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Jazz Articles about Stanley Cowell
Marion Brown: Why Not? Porto Novo! Revisited
by Chris May
Alto saxophonist Marion Brown was part of the band on John Coltrane's Ascension (Impulse, 1965), though you would not guess it from Why Not (ESP, 1968). Like fellow Ascension alumnus, tenor saxophonist Pharoah Sanders' contemporaneous Tauhid (Impulse, 1967), Brown's album inhabited an intensely melodic section of the 1960s' New Thing. As were Sanders' own-name releases from 1967 onwards, Brown's work was deeply lyrical and embraced South Asian, Maghrebi and West African instruments and constructs. As bandleaders, the two ...
Continue ReadingStanley Cowell: It's Time
by Greg Simmons
The durable piano trio, with bass and drums accompaniment, is one of the most frequently employed and time-tested combos in jazz. The competition is fierce to say anything new or noteworthy, with plenty of attempts that yield mixed results. So it's a great pleasure to hear Stanley Cowell's It's Time: a finely crafted collection of mostly originals that is at once sophisticated, both aggressive and pensive, and simply fascinating to listen to.It's Time uses melody, rhythm, and space ...
Continue ReadingClifford Jordan: Glass Bead Games
by Robert Iannapollo
Perennially underrated saxophonist Clifford Jordan recorded two of his best albums for the Strata East label and Glass Bead Games is arguably his greatest recording and one of the great albums of the 1970s. Everything is right about this date; Jordan never sounded so good, his tone rich and full, his improvisatory ideas taking the models of Coltrane and Rollins and giving them his own twist. Recorded on a “stormy Monday, October 29, 1973," it was originally issued as a ...
Continue ReadingGlass Bead Games
by Samuel Chell
"I suddenly realized that in the language of the Glass Bead Game every symbol and combination of symbols led not to single examples but into the center, the mystery and innermost heart of the world, into primal knowledge."---Hermann HesseClifford Jordan was a soulful, powerful, deeply thoughtful Chicago tenor player who, though sought after by pianist Horace Silver and praised by fellow saxophonist Sonny Rollins, was fated to be the Lester Young of his era, misunderstood and often overlooked ...
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