Ptah, the El Daoud, recorded and released in 1970, is the third solo album by Alice Coltrane. The album was recorded in the basement of her house in Dix Hills on Long Island, New York. This was Coltrane's first album with horns (aside from one track on A Monastic Trio (1968), on which Pharoah Sanders played bass clarinet). Sanders is recorded on the right channel and Joe Henderson on the left channel throughout. Coltrane noted: "Joe Henderson is more on the intellectual side, while Pharoah is more abstract, more transcendental."

Journey in Satchidananda is the fourth solo album by Alice Coltrane. Its title (and title track) reflects Coltrane's inspiration by Swami Satchidananda whom Coltrane had become close to while being his disciple. "Shiva-Loka", or "realm of Shiva", refers to the realm of the third member of the Hindu trinity, the "dissolver of creation". "Stopover Bombay" refers to a five-week stay in India and Sri Lanka on which Coltrane was due to go in December 1970. "Something About John Coltrane" is based on themes by her late husband, John Coltrane. "Isis and Osiris", on which Charlie Haden replaces Cecil McBee on bass, and Vishnu Wood plays oud, indicates Coltrane's interest in Middle Eastern and North African music and culture. The presence of the tamboura, played by Tulsi, reflects Coltrane's interest in Indian classical music and religion.

Following on the monumental Migration of Silence Into and Out of The Tone World box set earlier this year, composer, multi-instrumentalist, poet, griot, improviser and community leader William Parker will release an astonishing Pair of brand new trio albums which further expound on his profound and limitless vision: Mayan Space Station -&- Painters Winter. One of the iconic and enduring music leaders to emerge in the world over the last half century, Parker continues to raise the bar higher. As ever, AUM Fidelity is deeply honored & incredibly stoked (!) to present this work to you.

The Velvet Lounge was a door that Fred Anderson opened continuously for decades, an access point through which the human soul could enter and explore the organization and chaos of the cosmos. Through this door the spirits outside also came into our little system. When the exchanges happened, it made a sound of joy, like el: those of us who weren't there are lucky that recording devices were. It's a generation removed and still we can feel their presence from the record.

This album, "The Window", is about light. Travelling light as a trio but also illuminations. From the teachers and players he has known Lacy-forges his own light. His tunes are like little jewels tiggering reflections, or refractions, while they spin in your hand. They stick to your thoughts and light the way home, like that window at the end of the path.
Experience is also what gives such a deep equilibrium to the playing of this trio. Oliver Johnson and Jean-Jacques Avenel have a long tenure with Lacy’s music as regular members of his sextet. This is their first album as a trio, and the sureness of their intuition can't be faked. They are used to playing as six, so the trio is a crystalized form of the regular band.
A breadth of vision, a certain spaciousness, characterizes Lacy’s music…

This album was among the most acclaimed music releases of 2020. What was most certainly clear to us from jump, and then affirmed by countless others writing with intelligence & passion is that this recording of one fella massaging 88 keys pressing pads that strike metal string & cable toward resonance within a wooden chamber is one that you absolutely need to hear.

If jazz is a body, then Edward Vesala is its ligament of fascination. Flexing and creaking with the passage of emotion into life and life into silence, the drummer’s disarming soundscapes never fail to intrigue, to say something potent and new. In spite of its tongue-in-cheek title, Ode To The Death Of Jazz is, strangely, one of his more uplifting exercises in sonic production.
The title of “Sylvan Swizzle” sets the bar in both tone and sentiment, opening in a smooth and winding road of flute, woodwinds, percussion, and harp. Textural possibilities bear the fruit of the ensemble’s explorations in somatic sound: an exercise in pathos, to be sure, if only through the eyes of something not human. The space here is dark yet flecked with iridescence, sporting yet bogged down by infirmity, vivacious yet weak in the eyes…

Franz Koglmann & Lee Konitz - We Thought About Duke (1994) {Hat Hut hatOLOGY 543 rel 2002}
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© 1994, 2002 Hat Hut | hatOLOGY 543
Jazz / Avant-Garde Jazz / Modern Creative / Trumpet / Saxophone

Duke Ellington tributes, much like Cole Porter, George Gershwin, John Coltrane, and Miles Davis tributes, were a dime a dozen in the '80s and '90s. All too often, these Ellington tributes were unimaginative and predictable, sticking to the standards while ignoring the many lesser-known gems that were written by Ellington or his partner Billy Strayhorn. But predictability isn't a problem on We Thought About Duke, a cerebral post-bop date that trumpeter/flugelhornist Franz Koglmann co-led with alto sax master Lee Konitz.

