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Jones Jones: A Jones In Time Saves Nine
Over a decade in existence and the free jazz trio Jones Jones has just dropped its third album. That's not exactly prolific, but may well be an accurate reflection of the challenge implicit in bringing together colleagues separated by the 5795 miles between reedman Larry Ochs and bassist Mark Dresser in California, and percussionist Vladimir Tarasov in Lithuania. But the wait has been worth it with A Jones In Time Saves Nine ranking as their finest work so far, surpassing ...
read moreLarry Ochs Sax And Drumming Core: Wild Red Yellow
Reedman Larry Ochs' Sax And Drumming Core was famously once threatened by a punter calling the police because they weren't conforming to his narrow definition of jazz. Wild Red Yellow constitutes the second outing by the augmented version of the band responsible for that misdemeanor, following as it does from Stone Shift (Rogue Art, 2009), which similarly incorporated the Japanese pair of trumpeter Natsuki Tamura and pianist Satoko Fujii as guests. Happily they haven't been cowed by the prospect of ...
read moreLarry Ochs: The Celestial Septet & We All Feel The Same Way
ROVA Sax Quartet/Nels Cline SingersThe Celestial SeptetNew World Records2010 Jones JonesWe All Feel The Same WaySoLyd2010 The synchronicity and boundless energy that separate great groupwork from everything else pervades these two new additions to multi-instrumentalist and composer Larry Ochs' already formidable discography. He has always negotiated the permeable boundaries between improvisation and composition with ...
read moreLarry Och's Sax & Drumming Core: Stone Shift
Fifty years after its inception, the avant-garde still regularly begs the hoary old question “Is it jazz?" Notwithstanding that it has persisted as an active style as long or longer than most of its predecessors, with a small but committed following around the globe while continuing to reinvent itself in different ways wherever the seed germinates, that question just won't go away. With each passing year the connections to the tradition become clearer, but still not clear enough perhaps.
Why ...
read moreLarry Ochs Sax & Drumming Core: Stone Shift
Larry Ochs, best known for his work with the long-standing ROVA saxophone quartet, has been working an unusual and satisfying side project for close to a decade. His Drumming Core, founded in 2000, is a trio with two drummers dedicated to exploring American field hollers and Asian chants. The first two CDs were rewarding, if more as an opportunity to hear Ochs as the sole melody instrument than for the East-meets-West concept. But for their third release, Ochs has expanded ...
read moreLarry Ochs
“It started out as a social thing," says saxophonist and composer Larry Ochs of what would eventually determine the course of his life. “I played trumpet as a kid in New York, but it wasn't really because I enjoyed it. I played music because friends of mine were doing it; then it was supposed to be good for college credit. My private teachers never even suggested to me that I could play music I liked or hinted at the idea ...
read moreAn AAJ Interview with Larry Ochs
This interview was originally published in January 2000.“To reveal a new world is the function of creation in all the arts." --Edgard VareseHow different might our planet be if a number of significant events over the past century had NOT happened? What if the Kennedys and Dr. King had NOT been assassinated? What if nuclear weaponry had NOT been invented? What if the stock market had NOT crashed in Oct. 1929?From a musical perspective, ...
read moreLarry Ochs: Spiller Alley and The Mirror World
Larry Ochs/ Maya Masaoka/ Peggy Lee Spiller Alley RogueArt 2008 Larry Ochs/ Rova Special Sextet/ Orkestrova The Mirror World (for Stan Brakhage) Metalanguage 2008
Since 1978 saxophonist Larry Ochs' activities have been primarily centered on the Rova Saxophone Quartet, but increasingly, survival in the jazz world demands the pursuit of parallel projects. Consequently ...
read moreLarry Ochs/Jean Jeanrenaud/Miya Masaoka: Fly Fly Fly
Culled from the ranks of the Rova Saxophone Quartet, the Kronos Quartet and the ever-increasing pool of improvising koto players, the trio of tenor saxophonist Larry Ochs, cellist Joan Jeanrenaud and kotoist Miya Masaoka is a formidable ensemble in the annals of creative “chamber" music. The group's formation was, in fact, a natural progression of Maybe Monday (Ochs, Masaoka and guitarist Fred Frith) and Ochs' own work with Jeanrenaud, who found herself in the improvising world shortly after leaving Kronos ...
read moreLarry Ochs Sax & Drumming Core: The Neon Truth
Intentions don’t always dictate results, and in fact many great works have been the result of mistake or happenstance. So while it’s interesting to note what saxophonist Larry Ochs had wanted his Sax & Drumming Core to be, it doesn’t have a lot to do with the successes of their first record. In the liner notes to The Neon Truth (recorded in August of 2000, and released in Europe in 2002, only recently available in the US), ...
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