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Jason Stein: Anchors
by Giuseppe Segala
Il clarinetto basso vanta nel jazz contemporaneo una rosa di solisti eccellenti, a partire da Eric Dolphy, che ha letteralmente inventato un modo di interpretare lo strumento, di valorizzarne colori e incisività espressiva. Però la sua frequentazione, con lo stesso Dolphy e con personalità quali Michel Portal, John Surman, Vinny Golia, Marty Ehrlich, Don Byron, si è sempre affiancata ad altri strumenti, alla ricerca di una duttilità tipica degli esploratori di tavolozze timbriche aperte e audaci. Tra i rari musicisti ...
Continue ReadingJason Stein: Anchors
by Jerome Wilson
Six years after releasing his previous album, bass clarinetist Jason Stein returns with a new trio recording that goes outside the realm of conventional jazz. He has been undergoing healing therapy in those six years to combat physical injury and this album is inspired by that process. Aided by bassist Joshua Abrams and drummer Gerald Cleaver, Stein constructs trio music that is both meditative and explosive, with the three musicians tightly focused on their collective sound. Stein's playing ...
Continue ReadingRempis / Adasiewicz / Abrams / Damon: Propulsion
by Mark Corroto
Do you ever imagine yourself, while listening to an album from the Chicago creative scene, as a detective in one of those murder mystery movies? The investigator has assembled a wall with a string running from the crime scene photos and victims to all the accused. They do so to visualize the connections between suspects. The same process is helpful with Chicago musicians. Saxophonist Dave Rempis had curated nearly a thousand Thursday night performances at Elastic Arts in Chicago between ...
Continue ReadingJason Stein: Anchors
by Mark Corroto
Jason Stein would never in a million years characterize Anchors as his variation of A Love Supreme (Impulse!, 1965). But a comparison can be made. John Coltrane's quartet recording was the most personal and profound statement of his career. The same can be said for Stein and Anchors. He had taken time off from recording and performing due to some chronic pain that plagued him. Stein set about diving deeply into the body, studying massage, specifically trigger point therapy, practicing ...
Continue ReadingNatural Information Society: Since Time is Gravity
by Danen Jobe
The concept of trance is one of the oldest in the world. Many older music forms embraced trance for their rituals. One is the Gnawa musical tradition originating in Kano, Nigeria and Morocco, which uses double and triple notes repeated sometimes for hours to induce a religious state while the singer sings stories of spirits. It is played on a gimbri (aka sintir or hajhuj), a three stringed instrument featuring one short and two long goat gut strings over a ...
Continue ReadingRempis / Abrams / Ra + Jim Baker: Scylla
by Mark Corroto
Avreeayl Ra sets the tone for this entire live set as his voice and mbira open Scylla, “this is for all the survivors." According to Greek mythology Scylla was a beautiful woman who turned into a monster with four eyes and six long snaky necks with heads, each containing three rows of shark's teeth and 12 tentacle legs plus six dog's heads wrapped her waist. Recorded deep into the Covid-19 pandemic, in July 2021, at Chicago's Elastic Arts, one would ...
Continue ReadingJoshua Abrams’ Cloud Script: Cloud Script
by Mark Corroto
You can take bassist Joshua Abrams out of his Natural Information Society, but you can't take the Natural Information Society out of Abrams. His long- lived ensemble, which traffics in long-form psychedelic environmental music, has made a permanent imprint on just about everything Abrams does. In bands led by Nicole Mitchell, Hamid Drake, Dave Rempis, and Rob Mazurek, Abrams' acoustic bass sound is hypnotic and mesmerizing. The same can be said for this one-off Cloud Script quartet. The ...
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