Today begins a long weekend of guitar related posts starting with a great set of solo recordings that range from the acoustic to the very electric.
Susan Alcorn – Soledad (Relative Pitch, 2015) ****
ByPaul Acquaro
The adjective that repeatedly comes to mind is ‘otherworldly’. Baltimore’s Susan Alcorn has a concept and approach to the pedal …
What draws me to clarinetist Ben Goldberg’s music – whether it’s his interpretations of Thelonious Monk, the rock oriented Unfold Ordinary Mindor other works – is his bending of the familiar, and how simple musical statements will intertwine and build into dramatic structures. The aforementioned work of Monk works well just by its nature, as do…
Guitarist Ava Mendoza has been toying with the phrase ‘Unnatural Ways’for a while now. Her 2012 duo release with percussionist Nick Tamburro was titled Quit Your Unnatural Ways, andher current working trio with bassist Tim Dahl and drummer Max Jaffe is called Unnatural Ways. On this album,Unnatural Ways, Mendozais accompanied by her previous Un…
A few weeks back when writing about a group from Hamburg, Germany called Piho Hupo, I confessed that I knew little of the free jazz scene in that lovely city. Well, the picture is filling in just a little bit more with Birgit Ulher (left channel) and Leonel Kaplan’s (right channel) aptly titled recording Stereo Trumpet.
Ulher is from Hambu…
A round up of some intriguing solo recordings that have come to our attention in recent months.
Vinny Golia – Solo (GoldLion Arts, 2015) ****
Get it whileyou can! This treat of a tape release from Gold Lion Arts is a scant run of 75 copies. Featuring the always excellent Vinny Golia on singing bowls and various woodwinds, Solo is 30 i…
Piho Hupo, is a quartet based in Hamburg, Germany – a beautiful city, that as far as I know, isn’t as known for avant-garde jazz as it is for the lovely Außenalster, the lively Reeperbahn, a renowned opera house, the early Beatles, and the sprawling Elbjazz festival. But, that’s as far as I knew, until bassist John Hughes informed me about a s…
Sitting at a bar stool in a crammed West Village club during Winter Jazz Fest this year, I knew I had a dilemma on my hands after only the first few minutes of Myra Melford’s appearance with her group Snowy Egret. The trouble, I reckoned, would be that I would want to write about the group’s upcoming release for the Free Jazz Blog, and while w…
The music of Boston’s Leap of Faith is both easy and difficult to describe. I suppose I could string together some words like ‘cathartic’, ‘intriguing’, ‘harrowing’ and phrases like ‘nightmarishly enthralling’ and ‘unexpectedly beautiful’ and call it a day, after all, Leap of Faith is a fascinating and utterly unique group and those words …
Soft Machine – Switzerland 1974 (Cuneiform, 2015) ****
I feel I owe a good deal of thanks to Soft Machine – it was many years ago now that Thirdblew my mind and led me circuitously to the tangentially relatedEl Skid,which just led me deeper and deeper. My collection is now well stocked with Soft Machine, various Soft Heap and Head projects, …
Though this isn’t Evan Parker’s album- which is obvious from the title – his work on it adds a thoroughly new dimension to the already excellent trio of pianist John Escreet, drummer Tyshawn Sorey and bassist John Hebert.
The opening bars of Part I, finds Escreet delivering a rousing and percussive introduction that is wonderfully bolster…
The Broken Trap Ensemble didn’t capture me right away. The first couple times, I just did not give it the concentrated listening it deserved. Though their music does not challenge the listener with harsh tones or calamitous cacophony, it requires holding onto snippets of ideas and fragmented motifs, which can be difficult to grab onto and follo…
The Sunshine Don’t Mind My Singingby guitarist Dom Minasi and woodwind player Blaise Siwula is an effortless conversation between musicians who have their positions and points of view and enjoy making them. A confidence exudes from their playing and a camaraderie really comes through in their interactions, all in all, it adds up to a deligh…
