ep1str0phy

Unreal--quartet? That lineup sounds great. I'm listening to Original Phalanx right now. Great, very original band. I'm warmed up for my gig earlier this evening by playing along with Touchin' On Trane--totally wiped me out... but hey, my chops were in order for the show.

Also, that Rashied Ali Quintet album with early James "Blood" Ulmer on guitar is a stone favorite of mine. That's probably my favorite Ulmer, and Rashied's solos on that one are killin'.... Funny--I remember thinking earlier yesterday about what my favorite albums were, coming to the conclusion that, yeah, Interstellar Space would have to be at the very very top. I had no idea that Muhammad Ali was still alive, and, if so, I'd love to hear what he sounds like today. Talented family with some important, beautiful talent.

I just learned about this at a gig late yesterday--literally--this and Les Paul's passing, right before we hit. Got to see Rashied with Sonny Fortune at the old LA Jazz Bakery a few years back... played one tune a set (Giant Steps and Satellite?)--45 minutes, nonstop, Interstellar Space style. I was enraptured. Fck you, Death. Fck you.

I'd just like to the point out that I obtained a copy of the Bradford/Stevens disc yesterday, and the sound is phenomenal. I hadn't heard these sessions, but I am familiar with other recordings by iterations of this band, and this is clearly the only time I think I've ever really heard the sonic "impact" of the group. Julie Tippetts and Ron Herman are, here, lucid and animate in a way that I had not anticipated; I recall a review of the RVG of Dolphy's Out to Lunch that referred to the sound of Richard Davis's bass as "holographic," and that certainly applies to the voice and bass on this recording. Better still is that, especially in comparison to some of the musically fantastic but sonically dreadful Stevens/Watts reissues that have cropped up out of FMR, the drums have a more noticeable punch and dynamism. I didn't think it was possible for a remastering job to so totally affect the way that I hear a group of musicians, but just on first impressions I may prop this up next to No Fear and the first Amalgam disc as my favorite "aggressive" John Stevens album.

I didn't know where else to post this information, but, for those in the Bay Area, but I'm holding my thesis concert on Saturday, May 9, at 7:30pm in the Mills College Concert Hall (5000 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland, CA 94613). This project seems to have been consuming my time recently and, well, I figured I'd let people know about it: 1. Solo 2. Duet: Grex (me: guitar, vox; Rei Scampavia: p, fl, acc, vox) [potato dirges] 2. Trio: Me: guitar, Christopher M. Skebo: tpt, Luigi Marino: zarb 4. Quartet: Host Family (me: guitar, Andrew Conklin: guitar, Jason Hoopes: bass, Jordan Glenn: drums) [moon songs] Fred Frith said that we sounded good in rehearsal, for whatever it's worth. My myspace, for sound purposes: www.myspace.com/karladevangelista -Regarding Host Family, for name recognition purposes--Glenn leads the trio Wiener Kids with Aram Shelton and Cory Wright, Conklin the band Quinn, and Hoopes is in the Atomic Bomb Audition (which also features, members of Fred Frith's Cosa Brava and Mute Socialite). It's a Mills thing. I'm in the middle, also, of completing an epic 100+ page MFA thesis on the Blue Notes/Brotherhood of Breath, to be finished within the next hour. I'm pretty excited to share it here...

I really don't know what to say about the show. I came up to Fred afterward, and all he could say was--"Well, you were there." It makes music feel really, really small and really, really big and the same time--putting credit where credit is due, knowing that people from backgrounds as diverse as Fred, Roscoe, (etc.) can all share in and appreciate fine music. What I can say is that the vitality of the two principals is indeed awesome. Roscoe played a sopranino solo that night that compares with or surpasses anything I've heard him do on record--a mixture of bent/microtonal pure tones and shrieking harmonics, circular breathed. (Cut askew from the same cloth as Evan Parker's essays on the larger soprano--only Roscoe's playing is an extension of the same phrase shapes and patterns one might detect in, say the Art Ensemble--not some monolithic something else.) And somewhere in my mind I'm wondering if the words fit, but I would call Muhal's contributions--which often served to harmonically "ground" the duet portions, providing a more tonal counterbalance to Roscoe's more angular, linear improvising--tasteful, elegant, and concise--as elegant as anything I've ever witnessed live (in any idiom). In other words: patience, ideas, work, and friendship. That's pretty much it. If we're lucky, the set might someday get released on record.

