I was introduced to the playing of Olaf Rupp by my Free Jazz Blog colleague Martin Schray. He described Rupp’s playing in a 2016 review, explaining that his “hallmark is that he plays the guitar in an upright position, reminiscent of Chinese pipa players. This way it’s easier to integrate flageolets, tremolos and arpeggios so as to create overt…
Beacon, NY is an old town, certainly by American standards. It was named after beacon fires that burned at the top of the nearby mountain to alert the Continental Army about British troop movement during the Revolutionary War. The town exudes history, from the beautiful Victorian buildings, to the ruins of an early 20th century casino and …
From: It’s OK to Like Free Jazz
Today we present the Collective’s top 10 albums of the year and invite you to vote in the annual New Ears Awards.
The contenders for the award were drawn from the lists below and can be found here. The collective also votes on the same list, but in a separate poll. The award winner for both polls will be announ…
Wolfgang Fuchs/Bernhardt Arndt/Hans Schneider: Fuchs – Arndt –
Schneider (FMP, 1984/2018) ****½
By
Martin Schray
Although Wolfgang Fuchs might not be the first name that comes to your mind
when you think of FMP, the saxophonist and clarinetist was a typical artist
of the famous Berlin free ja…
It’s hard to keep up with all of the music that (fortunately) keeps coming out, and one musician who seems to be both tireless and ever inspired is saxophonist Jon Irabagon. I was first introduced to his playing by Stef’s rview of the saxophonists’ Foxy and the non-stop blast from that album hasn’t slowed yet.
Jon Irabagon -Dr. Quixotic’s Tra…
I was between concerts at the Kongsberg Jazz Festival this past summer when I wandered into the cinema where Open Land was playing. From the opening moments, I was transfixed from the opening shots of the New York skyline across the Hudson River as the blue winter-light of the brittle upstate winter and the dark reds and browns of the city …
This trio of drummer Jeff Cosgrove’s, featuring saxophonist Scott Robinson (an true musical maverick who recently released an excellent homage to Sun Ra’s legendary Heliocentric Worlds recordings), and the fearless bassist Ken Filiano (the Brooklyn based musician seems to be everywhere the action is!), has released a wonderfully rich collabo…
Last year, Mar William’s released Volume 1 of An Ayler Xmas, this year, the saxophonist has followed up with Volume 2, which is another celebratory mash up of holiday music delivered in the style of Albert Ayler and with reference to his signature melodies.
Unlike the first volume that was recorded with his Ayler tribute group Witches and De…
Ken Vandermark’s restless musical imagination is well documented with theMomentum series, which began with his massive collection of improvised work from his residency at the Stone in NYC in January 2016, and continues this year with a double disc release of two composed works “Brüllt” and “Monster Roster.”
Momentum 2: Brüllt…
Thursday, November 1st
The Haus der Berliner Festspiele is a mid-century modern split-level architectural gem and it is more than a stones throw away from the typical environs for Berlin experimental jazz, like the scrappy Soweiso or Donau115, or even the slick Radial System V, host to the annual A’Larme Festival. But for a long weekend this mon…
The People Band (l-r): Paul Jolly, George Kahn, Terry Day, Mike Figgis, Charly Hart, Davey Payne.
Photo courtesy Fotoarchiv exploratorium berlin
Tucked away on an upper floor of a re-purposed chocolate factory in Berlin’s Kreutzberg neighborhood sits the Exploratorium. Hosting workshops and concerts with a focus on improvised music, the cente…
Uncompahgre is the sixth highest peak in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. The word is from the Ute language and means “dirty water”, in reference to the red spring water from the area. I don’t know if this was flowing through the minds of cornetist Kirk Knuffke and clarinetist Ben Goldberg when they got together and came up with these set of im…
