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Elton Dean: Elton Dean's Unlimited Saxophone Company
by Chris May
A vitally important platform for apartheid-era expatriate South African musicians, Ogun Records was founded in London in 1973 by the bassist Harry Miller, then in self-exile from South Africa, and his wife, Hazel Miller. Chris McGregor, Dudu Pukwana, Mongezi Feza, Johnny Dyani and Louis Moholo were among those recording with Ogun in the 1970s under their own names or as members of bands such as Isipingo and McGregor's Brotherhood Of Breath. Alongside the South Africans, and often performing with them, ...
Continue ReadingEternal Triangle: Gravity
by Jack Kenny
What a coup on the part of Jazz in Britain to celebrate the launch of their new label with veteran Trevor Watts. It is a great experience listening to an eighty-five-year-old playing like an unshackled Ornette Coleman. Jazz in Britain has set up a new music imprint: Jazz Now. The first release is Gravity by Eternal Triangle. Watts is a phenomenon. Just listen and enjoy the surge of music from this new group. What a celebration of the ...
Continue ReadingTrevor Watts' Original Drum Orchestra: The Art Is In The Rhythm Volume 2
by Chris May
A co-founder of London's pioneering Spontaneous Music Ensemble with drummer John Stevens in the mid 1960s, saxophonist Trevor Watts has straddled an unusually wide spectrum of genres. With SME he explored an area of free jazz which, in deliberate contrast to contemporary American adventurers such as Ornette Coleman or members of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, wholly rejected melody and rhythm. At the other end of the spectrum Watts has been involved in jazz rock.
Continue ReadingSplinters: Inclusivity
by Chris May
Archive label Jazz In Britain comes up with another winner. Inclusivity is a 3 x CD collection of the complete performances of Splinters, an all-star 1972 septet comprising three hard boppers, two radical experimentalists and two in-betweeners. They were tenor saxophonist and flautist Tubby Hayes, alto saxophonist Trevor Watts, trumpeter and flugelhornist Kenny Wheeler, pianist Stan Tracey, bassist Jeff Clyne and drummers Phil Seamen and John Stevens. The band assembled for just two London gigs five months apart. It made ...
Continue ReadingKarl Evangelista: Apura!
by John Sharpe
One sure-fire way for up-and-coming musicians to get attention is to convene an all star combo. Though Bay Area-based Filipino-American guitarist (and sometime AAJ scribe) Karl Evangelista follows that route on his fourth album Apura! he makes surprising but astute choices of bandmates by enlisting the services of legendary South African drummer Louis Moholo-Moholo and the British pair of veteran saxophonist Trevor Watts and rising star pianist Alexander Hawkins. As Evangelista explains in the liner notes, the music of early ...
Continue ReadingBrda Contemporary Music Festival 2017
by Angelo Leonardi
Brda Contemporary Music Festival 2017 Smartno, Slovenia 14-16.09.2017 Nel suo appuntamento annuale a Šmartno, sulle colline del Collio sloveno poco oltre Gorizia, il “Brda Contemporary Music Festival" continua a presentare il meglio della musica improvvisata europea. Un piccolo ma significativo evento giunto alla settima edizione, che raccoglie un affezionato pubblico dalla Slovenia e dall'Italia, con qualche presenza centro-europea. Dal 14 al 16 settembre si sono alternati sul palco dell'Hisa Kulture artisti d'alto spessore ed ...
Continue ReadingTré: Edle Einfalt
by Alberto Bazzurro
Trio dalle geometrie inusuali ma non per questo inaudite (pensiamo solo a un ipotetico, assolutamente realistico, Giuffre/Brookmeyer/Manne, le cui temperature fanno del resto capolino in episodi quali “Drachengedankenkampf," “Ninna nanna," per certi versi anche “Domino"), il tedesco Tré poggia le proprie fondamenta sulle larghe volute disegnate dal trombone di Thomas Lüthi, non fosse altro che per un fatto di mero volume sonoro (capita spesso, quando c'è di mezzo un trombone). L'approccio iniziale è corporeo, vitale, estroverso, anche ...
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