Rolling Jazz 2025

JBL's 2/1 release:

Informed by the rhythms and textures of hip-hop and funk while remaining rooted in jazz, ‘Apple Cores’ was recorded with James Brandon Lewis’s 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.

Today from ‘Apple Cores,’ the trio shares “Prince Eugene,” a hazy ballad that combines a dub-reggae bassline and drums with a Zimbabwean mbira as Lewis’ saxophone sings and guides us through the tune’s heavy yet minimal groove. Listen to it below.

The 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.

“The record itself is a nod to Amiri but mainly a nod to Don Cherry, using Amiri as a branch to really get the conversation going,” Lewis explains. “It’s not a tribute in the sense that we’re playing Don Cherry compositions, but that the music is commenting on his musical curiosity.”

Next month Lewis embarks on a European tour alongside The Messthetics with shows in Dublin and throughout the UK. A hometown album release show has also been announced in Brooklyn, NY at Public Records on March 6 and following that show his trio returns to Europe in April and May with dates in Austria, Spain the Netherlands and more to celebrate the release of ‘Apple Cores’. All upcoming dates are listed below.

TOUR DATES
February 7 – Dublin, Ireland @ Grand Social
February 8 – Belfast, United Kingdom @ The Black Box
February 10 - Glasgow, United Kingdom @ Nice N Sleazy
February 11 – Manchester, United Kingdom @ Yes
February 12 – Birmingham, United Kingdom @ The Hare And Hounds
February 13 – Nottingham, United Kingdom @ Boat Club
February 14 – Bristol, United Kingdom @ The Lantern
February 15 – Lewes, United Kingdom @ Lewes Con Club
February 16 – London, United Kingdom @ 100 Club
March 3 – Los Angeles, CA @ Zebulon
March 6 – Brooklyn, NY @ Public Records
March 7 – Chicago, IL @ Constellation
April 26 – Paris, France @ Maison de la Radio Studio 104
April 27 – Cologne, Germany @ Stadtgarten
April 28 – Brno, Czech Republic @ Cabare des Peches
April 29 – Vienna, Austria @ Porgy & Bess
April 30 – San Sebastian, Spain @ Victoria Eugenia Club
May 2 – Barcelona, Spain @ El Molino
May 3 – London, UK @ Vortex
May 7 – Tilburg, Netherlands @ Paradox
May 8 – Liege, Belgium @ Jazz A Liege Festival

Some good stuff coming out in the next couple of months:

Sun & Rain (3/4 of Little Women, minus Darius Jones, plus a new saxophonist) - Waterfall
Isaiah Collier/William Parker/William Hooker - The Ancients
Burnt Sugar - If You Can't Dazzle Them With Your Brilliance Then Baffle Them With Your Blisluth Vol 2 (live album)
James Brandon Lewis - Apple Cores
Sullivan Fortner - Southern Nights
Steve Lehman Trio + Mark Turner - The Music Of Anthony Braxton
Sylvie Courvoisier/Mary Halvorson - Bone Bells
Jeong Lim Yang - Synchronicity
Adrian Younge & Ali Shaheed Muhammad - Jazz Is Dead 22: Ebo Taylor
Alabaster DePlume - A Blade Because A Blade Is Whole
Billy Hart Quartet (w/Mark Turner, Ethan Iverson) - Just

https://tr.ee/j1i6095ik0

Been seeing jazz musicians post this fundraiser for the Los Angeles based Mauoin family ( including longtime jazz player Bennie Maupin) who have been impacted by the LA fires

Bennie Maupin was already suffering health (and cognitive) issues the last few years, I heard.

I was just about to post the same thing. Nasheet Waits shared the same link, writing: "Please give to Bennie Maupin. A true treasure that has lost his home and instruments. Literally everything. Kindly give so he can feel the love. Peace."

https://hullworks.net/jazzpoll/24/totals-new.php

Francis Davis Tom Hull Jazz critics poll

https://hullworks.net/jazzpoll/24/critics.php

Names and links to each critic's ballot for 2024

did everyone see this? i feel like everyone should see this. its good for you. in a good way. maybe everyone has seen it already.

