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Charlie Haden / Liberation Music Orchestra: Time/Life:Songs For The Whales And Other Beings
by Ian Patterson
Formed by bassist Charlie Haden in 1969 to protest America's war in Vietnam/Indochina, the Liberation Music Orchestra has reconvened roughly every ten years to record musical protest in the face of major injustices. Time/Life: Song for the Whales and Other Beings was inspired by concern at global ecological destruction, and to that end the music has a pervasive melancholy colored by the LMO's signature lyricism, and broken up by stirring collective and individual passages. The LMO's personnel has ...
Continue ReadingCharlie Haden Liberation Music Orchestra: Time / Life
by Giuseppe Segala
Due anni dopo la scomparsa di Charlie Haden si pubblica questo ultimo documento della sua Liberation Music Orchestra, un lavoro che il compianto contrabbassista progettò ma che non ebbe modo di portare a compiuta realizzazione. Vessillo del suo impegno civile e umano, l'orchestra era nata nel 1969 raccogliendo una pletora di musicisti straordinari, molti dei quali oggi non sono più con noi: Don Cherry, Gato Barbieri, Dewey Redman, Paul Motian. L'album è forse diverso da quello che sarebbe ...
Continue ReadingSwallow/Talmor/Nussbaum: Singular Curves
by Vincenzo Roggero
Tre generazioni a confronto -Steve Swallow classe 1940, Adam Nussbaum 1955, Ohad Talmor 1970 -ma non si direbbe. I tre musicisti suonano come vecchi amici che si incontrano dopo lungo tempo e ritrovano immediatamente il linguaggio della sobrietà, dell'eleganza, della misura, non una frase di troppo, non una parola fuori posto, segni appena accennati, ammiccamenti che valgono un discorso, la rilassatezza di sapersi in buona compagnia. Ma Singular Curves è tutto meno che una registrazione asettica e ...
Continue ReadingThe Swallow-Talmor-Nussbaum Trio at the Douglas Beach House
by Bill Leikam
Swallow-Talmor-Nussbaum TrioDouglas Beach House Bach Dancing & Dynamite Society Half Moon Bay, California August 10, 2014 A rare U.S. performance by the highly sophisticated and seasoned jazz trio of Steve Swallow, electric bass; Ohad Talmor, tenor saxophone; and Adam Nussbaum on drums, set the stage for a two-set performance. Before his passing on July 12, 2014, Pete Douglas, the legendary club owner and founder of the Bach Dancing & Dynamite Society, talked about this ...
Continue ReadingThe Swallow Quintet: Into the Woodwork
by John Kelman
In the press sheet for Steve Swallow's Into the Woodwork, the award-winning electric bassist is quoted, saying: “Good humor before and after the red light goes on is very important. Music-making should be fun, after all." Those fortunate enough to see Swallow with Steve Kuhn and Joey Baron this past summer--including a memorable stop at the 2013 TD Ottawa Jazz Festival--experienced this ethos first-hand, as smiles and outright laughter defined a performance that was, indeed, great fun, but just as ...
Continue ReadingPete La Roca: Basra
by Greg Simmons
Pete La Roca was one of those musicians with a long but under-sung career. He was a sideman to some great Blue Note leaders including saxophonists Sonny Rollins, Jackie McLean, and Joe Henderson, but he only ever recorded one date (1965's Basra) under his own name during the label's heyday, and indeed only three records total as a leader over a fifty-year career. He was a drummer in the background in almost every sense.According to La Roca's obituary ...
Continue ReadingJazz and Poetry: Impacted Gems
by Gordon Marshall
The poetry of the Beats, the New York school and the Black Mountain school, as well as the jazz poets, all share a particularly heavy rhythmic feel and an earthy, gritty imagery that creates a kind of syncopation within itself. The scenes dance and bump up against each other, cutting and rubbing up against the beat. Three of these poets, Kenneth Patchen (1911-1992), Paul Haines (1933-2003), and Robert Creeley (1926-2005), receive jazz treatments on a recent release, a re-release, and ...
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