Do Girls do Avant Garde?

If that question is really a question, it has been decisively answered by Matana Roberts.  Roberts is a sax player based in New York.  She is a member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, which sounds like a good thing to be a member of.  I have been listening to her recording The Chicago Project all day, over and over.  It is astoundingly good.  

The album weaves all the elements of traditional jazz into its tapestry but the larger image is unexpected and very gratifying.  The music is challenging enough, without ever losing the song.  I love this album!  Here is some information for you.  

The Chicago Project is Matana's homage to her home town and features compositions and conceptual material composed by Matana and interpreted by close friends and supporters of her Chicago development in the form of bassist Josh Abrams (of Town and Country, Prefuse 73 and more), guitarist Jeff Parker (of Tortoise, Chicago  Underground Trio and more) and drummer Frank Rosaly. The album was produced and engineered respectively by pianist Vijay Iyer and Tortoise’s John McEntire, and features a very special guest saxophonist in the form of Fred Anderson, who is one of the founding members of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM).

I've posted a couple of cuts on my Live365 station.  It is available on eMusic.  Get the darn thing. 

The genius of Cecil Taylor

Cecil Taylor's Jazz Advance is an essential item in any jazz library.  It is, all on its own, a brilliant piece of work.  In context, it is astonishing.  Recorded in 1956, it makes Miles Davis first great quintet look retrograde by comparison, and Miles was covering ground fast.  Taylor saw far ahead of his time.  

Last night I was listening to Taylor's Conquistador!, recorded a decade later.  Like most of Taylor's recordings, it is pure Avant Garde.  The room was lit by a single lamp and I was tired.  I dropped what I was reading and just listened.  It worked.  I was captivated by every note, though I could not have predicted the next note.  I suppose that was the point.  

Taylor recorded a lot of music, and I have enjoyed only a small portion.  I haven't heard anything that measures up to Jazz Advance, but I have heard a lot that is worth living with.  I have some recommendations.  

1. Jazz Advance (1956)
2. Looking Ahead (1958)
3. The World of Cecil Taylor (1960)
4. Air (1961)
5. Jumpin' Punkins (1961)
6. New York City R&B (1961)
7. Cell Walk for Celeste (1961)

That gives you the early Taylor.  Most of it is available from eMusic.  I will follow up with some more detail and some later Taylor, well, later.  

Bobby Hutcherson on Blue Note pt. 2

Bobby Hutcherson recorded three albums as leader with Herbie Hancock on piano: Components (1965), Happenings (66), and Oblique (67).  As Hutcherson's Dialogue was, I think, deeply colored by the presence of Andrew Hill, so Hancock's presence colors the 66 and 67.  This is so in spite of the fact that Hutcherson composed all but one of the numbers on Happenings (Hancock's 'Maiden Voyage') and three of the six numbers of on Oblique.  The latter also includes a single Hancock composition.  I think that this is a strength of Hutcherson's leadership rather than a weakness and is quite intentional.  Hutcherson's composition 'Subtle Neptune' certainly invokes the oceanic theme that marked Hancock's great Blue Note recordings.  Hutcherson chose to do something very clever: record albums that fit rather neatly with the latter.  

1. Components.  Freddie Hubbard (tp); James Spaulding (as, fl); Bobby Hutcherson (vib, mar); Herbie Hancock (p, org); Ron Carter (b); Joe Chambers (d).  Four of the cuts are Hutcherson composition, and they are all lyrical, accessible, and delicious.  'Tranquility' is pensive and haunting.  'Little B's Poem' is a classic.  The rest of the compositions are by Chambers, and lean a little more toward the avant garde.  
2. Happenings.  Bobby Hutcherson (vib, mar, d); Herbie Hancock (p); Bob Cranshaw (b); Joe Chambers (d, mar),  Great album art!  All the compositions are good.  I especially like 'Head Start' with Hutcherson's superb solos going on just inches above Hancock's piano. This is very energetic and compelling hard bop.
3. Oblique.  Bobby Hutcherson (vib, d); Herbie Hancock (p); Albert Stinson (b); Joe Chambers (d, gong, timp).  What Hutcherson does with Hancock's 'Theme from "Blow Up"' is just marvelous, and you don't get better vibes than are on display in the title cut.  
4. Stick Up! (66) Joe Henderson (ts); Bobby Hutcherson (vib); McCoy Tyner (p); Herbie Lewis (b); Billy Higgins (d).  This is a nice contrast with the above recordings.  It doesn't sound like a Hancock or a Henderson album, though Joe does not go unnoticed.  Hutcherson's poetry is a conspicuous feature of all these albums, but the best expression of it is in the aptly titled 'Verse'.  Again, Hutcherson composes his solo just above the exquisite Tyner on piano and Lewis on base, followed Henderson doing the same.  I can't imagine listening to this and not being happy.  

I may do another post on Hutcherson, or maybe not.   If you have the four recordings described in these last two posts, you have a fine record of mid-sixties jazz in all of its glory. 

