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Archie Shepp & Jason Moran: Let My People Go
by Mark Corroto
Now an octogenarian, Archie Shepp's name is quite often spoken in the same sentence as that of John Coltrane. Shepp was born a decade after Trane and is associated with the great one's 'New Thing' and 'Fire Music.' His music though, post-Ascension (Impulse!, 1965), might be better equated to that of Billie Holiday, who was born, incidentally, a decade before Coltrane. Just as Holiday presented her music (especially in the later years) in a frank, warts-and-all manner, Shepp has for ...
read moreArchie Shepp: I Hear A Sound
by Mark Corroto
Lest we forget. And certainly, how could we forget the struggles of the late-sixties and early- 1970s against racism, oppression, the Vietnam War? With the assassinations of JFK, MLK, Malcolm X, and Bobby Kennedy and the counter-culture movement scrambling the American identity, some believed the country was ripe for its own revolution. Music was (and I cannot now honestly say 'is') on the front lines of the rebellion. Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young's reaction to Kent State, “Ohio," ...
read moreArchie Shepp Attica Blues Orchestra: I Hear the Sound
by Jack Bowers
Saxophonist Archie Shepp wrote “Attica Blues" in 1972, not long after a five-day uprising at that New York state prison left thirty-nine people dead, twenty-nine of whom were inmates. Now, more than forty years later, Shepp's Attica Blues Orchestra (comprised for the most part of French musicians) has resurrected the “Blues" and made it the linchpin of a new album, I Hear the Sound, which includes five more compositions by Shepp, three by Cal Massey, one by pianist Amina Claudine ...
read moreArchie Shepp Attica Blues Orchestra: I Hear the Sound
by Chris May
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 moreArchie Shepp/Siegfried Kessler: First Take
by Germein Linares
Paired with German pianist Siegfried Kessler, Archie Shepp finds himself in an evocative mood on First Take. Recorded live in France, they perform an intimate and at times haunting set of six tunes. The disc begins with the 22-minute sojourn of “Les Matin de Noirs" ("The Morning of the Blacks"). A surprisingly smooth ride, considering its length, the opening number goes a long way to ease and convince the listener of the album's gentle vibe. Shepp never pushes and Kessler ...
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