Д.Д.

He-he, here is some more for you John (and others of course): European Wrner has been reissuing Atlantic sides recently. Among them Ornette Coleman's "Ornette!" (I think this one was available as strange two-fer on Collectibles only) and "Twins" (this one seems to have been not avialable on CD) and a lot of other stuff (MFQ, Mingus, Coltrane, etc.). All available at budget prices from amazon.fr and amazon.de (this one for example: http://www.amazon.de/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000...5460409-9124811 ). These are in jewel cases (not in digipacks as mid-'90s "swiss" remasters with horrendous sound). I am getting a first batch soon, and will report on the sound quality... Hey, looked through the board and found a thread on these Warner reissues: http://www.organissimo.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=5000 ... confuding stuff... in any case, I am getting some of those soon, so I might be able to clarify something...

You know what, I thik I will order some more Italian jazz as well. Just as a sign of my solidarity with you.

Does Rhames really sound very much like Train (a comment I've repeatedly read eleswhere)?

and most of it is quite expensive to obtain over here. I have never heard of Negri. Any album in particular that you recommend? If you like clever funk, go for So Funky!, if you want an excellent duo with a drumer go for Squarci (sells for €6.20 at jazzos).

Good thing about the Festival disc is that it it is not really and IIO (except for a couple of pieces), but different combinations of musicians form the Orchestra - solos (Eugenio Colombo is the man!!), duos, trios, etc., allowing individual musicians to display their talents and concepts better than within IIO framework. Oh, and I remember one more that absolutelys has to be obtained by evrybody on The Rat: Stefano Maltese (reeds) Evan Parker (honorable Italian, reeds) Keith Tippett (equally honorable Italian, piano) Antonio Moncada (percussion) Double Mirror (Splasc(H)).

Hey, so you are not such a neophyte in Italian music! In any case, check out Mauro Negri, my favorite clarinetist (together with John Carter), who also plays some mean alto. The only "problem" with Italian music is that once you start with it, you need to get more - and there is A LOT of good stuff. It's an absolute shame that even among the conosseurs of improv music Italian musicians are totally unknown.

I am quite a fan of Italian jazz. I was living in Italy for a year, so I started delving in Italian jazz, and it's a separate universe of own. Very distinctive approach to improvisational music (very melodic, lyrical and humorous.. even in totally free blowing), and tons of outstanding musicins that nobody outside of Italy has ever heard about. I will make a little writeup about Italian musicians. There are several god jazz labels focused on Italian improv muscians, Splasc(H) being the main one with its HUGE and consistently high-quality catalog (other nice ones include Via Veneto and Egea. A good place to start with Italian jazz is Italian Instabile Festival 2-CD on Leo, and then start checking the discographies of participants. Also, I would highly recommend checking several itams from the bargain bin of the Italian on-line CD store Jazzos.com: http://www.jazzos.com/db.cgi?db=default2&u...+Records&mh=999 - there are a couple of excellent (and cheap!) CDs here: Battaglia Stefano, Oxley Tony - Explore (Splasc(h) h304) - €7.90 (masterpiece) Fazio Enrico - Euphoria (Splasc(h) h327) - €4.90 (great Mingus-influenced stuff) Jazz Chromatic Ensemble - Skydreams (Splasc(h) h473) - €4.90 Negri Mauro, Kaucic Zlatko - Squarci (Splasc(h) h729) - €6.20 (masterpiece) New Emily - Alternate seasons (Splasc(h) h339) - €5.90 (insane blowing by Carlo Actis Dato) Nexus Orchestra - Seize the time! (2CD) (Splasch WS H841) - €14.90 (overall a bit dense, but still very good) Romano Furio - Danza delle streghe (Splasc(h) h318) - €4.90 (Italian take on Blue Note advanced '60s dates) Tononi Tiziano - We did it, we did it! (3CD) (Splasch WS h811) - 15.90 (also a good introduction to who-is-who in Italian jazz...3CD set!!!) As far as I remember, shipping rates are also very reasonable regardless of the destination. And if you are on Jazzos.com website, check out the Auand label releases as well - so good stuff there (both Italian and non-Italian).

I think many of these musicians recorded wit Don Cherry whne he was living in Sweden. There is a nice disc on some Swedish label called Brotherhood Suite... and probably some others as well. And Don Cherry - what a musician!!!

Agree with your assessment. For me also, Elvin solo is the highlight of the disc (beautifully recorded, btw... I would have loved to have a solo Elvin CD recorded this well). Redman sounds a bit tired IMO, but still quite good... his saxophone sounds like alto here - I would have preferred a bit mpore bottom. I remember Cecil's interview in STN where he was saying how much he enjoyed playing with Jones (they played some duo concerts together - who knows, probably they get released one day). A nice cover art also. I am not sure it is still in print, so don't wait for too long with obtaining it. Anybody heard the Cecil/Maneri duo yet?

This one will be available as RVG later this year.

OK, I litened to this one again, and I like it a lot. I feel there is bit too much emphasis on beat sometimes (I would prefer it to be more abstract in rhythmical sense), but in any case it's a beautiful, mesmerizing work. Will be listening to more Erstwhile stuff today: "Fire Song" by Earl Howard / Denman Maroney and "Do" by Toshimaru Nakamura / Sachiko M. Funny thing, but I find myself spending more and more time listening to "natural environment" sounds. At this very moment they include very nice bird singing (several different birds), children playing in the yard, occasional passing car or train far at the background, very slight (but constant) buzz of a fan somewhere and flying airplanes once in a while. Not something particularly original for sure, but somehow last couple of weeks I tend to find it all fascinating enough to listen to attentively for quite long periods of time. Moroever, yestrerday it reached a certain extreme: I was listening to all these natural environment sounds and then decided to put Mingus' "Black Saint.."... started listening and in 10 minutes realized the music is somehow redundant (Mingus!!! "Black Saint..."!!!), turned it off and went back to listening (with great interest) to natural environment sounds. If it progresses like this, I might have all my CD collection for sales soon, he-he...

