Where It All Comes From, Part 2

I was recently pointed to this archival video posted on YouTube by vibraphonist, pianist and composer Bobby Naughton of an open rehearsal for the Orchestra of the Creative Musicians Improvisers Forum from December 1982. The CMIF was a community arts organization based in New Haven, Connecticut in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, and grew out of an environment fostered by multi-instrumentalist and improvising composer Wadada Leo Smith and, to an extent, saxophonist Marion Brown. Smith had been a part of Chicago's AACM and his relocation to Connecticut provided a new opportunity to grow the music locally, beyond the nearby New York scene. The CMIF presented concerts, taught classes, and published its own recordings. Contra the AACM, the CMIF was more racially inclusive, which reflected both the later time-context as well as (presumably) Smith's own particular vision about the music's cultural locus. That being said, Afro-Asian roots were still a fundamental part of the CMIF's teachings. The CMIF also counted women among its member-musicians/associates, a harbinger of the gender diversity which the music has seen significant strides in since the 1980s.

I have a special affection for the CMIF, having spent summers with family in Connecticut growing up, and more than that, my uncle (Phil Buettner - no longer involved with the music) was a member of the organization, playing reeds in the orchestra and also appearing on recordings led by CMIF stalwart bassist Mario Pavone (Shodo, Alacra, 1981) and reedman Tom Chapin (The Bell of the Heart, Alacra, 1981). None of this was something that I was aware of until much later, when I’d independently started investigating the music, but it was a happy discovery for me that I could hear stories about the CMIF and its gestation. For what it’s worth, my uncle is the gentleman in yellow playing the baritone. He led a quintet with Pavone, bassist Joe Fonda, trumpeter George Alford and drummer Ralph Williams that never properly recorded, but the tapes show a strong Arista-period Braxton influence and the music is excellent (of course, I’m biased). Beyond Smith’s Kabell recordings, which were reissued on CD by Tzadik, no CMIF-related albums are in print on CD. That’s too bad, because the music that Naughton, Pavone, Fonda, Gerry Hemingway and others recorded during this period ranges from strong to absolutely superb. The CMIF Orchestra’s lone LP, The Sky Cries the Blues, is also a very scarce but rewarding listen.

I’ve heard burbling about CMIF materials being among Smith’s archive and that they might make their way into the Yale University Archives, which would be great. The work that Connecticut’s current resident improvisers – people like Carl Testa, Ann Rhodes, Stephen Haynes and Joe Morris – are doing is certainly an outgrowth of the possibilities presented by the AACM/CMIF some thirty-odd years ago. The book hasn’t yet been written on this fascinating subject, but hopefully someone intimately involved with the New Haven scene will put something together before too long.

Briefly Reviewed: Winter 2011/12

ALBERT AYLER

Stockholm, Berlin 1966
(HatOLOGY)

Almost forty-two years after his death, saxophonist Albert Ayler has reached a sort of unimpeachable ubiquity. His music, once lambasted by critics and failing in latter-day crass commercial attempts, is now part of the “jazz” pantheon. That is almost certainly a good thing. His work, while occupying a shorter time span than fellow travelers like Coltrane, Sun Ra and Miles, has had a lasting worldwide influence on both how the saxophone is played and how improvised music can be organized. The task of a critic is no longer to argue for the necessity of Ayler’s music, but to report on the quality of newly uncovered documents of his music and, perhaps, find grains and nuggets of interest in an already eloquently discussed subject. Hat Hut, which released the Lörrach/Paris 1966 concerts back in the late 1970s as a double LP, now presents the Stockholm and Berlin dates from the same tour. The Berlin set was available on the Holy Ghost boxed set (Revenant), but has ostensibly been cleaned up for this release, while the Stockholm radio concert sees its first issue here. Ayler is joined by his regular working band of the period – brother Donald Ayler on trumpet, Michel Samson on violin, Bill Folwell on bass and Beaver Harris on drums – for two sets of military-style marching band/free jazz fanfare as well as a rare cover of Pharoah Sanders’ “Japan.”

While the Aylers’ music was more locked in at this point to a theme one-solos-theme two-solos-theme arrangement, that tightness served them very well and allowed concision to enter the proceedings. As strong of a soloist as Albert Ayler was, Donald was a less inventive (or at least narrower) improviser and Samson, while an interesting and impassioned foil for the tenor and trumpet, was also not a high-caliber improviser. Whether for better or for worse, possible raggedness was shored up and solos came in short to medium bursts, with the music moving along at clip that, while somewhat frantic, was also undeniably stately in its energy. That can present a contradictory scenario as one often wants to hear a bit of a loss of control and the edge that that presents, while “better” instant composition sometimes follows from a degree of “boxing in.” Of the two sets presented here, the thirty minutes that comprise the Stockholm session are in excellent fidelity and the band is incredibly tight, while the Berlin set is recorded slightly rawer (to its credit, perhaps) and the music a bit more pell-mell (also perhaps a benefit). Exuberant fracas and reverent control emerge as two sides of this music, and cutting through it all is the massive, joyous and sublime call of Albert Ayler’s tenor. As much as this is group music with collective melodies and improvisation, it hinges on one of the invariably great tenor saxophone sounds in modern jazz. For fans of the Aylers’ music, this disc is essential.

JEREMIAH CYMERMAN
Fire Sign
(Tzadik)

When listening to the music of composer-clarinetist Jeremiah Cymerman, one has to suspend not only the idea of the “expected” but also the status of improvisation as something sacred, where the notion of composing/playing “in the moment” must remain undisturbed. He’s brought high-caliber improvisers like Nate Wooley, Peter Evans, Christopher Hoffman, Tom Blancarte and Harris Eisenstadt into play for Fire Sign, his second release on Tzadik and sixth in a few short years. Through the use of devices like ProTools, Cymerman takes improvisations and turns them inside out, creating an approach to directed improvisation that, while chopped and altered, remains distinctly tied to the personality of the players.

It’s a challenge, though perhaps not an aesthetic departure, to take apart and “recompose” the trumpet duo of Wooley and Evans on “Collapsed Eustachian,” circular breath and grunting, whining scrabble commingling with electronic flutter and swaths of pure dueling noise. Their music is both piercingly clear and violently abstract; Cymerman has shifted it to encompass stretched planes, electro-acoustically merging palimpsests and strange undercurrents. Tom Blancarte’s bass solo, “I Woke Up Early the Day That I Died” is muscular and throaty, his arco hacked to bits or emerging from a processed fog of overdubs, voice samples and digital flutter. Knowing the physicality that Blancarte and his instrument produce together, it’s almost amusing to hear a poetic “journal violone” unceremoniously torn asunder. “Touched with Fire” is a duo for Hoffman’s cello and the percussion of Brian Chase, athletic volley trades hiccupping and skipping backwards in a tug of war with a third, equally aggressive arm. The piece moves into a stark landscape during its midsection, a woody sonata within a digital environment, nattered by chewy glitches and filmic samples. The closing sextet piece, “Burned Across the Sky,” where Cymerman’s clarinet is joined by Hoffman, Wooley, Blancarte, drummer Harris Eisenstadt and trombonist Sam Kulik, is fascinating. There are echoes of Basil Kirchin in the jungle bird-like warble and scrape of trumpet, clarinet and electronics across a massive orchestral bottom – a simply stunning piece, it’s a powerful and weighty close to a unique and visionary audio journey.

VON FREEMAN
Have No Fear
(Nessa)

The sixth album in the Nessa Records catalog, tenorman Von Freeman’s 1975 LP Have No Fear was also the first non-AACM/Art Ensemble-related record to be released on the label. Certainly Nessa has become known as a haven for important AACM groups and figures like Roscoe Mitchell, Wadada Leo Smith and Air, but Chuck Nessa’s tastes are broad enough that the catalog has also represented unheralded (or under-heralded) modern jazzmen such as Lucky Thompson, Warne Marsh, Ben Webster and Freeman. Ever a quixotic player and a hometown hero, Freeman was little-known outside Chicago despite a career that had spanned three decades by the time this session was waxed. Freeman is joined on three originals, a Basie staple (“Swingin’ the Blues”) and one Great American Songbook tune (“Polka Dots and Moonbeams”) by regular confreres Wilbur Campbell (drums), John Young (piano), and David Shipp (bass).

Freeman, like many of the most intriguing improvisers, is a player rooted in contrasts and making the (perceptibly) impossible possible. His tone can be bitingly harsh as well as soft and light; it’s pillowy and bounces across the rhythm section’s rugged clip until he begins toying with wincingly sharp notes in athletic cavalcades. He can take that big, taffy-like swing era tenor sound and make it ricochet, a quality of Lester Young that’s imbued with the avant-garde (or at least highly, markedly individual) in Freeman’s hands, especially on “Swingin’ the Blues.” The ballad “Polka Dots and Moonbeams” spotlights both a gorgeous tone as well as the weird fractals that he finds in the melody, creating lemony tendrils that snake up and out of Young’s fizzily playful comping. Freeman’s work here is almost reminiscent of Sam Rivers’ standard takes on A New Conception (Blue Note, 1966) in sheer inventiveness and audacity, but more joyful than raw. John Young leaps and spirals with a subdued, rhapsodic funk and while the rhythm section may be slightly more daring on the companion volume, Serenade & Blues (Nessa n-11), their pocketed push throughout Have No Fear keeps the material grounded contra Freeman’s flights. The aforementioned “Polka Dots and Moonbeams” does include an interesting, free coda that shows just how stretched this quartet can be – perhaps a hallmark of the under-recognized Chicago class of geniuses. For this CD reissue, Have No Fear also includes the short bonus track “Boomerang,” in which a cracking Wilbur Campbell maintains a pace that, no matter how fast, is still in direct contrast with the leader’s utterly elastic, maddening sense of time and units. At nearly 90 years of age, Von Freeman doesn’t perform with nearly as much frequency as he used to, but he remains a treasure of modern jazz whose recorded legacy has provided some truly essential gems.

