W – X – Y – Z

All artists filed by last name under W, X, Y and Z :

Five Spot | Petras Vysniauskas | Yuri Yaremchuk | Roberta Piket | Mark Tokar | Klaus Kugel | Poltva

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The band’s name reveals that this is a quintet, with Lithuanian Petras Vysniauskas on soprano, Ukranians Yury Yaremchuk soprano, alto and clarinets, and Mark Tokar on bass, German Klaus Kugel on drums and Roberta Piket from the US on piano. All five musicians have solid backgrounds, both in traditional contexts as in a more free environment, as is the case here, for this live performance at the Lviv Jazz Festival in Ukraine in 2007, and it is free jazz in the spirit of the seventies, with the whole band working together on a coherent musical flow, rhytmic and forward-moving, with the musicians very concerned to build a unique sound rather than using the improvisation for personal expression. In the hands of lesser musicians this becomes a perfect recipe for either chaos or boredom, but you get the opposite here: discipline and deep listening skills, creativity and variation make this quite a captivating program.– Stef Continue reading →

The Resonance Ensemble | What Country Is This? | Not Two Records

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In mid December of 2004for some completely unknown reason, a complimentary issue of Time Magazine showed up in my mailbox. I hate the periodical, never read it except when I’m at the dentist, so I have no idea why it arrived. On the front cover was George W. Bush’s face, he had been selected as “Person of the Year” by the magazine’s editors after his reelection as president. Just one more reason to hate the publication. As I flipped through the pages with masochistic curiosity while drinking my morning coffee, I came across the following, an excerpt from Late Ripeness, written by Czeslaw Milosz, a poet I had never heard of. — Ken Vandermark Continue reading →

Henry P. Warner | Earl Freeman | Philip Spigner | Freestyle Band | No Business Records

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Why should an album as good as this one is be so obscure? Well, there are many reasons. There are all the ugly assumptions in the music world that poor black people can’t make serious art, the assumptions that George Lewis lays bare to such devastating effect in his history of the AACM, A Power Stronger than itself. There’s the economic corollary to that assumption: that if it’s not art, then it must be subject to the marketplace pressures of pop music, which European, or “real,” art music doesn’t have to contend with. Since avant-garde improvised music isn’t popular music, the economics always work against it. And so this album, and countless others, fade away due to social and economic neglect to become the quarry of avid record hounds. The reasons albums like this one sink out of sight are not entirely due to impersonal social and economic forces, however. It’s not as if these conditions were mysterious or unknown to musicians. Indeed, they have always been a source of anger and frustration. By the early ’70s, this anger and frustration boiled up into the do-it-yourself, countercultural, and black separatist spirit of the loft movement. Rejecting the system that in effect rejected them, the musicians who lived and worked in the lofts established their own performance venues and sometimes their own record labels. — Ed Hazell Continue reading →

Andrew Lamb | Tom Abbs | Michael Wimberly | Guillermo E. Brown | Rhapsody in Black | No Business Records

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It gives me great pleasure to once again find myself in the midst of expressing my thoughts about another recording of my work. The Creator had blessed me with the opportunity to have the wonderfully creative bass, tuba, and didjeridoo performer Tom Abbs, who has been with me for slightly over a decade, together with two of the most unique, musically diverse and culturally aware percussionists today – Michael Wimberly and Guillermo E. Brown. These gentlemen are true pfrofessionals both on and off the bandstand, which is a great pleasure for me to state. The works on this recording are organic and unpretentious, laced with the type of communication that can only be obtained, and experienced by those who are truly kindred spirits. — Andrew Lamb Continue reading →

Nate Wooley | Christian Weber | Paul Lytton | Six Feet Under | No Business Records

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Six Feet Under (2009 [2012], NoBusiness): Trumpet, bass, drums, respectively. Lytton is the best known, one of the major drummers of Europe’s avant-garde, but Wooley has been prolific since 2002, even more so since he started releasing records under his own name in 2009 (AMG lists eight, missing this one — an LP release limited to 300 copies, so I’m glad to have received my CDR). Scratchy, lots of low volume, high pressure maneuvers, making the few sections where the trumpet breaks loose all the more impressive. —Tom Hull Continue reading →

