Don Cherry - Art Deco (1988) {A&M Records CD5258 rel 1989}
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© 1989 A&M Records, Inc. | CD 5258
Jazz / Post Bop / Modal Music / Progressive Jazz / Trumpet

Although it is not mentioned anywhere on the outside of this CD, this session is very much a reunion. Trumpeter Don Cherry is reunited with bassist Charlie Haden and drummer Billy Higgins from the early Ornette Coleman Quartet and, most importantly, tenor saxophonist James Clay. Clay, who after playing with Cherry in Los Angeles in the 1950s and doing a few recordings moved back to Texas, had been in obscurity for decades. Fortunately, his playing is quite strong on what turns out to be a surprising bop-oriented session. Comprised of superior standards, a few group originals and three Ornette Coleman tunes (including the classic "The Blessing"), this set is quite accessible and finds all of the musicians in top form.

Derek Bailey & Gregg Bendian - Banter (1995) {OODiscs OO20}
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© 1995 OODiscs | OO20
Jazz / Avant-Garde Jazz / Guitar / Percussion

It's not easy playing with Derek Bailey. When you're dealing with someone who has spent, at the time of this recording, about 30 years honing his highly idiosyncratic and abstruse method of musical conversation, entering the room for some "banter" must be an unnerving event. Given his numerous duo recordings, the guitarist seems to welcome the opportunity, however, and percussionist Gregg Bendian approaches the meeting with high confidence and an imaginative array of sounds. Unfortunately, he doesn't bring much to challenge Bailey, or at least is unable to move him out of his "standard" routines.

Double bassist Joshua Abrams provides the compositions for this studio album performed with Ari Brown on tenor sax, Jeff Parker on guitar and Gerald Cleaver on drums, an exceptional quartet of master improvisers who balance lyrical and soulful playing with explorative impulse, fueled by an empathetic responsiveness that only a long history of collaboration can engender.

Cecil Taylor Ensemble - Always a Pleasure (1993) {FMP CD 69 rel 1996}
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© 1996 Free Music Production | FMP CD 69
Jazz / Avant-Garde Jazz / Modern Creative / Piano

Recorded in 1993 during the Free Music Workshop in Berlin, this date features Cecil Taylor playing in a septet setting with a group of musicians who both point back toward some of the Cecil Taylor units of old and look ahead at the possibilities for a future ensemble employing numerous instruments, not only for color and variance, but also as force creators in Taylor's wave field. Old Taylor stalwarts like bassist Sirone and drummer Rashid Baker are tossed into a mix that includes tenor titan Charles Gayle, cellist Tristan Honsiger, and soprano saxophonist Harri Sjöström, as well as French trumpet master Longineu Parsons.

Lawrence D. "Butch" Morris - Testament: A Conduction Collection (1995) {10CD Set, New World Records 80478-2 rec 1988-1993}
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© 1988-93, 2005 New World Records | New World 80478-2
Jazz / Structured Improvisation / Avant-Garde / Experimental Ensemble

The ceaselessly innovative and searching composer and Butch Morris died yesterday in New York. He had been under treatment of cancer for several years. Morris was 65. He developed an approach to big band music that he called conduction. It made demands on musicians by insisting on intensive, intuitive listening, reaction and interaction. The effort involved adjustment to Morris’s highly personalized methods of conducting while simultaneously composing and arranging through a system of cues and hand motions.

The energy and the unassailable virtuosity with which Marius Neset burst onto the scene have not been forgotten. Back in 2004, as a nineteen-year old student recently moved to Copenhagen, he won the Talent Award at Norway’s Nattjazz Festival.

Where Future Unfolds is a new work spirited by Chicago-based sound & visual artist Damon Locks. Starting as a solo sound collage piece (where Locks pulled samples from Civil Rights era speeches and recordings to create an improvisational pallet for performance on his drum machine), over 4 years the project has blossomed into his 15-piece Black Monument Ensemble – featuring musicians (including Angel Bat Dawid on clarinets and Dana Hall on drums), singers (alumni of the Chicago Children's Choir), and dancers (members of Chicago youth dance company Move Me Soul). Where Future Unfolds is a live capture of the ensemble's epic debut at the Garfield Park Botanical Conservatory on the West Side of Chicago. Recalling the spirits of Phil Cohran's Artistic Heritage Ensemble, Eddie Gale's Black Rhythm Happening, Archie Shepp's Attica Blues, and Public Enemy's It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, the album presents an inspired, innovative & immediate intersection of gospel, jazz, activism & 808 breaks.

