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Liberty Ellman: Last Desert
by Jerome Wilson
Guitarist Liberty Ellman has been doing valuable work in recent years as a sideman for musicians such as Henry Threadgill, Stephan Crump and Myra Melford. Once in a while he also puts out his own music as a leader. Inspired by a marathon race that takes place in Antarctica, the music on this disc is a constantly moving bundle of sounds with some resemblance to Threadgill's recent work in its use of tuba and its overall jangling ensemble ...
read moreVijay Iyer & Mike Ladd: InWhatStrumentals
by Karl Ackermann
In 2003 Vijay Iyer and Mike Ladd released In What Language?, a hybrid jazz/hip hop response to post-9/11 American paranoia. Inspired by many related injustices, the inflection point was the extended detention, handcuffing and humiliation of a prominent Iranian filmmaker passing through JFK International Airport. Seventeen years later America was mired in multiple unprecedented crises, giving cause to repurpose that album. Iyer and Ladd had the instrumental masters from 2003, and release them here as InWhatStrumentals: Music from In What ...
read moreClean Feed’s Latest Releases
by Maurice Hogue
This episode digs into a number of fine new releases from Clean Feed Records. You'll hear tracks from the Simon Nabatov Quintet, the Scandinavian group Inland Empire (featuring Kris Davis), legendary singer Patty Waters, pianist Kaja Draksler, and the hard-nosed Luis Lopes Humanization Quartet (featuring saxophonist Rodrigo Amado). Also new is the Itaca 4et, a joint Canadian-Italian project, young saxophonist Ori Jacobson's debut, pianist James Carney and guitarist Liberty Ellman's latest with an outstanding band in tow. There's lots more ...
read moreLiberty Ellman: Last Desert
by Mark Corroto
Guitarist Liberty Ellman doesn't release many albums as a leader. Last Desert is only his fifth in more than twenty years, and fourth for Pi Recordings, following 2015's Radiate. But that doesn't mean he isn't a busy artist. He can be heard with JD Allen, Jason Robinson, Myra Melford's Snowy Egret, Stephan Crump's Rosetta Trio and, of course, Henry Threadgill's Zooid. He also produces music, mixes and masters recordings. Those last three crafts may explain why his recordings as a ...
read moreLiberty Ellman Trio at Crescent Arts Centre
by Ian Patterson
Liberty Ellman Trio Crescent Arts Centre jny:Belfast, N. Ireland April 13, 2018 Liberty Ellman was short his pedals for this Moving On Music gig at Crescent Arts Centre--lost somewhere in transit--but he certainly wasn't short of musical ideas during a constantly engaging ninety-minute set. With four releases in twenty years Ellman maybe isn't the most prolific of leaders yet this only tells part of the story, for the New York-based guitarist--a cornerstone of ...
read moreLiberty Ellman: Radiate
by Stefano Merighi
Ascoltando Radiate si coglie immediatamente la comunanza linguistica che stringe quel manipolo di musicisti abituati ad incidere per la PI, forse la migliore etichetta odierna di jazz contemporaneo. Si percepiscono i medesimi studi giovanili, i medesimi sviluppi creativi, quella telepatia esecutiva che rende interessante una performance jazzistica. Anche quando la prima impressione è quella di una musica derivativa. Sì perchè, assodato che Liberty Ellman è un signor musicista, chitarrista intelligente e compositore scaltro, non ...
read moreLiberty Ellman: Radiate
by Dan Bilawsky
Guitarist Liberty Ellman works at the crossroads of intellectual inquisitiveness and rabid expressionism. That's been evident both in his own small but impressive discography and in his musical travels with Henry Threadgill's Zooid over the past fifteen years. On Radiate--Ellman's first album in nine years, third on the Pi Recordings imprint--those two roads quickly meet. The album-opening Supercell" proves to be a deep-grooving masterpiece that plays unification and disconnection against each other to create something magical. Damion ...
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