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All About Jazz Feature Articles
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Gavin Bryars / Brian Eno / Jon Hassell / Synnove Bjorset / Ase Teigland / Peter Schwalm / Sophie Clements / Nik Bartsch's Ronin / Nils Petter Molvaer / DJ Strangefruit / Eivind Aarset -- Punkt 08 - Kristiansand, Norway - Day Two, September 5, 2008
Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3
Punkt 08's first day of full programming was a full one. In addition to five concerts and three live remixes, festival goers were treated to a lengthy public discussion between Brian Eno and Jon Hassell that proved as entertaining as it was enlightening. Punkt has also been running daytime seminars since inception, but this year another rare and equally enlightening event was Gavin Bryars' lunchtime session, with a performance later that evening that was, along with Nik Bartsch's Ronin, one of the most eagerly anticipated shows of the festival. And it didn't disappoint...
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Howrd Mandel -- Miles, Ornette, Cecil
Miles, Ornette, Cecil: Jazz Beyond Jazz Howard Mandel Hardcover; 288 pages ISBN: 0415967147 Routledge 2007
The music and personalities of Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor inspired taxis and tropism. Each is endearing, maddening, mercurial, confounding, innovative and timeless. Howard Mandel has written Miles, Ornette, Cecil: Jazz Beyond Jazz using previously published interviews and articles, as well as personal recollections, to present compelling portraits of these prominent members of what he calls the "avant garde...
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September 2008
Sonny Rollins
Sonny Rollins has a long tradition with New York's outdoors--from the famed Williamsburg Bridge woodshedding 49 years ago to his pretty much annual summer concerts of recent years. Rollins has so much music under his belt that he can take the music in most any direction on any given night. Playing a benefit at (and for) Central Park's Summerstage Aug. 6th, just shy of his 78th birthday, the saxophonist displayed both showmanship and finesse and his quintet was there to let him shine. They opened with the light, Latin-tinged "Nice Lady," congas, guitar and muted trombone setting an easy backing for Rollins' solid soloing. That was the mission for the night--Rollins pacing, marching, even pirouetting around the stage, his horn soaring while the band served as jetty to still the waves. He didn't say a word to the near-capacity audience until well past the 40-minute mark, when he called "St. Thomas": "I haven't played it in 150 years." They touched on Irving Berlin, Noel Coward and Duke Ellington, the band always solidly anchored by Bob Cranshaw's electric bass and lightly wrapped around the tunes. Guitarist Bobby Broom provided sweet melodic foils as Rollins confidently went wherever he pleased, reducing themes at times to a few well-placed, articulated notes, then delivering them again in double time. The park was theirs, even the people sitting on the lawn outside Rumsey Playfield were in rapt attention...
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Chris McGregor: Very Urgent, Up to Earth and Eclipse at Dawn
Chris McGregor Group Very Urgent Fledg'ling 2008 Chris McGregor Septet Up to Earth Fledg'ling 2008 Brotherhood of Breath Eclipse at Dawn Cuneiform 2007
It reasonably could be argued that without the arrival of pianist Chris McGregor and the Blue Notes, British jazz would not have the stature it enjoys today. For many years, very little of McGregor and his South African compatriots' music had been available. In the past decade or so, reissues and discovered material have reattached this lost limb to the British jazz family tree...
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Bud Powell: Live at the Blue Note Cafe, Paris 1961 and In Copenhagen
Bud Powell Live at the Blue Note Cafe, Paris 1961 ESP-Disk 2008 Bud Powell In Copenhagen Storyville 2008
Pianist Bud Powell's music is often buried in his tragic personal history, so much so that his story is best known through the film Round Midnight, where his character is transmogrified into a saxophonist memorably played by Dexter Gordon. Mental illness--at least partially caused by a savage police beating in 1945--and drug and alcohol abuse, plus a bout with tuberculosis, made the last half of his 42-year life a hapless tragedy that took a toll on his, at its best, mercurial playing. But every performance of his later years was by no means a disaster, as these two CDs, capturing performances in Europe (where he lived in the early '60s) between early 1961 and April 1962, make abundantly evident...
