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

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.

xp totally agree
the drumming was a little on the crowded side for my liking and i watched a live performance and was not feeling it but i did like the general concept from the one song i heard.

just wondered what their deal was. i had a similar experience with another band. when i went to see them live they were 1)sonically uninteresting and 2) wearing ridiculous costumes and it was enough to turn me off. like it was clear that more thought was put into the concept than the music.

very cool that you got to see your heroes! is your life complete now?

i've seen them many times, so it was mostly comforting to see them again. but i also played gig that was my ideal new orleans brass band show in terms of crowd/music/vibe. another hero (the snare drummer from Rebirth) came and approved and sat in a couple times, and i did think afterwards "i can stop playing this music now, after 13 years that was all i was looking for."

but i also played gig that was my ideal new orleans brass band show in terms of crowd/music/vibe. another hero (the snare drummer from Rebirth) came and approved and sat in a couple times, and i did think afterwards "i can stop playing this music now, after 13 years that was all i was looking for."
that's awesome! i believe this is what they call satisfaction.

As promised, live video of São Paulo Underground/Black Cube SP via Burning Ambulance...

UC Santa Cruz put some (most? all?) of Frank Kofsky's photos online:
http://digitalcollections.ucsc.edu/cdm/search/searchterm/Kofsky,%20Frank/mode/exact/page/1

Ayler, Coltrane, Dixon, Shepp, and a couple photos of Bennie Maupin with Marion Brown, among others.

Thanks,I was aware of him more as a writer in my ancient jazz mags (though a friend took some of this classes); didn't realize he took all those pix, some of which I'd come across fairly often (especially like the color of Bill Dixon).
From my "So In Love" comments
(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)
However---Jazz Casual, Ralph J. Gleason's Public TV show (mentioned in WSJ piece I posted upthread), has finally provided my first exposure to Pepper's less-assimilated Coltrane phase, in 1964. Not Clonetrane, but he starts with deep, sustained, vibrato-less tones, which become a drone, but with a certain sway, making its way from North Africa to Spain---the earliest version of "The Trip" I've heard, with an austerity in the mystique, which keeps it from being too portentous. He gets what makes Coltrane's sound in that era, incl. the self-discipline.
However pt. 2: During "The Trip," Pepper's pitch sometimes seems uncharacteristically off or strange, until he settles in with his combo, who have the bright, sometimes hairtrigger (but never annoying) responsiveness which he shares in the performances I'm more familiar with, from the 50s and 70s. After the interview, he compresses his ideas and into two shorter performances, adapting the Trane influence like several canny younger performers did later on, while Pepper worked out his own West Coast bop x post-Trane turns.
His guys here are also new to me: Frank Strazzeri on piano. Fred Marshall, bass and (yay) Bill Goodwin, drums. damn I'm so into drums these days, re every genre, every style

Bernard Stollman, founder of ESP-Disk Records, has died. Hard to even imagine what the present-day state of free/avant jazz would be had he not been willing to record people like Albert Ayler, Sunny Murray, Noah Howard et al. back in the 60s.

Doubt I'll make it but this gig looks particularly intriguing, http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?f=001j3eyNJQuU-bbcRj0lV9Rvsg-P-awfnpy0rOUfMShyWDC_NO0JRIESd9fS_K9FiquSTmom3Nh1M1iNykWmU9meXkvwQjiOItWx-i7QezSF5oL5PbqXQkytrH4QoajqbfMNV-HxyyfXqTe7YUrtjpOdn9Fc29l8AxcUSUD8Tn2JFghUFVIZBz5kQ==&c=jpUTRE6950N151KQGVg4KtaW6BDU65XOF_YfuujVlx-HY8-KDspVVA==&ch=xlNZq7inTZVEO2bYk9RihpdCmLQHCEHRcRdepiBJ460_S2UrvZaDqQ==

What?Sorry. Anyway that was Jonathan Powell & nu Sangha at The Jazz Gallery

Below is link to JP's home page with info. Really like the rhythm section on this gig.

http://www.jonathanpowell.net/

Somebody please check this out & report back:
From WSJ

Free at First: The Audacious Journey of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians’ Review
Through a half-century, the AACM has grown from a collective of ambitious Chicago musicians to an engine of creative inspiration and practical outreach that has touched nearly all corners of modern music.

