Results for "Albert Ayler"

Albert Ayler

Tenor saxophonist Albert Ayler was born on July 13th 1936 in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. He learned to play the alto sax at a young age. His father, Edward, encouraged his musical interests and was his first teacher. Albert Ayler continued his musical education at John Adams High School, where he played oboe, and at the local music academy. His first gig was with Lloyd Pearson and his Counts of Rhythm when has was 15 in 1951. This led to a job with Little Walter Jacobs’ R&B band with whom he spent the following two summer vacations traveling. After graduating from high school in 1954 he went to a local college but financial difficulties forced him to leave college in 1956 and join the army

1964: Prophecy Revisited

By ALBERT AYLER

Label: ezz-thetics
Released: 2020
Track listing: Spirits; Wizard; Ghost 1st Variation; Prophecy; Ghost 2nd Variation; Saints; Ghosts; Wizard; Children; Spiritis (theme).

Impulse! Records: An Alternative Top 20 Zeitgeist Seizing Albums

By CHRIS MAY

There can be little argument that a jazz label ever captured a zeitgeist more completely than Impulse! did during its original 1960s incarnation. In the US, the fight back against white racism was cresting, opposition to the Vietnam war was growing, outrage over the assassinations of figures of hope such as President Kennedy, Martin Luther King ...

New York Contemporary Five: Consequences Revisited

By MARK CORROTO

This 2020 reissue of the New York Contemporary Five recordings from 1963-64 can't help but draw one's attention to the social unrest occurring in America in 2020. In 1964 the riots in Harlem and Philadelphia over police brutality were followed by similar riots a few years later in Watts, Newark, Detroit, etc. In the growing civil ...

Paul Flaherty / Randall Colbourne / James Chumley Hunt / Mike Roberson: Borrowed From Children

By MARK CORROTO

Let's misquote a Rolling Stones' lyric here, with the music of Paul Flaherty “you can always get what you want," and maybe to a greater extent, “you get what you need." For more decades than he might want to count, the saxophonist has been making his self-described 'hated music.' We're talking hate as in a bugaboo, ...

Jazz & Film: An Alternative Top 20 Soundtrack Albums

By CHRIS MAY

Jazz and the movies have a shared history stretching back almost a hundred years. The relationship came into its own in the US in the mid twentieth century. Elia Kazan's 1950 movie Panic In The Streets is an early example of how film makers used jazz-based soundtracks to enhance drama and atmosphere and create ambiances of ...

Peter Hansen - Peeter Uuskyla: JULY 1, 1979

By MARK CORROTO

The year was 1979. Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols died, so did jazz legend Charles Mingus. While punk rock was in a duel with disco, jazz as commercial music was dying the death of a thousand cuts. Miles Davis was in hiding, as jazz fusion (the disco equivalent in jazz) was forcing the retirement of ...

Idris Ackamoor: An Afro-Futurist Odyssey

By CHRIS MAY

In summer 2020, Idris Ackamoor will release Shaman! on Britain's Strut label. It is his third album with the post-2015 incarnation of his 1970s band, The Pyramids. It reunites Ackamoor with flautist Margaux Simmons, with whom he had co-founded The Pyramids in 1972. Ackamoor's route to Afro-Futurist jazz began in the US in ...

Alice Coltrane: In the Spirit

By KURT GOTTSCHALK

From the 1995-2003 archive: This article first appeared at All About Jazz in December 2002. Alice Coltrane walked out onstage, joining an ensemble led by her son Ravi on a recent and historic night at Joe's Pub. The bassist Darryl Hall played an immediately recognizable four-note line and the group (also featuring drummer E.J. ...

Anna Högberg Attack: lena

By SAMUEL STROUP

There are moments of lena, the sophomore release from Swedish group Attack, which feel as though the ensemble is as much punk band as it is jazz sextet. Under the leadership of alto saxophonist Anna Högberg, the group plays loud and fast free jazz which is as stylish as it is raucous. Even the monochrome album ...