Nate Dorward

1) yeah, Threads stinks. 2) the AEOC's The Meeting. Not bad, but pretty lacklustre considering it's got everyone but Bowie back on board. 3) The much-ballyhooed Limescale on Incus isn't terrible, but it's a one-joke album. Predictably enough The Wire has elevated it to the ranks of the best releases of 2003 (at least one Derek Bailey release always receives this accolade, & since he only released two or three albums this year there wasn't much to pick from.....). Don't be fooled. 4) Actually I was a bit underwhelmed by a lot of Palmetto discs this year. I got one batch from them that included the Previte, Matt Wilson, Javon Jackson & Ted Nash. None of which I thought was all that remarkable, & the Jackson is downright terrible. Fortunately they released some good things this year too--I haven't heard the Fred Hersch disc, but the Bill Mays & Marty Ehrlich are superb. 5) Ron Carter's The Golden Striker is inconsequential & genteel music from three players capable of much more. 6) In the teeth of countless Vandermark fans I'll insist that Airports for Light isn't all that great. But then, I've never really gotten with the program on KVDM.... 7) William Parker, Joe Morris, Hamid Drake, Eloping with the Sun. Shapeless studio jamming, with Morris's banjo/banjouke genuinely painful to listen to. You know it's bad when they include a 3-minute track with Hamid noodling on the drums while the other guys have a conversation with the recording engineer (entirely audible on the track).

Oh crap, I have the Joe Daley on LP & should have got that, though I haven't listened to it for about 7 years (my record player is no longer working & hasn't been fixed for ages). It's indeed a remarkable disc--is it available on CD? My LP is very, very rough. It's a terrible, terrible shame that Daley didn't go on to greatness (at least on disc). -- Actually I think the reason I didn't get this is because it's been so long since I heard the disc I'd remembered Daley as playing baritone not tenor on it. Yeah, the El'Zabar concert I saw counts as one of my top-ten Awful Concert-Going Experiences, just nudged out of the number-one slot by two Jerry Granelli gigs (hm, both of 'em pleased-with-themselves drummers.....there's a pattern here). Oh well, it happens. It was still nice to see Fred Anderson, though.

Glad to know it's Wilkerson & Bowie on the "Ornette" cut--Wilkerson in particular sounds excellent--but I still don't get it about el'Zabar himself (& the cut is hardly an advertisement for his inventiveness as a drummer ). The one time I've seen him live was in duet with Fred Anderson; Kahil disappeared into the dressing room just before the concert was to start, leaving Fred bewildered onstage--Kahil made him & the audience wait for an hour before he bothered to show up, & then the concert itself was a depressing display of a great tenor player having to contend with some obnoxiously splashy & egotistical drumming. Anyway, that was my last shot at hearing el'Zabar, because the local music promoter won't bring him here any more (after three occasions where his Ritual Trio was hired to play--KEZ only brought one other player on each occasion but ate the fee for the full trio anyway). Yeah, Marsh remains a specialist taste I guess. I was surprised so few people identified him, actually--easily one of the most distinctive stylists on the saxophone I know of, identifiable within a few notes if you know his sound. I assume Woody Theus = "Son Ship Theus"? What happened to him anyway? I last encountered him on some Charles Lloyd discs in the early 1980s.

Hey, I quite like Constellations. Nice cover of a Nichols tune on it among others. Shepik = the pronunciation of Shoeppach. He got tired of people stumbling over how to pronounce his name. Well, I'll beg to differ on Synergetics/Phonomanie but in any case it's not a very good place to hear Parker. He's the organizer of the festival it's drawn from but actually only plays on a few tracks of it. The only Hopscotch I have is Barcelona with Derek Bailey & Agusti Fernandez. It's pretty good. My favourite thing is that I have one of the screwed-up first batch--nothing wrong with the CD, but one letter of the pianist's name is missing on the packaging by accident. This is fixed on later issues.

