Nessa Records

[Chalupa]

I don't want to answer for Chuck but I don't think that even covers a CD pressing run, when its apparent he isn't even at the point of having a new master completed.

Dan is correct.

At this point I've transferred all the tapes (including multi-tracks) to digital. Just that part ate up a grand. Next is mixing/editing/mastering. It will probably take $5000 to get the first thousand pressings on my basement.

Wow, I had no idea.

Thanks for the reply.

[Chalupa]

Bump.

Chuck, sorry if I missed it - do you have an update for us on the CD release of "Nonaah" and/or "Saga of the Outlaws"?

[Chuck Nessa]

Bump.

Chuck, sorry if I missed it - do you have an update for us on the CD release of "Nonaah" and/or "Saga of the Outlaws"?

Well, I'm now finally past dealing with personal stuff and can get back to reissues. The first half of the new year should produce "Nonaah" (with some new material added), "Saga of the Outlaws", Wadada Leo Smith's "Spirit Catcher" and one or two others.

[GregN]

Bump.

Chuck, sorry if I missed it - do you have an update for us on the CD release of "Nonaah" and/or "Saga of the Outlaws"?

Well, I'm now finally past dealing with personal stuff and can get back to reissues. The first half of the new year should produce "Nonaah" (with some new material added), "Saga of the Outlaws", Wadada Leo Smith's "Spirit Catcher" and one or two others.

That sounds great! I am still diggin the discs I got from you a while back.

[Teasing the Korean]

Oh? I see...

(with respect to Barnabas Collins)...

Edited October 13, 2007 by Teasing the Korean

[Chuck Nessa]

[GregN]

Oh? I see...

(with respect to Barnabas Collins)...

?

[Chalupa]

Bump.

Chuck, sorry if I missed it - do you have an update for us on the CD release of "Nonaah" and/or "Saga of the Outlaws"?

Well, I'm now finally past dealing with personal stuff and can get back to reissues. The first half of the new year should produce "Nonaah" (with some new material added), "Saga of the Outlaws", Wadada Leo Smith's "Spirit Catcher" and one or two others.

Bump.

[Chuck Nessa]

I am waiting to hear back from my studio of choice for time to do the final editing.

Nonaah, Saga of the Outlaws and a reissue of Leo Smith's Procession of the Great Ancestry will be issued within the next 4 months and more will follow quickly.

Nonaah will include a couple of studio solos and more of the Mapenzi concert - Roscoe recently located and sent the tapes.

[Chuck Nessa]

Terry Martin's notes to the Nonaah lp issue - sans italics for quotes:

This album begins with a confrontation, one met by the Willisau audience and yet facing the unprepared listener now. The major elements of the project are involved immediately in that confrontation: the player, the composer, the alto saxophone and Nonaah. Roscoe Mitchell, perhaps not the best known name in the new music, but an artist whose consistent power and originality have already transformed the jazz language, fuses these elements to create a retrospective that reveals future potentials as much as it reflects continuing relationships and discoveries.

I’ve been feeling this whole period is like returning to a certain point on the circle and I haven’t been trying to push against it. It’s a very natural time to do it . . . to return to the alto . . . when I used to play one instrument it became part of me, a very natural sort of thing, all the mind’s eye had to deal with. When I started to play a lot of instruments that feeling went away, and I couldn’t play anything. I am prompted to try to play the whole family of saxophones, to get the whole thing tied together where it doesn’t really feel like a lot of different instruments, and now I’m actually experiencing that closeness . . . I’ve briefly moved away from that in this project to return to a particular space on the circle . . . I really enjoy playing with these musicians and I think that’s another part of the circle, that we’re starting to come back together again. I’m looking forward to those kind of relationships . . . to get the next level of the music, it’s going to have to be done with the people who have actually been playing it for the last 10-12 years.

