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Nathan Davis Quintet: The Hip Walk
by Ken Dryden
There are numerous examples of talented American jazz musicians who had long careers but were overlooked by critics, broadcasters and much of the jazz audience, often because they spent decades as full time jazz educators, which limited their opportunities to tour in support of their recordings. Nathan Davis, primarily known as a tenor and soprano saxophonist, though he was also a fine flautist and clarinetist, falls into that category, though part of the reason he is lesser known is that ...
read moreJean-Luc Ponty: No Absolute Time
by Peter Rubie
When we talk about world music, we often use the phrase in quiet desperation to describe music that defies familiarity and our expectations but still appeals to us. Its very newness is often both slightly disturbing and refreshing at the same time. Two years before No Absolute Time was released in 1993, Jean-Luc Ponty (JLP) produced one called Tchokola. In an interview for this re-release, JLP said, “Tchokola was a very special project for me. I recorded it ...
read moreJean-Luc Ponty: Individual Choice
by Peter Rubie
By 1982, jazz violinist Jean-Luc Ponty had established an enviable reputation as a pioneer in jazz-rock and jazz fusion. He began as a young bebop player in the late 1950s with little interest in becoming another swing or gypsy style violinist. It was the “sheets of sound" music of John Coltrane that spoke loudest to him. By the early 1970s Ponty was recording and touring with rock composer Frank Zappa, and playing with John McLaughlin's Mahavishnu Orchestra, as well as ...
read moreJean-Luc Ponty: Open Mind
by Peter Rubie
If Individual Choice was the sketchbook of Jean-Luc Ponty's (JLP) decision to take his music in a new direction, Open Mind (1984), released the following year, was a deeper exploration of the emerging world of synthesizers and sequencers and their impact on live (studio) performance. Here, complex rhythmic patterns shift in the background while new sounds appear and disappear on the surface in colorful bursts, and outstanding jazz improvisors create familiar music in new settings. It's almost an audio version ...
read moreVarious Artists: Nicola Conte presents Cosmic Forest: The Spiritual Sounds of MPS
by Chris M. Slawecki
A labor of love, Cosmic Forest was compiled by Italian musician, producer and DJ Nicola Conte to both revisit and present to a new audience Conte's favorite “spiritual jazz" recordings from MPS Records' 1965--'75 catalog. Eight of these thirteen pieces came from albums released as part of the MPS label's mid-1970s “Jazz Meets the World" series masterminded by jazz activist and label partner Joachim-Ernst Berendt. Cosmic Forest can take you as deeply in or as far as you ...
read moreVarious Artists: MPS: 50 Years
by Chris M. Slawecki
In 2018, MPS--Musik Produktion Schwarzwald--Records, Germany's first jazz label, celebrated its fiftieth anniversary. Pianist Oscar Peterson recorded the first release for MPS after his contract with Verve expired. Its catalog expanded to feature George Duke, Red Garland, Wolfgang Dauner, Horst Jankowski, George Shearing, Monty Alexander and many other pianists. Violin became the label's second most featured instrument through releases by established masters such as Don “Sugarcane" Harris and Stéphane Grappelli, and emerging ones such as Didier Lockwood and Jean-Luc Ponty. ...
read moreNicola Conte: Let Your Light Shine On
by Chris M. Slawecki
One of the best parts of Let Your Light Shine On is how it plucks out musical threads from throughout the galaxy (more on that later) and knits them together into truly groovy, soulful cloth. But music is only one of many real good things this set has going on. Light is the first album by internationally-renown Italian DJ, composer, guitarist, bandleader and producer Nicola Conte for Germany's esteemed jazz label MPS Records. “For me, when it comes ...
read moreVarious Artists: Nicola Conte presents Cosmic Forest: The Spiritual Sounds of MPS
by Chris May
The description “spiritual jazz" means different things to different people. It was first applied to the predominantly African American style platformed by the Strata-East and Muse labels in the early and mid 1970s. The tag was not introduced until a decade later, and a better one would have been “cultural jazz," despite the tautology--for although every Strata-East and Muse artist would, if asked, almost certainly have acknowledged the inspiration of John Coltrane's masterpiece A Love Supreme (Impulse, 1964), little of ...
read moreAlphonse Mouzon: In Search Of A Dream
by Chris May
2018 is the 50th anniversary of the founding of the distinguished German jazz label MPS. To mark the occasion, the label's catalogue of over 400 albums has been released on download, and a vinyl and CD remastering and reissue programme has begun. Alphonse Mouzon's In Search Of A Dream is among the first of these discs. Originally released in 1978, it was the fourth--and finest--jazz-rock set the drummer recorded for the label. During the 1970s, his ...
read moreBaden Powell: Tristeza on Guitar
by Chris May
2018 is the 50th anniversary of the founding of the German jazz label MPS. To mark the occasion, the label's catalogue of over 400 albums has been released on download, and a vinyl and CD reissue programme has begun. Brazilian guitarist Baden Powell's Tristeza on Guitar is among the first of these discs. Originally released in 1966, it is an enduring treasure of twentieth-century Brazilian music. Between 1966 and 1976, Powell recorded nine albums for MPS, ...
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