I'm not a huge Shipp fan or Morris fan but it's worth pointing out that I've never heard a good thing about their duo album on Hat Art, & it gets a lowly rating in the Penguin Guide to boot. I haven't heard it but it's probably not a good place to form one's estimate of either player. -- I've heard By the Law of Music, which FWIW is supposedly one of Shipp's best albums (Ben Ratliff, who wrote the liners, even includes it among his list of 100 essential jazz albums). I found it pretty stodgy actually, & got rid of it. (It features Mat Maneri--in his droopy electric-violin phase rather than his more interesting acoustic viola phase--& William Parker.) -- Morris is a talented but frustratingly voluble player, I've found. Haven't heard Age of Everything; of those I've heard I found No Vertigo pretty tough going; the quartet with Brown/Parker/Krall is OK; Many Rings is dry, dry, dry, though it does give a glimpse of a post-Lyons Karen Borca at least; Eloping with the Sun is a tepid studio jam with Morris plinging away on banjo & banjouke. The one I WOULD highly recommend of those I've heard is Whit Dickey's new Prophet Moon on Morris's Riti label: it's Dickey, Morris, Rob Brown, & it's terrific. As usual, Morris rarely lets up--he tends to come to the foreground for his solos, recede to the background when Brown's soloing, but never actually stops playing. But it's a really good disc nonetheless & was enough to make me think I'd take another chance on Morris again after some years of rather lukewarm feelings. The Minimalism of Erik Satie is an excellent disc, yes.

Phew, while I feel somewhat mortified that I'd casually said the Shannon Jackson was an "amusing interlude", I'm glad I didn't actually sit down & try to make out the lyrics. Following along with the lyrics with the disc on the stereo I can see that I could only have gotten about half the lines without the help of the lyric sheet. The most interesting discovery so far (I'm writing with only tracks 1-10 of disc 1 commented on so far) is the Maynard Ferguson track, not so much for Ferguson himself as that it leaves me wondering why Lanny Morgan doesn't play in that Booker-ERvin style more often. I'e heard two of his latterday albums with Carl Saunders, & he's an excellent but entirely by-the-books West-Coast Parker disciple. I just played the track with Ferguson side-by-side with his solo on the (excellent) Carl Saunders Big Band disc on Sea Breeze, & it's hard to see any resemblance at all. (I presume it is Morgan taking that solo there--I notice there was some confusion in the BFT responses as to whether it was an alto or tenor solo.) Interesting how the Duke track closely resembles what some of the classically-trained players on the European scene are doing--hence my guess of Michael Moore (American, but Amsterdam-resident); the approach is actually very close to George Graewe's album of Monk tunes on Nuscope.

Whoops, hadn't checked in with the label website recently--there was a long, long gap in terms of new releases after disc 1012 (Grathovox) & I lost track.

My understanding is that the Knitting Factory has abandoned its support of free jazz almost entirely, both of live concerts & the associated record label. There was a public letter going around a few months ago about the situation concerning the discs: it was being circulated on behalf of musicians afraid that their discs would be trashed without a chance to buy copies or receive a proper accounting. I can dig it up if anyone's curious--I think it was posted on a thread on the Jazz Corner board. Meniscus: I have all their discs, due to a generous gesture from Jon Morgan. Everything I've heard has been worthwhile, though not all of them tickle my fancy. It was a solid label but never quite broke through; at the point where it was genuinely starting to get consistent attention (for releases like Points Snags & Windings, and Trumpet) Jon disappeared from the scene for a year & a half. The most recent (last?) releases, Surface/Plane by the Sealed Knot Trio, & Le Ventre Negatif by Le Quan Ninh, would have been cutting-edge if they'd been released on-schedule at the start of 2002, but instead came out belatedly in summer 2003, when they were less arresting (as the lowercase-improv style of the Sealed Knot for instance has become far more widely exposed in North America). That said they're both some of the label's stronger releases. -- The trio disc Quicksand is musically pretty good; my hesitation over it concerns the wonky recording, which is dominated by Lovens' drums & buries the piano. It's nonetheless listenable. If you want reviews of these discs I'd suggest typing "Meniscus" into the search engine on the Paris Transatlantic site--www.paristransatlantic.com--& you will find that Dan or myself has reviewed virtually every release on the label. Also, dig up Nick Cain's Opprobrium website (no longer updated but it's still very much worth reading) for some more, equally incisive reviews of those discs. (A Googling on "nick cain opprobrium" should turn it up.) Nuscope: I have two of their discs, the Graewe Interpretations of Monk & Butcher/Durrant/Lee Intentions. Both are very nice. The label covered overlapping improv territory to the Meniscus label, with Graewe & Butcher favourite musicians on both labels. Nuscope seems to be defunct now, though their old releases are still available. Again, the two sites I mentioned above will have plenty of thoughtful reviews.

