Showing posts with label Matthew Shipp. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Matthew Shipp. Show all posts

Monday, May 19, 2014

Alternating Current



http://www.allaboutjazz.com/coverart/large/jeffcosgrove_alternatingcurrent_db.jpg I got a fine CD last week from master drummer Jeff Cosgrove.  Jeff is a fearless explorer of those regions of avant garde hyperspace opened up by the elder captains.  I have previously reviewed his amazing tribute to the music of Paul Motian: Motian Sickness. 
Alternating Current is another voyage for which you will want to be on board.  Cosgrove leads a trio including Matthew Shipp on piano and William Parker on bass.  Anyone who has followed this blog or listened to JazzNoteNSU knows that I am devoted to the music of William Parker.  I think that he might be the greatest living composer of jazz.  I have also featured Matthew Shipp frequently, as I think his word is fundamental.  I will take the liberty of including a bit from one of Jeff’s emails: “Playing/meeting Matt and William was definitely life changing.  The best part is they are some of the kindest people as well.”  I can only imagine, but I am grateful to Jeff for including me in the outreach part of the project. 
Finally, I note that the album is dedicated to Andrew Cyrille who, according to the liner notes, “helped connect the musicians for this recording and has long been an inspiration in improvisation”.  Cyrille is another master whom I have pushed with all the power of my meagre resources. 
The disc has three cuts: ‘Bridges of Tomorrow’ is 38 minutes long.  It is textbook free jazz: a weaving of three great minds with thick rope here and stringy sinews there.  The second and third cuts are shorter and sweeter, if more impressionistic. 
If you love jazz, you will want to get this disc. 


Saturday, December 29, 2012

David S. Ware: Pastor at the Church of Jazz

Avant garde sax man David S. Ware passed away in October.  I confess that I didn't find out about his passing until last week.  NPR had a tribute to Ware and Lol Coxhill and Von Freeman, all of whom we lost last year.  I would note that I got to hear Freeman in Chicago a few years back, in a small club just north of the river.  

I don't know Coxhill, but I do have a healthy collection of David S. Ware in my library.  Most of Ware's music is what I call Page Four Jazz.  Someone who likes hard bop (Page Three) will recognize Page Four as music, but may find it very challenging.  Ware played a very muscular, frenetic horn.  You'll like it if you like the scratchy texture of his sax (I do) and if the way he slices and reassembles musical ideas does that avant garde thing to you (it does to me).  

You can watch a very interesting short film about David S. Ware produced by the David Lynch Foundation.   It includes Ware's voice along with William Parker.  "Now Jazz is one of the world's greatest churches, for sure," Ware tells us.  Don't miss it.  You can also read a fine obituary at the Guardian

Ware recorded Sonny Rollins' 'Freedom Suite' twice, once on an album of that title and again on Live In The World, a splendid avant garde document by the David S. Ware Quartet.  Either is a good place to start for the wary looking for something accessible.  These are fine examples of jazz in a classical format.  I am playing the third movement from the Freedom Suite album.  Here are the usual suspects:
I am also playing 'Mikuro's Blues' from Go See The World, the studio album released just as the tour documented in the album above was going.  It is a very accessible blues number and gives you a pretty good idea of Ware's brilliance.  I just downloaded this recording tonight, so I can't give you a review.  No surprises on the score card:
 Meanwhile, what I really want to talk about is an Andrew Cyrille album that features Ware: Special People (1980).  I was already up to the eyelids deep in love with Cyrille.  He is one drummer who can lead a band the way a catcher directs the diamond.  Special People is so bloody good I can't believe I didn't have it until today.  Every single number is toe curling delicious.  Here is the lineup:
Just from the first listen, I would have guessed that Nick De Geronimo was the leader.  His bass supports the other instruments the way the treads support an armored personnel carrier.  He knows just how to find his footing in each musical topography and how to reach for the delicious push.  Cyrille's percussion frames the music and keeps the horns on top the tread.  Ware is magnificent, playing with the heart of a war horse.  The same goes for Ted Daniels on brass, who is lighter afoot but just as poetic.  This album is simply superb.  Get the darn thing!


Friday, April 20, 2012

A Visit to the Jazz Record Mart

I recently enjoyed a visit to Chicago and, of course, a trip to the Jazz Record Mart.  This little gem is at 27  East Illinois St., just a little North of the River and West of Michigan Ave.  Right next to it, I will mention before I forget, is a wonderful Thai restaurant, The Star of Siam.  

