Sun Ra, piano, organ, drum box, Crumar Mainman; Luqman Ali, drums. Be warned: Sun Ra is a prophet, and you mock or scoff at him at your peril. -John Litweiler, The Freedom Principle Chilly Jay Chill: We usually post more than one song, but we think this [.
..]]]> Sun Ra, piano, organ, drum box, Crumar Mainman; Luqman Ali, drums.
Be warned: Sun Ra is a prophet, and you mock or scoff at him at your peril. -John Litweiler, The Freedom Principle
Chilly Jay Chill: We usually post more than one song, but we think this track deserves your undivided attention. We often find ourselves tempted to collect a lot of great stuff without actually spending the time to, you know, listen to it.
But you ll want to give this at least a few spins pronto.
Prof. Drew Le Drew: This track leaves me almost speechless.
It s what? Minimalist breakbeat techno meets monster dub groove?
CJC: Pulp has a rather excellent song titled .
But truly, Ra is running millennial circles around them with his Disco 3000 joint.
DLD: And he s still about 50 years ahead of everybody else. In many ways, even today s most cutting-edge music hasn t caught up with this.
could ve copped most of his ideas off this track and still come back for seconds. It s what? Afro-glitch trance exotica?
CJC: You can hear a serious minimalist influence echoes of Terry Riley s in Ra s hypnotic organ drones but this is darker, more textured, laced with serious electronics. The rhythms are insanely forward-looking.
DLD: A lot of Ra nods to the past in fairly recognizable ways, but it s hard to hear the jazz antecedants in Cosmo-Aliens.
It s there in the melody, I guess, but the overall tone and instrumentation are so otherworldly. It s what? Space-rock psychotronica?
CJC: I wonder if there s some actual disco in the DNA of this track. Maybe Ra was inspired by some Giorgio and/or Kraftwerk and then took it to another dimension.
DLD: It wouldn t sound out of place over at .
It s what? Avant-rock dance-blogtastical?
CJC: Yes.
Love that site. It also harkens slightly to the recent compilation, which featured Originals from the Cosmic Era. Meaning Italian disco from the late 70s.
Of course this Ra track is far more cosmic.
DLD: Interestingly, Dance of the Cosmo-Aliens was recorded live in Italy around that time. So who knows.
CJC: But let s face it: Basically we re just offering possible sign posts and entry points to the music. Wildly pointing our fingers in various directions hoping that one will help folks connect with this.
DLD: Just listen to the track.
It s what? Eleven minutes of boop-bip jungle bop. It ll tell you all you need to know.
@ % ! $ * ? > ~ $
Waxophilic types may be interested to know that this album was somewhat recently reissued on high-grade vinyl, by Art Yard.
See for consumer possibilities. May be too late, though.
Re Crumar Mainman, who has on occasion been cited as an additional player on this disk (and on Media Dreams, which draws from the same concert): it is a synthesizer a seemingly very rare synth produced by the Crumar company.
Looking at , and other spots, it would appear possible that the instrument Ra used was in fact a Crumar Multiman, but we await further clarification in the comments, as possible.
While certain jazz histories present the music as a parade of individual geniuses gracing others with their brilliance, one of the most essential, and revolutionary, aspects of the music is its collective and collaborative nature. Whether it’s Duke Ellington’s Orchestra or Cecil Taylor playing solo, the spark of the music always comes out of some sense of community, an exchange of ideas and shared artistic exploration. For me, a successful duo outing can provide the most elemental example of this kind of interplay and dialogue.
After John Coltrane’s Interstellar Space with Rashied Ali, saxophone/drum duo records became almost de rigueur, but trumpet (or cornet) and drum duets have been far less common. (For the beginning of this post, I’ll be using trumpet and cornet interchangeably, but by the end I’ll get down to the real nitty gritty.) While I’m obviously biased, I actually think the trumpet is more suited to drum duets than the saxophone; the percussive quality of brass instruments creates a natural affinity with the drum kit.
And while saxophonists can keep playing almost forever, the physicality of the trumpet forces more space (you simply have to get the horn off your face every once in a while or your lips will fall off). This gives the drummers greater freedom, where the saxophonistic sheets of sound might lock them in.
Some of my favorite documents of this instrumental pairing include Don Cherry and Ed Blackwell’s and Dizzy Gillespie and Max Roach’s (the similarities between these two albums deserves its own post…nowhere is it more obvious Don and Ed were playing bebop, and Diz and Max were playing free…), along with the Bill Dixon and Tony Oxley Papyrus albums, and Lester Bowie and Phillip Wilson’s Duet.
And among contemporary projects, I ve been deeply impressed by the Chicago Underground Duo, with cornetist Rob Mazurek and drummer Chad Taylor.
So I was thrilled a couple of years ago when my friend, the excellent drummer Luther Gray, gave me a CD-R with Phillip Wilson and Olu Dara’s names scrawled across it; a long out of print LP called Esoteric on the HatHut label. I had never even heard of the recording before Luther gave it to me, but Wilson and Dara are two of my favorite musicians from the (now famously) neglected period of 70s jazz, and it quickly joined my short list of duo favorites.
It’s great example of the deeply historically informed yet totally go for broke spirit of that musical era. There are echoes of New Orleans in Wilson’s tight rudiments and Dara’s Armstrong rips, and clear references to African traditional music in the tricky polyrhythms and untempered horn blasts, but this is no polite NPR-friendly repertory jazz or world music. These guys are ripping it apart, having fun with it, making it their own.
