Steve Reynolds

For jazz/free improvisation the following are favorites - all new to me and 90% are late 2016 or 2017 releases: Jaimie Branch: Fly or Die Chicago/London Underground: A Night Walking Through Mirrors David S Ware Trio: Live in New York - Blue Note Nu Band: Live in Geneva - Heberer & Whitecage are great here Daniele D’Agaro Trio: Disorder at the Border Liudas Mockunas with Rafal Mazur & Raymond Strid: Live at Divadlo 29 Red Trio with John Butcher: Summer Skyshift Jones Jones: Moscow Improvisations By quite a bit the best thing I’ve heard is Tensegrity - 4 CD box of Barry Guy’s Blue Shroud Band in small formations - improvisations

Great to see that Steve Potts is still playing. I loved his playing with Steve Lacy.

Very glad that I had the opportunity to see the great man once I think I remember when I first really heard him on record - I think it was on Jump Up with Jimmy Lyons & John Lindberg. Then I realize he was doing that fee time thing in 1962 when no other drummer had ever approached that sort of free thing. To my ears the most relaxed and coolest drummer in the world. Plus those cymbals? Who does that?? No one by Sunny

I’ll should be at the Newburgh show. Nice venue. I was at the Tim Berne Snakeoil show a couple of months ago.

Enjoy - dream band with the *great* Joe McPhee joining the long standing awe-inspiring trio...

King Crimson in Allentown, PA

Love the 5/10/78 show from the first 2 discs of Dick’s Picks 25

How about the majority of the Not Two Records catalogue?

I used to think there was no way Fall 72 Grateful Dead was much different than Spring 73 Dead even though the band had the same 6 members and the set lists were similar. Until I listened more closely over the years, that is. In fact I used to think the whole idea that Dead Heads liked or thought of eras by time frames as distinct like Fall 71 vs Spring 72 or even supposed vast differences between Spring 77 & Fall 78 was thoroughly insane. Sounded crazy. Once I’ve immersed myself in it, I’ve found it all to be true. Real changes from even April 78 to July 78. Forget about the difference between 1970 & 1972. same applies to improvised music - I understand the merlot analogy but many of these “free jazz” bands don’t even have saxophones. Look up Jaimie Branch’s Fly or Die. You wouldn’t even call it free jazz. Or Harris Eisenstadt’s nonet I saw earlier this year with Instrumentation and an approach far from anything thought of as free jazz/free music.

Yes it has!! The actual music being made on the “margins” has almost always been the most fascinating to me. So different yet seemingly the same but it’s not. Somehow if one is not ensconced I this music, it can all blend together. You will have trust me that when I first saw the Tom Rainey trio with Mary & Ingrid I think in 2011 that it was really very exciting and very new. As good as Laubrock is, the singular unique abilities of both Mary & Tom made and make that improvising trio “sing” like few others. The combination of a distilled seasoned player like Rainey with a younger melodically based experimental guitarist like Mary melded a trio into a sui generis band with it's own voice. Will they be genre defining? Of course not and neither will the somewhat similar somewhat cooperative trio mentioned above - Ches Smith’s trio with Maneri & Taborn. That trio also has 2 very unique voices - one older - Mat and Ches is, of course, a contemporary of Mary’s. Band filled out by one the great pianists of our time, Craig Taborn but to my ears, it’s the other 2 who take a fine trio and make it an incandescent one.

Thanks for this post. Certainly the Rempis Percussion Quartet is expanding on previous/existing musical forms. No way to listen to this and think I’ve heard something like it before. Whatever Haker Flaten is doing on bass on the last release is something I’ve never heard before. Fly or Die is a striking 35 minute new piece of assembled music that is at least stunning in it’s vibrancy. I know again I’ve not heard other music of this sort. Even Tomeka Reid’s more straightforward quartet with Mary Halvorson, Jason Roebke & Tomas Fujiwara is music that would not or could not have existed 10 or 15 years ago. How about Max Johnson’s The Prisoner with Ingrid Laubrock & Mat Maneri also with Fujiwara? Taylor Ho Bynum’s Triple Double with the 2 guitar, 2 trumpet/cornet & 2 drummer line-up? Ches Smith’s most recent These Arches needs to be recorded with Herb Robertson & Devin Hoff on electric bass. I saw this band on 10/1/2016 and is was brand new grooving out there creative music. Herb Robertson remains one of the great underheard voices on trumpet this music has ever had. Same can be said for the amazing Ches Smith trio with Craig Taborn & Mat Maneri. They are astounding live and I’ll hopefully see their one set (boo for the new 1 set booking) at The Stone on 12/20. Last Friday I experienced 2 sets from the new cooperative trio of Daniel Levin, Tony Malaby & Randy Peterson. Fierce powerful escatic almost hyper manic insect music with Malaby as strong as I’ve heard him in a few years on both tenor & soprano. This is just a bit of the stuff I’m familiar with and I don’t listen to this music nearly as much as I once did / so to my ears the wide array of the unfortunately named “free jazz” is alive and well and new from the creative perspective.

Same here

Going to see Robert Fripp & Company on 11/11 in Allentown, PA

Tomorrow Night at Firehouse 12 in New Haven, CT: Daniel Levin, Tony Malaby & Randy Peterson 2 sets 8:30 & 10:00

“Useful & enjoyable” to whom? Plus are all the jazz geniuses dead?