The JRM is a wonderful place to find just what you are looking for, especially if you are looking for jazz that has a Chicago connection.  I walked out with six recordings, a couple of which I couldn't find online. 

Ken Vandermark's Sound in Action Trio is something special: Vandermark on tenor sax and clarinet, with Robert Barry and Tim Mulvenna, both on drums.  The album is Design in Time (1999).  I am playing the first cut, Ornette Coleman's 'Law Years' and Albert Ayler's 'Angels'.  I also nailed Dual Pleasure, with Vandermark and Paal Nilssen-Love on drums.  I am playing 'Anno 1240'.  Both albums are superb. Vandermark is one of the most brilliant horn players of the current age.  He is endlessly inventive, with that hard edge and reverence for musical history that defines Chicago avant garde. The trio album is more accessible, mostly because Vandermark is covering other composers.  

Trio 3 with Geri Allen, At This Time (2009), features: 
This is an easy album to warm up to.  I have a special fondness for Cyrille.  I am playing 'Swamini', an Allen composition in honor of Alice Coltrane.  


The late Fred Anderson is another Chicago AG stalwart.  I picked up his Blue Winter, a two disc CD with William Parker on bass and Hamid Drake on drums.  The first disc is a long rambling blues.  I am playing the last cut, 'IV', from the second disc.  There is power in that there trio!  


I also picked up The All-Star Game I, with 
This is avant garde.  

Finally, I purchased The Matthew Shipp Trio-The Multiplication Table (1998). 
This is also very avant garde, with a mix of easily accessible piano work and some very challenging deconstructions of 'Autumn Leaves' and 'Take the A Train'.  I am playing 'The New Fact'.

That was my trip to the record store.  Oh,  and the Thai food was excellent. 

Sunday, March 7, 2010

David S. Ware Got a Kidney

It occurs to me that that blog title would make a good title for an avant garde ballad.  I posted some time ago on David S. Ware, mentioning the fact that he was in desperate need of a new kidney.  I had this momentary daydream in which my blog post became the connection between the brilliant avant garde tenor and a donor.  It was a  pure 'put me on center stage' kind of fantasy.  I am happy to report that Ware did receive a transplant, from Laura Mehr.  You can read about the connection at that link.  I say: well done, Laura!

On my original post I mentioned one difference between the jazz and classical music genres: long, multi-part compositions are relatively rare in jazz.  Subsequent versions of such works are rarer still, though Ken Laster pointed out that Trane's A Love Supreme has been produced many times by other artists.  I would point out that so has Tranes' Ascension, though I can't figure out why. On that post I reviewed Ware's recording of Sonny Rollin's four movement 'Freedom Suite'. 

This week I have been listening to a three disc recording by the David S. Ware Quartet: Live In The World, which contains another, longer version of 'Freedom Suite'.    Backing Ware are three consummate avant garde artists.  William Parker, one of the most imaginative and brilliant jazz composers plays bass.  Matthew Shipp plays piano.  Shipp reminds me a lot of Parker, perhaps because his recording Pastoral Composure reminds me of Parker's Painter's Spring.  Those two albums are good, accessible introductions to the work of both.  Live In The World presents three concerts.  Different drummers appear on each.

To be sure, this is not music for the inattentive.  Some of the numbers are quite challenging.  Ware's interpretation of 'Freedom Suite' is the kind of thing that should bear a warning: don't try this at home.  But this is also a good album for the hard bop ban to cut some avant garde teeth on.  I especially liked Ware's interpretation of 'The Way We Were.'  There's a lovely if syrupy ballad, almost spoiled by the memory of a dreadful movie.  Ware opens with a long and intense solo that was distant enough from the original melody that it made me wonder if the title was a mere coincident.  But then the piano comes in, and sure enough it's 'The Way We Were.'  Ware's solo had the charming effect of scouring out all my preconceptions about the song, and it allowed me to hear it for the first time without once thinking of Barbara Streisand.  

Ware obviously has a deep interest in Eastern mysticism.  The album highlights these interests.  It is also too easy for a movie star or musician to trivialize a spiritual tradition, but in the best cases the spiritual colors weave into the music and make it more interesting.  This is one of those cases.  'Elder's Path' is a very interesting walk.  

But here is a sample of a more traditional blues.  Susie Ibarra is on drums.  It's finger-licking good.  
Davis S. Ware Quartet/Mikuro's Blues
This gives you some idea of what Ms. Mehr purchased with her kidney.