ep1str0phy

A (possibly) bizarre post, but most certainly of interest - this is essentially a reunion show for the One Step Beyond band. Of particular note is that Jackie isn't even on this recording. According to the YouTube comments, he was in a car accident. James Spaulding subs. Woody Shaw and Ron Carter also feature, with Moncur, Hutcherson, and Williams returning. The lack of McLean robs this music of some necessary surrealism, but Spaulding acquits himself well. The heads are a little shambolic, and "Frankenstein" in particular sounds like it was performed with only minimal rehearsal. Overall, however, the music is excellent. Tony and Ron are playing in full-on maximalist/VSOP mode, but it works here. Moncur sounds like his old self, Hutcherson is appropriately lyrical, and Shaw offers a bit of vintage fire. I was at an open air gig last Saturday where the bandleader had us play "Ghost Town" off of lead sheets. It was not great. What I came to realize - and this was confirmed by a quick spin of the record later that day - is that the One Step Beyond music is largely very "in." It's all modal structures with few hairy edges. The abstraction is derived from the band's interplay and the energy of the performances. I guess I had misremembered things. When McLean did veer into actual free jazz later in his Blue Note tenure, the music lost some of its identity. To me, this both (a) reconfirms the primacy of that stretch from Let Freedom Ring to '65 or so, which is truly unique in character, and (b) validates the notion that the free jazz music of the '60s wasn't just something you could slump into, regardless of good intentions.

Ted is a fantastic bandleader/keyboardist, too, for anyone who doesn't know. Some of the most insightful Dolphy stories I've heard come from Sunny Murray. (I head the stories secondhand, relayed to me by the great Bay Area saxophonist David Boyce.) I can only paraphrase what I was told, but apparently Dolphy was occasionally in danger of physical attack. The hulking Murray, who was a Golden Gloves winner, sometimes had to serve as his bodyguard. Murray also characterized Dolphy's living conditions as very spare - a bed and some protein. IIRC George Russell said more or less the same thing.

It's Bobby Bradford's birthday today - he turns 90. I'm certain that his music means plenty to everyone on this board. Bobby's longevity - and his continued creative excellence - more than merits celebration. (I've had the good fortune to know and play with Bobby for a number of years now, and he's one of the sharpest and most astute musicians I've ever met - and a deeply kind, generous, and funny guy.) In recognition of the moment, I thought I'd paraphrase an anecdote that Bobby always tells me to share (I'm recounting this from memory, so apologies for any minor inaccuracies) - Ornette's free jazz quartet only convened twice. Any information to the contrary is apocryphal. The second occasion was a performance in the midwest. The band was comprised of Ornette, Steve Lacy, Bobby, Don Cherry, Jimmy Garrison, Charlie Haden, Billy Higgins, and Ed Blackwell. The performance never happened. It was advertised as a "Free Jazz" concert (read: Free Jazz, like Free Chicken Nuggets, rather than "Free Jazz"), which fostered confusion among the audience. The band was customarily paid upfront for engagements of that nature, and the miscommunication about the advertising caused some issues with the promoter. Long story short, the band never took the stage and they went straight home. Subsequent articles played up the alleged "free jazz performance" as a source of controversy, but it was all pantomime on the part of the local music media. There was no controversy because the music never happened. An amusing wrinkle: Ed Blackwell didn't have drums for this gig. When he arrived at the airport, all he had were rhythm logs. (He played these on Shepp's The Magic of Ju-Ju.) Ornette was livid. Someone - whether the promoter, Ornette's manager, or whomever - called ahead to see if any local drummers were willing to lend Blackwell a kit. When the band arrived for the gig, three different drummers were willing to lend their gear. It was an honor to have those cats in town.

