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Jack DeJohnette's Directions: New Rags
by John Kelman
Jack DeJohnette's DirectionsNew RagsECM Records1977 Today's Rediscovery is an album that, despite never being released officially on CD, is a relatively regular play chez Kelman, getting spun at least a couple times every year. New Rags (ECM, 1977), the third and, sadly, final recording by drummer Jack DeJohnette's Directions group, pares down the quintet of its second album and ECM debut, Untitled, to a quartet. Cosmic Chicken's bassist, Peter Warren, was replaced by Mike Richmond ...
Continue ReadingJack DeJohnette: Made in Chicago
by Karl Ackermann
At one point on Made In Chicago, drummer--and occasional pianist--Jack DeJohnette announces, “We'd like to do something spontaneous for you." By then, spontaneity is a foregone conclusion. With a discography that includes almost two-hundred recordings, DeJohnette is best known among more casual listeners as one third of pianist Keith Jarrett's long-time trio. Significant though the role has been, it hardly represents the scope of his career or his musical proclivities. In 1965, along a group of local Chicago musicians and ...
Continue ReadingJack DeJohnette: Made in Chicago
by Giuseppe Segala
Periodicamente, seppure con rara frequenza, i protagonisti delle ricerche e dei fermenti musicali legati alla città di Chicago negli anni Sessanta si ritrovano e incrociano di nuovo i propri strumenti. Quando la Experimental Band di Muhal Richard Abrams rappresentò un momento catalizzatore di giovani talenti voraci di musica e pronti all'esplorazione, sfociata poi nella meravigliosa esperienza della AACM, la Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. Persone come Joseph Jarman e Roscoe Mitchell, che stimolati da maestri lungimiranti come Richard ...
Continue ReadingMiles at the Fillmore - Miles Davis 1970: The Bootleg Series Vol. 3
by Ian Patterson
It would have been inconceivable for Miles Davis in his post-sabbatical, 1980s reincarnation to have been billed as “an extra added attraction" on any festival or concert hall billing, but that's how it was when the trumpeter--already a legend--played his first ever gigs at the Filmore East, supporting Neil Young & Crazy Horse and the Steve Miller Band in March 1970. The initiative to stage Davis at the hallowed rock venue came from CBS President Clive Davis, no doubt with ...
Continue ReadingMiles Davis: Miles at the Fillmore - Miles Davis 1970: The Bootleg Series Vol. 3
by Doug Collette
Intensely intoxicating as much as it is wholly hypnotic, Miles Davis Live at the Fillmore becomes increasingly so through the course of its four compact discs. More than doubling the playing time of the original four-sided vinyl release, The Bootleg Series Vol. 3 posits an argument the band(s) of this era were among the finest ever led by the man with the horn. If that sounds hyperbolic, it's difficult not to rhapsodize about this archive series in general ...
Continue ReadingMiles at the Fillmore - Miles Davis 1970: The Bootleg Series Vol. 3
by Maurizio Comandini
Finalmente la Sony Legacy pubblica ufficialmente e integralmente i quattro concerti del gruppo di Miles Davis al Fillmore East, mitico teatro posto più o meno all'incrocio fra la Sesta Strada Est e la Seconda Avenue a New York, nell'East Village. Era la metà del mese di giugno del 1970, il capolavoro Bitches Brew era stato pubblicato da pochi mesi e il gruppo era in forma straordinaria, a cominciare dal leader. In realtà, questi concerti erano stati immediatamente ...
Continue ReadingMiles at the Fillmore - Miles Davis 1970: The Bootleg Series Vol. 3
by John Kelman
By the time Bitches Brew (Columbia) was released in April, 1970—and despite receiving a 5-star review in Downbeat Magazine—trumpeter Miles Davis was already under fire from mainstream jazz critics as having “sold out," despite the densely constructed, improvisationally unfettered music being as unapproachable to an audience looking for accessible music as anything he'd done with his increasingly liberated second great quintet of the 1960s. Sure, there were rock rhythms and, perhaps more disturbingly to the delicate ears of its detractors, ...
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