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Steve Coleman and Five Elements: Harvesting Semblances and Affinities
by AAJ Italy Staff
È dedicato al filosofo Raimondo Lullo quest'ultimo CD di Steve Coleman, che al jazz degli ultimi due decenni ha regalato le idee più fervide ed emozionanti. Anche qui la dimensione rituale è al centro di un mobilissimo percorso sonoro, volto a tradurre in termini musicali (i ritmi asimettrici) le corrispondenze fisiche e simboliche tra uomo e natura, tra microcosmo e macrocosmo. Fin dal brano iniziale, l'alto-sassofonista mescola creativamente i canonici tempi pari del jazz con una mistica cadenza numerologica d'ascendenza ...
Continue ReadingSteve Coleman and Five Elements: Harvesting Semblances and Affinities
by Glenn Astarita
Celebrated and highly influential alto saxophonist Steve Coleman reenters the progressive jazz context with his cutting-edge Five Elements band. A purveyor of M-Base processes, which are centered upon a synchronous balance between structure and improvisation, Coleman's odd-metered metrics revert to kaleidoscopic sentiment on “Clouds."Trombonist Tim Albright launches the track with warmly stated choruses, underscored by Thomas Morgan's bulging bass lines and Jen Shyu's instrumental-like vocalizations. Slightly intensified by Coleman's darting sax lines and trumpeter Jonathan Finlayson's contrasting statements, ...
Continue ReadingSteve Coleman and Five Elements: Harvesting Semblances and Affinities
by Troy Collins
As the founder of the M-Base movement, alto saxophonist Steve Coleman has been at the forefront of advances in jazz composition for 25 years. Culled from traditions with roots in the diverse music of the African Diaspora, M-Base's intricate fusion of syncopated rhythms and polyphonic harmonies has provided a vivacious, forward-thinking alternative to staid conventions for over two decades. A veteran scene leader and mentor, Coleman has aided the careers of peers like Geri Allen, Greg Osby and ...
Continue ReadingSteve Coleman: Invisible Paths: First Scattering
by Mark Corroto
To admire the music of saxophonist Steve Coleman is, indeed to admire the man. From his origins as a Chicago musician to his current life full of exploration of philosophy, musicology, symbols, and language, he has kept a directness and lucidity about his musical presentation.
Invisible Paths: First Scattering is his first solo session, coming twenty-some years after he co-founded the M-Base collective that included (among many others) Greg Osby, Ravi Coltrane, Robin Eubanks, and Jean-Paul Bourelly. He ...
Continue ReadingSteve Coleman and Five Elements: Weaving Symbolics
by Jeff Stockton
Philosopher, conceptualist, theoretician and supremely original alto saxophonist Steve Coleman has issued more than twenty albums over the last twenty years under his own name, all of which helped perpetuate his notion of the M-Base (macro-basic array of spontaneous extemporization) collective. Less a musicians' club than a way of thinking about music creation, Coleman and his band employ M-Base to combine structure with improvisation on Weaving Symbolics and deliver music that fuses funk, soul, world beat and jazz.
Continue ReadingSteve Coleman and Five Elements: Weaving Symbolics
by AAJ Italy Staff
Quattro sedute di registrazione, 10 formazioni differenti, 19 titoli, a loro volte suddivisi in 5 gruppi con cicliche ripetizioni, fissati su 2 CD, aventi 2 B-sides per altrettanti DVD. Elogio ed egemonia dei numeri? Non proprio, ma risulta innegabile che i numeri, la matematica, il simbolismo e l’astrologia, rivestano un’importanza considerevole nella filosofia musicale di Steve Coleman. Certo, non tutto risulta chiaro nell’intervista/confessione riportata nei DVD, zone d’ombra si alternano a sprazzi illuminanti, ed i contorni di alcuni pensieri restano ...
Continue ReadingSteve Coleman and Five Elements: Lucidarium
by Rex Butters
Steve Coleman's latest tablet from the mountain top finds him back with a large group performing even larger conceptual compositions, augmented by voices and rappers. Besides group improvisations, Coleman also abandons pitch in places and continues to work within signature structures and rhythms. Gathering a stellar group of musicians while obsessively pushing himself and everyone else past imagined limits creates a uniquely inspired program of music fraught with meaning and melody.
His bright, warm alto sparks a brief quartet with ...
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