Articles

Sabir Mateen: URDLA XXX

by John Sharpe
March 25, 2010

It must have been some surprise when Sabir Mateen, already playing, strode into the centre of URDLA, the Parisian engraving workshop where a hundred guests were convened for a celebration of its 30th anniversary. Mateen had been commissioned as a special guest to appear on the stroke of midnight. Solo concerts are not the rite of passage they were for a saxophonist back in the 1970s test bed of free jazz creativity, and their infrequency means it still takes a ...

Sabir Mateen: Prophecies Come to Pass

by Jeff Stockton
October 20, 2006

The Shapes, Textures and Sound Ensemble is a quintessential downtown New York jazz group in the tradition of Other Dimensions in Music and Test--as intense and impassioned as music honed on the street should be: tough, but coherent and highly skilled. Led by veteran reedman Sabir Mateen on alto, tenor, flute and clarinets, none of the players in the Ensemble are more than a degree or two outside of the wide shadow cast by William Parker's Little Huey Creative Orchestra--and ...

Sabir Mateen: Prophecies Come To Pass

by Troy Collins
September 21, 2006

On Prophecies Come To Pass, saxophonist Sabir Mateen's Shapes, Textures, and Sound Ensemble delivers a rousing program of classic free jazz that rarely relents in its intensity. Recorded live in Brooklyn, this album captures the group at its rapturous best. Dedicated to late trumpeter Raphe Malik, the ensemble pushes its post-Ayler dynamics to the heavens.

Multi-instrumentalist Mateen coaxes an array of sounds from his many horns; his alto is light and buoyant, with an assertive edge; his raucous ...

Sabir Mateen: Prophecies Come to Pass

by Florence Wetzel
July 12, 2006

Prophecies Come to Pass is the debut recording of Sabir Mateen's compositions by his group The Shapes, Textures, and Sound Ensemble. Recorded live in Brooklyn in September 2005, the CD was edited by Mateen and Swell and mastered under Mateen's direction. It's dedicated to the late great Raphe Malik, who at one time played with the group.

The ensemble is composed of an impressive roster of creative musicians: Mateen on saxophones, flute, and clarinets; Matt Lavelle on trumpet, ...

Sabir Mateen: TEST

by AAJ Staff
June 1, 1999

In the purest sense, free improvisation is all about communication. When it succeeds, a group of individuals can speak with a single larger voice. New York City's TEST does exactly that: fuse four highly distinctive individual voices together to form one searing rollercoaster of musical experience. It certainly doesn't hurt that the members of this quartet collectively have well over half a century of experience playing in this tradition. And they've been playing together on the streets of NYC since ...