Tenor saxophonist Houston Person’s Moment to Moment begins with an instant nostalgia trip to the classic Blue Note Sessions of the 1960s. It should not come as any surprise, then, that this album was recorded in the legendary Van Gelder Studios in Englewood Cliffs, NJ by the man himself, m: Rudy Van Gelder–rarely a bad thing…
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With a dry tone, and unhurried phrasing definitive of the emergent West Coast Cool–a relaxed alternative to the edgier hard bop coming from New York–alto saxophonist Paul Desmond had already made a name for himself with pianist m: Dave Brubeck‘s quartet on the legendary Time Out (Columbia, 1959). Desmond also wrote the tune that became Brubeck’s signature, “Take Five,” and, while he passed away too young at the age of 52 from lung cancer, he’s left behind a relatively small but significant legacy of recordings that have sometimes become overlooked with the passing of time…
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1969 was a watershed year for John Surman. He released his eponymous debut on Dutton Vocalion that year, but it was the recording session for How Many Clouds Can You See? (Vocalion, 1970), that made the year of Woodstock and man’s first steps on the moon so portentous for the 25 year-old saxophonist An album effortlessly joining large and small ensembles–right down to a burning duet with drummer m: Alan Jackson that alluded to m: John Coltrane‘s incendiary pairing with m: Rashied Ali, but also demonstrated Surman’s economy and thematic focus–it became Surman’s first true statement as a definitive composer, performer and bandleader…
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Ben Wolfe is a commanding presence beside the gravitational weight of his bass violin. On Live at Smalls, Wolfe brings something of the fabled m: Charles Mingus‘ authority and leadership to his own quintet. It had to be so; Wolfe undertakes to have four towering individualists interpret the charts performed on this date at the club that is now becoming all the rage of Greenwich Village, NYC. Pianist m: Luis Perdomo, somewhat better-known for his tumbao, is heard here negotiating the knife edge of Wolfe’s music, that slices slivers off everything that the rhythmic complexity of bebop inspired. Tenor saxophonist m: Marcus Strickland and trumpeter m: Ryan Kisor often get into each other like the men with horns that they are. And drummer m: Gregory Hutchinson provides a perfect foil for Wolfe, shaping the internal beat while the bassist charges on, effecting subtle and not-so-subtle changes to the rhythm, sometimes even abruptly changing course, as he does on “For the Great m: Sonny Clark…
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Renowned Swiss drummer Pierre Favre imparts his kaleidoscopic tonal palette into these intricately exercised and probing duets with fellow countryman, guitarist Philipp Schaufelberger. The musicians cover a gamut of twists, turns and subtle theme building maneuvers, including airy environs and an abundance of tradeoffs. Moreover, Favre balances out the set with structured patterns and asymmetrical rhythms in concert with his melodic fills…
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Sight and vision are not the same thing, and pianist Justin Kauflin is a testament to this fact. While a rare eye disease robbed Kauflin of his sight by the time he was eleven years old, his artistic vision and sense of purpose remain intact. Kauflin’s classical training initially placed him on a certain path, but a detour toward jazz during his high school years, followed by further studies at William Patterson University, where he earned a degree in Music/Jazz Performance and worked with trumpet legend m: Clark Terry, solidified his intent to pursue a life in jazz…
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Driven may seem a curious title for the debut album of a 37-year-old artist. But it’s likely bassist Matthew Rybicki chose the title more as a pronouncement of his musical tastes ("It’s definitely critical for me to be trying to swing all the time," he has noted) and, perhaps, of the bassist’s role within music, generally…
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Saxophonist Colin Stetson’s New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges evokes the quote by cowboy philosopher and former US Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, "There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know…
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Trumpeter, Jacques Coursil’s Trails of Tears is quite simply, a monumental undertaking and a major work that ought to bring to light some of the earlier work that comments on colonialism in America, such as the equally important Gor&#233e (schemp, 1984), from beaver harris/don pullen 360E Experience; that composition itself being a strident dirge about the history of slavery in the western-most point of Africa, which was, at one time the centre of the slave trade. It was from Gor&#233e that white colonialists bought Africans as slaves, transporting them from this point in West Africa to South America, notably Brazil as well as to the Caribbean, and also to what is now the continental US. Why is this preamble so important to Trails of Tears…
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Trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie was one of the few jazz musicians equally adept (and influential) in small groups and fronting big bands. After the bebop heyday, he spent the fifties equally divided between smaller groups and a larger orchestra. His days as a bebop pioneer and a developer of Afro-Cuban music behind him, he now had a new role: ambassador. The sessions covered by this compilation come from around the time that Gillespie led a crack big band for a State Department sponsored tour overseas. Two of them, 1957′s Dizzy Gillespie at Newport and 1954′s Dizzy Gillespie and his Orchestra, are live dates, while 1955′s Dizzy Gillespie and Strings and 1956′s World Statesman, are studio dates. Many of these recordings have been difficult to locate until now…
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