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Trombone Solos: Wolter Wierbos and Denis Beuret
Wolter Wierbos 3 Trombone Solos DolFijn 2008 Denis Beuret Alone Leo 2008
Though the vocalizing of jazz lines and effects on wind instruments is famously attributed to saxophones, cogent arguments can be made for trombones, as well. The large traditional trombone embouchure itself allows for wide expressiveness, but players also can adapt and plug in mouthpieces for tuba, trumpet, even woodwinds. The glissando capability allows deft emotional nuance. Further timbral shadings can be achieved using the legendary array of colorful mutes--straight, hat, plunger, cup, chamois, Harmon and many more, some homemade. Players with signature 'vocal' sounds include gutbucketer George Lewis, guttural smoothie Quentin "Butter" Jackson, squawky-talker Ray Anderson and bop boomer Steve Turre (who enhances his arsenal with a crateful of conch shells). Today much experimentation is done (or at least recorded) among Europeans; here Wolter Wierbos (Netherlands) and Denis Beuret (Switzerland) polarize as if the yang and yin of sackbutters--expressing organic pulsing vs. synthetic arrhythmia...
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Michael Moore: Sweet Ears, Holocene and Fragile
The Persons Sweet Ears Ramboy 2008 Michael Moore Trio Holocene Ramboy 2008 Michael Moore Fragile Ramboy 2008
As a member of Amsterdam's venerable ICP Orchestra, saxophonist Michael Moore's musicianship and playfulness can be assumed, a part of the raconteur spirit that unites the members of Misha Mengelberg's ensemble. Outside the ICP, Moore is involved in a number of projects, as diverse as they are satisfyingly, realized. From the Bob Dylan interpretations of Jewels and Binoculars to the offbeat Available Jelly and his longstanding Clusone Trio with Han Bennink and Ernst Reijiseger, Moore's wide-ranging interests never lack a sense of full commitment to the project...
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Dave Liebman: Renewal, Depth of Emotion, Music from the KOPAFestival 2006, Vol. 1 and Negative Space
Dave Liebman/Ellery Eskelin Renewal hatHUT 2008 Depth of Emotion Depth of Emotion World Improvised Music 2008 Various Artists Music from the KOPAfestival 2006, Vol. 1 Kopasetic 2008 Dave Liebman/Roberto Tarenzi/Paolo Benedettini/Tony Arco Negative Space Emarcy-Verve 2008
No matter what the context, singular multi-reedist Dave Liebman always lays down original, emotion-rending sounds...
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Ron Carter: New York Reunion, The Next Level and Just Between Friends
McCoy Tyner New York Reunion Chesky 2007 Ignaz Dinne The Next Level Double Moon-Challenge 2008 Houston Person with Ron Carter Just Between Friends HighNote 2008
Just past the threshold of his seventh decade, Ron Carter is an iconic bassist whose prolific heartbeat has stirred the lifeblood of jazz for nearly 50 years. Whether he's playing with fellow legends or lending credibility to a burgeoning young lion, his distinctive style and tone has been the underpinning for the 1000+ recordings on which he has appeared...
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Michael Jefry Stevens: For The Children and Moving Stills
Michael Jefry Stevens For the Childen Cadence Jazz 2008 In Transit Moving Stills Unit Records 2008
The two newest releases by pianist Michael Jefry Stevens reveal two complementary facets of the pianist's musicianship. Though the instrumentation is similar in both, the records were made almost a decade apart, with the older album featuring a lengthy set of Stevens compositions and the more recent album comprised entirely of spontaneous compositions. Taken in tandem, they provide a very telling cross-section of the pianist's skills and versatility...
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 Sunday, 07 September 2008
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