"Weird Means Something You Never Heard Before": Rolling Jazz D-bag Thread 2015

RIP Bob Parlocha :(

I've decided to take a run at Bill Evans; bought 12 Classic Albums 1956-1962.

Here's the cover art (apologies for hugeness):

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/81%2B2AiHgV7L.jpg

^ You can't get a much better collection than that - I've had to note down the link as that will make the perfect stocking filler for a few friends - a steal at that price. If you're still hungry after all that I can't recommend the Complete Sunday at the Village Vanguard highly enough.

Finally got onto that Bill Evans and Tony Bennett re-release. Sublime as I remember but I really love hearing the alternate takes and how much they differ at times to the originals. Geniuses at play.

Played my ancient (yet Digitally Remastered Chrome) tape of Pepper's xpost Living Legend again, and it still sounded fine---Hawes still doesn't soound quite like anybody else, even when he switches to electric piano; Haden co-stars, without showboating---and Straight Life is maybe even better. Pepper's alto is quicksilver, glancing off the original melody even while building/finding an intimate vibe, which is never too sentimental (what a version of "Nature Boy"). Shifts into atonality a few times, but it's never jarring; just something he's gotta do. Here he's got Tommy Flanagan, Red Mitchell and Billy Higgins. Must check his Spotify stash, esp. for So In Love, on Artist House, with Haden, Higgins, Ed Blackwell, George Cables. I'll also look on there for the Vanguard material.

Kevin Whitehead on Tony Malaby's Tubacello and Scorpion Eater, with promising excerpts:
http://www.npr.org/2015/03/18/393850257/saxophonist-tony-malabys-new-quartet-brings-out-his-rowdy-side

"Tain" Watts is remarkably chill & self-effacing to a fault in this interview: http://www.thetrapset.net/

Not sure why I expected any different?

Also listened to this Chris Potter video today, it's kinda cool to see the musicians rehearsing and Nate Smith is a bad-ass:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=si-7m7u84Do

But then I followed it up with this Brian Blade Fellowship festival set, which makes CP's music seem cold & corny by comparison:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dP_-wwU-KQ8

Got a 3CD set in today's mail containing all six Max Roach +4 albums (including one originally credited to Booker Little) from 1958-59. Really interesting stuff; on a lot of the records, the lineup was Booker Little on trumpet, George Coleman on sax, Ray Draper on tuba, and Art Davis on bass.

wow, not sure if i've heard any of those records with tuba.

That's an amazing set, and the arrangements with Draper are stunning.

Don't know where to post so posting here:
http://www.kcet.org/arts/artbound/counties/los-angeles/drummer-peter-erskine-on-whiplash-film.html

From Soul Jazz Records

http://www.soundsoftheuniverse.com/mailouts/img/main/600/w/tannersuitecover.low.jpg

Available in all good retail, internet and digital stores from next Monday or from us right now!

Soul Jazz Records/Universal Sound are releasing here the third album from deep jazz flautist and composer Lloyd McNeill (alongside the earlier ‘Asha’ and ‘Washington Suite’ - both now sold out).

Tanner Suite is one of the most beautiful and by far the rarest of all of McNeill’s records, a unique piece of music especially commissioned by the Smithsonian National Gallery Of Art in the late 1960s to accompany an exhibition of the work of Henry Ossawa Tanner, the first African-American painter ever to gain international success.

Tanner Suite was originally released in 1969 as a private individually numbered pressing of 1000 copies on McNeill’s own Asha Record company and has never been issued since. Soul Jazz Records new pressing of this album is also limited to 1000 copies each on vinyl and CD. Both editions come in heavyweight exact-replica hard tip-on USA card sleeve original artwork.

This beautiful and intense and set of pieces based around improvisation was the soundscape to the significant exhibition of Tanner's work, created at an important point in post-civil rights African-American self-definition. The music is both profound and spiritual.

