Steve Reynolds

Great album

Chance I am at Cornelia Street Friday night for BassDrumBone with Helias, Hemingway & Anderson. Only reason I may not be there is my wife is a bit under the weather. Enjoy the shows!

Getting me more interested in these wonderful musicians, especially the great pianist and the drummer Gabriel Ferrandini that I know from Rodrigo Amado’s Motion Trio.

A wonderful fairly recent release that is making an impact: Before the Silence Albert Cirera: tenor & soprano saxophones Hernani Faustino: bass Agusti Fernández: piano Gabriel Ferrandini: Drums no business records

Latest Peter Brotzmann purchase awaiting a spin: Live in Copenhagen - Trio with Steve Swell & Paal Nilssen-Love recorded live on 4/21/16 same trio on Live in Kraków from a year or so earlier is terrific on Not Two Records

1) Tony Malaby, Daniel Levin & Randy Peterson - late October @ Firehouse in New Haven, CT 2) Tim Berne’s Snakeoil - late Summer in Newburgh, NY 3) Ches Smith Trio with Craig Taborn & Mat Maneri - 12/20 @ The Stone 4) William Parker Quartet with Rob Brown, Cooper-Moore & Hamid Drake - early summer @ Shapeshifter Labs in Brooklyn, NY 5) Nu Band with Mark Whitecage, Thomas Heberer, Joe Fonda & Lou Grassi - late Winter in NYC might have missed some but these were all stellar to amazing

Not thrilled. Dave’s 22 from December 1971 was meh at best. They should have at least picked 12/15/71 which includes a Dark Star

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.....