Yoshiko Chuma’s School of Hard Knocks
and Bruce Lee Gallanter
The motto of the Vision Festival is simply “For a Just Future”. A timeless mission, and in our current political state of mendacity, words more prescient than ever. Yoshiko Chuma’s School of Hard Knocks’ debut performance of “Dead End, Hey! Women” was a timely and kaleidoscopi…
Opening Invocation: Patricia Nicholson, William Parker, Hamid Drake
Here is plan: I’m attending as much as the 22nd annual Vision Festival as I can this year. In past years I have attended one or two nights, making tough choices on which night to attend. This time around, caution is thrown to the wind and the deciding factor will be just …
I’ve always enjoyed guitarist Bill Frisell’s duo work. His playing is always supportive, incisive, delicate, and persuasive, really everything a partner should be. Some collaborations that come to mind includehis 1998 meet up with pianist Fred Hersch (Songs We Know), a 2006 rendezvous with Jack DeJohnette(The Elephant Sleeps but Still Remember…
Shapeshifter Lab, tucked away in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn, is an impressive 4,200 square foot venue. The stage area alone is the size of most venues catering to experimental music. The area is gentrifying quickly – in the few years I’ve been attending more and more bars and coffee shops have been opening up and I am pretty sure there was…
The core of the group Dálava is the husband and wife team of vocalist Julia Úlehlaand guitarist Aram Bajakian. They released the first Dálava albumin 2014 and like The Book of Transfigurations,it is an exploration ofMoravian folk songs collected by Úlehla’s great-grandfather,sung in Czech, and set to the more contemporary downtown NYC…
Drummer Devin Gray’s quartet with guitarists Ryan Ferrier and Jonathan Goldberger, and bassist Chris Tordini is a potent post-rock explosion – at least that how it begins.
The two guitarists twist distorted sounds around like they are sculpting with sheet metal. Legato melodies are stretched over the sharp angles and effect laden structu…
Ivo Perelman, Photo by Susanne Baltes
It’s a rainy Saturday here in New Jersey and I finally have a chance to sit down and think about last Sunday’s release show for saxophonist Ivo Perelman’s and pianist Matthew Shipp’s latest set of releases on Leo Records,The Art of Perelman & Shipp. I’ve cued up Volume 3, Pandora, which pairs Per…
Cooper-Moore, at the Stone in2013. Photo by Peter Gannushkin
In anticipation of the 22nd Vision Festival, which takes place May 28th to June 3rd in New York City’s West Village, this year’s lifetime achievement awardee, Cooper-Moore, took some time to answer a few questions about his work, the award, and the challenges that artists face.
Coo…
Filosofer – landet er gitt oss (Nakama Records, 2016) ***½
‘Planet earth is about to be recycled … your only choice to survive is to leave with us,’ so says the omnipotent voice that begins ‘vi er universitet’. A loopish sequence of plucked strings follows, sounds rise and fall, explosions, synthetic drum beats, and waves of electronic nois…
BassistEivind Opsvik, originally from Norway but living in Brooklyn for a number of years, has been slowly releasing a series of albums with the title ‘Overseas’. Now on volume V, the group refines the more rock oriented sound that emerged on Vol IV, this time with a distinctive New Wave/No Wave intent.
So, no better place to do this th…
Illegal Crowns is an unusual new formation for some well known collaborators – cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum, drummer Tomas Fujiwara, and guitarist Mary Halvorson already work together in a number of combinations, but by adding French pianist Benoît Delbecq into the mix, an entirely new dimensions seem to open up.
On the opener, ‘Colle …
An homage of sorts … in November 1961, John Coltrane played at the Granada Theatre in Walthamstow, North East London, on A Jazz at the Philharmonic tour. A young Evan Parker was in the audience that night, and the event obviously left an indelible impression. 55 years later, Parker returned to the scene of the ‘crime’ (a cinema located at186 …
