Articles

Stephen Gauci Pandemic Duets

By John Sharpe

When everything shut down in March 2020 due to the Covid pandemic, New York City native tenor saxophonist Stephen Gauci initiated what he thought would be a set of five duet recordings in a refusal to be cowed by the lack of performance opportunities. In fact the collection has run to some 19 entries over that summer, with the four releases here, each of just over 30-minutes duration, being just among the first. For this initial batch ...

Gauci Pandemic Duets and More!

By Bob Osborne

This week lots of new music from Jesse Ryan, Junk Magic, Noah Haidu, Dave Young, and James Brandon Lewis, a focus on Cambridge UK musician Ryan McCaffrey and more great improvisation from Stephen Gauci with his pandemic duets. As Gauci says “I resolved to safely record a series of duet recordings in order to fully express musically, the intense emotions we are all feeling during this challenging period. What was originally meant to be a string of five duet recordings, ...

Celebrating Gauci Music

By Bob Osborne

This week a selection of new albums including material from Stephen Gauci's gaucimusic imprint, a first look at a new electric album celebrating the music of John Coltrane, new music from Rebecca Hennessey, and two great new releases from the ears&eyes label. Playlist Hans Tammen, Jeremy Carlstedt, Stephen Gauci “#1" from Studio Sessions Vol. 11 (gaucimusic) 00:00 A Love Supreme Electric : Vinny Golia, John Hanrahan, Henry Kaiser, Wayne Peet, Mike Watt “A Love Supreme: Acknowledgement" from A Love Supreme ...

Stephen Gauci: Thunk!

By Mark Corroto

If the subject of an album of covers songs is pianist Thelonious Monk, then the approach invariably is reverence or its opposite, insolence. Bands either worship at Monk's alter or attempt to out-Monk Monk by counterfeiting eccentricity or outlandishness. To quote the great man, “You've been making the wrong mistakes."One band not making those wrong mistakes is saxophonist Stephen Gauci's quartet. Its eight Monk covers begin with a bold confidence and ply a determined vigor to this famed ...

Stephen Gauci: Live at Glenn Miller Cafe

By Marc Medwin

New York tenor saxophonist Stephen Gauci's first trip to Stockholm is documented on these hard-hitting Ayler releases in a double-disc set and an mp3 download. Between the two releases, most of the music recorded by this newly formed aggregate on Jul. 9th-10th, 2007 at the Glenn Miller Café is captured in vivid if slightly constricted sound. Gauci's work is always fascinating. Like Jimmy Lyons, his roots in bebop rhetoric are always evident, accompanied by an evenness of ...

Stephen Gauci: Absolute, Absolutely and CIMP 360: Circle This

By Jeff Stockton

Stephen Gauci Quartet Absolute, Absolutely CIMP 2008 Michael Bisio Quartet CIMP 360: Circle This CIMP 2008

More than 250 recordings have been issued on producer/owner/impresario/liner notes writer Bob Rusch's CIMP label. You can imagine how that number of sessions would result in a broad range of creative improvisation from variously sized ...

Stephen Gauci Trio: Substratum

By Stuart Broomer

Perhaps no combination of instrument and style carries the predictability of the free jazz tenor saxophone and it's to Stephen Gauci's abiding credit that he manages both to embody a tradition and refresh it at every turn. The over-the-top blowout is, of course, part of Gauci's vocabulary. Eventually it will all show up: mystical yipping onslaughts, Pharoah-esque polyphonic bursts, the Ayler birth wail, the split-tones and multiphonics--everything that's made the tenor the expressionist's instrument of choice. But it's all deployed ...