I'd be interested in doing a test. The timing doesn't matter to me--not a terribly busy guy at present--but I gather that the ranking have reached so far up I'm looking at circa 2005 at this rate..... Well, whatever.

Oh yeah, avoid this one like the plague. I'm exaggerating somewhat--it's got some nice George Lewis on it--but it's also got a lot of longueurs, & it's a 2CD set so it's pricey. The recorded sound is a real problem, not least because it was so poorly done that they had to remove most of the tracks with electronics because some of the high frequencies caused distortion. So though there are two guys using electronics on the album, they're virtually invisible because only tracks where they played a minor role are included. It also includes some fairly tedious stuff for launeddas (a type of bagpipe)--the first 8 minutes or so or the album are taken up with its tootling--& in general Evan Parker himself has a very minor role on the album, playing for no more than about 20-30 minutes between the two CDs. The Cook/Morton guide is quite enthusiastic about the Parker/Guy/Lytton trio's first disc Atlanta. I've always had less warm feelings about this, in part because the recording is not terribly good, but it does include one of my favourite examples of Parker's solo soprano work from the mid-1980s, "The Snake as Roadsign". It's in part a useful track to have because it's in a drier acoustic than Parker usually favours for solo concerts, so it sounds very different from say Conic Sections or Monoceros or Lines Burnt on Light. I think the duet encounter with Braxton on Leo is pretty extraordinary. As with the encounter with McPhee, it's not the place to hear Parkerian fireworks--it's cooled-out & there's no circular breathing showcases--but if you're a fan of Konitz/Marsh duelling lines, it's great stuff. Not the world's best recording quality, again, but it's quite acceptable. I haven't heard the trio disc with Rutherford but it can't be too shabby surely. I'm told that all the Psi reissues from the 1970s with Lytton & Lewis are remarkable stuff, by the way. Lastly, I'm rather fond of Parker's work on the first of the two discs with Paul Bley & Barre Phillips on ECM, Time Will Tell, which is pretty untypical of his work (being, well, ECMish). The echo is appalling--it's excessive even by ECM's standards--but it's interesting music, in part because Bley & Parker are so obviously testing each other out, & neither of them on home territory. The sequel Sankt Gerold I found pretty but very frigid, & it falls foul of one of the mannerisms of a lot of later Parker discs--too much space given to spotlit solo excursions, where the players do little more than play their default solo-piece. It's After Appleby. I haven't heard it; I have the previous quartet disc Natives & Aliens, which is good but somehow I've never warmed to it quite. It's the EP/BG/PLyt trio plus Marilyn Crispell. The duo album with Eddie Prevost is worth hearing, by the way, if repetitive (should have been a single disc not a 2CD set). Most Materiall.

& also re: Alex Ward--haven't heard False Face Society but he's indeed a good guitarist--funnily enough that's his 2nd instrument, he's better known as a clarinetist. But there's a nice two-guitar duet on 2:13 worth checking out, Crypt, with John Bisset. It's acoustic duets, quite charming.

Hm......I think that Alder Brook is rather pretty but hardly a good place to start with Evan Parker. The one person I've talked to who seems enthusiastic about it is Walter Horn, but I'm not sure why really. Lines Burnt on Light is easily the dullest solo disc I know of: it probably will sound just fine if you haven't heard any of the earlier ones but I would nonetheless not go for it first. I'm told The Snake Decides is excellent, as well as Six of One both now reissued on Psi. I have Monoceros which is superb but may be scarce as I think the CD reissue recently went out of print, though Cadence/North Country & I think DMG still carry it. For Parker with groups, I'd suggest heading straight to the 2CD 50th Birthday Concert on Leo, which is a remarkable document. Imaginary Values on Maya is another good one by the Parker/Guy/Lytton trio (in fact everything by the trio is worth hearing, except the drab Redwood Sessions). I'm not enormously well-versed in the 1970s & 1980s Parker oeuvre, but I'm sure people can say more here. On the whole just about anything Parker's done up to about 1997 is worth hearing. Recent years have found him rather stuck on his lofty plateau, though there are notable exceptions like the duos with Joe McPhee (for those who like their music REEEAL dour & sombre, but it's great stuff I think).