Note: Nessa Records does not have a website but releases can be found at better brick & mortar or online retailers.

IN TRANSIT
Shifting Moods
(Konnex)

Pianist Michael Jefry Stevens has been collaborating with Swiss alto/soprano saxophonist Juerg Solothurnmann, bassist Daniel Studer and drummer Dieter Ulrich since at least 2007, when their debut disc, Moving Stills, was released on Unit Records. Stevens is a proponent of the open-mainstream and seems to favor the quartet format, such as with the Fonda/Stevens Group and Conference Call. As with most of these other groups, In Transit is an egalitarian, collaborative ensemble in which no one voice dominates. Stevens’ pianism tows the line between erudite, distant ambiguity and warm opennes, sometimes shifting within a few short phrases. The solo that opens “Color Deep” is a case in point – crystalline, sharp, and dappled, hewing to shapely repetition he’s wonderfully supported by high-register bass plucks and brushy tiptoes. Gradually, Solothurnmann enters on alto with simple, quavering harmonics that balance painterly motion with calmly placed shading. “Spices & Devices,” in two parts, is more cantankerous; in the first part, Stevens sets up a haranguing contrary motion (a la Dave Burrell) to round chortle and the persistent, youthful rattle of bass and drums. Ulrich is a fine percussionist in the vein of Tony Oxley and Barry Altschul, keeping distracted time that often stops just short of a countable groove. Keening burble and hairy fiddling open the second movement, with Solothurnmann bringing a sound that is both stately and sputtering to the proceedings, echoing Rob Brown, John Tchicai and Dudu Pukwana. While having nothing to do with the Wolfgang Dauner piece of the same name, “Dream Talk” is robust and at the start, the piano’s gutsy resonance rings out over the music’s landscape. The tune’s flow moves from unaccompanied solo to semi-duet (between bass and percussion) and closes with an ambling, idiosyncratic trilogue between alto, bass and drums. In Transit is an appropriate name for a quartet that snakes its way through and beyond melodic free-bop logic, and Shifting Moods is an excellent place to hear them at work and play.

SZILARD MEZEI WIND QUARTET
Innen

(Ayler)

ANDRÉ/TOKAR/KUGEL
Varpai
(Nemu)
KUSIOLEK/SJAROV/WOJCINSKI/KUGEL
Nuntium
(Multikulti Project)
HERA
Hera
(Multikulti Project)
FOTON QUARTET
Zomo Hall
(Not Two)

One of the great things – and there are many – about following creative improvised music is that one will never uncover all of the nooks and crannies where the music exists. Most regions of the world – west and east – have an improvised music/creative composition subculture, some of it better documented than others. Even if the idea of every place having “scenes” and “sub-scenes” has been rendered somewhat obsolete as our niches are drawn together through the internet, it stands to reason that regional art and culture is still a special thing that takes some time to uncover and experience. I remember that my general go-to in this music was of the American persuasion until about a dozen years ago, when I first started diving into jazz and improvised music from the UK, Germany and Holland. Scandinavia came later, and I’m dipping my toes into the Japanese improvisers at present. Eastern and East-Central Europe is a fascinating, deep area of rich modern creative music, but not an area I’ve exposed myself to very heavily (there’s still time). New discs that have crossed my desk recently spotlight musicians from Lithuania, Serbia, Ukraine and Poland – all countries whose contributions to the jazz/improvised vanguard are worth seeking out.

Violist Szilard Mezei originally hails from Serbia (he’s now based in France), and though his name might not crop up as quickly among the foremost European improvising composers active today, his CV is lengthy and includes groups ranging from duo to orchestra. Innen is the Mezei Wind Quartet’s second disc to date – the first, We Were Watching the Rain, appeared on Leo in 2008. Across seven of the violist’s compositions he’s joined by reedman Bogdan Rankovic, trombonist Branislav Aksin, and tubaist Kornel Papista. What’s striking about the group is that, without a chordal rhythm section, they nevertheless put forth significant motion – not an impossible feat for a chamber ensemble, sure, but in spite of a relatively preponderant shade, the foursome have a spry, dancing energy. All four musicians can occupy front line or subservient roles – strums and repeating blats at play with brassy high-pitched chortle and mouthy, choppy woodwinds.
“Hep 15 R” nods to Anthony Braxton in the placement of Rankovic’s dry, lyrical alto against massed swirls and dissonant, puckered unison lines that gradually move into seesawing collectivity. Mezei’s scrabbled harmonics and constantly shifting athletic hum is an incredible directing force, imbuing this small unit with both orchestral weight and devilish immediacy. Earlier in the disc, “Nagymacska” stomps in rings around a dominant tonal center, opening out into flitting conversational vistas with players duetting or soloing over a subtle, hushed rhythmic backing. It’s a gorgeous piece that really gives one an idea of how the quartet works to realize compositional vision with the maximum amount of freedom – the soft walk of alto and tuba holding court as Mezei peels off in gritty ponticello, or Aksin’s elegant slides atop a choppy, plucked tiptoe. Excellent stuff.

Varpai joins the Lithuanian singer André Pabarčiūté with German percussionist Klaus Kugel and Ukrainian bassist Mark Tokar for a series of ten improvisations that are full of detailed chamber arrangement while putting forth a strong degree of mass and energy. Vocally, Pabarciute reconciles the guttural, subtonal extremity and caterwaul of Diamanda Galas with bubbling lyricism, leaping from husky chatter and bent multiphonics to the range (if not the words) of a popular siren. Her voice is incredibly rich and, coupled with Kugel’s orchestral approach (large, contrasting sounds and hulking spaciousness), makes for a massive sounding small group. Tokar and Kugel vacillate between each player performing as an anchor and contrapuntally, with deep bowed chords and gong resonance building a foundation as arco flits and accenting cymbals and bells define and shape space. Pabarčiūté is certainly the main attraction on Varpai, even if the disc presents a cooperative trio – her vocal work is just that arresting, blending strands of Kate Bush and Jeanne Lee into an approach that’s decidedly her own.

Nuntium is a chamber quartet featuring Kugel, bassist Ksawery Wojcinski, accordionist Robert Kusiolek and violinist Anton Sjarov on the seven-part title suite. Though the music is cooperatively credited, Kusiolek is apparently the musician-composer behind Nuntium and is one of Poland’s preeminent young avant-garde acolytes. Some of the record’s most intriguing interplay comes from Kusiolek and Sjarov; the accordionist also doubles on electronics and Sjarov augments his violin with voice. The opening movement almost recalls some of Salish Bayal’s work with trumpeter Maffay Falay, even though the connection between Turkish and Polish melodies might be spurious. Fleshed out with electronics, pulsing accordion, gongs and droning bass, there’s a lilting duskiness that is extraordinarily affecting. Amplified knocks and echoing resonance set the stage for the third movement, which takes shape as a tart lament for violin, bowed bass and the accordion’s accompanying gloop before shifting into light, celebratory flourishes. The motion and associations with both folk music and folk-derived art music make Nuntium a particularly engaging session; the “rhythm section” mostly presents color and texture that draw out the front line's referential wit and breathtaking technique. Kusiolek and his comrades have come up with a powerful creative chamber-music concept that surely will bear more fruit.

Hera is a rugged Polish quartet that builds on the twined histories of free jazz and modern composition, rooted in four pieces from clarinetist and nominal leader Waclaw Zimpel as well as one group-credited work and the traditional “Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child.” Their self-titled first disc (covered here somewhat belatedly) was recently followed up with Where My Complete Beloved Is, also on Multikulti. In addition to Zimpel, the group features bassist Ksawery Wójcinski, drummer Pawel Szpura and soprano/tenor saxophonist Pawel Postaremczak. The opening “Monreale” has a low-slung brilliance, bass clarinet and tenor in phased worry against deep arco and Szpura’s shimmering rustle. Zimpel digs in with his heels but also brings a scumbled romanticism to the fierce painterliness of bass and percussion. Postaremczak is a new name to me, and he's a powerful tenor player who has internalized Dudek, Ervin, Pharoah and Rivers into a florid but robust approach.
“Napoli->Palermo” continues the Italian theme in title, written as a series of measured atonal suspension that, with the saxophonist at the helm, moves into clattering, cussing fracas with Surman Trio-like energy. Zimpel’s subsequent statements bring a bit more reservation to the group, though his reed work soon becomes bracingly hot atop pizzicato grapple and pot-stirring action. The closing rendition of “Motherless Child” is an oblique launch pad for the quartet, collective improvisation giving way to Zimpel’s reverential, burred taragato as he outlines Aylerish spirituality with rustic lyricism, Wójcinski and Szpura heaving underneath before Postaremczak lets fly with exhaustive, cyclical planeing. Hera’s debut was – and is – an example of finely wrought group unity, no-nonsense European improvised music well worth seeking out.

The Foton Quartet, consisting of reedman Gerard Lebik, trumpeter Artur Majewski, bassist Jakub Cywinski and drummer Wojciech Romanowski, is probably the most traditional of these recordings, though that tradition is rooted in the openness of a pianoless quartet (structurally in the post-Ornette mold) and bonded by European free improvisation. Recorded in 2007-2008 and released in 2010, Zomo Hall is the Polish group’s first disc and features six untitled collective improvisations. The first piece finds Lebik on tenor, with his thick and velvety gobs in a fine sideways keen against Majewski’s crinkled measure and the spare, tense rattle of cymbals, toms and grappled strings. Lebik and Majewski are a well-balanced pair, indebted to front lines such as Dudek and Schoof or Rosengren and Cherry but decidedly seeking a contemporary path.
There’s a decidedly coiled sparseness to the ensemble’s music; one would expect this lineup to, perhaps, produce crackling freebop energy, but Romanowski’s fullness is mostly in service of texture, pushing waves of accent and tone alongside the bassist’s throaty ruminations. The fourth piece features some fine, wheezy alto clarinet playing amid a canvas of mallets, arco harmonics, bells and swaggering huffs in varied areas of density and comment. Switching to disembodied mouthpiece, the reedman’s high-pitched exhortations stand in relief to collaborators who delicately tread the line separating full-on clamor and muscular withholding patterns. Cywinski’s unaccompanied callus-splitting statements form a passage that demands a close ear; switching to arco, he’s brilliantly conversant with Majewski’s cool, thin lines in a wispy trilogue. While at times there might be a little too much continuity between the improvisations, the musicianship and interplay on offer from the Foton Quartet makes this disc a rewarding and remarkable listen.