Interactions have always been a primary concern of Roscoe’s mature music (let us say from 1966 onwards), and it is that characteristic that makes him such a formidable composer, in the jazz sense and in the best of any sense. The interactions stressed may be those amongst the contributing musicians, as in his art ensemble of 1966-68 (later to become the Art Ensemble of Chicago), or between the predetermined elements of a “composition”, or the sound properties of separate musical instruments…or whatever combination you can envisage. Perhaps we may approach his present music from the point of view of the composer; the player and the alto saxophone will inevitably force their entry anyway. The original idea for the album came, significantly, from the Willisau solo concert performance of Nonaah, and the composition represents as fundamental an example of Mitchell’s work in the past few years as any single piece can. Its approach contrasts with the duality of reference lines (heads) and free association, which characterized his earlier music and provided a basis for the AEC style. The germs of the present compositional approach were apparent in the play of motif fragments present in his own improvisations. The first recorded appearance of Nonaah is as a single complete line, played by the Art Ensemble on their Atlantic “Fanfare for the Warriors” in September 1973. It remains a line at a Montreal solo concert in November of the same year, but is cracking at the seams by July 1974 in Finland solo performance; both available on a Sackville album. A duet with Muhal Richard Abrams, not yet issued, from 1974 has the superimposition of a slow melody and a surprising stride coda. The preliminary drafts of the version for four alto saxophones occur in Michigan and Chicago in 1975 with the same personnel used here; the Nonaah Structure has grown to four themes at this point. Clearly the present series of Mitchell compositions are not to be regarded as static forms but as working, evolving structures.

Nonaah is a fictional character that I’ve come up with . . . I suppose it could apply to me in a given situation, or someone else; but that is too restrictive a definition for Nonaah the composition, rather the main line, the three other lines, each fragment, the improvisations . . . all come from the same world or atmosphere. The thing about Nonaah is that once you put yourself in that atmosphere you can ride on forever. The world has the properties of very large skips and it has notes that have accidental qualities that are kept. The rhythmic values are those of quarters, eights and triplets; in the slow parts all can be extended, the regular triplet to quarter-note or half-note triplets as in the quartet version. I rehearse it in very strict tempo and very loose, so everyone knows where he is and I can take the privilege of accelerating certain points. When I do it solo I do it many different ways . . .

The way in which Nonaah was done in Willisau was different certainly, and the outcome in its particular deployment and intensive analysis of a thematic fragment may have been the result of a specific set of circumstances that led to a potent realization of the Nonaah world. Mitchell recalls the concert . . .

It was strange, the whole thing, because the Ensemble had played there a few day before and I was just taking time to relax before going to Italy. Then all the sudden Anthony [braxton] wasn’t coming [to give his solo concert] and they said “OK, we want you to do a concert”. So I ran to the hotel and got my alto; I had an hour to warm it up. I went out there and got this tension thing. It was a battle. I had to make the noise and whatever was going on with the audience part of the piece. The music couldn’t move till they respected me, until they realized that I wasn’t going anywhere, and if someone was going it would have had to be them. It was very interesting, and it helped to create the environment the piece was to take place in . . . building tensions . . . and when I finally did release it my alto had just given in to me (it said, “OK, you can play me now”). I started to open it up soundwise by putting in smears and different sounds, and by the time it finally reached the end at the encore piece it all pulled together.

Apparently there are hidden values to be drawn from somewhat antagonistic audiences, if they also happen to be intelligent, for the interaction with the artist in this case produced a concert of unique creative tension and integrity. Powerful enough to enclose a very different composition Ericka, a profoundly lyrical melody by Joseph Jarman, within the angular universe of Nonaah. Held in stress between the two versions of the title piece, Ericka begins almost as a bridge of apparent calm but soon uncoils with a virtuosic violence in some of the most startling and powerful saxophone playing on record. The condensed explosion of the brief Nonaah encore is the only fitting conclusion to such a performance and to the intense opening section of this album. An extended pause follows on the record before the development of aspects of Mitchell’s music can take place in a different set of contexts.

If the solo performances focus on the internal interaction of musical elements in Roscoe’s work, melodic motifs, sound colors, and the diverse images a single mind and instrument can be made to reveal, then the group pieces are an enlargement of the circle, maintaining its center but embracing a broader landscape, other minds. The three compositions Off Five Dark Six, A1 TAL 2LA and Tahquemenon show several differing approaches to ordering musical, instrumental and personal interactions. In Off Five the sopranino and alto cooperate to extend each other’s potential . . .

