ep1str0phy

Are you playing at all? Genuinely curious, since musical visits to this part of the EC can be rare, I know.

Hello, all- I don't post here all too frequently anymore, but for those enterprising East Coast denizens who are inclined toward music both new and oblique, my trio Grex (me, guitarist Karl Evangelista, keyboardist Rei Scampavia, and drummer Robert Lopez) is in the midst of a short run of East Coast dates. Having just finished a successful twofer in Philadelphia and Arlington, we hit DC tomorrow. The upcoming dates: July 16, 7:30pm (doors)/9pm, $8, Washington, DC at Velvet Lounge (915 U St NW) with Ted Zook’s Lost Civilizations and Jeff Barsky’s Insect Factory July 19, 8pm, No Cover, Brooklyn, NY at Pete’s Candy Store (709 Lorimer Street) with Good Times Cocaine, Golden Alphabet, and The Synthetic Blues (Grex at 8pm) July 20, 8pm, $5-10 sliding scale, Cambridge, MA at Outpost 186 (186 1/2 (Rear) Hampshire St) with Angela Sawyer/Nick Neuberg/ EthanParcell Trio + Morgan Evans-Weiler Solo July 21, 7:30pm, $5-10 sliding scale, New York, NY at The Delancey (168 Delancey Street) with Michael Coleman’s Young Nudist, Gene v. Baker, and MORE July 23, 8pm (doors), 9pm, donation/all ages, Brooklyn, NY at The Silent Barn ("Pleasure Jail" upstairs show, 603 Bushwick Ave) with Timosaurus, Jason McMahon Solo, Diamond Terrifier July 25, 7:30pm, $15 general/$10 students, New York, NY at Spectrum (121 Ludlow St #2) w/Nathan Hook/Mobiustrip Grex might best be described as free jazz/art rock--we're former students of the great Roscoe Mitchell (of AACM fame) and have worked with the likes of Fred Frith (and his band Cosa Brava), Zeena Parkins, Hafez Modirzadeh, Francis Wong, and Tony Levin (of King Crimson fame). This is a special tour for us, in support of our new album Monster Music. It's a summation of our activities in the past half decade, a very new step on our quest to create both "new improvised music" and contemporary "people's" music, a rare opportunity to work with some great East Coast artists, and our first chance to bring this set out East. Here's us, a couple of days ago: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPfkODjR-fU The album: http://grex.bandcamp.com/album/monster-music For further background, here's an interview I just gave for the online magazine Prepared Guitar (actually a pretty interesting website--among the heavier interviewees are the likes of Bill Frisell, Nels Cline, Frith, etc.): http://preparedguitar.blogspot.com/2014/07/karl-evangelista-13-questions.htm And some choice reviews: http://wordsonsounds.blogspot.com/2014/06/grex-monster-music.html (insightfully mentioning Frith, Charlie Hunter, and Henry Cowell, in turn) http://zookeeper.stanford.edu/index.php?action=viewRecentReview&tag=1053032 (likening us to a band comprised of literal cinematic monsters) http://www.tinymixtapes.com/chocolate-grinder/premiere-grex-monster-music (dead-on analysis by our own resident virtuoso critic, the great Clifford Allen) Cheers, as always, Organissimo board, K/ep1

Even though I haven't posted in a while, I lurk almost daily, and I'd be lying if I said that I didn't live in fear of seeing posts like this. This one really hurts, in no small part because Haden was sort of my introduction to jazz bass and the barometer by which I'd come to measure all who play the instrument. The first jazz album I ever purchased--at age 12--was The Shape of Jazz to Come--and even then, back in the now incomprehensible interval when Don Cherry's playing was so weird and alien to me, something about Charlie's bass playing resonated with me. I feel that, as both a free improviser and a contemporary jazz musician, the paths and methodologies of "successful" ensemble playing are sometimes vague, but Charlie (with Ornette, of course) found a way that was both innovative and profoundly grounded in tradition. It's spectacular listening to something further along the line--like Science Fiction or Rhythm X--and coming to grips with the fact that the seemingly unconventional character of Charlie's playing--metrically mobile, often counter to the pulse and harmonically fluid--so totally occupies the role of the bass. Emerging in a period when so many players seemed preoccupied with bringing the "new music" to the bass--and this is no slight on other greats like Peacock, Grimes, and LaFaro, for three--Haden always struck me as an anachronism, bringing the bass to the music. As early work with Ornette bore out, showcasing both his uncanny ear for spontaneously shifting harmonies and his tremendously soulful sense of swing (a perfect complement to the endlessly funky, but also often ballistic, drumming of Higgins and Blackwell), Haden always had an ear for the role of the bass as a support instrument--even (especially?) in a less stable ensemble environment. I think that Haden remains eminently listenable and influential for the fact that the core of his playing is so simple, so completely focused on compatibility, development, and contrast. Even on something like Gato Barbieri's The Third World--which is almost unrelentingly dense, shrill, and melodramatic--Haden is the model of stability, the pivot around which the whirlwind rages. Maybe the biggest compliment I can render (as both a musician and a totally indebted fan) is that Haden lent a sense of logic and cohesion to even the most ridiculous musical scenarios. I was just headed out on tour, driving the stretch of freeway from San Francisco to Los Angeles--we spent a big part of the drive, including an interminable single lane crawl through a seemingly infinite construction zone--listening to Ballad of the Fallen. We weren't aware that anything had happened or would happen to Charlie. We've been preparing "Song for Che" for the tour, and we play "Guinea" at virtually every concert--we even crib Haden's characteristic chromatic bassline for the principal melody. This is the definition of a hero for me--someone whose presence so defines my own activities that, while I have to imagine a world without him, I couldn't conceive of a world he didn't fundamentally, irrevocably change. Thanks for the music, Charlie. A luta continua.