DAVID S. WARE
Organica
(Aum Fidelity)
TRAVIS LAPLANTE
Heart Protector
(Skirl)
DAUNIK LAZRO
Some other Zongs
(Ayler)
SIMON ROSE
Schmetterling
(Not Two)

The improvisational subgenre of solo saxophone music has been around since Anthony Braxton’s seminal For Alto (1968, Delmark) though it traces its roots at least as far back as Coleman Hawkins’ “Picasso” (1948, Mercury). Though one expects the instrument to be at its best when supported, at the very least, by a rhythm section or like foil, solo saxophone recordings are as varied and nuanced as are the ways to play the axe (or as its practitioners). This is quite clear from a selection of recent solo tenor, sopranino and baritone recordings from musicians based in New York, Paris and the United Kingdom.

It’s curious that, even in the 1990s, David S. Ware was thought of by some (myself included) as something of a young lion – after all, his first recording at age nineteen was in 1968 with altoist Abdul Hannan. Maybe it’s the translation of a youthful energy that he carried in his music well into his forties; that is still present, but as he ages his sound is as fragile as it is fervent, and connections to his forebears become ever clearer. Organica is the second volume of Ware solos to be released by Aum Fidelity (following the excellent Saturnian), and is culled from live performances in Brooklyn and Chicago during 2010. The opening “Minus Gravity I” features Ware on sopranino, unspooling and re-knotting pinched lines with echoes of both Coltrane and Coxhill. The small straight horn is, if not necessarily a new instrument in Ware’s arsenal, nevertheless an instrument that does a fascinating job of translating his chordal recombinations into a high-pitched, devilishly narrow area. There are two tenor pieces, both titled “Organica,” which elegantly spotlight the saxophonist’s primary horn and textural range, from throaty, velvety croon to terse peals and wincing pirouettes. Though it might be difficult to envision Ware’s music without collaborators like William Parker, Warren Smith, Guillermo Brown or Matthew Shipp, these unaccompanied statements are a show of creativity and force that is rarely rivaled in modern music.

Brooklyn-based tenorman Travis Laplante is best known for his work in the quartet Little Women with altoist Darius Jones, drummer Jason Nazary and guitarist Andrew Smiley, a punk-jazz quartet whose recordings are well worth investigating. Heart Protector is the first disc to be solely credited to Laplante and, in a fairly ballsy move, is entirely solo. Across five pieces and thirty minutes, he puts forth his playing unwrapped in collectivity, working the instrument and himself through their respective and unified paces. One is reminded a bit of Joe McPhee’s 1976 Hat Hut LP Tenor, in both concept and (in some cases) execution as Laplante explores tense harmonics, lung-busting ferocity and delicate, poetic balladry. The opening title track is a warm, breathy piece of split-toned quaver and gentle harmonic dissonance, microcosmic in its attention to pad-clicking detail. Laplante lets fly with a more aggressive minimalism on the following “Five Points,” a fiery multiphonic exposition of hulking, paint-peeling circular-breathed lashes in play with a few nods to lilting subtlety. Laplante chooses simple but effective working strategies and hews to them closely, such as the feedback-like long tones of “The Great Mother” or the melodic harangue of “The Tear Dam.” With Heart Protector, Laplante cements himself as a player to watch with curiosity.

Speaking of Joe McPhee, French baritone saxophonist Daunik Lazro begins his new solo disc, Some other Zongs, with McPhee’s “Vieux Carré.” Lazro and McPhee have an association going back to the 1980s, so it’s a fitting tribute that opens this record. It’s a soft, wistful and in Lazro’s hands, somewhat funny melody, the big horn equally caressing and ambling about the tune’s folksiness before the saxophonist grabs a handful of notes and twirls them with facility. Contrary to its original version on soprano, Lazro chomps, squeals and furrows into an epicenter that, at first blush, one might not be aware that “Vieux Carré” had. But that gentleness, power, and prowess are all sides of the master to whom Lazro pays homage. “Caverne de Platon” is as intense as its title, Lazro exhorting from shadowy depths toward naked, pure and shocking sound. The four “Zong at Saint-Merry” explorations begin with spare harmonic tendrils and ghostly reverberation, increasing in density and daring toward the seventeen-minute closing movement. The baritone saxophone is an instrument usually associated with the bottom end, though Lazro sculpts high-pitched squeaks and complex passages that, far from being merely blurred squall, present athleticism against laid-bare vistas. While saxophone solos are, by dint, “unaccompanied,” rarely does the existential “alone” come through in such a powerful way as on Lazro’s Zongs.

Schmetterling presents English saxophonist Simon Rose on a program of fourteen improvisations for baritone. In addition to working in the Badland trio with bassist Simon H. Fell and drummer Steve Noble, Rose has also recorded an album of solo alto improvisations, Procession (FMR, 2006). Waxed in the company of chirping birds and an open window, Rose flutters and pops on the opening “Off World” before a lung-busting shear emerges on “Ponopticon” and its seven minutes of bullheaded force. Even when Rose approaches improvisation with a sparser cast, one gets the feeling that he’s wrenching something out of the horn (and himself) at every moment, fighting the instrument or using it to do some sort of battle - a willful extrusion that’s palpably different from sound as separated from either player or axe. That’s not a slight against his approach to improvising as put forth here; a technical and sonic beast of a player, hearing Rose work through these shortish slices of tone-flexing is just an exhausting prospect (not the creative musician’s problem, mind you, but the listener’s). If one is up for the challenge of rarely interrupted skronky baritone workouts, then Schmetterling delivers the goods.

ZOMES
Improvisations
ETERNAL TAPESTRY & SUN ARAW
Night Gallery
(Thrill Jockey)

I’m not quite sure when Thrill Jockey made the transition from being known as a stable for Chicago’s progressive/art-/post-rock bands into a label that also puts a focus on the fringes of contemporary rock and psych but nevertheless, it’s been an interesting ride. The imprint’s current stable includes a pretty broad range of groups and individuals, including Imbogodom, Robert A.A. Lowe, D. Charles Speer, David Daniell, Skull Defekts, Wooden Shijps, and Arboretum. What might separate these artists from some of their brethren is a sense of tried-and-true, that these are mostly mature artists who, while they may still be “seeking,” have a clear and studied direction in mind. Whether or not that is how the label builds its catalog or just chance is up for discussion, but in any event, the consistency that breeds serves them well.

Asa Osborne is mostly known for his work as the guitarist and principal sonic architect of the storied, minimal and math-y Baltimore band Lungfish, whose vocalist Daniel Higgs has gone out on his own as a purveyor of shamanic, declamatory “songs” backed either by his own banjo and mouth-harp or by Scandinavia’s Skull Defekts. It’s often a heady, challenging listen that, at its fullest realization, can be quite overpowering and exhausting. Osborne has taken a different tack, creating instrumental landscapes under the aegis of Zomes. Some of these landscapes are reminiscent of voiceless Lungfish tracks, albeit ultra-stripped down. In the case of the three pieces on Improvisations, a thirty-odd minute tape and keyboard fantasia, the chilled-out burble that Osborne harps on is more akin to Cluster or Harmonia if they recorded on a cassette player in the bedroom. Sure, the music is noodly and a bit primitive-sounding, but there’s a naïf exploratory aspect that’s charming in the most simple iterations and becomes quite beautiful with time, familiarity and open ears. While the shorter pieces and somewhat texturally-disjointed quality of Zomes’ full lengths might ultimately be more engaging on the surface, the three works on Improvisations are worth their weight in wax.

Night Gallery is, on the other hand, a pure contemporary American take on Krautrock resulting from the meeting of Portland’s Eternal Tapestry and electronic artist Sun Araw during a 2010 SXSW gig in Austin. The sextet provokes a shattering mind-meld of raw skree and blissed-out tonal wash as organ, keyboards and guitar pulverizing crest waves of light, detailed drum and cymbal work and a pulsing undercurrent. The ghosts of Terry Riley’s Persian Surgery Dervishes are clear in the electric organ that closes out the first piece, while a dry-and-dirty rural southwestern vibe unfurls across motorik beats on the second piece’s opening moments. Stretching out into a blistering jam, there’s a lot of facility behind what Eternal Tapestry does, that much is clear. Nevertheless, what’s captivating is the fact that the improvisation rides on simple (albeit intense) communication. The final lengthy piece is a bit more plodding rhythmically, but over the course of its fourteen minutes the toothy shimmer that takes hold is really quite breathtaking. Like a lot of Thrill Jockey’s weirder titles, both of these are currently only in print digitally (they were limited-edition vinyl), but the high-quality recordings translate well to headphones and bit-transportation devices.

Resounding Vision Award 2012: Alvin Fielder

I've been asked by a few people to see the transcript of a talk I gave at the 2012 Nameless Sound Resounding Vision Award, honoring Jackson, Miss. drummer, educator and historian Alvin Fielder. What follows is the text that I read to introduce one of America's national treasures. Following introductions and the presentation of the award, Alvin played in duo with tenorman Kidd Jordan and in a trio with two drum students, Abel Cisneros and Juan Martinez. The next day saw Fielder, Jordan and William Parker give a workshop at Sterling High School in South Houston, Texas followed by an evening's performance by the trio (with special guest pianist Darryl Levine) at the Eldorado Ballroom. It was a fascinating end to the week and a wonderful start to the new year...

