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Jazz Articles about Pat Thomas
[Ahmed]: Nights on Saturn (communication)
by Troy Dostert
When [Ahmed] released its debut album, Super Majnoon (Otoroku), in 2019, it provided not only an opportunity to revisit the under-heralded work of pathbreaking bassist Ahmed Abdul-Malik. It also offered a bewildering, sometimes intoxicating stew of improvisation that relied equally on minimalist repetition and deeply-rooted grooves. This intrepid team of European musicians, consisting of saxophonist Seymour Wright, pianist Pat Thomas, bassist Joel Grip and drummer Antonin Gerbal, envisioned new ways of continuing Abdul-Malik's quest to find shared connections between jazz ...
Continue ReadingShifa: Live in Oslo
by Mike Jurkovic
A spectrum of subversive, seemingly sinister ambitions erupt upon entering the very vigorous other-world proposed on Live In Oslo, a true mind-meld of London's free-jazz highest order, led by saxophonist Rachel Musson, pianist Pat Thomas and drummer Mark Sanders known collectively as Shifa. Recorded at Oslo's Blow Out Festival in August 2019, the trio finds no trouble breaking space to its atomic bits and telling time to take a holiday, setting apace a restless, anxious investigation into the ...
Continue Reading[Ahmed]: Super Majnoon (East Meets West)
by John Sharpe
It's well known that artistic constraints can in fact aid creativity, but few have put the theory into such good practice as [Ahmed]. The international co-operative of improvisers, comprising the British pair of pianist Pat Thomas and saxophonist Seymour Wright, Berlin-based Swedish bassist Joel Grip and French drummer Antonin Gerbal, takes as its unlikely premise the pioneering music of American bassist Ahmed Abdul-Malik which fused Arabic, East African and jazz modes. Claiming Sudanese descent (although jazz historian ...
Continue ReadingAhmed: Super Majnoon (East Meets West)
by Mark Corroto
There are discoveries in jazz waiting (patiently) to be unearthed. Most of them are hidden in plain sight, like the music of Ahmed Abdul-Malik. Born in Brooklyn in 1927, the bassist performed and recorded with, among others Art Blakey, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, and Randy Weston. Besides double bass, he pioneered the oud in jazz and improvised music as early as the late-1950s. Was it Randy Weston who inspired Abdul-Malik, or conversely did Abdul-Malik spark Weston to explore African and ...
Continue ReadingAnker / Thomas / Flaten / Solberg: His Flight's At Ten
by John Sharpe
Perhaps the title refers to British pianist Pat Thomas' travel schedule. If so it will be a situation that he is all too familiar with, as strangely his reputation appears greater in Europe than at home, in spite of an extensive discography and collaborations with a who's who of contemporary experimental music. His Flight's At Ten presents him in the company of three stellar Scandinavian improvisers on a set recorded at the 2016 edition of Oslo's Blow Out! ...
Continue ReadingPat Thomas: Al-Khwarizmi Variations
by John Eyles
Al-Khwarizmi Variations is the most recent addition to a select group of albums--the solo recordings of pianist Pat Thomas. It is Thomas's fourth solo outing in twenty years, and follows Nur (Emanem, 2001) and Plays the Music of Derek Bailey & Thelonious Monk (FMR, 2008). Both of those are hard to follow, but Al-Khwarizmi Variations is a worthy successor to them.Thomas is known to be an adherent of Islam, which may be why the album title name-checks Al-Khwarizmi, ...
Continue ReadingPat Thomas: Nur. Solo piano 1999
by John Eyles
Pat Thomas is one of the UK's most versatile and unpredictable improvisers. His piano, electronic keyboards and (often eccentric) taped samples have featured in many memorable contexts including Company, Relay, in duos with Derek Bailey and with Lol Coxhill (their One Night in Glasgow is well worth seeking out), with Tony Oxley, and in the trio Powerfield. Nur is Thomas's second solo CD. It is in complete contrast to his first, New Jazz Jungle: Remembering, which featured a ...
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