Phillip Wilson was one of the great drummers, who died far too soon at age 50 in 1992. He’s probably best known in the jazz world for his work with Lester Bowie (who receives a dedication on Esoteric), along with some classic albums by Julius Hemphill, Anthony Braxton, and David Murray, among many others; he was also the original drummer in the Art Ensemble of Chicago, before he left town to tour with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. He’s one of the school of experimental jazz drummers with chops, who might create a ruckus by throwing a bag full of rattles to the floor while knocking over his kit, or might break into a ridiculous groove or tasty swing, but is open to all of it and makes incredible music whichever way he goes.
Before he became famous in the late 90s as a modern urban griot bluesman (and as father), Olu Dara was one of the baddest cornet players around. While he didn’t record as a leader until 1998’s In the World: From Natchez to New York, Dara made extraordinary contributions to records by Julius Hemphill, Oliver Lake, the David Murray Octet, and the Henry Threadgill Sextett. I’m something of a cornet proselytizer, and can go on at length about the subtle differences between it and the trumpet.
But to be brief, the basic difference is that the cornet is more timbrally flexible and more vocal, but less accurate and cutting than the trumpet. I think it’s telling that the cornet was most popular in pre-WWII and post 60s jazz, and fell out of favor in bebop and post-bop; the cornet tends to be used more in musics that prize timbral innovations over harmonic ones. Few players have squeezed more sounds out of their horns than Dara, as you hear to full effect on this record.
(On a side note, it’s interesting that between my three favorite cornet players of the 70s, Olu Dara, , and , only Bradford is still primarily a cornetist; Dara still plays some horn, but mostly plays guitar and sings, and Morris exclusively conducts. It’s a tough instrument!)
The three tracks I’ve pulled from Esoteric are Caul Call: the Eso, the March, and Ragtime, Elephant Bossa, and Lost and Brash.
Caul Call is the longest track, and covers almost everything I’ve been talking about: seamless stylistic diversity, improvisational give and take, and a palpable sense of fun and exploration. Elephant Bossa is a quickie, just proof that while trumpet jocks try to screech higher than the next guy, cornet players know it’s hipper to see how low you can go. And I love the title Lost and Brash ; you don’t know where you’re going, but you go there with confidence.
That’s the whole point right there.
Be sure to check out THB s upcoming disks, including , a duo recording with drummer Tomas Fujiwara on , and two projects on the new : by his sextet, and Anthony Braxton s . Bynum also maintains a generous, literate, and highly engaging blog, ; don t sleep on it.
Wed, 17 Jan 2007 20:16:10 +0000 BAG in Paris, Aries 1973 The AACM inspires musicians to band together to do what they do, because otherwise it wouldn t be done . And [..
.]]]> BAG in Paris, Aries 1973
Oliver Lake, alto and soprano sax, flute; Floyd LeFlore, trumpet; Joseph Bowie, trombone; Baikida Carroll, trumpet, bass; Charles Bobo Shaw, drums. Everyone also plays miscellaneous instruments.
The AACM inspires musicians to band together to do what they do, because otherwise it wouldn t be done . And it s not so much because of the music itself, but the idea . The idea: to pool our engeries to a common cause.
Muhal Richard Abrams, 1975
Common cause. Not exactly an American ideal these days. We mostly seem stuck in , but it wasn t always so.
The Abrams-led, Chicago-based AACM model of common cause was a bright beacon. In fact, it was so successful that it led to similar collectives sprouting in other cities including Detroit, Boston, and, most notably, St. Louis.
That s what the cats were doing in Chcago, and that blew me away and really inspired me. So it was from that trip [in 1967] that I came back and started my group and said, Oh! What am I waiting for?
Do it that s the key! It was such a simple thing to do. Oliver Lake, 1977
Lake did it, all right, starting up the Black Artists Group in his native St.
Louis. BAG became a cultural center that featured all aspects of the black arts movement dance, theatre, music, painting plus community outreach and education. Unfortunately, some key funding was withdrawn around 1972, right about the same time the first wave of BAG musicians heeded Lester (brother of Joseph) Bowie s call of Allons-y!
and made for Paris. The next generation of BAGers was too green to withstand the forces at work, and BAG ceased to be an active organziation.
But the BAG exiles made the most of their Parisian sojourn, and worked often.
This self-released recording features the leading lights of the St. Louis experimental scene playing before a receptive French audience. Something to Play On is drummer Shaw s tune, and he swings freely along throughout.
It s a fairly spacious track, with each member finding plenty of room in which to make a statement. Bowie s trombone is a key ingredient, offering some splendid counterpoint to the trumpets when not establishing his own melodic lines.
Lake s Re-Cre-A-Tion is, after it s title, both playful and continually in the process of coming into focus.
To our ears the more AACM-ish tune, it highlights Lake s lyricism and facility on flute, as well as the group s fearlessness in the face of empty space. There s something theatrical about this track too something out of , maybe. Note how the scrims of sonic scenery keep shifting, how the brass solos feel like they re divulging bits of narratives, earnest soliloquies against often absurdist backdrops.
Dig the chattering noises at the 7:30 mark and spoken interjections at the 11:00 juncture. This track requires some patience, but rewards the faithful audience.
For the complete story on the Black Artists Group, see Benjamin Looker s book on BAG: .
Looker s long article on BAG, a distillation of the book, can be , and also at (the latter link includes the source notes).
Bill Shoemaker in the January 2006 issue of Point of Departure. At around the same time, a symposium on BAG was held at Washington University in St.
Louis; the for that event holds some interesting history and photos.
Perhaps the most wonderful recent news, aside from Lake s cryptic [scroll down] regarding a CD release of this album (a note that looks to be about a year old), is out of St. Louis, courtesty the stellar, unflagging St.