The title encompasses the number and color aspects…as you would say off red or dark blue; 5 but a little off of 5, and a 6 but a darker 6. It starts off creating a space which deals with acoustics, where you’re sort of dropping these notes in a vacuum, but the way they’re hit they have so much presence that they start to form a space. The part where it moves into the first improvisation . . . done with a solo instrument I was using d..dt…d..dt, the sixteenth note sort of leading back trying to form it into a round. With Anthony I was able to create that echo relationship and also put another layer on top. A series of harmonics approach and finally settle on their fundamentals, then into a melody with the alto notes being modified in the high register to match the quality from the sopranino, leading to the very high sounding improvisation . . . and the ending with the alto playing a run figure which is matched by the sopranino . . . like one instrument with the range extended on both ends.

The surrealism of the title of the piece is a recurring element in Mitchell’s art (visual and musical), as are those strange companions: a deep sense of humor and a dedication to form (albeit new form). On the other hand A1 TAL 2LA does not have the abstruse meaning one might have expected; instead it is a melophonic dedication to his daughter, Atala. The duet itself is beautiful fusion of the personal qualities of Malachi Favors and Roscoe Mitchell. These two musicians drew a great deal of strength from each other in the formative mid-sixties, and it is a pleasure to hear that creative exchange reaffirmed in new aspects.

A1 TAL 2LA uses another compositional technique I’m involved in right now, where I write over a number of staffs . . . in that case I took two staffs and used notes in common as connections . . . as connecting phrases, where the phrase would start in the alto and end up in the bass. There were some choices at these connecting notes, so two different color changes could occur at that particular point. I have a piece ABCD, for two bass saxophones and two trombones, where that technique first appeared – the idea there was that you used four staffs with common notes, like pulling the instruments together, but with choices so the music would be picking up these different things as you went along.

In between and stemming from the written passages the improvisation proceeds with slow but pointed lyricism, gaining depth and humor in one notable passage from Malachi’s oblique insistence on a folk line which Roscoe finally accepts in appropriately subtle fashion having well prepared the character of his disjointed phrases to accept it. Throughout, the sound of the alto against wood collaborates and contrasts to the benefit of both; the ideas of the musicians contained in these sounds achieve the same fruitful blend.

Tahquemenon uses a technique I call “condensed range”. Using graph paper I bump the staffs together when I want to, cutting out parts of the range of certain instruments . . . for example putting the alto and trombone staffs together the alto would have the range to go above the staff and the highest the trombone could go would be the top line, but it would have the range to go below the staff. The instruments are limited to the condensed ranges for both the written and improvised passages when playing in the condensed situation, but here again there are choices. I had Muhal in condensed range then open . . . taking part of his piano out then all of a sudden it’s back again. The graph creates an effect of reference . . . the piece can be developed to a higher level each time it is played and still have the surprise elements of improvisation . . . the composition is still in a growing state – we could sit down over coffee and talk about other properties to take it out further.

Once again the musicians have no trouble applying their own personalities to the given structure, George Lewis’s humor shines trough as easily as Muhal’s modern romanticism, though no one could misidentify the composer at any instant. On the whole the curving of lines between the instruments in a broad space gives the impression of three adventurers sneaking up on the music.

The solo Improvisation 1 serves as something of a turnaround in the album. Like the opening pieces it was recorded live, but makes no reference to preconceived lines or structures. However it will not surprise listeners familiar with Roscoe to find that this totally improvised work is one of the most intensely felt structures on these records.

Improvisation is one of the higher forms of music and to be able to do it intelligently is really a challenge. It is probably easier to develop a style and just improvise off that, but for me that is not very interesting. I want to be able to create different situations and be able to expound on them intelligently . . . This occurred on the last night of a long series of solo concerts, so I had the chance to try out a lot of different techniques and situations. That was a very structured improvisation . . . it started off in one particular color, developed then moved into another color and after that began to recall the first from which something else came. Staccato sections in some parts and very singing-like things in others, it covers a lot of territory and builds on top of itself until at the very end it develops into, not single note trills, but sound trills . . . I have developed fingerings for several precise sound areas, so I can go right to them.