Yes will be interested to hear what this track is as it's extremely good. I was wondering about the Rollins i.d. simply because the particular album many people have pointed to, with Rollins, Grimes & La Roca, is way too early for this track--it dates from 1959, but it seems clear to me that (1) the track shows evidence of a serious absorption of Ornette Coleman's music, which would have been impossible in 1959 when Ornette hadn't even yet recorded all his classic albums for Atlantic; (2) the bass solo on the track seems to me too out-there for 1959.

Report on Soundtrack to Human Motion? It's a very nice disc, cooler & more restrained than Moran's later stuff--as much Hancock as Hill in the mix, I think. A reading of a Ravel piece on it, if I remember rightly, but otherwise all originals. The sound is closer to Greg Osby's Blue Notes of the period than to Moran's own conception later on, in part because of the smoother & more conventional rhythm section here. It's very much worth picking up, needless to say.

The rest. 8: My first thought was Basie. Not sure if it’s Lester Young on the sax; lots of Lester licks & the sound too, but a few things that surprised me. 9: Ornette-influenced reading of a Charlie Parker tune. Sonny Rollins’ free period? Sounds great, anyway. Live sound could be a little better but hard to top the music – all three musicians in excellent form. Classic 1960s-free bass-solo in there is particularly great to hear. 10: The bizarre voicings & timbres made me think it was late Zappa, but the voice isn’t that of any Zappa vocalist I know of and the guitar and lyrics certainly aren’t Zappa’s. There’s the distinctive possibility therefore that the ridiculous backdrop isn’t actually parodic........ Anyway, worth hearing though not all that interesting. 11: Threadgill, obviously: the instrumentation and some of the wrong-turnings in the chord changes could be no-one else’s. Though it’s a lot more upbeat than the Threadgill I have, which is the Columbia stuff. Sounds like he’s trying to sound kinda of like African music – Threadgill does Sunny Ade. Is this from the Pi discs or the Black Saints?

Dinnertime so I'll interrupt my listening to disc 2. This is as far as I got: disc 2 1: “Nature Boy” (barely!), but I’ve no idea as to the players. Kind of like the plugged-in sax sound. Worth hearing once or twice, anyway. 2: My first hunch was that this was off Ellery Eskelin’s Figure of Speech, which I think has this instrumentation. This didn’t bowl me over – a little too static for me – but it’s a really good tenor solo, slippery harmonic moves and an interesting, non-mainstream tone, which again suggests Ellery. When the voices kicked in I wasn’t so sure, though. If not, possibly someone like Kahil el-Zabar. 3: Well, pretty obviously Marvin Gaye. I like the amorphous quality of the song, with voices & instruments dipping in & out of the arrangement according to no obvious pattern, & with the shape and direction of the melody impossible to predict. I like songs with no “hook”. The content of the lyrics makes me sure this is from Here My Dear, his notorious album about his ugly split from his wife. 4: Steve Swallow, and the piano is so minimal it’s surely Carla Bley. The piece is so static that the backdrop could almost be a prerecorded loop. Like a lot of Carla & Steve’s work I find the intelligence is so impenetrably wrapped in their habitual coziness that while I find it likeable it’s hard to feel very strongly about it. 5: crackle of vinyl & the fierce tempo made me initially fear it was playing too fast! Anyway, nice traditional jazz, probably players I should be able to identify but I can’t as I’m not at at all knowledgable in this area. The clarinet solo is very odd, which made me wonder if it weren’t Pee Wee Russell. Liked this track, anyway. 6: oh, “Lennie’s Pennies”. This will surely be Supersax, won’t it? Was it Clare Fischer who did this arrangement? Have heard OF it but never heard it. Pity about the crap sound on the piano (Fischer or Lou Levy?), which actually manages to sound not unlike Tristano’s sped-up piano exploits in timbre. Probably Gary Foster on alto. A slightly odd solo. Unmistakably Marsh on the tenor solo, with that weird sound that make it sound like he’s half-swallowing the notes sometimes, & the strange rhythmic feel. & that wild yelp in the top register. The ending big-band bit must be an arrangement of a previously improvised solo. 7: more big band sound, obviously Braxton, & sure enough it sounds like he’s written something on Lennie’s minor-key “Pennies from Heaven” changes. A moment in there sounds like a George Russell chart! Probably an Arista date from the 1970s. I can’t say I liked this all that much but it provides some food for thought about the links between Braxton’s big-band scoring & George Russell. The funny thing is that all the saxes sound to me like Braxton, even though obviously it’s only the alto solo that’s Mr B himself.