By Larry Blumenfeld
April 21, 2015 6:15 p.m. ET

Free at First: The Audacious Journey of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians

DuSable Museum of African American History

Through Sept. 6

Chicago

A portable oxygen tank, painted vivid colors and fashioned with a drumhead, sits near a wooden crutch adorned with bells, beads and wheels. These objects—improvised instruments and freestanding sculptures—were made by multi-instrumentalist Douglas Ewart from items found on the street. They make perfect sense among the 83 items in “Free at First: The Audacious Journey of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians,” an exhibition curated by Carol L. Adams and Janis Lane-Ewart at the DuSable Museum of African American History through Sept. 6, one of many events commemorating the 50th anniversary of an organization now best known by its abbreviation, AACM.

The AACM has long offered sustenance and support to musicians steeped in jazz tradition yet unwilling to be confined by it. Through a half-century, the organization has grown from a collective of ambitious Chicago musicians to an engine of creative inspiration and practical outreach that has touched nearly all corners of modern music.

Mr. Ewart, once the organization’s president, was mentored as a teenager in the late 1960s at the AACM’s music school, which is still in operation, free of charge, at Chicago State University. “The AACM was my birth mother for music, and in other ways,” he said in an interview.

The DuSable exhibition documents the AACM’s founding fathers through artifacts from the organization’s beginnings. Pianists Muhal Richard Abrams and Jodie Christian, drummer Steve McCall and trumpeter Phil Cohran had sent out postcards inviting leading Chicago musicians to meet on May 8, 1965, at Mr. Cohran’s South Side home to set the AACM’s course and credo.

“First of all, number one, there’s original music, only,” Mr. Abrams said at that gathering, according to “A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and Experimental Music,” a 2008 book by trombonist and composer George Lewis, also an important force in the AACM ranks. Mr. Lewis’s book framed the conditions that gave rise to this movement: A legendary South Side jazz and blues scene quickly evaporating; creative ferment demanding a broader jazz aesthetic; a transformation of African-American identity and its representations; and, above all, a dedication to wherever collective purpose and individualized composition might lead gifted musicians in a troubled yet genre-free world. (“Don’t give me a name,” Mr. Abrams has said about “jazz,” which is notably absent from the association’s name. “I’m not taking it.”)

The DuSable exhibition rightly places the AACM story within the long view of African-American history. Another museum exhibition, “The Freedom Principle: Experiments in Art and Music, 1965 to Now,” curated by Naomi Beckwith and Dieter Roelstraete and opening July 11 at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, will frame the AACM in terms of boundary-breaking links between musicians and visual artists. That connection gets literal—the show will include paintings by Mr. Abrams and Roscoe Mitchell, a multireedist who was among the earliest AACM members.

Well beyond Chicago, the AACM (which includes a New York chapter, formed in the late 1970s by Mr. Abrams and pianist Amina Claudine Myers, among others) holds a singularly celebrated place. Its key members form a roll call of distinguished African-American musicians, with National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master Fellowships, MacArthur Foundation grants and prestigious academic appointments: Mr. Abrams, still a formidable creative force at 84, whose early-1960s Experimental Band helped foster the organization; Mr. Lewis, now 62, the Edwin H. Case professor of American music at Columbia University; and, among others, multireedists Anthony Braxton, Joseph Jarman, Henry Threadgill and Mr. Mitchell, and trumpeters Wadada Leo Smith and the late Lester Bowie. These musicians’ individual expressions sound nothing alike, yet their careers trace a shared ascendance.

The AACM has in some ways been caricatured for contributions to jazz’s avant-garde. The deeper truth is that jazz’s mainstream is closer to the AACM’s ideas now than it was a half-century ago largely through the influence of the association’s musicians. The same can be said of the AACM’s effect on contemporary classical and electronic music, and within academia.

Whitney Balliett once quoted an unidentified AACM member: “If you take all the sounds of all the AACM musicians and put them together, that’s the AACM sound, but I don’t think anyone’s heard that yet.” Even so, this 50th anniversary year may approximate that experience.

Among the many Chicago events, an April 26 concert at the University of Chicago’s Mandel Hall will gather 50 AACM members, bridging continents and generations. Mr. Abrams’s Experimental Band will perform a rare reunion concert at this year’s Chicago Jazz Festival (Sept. 3). The Great Black Music Ensemble, the closest thing to an AACM house band, will play original scores to three commissioned dance pieces (Aug. 3). And the Museum of Contemporary Art will host performances from July through November, including Mr. Mitchell in four different trio settings (Sept. 27).