Oh man--a few of us managed to book some time with Muhal. I managed to play with him today--maybe the best "feeling" improvisation I've ever been in. No anxiety--just calm, time, the music goes where it's supposed to go. He kept emphasizing the phrase "respect the space", which just orients things--philosophically--for me in a completely beautiful way (the "space" being something apart from the self--something that just is when music is being made). Another bit of wisdom--"You are not your mind." Beautiful. Anyway, it's the real deal. The giants are out to go eat fish, and we're left to just do. Life changing.

Oh yeah--you can order tickets here: http://www.mills.edu/musicfestival/concert3.php

(I'm a Mills student and incidentally working a publicity assistantship for the music department, but this really doesn't have to do with that--) I was told today that this Friday's concert (2/27) featuring Muhal and Roscoe (I'm presuming some solo piano, some duet) is not yet sold out. Mills is located at: 5000 MacArthur Blvd. Oakland, CA 94613 Show starts at 8pm and tickets are $20 general, $12 students, alumnae, and seniors (65+). Now, I feel like a massive shill for posting this, but I thought it was ridiculous that this show had empty seats (considering attendance for certain other events...). If any of you are in the Bay Area and not yet hip to this, I highly, highly recommend it. I and a few of the other students actually performed an epic Muhal piece today, composer in attendance (providing encouragement, vocal and physical exhortations, and some piano). The man's energy is awesome. It's great actually finding out how open, helpful, and encouraging these heavyweights are (Roscoe, Muhal, Fred Frith, etc.). Good music by good people- (If any of you make it out, let me know.)

Not expecting to jump-start this thread, but I thought someone here might have an opinion/impressions of Michel Doneda. He was over here (SF/Bay Area) last week, playing with some of the local scene people and, most notably, Fred Frith and David Wessel. He has apparently worked with Fred Van Hove, Phil Wachsmann, Max Eastley, John Zorn, Eliott Sharp, Elvin Jones. I saw the Frith set--a little bit of a communication mismatch, although they both played resourcefully (Michel very free jazz in a Braxton sort of vein--extensive mastery of extended techniques, exceptional register control, a penchant for extreme velocity and fits of violence). I also recently tracked down a CD by the Italian collective N.A.D. (Niu Abdominaux Dangereux)--mostly mostly scrabbly material in a no wavey kind of vein--but the guest list is really astonishing: Denardo Coleman, Fred Frith, Henry Kaiser, Christian Marclay, Zeena Parkins, Elliott Sharp, Riccardo Bianchi, Zamir Ahmad Khan, Sonny Sharrock. Which makes me wonder why Denardo doesn't appear on more sessions that aren't hosted by his father, since his (present) percussion style is idiosyncratic and versatile enough to fit, I think, into a variety of contexts.

If there's anyone in NY and manages to see this, please follow-up--I'm really curious. Warren Smith!

And "Broadway Blues" sounds like sort of a paraphrase of "Sandu".

Damn it, Late. I thought it was going to be another one of those St. Sanders videos. A tip to "Well You Needn't" in the "Chronology" solo, if I remember correctly--not an exact quote, but rhythmically similar. Of course Ornette's music isn't as threatening now as it was, but listening to the Brown/Roach Quintet a lot recently--which itself sounds like the fire breathing of its time--and then spinning This Is Our Music for the first time in ages, my mind was blown anew. The two things I initially noticed were (1) this is the most complete pianoless quartet music I've ever heard and (2) you can't get people to just play this stuff--it's very tonally astute. Charlie Haden had ears of gold.

Call me crazy, but I liked Alan Arkin's Clouseau a lot.

Here's an obliquely written review I did of the Lacy Baden-Baden record (back in 2007): Steve Lacy: New Jazz Meeting Baden-Baden 2002 I'll have to dig it out again to see if my perspective has changed. The music, I recall, resembles some of Lacy's experiments with tape, this time assembled in real time.

Yeah, that's right--but In the Townships postdates "Home", IIRC. I don't know if too many people would have the answer, but I always wondered whether the issue was mis-accreditation or that these were folk songs or melodies/harmonies in the "group ether" that people chose to appropriate/place their own stamps on. "Ezilalni" from In the Townships seems to be based on a folk melody; the same theme appears as "Ntsikana's Bell" on Dollar Brand's Good News from Africa, and there it's credited as "Trad. arr. by Abdullah Ibrahim". On the other hand, there are songs like "Ntyilo Ntyilo" that have definitive sources but are very often mis-credited. (These might be issues that get clarified for me over the next few months of writing, though...)