Improvisation 1 almost matches the Willisau solos in intensity and perhaps surpasses them in extraordinary fervor. It shows how much richer the art of solo saxophone playing has become since Mitchell first assayed the medium in the 1968 recording of TKHKE for his Nessa “Congliptious” album; though that earlier performance still stands, thanks to its firm sense of order and brilliant initial extensions of the alto’s sound palette. But now exploration and expression have united in a richer and more balanced music, which can find new things without suffering the scars of wayward experiments.

As if to demonstrate more fully the breadth of that maturity the sparse solo Ballad becomes a meditative contrast to the overwhelming power and virtuosity of Improvisation 1. Built around isolated high notes with brief legato fragments in the lower range its plaintive points of sound try to assemble into a lyrical line. The line remains a phantom but a poignant lyrical space has been created anyway, and this will expose in greater relief the image that opens the final work on the album.

At the end the confrontation returns, but now the listener understands that the barnyard vamp constituting the first section of the quartet Nonaah provides more than a seemingly endless and obsessive reputation based on five beats from the main line. Beyond the subtleties of the slight variations, some of them accepted accidentals occurring in repeats that generate a complex round, it is an opportunity to readjust to the “world” of Nonaah, before engaging in its further exploration. Despite familiarity and the humor of this cranky vamp machine the tension or repetition builds until there is a silence, where the vamp can echo in our ears and define the lyrical slow theme that glides out of it. This floating line will gather its own clouds of intensity.

It definitely creates a stabilized tension at the beginning, and then the very smoothness of the middle section gives the impression of strings or organ . . . it is hard to separate what is going on, and because of the way the dissonances and spaces occur, it is constantly presenting different pictures . . . It moves from there into a spaced out section where the sound is moving in a circle between the four players…

The angular, spacy mobile recalls the first section but is free and dynamically variable, providing a bracing and infectious release to the tension induced by the vamp; the listener may find himself tapping all available extremities independently at this point. The shifting overlay of lines of the conclusion invokes a tremendous performance from the four altos, an exciting climax to the project, and a high point in the continuing history of Nonaah . . .

When I did it in Woodstock this summer for a large ensemble I started to extend it more . . . I took beats from the four lines and began writing parts off of parts that were already there. I’m still not finished with it yet . . .

Terry Martin

August 1977

[Chuck Nessa]

Michael Cuscuna's notes for Saga of the Outlaws - again sans italics for Tyler's quotes:

It is a sad fact that even among many astute listeners of contemporary black music the name Charles Tyler conjures only a vague recognition if any at all. Historically, even in the highest art forms, membership in the right circle at the right time has been the prerequisite for the recognition and serious consideration of one’s art. For the past eighteen years, Charles has been a member of all the right circles, but he has also been an urban nomad, moving from scene to scene, taking his ever developing music with him each time. In this age of media babies, he is guilty of not having stayed in one place and created a public identity with which we could all know and peg him.

To begin at the beginning, Charles grew up in Indianapolis and started the clarinet at age 7. In high school, along with such classmates as James Spaulding and Ray Appleton, he studied with Mr. Musnence and Mr. Brown, whom a few years before had spawned a hell of a trombone section with students Slide Hampton, J.J. Johnson and Dave Baker. In his early teens Charles started playing the alto saxophone. Summers would be spent with various family members in Chicago, Cleveland and New York, learning the topography and music of each city.

In 1957 he was inducted into the army and, of course, got into the band. I picked up the baritone sax there. They assigned it to me. Nobody wanted to play it because it weighed so much when you were marching. I had a negative feeling for the horn as a result of that and dropped it completely until the late sixties. I started playing again because I really missed that bass register.

Upon discharge, he spent a year gigging around Indianapolis with blues bands before moving to Cleveland. There he was soon to join forces with Albert Ayler. I had met Albert when I was fourteen. I was walking down the street during one of my summers in Cleveland, carrying my alto. This guy about nineteen years old with a patch of red skin on part of his chin stopped me and introduced himself and told me that he played saxophone too and started talking about music. That was that. Then, when I moved to Cleveland, I came across this saxophonist with white hair growing out of half of his beard. I figured that that was where the patch of red skin was. That’s how I recognized him and how our relationship began.

I learned a great deal from Albert, especially in the concepts of other forces, of certain spiritual forces that he believed in. We started playing together and eventually began commuting between New York and Cleveland.