Quite arbitrary in my view. Since I'm not versed in classical I cannot comment but it's interesting that John Butcher was listed above. I'm an admirer and some of what I've heard from him is of the first order of modern saxophonists but I'd certainly believe just from a saxophone perspective that Joe Maneri, Evan Parker, Mats Gustaffson, Roscoe Mitchell, Steve Lacy, Tony Malaby, Anthony Braxton, or even Urs Leimgruber or Martin Kuchen would also then have to be considered. I think Dave Rempis is as talented and brilliant a player and thinker as almost anyone playing today. But he's not well known at all and will probably never be so is he never considered for approval as a member into some sort of pantheon. Kind of Kennedy center honors - what a tucking bore that scene is...but Rempis is kinda like Peter Kowald - well there is a genius right there - as is Barry Guy but neither of them make the grade either. and of course others I don't know or prefer, etc. who is to say that it's just Miles or Monk or Duke? Keith Rowe for me is just as brilliant as anyone to my ears. whether they influenced or are well known to us are really not much of a consideration, in my view. I certainly believe Joe Maneri was a improvisational genius of the highest order and I think the same of his son. Whether anyone here agrees here or anywhere is of no concern to me. I've got ears and I know how to listen. enough out of me - resume.... Let The Horse Go

That one is on my list:)

I like Clifford's approach I will add Joe Maneri and his son Mat plus Agusti Fernandez & Paul Bley for two amazing pianists new potential younger voices like Nate Wooley, Mary Halvorsen & Ches Smith I hear it in them and others but we all hear differently or some don't hear it or listen at all.....

Glad you are into two of my favorites You would be well served to get Tensegrity - a 4 CD box of Barry Guy's Blue Shroud band in small formations. Evans is prominently featured and his spots are spectacular. of course Mats is all over the 2 previous small formations boxes of Guy's New Orchestra - Mad Dogs (5CDs) & Mad Dogs on the Loose (4CDs). These feature more well known mostly veterans of the scene (Evan Parker, Trevor Watts, Paul Lytton, Johannes Bauer, etc.) both ensembles include the great pianist Agusti Fernandez and his work with Gustaffson is priceless. There is a set with Parker-Guy-Lytton with Agusti added that is amazing. Both earlier boxes have great Tarfala sets - Mats with Guy & Raymond Strid at the kit. For my $$$ this is Gustaffson's sweet spot and the set on the earlier box is my favorite set I've ever heard him play. all 3 boxes on Not Two records - for me they are the best free improvisation releases of the past 10 years. Best sounding, best editing and the musicians are clearly focused and relaxed. Plus look at who is playing on the first two - and the younger players on the later discs that I was unfamiliar with are wonderful. There are a couple of saxophonists and multi-instrumentalists that stunned me with their abilities. I think Mad Dogs on The Loose is available for decent $$ as is Tensegrity. The first box looks to have become a bit pricey. An aside from before about "rudiments" Or and idea that free jazz dudes don't know even the rudiments was laughable 25 years ago, today writing that is a parody of some sort. One wonders if some have ever even listened to what some of these people are doing/playing. I attended the Tomas Fujiwara Double Trio shows a few weeks back. Rudiments indeed!!!

I've been listening to the Ware trio shows from October 2010 with Parker & Warren Smith. As has been said above, the influence from Ayler et al is obviously unmistakable yet his sound is almost timeless if you contrast it with Birth of a Being from 76/77 (an astounding trio with Cooper-Moore & Marc Edwards). However he is really more out of Rollins than Ayler and certainly the Coltrane influence is less than many/most of his contemporaries. the alternate downtown thread with people like Berne, Malaby and now Rainey, Maneri's, Kris Davis, Darius Jones, Ches Smith, Mary Halvorsen and many more is many moons apart from the late 60's free scene. In addition the wide range of music being made by these people and others is astonishing and mostly wildly creative and surprising. I'll say the same for the musicians from Chicago I've heard like Tameka Reid, Jamie Branch, Mike Reed, Jason Stein and many others. I think Vandermark's large ensemble music of the past 20 years is thoroughly undervalued and underheard. The Territory Band and Resonance Ensemble recordings are in most cases spectacular or close to it. as far as the Euros, I tend to enjoy the free and abstract music that has existed and continues to thrive even more than the vibrant creative music being played here. next Friday Tony Malaby with Daniel Levin & RANDY PETERSON in New Haven, CT

Not going to list recordings but here are some of the living pianists that have piqued my interest (bedsides the well known names I like/love like Cecil Taylor) Cooper-Moore Kris Davis David Virelles Alexander Hawkins John Escreet Lucien Ban Craig Taborn

I see this sort of Jazz often but Berne's Snakeoil is unique. Ches is one of a kind and Berne's compositions are challenging. I just saw them 10 days ago. I brought a good friend who had never seen a jazz show, let alone a somewhat 'out' band like this. He loved it, bought the CD and is going to see them again on 12/1 in New Haven. He is also going with me to see Tony Malaby, Daniel Levin & RANDY PETERSON. If he loves THAT band, his life will change forever. Berne was also hilarious and did a 30 minute sit down talk/Q&A and he told some cool funny stories.

I hope this is the case next year. No reason to muck up the greatest music in the world with the "resistance" movement. I did attend a show earlier this year sponsored by similar movement/people and I chose to leave while the "poet" booked in between 2 great bands spewed some vile cop killing nonsense. Plus even if I agreed with him, he wasn't any good. A whole slew of other "poets" were booked throughout the weeks long event and I'm sure the content was similar.

Ugh nothing like politicizing the music/festival to take all the spirit out of it

I'll be there by 7:15 or so. Show starts at 8:00. I hope that's early enough.