Playlist for The Long Rally with Scott McDowell – November 10, 2009.
With music from Fennesz, Tower Recordings, Archers of Loaf, The Mantles, Spectre Folk, Dewey Redman, Up-Tight, Lusine, Au, Nudge, King Tubby and more.
Filed under: Radio
• 1:55 pm 0
via Jazz: The Music of Unemployment: The top ten things I learned from the Rocktober tour
A nice “what I learned” post from the Industrial Jazz Group honcho Andrew Durkin, reflecting on the IJG’s recent tour of the northeast. Andrew was kind enough to send me some music to play on the radio from this cool big band. I didn’t have a chance before the shows actually happened (the week before was Singles Going Steady so I was reduced to playing all 7″ vinyl!) Regardless, some great stuff in this post, for example:
3. Hire a professional asshole.
Otherwise known as a “tour manager,” this is the person who would, for instance, proactively motivate any individuals who seem poised to make everyone else late. Alternately, he or she would be a veritable information kiosk for any and all questions about the itinerary, would anticipate occasional unforeseen logistical problems, and so on. (Oh, yeah! He or she would also allow a bandleader to focus on other things — like, well, you know, the music.)
via Jazz: The Music of Unemployment: The top ten things I learned from the Rocktober tour.
Filed under: Live , Andrew Durkin, Industrial Jazz Group
November 8, 2009 • 10:16 am 0
Henry Threadgill, Master of the Mutable – NYTimes.com
Filed under: Musicians , Henry Threadgill
• 10:14 am 0
Anthony Braxton’s Sonic Genome Project: 12tet + 50 Musicians
This amazing free show is happening during this year’s Winter Olympics in Vancouver.
Anthony Braxton’s 12+1 Tet with over 50 musicians
1/31/2010
12:00 pm until approximately 8:00 pm
Roundhouse Community Arts and Recreation Centre (Festival Hall)
181 Roundhouse Mews, Vancouver
Free (no reservations required)
Ensembles will break apart and reform into new organisms like human cells or societies in this ambitious experiment by American musical visionary and saxophonist Anthony Braxton. For eight hours, more than 60 instrumentalists, including local high school students, will use Braxton’s compositions and improvisational languages to create a living sound world where the audience is free to listen and wander at will. This marks the project’s world premiere as a public performance.
via Anthony Braxton’s Sonic Genome Project – Event Listings : Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics.
Filed under: Live , Anthony Braxton, Olympics, Sonic Genome Project
October 28, 2009 • 12:32 pm 0
via The Village Voice | The Great Jazz-Drummer Takeover of 2009
Filed under: Musicians
October 27, 2009 • 1:46 pm 0
Playlist for The Long Rally with Scott McDowell – October 27, 2009
Playlist for The Long Rally with Scott McDowell – October 27, 2009.
Today’s show with a lengthy Sirone tribute plus Greg Cartwright, Espers, Slasher Risk, Tim Buckley & more.
Filed under: Radio , The Long Rally
October 26, 2009 • 4:00 pm 2
Sirone RIP
Announced last week via ESP-Disk’s tweet, Sirone passed away in Berlin at 69, one of the classiest bass players who worked with the likes of Cecil Taylor, Dewey Redman, Marion Brown, Revolutionary Ensemble, Noah Howard, etc. A key figure in free jazz, a muscular player, and a unique spirit.
(photo credit: Larry Fink)
From Streams of Expression, a tribute playlist and a d/l link so you can listen along: streams of expression: A Tribute to Sirone.
Here’s somewhat of an obit from Blog to Comm.
Here’s another obit from Lars Gotrich of A Blog Supreme/NPR Jazz.
No Treble did an obit, too.
And a Sirone quote taken from an All About Jazz piece published in 2005 :
I put a definite attention towards the composition merely as a path of reaching the point where we can find that magical moment when you understand…that to reach that point of that freedom is discipline and that discipline is a study, this is why that word [free] doesn’t sit so well with me because it has been abused, the music has been abused by that word ‘free’. Sometimes you get a lot of noise.