Louis Jazz Notes , concerning BAG II:
Now some of the members of the original Black Artists Group, along with some new faces, have formed Black Arts Group (or BAG II for short). According to an email from bassist / composer / mbira player Zimbabwe Nkenya, the new organization s mission is to present to the community music, dance, theatre, visual and literary arts and foster wholistic health practices, welcoming and appealing to all age groups and multicultural audiences. BAG II is working to revive the creative efforts of and expose audiences to BAG s musical, artistic and cultural legacy.
BAG II has scheduled several events in St. Louis over the next few weeks, all to be held at the Scott Joplin House State Historic Site, 2658 Delmar Blvd in St. Louis.
The sidebar of St. Louis Jazz Notes alone offers a concise crash course in the rich jazz traditions of that city. Here s hoping BAG II stakes a claim of its own, and finds common cause with an appreciative audience.
AC, piano, harp; Charlie Haden, bass; Ben Riley, drums; plus: Nathan Kaproff, Lou Klass, William Henderson, Ronald Folsom, Leonard Malarsky, Gordon Marron, Janice Gower, Gerald Vinci, Sidney Sharp, James Getzoff and Bernard Kundell, violins; Myra Kestenbaum, Rollice Dale, Leonard Selic, David Schwartz, Samuel Boghosian and Marilyn Baker, violas; Jesse Ehrlich, Jerry Kessler, Jan Kelly, Anne Goodman, Edgar Lustgarten, Ray Kelley and Raphael Kramer, cellos.
We re deeply saddened by the unexpected passing of Alice Coltrane. She had recently returned after a long retirement with the solid and frequently impressive Translinear Light, was playing concerts, and was in the process of recording an ambitious and promising new work.
Hers was a renewed presence in the jazz world. She s gone all too soon.
We d been planning a post on Alice Coltrane s magnificent Lord of Lords album for some time.
It s sad to share these tracks under the circumstances, but they ll have to suffice as part of our tribute to a truly great jazz artist.
Coming from a musical family, Alice McLeod began studying classical music at age seven. She was also involved in the church and spent time in Paris studying with Bud Powell.
For an excellent account of her early career, . They detail her little-known work as a bebop pianist before she met John Coltrane, as well as her crucial contributions to her husband s late-period music.
That was an important phase of her career, but we want to focus on the magnificent and often misunderstood series of solo recordings Alice Coltrane made after her husband s death.
As we said in our earlier post about World Galaxy, she was often derided as the Yoko Ono of jazz. In other words, the widow of a legendary figure who had the temerity to pursue her own peculiar and powerful artistic vision.
Her excellent early albums like Ptah the El Daoud, A Monastic Trio, and especially Journey to Satchidananda found fresh ways to mesh modal jazz, gospel fervor, Eastern grooves and textures, and free sensibilities.
But it was her later work where she really went for broke. Here is David Toop s perceptive assessment of 1972 s Universal Consciousness:
The album clearly connects to other traditions - the organ trio, the soloists with strings - yet volleys them into outer space, ancient Egypt, the Ganges, the great beyond. The production is astounding, the quality of improvisation is riveting, the string arrangements are apocalyptic rather than saccharine, the balance of turbulence and calm a genuine dialectic that later mystic/exotic jazz copped out of pursuing.
Her lack of constraint was dimly regarded by adherents of 70s jazz and its masculine orthodoxies, yet Alice deserved better credit for her virtuosity, originality, and the sheer will power needed to realize her vision.
Her lack of constraint was exactly what caused critics and fellow musicians to roll their eyes. Dave Douglas has referred to the Crazy Experimental Freedom of 60s free jazz and while he s probably referring mainly to the aleatoric blowouts on ESP and BYG, the tag certainly fits Alice Coltrane s work.
On World Galaxy and Lord of Lords, her mash-up of string orchestras, Stravinsky, gospelized grooves, psychedelic organ, jazz interplay and much more is beyond bold and over-the-top.
And here s the important thing: Alice was never afraid to look foolish. Some of her choices like, say, letting her guru chant over her rendition of A Love Supreme, could make even her staunchest supporters blush.
But that was part of the vision, too. She was pushing herself - both musically and spiritually - as far as she could, trusting her wild muse. Many of today s artists are far too fucking tasteful, afraid to go out on a limb for fear of it snapping under them, and end up settling for work that s simply pedestrian.
It s that old saw: Good taste is the enemy of art.
Douglas has also suggested that today s jazz musicians have found ways to channel the worthwhile parts of yesterday s CEF and transform it into something more focused. That s an admirable goal.
But sometimes we wish that more of the brightest lights on the scene would go for the full-on, gonzo, undiluted, overreaching jazz that Alice Coltrane created. In these deeply conservative and crushingly consumerist times, we need art that offers new visions and radical possibilities, artists that dream larger than everyone says they should dare.
Toop is particularly insightful to note there s something feminine about Alice Coltrane s music and aesthetic that went against the grain of the deeply male jazz world of the 1970s.
Maybe that s one reason why it s taken her music so long to gain acceptance. Not that jazz critics and musicians at the time were necessarily sexist, but maybe they couldn t hear what was remarkable about her music because it implicitly challenged entrenched notions of jazz, how it should be structured, the mix of careful composition and naked spirituality, the dominant role of strings and other feminine instruments like the harp, etc. While jazz folks hemmed and hawed, it was critics like Toop and rock bands like Radiohead who first championed her music.
