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Elissa

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Posts posted by Elissa

  1. Jay Collins

    in New Releases

    Posted · Edited by Elis

    Tenor player and flautist (who played in Andrew Hill's and Leroy Vinegar's bands as well as toured with Gregg Allman for the last few years and recorded with Kenny Baron, Ben Riley, Bobby Sanabria, Jacky Terrason, Jason Lindner) Collins has a new album out on which he sings originals. Dred Scott plays piano.

    I like him best on tenor but the man has scads of soul no matter the ax. The title tune is impossibly catchy too. Hope he hits.

  2. Mulholland Drive

    in Miscellaneous - Non-Political

    Posted

    Loved this movie too. I'd agree that it vies with Wild at Heart as Lynch's best, but think this wins on a few counts, not least among them the scene in which the brilliant Naomi does the scene she's overacted in rehearsal for the second time in the audition, when she underacts in ever so achingly erotic a fashion with 'her father's friend' as to make it one of the finest 'sex' scenes in modern cinema. Watts is the real thing - a much better actress imho than her friend Kidman or really most any other beauty that leaps to mind.

    Anyone else ever notice that Lynch films invariably have both a red velvet cabaret curtain around a stage and a woman with puffy hairball cheek thingies? The cabaret stage I kinda get, but the puffy cheeks I find totally enigmatic. Kind of like Fellini's painted ascending eyebrow women.

  7. Mystery Piano Man

    in Artists

    Posted

    The BBC reports that a man found wandring round Kent cannot speak but seems to play the piano so well that orchestras around Europe are being asked to help identify him.

    The man, who has not said a word since being found in a soaking wet suit and tie on 7 April, stunned care workers by giving a virtuoso piano performance. Social worker Michael Camp said the man, in his 20s or 30s, is usually very anxious but "comes alive" at the piano. The man's talent came to light after staff at the Medway Maritime Hospital gave him a pen and paper in the hope he would write his name. nstead the patient, dubbed The Piano Man, drew very detailed pictures of a grand piano.

    The man shocked staff with a performance of classical music after Mr Camp showed him the piano in the hospital's chapel. Mr Camp said: "When we took him to the chapel piano it really was amazing. He has not spoken since the day we picked him up. He does not make any sounds but I think I can communicate with him through tiny nods." The man has since written music, which has been verified as genuine manuscript. Mr Camp added: "It is extraordinary. The first time we took him down to the piano he played for several hours, non-stop."

  10. Charlie Rouse

    in Artists

    Posted

    Sphere was an excellent band (Rouse, Kenny Barron, Buster Williams and Ben Riley). Their recordings (I'm only aware of one reissued on CD) are worth seeking out on LP, if not otherwise available. As I recall they were released on Elecktra Musician and Red.

    I have a very nice Sphere cd on Verve called Four For All. It was issued in 1987.

    Wonderful record. Used to listen to it daily in college (when the record was new) and well do I remember my friends berating me: "You listen to records with dudes in ascots on the cover?"

    Caught Sphere with Rouse at the Vanguard in 87 or 88. Just phenomenal, so spiritual: Monk in all newly reMonkified ways. Rouse was the one who stayed with Monk until the very end wasn't he? Long after Riley had gone.

    After Rouse passed, Sphere with Gary Bartz has been quite wonderful as well, if very different. Difficult though to imagine anything that didn't sound good with a rhythm section comprised of those fellows.

  13. revolutions

    in Miscellaneous Music

    Posted

    Did y'all just ax the single most revolutionary recording thread? I for one thought it was kinda cool, in spite of how much the historians did protest.

    But it does seem to me pretty indisputable that the 1940's, no matter whether you think jazz started the moment Africans hit the N. American shores or not, remain to this day the most revolutionary period in American music, with Klook then Max taking the essence of what Jo Jones and Sid Catlett were doing and expanding on that, with the emphasis on moving the beat to the cymbal and freeing the bass drum, giving birth to independence.

    Or do you feel otherwise?