Lloyd McNeill is flautist, composer and painter. As musician he studied with Eric Dolphy, played with Nina Simone, Mulatu Astatke, Nana Vasconceles, Ron Carter, Dom um Romao and Sabu Martinez. In the mid-1960s McNeill headed to Paris and became friends with Pablo Picasso.

more info/audio here: http://www.souljazzrecords.co.uk/index.php

ESP-Disk is reissuing the sole studio album by Last Exit (Peter Brötzmann/Sonny Sharrock/Bill Laswell/Ronald Shannon Jackson), Iron Path, on May 26. New cover art, but no bonus tracks. The album is way more Laswell-ized than their live discs, but it's still got moments of greatness. The press release calls it the beginning of a "partnership" with Laswell, so maybe the rest of their catalog will get reissued, too. When I interviewed him a couple of years ago, he said it would be easy to put it all into a box, if someone was willing to put up the money.

Yeah, that's great news. ESP's always had their periodic biz drama though...

Also from Soul Jazz: Pharoah Sanders, Elevation(1974)
info/audio:
http://www.souljazzrecords.co.uk/releases/?id=32694

And Michael White (electric violinist, great on John Lee Hooker's Never Get Out of The Blues Alive)
Spirit Dance(1972)
http://www.souljazzrecords.co.uk/releases/?id=32697

Spirit Dance and another of White's albums, Pneuma, were reissued by Impulse on a 2-for-1 CD a few years ago. I reviewed it at the time, called it "early '70s dashikis-and-shakers jazz." It's OK, not great.

Never heard his albums, but on Never Get Out of *These*(correction)Blues Alive, his violin rides the guitar boogie, like a harmonica sometimes, and on "TB Sheets," it's fluttering around, bumping, something trapped in the room, behind and over the Hook and Van Morrison.

Yay Myra Melford. Anybody heard Snowy Egret?

from WSJ:

Unusual Background, Unusually Good
By
Martin Johnson
March 23, 2015 5:42 p.m. ET

Myra Melford is one of the most interesting and underrated pianists in jazz today. Her work is both ambitious and accessible, full of bright, intense rhythms and complex harmonies. Yet she has remained at jazz’s margins. After participating in the downtown New York jazz subculture of the ’80s and ’90s and spending a year in India thanks to a Fulbright Scholarship in 2000, she relocated to Berkeley, Calif., teaching at the University of California and performing in the Bay Area.

Her work is on par with more celebrated players’, such as trumpeter Dave Douglas, pianist Jason Moran and saxophonist Joe Lovano, but she doesn’t do the things that enhance a jazz pianist’s profile. She hasn’t recorded a collection of classic repertoire, nor has she covered contemporary pop and rock tunes. Instead, she’s created works that take inspiration from the essay “The Myth of Sisyphus” by Albert Camus and the novel “The Woman in the Dunes” by Kobo Abe. The music on her new recording, “Snowy Egret” (Enja/Yellowbird), which is also the name of her newest band, is inspired by the “Memory of Fire” trilogy by the Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano.

In addition, starting Tuesday, she will perform for six nights at the Stone in New York, in a variety of different ensembles. The engagement amounts to a retrospective, as it will feature many of the bands she has led during her diverse career. Some of the highlights include performances by her sextet, Be Bread; two performances each by her quintets The Same River Twice and Snowy Egret; and a reunion of her trio from 25 years ago. A full schedule of concerts is at www.thestonenyc.com.

Ms. Melford, who is 58, was born in Evanston, Ill., and grew up in a Frank Lloyd Wright home there. That seems to inform her music, which is strikingly well structured and intelligently arranged. It’s always easy to hear what each instrument is doing and appreciate the often changing rhythms. Although not a member of Chicago’s Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, Ms. Melford studied with Leroy Jenkins and Henry Threadgill, two of the musicians who figured prominently in the collective’s early days. Ms. Melford’s music shares the traits of many bands that emerged from the AACM. In her arrangements her use of space is similar to that of Air and Eight Bold Souls, while her willingness to use nontraditional jazz instruments mirrors, at a smaller scale, the Art Ensemble of Chicago.

Most of her ensembles feature unusual instrumental combinations, which yield unique harmonies. For instance, the members of Snowy Egret are drummer Tyshawn Sorey, guitarist Liberty Ellman, cornetist Ron Miles and bassist Stomu Takeishi.

