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Eric Platz: Life After Life
by Troy Collins
Since the late 1990s, percussionist Eric Platz has maintained a busy performance schedule working in a variety of musical genres. He has served as a sideman to such luminaries as Bill Frisell, Joe Lovano and Lucinda Williams, co-led the improvised music trios Fat Little Bastard and FourMinusOne, and is a member in both the world music ensemble Asefa and Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter Carrie Rodriguez's band. Despite his extensive and eclectic discography, Life After Life is his first recording as a bandleader. ...
read moreJames Falzone: The Room Is
by Mark Corroto
Legend has it that Jimmy Giuffre harbored a vehement distaste for the use of percussion in his ensembles. He found drummers distracting, irritating and clamorous. By the time he recorded the classic records 1961 (ECM, 1992) and Free Fall (Columbia, 1963) he had jettisoned drummers from his piano and bass trio. It must have driven marketing executives mad. How would listeners follow the music? Who kept the time? What's with all this freedom?Exactly, what is with all this ...
read moreJames Falzone - The Renga Ensemble: The Room Is
by Glenn Astarita
Enterprising Chicago-based clarinetist James Falzone and a core band of fellow improvisers signal a modern day avant-jazz summit, inspired by the leader's affinity for Renga, which is a Japanese poetic tradition where 2 or more poets work in parallel to produce a new work. Falzone yields dividends by enlisting an ensemble, featuring prominent trailblazers of the modern era's improvising circuit such as Ken Vandermark, Ben Goldberg, Ned Rothenberg and others of note. The performers' inner-workings are implanted within a holistic ...
read moreKLANG: Other Doors
by Troy Collins
Though he has long admired the small combo recordings of legendary clarinetist Benny Goodman, Chicago-based clarinetist James Falzone never intended to record a tribute to the revered King of Swing. As a former student of modern composition at the New England Conservatory with a strong presence in Chicago's fertile free-improvisation scene, Falzone assumed his youthful gigs playing retro-swing dances were long behind him. An invitation to celebrate the Benny Goodman centennial at the 2009 Chicago Jazz Festival led him to ...
read moreKlang: Other Doors
by Nic Jones
With Other Doors, Klang leader and clarinetist James Falzone has documented a body of music he worked on, after being invited to celebrate what would have been Benny Goodman's 100th birthday, at the Chicago Jazz Festival back in 2009. As he's a highly creative individual in his own right, he hasn't gone for any sterile Swing Era reconstruction, instead fashioning a program which makes for rewarding listening even while it doesn't lose sight of its original stimulus. ...
read moreVox Arcana: Aerial Age
by John Sharpe
A list of influences including John Cage, Morton Feldman, Terry Riley, La Monte Young and Anthony Braxton is not the norm for a drummer-led ensemble, and gives notice that preconceptions are about to be challenged. These are the diverse inspirations Tim Daisy draws upon in Aerial Age, the sophomore offering from Vox Arcana, his vehicle exploring that ever fertile borderline between composition and improvisation. Best known for fuelling the fires of the Vandermark 5, the drummer remains a cornerstone of ...
read moreVox Arcana: Aerial Age
by Nic Jones
This is drummer Tim Daisy's working trio. His other work with Ken Vandermark has in recent years mapped out new territory for the always vibrant Chicago creative music scene. Daisy's compositions make up the whole program on this title and it's clear from them that his influences range from that city to schools outside of the improvised music continuum; if this implies a broad outlook then that's pretty much close to the truth for all the chamber music implications of ...
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