king ubu

Ken McIntyre - Way, Way Out (United Artists, part of a great Blue Note 2CD set)

impressions on my four days at the wonderful Festival Météo in Mulhouse (in addition, it was a pleasure to meet OliverM and his wife there, would have been great to have more time to talk, of course): :: Wednesday 24th :: afternoon (at L'Entrepôt): - Zeena Parkins solo - harp & electronics ... and histrionics - great stuff! - Clayton Thomas/Anthea Caddy - bass & cello used to produce sounds that reminded me of LaMonte Young and other drone music evening (always at Noumatrouff): - Louis Minus XVI - a french quartet of 2 sax, elb, d - rhythmically fun, punchy stuff, but the honking macho saxophones got tiring after a while - Sophie Agnel/Joke Lanz/Michael Vatcher - Agnel's carte blanche trio in its first performance that worked out amazingly well - her on piano, inside and on keys, Lanz doing some extremely well-fitting sampling and other turntables stuff, and Vatcher on drums/percussion - was pure joy seing them react to each other and to their own performance, big grins all around - The Thing & Joe McPhee - "ladies, motherfuckers, jazzfans!" - that was Mats Gutafsson's welcome message to kick off a high-energy set, him on tenor and baritone, McPhee on tenor and pocket trumpet, Ingebrigt Haker Flaten on double and electric bass and Paal Nilssen-Love on drums ... extremely concise, to the point, yet with lots of room for blowing - two highlights in a row, quite exhilarating really :: Thursday 25th :: children's concert (short solo sets at Bibliothèque Grand'Rue, 11:30) - Per-Ake Holmlander - a fun bit of solo tuba ... he ended with a high-speed version of Dollar Brand/Abdullah Ibrahim's "Jabulani" noon (12:30, always at Chapelle Saint-Jean): - Alexandre Babel solo - a short percussion set - seemed to lack direction or purpose or focus - the sounds themselves were interesting but not quite enough to keep the attention up afternoon sets I skipped for once (Hélène Breschand in duo with Kerwin Rolland - harp and effects, and then Mathias Delplanque, more electronics in solo), did some sightseeing around Mulhouse instead and took a much-needed nap evening: - Agustí Fernández/Kjell Nordeson & dieb13 solo - two half-sets, first a duo of piano and drums/vibraphone, which was pretty great, as I hoped it would be, Fernández being one of the most amazing free form improvisers of these times ... then a DJ set, not quite up to Joke Lanz the night before, but still good ... he sampled Ornette's "Lonely Woman" for a moment, and added some more jazz that I didn't recognize, it was pretty good really - Mats Gustafsson Nu Ensemble - the piece they performed was announced by Gustafsson as an homage to Little Richard ... which only made sense insofar as singer Mariam Wallentin - fine voice, but somewhat of an accent - sang bits of blues and r & b clichés most of the time ... McPhee was on board again, so was bass clarinetist Christer Bothen - whose noon solo gig I had missed on Wednesday, he played after a duo set by "Luft" which consists of Gustafsson and Erwan Keravec on bagpipes, but it was too early for me to catch -, then Anders Nyquist was on trumpet, Holmlander on tuba, Fernández on piano, Haker Flaten and Jon Rune Strom on double basses, Nordeson and Nilssen-Love on drums, and dieb13 on turntables again ... I enjoyed the variety of the music, was expecting more of a blaringly loud blow-out, which it was clearly not ... it was well-paced and kept me interested all the way through, the only thing I found a bit annoying was Wallentin's accent ... if they include blues-clichés as vocals, if they want to pay respect, why not have her sing in her own language? I dislike that we live in the age of "everybody thinks s/he can speak english" ... would be a nice language, but people don't give a shit, yet it has to be english nonetheless, all of the time - Ventil - an Austrian quartet - rather quintet if you include the video artist - doing more drone or rather semi-drone sounds ... it was loud and intense, synths and guitars with effects, and hard-hitting beats ... but after 10 or 15 minutes, I had quite enough of it and went outside where you could still hear it, but without your guts being shaken through ... I actually do like that feeling, but this was just not really my stuff :: Friday 26th :: children's concert: - William Parker - he was great with the kids but in fact hardly played ... he had with him a pocket trumpet, a shakuhachi and the silly red/black-painted bass that he seems to take with him when traveling, alas on that instrument he produces no sound at all, no volume, no body, no resonance, just flat tones that die as soon as he plucks or bows them - anyway, it was great how he got some of the kids to interact, but doing a kangaroo jump in 7 - "hap-py hap-py kan-ga-rooh" and then right back to 1 with no break - proved a little too complicated noon: - Joachim Badenhorst - next highlight there ... the young Belgian clarinet player did a wonderfully haunting set, using some loops early on, playing clarinet, bass clarinet and tenor - of the church concerts I heard - I missed but the first with Luft and Bothen mentioned above - easily the best afternoon (Église Sainte-Geneviève) - Áine O'Dwyer - church organ (and bells) ... a meditative, slowly-evolving, captivating set ... there were drones again, long-held single notes or chords, but also intense parts, she ended it by coming down the stairs and dancing - turning around herself - through the aisles all the way from the back to the alter, clanging a bunch of long bells ... at the beginning, the also threw down the sheets of music from the gallery, on which the organ is placed - Mike Majkowski - another solo, this time on double bass ... alas not on the level of the organ set, lacking ideas and coherence, it felt like stitched together fragments, sometimes even as if he was practising ... which could be a great thing of course, but alas it was just so-so evening: - Hamid Drake/William Parker/Pat Thomas - while I'm no fan of William Parker's, when he's alongside Hamid Drake, he can do no wrong, I guess ... his bass still didn't sound - all there was was amplification -, but this trio set with a piano player so far completely unknown to me, Pat Thomas, was very good indeed - powerful, and when Drake changed to his frame drum and started singing, Parker switched to gimbri, and it got truly haunting ... however, that gimbri sounded about as great as his bass - I really don't get the point about William Parker, I guess, but I'll keep trying) - Green Dome - this was Zeena Parkins's big project, with two bearded contemporary hipsters on piano/effects and drums, funny enough both called Ryan ... didn't really work for me, was too