I first encountered Sirone working under his given name Norris Jones (Sirone seems to be a modified reversal of Norris, doesn’t it?) on a Marion Brown LP called Three for Shepp (in turn, titled after Shepp’s LP, Four for Trane). He doesn’t solo too often but Three for Shepp was a favorite and I listened to it over and over again. After listening a while I just kept honing in on the bass playing and fell in love with it.
About six months later I went through a heavy Cecil Taylor Unit phase and again was consistently drawn to the bass playing. I’m not sure how I realized Norris Jones and Sirone were the same person but at least I was consistent! This realization led me directly to the Revolutionary Ensemble LPs and Sirone’s fate as one of my favorite workers of the thud staff was sealed.
I’ll be playing a track or two ten from Sirone as a small large tribute on my radio show tomorrow morning.
Should also mention this small piece of serendipity. On hearing of Sirone’s death there were some emails going back and forth on the WFMU email list. Dave Mandl put in a recommendation for a Sirone record called Artistry which he ripped from his brother’s LP years ago and had never seen a copy since. The very next day I stumbled upon an original copy at the WFMU Record Fair and bought it! Cosmic! (A post dedicated to some of my record fair finds is coming soon…)
UPDATED 10/27: This link launches the Sirone tribute portion of the 10/27 edition of The Long Rally.
October 21, 2009 • 11:16 am 0
Playlist for The Long Rally with Scott McDowell – October 20, 2009
Playlist for The Long Rally with Scott McDowell – October 20, 2009. Gimme Indie Rock: all 7″ show with Uncle Wiggly, Yo La Tengo doing Sun Ra, Clockcleaner, A Minor Forest, Dead C, Fad Gadget, The Clean and more.
Aside: I want to start adding links to my WFMU shows on this blog, but I’m not sure best how to do it. Should I just link the WFMU site or add the full playlist to the bottom of a post like this? WordPress.com will not let me embed the WFMU player which would allow readers to stream the shows from this blog and also view the playlist with one click. Ahh, well, there’s always the Big Blog Upgrade that’s been coming for a while.
Filed under: Radio , The Long Rally
• 9:48 am 0
Jessica Pavone | Songs of Synastry and Solitude
Nice review from All About Jazz of Jessica Pavone’s beautifully titiled new record for Tzadik, Songs of Synastry and Solitude. I have yet to actually hear it but am really looking forward to this one, freeform in concept:
Influenced in part by Leonard Cohen’s Songs of Love and Hate (Columbia, 1970), many of these tuneful pieces were inspired by folk, gospel, and soul, rather than traditional Western classical forms. Eschewing the atonal dissonances championed by the serialists, Pavone instead embraces time-honored string quartet techniques to render these compact meditations—including counterpoint, syncopation, equal interplay, unison themes, octave leaps and rubato tempos. Though inspired by folk music, these pieces still bear the influence of classical forms, especially the innovations of the Romantic composers—more so than traditional blues, jazz or rock structures.
Filed under: Musicians , Jessica Pavone
October 19, 2009 • 12:08 pm 0
Steve Dalachinsky: Connections, Disconnections (via THE GIG)
via Connections, Disconnections – THE GIG.
From Nate Chinen’s blog, THE GIG, a nice post on free jazz poet Steve Dalachinsky, who collaborated on a new book with photographer Jacques Besceglia called Reaching into the Unknown 1964-2009, printed by the excellent Rogue Art label. Dalachinsky is the de facto resident poet in the downtown NYC free jazz/improv community, a sort of successor to Amiri Baraka.
Dalachinsky wrote a poem for each set of Evan Parker’s residency at The Stone, two of which are reproduced in full in Nate Chinen’s post.
here the boat’s let loose down stream
& thru the rapids – then free falls o’er the falls
the top the peakless o’er it’s light & lamp
& end the plunge as it prevails
its cohesion amongst a spillage of dots.
