Rolling Jazz Thread 2024

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.

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'