Joe Moffett | Noah Kaplan | Giacomo Merega | Jacob William | Luther Gray | Ad Faunum | Not Two Records

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It’s not a terribly common rationale for a session of freely improvised music. “The idea was to offer an almost ritualistic praise of animals,” says trumpeter Joe Moffett. And so these five players, under Moffett’s de facto leadership, chose the group name Ad Faunum. “To the animal” is one possible rendering from the Latin, although Ad Faunum (“To Faunus”) is actually the title of Ode XVIII by the Roman lyric poet Horace (65 BC-8 BC). Faunus is half man and half goat, the Roman counterpart to the Greek god Pan. “I was thinking of a primeval idea,” says Moffett, “an idea of ‘worship’ music, something very old, even prehistoric. It relates to the kind of primal energy I imagined creating with this group. Also, I was reflecting on people’s almost religious regard for animals, on humanity’s complex relationship to these other creatures that live in the world.” — DAVID R. ADLER, New York, June 2011 Continue reading →

Andrea Wolper | The Small Hours

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One of the best things about releasing a CD is it gives one the opportunity to express gratitude to the many people who’ve helped along the way. I have to start with Ron and Ken, without whom this would surely be a very different CD. Playing music with them—not to mention hanging out between sets—is just a hell of a lot of fun, and they both continue to inspire me more, I’m sure, than either would imagine. Victor, Frank, Lou, and Jamey all have unique voices that we wanted on the date, and they all jumped right in, fully and generously. I’m grateful to each of them for their special contributions. Todd brought not only his expertise as a producer, but also respect and openness, as well as a belief in the project that really made a difference. Thanks also to Katherine Miller, whose great technical skills are matched by great ears, and to Todd Gerard for his excellent work and sensitive approach. — Andrea Wolper Continue reading →

Andrea Wolper | Parallel Lives

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I live somewhat “parallel lives” as a singer in that my musical interests are wide-ranging. Like so many other jazz singers, I started with standards, the best kind of training play/ ground, which I love like old friends who can still surprise me. But through the years, doing all sorts of gigs, living in New York, where there’s so much music to hear and so many people to play with, I came to realize there was no reason not to widen my embrace to include all sorts of music: music that plays it straight, music that doesn’t, songs I’d heard as a child, songs I discovered I had it in me to write, songs that didn’t seem to fit in any particular category. The selections on this CD traverse some of the now-parallel, now-converging paths I’ve been traveling these past several years, reflecting the idea that we all live dual (or more) lives, if only in our dreams, our hopes, our memories. As everyone knows, having the right traveling companions is crucial. And as every musician knows, there’s nothing like playing with your band, people with whom you develop understanding and trust. When you have that, you’re lucky. I’m lucky. Not only do Ken, Kris, Michael, and TA have the musicianship and the curiosity to travel with me wherever I feel like going, but each has a highly developed, very personal musical identity that means I get to travel down some unexpected byways. And that makes working with them a joy and an adventure. — Andrea Wolper Continue reading →

The Fonda | Stevens Group Trio + 2 | Live in Katowice | Not Two Records

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Harvey Sorgen – Drums |Ireneusz Wojtczak – Tenor Saxophone, Bass Clarinet | Maciej Obara – Alto Saxophone | Joe Fonda – Acoustic bass | Michael Jefry Stevens – Steinway Grand Piano. Recorded on October 22, 2009 at the Upper Silesan Centre of Culture in Katowice, Poland / Jazz Club Hipnoza. Recorded by Marcin Chlebowski. Edited and mastered by Jon Rosenberg. Produced by Joe Fonda and Andrzej Kalinowski. Continue reading →

Joe McPhee | Jeb Bishop | Ingebrigt Haker Flaten | Michael Zerang | Ibsen’s Ghosts | Not Two Records

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Joe McPhee – tenor saxophone |Jeb Bishop – trombone | Ingebrigt Haker Flaten – bass | Michael Zerang – drums Recorded at Victoria Theater, Oslo, February 21, 2009. Recorded by Thomas Hukkelberg. Mastered by Rafal Drewniany (dts studio). Produced by Ibsen’s Ghosts. Co-produced by Marek Winiarski. Cover art, photos and design by Marek Wajda Continue reading →