Some days just call for a little more muscular sounds and others something more delicate. Fortunately free-jazz and experimental music is so wonderfully ill-defined that you can find something that fits both your mood and nice tolerance level without problem – often within the same album. Here are two bands from New York City that make a lot of sou…
Eli Wallace – Solos/Duo (Eschatology, 2020) ****Brooklyn based pianist Eli Wallace has been developing a dynamic approach to his instrument, running a spectrum from minimalist sounds to maximum energy. A while back I reviewed two recordings featuring Wallace from when he was transitioning from the west coast. Since then, he has released several exc…
Algo en un Espacio Vacio, or ‘something in an empty space’, is right on. There is something that pianist Paula Shocron and drummer Pablo Diaz, musicians and physical movement teachers from Buenos Aires know about how to fill a space and on Algo en un Espacio Vacio they use light brushstrokes when applying their magic. Their medium – piano and drums…
Chick Corea, Skopje Jazz Festival 2009 ©Ziga KoritnikWe were surprised to hear about pianist and composer Chick Corea’s passing this week from a rare and only recently detected form of cancer. Over the past few months, throughout the various lockdowns, it seems as if Corea was producing online videos, conducting master classes, and keeping busy.Wh…
, Tom Burris, and Nick OstrumFollowing Lee Rice Epstein’s review of the new William Parker biography, we thought it would make a nice pairing with a review of Parker’s new 10 CD setMigration of Silence Into and Out Of the Tone World out on Centering and AUM Fidelity. Needless to say, it was a daunting task and even as we spread it out among three o…
In the blurb on Bandcamp about Eris 136199: Peculiar Velocities the word ‘glitchy’ is used to describe the work of the trio of guitarists Han-earl Park and Nick Didkovsky with saxophonist Catherine Sikora. It is an apt word, as Park has an approach that is as much electronic impulses as it is human touch. Didkovsky too is a musician with a deep…
https://stream.catalyticsound.com/During our conversation this summer, player, composer, organizer, and Catalytic Sound co-founder, Ken Vandermark, who at the time was in the thick of planning the Catalytic Sound Festival, dropped some hints of a in-development streaming service. At the time it was an intriguing aside, but now the service is live. …
No Gravity is a collaboration between Lisbon based drummer João Lencastre, RED Trio pianist Rodrigo Pinheiro, and bassist João Hasselberg. The group spins shimmery web of electro-acoustic sound that at times seems impossibly delicate and other times deadly effective.The opening track, ‘First Encounter’, begins with Pinheiro’s gently dripping note…
Tumbling into the rabbit hole of Soft Machine began with Third. It took me a long time to understand how it all came together – from the group’s early psychedelic days to the various mutant offspring that began already in the late 70’s with Soft Head and Soft Heap, and then later with Soft Mountain, Soft Bounds, and then Soft Works, and finally Sof…
Photo by Susanne BaltesWe asked the writers at the Free Jazz Blog to share their thoughts on this past year. Lee Rice Epstein posed the two questions “what will I remember when I look back at this year” and “what was listening like this year.” Considering the unusualness of the past year, we added a catch-all “anything else” to the list and then ga…
Ivo Perelman: A Musical Storyteller, tells the story of the Brazilian saxophonist from his formative years as a young musician moving to New York in the early 1990s, after a dissatisfying introduction to being a working musician in Los Angeles, to present day. It begins with the restless artist telling this story and how his own musical way began u…
Greetings,No doubt, there is a lot to be concerned about this year; however, 2020 has also been quite a year for recorded music.Let us focus on the positive and take a time out from the everyday to enjoy the nearly impossible task of ranking the “best of” 2020. If you have ever made one of these lists you know how difficult it is and how it is…