Interestingly, the closest modern parallel to Alice Coltrane s work isn t found in jazz but in the recent music of singer-songwriter and fellow harpist . Her latest album Ys unfurls five songs over fifty minutes, complex and winding poetic narratives that are scored for voice, harp, bass, and an orchestra scored by Van Dyke Parks. Newsom shares Coltrane s spirit - her towering ambition, cosmic lyricism, and virtuoso ability to realize unwieldy visions.
And there s something about the way she structures her songs that you don t find in the work of her male contemporaries. But where Lord of Lords was either laughed at or ignored, Ys has (rightfully) been topping Best of the Year lists. Which either says we ve come a long way, baby - or that 00s rock listeners are more open-minded than your average 70s jazz fan.
But ultimately great music is great music, period. So let s end this tribute-cum-manifesto with the spotlight where it belongs - on Alice Coltrane s music.
Coltrane described Lord of Lords as being like a meditation, and that transcendent energy ripples throughout the tunes.
Her version of an excerpt from Stravinsky s Firebird is almost hallucinatory, an untethered and incandescent mix of jazz organ, percussion, harp, and hypnotic strings. The tender reading of the traditional African-American spiritual Going Home is particularly poignant in the context of her recent death. It s an example of how her music remained rooted in core emotions even as it evoked a higher consciousness.
Then there s Coltrane s solo piano version of One for the Father, a song played live and dedicated to her husband, whose legacy she faithfully guarded and nourished in the years after his death. For all our talk of her ability to reach cosmic spaces by combining far-flung modes and instruments, let s not forget that Alice Coltrane was also a great pianist. This tune from Transfiguration is dramatic and emotionally direct.
An overwhelming performance. Although written for another, its mix of gospel, Messaien, and cascading jazz dynamics could not have been conjured by anyone else. It s a fitting epitaph.
Daniel King of the SF Chronicle sat down with Coltrane back in November, and wrote .
King also filed his interview with her as , including comments from Ornette Coleman and McCoy Tyner.
Durutti has , with Alice music, new and old.
Rod at links to some AC YouTube action, and hosts a classic mp3.
Carl Wilson has of relevant blog posts and other Internet notices.
Song with Orange has up, plus some new (to us) links, including a recent Wire interview and an NPR exchange with Tavis Smiley.
In lieu of flowers, the Coltrane family asks that you please send donations to the following charities:
The press release also notes that a public memorial service will be announced at a later date. Our heartfelt sympathies go out to Coltrane s extended family.
Memorial service details, via press release:
Saturday, January 27th, 2007 at 1pm (PST)
Also, the Big O blog out of Singapore has made a February 2006 AC concert .
Henry Threadgill, tenor sax, alto sax, flute; Fred Hopkins, bass; Steve McCall, drums.
It s an old story but bears repeating: The avant garde is intimately connected to the tradition and vice versa. This lesson has been replayed countless times, but rarely as spectacularly as Air s major label debut - Air Lore.
The trio offer up an album of Scott Joplin and Jelly Roll Morton covers, refracted through their own modern stylistic prism, along with a Threadgill original written in a similar mode.
Many jazz writers of the day were deaf to Air Lore s charms and achievements, but rock critic immediately recognized it as something special. He championed the album in the Village Voice, singling out the pleasure of hearing Henry Threadgill improvise over an explicit pulse.
He also highlighted one key facet of the music:
Demonstrating not only that Ragtime (Scott Joplin) and New Orleans (Jelly Roll Morton) are Great Art consonant with Contemporary Jazz, but also that they re Corny. And that both Great Art and Corn can be fun.
Fun - exactly.
And modern for exactly that reason. By Corny, Christgau partly means Obvious. Those familiar ragtime and nawlins rhythms, melodies, and changes - the ones that Threadgill and Co.
both embrace and subvert in equal measure. Note the way the band tears through Joplin s The Ragtime Dance, shifting gears on a dime, funkifying the beat and then breaking it apart, Threadgill breezing through some ferociously off-kilter solos.
But there s something deeper afoot here, too.
You can hear it in their version of Morton s Buddy Bolden s Blues - the tune spooked by the spirits of both Jelly Roll and legendary New Orleans trumpeter Buddy Bolden. We re not usually the biggest fans of the ol compare and contrast. But in this case it s illuminating to hear Air s version alongside the original - to hear the well of playfulness, spite, and sorrow the trio is drawing from.
Barely two and half minutes long, Jelly Roll s Buddy Bolden s Blues is fathomless. There s the stately rolling piano and the way it complements Morton s laconic delivery of such cryptic and haunted lines as I thought I heard Buddy Bolden say / You re nasty, you re dirty / Take it away. He lets the mystery build in the next verse: I thought I heard Buddy Bolden shout / Open up that window and let the bad air out.
Charles Buddy Bolden, the ghost at the heart of jazz, the cornetist of legend who supposedly birthed the music but was never recorded. His mighty sound sizzling in the minds of all who heard it. The progenitor behind King Oliver and Louis Armstrong.
Born in 1876, worked at Joseph s Shaving Parlor in New Orleans, played at Masonic Hall on Perdido and Rampart, at the Globe downtown on St Peter and Claude, and Jackson Hill. The music s Rimbaud who went mad in April 1907 while playing with Henry Allen s Brass Band. Thirty one years old.
Admitted to East Louisana State Hospital with dementia. Died there in 1931. Full of bad air.
You can hear his spirit both evoked and held at arm s length in Jelly Roll s voice. He wants no part of Buddy s madness, but can t help conjuring other ghosts as well, those from the Storyville scene: not so benign spirits who warn Gal, give me that money / I m gonna beat it out. And you believe they will.
The song is one of the great American touchstones and has inspired many thoughtful written reckonings over the years, most recently in , edited by Greil Marcus.
