B. Clugston

Happy Birthday! Hope you are having a great one.

Ganelin/Chekasin/Tarasov - Con Anima (Melodiya)

Nice to see a jazz festival with actual jazz. Good to see Guelph and Victoriaville, Quebec are still putting on great festivals.

Guitarist Reggie Lucas passed away earlier this month. He would get my pick as Miles Davis' most unheralded sideman, though he got plenty of recognition and a Grammy for his later songwriting and production work. I love his guitar work on Miles' 1975 Japan tour. He also briefly studied with Ornette Coleman and was the guy who set Ornette up with Jamaaladeen Tacuma.

RIP. Quite a multi-talented guy. Not too often you see someone with credits on Blossom Dearie, Miles Davis and John Zorn albums. He was also an accomplished recorder player and did some classical albums with recorder heavyweights such as LaNoue Davenport as well as the Medieval Jazz Quartet album, which is quite a blast.

Thank you! Picked up Herbie Hancock's Flood and Bernard Vitet's La Guepe for a birthday treat. '

Dollar Brand, African Space Program (Enja). Great music, though this is one album that sounds much better on CD. I've listened to a few copies of this over the years and all have sounded not so great.

"Legal trouble may be brewing for a Northern California brewery that sells “Brother Thelonious Belgian Style Abbey Ale,” with a label showing jazz pioneer Thelonious Monk in his trademark cap and sunglasses in front of a halo of piano keys...." https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Monk-s-son-wins-right-to-sue-over-Brother-12553201.php

RIP. Fabulous musician and a wonderful champion of Herbie Nichols. Great pic Allen. I was just reading this piece by Frances Davis about Roswell Rudd's Catskill days and it ended with this postscript: "The New York Art Quartet reunion never happened, and Rudd eventually lost his job at the Granit. The good news is that he’s been working with the tenor saxophonist Allen Low (sic)."

Interesting! Glad the replacement worked out so well. Susanne Lautenbacher, Biber -- Sonatas for Violin (Vox). Nice 1960s recording of the Mystery Sonatas, mastered by RVG.

Ha! My cousin and I used to watch Die Hard on Christmas Day.

Jimmy Lyons/Sunny Murray, Jump Up/What to do About (Hat Hut). RIP Sunny Murray. The only guy not listed on the cover--John Lindberg--is really impressive on this one.

Awesome! They really are great releases.

My favourite new release of 2017 is Roscoe Mitchell's Bells for the South Side (ECM). My favourite reissue is Sonny Clark's The 1960 Time Sessions (Tompkins Square), with Sun Ra's The Magic City (Cosmic Myth) not far behind. Favourite new-to-me LPs I came across this year are Jaki Byard's On the Spot (Prestige) and the Masaru Imada Quarter's Now! (Three Blind Mice).

Art Ensemble of Chicago, Live at Mandel Hall (Delmark) Buddy DeFranco, Odalisque (Norgran), one side features the divine quartet with Sonny Clark.