Jackie McLean - 'Bout Soul (1967) {Blue Note Connoisseur CD Series CDP 59383 rel 1997}
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© 1967, 1997 Blue Note / Capitol | CDP 7243 8 59383 2 0
Jazz / Post Bop / Modal Music / Avant-Garde Jazz / Saxophone

'Bout Soul does not mean the same thing as soul-jazz, as the opening track "Soul" makes abundantly clear. Written by Grachan Moncur III and poet Barbara Simmons, "Soul" is a tonally free tone-poem that features Simmons' spoken recital. It's about what the concept of soul is, not what soul music is, and that should not come as a surprise to anyone acquainted with Jackie McLean's work. Even as his Blue Note contemporaries were working commercial soul-jazz grooves, McLean pushed the borders of jazz, embracing the avant-garde and free jazz.

Electric Extension, c'est d'abord imaginer un orchestre qui permette de travailler sur des couleurs orchestrales et des associations de timbres originales, tout en proposant une musique puissante, énergique et électrisante. L'improvisation est abordée avec l'urgence du moment et une tension propice à la transe, en prenant le temps de mûrir des mélodies que l'on suit comme des fils qui se laisseraient dérouler naturellement.

Singer Cymin Samawatie and percussionist Ketan Bhatti from the Berlin-based group Cyminology apply their poetic musical language on a larger scale with the Trickster Orchestra. Under Cymin and Ketan’s artistic direction, the orchestra interprets their characteristic blend of transcultural modern music. Cymin draws inspiration from traditional verses, spanning psalms to texts by Sufi poets Rumi and Hafiz, this time around performing lyrics not only in Farsi but also in Hebrew, Turkish and Arabic. With the growth of instrumentation comes an expansion of dynamics, textures and colours.

Cecil Taylor - Looking (Berlin Version) Corona (1989) {FMP CD31 rel 1991}
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© 1991 Free Music Production | FMP CD 31
Jazz / Avant-Garde Jazz / Modern Creative / Piano

Recorded a couple of days after the similarly titled solo piano performance also released on FMP, Looking (Berlin Version) Corona is a fine quintet concert, notable for the relatively unusual (for Taylor) instrumental grouping employed. In addition to longtime associates Tony Oxley and William Parker, he added a violinist and a cellist (Harold Kimmig and Muneer Abdul Fatah, respectively), forming with Parker a kind of string trio plunked down between the two massive musical forces of nature playing piano and drums. This hornless ensemble creates a very attractive openness of sound, leaving the players a large amount of apparent sonic space in which to improvise freely. Kimmig takes advantage of this early on with some inspired soloing, bringing to mind another violinist briefly affiliated with Taylor, Leroy Jenkins.

On Friday, April 16, 2021, trumpeter and composer Nate Wooley will release Mutual Aid Music, a double-CD of eight ensemble concertos, on Pleasure of the Text Records. Wooley's concertos are performed by an all-star group composed of saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock, violinist Joshua Modney, cellist Mariel Roberts, pianists Sylvie Courvoisier and Cory Smythe, percussionists Matt Moran and Russell Greenberg, and Wooley himself on trumpet. Mutual aid points to the concept of community action and the human drive to provide succor to our fellow humans.

Piano-Drums Duos are the preferred playing arrangement of pianist Irène Schweizer. Her mastery of duets with important drummers of contemporary jazz are documented on numerous Intakt CDs. Han Bennink, Pierre Favre, Louis Moholo, Günter Baby Sommer, Andrew Cyrille and Joey Baron among them. The Chicago drummer Hamid Drake, born in 1955, and Irène Schweizer, born in 1941, have performed together on numerous occasions both in Europe and Chicago. Together they have appeared on the Intakt CD "Irène Schweizer-Fred Anderson-Hamid Drake". At the 40th anniversary festival "Kontrontationen in Nickelsdorf" (Austria), Schweizer and Drake were the highlight of the event. A celebration of the moment and a declaration of love to South African songs along with their thrilling energy and rhythmic lightness produced a firework of improvisation. A parade of successful interplay. The CD Celebration is released on the occasion of Irène Schweizer's 80th birthday (2. Juni), accompanied by a catalogue of the pianist's works on Intakt Records.

For many years Evan Parker, one of the greatest post-Coltrane saxophonists, has played a monthly gig at the London club The Vortex. These gigs in part illustrate Evan’s close ties with the fragile ecosystem of clubs that support the jazz world; the small venues that allow an intimate and powerful connection between the artist and audience that is at the heart of jazz creativity. Evan called these events his ‘jazz’ gigs, the knowing hyphenation an indication of the problematic use of the J word, an acceptance of the Vortex as a ‘jazz’ club, and a nod to his origins in jazz history. I took a friend there one time and it seemed to me that the trio’s performance (Evan, John Edwards and the great and sadly departed Tony Marsh) came close to seeing Coltrane or Ayler playing at the 5 Spot or one of the other legendary New York venues.