Jazz Articles

Billy Bang / Bill Cole: Duet

By RAUL D'GAMA ROSE

Among the more daring moments in music is one of the last adventures that violinist Billy Bang shared with double reeds player, the venerable Bill Cole. The intense encounter took place on April 17, 2009 and was captured by Cole who released it on his own label in the winter of 2010. A collection of intriguing compositions by both Cole and Bang, as well as tumultuous improvisations that emerged from the depths of each man's soul, this album will remain ...

Bill Cole's Untempered Ensemble: Proverbs of Sam

By JEFF STOCKTON

Master of semi-exotic Eastern double-reed instruments, Bill Cole has spent most of his professional life as an academic. Criminally under-recorded, when Seasoning the Greens, a 2001 concert of his Untempered Ensemble was released in 2002, fans of freely improvised worldbeat jazz only had to wait one year. So the question raised by Proverbs of Sam is: what took so long? Featuring the three long improvisations that comprised the Ensemble's set at the Vision Festival in June of 2001 and a ...

Bill Cole's Untempered Ensemble: Proverbs for Sam

By TROY COLLINS

Proverbs for Sam is dedicated to the late saxophonist Sam Furnace, a charter member of double reed master Bill Cole's Untempered Ensemble. The majority of the album is culled from the 2001 Vision Festival in New York, while the majestic finale is drawn from the same 2001 Burlington, Vermont concert documented on Seasoning of the Greens (Boxholder Records, 2002). These live recordings feature some of Furnace's last performances with the Ensemble, who passed away in 2004.

Since the ...

Bill Cole's Untempered Ensemble: Proverbs for Sam

By DAN MCCLENAGHAN

Bill Cole has such a typical American name that those unfamiliar with his music could be forgiven for expecting to hear quintessential American jazz on his recorded offerings. Cole, a rare breed of jazz artist who has focused his efforts on uniting Eastern sounds with the American art form, is a musical seeker who has, over the better part of four decades, mastered an array of non-traditional, non-Western instruments: the Chinese Sona, Australian Digeridoo, Indian Shenai, Ghanaian flute, and Indian ...

Bill Coleman: The Complete Philips Recordings

By JEFF DAYTON-JOHNSON

Trumpeter Bill Coleman (1904-81) played in a host of orchestras (led by Benny Carter, Teddy Wilson, Luis Russell and Don Redman) in the 1930s, with the same vibrato and finesse as his contemporary, Buck Clayton, but not quite the same bravura and vocabulary. To make an analogy using trumpeters from another jazz era, Coleman is to Clayton as Kenny Dorham is to Clifford Brown. Coleman would eventually settle in France, where these recordings were made and recently ...

Bill Cole & William Parker: Two Masters: Live At The Prism

By CHRIS MAY

Bill Cole and William Parker have much in common: belief in the healing and transforming power of music, respect for non-Western musical forms, and a commitment to free improvisation. Cole's Untempered Ensemble, which has included Parker in recent years, as well as Parker's prolific output with his own Little Huey Orchestra and a multitude of other lineups, have done much to challenge Western musical ethnocentricities and blow a fresh wind through creative jazz.

With all those credits behind ...

Bill Cole & William Parker: Two Masters: Live at the Prism

By JERRY D'SOUZA

Over the years William Parker and Bill Cole have taken improvisation to new plateaus, through both individual projects and Cole's Untempered Ensemble, of which Parker is a member. This is their first full recording as a duo. They play a host of instruments from around the world, and given their credentials, it is not surprising that they have understood the instruments and mastered the technique of playing them as well.

The nageswaram is a double reed used in ...

Bill Cole & William Parker: Two Masters: Live at the Prism

By JOHN KELMAN

As much if not better known for his two books on John Coltrane and Miles Davis, Bill Cole has nevertheless etched out a rather singular place in improvised music as an expert on a variety of instruments associated primarily with eastern cultures. And with his Untempered Ensemble, he has managed to embrace these unusual instruments, retaining their cultural roots while applying them to broader improvisational concerns.

Bassist William Parker, a charter member of the Untempered Ensemble, is certainly familiar with ...