The Charles Tolliver Big Band The Iridium Jazz Club New York, NY October 17, 2009 Charles Tolliver leads a modernist 16 piece big band that pushes the envelope of contemporary orchestral jazz sounds. The Big Band played a four night stand at the Iridium Jazz Club and I was fortunate to catch the second set on Saturday night. The Iridium is situated in Midtown Manhattan, just a few blocks away from...
Alister Spence Trio: Alister Spence (pno/electronics), Joe Williamson (bs), Tony Buck (dms). Bevan, Morris, Lash and Buck: Tony Bevan (sop/ten/bs sax), Joe Morris (gtr), Dom Lash (bs), Tony Buck (dms). Driving home, Art Pepper was playing on the car stereo - "Fascinating Rhythm". It was so relaxing after what had gone before at the Cluny that it was difficult to reconcile the fact that the...
As Nat Hentoff notes in the original liner notes to this album, pianist Cecil Taylor had scant few chances to record or even perform live during his formative years in the late 1950’s and early ’60’s. So he had quite an opportunity in the mid ’60’s to record a few albums for Blue Note Records, including this influential LP where he improvises with Jimmy Lyons on alto saxophone,...
David S. Ware Live in Vilnius No Business 2009 The year 2009 could be a rather big year for tenor saxophonist and improvising composer David S. Ware, and that's saying a lot. After all, Ware has long been one of the most celebrated figures in free jazz, owing not only to his work with artists like pianist {{Cecil Taylor = 4823}} and percussionists {{Andrew Cyrille = 6044}} and {{Beaver Harris = 7440}},...
The in-house gag about this show was that we were ready to work at the BRT (a fictional state owned radio station from Brasil that resembles our TRT) simply because it never wanders off brasileira & exotica, albeit a few breathers of downtempo jazz from Cecil Taylor and Marc Copland. Play this on sunny afternoons.
The 36th edition of Follow The Sound will run from September 30 - October 4 in Antwerp. The international music festival will take place at deSingel and in the industrial workshop space of ScheldApen on the Scheldt River quay. As always the festival is focusing on improvisation within a wide range of genres, including free jazz styles, experimental rock and electronic music. Central to Follow The Sound...
Sunny Murray Trio The Vortex London, England September 1, 2009 Two nights in north London with free-jazz drum pioneer Sunny Murray's European Trio was a prospect to set the pulse racing. That expectancy was widely shared, it appeared, as there was standing room only even on the second evening. Murray first found a way to shift beyond his bebop roots to pit a shimmering rhythmic undertow against {{Cecil...
Aki Takase-Louis Sclavis - Yokohama (Phantom ) Al Jarreau - Hits (Rhino ) Al Jarreau - Al Jarreau Hits (Rhino ) Alain Mion - Some Soul Food (Indies Japan/Zoom ) Alex Band Welsh - One More Chance (United States Of Dist. (Uk) ) Alex Welsh - One More Chance (United States Of Distribution LTD. ) Alex Welsh - Oh, Baby! (United States Of Distribution LTD. ) Alex Welsh & His Band - Oh Baby! (United States...
Recorded live in concert at the Willisau Jazz Festival on August 30, 1979, The Long March documents another of drummer {{Max Roach = 10725}}'s historic duo collaborations with the leaders of the jazz avant-garde. This stellar date with tenor saxophonist {{Archie Shepp = 4266}} follows Streams of Consciousness (Piadrum, 1977), with pianist {{Abdullah Ibrahim = 7858}}, and Birth and Rebirth (Black Saint,...
German free-jazz pioneer Gunter Hampel with his Trio + Bass is headlining the Jazz Beyond Festival in Richmond on September 25. The event is being hosted by Richmond free-jazz unit New Loft and will also feature brianjonespercussionensemble and Chromatic Mysteries with Elliot Levin from Philadelphia. Hampel, a true multi-instrumentalist, explores the woodwind and percussion families equally: bass...
The Nu-Art Series , run by trumpeter, gallery owner and former arts administrator George Sams out of his Metropolitan Gallery downtown, is kicking off its fall 2009 season this month with two concerts featuring former St. Louisans who have earned international acclaim in the jazz world. The group Trio 3 , featuring saxophonist and former St. Louisan Oliver Lake ( pictured ), bassist Reggie Workman...
A mini-debate on the future of jazz has formed around Terry Teachout’s article for The Wall Street Journal . Here’s an excerpt: In 1987, Congress passed a joint resolution declaring jazz to be “a rare and valuable national treasure.” Nowadays the music of Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker and Miles Davis is taught in public schools, heard on TV commercials and...
Filed under: All That Jazz Cultural critic Terry Teachout recently wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal titled 'Can Jazz Be Saved?' It caused a stir among jazz musicians, critics, cognoscenti and fans. There's even Twitter campaign to prove Teachout wrong (use #jazzlives if you want to Tweet live). The thrust of the early part of the piece quotes jazz audience statistics collected by the National...
So my concert list was just about pop-rock-folk-reggae-country-bluegrass bands. Here's a list of jazz artists I have heard: 1. Ralph Towner 2. John Abercrombie (those two as a duo: my first jazz concert; JA also in various other formats) 3. Oregon (1984 was a Towner-intensive year!) 4. Miles Davis (twice, once with Scofield) 5. World Saxophone Quartet (several times) 6. David Murray (with WSQ, with...
Freedom, Rhythm and Sound - Revolutionary Jazz Cover Art 1960-1978 Compiled by Gilles Peterson & Stuart Baker (192 pages Hardcover Book) Soul Jazz Records Publishing, 2009-10-31 The momentum of the 1960s civil rights movement and the explosion of Rock music and the underground press in that decade impacted Jazz in amazing ways, both musically and culturally. The record sleeves of this era (roughly...
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