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First hearing this music it seemed like it came from nowhere, or that it was rebelling against the old, that it was freedom from just as much (if not more than) it was freedom for. To me it seemed like Albert Ayler, Ornette Coleman, and the music of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) were counter to the prevailing legacy of jazz, rather than part of it. But in the course of listening to the music and talking to those who were there – and listening some more – that understanding became more fleshed out.

I first heard Alvin Fielder on Roscoe Mitchell’s Sound – the first AACM record to be released in1967. Probably that’s where some of you may also have heard his work. In the last few decades, based out of Jackson, MS his associates have included Kidd Jordan (New Orleans), William Parker (NYC), Joel Futterman (Virginia Beach), Ike Levin (the Bay Area), Dennis Gonzalez and Stefan and Aaron Gonzalez (Dallas). That’s a merger of a lot of different ways to play this music.

I met Alvin in 2005 after a gig here by the trio you’ll be seeing tomorrow night at the Eldorado Ballroom – with Kidd and William. He graciously allowed me to interview him, which was a really special experience (and anyone who’s talked to him for even a few minutes has had a hint of that). We’ve continued to talk regularly and each time we talk I get a history lesson, and maybe a drum lesson too (and I don’t play the drums). Alvin is a drummer but more than that, he’s a drum historian, and even more than that he’s an archivist, or rather a living, playing archive of jazz percussion. He collects stories and experiences from other drummers as a way of not only understanding what the drums’ possibilities are in this music, but as a way of playing within the orbit of the music’s history.

Now, you might expect a drummer to speak highly of people like Max Roach or Kenny Clarke or Roy Haynes, but the joy and awe that comes through when Alvin speaks about them – experiencing their music, sure, but also being a fly on the wall to their conversations, writing letters to them, documenting their own studies, is another thing entirely. Alvin speaks with equal depth about those drummers we may not know so well – Cuba Austin from McKinney’s Cotton Pickers, or Vernell Fournier, Ed Blackwell, Arthur Edgehill, Jimmy Wormworth, Beaver Harris, Joe Harris, Shadow Wilson… learning techniques from these musicians (a little phrase from Max, another phrase from Vernell) as well as about their humanity and how they contributed to this music. For him, this drive for learning is both an aesthetic necessity and it ensures that the music he creates (or imparts) remains grounded in history.

Archiving might certainly be about letters, drum exercise books, cymbals, sticks, tapes and records, but in the case of something as ephemeral and personal as the history of this music, that information must be lived. Whenever Alvin Fielder plays the drums, he’s playing a mental and physical history lesson (ancient to the future) that is n the here and now. Not that one has to take disassemble it – one can take in, receive it, and learn from the whole.

Let me say a word, too, about community because that is what the Resounding Vision Award is all about. First, community is something that is tied to living history, built on the foundation of what came before and truly knowing that. Being able to experience history in real time can draw us together as we understand our place in it. Alvin brought creative music to Missisippi with Black Arts Music Design, and was a founding member of Chicago’s AACM, which also had a community and educational basis to it. He continues to teach and impart the music’s development from a drummer’s perspective, ensuring that those lesser-known musicians’ stories are told. He will be teaching while he is in Houston – he’s always passing knowledge down. Implicit is that his own story and archive become part of that information. Now, Alvin’s licks are part of the drums’ language.

Clifford Allen
January 19, 2012

Happy New Year from Ni Kantu - Reflections on Creation and Space

Originally I was going to try to squeeze in a few more reviews for the last Ni Kantu post of 2011, but it looks like those will be running next week as the first post of 2012. At any rate, I won’t spend too much time reflecting on the past because the year’s end is, in my mind, an opportunity to leap forward. Nevertheless, and despite the political and cultural hardships we endure – not to mention financial challenges, wars, environmental insanity and sickness – this is an exciting time to be alive. Musically there is so much going on that it is impossible to keep up with it all, and that’s really quite a good thing.

When I first began to explore the world of jazz and creative music as a college student, I mostly looked at it from a historical perspective and made myself aware of the artist-soldiers who had come before my time. Some are still with us creating, many are not. As I turned to the music of my own time – that made by my peers and those somewhat older than me – it made me happy to realize that a lot of this work was new work, not retreading previously exhausted principles. While I haven’t heard or studied all the great jazz musicians from history, I still feel that what I hear now is possible only in the present, and is uniquely reflective of all the great things we, as human beings, now have available to us. I’m saying this not only in terms of technical and aesthetic resources, but spiritual (read: ineffable) ones too. Sure, we have lost many veteran masters in 2011 and it’s a trend that will no doubt be on the increase, but as we think back on the great works of those musician-composers, we must think of the fact that without these players in our physical midst, a) their work and spirit will remain with us and b) we can honor them by making the most of ourselves.

I’m really lucky to be in the position of being able to write and think about music, even as the time I have available for this work has shrunk a fair amount. Those who make music, or those who are scholars and who can pass on appreciation of the work, are also very lucky people and we’re lucky ouselves to have them in our midst. I balk at the idea that there aren’t enough musicians and artists who “bring it” left on the planet – for in my opinion, the weight of an excellent, original artist is worth ten thousand bullshitters and I’m glad there are so many fine musicians on the scene, many of whom we can see potential even if they haven’t yet come into their own. It’s a great time to look forward and to believe in oneself, perhaps keeping in mind the words of trumpeter and improvising composer Bill Dixon: “everything I did was all I could do.”

Happy New Year and Best Wishes for 2012!
Clifford Allen / Ni Kantu



The Thirteenth Assembly Minus One: Taylor Ho Bynum, cornet; Mary Halvorson, guitar; Tomas Fujiwara, drums. Filmed 2010, Columbia Museum of Art, Columbia, SC.

Music Briefly Reviewed - End-of-Year Roundup 2011

BOBBY BRADFORD/JOHN CARTER QUINTET
Comin’ On
(Hat Hut)

The Carter-Bradford Quartet was one of the great long-lasting ensembles of the second wave of avant-garde jazz, but due to their location in Los Angeles (not exactly the center of the jazz world) and fiscal challenges that beset any feasible touring schedule, their work was sadly unrecognized outside the cognoscenti. Trumpeter Bradford and reedman Carter waxed a number of excellent LPs for the Revelation and Flying Dutchman labels (the former are collected in a Mosaic Select boxed set) and appeared in various later aggregations for mostly European audiences. The 1988 performance captured on Comin’ On is a reunion of sorts, featuring drummer Andrew Cyrille, bassist Richard Davis and keyboardist Don Preston for a program of five original compositions.

Many writers have tried to connect Bradford and Carter with Don Cherry and Ornette Coleman – Bradford played with Ornette and Carter grew up in Fort Worth, but the combination of the trumpeter’s fat, incisive post-Brownie tone and Carter’s almost (avant-) “classical” sense of tonal organization does separate the two camps. This is true both soloistically and compositionally (though clearly such concepts overlap). Ultimately, I suppose it doesn’t matter too much whether they’re comparable ensembles or not because once one becomes aware of the music, individuality tends to be what’s memorable rather than how things (or people) are similar. Carter had switched exclusively to the clarinet well before these recordings were waxed at LA’s Catalina Bar & Grill, an apparent hotspot during the decade for creative music – pianist-composer Horace Tapscott’s contemporaneous stand was captured on The Dark Tree (Hat Hut, also featuring Carter and Cyrille). The set opens with Bradford’s title composition, a jovial but piercing fanfare for the horns, ducking and diving cadenzas before the rhythm section falls in line as the drummer’s light, skimming bash straddles bop and freer flow. Bradford’s phrasing has a sunny logic, roundly following thematic elements with a swagger that’s both hefty and slender, with simple and direct recapitulations of the tune’s essential swing. Carter’s statement is quite counter, high-register flights anchored by warbling chalumeau and slick, false-fingered movement that gives Preston’s harmonic chunks a heady challenge.

It is here that mention should be made of Preston’s synthesizers, which allow lush orchestration to present itself in a small-group setting. “Ode to the Flower Maiden” is a fine example of this, with echoes of strings, piano, metallic percussion and double reeds adding ghost registers to Carter’s absolutely fascinating exploration of breath and structure. It’s interesting to hear Bradford’s trumpet in this context – there’s a clear delineation between “jazz” and what Carter does - an extremely broad-minded instant encapsulation of the harmonic possibilities laid out in the theme’s initial voicing. A crisp, ascending figure steels the Davis-Cyrille vamp on “Encounter” as Preston approximates a modal hall of mirrors with crashing chords, oblique washes and unearthly sound-clusters surrounding the composer’s lengthy series of trilling clambers. Even when crumpled and abstracted, it seems as though Bradford is set on finding the bebop in this composition, and that’s not a slight – creativity includes finding one’s own ground within the form of others’ art.

“Sunday Afternoon Jazz Society Blues” is a complex theme that one could easily imagine as an orchestra piece with quintet interludes, massive synth chords augmenting chortled and splayed knots, Ornetteish laughter and rhythmic gulps. Bradford and Preston support Carter’s volatile cornucopia with alternately saccharine and sharp long tones, leading into cascading woody digs buoyed by loose and impeccable time. Where the clarinetist pushes against rhythm with his asymmetrical inventions, Bradford rides and crests those detailed waves, occasionally goaded into difference by Preston’s prickly accompaniment. Both approaches are entirely valid and grant the music a diversified power on the whole. Comin’ On is an exceedingly strong example of the leaders’ rapport, not to mention their abilities as composers, bandleaders, visionaries and traditionalists of the highest order. Thankfully it is in print once again.

MARC DUCRET
Tower Volumes 1 & 2
(Ayler)

Mostly known for his work with saxophonist-composer Tim Berne, French guitarist Marc Ducret and, while that collaboration has been extraordinarily fruitful – resulting in about a dozen albums under Berne’s leadership and a number of others variously helmed – Ducret’s own dates might be a bit overshadowed. Along with countrymen François Courneloup (saxophones), Dominique Pifarély (violin), Bruno Chevillon (bass), and Benoît Delbecq (keyboards), he’s created some fascinating music under a hybridized rubric of free jazz, modern composition and progressive rock. The two volumes of Tower, released on Ayler Records, eloquently display Ducret’s mastery of powerful free jazz-rock with two multinational ensembles.

