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Articles by Chris May
Felabration 2013
Felebration 2013 Dele Sosimi Afrobeat Orchestra & Guests 229 London, UK December 14, 2013 The second package show to be staged in London this year in honor of Fela's memory, Felabration 2013--a celebration of what would recently have been his 75th birthday--followed Saluting the Black President, presented at 229 back in May. The format was similar: a fast-moving succession of young, mainly Afrobeats (with an “s") artists offering their own spins ...
read moreArchie Shepp Attica Blues Orchestra: I Hear the Sound
Recorded in France in 2012 and 2013, I Hear the Sound is a live recording of saxophonist Archie Shepp's oratorio, “Attica Blues," co-written and arranged with Cal Massey in 1971, which was first heard on an Impulse! album a year later. Most of that album, Attica Blues, is revisited, with some adjustments to the running order of the tunes. In addition, Duke Ellington's “Come Sunday" is woven into the middle of the suite, and Shepp's “Mama Too Tight," the title ...
read moreLe Grand Kalle: His Life, His Music
Singer and composer Joseph Kabasele, aka Le Grand Kallé, is widely credited with the creation of “Congolese rumba," the most popular style in Central and East Africa during the 1960s and 1970s. In reality, Congolese rumba was born of several parents, but Kabasele's role in its creation was far reaching and has become the best documented. He was instrumental in blending traditional Congolese music with Cuban dance music--which was rooted in the music Congolese slaves had brought to the island ...
read moreMiles Davis: Legendary Concerts
Like the curate's egg, parts of trumpeter Miles Davis' 1980s recordings and performances were excellent, and others considerably less so. The 1985 Columbia album, You're Under Arrest--of which the CD/DVD set Legendary Concerts was a partial live performance, with one important personnel change--was the strongest of the early to mid 1980s albums, on which keyboardist Robert Irving 111's heavy on the back beat groove-arrangements, first heard on The Man With The Horn (Columbia, 1981), and Davis' increasingly minimalist playing, meshed ...
read moreDexter Gordon: North Sea Jazz Legendary Concerts
The North Sea Jazz festival has an immense archive of filmed concert performances, which makes its Legendary Concerts CD/DVD series an eye-wateringly interesting prospect. The first eight volumes--featuring tenor saxophonists Dexter Gordon, Yuri Honing and Wayne Shorter, pianist Michael Borstlap, guitarist Jan Akkerman, and trumpeters Miles Davis, Eric Vloeimans and Dizzy Gillespie--are all cherry-pickingly good, and more releases are planned. Already, Legendary Concerts is a major event. Recorded and filmed at The Hague's Carrousel Zaal during the 1979 ...
read moreBrian Haas / Matt Chamberlain: Frames
It is not often an album confounds expectations to the degree that Frames does. And confounds them not just once but twice. The first expectation arises from the players' histories. Brian Haas is best known for his work with Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey, the spectacularly trans-genre band which the pianist co-founded twenty years ago. Drummer Matt Chamberlain has worked with neo-classicists such as pianist Brad Mehldau and guitarist Bill Frisell, but is better known for his recordings with ...
read moreAhmad Jamal: Saturday Morning
"Play like Jamal," Miles Davis told his pianists in the mid 1950s. The trumpeter was not shy about recruiting band leaders or poaching their musicians, so you might suppose he canvassed Jamal. But the pianist maintains Davis never popped the question. Interviewed in 2012, he side-stepped the subject, saying that he was in any case too busy leading his own band to consider offers from Davis or anyone else. “I lived a block and a half from Miles when I ...
read moreOrnette Coleman / Bachir Attar / The Master Musicians of Jajouka: The Road to Jajouka
Jazz has been mixing it up with traditional Moroccan music for almost fifty years. Pianist Randy Weston was a pioneer in the late 1960s, followed by saxophonist Ornette Coleman in the early 1970s. A modern successor to those early adventurers is Boston's Club D'Elf, which describes itself as a “Moroccan-dosed psychedelic dub and jazz collective." Club D'Elf's 2011 double set, Electric Moroccoland (Face Pelt), featuring keyboard player John Medeski and turntablist DJ Logic, convincingly channelled the intensity of Morrocan trance ...
read moreMulatu Astatke: Sketches of Ethiopia
Sketches of Ethiopia is, extraordinarily, the first album Mulatu Astatke, the godfather of Ethio-jazz, has recorded with his own band for an international label of influence. It has been a long time coming and it is a corker.Astatke, on vibraphone and keyboards, is accompanied by his regular touring band, Step Ahead, which has at its core A-list British jazz musicians--among them, trumpeter Byron Wallen, drummer Tom Skinner, bassist John Edwards and reed player James Arden. Step Ahead's 12-piece ...
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