mjazzg

Billy Harper - Capra Black [Strata East, 1973] I really should play this more often

Terrific band

The Astral Spirits is not a subset. Different concert, from Glasgow. I bought my copy from Seymour Wright in person the other day and had a very pleasant short chat with him. He was very pleased with how both the box set and the AS double LP have come out. I haven't listened to the LP release yet.

That's less than I paid and I collected it from Café Oto!

I used to look at Burning Ambulance a fair bit before it went to Substack, not sure why not since. It covered a breadth of music, not just Jazz but predominantly so. It was always very readable. I'm hoping this will be good. CT deserves that at the very least, lots to get in.

The box set is very good indeed. I wasn't able to get to the Oto residency they did last week, bet that was blistering

Chad Taylor's always good I can't seem to get Brandon Lewis, all a bit blustery

Makes sense to make their releases available on a platform and retail outlet that is very widely used

Awen Ensemble - Cadair Idris Strong debut, fits nicely into the British pastoral Jazz lineage

Just got to 'The Bear'. Wasn't sure how it would stack up against all the hype and plaudits. A couple of episodes in and I can that it might

I bought the 5CD box set of [ahmed], two discs in and it's a blast. They're certainly developing a signature sound, possibly not for everyone, that's taking the acoustic quartet to places it rarely visits. https://ahmedquartet.bandcamp.com/album/giant-beauty

I bought the String Quartets as a leap of faith as much as anything else as I don't ordinarily listen to the format very much at all. As a big WLS fan I thought why not. They've definitely repaid my listening and give an enlightening perspective on his other writing. Without stating the obvious they sound to me very like WLS music and I'd say any fan of his would find them an interesting listen. There's variation and development across the set although as mentioned above the guests aren't providing a lot of that. How they compare to others' string quartets I'm not qualified to comment. I didn't buy 'Emerald Duets' as I already have a lot of WLS in duet but would love to hear the Bennink. As for ' Chicago Symphonies', I think I'm a bit of an outlier in finding that set a little underwhelming, maybe expectations were too high given the line up. I'm very excited about the mention of an Amina Claudine Myers collaboration. I'll buy that one.

Lovely album, quite a diversion from her previous releases

I always think of 'Don Juan's Reckless Daughter' as that

I discovered through the same source, good substack