I checked out "Everything for Somebody" on Spotify enjoyed it. Thanks. Might buy list. Anything with Darren Johnston is worth consideration IMO. Agreed. Love Darren Johnston. There's so many genuinely amazing trumpet players out there of, i guess, his generation and if i was to do a list of my favourites he would definitely be on it. Hey, xybert--I don't think we've actually met (unless we've somehow met in person), because I haven't been on this board in nearly a year--but I'd be curious to hear how you came across these guys. They're all in my regular axis--Aram is a fantastic player whom I've collaborated with now and again (and whose projects are actually far more diverse and aggressively experimental than what you'll often hear on record), and Darren is a fairly inspirational, really omnivorous man about town. The Bay Area is virtually a press vacuum, though, so unless you got to this music via the Chicago connection, I'm really surprised it's gotten to you at all.

I've been re-examining Doyle's music as of late, and Noah Howard's Black Ark really stuck out to me. Having digested a large segment of the Howard discography in the last few weeks, this is clearly a highlight--strong melodies, very thoughtful arrangements, and a nice balance between driving modal grooves and multi-directional rhythm. I think what sets this apart from a lot of material with similar instrumentation and personnel is just how effectively the music showcases the very individual (and in some ways disparate) talents of the band members. Muhammad Ali, for example--he's a spectacular free percussionist and a creative, if somewhat less flashy, "inside" player--it's nice to hear him just hammer these dark, meaty vamps and then expand into abstract propulsion in the solo passages. This is a great Doyle album, however, because the tenor is sort of a textural foil to the alto. I'm a huge fan of classic, highly deliberate tenor/alto pairings, and they can be really effective in free jazz settings (Shepp/Brown, Shepp/Tchicai, Jarman/Mitchell, etc.)--something about spotlighting the melody/noise dichotomy and how this relates to the respective lexicons of those two instruments. (I think Amiri Baraka was the one who first distinguished between a post-Trane/post-Ayler energy tenor school and the more melodic, post-Ornette alto vein.) When Doyle plays a second or third melodic line, it's with this brusque, grainy tone (halfway between late Ayler and, basically, the paradigmatic untutored/high school tenor sax thing)--it's analogous to rhythm guitar. When Doyle erupts into a solo, it's like a supernova--or maybe a black hole, just sucking everything into its energetic axis and transforming things, if only momentarily, into pure catharsis. On Babi Music or the Blue Humans stuff, it's entirely this, and it can get exhausting--here, it's both a catalyst and secondary environment that re-contextualizes everything around it.

Hello, all- Not meaning to spam the forum with personal affairs, but seeing as how this group has been of interest in the past--and considering how rarely I'm on the East Coast--I thought I'd let you know- My group Grex (http://www.grexsounds.com)--whose MO these days is as a free improvisation ensemble buttressed by pop, chamber, and jazz elements--is making a few (very) upcoming stops on the East Coast. Here are a few recent live tracks: http://grex.bandcamp.com/album/trio-live We just completed a run in NYC, Silver Spring, Arlington, and Philly, and we'll be in Brooklyn, Cambridge, and Connecticut in the coming days: August 28, 11:00pm set time (Brooklyn, NY) @ Goodbye Blue Monday (w/Michael Lafuentes, etc.) August 29, 8:00pm (Cambridge, MA) @ Outpost 186 (w/Duck This!, Eli Wallace) August 30, 8:00pm (Brooklyn, NY) @ Panoply (w/Valerie Kuehne, Martin Bisi, Sam Ospovat, etc.) August 31, 3:00pm (Hamden, CT) @ The Outer Space September 1, 8:00pm (Brooklyn, NY) @ Launchpad (w/Kurt Kotheimer's ROMCOM) For those interested in some jazz inflected music that is at the same time somewhat beyond the pale, we hope to see you.

Henry Threadgill has the second reed chair on those sides, though he was also in a David Murray Big Band around that time.

