Rolling Jazz Thread 2024

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