Anthony Braxton - Quartet (Standards) 2020 (2021) {New Braxton House Records}
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© 2021 New Braxton House Records
Jazz / Experimental / Modern Jazz / Avant-Garde Jazz / Saxophone

On June 18, 2021, the Tri-Centric Foundation and New Braxton House Records will release Anthony Braxton's "Quartet (Standards) 2020", a 13-CD deluxe box set documenting Braxton’s European tour in January last year. Armed with a songbook of over one hundred tunes, Braxton crossed the Atlantic and assembled a stellar ensemble of British musicians – Alexander Hawkins on piano, Neil Charles on bass and Stephen Davis on drums. The box set comprises sixty-seven tracks culled from nine evenings of performances in London, Warsaw and Wels representing decades of American music, from the Great American songbook to Paul Simon via music by jazz luminaries including Dave Brubeck, John Coltrane, Andrew Hill, Sonny Rollins, Wayne Shorter, and many more.

Eric Dolphy - The Complete Uppsala Concert (1961) {2CD Set, Jazz Door ‎JD 1253/54 rel 1993}
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© 1961, 1993 Jazz Door ‎| JD 1253/54
Jazz / Post-Bop / Avant-Garde Jazz

One of my pet theories is that one of the kickstarts for creative indigenous jazz in Europe was the tours undertaken there by Eric Dolphy as a leader (late summer 1961, summer 1964) and with John Coltrane (winter 1961) and Charles Mingus (summer 1964). The passage through the region of such an iconoclastic figure as Dolphy, particularly at these two hypercreative moments for him, must have had some effect on the local musicians who heard or, in some cases, played with him. Those tours were documented and are back in the forefront with a two-disc reissue of a Swedish concert from September 1961.

The adventurous playing and writing on this reissue hint at both avant-garde jazz and 20th century classical music. Pianist/composer Anthony Davis (who wrote all of the music for the set) is joined by violinist Leroy Jenkins, cellist Abdul Wadud, and drummer Pheeroan akLaff on the three-part "Suite for Another World" and "Estraven," while taking "Of Blues and Dreams" as a solo piano feature. The music is episodic and somewhat cinematic, with some intriguing interplay among the musicians.

The Art Ensemble of Chicago's first (and arguably most significant) period concluded with this high-quality studio session, Fanfare for the Warriors. The quintet (trumpeter Lester Bowie, Roscoe Mitchell and Joseph Jarman on reeds, bassist Malachi Favors and drummer Don Moye) provides concise but adventurous performances. High points include Mitchell's "Nonnaah," Bowie's humorous "Barnyard Scuffel Shuffle" and "Tnoona," but all of the selections have their own musical personality. It's a fine showcase for this important avant-garde unit.

This laconic yet lasting statement from Terje Rypdal marked the Norwegian guitarist’s third ECM appearance as composer and leader. Its crucible continues to yield an enticing tincture of prog-rock and classical stylings for the weary musical mind. The reverberant French horn that animates “Silver Bird Is Heading For The Sun” betrays nothing of its cooption by a punchy g/d/b constituent. Floating on a well-aged mellotron, it bows out gracefully as Rypdal rolls in like a fuzzed haze.

Nuovo lavoro per il flautista di Pordenone (incisione del 2012), in trio con due fedelissimi quali Cesselli e Turchet, e nuovo centro. Persino prevedibile, verrebbe da dire (ovviamente nel senso migliore del termine), perché da Massimo De Mattia, ormai da molti anni figura nodale sulla mappa del jazz nostrano (magari non tutti se ne sono accorti, ma pazienza…), non ci aspettiamo mai di meno. Il disco, breve (39'), si sviluppa attraverso sedici brani di ammirevole concisione (a parte il primo "Trilemma," nessuno raggiunge i quattro minuti, e sette rimangono addirittura sotto i due) in cui i tre musicisti scovano abbinamenti strumentali variegati, senza che nulla venga mai dato per scontato (il che è ovviamente pregio non da poco). Dopo il citato "Trilemma" d'avvio, episodio scuro, quasi spettrale, una sorta di memento, a firma di Cesselli, si alternano guizzi e segmenti in cui tutto sembra invece stemperarsi.