much after the effect, also probably too notated to really allow the music to loosen up and breathe some - but her solo set was really good, and I'm glad I kept through this one too and stayed on for the closing set of the night ... - Zeitkratzer: Lou Reed "Metal Machine Music" Parts 1-4 - now this was the odd one out that no one could really tell how it would end up ... Zeitkratzer is a mid-sized ensemble led by pianist Reinhold Friedl I guess, and he was after all the one that had most of the work in this amazing 66 minute set ... Frank Gratkowski - hey, where's my sheet music? - was on clarinet, Hild Sofie Tafjord did her best - wasn't always enough, I thought - on french horn, Hilary Jeffery was on trombone, them lined up between the piano on the far left, and the drums in the middle of the stage, played by Maurice De Martin, on his right there were four strings: Ulrich Phillipp on double bass, Elisabeth Fügemann on cello, Burkhard Schlothauer on viola and Lisa Marie Landgraf on violin ... the music was reminding me again of minimal music, I thought of various recordings of "In C" in the process - the horns and strings kept on churning out the same notes again and again, with some slight changes, some short soloist escapes by the trombone, the horn, some fills by the drums to add to the steadily prodding, walking, stomping beat ... the piano was playing around wildly for much of the duration though, as if forming a kind of counterpoint or anti-thesis to the rest ... this was, I guess, the unexpected - at least from my side - highlight of that night :: Saturday 27th :: noon: - Clayton Thomas - another double bass solo ... though Parker only had played one short final piece on bass actually ... Clayton Thomas had been heartily recommended to me by a friend from Berlin who has heard him often while he was still living there, as the duo with Anthea Caddy gave really no idea at all how he was as a bass player, I was very curious, and the solo set indeed turned out pretty well ... he used the bow, different kinds of mallets and drumsticks and other objects and put together a really nice set that had the focus and successfully managed to create those larger arcs that Majkowski didn't really achieve now this was a very busy closing day (which was why I skipped the children's concert by the same Erwan Keravec on bagpipes ... heard a few tones while passing by the library, which is right next to the chapel) ... at 14:30, there were two events, an open air concert and a short conference with Roscoe Mitchell - I picked the later, and it was pretty interesting actually. Alexandre Pierrepont, who has written a book on the AACM, did a (rather too long) introduction and then started asking a few questions (thankfully mostly just in english) and it was pretty interesting to hear Mitchell talk, though it was all a bit on the polite side (except for an Italian lady in the audience that kinda implied AACM had a racist policy going on) and Pierrepont could have really prepared a few more focussed questions to not just have Mitchell talk some (which was nice enough, he has plenty of stories to tell and is willing to share his insights, too - after all he is teaching as well) afternoon (at La Filature) - just one set: - Der Verboten - this is a quartet that took shape at Météo a few years ago, if I understood correctly - Franz Loriot on viola, Antoine Chessex on tenor sax, Cédric Piromalli on piano and Christian Wolfahrt on percussion ... they performed a long-form improvisation in the wonderful room with its very fine acoustics ... glad I rushed there, it was excellent evening (there was a free concert at 7 p.m. first, then the main event, as usual at 9): - Native Instrument - Stine Janvin Motland on voice and electronics and Felicity Mangan using field recordings and adding more electronics - this turned into an almost danceable set, many of the older jazzheads disliked it, many left even though it was just 30 minutes short ... the duo kinda attempted to adapt vocally and electronically the sound of their nature, one being from Norway, the other from the land of OZ - the resulting soundscape was a times almost danceable, and really interesting - Sonic Communion - the main event, pt. 1 - this is a collective of Jean-Luc Cappozzo on trumpet, Douglas Ewart on various horns and little instruments - sopranino sax, wooden flute, bells, english horn ..., Joëlle Léandre and Bernard Santacruz on double basses and Michael Zerang on drums ... they struck a chord together - or rather more than just one, and a free one, too, of course ... a lovely set that to me showed with ease how naturally European improvisers and American jazzers can find together and create something that is common - I guess in this case it was mostly the French fitting into a kind of AACM/Chicago frame, but that was done without them negating their own voices ... as for voices, of course Mme Léadre did some singing in the end, and it got quite hilarious indeed - dada lives! - Roscoe Mitchell Trio - the main event, pt. 2 - actually, together with The Thing/McPhee the concert that made me book a hotel and a festival pass ... Mitchell again teamed up with two Europeans, two brits this time, namely Mark Sanders on drums and the one and only John Edwards on double bass - best bass player there is currently, for any kinds of free and energy playing ... Mitchell had with him his alto, soprano and sopranino saxophones, and he was fully THERE from the very first second, not dominating, not imposing, but just THERE, with the brits giving him great support and getting their solo and duo spots, free-wheeling and driving the music hard, while Mitchell engaged in his circular-breathing for long stretches ... they even came back for a short encore, and one needn't be afraid that the level went down, they just picked up again where they had left off and added a couple more minutes - stellar closing concert to a mighty fine festival And on Saturday, another former concert-going friend, now in a wheelchair and alas not in a condition to attend concerts regularly, passed by to say hello (and spend some time with other friends, they're all a couple of decades older than me and have attended concerts together since the seventies) and asked me if I would go to Willisau next week and told me there was a John Zorn special ... indeed, six bands on Saturday afternoon and evening, starting out with the mighty Masada itself ... so on the train back home, I booked a room and bought tickets online ... damn! (lest someone asks, I did take a frew - crappy, as usual - snapshots, but not from all concerts ... no time yet to sort them, might add a few later on, but next weekend I'll be busy in Willisau, not sure I find a moment before that)