From Helma Schlief's (FMP) e-mail: "...end of this month we shall re-release a Peter Brötzmann solo CD (FMP Vinyl 1060 of 1984) called 14 LOVE POEMS PLUS 10 MORE; dedicated to poet Kenneth Patchen". As a honorable subscriber to FMP, I will receive it as soon as it's out and, whether you like it or not, will report here.

Continuing working through the CD Baby package I recieved, and can highly recommend these three: Mark Taylor "Circle Squared". Beautiful stuff - excellent compositions (in advanced hard-bop vein), imaginative playing by all ivolved (Myra Melford in particular). Easy to enjoy. Stylistically close to OmniTone label releases (like marvellous Baikida Carroll's "Marionette on a Hight Wire"). Ben Schachter "Fractals". Stylistically somewhat similar to the one above, allthugh more muscular. Schachter is not the mst original saxophonist, but his compositions are really top-notch. I think this disc is a part of $5 sale (you need to get 3 discs from the sale list: http://www.cdbaby.com/sale to qualify for discount). $5!!!! Twelve20six - again, not the most outstanding musicians (although very solid ones), but very interesting compositions with more diverse elements. Also a part of the $5 sale.

OK, OK, I am convinced. This will be my first Cuneifirm CD. BTW, here is a Tippetts-Dunmall-Westbrooks website (listing depressinly long discographies of all invovled): http://www.mindyourownmusic.co.uk

Listened. Amazing. This one will certainly become one of the most often listened-to discs of the following year. If I were a bassist I would listen to it standing on my knees. Hopefully I can track down a reasonably priced copy of this one. It sounds amazing! Dave Holland was a monster on the bass when we saw him in January. I got it for 2300 yen ($21.1) plus very reasonable shipping from Hiroshi Tanno. Not bad, I think. That does sound fairly reasonable. Hmmmm.... John, if you decide to go the Japanese way, I would encourage you to check out the rest of the "Hardcore Jazz" Universal Japan reissues: http://www.universal-music.co.jp/jazz/hard...jazz/index.html As I mentioned, Pharoah Sanders release seems to be already unavailble.

Listened. Amazing. This one will certainly become one of the most often listened-to discs of the following year. If I were a bassist I would listen to it standing on my knees. Hopefully I can track down a reasonably priced copy of this one. It sounds amazing! Dave Holland was a monster on the bass when we saw him in January. I got it for 2300 yen ($21.1) plus very reasonable shipping from Hiroshi Tanno. Not bad, I think.

Yes, there was: UCCI-9021 Archie Shepp: The Magic of Ju-Ju - released 3-4 years ago in 24-bit remastering. Might be not so easy to find now. If you are interested, I'd recommend contacting Hiroshi Tanno at hiroshi@earlyrecords.com - super-fast service and reasonable prices.

Listened. Amazing. This one will certainly become one of the most often listened-to discs of the following year. If I were a bassist I would listen to it standing on my knees.

I am pretty sure that HatHut will reissue Shepp-Roach duo in a forseable future - and knowing your Hat fetish, it is inevitable you'll hear Shepp sooner or later. But you shouldn't wait till then. Go for The Way Ahead or this one: Japanese-only reissue.

I love The Way Ahead. Beautiful Album. I finally got this one (wonderfully sounding Japanese version.. but no bonus tracks (why? why?) - a great one. Probably the best Shepp I've heard (I don't have too much, I have to admit).

I have one of his discs (I think it's called "Dorgon y Su Grupo" - and beleive me, its packaging is much less elaborate than the that of the ones you are posting). I hated it on a first listen - sounded silly, primitive and senseless (I think there were several "conceptual" compositions/improvisations in vibrophone-bass-saxophones-drums format), but something made me listen to it for the second time and I found it much more interesting and involving the second time around - the sillyness and repetitiveness of compositions started to make sense, and it all seemed nearly charming. Still I don't hink I finished listening to the CD. Means I need to find it and listen to it for the third time. Nothing reminding of Brötzmann or Ayler or Ware on this disc, btw. Jumbo releases seem to be available from themusicresource for just $9"a piece. I think this is where I got my Dorgon treasure from.

Listening to Martin Siewert / Martin Brandlmayr "Too Beautiful to Burn" (Erstwhile, 2003) and enjoying it quite a bit. Will have to listen again to be able to write in greater detail, but this is good stuff, for sure.

Anybody knows this guy: Rob Blakeslee? Looks interesting...

I am on a fence regarding this one. One one hand - GIonzalez and Grimes how I am very interested to hear (any other recordings after his comeback? - I don't know any); one hte other hand -ROy Campbell who I don't care about and Sabir Mateen who I cannot stand (and mnore and more so since I got otherwise excellent mark WHitecage CDs with annoyingly banal contributions buy Mateen). So I rely on your in-depth analysis, John.

I checked Tesh's website- he does not seem to be playing live too much, so my chances of seeing him live are quite limited. But he has a an on-line message board...