-albums-of-2023/

Chuck Eddy list with 3 of top 4 being jazz ; plus long essay -

Jason Moran From the Dancehall to the Battlefield (Yes)
Allen Lowe and the Constant Sorrow Orchestra America: The Rough Cut (ESP-Disk)
Clairvoyance is the Dance Vol. 1 (Huveshta Rituals Belgium)
Lakecia Benjamin Phoenix (Whirlwind)

And oh yeah, there’s jazz too. Which, for all I know, Richard Meltzer might still listen to, to this day. And even if he doesn’t, it never died! I count at least 16 albums on my list (almost 11% — exact same percentage as metal, if you want a horse race), including three (= 75%) of my top four and 10 (= 25%) of my top 40. Read the credits and you’ll deduce that I clearly have a thing for saxophones, which is not to suggest other lead instruments aren’t honored as well.

The top two, especially, are illuminating. 48-year-old Houston pianist Jason Moran’s From the Dancehall to the Battlefield and 69-year-old Long Island (mostly alto) saxophonist Allen Lowe’s America: The Rough Cut are both loaded with blues and rags — you can tell; it’s right there in their song titles. Hillbilly music, too. In other words, they update the rock’n’roll of more than 100 years ago...

Half an hour of Cecil Taylor's big band, which appeared annually at Iridium for about five years in the early 2000s:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1eCgBMMkmE

As I discovered when writing my book, this band was amazing, as close as Taylor ever got to Ellington-level orchestration, but no albums have ever been released even though a lot of the shows were recorded.

I was there for some of them!

Not in NYC for any of this weekend's multiple impressive Winter jazz conference gigs or the global ones at Drom & Lincoln Center alas. Today there's an impressive one-- Esperanza Spalding, Brandee Younger, Irreversible Entanglements, The Messthetics & James Brandon Lewis. Website doesn't list Shabaka H, but he was listed elsewhere as part of this 6pm gig today at le Poisson Rouge

Sounds good, afraid I will be missing the whole thing once again as per usual.

Question for unperson, anybody: "Someday We'll All Be Free" and another track on on Eye of I sound like they incl. uncredited trumpet---could it be Kirk Knuffke's cornet, not making the Bandcamp annotations---or is JBL overdubbing the high end of his tenor, perhaps with pitch tweaking, other effects?
This and For Mahalia are currently my most played albums of any genre, any year.

Yeah, that's Knuffke. I don't know why he's not credited on the Bandcamp page for the album.

Wow, thanks! Also, the Glide reviewer keeps referring to Hoffman's "violin,' when credits have only "Cello/Pedals," which is certainly what it sounds like. But is violin on there as well or instead??

I have revived my podcast and interviewed pianist Ethan Iverson, who has a new album out on Friday. (It's good!)

Will listen. I got introduced to Joseph Branciforte on Pablo Held's podcast today, he's a recording engineer who has done a ton of records for Ben Monder, Tim Berne, etc. But he's also made a pair of gorgeous records with Theo Bleckmann where he's doing all the music live in a Max/MSP looping environment he made:

https://josephbrancifortetheobleckmann.bandcamp.com/album/lp2

And here he is covering this crazy Ben Monder tune on Rhodes and Moog, and he's also a ridiculous drummer? Come on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyBQTg3d6u8

Great interview, really enjoyed it. I like the 'singles' from the record too, looking forward to hearing the whole thing. The tunes are the most 'Bad Plus-y' I've heard from him in a long time, but that also makes the drumming sound a bit safe and me want to hear what Dave King would do.

I included some quotes from the podcast in my latest Stereogum column, which just went up. I cover some high-profile albums therein (Mary Halvorson, Keyon Harrold), but there are some lesser-known artists like Muriel Grossmann, Kirsten Edkins, and Tetragone that I hope people will check out, too.

This is coming in April, and as a huuuuuge fan of their first record, the sample bit just got me totally pumped

https://astralahmed.bandcamp.com/album/wood-blues

There's also a 5CD [Ahmed] box set coming out in April on the Swedish label Fönstret. I haven't heard it, but the label head tells me it's coming, so...

All I can see is this:

https://ahmedquartet.bandcamp.com/album/super-majnoon

which is also deeply exciting to me

lol sorry, I got stoned— that last record came out this year! I had no idea because the group has several different Bandcamp pages.

Yeah, the 5CD set hasn't been announced yet, as the band haven't even signed off on the masters. But it's in process.

Cool!!

Jimmy Cobb on this Great Jazz Trio record has the greatest jazz bass drum sound I've ever heard

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

Gig at LPR was really good, particularly JBL/Messthetics and Irreversible Entanglements. Shabaka was a bit of a snooze though. Really not sure about this wafty new age direction he's going in. Too much of this tasteful ambient jazz about - it has none of the beauty or intensity of the spiritual jazz tradition it claims to be extending.

Lol, I must have been looking at a Discogs page for the wrong album because I kept listening to this going "how the fuck does Jimmy Cobb suddenly sound like Elvin", but of course it's Elvin Jones & Richard Davis on that Great Jazz Trio album. I was pretty blown away by "Eddie Gomez" too, makes much more sense now. What a record.

https://ahmedquartet.bandcamp.com/album/super-majnoon

Just a note that this is an insanely good record, bought it last night.

So I heard a song on the radio last night that I liked and Shazamed it and it was Joey Alexander — who I vaguely remember as the child prodigy who popped up on TV and elsewhere some years back. Didn't realize he had a going adult career. No idea what his critical standing is like, but I liked the vibe of the song. Anyway, this was the track (the studio version).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQM2a350TF4

Got tix to see the Blue Note Quintet on Fri, in addition to Kendrick Scott I'm most looking forward to hearing Joel Ross again.

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

(some insane playing on this session, first time seeing video of Kush Abadey, I wasn't familiar with him until that new Ethan Iverson record)

James Brandon Lewis has two albums coming out this winter/spring: a new quartet disc on Intakt with pianist Aruán Ortiz, bassist Brad Jones, and drummer Chad Taylor (I think it's their third album together), and a collaboration with the Messthetics (guitarist Anthony Pirog and bassist Joe Lally and drummer Brendan Canty, both formerly of Fugazi) on Impulse.

That quartet is absolutely superb - saw them in London in November. Ortiz is such a fantastic pianist - managed to get a seat a foot away from him. Just a marvel too watch. Rest of the band not too shabby either, ha! Chad Taylor is one of the greatest drummers alive, deserves all the flowers.

Yeah, the quartet is great, and Lewis's duo project with Taylor is fantastic, too.

The Blue Note Quintet show was stunning, highly recommend catching the tour if you can. It's hard to imagine a better drummer than Kendrick Scott, he can play anything but has a Brian Blade level of musicality & restraint. Joel Ross delivered too (especially his dancing when he lays out and goes to the back of the stage). They really sounded like a band too, mostly originals until the last tune, which was a Monk tune smashed up with a Charlie Parker blues worked into the form.

Gerald Clayton kept triggering clips of jazz musicians being interviewed (Wayne Shorter was the only one I really recognized by voice), sometimes it was just a bridge between tunes and sometimes one person would play under the audio. Didn't always work imo, but it was a good way of not having any dead air or having to address the audience until the end. Wonder if they'll make a record.

Have we talked about this record here?

https://billorcutt.bandcamp.com/album/a-mouth-at-both-ends

Friend of mine just played the trio on the radio and it blew my top off.

hmm, will peep

Fuck yeah

(brings back seeing Herlin play this tune from a few inches away a few summers ago)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RI4M7qzOTHo

Really enjoyed this Vinnie Sperazza post featuring legendary jazz drummers on early r&b singles. Heard Billy Hart talking about the same thing recently, how his first gigs were in r&b bands, which led to playing with singers, which led to all of the modern jazz gigs (and how the jazz bandleaders all hired him for his r&b and pop background).

The new Iyer/Oh/Sorey album is predictably great. What a fantastic trio.

Haven’t listened but can imagine.

Yeah, it's good. I've got an interview with Iyer running in my next Stereogum column, which will probably go live next week.

Been going in on some Al Foster records after being inspired by this Dan Weiss clip:
https://www.instagram.com/p/C3LYW6kAwbk/

I went back to Joe Henderson's "So Near, So Far" Miles tribute record with Foster and John Scofield, and it's just as great as I remember. Foster is so creative and tight, especially with the hi-hat, I wouldn't be surprised if Bill Stewart got a lot from him.

I got to see Henderson and Foster play together, with George Mraz on bass, in 1997. It was great.

Wow

My latest Stereogum column is up; I interviewed Vijay Iyer, and reviewed new albums by James Brandon Lewis, Sullivan Fortner, and others. Lotta Scandinavians this month, so be warned.

I enjoyed your Rufus Reid interview (tried to go through that complete Monk set but wasn't feeling it for some reason, even though Billy Drummond is great)...it's really something how every musician talks about Sullivan Fortner these days, I've heard the same thing recently from Brad Mehldau, Aaron Parks, etc.

Some interesting records in there, especially that Otis Sandjo record.

The two tracks out from the upcoming Potter/Mehldau/Patitucci/Blade record are masterful, can't wait for that one.

I'm waiting to get the full album from the label. It's a hell of a lineup for sure.

https://wapo.st/49GLa8S

Washington Post interview with Iyer focusses mainly on Compassion album and recent live show with no mention of Arooj Aftab one

So the new Shabaka has dropped and... I'm really underwhelmed.

I'm all for beauty, but this current wave of chilled out ambient jazz just feels aimless and banal... over reliance on "vibes" but not much substance... I'm sure it's nice to put on while you do yoga, but Don Cherry it ain't!

Floating Points has a lot to answer for.

I like it! I've already heard the whole album (reviewed it for The Wire) and it's a whole lot better than the Andre 3000 thing, or the Vijay Iyer/Arooj Aftab/Shahzad Ismaily thing, or about half of what's come out on International Anthem in the last year. The tracks with two harp players are really beautiful, and it's got some really good guest vocalists. There's nothing aimless or haphazard about it — it's a tight record (11 tracks, 47 minutes) with a ton of guests including Jason Moran, Nduduzo Makhathini, and yeah, Andre 3000's on it but you wouldn't notice unless someone told you.

Haha. I'm feeling this more from the UK side of things, although I like a lot of it (the last Alabaster de Plume stuck with me, the previous Shabaka record didn't). The Ambrose Akinmusire LP is post-ECM ambient jazz done right (and I was gratified to see that Jakob Bro subbed for Bill Frisell on his tour, since Bro kicked off my obsession with this sort of thing and I felt like the AA record fit into that universe).

xp
How does it compare to Afrikan Culture? I never felt v compelled to listen to that a second time, but a fuller band would be more enticing

To me, the Ayer/Izmaily/Aftab thing is probably the best example of this kind of thing, especially live there was a continual bass pulse that kept if from being too floaty. Maybe I give this the benefit of the doubt cause I know that Iyer is a serious musician and not just slumming, which I think Hutchings does a bit (e.g. your interview with him where he says he wants to play “stupid sax” because he thinks playing complex music serves capitalism or something).

Yeah, aimless applies to Andre 3000's jams, but not so much the Shabaka. There's obviously intention and structure there, but it does seem to stop just as it's starting to go somewhere. Caught his set at NY Winter Jazz fest and found it pretty dull. There's no tension or bite to make the ostensibly beautiful sounds really soar.

I get why this chilled out minimalist/ambient thing is all the rage but I find it a total snooze! Can't help but feel there's a lot of reliance on spiritual jazz signifiers to give the music a sense of depth. At worst, it's some phoney new age bullshit.

Good to see I'm not the only one underwhelmed by the Iyer/Aftab/Ismaily - I like all the people involved, but I wonder how much lies behind studied ECM tastefulness. I'm also finding IA incredibly frustrating, particularly in its choice of UK acts. Doesn't seem right that a mediocrity like Alabaster DePlume, with his insufferable wide eye naif routine, gets to work with amazing Chicago musicians.

I get why this chilled out minimalist/ambient thing is all the rage but I find it a total snooze! Can't help but feel there's a lot of reliance on spiritual jazz signifiers to give the music a sense of depth. At worst, it's some phoney new age bullshit.

Moor Mother had a hilarious tweet the other day:

Just imagine if some of the folks playing spiritual jazz was actually spiritual

— poetry (@moormother) February 21, 2024

(Her new album is amazing, btw; Iyer's on it, and a bunch of other people. Not "jazz" exactly, but really, really strong stuff.)

Ha I saw that! She's OTM.

Very excited for her new album. She can do no wrong!

curious to hear the new shabaka album

i'm not familiar with all of his work, just sons of kemet and the comet is coming, but he has popped up on some other stuff. i like him, but there've been several times where i immediately clocked it was him because...he plays the same licks all the time? like i could hear a certain phrase and it's just immediately recognizable

Haha. I'm 100% in favor of that, my favorite horn player (Derrick "Kabuki" Shezbie) has 5 - 10 licks he deploys with the utmost sound, feel, & musicality and no one else can play those licks like him.

I think there's a conceptual divide where some musicians think true improvisation is playing something you've never played before, without a net, and others feel that's what the practice room is for and that you shouldn't try to play everything you hear if you don't know where it's going. Idk, I think licks = words and it's all in how you use them. Talk with them rather than recite a prepared speech.

yeah to be clear i'm not against it or criticizing him really, it's just SO noticeable to me compared to a lot of other horn players

i like him, but there've been several times where i immediately clocked it was him because...he plays the same licks all the time? like i could hear a certain phrase and it's just immediately recognizable

Allow me to introduce you to the work of Fred Anderson...

Ha I saw that! She's OTM.

Very excited for her new album. She can do no wrong!

(I have also had the distinct privilege of seeing her a LOT since we are both Philly jawns)

On the ambient turn... this review of Winter Jazz Fest makes some good observations. His argument - comforting music for troubled times - is solid enough, but that's the problem. If there's a time for jazz to be angry it's now. A lot of this new age ambient jazz comes across as hippy escapism. It's also not very interesting musically. I put on a Carlos Nino album and think that's cool, some nice grooves, some nice sounds, but it doesn't keep me engaged. But then that's maybe the point - it's background music to chill to. Perhaps I'm not temperamentally disposed to blissed out Californian vibes.
Of course any revolutionary movement needs collective joy, beauty, love - that's why the latest Irreversible Entanglements is so powerful. And I get that Shabaka, for example, has released plenty of politically charged music before (The third Sons Of Kemet album in particular) and has every right to follow his bliss. But still...

