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David Murray: Seriana Promethea
by John Sharpe
It's over 45 years since David Murray blew into the Lower East Side lofts from California. For a while he was near ubiquitous and amassed a discography to match. While releases have become less prolific in the decades since, he remains restlessly active, and Seriana Promethea by his Brave New World Trio ranks alongside his best. With a saxophone style strung between the twin poles of the New Thing of Albert Ayler and the earlier practices of Coleman Hawkins and ...
Continue ReadingDavid Murray, Brad Jones, Hamid Drake: Brand New World Trio
by Mark Corroto
David Murray's Brave New World Trio is certainly a dream team of modern jazz. The only explanation for why the saxophonist, bassist Brad Jones and drummer Hamid Drake have not toured and recorded together in the past is that each musician is in high demand as leader or sideman. It took a worldwide pandemic, with each player's lockdown location being proximate to the others, for a performance and this recording to happen. While not ready to thank the virus for ...
Continue ReadingGeorge Freeman: Everybody Say Yeah!
by Mark Corroto
It took a long time (much too long) for listeners to recognize the brilliance that was Chicago saxophonist Fred Anderson. The New York-centric jazz cognoscenti have often overlooked talent that comes from Chicago, and artists were often drawn to The Big Apple to seek the recognition they deserved. Beginning in the '90s, though, the focal point of creative music shifted to Chicago and veteran musicians such as Von Freeman, Fred Anderson, and Harrison Bankhead, plus (then) younger talents, Ken Vandermark, ...
Continue ReadingWilliam Parker: Migration of Silence Into and Out of the Tone World
by Karl Ackermann
If multi-instrumentalist/composer William Parker's ten-CD Migration Of Silence Into And Out Of The Tone World suggests a cohesive, high concept plan, it is something more. The beautifully packaged clamshell box set is comprised of mutually exclusive projects—one dating back ten years—with some common themes. There is an overall dedication of the music to “all people of the world who are searching for freedom...." Pandemic downtime resulted in Parker's accumulating enough material for many of these albums. Viewed as a whole, ...
Continue ReadingIrene Schweizer / Hamid Drake: Celebration
by Troy Dostert
If John Coltrane was the dominant figure behind the rise of Impulse Records in the 1960s, and Wayne Shorter played a similar role for Blue Note in the same decade, one could argue that pianist Irène Schweizer has placed her stamp upon Intakt Records. Certainly the Swiss avant-garde label has embraced that relationship, as aside from a handful of releases on FMP, Intakt has been Schweizer's exclusive home since the 1980s, with dozens of releases over the years documenting her ...
Continue ReadingIrene Schweizer / Hamid Drake: Celebration
by Dan McClenaghan
Celebration is a walloping storm of free jazz, rolling in on a hard-hitting percussion mode. Pianist Irene Schweizer holds down the piano chair, Hamid Drake is behind the drum kit. The pair has played and recorded together often. The opener, “A Former Dialogue," introduces us to a drum thunder and a splattering of fat piano-crafted raindrops. Schweizer's piano approach sounds as if it is an attack full of elbows and knees, making madcap, Cecil Taylor-like pandemonium interspersed with moments of ...
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