Christoph Gallio

I received a welcome email this week from Christoph Gallio.  Gallio is jazz saxophonist based in Switzerland.  He found my posts on Day & Taxi, his horn, bass, and percussion trio.  He is sending me a recent recording, which I will review here. 

It is one of the benefits of doing this blog that I occasionally hear from jazz geniuses.  If more of them would drop me a line, I would do more to promote their music.  I love the two Day & Taxi albums About and Less is More.  Gallio was a student of Steve Lacy and it shows.  Here is the lineup for the two albums:

1.       Bass – Dominique Girod

2.      Drums – Dieter Ulrich

3.      Saxophone – Christoph Gallio

I’ll do some more when I get the disc.  Meanwhile I am play ‘Madagaskar’ from About. 

Don Pullen

I have managed to obtain the entire collection of William Parker live recordings released under the title Wood Flute Songs.  There is so much beauty and heartwood in this collection that one cannot hope to appreciate it all in a lifetime.  Everything is here.  All the bits and pieces out of which modern music is composed have been melted down and recast in rainbow colors.  The tracks on which the train of melody rides have been ripped up and laid down again just ahead of the train.  If you listen to my Live365 station, you are sitting in front of William Parker and his co-conspirators. 

Meanwhile, another treasure chest arrived in my mailbox.  I have had Don Pullen’s album Evidence of Things Unseen sitting in my eMusic save file for a long time.  Good thing, that.  The Black Saint and Soul Note box Don Pullen: the Complete Remastered Recordings had that and six other albums.  It cost about 30 bucks.  Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum. 

Pullen played piano on a couple of Charlie Mingus albums.  He has bop cred but most of his work under his own name stretches into avant garde.  I am playing the title cut from Evidence, one of his solo recordings.  It is delicious.  Pullen is most often compared to Cecil Taylor.  A lot of the material in this box will support that.  Mostly, though, he is more Monkish than Taylor. 

I am playing ‘Joycie Girl’ from Capricorn Rising.  Alex Blake plays bass, Bobby Battle drums, and Sam Rivers sax.  Finally, I played the title cut from The Sixth Sense.  Fred Hopkins on bass, Battle again on drums, Donald Harrison on sax, and Olu Dara on trumpet. 

Live Genius from William Parker

One more jazz collector’s windfall fell my way last week.  William Parker has released a series of live recordings.  Parker is a bass player and maybe the best avant garde composer working today.  I have featured a lot of his music on my Live365 station and I have loved him dearly for a long time.  The collection is available in a box as Wood Flute Songs.  It includes six concerts on eight CDs.  Amazon was sold out, but fortunately for me the individual discs are available from eMusic. 

William Parker is that rare example of the whole package.  He is a consummate low string finger man, a marvelous composer, and a brilliant band leader.  He seems to be able attract splendid musicians and thump every last bit of genius out of them.  I have never been lucky enough to see him live.  I am lucky enough to have these recordings on my iPod.  While I fix a batch of Texas red chili in my kitchen, Parker’s songs find their way into the beef.  What a wonderful world! 

I am playing ‘Late Man of This Planet’ from Friday Afternoon, with the Raining on the Moon group, recorded at Montreal in 2012.  Also ‘Grove #7’ from Live at Yoshi’s.  That one was recorded in Oakland in 2006.  Both albums are very well produced. 

I’ll be putting more of this up as I listen to it.  Meanwhile, get this stuff.  It is what jazz is.