Jazz Articles
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Duck Baker: Breakdown Lane: Free Solos & Duos 1976-1998
by Mark Corroto
This release is a great introduction to the music of Duck Baker and, maybe more importantly, a reminder of why the musician's sound is so vital. Baker, a finger-style acoustic guitarist, is a folk music omnivore. Besides Scottish and Irish fiddle music, he is at home with bebop, blues, free jazz and free improvisation. Let that last sentence sink in for a minute. Baker's folk can absorb, digest and effortlessly function in all genres. He released the stunningly beautiful covers ...
Continue ReadingMatthew Shipp: New Concepts in Piano Trio Jazz
by Mark Corroto
Jazz fans are much like baseball geeks; they collect facts and statistics. The baseball fan will know a player's numbers such as on base percentage, at bats, home runs and stolen bases, whereas the jazz fan, maybe better said the jazz fanatic, will note recording dates and lineups, titles, releases and recording engineers. The baseball fan will utilize those statistics to predict what a player will do in a clutch situation as in the bottom of the ninth with two ...
Continue ReadingMatthew Shipp Trio: New Concepts in Piano Trio Jazz
by Karl Ackermann
Matthew Shipp with bassist Michael Bisio and drummer Newman Taylor Baker, issue their fifth album as the most enduring of Shipp's various trios. New Concepts in Piano Trio Jazz is another vehicle for the pianist/composer in which to express his singular, intricate vision. The perpetual sea-change artist believes that this album is a substantial leap ahead of the highly regarded World Construct (ESP Disk, 2022). At the very least, New Concepts in Piano Trio Jazz allows Shipp to move his ...
Continue ReadingPaul R. Harding / Michael Bisio / Juma Sultan: They Tried to Kill Me Yesterday
by Mark Corroto
When we speak of poetry and music, should we ask the chicken and the egg question? As in, which came first? Certainly there was music before spoken word, for imitations of bird calls and other nature sounds will have predated language. So, it's settled, right? Maybe, but not so fast. They Tried to Kill Me Yesterday raises an even more complex inquiry that goes beyond the avian and the ovum. Enter poet Paul R. Harding. His early years ...
Continue ReadingJohn Blum: Nine Rivers
by Mark Corroto
Pianist John Blum's solo Nine Rivers is not so much a hit as it is a HIIT. His music is and has consistently been, to borrow a term from sports, a HIIT workout. HIIT or High Intensity Interval Training is a series of repeated all-out efforts with a brief recover time in between each effort. This recording from the 2013 Crosscurrent Festival in Pescara, Italy confirms Blum's approach as an anaerobic endeavor. His intensity only recovers in the spaces between ...
Continue ReadingMatthew Shipp Trio: Circular Temple
by Mike Jurkovic
On a good day it is strenuous to stay current with pianist Matthew Shipp's imposing and voluminous output. On an even better day it is a fool's hardy errand to say the least. Now with the planned re-issuing of some of his great early deconstructions of musical thought and theory, starting here with 1990's daringly incongruous yet hypnotically accessible, Circular Temple, keeping up just got a whole lot harder. With William Parker on bass and Whit Dickey on ...
Continue ReadingIvo Perelman: Fruition
by Hrayr Attarian
To say that saxophonist Ivo Perelman and pianist Matthew Shipp have seamless synergy is an understatement. After a dozen and a half improvised duet albums the two men form a single creative entity, one that is multifaceted, dynamic and crackles with spontaneity. Fruition, their eighteenth, is a stimulating set of eleven interlinked tracks which has a melancholic undercurrent and a fluid poetry. Opening with a bluesy tenor break, “Nine," which also starts off the recording, transforms into an ...
Continue ReadingIvo Perelman / Matthew Shipp: Fruition
by Mark Corroto
After 26 years years of recording in duo together, is it possible now to decode the music of Ivo Perelman and Matthew Shipp? The word “decode" is used here because their efforts, nearly all freely improvised, are a musical language the two musicians have created themselves. Like the Steve Lacy/Mal Waldron duos, their sound together is instantly recognizable. In contrast though, where Lacy and Waldron often began with the familiar music of Thelonious Monk, the Brazilian-born Perelman and the American ...
Continue ReadingWeFreeStrings: Love In The Form Of Sacred Outrage
by Mark Corroto
History does repeat itself, violist Melanie Dyer draws from the same well of inspiration as Max Roach's We Insist! Max Roach's Freedom Now Suite (Candid, 1961). Maybe better put, history reveals Martin Luther King's arc of the moral universe has only bent a few degrees in the past sixty years. With Love In The Form Of Sacred Outrage, the ensemble WeFreeStrings follows up their debut Fulfillment (self released, 2018). Dyer, a classically trained violist, found inspiration in the music ...
Continue ReadingMatthew Shipp Trio: World Construct
by Karl Ackermann
Throughout his long and prolific career, Matthew Shipp has presented several different and impressive trio formations. Among the featured members have been bassists William Parker, and Joe Morris, and drummers Guillermo E. Brown, Whit Dickey, and Susie Ibarra. In 2015, two other premier players, bassist Michael Bisio, and drummer Newman Taylor Baker stepped in as the rhythm section on The Conduct of Jazz (Thirsty Ear). Their fourth album as a unit, World Construct makes the group the most enduring of ...
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