Hey, folks- Long time no post, but I've been on a massive Julius Hemphill listening bender and I haven't really seen this question answered anywhere else- Is there a comprehensive Hemphill sessionography or discography available online anywhere? (My preliminary and perhaps poorly researched answer to this question is "no.") Here's my best attempt at a discographical list, organized roughly in order of recording date (I'm positive that some of these dates must be incorrect, but I'm just trying to lay the cards out on the table, rather than provide something definitive). It's a synthesis of both what I could find in my collection and the various incomplete online discogs that seem to be available. I'm also fairly certain that the sideman listing is waaay incomplete--this was the hardest to piece together. As Leader: 1972, Dogon A.D. (Mbari, Freedom) 1972/1975, Coon Bid'ness (Freedom, later reissued as Reflections) 1976, Live in New York (Red) 1977, Blue Boye (Screwgun) 1977, Roi Boye and the Gotham Minstrels (Sackville) 1977, Raw Materials and Residuals (Black Saint) 1978, Buster Bee (Sackville) 1980, Chile New York (w/Warren Smith, Black Saint) 1980, Flat-Out Jump Suite (Black Saint) 1984, Georgia Blue (Minor Music) 1987, Live at Kassiopeia (w/Peter Kowald, released NoBusiness in 2011) 1988, Julius Hemphill Big Band (Elektra) 1991, Fat Man and the Hard Blues (Black Saint) 1991, Live from the New Music Cafe (Music & Arts) 1992, Oakland Duets (Music & Arts) 1993, Five Chord Stud (Black Saint) 1997, At Dr. King's Table (New World) 2002*, The Collected Poem for Blind Lemon Jefferson (w/K. Curtis Lyle, Ikef) 2003, One Atmosphere (Tzadik) 2004, The Hard Blues (Live in Lisbon) *This album was released on Mbari, I'm positive--but I don't have my copy in front of me, so I don't know what year it's properly from w/World Saxophone Quartet 1977, Point of No Return (Moers Music) 1979, Steppin' with the World Saxophone Quartet (Black Saint) 1981, W.S.Q. (Black Saint) 1982, Revue (Black Saint) 1984, Live in Zurich (Black Saint) 1986, Live at Brooklyn Academy of Music (Black Saint) 1986, Plays Duke Ellington (Elektra/Nonesuch) 1987, Dances and Ballads (Elektra/Nonesuch) 1989, Rhythm and Blues (Elektra/Nonesuch) 1991, Metamorphosis (Elektra/Nonesuch) As Sideman: 1970, Fathers of Origin (Aboriginal Music Society, Eremite) 1973, Hustlers Convention (Lightnin' Rod, United Artists) 1974, Fast Last! (Lester Bowie, Muse) 1974, Streets of St. Louis (Charles Bobo Shaw & The Human Arts Ensemble, Moers Music) 1974, New York, Fall 1974 (Anthony Braxton, Arista) 1977, P'nk J'zz (Charles Bobo Shaw & The Human Arts Ensemble, Muse - also as "Concere Ntasiah" on Universal Justice) 1982, Shadows and Reflections (Baikida Carroll, Soul Note) 1982, Ram's Run (Kalaparush Maurice McIntyre, Cadence Jazz) 1983, Show Stopper (Jamaaladeen Tacuma, Gramavision) 1987, Jungle Cowboy (John Paul Bourelly, JMT) 1988, A Lot of Lovin' (Killing Floor, OSA) 1988, Before We Were Born (Bill Frisell, Elektra) 1990, At the Moment of Impact (Allen Lowe, Fairhaven) 1991, New Tango '92: After Astor Piazzolla (or the Second Assassin) (Allen Lowe, Fairhaven) 1994, Debut Live (Bjork, Polydor/Universal/One Little Indian) Compilations: 1977, "Pensive," on Wildflowers 4: The New York Loft Jazz Sessions (Douglas) 1991, "Balances and Gloves" on Duos America (Peter Kowald, FMP) The sessionography is something else altogether. I have a few unreleased Hemphill live recordings laying around that aren't duplicated in terms of format or personnel anywhere else (a date with Jack DeJohnette's Special Edition, a recording of Long Tongues).

Hey, folks, As a few of you know, I spent the past few years (aided and abetted by a Zellerbach Grant, a successful Kickstarter campaign, and some weird compulsion to navigate Filipino law) creating Taglish, an album of Filipino-American music. The project features Asian Improv aRts cofounder Francis Wong, bassist John-Carlos Perea, a crack team of Bay Area experimentalists/jazz people (drummer Jordan Glenn of the amazing bands Wiener Kids and Jack O' the Clock, reedman Cory Wright of the Industrial Jazz Group, and Rob Ewing, lately under the baton of Marcus Shelby and Graham Connah, among others), and my primary group Grex (with pianist Rei Scampavia). The project is a hybrid of jazz, American song, 20th century experimentalism, and Filipino folk rhythms and melody. I'm sorry to say that it's best heard in its entirety, since the album format (in the traditional sense) and CDs are way less popular today than even two years ago. Nonetheless, the project went through so many complications--including a brief run in with the Filipino legal system, whose strictures regarding interpretation of the national anthem are even more intensive than America's--that I thought best to put out the suite as was/is, and let people take of it what they will. I know (and very much appreciate) that folks here liked the last Grex album--Taglish is very different (and will likely be very different from what comes later), but for now, I'm proud to present it and very glad that I put my heart into it. Here it is for listening/and orders (if any of us still believe in physical copies!): http://grex.bandcamp...album/taglish-2 By the way--this is the track that almost got me thrown in jail: http://grex.bandcamp...rack/hymn-dad-b Cheers and I hope you enjoy, ep1

I never got to play with Butch Morris, but may of my teachers and friends--very many of them--did. I mentioned Dust to Dust during my first encounters with both Myra Melford and Zeena Parkins. I actually can't remember the last time my Facebook home page was deluged with so many moving tributes, and even if you didn't know of Butch, the sheer volume of praise that has been spelled out on his account would tell you that he was someone talented, loved, and hugely important. I'm sure many of other musicians could probably speak to this sentiment, but it's very difficult to underestimate the importance of conduction to contemporary experimental music(s). I do not overstate the case when I say that every major large group project I've participated in in the past several years--with the exception of the offhand afrobeat big band and one or two jazz/improv big bands, each of which had its own specific modus operandi--has utilized some variation on Morris's conduction system at some point. Maybe it's because I'm in the Bay Area and the Mills influence is viral out here, but this has to be the case with many cells throughout the world. Back when I was studying at Mills, I'd leave a session joint conducted by Fred Frith and Myra Melford--or maybe the occasional recording session with fellow students--everyone using conduction cues--and fly off somewhere, maybe the Guelph festival a few years back, and see Greg Tate shepherding a hybrid of Burnt Sugar and the ICP orchestra through a very rigid exercise in Morris conduction. I've heard a few people say that conduction is the "future" of improvisation, but caution to say that it's really the "present"--it's a highly effective system for organizing musicians and musical techniques that that are simultaneously increasingly specialized and increasingly versatile. It will also continue to be an invaluable tool for whatever creative music transitions into in the next century or so. No one did it or (maybe) will do it with the rigor and decisiveness that Morris did, and conduction is already being cannibalized into spare tools of the traditional conductor trade. Nonetheless, however you want to read what conduction was, it made a hugely significant impact on the art of improvising, and for that we really should honor him.