Sorry, didn't include the link: https://aquariumdrunkard.com/2024/02/28/jazz-ragas-for-restless-times/

I don’t really understand the fuss over Niño and am lukewarm on Hutchings’ latest efforts, but I am a little skeptical of the idea that a sound being projected onto some musicians betrays their stance on social or political issues.

That said, could it be possible that by making music that is calming, comforting, even contemplative, there is a desire for futurity being projected into the world? Why does music have to be “angry” to be read as in tune with political and social demands? And isn’t that more a problem with the subjective listener than the music itself?

To clarify, I'm not arguing that all music should be angry, noisy and political. Free jazz has always looked after the spirit - music as a healing force and all that. And it's always had space for the contemplative. By its very nature, jazz and improvised music is inherently subversive, a liberation technology as Moor Moor puts it. Or at least, any jazz and improvised music that is alive and real, and not just industry hyped pseudo spiritual jazz or sub ECM muzak.

And I'm not questioning Shabaka's political commitment - I really admire the way SOK brought anti-colonial, anti-racist politics to the edge of the mainstream. That glorious FUCK THE TORIES FUCK THE FASCISTS bit in My Queen Is Ada Eastman needs to be blasted from rooftops.

My beef is really with the wider ambient trend and the marketing of it. Again, it ties back to another recent Moor Mother tweet about flooding the market with ambient and soft indie so people remain asleep.

Yeah sorry I don’t buy that

What is “real” spiritual jazz? Does Camae Ayewa get to decide that for us?

Shiroishi has made deeply political records, full of feedback, skronk, and wailing that gets to the center of the goddamn earth. He also is one of the leaders of Fuubutsushi, a group that definitely makes ECM-style “vibes” music, albeit with a political bent, given samples used and song titles.

This whole oppositionality to what is seen as a burgeoning “trend” seems to me to be more about certain people acting like cops about what people can and can’t enjoy based on whether it meets some very subjective ideas of what spirituality is and can be.

Isn't "spiritual" a notoriously vague, even vacuous, term? To the point that people are often mocked for self-describing with it? It's kind of funny to assert that some people have this quality and others don't. Also I know everyone itt knows that original spiritual jazz was strongly detested for decades because genre purists thought it was "phoney new age bullshit" (not always without reason!)

By its very nature, jazz and improvised music is inherently subversive, a liberation technology

more like jazz music has always been an idea onto which the white jazz critic cannot resist projecting his politics, his ideas about authenticity, his hang ups and squabbles with other critics, ya feel me

and i don't mean that as a personal attack, and to be clear i really like having you around, Stew, but i think if there's been any kind of through line or 'essence' to jazz, it has to be this more than anything else

more like jazz music has always been an idea onto which the white jazz critic cannot resist projecting his politics, his ideas about authenticity, his hang ups and squabbles with other critics, ya feel me

Agree with this 100%. It's a major problem. Amiri Baraka's essay "Jazz and the White Critic" remains a crucial text even in 2024, and you can always read Frank Kofsky for a tragic lesson in what not to do and who not to be.

Absolutely, and as a white jazz critic I'm well aware of these pitfalls and try my best to avoid them or at least learn from mistakes. The Baraka essay is a touchstone and in my writing and teaching I draw on what musicians like Moor Mother William Parker, Pat Thomas et al have to say, as well as thinkers like Fred Moten, Edward George and Rashida Philips. Jazz has had a profound impact on my politics. As a friend puts it, music is why I'm not a Tory.

Obviously I'm not claiming every jazz musician is politically radical, but I don't think it's hard to see the liberatory potential in a music based on improvisation, freeing up melody, harmony and time, expressing your individuality etc. Which is why more conservative kinds of jazz don't do it for me, aesthetically or politically. But I wouldn't call them inauthentic.

'What is “real” spiritual jazz? Does Camae Ayewa get to decide that for us?'

Of course not, but I don't think she's trying to be prescriptive about what spiritual jazz is. Rather, the point is that "spiritual jazz" has become a marketing term, both for the reissues market and new releases. There's lots of deeply spiritual jazz that's just too radical or intense to fit the commercial idea of "spiritual jazz", i.e. modal, groove-based music modelled on the more accessible aspects of Alice/Pharoah's classic Impulse! sides. It says a lot that a musician of the "revolutionary spiritual school" like William Parker is too much for the posh rare groove tastemakers.

I think there's a British class dimension to this that maybe needs explaining... my beef is largely with privately educated white British musicians and tastemakers, including Floating Points, who let the "spiritual vibes" do a lot of heavy lifting for their bland expensive wallpaper music.

'This whole oppositionality to what is seen as a burgeoning “trend” seems to me to be more about certain people acting like cops about what people can and can’t enjoy based on whether it meets some very subjective ideas of what spirituality is and can be.'

People can enjoy what they like, but it's not the critic's job to just hold their hands up and accept any old nonsense.

Big fan of Shiroishi and the sheer variety of his music is stunning. And I think the political charge makes a big difference, putting those crystalline ECM sonics to radical uses.

Obviously I'm not claiming every jazz musician is politically radical, but I don't think it's hard to see the liberatory potential in a music based on improvisation, freeing up melody, harmony and time, expressing your individuality etc. Which is why more conservative kinds of jazz don't do it for me, aesthetically or politically. But I wouldn't call them inauthentic.

The last sentence here is crucial. Because yeah, I listen to tons of free and out jazz, but I also listen to tons of early 70s CTI recordings, and dudes like Hubert Laws, a flutist equally conversant in jazz and classical, blending both of those with psychedelic funk production, is making music that's totally authentic to his experience of the world. And Afro-Classic is a fucking incredible record as a result. Could you throw some of it on alongside the Andre 3000 record?

Somewhat related to this, I've heard sizable chunks of the next Kamasi Washington album, and...it's not really doing it for me in the way The Epic or Heaven and Earth did. Was I just infatuated at the time? Did I buy into the hype cycle? I don't think so — my excitement when I heard that album was real, and I'd already heard Pharoah Sanders and Alice Coltrane and all the rest of the influences he was clearly drawing upon. More to come...

Got it. I guess the problem I have is that while I agree with you pretty sturdily on yr complaints regarding Floating Points and the ilk, I bristle at the idea that anyone can diagnose what counts as “spiritual” jazz or “spiritual” music, and find Ayewa’s tweet to be wrong-headed, because the spiritual experience is one that is entirely subjective and not within the realm of rationality. That is to say: some people might find something in FP or Carlos Nino that I don’t. I personally think ‘descension (out of our constrictions)’ is a heavy spiritual record, and that NIS are lumped in with the more wallpaper stuff in the AQ article feels like the writer isn’t actually listening to the music, because last year’s record is pretty damn spiritual too, just not as ecstatic. Not all spiritual experiences are based in ecstasy or transcendence.

Now, I agree that the marketing of “spiritual” jazz is super fucked, but this isn’t anything new— the more accessible side of spiritual jazz has always been pushed harder! I heard Alice Coltrane for the first time as a 17 year old and it totally blew my mind, but within a few years I knew that it was the tamer side of the spectrum . (That isn’t a knock on Alice, of course).

Totally agree with you on NIS. I think there are certain superficial connections with the new age/ambient stuff but that's as far as it goes. Heavy stuff with loads going on.

I do wonder if there's a bit of mischievous humour to that Ayewa tweet - she does shitpost from time to time!

x-post - I think the psychedelic funk influenced stuff is pretty radical in its own way. Some amazing arrangements and textures there. I know some people have been sniffy about Washington, but those records are really enjoyable and he puts on a great live show. I also appreciate the way he's given props to his community, hipped people to Horace Tapscot et al.

Not exactly related to the above, but when I saw Makaya McCraven recently he had 3 violinists in addition to his harpist and cellist and flute/sax player, trumpet, bass, etc and a dj guy I know who had seen McCraven at Big Ears once, said he felt this show was too sedate. I enjoyed it and to my ears at times it felt like McCraven was going almost for a Sketches of Spain meets Curtis Mayfield soundtrack feel. More sedate-- yea, but I liked it.

Coupla unrelated things (other than the general subject). I finally got around to reading that utterly amazing Kramer interview/more-or-less essay in "The Believer." I appreciated his depiction of the personal path from loving nothing but free/experimental music to settling into loving nothing but Bill Evans and Nelson Riddle. Sometimes I get so used to listening to jarring music that more sedate music becomes a bit more jarring. I think I was playing a playlist of The Book Beri'ah, and the moments that made me perk up were not the skronky or metal bits, but when it would suddenly downshift into something more subtle.

Second, I saw that Julian Lage did a gig with Joey Baron recently, and it reminded me that I didn't know what Baron was up to lately, which brought me to this:

https://downbeat.com/news/detail/blindfold-test-joey-baron

I love ears so attuned that they can recognize a drummer just from how they hit the cymbal or snare. (I also had somehow never heard Tyshawn Sorey!)

(I also had somehow never heard Tyshawn Sorey!)

His albums on Pi Recordings are incredible. Not on streaming services, though. The Inner Spectrum of Variables, Verisimilitude, Mesmerism and Continuing are the ones to start with. The latter two are collections of standards, but the way they play them really is transformative. I love the pianist in that group, Aaron Diehl. He draws from old-school jazz, like the 1930s and 1940s, and really makes it work. He's on a level with Jason Moran in my estimation.

Agreed re: Sorey. Mesmerism is a transformative listening experience.

Sorry for the self-promo, but I lead a ten-person jazz-adjacent proggy band that just announced our first LP, out in full in early May; maybe people on here will/might dig at least some of it (three long tracks)--I have hired a publicist, so unperson be forewarned, haha:
https://kunudusuvuntu.bandcamp.com/album/pita-parka-pt-i-xam-egdub

i'm 100% here for ilxors plugging their own jazz-adjacent music in the rolling jazz thread fwiw. looking forward to checking this out

Also xp, yes Josh In Chicago, that Kramer article in the Believer is so good! I could use a re-read--remember it being a fittingly bizarre, digressively eye-opening blast

Re: "I appreciated his depiction of the personal path from loving nothing but free/experimental music to settling into loving nothing but Bill Evans and Nelson Riddle. Sometimes I get so used to listening to jarring music that more sedate music becomes a bit more jarring," I can't help but think of Nels Cline, when promoting his 2CD set The Lovers, enthusing about the arrangements on Stan Getz's Focus

Yeah, I got sent your album yesterday; I'll definitely check it out.

Seconded on Unperson's Tyshawn Sorey recommendations. Would add Pillars, which is absolutely incredible, as if Bill Dixon and Tony Oxley had made the greatest drone metal album of all time.

Just got a hurt-feelings email from a free jazz player I wrote about in BA last year, asking me to take down the article about them because it was overly harsh. I re-read it and it was nothing of the kind, just a (mostly favorable) assessment of a young musician who hasn't fully developed their own personality yet, with some additional discussion of how young players pop up all the time and some of them last and some of them don't. I probably shouldn't have, but I responded, saying basically, "If I didn't like your work and think it was worth people's attention, I wouldn't have written about you at all," wished them well, and didn't even acknowledge the takedown request.

cheer up zoh amba

not listened to Pillars in ages, it's brilliant.

Tyshawn's collaboration with King Britt is a lot of fun too and the one my students connected with immediately.

On a related note, the new XT/RP Boo is a great curveball (at least, a curveball in jazz/improv terms, not the artists themselves). Footwork + jittery free improv/jazz is a great combination. See also Jana Rush's reworking of Lonely Woman.

https://feedbackmoves.bandcamp.com/album/yesyespeakersyes

Not sure how I stumbled on this one, but this release of a Mars Williams/Hamid Drake live set from '96 at the Empty Bottle is making my morning. https://corbettvsdempsey.bandcamp.com/album/i-know-you-are-but-what-am-i

Thx for heads-up, RIPs to Williams as well as documenter/recordist M. Ritscher (grimly/righteously back in the news as a self-immolating protest precedent back in '06)

Thanks for the reminder. That's the first vol of a series of Mars Williams archival releases CvsD have just announced: excited to hear them all.

Equinox single from Gilad Hekselman live album sounding good this morning
https://giladhekselman.bandcamp.com/album/life-at-the-village-vanguard

Really nice Swedish straight-ahead sax/piano/bass trio album (Gilbert Holmström on tenor, Peter Jansson on bass bar one tune,
Kresten Osgood on drums) that reminds me of what has excited me in recent re: Chris Speed's trio on Intakt with Chris Tordini and Dave King (s/o to one of my fave bass players here in Toronto, Dan Fortin of Bernice, for the heads-up via snooping on his BC fan page): https://gottaletitout.bandcamp.com/album/easy-to-remember

Catherine Sikora/Susan Alcorn sounding good this foggy morning

https://catherinesikora.bandcamp.com/album/filament

Not jazz per se but this is a really cool record, found just by looking to see what Susie Ibarra's been up to:
https://www.goldenhornet.org/insectum

Short (25 min!), sounds amazing, each track is interpreting a different insect sonically.

I wrote about Louis Armstrong for BA this week.

Catherine Sikora/Susan Alcorn sounding good this foggy morning

https://catherinesikora.bandcamp.com/album/filament🕸

I wrote about Louis Armstrong🕸 for BA this week.

Hat Hut has put out a previously unreleased Cecil Taylor live recording from February 1980.

He and his band recorded four sets between February 8 and 10. The second set, which bled from late 2/8 into early 2/9, was released as It Is In The Brewing Luminous, from which I took the title of my forthcoming book, In the Brewing Luminous: The Life & Music of Cecil Taylor. This new release is the third set, from the night of 2/9. The band is Taylor on piano, Jimmy Lyons on alto sax, Ramsey Ameen on violin, Alan Silva on bass and cello, Jerome Cooper on drums and balafon, and Sunny Murray on drums.

Amazing! What an era of the Unit.

Hat Hut has put out a previously unreleased Cecil Taylor live recording from February 1980🕸.

He and his band recorded four sets between February 8 and 10. The second set, which bled from late 2/8 into early 2/9, was released as _It Is In The Brewing Luminous_, from which I took the title of my forthcoming book, _In the Brewing Luminous: The Life & Music of Cecil Taylor_. This new release is the third set, from the night of 2/9. The band is Taylor on piano, Jimmy Lyons on alto sax, Ramsey Ameen on violin, Alan Silva on bass and cello, Jerome Cooper on drums and balafon, and Sunny Murray on drums.

I've always loved the Hot Fives and Sevens. Never found them corny at all. Thrilling, actually. In my brief jazz school days I thought the bebop-centric approach of my school was all wrong and that people should be transcribing Louis Armstrong and Johnny Hodges and Lionel Hampton so they could learn the basics of how to play a solo that someone actually wants to listen to before they start getting all baroque with their improv.

tbf some of the professors probably would have agreed with that. Like one of them was really big on learning not only the original version of the melody of any standard, but learning to sing the words.

