Jazz

Evan Parker | Barry Guy | Paul Lytton | Live at Maya Recordings Festival | No Business Records

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As a musician Evan Parker is a man of many faces. On the one hand he is always looking for new collaborations like on C-Section with electronic madman John Wiese (Second Layer Recordings), Live at Akbank Jazz Festival (Re:konstruKkt) with the Turkish group konstruKt or ‘Round About One O’clock (Not Two) with Slovenian drummer and percussionist Zlatko Kaučič. On the other hand he likes long time relations like his Electro-Acoustic Ensemble (although many new members have been added to this project), the legendary Schlippenbach Trio (as to persistence the Rolling Stones of free jazz) and the Evan Parker Trio (with Barry Guy on bass and Paul Lytton on drums). — Martin Schray Continue reading →

Correction with Mats Gustafsson | Shift | No Business Records

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The inmates riot in the House of Correction. The girls who put up postcards in London telephone boxes – are telephone boxes used for anything else now? – offer correction among other delights. The ticker-tape in newspaper offices – also not much used now – hesitates on a story, flags CORRECTION, and adjusts the casualty figures up or down. We know what the word means, and what it means is somewhere on the pleasure/pain divide, somewhere between sticking to and breaking the rules, some measure of restraint coupled to a throwing over of all restraint. — Brian Morton Continue reading →

Quat Quartet | Live at Hasselt | No Business Records

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A foursome that includes vibes and piano may initially put you in mind of the Modern Jazz Quartet. It’s a natural reaction for those who have absorbed the jazz canon going back at least that far. But though there is a certain kind of quietude at times in common with MJQ, the quartet Quat doesn’t occupy the quasi-formal bop-classical-tonal-composed-head territory of the earlier group. Listen to Quat’s CD Live at Hasselt (No Business NBCD54), however, and you will find there is much going on in an intimate interactive setting that the MJQ also excelled at, though the Quat quartet firmly occupies a modern free improv context. Quat comes through with four middle- to long-lengthed improvisations that surely bear repeated listens. —Grego Applegate Edwards Continue reading →

The Convergence Quartet | Slow and Steady | No Business Records

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Free music is no simple matter. It can work marvelously when the chemistry between players is right. Or it can earnestly go along but never quite reach a collective point of convergence. Happily, the group named after such occurrences, the Convergence Quartet, achieves such a state consistently and rewardingly on their album Slow and Steady (No Business NBCD 53). — Grego Applegate Edwards Continue reading →

Lo Galluccio

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Lo Galluccio is a vocal artist and poet who’s first CD, “Being Visited” was released on the Knitting Factory label in 1997. NY Dj Vin Scelsa called it “By turns, mysterious, seductive, surreal and spacy.” She first started working with the Jazz Passengers, co-writing a song with Roy Nathanson for the “In Love” CD on the Windham Hill/High Street label, co-produced by Hal Willner. In the mid 90’s she had an avant-rock band called, “Fish Pistol” with slide guitarist wizard Dave Tronzo, bassist Brad Jones, and various drummers including Ben Perowsky. The band played many downtown NYC clubs like Fez and the Mercury Lounge. She’s also sat in with the bands “Sex Mob” and collaborated with Jim Pugliese of “Soultronix”. Continue reading →

Michel Edelin Quartet | Resurgence | RogueArt Jazz

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Here is a group that is not mere circumstance a group that has a sense of durability! Eighteen years after an already accomplished first recording, the four musicians show in any case that the disorganized effects of commercial culture have no influence on an artistic desire newly reaffirmed in this gushing Resurgence, leaving eleven themes/sources drifting on its unique current linked in a distanced aesthetic which does not challenge the history of jazz but is known to be gaily unsubdued by current trends and to codes which guide a certain “European jazz”. — Bernard Aime (Translation Marie Alleyrat) Continue reading →

Joshua Abrams Quartet | Unknown Known | RogueArt Jazz

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RogueArt continues its Chicago jazz love affair with Unknown Known a quartet featuring Josh Abrams on bass, David Boykin on tenor sax, Jason Adasiewicz on vibes, and Frank Rosaly on drums. In many ways, Unknown Known sticks to those Chicago roots: even it its wilder flights, it always has a foot planted in composition and structure. It’s jazz that comes up under the tutelage of the AACM, which constantly pushed boundaries without ever entirely dispensing with them. Continue reading →

Nicole Mitchell | Engraved in the Wind | RogueArt Jazz

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This recording is a virtuosic tour-de-force. The technical achievement of this music stands on its own and defines Nicole Mitchell as an innovator and expressive artist with a depth of mastery that surpasses even that which we already know about her. Consider the exacting precision of every sound made here, the multi-phonics, the sustain and variation of pitch, the rhythmic phrasing, the sheer beauty of the intonation, the arch and fluid execution of every phrase regardless of the velocity or density of notes, and the. tremendous and complex variety of timbre, articulation, and variation of groove. All of these elements make Engraved in the Wind a masterful work of solo music, a great achievement for Nicole Mitchell and a deeply rewarding listening experience for the rest of us. — Joe Morris, November 2012 Continue reading →