Air s version of the song is no less of a reckoning, a musical attempt to come to terms with its mysteries. In some ways it s a close cousin of Michael Ondaatje s visionary book , which mixes reportage, poetry, fiction, and history to try to conjure Buddy Bolden s ghost, to hear some echoes of what he might have been saying, what others might have thought they heard him say.
Air also use a variety of techniques and methods to work their way into the heart of the song - and the legacy of Buddy.
It s telling and heartrending how Air winds down the tune, letting the melody grow slower and fainter until the final sighing notes almost evaporate from the grooves. Ondaatje s novel ends with a similarly wary coda, as a broken Buddy recedes from view: Thirty one years old.
There are no prizes.
The Morton tune is currently available on for the Marcus-edited book.
Some time after shaking the roof off Van Gelder s place during the Ascension sessions, Tchicai blew back to his native Denmark with a head of steam and some seriously outsized notions of what a large group of musicians could accomplish. The Danes, not knowing what else to do, gave him a grant.
Cadentia Nova Danica made a couple of albums.
This is their second, and it s a mønster. Fulfilling the old and entirely accurate adage that geography is destiny, Afrodisiaca blends Euro big band archness, New York fire, and, picking up on Tchicai s Congolese roots, African rhythmic complexity and polyphonics into a soulful stew.
That mix may seem somewhat inevitable in theory, but the band s music still sounds singular.
It was seriously forward-looking a bold and idiosyncratic assemblage of fiery improv and nuanced composition that found new ways to disassemblie and reconfigure the large ensemble. Baffling at the time, today these tunes are a little less strange thanks to later, evolutionary fare such as Braxton s large group work from the Seventies. But CND mapped terrain that s still gone largely unexplored in jazz.
The wonderful Fordringsmontage highlights Tchicai s approach to free improv. In it we hear aspects of the AACM large group aesthetic, using some abstract framework to support some really supple playing. This was guitarist , and his fills offer some of the most refreshing playing here, foretelling Bourelly s work on Muhal Abrams big band outings.
The rare good song that seems longer that it really is, Fordringsmontage works so much into the first four minutes, especially, it s something of a surprise when you check the clock at the end.
Terrific examples of how Cadentia Nova Danica broke their compositions into unsuaully interlocking modules, Lakshimi and Heavenly Love On A Planet are tunes that alternately flow and contrast, build and jolt. It s fascinating how the guitar, trumpet, and flute sections in Lakshimi are orchestrated against the large ensemble and how they re all bound together into the same tune.
It s a mini-epic in six minutes.
Heavenly Love features two winding and growling solos set against an armada of percussion that starts out sparse and agile and then becomes increasingly dense. Again, the arrangement of the compositional connective tissue is extraordinary.
We could say it about almost everything we post here, but it s triply true in this case: Some hip label really needs to REISSUE this! Cadentia Nova Danica s moment has come.
See also dept.
:
CH, bass; Don Cherry, trumpet, percussion (on Out of Focus ); Hampton Hawes, piano (on Turnaround ). New Year s numerology: While De La Soul reminds us that three is the magic number, Tibetan mythology informs us that seven is the golden number. Seven is the digit most commonly used in mystical formulations [.
..]]]> CH, bass; Don Cherry, trumpet, percussion (on Out of Focus ); Hampton Hawes, piano (on Turnaround ).
New Year s numerology: While De La Soul reminds us that three is the magic number, Tibetan mythology informs us that seven is the golden number. Seven is the digit most commonly used in mystical formulations to achelmize ordinary materials into precious metal. Sounds auspicious to us.
So what better way to kick off 2007 than with two tracks from The Golden Number itself.
Recorded in 1976, this album was Haden s second installment of duets with celebrated musicians. Although it s his show, on first listen Haden tends to get upstaged by his partners.
So let s take a second to point out the obvious: Haden s immaculately tasteful, tuneful, and consistently surprising accompaniment throughout. He never relies on mere technique and sculpts alternately primal and complex runs in the service of the tunes. No matter how unusual, his choices always fit perfectly - as if they couldn t have happened any other way.
Out of Focus is a duet with Don Cherry, duo partner extraordinaire. A terrific, percussive start builds up to a heady space-rock vibe before Cherry switches to trumpet. His bright smears of brass take the song higher, as he kites notes above Haden s bass, which plays tether, keeping the whole enterprise grounded.
Turnaround offers something deeply perverse: an Ornette Colmean cover with piano and no horns. But Hawes swings the tune. Pretty, bluesy, gently rollicking.
An alternate take of this tune appears on the Hawes/Haden collaboration (as does the version above). On the alternate, Hawes takes more chances, offers more embellishment. This version is elegantly laconic.
And a fitting final statement: Hawes died of a stroke, at 48, less than a year after was made.
If it doesn t sound particularly out that s because it s not. After all these years our ears have caught up to Ornette s harmolodic inventions and they sound like what they always were - classic jazz, y all.
Before we start our look back at 2006, a moment of silence for the God(father) of Soul, Mr. Dynamite, The New Minister of the Super Heavy Funk, the Eighth Wonder of the World James Brown. James Brown s influence on jazz (especially on Miles and the fusions that followed) is incontestible, but the impact of his music [.
..]]]> Before we start our look back at 2006, a moment of silence for the God(father) of Soul, Mr.
Dynamite, The New Minister of the Super Heavy Funk, the Eighth Wonder of the World James Brown.
James Brown s influence on jazz (especially on Miles and the fusions that followed) is incontestible, but the impact of his music goes far beyond the many fertile genres spawned in his wake. Like Picasso reenvisioning the way we see the line, James Brown reshaped the way he hear and experience rhythm.