Same. Connecting back to the idea that you're playing a song, not just an abstraction of a song or a vehicle for soloing.

Believe such a luminary as Lester Young recommended learning the words, as do many others.

I’m even in favor of learning the words when technically they might not have existed in the original version as in, say, the Jon Hendricks lyrics for Monk tunes.

In those famous and mysterious Lee Konitz levels of improvisation I believe the first two or three if not more are devoted to working with the melody.

To go further, you can always play the changes or something similar, but how often do you get to play that particular melody? Plus a melody might have some kind of jump or leap in it that might be physically difficult for you to play if you haven’t practiced it, which will get you out of your comfort zone pretty quickly but will make you feel good when you can do it smoothly.

Otherwise one can just get by with the bare minimum solo which is sort of a modified bass line but not in a quarter-note rhythm, at least in my case.

Which reminds me to callback that I think people could and should learn to play walking bass lines by listening to Walter Page with Count Basie.

as in, say, the Jon Hendricks lyrics for Monk tunes

i don't normally like to hand out fp's on the jazz thread, but you've put me in a tough position

O RLY?

Do you think that was an insult to Monk or to Jon?

on my part or ... ?

Like I don’t get what exactly offended you

i was just being silly because i don't care really care for them but obviously monk liked him enough to put him on a record

i am not offended, sorry, i was just trying to be lighthearted

Oh okay.

Thing is that I do know some jazz dudes who WOULD take offense, don’t feel like going into detail right now.

In Walked Budo

Suddenly in walked budo
And then they got into something

Recently listened to Mark Turner on Pablo Held's podcast, and he was saying how approaches learning to solo on an unfamiliar standard or new tune by soloing in half notes first (and demonstrating on the piano).

lol I'm actually kind of with Budo on the added lyrics thing

Why do you people hate fun vocalese?

Recently listened to Mark Turner on Pablo Held's podcast, and he was saying how approaches learning to solo on an unfamiliar standard or new tune by soloing in half notes first (and demonstrating on the piano).

Why do you people hate fun vocalese?

I know they're two different things, but there's a reason scat singing and scat porn have the same name. Shut up and learn an instrument.

Never change, ILM.

Yeah I have also heard people say "Just play the root of every chord and hold it, then do the same with the third, then the fifth, then the seventh etc." Then switch between them but in whole/half notes. That makes sense to me. I'm very pro-chord tones and very anti-scales.

Yeah. CST is kind of a blight

Jamey Abersold ruined a generation of musicians imo

It has its place, it has its use but it really… maybe I should just relink Ethan Iverson’s posts about Jeff Goldblum’s jazz album.

https://ethaniverson.com/received-wisdom-jeff-goldblum-chord-scales-the-ireal-book-and-kamasi-washington/

https://ethaniverson.com/received-wisdom-jeff-goldblum-chord-scales-the-ireal-book-and-kamasi-washington/

― The Ginger Bakersfield Sound (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, March 7, 2024 3:16 PM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

This is good, but I think the scalar/blues dichotomy he sets up is totally false. Bach isn't scalar either, and neither is Stravinsky, and Charlie Parker was listening to and absorbing all that stuff too.

Chord-scale playing isn't bad because it's not blues, it's bad because it's not musical.

It’s not, um, idiomatic

Other than deliberately modal jazz I don't think any good music has ever been written by applying scales to chords.

I mean I could probably rant about this forever, but part of the reason G Lydian sounds like shit in Out of Nowhere is not just that it's not "bluesy," but that the sharp 4 doesn't really have any obvious relationship to the chord that comes next, either as a chord tone or as a leading tone. But there are ways you could make it work! Like resolve the sharp 4 before you hit the next chord. You could even do that in a "bluesy" way. You can make any note work. But not by meandering around through a chord scale.

Btw per the self-deprecation thread, I appreciated that Mark Turner stated "I'm not talented, which just means I need to put the work into every single aspect of playing." He didn't say he sucks or pales in comparison to anybody, just that he knows people who are great with less effort, people who the music just seems to flow through.

Other than deliberately modal jazz I don't think any good music has ever been written by applying scales to chords.

WEREN’T

Well yeah, and to the extent they were, they knew how to do it interesting ways because they already knew how to play music, how to create a melody, how to phrase, etc. So using the mode was like an interesting experimental limitation rather than a jumping off point.

I appreciated that Mark Turner stated "I'm not talented, which just means I need to put the work into every single aspect of playing." He didn't say he sucks or pales in comparison to anybody, just that he knows people who are great with less effort

There’s an episode of Columbo where Falk says something similar about detective work

There's some Mark Turner stuff I really like, specifically the Fly Trio

kudos p4k I guess but this amaro freitas record is nice

Saw that the saxophonist Wally Shoup died recently. Always liked this disc he played on with Nels Cline and Chris Corsano:

https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Nels_ClineWally_ShoupChris_Corsano/ImmolationImmersion

kudos p4k I guess but this amaro freitas record is nice

It's really good. Lots of guest players, too: Jeff Parker, Brandee Younger, Shabaka, Hamid Drake. I've been a fan of his since his second album (this is #4); he really sounds like no one else out there, a kind of middle ground between McCoy Tyner and Matt Shipp but with a pounding heavy northern Brazilian sense of rhythm.

I’m only halfway through my first spin but it’s really good so far

Chris DeVille wrote a cool piece for Stereogum about becoming a jazz fan, pegged to the James Brandon Lewis/Messthetics album that comes out this week.

Is it strange that reading about the JBL/Messthetics stuff always gets me excited, and then I find the tracks totally unremarkable?

And i like JBL!

I was just thinking the same thing

the Freitas album is sick, thanks for mentioning it

Listened to the Chris Potter/John Patitucci/Brad Mehldau/Brian Blade record a few times while traveling yesterday, it's great. I wonder if it will seem a little too straight-ahead for people in 2024 - no gimmicks, no big concept, just a record of originals played by the masters. It almost has a coziness to me because of that, feels sorta like a '90s record, but they're all just so in tune with each other and confident and killing, it's a pleasure to hear.

A jazzbo friend of mine said he thought it was kind of boring and by the numbers by their standards, but I'll def give it a listen.

I constantly confuse John Patitucci with John Petrucci, and wonder why all these jazz dudes are hanging with the Dream Theater dork.

I think that's what I'm getting at...like, yes, it is in a sense (especially if you're looking for something that *sounds* new or not like other jazz records). But their standards are so high that a 'boring' record from them is still beautiful. The details of their playing together are always worth hearing, and they make it look so easy.

no gimmicks, no big concept, just a record of originals played by the masters

This is almost exactly how I described it when writing it up for Stereogum this morning.

Aging rock act on new album: This time we wanted to go back to the basics

Listened to the Chris Potter/John Patitucci/Brad Mehldau/Brian Blade record

Scanning too quickly I read that as John Petrucci for a second and was like, uh.... then I saw Josh made the same mistake.

Just four guys in a woodshed

Throw John Pizzarelli in there

I had it on in a rental car when I was driving some co-workers somewhere, and there were moments when I could hear how it might sound a little 'smooth' to a civilian, and I wanted to say "no you don't understand, these guys are legends in the game, Brian Blade is crushing it here".

My latest Stereogum column is up. I wrote about the Black Art Jazz Collective and reviewed albums by Alice Coltrane, Charles Lloyd, James Brandon Lewis & the Messthetics, Chris Potter, Ivo Perelman, Cassie Kinoshi, Amaro Freitas, Fire!, Ill Considered and Cornelia Nilsson.

Some of you will have seen this already, but there's a Gofundme to help the great Steve Beresford out as he's going through a tough time. It's awful that a genius musician like Steve should be in such a position. An absolute pillar of the improvised music community who has played with everyone from Zorn to The Slits and is hugely supportive of younger musicians.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/musician-needs-a-hand

Would also recommend the latest album by his piano trio with Valentina Magaletti and Pieropaulo Martino - came out towards the end of last year so slipped through the tracks a little, but it's a terrific set.
https://valentinamagaletti.bandcamp.com/album/naize

I wish the Messthetics album had more improvisation and/or funkier. I think Anthony Pirog is doing a Danny Gatton thing and at the risk of revoking my DC credentials Gatton didn’t do much for me, skilled as he was.

Drummer I've been following for a while, Steve Lyman, has a record coming out with Donnie McCaslin, Jimmy Chamberlin (yes, the pumpkins drummer) Austin White and others

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJe-fGIQL5U

(note, track is quiet for like the first 45-60 seconds)

He's a crazy good drummer, interesting to hear him put his multi-tempo concept thing into a musical context. It's too bad the drums sound kinda shitty on these tracks (not the playing, just the mixing). :(

Yeah I agree it's not the ideal sound - his drums sound much better in his videos imo!

Also, he apparently claims he is *not* using the "vector system" on that track, which just makes me thing maybe I don't really understand what the vector system is, lol

Enjoyed then new Mehldau/Blade/Potter/Pattituci a lot on first listen, although I got a bit fatigued after the first 3 tracks. Very strong spirit of Wayne Shorter coming through in the compositions and playing.

The Charles Lloyd record is a beauty, what a brilliant rhythm section (Moran/Grenadier/Blade). Haven't heard Moran in a minute, especially as a sideperson, and with the Potter record it's just a bounty of Blade.

90 minutes though, whew. This easily could have (and should have imo) been two albums.

Lloyd put out three albums the other year, and I don't think that experiment was particularly successful — Blue Note probably didn't want this one split up.

Ah, makes sense.

There are a lot of vibey tracks on here and I'm into that, but 'Booker's Garden' is a highlight. Some really crazy playing around the pulse, but so locked-in and together too.

The Julian Lage acoustic guitar album (w/Dave King still on drums) is really really nice.

I guess it's not all acoustic, but there are a lot of acoustic tracks. And he's been posting live videos of a bunch of the tunes (different takes from the record obv), and most of those are acoustic.

Just found out Emmet Cohen's playing here with his trio this weekend, I'm gonna go.

Ari Hoenig on fire right now!

This Herbie Hancock tour announcement reads like it was written with AI. As someone who used to work with the Relix folks (and even wrote a few pieces for the magazine), this makes me very sad.

Jazz legend Herbie Hancock has dropped a new slate of dates, which will take him on the road in the early fall. The impending run of concert appearances will occur throughout the U.S.’s Southern region and up the East Coast. Along the way, the headliner and his unannounced group of instrumental accompaniment will perform 12 concerts, leading up to a tour closer at the esteemed Massey Hall in Toronto on Oct. 1.

Hancock and company’s newly dropped schedule begins on Sept. 13 with the first of three Sunshine State appearances, which will roll out nightly with ensuing into Sept. 14 and 15. From there, the billed act moves onto Auburn, Ala., for a Sept. 17 follow-up at a TBA venue. Descending into the South, the tour will take the notable member of the Miles Davis Quintet to Nashville, Tenn., for an evening at the Schermerhorn Symphony Center.

From Music City, Hancock’s next live show arrives at the Wilson Center in Wilmington, N.C., on Sept. 21, with Sept. 22 presenting another gig, which time in Norfolk, Va. Another pair of North Carolina concerts prelude East Coast dates, following up shows in Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, conjuring in Newark, N.J., before the Toronto finale.

News of Hancock’s September 2024 tour arrives after the announcement that the artist will pay tribute to 50 years of Head Hunters on Wednesday, August 14, at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. Adding to the intrigue, the event is billed to include a reunion lineup featuring Harvey Mason, Bennie Maupin, and Bill Summers, with Marcus Miller standing in for the late Paul Jackson.

holy shit, someone should get fired for that

Can you fire AI?

much like a bad middle manager, everyone hates AI, AI does a terrible job over and over again yet keeps getting chances and continues to fail upward

A collaborative program subtitled “Weaving Strands of Sound from Addis to Chicago,” that might answer the equation of AACM x Ethiopiques. The evening features an expanded version of cellist Tomeka Reid and double bassist Silvia Bolognesi’s Hear in Now group (bonus all-stars: violinist yuniya edi kwon and drummer Chad Taylor), in musical conversation with Qwanqwa, a supergroup of Ethiopian experimentalists. This could get great. (Wed 4/3, 8p @ Roulette, Downtown Bklyn - $25/$30)

Saw this on the Dada Strain email. I saw Ethiopian group Qwanqwa on their last US tour 2 years ago by themselves and they were great. This collaboration with them was probably good too. Qwanqwa are touring the US now too. Gonna see them in Alexandria, Virginia near Washington DC.

they are playing minneapolis later this month, i'm definitely considering going

with Marcus Miller standing in for the late Paul Jackson

Is this meant to imply that Herbie normally tours with a dead guy on bass?

RIP Tootie Heath

Oh! RIP. Great musician and very funny person.

new shane parish solo acoustic record (cf. tompkins sq. thread) w/ covers of "lonely woman" and "journey in satchidananda"

https://shaneparish.bandcamp.com/album/repertoire

RIP Tootie

voodoo chili recommended the new Josh Johnson album on a different rolling thread, but anyone who liked that rad Anna Butterss album or recent Jeff Parker stuff (JJ plays on the Enfield Tennis Academy record) would prob dig this: https://joshjohnsonmusic.bandcamp.com/album/unusual-object

The Emmet Cohen Trio show last weekend was fantastic, truly. He told some good Tootie Heath stories too (although of course he kept saying that all the best ones were wholly inappropriate to tell on stage).

Also really enjoyed watching this set w/Tootie, for the stage banter alone. He really had some deep New Orleans elements in his playing, moreso than any of the other famous Philly drummers, it's interesting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgAkz3uM-pM

Also had a good time going through the recordings Vinnie Sperazza mentions here:
https://vinniesperrazza.substack.com/p/for-albert-tootie-heath

That Josh Johnson album sounds great so far, a lot like Sam Gendel except less anti-jazz.

I'm liking it exponentially more than that new Kenny Garrett electronic record, sorry Kenny.

I went to see (ahmed) tonight, last night of a four-night residency at Cafe Oto in London. They were incredible and relentless.

very jealous

I do hope they reissue those earlier [Ahmed] LPs

Did anyone get that CD box set? I thought at first it was a straight reissue of the aforementioned LPs but I guess it's actually a recording of a 2022 residency.

I bought one at the show but haven’t unwrapped it yet. A friend who’s heard it was raving about it.

