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Mars Williams: An Ayler Xmas Vol. 4: Chicago vs. NYC
by Mark Corroto
For more than a decade, Mars Williams has been making (to borrow a phrase) Christmas music great again. He does so by exchanging the saccharine for the sublime, intersecting holiday classics with the music of Albert Ayler. Born out of his Chicago Ayler repertory band which can be heard on Witches And Devils At The Empty Bottle</em> (Knitting Factory Records, 2000), Williams applied the Gospel and spiritual nature of Ayler's methodology to Xmas music. While the eponymously titled first volume ...
Continue ReadingBilly Mintz: Ugly Beautiful
by David A. Orthmann
Consisting of seventeen tracks spanning over two hours of playing time, Ugly Beautiful is a large, sprawling, wise, unflinchingly honest, powerful work of art. Billy Mintz's third recording as a leader--all of which were made in the most recent decade of a fifty-year plus career--stubbornly refuses to conform to stylistic boundaries and gleefully defies expectations of any kind. The record demands to be taken on its own terms. Trying to pin labels or anticipate the course of almost any track ...
Continue ReadingBilly Mintz: Ugly Beautiful
by Dan McClenaghan
Drummer/composer Billy Mintz has a long career of enhancing the music of others with his percussive artistry, everyone from saxophonist Lee Konitz to pianist Hal Galper, to clarinet master Perry Robinson. His own discography as a leader is small, with frequent revisitations of a handful of original compositions that are as distinctive and as worthy of the multiple version approach as the music of Thelonious Monk. He writes small masterpieces and turns his ensembles loose on them, resulting in a ...
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