The music on the recording is lean, lithe and appealing. There are numerous passages where the unisons of cornet and guitar are contrasted with the more conventional rhythms of drums and piano. Mr. Sorey and Ms. Melford’s rousing duet drives the recording’s opening track, “Language,” then the two give way to pithy solos by Mr. Ellman and Mr. Miles that are augmented by undulating drumbeats by Mr. Sorey and propulsive riffing by the leader. “Language” is an up-tempo track, but the band is just as adept at turning elegant, slower numbers like “Night of Sorrow” into equally compelling music. Mr. Sorey’s subdued drumming and Mr. Miles’s brassy murmurs underpin graceful solos by Ms. Melford and Mr. Ellman.

Two of the other highlights from the recording build on the blues, another early influence of Ms. Melford’s. “First Protest” begins with 90 seconds of warp-speed piano clusters and furious drumming that give way to a bass line from Mr. Takeishi that is an abstraction of a bluesy beat. The beginning of “The Strawberry” takes its cues from classic barrelhouse piano before deftly shifting into a stuttering beat that vaguely recalls Argentine tango.

Ms. Melford’s background is unusual among jazz musicians; she’s participated in the jazz scenes of the Midwest, East Coast and West Coast, and there are elements of each locale in her sound. Her lack of media recognition hasn’t slowed her. “Snowy Egret” is her 21st release as a leader, and she has more than double that number as a sidewoman. She was named a Guggenheim Fellow in 2013 and has won awards from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation for her efforts in reworking the jazz program at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. Fortunately there is a growing awareness of Ms. Melford’s considerable gifts, even if recognition still hasn’t permeated the mainstream jazz community.

Mr. Johnson writes about jazz for the Journal.

not yet; am very much looking forward to seeing her live later this year

Yeah, the new Melford album is really good. I just turned in a review to Jazziz; I profiled Melford for the mag a few years ago, too. Ellman and Takeishi (both of whom are also in Henry Threadgill's Zooid, it should be noted) are great on it.

This is a quick, quarterly reminder that all available tracks mentioned on this thread (and a few album selections) are being posted as updated to a thread-specific Spotify playlist that I'm maintaining. I just did a quick sweep prior to posting this message and updated as of today with everything that's been added on Spotify since it was first mentioned.... still no Myra Melford yet.

That playlist is currently a bit more than four hours of music and is clickable below. Give it a spin and subscribe if you want to listen along through the year.

Rolling Jazz 2015 Thread Spotify Playlist

Never heard much Wes Montgomery, aside from the proto-smooth jazz, wondering about this---anybody heard the previous collection on this label?

RESONANCE RECORDS PRESENTS
IN THE BEGINNING
BY JAZZ GUITAR ICON WES MONTGOMERY,
A 26-TRACK COLLECTION OF
RARE AND NEVER-BEFORE-RELEASED
TRACKS SPANNING 1949-1958
ONLY THE THIRD ISSUE OF PREDOMINANTLY UNHEARD MONTGOMERY MATERIAL SINCE HIS PASSING IN 1968;
INCLUDES COMPLETE, NEWLY DISCOVERED 1955 RECORDING SESSION FOR EPIC RECORDS PRODUCED BY QUINCY JONES

In the Beginning due out May 12, 2015 in two-CD deluxe digi-pack and separate
three-LP set; features booklet with previously unpublished photos, plus essays and recollections from Quincy Jones, Pete Townshend,
Bill Milkowski, Ashley Kahn, producer Zev Feldman, and more.
Includes excerpts from unpublished autobiography by Buddy Montgomery.
Lots more info here:
https://t.e2ma.net/message/2xbzg/mdpv1d

Thanks for the playlist, forks! I'll make time for it soon (I hope)

wes montgomery is the shizznit; that sounds great

just threw some jimmy smith wes montgomery on that playlist, cuz why not

at the risk of spamming the board, here's the lineup of pertinent shows at NYC's SummerStage for the upcoming season:

