Tag: Free Jazz Blog
ByPaul Acquaro
Not so long ago, I had the pleasure of seeing a gig that paired up saxophonist Tony Malaby, drummer Gerald Cleaver, and bassist Ingebrit Haker-Flaten at the tin foil lined JACK Arts in Brooklyn. The music from the trio was just cooking. There was a point in the groups playng when there was no longer a group, but a THING. To start th…
Afterimage, recently released on Driff Records, was recorded live at Constellation in Chicago and follows in the footsteps oflast year’sstudio recordingCircuitous. As you may already know, besides the Boston based group leader pianist Pandelis Karayorgis, the group is comprised mainly of Chicago based players* – and benefits wonderfully from …
Reedman Jorrit Dijkstra: New Crosscurrents is a sextet that seamlessly meshes a classic jazz sound, descendent of the Tristano school, with a healthy helping of full on ensemble free-playing on their download only Live Bimhaus Amsterdamfrom Driff records. The group is comprised of Dijkstra on alto saxophone, David Kweksilber on tenor and alto …
Dálava is an ambitious – and it seems – very personal project by husband and wife team guitarist Aram Bajakian and vocalist Julia Ulehla. It’s a song cycle set to fragments and stanzas of poetry and verse recorded by Ulehla’s great-grandfather Vladimir Úlehla in eastern Europe at the start of the 20th century. While the poems are set to music…
The Winter Jazz Festival hit NYC last weekend. It was a crazy scene – sold out shows, SRO venues – but there was a lot of great music. One show that really stood out was Nate Wooley and Ken Vandermark’s duo set. Their concept was modeled after the combo of trumpeter Bobby Bradford and saxophonist and clarinetist John Carter, who were based out …
Ah, memories … I recall downloading Lawnmower’s first album, West, from eMusic at Stef’s enthusiastic recommendation. Then, I remember falling for it, becoming enthralled by the two guitars spinning ambient textures, Luthar Grey’s understated drums and Jim Hobb’s earthy saxophone. I also had the luck to catch a performance at the a sweltering…
Saxophonist John Dikeman is the lungs behind the high powered Amsterdam based group Cactus Truck. Originally from Wyoming, he traversed the country, stopped by Chicago and NYC, studied in Michigan and Vermont, lived and performed in Egypt, traveled through Europe and now has settled in recent years in Holland. If you know Cactus Truck, you may…
Side A’sIn the Abstractis the follow up to 2012’s wonderfulIn The Margins.The interaction between Ken Vandermark’s reed work, Håvard Wilk’s sympathetic piano playing, and Chad Taylor’s impeccable drumming pushes the somewhat traditional, but wholly original, trio into exciting and new musical territories.
The opening track, ‘Cadeau (for Man…
Two LPs and a 7″ – if you cannot get enough of the duo of reed player Ken Vandermark and drummer Paal Nilssen-Love on this album, you’re insatiable – and that’s just what we want. In fact, if we weren’t just a little … umm … obsessed with the thrill that we get from music that skirts the edges, from the tightrope of free improv to the more …
So another year and another 1500 albums considered for review (and that’s just the ones we actually added to the list!). Taking a quick look back: this year Julian, Matthew, Chris, Ed, Antonio, Stefan, Josh, and Hugo joined the review team and we recently welcomed Eyal and Alfonso – you’ll be seeing more of them soon. 2014 also saw Martin Schray b…
One may think, from titles of the tracks on saxophonist Matt Nelson’s solo recording Lower Bottomsthat he’s a bit a jaded …. ‘Sunk Cost’, ‘Sworn Enemies’, ‘Motor Mouth’ and ‘To Believe in What’ all seem a bit, well, down. However, good to know that Nelson seems to be a master of subterfuge – not only are the tracks teeming with lifeblood but …
Wayne Horvitz and The Royal Room Collective Music Ensemble – At the Reception (Songlines, 2014) ****½
On his Royal Room Collective Music Ensemble recording “At the Reception” – keyboardist, composer and conductor Wayne Horvitz leads a big band through a set of his compositions that involve a great deal of improvisation and are highly en…