Sorry to hear this. I love her playing. Not only was she a great improviser in a vacuum, but she helped to establish the vernacular of piano playing in free music. I'd be hard pressed to find another player of her generation who was so deft at integrating into so many different stylistic environments. Her duo records are incredible, especially the recital with Louis Moholo-Moholo. That album should be required listening for anyone who wishes to understand how traditionalist idiomatic conceits can coexist with total free improvisation. They play a ton of tunes, but the composed content never gets in the way of the abstraction (and vice versa). You have to cherish the masters while they're still around.

I find this comparison fascinating. As someone who comes from a blues background, repetitive riffage is just part of the idiom. There isn't that much separating Grant Green from a Buddy Guy or Albert King. Green is only exceptional in that he's exercising these techniques in a more conventional jazz context.

I've had a difficult time reconnecting with Black Magic Man, but I adore Tenor and especially The Willisau Concert. I wish there were more documentation of McPhee playing with some of the more familiar names of his era, regardless of the superlative quality of his solo and more esoteric small ensemble work.

Hello, all- For those of you proximate to the SF Bay Area - my project Grex is proud to be presenting "Auntie + Tebs" - an experimental work that celebrates the sound of revolutionary change. The project premieres May 31 and June 1 in Oakland, CA. The project title “Auntie + Tebs” references two epochal figures: Miriam Defensor Santiago, my Aunt and a longtime Filipino public servant, and Louis Moholo-Moholo (“Tebs”), the innovative South African drummer and Anti-Apartheid activist. Both of these individuals devoted their lives to toppling corruption and oppression in their home countries. This project, which is centered on free jazz, spoken word, and experimental aesthetics, underlines the relationship between Bay Area activism and hard-fought battles abroad. For this project, we're excited to be welcoming the great Bobby Bradford (both shows) and firebrand Zoh Amba (6/1 only) to the Bay. It's a rare opportunity to see some unique, potent figures in an unusual setting. Details: Grex: “Auntie + Tebs” feat. Bobby Bradford, Zoh Amba, Francis Wong Friday, May 31, 8pm & Saturday, June 1, 8pm at Dresher Ensemble Studio, 2201 Poplar Street, Oakland, CA 94607, United States General Admission: $15; Students and Seniors: $10 TICKETS / MORE INFO

Re: adventurous guitarists that might rightly be considered modern jazz or post-bop: Zoller is a great callout. If we're talking early, mid-60's, there is a bit of a recorded scarcity of guitarists operating in more contemporary contexts. In retrospect, I'd assert that the advent of Hendrix really altered the the perceptual range of possibilities for guitar. Speaking as a guitar player, I think a lot of this has to do with technology and innovation. The vernacular(s) of jazz guitar operate in this liminal space between horns and piano. It isn't an ideal instrument for either expressive melodicism or harmonic density - the guitar can do both, but other instruments are better suited to either extreme. It isn't a coincidence that a slew of new, decidedly modernistic guitarists emerged in the 1960s. The minute louder amps and effects pedals became more widely available - and after guitarists like Hendrix established what could be done on the instrument - it became easier for people to find a role for guitar in modern jazz ensembles. What many may not understand about gain on guitar is that it compresses your signal. Overdrive/distortion/fuzz are not merely effects - they actually change how lines articulate. A guitarist with a well-controlled fuzz pedal can play as fluidly as a horn player, even with the jazz/high-gauge strings that allow for stability of intonation. All this is to say that a guy like Grant Green may very well not have played like Grant Green had different technology been available in his youth. (And that's the story of music.) Case in point: consider Ray Russell, a very capable English guitarist who plays in a linear style not fundamentally dissimilar to a Zoller or Coryell (although he's somewhat less fluid and more angular-melodic - more akin to Jim Hall than Tal Farlow): This is from '68. You can already hear the inflection of the Coltrane-Miles continuum of modalism - which is to say that he's playing as more of a melodist and less of a vertical (harmonic) improviser. He just hasn't put it all together yet - he's missing that extra layer of expressivity. This is from '71: The fuzz grants Russell and extra layer of expressivity - there are explicit overtures to American fusion and free jazz. This version of Russell (essentially the same that would play "Stained Angel Morning," which by a certain metric might be considered the guitar equivalent of Spiritual Unity) is capable of contributing to a more contemporary ensemble in a meaningful way. See what happened to Derek Bailey toward the end of the '60s, James Blood Ulmer in the '70s, and Sonny Sharrock after his resurgence and you get roughly the same picture.