I was always a little perturbed by the traditional critical assessment of The Inflated Tear--i.e., that it's middleweight Rahsaan with an undistinguished band. It was maybe the second Roland Kirk album I got my hands on (after the Simmer, Reduce, Garnish & Serve compilation--which maybe does compile the Warner Brothers years more effectively than any of the individual albums), and it may still be my favorite. No, it's not Rip, Rig & Panic, but the latter is just as much about the myriad hookups on display (Byard/Davis, Kirk/Byard, Davis/Jones, etc. etc.) as it is about Rahsaan himself. The Inflated Tear as all (pre-)Rahsaan's show, and it would be nowhere near as perfect an encapsulation of Kirk's talents as a sheer jazz musician without that unbelievably kickass band. Jimmy Hopps + Steve Novosel is king, but man--Burton. That's "pocket" postmodern jazz piano--not as out or flamboyant as Byard, but just as encyclopedic and versatile in its own way. Listening to Burton's filigrees on "The Inflated Tear," his buoyant--but tough-as-nails--comping on "Fly by Night"--and later, ecstatically hammering away on Volunteered Slavery, Tynering at length on Bright Moments, and defying gravity on the spectacular and deeply undervalued Prepare Thyself to Deal with a Miracle--there was/is no denying for me that Burton was really the right man for that job, just like Alice was perfect for late Trane, Ronnie Boykins for Sun Ra, Tony for Miles. That, to me, is a pretty heavy legacy.

Wow--I had no idea about Jack Gregg playing in that band. Something new every day... In much the manner that the "House of Trane" was sort of de facto partitioned after Coltrane's passing--Archie Shepp continued/developed the tradition of sideman sponsorship via massive recording projects, Pharoah took on the spiritualist modal angle, Alice picked up on Trane's baroque conceptual apirations and developed her own wild orchestral music, Rashied cultivated the DIY/loft aesthetic (to say nothing of guys like the sidemen of Trane's sidemen--Dave Liebman, Steve Grossman, Azar Lawrence, etc. who picked up on and shadowed Trane of various vintages)--Ayler's legacy fell upon a bunch of other folks who did sundry, sometimes very artful things with it. Peter Brotzmann was one--he secularized the Ayler aesthetic and in turn transformed it into something almost punkishly violent, confrontational, and ambivalent (which speaks/spoke to a whole other type of listening). Frank Wright, on the other hand, seemed capable of sustaining the consistent ensemble and singular sound that Ayler struggled to keep going for more than one or two years at a time in the 60's--he realized a certain part of the "spirit" of Ayler's music (the celebratory, ecstatic part), and I guess he was sort of rewarded for that.

Right on, jeffcrom. Your post reminded me that we definitely talked about this stuff before--then I realized that this thread happened: I'm not sure my opinion has changed, but I'm right with you on the quartet tracks. I'm not sure what the motivations behind recording such a grab bag of pieces was--nothing on those two albums sounds commercial, and the bagpipe pieces have to rank among Ayler's most alienating, forbidding music. Maybe Ayler was trying to break formula (after the relatively slight but consistent Love Cry and the disaster/brave experiment of New Grass--dependent on who you ask), maybe we has scrambling to try some new things out. Unlike Archie Shepp, whose albums in the late 60's/early 70's were similarly scattershot but retained a sense of conceptual and psychological unity, the last two Ayler albums sound desperate and confused, like someone who'd suddenly forgotten what his music was supposed to sound like. Apparently this wasn't the case live--not if the Fondation recordings have anything to say about it--but we'll never really, fully know. I've been rereading the Holy Ghost book here and there--apparently that final live recording on the disc 7 of the box is closer to the music Ayler was developing at the time (he selected the Fondation repertoire under the premise that it had all been recorded before and, thusly, he wouldn't get ripped off nearly as bad when the concerts got issued on record). Anyway, that last concert is really perplexing--he still sounds like Ayler, naturally, but many of the arrangements are (if anything) more conventional than the stuff played at the Fondation concerts--disarmingly so, in much the fashion cats like Shepp, Pharoah, and (from personal experience) Eddie Gale reverted to playing "straight" music without really buttoning down their freer tendencies (when soloing). What really strikes me about the last two Impulse albums is that, taken as works of "music" (rather than Ayler albums), there's a lot of really interesting arranging and deft conceptualization going on. I would be completely into "Music Is the Healing Force of the Universe" or "Island Harvest" if they'd been recorded by, say, the Battered Ornaments, whose first album was actually a (sort-of) British take-off on New Grass. Also, there's not a lot separating the ensemble improvisations on Healing Force from some of Frank Wright's later music (w/Eddie Jefferson--around the time he got into those weird modal/blues hybrid records)--and Ayler sort of "borrowed" Wright's trademark rhythm team for this album, anyway (Few and Ali). It's all sloppy and tentative on the Impulse sides, but I do think Ayler was on to something.

