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William Parker Double Quartet | Alphaville Suite | RogueArt Jazz

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I first saw Jean Luc Godard’s Alphaville on American television in the early 1970’s. It didn’t take long for me to realize that Alphaville wasn’t just another science fiction spy thriller; it was really a wake up call to modern society to be vigilant… …It has always been my dream write to a piece of music inspired by this great film. The plan was to have a double quartet, one quartet made up of strings (Julia Kent, and Shiau-Shu Yu cello, Jessica Pavone viola, and Mazz Swift violin). The other quartet is the regular working band of Rob Brown, alto sax, Lewis Barnes, trumpet and Hamid Drake, drums. I read the films screenplay and bought the DVD of the film to refresh my memory. Then I began to write the music, ending up with 15 compositions each one capturing a different aspect of the movie. The concept was to create an alternative soundtrack that could possibly be used in the film. While at the same time have a life of it’s own as concert music. Due to time restraints we only could record about half the music. Eight musicians blending as one while at the same time not giving up their individuality. — William Parker, excerpt from the liner notes Continue reading →

Joe Giardullo Open Ensemble | Red Morocco | RogueArt Jazz

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Someday someone will write a history of modern music that will free us of the false dichotomies such as high vs. low, improviser vs. composer, classical vs. everything else… …The written materials Joe passed out to the musicians for Red Morocco was minimal, sometimes more visual than musical, but always modest. Everyone was seated in the same room, in a circle. The music heard on this recording occurred late in the day, when Joe felt a certain clarity was occurring… …The results are an elegant, shimmering, ringing music, like colors spiking across the plane of a Monet canvas, or spinning like a piece of Calder’s kinetic art; a constantly evolving, deeply sonic performance, collectively improvised, and decentered; a self-organizing musical system, with minimal input or constraints from outside. Giardullo is willing into existence a music that occurs beyond his control. This means he has to surround himself with musicians who are accomplished, but also open, free to take chances, and willing to be themselves, no matter what. — John Szwed, excerpt from the liner notes. Continue reading →

Rob Brown | Joe Morris | Matthew Shipp | Whit Dickey | Right Hemisphere | RogueArt Jazz

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Right hemisphere the intuitive side of the brain – the god part of brain – the part that processes in wholes not in linear sequences – the part that is out of time and rooted in eternity… …These pieces are not collective improvisations but are a series of concepts and gestures put forth, discussed and then acted upon musically. — Matthew Shipp, excerpt from the liner notes Continue reading →

Hamid Drake & Bindu | Blissful | RogueArt Jazz

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…The music improvised by Drake, Abrams, Alexander, Morris, Parker and Parker is getting close. The music improvised by the second incarnation of Bindu is also a trance music: so is its rhythm of growth, the crossroad. The music can only grow, propagate waves, navigate through forms. Dance upon the laying body of cinder-covered structures. Everything is good to it, nothing dictates its behavior. The music improvises what it needs, summons the worlds it needs, within the flow of inter-play, Kâlî’s way of playing. Our rebirth; our voodoo. Everything darkens; everything brightens. The music gives out names, one by one. Love. Life. Love. Her. Even Heaven. Around the names and the bodies dismembered by Kâlî, the alphabet is not only divided up into vowels and consonants, but in masculine and feminine letters, lit up. Agni’s seventh tongue…– Alexandre Pierrepont, excerpt from the liner notes Continue reading →

Matthew Shipp | Un Piano | RogueArt Jazz

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This music, one piano /one pianist, is a system both simple & severe. it contains a full dimension of style, range, technique & sound sources. it does equally well, feels equally (un)comfortable at home (alien) here in(ner) out(er) (s)pace using broad designs, vagaries, different & difficult patterns & obvious mannerisms. it is flutt’ring soundsheets in an unpredictable breeze of varying weights. a wealth of oppositional yet embracing sequences (like nature itself). clumsy elegance lifted into, soaking & unburdening the EAR. as precious stone is heavy yet beautiful to behold & light to the touch. plundering culturally formulated ideals, manners & mannerisms. a full course meal consumed. — Steve Dalachinsky, excerpt from the liner notes Continue reading →

