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Scurvy: Fracture
by Nick Millevoi
It is no news that prog rock is thriving. There is a healthy scene of underground bands that embrace heavy riffing and odd-meters, and run them through a variety of experiments. New York saxophonist Johnny Butler has gotten in on it too, and presents his unique version with Fracture, by his quintet, Scurvy. With Scurvy, Butler makes an avant-garde jazz attack on prog rock, where heavy vamps and extreme feedback abound to make for a noisy assault. Butler ...
Continue Reading...November 2010
by Mr. P.C.
Dear Mr. P.C.: If I'm carpooling to a gig and we split the gas, should the guy with a day job pay more? Chuck, Seattle
Dear Chuck:I know where you're coming from. You dream of a society--like I do--where each gives according to his or her means. Naturally, there should be a gigging equivalent, right? But let's make sure it's truly fair...First of all, consider your respective lifestyles: You've got music running ... Continue Reading...Bob Lark and Friends: Cathy's Song
by Jack Bowers
Trumpeter Bob Lark's “friends," on his fourth album for Jazzed Media Records, include alto saxophonist Phil Woods (two tracks), pianist Jim McNeely and bassist Rufus Reid (four apiece). There's a six-member string section on three numbers, on which Lark's flugelhorn is the only horn, while the selections with McNeely and Reid are scored for trio with Lark on flugel for three, and muted trumpet on “Green Dolphin Street," a conspicuous salute to Miles Davis on which Lark briefly bends the ...
Continue Reading...Pat Metheny: Orchestrion Tour, Binghamton University October 19, 2010
by CJ Shearn
Pat MethenyAnderson Center for the Performing Arts, Osterhout Theater, Binghamton UniversityBinghamton, New YorkOctober 19, 2010 Guitarist Pat Metheny's mastery of the intricacies of his Orchestrion was on dazzling display Tuesday evening, October 19, 2010, at the Anderson Center for the Performing Arts, Osterhout Theater, on the campus of Binghamton University in Binghamton, New York. The concert was a homecoming of sorts, as the guitarist returned to the upstate New York town after a decade ...
Continue Reading...Various Artists: Twenty Centuries of Stony Sleep
by John Kelman
Since releasing its first album, Supersilent's groundbreaking 1--3 (1998), Rune Grammofon has evolved into one of Norway's most consistently intrepid and unfettered labels. With every passing year, it's stylistic purview--largely focusing on Norwegian artists--expands just that extra bit further, with music ranging from the sublime beauty of In the Country's debut, This Was the Pace of My Heartbeat (2005), to the skewed techno-pop of Susanna and the Magical Orchestra's 3 (2009). For over twelve years, label head Rune Kristoffersen has ...
Continue Reading...Natalie John: Unveiled
by C. Michael Bailey
Listening to Natalie John's Unveiled is a jarring, almost alarming experience. It is comparable to a first listen to Tony William's Emergency (Polydor, 1969), or Miles Davis on the verge, with his “Lost Quintet" (Chick Corea, Dave Holland, Jack DeJohnette, and Wayne Shorter), on the recently uncovered It's About That Time (Columbia, 2001). Those recordings presented music that was in-your-face on the blade edge of drastic change . A similar, though more diffuse trend is happening today in jazz vocals, ...
Continue Reading...Joe McPhee / Ingebrigt Haker Flaten: Blue Chicago Blues
by Mark Corroto
The pairing of saxophonist Joe McPhee and bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten seemed inevitable. Both the US-born McPhee and Norwegian Håker Flaten have worked in the same circle of players for years. The Ken Vandermark (Chicago) and Mats Gustafsson (Swedish) connections have made their services valued in varying bands.This meeting, in Chicago 2007, is a fine bookend to McPhee's duo recording Tomorrow Came Today (Smalltown Superjazz, 2009) with Håker Flaten's longtime collaborator in tThe Thing, drummer Paal Nilssen-Love. Connoisseurs ...
Continue Reading...John Fedchock New York Sextet: Live at the Red Sea Jazz Festival
by Raul d'Gama Rose
There is a rugged elegance in the kinetic energy that propels the music played by John Fedchock's New York Sextet. The performances on Live at the Red Sea Music Festival hark back to the hard driving live bebop performances that powered on in the best venues during the '50s and '60s. This does not mean that Fedchock's music is patently imitative; rather it is wildly inventive, as it pays tribute to one of the most enduring metaphors of jazz. Not ...
Continue Reading...Take Five With Boris Kozlov
by AAJ Staff
Meet Boris Kozlov: Currently serving as a bassist, arranger and Musical Director for the Mingus Big Band, Mingus Dynasty and The Orchestra, as well as leading his own projects, he has also been a first-call bassist for such important jazz acts as Michael Brecker, John Blake, Ray Barretto's New World Spirit, Lew Tabackin, David Kikoski, Alex Sipiagin, Jean-Michel Pilc, and many others. Boris Kozlov was born in Moscow,USSR on December 5, 1967. Having a chance to go to ...
Continue Reading...Musical Talent Is (Now and Then) All in the Family
by Jack Bowers
The induction of almost the entire Marsalis family (father Ellis, piano, and sons Wynton, trumpet; Branford, saxophones; Delfeayo, trombone; and Jason, drums) set me to thinking about how musical talent sometimes runs in families. In the pop world, almost everyone knows about the Jacksons, the Kings, the Osmonds and others. The same is true in jazz, in which a few families manifest extraordinary musical aptitude, well beyond what the law of averages would presume. Is it nature, nurture or some ...
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