Home » Jazz Articles » Makanda Ken McIntyre
Jazz Articles about Makanda Ken McIntyre
Bill Dixon: With Archie Shepp, 7-Tette & Orchestra Revisited
by Giuseppe Segala
È benvenuta questa pubblicazione nel catalogo ezz-thetics Revisited, collana che prosegue con risolutezza nella riproposta di lavori importanti, spesso fondamentali del jazz contemporaneo, concentrando in particolare la propria attenzione sugli anni Sessanta e abbinando in unico CD registrazioni storiche, opportunamente restaurate e corredate di inedite, meticolose note di copertina. Protagonista di questa uscita è Bill Dixon, figura singolare, di notevolissimo valore, la cui presenza discografica è stata purtroppo rara e saltuaria, spesso affidata alla diligente attenzione di ...
Continue ReadingBill Dixon: With Archie Shepp, 7-Tette & Orchestra Revisited
by Chris May
If Bill Dixon is today, in 2023, less widely remembered than other New Thing warriors such as Archie Shepp, Cecil Taylor and Albert Ayler, it is partly because he had little desire for celebrity, devoting much of his energy to organizing on behalf of his fellow musicians and composers, and teaching. In 1964, midway through making the 1962-1967 recordings collected on this album, Dixon organized the historic October Revolution in Jazz at the Cellar Café in Manhattan, which ...
Continue ReadingCecil Taylor: Mixed to Unit Structures Revisited
by Chris May
This story has been revisited before, in the context of an Albert Ayler review, but good stories bear repeating, particularly when they are instructive ones. So here it is again... During a May 2021 interview with All About Jazz, the reed player Shabaka Hutchings was asked to name six albums which had made a more than usually deep impression on him. One of those Hutchings chose was Cecil Taylor's Silent Tongues: Live At Montreux '74 (Freedom, 1975). “This ...
Continue ReadingCecil Taylor: Mixed to Unit Structures Revisited
by Giuseppe Segala
La pubblicazione di Mixed To Unit Structures, nella meritevole collana Revisited Series della Ezz-thetics, sotto-etichetta della svizzera Hat Hut, riunisce due date di registrazione importanti nella vicenda di Cecil Taylor, distribuite tra l'ottobre 1961 e il maggio 1966. La prima, composta dai tre brani “Pots," “Bulbs" e “Mixed," era stata pubblicata dall'etichetta Impulse! nel disco Into the Hot, a nome di Gil Evans. I successivi quattro pezzi costituivano il disco Unit Structures, siglato originariamente da Blue Note. ...
Continue ReadingCecil Taylor: Mixed To Unit Structures Revisited
by Mark Corroto
A listener could make it their life's work to absorb and appreciate the music the music of Cecil Taylor. One could possibly approach it as a scholar and musician through notation and transcription—not the recommended approach. Such a task would be similar to the process of systematizing a DNA sequence. Taylor's music, and pardon this analogy, might be best grasped as one might attend to the oxymoronic genre noise music. If you are still reading, allow an explanation. ...
Continue ReadingMakanda Ken McIntyre: In the Wind
by Rex Butters
In the Wind adds a much-needed title to the sadly thin discography of tireless educator, wind master, innovator, composer, and African American music activist Makanda Ken McIntyre. The late McIntyre counted several remarkable classics among his recorded works, including Cecil Taylor's Unit Structures, performances with Charlie Haden's Liberation Music Orchestra, Beaver Harris, and an appearance on Sam Rivers/Alan Douglas' hugely influential Wildflowers collection, as well as his own sought-after Chasing the Sun and Open Horizon, but he devoted his life ...
Continue ReadingMakanda Ken McIntyre: In The Wind: The Woodwind Quartets
by Kurt Gottschalk
In his final years, multi-reedist Makanda Ken McIntyre was fond of saying in concert that a piece was off his last album, which came out more than twenty years prior. He would laugh, but the joke pointed out how criminally underdocumented he was during his life. In June 2001, that industry oversight was finally corrected with the release of A New Beginning , a bitterly ironic title since he died the same month. McIntyre's associations were few, which ...
Continue Reading
