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Recording

Mike Montrey Band Releases Live Studio Album "Weaving The Basket"

Source: Chris M. Slawecki
June 13, 2011

A stifling, infectious infirmity is running rampant under pop culture's slate gray clouds. A society—and modern music industry—that pretends to nurture the creative spirit actually forces an ideal: that to produce products and sell the results is the only acceptable form of creative exchange. For its upcoming double album, Mike Montrey Band (The MMB) reach back to an older literary classic for the inspiration to burst through the veil of robotic capitalism and its stranglehold on recording, and let music ...

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Recording

Art Pepper - Blues for the Fisherman Sampler (Widow's Taste, 2011)

Source: Music and More by Tim Niland
June 13, 2011

This is a one disc sampler of a planned four compact disc set of alto saxophonist Art Pepper's run at Ronnie Scott's jazz club in London during 1980. There were a couple of LP's released of this material on Mole Records, but due to contractual obligations, Pepper could not be noted as the leader of the ensemble. This sampler from the material sets the matter straight, giving credit to Art Pepper's band with Milcho Leviev on piano, Tony Dumas on ...

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Recording

Mike McGuire - Beyond the Ark (2011)

Source: Something Else!
June 13, 2011

Americana singer-songwriter Mike McGuire travels a land of heavy weather, echoing church bells, sad tales and long memories. But he never lets go of the one thing that binds us together: Faith, in ourselves, in our future paths, in our country. It's something that adds a sustaining power to Beyond the Ark, even as the Louisville, Kentucky, resident deals with a number of damaging emotions. That starts with a creeping dread on the opening “Cumberland River Blues," as McGuire crafts ...

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Recording

Dexter Gordon and Booker Ervin

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
June 13, 2011

Tenor saxophone battles originated at Minton's Playhouse jam sessions in Harlem in the early 1940s and soon became common at clubs on Central Avenue in Los Angeles. Famed tenor sax pairings include Dexter Gordon and Wardell Gray, Sonny Stitt and Gene Ammons, Eddie “Lockjaw" Davis and Johnny Griffin, and Zoot Sims and Al Cohn. One of the finest battle albums is Settin' the Pace (Prestige), featuring Dexter Gordon and Booker Ervin. The two tenor titans met in Munich, Germany, on ...

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Recording

Nicole Mitchell - Awakening (Delmark Records, 2011)

Source: Music and More by Tim Niland
June 12, 2011

Renowned Chicago flautist and composer Nicole Mitchell has embarked on some very ambitious projects in the past, but this quartet recording pares back her group to a small set of colleagues, Jeff Parker on guitar, Harrison Bankhead on bass and Avreeayl Ra on drums. It's a group of some of Chicago's most talented improvisers, and the music is adventurous and thoughtful throughout. Nicole Mitchell plays adventurous flute reminiscent of Rahsaan Roland Kirk, using throaty growls and swirling figures plus the ...

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Recording

Steve Earle - Jerusalem (2009)

Source: Something Else!
June 12, 2011

By Mark Saleski I know what I like, but you won't find me setting any rules. This is as close to a “philosophy of music" as you're going to get out of me. That idea has been the driving force behind most of the stuff I write about, especially when there's “musical evangelism" involved. My ears take something in and they demand that other people at least consider the material. It seems like the right thing to do. Maybe even ...

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Recording

One Track Mind: James Cotton and Billy Branch, "Rocket 88" (2011)

Source: Something Else!
June 12, 2011

Like an aging boxer making an heroic late-round stand, James “Superharp" Cotton brilliantly tangles on a timeless favorite from his 1960s tenure with Vanguard, giving fellow harp master Billy Branch all he can handle. Even now, Cotton's playing style closely resembles his bandleading heyday—a memorably robust player, you imagine smoke and spit blasting out of the other side of his harmonica as he blows—but the 74-year-old has found both a suitable inheritor, and a worthy opponent, in Branch. Perhaps that's ...

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Recording

Outside and Inside

Source: Free Jazz by Stef Gijssels
June 12, 2011

By Stanley Zappa There are those who support groups assiduously avoiding triads and all things symmetric and there are those who don't. The further the group strays, the more support I try to give. Birgit Uhler, Tim Perkis, Gino Robair—Pögiff (Bug Insicion, 2009) ***½ Potsa Lotsa—The Complete Works Of Eric Dolphy (Jazzwerkstatt, 2011) **½ Pögiff by Birgit Ulher, Tim Perkis and Gino Robair gets my support by in large for the severity of swerve away from the land of melody ...

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