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Seymour Wright
Sven Åke-Johansson: Two Days at Cafe OTO
by Fran Kursztejn
Sven Åke-Johansson's death in 2025 felt distinctly like a chapter closed. There is a cliche in Jazz to characterize players of a certain class and longstanding influence as “youthful" or otherwise endlessly inventive despite multi-decade, multidisciplinary careers. Its excessive use is justified by elements of the medium's own construction and history. Jazz itself appears to be an eternally youthful tradition, a set of lofty and difficult characteristics which coalesce into an incorruptible, universal playground. What results is an often tumultuous ...
Continue Reading[Ahmed]: Nights on Saturn (communication)
by Troy Dostert
When [Ahmed] released its debut album, Super Majnoon (Otoroku), in 2019, it provided not only an opportunity to revisit the under-heralded work of pathbreaking bassist Ahmed Abdul-Malik. It also offered a bewildering, sometimes intoxicating stew of improvisation that relied equally on minimalist repetition and deeply-rooted grooves. This intrepid team of European musicians, consisting of saxophonist Seymour Wright, pianist Pat Thomas, bassist Joel Grip and drummer Antonin Gerbal, envisioned new ways of continuing Abdul-Malik's quest to find shared connections between jazz ...
Continue Reading[Ahmed]: Super Majnoon (East Meets West)
by John Sharpe
It's well known that artistic constraints can in fact aid creativity, but few have put the theory into such good practice as [Ahmed]. The international co-operative of improvisers, comprising the British pair of pianist Pat Thomas and saxophonist Seymour Wright, Berlin-based Swedish bassist Joel Grip and French drummer Antonin Gerbal, takes as its unlikely premise the pioneering music of American bassist Ahmed Abdul-Malik which fused Arabic, East African and jazz modes. Claiming Sudanese descent (although jazz historian ...
Continue ReadingAhmed: Super Majnoon (East Meets West)
by Mark Corroto
There are discoveries in jazz waiting (patiently) to be unearthed. Most of them are hidden in plain sight, like the music of Ahmed Abdul-Malik. Born in Brooklyn in 1927, the bassist performed and recorded with, among others Art Blakey, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, and Randy Weston. Besides double bass, he pioneered the oud in jazz and improvised music as early as the late-1950s. Was it Randy Weston who inspired Abdul-Malik, or conversely did Abdul-Malik spark Weston to explore African and ...
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Music
Seymour Wright
Instrument: Saxophone, alto