The first volume is a French-Danish meeting and joins Ducret with trombonist Matthias Mahler, saxophonist Fred Gastard, trumpeter Kasper Tranberg and drummer Peter Bruun on three rather intense compositions. “Real Thing #1” starts the set off extra crunchy, with midrange guitar flutter and hum approximating shorts and small explosions as Ducret’s volatility jibes with whining trumpet and Bruun’s cymbal scrape. But things really kick into high gear with a series of mouthy ensemble knots, Gastard and Mahler providing a serious bottom end to cutting trumpet, adroit martial clatter and Ducret’s scumbled, cottony electricity. The composed lines are charged with a tensile weave, motoring huffs befitting a Six-era Softs until Ducret and the horns put forth dense power chords, rocked-out poles that segregate and shore up fragmentary duo and trio improvisation. Though not evincing as much multiphonic shredding as someone like Mats Gustafsson, Gastard’s bass saxophone work is in that tradition and fits well with the twining spires of Ducret’s choppy and compelling jazz-rock vision. Bruun is the drummer to realize this, building tension with top-heavy, caterwauling rhythms that are nevertheless precise and delicate. The absence of a bass-centered rhythm section also helps to push the ensemble’s rockist tendencies into a weirdly light overdrive. Real Thing #2” follows, Ducret spinning out funky flint against muted cymbals and agitated roll, augmented by a chunky front line. An area of knife-like interplay between guitar and brass emerges, very free, before Gastard and Bruun build a fat motion for sinewy mid- and upper-range colors to ride, with Tranberg’s keening young-lion blast getting some fine stretching room.

Tower Volume 2 presents the French-American contingent, with Ducret and Pifarély joined by Berne and drummer Tom Rainey. The opening “Sur l’Electricité” melds a soundtrack of the Paris Metro and cityscape with guitar and electric violin at the outset, amplified ponticello skirls, triple-stops, and scrambled staccato elegantly contrasting Ducret and Rainey’s slim, blues-rock backing. That’s not to say that the violinist doesn’t pick up on these advances, wailing flatted fifths and then some before he, Berne and Ducret assemble a bright, atonal progression. A choppy guitar-drums duet emerges, wiry, backbeat-heavy and painted over with an awesomely aggressive swirl. As much differentiation as exists in the quintet of Tower Volume 1, the quartet here is extremely well matched and dare I say familiar – Pifarély and Berne complement one another perfectly, alto curling in soft salts as the violinist works through a deep, sinewy harmonic range. “Real Thing #3” opens with guitar, alto and violin approximating some of the spacious, toothy tones of Morton Feldman (especially apparent in Pifarély’s long, dissonant quaver). Even as Ducret begins assembling crotchety, fuzzy clusters, there’s a sense of poise against those rough blues that’s really remarkable. As with the other “Real Thing” compositions, the group alternates between patches of scrappily open detail and rugged, seafaring movement. Perhaps this quartet is a bit more delicate, with Berne’s lip-curls and Pifarély’s rangy poems in the front line. Either way, Ducret has assembled two fantastic groups to work through six collective compositions striding across free and rigorous form. Both volumes of Tower are essential new-millennial listening.

KALI Z. FASTEAU
An Alternate Universe
(Flying Note)

Multi-instrumentalist and improviser Kali Z. Fasteau is somewhat of a veteran in creative music who, alongside Don Cherry, could easily be said to have helped bring non-Western music and “jazz” together under the banner of world improvisation. Not as well-known as Cherry, she first began working alongside her late husband, Chicago bassist, clarinetist and instrument maker Donald Rafael Garrett in the Sea Ensemble, an important yet unsung outfit from the halcyon 1970s. The Sea Ensemble incorporated a vast array of non-Western instruments, homemade sounds and educational-participative practices into the landscape of free improvisation. Since the late 1980s, most of her releases as a leader-collaborator have been on her own Flying Note label, including partnerships with Kidd Jordan, Noah Howard, William Parker, Rashied Ali and Bobby Few. An Alternate Universe joins her on a collection of 1992 archival recordings with Parker and drummer Cindy Blackman (a rare avant-garde encounter) now seeing their first release.

Fasteau’s choice of instrumentation here is perhaps a little closer to the Western ear – she plays cello, soprano saxophone and electric piano – but in these trios and duets, the intent remains expansive and by the same token the narrower palette concentrates the improvisations. Recorded in a deliciously lo-fi manner, the twenty-five minute “Ardor” is the disc’s centerpiece and pairs Fasteau’s cello and Parker’s arco bass harmonics in a devilish saw-and-sway that is occasionally in the red, furious and free in its naked expressionism. Perhaps we’ve gotten somewhat used to Parker’s hypnotic vamps, and this piece serves as a nudge in the direction of a different kind of trance – that of the consciousness-raising immediacy of concentrated, varied impasto. Though classically schooled, Fasteau’s cello work is a more homebrewed, generative and reactive virtuosity (i.e., playing the shit out of the instrument). “Liquid Geometry” finds Blackman roiling in scattered brush attack behind a jagged, almost unsettling quilt of electric piano/harpsichord lines and Parker’s bowed bass, while the bright, dervish-like soprano twirls of “Fervor” and its mildly overdriven groove spotlight the trio’s lofty energy. Blackman’s approach to the kit, while sometimes overtly concerned with technical implications, here recalls the eye-popping interleaved rhythms of Ed Blackwell and Charles Moffett. “If You Knew” is a grungy threesome for cello, bass and drums and, while the contrast between sharp, rolling accents and sawing bows is almost sore-thumb apparent, that collision makes for an engagingly strange listen. Fasteau, Parker and Blackman present an unflinchingly raw collective vision that is certainly a must-experience for fans of free music, and An Alternate Universe is also a great place to dip your toes into the Fasteau discography.

THE FOUR BAGS

Forth
(NCM)

Though it’s become patently unhip to call an artform quintessentially “New York” – as much as contemporary music can be regionalized in the age of the internet and so forth – but the work of chamber quartet The Four Bags doesn’t seem like it belongs to any other locale. Formed in 1999 by trombonist Brian Drye, clarinetist Michael McGinnis, guitarist Sean Moran and accordionist Jacob Garchik, Forth is their fourth disc to date of original compositions and obscure covers that draw from modern composition, klezmer, Brazilian pop, jazz and “indie rock.” The set begins with the accordionist’s “Wayne Shorter’s Tune With All Different Notes” (which I couldn’t quite identify), but no matter as this is a fine introduction to the Four Bags’ modus operandi. That is to say it's flinty and funky as guitar commingles with Drye’s stately, Mangelsdorff-like chortle and the knotty tango of clarinet and accordion, shifting from oddball stomp to flecked detail and long, heaving squeeze-box tones within a very short time span.

The Four Bags’ weirdness is not a put on – they come by it honestly, as their deft individual phrasing is immediately clear and, instead of appropriating a bunch of different strains to make something “different” from grafted-on parts, this is a unified whole of bright, off-kilter construction. A cover of the Air tune “Run” (Air as in the French electro-pop group, not the AACM trio) follows, tautly insistent patter and warble offsetting Drye’s chortling bugle-flicks and snatches of minimal, phased wowing. The guitarist’s “Terpsichore” crosses the Greek/East European axis with curious tonal juxtapositions and a nagging tendency to undermine its own furious tempo and intricacy with blats and thick, grungy swaths of sound, while “Comfort Toon” pits filmic calm and folksy progressions against spots of unsettled wheeze and winsome clarinet. These patches of dissonance briefly take over around the halfway point, fuzzed guitar and accordion sticking in the sand as the horns cut a tall profile. Though areas of improvisation occur, The Four Bags are not really an improvising ensemble (they are certainly creative, however). The focus is on structured compositions that draw from collectivity, personality and a broad understanding of how divergent musics can fit together without leaving too many holes and patches. Tart minimalism, recast Persian melodies (Parviz Meshkatian's "The Burning") and signs of Downtown jazz are just part of The Four Bags’ fascinating, eminently listenable whole.

THE GREEN PASTURE HAPPINESS
Aut Disce Aut Discede
(Peira)

The Green Pasture Happiness is a trio of Chicago-based electronic (mostly) improvisers consisting of Brian Labycz, Aaron Zarzitski, and Daniel Fandiño, and Aut Disce Aut Discede is their first release, appropriately enough on Labycz’ Peira CD-R label. The group’s main objective appears to be confrontationally straddling the perceived boundaries between noise music/non-music and improvisation. Of course, those twain have met before in the context of people like Michel Waisvisz and groups such as Musica Elettronica Viva and Gentle Fire, though the crucial difference among the latter two is that those were collectives drawn from academic composers “reinventing” music through electronic and non-musical means, rather than artists starting from a less well-heeled pedigree. Interactive events and their results are nakedly present, especially on the centerpiece “Should I Take Your Silence as a ‘Not Interested’?” and its Hugh Davies-inspired contact microphone huffs, disembodied growling and the whittled scrape of small, metallic objects. Essentially, noises are sounds without music and their occurrence is defined as random and disembodied. Once organized, attached to something/someone and developed through impulse and refinement, they are no longer “noises.” Through collective engagement, this trio’s actions and reactions pile on, augmented and set against the movement of the whole. At times the pieces’ structure appears loose, with constant textural shifts and amplified behaviors calling to mind workmanlike imagery, even if the exact sources aren’t obvious. Other sounds are drawn out, shaped and even hierarchical. The closing “A Spiritual Brown” offers multiple sections of haranguing blocks of sound, hard shifts demarking the changes. Obviously, this is music resulting from a trio of someones, as much as the landscape that they create may at first blush seem inhuman.

