Jazz /
80/81
Widely regarded as one of Pat Metheny's most inspired recordings and now considered a classic of instrumental and improvised music, *80/81* unveiled a bold new dimension of the then-26-year-old guitarist's sonic world. Released in 1980, this groundbreaking album marked Metheny's first collaboration with jazz luminaries from multiple generations, including bassist Charlie Haden, saxophonists Dewey Redman and Michael Brecker, and drummer Jack DeJohnette.
Drawing equally from the freewheeling spiri…
Travels
Over the years, Pat Metheny Group's Grammy-winning double live album Travels has earned a singular reputation among jazz aficionados as one of the most distinctive and impeccably recorded live jazz albums of all time. Upon its initial release, it appeared on numerous year-end best-of lists, with The Wire hailing it as simply "remarkable" and "superbly recorded."
The album captures the Pat Metheny Group during their 1982 US tour, a period when Brazilian percussionist Nana Vasconcelos had become a…
Continuum
Following three studio albums (Stoa, 2006; Holon, 2008; and Lyria, 2010) plus a double live album (2012) with his electric band Ronin, Swiss pianist and composer Nik Bärtsch now unveils a new release with his original ensemble, Mobile – whose lineup partially overlaps with the current Ronin formation.
Originally formed in 1997, Mobile (here enhanced on three tracks by a string quintet) represents the foundation of Bärtsch's ritualistic approach to music-making. This distinctive style has been sh…
Spirit Groove: Golden Sea Duo in Shenzhen
Tip!
David Murray - Saxophone Kahil El'Zabar - Percussion / Kalimba / Voice
Recorded at the 10th OCT-LOFT International Jazz Festival, B10 Live, Shenzhen October 27th, 2023
Transfiguration
"Recorded live at a UCLA concert hall in April 1978 and released on Warner Bros, Coltrane plays piano and organ accompanied by Roy Haynes on drums and Reggie Workman on bass. The trio conjures both a universe and a universal consciousness; Coltrane has no qualms with the commingling of exhilaration and asceticism it demands of listeners. In fact, she demands that you come closer, to its tone and to your natural self. What this feels like in one aspect is Black music's Bonnie and Clyde fantasy re…
Thousand Leaves
Despite a 40-year age gap and the vast distance between Japan and Greece, pianist Masahiko Sato and guitarist Giotis Damianidis reveal themselves as kindred spirits on Thousand Leaves. Capturing their very first meeting—recorded live on February 2, 2024, at Jazz Spot Candy in Chiba, Japan—this album is a testament to the power of improvised music to dissolve boundaries of geography and generation. The rapport between Sato and Damianidis is so immediate and intuitive that one might imagine a much…
Raised Pleasure Dot
Drummer Joey Baron has played with such unorthodox types as John Zorn, Wayne Horvitz, and Tim Berne, so it's not surprising that his own sessions are equally diverse and ambitious. This date presents an unusual instrumental lineup and a freewheeling, constantly changing musical menu. Baron heads a trio with saxophone and trombone; the absence of bass, keyboards, or guitar results in intriguing voicings and the pieces are solely dependent on the interaction of his drumming with Ellery Eskelin’s s…
Past Tells
This is not a recording for the fainthearted, the straitlaced, or the stylistically correct. Bass trombonist David Taylor has assembled a multi-faceted self-portrait out of pieces he selected, inspired, and composed. His eclecticism demonstrates how meaningless the old stylistic boundaries are for a contemporary artist. Taylor is known for his work with such artists as Duke Ellington, Barbra Streisand, Frank Sinatra, Aretha Franklin, The Rolling Stones, and Quincy Jones. He also premiered compos…
Third Stone From The Sun
It is a monumental task to interpret the music of Jimi Hendrix on the flute. The incredible flute virtuoso Robert Dick has managed to do it with ease, finesse, and soul. There is almost no sound that he cannot create on the flute with his amazing technique. Chords, slides, colors, drum and bass sounds, all had to be created acoustically. There are no electronically altered flute sounds on this recording.
This recording represents a statement that Robert Dick has long dreamed of making. Like man…
Untitled
The spontaneous exploration of musical ideas can be exciting, rewarding, and challenging for both the performer and the audience; jazz musicians demonstrate this constantly. Most of the participants in this recording project have had extensive experience in jazz. In their work here, they are exploring the conceptual similarities and connections between improvised music and concert music, an extension and development of both European and American traditions.
