Steve Reynolds

So glad it is back at Roullette would love to be there for the Burrell tribute on Wednesday 5/23 but it looks like Friday night 5/25 & Sunday night 5/27 are my targets. 5/25: first band looks interesting as I’ve wanted to hear Keir Neuringer. Nasheet Waits’ Equality with Darius Jones is a great band and I cannot miss the Shipp ensemble that includes both Mat Maneri & Nate Wooley 5/27: missed Frode Gjerstad’s trios & quartets too many times and this quartet with Steve Swell will be burning, would love to hear Chris Potter with Cleaver - plus I see Brandon Lopez in on bass - I’ve always wanted to hear Potter in this sort of environment. Plus I think I need to see Gayle one more time before it’s too late. Hopefully he plays more tenor sax than piano - maybe it’s good they are listing saxophone next to his name.

The reason I put Sara Schoenbeck on he list is she played a few amazing bassoon improvisations both times I saw her / once in a larger ensemble with Harris Eisenstadt and the other time a woodwind & strings Marty Ehrlich led Quartet that also had Nicole Mitchell & Tomeka Reid. Sara was the musician I was unfamiliar with and she more than held her own in that company. With Eisenstadt her solo/improvisation was as impressive as Nate Wooley’s or Jeb Bishop’s. Shockingly inventive and powerful.

A few friends saw Mary Halvorson multiple times during her recent week at The Stone while I took a new friend to see her 1/30 show - a duet with Randy Peterson. My friend is a 22 year old guitarist who had seen a few you tube videos but his first real exposure to Mary was from a few feet away that night. I think he was spellbound but he would have to speak for himself. For me the 4 improvised pieces that spanned 65-70 minutes were pretty much great to otherworldly. First meeting with the iconclastic drummer and although Randy can teeter on the edge of a bit too much, the music was worthy of a CD release. Very strong. Good to hear their first encounter and thrilled she takes such risks.

Current great female musicians I’m always interested in hearing: maybe not including older more established (for decades like Myra Melford, Joelle Leandre, Marilyn Crispell, etc.) Tomeka Reid Mary Halvorson Kris Davis Ingrid Laubrock Jaimie Branch Sylvie Courvoisier Nicole Mitchell Sara Schoenbeck Lisa Mezzacappa More of course and not sure more interesting than their male peers but very cool that so many wonderful improvisors from all backgrounds are heard these days...

Tony Malaby Quartet with Marc Hannaford on piano (I’m unfamiliar with him - Malaby has a very wide range of musicians that he plays with so I’m excited to hear another new name to me), Michael Formanek on bass & the *great* Randy Peterson on drums 2 sets @ Cornelia Street Cafe 8:30 & 10:00

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