Great set, the Hawkins!

Steve, do get that Barry Guy box! Just got the latest one from Ayler and enjoyed the first (and so far only) spin: Joëlle Léandre - Can You Hear Me? (2015 re-creation) order aylCD-146 - €13 personnel: Jean-Luc Cappozzo, trumpet Alexandra Grimal, saxophones Jean-Brice Godet, clarinets Christiane Bopp, trombone Guillaume Aknine, electric guitar Théo Ceccaldi, violin Séverine Morfin, viola Valentin Ceccaldi, cello Joëlle Léandre, double-bass Florian Satche, drums, percussion cd tracks: 1-9. Can You Hear Me? Excerpt #1 | Excerpt #2 Excerpt #3 | Excerpt #4 | Excerpt #5 Total time: 48'09 release information: Recorded in concert on January 29th, 2015 at L'Arsenal, Metz, France. Cover photo by Colette Gigos. 1 CD Digipack. aylCD-146 This hybrid piece, where for the first time the musician has agreed to play the problematic role and function of ‘composer’, can be read both as a form of achievement and as a founding act. Indeed, ‘composing’, as she makes it clear here, with the structure constantly generating and encouraging individual expression, is nothing else for her than a transposition to ‘another stage’ of the improviser’s gesture and a transfusion into a band’s plural entity of the complex spread of a thought both intimate and collective, made even more unique by its will to be shared. […] Because she constantly feeds all her experience as an improviser into her writing, Léandre has clearly created, with "Can You Hear Me?", a major milestone in her already illustrious career. ( from Stéphane Ollivier’s liner notes )

CD 1 of Vol. 1 (4 Vols, each three discs) - enjoying this box quite some!