I'm currently in the midst of an Albert Ayler listening binge--which is tantamount to jogging in quicksand, as far as I'm concerned. For me, spending time with some of Ayler's music means spending time with all of Ayler's music. I've heard the opinion that Spiritual Unity is the perfect, singular encapsulation of what made Ayler so special--and it certainly is his iconic recording--paradigmatic, in a sense--but far from the whole picture. Spiritual Unity is only the zenith of Ayler's music insofar as the Ayler of a certain juncture ('64-'64ish) was absolutely sui generis and, by virtue of its precedence and influence, the apex of its genre. But (other than the heroic album art, its place/historical ordering in the emergence of free jazz, the weird, ghastly test signal toward the end of the record--which reminds me a bit of the fetishized, conspicuous silence at the heart of Yoshihiro Nakamura's Fish Story) there's not much that makes Spiritual Unity in and of itself better than Prophecy, Spirits Rejoice, The Hilversum Session, or (my personal favorite) Vibrations/Ghosts. *(I will note that a close friend of mine--present for Ornette and Monk, respectively, at the Five Spot, Trane's stints at the Half Note and Village Gate, the NYAQ in Copenhagen--I have no idea how he was in so many interesting places in such a narrow span of time--noted that Spiritual Unity comes closest to how Ayler sounded live. I will admit that there's something really blunt and confrontational about the sound quality and balance on that album, and maybe it's that starkness that makes it the classic.) Even limiting things to the epochal '64-'65 recordings means that we miss the development of the "string band" (which really did sound different with each personnel change), the wild but occasionally rewarding later Impulse sessions, and the Fondation Maeght recordings. Stopping after Peacock leaves the band ignores the fact that Ayler's playing did go through futher, increasingly bizarre evolutions as the 60's wore on--that piercing altissimo that dominates the string band recordings, for one, and the hardcore/post-Lionel Hampton band chording/rasp that he achieves on the final Impulse sides for another. Throwing the door open, maybe we can talk about some of our favorite less celebrated Ayler recordings? A couple of my picks: The Copenhagen Tapes Straight up, Vibrations is my favorite Ayler and the Cherry quartet is my favorite Ayler band. I heard the stories about Dolphy joining up with this group, and had that quintet been a thing, it would have been unbeatable in that idiom. Talk about a freaking supergroup. Cherry at this historical juncture ('64 or so) is both an original player and a phenomenal mirror--someone who manages to frame other instrumentalists in interesting, revealing ways whilst retaining a very personal musical identity. What Cherry does in this quartet is amazing--he is Ayler's melodic equal but very distinct in terms of color and attack (mostly much lighter). The unison and collectively improvised (i.e., two horn) passages in this band are just ridiculous, because they're bebop-caliber tight--they manage to endow Ayler's lines with a sense of logic and inevitability that just isn't there on the trio recordings. I'm singling out the Copenhagen Music because they're bad to the damn bone. Ayler is operating at a technical level similar to, but maybe even more extreme than the Spiritual Unity/Prophecy stuff. The September 3 version of "Vibrations" is just fucked up--that's the sort of stuff that makes you jump out of your seat if you're not prepared for it. I don't think Ayler had quite reached the facility on upper register that he did/would with the string band, and that extra bit of effort expended on getting the notes out juuuust right gives the music this sheen of agony and power that is absolutely spine-tingling. June 30/July 1 1967, Newport - Albert Ayler Quintet -This one was on Disc 6 of the Holy Ghost box, and I think it may be the best of the recorded string band music. I've heard plenty of people complain about the fact that there's simply too much of this band to digest--on the epic Greenwich Village sides, Slug's Saloon, and on Discs 3-5 of Holy Ghost--and I might agree with that to an extent. I think the excess and insistency of this music is both its weakness and its strong point--it's almost a dance band, simplifying everything--motivic complexity (both in a global thematic sense and in terms of the tiny melodic cells that serve as transitions within the pieces--I once heard someone make the point that this is probably because of Donald Ayler's technical limitations, and I'm inclined to agree), improvisations (Ayler is at full tilt altissimo for almost all of his solos), and especially rhythm (whereas Murray was exaggeratedly dynamic, Beaver Harris and, to a lesser extent, Ronald Shannon Jackson are content to thrash). On the other hand, if Ayler's goal was to communicate--or, rather, to frame his talents in "intelligble" terms--this band comes closer than any of Ayler's music to striking a balance between complexity, simplicity, and virtuosity. The Newport set might be my favorite because it is intense, complex, manages to feature all of the band members to striking effect, and is short. It packs all of the intensity of the Slug's sides--plus Milford Graves--into under 25 minutes. The band wants to make it count. Michel Samson gets his chirping upper register interlude--and it's brief. Donald Ayler squeezes off a brief, effective barrage of limited range firepower. Albert plays one of the most blistering altissimo solos of his career, and he even manages to fit in some weird vocals ("Japan," which is the same song the Pharoah features on Tauhid) and some alto and soprano playing.

For Bay Area cats--Friday night (technically tomorrow, but fast approaching)--November 16, 2012, 8:00pm--I'll be releasing a new album at Berkeley's Jazzschool (2087 Addison St). The album is called Taglish--a sort-of essay on Filipino-American life. It's a feature for my group Grex (http://www.grexsounds.com) and a cast of Bay Area veterans--Asian Improv aRts cofounder Francis Wong, Grammy winner/Jim Pepper authority John-Carlos Perea on bass, local powerhouse Jordan Glenn, Moxie bandleader Bill Noertker, and many others. Here's a little preview video I threw together: http://youtu.be/-ZrFuuOFENs

One more thing--if Garrison ever had a "true" spiritual successor, it was Malachi Favors. They were very different players, but they both had this really profound way of clarifying and illuminating abstract environments. Garrison owned the maximalist arena with the Quintet, but Malachi Favors was a tower of strength on the early, often minimalist Art Ensemble albums (pre-Don Moye right up to and probably including Phase One and such).