I saw Makaya McCraven and Greg Ward in a local dive bar the other night, playing highlife, it was a treat. They were reviving this band:
https://occidentalbrothers.bandcamp.com/album/likambo-te

(the guitarist Nathaniel Braddock was really great too, he was working hard since they didn't have a vocalist)

Oh I remember Occidental Brothers. I just did an an ilx search to further refresh my memory (!) and saw I wrote in 2009 that the group did a kitschy but nice highlife version of New Order's "Bizarre Love Triangle."

Too bad they didn't have with them the vocalist who is on a number of cuts from that new Bandcamp album release - Samba Mapangala. He's Congolese but later moved to Uganda, Kenya, and then the US

Another major historian and curator, Michael Cuscuna, has passed away. (He was being treated for cancer for a while.) Good guy, and given the work he was doing until the end and his wealth of knowledge (much of which was gained from his own research and lifelong experiences), it feels like a major loss.

Yeah it really is a loss to jazz (as the owner of so many records he produced, reissued, etc.)

My latest Stereogum column is up. It includes an interview with Kenny Garrett and reviews of new albums by Jeremy Pelt, Matthew Shipp, Isaiah Collier, Dave Douglas, Melissa Aldana and others. Plus a gratuitous shot at Bill Frisell!

Leave Bill Frisell alone!

That Jeremy Pelt track sounds great, will have to check that one for sure. That Miles Davis interview at the bottom hits hard (the endless debate).

A little Frisell goes a long way

Could probably pick a few threads to post this in, but excited to check out the debut from Beings, There is a Garden, out on No Quarter soon:

https://beingsnyc.bandcamp.com/album/there-is-a-garden

I mean, this lineup!

Zoh Amba - saxophone, vocals, acoustic guitar, harmonium, piano
Steve Gunn - electric guitar
Shahzad Ismaily - bass, synth
Jim White - drums

wow!

Saw Terence Blanchard with the E-Collective, Turtle Island Quartet, & guest opera singers Justin Austin & Adrienne Danrich. The night was billed as "Fire Shut Up in My Bones: Opera Suite in Concert. The main portion of the night was pieces from the opera with backing visuals , but the concert opened and closed with Blanchard and the musicians doing other compositions. He made a reference to Wayne Shorter re the first one. Blanchard's trumpet sounded strong throughout and especially touching on the operatic suite. Blanchard's jazz and the operatic vocals ended up meshing together pretty well. I wasn't wowed by electric guitarist Charles Altura whose playing was more prominent on the non - opera suite efforts. Too '70s rock-jazz fusion for me. Longtime drummer Oscar Seaton seemed better when he was trying subtle things as opposed to just pounding hard. Would like to see the full opera version with dancers, orchestra, costumes and sets.

"Fire " the opera recently re-opened a few weeks ago at the Met in NY (after its initial 2021 run) and got a mixed review

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/09/arts/music/met-opera-fire-shut-up-in-my-bones.html?unlocked_article_code=1.nk0.6ll_.FitoGw3e1o-i&smid=url-share

I think “Fire” was filmed by the Met for its Live In HD Program so it may rerun at a movie theater near you or a DVD come out.

I would have gone but I saw Marc-Andre Hamelin play at the Library of Congress last night doing Charles Ives’ Concord Sonata, an essential trip for me.

Not particularly interested in the opera but I've enjoyed Blanchard's last couple of albums with his group.

I wrote about the new Tomeka Reid Quartet album in this week's Burning Ambulance newsletter.

"I like in and out."

me too! lol

I interviewed Kamasi Washington for Stereogum. I love the fact that the longest section of this interview is him talking about working with Gerald Wilson.

Nice.

I don't know if I've ever seen this much effort put into a video by a jazz (adjacent) group:

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

All my Bandcamp purchases today are old albums from the 80s on Italian jazz labels:

Hamiet Bluiett, Resolution
Baikida Carroll, Shadows And Reflections
Billy Harper, Black Saint and In Europe
Beaver Harris, Beautiful Africa
The Leaders, Unforeseen Blessings
Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre, Peace And Blessings
Dannie Richmond, Dionysus
Woody Shaw, Time Is Right

not from this year but i'm digging pianist Rodney Franklin's album In the Center. i had never heard of him. sounds like he veered pretty quickly to smooth jazz, but this album, his first, is really cool and varied. most of it would fit well with late 70s soul jazz like lonnie liston smith - some disco-funk, one with vocals, a couple spiritual jams. the closer, "life moves on" is a killer

Does Tomeka Reid still live in DC? Had no idea she released something on Cuneiform.

I saw Reid a couple weeks ago doing a great composed tribute to Duke Ellington at the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater.
Right now I’m in Brooklyn at the Long Play festival and saw a fantastic set by Darius Jones doing his Fluxtet music. He killed it was so great. At the end he did some Pentecostal vocalizations over a string ostinato. Very moving.

Having dinner right next to Ingrid Laubrock and Tom Rainey

!

Incredible interview with Charles Gayle from a Buffalo, NY newspaper in 1970(!). Reveals more about his early life than I ever knew before. I wonder if the tapes he talks about are still in the ESP archives?

RE: Laubrock/Rainey, I was in Brooklyn for Bang On A Can's Long Play Festival, where both were on the bill: Rainey in the DoYeon Kim Quartet and Laubrock had written a string quartet that was premiered there. Great festival, a smaller more manageable Big Ears in a cooler city (Sorry, Knoxville).

I kicked off this month's Stereogum column with a deep dive into the history of Last Exit (Bill Laswell's jazz-metal improv band featuring Peter Brötzmann, Sonny Sharrock, and Ronald Shannon Jackson), since their catalog has basically doubled in size in the last couple of years thanks to a half dozen live recordings he's put up on Bandcamp for subscribers. Lots of great albums reviewed, too.

Reid is Chicago-based but moving around a lot due to visiting professorships and touring. I'd love to hear the Ellington material and also the expanded Stringtet. 3x3 is absolutely superb.

Finally got to the new Charles Lloyd, wow it's great. Listened to it twice straight through.

Some Charles Lloyd videos available here from 1994 at the North Sea Jazz Festival. They seem to be opening up their archive. There's also a great video of Joe Henderson playing "Recorda-me" from the same year, but it's cut off when the bass solo starts. The entire playlist is being updated regularly.

First listen of Ghosted II (Ambarchi / Berthling / Werliin): long and drifting percussive pieces, pleasant reverie, Afro-jazz style bass and fuzzy keyboards, some pulse but could have more, the two pieces after the first are more peaceful and astral, the fourth is some kind of synthesis. Not particularly going anywhere but still good headphone music.

This new Charles Lloyd is probably my favourite since 'Canto'

The new Nubya Garcia album, Odyssey, is being announced tomorrow. It comes out September 20. It features strings and a few guests including Georgia Anne Muldrow and esperanza spalding, and I have to say after listening to it once or twice that it sounds astonishingly like Kamasi Washington's music. But not what he's doing now, with the synths and stuff; this sounds like rehashed The Epic, minus the choir. Even Garcia's playing is simpler, more KW and less Dexter Gordon than it used to be. I get it; she's toured opening for Khruangbin and now she wants to move into those big rooms on her own, and this is a legit way to aim for that kind of crossover success. But it's surprisingly blatant.

Okay, so I'm playing that Beings album I mentioned upthread (Zoh Amba, Jim White, Steve Gunn, Shahzad Ismaily) and it is fantastic, I love this.

Agree, it's very good

The Wire has published an excerpt from my upcoming Cecil Taylor book, all about the making of the Dewey Redman/Cecil Taylor/Elvin Jones album Momentum Space. Includes stories of Taylor being a manic cokehead and a catty bitch. Here's the link — enjoy!

I got to imagine the hardest part of writing a book on Cecil is choosing which manic cokehead/catty bitch stories to tell

Is there going to be a US distributor for the book or will I have to mail order it from Germany?

Working on that now — Wolke doesn't currently have a US distributor. I will have 20 contributors' copies, though, some of which I will absolutely sell to people.

Loved that excerpt, lol. Will definitely need to hear that album, and congrats again on the book.

Currently into Molly Miller Trio - The Ballad of Hotspur, fantastic L.A. guitar record with Jay Bellerose on drums. Folky & spaghetti western-y at times, recommended if you were into the recent Jeff Parker or Dave Easley records with Bellerose.

Previous records are great too! Also very Ribot-esque at times.

It's a cliche but every L.A. jazz record seems like it could be part of a movie soundtrack.

really annoying to hear him knock dewey redman like that

(many xps)

i'm guessing eye rolls abound throughout the book

still excited to read it

Really enjoying this new live record by Johannes Enders (Tied + Tickled Trio, German saxophonist, beautiful sound), Renato Chicco (organ player I'm not familiar with), and Jorge Rossy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkuNIiQO5v8

My latest Stereogum column is up. I interviewed Nasheet Waits, and reviewed albums by Julius Rodriguez, Nduduzo Makhathini, the Jihye Lee Orchestra, and a bunch of other folks, including that incredible archival Charles Gayle/William Parker/Milford Graves live set.

Will have to check out Nasheet, he's incredible and mysterious of course. Mark Turner's Dharma Days is a big Nasheet album for me.

That William Parker/Cooper-Moore/Hamid Drake preview track rules.

(I mean the Nasheet Waits solo album)

Love Nasheet Waits, not mentioned in the piece but he's great in McBride's New Jawn band

Yeah, those New Jawn records are great — we talked about that, and how it shows a whole different side of McBride, but there wasn't space.

I have no idea that McBride could or would go that hard until their Tiny Desk set

Huh, it wasn't surprising to me! He's always had some out stuff on his records and can clearly do it all/is interested in it all, but maybe he gets pigeonholed as a traditionalist?

Yeah, he absolutely does get pigeonholed that way, including by me. And I mean, I should know better — the only time I ever saw him live was at Sonny Rollins' 80th birthday concert, where he held it down with Rollins, Roy Haynes, and Ornette. But I still think of him as basically a really good swinging bassist, not someone with a real interest in the fringes. The guy I always think of as a real can-do-anything type is Eric Revis, who's been in Branford Marsalis's band for twenty-plus years but also worked with Brötzmann, is in Tarbaby, has done some really wild shit on his own records, etc., etc.

i really like christian mcbride

Yussef Dayes - Black Classical Music is pretty incredible

Yeah I was surprised that didn’t get any votes in the year end poll, I half expected a whole thread about it. It’s really good.

Piotr Orlov in his Dada Strain substack says :

Amirtha Kidambi’s Elder Ones, New Monuments (We Jazz) - 2024’s best punk-jazz album is also its best prog-jazz album, and its most unabashed political jazz album

It's a good record but that's an almost Christgau-ian reduction of its virtues: its politics are right on, therefore it's a good record. Here's what I said when I reviewed it for The Wire:

Vocalist and keyboardist Amirtha Kidambi formed Elder Ones in 2016. The first lineup, heard on Holy Science, featured saxophonist Matt Nelson, bassist Brandon Lopez, and drummer Max Jaffe. Three years later, they reconvened for From Untruth, but Lopez had been replaced by Nick Dunston and both Kidambi and Nelson were playing synths, while Jaffe had added electronic percussion to his toolkit. The biggest change, though, was in the vocals. On Holy Science, Kidambi had embraced wordless abstraction, inspired by her work with Darius Jones on his album The Oversoul Manual, but now she was writing lyrics explicitly — even stridently — concerned with “issues of power, oppression, capitalism, colonialism, white supremacy, violence and the shifting nature of truth.”

The third Elder Ones album continues down this path of avant-chamber-jazz agitprop. Each release to date has contained just four long compositions, lasting between eight and 20
minutes, with Kidambi establishing a foundation on harmonium and occasionally synth, as the other players whirl around her like a leaf storm. The lineup has been almost entirely revamped since 2019, though; Nelson and Kidambi are the only constants, now joined by cellist Lester St. Louis, bassist Eva Lawitts, and drummer Jason Nazary. As a consequence, the new music has a deep, pulsing groove that strongly recalls the late jaimie branch’s Fly Or Die ensemble (in which St. Louis also played). On the title track, Nelson does some spiritual-jazz soloing, and St. Louis and Lawitts deliver a dark, unnerving bowed duo. Kidambi’s vocals embrace a punk-rock desperation one moment, Carnatic wailing with echoes of Diamanda Gálas the next, but always displaying exquisite control. Her lyrics are deeply felt meditations on bias, violence, and those written out of conventional history, but it’s the wordless and instrumental ecstasy that will keep listeners returning to this album over and over.

Question: so let’s say I dig the weird noise gurgling and sax of JD Allen’s “THIS” from last year, but honestly really can’t get into any of these “jazz-punk” records that have been coming out. What’s coming out that’s more like the former and less like the Messthetics with JBL stuff.

I like JBL a lot and was disappointed that the Messthetics record (and their live performances) weren’t jammy/improvisatory as I would have liked. More rather “rock with sax”.

Try Nout's Live Album:

https://gigantonium.bandcamp.com/album/nout-live-album

Flute, electric harp fed through a shitload of pedals, drums. Mats Gustafsson guests on three tracks.

an almost Christgau-ian reduction of its virtues: its politics are right on, therefore it's a good record

that's not even remotely what piotr/dada strain is saying.

You're right Cuz. Piotr/Dada Strain clearly hailed the music first - and mentioned the politics last.

I like JBL a lot and was disappointed that the Messthetics record (and their live performances) weren’t jammy/improvisatory as I would have liked. More rather “rock with sax”.

thanks for the Nout suggestion, unperson

like, the Konjur Collective record from 2022 is more what I think of when I think of recent “jazz punk,” but that’s more because it is raw as fuck, not because it has much “rock “ in it

another shout for Black Classical music - thanks to upper mississippi sh@kedown for the rec! never heard anything like this

My latest Stereogum column is out — I interviewed alto saxophonist Lakecia Benjamin and reviewed 10 great new albums, including some by artists I've hated in the past (Kurt Rosenwinkel).

Nice, I'm extremely psyched about the Rosenwinkel album.

I was shocked by how much I liked it. Apparently Rosenwinkel played Smalls every Tuesday night for eight years(!) back in the 90s/early 00s.

TT 422: Ornette, Dewey, Charlie, Blackwell
video from 1971 surfaces at last
ETHAN IVERSON
Aug 07, 2024

A tantalizing excerpt of this concert was seen in the Charlie Haden documentary Ramblin’ Boy. Now 44 minutes of this Berlin concert is finally on YouTube.

xps I enjoyed that live album too. I alluded to this in another thread, but per Rosenwinkel, his wife gave him the idea to reunite the quartet that recorded The Next Step and do a celebratory world tour this year. Not sure if she was inspired by pre-existing plans to release the live album or if her suggestion inspired them to release that recording, but regardless, they kicked off the tour in May with a weeklong residency at the Village Vanguard.