(from the Living Stereo box)

the solo Satie disc

lately: I was indeed crazy enough to complete my Spányi/CPE Bach holdings in the recent BIS sale @prestoclassical's ... enjoying it an awful lot! Other than that, the Prohaska got two spins so far, it's good, of course, but fails to really grab me by the guts. The Enescu on the other hand is moody and beautiful. Not familiar with the music elsewhere (that is except for the third - there is no second actually, Enescu seems to have said it was in his head, too bad he didn't write it down in time - sonata by Lipati), but I think this is a splendid set, really! Even more splendid is the Gál - great stuff there, full of twists and jagged surprises, but full of melody just as well. Not familiar with his music yet otherwise, gotta check out more, that's for sure (and in light of 51 discs of Spányi/CPE Bach, I really wish there were several dozen more discs to complete Gál's piano music!) The Schubert by Orkis is wonderful - he plays a Graf fortepiano on disc one (Impromptus D 899 & D 935) and a copy after a Nannette Streicher piano on disc two - and it's disc two that I find even better, with the folksy piano pieces D 946 and the Moments Musicaux (D 780) as well as D 899/1 played from the original pencil draft, and the original version of D 946/1 to end things. Played like this, Schubert's pieces sound intimate, almost as played in your living room, really. A totally different experience (and maybe one that fits with some of the other stuff depicted above, and the mood that listening to it brought me to). The Weingartner concerto seems to come after Brahms, and his arrangement/completion of the Schubert symphony that follows is probably a bit too full-bodied for Schubert, but both are nice pieces (and actually remind me that I should revisit Weingartner's Brahms symphonies cycle). Albéniz by de Larrocha is probably about as good as it gets ... thanks to soulpope for insisting (I already have the EMI Icon box of her's, but just bought a few of her later Decca recordings of Spanish repertoire).

That's why I bought the "Complete Masters" box, I guess - but guess what? I never heard a single tone from it yet (and have lent it to a friend a year or so ago - do plan to get it back though).

Agreed on Schneider! As for Mark Masters, other than the Grachan Moncur disc (thanks, brownie! ), I have one with Lee Konitz but am honestly not sure I ever played it yet. I also like this Swiss guy, Kaspar Ewald ... not sure he has any recent releases out, have two of his albums from around 10 years ago:

Like: there was a CD reissue boom going on from 1995 to 2005 ... a dozen years past it, the ones owning rights to Erroll Garner finally get on it, too? And yet the liners to the Complete Concert by the Sea stressed how well Garner's affairs had (and have! ha!) always been handled ...

taken from a Jazz Icons DVD, I assume: https://www.allaboutjazz.com/jazz-icons-series-3-sonny-rollins-65-and-68-sonny-rollins-by-c-michael-bailey.php finally about to buy these, had the first box for a while, just bought the fourth, lent a few single DVDs from a library years ago ... and going to pick up Vols. 2 and 3 on the way home from work today (gotta pay baksheesh for the cutsoms) ... leaves Vol. 5 which will be part of my next Mosaic order (not scheduled yet, though i wand the new Pres set badly)

JPC has nice prices on some of the Storyville boxes - these go for 35€ currently: The Duke Box https://www.jpc.de/jpcng/jazz/detail/-/art/Duke-Ellington-1899-1974-The-Duke-Box/hnum/8707288 The Blues Box https://www.jpc.de/jpcng/poprock/detail/-/art/The-Blues-Box-7CD-DVD/hnum/5557134 The Armstrong Box https://www.jpc.de/jpcng/jazz/detail/-/art/Louis-Armstrong-1901-1971-The-Armstrong-Box-7-CD-DVD/hnum/9912297 George Lewis - Keeper of the Flame https://www.jpc.de/jpcng/jazz/detail/-/art/George-Lewis-Keeper-Of-The-Flame/hnum/4080235 Billy Strayhorn - Out of the Shadows https://www.jpc.de/jpcng/jazz/detail/-/art/billy-strayhorn-out-of-the-shadows/hnum/5247145 The Earl Hines goes for €43: https://www.jpc.de/jpcng/jazz/detail/-/art/earl-hines-piano-genius-at-work/hnum/8602936

@xybert yeah, I think I had one CD-R straight from Amazon, you're correct! And same here, would love to have been aboard from the first volume of DETS on!

Those OJC CD-Rs seem to be a US phenomenon though? We only seem to get them via those crooked US re-sellers on amazon that always fail to properly declare stuff and then fail to partly re-imburse or to even react to complaints ... bottom line: I don't buy any Fantasy CDs without being able to look at them first (in Europe, they're Universal CDs, and so far I don't think I've run into any Universal CD-R). But yeah, the blue frames ... those, we have them over here, too (via amazon itself), not always correctly declared either. But Storyville joining in (be it that they manufacture CDRs themselves, be it that they allow others to re-sell their - OOP? - stuff in CD-R format) is quite a let-down. I have several of the DETS from around Vol. 10 and was planning to fill the gaps eventually. Not sure if that's worth it now. Will also need to investigate the stray other volume I have from among the earlier ones (I think Vols. 1 and 2 only, but I keep forgetting such things, which is why I usually have my list updated and on my smartphone, just in case ).