MILES GRIFFITH/MICHAEL JEFRY STEVENS QUARTET
Only Love
(ARC)

Vocals weren’t really present in my initial forays into this music, whether growing up or in later investigations live and on record. I didn’t really think that “jazz vocals” represented the music’s serious side. It wasn’t until hearing people like Eddie Jefferson, Joe Lee Wilson, Patty Waters and Jeanne Lee that my understanding of, at the very least, the power of the human voice in both improvisation and song craft became clearer. After all, getting interested in jazz was partly a “freedom from” popular music as much as it was a “freedom for” grasping music (including pop) with a bit more relativity (that’s still an ongoing process). So it is in this personal tradition that Only Love, the third recording from vocalist Miles Griffith and pianist Michael Jefry Stevens, entered my orbit. Joined by drummer Dieter Ulrich and bassist Dominique Girod on ten original compositions recorded for Swiss radio, the quartet is full of power, muscle, beauty and humor in its cooperative search.

Miles Griffith walks an elegant tightrope between clarity of form and purity of expression – that’s why, I suppose, his work here feels more akin to a “traditional” instrumentalist. Sure, voice is the “original instrument” (to quote Joan La Barbara), but it’s become so connected with words and meaning that sometimes one’s appreciation of tone and phrasing gets lost. The irony is, in the case of Griffith’s approach, that his original lyrics are striking, simple poetry clearly enunciated and that clarity is used as part of his phrasing, integral to what makes his “sound” so elegant. Crisp, bubbly, mildly acrid intonation on the gorgeous spiritual modes of “Sometimes” mirrors the head-on wail of alto saxophonists like Carlos Ward and Gary Bartz, in conference with rolling, mildly dissonant arpeggios and a steamrolling rhythm section. The tune’s closing improvisation includes volcanic, leaping scat – something Griffith is technically adept at while also an instance of expression superseding traditional language (the rollicking Afro-Cuban “Oh Mama” almost recalls some of Milford Graves’ antics). That said, his sculpting of the literal word is what I find most intriguing as he purrs, kinks and renders sharp or flowing stanzas that, on the surface, would read rather basic. In that sense, he’s an excellent foil for Stevens, whose pianism has always entranced with poise and wryness in its language of open post-bop. Only Love and the Griffith/Stevens Quartet mark an extremely worthwhile modern jazz collaboration that is well worth seeking out.

ALEXANDER HAWKINS ENSEMBLE
All In, Ever Out
(Babel)

English keyboardist and improvising composer Alexander Hawkins is fast proving to be one of the most unique voices in contemporary music, a young master for whom terms like “free improvisation” and “avant-garde” don’t exactly cut the mustard. His work in the bi-continental Convergence Quartet and the rugged organ trio Decoy would have put him on the modern creative music map by themselves, but it’s in the elegantly cooperative Alexander Hawkins Ensemble that his work really stands out. The instrumentation is curious – piano, marimba, guitar, cello, bass and drums – but utterly gimmick-free. One gets the feeling that the Ensemble’s collective voice and the structure that arises straddle two poles - that the player’s personality stands ahead of instrumental specifics and the particular sound of these instruments (together and in opposition) is extremely important to the overall work. All In, Ever Out is the group’s second disc (following the 2009 standout No, Now Is So on FMR) and joins Hawkins with guitarist Otto Fischer, drummer Javier Carmona, cellist Hannah Marshall, bassist Dominic Lash and Orphy Robinson on marimba for nine compositions, all of which are originals. This is somewhat of a departure from other discs, which have featured highly personal interpretations of Sun Ra, Wadada Leo Smith, and South African township jazz alongside Hawkins’ own pieces.

“Ologbo (double trio)” may take its title from a Nigerian township, but following the initial bass-cello duet, its theme (primarily voiced by guitar and piano) has more in common with the erudite, Monkish swing of the Attila Zoller-Don Friedman group. The ensuing improvisation adds Robinson’s resonant wooden cascades to the strings’ pizzicato surge, as flourishes of cymbals, electric guitar and piano gradually pile on. Fleet, dry fire from Carmona’s kit prods the twined inversions of Fischer and Hawkins in another brief and exceptionally busy trio before the ensemble, ragged and right, takes the tune home. “Tatum Totem III” follows, independent jaunt and overlapping parallel blocks drawing together as choppy improvisational currents that, while they relate to and inform one another, reflect the individuality of their contours as much as they do an overarching scheme. It’s not something that, on the surface, would seem all that unique in improvised music but the way it’s scored among these six musicians is a resounding collar grab. The penchant for parallel commentary seems almost lackadaisical in “Owl (Friendly)/A Star Explodes 10,000 Years Ago, Seen By Chinese Astronomers” as a delicate, short phrase and its refrain are teased out and elaborated upon in gently wheeling mingle and Marshall’s deep, lithe cello is front and center with tousled romance.

“Ahab” is boisterously resolute in its seaworthiness, a slightly out-of-tempo orchestral jounce in the head that gives way to the staggering, Schlippenbach-Lovens interplay of the pianist and drummer as Lash motors along underneath. Fleshed out by the rest of the ensemble, bass, cello and piano kick and chomp towards a regal conclusion. “Elmoic” could take its title from a Paul Rutherford piece; its first two and a half minutes are given over to the leader’s kaleidoscopic unaccompanied piano before the ensemble enters in a circular dance, anthemic downstrokes countering a series of short, florid solos. Hawkins tends to subsume his own highly virtuosic playing to the greater good of collectivity, so it is fascinating to hear him step out front on this piece. The closing “So Very, Know” is as striking in its somberness as other compositions are exhortations of joy, sparsely-drawn harmonics a padding for the guitarist’s flourishes and Hawkins’ gospelized but oddly unresolved piano. All In, Ever Out is unlike anything else in modern creative music and, while it may be produced under nominal leadership, it’s a testament to mutual selflessness and a trust in convergent personalities. That is, after all, what our music is rooted in.

JOE HERTENSTEIN/THOMAS HEBERER/JOACHIM BADENHORST/PASCAL NIGGENKEMPER

Polylemma

(Red Toucan)

There’s a small group of New York-based European musicians who seem to be developing a real collective voice. As of yet they aren’t getting a ton of press Stateside but that will probably change. Four of them are represented on Polylemma – drummer Joe Hertenstein, trumpeter Thomas Heberer, and bassist Pascal Niggenkemper are from Germany, and bass clarinetist Joachim Badenhorst hails from Belgium. Heberer (the eldest) is the most well known because he has played the “straight man” in the Instant Composers Pool Orchestra for many years, though his own work as a soloist and bandleader is fairly obscure. With only trumpet in the front line, a pared-down version of this group recorded the excellent HNH for Clean Feed in 2010, and without drums another trio variation waxed Klippe under Heberer’s leadership for Clean Feed earlier this year.

Back to Polylemma, though: the eight compositions are split between Hertenstein and Heberer, and range from subdued tonal agitation to more rhythmically excited bounce. The latter’s “One Ocean at a Time” starts with a pedal point reminiscent of Coltrane’s “India,” which quickly begins playing off of a series of knotty rows, first from bass clarinet and bass, then adding Heberer’s clarion tone. Skimming across all of it is Hertenstein in rolling, punchy detail, building phrases from damped toms and broad, coppery crash. Niggenkemper’s arco solo is deft and guttural, and driving in a way that no beat is lost when he surges alongside the drummer’s tense chatter. “Crespect,” composed by Hertenstein (and also the title of his disc with bassist Achim Tang and pianist Philip Zoubek), is vibrant and singsong with a Bley-like wander, Heberer embellishing with cackling, wry turns, maudlin lines and boppish fragments while Badenhorst needles the theme into an intense harangue. When they intertwine it’s brilliant, but there’s a lot of enjoyment in this piece from the quartet’s well-schooled ricochet.

The four musicians are quite a study in contrast – Hertenstein is busy but empathetic, contradicting his colors with undermining action as Heberer ties a kaleidoscopic understanding of history and technique into knots. Niggenkemper and Badenhorst are bound among woody tones that they serve in clean, expressionist dollops. Even a stab at modernist post-bop like “Nupeez” is imbued with a weird sense of polyphony that nearly subverts its very flow. But if Polylemma’s options were all smirk, it would lose the compelling holler of sweaty groove and powerful synchronicity, which this quartet has in spades.

INGRID LAUBROCK & SLEEPTHEIF
The Madness of Crowds
(Intakt)

It sounds strange to say this – especially when a non-musician is considering the work of an artist who’s been active for a number of years – but German-born saxophonist and improvising composer Ingrid Laubrock really is coming into her own. October saw Laubrock performing the Falling River Music with Anthony Braxton, whose breathy, cutting fragility makes an excellent foil for her tenor, which transliterates Archie Shepp’s coiled velvet into tonal-spatial research. Aside from stretching the tenor’s boundaries with mutes and inserted objects, on soprano she has a golden plaintiveness that brings to mind Steve Lacy and Marion Brown. Though she’s worked with a number of bands around New York and in her previous home base of London, Sleepthief (which also includes pianist Liam Noble and drummer Tom Rainey) might be among the most compelling. The Madness of Crowds is the trio’s second disc and finds them working through nine stunning, continually-shifting and rigorous explorations.

Continuing the reference of the disc’s title to economist Charles Mackay, the opening “Extraordinary Popular Delusions” (not to be confused with the Chicago free music quartet of the same name) begins with a mixture of piano strings, zither (Laubrock) and cymbals. Whittling scrapes, strums and muted insistence are supported by Rainey’s delicate architecture and precise tom rhythms, keyboard flourishes an arching dusk for Laubrock’s phrases, which turn Charlie Rouse into parsed caterwaul. Following an ending swatch of percussive vulcanism, “You Never Know What’s In the Next Room” flutters tersely as Laubrock’s tendrils carve balladic space against a dangerous harmonic seam. Beautiful, ringing near-romantic progressions fall back into the murk, parlor phrases snake out of bubbles and chatter, beats and lilting melody in a haze of undisclosed gurgle. Laubrock's soprano is given the spotlight on “The Slow Poisoners” – growling yet pure, warm trills caught in an updraft from piano and brushes.