Each of the written compositions (Some…
Why I Like Coffee
Composer and pianist Bob Nell is best known for his work with Kelly Roberty and Brad Edwards, collectively known as The N/R/E Trio, with whom he performs regularly throughout the Midwest and Canada, backing such jazz luminaries as Eddie Harris, Ray Brown, Woody Shaw, Freddie Hubbard, David "Fathead" Newman, Bobby Hutcherson, Nat Adderley, Emily Remler, Michele Hendricks, Sonny Fortune, Hank Crawford, and many others.
I first heard about Bob Nell shortly after moving to Seattle; he spent some tim…
Opposites Attract
It is with great satisfaction that we write these notes as the final part of a compositional saga, the evolution of which we could never have foreseen at its inception. This project was unusual for us in many ways, most notably in the length of time (4 1/2 years) during which we worked and reworked the material, and in the number of incarnations that resulted from these efforts. The development of the music was closely linked to a parallel evolution in music technology, particularly in digital s…
Long Night Big Day
When it came time to prepare for this recording, I was intrigued by the possibilities of a quintet consisting of three winds, bass, and drums. My earlier projects had been either in the trio, quartet, or traditional jazz quintet format－now I wanted to write for a group that could play expressive chamber music, swing hard, and improvise on a high level.
As envisioned, the compositions would combine inspiration from numerous sources to create something relevant to the present, reflecting today's c…
The New York Composers Orchestra
The New York Composers Orchestra is a big band formed in 1986 by its artistic directors Wayne Horvitz and Robin Holcomb with the idea of giving new life to a classic format and to further the tradition of new music bridging the worlds of notated and improvised music.
... the music evokes Aaron Copland and Igor Stravinsky as much as Count Basie and Charles Mingus; the playing is not just precise but committed to making the music jump. －The New York Times
Earl Hines Plays Duke Ellington
When time pulled the rug from under Earl Hines in 1983, he was still enjoying a comeback that had lasted almost twenty years. That comeback was one of the most important events in recent jazz history and the music included here was recorded when his return to action was in high gear.
The classic quality that Hines maintained throughout his career, and that dominates these interpretations, was a persistent exuberance, a spirit of engagement. Hines was not incapable of meditative melancholy or the…
Going To Kansas City
Jay McShann secured a lasting place in jazz history on April 30, 1941, when he became the first bandleader to usher Charlie Parker into a studio for a commercial recording session. For years, that was how McShann was remembered, if at all—as an early benefactor of the most influential figure in modern jazz. Shamefully, it took the jazz literati three decades to recognize Bird's old boss as a dynamic force himself.
McShann's advocacy of Parker was hardly his only distinction as a bandleader. A ri…
The Texas Twister
The Texas Twister is a relaxed, gently probing session; its several highlights begin with the title selection, a thirty-two-bar riff confection with a characteristically willful opening solo by Buddy Tate. His best playing on the date is heard on "Talk of the Town," a memorable example of his ability to invest a ballad with emotional generosity, melodic invention, and playfully rhythmic finesse, and on "Topsy," in which he follows the piano solo with a plaintive, wailing, yet impeccably shaped s…
Mostly Ballads
The fullness and clarity of the six solos and six duets that comprise Mostly Ballads set them apart from the typical encounter of post-Parker jazz musicians with "the tradition." Standard songs, once the improviser's training ground, fell out of favor in the sixties as jazz became freer on the one hand and more tolerant of rock on the other; far too many players viewed pop tunes merely as opportunities for broad comedy or rote displays of musicianship. But Steve Kuhn, a post-Parker improviser wi…
3 Phasis
3 Phasis is the companion disc to the Cecil Taylor Unit, both set down over four miraculous days in April 1978. It too is a testament to the perfectionism and unpredictability that are hallmarks of Taylor's music. As always, he is the instigator and barometer of the torrents of energy channeled through his able and sympathetic collaborators. This is music of a fierce and uncompromising beauty which sweeps all before it.
Yes Sir, That's My Baby (The Golden Years Of Tin Pan Alley 1920-1929)
The naive romanticism of the Jazz Age, when, as F. Scott Fitzgerald saw it, "people danced in a champagne haze on the rooftop of the world," was nowhere more clearly reflected than in America's popular music of the 1920s. The banal optimism, the desperate gaiety, the tinsel pretentiousness, the childish excitement, and the innocent beauty of the songs between the end of World War I and the Depression demonstrate how sweet and sad and silly a time it was. The subject matter of the love songs, the…