Category: Recordings
I don’t know what you all think, but it seems to me that a free jazz (of the fiery variety) holiday album is right on cue. I’m not in the mood for sweet, gentle, or traditional this year, there is just too much going on that is not sweet, gentle, or traditional, but I’m also not quite ready to forgo holiday cheer entirely. So, why not add a pri…
Everyone knows Dave Douglas, right? The prolific trumpeter was a member of the original Masada in the early 1990s and has amassed an astounding and diverse discography over the years. One of his latest is the brass heavy Little Giant Still Life. His partners on the recording are the The Westerlies, whom we last encountered when they were play…
Glorious Ravage is an ambitious multi-faceted undertaking by Bay Area bassist and composer Lisa Mezzacappa. The work is organized around women, who late 19th and early 20th century, transcended the stereotypical roles of the era and pursued their passions in science, travel, and more. On the recording, Mezzacappa works with a frighteningly t…
I suppose it’s a bit of a conflict of interest to write this review since I also wrote the liner notes; however, since I’ve decided to barrel ahead anyway, I am going to further transgress and paraphrase liberally from the notes I wrote for the album. When I started on them, I took the opportunity to do Q&A’s with the SLD trio’s pia…
Chet Doxas’ Rich in Symbols has just been placed into my guilty pleasures playlist – but it’s not one to feel guilty about at all, it’s just so rich and flavorful that there is no way it can be good for me.
Brooklyn based Doxas works often with trumpeter David Douglas (who has a guest turn) and plays saxophone and synthesizer – the latter …
I’ve long been a fan of drummer Tomas Fujiwara’s compositions, enjoying his music’s melodic tendencies and avant-garde leanings, on top of understated grooves.Triple Doublehas all of that and in multiples: two drummers (Fujiwara and Gerald Cleaver), two brass (Ralph Alessi on trumpet and Taylor Ho Bynum on cornet), and two guitarists (Mary Ha…
Projected on the wall of the gallery at the Haus Der Kunst in Munich for the FMP exhibition was an electric 1974 performance of a brawny young Peter Brotzmann on sax, a mischievous Hans Bennink on drums, and an intense Fred Van Hove on piano. This for some reason came to mind as I was listening to this incredible duo recording from a concer…
John Butcher, Damon Smith, Weasel Walter – Catastrophe of Minimalism (Balance Point Acoustics, 2017) ****½
Bassist Damon Smith writes in the notes for this release, which was taped live in Oakland, California in 2008, that he likes to let recordings age: “You are very sure about the music when you live with it for a few years before putting…
The 19 minutes of the first track off Six Situations, ‘The Diagonal of Personal Ecstasy’, is a journey through the joys of improvised music making. The core duo of bassist Damon Smith, and drummer Alvin Fielder, first played together in 2010 and their collaborative spirit remains strong through today, as evidenced by their recent duo releas…
A little while back, I wrote about a recording by the East Coast pianist and poet Eliot Cardinaux, whose surreal poetry mixed intriguingly with his adventurous music. Well, here is a West Coast response – Kyle Bruckmann’s Degradient Dear Everyone. Prose is spliced into and throughout composer, educator and woodwindist Bruckmann’s wide rangin…
A problem that I often feel I am running into when writing reviews is my flogging of a dead metaphor and over use of certain words like “texture” or “interplay”. So recently, in a ham-fisted attempt to expand my lexicon, I asked a musician how would you describe the compositions of drummer Kate Gentile … without a pause the answer…
Shelter, a new project from saxophonist Ken Vandermark, starts out on somewhat familiar ground – Nate Wooley’s trumpet and Vandermark’s sax hurtling a melody with an uptempo urgency. It all seems quite normal until they smack into the rhythm section, and the momentum is suddenly yanked in a different direction. An akimbo pulse takes precedence,…