In New York next week, the new-music series “Interpretations” will present symphony and chamber works by AACM composers (April 28) and Messrs. Abrams, Lewis and Mitchell in trio (April 29). The AACM’s New York chapter will stage a four-concert festival in October.

Meanwhile, Mr. Lewis has transformed his AACM book into an opera, scheduled as a work-in-progress at Brooklyn’s Roulette (May 22-23) and the Contemporary Museum of Art Chicago (July 17): The museum will host its premiere in October.

It’s fitting that this anniversary celebration features so many personal takes on a shared legacy. As Mr. Abrams said in an interview, “the AACM is always expanding but in a specific way. It’s collecting individuals.”

Mr. Blumenfeld writes about jazz for the Journal. He also blogs at blogs.artinfo.com/blunotes.

And by "this," I don't mean Chitown activities only:
In New York next week, the new-music series “Interpretations” will present symphony and chamber works by AACM composers (April 28) and Messrs. Abrams, Lewis and Mitchell in trio (April 29)(and the October in NYC happenings o course).

Will try, especially Roulette event.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/26/arts/music/los-angeles-jazz-with-kamasi-washington-and-others.html?ref=arts

Ben Ratliff visits LA

I wanted to like that album more than I actually wound up liking it. It starts off incredibly strong; like I said above, at its best it's like if Pharoah Sanders circa 1972 had been given a budget for a choir and orchestra. Unfortunately, there are a bunch of songs with a solo female vocalist and watery lyrics about empowerment and The Struggle and blah blah blah, and those suck-diddly-uck. Not that those are unfit subjects for songs, but these are not good songs, and they take away from the strength of the project as a whole. I think I'm gonna keep the instrumental stuff in my iPod, though.

In other news, JD Allen has reformed his awesome trio (with bassist Gregg August and drummer Rudy Royston); their fifth album together, Graffiti (sixth if you count August's album Four By Six), comes out next month.

Re-re-(re?)issue of a set I hope to get this time around:

http://d31hzlhk6di2h5.cloudfront.net/20150430/d8/4c/da/47/17bd7f56ecf34d489bfdde6e_280x280.jpg
Out May 19; excerpt from press release:

The 15-disc box set presents the entire output that Monk recorded for Riverside between 1955 and 1961, and offers a striking picture of one of the most significant and colorful figures in jazz history. A comprehensive booklet completes the collection, offering rare photographs, discographical information, and GRAMMY® Award-winning notes by the late Orrin Keepnews, producer of the original recordings, who also researched and assembled this 1986 compilation.

Fans of the groundbreaking jazz pianist and composer will enjoy 153 performances — studio sessions, club and concert recordings — in chronological order. Also included are a legendary abandoned session with drummer Shelly Manne, as well as partial takes and in-studio conversation, all of which add to this unique portrait of a genius in action, at a time when Monk was gaining wide recognition. Running the gamut from unaccompanied solos to Monk’s celebrated 1959 orchestra concert at Town Hall, this collection features many of the most important jazz artists of our time, including John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Art Blakey, Coleman Hawkins, Gerry Mulligan, Max Roach, Clark Terry, Thad Jones, Charlie Rouse, Johnny Griffin, and Wilbur Ware.

...The Complete Riverside Recordings, which garnered GRAMMY® Awards for Best Historical Album and Best Album Notes at the 1988 ceremony, was given a five-star rating by Allmusic.com, which commented, “The Complete Riverside Recordings explores Monk’s genius with a certain degree of real-time analysis that simply listening to each of the individual albums from this era lacks . . . [The booklet] is indispensable in dispelling myths and making sense of the convoluted and seemingly random order in which many of these recordings have been previously issued.”

For a complete track listing, please visit the online media kit at:
http://mediakits-showcase.concordmusicgroup.com/p/monkcompleteriverside/

(Sorry, meant to remove that GRAMMY® shit)

Honestly, I'd rather buy this version, which is the original albums, minus all the alternate takes and whatnot, which I would never listen to anyway.

excited for tonight. arthur brooks and tarfumes the escape goat playing at my store. freedom music! plus, my pals the 23 quintet. even more freedom music!

