Jazz Articles

Karen Mantler: Business is Bad

by Hrayr Attarian
April 18, 2015

Composer/singer/multi-instrumentalist Karen Mantler's fifth release as a leader, Business is Bad, is a set of nine intimate sketches of everyday life. Delivered in Mantler's unique musical style, the pieces range from the whimsical “My Magic Pencil" to the elegiac “Surviving You" and everything in-between. Mantler does not so much sing these engaging soliloquies as she does hum them to herself. On “Catch as Catch Can," she laments the plight of the homeless and the hungry with plenty of ...

Karen Mantler: Business is Bad

by John Kelman
July 29, 2014

It's been nearly two decades since Karen Mantler last released an album under her own name on the XtraWATT label belonging to her similarly coifed mother, pianist/composer Carla Bley, but she's been anything but idle. Work on Bley albums like Appearing Nightly (Watt, 2008), recordings by father Michael Mantler like Folly Seeing All This (ECM, 1993), and sessions with fellow singer/songwriter Robert Wyatt have dovetailed with the singer/pianist/harmonicist's collaborations with the Golden Palominos and Hal Wilner, as well as her ...

The Swallow Quintet: Into the Woodwork

by John Kelman
August 21, 2013

In the press sheet for Steve Swallow's Into the Woodwork, the award-winning electric bassist is quoted, saying: “Good humor before and after the red light goes on is very important. Music-making should be fun, after all." Those fortunate enough to see Swallow with Steve Kuhn and Joey Baron this past summer--including a memorable stop at the 2013 TD Ottawa Jazz Festival--experienced this ethos first-hand, as smiles and outright laughter defined a performance that was, indeed, great fun, but just as ...

Steve Swallow with Robert Creeley: So There

by Nenad Georgievski
March 6, 2007

Steve Swallow goes for a varied approach on So There, combining string quartets, piano and bass, all of this inspired by the poetry of Robert Creeley, one of the most important American poets. This is his second release inspired by Creeley's poetry; in 1980 Swallow and Kuhn (and vocalist Sheila Jordan) released Home on ECM. So There is mostly a quiet and thoughtful affair, and the performances feature close interplay between Swallow and pianist Joachim Kuhn, with ...

Steve Swallow with Robert Creeley: So There

by Jeff Dayton-Johnson
November 28, 2006

Steve Swallow with Robert CreeleySo ThereXtraWatt/ECM2006 Bassist Steve Swallow has been meditating on the poetry of the late Robert Creeley (1926-2005) for a long time. In 1980, Swallow and pianist Steve Kuhn released an album of song settings of Creeley's poems with vocalist Sheila Jordan (Home, ECM). After a quarter century, Swallow feels prepared to take up the collaboration again.For So There, Creeley recorded a selection of ...

Steve Swallow with Robert Creeley: So There

by Budd Kopman
November 20, 2006

So There is a mixture of Robert Creeley reading short poems and fragments of longer ones, surrounded and accompanied by Steve Kuhn's light, dazzling, free piano and Steve Swallow's feathery bass (and guitar-like solos in the upper register)--plus occasionally the Cikada String Quartet, both alone and with Swallow and Kuhn. Creeley's poems have an understated pulse, but his readings emphasize it even more, especially as he many times breaks down words into separate syllables. Swallow has long ...

Steve Swallow with Robert Creeley: So There

by John Kelman
November 8, 2006

Things don't always work out according to plan. Robert Creeley, who passed away last year at the age of 78, has been a source of inspiration for bassist Steve Swallow for nearly half a century. So much so that one of Swallow's most memorable albums, Home (ECM, 1980), adapted the Guggenheim Fellowship recipient's poetry, sung by Sheila Jordan, to a small-ensemble jazz setting.

So There, a by necessity if not by design posthumous collaboration between Creeley and Swallow, is an ...