FREE SHOWS featuring (in alphabetical order) ANDY BEY, CAMILLE THURMAN, CESÁRIA ÉVORA ORCHESTRA, DR. LONNIE SMITH, FANTASTIC NEGRITO, JEFF ‘TAIN’ WATTS, JOE LOVANO, KING SOLOMON HICKS, MICHAEL MWENSO, MYRA MELFORD, OLIVER LAKE BIG BAND, ROY AYERS, ROY HARGROVE, RUDRESH MAHANTHAPPA, WYCLIFFE GORDON, and many more

• Saturday June 6 - Central Park - 3pm - Blue Note Jazz Festival with Meshell Ndegeocello + Roy Hargrove + Gabriel Garzón-Montano
• Sunday July 12 - Central Park - 3pm - Cesária Évora Orchestra + Mayra Andrade + Dino D'Santiago
• Sunday July 19 - Queensbridge Park, QNS - 4pm - Queens Family Day with Wycliffe Gordon and Friends + B-Love’s Hip Hop Jazzy Groove + Karisma Jay and Abundance
• Saturday July 25 - Central Park - 3pm - Bombino + Young Fathers + Fantastic Negrito
• Wednesday August 12 - Marcus Garvey Park, BX - 7pm - Mobile Mondays! Live: Everybody Loves Roy Ayers
• Friday August 21 - Marcus Garvey Park, BX - 6pm - The Charlie Parker Jazz Festival featuring Oliver Lake Big Band + King Solomon Hicks + Michela Taps: Bird Lives
• Saturday August 22 - Marcus Garvey Park, BX - 3pm - The Charlie Parker Jazz Festival featuring Dr. Lonnie Smith + Andy Bey + Jeff ‘Tain’ Watts + Camille Thurman
• Sunday August 23 - Tompkins Square Park, MN - 3pm - The Charlie Parker Jazz Festival featuring Joe Lovano + Rudresh Mahanthappa: Bird Calls + Myra Melford + Michael Mwenso

Sweet! Ditto this, hopefully
NPR Jazz Night In America series, streaming shortly

Cassandra Wilson Sings Billie Holiday

9pm ET / 6pm PT

• Kennedy Center, Washington, D.C.

Esp. considering this, from Wall St J:

Review of ‘Coming Forth by Day’ by Cassandra Wilson: Tribute Album as Birthday Present
A recording that recasts Billie Holiday on the singer’s 100th birthday.
By Jim Fusilli
April 7, 2015 5:33 p.m. ET

Through their achievements at popular music’s highest level, Billie Holiday and Cassandra Wilson are peers across time. Accordingly, Ms. Wilson is free to pay homage to Holiday without fealty, and she does so on her new album, “Coming Forth by Day” (Legacy), by radically reinterpreting, with characteristic confidence and nonconformity, the Holiday canon. Its release this week coincides with the 100th anniversary of Holiday’s birth.

“Coming Forth by Day” isn’t a traditional jazz album, nor does it attempt to evoke the Lady Day music aficionados know through recordings and legend. Ms. Wilson, who is 59, went out of her way to avoid easy comparison to Holiday’s classic versions. During a phone conversation last week, she said she gave “zero thought” to a tribute that sought to capture the Holiday sound, adding that to do so would be, by the jazz musician’s code, an unacceptable affront to her memory. “In our world, that’s an insult.” She said, “I was always focusing on the artist and what she represents: extraordinary things.”
Cassandra Wilson ENLARGE
Cassandra Wilson Photo: Rick Diamond/Getty Images for Americana Music

Thus, Ms. Wilson’s understanding of Holiday goes well beyond the standard biography of the singer, who died at age 44. The typical telling portrays Holiday as a tragic figure abused by men and the drugs she used, whose mastery of tone, tempo and lyrical interpretation was either a birthright or an intuitive response to hardship rather than the result of supreme artistry refined through intelligence and dedication.

