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Cory Smythe
Modney: Ascending Primes
by Vincenzo Roggero
"Ascender" ti investe con la forza di un uragano. Poco più di sette minuti dove il solitario violino di Joshua Modney, collegato ad un pedale distorsore, scatena un'onda d'urto di emozioni che stordisce. Ingannati da un inizio che ha le cadenze di una ballata folk improvvisamente il suono si stratifica, ruggisce, deborda in rumore, rende lo spazio denso e grumoso salvo poi scivolare in una dolcezza apparente, strattonata com'è da dissonanze e armonici. È l'apertura di Ascending Primes, ...
Continue ReadingLesley Mok: The Living Collection
by Hrayr Attarian
Percussionist and composer Lesley Mok is a restless explorer who has also been called a sound artist. However, that designation does not give a full picture of her creative vision. Mok deftly maintains the singular balance between the notated and the improvised as well as abstraction and accessibility, thus breaking out of narrow genreist designations, to make music which is urgently relevant. All this and more is clearly demonstrated on her debut as a leader, the provocative The Living Collection. ...
Continue ReadingSylvie Courvoisier / Cory Smythe: The Rite of Spring: Spectre d’un songe
by Karl Ackermann
Two daring jazz improvisers take on a cherished hundred-year-old classical ballet masterpiece with radical roots on The Rite of Spring: Spectre d'un songe. Igor Stravinsky was fresh off the success of his 1911 “Petrushka," which radiated with the artistic atmosphere of his Russia, when in 1913 he premiered “The Rite of Spring" at the opening of the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées. The audience was divided into the Parisian elite in the boxes and the “bohemian" aesthetes scattered about the theater. Stravinsky's ...
Continue ReadingCory Smythe: Smoke Gets In Your Eyes
by John Sharpe
The startling molten sounds which open pianist Cory Smythe's Smoke Gets In Your Eyes signal that this will be no ordinary journey. On the first four cuts he draws on a stellar 11-strong squad which matches leading cutting edge figures such as saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock, trumpeter Peter Evans and cellist Tomeka Reid, with colleagues from the International Contemporary Ensemble, hailed as America's foremost new-music group by The New Yorker, such as violinist Josh Modney and sadly deceased saxophonist Ryan Muncy, ...
Continue ReadingCory Smythe: Accelerate Every Voice
by Alberto Bazzurro
Un vivace, originale intreccio di voci, diremmo più di matrice contemporanea che strettamente jazzistica (questa costola respira semmai soprattutto nel pianismo del leader Cory Smythe), anima questo stimolante lavoro, in cui anche l'elettronica gioca un suo ruolo, per quanto discreto. Lo compongono otto apprezzabilissimi brani brevi (il più lungo supera di poco i cinque minuti) e uno, invece, molto ampio (diciannove), logorroico e dispersivo, che purtroppo deturpa e disperde in buona parte quanto di buono, spesso di ottimo, lo precede, ...
Continue ReadingNate Wooley: Mutual Aid Music
by John Sharpe
With Mutual Aid Music, trumpeter Nate Wooley expands the ideas that underlay his Battle Piece series, (heard on three albums on Relative Pitch Records from 2015, 2017 and 2019) to produce a double CD which absorbs and enthralls. To the original cast of accomplished improvisers, comprising saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock, vibraphonist Matt Moran and pianist Sylvie Courvoisier, Wooley adds four players, who hail from contemporary classical backgrounds. Of these, pianist Cory Smythe has had the greatest exposure to jazz audiences, not ...
Continue ReadingCory Smythe: Accelerate Every Voice
by Karl Ackermann
Pianist/electronics artist/composer Cory Smythe's Pyroclastic Records debut Circulate Susanna (2018) was a tongue-in-cheek attribution to the inspiration of a fictional event. He returns to the Kris Davis run label with the intriguing, socially-conscious and genre-less Accelerate Every Voice. Inspired by an assortment of sources: Andrew Hill's Lift Every Voice (Blue Note, 1970), the work of Harlem Renaissance poet and early NAACP leader James Weldon Johnson, and the a cappella art form and its sociological duality. Smythe is an ...
Continue ReadingJazz this week: Claire Chase, Tyshawn Sorey & Cory Smythe; Jazz at Lincoln Center Group; The Sextet; Marcus Lewis; and more
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St. Louis Jazz Notes by Dean Minderman
This week's lineup of jazz and creative music in St. Louis features a couple of Kansas City acts making their first trips here, a couple of small groups comprised of musicians drawn from larger, well-known ensembles, and more. Let's go to the highlights... Wednesday, January 10 This week's “Grand Center Jazz Crawl" features cornetist and banjo player T.J Müller at The Stage at KDHX, the jam session led by bassist Bob Deboo at the Kranzberg Arts Center, and trumpeter Kasimu ...
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Photos
Music
Ascender
From: Ascending PrimesBy Cory Smythe
Combustion 1
From: Smoke Gets In Your EyesBy Cory Smythe
Northern Cities Vowel Shift
From: Accelerate Every VoiceBy Cory Smythe