Maybe not the paradigm for Monk drummers, but I favor Shadow Wilson. It's wholly possible that my opinion has been colored by the presence of Coltrane on the Monk records that Wilson appears on. Wilson is fleet and liquid in a way that tempers Monk's internal groove very well.

BTW - thanks for the kindness, guys. I've definitely missed being here! Having a kid has completely recalibrated so many of my old habits.

Exactly. There's a reason that Booker Ervin exists. I don't want Booker to sound like Joe Henderson - they're different players that operate effectively in different contexts. It's worth mentioning that a ton of our knowledge about Grant is based on his recordings. Firsthand accounts are sparse. Grant's career mostly coincides with an era when amplifiers were not designed to compete with the (often) punishing volume levels of modern jazz. This dude was playing with organs in loud clubs. It may not be immediately evident if you don't have firsthand, experiential knowledge of playing guitar on stage, but you can't simply turn an amplifier up. There are certain gestures and registers that will invariably project better in a loud room. I can more or less guarantee that Grant's style played better in live environments than the approach favored by many of his contemporaries. He's comparable in this way to someone like Buddy Guy, who often sounds pinched and thin on records but who has probably destroyed every single room he ever played. For reference: there's all that talk about how Wes played with the Coltrane band. I can absolutely understand why this might be the case. Wes's harmonic vocabulary was surpassing, but he also figured out how how to solo with octaves in an era when people hadn't yet developed a facility with that technique. I can't imagine too many other players who were able to play over Elvin in an era before good live sound and freely available gain/distortion options.

Oof. There has to be content from the '60s in there, yes? Some iteration of the Barrage band?

I don't think that this is a fair assessment. Jim's statement applies - most jazz players are licks players. In Green's case, the reliance on riffs is stylistic rather than a reflection of any intrinsic limitations. He tends to lean on certain phrases because they're structurally sound and give his solos rhythmic and melodic cohesion. Considering the fact that he's mostly playing mid or downtempo hard bop, it's a sound approach. There's an additional (practical) consideration, which is that Green is a largely linear/melodic improviser. In sideman contexts, he's generally employed as a frontline instrument and has to compete with horn players and drums (re: My Point of View, Search for the New Land, etc.). So it's partially an issue with volume and attack. He tends to favor shapes that project easily and sit well on guitar: quartal phrases, arpeggios, short chromatic phrases, and - yes - riffs. With the benefit of hindsight, people like Wes feel like an exception - most of the guitarists of the era who played more fluidly than Green didn't have to contend with drummers like Elvin, Tony, or Philly Joe. Which is not to say that Grant couldn't play more inventively. His simplicity was a strength, and when he did go to bop phrasing, it was doubly effective. Look at measures 12-14 in the transcription below. He starts with some simple (mostly) stepwise motion on the G7b9 - the nested triplet has a ton of character. He follows this with a really simple triadic phrase (which he favored). He then plays a really beautiful phrase over the Fm6-G7b9, playing the double neighbor of the root tonic before resolving to the 13th of the next chord (the Ab7#11). Pure "riff" players can't execute this - you need to know some vocabulary in order to pull this off effectively over a chord progression at a glacial tempo. https://youtu.be/9hqGQxl_TlQ?si=qvUm4scVhfjbJ3J_