From a first listen to disc 1: 1: Surely it’s latterday Horace Silver (I didn’t twig to this on the opening solo, but Silver’s mannerisms are more apparent in the later solo with the band). The horns sound terribly familiar & I’m sure if I looked up the lineups in Silver’s bands I could sort this out but won’t bother. OK track, didn’t love it; I didn’t like the rhythmic feel too much. But I don’t really like Silver much anyway of whatever period. Mostly enjoyed the sound of old vinyl, as my record player isn’t working & I miss it. I can’t say it sounds at all like “Ask Me Now” to me, it's probably a Silver original. 2: pity about the horrible fuzz. I liked hearing it once, would have enjoyed it more but for the sound quality. 3: This is a really good track, with a great rhythm section & it’s annoying that I know that I know all these players but can’t quite place them: the trumpeter & drummer in particular sound very familiar. Avant-Blue Note-ish. I liked the use of half-time feel, & the slippage between minor- & major-key blues. The saxophonist is surely a Mingus graduate. 4: Entertaining period piece, virtually defies criticism. It ain’t subtle, that’s for sure. The old-fashioned clarinet solo was the biggest surprise. My guess is an old big-band leader, probably the clarinetist, making a misguided attempt to modernize his sound. 5: This isn’t really my thing: don’t like the extreme juxtaposition between the smooth big-band arrangement & the rough-edged pleading voice (I presume James Brown’s?). 6: Ick. Boring arrangement, a style of vocal I don’t like much. Makes me want to take this off & put on something like June Christy & Pete Rugolo’s albums to hear this kind of thing done right. 7: The altoist sounds familiar – the little fast licks he puts in a few points in particular. A wild guess would be Michael Moore, though I’d have to listen again to confirm it. Maybe then it’d be Fred Hersch on piano, as Fred likes this tune (“Little Rootie Tootie”: there’s a version on Toots Thielemans’ Only Trust Your Heart). Whatever the case, I like the Tristano-school tactic of avoiding the head until the very end. 8: I hate it when organ albums have a separate bass player. Use your feet, for cripes’ sake! Anyway, for what it is it’s fine, though not for me a really standout organ/tenor track. The tenorist sounds very familiar. A little overfond of following out a lick to the bitter end: if he laid off a bit I’ve have enjoyed this a little more. 9: Amusing interlude, if nothing else. I could probably get a better idea who it is if I listened to the words closely, but life’s short..... 10: No idea, though I note that Atavistic has recently reissued Baby Dodds’ solo drum album as part of its UMS series, so that wouldn’t be a bad guess. 11: this one is easily i.d.’d via Google. 12: This one made me feel warm & fuzzy inside. My wife & daughter complained vociferously about this one. With #3 & #13 my favourite track on disc 1. I haven’t heard it before but the Art Ensemble of Chicago would be the very obvious guess. 13: Phil Woods and Zoot Sims with a big band, not sure of the clarinetist. Annoyed that I can’t place the tune; the chord changes of the A section are those of “Confirmation”, so this is presumably whatever tune Parker based that tune on. Nice feel. West Coastish. If it's not Woods then Bud Shank would be my next guess. 14: Not sure. Very late Al Cohn or Zoot Sims maybe. Or Ted Brown even? Very by-the-books white-guy-Lester sound, not enough surprises in the tenor solo (that suggests it ain’t Brown). The Basie-minimalist piano solo a nice touch. Nice, if not a standout. Didn’t quite like the rhythmic feel here, a little inconsistent & not always as graceful as necessary. 15: A tribute to the Goodman/Wilson/Hampton sides, obviously, though the pianist is in an Earl Hines bag instead, a little too scattershot for my tastes though. An OK track, nothing to get too excited about.