yup, but I was away for a week ... and then back in the office, so instead of having an overflowing mailbox (and then maybe having to pick up some stuff again myself due to that) and not being home to receive tracked/signed mail ... I picked the option to go and fetch the stuff myself, was more convenient in this case

Very sorry about having to report this ... but DETS Vol. 4 I just bought (from jazzmessengers) turns out to be a CD-R. Wasn't aware Storyville (or whomever pirate) has joined that game now, too. This is the type of CD-R used in this case: http://www.opti-pack.co.uk/product_info.php/manufacturers_id/17/products_id/66 the number (ATW700T-2/0.4) can be clearly read in the inner circle, and the entire thing felt a bit odd and looked less shiny than it ought to ... so yeah, indeed

just returned from the post office picking up last week's mail ... and the Vocalion package was amongst the stuff - playing the Maupin now

Guess that's why I finally just bought "Streams" last week ... This new set definitely holds little interest ... I think the Tom Scott is the one album I don't know. It's neither a collection of Impulse's best albums nor a collection of rarities or oddballs. Seems almost like they're aiming at those that have no clue ... Re: Hines and Scott ... the Hines is a bit of an oddity, but a charming one - I wish for more playing time/solo space each time I listen to it. The Scott is brilliant, maybe the perfect example of the Turrentine/Scott team. The old GRP CD contained some substantial bonus tracks (but I think some cuts were still missing, compared to the vinyl releases of the material?) ... bet this time it'll be sans any bonus tracks? That would be a pity for the Ellington/Hawkins album, too ... just one bonus track there, but a gorgeous one (as is the whole album anyway). Also, for some, the Shelly Manne may be new? It has some prime Hawkins and some Eddie Costa, too. Mighty fine album, for sure (it was part of the recent Japanese Impulse reissue series, but I have a battered LP of it, too).

just the opposite ... it looks like all those Sony boxes (Essential Albums, Vogue etc.) - more details here: http://www.udiscovermusic.com/discover-your-impulsive-side-with-this-25-cd-box-set contents: I. Art Blakey And The Jazz Messengers- Jazz Messengers!!!!! II. Max Roach- Percussion Bitter Sweet III. Shelly Manne- 2-3-4 IV. The Gil Evans Orchestra - Into The Hot V. Quincy Jones - The Quintessence VI. Benny Carter And His Orchestra- Further Definitions VII. Roy Haynes Quartet - Out Of The Afternoon VIII. Duke Ellington & Coleman Hawkins- Duke Ellington Meets Coleman Hawkins IX. Freddie Hubbard- The Artistry Of Freddie Hubbard X. Chico Hamilton- Passin' Thru XI. John Coltrane Quartet- Ballads XII. Sonny Stitt & Paul Gonsalves- Salt & Pepper XIII. Charles Mingus- Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus XIV. McCoy Tyner- Today And Tomorrow XV. Oliver Nelson- More Blues And The Abstract Truth XVI. Shirley Scott- Queen Of The Organ XVII. Earl Hines- Once Upon A Time XVIII. Sonny Rollins- Alfie XIX. Stanley Turrentine- Let It Go XX. Dizzy Gillespie- Swing Low, Sweet Cadillac XXI. Tom Scott- Rural Still Life XXII. Alice Coltrane- Journey in Satchidananda XXIII. Charlie Haden- Liberation Music Orchestra XXIV Gato Barbieri- Chapter One: Latin America XXV. Keith Jarrett- Death And The Flower just in case, this was how it was originally supposed to look: don't have a contents list handy, but I'm sure it can be found here, somewhere ...

Went on with Opp. 20 and 33 by the Schneider Quartet - what a great bunch of pieces, and thoroughly interesting to see the development and changes from one set to the next ... now playing Op. 33 by the Mosaïques - quite a contrast, but I guess these two are cool to have alongside!

Thanks - I have ordered a few times and never had any problems. Off for a week of vacation tomorrow, will see if anything arrives in the meantime. If not, I'll deal with it afterwards.

Had this in the mail yesterday, and played Op. 20 right away ... that then prompted me to search for this here: Played Opp. 1 and 2, now into Op. 17 (quite a difference indeed) and looking forward to their take on Op. 20 later today or maybe tomorrow. Don't have any complete set, so alas I am missing Op. 9 as of now.

I bought his "Kenton Presents" LP a few days ago ... no time to listen so far. Sad news, always enjoyed him in Bud Shank's group.

Many thanks, worked like a charm!