Filed under: Books, Live, Poetry , Evan Parker, Jacques Besceglia, Nate Chinen, Steve Dalachinsky
• 9:39 am 0
Big Band Bonanza: Tonight at the Bell House
Tonight at the Bell House: a big band extravaganza with DJA’s Secret Society, Industrial Jazz Group and Travis Sullivan’s Bjorkestra. Actually, it’s a bonanza, not an extravaganza.
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Filed under: Live , Darcy James Argue's Secret Society, Industrial Jazz Group, Travis Sullivans Bjorkestra
October 15, 2009 • 11:26 am 0
via NYT: Music Review – Evan Parker – At the Stone, High-Energy Improvising With a Shifting Cast
(Photo via the New York Times)
Nice review of Evan Parker’s residency at the Stone. I made it out to see EP with the wonderful Susie Ibarra and was not disappointed. The set was warmhearted and pure and went from maniacal skittering to reflective calm and back again.
This NYT review focuses mostly on the set with Nate Wooley and Chris Corsano, two of my favorite musicians. I am sorry to have missed it.
Instead the emphasis was on real-time reactivity and a shifting locus of tension. Though cast in the shape of a trio, the musicians did much of their strongest work in pairs. Mr. Parker and Mr. Wooley squared off near the end of the third piece, braiding their lines into barbed wire; Mr. Parker and Mr. Corsano often wound up together, tumbling hard but light, making a dizzying lesson of cooperative conflict.
Filed under: Live , Chris Corsano, Evan Parker, Nate Wooley
October 8, 2009 • 8:46 am 0
David S. Ware, Darius Jones Trio, William Parker & The Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra at Abrons Art Center 10/15
From the fine folks at AUM Fidelity some info on an amazing upcoming gig featuring solo David S. Ware (first gig since receiving a successful kidney transplant), Darius Jones celebrating the release of his new debut as a leader, and the always stellar William Parker’s Little Huey Creative Orchestra.
Thursday, October 15, 2009 at Abrons Arts Center, NYC
DAVID S. WARE
DARIUS JONES TRIO
WILLIAM PARKER & THE LITTLE HUEY CREATIVE MUSIC ORCHESTRADavid S. Ware has been gearing up for this performance the whole summer and up to the present moment. The one only time I’ve every seen this Master perform solo, it was a breathtaking transporting ascent. Solo is how DSW wanted to return to the stage following his life being saved. We are also very happy that Laura Mehr, who donated her kidney to David in May, will by flying up from Florida and will be in the audience, hearing David perform live for the first time.
Darius Jones so belongs up in here, oh my god, this young man will be bringing it! Some new pieces will be premiered further to selections from his stunning debut album, Man’ish Boy. Read this amazing just posted review of Darius’ album (writer got it!):
http://popdose.com/jazz-dont-hurt-the-blazing-fire-of-a-manish-boy/William Parker & The Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra will be making their first NYC appearance in over four years; their last show at Vision Festival 2005 was one of the most illuminated, dancing, joy-inducing, next level sets at Vision Fest, ever! They’ll be premiering a new Parker composition entitled, “Subsequent Illumination Inscriptions / Light Cottage” (for George Russell).
OK, the deal is this: AUM is renting the Abrons Arts Center in order to manifest this magnificent triple-bill; we need to sell more tickets in order to make the fee we promised to the musicians (and not be in serious debt this season). So we exhort you to please buy tix and be there if you’re in the NYC metro (and beyond..?) and also spread the good word of this event to all available friends who are into transformative live musical performance by some of the musical masters of the present era. Deal? Dynamite! (See full details below the horizontal line to forward to friends with your own pointed preface; thanks!).
Advance Tickets Now Available: $20- (plus $3.50 surcharge is true, but still a little less than $25- at the door!)
exclusively from Theatermania / OvationTix
online here
and by phone 212.352.3101 or 866.811.4111
Filed under: Live , Darius Jones, David S. Ware, William Parker
