Tag: Free Jazz Blog
By Stef GijsselsIn the fourteen years of our existence, we’ve reviewed only 15 trumpet-guitar albums. Obviously more albums have been released, but the format is clearly not very common. We’re updating you with three new albums.Tin/Bag – Evening Hawks (Big Ego, 2021) ****Of those 15 albums, three are by the duo of Kris Tiner and Mike Baggetta. We’r…
We took the occasion of Sammy Stein’s review of Ivo Perelman and Nate Wooley’s Polarity on the new Burning Ambulances record label to reach out to label founder Phil Freeman with some questions. Paul Acquaro: Burning Ambulance, the web site, contains a wealth of your writing
and podcasts about music. This seems like a good amount of wor…
Hey, does anyone have a Blu ray player I can use? This slim, attractive box set from saxophonist Ivo Perelman and pianist Matthew Shipp is, well, quite appealing. The orange texturedheavy stock paper box, closed by magnetic clasps, opens to reveal a CD, Blu ray disc, and a substantial booklet by writer and musician Jean-Michel Van Schouwburg. Whil…
I think it is easy to get a little intimidated by a new Nate Wooley recording. There is usually a concept that tries to answer a question about the process of creation and creativity that he presents eloquently and humbly, but as a listener you may be inclined to wonder, as I sometimes find myself doing, ‘will I get it?’ It’s easy to let this happ…
By Paul Acquaro Emerging during the depths of the Covid winter, the Dorf Alien Trio’s album, Industrial Memory, is the output from a trio of young players from Ahaus, Germany who seem to be, on the one hand, steeped in…
By Paul Acquaro New York based violinist Sana Nagano’s Smashing Humans begins with a no-nonsense musical statement. ‘Strings and Figures’ starts off with a few strokes of Nagano’s bow across the strings and then is joined by a lurching bass figure and…
Some days just call for a little more muscular sounds and others something more delicate. Fortunately free-jazz and experimental music is so wonderfully ill-defined that you can find something that fits both your mood and nice tolerance level without problem – often within the same album. Here are two bands from New York City that make a lot of sou…
Eli Wallace – Solos/Duo (Eschatology, 2020) ****Brooklyn based pianist Eli Wallace has been developing a dynamic approach to his instrument, running a spectrum from minimalist sounds to maximum energy. A while back I reviewed two recordings featuring Wallace from when he was transitioning from the west coast. Since then, he has released several exc…
Algo en un Espacio Vacio, or ‘something in an empty space’, is right on. There is something that pianist Paula Shocron and drummer Pablo Diaz, musicians and physical movement teachers from Buenos Aires know about how to fill a space and on Algo en un Espacio Vacio they use light brushstrokes when applying their magic. Their medium – piano and drums…
Chick Corea, Skopje Jazz Festival 2009 ©Ziga KoritnikWe were surprised to hear about pianist and composer Chick Corea’s passing this week from a rare and only recently detected form of cancer. Over the past few months, throughout the various lockdowns, it seems as if Corea was producing online videos, conducting master classes, and keeping busy.Wh…
, Tom Burris, and Nick OstrumFollowing Lee Rice Epstein’s review of the new William Parker biography, we thought it would make a nice pairing with a review of Parker’s new 10 CD setMigration of Silence Into and Out Of the Tone World out on Centering and AUM Fidelity. Needless to say, it was a daunting task and even as we spread it out among three o…
In the blurb on Bandcamp about Eris 136199: Peculiar Velocities the word ‘glitchy’ is used to describe the work of the trio of guitarists Han-earl Park and Nick Didkovsky with saxophonist Catherine Sikora. It is an apt word, as Park has an approach that is as much electronic impulses as it is human touch. Didkovsky too is a musician with a deep…