Baden-Baden Free Jazz Meeting 1970

Isaiah Collier/William Parker/William Hooker - The Ancients, just got my copy this morning, Collier I was not really familiar with aside from hearing the name but he has no problem hanging with Parker & Hooker, who are as you can imagine outstanding, just a really great set

This is a really cool record of live duo improv + electronics, from some folks I know well -
https://shiftingparadigmrecords.bandcamp.com/album/full-potential

My latest Stereogum column just went up. I reviewed the Collier/Parker/Hooker album and nine other equally excellent records covering a wide spectrum of sounds (everything from an Andrew Hill big band to the PainKiller reunion disc), and interviewed trumpeter Jason Palmer:

https://www.stereogum.com/2293704/introducing-jason-palmer/columns/ugly-beauty/

^ I always LOVE your column. Thank you for the great music you've introduced me to (as someone who has little knowledge about jazz)!

https://mapledeathrecords.bandcamp.com/album/flowers-are-blooming-in-antarctica

loving this laura agnusdei album "flowers are blooming in antarctica" - dubby jazz with electronics

Whoever is doing the quality control over at Division 81 records is super sloppy and it's starting to annoy me. Last year I ordered two Isaiah Collier albums (Cosmic Transmissions & The Almighty), but they initially only sent me the first one and I had to email a couple times to get the second one. Then a few months ago, I ordered the new one (The World is On Fire) and they sent me another copy of The Almighty and have yet to respond to my emails.

Love that NA, it fits right in with the dub wormhole I'm currently in.

it's so good. i am not a "jazz guy" but i feel like every year there's one album in this vein that i click with.

The Collier/Hooker/Parker is fantastic. The bit in the final set where Collier plays a megaphone like its the sax, complete with multiphonics and timely blasts of the klaxon, is a trip.

The new Ambrose Akinmusire is out today and it's a stunner. https://daily.bandcamp.com/album-of-the-day/ambrose-akinmusire-honey-from-a-winter-stone-review

I love Akinmusire in more conventional settings (his quartet/quintet, the trio with Bill Frisell and Herlin Riley) but I really didn't like Origami Harvest, and this new one is being linked to that one, so I'll probably pass.

whoa the Agnusdei album is sounding amazing

Oh shit, I was wondering when his next one would be out. Owl Song was probably my AOTY, but his music had never really clicked with me before that.

Listening to a Susan Alcorn/José Lencastre/Hernâni Faustino album from 2023, Manifesto. Really beautiful stuff; steel guitar, alto or tenor sax depending on the track, upright bass. On Clean Feed.

https://cleanfeedrecords.bandcamp.com/album/manifesto

Definitely worth hearing the Akinmusire as it pulls off the jazz/hip-hop/contemporary classical thing with more sophistication and fluidity than Origami Harvest (which was still really interesting). The Mivos String Quartet are very much part of the whole ensemble. There's a lot of fluidity in the arrangements and no sense they're tacked on. The drumming is fantastic - more FlyLo than 90s boom bap.

Saw that Alcorn trio in Lisbon in 2023. Really gorgeous music. There were bits where she made the pedal steel sound like banjo or zither. An amazing artist. Really gutted at the news of her passing.

Aw, that's very sad about Alcorn. An acquaintance of mine wrote a piece for her, he talked a lot about her on a podcast recently.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DFgF1gTg_i8/?igsh=YmN2ZG51dm50MGFr

Yeah sad to learn that. I found out about her through a great country album by Zane Campbell that she played on

I love Akinmusire in more conventional settings (his quartet/quintet, the trio with Bill Frisell and Herlin Riley) but I really didn't like Origami Harvest, and this new one is being linked to that one, so I'll probably pass.

Same. Was excited about this until I read the description. Still rooting for this guy, though. He's a great player.