Ms. Wilson discounted what she called “the salacious.” “There’s a depth of musical knowledge as well as a knowledge of the psyche,” she said of Holiday. “She was an amazing musician, a genius, that opened up an entire world of vocalization.“

Imitation wouldn’t have suited Ms. Wilson, either by temperament—she has been going her own way since before her 1986 debut recording, “Point of View”—or by technique: Abbey Lincoln, Carmen McRae and Sarah Vaughan, rather than Holiday, can be seen as her influential predecessors. Liberated from a literal homage, Ms. Wilson sought an unorthodox team for the project. “Coming Forth by Day” was produced by Nick Launay, who is best known for his work with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Van Dyke Parks wrote the string arrangements, and Nick Zinner of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and T Bone Burnett play guitars, along with Kevin Breit of Ms. Wilson’s band. The Bad Seeds’ Thomas Wydler and Martyn P. Casey on drums and bass, respectively, provide the core of the rhythm section. Frequent Wilson collaborators Jon Cowherd, on piano, and Robby Marshall, on reeds, round out the supporting musicians, and they nod to jazz in the indigo arrangements, which range from Mr. Parks’s gorgeous orchestral setting for “The Way You Look Tonight” to the slow-motion rumbling of “Billie’s Blues.” The latter recalls Ms. Wilson’s recasting on her earlier recordings of blues by Son House and Robert Johnson.

“Coming Forth by Day” is a loving but somber affair. Joy is muted and none of the album’s 12 tracks bounce or swing. Thus, these familiar songs, now made unfamiliar, prompt careful examination that suggests new meanings. Strings, electric bass and clarinet give “What a Little Moonlight Can Do” a different kind of lift, and Ms. Wilson’s chaotic take on “Good Morning Heartache” is anything but a bittersweet welcome to misery.

Throughout the album, she enters cautiously, as if she is waiting to see what evolves or how she can move the band where she thinks it needs to go. “Don’t Explain” picks up after Mr. Marshall’s saxophone solo brings out a dark chuckle from the singer, who instructs him to “say that one more time.” An almost unrecognizable “Crazy He Calls Me” is taken as a down-tempo blues with the band entering as if from a rehearsal. “Yeah. All of that,” she cajoles as the song takes form.

The stately reserve that can be characteristic of Ms. Wilson’s work is appropriate for the cinematic reading of “Strange Fruit,” a song about lynchings that Holiday introduced in 1939, and yet the band explodes in rage as the song drives to its end. Her exquisite performance in “These Foolish Things” emerges from a simple setting of drums, bass and guitar until Mr. Marshall enters with brief statements that usher her to the bridge.

The album closes with an enchanting original composition by Ms. Wilson inspired by what she called a “devastating” incident: the denial of Holiday‘s request to sing at the funeral of her estranged but longtime associate, the saxophonist Lester Young. In “Last Song (for Lester),” she sings from the point of view of Holiday, who is stung by the rebuke but believes she will be reunited in the afterlife with the man she dubbed “Prez.” Ms. Wilson said, “I’m a believer in the spirit world. We live inside what we created.”

She refuses to judge Holiday. “What a short life she lived,” she said, “but tomorrow isn’t promised to anyone. Who is to say that it’s better to live longer? It’s quality over quantity, and she burned brightly.”

Mr. Fusilli is the Journal’s rock and pop music critic. Email him at jfusi✧✧✧@w✧✧.c✧✧ and follow him on Twitter @wsjrock.

Jazz Night In America is tonight!

Oh yeah, so far so good (and no imitations)
http://www.npr.org/event/music/396687392/cassandra-wilson-sings-billie-holiday

Violinist Charlie Burnham, of Blood Ulmer fame, is playing some deliriously deft solos, fit right into the calmly committed (in more ways than one!) "Crazy He Calls Me." he's distilling Van Dyke Parks' string arrangements on the album. Also on stage: Jon Cowherd, Kevin Breit, Lonnie Plaxico, some others I don't recognize. "All of me..."

O my GOFD. This will be archived (starting maybe later tonight) for one week.

i'm going to see Cecile McLoren Salvant do a Lady Day set tomorrow; pretty psyched. She's more or less my fave jazz vocalist of the moment.

That should be nice.