Truth be told, I never heard his records before, but a friend got excited when he saw Rosenwinkel was playing, and after he told me he was his favorite guitarist, I picked up a CD of The Next Step to see if I'd be interested. The answer was a resounding yes and I even brought it along and got all four members to sign it. Coincidentally, I just got back from Korea and the group made their latest stop in Seoul right before I was scheduled to fly back - I thought it would be amusing to show up and see if they'd remember me ("are you following us around the world?") but my partner was set on us having dinner elsewhere. I haven't explored his later albums yet, but hearing that he could be "more showy than emotional" does make me wince - would be massively disappointing to hear him go in that direction over the 20+ years since The Next Step. Maybe it's something to do with that album and how he conceived the music, but when I saw him at the Vanguard, he actually played with great discipline and restraint, leaving most of the pyrotechnics to Mark Turner (who was pretty amazing - they all were).

On another note, I've been listening to a lot of Woody Shaw lately, and I didn't realize what had happened to him. I think the subway station where he had his tragic accident is DeKalb, which I've been to many times (and regularly pass through to see a friend nearby). It's going to feel pretty chilling the next time I walk down that platform.

xpost first listen to Ornette show: perfect audio and even video, even on sub-sub audiophile cans x elderly win 7 laptop---fro Iverson's always cogent comments:

Ornette is about drive and forward motion. This whole wonderful concert offers a headlong tumble of melody and blues. To state the exceptionally obvious, this quartet is also a collective of unique personalities...The band is loud. They couldn’t play this way in a jazz club. However, the expanded dynamic range of a concert hall suits the naturally epic music of Ornette Coleman. (This unlike bebop or hard-bop, two genres that are almost always best-suited to a close and contained environment.)

On “Whom Do You Work For?,” “Street Woman,” and “Happy House,” the melodies are catchy, the improvisations are robust, and the swing undeniable. There are no preset chord changes, it is up to Haden to harmonize the sax solos with pedal points or walking. Ed Blackwell delivers his peerless uptempo jazz drumming; Max Roach meets NOLA parade.

Ornette is about drive and forward motion. This whole wonderful concert offers a headlong tumble of melody and blues. To state the exceptionally obvious, this quartet is also a collective of unique personalities...The band is loud. They couldn’t play this way in a jazz club.

All this was equally true of the Carnegie Hall show I saw in 2003 (with Tony Falanga and Greg Cohen on bass, and Denardo Coleman on drums). Ornette's trademark melodies delivered at punk-rock tempos, and the drums were behind a wall of plexiglas to keep him from being the only thing you could hear.

Very cool---and I just now saw this on Ethan's blog:

author
ETHAN IVERSON
21 hrs ago
Author

I first wrote above that this was the only video of Ornette with another horn that I knew about. Ted Panken let me know about a Barcelona set with Cherry, Haden, and Billy Higgins from 1987

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPLLhF84SZg

xp unperson I was at that show too!

It was fucking wild, wasn't it? It was like he'd listened to John Zorn's Spy Vs. Spy and thought, "Shit, I'll show him something..."

Yeah it was punk as fuck.

Ethan Iverson just published a really good essay on a school of musicians making what Vijay Iyer has apparently dubbed the "New Brooklyn Complexity" — Matt Mitchell, Anna Webber, Miles Okazaki, Kim Cass and others. I've reviewed albums by Mitchell, Webber, Cass and others in their group in the past, and have made some of the same connections Iverson does (tracing it back to Tim Berne and Steve Coleman — Iyer himself was in Coleman's band at one point), but I can't even read music, so obviously there are things I can't talk about that he can, and he does it while leaving his usual small-c aesthetic conservatism to the side and taking the work on its own terms, something Stanley Crouch would never have been able to do. Definitely recommended reading.

xxxpost Barcelona, yow (did they go check out all the Gaudi? Music fits right in): mix is erratic at first, sometimes almost all in left channel, but bass & drums, especially, maintain throughline-expressway. For me, Haden often sounds like the lead player/most consistently compelling here, but no showboating, just surging along in a crisply defined fullness, with occasional solos part of the call-and-responsive flow. Pretty much a Coleman-Higgins duo in there eventually, and grand finale is Higgins solo w occasional punctuation etc. from others. Was hoping for pocket trumpet and regular trumpet together, but no. Cherry's solos are pretty quiet, and could be because pocket t. in that room, though also looks kinda haggard in long shots. Very strong overall, duh.

Ornette Coleman & Prime Time w Pat Metheny, Montreal, 1988:
Like the Barcelona recording, this opens w odd sound: here, Ornette seems down in the mix, with busy guitar pickers way up front--mainly seeing and seems like hearing guests Chuck Rosenberg and Ken Wessell, although Ellerbee and Nix are in credits at end of this apparently pro-shot set---Badal Roy sounds like he's playing glass blows more than tabla. also loudly(he's not that noticeable later, okay by me)--but Ornette pushes, effectively acid, sand in the craw. Then Denardo goes to a backbeat. Ornette drolly leads. and this is "Bourgeois Boogie," I think. Good, and then Metheny appears, fits perfectly with Ornette, who eventually I could swear has switched to violin, but no, he's just standing there listening to PM--who comes back later for that Skies of America, Dancing In Your Head theme: he and other guitarists decorating the margins while alto, bass and drums rule, also Metheny's solo seems predictable, but Ornette takes whole thing toward delirium---
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exla6Yi7OnI

playing glass bowls, I meant.

Ornette Coleman & Prime Time, Live in Palalido, 1980:
Opener is ok, not compelling, then thick veins ov fever spread around that xpost theme, as mainteined by blithe spirit Ornette--drum duets help make porous doubled visions into a hellish "Sing Sing Sing" from Sing Sing--them more stuff happens (have I gotten too spoilery before?)

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

Really strong release, great melodies (composed by the bassist). Matt Gold on guitar, Tony Barba on saxophone, don't know the drummer but he's great.
https://shiftingparadigmrecords.bandcamp.com/album/soft-rock

really liking Malcolm Jiyane Tree-O's album True Story

His album from 2022 is dope too. Maybe I should put this in South African jazz thread.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enULchNtTt4-

Tyshawn Sorey's trio with pianist Aaron Diehl and bassist Harish Raghavan has a new disc, The Susceptible Now, coming out October 11. Four long (the shortest is 15:22, the longest 26:07) versions of other people's tunes: McCoy Tyner's "Peresina," Charles Mingus and Joni Mitchell's "A Chair in the Sky," Brad Mehldau's "Bealtine," and "Your Good Lies," a soul song by the group Vividry. I like this trio a lot so I'll definitely be buying a physical copy of this.

Man, Charlie Haden on that Ornette video above. That got me to listen to all of the Old & New Dreams, which are fantastic.

I'm so fucking tired of this shit. I tried listening to Bill Charlap's new album tonight and made it halfway through the second track before bailing. Here's the track listing for a live piano trio album on Blue Note in 2024:

1. And Then Again (an original song, if you can call a generic blues theme original)
2. All the Things You Are
3. Round Midnight
4. In Your Own Sweet Way
5. Darn That Dream
6. Sometimes I'm Happy
7. The Man I Love
8. I Don't Stand a Ghost of a Chance With You

For fuck's sake. Write your own music or just fuck off. You want to include ONE standard in your set, because it's a song you absolutely love? Fine. But entire albums of standards can go straight in the fucking dumpster out back.

🤔

of course you realize the very history of jazz is built on so-called standards

Those songs were new then, and traditions change. Like not many rock bands are recording Chuck Berry covers this year.

of course you realize the very history of jazz is built on so-called standards

WHAT? REALLY? I've never heard anything about this! Say more, please!

You’ve never said anything before yourself about your feelings with regard to this topic. Do go on, please.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1xvz50JtGUQdYuJLBMKA13

I listen to this on shuffle sometimes, good stuff

You want to include ONE standard in your set, because it's a song you absolutely love? Fine. But entire albums of standards can go straight in the fucking dumpster out back

Whoops, don't tell Anthony Braxton.

this is great! totally stealing this CD from my dad...

https://i.discogs.com/RSwtqqBnWi3KjJkcmTWinBRxOLw2QR62ZgjAuUFf4Jk/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:595/w:600/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTQwNTE4/MjgtMTYzNjkzNzI3/MS03Nzg1LmpwZWc.jpeg

My latest Stereogum column is up. I interviewed author Mike Smith about his new book In With The In Crowd: Popular Jazz In 1960s Black America, which is one of the best jazz books I've read in forever, and then I wrote about a bunch of new records, including the Wayne Shorter posthumous live album which contains all the virtues and flaws of his quartet's work.

i'm also confused by the anti-standards stance— what did you make of the Sorey records of a few years ago? to my mind they were some of the best records of the year, tho I know you don't like Osby.

ok, i'll bite at something else: what's with the abundance of records featuring vocals in your Stereogum roundup, which seems to be mirroring a larger trend within jazz as of late.

i hate to be this guy, but it is REALLY hard for me to get into jazz with any kind of vocal unless it's, well, standards! i don't care to hear a 25 year old's bad lyrics about love, nor do i care to hear Fred doing his usual thing over some bleating. it doesn't have the dynamism or excitement that many seem to think it has, and i hate so much of it!!

Good article, thanks. Was reminded of this: https://thought.is/the-left-rev-mcd-the-strange-career-of-geneeugene-mcdaniels/

i'm also confused by the anti-standards stance— what did you make of the Sorey records of a few years ago? to my mind they were some of the best records of the year, tho I know you don't like Osby.

Osby I can take or leave. Some of his records — Zero, Banned In New York, Inner Circle — are really good. I saw him live around the time of Inner Circle and he had Jason Moran and Stefon Harris in his band. No arguing with that. But a lot of his other stuff kinda sucks, and I think he's something of a MeToo-ish asshole. As far as the Sorey standards records, I actually enjoy them because I think Aaron Diehl is a fantastic player, but I think of them in relation to Sorey's whole catalog the same way I think of Braxton's standards records: I'm glad you're having fun, but this isn't really what I come to you for. And that's entirely different from someone like Bill Charlap (who inspired my most recent crankiness on this subject), a guy who does nothing but "interpret" 80-to-100-year-old songs in a thoroughly uninteresting (unless you're a "student" of "jazz piano") way. He plays dinner music, and should just go get a restaurant gig somewhere; there's no reason for Blue Note to be subsidizing his work.

ok, i'll bite at something else: what's with the abundance of records featuring vocals in your Stereogum roundup, which seems to be mirroring a larger trend within jazz as of late.

Yeah, there's a lot of singing going on, and I am generally anti-vocals myself, but will definitely include stuff from time to time that I think my readers will like more than I do, like the Milton Nascimento/esperanza spalding record. I like the Asher Gamedze disc, though, and have actually ordered a copy of the CD.

table otm. I'd probably buy a lot more International Anthem and modern IA-style jazz albums if there were no vocals, most of which I find grating and unnecessary

seriously, though, this record is so much fun. its like five bucks on discogs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bm6770D2x-I

Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Billie Holliday is my type of jazz vocalists. A boring old fig take perhaps, but it's what I like. The vocals on that Code Girl album was a point where I was thinking please stop doing this shit. Not saying vocals on contemporary jazz music have to be bad, but they mostly are.

mind you even the vocal recordings on Mingus albums are annoying af to me tbh

Yeah there is an increasing trend to shorter songs and artless singing in the more avant garde/leading edge jazz/creative improvised music. I can take a couple such numbers on an album, and Mary Halvorsen has accumulated enough good will for me to tolerate her attempts. Stuff like Alistair De Plume though is a hard pass for me, though, and I had trouble warming up to Jamie Branch because of the short song/cringey vocals thing.

From way upthread now:
Yo Jordan, glad you got into Haden in that Barcelona Ornette like I did, and any Haden head should also check his guest set in Ornette's North Sea Jazz Archive show, from 2010.
He comes strolling out at about the 44 minute mark, cues the audience to an even bigger response, starts playing an unaccompanied "Things Ain't What They Used To Be," I think, and things keep developing. Ornette, 80, sits on a folding chair, but leans into his silvery, shapely notes, stirring the pond. They pretty much duet for a while, although Denardp gradually provides more punctuation; later he and Charlie duet, although, even when he's not playing, Ornette looks like he's listening and thinking thinking thinking (if he isn't, still good showmanship). Also leans into consult his little notes on music stand, without a pause, and the others can't possibly see these clearly, if at all, so yeah, listening and thinking etc.
Joshua Redman, guest during the first set, comes back out and provides more discreet comment, though also again the welcome heft of tenor (like a truck horn going by a couple times) Amazed to realize this was 27 minutes: so fleet, but never rushed.
Then again that's also true of the first set, with Tony Falanga frequently in arco effects, but not too much; likewise. Al McDowell lets you know he's playing an electric bass guitar, without showboating.
All the music is spare, sensitive. dynamic, melodic w/o mush (my notebook mentions "Ornette's chem trails), sometimes grooving, bluesing or not.
North Sea Jazz Archives, wow. Wonder what else is in there?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vocyVKgP2jE

The embrace of song in new school avant-jazz is a really interesting development. Wendy Eisenberg's previous songwriter albums weren't quite my thing, but their recent collaboration with Caroline Davis is great as is their forthcoming album on American Dreams. They're a really good songwriter and improviser, and they've found really interesting ways to integrate the two, with some excellent musicians on board.

Code Girl kinda depends on how you feel about Amirta Kidambi's vocals, but the song with Robert Wyatt was lovely.

Alabaster de Plume is unlistenable cos of his gauche hippy poet schtick and mediocre music, but branch's vocals were totally righteous and fitted the punky energy of the music.

If it's "proper" jazz vocals you're looking for, Faye Victor's recent take on Herbie Nichols is fantastic. She's on the new Miles Okazaki too, which is on on my to-listen pile. And there's the recent Sofia Jernberg/Alex Hawkins album too: stunning takes on Ethiopian, Swedish and Renaissance English tunes, with Jernberg's amazing extended techniques tightly woven into her clear melodic delivery.

For me, Hawkins can do no wrong but I didn’t enjoy that album so much precisely because of the vocals.

I should check out the Victor album, I love Herbie Nichols.
I have to agree with Table though that my favorite vocalists are the very old school basic ones: Fitzgerald, Holliday. Have a soft spot for the creamy croony baritone of someone like Herb Jeffries or Al Hibbler.