During that period we got to jam with Ornette and Sunny Murray and a lot of other artists. There were a few private lofts and some small coffee houses in the Village. Sometimes LeRoi Jones would stage something. It was an exciting time.

By 1965, Albert Ayler had exposed his ground breaking concepts sufficiently in Copenhagen and New York and had made four albums (three now on Freedom and his first for ESP). Work came more frequently and Charles Tyler was added as the third horn in the band. That association is documented by Bells and Spirits Rejoice, both on ESP. Despite Ayler’s extraordinary, simultaneously reactionary and avant garde approach to the saxophone, Tyler remained his own man as well as an astonishingly empathetic contributor to Albert’s music. This, one must remember, was the same year that John Coltrane carried around cassettes of Ayler’s music and wondered aloud on many occasions what was left and where he should go in light of Ayler’s advancements on the music.

Away from the Ayler group, Charles worked rhythm and blues gigs in Harlem. I used to play at a club on 125th Street, right across from the Baby Grand, called The Top Club. Bennie Maupin was working there at the same time with Edwin Birdsong. It was good discipline. Also in that period, Charles recorded his first album as a leader for ESP, using cellist Joel Freedman and bassist Henry Grimes from Albert’s group along with Charles Moffett on mallet instruments and Ron Jackson (currently known as Ron Shannon with Ornette Coleman’s Prime Time) on drums.

Ayler and Tyler eventually grew apart. As Charles tells it, Albert started to change his mind about things. A lot was going on. And people started to convince Albert that he could get an even larger audience if he changed certain things in his direction. I couldn’t watch that happen. So that’s when we parted.

Composer-cellist-educator Dave Baker (former trombonist with George Russell) arranged for a scholarship for Charles at Indiana University in Indianapolis in 1966. Charles plunged himself into study for two years, surfacing only long enough to record a second ESP album Eastern Man Alone with Baker on cello and two bassists.

The most immediately striking characteristic of his first two albums is the instrumentation. I’ve always liked to play with composition and put my classroom experience into practice. If you study music, you’re studying the classical idiom with a foundation that was laid down in the 16th century. I like to work with forms of composition and with different instrumentation. For example, the alto sax and cello produce a very wonderful sound. So do the baritone and cello for that matter. Maybe it’s the combination of a reed instrument pitched in E-flat and the cello. I don’t know, but it works.

In 1968, Charles transferred to the University of California in Berkeley where he studied and taught. I was living in Oakland and found some time to play around the Bay area. I organized a quartet with Butch Morris on trumpet, his brother Wilbur Morris on bass and Eddie Marshall or sometimes Jackie Prentice on drums. At one point, Bobby Bradford came up to make a gig that Butch couldn’t make. And he was incredible.

I also got down to Los Angeles to work with Stanley Crouch, Bradford, Arthur Blythe, David Murray and others. Toward the end of my stay in California in 1973, I recorded on one of Stanley’s albums, using baritone sax. We did one of my compositions Youngsters’ Eyes. There were a lot of great musicians in California at the time. But for me, it became very institutionalized and I couldn’t really practice my craft. I could continue to study and teach, but that was all. So I headed back to New York.

In New York in 1974, Tyler wasted little time making his presence felt. He organized a quartet with trumpeter Earl Cross, bassist Ronnie Boykins and drummer Steve Reid, adding Arthur Blythe to the group on occasions. They recorded a superb album Voyage From Jericho that was issued on Charles’ own Akba Records, a company borne out of the indifference of the established labels.

It was a very satisfying group. I liked adding Arthur because he has a way of playing my music on alto the way I would play it myself. He just has this ability to play peoples’ music exactly the way that they want it played. Besides, he really knocks me out on alto, and it gives me more opportunity to play baritone.

And Steve Reid and I had hooked up in the mid sixties. So I thought of him immediately when I came back to New York. He studied in North and West Africa for a couple of years and is a real master of polyrhythms. Reid has worked with Sun Ra, Charles McPherson and Frank Lowe among others. He also leads his own ensemble and operates his own Mustevic Records. Both Charles and Arthur have appeared on his dates.

Earl has been around for a long time and been very overlooked. He has made a lot of contributions to the music. Cross has been active on both American coasts and in Europe, having worked with Noah Howard, Rashied Ali, Sonny Simmons, Smiley Winter, Dewey Redman and many others.

