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Roscoe Mitchell and the Note Factory: Song for My Sister
The band comes out swinging, lush, loose, rollicking, on the disc's title track, "Song for My Sister". Leader/multiple reedman Roscoe Mitchell on tenor sax, front line partner Corey Wilkes blowing trumpet. The band is filled with duostwo pianos, a pair of basses, a couple a drummers. "Song for My Sister", the song, is lush, full-bodied without being clamorous or cacophonous, lyrical, delicately-cut from a dense musical soundscape. Instrumentalists and solists are responsive to the musical flow, no stepping on each others toes. An eleven minute jazz symphony.
From there, Mitchell and his bandmates blow all over the globe: open, frenetic on "Sagitta"; eerie and third world on "this"; "When the Whistle Blows" is an ominous, churning caldron; "Megaplexian" tinks and rattles with haunted sounds; "Step One, Two, Three" broods darkly, like a mad funeral march; the closer, "Count Off", is a rumbling James Brown funk, with a free jazz sensibility, Mitchell's tenor a rough hewn growl, with a muted trumpet screaming softly behind his band saw attack in front of a snapping, cracking rhythm.
Stylistically diversea complex, cerebral, hugely rewarding set of songs.
www.pirecordings.com
Track Listing
Song for My Sister; Sagitta; this; When the Whistle Blows; The Megaplexian; Step One, Two, Three; The Inside of a Star; Wind Change; Count Off
Personnel
Roscoe Mitchell, reeds, percussion, bass recorder; Leon Dorsey, bass; Vijay Iyer, piano; Vincent Davis, drums; Gerald Cleaver, drums; Spenser Barefield, guitar; Jaribu Shahid, bass; Corey Wilkes, trumpet; Craig Taborn, piano
Album information
Title: Song for My Sister
| Year Released: 2002
| Record Label: Pi Recordings
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