Music in the second half of the 20th century lives in his shadow. It s his world, we just dance in it.
With our focus on excavating overlooked gems of the past, not many folks will be turning to Dest:OUT for a capsule take on the year s crop of jazz releases.
( ). But we thought it might be interesting to review what readers opted to download most often from this site, a sort of democratic, listener-generated top ten.
Keeping in mind that we ve only been online since the early summer and that readership has grown over that time, we devised a complicated algorithm that takes into account these factors, plus the digits of Lee Morgan s birth date, and what we had for breakfast this morning (off-brand honey-nut Os, if you must know).
In this way the list below surveys the full spread of tunes offered, resulting in our Top 10 Greatest and Most-Downloaded Destination:OUT Hits of 2006 as Devised by Complicated Algorithm !
Oliv in the top spot is something of a surprise. The reason is .
Singaporeans love them some British jazz.
If you add up , he comes out on top. It was a triumphant year for Mr.
Coleman, with a tremendous round of concerts and a resoundingly praised new disc. He and Mr. Rollins stand as the two titans of the saxophone; they are untouchable.
Let us praise, celebrate, toast, and best-seller-ize these famous men while they still walk amongst us.
And here s one rescued from the discard pile, something that didn t see so much action but that we feel deserves a second shot. Please revisit:
Have a happy oh!
oh! seven!
We here at Dest:OUT sincerely hope you and yours are enjoying a wonderful, safe, and prosperous holiday season.
We d been debating whether to mark the occasion with a special post - free jazz Christmas carols? - when we ran across this album.
If you re looking for holiday cheer and goodwill to men on Earth then you ll want to find something else to download.
However, if you re sick to death of syrupy holiday tunes, forced-march good cheer, and your insufferable family have we got the soundtrack for you!
Brotzmann and Einheit s Merry Christmas has got to be the most noxious holiday music ever waxed. They work hard to redefine ugly - not as something aberrantly beautiful but as something truly pestilent and corrosive to the soul.
When you combine Einheit s tenure in Einsturzende Neubaten with Brotzmann s noise lineage, it s not surprising what you get music that expertly mixes the sickliest wheezes of free improv with the grinding gears of toxic industrial circa the early 80s. Ho ho ho.
The title track sounds like, uh, Santa Claus getting plugged with a revolver for B E while the reindeer aimlessly stumble around the rooftop s slushy snow high on dopamine.
Happy holidays! Nizzary - which evokes a Snooped-up Nazarene to one of us here - is reminiscent of a shortwave radio tuned to static while Derek Bailey sticks himself with a large tuning fork and bleeds little drops of feedback. Mazel Tov!
May all your eggs be noggy, and your Christmases, white (noisy).
Wed, 20 Dec 2006 05:53:41 +0000 Enrico Rava, Manfred Schoof, and Kenny Wheeler, trumpet; Günter Christmann, Albert Mangelsdorff, and Paul Rutherford, trombone; Peter Brotzmann, Anthony Braxton, Gerd Dudek, Evan Parker, and Michel Pilz, reeds; Alexander von Schlippenbach, piano; Peter Kowald, bass, tuba; Buschi Niebergall, bass; Paul Lovens, percussion.
Pearls finds the Globe Unity Orchestra at the peak of their star-studded, internationalist phase.
Take a moment to linger over the ridiculous line-up that Schlippenbach assembled for this edition of the orchestra. I mean, Braxton, Brotzmann, and Parker - and that s just half the reed section!
Press release-cum-manifesto from GUO s first U.
S. appearance: The compositions are demanding and the fluidity with which they are performed, weaving in and out of sophisticated free jazz improvisations, requires an unusual degree of skill and sensitivity. They are eclectic, deploying everything from 12-tone structure to Jelly Roll Morton.
A quick history: The group was formed in 1966 when Schlippenbach received a grant from the Berlin Jazz Festival and combined two smaller ensembles that included Peter Kowald, Peter Brotzmann, and future Can drummer Jaki Liebezeit. Not a bad start. The orchestra was largely a communal effort in the early years with many voices contributing.
In time, Alex Schlippenbach become the bedrock of the group, overseeing it through various phases - from total free improv, to pop art happenings involving 25 accordionists, to more traditionally and compositionally grounded works.
Tinted historical color for those (like us) too young to remember: 1966 was a time when universal love, religious ectasy, political awareness, and free jazz supposedly went hand in hand: a black fist clasped with a white one, a psalm to a chant, a split-tone to an overtone. Coltrane s 1965 Ascension was a turning point 11 musicians united only by sincerity and a triad, alternating frenzied ensembles with frenzied solos.
It was more a manifesto than an experiment. -Gary Giddins
A decade later: Globe Unity was birthed by the radical idealism of the 1960s but the music had morphed into something even more interesting by the mid 1970s. Pearls hopscotches its way across the lines that supposedly separate composition and improv, rigor and play, innovation and tradition.
Although the orchesra is famed for its full-band blowouts (see available from Atavistic s Unheard Music Series), we ve selected some more condensed and concise gems.
Kunstmusik 2 is a marvellous circus of wheezes, feints, headlong solos, and rambling asides that manages to hold together and remain fascinating throughout. Though a full band effort, the whole crew is markedly adept at using space, depsite the number of instruments.
Compare with Breuker s , another Eurosemble that formed at around the same time. Where the Kollektief acts like a finely tuned machine (if perhaps tuned by a ), calibrated and engineered to hum along no matter the speed or direction, the GUO of Kunstmusik is that machine s parts spread out on a table for de-greasing.
The Onliest - The Loneliest is where the leader gets some.