In 2020, this xxxpost etc DePlume seemed good--mostly instrumental, as it's billed; I don't recall the vocal bits, emitted by him and others, as getting in the way---kind of a mostly-instrumental John Martyn vibe, man:
https://intlanthem.bandcamp.com/album/to-cy-lee-instrumentals-vol-1

Don't know Jeffries that well, but yeah Ella is always refreshing, a palate cleanser: doesn't delve into lyrics that much, but frequent systematically brings out, shakes out jazz liveliness from melody and rhythm of standards etc, if you can stand scatting, though she doesn't always do that.

Code Girl kinda depends on how you feel about
Amirta Kidambi's vocals, but the song with Robert Wyatt was lovely

...branch's vocals were totally righteous and fitted the punky energy of the music.

I interviewed Victor about the Nichols album for DownBeat:

https://downbeat.com/news/detail/fay-victor-navigates-nichols

righteousness and punkiness (and jazziness) of jaimie branch's vocals thirded.

Well, this is new. The Bad Plus have just announced a new album, Complex Emotions, coming out on Mack Avenue on November 8.

https://thebadplus.bandcamp.com/album/complex-emotions

Here's how the credits read:

Reid Anderson, Acoustic Bass + Synthesizer
Dave King, Drums + Synthesizer
Ben Monder, Guitar
Chris Speed, Tenor Saxophone

Also intrigued to read about Faye singing Herbie Nichols, and interview w Mike Smith----I remember asking you about Bob Porter's book on Soul Jazz (he'd been interviewed about it on Jazz In The New Millennium, played splendid examples I'd never heard of before). You indicated that the book had its flaws, but worth checking, esp. because that subgenre was ridiculously under-covered/ignored music.

Gonna also admit that I actually just don't like any of the branch records— it reminds me of the jazz club kids who tried to be in skapunk bands on the weekends. It sounds corny and fake, and while I'm sure I would have changed my tune if I'd seen it live, it's clear the records don't do the reputation of "punk energy" any justice.

I'm not the biggest Cecil Taylor fan. I like everything I've heard, just haven't heard enough.
I recently heard his version of "Bemsha Swing," one of favorite Monk tunes, and I loved it.
Then I listened to the album, might be his first, and I loved it. It's going to be a rest of life keeper.

last two posts in a row remind me the first time i saw jaimie branch was at a cecil taylor memorial concert, at roulette in brooklyn. she looked out of place (in an old-school hip-hop tracksuit, iirc) and sounded fire. she was one of the most generous, ferocious and joyful live performers i've ever seen, in any genre. i love the records, too, and yeah it's quite possible seeing her live a bunch of times helped set me up for that. but it's also possible they're just really really good records, whatever and however you want to label them.

I think maybe some of the goodwill and enthusiasm for branch was because she(they?) was a very kind and generous person.

cecil's version of "bemsha swing" is indeed awesome. the debut record is among my favorites of his

(xp I never saw branch live, though did like her live alb, with the sing-along I mentioned above, and whole thing had an amazingly intimate, you-are-there feel, esp. barely post-quarantine---otherwise, I just happened to get a promo of the first Fly Or Die, dug II too.)
Here's my first Cecil: "Bulbs, 'from 1961! On Into The Hot, a round-up of outcats, billed as a Gil Evans album to get it out there:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxQMLGVXN0s

Piano: Cecil Taylor
Alto Saxophone: Jimmy Lyons
Tenor Saxophone: Archie Shepp
Trumpet: Ted Curson
Trombone: Roswell Rudd
Bass Guitar: Henry Grimes
Percussion: Sunny Murray

Good comments on this unusual kind of alb here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_the_Hot_(Gil_Evans_album)

jaimie branch certainly got respect and goodwill for her generosity, her organising and activism, but she was also a fantastic musician, who could bring it in any number of situations, from old school fire music to free improv (more people need to check that record with Ig Henneman), to hardcore to the wonky electronic grooves she and Jason Nazary cooked up. The idea of her as some jazz club kid trying to be ska punk at the weekend makes no sense - she was a real one, punk as fuck, representing the best Chicago & Brooklyn values. I think she was a real standard bearer for a generation of "jazz" musicians who don't care about genre expectations, who are open and generous, socially and politically committed.

a real one indeed. great post, stew.

that might be true, Stew, but what you describe doesn’t come across in any of the records I’ve heard. like, i actually removed “Fly or Die Live” from my phone because i was tired of songs from it coming up on shuffle. i don’t like her music, even if I can appreciate what people say about it— there’s just a fundamental disconnect, to my ears, between what people describe and what i hear.

I feel the same and chalk it up to a "you had to be there" / live experience enhancing the records effect.

I never saw the Fly Or Die band live (though I saw Branch in two other contexts) and I love those records. The first one in particular reminds me of early BAG stuff filtered through Chicago postpunk art-rock.

Yeah, it's not just hadda be there live, the studio albums were career-makers, esp. but not only for those of us who never got to see her, didn't know much about her except what came through the music, which matters most. But of course not everybody hears it the same way, so be it.

Glad to see I’m not alone in not wanting vocals in jazz.

Agreed that it’s not just a live thing. I like her a records and I liked her live shows. But I also agree with Boring Marylands original statement. The vocals are bad. Like “Prayer for Amerikkka pt 1&2”? I cannot get behind that vocal style at all.

I saw Russell Malone for the first time several months ago when I went to see Ron Carter (also for the first time). The two of them and Donald Vega were set to perform yesterday in Tokyo when Carter announced that Malone was feeling under the weather and that the evening's performance would be a duo. Then things took a terrible turn when Malone suddenly passed away. He was only 60 and from the looks of it, he was a very warm and funny human being who made many friends who are now in a state of shock.

Per Neil Tesser in the Chicago Reader, "with his crystalline tone, casual but precise attack, cool-bop rhythms, and effortless lyricism at any tempo, he comfortably shoulders a lineage that extends from Kenny Burrell through Wes Montgomery to Grant Green and the young George Benson."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kz79BO-G-AA

I can’t say that I knew him but he was a person one would see all the time at other people’s gigs in which situation I would often chat briefly with him. He always looked great and had a big smile and great voice and would always say something, um, on point.

Anyone needing some truly beautiful vocal jazz should check out Thandi Ntuli’s album Exiled.

https://londonjazznews.com/2024/08/25/russell-malone-1963-2024-a-tribute-by-david-orourke/

i once saw russell malone accompanying diana krall in that park across from j&r music world. she was fine but i couldn't take my eyes off his fingers.

WKCR tribute starting in twenty minutes: https://www.instagram.com/wkcr/p/C_Em6HxMaYB/

He's on Christian Mcbride's 'A Family Affair', one of my favorite records.

Listening to the tribute now. "Snowfall"!

Kurt Rosenwinkel classic quartet live video alert:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYtUzX7x6cg

What do we think of Eric Chenaux? If that’s jazz with vocals, then maybe I don’t hate all new jazz with vocals

The thing with branch is that it's not meant to be a beautiful jazz vocal, but it works for her music. You wouldn't want Johnny Hartman fronting The Ramones.

A last point on branch: I dropped Take Over The World in a DJ set the other night and the place went off. It sounded amazing on a club PA too: Chad Taylor's drums were massive and the dub section was just gorgeous. I played a bunch of funky free jazz (Joe McPhee's Shakey Jake, Theme De Yo Yo, Irreversible Entanglements, Brotherhood of Breath etc), dub and punk that night and it fit in beautifully. Same energy, same spirit, same freedom.

jaimie branch does the baby talk singing voice, end of discussion

You must hang out with some cool babies.

sadly i think my aversion to it is like the cilantro/soap thing

yeah i am sorry, we are going to have to disagree on this. the vocals are absolutely the thing that ruins the branch records for me.

Working my way through the latest No Business batch and this Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre set - the first in their Live From Studio Rivbea series - is great, primo mid-70s Loft Jazz.
https://nobusinessrecords.bandcamp.com/album/rivbea-live-series-volume-1

I own it, haven’t listened yet, thanks for the reminder. Stew don’t know if there will be more Sam Rivers live from NoBusiness?

“Stew do you know…”

Thanks for the mention of Christian McBride's A Family Affair, Jordan. I only knew McB. as host of Jazz Night In America etc., and had no idea about his session leading and original writing, with great choice of covers on here too. Right off, we get "I'm Coming Home," by Thom Bell and Linda Creed! Now I'm thinking that Philadelphia International seems like a very under-jazzed resource---what other Philly soul versions by jazz artists should I check out??
Also new to me: Russell Malone's fairly dazzling Time For The Dancers, with elegant title track by Sir Roland Hanna, then two originals, perky "Leave It To Lonnie,")Plaxico, that is) sassy "The Ballad of Hank Crawford," and no prob mood-tempp shift to Peggy Lee's "There'll Be Another Spring"--although so far I haven't gotten all the way through an overthought take on Jose Feliciano's charmingly naive theme for Chico and The Man (sitcom about charmingly naive Freddie Prinze unfazed by grumpy gringo Jack Albertson).
Then again, there's the revelatory-to-me consideration of "So It Goes," by Billy Joel---I might even try comparative listening to the original (na).
More apt Malone originals, and btw don't worry, despite covers of singers, no vocals anywhere on this one!

htts://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_nnyTxRTmUeWWceiONx3ZuC2FMbwHLYoFE

damn, sorry!
http://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_nnyTxRTmUeWWceiONx3ZuC2FMbwHLYoFE

http://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_nnyTxRTmUeWWceiONx3ZuC2FMbwHLYoFE

Dunno why I'm not seeing the cover etc., but that is the right link, in the last two posts.

Oh, and speaking of him w Ron Carter and Donald Vega, I've just embarked on their live Golden Striker (Deluxe Edition), via "Laverne Walk," just over 12 minutes, and quite justifiably so. I'll grab another coffee for the road:
http://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_nrf15x1zejLe5D2Z0j9_MPV3oI2x1sKG0

Not sure where things are at with the Sam Rivers archive - hope there's more to come. Might be that they've put out all the stuff with Rivers himself so now they've started the Live at Rivbea series. Really should drop Danas a line to find out.

Talking Rivers, have you seen this one? Not sure where this Youtube account is getting all this vintage Berlin Jazz fest stuff from (German TV archives? DVDs?) but it's solid gold. The Braxton and Ornette sets are particularly amazing.

Help if I posted the link! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WF8T4mbDe-4

Yeah I subscribe to his channel, he is spoiling us lately. I watched a few already, but I gotta catch up!

Right off, we get "I'm Coming Home," by Thom Bell and Linda Creed!

Thank you, because I'm an idiot and never knew the original version(s) of it. Like many many pop and r&b tunes, I heard the jazz version before the vocal one. But it totally makes sense that it's an arrangement, because the form is really weird (Gregory Hutchinson does some of the best second line drumming on it that I've heard from a non-New Orleans drummer). But now I'm listening to the Spinners version and it rips.

Also I might start a thread for it, but there's a new Happy Apple record for the first time in like 17 years and it's AOTY material for me. Apparently it was self-released briefly in 2020, but now out properly -
https://sunnysiderecords.bandcamp.com/album/new-york-cd-2

I think it's their best work, and really reminds me of why they blew me away so hard when I would see them in the very early '00s, even more than the Bad Plus (this was before TBP blew up).

The record sounds amazing for one, everyone's instrument sounds huge and full and yet dynamic. Every member is so killing, and I can't think of a 'jazz' group with electric bass that I like more. Such a unique band, I hope people finally pay them the attention they deserve.

If people aren't familiar it's Dave King on drums, Michael Lewis (who has been playing sax in Bon Iver's band and bass with Andrew Bird) on sax, and Erik Fratzke on bass.

Talking Rivers, have you seen this one? Not sure where this Youtube account is getting all this vintage Berlin Jazz fest stuff from (German TV archives? DVDs?) but it's solid gold

Wow @ Charlie Persip wearing a shirt that says "Curtis Fuller is a Blowhard", haha.

Yeah, Jay Korber's got 'em, and not only 70s Berlin---for inst:

AMR Jazz Festival
Geneva, Switzerland 1985

Sam Rivers - reeds, flute, piano
Alain Ginapé - guitar
Kevin Harris - bass
Steve McCraven - drums

Did not know Rivers ever worked w guitar.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40eSQjo7XxM

jordan thank u for pointing the way toward the happy apple record, i've never heard them before and this album rules so much

i dug it too

Glad you checked it out & enjoyed! I'm going back to some of their older records, which are great but it's also convincing me that this might have captured their sound the best, miraculously. All it's missing is the shaggy dog banter that Dave King used to do between songs. The tunes have so much humor in them while still being deep though.

Listened to a podcast with the bassist where he said they have something like 150 tunes but have never written them down, and rely on people having taped their shows to remember many of them. They did a show recently and wanted to revive old tunes, and each of them suggested tunes that the others forgot having existed.

i don't miss dave king's banter tbh

I’ve loved the music of Satoko Fujii and Natsuki Tamura for many years but this one is really hitting me, especially “Haru wo Matsu”: https://satokofujii.bandcamp.com/album/dog-days-of-summer

I've been a fan for years and years, too, even interviewed the two of them once. I just reviewed one of their other recent releases, Aloft, for The Wire. But the one I've been listening to the most lately, because my wife found it in the stacks and absolutely loves it, is Hyaku - One Hundred Dreams:

https://satokofujii.bandcamp.com/album/hyaku-one-hundred-dreams

It's a single hour-long piece divided into five movements, recorded in New York in 2022 with an incredible one-off band:

Ingrid Laubrock - tenor sax
Sara Schoenbeck - bassoon
Wadada Leo Smith - trumpet
Natsuki Tamura - trumpet
Ikue Mori - electronics
Satoko Fujii - piano
Brandon Lopez - bass
Tom Rainey - drums
Chris Corsano - drums

unperson's xpost column re Mike Smith's new book about 60s soul jazz etc, reminded me of

Funk Brother Dennis Coffey's psychedelic soul jazz sidetrip, rec to fans of Band of Gypsies, The Meters, and excitement.
---from Omnivore Records notes:

]One Night At Morey’s: 1968 is drawn from the residency at Morey Baker’s Showplace Lounge in Detroit by the Lyman Woodard Trio. The trio, comprising Coffey on guitar, brilliant organist Lyman Woodard, and drummer Melvin Davis, could be found at Morey’s once a week. They played to a dedicated, often repeat, audience so the band kept the repertoire fresh and changing. One Night At Morey’s: 1968 follows last year’s Hot Coffey In The D: Burnin’ At Morey Baker’s Showplace Lounge, released by Resonance Records, also drawn from the Morey’s residency, but with an entirely different track list.