Oh man - tough news. I did know Achyutan. We'd fallen out of touch a bit, and our mutual acquaintances had dwindled. We worked together as music educators in Richmond, CA, and we played together on numerous occasions. He was consistently encouraging, and very warm with me. He was one of the first people I thought to check in with back when COVID hit. In a way, Achyutan was my first real view into a certain part of the jazz ethos. He had lived the music that I romanticized growing up, and he welcomed me into that world with open arms. Before playing with Achuyan and company, I hadn't spent much time among musicians who taught from the bandstand - folks who would reprimand you for stepping too far out, or remind you to play the melody when you were just noodling around. Off stage, Achyutan was kind and courteous. The time I spent with him was an object lesson in the fact that music really is a job, a passion, and a lifestyle all at once. These facts are lost to time, but Achyutan really got around on the scene in the 60s. Like a lot. He subbed for Elvin Jones in the Coltrane Quartet - not for a night or two, but for a stint. He was on Pharoah's first record, and he kept a photo of the band from that album in his living room. He spoke of people like Beaver Harris in reverential tones. Hearing his stories really made me reflect on the number of largely unknown musicians who made inestimable contributions to jazz - people who gifted it life in the wee hours, often to audiences who could not or did not grasp the craft. What I found interesting is that by the time we began playing together, he had made a hard shift away from avant-garde music. Even in contemporary academic circles, where there is an incentive to engage in at least some level of cultural nuance, we still tend to think of free jazz a monolith. In truth, there were probably as many different camps as there were participants, and there was certainly a contingent that looked upon the more extreme manifestations of the music with some skepticism. Achyutan could appreciate Archie Shepp's wall-of-noise music from the late 60s, but there was a disconnect between the purity of his bebop vernacular and whatever free jazz ultimately evolved into. It's complex. Regardless, I'll never forget goading him into playing some wilder stuff at rehearsals. I was super keen to play "Impressions" with him - to just be near the reality of that language. I played my Coltrane superimpositions and side steps and additional self-inflicted hysterics. When we were done, he exhaled and winked. Legit to the core. I'll remember him differently, but he should be memorialized for the depth of his musicality. Here's a great video with Gato, in 1972:

I just dug this one out for the first time in a couple of years, and I was surprised to discover that my opinion on the recording had drastically changed. Regardless of my initial impressions, I had previously understood this live recording to be of historical value first and musical value second. In a way, it's neither as excessive (and fun) as the previously released Seattle stuff or as focused as the studio album or the '65 Antibes performance. I've now had a few opportunities to listen to the Seattle ALS from beginning to end, and I can see the bigger picture. It's a decisively formalist reading of the music that just so happens to contain a series of tangential features - and many of the improvisations are extraordinary. To those who still complain about Pharoah's contributions to this ensemble - he's dagger-sharp and admirably concise throughout this performance. He's also pretty clued in to the music. Contrast against Carlos Ward - a brilliant player who is just not connected to what's happening around him here. On "Resolution," Ward seems defiantly insistent on avoiding the piece's core tonality, and his largely linear, melodic playing clashes aggressively with everything around him. Pharoah, meanwhile, is all about riding the ensemble's intensity and notching up the energy. Pharoah understood the assignment - he totally belonged on this job. The core quartet's contributions are also quite strong. Coltrane does a superlative job gluing together the guest features and the compositional material, and his short spotlight on "Psalm" matches or even surpasses the energy of the Antibes performance. Elvin is a dynamo throughout, and Garrison (with Garrett) is deeply dialed into the music's half-modal, half-free sonic environment. This document is also a McCoy Tyner master class. His comping throughout - especially on that egregiously out-to-lunch Carlos Ward solo - is brilliant. Free playing may not have been his preferred bag, but he is just so good at pushing the limits of tonality without losing focus. There are long stretches of improvisation that feel both literally and proverbially suspended - i.e., these episodes of harmonic development where it seems like a resolution is coming and it never quite does - and Tyner does not let his foot off the gas. As an aside, his solo on "Pursuance" has to rank among his best as a member of the quartet. I really appreciate revisiting music to see where I may have been (or clearly was) wrong, so my time with this record has been a pleasant late-year surprise.