Re: Gräwe: I have a few discs-- VicissEtudes with Frank Gratkowski on Random Acoustics is easily one of the best freely improvised discs I have. Period. There's also the same lineup with Paul Lovens added on Meniscus: Quicksand. This is more ordinary blow-out stuff, really doesn't sound much like the other one at all. Impressions of Monk on Nuscope. In terms of "out" players playing mainstream jazz (if Monk is mainstream, anyway) this is one of the few discs that I think really hits the nail on the head. Michael Vatcher is a heavy handed drummer on here, perhaps, but Gräwe is extraordinary. Re: Duos for Doris I've had about every reaction over the spectrum. My main problem is that it's virtually impossible to listen to free of the massive amounts of hype given the disc, especially since several of its key promoters make a point of spreading the gospel on it via the web. Erstwhile has nothing if not an avid fanbase & assiduous promoters. Anyway, I found it extremely hard to listen to it "cleanly" without the constant sensation of someone jogging my elbow, but maybe I'm just an overfussy sort. My (largely positive, but somewhat equivocal) take on the disc is available here: http://www.squidco.com/cgi-bin/news/newsView.cgi?newsID=270 For me some of this genre of minimalist improvising is hard to warm to because of the portentous atmosphere enveloping the performance & every single gesture. But there are many other folks I talk to who are enthralled by it so I may be just a cranky old-school type of guy (at age 30 no less).

Talking about ghastly choices of photos for a Steeplechase session, try the shots inside the booklet for Blues for a Reason by Chet Baker & Warne Marsh (both nearing the ends of their lives).

My favourite instance of simultaneous vocalizing (of a sort) & playing is Dave Frishberg's unison piano+whistling on "El Cajone" on Live at Vine St.

Just to chip in to say that this disc deserves all the thumbs-up it's been getting. Lovely, lovely, music. Ragin's Feel the Sunshine is OK but I find Tshar on that disc a bit of a cutrate David Murray or James Carter. Ragin & the rest of the team sound fine, though.

No, the Tristano/Marsh disc is out of print. Perhaps Hat Art/ology will bring it back into print at some point, who knows, though I'm not sure Braxton & Uehlinger still see eye to eye. I have a burn of one of the discs on the 4-disc GTM set. It's interesting, though I can't honestly say I've listened to it more than twice. There's a review of the whole thing at http://www.paristransatlantic.com/magazine...ug_text2.html#3 if you're curious.

The 1970s work with Holland & Altschul is utterly superb. There was a decent one-CD condensation of the 2LP set with Wheeler & Lewis (one on each of the LPs). I had it & foolishly lent it to a drummer who has never returned it. Though it's had mixed reviews for some reason I thought the new Four Compositions (GTM) 2000 on Delmark was the first really good thing of Braxton's I'd heard for a while. One of the few Ghost Trance discs I've liked a lot. I'm not a big fan of Braxton's standards playing. Charlie Parker Project has some wonderful things on it, but it also has some remarkably verbose & sloppy playing, & everyone goes on too long (e.g. Ari Brown is fine for one or two choruses--but he simply repeats himself over & over again on the longer tracks). On "Dewey Square" Braxton manages to lose his place in the tune at the end (he returns to the head in the wrong spot). "Ko-Ko" ends up a mess, if an exciting mess--why are they playing the B section twice every chorus during the trading-eights with akLaff? -- I also don't like the Tristano disc, which is again very sloppy & verbose. The best of the repertoire albums I've heard is the Monk, which still has some verbose moments (hey, Mr Braxton, couldn't you have spared Mal Waldron a little extra room? on "Skippy" Mal barely gets a lookin while Braxton takes chorus after chorus, scattering notes everywhere)--but the ballads "Ask Me Now" & "Reflections" are some of the prettiest things Braxton has ever recorded. Willisau has its ups & downs. The best stuff from that band is in the Santa Cruz set & the three sets on Leo. For Alto is a tough listen & I rarely pull it out, but I'm still glad I have it, crappy sound & all. It's truly great music.

This is what I sent in to Coda when they asked for a top-ten. Geof Bradfield, Rule of Three, Liberated Zone Rhodri Davies, Trem, Confront Whit Dickey, Prophet Moon, Riti Marty Ehrlich, Line on Love, Palmetto Vijay Iyer, Blood Sutra, Artists House Ahmad Jamal, In Search Of: Momentum (1–10), Birdology/Dreyfus Fredi Luescher, Cécile Olshausen, Nathanael Su, Dear C. – The Music of Carla Bley, Altrisuoni Giorgio Pacorig, My Mind Is on the Table, Splasc(h) Evan Parker and Joe McPhee, Chicago Tenor Duets, Okkadisk Trio-X (Joe McPhee, Dominic Duval, Jay Rosen), Journey, CIMP

Yes My Foolish Heart is a really good one. I wish, though, that Friedman would stop titling his albums after famous compositions (mostly Bill Evans-associated). His two previous albums were My Romance & The Days of Wine and Roses. Anyway, a great player.