That seems to happen with this network of musicians. Nomali is the same as "Angel Nemali" from In the Townships. I think you're right in that it's credited to Dudu there (I don't have the liners with me to confirm). For comparison, "Shebeen" from Masekela's Hugh Masekela & the Union of South Africa is actually the same as "Baloyi"--In the Townships' lead-off track. "Shebeen" is accredited to Jonas Gwangwa on the Masekela album; I think it's attributed to Dudu on his record (again, I can't confirm right now). I love the drummers on the Masekela dates, but I by far prefer the versions on In the Townships--far edgier and more rhythmically supple. Incidentally, "The Big Apple" appears as "Big Apple" on Dudu's Cosmics Chapter 90, also attributed to Semenya (an example of agreement).

Great your opportunities seem to be ballooning. Wish I could be there for some of the shows--I'm actually in the process of final stage of the Blue Notes paper. We'll all say that we knew you "when".

Right--all ascriptions of fire and rage kind of dull/hide the fact that a lot of that music was heavily, heavily arranged. I recall a Downbeat interview with Carla Bley sometime in the 70's where she disparaged Brotzmann and Kowald--I think because of a tension between her composed aesthetic and the much more formally "open" playing of the Germans. Paraphrasing from the same interview, I remember her saying that she could only really go as far as Ornette (again, I don't have the article in front of me). I mean, it was a scene, but I don't get the impression it was a totally united front. Listened to Everywhere again and Logan's flute comes across a lot more nuanced than I thought--though I get the impression that he's pushed further back in the mix than the others (his bass clarinet is almost inaudible for some of the ensembles). Weird.

Paragon rocks. I like how rough the Tuba Trio stuff is, but the Rivers + Holland and Altschul is great. I don't know why I didn't think of this before, but Zorn, George Lewis, and Bill Frisell's trio disc News for Lulu actually fits in this category pretty well. The music is comprised of pretty creatively arranged readings of hard bop classics, mixing in some free blowing and "out" passages. Zorn's alto playing is surprisingly warm on this disc, which amazed me upon first hearing (considering how strident he usually is). Frisell's time impresses me a lot, too. Lewis ranges from good to awesome all the time, so that goes without saying...

edited to add AMG review - source: http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&a...10:kbfrxqukldse Nice album; no long trax. MG I was actually thinking about this when the thread came up, but the tracks are short. I got it as a twofer with Black Woman a while back and was kind of bewildered by the pairing. Good album, though, with some really cutting playing by Henderson. If we're going to bring up the Masekela, let's bring up his other album Hugh Masekela & Union of South Africa, which is less adventurous but a little more soul jazz-y than Home. I'd bring up Dudu, but that's taking things a little far afield, I think.

I'll want to check this out, as I'm familiar and have been impressed by a couple of the principals. The Irabagon I've heard certainly does sound like "free jazz party music".

C: To clarify my very unconvincing ideas, I think the bigger issue is that, short of Jost and a few artist-specific books & scholars (like the interesting but kind of brief Ornette Coleman book by Peter Niklas Wilson), no one has really gone in-depth about composition as an element of 60's free jazz. I think Giuseppi is interesting because it seems that preconfigured elements are just as important as improvisation as an organizing factor in his music--which contravenes the classic stereotyping of free jazz as a compositionally reductive music. (OK, that's better...)

As per the 7/8 thing, coming from who it does and where it does--historically--I think it's an issue that isn't dealt with enough. It's easy to be reductive about analyzing free jazz of that vintage and, moreover, to lump it all together into one homogeneous kind of thing, but I think there's something to be said about certain people doing different things (even if not well). Now, in the world(s) of Braxton, or Zorn, or, hell, Zappa, or Max Roach, it's not as important--not when we flatten everything out and look at what people can do and have done. Maybe this makes details like Giuseppi's composition a curiosity (ultimately), but it's interesting enough to me... it's there and kind of not talked about. I hope it doesn't disappoint you, .:., but I'm not Henry Kaiser or whatever: www.myspace.com/karladevangelista Or a VERY rough recording of my group: www.myspace.com/hostfamilyband I am studying under Roscoe and Frith, playing and kibitzing with some of the Asian Improv Arts guys, and, when the context will allow it, playing out on the Bay Area experimental scene (confrontational and unlucrative, which is paradoxically perfect for attracting lots of interesting people). I just did a Moe!kestra! yesterday and nearly went deaf with ecstasy.

Whoa--shoutout to Azar Lawrence from Noj. He's back playing Coltraney modal jazz as of late (and doing it well). Mention of Belgrave makes me think of the Tribe stuff, of which a few albums are more accessible than others. Phil Ranelin's Vibes from the Tribe is certainly as raw and funky as it gets, even with that modal edge. Speaking of Mwandishi, has anyone caught this youtube video yet? I was expecting them to bust into some hard free stuff, but they start playing a tune from Fat Albert Rotunda (I don't have the album here, so I can't recall which one).