It s a showcase for Schlippenbach, who really cuts loose, something like Cecil Taylor going barrelhouse. There are also shades of Monk in the falling-down-stairs rhythm and pacing. In fact, the album closes with a beautiful and mostly straight rendition of Ruby, My Dear.
Given the company, it s a bit like scanning and finding rising out of in the murk. But it shows that the whole outfit is as unafraid to reveal their influences as they are to shred them.
RC, trumpet; Mike Osborne, alto sax; Jean-Francois Jenny-Clarke, bass; Selwyn Lissack, drums.
It s always satisfying and not a little surprising when one of the grails of avant jazz turns out, when finally found, to deliver the goods. It s as if, for one brief, blazing moment, one s faith is restored, and justified (if not one s dorkiness). This quartet session has been canonized by none other than ecstatic noise conoisseur .
Moore s originally appeared in 1995 in Grand Royal magazine (issue #2, with Lee Scratch Perry on the cover), and noted the following about his number five selection:
Issued in the UK only in 1970. Ric was an interesting white cat who came to the U.S.
to blow some free e-motion with NYC loft dwellers. He s most well known for his amazing playing on the great Noah Howard s first ESP-Disk release (ESP 1031). The picture of Ric on the Noah Howard LP shows a man with race-car shades and a cool haircut playing his horn while a ciggie burns nonchalantly from his relaxed grip.
A very hip dude. And very FREE. His only solo recording is this Fontana LP which he recorded while cruising through Europe.
He connected with South African drummer Selwyn Lissack (whatever happened to ) and the UK s famous avant-altoist Mike Osborne and bassist J.F. Jenny Clark (student of 20th century compositionists Lucian Berio and Karlheinz Stockhausen) to create this exceptional and complex masterpiece.
Exploring some kind of Anglo-Franco-Africano deep soul axis, this group plays beautifully together, mining a free-bop vein that s both instantly familiar (if you ve heard any ESPs, say) and utterly singular. Not totally dissimilar in tone to Jimmy Lyons Other Afternoons either.
Aphrodite is a corker.
Lissack opens the track with a calvacade of rhythm and continues to thrash away throughout. Jenny-Clarke alternately sprints and strolls, laying down a crabwise groove. Colbeck sprays, but not carelessly so, and Osborne provides one stunning statement after another.
The title track begins with a bass solo that sets up the dramatic entrance of the horns. As the song kicks into gear, the band slides slightly out of synch. Purposefully wobbly.
The horns unfurl a series of long tones like they re trying to regain their bearings. The piece builds to a ferocious crescendo where the number of horns seems to have suddenly doubled. It s a carefully textured cacophony - or maybe a densely vocal colloquy.
A visceral rush, in any case.
There are tantalizing clues that this record will soon see the light of day (so to speak) on CD. One can be found .
The complete Colbeck discography, incidentally, is .
Regarding Moore s note about Lissack, he is currently experiencing a reemergence, spurred by the DMG/ARC reissue of his / Facets of the Universe, comprehensively by Clifford Allen. Lissack is pretty much the last man standing from this quartet.
Their sun is no longer coming up, but we can still don our race-car shades and bow to the East in respect, admiration, and love. Keep the faith.
My old joke is that saxophonists get all the girls, trumpeters make all the money, and trombonists develop an interior life.
-Bob Brookmeyer
So. Solo trombone? Even though these tracks are exactly as advertised, the music is surprisingly full, satisfying, and even fun.
Gary Giddins has dubbed it a tour de force, where Lewis accomodates each improvisational style with a different tone.
A mere twenty-four years old when he cut this, the trombone prodigy was nevertheless throwing down a gauntlet. Or throwing down, anyway.
If his work with Braxton from earlier in 1976 hadn t already done the trick ( ), here Lewis proves that he s one of the instrument s true masters. Among other things, The Solo Trombone Record is one of the great - and underrated - solo recitals in jazz.
Phenomenology highlights some R B riffing, great rhythmic vamps that build to a point where Lewis blurts and splatters brass from the speakers, zig-zagging helium tones.
This piece rocks; when he reaches for the plunger halfway through, it s as if he s fitting the horn with a flange.
Lewis hushed, lovely take on Lush Life reveals a wisdom and weariness beyond his years, and calls to mind Coltrane s great performance of the ballad from some twenty years before. It s a fairly straight rendition, and highlights the trombonist s wonderful way with melody, as well as his swinging sense of time.
Each tune on the album has its own sound. The centerpiece is the long first track, Toneburst, a twenty-minute song with three overdubbed trombones interacting with each other - not to be missed. If you like the tracks above, you ll dig the rest: copies of the album may be available at .
Lewis later received a MacArthur genius grant for his work as a composer, improviser, and pioneer in the use of electronics in music. His standout work to date, Homage to Charles Parker, shows off a canny and haunting combination of electronic atmospheres (a la Brian Eno) and jazz improv. But the magic on the tracks above comes strictly outta the mouthpiece.
D:O saw him perform a duet several years back with Muhal Richard Abrams and we were totally poleaxed. Lewis played trombone and pulled out all the stops. He seemed to have an endless bag of tricks, including deep resonate tones, dog-whistle squeaks, talking wah-wah vibrations, and much more.
His architectonic soloing was a marvel but the pleasures were far from intellectual. The spit hitting the floor seemed to have musical properties. Lewis played the entire show with a fire in his belly, like Dolphy with a plunger.
To close, here is a long Lewis quote drawn from an interview conducted by guitarist Jeff Parker, published in BOMB in 05, and reposted at . It touches on a number of Lewis themes, and ends with him receiving something of a comeuppance:
I was 19 years old when I met the people in the AACM. It was just dumb luck that I literally stumbled upon Muhal, Pete Cosey, people like that.