I can see where you're coming from, in no small part because I used to think the same way. I don't think there's any need for "conversion" in disagreement (the "I used to think that" line of debate is a huge irritant of mine), but I seriously think that close listening to Garrison will reward improv listeners with a huge appreciation for what can be done in an (admittedly--occasionally) straightjacketing idiom. I take some issue with the Parker comparison--they're similar on several facile levels (huge, woody sound, a preference for modal/vamplike contexts and only minor dynamic variation, "status" placement in key rhythm quartet bands--Ware v. Coltrane, that is), but it's worth noting that Parker actually lived through 20-30 years of musical developments before really coming into his own in his own idiom. That is, it's sort of difficult to make the call that playing like Garrison is the only, right, or logical "way" in a free jazz sort of context after Barry Guy, Johnny Dyani, Harry Miller, Peter Kowald, Yoshizawa Motoharu, Tatsu Aoki, Fred Hopkins, Malachi Favors, later Reggie Workman, etc. etc. etc. History can color our perception of things, and I think Parker sounds even more regressive considering that he's harkened back to the already historical Garrison thing and streamlined that. Garrison may not sound sound like the ideal bassist for late Trane--not after the Europeans, AACM cats, Japanese, and South Africans, and not after the promise of Richard Davis--but he's the only one among that crowd to have to grapple with the dilemma of adapting the repertoire of bop era bass to completely unprecedented freedom--and, by that token, he's really the only once who "succeeded." He figured it out first, and maybe by virtue of fighting that fight, understood the meaning of that freedom "the best." Parker, on the other hand, sort of studied the evidence, read the journals, did the science, and decided that Garrison's mathematics was more valuable than any number of other discoveries in the interim. What changed my mind on all this was actually getting stuck in late Trane for a bit (this is happening again, thanks to Jim's thread). In terms of articulation, phrasing, and especially rhythm, he is nothing like Parker. Jim mentioned in (I think) the Interstellar Space AOTW thread that (and I'm paraphrasing the hell out of this) Trane had basically exhausted the possibilities of harmonic freedom, although he never really got there rhythmically. Coltrane was a lot more systematic, a lot less freewheeling and pliable that Rollins or even Shorter. Another way to interpret this is that rhythmic filigree was at a sort of odds with late Trane's music, which still sounds hard, direct, and sort of monolithic. I look at Garrison as a sort of bass reduction of this aspect of Trane--not so much inflexible as steely and very much noodle-averse. Whereas Parker is a bit of a thrasher (phrase-wise), Garrison is extraordinarily selective with where he phrases his lines--in relief with Ali's drumming, I have to imagine this was a deliberate way of doing things. Keep in mind this was the guy who flipped out on Ornette because he didn't understand the concept--and a dude who played much more busily on (later) New York Is Now! and Love Call. Garrison's bass solos were always a sort of interlude--a respite from the maelstrom--but in that later band, Garrison found a way to integrate that soloistic approach with the ensemble sound. This was unprecedented as fuck, as I think only Charlie Haden was really operating on this level at that time. Guys like Gary Peacock and Lewis Worrell were classic--maybe paradigmatic--free improv thrashers, and their role was more as a precedent for the hardcore bass liberation that guys like Barry Guy and Dyani were working with later in the decade. Garrison, on the other hand--and maybe because he was a really systematic thinker, who knows--found a way to operate soloistically while still thinking in terms of counterpoint to the melody--and he didn't do it by playing less busy, necessarily, but by basically improvising a reduction of Trane's harmonic conceits. Resultantly, Garrison is very rhythmically assymetric (much more oblique than Parker), but still melodically lucid. This is a much more "inside" way of doing things, which might be why Garrison is still so "legit" to mainstream cats and maybe not so hot to out people. This is what I meant by egoless, and I have endless love, respect, and admiration for Jimmy Garrison for being this oddball voice of "reason" in an era when people weren't really giving half a damn about reason. That wouldn't be "enough," really, to put him in the pantheon, but I discovered that Garrison's depth and poise actually gave me sort of a lifeline back when late Coltrane sounded like chaos. Don't get me wrong--chaos is freaking awesome--but listening to Garrison actually foregrounded the calmness, beauty, love, etc. at the center of late Coltrane--which I definitely think was an important (and often ignored) part of the message. There are few greater skills for a bass player, AFAIC, than getting the listener to hear the rest of the band differently and "better." Killer Garrison to this effect may be heard on: Live in Japan -Maybe the most subdued of the late Quintet recordings, it's possible to listen to this as one long rhythm section piece. The interplay between Alice, Jimmy, and Rashied is really striking--like one long, unending dominant chord that somehow relaxes you into the middle of the tension. More than the Quartet music, this feels like Coltrane improvising over something orchestral and endlessly rich in color and stasis. Expression -Similar to Live in Japan, but more compressed and maybe more dynamic. What Garrison does with his role in the arrangements is truly spectacular--listen to stuff like "Seraphic Light," where with might otherwise sound like a noodle-y, vaguely "Eastern" drone actually achieves a degree of slow, powerful melodic momentum. That's real spontaneous orchestration. Cosmic Music -The Trane tracks on this album are kind of atrociously mixed, but that maximizes (in weird ways) the beauty of Garrison's contribution. His pizzicato work here is really fascinating--the band is at full tilt and the horns get severely unmelodic in places, but Garrison manages to turn that into a weird dialogue--two sides (horns v. bass/piano) at cross-purposes, where the harmony is actually only a shadow of what the horns are doing (rather than vice-versa). Stellar Regions (see Expression The Olatunji Concert -The consensus on this album seems to be that it sounds so bad that it's actually kind of awesome, and I agree with that. The drums are absolutely out of control, but the fact that Jimmy is also pushing the mic waaaay past red says something about his power and aplomb. Garrison earns a medal for not only engaging in a dialogue with what is essentially the world's longest atom bomb denotation, but also for complementing and reinforcing the power with a really inconceivable clarity.