Ronnie Boykins worked throughout the sixties with Archie Shepp, Ted Curson, Bill Barron, Hank Crawford, Rahsaan Roland Kirk and, for a long stretch, Sun Ra. He is currently with Mary Lou Williams.

Sometimes, if Ronnie couldn’t make a gig, I’d hire John Ore. I always wanted to try them together, but there was never enough money involved until this Wildflowers festival came along. Ore is best known for his tenure with Thelonious Monk from 1960 to mid 1963, but he had previously worked and recorded with such masters as Lester Young and Bud Powell. He freelanced through the sixties, recording with Steve Lacy and Hank Mobley among others. During this decade, he has appeared most often with Earl Hines, Cecil Payne and Tyler.

In 1975, Charles enrolled at Columbia University for post graduate studies and tried to maintain his group with various loft and college concerts throughout the New York area. In the summer of 1975, he made and extensive tour of Scandinavia with Boykins, Reid and guitarist Mel Smith, releasing his second Akba album Live In Europe from tapes of a Swedish concert.

Although I had first met Charles upon his return to New York in ’74, we did not get a chance to work together until the occasion of the album herein. My efforts to get a commercial record contract for Charles behind his self-produced Voyage From Jericho were for naught.

But in the beginning of 1976, Alan Douglas and I conceived and arranged a festival of the music currently happening in the New York lofts, from which we could cull as many albums as the music dictated. Each performer would be represented by one piece of music. We settled on Sam Rivers’ Studio Rivbea as the site, since it was one of the oldest and most important lofts.

The festival took place on two three-day weekends in May with a Thursday in the middle. Needless to day, it was a success, bearing five volumes of Wildflowers on Douglas Records and additional music by David Murray, Andrew Cyrille and Roswell Rudd appearing on other labels.

That Thursday night was the most trying and fruitless night of the project. Things started off with Monty Waters bringing in a big band that were incapable of recording instead of the quartet that had been arranged. The evening closed with The Last Poets, whom Alan had brought in to play but not record. In the middle was Charles Tyler’s set. Charles came with his quartet and added bassist John Ore. He told me that he had a specially written piece for the concert, which flattered me, and told me that it was a continuous performance of about 40 minutes, which flattened me as we were trying to get four to five artists represented on each album.

Charles’ piece Saga Of The Outlaws was magnificent. But I knew then that it would be impossible to excerpt a section without losing the vitality and construction of the piece. A musical triumph; but within the parameters of the project, a total disaster.

After three tedious months of listening, mixing, editing and programming, I was satisfied with the resultant five Wildflowers albums, but obsessed with finding an outlet for some of the magnificent unissued material that was returned to the artists.

By the beginning of 1978, I had had a record deal that was pending forever, and Charles was getting ready to issue the piece on his own Akba Records. And finally Chuck Nessa came to the rescue, ready to put the music out properly and immediately.

I wrote this piece specifically for the occasion, and I was especially inspired by the ability to finally use two basses. That gave me the opportunity to write four different melodies and to set things up as almost two trios of horn, bass and drums, except that they share one drummer. Outlaws is a polyphonic work; that is, each bass and horn has its own melody to be played simultaneously with the others. And throughout the solos, each player uses his theme as a sort of working motif. You can hear each instrument reaching back and using parts of the theme. Of course, the full composition is played only at the beginning and end of the performance.

I love Westerns, always have. I wanted to project a feeling of the daring, romantic Old West, like the Dalton Gang or Gunfight At The OK Corral, which was a classic. I used to dig the background music in those films and the feeling that Frankie Laine used to achieve with his voice. Of course, this is quite different musically with modern overtones and instrumentation, but I was looking for the same sort of feeling.

Charles’ alto is voracious and unstoppable throughout. His playing is muscular and impassioned; yet it is always fluent, lyrical and beautifully constructed with its own inner logic. He shines with a reservoir of creativity.

With Earl Cross back in Europe, Boykins with Mary Lou Williams and Blythe pursuing his own career, Charles’ working group has been pared down to John Ore and Steve Reid, although various musicians have been added on appropriate occasions. He is also working on solo performances and writing for a large woodwind orchestra that has made a couple of appearances in New York.

