Jazz Articles

Punctual Trio: Grammar

by Mark Corroto
November 15, 2005

Is there a mode (maybe mood, posture, or circumstance) in which you are required to set yourself in order to appreciate (maybe absorb) freely improvised music? If you are attending a live show, the location, smells, company, and certainly the visual aspects of the show contribute to your “experience." When you are merely listening to a purchased recording, what are the rules for your listening experience?

Do you meditate in a quiet room? Can you listen to it ...

Blue Collar: _ is an Apparition

by Ty Cumbie
February 28, 2005

Blue Collar's oddly titled debut recording is a demonstration of how to avoid the ordinary. The musicians, all virtuosos, eschew every convention of music here, opting for displays of “extended technique"? or inspired noisemaking. Not until track five do the excellent brass players deign to play actual notes. They do grunt, huff, puff, squeal and produce just about every other possible sound. Tatsuya Nakatani complies and complements, pulling from a voluminous bag of percussive textural effects. _ ...

Greg Kelley: If I Never Meet You In This Life, Let Me feel The Lack

by Glenn Astarita
February 4, 2003

Trumpeter Greg Kelley is known for his modernistic excursions within various improvisational circles. With this solo outing, the artist does not rummage through anything that adheres to the straight, narrow or even free-jazz zones. This, my friends is an entirely different ball of wax. Here, Kelley explores the guts of his horn via multiphonics, upper register hissing sounds and otherworldly tonalities. Curiously strange yet undeniably fascinating, Kelley intermixes dark, ambient tones with mechanistic phrasings. At times, he conjures up effects ...