I didn't want to jump in and just start bashing Ron Carter--I do think he's one of the great bassists of his generation, particularly in his idiom (i.e., the second quintet freebop thing). On the other hand, beefs are beefs, and I'd be lying if I said that I understood precisely why a player of that status and caliber felt the need to drag on Garrison. I did and does strike me as another instance of a virtuosic musician calling out another musician on "failing to meet" supposedly objective standards of brilliance--which, as we know, is often "beef" more than it is "reality." I like The Real McCoy--and Ron's hookup with Elvin is unimpeachable insofar as it operates under its own premises (just like the Elvin hookup with Richard Davis, for example--there's nothing else like it). I do like Jimmy/Elvin "better," honestly--or, rather, it's a different thing that just gets me deeper (both feel wise and emotionally). A/Bing the version(s) of Chasing the Trane with Workman and Garrison, for example, convey just what Jimmy brought to that band--Workman is a great player, but his uptempo playing (at that time, at least) comes across as a lot more slippery, a lot less rhythmically "direct" than Jimmy's. Garrison is as stable as it gets without getting stiff. Jimmy strikes me as the rubicon point beyond which things get toooo stiff (see plenty of modal jazz in the wake of Coltrane) and before which things just aren't heavy enough. Speaking to something Noj said--I do think there's a very real and serious relationship between Jimmy/Elvin and, say, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward, Jones and Bonham, etc. etc. (free rhythm section example: Dyani and Moholo, post punk rhythm section: Kim Deal and Dave Lovering if you want to go there).

Unless the discography got revised before I last checked, it was Garrison on Chasin' the Trane: Coltrane Discography John Coltrane Nonet Garvin Bushell (ob, cbasn -2) John Coltrane (ss, ts) Eric Dolphy (as, bcl -1/3,5,7) McCoy Tyner (p -2/4,6,7) Ahmed Abdul-Malik (oud -2) Reggie Workman (b -1/4,6) Jimmy Garrison (b -2,5,7) Roy Haynes (d -1) Elvin Jones (d -2/7) "Village Vanguard", NYC, November 2, 1961 1. Chasin' Another Trane Impulse IZ 9361/2 2. India MCA/Impulse MCAD 5541 3. Spiritual - 4. 10572 Softly, As In A Morning Sunrise Impulse A 10, AS 9200-2 5. 10576 Chasin' The Trane Impulse A 10, ASH 9278-2 6. 10573 Greensleeves Impulse AS 9325 7. Impressions Impulse IZ 9361/2 * Impulse IZ 9361/2 The Mastery Of John Coltrane, Vol. 4 - Trane's Modes * Impulse A 10 John Coltrane - Coltrane "Live" At The Village Vanguard * Impulse AS 9200-2 The Best Of John Coltrane - His Greatest Years * Impulse ASH 9278-2 The Best Of John Coltrane - His Greatest Years, Vol. 3 * Impulse AS 9325 John Coltrane - The Other Village Vanguard Tapes * MCA/Impulse MCAD 5541, DIDX 204 John Coltrane - From The Original Master Tapes Also, right about Art Davis, but you're wrong about Richard Davis: Richard Davis Interview

Jimmy Garrison was and is an active negation of the notion that virtuosity is linked to competition--and, moreover, a counter to the lingering idea that "free music" (particularly of the "energy music" variety) is predicated on self-indulgence. I'm of the sense that even virtuosity/technique predisposed musicians will (and, in my experience, almost always do) hold Garrison in high regard due to a basic understanding of just how much it takes to play the "Garrison role" precisely, tastefully, and with conviction. That's how Workman (another bassist I love) lost the Coltrane gig, yes? Coltrane was of the mind that he didn't want someone mirroring Elvin--or, rather, that there was no need for two instruments to occupy the same rhythmic and energetic space. I actually have a hard time imagining too many bassists who could slot into a band with, say, Trane, Pharoah, McCoy, Elvin, and Rashied and check their egos at the door... Reading Ron Carter's pseudo-dismissal of Garrison in his interview with Ethan Iverson is just ridiculous in that regard. Ron--mercurial, active, and buoyant--is almost Garrison's opposite, and Ron was perfect for Miles's really liquid group concept in the 60's... but Trane's 60's music, which was (especially in later years) exploding with rhythmic activity, really benefited from a solid anchor, a sense of depth in the low register. McCoy wasn't just pure flash--he connected the dots between Elvin and Trane's rhythmic density and Jimmy's unhurried profundity. Hear the difference when Alice takes over the piano chair--much less stable, sort of like the constantly shifting Heraclitan river (whereas the "classic quartet" was this spectacular, eloquently stratified structure whose floors were in a constant state of remodeling). What keeps that final music together--insofar as I'm concerned, anyway--is Jimmy. There's something always there--as pointed out above, always "felt"--that tethers the music to a sense of comprehensible reality. As far as technique is concerned--anyone down on Garrison should listen to the hookup with Ed Blackwell on Ornette on Tenor. Jimmy is as supple and dense as Haden (maybe denser) and almost as mobile as LaFaro on a walk. Or dig the master take of Chasin' the Trane, which is still the ultimate burnout piece--Garrison is a heavy and rock solid swinger--even at fast tempos--and never gets so preoccupied mixing it up with Elvin that he loses the thread of Coltrane's narrative. Jimmy is the perfect energy bass player in that he prioritizes ebb and flow over phrases and gestures. None of this is to say that Garrison was ponderous or inflexible. Some of the trouble I've had with the crop of "heavy free jazz bass players" of the past two or so decades is this weird preoccupation with unrelieved walking (albeit at fluctuating tempos). Garrison does twice or three times as much with a couple notes surrounded by space than most bass players do with a stream of regular notes (let alone a stream of jittery phrases). I was just listening to Cosmic Music--it's very clear there that Garrison is essentially performing the role of this improvised solo/dialogue with the rest of the band's soapboxing, and the clarity and simplicity of his through-line really clarifies some of the band's ideas for me. There's always the story of how Coltrane wanted Richard Davis in the band before Trane split, and I can get that, too--even though Davis is slippery where Garrison is dry, he's still an anchor sort of bass player (heavy sounds and all that). If I want hyperactivity and craziness, I can go for Harry Miller, Johnny Dyani, Peter Kowald, and, for that matter, Scott LaFaro in the right moments--otherwise, I'm glad that Garrison was where he was at when he was there. It just sounds like that was what needed to happen.