A kaleidoscope of harried angles isn’t out of her vocabulary, evidenced by “There She Goes with Her Eye Out,” which starts in a haranguing volley-trade with Rainey’s drums as Noble's occasional creeping blocks of commentary outline shivs of gauze. “Haunted Houses” finds Laubrock’s snapped shouts rattling drum heads and piano guts with terse vibrations, before shifting into the purrs and crackle of “Does Your Mother Know You’re Out?” The latter explores a range of chirps, wheezes, gulps and whistles that nevertheless contain an incredible amount of energy, tiny explosions that produce enough tension to open throttle with, Rainey galloping along with Noble’s swirled turnarounds and Laubrock’s conch-like muted call. The trio references boppish phrasing in brief snatches before a lush, overlapping finale. Sleepthief is clearly a special trio that has grown by the experience not only of playing together, but the contrasting advances that each player has made independently. The group reveals an expanded language awash in pure sound as much as it values Monk, minimalism, and orchestrated explosiveness. While Laubrock is busy finding new improvisational paths, it will help her (as it would any improviser) to have a home base that is regularly refined.

DAUNIK LAZRO/BENJAMIN DUBOC/DIDIER LASSERRE
Pourtant les Cimes des Arbres
(Dark Tree)

Though perhaps an ongoing concern for French baritone saxophonist Daunik Lazro, it is safe to say that with Pourtant les Cimes des Arbres (Still Treetops) he's made a record that turns the notion of a saxophone-bass-drums “power trio” on its head. Certainly a number of such configurations have explored range, space, and physicality in nuanced ways before – and they will continue to – but the four improvisations Lazro, bassist Benjamin Duboc and percussionist Didier Lasserre (snare and cymbal only) create are both volcanic and confrontationally essentialist. Each piece’s title is taken from a French translation of a Bashō haiku, meaning shifting line by isolated line. The literary-musical effect is of a stripped-down, workmanlike sublime. The three musicians play with a sense of naturalness that is quite striking as their collective sound increases or decreases in density with the ease of measured breathing; there’s certainly no theme-solos-theme organization, and even traditional go-for-broke power play has been thrown out the window.

The closing “Retiennent la Plue” (Holding the Rain) is a prime example of what this trio is capable of. Starting with throaty pizzicato and bare, ringing cymbal taps in a slightly uneven pulse, Lazro’s purr winds its way around the territorial statements of bass and drums. It’s a trio of parallel advances, each musician loosely tied together and snaking through a veritable rockpile, where confrontation is marked by resonant snaps and scrapes from a minimal kit, generating a charge for the saxophonist’s huskily polished horn. From floor-shaking rumble he builds a stately impasto cry, offset by furious bowed harmonics and brushy accents until the group decides on torqued long tones and declamatory froth.

Lasserre’s kit deserves special mention – playing only a ride cymbal and snare drum, his approach recalls the portable necessity of Sunny Murray and John Stevens without a bop-inflected level of quickness. Lasserre marks time and creates decisive actions that shape the ensemble’s flow in an unpretentious, simple and direct fashion. That said he still gets a range of sounds and kinetics out of minimal instrumentation – witness the unearthliness of rolled sticks on the opening “Une Lune Vive” (The Quick Moon) as they set the stage for microtonal crackle and bellows. Narrowly-defined, tense clusters are worried into a frenzy and released ever so slightly as waves, flutter-tongue and arco approximate the earth along a fault line. Col legno patter, metronomic whine and subtonal sputter become the trio’s language in the piece’s next section with similarly narrow and equally effectual spacing. The power of Pourtant les Cimes des Arbres is in relatively simple iterations of mass and distance, but these are drawn out of three very distinct personalities.

JOE MORRIS' WILDLIFE
Traits
(Riti)

With a discography as sizable and diverse as that of guitarist-contrabassist Joe Morris, either finding a strand to tie it all together or compartmentalizing it into different “concept groups” is the usual critic’s task. But that would be a disservice to how unadorned most of his records are – whether occupying the role of leader/principal composer or sideman, there’s often a basic, unfussy presentation to the work that simply expresses the joy of playing in different configurations. That’s not to say that these groups don’t have varied aesthetic purposes, but at the end of the day Morris lives to play and is very serious about documenting both his own path and that of his comrades. Wildlife is, on the surface, a vehicle for collective exploration – nothing more, nothing less. Morris holds down the bass chair here, supported by regular rhythm confrere Luther Gray on drums and the twined saxophones of altoist Jim Hobbs and tenorman Petr Cancura. To put it simply, their music is collectively improvised, dyed-in-the-wool free jazz – each of the six pieces on Traits (the group’s second disc and first on Morris’ own Riti imprint) grows naturally out of individual statements and rhythmic motifs into robust parallel conversations.

The opening “Howlin’” is out for blood with classically-rendered bray, wide-open burred vibrato carried by the bassist’s wound note clusters and Gray’s loose, circular bash. Both saxophonists reach back towards Ayler-ish fire and brimstone in their playing, elongated revelries that gradually twist and change shape while the rhythm section remains active and pliant. Morris’ solo features gobs of detail and a dusty tone, and while the upright bass might look and sound a fair shake different from a hollow-body six string, there’s something about his attack that translates across both instruments. “Tracking” starts with inventive unaccompanied additions from Gray’s kit, with the remaining three musicians entering in layered tempi, chopping and swooping in a manner not unlike the fractured, swinging independence of the New York Art Quartet. Cancura takes the next spot, sinewy tenor in strands that weave through particulate, stuttering rhythms. It’s a beautiful solo of studied, warm oddness (a cross between Jimmy Giuffre and John Tchicai comes to mind) that stands in direct contrast to Hobbs’ agitated, declamatory buzz. “Game” is husky and round in its groove, a snappy and excited jounce that doubles, triples and halves underneath steely, pirouetting quotes and sputtering joy. Cancura’s hard flutters gradually find their phase. Hobbs’ alto logs bent, non-Western tonalities with a snake-charming effect, recalling Sonny Simmons’ Afro-Asiatic flights. Wildlife’s collective unity is never a sure thing, and that tension is one of the group’s charms. If such a fact can be read as concept, so be it, but it’s more interesting to open oneself up to concept-less discovery.

PHILL MUSRA
Love, Life & Games
(Sagittarius A-Star)

Love, Life & Games is the second LP of saxophonist Phill Musra’s music to be issued on the Sagittarius A-Star label, an offshoot of revered left-field imprint Qbico Records. Musra’s name – and that of his brother and near-constant collaborator Michael Cosmic – should be quite familiar to Ni Kantu readers, as his historical and recent music has been to this blog what Joe McPhee was to the early days of Hat Hut. Here, Musra is heard with two different quartets on two compositions that were performed twenty-five years apart. Interestingly, both pieces were written during his time in the AACM at the close of the 1960s. They’re both very fragile lines that could quite easily be imagined in a loose, free, Creator Spaces-like setting, but the ensembles are a far cry from mid-Seventies Boston improvisation – rather light, boppish grooves that stand apart from Musra’s quavering, moment-to-moment cries, murmurs and eviscerations. The first piece is a 1986 recording with Cosmic on electric piano, Mike Mowen on electric bass and Kay Ballard on drums for “Promise of the Sun,” Musra’s steely tenor eking out a simple, brightly embellished solo atop Cosmic’s wandering chords and gooey peck and the rhythm section’s dry, even time. The rendition has a homemade, very personal quality hat seems set apart from time and the broader jazz consciousness of the mid-1980s (or even now).

The title piece is a half-hour romp with Don Hooker on drums, Steven McGill on conga and vibes, and pianist Walter Barrilleaux, recorded earlier this year. Slight variations from the central motif become gruff litmus for struggle as Musra digs in on tenor. Switching to soprano, the wistful aspects of his personality really come out – a barren lament that quavers in contrast with the clean and often lush backing of piano, vibes and Hooker’s tasteful swing. Barrilleaux gets some stretching room and McGill’s accents and rivulets give varied flesh to the proceedings (the percussionist’s Kujichagulia disc is also worth investigating). Again, the journey of Musra and his mates is a very personal one that, while it may not reflect the broader creative music consciousness, presents a semi-private window on spirit and communication. This is the same unique, “outsider” charm that imbued his 1974 recordings with Cosmic and Ertunç, albeit within a less frantic ritual. It’s a special opportunity to hear this music and, while the limited-edition vinyl of Love Life & Games is technically now out of print, the intrepid internet researcher should be able to scare up a copy.

VARIOUS ARTISTS
Quartet Solo Series, Volume 2
(Striking Mechanism)

Multi-instrumentalist, sound artist and composer Jonathan Chen instituted the Quartet Solo Series on his Striking Mechanism imprint to present the work of young players whose art traverses those very same worlds that he does – sound, improvisation, instrumentalism and composition. It’s a simple prospect, really, but so few recordings in this music present the artform with such simplicity and directness as this series does. Both of the volumes present four musician-composers on four pieces each, all solo and doing what they do in an unadulterated manner. The first volume featured Chen (with his excellent electro-acoustic piece “Drummer”), saxophonist Andrew Raffo Dewar, German electronic artist Philip Schulze and cellist Marina Peterson. Volume 2 brings together the works of violinist Jessica Pavone, bassist Carl Testa, bassoonist Katherine Young and electronic artist/multi-instrumentalist Jonathan Zorn. As with the previous disc, all of the musicians are directly connected either to Wesleyan University or to composer Anthony Braxton.

