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Archie Shepp & Jason Moran: Let My People Go
by Mark Corroto
Now an octogenarian, Archie Shepp's name is quite often spoken in the same sentence as that of John Coltrane. Shepp was born a decade after Trane and is associated with the great one's 'New Thing' and 'Fire Music.' His music though, post-Ascension (Impulse!, 1965), might be better equated to that of Billie Holiday, who was born, incidentally, a decade before Coltrane. Just as Holiday presented her music (especially in the later years) in a frank, warts-and-all manner, Shepp has for ...
Continue ReadingRon Miles: Rainbow Sign
by Paul Rauch
Denver-based cornetist Ron Miles seemed to turn an important creative corner with the release of his last album, I Am a Man (Yellowbird, 2017). With a stellar band in tow, he seemed to have gathered the elements to produce something very original. This was not an easy task, considering the ardent individuality represented by the session's participants. Indeed, guitarist Bill Frisell, pianist Jason Moran, drummer Brian Blade and bassist Thomas Morgan had all made major impressions on the landscape of ...
Continue ReadingRon Miles: Rainbow Sign
by Ian Patterson
The symbolism of the rainbow varies from one culture to the next, and not all interpretations are positive, but the notion of the rainbow as a pathway between this life and the afterlife is perhaps the most pertinent for Ron Miles. Rainbow Sign, the Blue Note debut of the Colorado-based cornetist, was mostly written as his father was passing away in the summer of 2018, so it is no surprise that the music has a reflective, poignant quality. Reunited with ...
Continue ReadingSteph Richards: Supersense
by Mike Jurkovic
With all the threatening weirdness and desperate surrealism that has become life in the USA, it makes absolute sense that Supersense, daring trumpeter/composer Steph Richards' third full length album, starts out like an encroaching invasion of ants, or microbes, or a disruptive, divisive, myopic political movement. As with such forward seeking rebels as Henry Threadgill, Anthony Braxton, David Byrne, Laurie Anderson and Yoko Ono, Richards' modus operandi is chiseled in the very foundations of the music itself. Never ...
Continue ReadingJason Moran: Promoting the Freedom Principles
by Leo Sidran
Pianist, composer, conceptual artist Jason Moran on truth versus passion, promoting the “Freedom Principles," America's unfortunate way of forgetting the past, when innovation becomes rhetoric, what it means for African American musicians to move freely “from the stage to the table," the power dynamic in choosing repertoire, coming up in Houston among a generation of jazz innovators (including Robert Glasper and Eric Harland), what we still have to learn from Louis Armstrong, the common threat from Thelonious Monk to KRS-1, ...
Continue ReadingJason Moran and the Bandwagon at Cologne Philharmonie
by Phillip Woolever
Jason Moran and the Bandwagon Cologne Philharmonie Cologne, Germany November 22, 2019 As the sprawling local Christmas markets prepared for a holiday tourist onslaught, Jason Moran and the Bandwagon presented masterful skills transcending any singular celebration. The concert was part of the trio's celebratory 20-year anniversary tour and there was indeed much to cheer. Moran made a few humorously accurate observations about the musicians gaining both instinctual familiarity and unpredictable quirks that were apparent ...
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