I am very excited about writing for all those reeds. As I said, I love to work with different combinations of instruments and compositional forms. There is a lot of strong music around that uses composition. Julius Hemphill’s The Painter (from Dogon A.D. on Freedom) is beautiful.

The melodic form is straight out of the late Renaissance. Braxton’s orchestra pieces (from Creative Music Orchestra 1976 on Arista) are just amazing. And Roscoe Mitchell is really a master; his work is very special. That newest album (Nessa n-14/15) has some unbelievable pieces. I really hope things continue in these directions and that the music gets heard.

I hope so too.

MICHAEL CUSCUNA

[JSngry]

YEAH!

[Chuck Nessa]

As you might surmise, I have been typing a lot to get this stuff ready for digital release.

[Peter Johnson]

Brilliant--can't WAIT for these to be ready. Please keep us posted, Chuck!

[jon abbey]

good to see you're making progress on reissuing some of your back catalog, Chuck!

if you're interested in advice from someone who started in this biz about three decades after you, I'd suggest not putting the liner notes on the web, as that's a part of the physical package you're hoping to sell that's at least slightly more of a pain for people to illegally copy. I can see arguments both ways, but I'd personally lean towards keeping them off the web, at least until the discs have been available for purchase for a bit. I know you're trying to drum up excitement, but maybe just an excerpt would work? just my two cents...

[Alexander Hawkins]

The first half of the new year should produce "Nonaah" (with some new material added), "Saga of the Outlaws", Wadada Leo Smith's "Spirit Catcher" and one or two others.

I am waiting to hear back from my studio of choice for time to do the final editing.

Nonaah, Saga of the Outlaws and a reissue of Leo Smith's Procession of the Great Ancestry will be issued within the next 4 months and more will follow quickly.

Chuck - just a little confused - which of the Leo Smiths is coming out?

'Procession of the Great Ancestry' is absolutely stunning. I love that one! Never heard Spirit Catcher though, so I would love for it to be that one...

[Chuck Nessa]

The first half of the new year should produce "Nonaah" (with some new material added), "Saga of the Outlaws", Wadada Leo Smith's "Spirit Catcher" and one or two others.

I am waiting to hear back from my studio of choice for time to do the final editing.

Nonaah, Saga of the Outlaws and a reissue of Leo Smith's Procession of the Great Ancestry will be issued within the next 4 months and more will follow quickly.

Chuck - just a little confused - which of the Leo Smiths is coming out?

'Procession of the Great Ancestry' is absolutely stunning. I love that one! Never heard Spirit Catcher though, so I would love for it to be that one...

The reissue of Procession is easier and quicker than Spirit Catcher which involves remix of multi-tracks and addition of new material. Spirit Catcher should follow later in the year.

Edited March 18, 2008 by Chuck Nessa

[Chalupa]

The first half of the new year should produce "Nonaah" (with some new material added), "Saga of the Outlaws", Wadada Leo Smith's "Spirit Catcher" and one or two others.

I am waiting to hear back from my studio of choice for time to do the final editing.

Nonaah, Saga of the Outlaws and a reissue of Leo Smith's Procession of the Great Ancestry will be issued within the next 4 months and more will follow quickly.

Chuck - just a little confused - which of the Leo Smiths is coming out?

'Procession of the Great Ancestry' is absolutely stunning. I love that one! Never heard Spirit Catcher though, so I would love for it to be that one...

I believe Chuck still has copies for sale of Spirit Catcher on vinyl.

[Nate Dorward]

That's terrific news about the reissues. Long wanted to hear this music, not to mention the previously unreleased stuff...!

[John L]

Nessa records rules!

[GregK]

tell me when to send the check

[Chuck Nessa]

Checks are always welcome.

I suggest you wait 'til I say GO.

[Clunky]

any update ?

[Chuck Nessa]

Been in the studio four full days over the last couple of weeks working on the mixing, editing and transfers. I hope to finish that work on Thursday and Friday this week.

Stuff is progressing.

[Late]

Thanks for the update. I suspect you're going to have a fair number of orders from a certain "jazz discussion forum." Count me in for the Mitchell and Tyler.