Articles by Derek Taylor
Christian Weber: 3 Suits & a Violin
by Derek Taylor
One of the unwritten idiomatic tenets of a lot of electro-acoustic improv is the sublimation of the individual for the collective cause. In the process, the sounds of itemized and identifiable instruments are often replaced with more implicit textures and shapes. Bassist Christian Weber is adept at this strategy having worked with some of the leading luminaries of amplification-inclusive abstract improvisation like Günter Müller and Norbert Möslang. He's also versed in more jazz-grounded improvisation as evidenced by recent projects with ...
read moreSmalls Records: Sound Stewardship For US Treasures
by Derek Taylor
From trumpeter Bunk Johnson waxing reverential about Buddy Bolden to saxophonist Michael Brecker bowing at the altar of John Coltrane, a strong sense of nostalgia is woven through the history of jazz. The phrase when giants walked the earth is frequently invoked or implied, and the feeling that the best is already behind us bothers musicians and listeners alike. Label owner and producer Luke Kaven adopts this overly reverential tone when he recounts halcyon memories of New York's Smalls club ...
read moreDerek Taylor's Best of 2006
by Derek Taylor
Another year gone and an especially bountiful one for excellent jazz and improvised music. Paring down to a modest number was particularly difficult to accomplish, but here are several handfuls of my favorite releases from 2006.
Thomas Chapin Trio Ride (Playscape) Trio 3 Time of Being (Intakt) Bill & Kenny Barron Quartet Live at Cobi's, Vol. 2 (Steeplechase)
read moreDavid Haney Trio: The Music
by Derek Taylor
David Haney has a talent for concocting recondite tune titles. The five-part Pteradactyl Lunchbox cycle on the pianist's debut CIMP session is only one reflection of a remarkable intellect that revels in both humor and hand-spun absurdism. The disc's title is another, distilling its contents down to a most basic signifier and eschewing any sort of promotional embellishment. Musically, Haney and his A-list colleagues, Julian Priester and Adam Lane, are less difficult to draw a bead on. The program, which ...
read moreLucian Ban & Alex Harding: Tuba Project
by Derek Taylor
Several years have elapsed since Lucian Ban and Alex Harding's last CIMP collaboration, but their artistic rapport has only deepened in the interim. Their latest project carries a signifier that stresses the novelty of the instrumentation. The duo dispenses with string bass completely. In its stead, Bob Stewarts' bulbous, bell-shaped horn sits as co-resident of the bottom end, right alongside Harding's heavyweight sax. Stewart slides naturally into the brass bass role standard to early-20th Century street bands, but also steps ...
read moreRobert Dick & Ursel Schlicht: Photosphere
by Derek Taylor
In this age of shoebox-budget labels and shoebox-sized recording technology, the concert stage has swiftly become the new studio. As a result, home listeners are privy to more live music than ever before. This rhyme-ready pairing of flautist Dick and pianist Schlicht illustrates the immediate benefits of the progress with this performance taped in front of a respectful German audience.
Both musicians are masters of extended techniques on their respective instruments. Dick has been expanding the capabilities of the flute ...
read moreCarnival Skin: Carnival Skin
by Derek Taylor
Strong starts do not always ensure steady recording schedules. Jersey-based guitarist Bruce Eisenbeil experienced just such a surcease after a trio of laudable releases for CIMP. This new collective quintet recording on drummer Klaus Kugel's Nemu imprint puts him back in the record shop racks after a hiatus of several years. The band's name is something of a cipher. Its music is less cryptic--passionately concocted free jazz played with a strong, but never stolid, consensus of purpose.
Veteran ...
read moreSaadet T: Urumchi
by Derek Taylor
The Swiss Intakt imprint has long evinced a stake in stewarding ethnic improvisatory traditions. This new album by Kazakhstani vocalist Saadet Türköz presents one of the most striking distillations of an age-old idiom. Türköz's roots lie in the musical traditions of her forbearers, bred in the windswept steppe lands of what is now Eastern China. As a longtime resident of Zurich, European cultures have also flavored her perspective, but the music on Urumchi closely limns her ethnic heritage to create ...
read moreZentralquartett: 11 Songs - Aus Teutschen Landen
by Derek Taylor
Attention to tradition is too often mistaken as adherence to conservative orthodoxy. In jazz, the culpability often rests at the feet of the neo-conservative crowd, a frequently demonized assembly whose stock rises and falls with regularity, depending on the body of listeners polled.
The four players who form the Zentralquartett have little time for such meta-musical squabbling. They're too busy making music that stretches the malleable and porous boundaries of improvised music to their own highly listenable designs. Like Albert ...
read moreBobby Few & Avram Fefer Quartet: Sanctuary
by Derek Taylor
A misplaced piano, a dropped soprano and an aurally-intrusive air-conditioning system all conspired to derail this CIMP session by the jointly-led Few-Fefer Quartet. Fortunately, cool heads prevailed and the music persevered. The co-leaders' associations go back to the mid-1990s in Paris, though audio evidence of their collaborations proved slow in surfacing. Boxholder stepped into fill the gap, releasing a small cache of albums, but this date marks the duo's debut with conventional jazz quartet instrumentation. Coincidentally, it's also Fefer's first ...
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