Tarfumes is in the house...

https://fbcdn-sphotos-e-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xap1/v/t1.0-9/11169991_10153894317177137_2315843355851242327_n.jpg?oh=a06c2346244b36d830823dbcdeaccd64&oe=55CF0E92&__gda__=1436145351_9afc548fcdc93cfb5bfd367774751bb4

what a setup! dang

https://scontent-ord.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpa1/v/t1.0-9/11182133_10153894350592137_2795457767915318266_n.jpg?oh=eb101c9cedb5de24c4053004645e299f&oe=55E017FE

https://scontent-ord.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xfp1/v/t1.0-9/11013164_10153280824160908_928124845931809422_n.jpg?oh=01c34acb04b692f847ed180d88254d2c&oe=55D8637C

sounds wonderful...

i love that you have rows of shonen jump

Thanks so much for having us, Scott! (And I think you'll really like Nightcaller)

In other news, JD Allen has reformed his awesome trio (with bassist Gregg August and drummer Rudy Royston); their fifth album together, Graffiti (sixth if you count August's album Four By Six), comes out next month.

Pitchfork reviewed the new Kamasi Washington album today, and overall they did a pretty good job of it, even throwing in the names of a few other jazz albums their readers should check out, but even though we all know damn well the only reason they ran it was because Washington played on Kendrick Lamar's album, three whole paragraphs of Lamar-related throat-clearing seems a little excessive when all that needed to be said was, "Kamasi Washington is a saxophonist who played on rapper Kendrick Lamar's new album."

Went to Jazz Standard last night to see drummer Johnathan Blake's "Gone But Not Forgotten Quartet" (named for his most recent album) with Chris Potter and Mark Turner on saxophones and Ben Street on bass. A really good set, all other people's tunes, including one by Blake's father, a violinist.

Spun The Epic last night, pretty good, I don't love the strings and choir vocals, they push the record into a kind a 70s-spangley outfit-show band territory, the tunes with actual lead vocals I enjoyed more than I thought I would, as long as I don't listen to closely to the lyrics, and basically, the record is just too long, but I mean the real meat of the record his playing & the band. Which in general is really great, for all the references in the Pfork review it doesn't feel overtly throwback. I'm sure I'll spend more time with it and I bet the band would be great live.

Side note: glad that the Pfork review shouted out the Pharaoh Sanders & Sao Paulo Underground records from last yr, when I was reading some of the pre-release hype of Washington's record I was thinking of those ones, which are really great and I don't know how many people have heard.

I've only heard one of them, because the other is vinyl-only (no digital files). But the one I heard, I liked a lot.

I have a thing for piano trios at the moment and have been loving the new Omer Klein album, well not that new - it came out in Feb but it isn't like modern piano trios get a media blitz. I previously got into him via his and bassist Cohen-Milo's Tzadik releases. I just love his piano style which I could lazily describe as Israeli/Duke Ellington, talking of Duke there is a wonderful interpretation of Azure on here as well.

oh it is called Fearless Friday

The Pitchfork review of Cecil Taylor's In Berlin '88 box is pretty good. I wonder how much jazz coverage they're planning to add to their mix, and whether they'll be any better at recognizing the genre's breadth than they are with metal ("We cover all kinds of metal - black, death, and doom!").

That is a good review, and is otm re: the 2CD European Orchestra coming back into print.

My only quibble with the review is "Then the set promptly went out of print" -- the box did, but the individual discs were available from 1989 until around 2007 or so.

The only parts of the set (aside from the physical box itself) that promptly went out of print were the two massive books (replete with photos, information, and recollections of the festival) that accompanied it -- and disappointingly, neither is reproduced for the download.

Was Legba Crossing available separately? Cause when I dug into the box (for The Wire), that was probably the disc that impressed me the most.

It was; I found my copy used, but I remember seeing it listed in the Cadence/NorthCountry catalog.

And yeah, it's a great disc, seriously underrated in his catalog (likely because he doesn't actually play on it), and definitely one of the more intriguing listens in that box.

What is it, orchestral? Describe please.

It's a large group, maybe 15 pieces or so, but it's not the constant high-density/high-velocity thing one might expect from a Cecil-related project. It's billed as his "Workshop Ensemble," and I only recognize two names -- pianist Paul Plimley, who went on to do great work as a leader; and violinist Harald Kimmig, who came as close as any musician did to filling Jimmy Lyons' shoes in Cecil's group (on Looking (Berlin Version) Corona, not on this set). But there's a sensitivity to dynamics here that I haven't heard -- in this particular sense -- on other Cecil records.