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Nick Dunston
Ches Smith: Clone Row
by Glenn Astarita
Ches Smith, the San Diego-born Sacramento-raised drummer who studied philosophy at the University of Oregon before diving headfirst into the Bay Area's experimental music scene, has long been one of modern jazz's most restless spirits. His deep resume includes work with Marc Ribot, Tim Berne, John Zorn, Mary Halvorson and Nels Cline, cementing his reputation as a first-call rhythmic architect for the avant-garde and progressive jazz. Following his acclaimed ten-piece ensemble album Laugh Ash (Pyroclastic, 2024), Smith took a bold ...
Continue ReadingChes Smith: Clone Row
by Vic Albani
Giù il cappello ancora una volta. Ches Smith è davvero un meraviglioso esempio di intelligenza e--dopo il bellissimo capolavoro dedicato al Voodoo (Path of Seven Colors) pubblicato con Pyroclastic nel 2021, ma anche Laugh Ash del 2024--tira fuori dal cappello un'altra meraviglia affrontando un'autentica destrutturazione di un super quartetto con tanto di due chitarre (Mary Halvorson, regina del canale destro, e Liberty Ellman, protagonista di quello sinistro) e Nick Dunston (basso ed elettronica). Nelle spettacolari note a ...
Continue ReadingMary Halvorson: About Ghosts
by Doug Collette
Since Mary Halvorson began her prolific affiliation with Nonesuch Records, she has refused to repeat herself except with a purpose. The simultaneous release of Amaryllis & Belladonna (Nonesuch Records, 2022) was the precursor to the expansive Cloudward (Nonesuch Records, 2024), while About Ghosts represents a retrenchment, albeit a productive one. On five of these eight cuts, the identical Amaryllis Sextet that appeared on the latter LP interacts smoothly with guest saxophonists Immanuel Wilkins and Brian Settles. Such synchrony ...
Continue ReadingMary Halvorson: About Ghosts
by Mike Jurkovic
It has become more than an urban legend that Brooklyn's genius-in-residence Mary Halvorson is supernaturally up to something. Some new route around something else. On her second resiliency test of the year--her first, the fiery Bone Bells (Pyroclastic, 2025) alongside hot-house pianist Sylvie Courvoisier still rattles the playlist--Halvorson's About Ghosts tells of wide open spaces with a wide open lens. Its intricate inner architecture is so comfortably ethereal that you sway freely within its charm and frenzy. About ...
Continue ReadingStephen Davis Unit: The Gleaming World
by Ian Patterson
Belfast-based drummer-percussionist Stephen Davis' debut album for 577 Records takes its name from a line in a Seamus Heaney poem. The Irish Nobel laureate drew deeply on his rural surroundings, and, as these song titles suggest, so too has Davis. In late 2023, Davis spent time as a musician-in-residence at The Courthouse, Tinahely, in County Wicklow--an Improvised Music Company scheme that provides musicians with the support, time and space necessary to follow their artistic muse. Davis tapped into the natural ...
Continue ReadingNick Dunston: Colla Voce
by John Sharpe
One thing you can expect from a Nick Dunston leadership date is the unexpected. After Atlantic Extraction (OOYH, 2019), Spider Season (OOYH, 2022) and Skultura (Fun In Church, 2023), Colla Voce is something else again. Although an in-demand bassist in adventurous contemporary circles, as evidenced by stints with trumpeter Dave Douglas, guitarist Mary Halvorson and drummer Tyshawn Sorey, as a composer Dunston ranges even more widely. Assembled from sessions in Berlin and NYC, Dunston calls on a 13-strong ...
Continue ReadingNick Dunston: Colla Voce
by Mark Corroto
Composer and bassist Nick Dunston's Colla Voce -"with the voice" -is a chamber construction which he describes as an Afro-surrealist anti-opera that operates in the concept of an individual experience, as opposed to a collective one. By that he asks, “what if the blue that I see is not that same blue that you see?" His caveat is that each listener's experience may differ. Historical examples of this phenomenon are Igor Stravinsky's 1913 premiere of “The Rite of ...
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