Tag: Free Jazz Blog
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,…
About two weeks ago I had an unexpected opportunity to see In Order to Survive perform at Shapeshifter Lab in Brooklyn. The concert was a celebration of bassist and band leader William Parker’s new double album just released on AUM Fidelity, featuring the formidable quartet of pianist Cooper-Moore, bassist and leader Parker, drummer Hamid Dra…
Poet and activist Amina Baraka, has just released, I believe, her first recording on the storied ESP-Disk label. Her album of spoken word and inside/outside jazz is a spot-on debut, drawing deeply on her life, culture, and politics. Baraka is the widow of writer, activist, and music critic, Amiri Baraka, mother of current Newark, NJ mayor Ras B…
Pianist and poet Elliot Cardinaux floats into this set of music and poetry quietly and when the first track ’Thicket’ ends on the phrase “There never were any Indians in Columbus’ America” you know something is happening, even if you don’t know exactly what it is. Though it took me a while to get to this album, when I finally dove in,…
I’ve had this new release from the David S. Ware Trio on heavy rotation for the past week. I do have a pile of other new records and a bunch of CDs sitting on my coffee table, plus several digital albums to contend with too, but they’re going to have to patiently wait their turn – this one is just too good to interrupt. Recorded at the Blue …
Something that has always fascinated me is the many ways instrumental music – without the help of lyrics – can be used to carry a message, to protest, or to advance a cause. A group of musicians out of the Bay Area in California have found their way by creating a record label which donates all proceeds to Planned Parenthood. Founders Vijay And…
