Rolling Jazz Thread 2024

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