Articles by Clifford Allen
Byard Lancaster: From A Love Supreme to The Sex Machine
by Clifford Allen
[ Editor's Note: This 2005 article was reprinted in memory of Byard Lancaster who died on August 23, 2012. ] “From A Love Supreme to The Sex Machine" is reedman Byard Lancaster's personal aesthetic mantra, something that recalls the theme of the Charles Moffett tune “Avant-garde Got Soul Too." Free jazz and creative improvisation historically have not often been viewed as the music of the people, but the idea behind the term 'avant-garde' is ...
read moreJoe McPhee: A Band Apart
by Clifford Allen
You might expect a musician who has been a steady figure on the creative improvising scene for nearly 45 years to have some variance in their discography and a diverse range of projects and band concepts. Reedman (and sometime pocket trumpeter) Joe McPhee's vast number of recordings and ensembles speak to that impulse, but the curious thing is that there doesn't seem to be a preferred instrumental context for his playing--not really. McPhee's cultish free-funk sides of ...
read moreWeasel Walter / Mary Halvorson / Peter Evans: Electric Fruit
by Clifford Allen
Weasel Walter / Mary Halvorson / Peter EvansElectric FruitThirsty Ear2011 Percussionist and improviser Weasel Walter often uses the term “face rip" to describe a particularly intense musical experience. In improvised music, you often don't get a “blood and guts" approach; free jazz, in many instances, has been squeezed to the point that to remain relevant, it must often have structured erudition applied to it. That's understandable, of course--rarely can a musician ...
read moreWadada Leo Smith / Ed Blackwell: The Blue Mountain's Sun Drummer
by Clifford Allen
Since the Ornette Coleman Quartet's The Shape of Jazz to Come (Atlantic, 1959), the trumpet's historical bar in creative music has been set in great part by Don Cherry. Not that Cherry's way was the only way and, in fact, the work of Bill Dixon, Donald Ayler, Lester Bowie, and a few others certainly paved significant directions for the instrument's place and growth in the ensuing decades. But Cherry, even as his language was a condensed, rambunctious and decidedly expansive ...
read moreTatsuya Nakatani: Essences and Abiogenesis
by Clifford Allen
What is improvised music without visuality? While the music of improvising composers can be felt and picked apart aurally, the physical act of making music in an un- preconceived setting is something rather extraordinary and easily lost through the audible distance of a recording. It's not just the dynamic, theatrical high jinks of a player like percussionist Han Bennink or ferociously deft fiddling of bassist Barry Guy (with his table of accoutrements at the ready). That visualness can be in ...
read moreDecoy and Joe McPhee: Oto
by Clifford Allen
Decoy and Joe McPheeOtoBo'Weavil2010 The existence of a free-improvising organ trio, though uncommon even in 2010, shouldn't be all that surprising and, indeed, you might be prompted to ask what took so long. Certainly, figures like Larry Young and John Patton stretched the boundaries of organ-jazz in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and composer / pianist / polymath Sun Ra employed the Hammond organ in some of his ensembles (though perhaps ...
read moreUne, Deux, Trois: Solo, Duo and Trio Improvisation from Europe
by Clifford Allen
At one point in time, the term “European Improvisation" meant something quite specific, carrying with it an air of otherness to American jazz audiences, solidarity to European jazz audiences, and presented rarified and sometimes unruly music based on folk, classical and open forms. In the ensuing decades, the world has grown a bit smaller, and intercontinental meetings and aesthetic mergers are commonplace, so much so that “European Improvisation" doesn't quite mean what it once did. Certainly, the history remains and ...
read moreRag, Saddle and All: Curlew and George Cartwright / Davu Seru
by Clifford Allen
Saxophonist and composer George Cartwright might not be an oft-repeated name in creative improvised music, but he should garner a weighted whistle whenever he does crop up. Raised in Mississippi and now calling Minneapolis home, Cartwright was co-leader of the seminal New York post-RIO/squirrely downtown jazz ensemble Curlew, alongside cellist Tom Cora, throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s. In 2010, Curlew barely registers a blip when people talk about the “Downtown" scene, but with such luminaries as ...
read moreMuhammad Ali: From a Family of Percussionists
by Clifford Allen
Though not as well known as his brother, drummer Rashied Ali (1935-2009), Muhammad Ali spent the 1970s as one of the busiest drummers in free jazz, primarily working in a cooperative Paris-based quartet with saxophonist Frank Wright, pianist Bobby Few and bassist Alan Silva, and known as the Center of the World Quartet. Born in Philadelphia in 1936 as Raymond Patterson, Ali has worked with many of the preeminent names in the jazz avant-garde, including saxophonists John Coltrane, Albert Ayler, ...
read moreDavid Haney: Blue Flint Girl and Live from Yoshi's
by Clifford Allen
David Haney TrioBlue Flint GirlCIMP2009 The David Haney CollectiveLive from Yoshi'sCadence Jazz Records2009 The center of the jazz world is still considered to be Gotham, even though one can pretty much do whatever one wants musically in any location (witness the recent relocation of Norwegian bassist Ingebrigt Haker Flaten to Austin, Texas). The West ...
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