All Activity

It is truly extraordinary. Been a while.

I'd be in on that!

Buddy DeFranco & Tommy Gumina Quintet (3 LPs on Mercury, 1962-64, and one on Decca, 1961). As Johnny Carson might say, "That's some wild, wild stuff."

Nice list love the Sven discs madly gonna check out a few of these I have not heard yet. About to order the AMM plus Sachiko M. I usually far prefer AMM with Keith Rowe. fwiw I just saw Bill Nace with Nava Dunkelman & William Winant last week. Genius. saw Sakina Abdou a couple of times in 2024. big Sandy Ewen fan, I’ll listen to that trio discs. I’ve been listening to her solo recordings from this years southern tour. seeing Ahmed again end of February in Brooklyn 2-3 nights.

I wish I had a copy of that LP. Great music!

2025 was a good year for live African music for me, thanks entirely to the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival The festival featured: Afrobeat from Seun Kuti and Eygpt 80. Thrilling music from Senegal with the great Youssou N'Dour. Intense Afro-rock from Benin International Musical. North African/electronica fusion from Zar Electrik. Hopefully 2026 will be equally fruitful (though the cancellation of Orchestra Baobab from 2026 Big Ears Festival bodes ill). In the meantime, a short concert from Jupiter & Okwess..

Anne-Sophie Mutter, Lambert Orkis, Beethoven: Spring & Kreutzer Sonatas. Deutsche Grammophon 471-641-2 [Germany 2002]

Helen Merrill avec Peacock/Satoh/M. Hino -- Sposin' -- Storyville FR

Exactly!

yeah, stuff just gets broken or disappears with various updates to operating systems, storage, and platform architecture. A lot of my AAJ reviews, articles, and interviews are damaged or abbreviated because of this--to say nothing of the various sites I wrote for that have gone completely dark. The moral of that story is to back everything up and ensure you have access copies (my early 2000s self needed a talking to!).

Woody Shaw, Live in Breman 1983 (Elemental) James Moody, Sun Journey (Vanguard)

Yusef Lateef, Golden Flower: Live in Sweden (Elemental)

He didn't, as we all know, but I can certainly understand his wife (and his son) mostly remembering the ear-shattering noise of the free jazz he liked to put on. Welcome! BTW: I always save all these kinds of remembrances when I come across them, simply because the Internet has increasingly developed amnesia in recent years. Important things are often immediately buried a mile deep (thanks to Google) or simply disappear altogether after a short while. And we all know how terrible search results have become. Maybe some of you remember Hans Koert (Netherlands), who ran various websites, especially with in-depth information about Oscar Alemán. If you check his old https://keepswinging.blogspot.com/ website, you can see how quickly things can disappear from the Net. Jørgen Larsen, who continued running Koert's website(s) for a while (up until 2024), outlines these problems in his recent (and then last) post(s) over there. Have a look.

Micky Dolenz - Dolenz sings R.E.M.

good call on the Revelation recordings, of which there are many. Perhaps starting with Gary Foster, Warne Marsh, and Dennis Budimir... It is too bad that Jonathan doesn't post here anymore, and that the Joe Daley expanded reissue did not materialize. Warne Marsh needs an assessment beyond the Atlantic set (Konitz/Tristano/Marsh), though of course we have many labels to choose from and licensing could be an issue.

Yeah, that's fascinating to hear. It's interesting that he did not talk about the death of his father in the PoD interview; perhaps it was still too traumatic.

Can that really be true? None of the accepted harmonizations of Monk's composed melodies come from his own notated music? Monk himself seemed to play similar harmonizations for each given piece.

Bette Midler - Cool Yule (Columbia). This is a very well done Christmas CD. Midler's voice is in in great form & the backing musicians, from a string orchestra to a big band, are all very good. As I listen to this, I find myself wondering why it never really got the playtime that a lot of other Christmas CDs made back then (2006) did. Maybe because she was already in her early 60s by then and radio wanted youngsters? I am still shaking my head after reading that she turned 80 this year. I had no idea she was 80.

From his numerous posts over the years, I would not have figured Brownie as someone who always listened to free jazz.