Thanks for the kind words, all! My opinion is obviously very skewed, but Tatsu's work with Fred is across-the-board stellar. I'm partial to On the Run (a trio with Hamid Drake), and there's a live quartet date which is extraordinary - it's sort of an alternate-universe version of the Die Like A Dog band, with Toshinori Kondo included: https://fperecs.bandcamp.com/album/live-volume-v Finally: for those afar, it's looking like the Saturday show may stream - regardless, here's the link:

Hello, all- I'm very excited to announce two special live dates in Chicago, scheduled for Saturday, October 21 and Sunday, October 22 at Elastic Arts. These dates feature my What Else is There? project, featuring our friend Alexander Hawkins and bassist Tatsu Aoki. Our drummer Michael Zerang features on October 21, and October 22 features Charles Rumback, Mai Sugimoto, and Jeff Chan (in place of Zerang). We'll be celebrating the release of a brand new album on Fundacja Słuchaj, featuring Hawkins, Aoki, and Zerang. When this ensemble first convened, conversation turned to music and family. Pondering this notion, Aoki asked, "What else is there?" - hence the title. The record is an arresting blend of free jazz and free improvisation, melding my original compositions with some choice Asian American and Chicago jazz inflections. More Info: Night 1 Night 2 Thanks, all! https://www.karlevangelista.com

With only a handful of exceptions, all of the records that Moore selected are landmarks. The heavy-handed language may grate a bit, but there's something telling about the fact that we're talking about this list nearly two decades after the fact. In the interval between Moore's list and now, a defined subculture has emerged that valorizes lo-fi free jazz. This contingent is at least significant enough to to have forced a critical appraisal of what constitutes valid improvised music. The advent of streaming fostered a transformation in how we access anachronistic art, which has in turn reshaped the canon. I've leaned away from posting on most topics as of late, largely because of how many of my friends and peers are discussed on this board, but this fact is worth noting: a lot of music that was considered decisively marginal some 10 or so years ago is now quite widely traded. In the early days of new media - back when one's listener base was mediated by literal physical access to LPs, CDs, etc. - history was, by necessity, shaped by the winners. Things are different now. To be perfectly frank, I don't know of many musicians who currently think of Wynton as an existential threat - he merely carries the opprobrium of having made a series of very loud and incredibly ignorant referenda on music that he didn't understand. Talent wins out in the end. I saw it happen, in literal real time, when Roscoe Mitchell began getting his flowers some 15 or so years ago. That dude is a literal genius, but culture had to catch up to his accomplishments. All of this is to say that that Moore list doesn't look nearly as dumb now as it did back when I started checking out this board. Twenty years ago, I would have said that Nommo was an exciting document that is very much of its time. Now that I'm older and am slightly less stupid, I recognize that those Pullen/Graves records are a high watermark for a vernacular that remains undigested. That shit is really advanced. Go ask Jason Moran. Go ask Steve Coleman. It's dealing in rhythmic and timbral concepts that are just so perpendicular to the norm that cats in the past fifty years did not know how to properly copy it. The fact that mammoth figures like Coltrane exist shouldn't numb people to the fact that it's very easy to be wrong about art - a fluid, ultimately subjective thing. Yesterday's dorky free jazz list is today's bellwether for a change in thinking. I'm not saying that Moore is a genius and that the essay is particularly well-conceived - I'm only saying that stuff happened behind the scenes that people rethink a lot of this music.