Larry Ochs | Miya Masaoka | Peggy Lee | Spiller Alley | RogueArt Jazz

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This music of exquisite sensibilities profound listening and genuinely laid-back cloth at first throws you; nobody is trying to do anything, just play as together as possible. Nobody gets in anybody’s face, including the listener. Nobody solos more than the depth they listen at; nobody never wanted not to be there…. Anyway if this ingenious blend of scents from Masaoka’s ancient koto, Lee’s middle-European cello and Ochs’ out of hock saxes is any indication, “musica da camera” – that old elite art of chamber music – is going to be around for some time yet. — Alvin Curran, excerpt from the liner notes Continue reading →

Alexandre Pierrepont | Mike Ladd | Maison Hantee | RogueArt Jazz

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On one level, both music and poetry are very much the same, that being sound – at least the spoken word would be. Here in “Haunted House” is a sound design or shape being put forth with multiple meanings psychoacoustically, linguistically, musically that I can only say very little about in terms of meaning, since ultimately it’s meaning will be with each individual who experiences this work. This rhythmic engagement between these two art forms create a third reality of sound gestures and events that collide and integrate. Yet knowing these facts it still does not allow me to analyze or describe exactly what “Haunted House” is. Hopefully this experience will be a catalyst at some level for good. — Henri Threadgill, excerpts from the liner notes Continue reading →

Hamid Drake | Nicole Mitchell | Harrison Bankhead | Indigo Trio | Anaya | RogueArt Jazz

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Creative music making is a matter of energy, heart, and trust and when all three are present the music flies. A meeting of three old Chicago friends and collaborators, flutist Nicole Mitchell, drummer Hamid Drake, and bassist Harrison Bankhead, the Indigo Trio soars with the kind of spiritual energy that has inspired Great Black Music from its inception… Building a bridge between composition and improvisation, Bankhead, Drake, and Mitchell have created an inspiring second CD. With their spirit of openness and generosity, the Indigo Trio model the poet Rumi’s insight that “only from the heart can you touch the sky.” — Ellen Waterman, excerpt from the liner notes Continue reading →

Michel Edelin Trio | Kuntu | RogueArt Jazz

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Flutists’ albums, in jazz, do not clutter up record stores. Michel Edelin is one of the (very) few jazz musicians, French on top of that, to have chosen the flute, in all its forms, as his exclusive instrument. For ages, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Eric Dophy, Jeremy Steig, James Newton, Dave Valentin and the likes have held a central position in his personal pantheon, he who was able to digest their teachings in order to feed his own syntax: a sound of a beautiful elegance, an angular phrasing where a propensity for melody and lyricism can be heard, a taste for certain instrumental audacities, the understanding of the collective… …This album of a complete openness, breathing onto the melody, is collectively constructed in real time around pretext-themes with great rigor and a radiant imagination. — Gérard Rouy, excerpt from the liner notes Continue reading →

Kassap | Lavant | Lopez | Medioni | Tchamitchian | Ascension, Tombeau de John Coltrane | RogueArt Jazz

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…Questions: none of Coltrane’s albums bears this title. And somehow all of his albums do. All are clearly subjected to the ramified, plural, moving, exuberant, augmentative interrogation, that they left us, as if panicked or distraught. Such trust. A unique manner, always beyond and ahead of itself. A haunted, questioning manner. Inheriting a question is, in many ways, convenient; it’s called mysticism, and in the end, there’s something in it for everybody. To see oneself or live as the guardian of a range of questions certainly can’t be read on the same stave. It creates different obligations. Requires, in more ways than one, writing – taking part. As, here, Franck Médioni and Lavant’s voice, or Sylvain Kassap and Ramon Lopez, and Claude Tchamitchian… — Chrisitan Tarting, excerpt from the liner notes Continue reading →