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Jazz Articles about Idris Ackamoor
Idris Ackamoor’s Afrofuturist Theater of Sound
by Steven Roby
The plan is not a recital. It is a happening--part theater, part ritual, part dance-floor communion--led by a saxophonist who has spent five decades making music that refuses to sit still. “I call myself an artistic being," Idris Ackamoor says, describing the continuum that stretches from his horn and piano to the page and back again. “My apartment has become my home studio. I use the piano, my saxophone, and voice as instruments to create music... Sometimes I might be ...
Continue ReadingIdris Ackamoor: Afro Futuristic Dreams
by Angelo Leonardi
Uno dei meriti dell'Afrofuturismo (e delle sue diramazioni musicali che includono Afrobeat, Spiritual jazz ed altro) è quello d'aver fatto conoscere, oltre i confini delle comunità afroamericane, artisti come Idris Ackamoor, leader da cinquant'anni del collettivo Pyramids. Com'è noto Chicago, San Francisco e Londra sono i poli di produzione musicale del movimento ed è indicativo ritrovare questi luoghi nel percorso biografico di Ackamoor che parte da Chicago, transita a Parigi (dove nel 1972 fonda The Pyramids, prima ...
Continue ReadingIdris Ackamoor & The Pyramids: Afro Futuristic Dreams
by Chris May
Idris Ackamoor paints on a big canvas, in vivid colours. Listening to the 2023 episode of his multi-decade Afrofuturist odyssey, there are times when he and The Pyramids stir memories of Fela Kuti's Afrika 70 and Egypt 80 bands. At other times, it is Sun Ra's Arkestra. Next up could be an unplugged Funkadelic. And there are moments, when Ackamoor's tenor saxophone engages with Sandra Poindexter's violin, that one is reminded of Frank Lowe's partnership with Billy Bang.
Continue ReadingFunkwrench Blues: Soundtrack For A Film Without Pictures
by Chris May
Once upon a time it was hard to walk into an arthouse cinema without bumping into a jazz soundtrack. Miles Davis' for Louis Malle's Ascenseur Pour L'échafaud (1958), Charles Mingus' for John Cassavetes' Shadows (1959), Krzysztof Komeda's for Roman Polanski's Knife In The Water (1962) were among a legion of similarly inclined endeavours. But all that was a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. In the 2020s, if you want to hear a freshly ...
Continue ReadingIdris Ackamoor, Jasper Hoiby, Die Hochstapler & Monder/Malaby/Rainey
by Maurice Hogue
A band that has endured since the 70s when they were one of the first American bands to tour Africa, Idris Ackamoor & the Pyramids, have just re-released some of that early music, and we dig into that, plus new music from Germany's Die Hochstapler, Toronto's Luis Deniz, bassist Nicolas Ojeda from Buenos Aires & Jasper Hoiby from England with his Planet B, and a track from Ben Monder, Tony Malaby and Tom Rainey recorded during a live performance in ...
Continue ReadingOn the Road With Idris Ackamoor & The Pyramids
by Gioele Pagliaccia
The first time I met Idris Ackamoor was inside of Centro Stabile di Cultura on a Sunday afternoon in November 2018. The organizers at this historical venue in San Vito di Leguzzano, a small village half hour from Vicenza surrounded by foundries and wheat fields, asked me if I could lend my Ludwig Drums to the drummer playing in The Pyramids at the time; as a reward I would watch the show for free and get to meet the band. ...
Continue ReadingIdris Ackamoor & The Pyramids: Shaman!
by Chris May
California-based tenor saxophonist and composer Idris Ackamoor, who has one foot in magical realism and the other in the politicised school of spiritual-jazz, relaunched his 1970s band the Pyramids in 2015. A year later, the group released the acclaimed We Be All Africans, which was followed in 2018 by the equally noteworthy An Angel Fell (both on Strut). Shaman! is the revived Pyramids' third winner in a row. It is also the most ambitious album in Ackamoor's ...
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