R.I.P. RE: the above conversation - I'm a tremendous admirer of the first two records, though I have no strong sentimental attachment to the music. When the Band operated as a collaborative entity, it was truly extraordinary. The group understood pocket in a really special way, and the best of the writing somehow sounds both nuanced and effortless. The bass motion and cascading power chords in "King Harvest" are weirdly sophisticated - not in a proggy sense, but in the same way that the Pixies or Mitski would later harmonize around the melody. It deviates from the pop formula of the era by adapting the harmony to a lead voice, rather than just superimposing the vocal line over a predictable diatonic chord progression. In a practical sense, it presages the "chunks of power chord"-type writing that is all over modern indie and alt rock. Incidentally, there is a certain school of creative music that swears by Robbie Robertson's guitar playing. I admit that It's taken me a long time to get to it. It's fundamentally economical, and its specialness is based on feel and rhythmic nuance rather than energy or sophistication of line. But it's perfect for the Band, and a fine contrast to the escalating virtuosity that prevailed in the guitar heroism of the late 60's onward.

Just got back from a wonderful tour (and grueling, near-death-defying cross-country trip) - just now saw this. Thanks, all, for your support! Our guy Clifford runs a fantastic show. If you ever wonder how creative music survives outside of the major cities and festival circuit, know that independent curatorial work and concert production are hugely important. All it takes is one person and some ears.

Thank you, man! I thought it pointless to start a new thread for this - in anticipation of these shows, I conducted a pretty lengthy interview with Andrew. He's (characteristically) loquacious in the first half, but about 10 mins in, he begins offering some pretty intense insights regarding the intersection of race, commerce, and the future of the music. I know that the majority of you reside in lands afar, but hopefully you can find something of interest here:

Hi, all- I'm excited to announce that a long-gestating project is finally coming to fruition. Karl Evangelista's Bukas with Special Guest Andrew Cyrille debuts May 27-28 in the Bay Area. Both of these shows are free admission, with all proceeds going to support local arts organizations. "Bukas" is Tagalog for "tomorrow." This piece explores the idea of Free Jazz/Free Music as an aspirational practice, using musical exploration as a method of imagining better futures. Bukas uses cutting-edge sounds to commemorate and embody the stories of radical Black and Asian artists. More info on the events may be found here: https://www.karlevangelista.com A few bullet points: Andrew is seldom on the US West Coast these days. I just want as many people as possible to get the opportunity to hear him. Thanks to some hard work (and the generosity of the California Arts Council), we were able to make that happen. This isn't a repertory exercise. I've written an entire program of new music for this show, and we're taking some real creative risks. Joining Andrew and me for date will be a cadre of top-flight Bay Area improvisers: Asian Improv aRts cofounder Francis Wong, United Front saxophonist Lewis Jordan, bassist Lisa Mezzacappa, and my partner (and bandmate) Rei Scampavia. On May 26, we'll be releasing Ngayon - a more "in-the-idiom" free jazz recording we made back in 2021. Excited to say that we'll have physicals available at the shows. All the best to y'all, K/ep1

Fantastic, man! So excited to read this.

This band is absolutely stacked, and I have my doubts that Braxton would pen something and name it "Geese Suite" (unless these are random track titles assigned by a bootleg producer).

Terrible news. I don't much care for the term "underrated," as it tends to serve as shorthand for "something I get and other people do not." If any free jazz saxophonist deserved that honorific, however, it was Kidd. Like Frank Wright or early Frank Lowe, Kidd was an energy improviser. There's a through-line in that continuum that is, obviously, based in R&B and the blues. At the same time, Kidd had such a singular preoccupation with his altissimo register that you could hear multitudes in it. His smears of sound assumed a structural quality that was really remarkable, especially in extended contexts. Outside of Cecil and a handful of others, I can't think of many improvisers who more completely inhabited the intersection of physical stamina and intuitive constructivism. One of the most memorable concerts I ever witnessed was up at Guelph. Kidd was joined by Joel Futterman and Alvin Fielder. As the evening wound down, someone draped a cape over Kidd's shoulders, ala James Brown. In hilariously studied fashion, Kidd whipped around, saxophone in hands, and proceeded to dash around the room. Just bananas. My Mom was in attendance with me and - God bless her - she couldn't stop raving about it.