Bobby Hutcherson on Blue Note pt. 1

I have had very little time for this blog over the last few months and I confess that I have not really found a satisfying way to combine it with my Live365 site.  This was a lot more fun when I was posting links directly to sample cuts, but that was more risk that I was willing to continue taking. 

The original purpose of the blog was to share my love of jazz collecting, so I am going to try to return to that purpose.  Who knows?  Perhaps I can draw some audience back.  

I have been rounding out my collection of vibe man Bobby Hutcherson recordings.  In the mid '60's, Hutcherson did a series of recordings for Blue Note that ought to be in anyone's jazz library.  Here is a list of these recordings with some notes.  

1. The Kicker (63)  Joe Henderson (ts); Duke Pearson (p); Grant Green (g); Bob Cranshaw (b); Al Harewood (d).  This might as well have been marketed as a Henderson album.  Maybe then Blue Note wouldn't have kept it in the vaults for more than thirty years (1999)!  It is a rock solid hard bop date, with fine displays by Henderson and Hutcherson and Pearson.  Kicker* may be heard on my Live365 site.  
2. Dialogue (65) Freddie Hubbard (t); Sam Rivers (ss, ts, f); Andrew Hill (p); Richard Davis (b); Joe Chambers (d).  Likewise, this might have been marketed as an Andrew Hill recording, as the pianist composed three of the cuts and it has a very topography.  This is Hutcherson's most interesting and inventive recording.  It invites obvious comparison with two very great recordings.  Hill's Andrew!!! has the same Hill-Davis-Chambers rhythm section.  Hutcherson, Hubbard, and Davis appeared on Eric Dolphy's earth shaking recording, Out To Lunch.  Hill's 'Les Noirs Marchant' could easily have fit on that album.

Don't misinterpret my remarks about marketing.  These are both Hutcherson recordings.  If his subsequent Blue Note recordings were less adventurous than Dialogue, they are nonetheless squarely on the path of the new thing.   In pt. 2, I'll cover Happenings, Stick Up, and Oblique. 

ps.  I have relied heavily on A Bobby Hutcherson Web Site.  What a resource!  Would that every jazz artist had this kind of attention paid to him or her. 

Freedom Day

Happy Fourth of July.  I have posted Max Roach's 'Speak, Brother, Speak,' my Live365 station, in honor of these United States.  For entirely obvious reasons, there is a not a lot of explicitly patriotic music in jazz.  However, the civil rights stuff is more than genuinely patriotic in its fashion.  I think you will enjoy the long Roach piece. 

Jared Gold on Posi-tone

I've been listening to more organ music tonight: Jared Gold's All Wrapped Up.  Gold leads a quartet consisting of Ralph Bowen on tenor sax, Jim Rotondi on trumpet and flugelhorn, and Quincy Davis on drums.  The instrument conspicuous by its absence is the bass.  Is it really jazz if there isn't the thump of the bass?

Well, yes.  Gold has a very vigorous strike for an organ player and he has to fill in for the bass when the horns are up front.  He does a good job of that and more.  Gold plays the organ like a catcher plays baseball: he minds his post and manages the field.  The horns are prominent, as God intended, but the organ is always supporting the action.  If you were moving a resolution for more organ in jazz, you would want to introduce this album into evidence.  

Ralph Bowen knows what a saxophone is for.  His solos are brilliant.  I was constantly surprised by his changes and by his sense of where the sweet spot in the melody lies.  Rotondi's horn reminded me of a smoky room many years ago when another horn player reminded of why God made ears.  I won't neglect the drumming, which was flawless and rich.  

But Gold's organ was the interesting thing.  His solo work ranged between soulful singing and the precision of a computer dialing a phone number.  The latter was wonderful on its own, but it highlighted the mood of the former.  

Don't miss All Wrapped Up.  Tell 'em I sent ya. 

Jemeel Moondock & William Parker: New World Pygmies

I am way behind on my album reviewing.  I have a lot of good stuff from Posi-Tone to review.  I hope to do that properly soon, but my summer schedule is tighter than my fall and spring schedules.  Just right now I am listening to New World Pygmies, a 1999 duet album with Moondoc on alto sax and William Parker on double bass (Eremite Records).  What a fine piece of jazz. 

The music is brilliant, lyrical, and deeply passionate.  It's avant garde, to be sure; however, it is more accessible music than you might expect from these two luminaries.  You will want to listen to it where the background noise is minimal.  You need to be able to hear ever inch of Parker's strings.  The sound is superb, and that is essential on an album like this.  The sheer sound of the instruments is almost a third party to the recording.  

I was able to get New World Pygmies for a reasonable price from Amazon.  What I don't understand is why it's not available in mp3 format.  Since so much music is purchased that way now, any label not getting its music up online is dropping the ball.  Moreover, this is the kind of thing you would have had a hard time finding when CD stores and jazz sections still roamed the Earth.  Give this one a shot.  Tell 'em I sent ya.

Image: http://stevencerio.com/2010/05/22/jemeel-moondoc-william-parker-hamid-drake/