All tracks on One Night At Morey’s: 1968 are previously unissued and come directly from the vaults of Dennis Coffey and producer partner, Mike Theodore. Tracks include original compositions, “Big City Lights,” “Mindbender,” and “Union Station,” as well as surprising and funky covers of “Billie’s Bounce” by Charlie Parker, “Burning Spear” by The Soul Strings, “Cissy Strut” by The Meters, “Eleanor Rigby” by The Beatles, “Groovin’” by The YoungRascals, and “I’m A Midnight Mover” by Wilson Pickett from the pen of both Pickett and Bobby Womack.

Holy shit, just getting around to the new Asher Gamedze, Constitution, this is incredible!

wow, this is cool, thank you.

i'm not so into the spoken word parts but the music is good enough to keep me hooked for the time being

Yeah, those interludes were probably my least favorite part, but the rest of it is so damn good that I can't get too hung up on them.

There's a newish venue, two months old, I think, on 19th Street now called Midnight Blue that seems to book pretty good bands but the one time I went there I arrived between sets and also didn't feel up to paying the $10 cover plus $25 minimum.

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

Teahm this was my brimful of Asher gateway on RJ 2020:

Asher Gamedze, Dialectic Soul:"Fundamentally, it is about the reclamation of the historical imperative. It is about the dialect of the soul & the spirit while it moves through history. The soul is dialectic. Motion is imperative. We keep moving." For instance, in the opening "Emergence Suite," tenor sax and trumpet can seize on moments all they like or or must, while bass & drums are like,"Yeah, yeah, that's good, that's good, come on now, mind your head, good." Also perfectly supportive of, never submissive to horn comments and slender, strong singing in "Siyabulela."
Then a witty, fabulistic stroll through enormity in "Interregnum," where "the hopscotch ended much as it began" along the way (Don't worry, that's almost all for the voices). "Eternality" is more work-out than bliss-out, but good between the couch potato headphones. "Hope In Azania" is adrenaline afterglow in second wind, not too hopeful, but reasonably so it seems; oh yeah Speculative Fourth" does eventually let a human sing along some more with the horns, for a little while, sorry anti-voxxers.
https://ashergamedze.bandcamp.com/album/dialectic-soul

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a2422404092_10.jpg

Are you thinking of Turbulence and Pulse? Probably because it's on International Anthem:

https://intlanthem.bandcamp.com/album/turbulence-and-pulse

Forgive me if there's another one you meant, but this sounded like what you describe with the live tracks at the end.

Yes, thanks! Forgot that he was already on IA before Constitution.

There's a newish venue, two months old, I think, on 19th Street now called Midnight Blue that seems to book pretty good bands but the one time I went there I arrived between sets and also didn't feel up to paying the $10 cover plus $25 minimum.

The official announcement won't be coming until Tuesday, but:

On November 22, Blue Note Records will release of Forces of Nature: Live at Slugs’, a never-before-issued live recording of jazz legends McCoy Tyner and Joe Henderson leading a stellar quartet with bassist Henry Grimes and drummer Jack DeJohnette at the hallowed lost NYC jazz shrine, Slugs' Saloon, in 1966. The release was produced by Zev Feldman, Jack DeJohnette, and Lydia DeJohnette.

Forces of Nature includes an elaborate booklet with rare photos by Francis Wolff, Raymond Ross, and Robert Polillo; plus liner notes by esteemed author and critic Nate Chinen, and interviews and statements with DeJohnette, Jason Moran, Joe Lovano, Joshua Redman, Christian McBride, Nasheet Waits, and Terri Lyne Carrington. Originally recorded by the legendary engineer Orville O’Brien — who recorded classic 1960s jazz albums such as Freddie Hubbard’s The Night of the Cookers, Charles Tolliver’s Music Inc. and Alice Coltrane's Journey in Satchidananda — the tape has been in DeJohnette's personal archives for nearly 60 years. The 2-LP 180g vinyl set is transferred from the original tape reel and mastered by Matthew Lutthans at The Mastering Lab, who also mastered the 2-CD and digital.

good news for the henry grimes completists among us

I've listened to a little bit (the opening "In 'N Out" is 27 minutes long) and the recording quality is great.

Damn this sounds like a great night (Branford w/Robert Hurst, Herlin Riley, and Tain Watts sitting in)
https://vinniesperrazza.substack.com/p/belonging

Also apparently this got reissued and I'm curious to hear

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Quest_(Mal_Waldron_album)

From the upcoming album unperson mentioned last week:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpXFjaFZhK4

fantastic!

This is interesting, Marshall Allen is releasing his debut solo album at the age of 100.

https://week-end.bandcamp.com/track/african-sunset

feat. Jimmy Carter on tenor sax

So I guess this means the first album under his own name only, not co-billed with anyone else. Very admirable career path, huge flex.

To be released next Friday, a new Tyshawn Sorey trio album.

Tzadik re-released Milford Graves' Stories and Grand Unification as digipack-editions.

New Jeff Parker ETA IVtet live album announced by International Anthem was an instant pre-order for me, and I suspect others:

https://intlanthem.bandcamp.com/album/the-way-out-of-easy

I bit a few minutes ago (ie. also pre-ordered new ETA IVtet)--Int'l Anthem's CD shipping to Canada is very cheap on BC, which helped my decision to get the physical for it.

An excerpt from my Cecil Taylor bio, dealing with the last years of his life, was recently published in DownBeat; now it's on their website.

Thanks that is amazing! Think you mentioned several years ago in a post, about observing the guardianship while interviewing him---so some dicey to nefarious situations there...you got the shades of change still going on with an older person, as they do, and other people deal as best they can, also otherwise.

you caught the process, I mean: you depict it.

Read a really good interview with all three members of Matthew Shipp's trio, plus their producer, Steve Holtje. This quote from Shipp has been in my head for days:

"I am trying to get the trio to the point where a profound cosmic concept comes across but where the audience does not come away saying, 'Wow, those guys can really play their instruments.'"

thoughts on new immanuel wilkins album? i've only listened once so far. it's very interesting, at times pretty exceptional. but it's challenging, and idk if i'm on board with all the vocal stuff. i was turned onto him fairly recently and the 7th hand is one of my favourite albums of the decade

Yeah, I like it. He's put out a really nice video for "Matte Glaze":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyToVyKf6yE

Holy crap, Greg Fox's introductory drumming on this new opening Body Meπa track nails that explosive yet locked-in quality of his playing that grabbed my ear when first hearing early Liturgy almost 15 yrs ago: https://bodymetaband.bandcamp.com/track/etel

Maybe this is a dumb question since I'm not a guitar player, but is there anything specific about an "owl" guitar or a "deer" guitar? Or is that just Body Meπa's cute way of distinguishing the two guitar players?

i think an owl guitar is somewhere between a steel appendage guitar and a glass finger guitar

Snake guitar to thread

Ethan Iverson took some of my anti-standards grumblings as the jumping-off point for an interesting little piece:

https://www.everythingjazz.com/story/to-standard-or-not-to-standard/

He also praises my Cecil Taylor book, which is nice.

Amiri Baraka attacked Taylor for recording "This Nearly Was Mine," the piece Iverson mentions; Taylor's response was, "Doesn't that fool know I recorded that song because I like it?"

Ha, cool!

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/15/arts/music/tim-berne-jazz-new-york.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Sk4.Czuv.QZP7lA2efHDq&smid=url-share

Tim Berne likes playing at Brooklyn bar Lowlands where there’s not even a stage . Hank Shteamer profiles him for New York Times

There's a new JD Allen album out — it's called The Dark, The Light, The Grey And The Colorful, and it features two bassists (Gregg August and Ian Kenselaar) and Nic Cacioppo on drums. August and Kenselaar each switch back and forth between acoustic and electric, depending on the track (but it's always one man playing acoustic, the other electric), and Kenselaar uses a ring modulator to give his electric that Bill Laswell-y eerie ringing dub sound. Almost all the pieces are in a slow, rubato/free time; Cacioppo is a very interesting drummer, abstract but clearly rooted in early jazz — he takes a lot from Papa Jo Jones, something we talked about when I interviewed him for DownBeat a few years ago. Not on Bandcamp, but it's on streaming services, so definitely check it out.

Sounds interesting, thanks.

Listening now and really liking it.

Cacioppo a childhood friend of mine, his mother was my piano teacher and his father a classical composer and professor.

This is the piece I interviewed Cacioppo for back in 2019. Still one of my favorite things I've written for DownBeat just on a pure prose level.

I saw Riley Mulherkar's quartet last night, really enjoyed it. The pianist was running everything through an fx chain but it was all very tasteful. It was a bit funny to see them doing post-modern versions of tunes like King Porter Stomp when I had just been playing at the same venue the previous two nights doing the straight-down-the-middle, no twists or gimmicks approach (w/trumpeter Leroy Jones). But it was cool, great rhythm section but drummer Jason Burger (original Big Thief drummer) was super impressive, huge dynamic range.

My latest Stereogum column is up. I wrote about Tyshawn Sorey's current piano trio/"jazz standards" project, and gave the #1 album blurb slot (where I write about 500 words as opposed to 150) to Isaiah Collier. In between: Charlie Parker, Ezra Collective, Anna Webber, JD Allen, Aaron Parks... a whole range of stuff.

Will peruse, of course, thx agn

Hey, remember this lot?

TITAN TO TACHYONS is led by New Zealand/New York composer and guitarist Sally Gates (ex-Orbweaver), joined by drummer Kenny Grohowski (Secret Chiefs 3, Imperial Triumphant, John Zorn), and dueling bassists Trevor Dunn (Mr. Bungle, Fantômas, Tomahawk) and Matt Hollenberg (Cleric, John Zorn). The quartet instrumentally depicts the realms of surrealism and science-fiction through eclectic and improvisational passages, juxtaposed by fluid grooves and metallic flurries.

* tour dates:

11/09/2024 Sarajevo Jazzfest – Sarajevo, BA [tickets]

11/10/2024 Porgy and Bess – Vienna, AT w/ Trevor Dunn [tickets]

11/12/2024 Stadtgarten – Cologne, DE w/ Trevor Dunn [tickets]

11/13/2024 Le Petit Faucheux – Tours, FR w/ Trevor Dunn [tickets]

11/15/2024 Prishtina Jazz Festival – Prishtina, XK

11/16/2024 Prishtina Jazz Festival – Prishtina, XK (Masterclasses)

A bunch of acts have been announced for Winter Jazzfest 2025, and one that caught my eye is "Air Legacy Trio" — presumably a Henry Threadgill project, but Fred Hopkins and Steve McCall are both dead, so I'm wondering who the other two members will be. Both Andrew Cyrille and Pheeroan AkLaff played drums for Air at different points, but it was always Hopkins on bass.

Saw Wayne Shorter’s old band with Mark Turner on sax doing what was billed as a tribute to Wayne. Wonderful long flowing improvisations like late live Shorter. The only tune I recognized was Witchcraft, a 60s tune but done in a very contemporary manner where the improvisations took fragments of the theme and riffed on them.

I just heard about that, I'm glad they're doing it and Mark Turner seems like a perfect choice.

Not to be a hater but I tried to listen to a Tape Notes episode on Ezra Collective and I just can't. Out of all the bands that have done a version of Fela over the years, they just leave me cold, it feels like a version with all the interesting edges sanded off and I know multiple bands in the midwest who have done better takes on the style.

Damn, RIP Roy Haynes, I really thought he was immortal. If I wasn't traveling I would listen to Out of the Afternoon, Now He Sings Now He Sobs, and Like Minds just to start with.

So many things come to mind all at once---why is this first? Anyway, it's good, in an unusual way: "I'm Late, I'm Late," w Stan Getz, and Eddie Sauter's chart: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmnBgZ0yQHs

I wish Haynes had been on the rest of that album!

Of course they got to do other things, like this at the White House, with Diz, Chick, Miroslav (introduced by Itzhak):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCzRXyZL_hc

I always remember him giving a single SLAM on the snare as the solos begin in "Stolen Moments", a nice way for the drummer to assert himself in a laidback recording where he doesn't get a solo of his own.

RIP Roy Haynes. Legend.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6COjQla_s0o

this could probably go in a couple different rolling threads but putting it here because the jazz vibe is pretty strong with Norwegian four piece The Red Barn featuring drums, bass, guitars, saxophone on bluesy americana tunes, opener Wrangler is a pretty clear mission statement:

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

one of my favorite albums this year

Tom Hull just posted this:

I'm working on this year's Francis Davis Jazz Critics Poll. I wrote up a piece on how it works, including a request to help us make sure it remains the broadest, best-informed poll of its kind. I hope that anyone here with a serious interest in jazz will read this piece, and get in touch if they would like to vote and/or help, and pass it on to whoever you know who might be interested. Thanks. LINK.

Thanks bird! Haven't seen you in a while, though maybe haven't looked on right threads.

JAMES BRANDON LEWIS TRIO ANNOUNCES FULLY IMPROVISED NEW ALBUM ‘APPLE CORES’

OUT FEBRUARY 7

Informed by the rhythms and textures of hip-hop and funk while remaining rooted in jazz, James Brandon Lewis Trio’s new album ‘Apple Cores’ was recorded with longtime collaborators Chad Taylor (drums/mbira) and Josh Werner (bass/guitar). The recording was a collective compositional process that happened over the course of two intense, entirely improvised sessions. Lewis’s second album for ANTI-, ‘Apple Cores’ will be released on February 7.

“If you don’t spend time with your band, you’re not going to really trust that moment,” Lewis says. “I think we’ve spent enough time together to where we can do that. I’ve been playing Chad for like ten years, so that’s like water right there and me and Josh have been playing together since 2018.”

he album takes its name and intention from the column that poet and jazz theorist Amiri Baraka wrote for DownBeat in the 1960s. “I was first exposed to Amiri Baraka at Howard University [also Baraka’s alma mater],” says Lewis. “Blues People [Baraka’s groundbreaking 1963 study of Black American music], was required reading. I’m always in constant dialogue with his work.”

In addition to Baraka, the influence of another jazz giant looms mightily over ‘Apple Cores’: trumpeter and multi-instrumentalist, Don Cherry. In a testament to Cherry’s influence over the music that the trio is playing, Lewis designed each song title as a cryptogram of sorts, making subtle references to Cherry’s life and music.

Listen to the nimble, pulsating track “Five Spots to Caravan”:

“Five Spots to Caravan” is a multi-layered reference to Don Cherry’s creative arc and travels as a musician; It nods to New York’s famed Five Spot where Ornette Coleman made his New York City debut in the fall of 1959 alongside Cherry. Also joined by the drummer Billy Higgins and Charlie Haden on bass, this residency signaled the arrival of Coleman’s radical avant-garde experiments to jazz’s mainstream. The “caravan” in the song’s title is a reference to the Caravan of Dreams performing arts center in Coleman’s hometown, Fort Worth, Texas.