I'm pretty sure I have all of Ornette's leader appearances in one form or another. I probably also have 60-80% or so of his sideman appearances--I'm just missing a handful of stuff I've either put off buying or haven't been able to track down in physical form (including that Rolf Kuhn album, the Geri Allen album he's on, the Al McDowell Time Peace album, two of the Jamaaladeen Tacuma albums he's on, and I think that's it). I've also managed to track down most circulating concert recordings from the pre-80's period (i.e., everything up to and including Of Human Feelings-era Prime Time), but the sheer volume of bootleg recordings after that point gets pretty intimidating. Brief perusal of racks--I must have 80-90+% of Andrew Hill, Dolphy, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Albert Ayler, Marion Brown, Art Ensemble of Chicago, and anything involving the Blue Notes/Brotherhood of Breath. Like a lot of people, I'm pretty sure I have all if not most of the Coltrane from the Atlantic period onward. Most of this has to do with papers/analyses I've had to write, incidentally. I guess it doesn't look like a disorder until you actually see it all in one place... Living the life of a musician/obsessive in the digital age, I've found it's actually pretty easy to accumulate/collect discographies from even obscure artists. I'm not talking about sharity blogs per se, but rather the fact that the one or two (for example) Air albums I'd had trouble tracking down maybe ten years ago are now up on Amazon for very cheap (or mixed into some relatively economical boxed set). I made a conscious effort a while back to avoid ordering stuff online (specifically the huge, conglomerate sales orgs--like Amazon or ebay) to keep record store buying interesting, but the market is deflating and it's harder and harder to find obscure stuff in the bins these days. I've found that current trends in availability of documentation have made it easier for me to "obtain" stuff, but much harder for me to "get" stuff (if you dig).

Fascinating lineup--Tatsu (in addition to being one of the foremost old guard bassists in Chicago) is a very esteemed member of the greater Asian Improv scene. I know him through Francis Wong--one of many "big" tenors in Tatsu's musical circle, it seems. I've always enjoyed Tatsu's playing, and I'd imagine his pliant, burly tone would mesh well with a tenor as tough as Von.

That is one of the single most ignorant conceits I've heard about new music/free jazz--and conceived of by people who should definitely know better! That's like counting Ornette and Dewey Redman, Frank Wright and Noah Howard, Konitz and Marsh as the same guy.

Yes--best to Joseph!

I purchased a copy of Head On earlier today and... wow. Components does not lie in that it paints a picture of a complex, multifaceted musician with a very broad palette of tastes and inclinations. Even though it's not as if any of Bobby's other albums are that clearly divided between an "in" side and an "out" side (so to speak), Components was not a fluke. My mind reels at the fact that Bobby recorded Now (a pseudo-abstract psychedelic groover), then San Francisco (a moody funk album), then Head On (which shifts from free jazz to light instrumental music to modal blowouts with remarkable cohesion), then Natural Illusions (which borders on irredeemable muzak at times). I honestly can't think of another mainstream jazz musician of the era who was both this all over the place in terms of setting and so proficient at everything he or she handled. There's Rahsaan, but his bag is more explicitly postmodern; the genre play in that case is jarring and purposefully so, and many of his attempts at engaging with subgenres are almost aggressively facile, if musically interesting (I'm thinking specifically of The Case of the 3 Sided Dream in Audio Color, which is alternately awesome and a little bit too absurd). Freddie Hubbard did a lot of work in multiple settings, but his crassness was much more wholesale than Bobby's, and his descent into recorded commercialism is a little more extreme. The clearest comparison is with Herbie, although Herbie was the more visionary composer and conceptualist--the arc of his development seems clearer and more overtly purposeful (however much you value that purpose... after Thrust, at least). Head On does reinforce my thoughts about the Hutcherson/Chambers collaboration--that is, that Bobby's "secret" talent was that he had an excellent ear for other folks' innovations and, moreover, that he knew how to both champion those innovations and operate convincingly within their premises. The transition from "At the Source" to "Many Thousands Gone" is mind-boggling in its scope, and it's sort of a microcosm of how Hutch's preternatural ability to collaborate made, in almost every case up until the 80's, for this sort of gestalt music--a sound informed by, but "better" than, what, say, Cochran and Hutcherson might create independently. As for what you said, CJ--were you the guy who mentioned this on a Components thread a while back? Because if so, that was dead on, and it's crazy to me that no one (including myself) followed up on your sentiments. The similarities between Components and the more free jazzy EFI (like, for example, the SME's Karyobin) are very, very apparent. It may (or may not) have been a matter of one thing influencing the other, but it was certainly a case of people coming to similar conclusions from similar external pressures. The reductionist free jazz aesthetic of the Spontaneous Music Ensemble was a response, in ways, to the maximalist American ethos (e.g., Coltrane), and Chambers's contributions to Components strike me as attempts to both rationalize (via intellectual and physical introversion) the liberties of free jazz that were elsewhere exercised fast and loose.