Took my longtime jazz fan Dad to see Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea last night at the Kennedy Center. They were at Carnegie hall the night before. 2 pianos and 2 synthesizers together. An hour and 10 minute set with a 15 minute encore. I liked the more melodic, lyrical stuff they did (Miles Davis "All Blues" plus a bit of Sketches from Spain) although the first number (Hancock made a mention of Corea emailing it to him earlier) which was challenging and had some classical bits along with noisy touches (Corea reaching inside his piano to pluck sounds) had its moments. The synth duet with ambient and almost techno and atmospheric found sound soundtrack-like touches was interesting also. Looks like the DC show was similar to NY based on this Pareles review in the NY Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/11/arts/music/review-chick-corea-and-herbie-hancock-on-two-grand-pianos-at-carnegie-hall.html?ref=arts&_r=0

Going to see Rob Mazurek at the Jazz Gallery tonight - he's touring with both São Paulo Underground and Black Cube SP (which is SPU + violinist Thomas Rohrer), and told me via email that tonight's set will be SPU with Rohrer guesting for a few numbers, so both bands in one. Should be cool.

Mazurek set was killer—I shot video of a bunch of it, will post some on YouTube later this week.

Mazurek and company are in DC tonight. Here's video of them someone shot in Pittsburgh at the Warhol Museum. I like it more than I expected I would

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K71kVRZB3zs

Herbie & Chick with audience participation on Sketches of Spain with audience participation, a few weeks back

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_awCgtaLiew

What did the audience do?

harmonize in separate groups, divided up by gender

oops re cut and paste typo

Part of that video may be Corea's "Spain", based on the piece from Sketches

Back to xpost Art Pepper, for the title track from So In Love. In contrast to the generic title, which might make you expect a ballad, the vibe is more like Coltrane's version of "Softly As In Morning Sunrise": plenty tuneful, and always with a thoughtful touch, but also uptempo and developmental (in this case, from hard bop to or toward new thing, again like Trane hitting his early 60s stride, but that's more about compatible sensibility than imitation---AP always sounds like a West Coast post-cool virtuoso of his generation). 11'38", feeling more like 5. With Charlie Haden, Billy Higgins, and George Cables.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_4jLzxD_Xw

Listened to this four times in a row--wish I could find a nice-price copy of the album (on Artist House).

Just got an advance DL of the upcoming debut from saxophonist Kamasi Washington. It's a 3CD set called The Epic, and it's coming out May 5 on Flying Lotus's Brainfeeder label. It features a biggish band (trombone, piano, keyboards, two bassists, two drummers, and a vocalist), plus an orchestra and a choir. There's a lot to dig into, obviously - eight of the 15 tracks are over 10 minutes long. But so far it's pretty great.

I heard a little bit of that, just the samples online, sounds really cool, very curious to hear the whole thing.

really hoping i am still on the promo list for the DL of that 'epic' album.
i normally can't stand the brainfeeder style, but i heard a track off it, and melted.
absolutely up my street in regards to big scale psych-jazz-funk.

The more I dig into it, the more it reminds me of early '70s Pharoah Sanders...if he'd had the budget for an orchestra and choir. Very cool.

i dunno if this belongs in a jazz dude thread but when i got into the car last night, the public radio station was playing music i actually liked and i waited around to see what it was. turns out it is badbadnotgood (horrible band name btw). are they good? i have googled and see that they did something with ghostface and also have albums that are just them. any of them recommended over others? (i searched ilx and there were just random posts about them)

The more I dig into it, the more it reminds me of early '70s Pharoah Sanders...if he'd had the budget for an orchestra and choir. Very cool.

droooooool ..

i'm kind of a hater when it comes to BBNG, but that's mostly because of their huge success. listening to those Ghostface tracks, they know their way around the studio now, but i still don't like the drummer much. they can sound very college-y, like a jam band who loves trap beats & EDM, and there are so many killer musicians out there that it's a shame that these guys represent "jazz" to some kids.

that said i know they have some good tracks. the more restrained, the better.

btw i posted this on the New Orleans thread, but i got to see all of my N.O. jazz heroes over the weekend. Shannon Powell w/David Torkanowsky, Herlin Riley w/Wendell Brunious, and Leroy Jones w/Gerald French.