Side note: It's incredible how hard it is to get hands on a physical copy of A Rift In Decorum: Live At The Village Vanguard.

try discogs

it's kind of jarring that Ambrose's pianist collaborator is called Sam Harris

i want to cover the Village Vanguard record and call it A Dilf in Your Rectum

sensational article from ethan iverson that takes the Live At Slugs record as a kind of jumping off point to talk about, frankly the entire history of mid-20th century jazz, and how the Slugs was a kind of ground zero for the evolution of hard swinging jazz that pushed the boundaries but didn't follow the fusion or free jazz trajectories -

https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/slugs-jazz-ethan-iverson/

Nice little sidebar listener's guide here: https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/slugs-jazz-albums-list/

ty, excellent article

I really enjoyed reading that too, but part of my enjoyment was being somewhat bemused by its thesis: that this idiom is overlooked. When I started getting into jazz in the mid-00s, it was through buying reissued CDs and early-mid 60s Blue Notes were so abundant and relatively cheap that the era was wildly over-represented in my knowledge of jazz history for a while. I totally get that my experience is an outlier consequence of the 00s music industry, but it's funny to see a list of "overlooked" records that I own half of (and have close alternates for most of the rest).

Same here.

Same, and it might be my favorite music of all.

Haven't read the article but I liked this post where he talks about omitting Art Blake's Free for All (one of my favorites for the sense of abandon and unexpectedly driving all the meters into the red).

https://iverson.substack.com/p/tt-479-a-night-in-tunisia-and-free

Also love this anecdote from him interviewing 'Tain' Watts about Blakey -

"Art could just do anything. He probably just heard cats doing it and he would just do stuff to show people he could do it. I remember taking a van ride with him to Atlantic City. We were in the van and we’re riding and he’s like, Yes, Jeff. Polyrhythms, you know, it’s no big deal, polyrhythm. You do six over here and you do five with your foot like this. And he was just doing it! You just do that and then you can play in between, you know, playing three over here. He’s just like a natural virtuoso blues musician or whatever. "

I didn't know where to put the new Damon Locks album on International Anthem. This is not jazz but spoken word/poetry although it is jazz in a way. Nevermind don't sleep on it, the first album of the year contestor has arrived. Poetry for our algorithmic times.

"I am late, yet time has lost all meaning"

"the networks create connections and monetize reactions"

"- meaninglessness, it's not concrete; it is ephemeral. at the same time, trackable and traceable"

https://intlanthem.bandcamp.com/track/click

New percussion trio album from Joe Chambers (82!), Chad Taylor, and Kevin Diehl -
https://eremiterecords.bandcamp.com/album/onilu

That first preview track is beguiling, it's in 13 but sometimes it's in 12 and I haven't yet worked out the cycle, or maybe I'm just not getting it.

I wrote about tenor saxophonist Don Byas in this week's BA newsletter. I found him to be a fascinating transitional figure who bridged the gap between the swing and bebop eras, and who left the US for Europe at the height of his success, never to return.

There's a 4 1/2 hour playlist of tracks from the Strata-East label up on streaming services today. It serves as a preview of a big digital reissue campaign covering almost their whole catalog, which will happen in April. Here's a Tidal link, because fuck Spotify.

https://tidal.com/browse/album/411629336?u

Also, my latest Stereogum column is up. I interviewed pianist Sullivan Fortner.

RIP Larry Appelbaum whom I first met at the University of Maryland radio Station WMUC where Larry was a jazz dj. He moved on to the Library of Congress where he found a previously unavailable Thelonious Monk tape (and got some acclaim for this) , programmed jazz movies and concerts for the Washington dc area public and did so much more there at the LOC. He also dj'd at WPFW for years (his show was called "The Sound of Surprise") and wrote for Jazz Times and others. He programmed concerts with Transparent Productions in DC for awhile too. He had a stroke some years back and did his best since that time. He frequently honored musicians and other artists on Facebook with posts, and also shared photos he had taken himself over the years with jazz musicians and jazz scholars. I knew him and will miss him.

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

That YouTube is Larry Appelbaum explaining finding the Monk w/ Coltrane tape and more at the LOc