I was walking on 87th and Bennett and I saw a band rehearsing in this child center, I poked my head in, and that was how I met them. They had their Monday night band, and then after the initial period of Who is this guy? they let me play.
It seemed that the AACM was a place where if you didnt have a clue, you were encouraged to develop one. If you had an idea, no matter how half-baked it was, they would try to realize it, and they would sort of demand that you create your own concepts, your own compositions. They had their Saturday classes, and people were being encouraged to compose.
They never discussed improvisation; the only classes were in composition. So to bring this whole thing full circle, this whole business of my approaching things compositionally came from the AACM, because it was assumed that you were there because you wanted to be a composer, and by being a composer you were manifesting a kind of alternative model of what African-American creativity would be about. People like Fred Anderson, Lester Lashley and Roscoe were constantly questioning you about what you were trying to do.
I remember riding in a van with Braxton, and he turns to me and says, George, what is your music like? So I gave him what I thought was a pretty cool answer, and he said, you know, George, that kind of sounds like bullshit to me. (laughter) I mean, he was right, you know?
PS, soprano sax, percussion; Sedatrius Brown, vocals, percussion; Joe Bonner, piano, flute, percussion; Arthur Webb, flute; Kylo Kylo, tamboura; Calvin Hill, Cecil McBee, and Stanley Clarke, bass; Kenneth Nash and Marvin Peterson, percussion; Lawrence Killian, congas; Jimmy Hopps, drums, percussion; Norman Connors, drums.
Many people cite Pharoah Sanders as his artistic zenith and the primo entry point to his solo work. And for good reasons.
Despite its thirty-minute run time, the piece was an actual FM radio hit in its day. It s got a soulful vamp and loping groove that run throughout the piece, a catchy chant that surfaces at key intervals, and even a scorching noise section. In other words, plenty of hooks.
It remains an impressive piece, but something about the simplicity of the composition and lack of surprise in its execution leaves us a little underwhelmed.
The better introduction to Sanders may be Village of the Pharoahs. It s a practically a cliche in free jazz circles to prize the rare track over the better known composition, but Village gets us going in a way that The Creator simply doesn t.
Unlike some of Sanders work ( Creator included) that hits a solid groove and then adds or subtracts chants and musical textures in a musical equation that can produce diminishing returns, Village keeps on giving.
It s simply one of his funkiest, freakiest, and most fun efforts, from the get-go soundling like the coolest Bond theme that never was. Constantly churning, constantly in motion, the song s multitude of basses ensure the rhythms keep shifting and sliding, while Sanders horn cuts through the roil like a knife through sand.
Highlights include a skittering and meaty piano contribution from Bonner; some metal-on-metal percussion that rattles the chassis just past the four-minute mark; waves of tamboura that anoint the whole band about halfway through; chants that blend beautifully with the rest of the sounds, rather than drawing attention to themselves as annoying distractions.
Slated to appear on the semi-mythical , the song is currently available on expensive Japanese import, and appears to be , too.
DJ alert: this song segues beautifully into Drop It Like It s Hot by Pharell and Snoop.
Don t change the dizzle, just turn it up a little. You can thank us later.
DP, alto sax; Mongezi Feza, trumpet; Harry Miller, bass; Louis Moholo, drums.
Dig it: The indestructible beat of Soweto. Jazz stylee.
Dudu Pukwana.
Alto sax prodigy who won first prize in Johannesburg Jazz Festival to launch his career. Joined Chris McGregor s interracial Blue Notes ensemble. Went into exile in the mid 1960s and made the swinging London scene with the monumental .
And also played with everyone from fearless improvisers Misha Mengelberg and Han Bennink to the dusted folk of The Incredible String Band.
Here he leads his Spear band at the pinnacle of their powers, featuring the indefatigable Mongezi Feza. It s a terrific mix of unbridled (let s not say free) jazz and African sensibilities.
The group churns out massive riffs, chock full of buoyant rhythms and joyful shouts. It s tumultuous in the way of the best rock or funk.
You can hear its glorious and uproarious echoes in the South African Mbaqanga music championed by Paul Simon and many, many others in the 1980s.
There are also hints of township Jive and Highlife. But those are just reference points because the sound of In the Townships maps its own territory - somwhere east of Motown, south of your hips, and around the corner from the best party you ve ever been to.
Dudu unleashes a massive tone, laying down wide swathes of buzzing sound instead of worrying about subtlety.
The nuance here is found in the players interactions and abandon, not in the individual notes or phrases. For more details and better musicology, check out s
Even though this comes from well-loved vinyl (anyone out there care to share a better version?), the sheer joy and lasting rhythmic pleasure of the music comes through loud and clear.
Enjoy.
Wed, 06 Dec 2006 16:20:48 +0000 A hearty hello to readers finding their way from the recent New York Times article on jazz and blogs. Come in and take a look around.
We generally add new material twice a week, and the music is available for a limited time before we pull the links. Requests are welcome, either via the comments [..
.]]]> A hearty hello to readers finding their way from the recent on jazz and blogs. Come in and take a look around.
We generally add new material twice a week, and the music is available for a limited time before we pull the links. Requests are welcome, either via the comments or email.
If you re curious about the Marion Brown and Muhal Richard Abrams posts cited by Nate Chinen, we have reinstated those tunes for this week only, and .
Our Beginner s Guide to Free Jazz can be found . It features a section on common misconceptions about the music, and some terrific and listener-friendly mp3s of classic tracks. We ve also reinstated the music for this week only.
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