Pre-Order ‘Apple Cores’
1. Apple Cores #1
2. Prince Eugene
3. Five Spots to Caravan
4. Of Mind and Feeling
5. Apple Cores #2
6. Remember Brooklyn & Moki
7. Broken Shadows
8. D.C. Got Pockets
9. Apple Cores #3
10. Don’t Forget Jayne
11. Exactly, Our Music

https://jblewis.com/

For More Info on James Brandon Lewis, Contact:
kelly at epitaph dot com

Thanks dow! I was less active in the lead up and aftermath of the election - did everything I possibly could for the Harris campaign in PA and of course everything I feared (the reason I went all-in to begin with) came to pass. Ugh.

Bahraini trumpeter Yazz Ahmed has a new album coming out January 1 (though physical LPs and CDs apparently won't ship until the end of February). Anyway, there's one track up on Bandcamp now and just like her last two albums, it rules:

https://yazzahmed.bandcamp.com/album/a-paradise-in-the-hold

Profiled the great Pat Thomas for the Guardian. It's been beautiful to see him getting his flowers at last - and he's finally playing the US next year.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2024/nov/20/piano-virtuoso-pat-thomas-on-his-journey-through-jazz-ahmed

man that yazz ahmed track is sooooooo good

Michael Cuscuna (1948–2024)

Saint Peter's Church in Midtown Manhattan has been the site of many memorials and celebrations-of-life for jazz musicians throughout the decades. Please join us for a celebration of the life for Michael Cuscuna on December 9.

An Evening of Performances & Remembrances
In Celebration of a Life Well Lived

Monday, December 9 at 7pm

(The memorial begins at 7:00 p.m. and runs for two hour. Doors open at 6:30 p.m.)

There will be a reception with light refreshments from 8:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.

Saint Peter's Church
619 Lexington Avenue
New York, NY 10022

Featuring...
Peter Bernstein
Otis Brown III
Gerald Cannon
Bill Charlap
Billy Harper
Billy Hart
Kevin Hays
Joe Lovano
Greg Osby
Renee Rosnes
Charles Tolliver
& more

This memorial is organized and funded by family and friends, with underwriting from Saint Peter's Church. Streaming is available on Saint Peter's website and Facebook.

https://www.saintpeters.org

Profiled the great Pat Thomas for the Guardian. It's been beautiful to see him getting his flowers at last - and he's finally playing the US next year.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2024/nov/20/piano-virtuoso-pat-thomas-on-his-journey-through-jazz-ahmed🕸

Thanks for posting that Pat Thomas piece, it is great, I'm really digging Wood Blues

Yeah thanks Stew, enjoyed that, I’ve been getting very excited about the show tonight.

yeah any idea about where Thomas will be playing? i would drop a load of cash on tickets right now, afaic the ahmed records are the best free jazz of the past five years

I know that Ahmed is playing Big Ears, so I’m hoping it’s part of a US tour.

i would drop a load of cash on tickets right now, afaic the ahmed records are the best free jazz of the past five years

― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table), Friday, November 22, 2024 7:59 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

ditto

Ahmed were amazing this evening.

FYI students can buy any available ticket to see the Maria Schneider Orchestra at Town Hall in NY tomorrow for only $22 - the box office will be open starting at noon. (They have a bunch left - not a lot but not few either.)

Given the way she sells her albums (only through her PledgeMusic site, which doesn't take Paypal, only credit cards) I'm surprised you don't have to actually seek her out on the street and ask nicely if you can please buy a ticket.

Artistshare

thanks for sharing that piece Stew, always nice when you post itt

Was away at the weekend. Thanks for your kind words about the piece. to answer your questions, I think [Ahmed] have a few shows around Big Ears. Likely to be an NYC date, maybe LA or SF, Chicago etc.
There will also be some Pat appearances before then, but not sure they've been announced yet, so don't want to get anyone in trouble!

Unrelated, but I noticed that Roulette's Wadada Leo Smith/Amina Claudine Myers gig next week is being webcast. That album is absolutely gorgeous, so I'm excited for that. Saw Wadada in Huddersfield last week, which was really great.
https://roulette.org/event/wadada-leo-smith-and-amina-claudine-myers/

Very refreshing profile, thanks Stew! Heard some revelatory [ahmed] on Bandcamp after tables' RJ mention, but hadn't checked backstory---intriguing mention of PT's other projects at end---

Nearly everything at Roulette is webcast and available on YouTube, recorded for posterity

Oh and they have an online audio archive going back to the 80s which scares me cause there’s so much in that rabbit hole I’ll have to quit my job and listen 24/7 to the exclusion of anything else

FYI, speaking of Ahmed, if you were like me and missed out on the first pressing, there’s another pressing of the 5xCD box available at their bandcamp.

FYI, speaking of Ahmed, if you were like me and missed out on the first pressing, there’s another pressing of the 5xCD box available at their bandcamp.

oops, sorry for the double post, got an error message for the first one and assumed it didn’t go through

I got that one, but wish they'd repress those first few LPs! Maybe if the response to the CD box is good, they'll consider it. Those have been on my wantlist for a while.

I think the CD box will do very well in the more leftfield EOY polls. Hope Astral and Umlaut reissue the earlier albums, but as they're both cottage industries it might take a while.

To be frank, a lot of the new UK jazz or jazz related music getting hyped or released by US labels is pretty mediocre. Too many promising young musicians stuck in a tasteful post Gilles Peterson "spiritual" jazz meets chilled out club music aesthetic (not to mention all the sub Ezra Collective party bands on the festival circuit). It's solidly 4/4, the tunes/riffs/arrangements are kinda basic, there's little space for improvisation. There's a lot of pastiche and even the stuff that does engage with more contemporary electronic sounds does it in a fairly reined in way. Not that I expect everyone to by wildly avant-garde, but as someone like Jeff Parker has shown, you can make accessible, groove-based music that's still interesting compositionally and allows the musicians to stretch out.

Anyway, it's great to see [Ahmed] hitting the states and rocking crowds at Big Ears et al. They're never going to have the commercial reach of artists with major label money behind them, but they'll get the enduring love. Pat has long worked with US musicians, but I think he appeals to the younger generation of players like Luke Stewart, Moor Mother, Chris Williams et al because he's a real one and he's open to working across and between genres.

[Ahmed] related news: the X-Ray Tet on Reading Group is something else. Pat and Seymour plus Edward George, Crystabel Riley, Edward George, Billy Steiger and Paul Abbott. Riley's recent solo drum release through Oto is superb too and Abbott is bringing it with his yPLO stuff. As Pat said, Abbott is the new Tony Oxley in terms of integrating electronics into his drum kit. Unlikely that a lot of this stuff will be accepted as "jazz" but it's where the innovation is: musicians who are very much engaged with the legacy of improvised and experimental musics while pushing forward.

This week's Burning Ambulance newsletter is a list of 50 great jazz albums from 1974. Most are easy enough to find on streaming services, but some will require extra searching. All are worth your time.

Super high quality Kurt Rosenwinkel set:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WvexMiZ8dg

Braxton and bassist Dave Holland essaying three standards on the flip.

Apropos of this, can anyone explain why the Penguin Jazz Guide says (without any further discussion) that Anthony Braxton's recordings of standards is "problematic at best"? I've heard his Monk and one of the 1985 standards albums and didn't mind them at all, though I've got no loyalty to how these songs "should" be performed.

xp Great list re: 1974 jazz, Phil/unperson--had never heard McCoy Tyner's Sama Layuca, wow!

Might sound dumb, but McCoy Tyner is my jazz discovery of 2024. Obviously he's great on all the Trane records and his more canonized albums as a leader, but the recent Slugs' Saloon archival release w/ Henderson was a big epiphany for me this year. After listening to that one a few times, on a whim I played Henderson's Inner Urge (which I hadn't pulled out in years despite being my favorite of Henderson's Blue Note albums), paying special attention to Tyner, and it felt like I was hearing the album for the first time. It was as if suddenly I started noticing McCoy, if that makes sense. I think, given the company he kept, maybe he was an easy player to take for granted?

Wow I've always thought of him as a nearly overpowering presence on the records he's on, but that's interesting

can anyone explain why the Penguin Jazz Guide says (without any further discussion) that Anthony Braxton's recordings of standards is "problematic at best"?

I can't speak for the Penguin folks, but one thing I have noticed — and asked Braxton about when I interviewed him — is that when he makes a standards album, it's always also an album recorded with people he doesn't usually record with, rather than his working band of the moment (if he has one) or people from his regular pool of collaborators. And what he said was (in part),

many of the musicians who've come up with me aren't as experienced in bebop as some of the people I grew up with, or people from my generation. And so it's a combination of all of these factors. So one, I was trying to get out of my family, to work with people who are outside of that and plus, people who feel like me, in the sense of having a real love for the traditional repertoire. And so we'll come together and play that. I would still like to, hope to one day do a box set of 12 CDs of the music of Charlie Mingus. Or the music of Dizzy Gillespie. Certainly Dave Brubeck. All of the people that I've talked about since I made my first recording, I still listen to them and consider myself a student trying to better my understanding of their great work. And so, yes, you put your finger on it. I go outside of my family, to play with people who could be looked at as the quote-unquote the other. And this keeps me, as an old dog, on my toes. To fight to try to do better and to play with people that I haven't had a chance to play with, so I won't get too comfortable. Because I'm not interested in continuing with music if I can't find a surprise in my own playing.

Norma Winstone has very few mentions on ILM as far as I can see, but I for one am enjoying Wheeler With Words.

"can anyone explain why the Penguin Jazz Guide says (without any further discussion) that Anthony Braxton's recordings of standards is "problematic at best"?"

I would suspect it because Braxton will ignore the changes and play "free" in a lot of his solos while the band
continues to play the tune. At least that is what the 1985 recordings sound like to me. For all i know he is doing complex harmonic substitutions that i cant understand. But ya, i think Penguin Jazz Guide is implying that he is playing the songs "wrong"

Enjoying this episodic doc on Nik Baertsch's math-jazz - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWwLRcu7N6Y

Ok I was not prepared for the sheer intensity of Forces of Nature (new the McCoy Tyner/Joe Henderson/Jack DeJohnette/Henry Grimes '66 live record). Jaw-dropping.

Apparently this is the earliest known recording of Jack DeJohnette...he often got described as a combination of Tony & Elvin, and that's never seemed more accurate than here in the best way, he's so sharp and burning, it's wild.

Unrelated, but I noticed that Roulette's Wadada Leo Smith/Amina Claudine Myers gig next week is being webcast. That album is absolutely gorgeous, so I'm excited for that. Saw Wadada in Huddersfield last week, which was really great.
https://roulette.org/event/wadada-leo-smith-and-amina-claudine-myers/

Went to this and bought the record at the merch section while I was there. Beautiful, and surprisingly, per Smith, this is the first time he and Myers have performed together in public. It was very moving to see them together.

That album was only the second time they'd recorded together — the first was on Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre's Humility in the Light of Creator, way back in 1969.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RwLdIiZk_8

Saw Sundance winning doc film Soundtrack to a Coup D’etat today. Well-made , long depressing and disturbing film about the US & Belgium & others having Congo’s post colonial prime minister Lumumba killed and the State Department sending Louis Armstrong to perform at the time there and Armstrong being upset that he was used. Also Abby Lincoln & Max Roach at the UN in 1961 protesting what was done . Lots of sad footage and details on man’s inhumanity to man, especially white people doing terrible things. Plus African politicians and soldiers bribed and used to carry out terrible stuff. But the jazz and the Congolese music is inspiring at least .

I have to write my year-end Stereogum column, which is the Best Jazz of 2024 roundup. But I don't want to just pick 10 albums. Instead I want to lay out 10 categories and write a paragraph about each that lists 5 representative albums, as follows (chosen albums not revealed here, sorry):

Archival Discoveries
Brooklyn Composers
Leaders Of The New School
New Age Spiritual Hippies
Nordics
Old-School Avant-Gardists
Pianists
South Africans
Traditionalists
What Do You Even Call That?

y/n did TRUE STORY make the South Africans?

xp I like that idea (and the category names).

Happy with Nordics as a category :)

Now I really want to play Jazz Jeopardy

What do we think of Eric Chenaux? If that’s jazz with vocals, then maybe I don’t hate all new jazz with vocals

― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table), Monday, August 26, 2024 9:55 PM (three months ago) bookmarkflaglink

Coming back to this, gorgeous weirdo idiosyncratic virtuoso guitar/vocal jazz songwriting. Love his woozy whammy pitch-bend guitar style, but maybe not the farty 8bit guitar synth tone on the firts track.

https://ericchenaux.bandcamp.com/album/delights-of-my-life

speaking of Happy With Nordics---couldn't resist, as backstory injoek, but I am happy as cautiously optimistic can be about the following, from free version of Nate Chinen's The Gig:

Some good news dropped out of the blue this week: JazzTimes Lives! This surprise announcement came via a Letter from the New Editor, David R. Adler, a former contributor to the magazine, and a longtime colleague and friend.

I wanted to extend my congrats, and I also had a few questions. So I connected briefly today with David, who spoke from his home in West Yorkshire, England.

The podcast follows; I haven't listened yet, hope all of that is free too.

If you’re wondering about the saga of JazzTimes and its corporate ownership, that’s a story for another time (and probably someone else’s to tell). You may recall that I wrote about the dismaying first chapter of the BeBop Channel era at The Gig:

As you’ll hear, David has a phased return underway for JazzTimes, starting small but with his usual high standards. He has his work cut out for him, but there’s nobody I’d trust more with the task.

I’ll have a couple more announcements related to jazz journalism in the coming days. But I wanted to get this out to you in a jiffy, as they say. Hope you enjoy it.

satkinsn
2h

Excellent! Who owns JT now?
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Nate Chinen
2h

A UK company called BGFG (By Gamers For Gamers)

26 m

Thanks. I somehow managed to not notice the audio you posted before I wrote

Was up in NYC this past Friday and the missus and I caught the end of Blacks' Myths w/ Luke Stewart (bass, electronics, mbira sounds) Trae Drummer & Jamal Moore (reeds & percussion), Cassie Watson Francillon (harp & electronics keyboard), Nicole Mitchell (flute & electronics), & Miriam Parker (movement artist dancer & in charge of video visuals showing behind them & staging) doing "Kemetic Hymns" @ the pyramid room in the "Flight into Egypt: Black Artists and Ancient Egypt 1876-Now" exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Some parts were noisy , some quieter w/ more mbira and harp sounds.