Jessica Pavone starts the disc with “This is my Violin” (winner of the most-unpretentious title award), a twenty-minute exposition for violin and echo. Ringing col legno gives way to a stomping folk melody – Mediterranean or Irish, it’s hard to say, but as it’s a simple variation swathed in echo, it could be comparable to an American Folk Music take on Steve Reich’s Violin Phase. Pavone’s spiky attack, parsed to an extreme from the theme’s rhythm, is reverberated through electrified gauze, but never loses that hard-bitten energy and the recurring folksiness brings out a heeled stomp. She revels in the sound of the violin, tough and hanging in space, as much as she does its ability to generate song. The presence of naked abstraction alongside (and developed from) an old-world tunefulness calls to mind one of Braxton’s favorite collaborators, Leroy Jenkins, and his solo recitals that included pieces like “Keep on Trucking, Brother.” Carl Testa is a New Haven bassist who has worked in a variety of Anthony Braxton ensembles as well as the New Haven Improvisers Collective and his own solo, duo and trio projects. The five short pieces represented here are all for solo bass and a range of expertly produced auxiliary shades. Testa’s general approach is to build up masses of harmonics, exploring the strings on either side of the bridge in walloping low drone and in high-pitched, sonorous cries. While definitely utilizing a palette that’s rough around the edges, the pieces are relatively simple studies of mass, tone, and motion that, while resoundingly physical, aren’t overpowering. That said, he does know how to dance on the strings as the flitting, circular harmonic gestures on “Part Two” attest.

There aren’t too many improvising bassoonists on the modern creative music scene, but judging from the work of two of the music’s young masters – Sara Schoenbeck and Katherine Young – it’s an instrument that could gain some prominence. Young has performed the Diamond Curtain Wall musics of Braxton, as well as in duo with violist Amy Cimini and her own solo bassoon and electronics pieces (well represented by the indispensible Porter Records CD Further Secret Origins). “Storm” is a twelve-minute piece that sometimes makes it difficult to discern how much is produced through the wizardry of circular breathing and how much is overdubbed (that’s always been a challenge with her music). Delicate, pecking alto-range wander peeks out from vicious, massive impasto and jagged superimposition, her phrases only broken for a cuckoo clock’s chime. It’s quite an interesting polarity between obnoxious, harried mass and soft pure-toned stabs, exemplifying the garish, somewhat gallows humor that is at the heart of the most “serious” of music.

“Dia No Vive Aqui” is Zorn’s entirely electronic contribution; he’s also known as a contrabassist and his works for both acoustic and electric music have appeared on a range of CDs on his Set Projects label. Defiantly analog and recalling some of the more abstract computer music that appeared on a variety of CRI and collegiate music labels throughout the ‘70s, Zorn’s work is both crotchety and expansive, a panoply of fuzzy patches, organ-like swirl and microcosmic echolocation (David Behrman’s “Runthrough” comes to mind). Haranguing chords enter and recede, jutting out of an ebbing field of gooey long tones, wows and beeps, and for the diversity of textures and actions it’s somewhat hard to imagine all of this sound coming from one person, well-organized as it is. With an array of computers at Zorn’s disposal, it’s fascinating to hear how internally reactive the music’s structure is – in other words, there is a collectivity and an improvisational feel to it, arrived at through both gradual change and immediate chance. This is a powerful piece and really pushes the boundaries – like the entirety of the disc – of what it means to create and perform solo music.

KRIS WANDERS OUTFIT
In Remembrance of the Human Race
(Not Two)

The name Kris Wanders might be obscure, but the Dutch saxophonist is synonymous with the embrace and appropriation of Afro-American fire during the halcyon years of European free music. Alongside Peter Brötzmann and Gerd Dudek, he was part of the 1966 and ’67 iterations of German pianist-composer Alexander von Schlippenbach’s Globe Unity. In 1970, he worked in a heavy quartet alongside Dutch pianist/multi-instrumentalist Kees Hazevoet, bassist Arjen Gorter and drummer Louis Moholo, which resulted in the excellent LP Pleasure One (Peace/Atavistic UMS). Dutch jazz has been given over to a single, humorous and pastiche-filled worldview qua New Dutch Swing and the later recordings of the Instant Composers’ Pool. Of course there were other interesting ways to make improvised music in Holland around the turn of the ‘70s, from post-bop to Afro-Caribbean liberated soul-jazz. And then there were musicians who embraced searing post-Ayler freedoms, for whom Kris Wanders is a fine representative. He’s been living in Australia for quite a few years and following a scarce self-released quintet date (On the Edges of Silence, 2004), two discs on the Polish Not Two label are the hard-edged calling cards of his return to the scene.

In Remembrance of the Human Race joins Wanders with trombonist Johannes Bauer, bassist Peter Jacquemyn and drummer Mark Sanders on three lengthy group improvisations recorded live in Antwerp. The title piece opens with a stripped-down, Ascension-like tenor call to arms, Wanders' cascading movements recalling the thin, regal chords of a bagpipe. Jacquemyn and Sanders provide furious tumbling accompaniment as the tenorist digs in with split-toned rally and a wide, guttural plow. The rhythm section builds a dry, martial vamp underneath a freight train of rending squeals and false-fingered exhortations, Bauer countering with singsong chortle. Low drones gird the bottom end as Bauer flutters and mocks and Sanders’ percussion provides the death rattle – somber and stately thrash that evokes the piece’s bleak title. “Uwaga” is somewhat more charged, opening with a Gato Barbieri-like trill as Wanders’ lines chip, worry and coalesce into long, hoarse wails offset by Bauer’s loquacious expressionism. Following the bassist's furious solo, the ensemble soon drops into sparser interplay and Bauer’s multiphonic whinnies and blats nearly goad Jacquemyn into a loose swing, but it doesn’t take long before Wanders’ flayed tone spurs over cracked earth. Sure, In Remembrance of the Human Race is ultimately a blowing date and perhaps some of the improvising is a bit monochromatic, but it’s the kind of free music that inspires a bitter beer in hand and the volume cranked. They don’t make many records like that anymore in any genre and, alongside Taken By Surprise (Not Two, 2011), the European stage looks cleared for Kris Wanders once again.

Things We Like #2 - The Best of 2011

While it can be a challenge to keep up with all the new music being released, most of it is of really, exceedingly high caliber. But seeing as how it's the end of the year, that means that it is list-making time and I have to take stock and whittle down all that I've heard into a short run of top-notch material. Importantly, picking ten standouts doesn’t negate the hundreds of excellent albums that are also out there and well worth hearing. If I put in a “runners up” list, it would be excessively long and one day I might prefer listening to any of those recordings over one that’s been “picked” (cue some of the absolutely ruling discs that will appear in the year-end review roundup shortly). There have also been some particularly fine reissues this year – not only a healthy group of boxed sets, but also some first-time-on-CD classics from trumpeter-composer Bill Dixon and saxophonist Julius Hemphill. And while there have some tremendously sad losses in the world of creative music, the fact that our young masters continue to create such vital work gives me hope for the continued flourishing of this music.

All of these are listed in alphabetical order, by the way, because internal list hierarchies are troubling.

New Releases:
Muhal Richard Abrams – Sound Dance (Pi Recordings)
Anthony Braxton – Trillium E (Braxton House)
Bill Dixon – Envoi (Victo)
Agusti Fernandez – El Laberint de la Memoria (Mbari Musica)
Rick Reed – The Way Things Go (Elevator Bath)
Akira Sakata with Jim O’Rourke and Chikamorachi - …and that’s the Story of Jazz (Family Vineyard)
Matthew Shipp – Art of the Improviser (Thirsty Ear)
The Thirteenth Assembly – Station Direct (Important)
David S. Ware – Planetary Unknown (Aum Fidelity)
Nate Wooley - (Put Your) Hands Together (Clean Feed)

Reissues and Unearthed Gems:
Bitch Magnet – Ben Hur/Umber/Star Booty (Temporary Residence)
Miles Davis – The Bootleg Series vol. 1 (Columbia Legacy)
Bill Dixon – Intents & Purposes (International Phonograph)
Julius Hemphill – Dogon A.D. (International Phonograph)
The Rev. Charlie Jackson – You Got to Move: Live Recordings vol. 1 (50 Miles of Elbow Room)
Roscoe Mitchell – Before There Was Sound (Nessa)
Warren Smith – Dragon Dave Meets the Black Knight from the Darkside of the Moon (Porter)
Social Climbers – Social Climbers (Drag City)
Juma Sultan’s Aboriginal Music Society – Father of Origin (Eremite)
John Surman – Flashpoint: NDR Jazz Workshop ’69 (Cuneiform)

Phill Musra - The Creator Spaces (Intex, 1974)

Rarely do I offer downloaded music at Ni Kantu, but in the spirit of a previous offering of the music of Michael Cosmic’s Peace in the World (Intex/Cosmic), here is another volume of the Phill Musra/Michael Cosmic trilogy. Though picking favorites isn’t really my thing, I would have to say that The Creator Spaces has gotten the most spins in my household over the years, probably because the program sort of “eases you in” to the far out stuff, starting with a beautiful flute melody set to the shifting sands of hand percussion and Huseyin Ertunc’s steady, pulsing cymbal waves on “Egypt.” Certainly the music gets quite free, but there’s a homemade fragility to it that puts it in a different class from that of, say, the AACM (which Musra and Cosmic were a part of early on). Like Ertunc’s Musiki (probably recorded at the same session), the band is a stripped-down trio with Musra on reeds and percussion; Cosmic on reeds, organ and percussion; and Ertunc on drums. There is also some track overlap with Musiki, as that album features an alternate of “The Creator Spaces.” Musra has said he hopes to reissue this album someday but in the meantime has asked me to make it available as a download.

Tracks:

1. Egypt
2. Arabia
3. The Creator is So Far Out
4. The Creator Spaces

Phill Musra – flute, tenor, soprano saxophone, zurna (oboe), percussion

Michael Cosmic – flute, alto, sopranino saxophone, clarinet, zurna, organ, percussion

Huseyin Ertunc – drums and cymbals

Recorded 1974 in Cambridge, MA and engineered by Larrymar Richards, released as Intex 84.

Get the FLAC files here (from about as clean a copy as you could get).