  14. Dewey and Joshua Redman

    in Artists

    Posted · Edited by Elis

    I agree with Guy.  Joshua had great promise (I actually saw him win the Monk competition), but somehow his records just didn't cut it for me.

    Dewey is one of my three favorite living musicians, along with Wayne and Jackie.

    Bertrand.

    I have low expectations for most any new jazz album - all recorded digitally of course none will breathe as do favorite sides from the 50s and 60s etc. Yet I too like Sam Yahel a lot and look forward to checking out Josh's newer disks with him.

    And still, judging by seeing him live a number of times, I find Josh doesn't touch me much. To my ear he personifies jazz as a profession rather than as an art in both feel and sound. Last time I saw him (at the BU Concert Hall I think) he was doing a whole lot of Trane-channeling, yet none of it spiritually, more in a detached, businessman way. I don't mean to imply that he's not a good musician, clearly he is; just not among my favorites and not one imho worthy of comparison to the masters of yore. (Among his generation, I don't feel that way about either say Eric Lewis or Roy Hargrove, who do indeed measure up.) Josh's bands too are always killing, especially Greg Hutchinson, but to Josh himself I far prefer Dewey, who granted I haven't seen since he played for a sec in the World Sax 4tet, but whose playing has stayed with me since. And of course all of Dewey's albums have legs.

    I mentioned my take on Redman pere et fils once to a producer at Verve, and he (shock) disagreed, describing Dewey to me as a washed-up has-been and Josh as the second coming, go figure.

  17. Monday Nights

    in Live Shows & Festivals

    Posted · Edited by Elis

    Guitarist Ron Affif has played Mondays at the Zinc Bar for over ten years with unfailingly great rhythm sections. Tain and Essiett Essiett for instance were on the gig for likely half the decade. These days I don't drop by more than once every couple months, but last night was another typically cool one. We went after Benny Powell's 75th Bday party at Sweet Rhythm, where he played with the killing ensemble he coaches at the New School. After the wonderful Charli Persip sat in for a closing tune, I brought him with me a few blocks east to the Zinc.

    The Zinc is also pretty much the only jazz club open after 11pm anymore - and there they don't close the doors til 4am. Ugonna Okegwa was on bass last night as was a great cuban drummer whose name I didn't catch. Russell Malone sat in the third set as, did Greg Hutchinson. My favorite pianist Eric Lewis stopped in, as he usually does after his own Monday night gig uptown at Cleopatra's Needle, and played a couple solos that filled me with enough joy to last til Spring really does arrive.

    Used to be, when American jazz musicians were still invited to the European festivals (I kid - a little) you couldn't hit one without running into a Zinc crew. Roy Hargrove lives just down the street so can often be found jamming here; Franck Lacy is a good bet when he's in town. Guitarist Saul Rubin inevitably shows up, and the lovely singer Lezlie Harrison.

    But then in a sense aren't Mondays jazz nights?

  21. Art Ensemble of Chicago new release

    in New Releases

    Posted · Edited by Elis

    Joseph Jarman has a goddaughter named Erika - seems safe to assume he wrote the tune (tune 1, CD 1) for her. I went with the selfsame Erika to see the AECO on their Third Decade tour when they hit Portland, OR in - what was it - 1988?. Though I'd been listening to that brilliant record daily for months and pretty much knew every note on it, it still surprised me when I floated about 15 feet above my chair for the entire concert.

    Afterwards we went backstage and met Mr. Jarman, who looked at me and said: "It's so wild to play a show like that and then come off stage to your manager saying, 'I want you to meet this producer and that agent...'"

  23. Ravi Coltrane

    in Artists

    Posted

    Sure, EJ plays around a lot: Wallace Roney, Jeremy Pelt, Mulgrew Miller, Vincent Herring, Anthony Wonsey, Russell Malone and with his brother Marcus, a fine tenor player. The killing Russian bassist Boris Kozlov, long the Mingus Big Band bassist, is in EJ's band, called the EJ Strickland project. They've been at the Jazz Gallery of late.

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