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Maria Schneider Orchestra: Data Lords
by Jerome Wilson
Composer Maria Schneider has long been writing and speaking about the dangers of the omnipresent digital universe, intellectual property theft, gathering and manipulation of personal data by big tech companies, the unchecked proliferation of false and misleading material, and so on. Those concerns form the basis of her latest musical project, Data Lords, a 2 CD set examining the conflicting realities of the digital and real worlds. The two CDs are labeled “The Digital World" and “Our Natural ...
Continue ReadingMaria Schneider: Data Lords
by Doug Hall
Maria Schneider, jazz pianist, orchestral composer and 2019 NEA Jazz Master, has just released a new double-album, Data Lords (artistShare, 2020), which creates poignant musical imagery about our data-driven world. Schneider, who has been an active advocate for musicians' rights and copyright, has followed-on this impact, citing “big data" companies as manipulators of music, culture and privacy. This collection of uniquely and emotionally rendered original compositions addresses the conflicting relationships between the digital and natural worlds, featuring Schneider's orchestra of ...
Continue ReadingMaria Schneider Orchestra: Data Lords
by Karl Ackermann
The skillfully designed cover art tells part of the story; a leaf--half as nature intended--the remainder, a circuit board doppelganger. The pastoral soundscapes associated with the music of Grammy-winning composer/bandleader Maria Schneider belie her activist alter-ego. An outspoken critic of copyright protections, prejudicial revenue schemes and the abuses of “big data," Schneider has authored op-eds and testified before the US Congress. She ventures onto unfamiliar terrain, coalescing her passions on a masterwork double album, Data Lords. The two ...
Continue ReadingCharles Pillow Ensemble: Chamber Jazz
by Jack Bowers
Chamber Jazz, alto saxophonist Charles Pillow's eighth recording as leader of his ensemble, is a generally sedate but remarkably engaging series of tone poems that combine contemporary jazz with elements of classical music to produce a hybrid that underlines what is most harmonious and charming in each genre. Chamber Jazz is what it says, and chamber jazz is what it is. For comparison's sake, think of the ensemble as the Modern Jazz Quartet times five. True, there is no John ...
Continue ReadingDenise Mangiardi: Brown Book
by Jerome Wilson
Denise Mangiardi dwells in two musical worlds, as both a jazz singer and an accomplished classical composer. She puts all her talents to good use on this CD, singing a collection of self-written ballads, folk songs and torch songs, over her own haunting arrangements. Mangiardi's moving string-writing appears on the two brief “Soundscape" instrumentals which bookend the album, as well as on the songs “The Exchange," “Waves," and “My Beauty"--which is really Thelonious Monk's “Ugly Beauty" with lyrics ...
Continue ReadingEnrique Haneine: Unlayered
by Mike Jurkovic
Whether he leads from his drummer's stool or his the piano bench, drummer/composer/multi-instrumentalist Enrique Haneine is a mischievous creator, assembling different blocks to form other different blocks, stacking, unstacking, widening the fall zone with each new release. It's an aesthetic that keeps you jumping hoops but, most importantly, listening hard to the logic employed. But Haneine insists we should not be content to just sit and listen. Haneine will walk point but you have to follow his lead ...
Continue ReadingJay Anderson: Deepscape
by Jerome Wilson
Bassist Jay Anderson has been a sideman for many musicians including Michael Brecker, Lee Konitz, Kenny Wheeler and Maria Schneider, but he hasn't led a recording session since the 90s.' He makes up for lost time here with a varied set of music that sometimes follows standard jazz orthodoxy and sometimes goes its own fascinating way. Two of his treatments are particularly surprising. He turns Morton Feldman's solemn “Rothko Chapel" into haunting exotica. His bowed bass and Billy ...
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