Results for "Bill Dixon"

Bill Dixon

Born: October 5, 1925

Bill Dixon has been a driving force in the advancement of contemporary American Black Music for more than 45 years. His pioneering work as a musician and organizer in the early 1960’s helped lay the foundation for today’s creative improvised music scene in New York and beyond. In 1964, he founded the all-star artists collective, the Jazz Composers’ Guild, and produced and organized The October Revolution in Jazz, an unprecedented New York festival that helped put the so-called “new thing” on the cultural map.

A mentor to countless musicians, through both his teaching and his role as a producer for Savoy Records, Dixon turned his focus to education in the late 1960’s, serving for nearly 30 years on the faculty at the prestigious Bennington College, where he founded the historic Black Music Division in 1973.

The Latest From Clean Feed Records

by Mark Corroto
July 28, 2021

2021 marks the twentieth year of Lisbon's Clean Feed Records. Listeners went from thinking ”who knew there was jazz in Portugal?" to acknowledging the label as the flag bearer of jazz' vanguard. Besides releasing music by Evan Parker, Mats Gustafsson, Steve Lehman, Julius Hemphill, Charles Gayle, Anthony Braxton, Elliott Sharp, Eric Revis, Harris Eisenstadt, and Kris ...

Unconventional Instruments

by Karl Ackermann
July 27, 2021

ECM regularly tops lists of the best jazz labels though their full name--Edition of Contemporary Music--would argue for a broader scope of content. A substantial number of their most popular albums, such as Carla Bley's Escalator Over The Hill (1974), Egberto Gismonti: Dança Dos Escravos (1989), Nils Petter Molvær's Khmer (1997), and many more, are not ...

Step In: Voilà La Tendresse

by Karl Ackermann
June 28, 2021

Step In is the international trio of Italian pianist Carlo Morena, Chilean drummer Felix Lecaros, and the renowned New York bassist Joe Fonda. Morena and Fonda started playing together in 1990, later adding drummer Jeff Hirshfield and adapting the current trio name. George Schuller later replaced Hirshfield before Lecaros took over the throne. Voilà La Tendresse ...

Albert Ayler & New York Contemporary Five: Revisited, Remastered, Resplendent

by Chris May
May 27, 2021

The Swiss-based ezz-thetics label was launched in 2019 by Hat Hut Records' founder, Werner X. Uehlinger, and its Revisited strand is a jazz aficionado's dream. The series is devoted to landmark avant-garde recordings from the 1960s, and ezz-thetics does more than simply reissue them. Peter Pfister, Uehlinger's longtime mastering Jedi, improves the audio quality of the ...

Mario Pavone / Dialect Trio +1: Blue Vertical

by Karl Ackermann
May 27, 2021

Bassist and composer Mario Pavone died on May 15, 2021, after a seventeen-year battle with cancer. The Connecticut native had many interests and earned a degree in engineering, a Doris Duke Foundation grant and, for a quarter-century, shared his wisdom and talent with kids at the Litchfield Performing Arts Jazz Camp, where he also served as ...

Sam Rivers: Braids

by John Sharpe
April 15, 2021

With the fourth issue in its Sam Rivers archival series, the NoBusiness imprint has unearthed a cracking concert recording of a terrific quartet, completed by bassist Dave Holland, drummer Thurman Barker and tubaist Joe Daley. Very few can match Rivers' breadth of experience, which includes not only with leading lights of the 1960s New Thing like ...

Rinascita a Chicago: le gemme dell’etichetta International Anthem

by Angelo Leonardi
April 9, 2021

Non è casuale che l'etichetta indipendente più innovativa nell'attuale panorama jazzistico (e non solo) sia nata e operi a Chicago. È noto infatti che la metropoli dell'Illinois è una delle capitali del jazz, avendo svolto un ruolo centrale in tutta la storia musicale afro-americana, talvolta paritetico con quello di New York. Nel 2014 ...

In Layers: Pliable

by John Sharpe
March 26, 2021

Working on-the-fly, improv outfit In Layers collectively orders timbral maneuvers into captivating momentum on Pliable, its second outing following the eponymous debut (FMR, 2016). The cast remains unchanged, the Portuguese pair of guitarist Marcelo Dos Reis and trumpeter Luis Vicente, being supplemented by Dutch drummer Onno Govaert and Amsterdam-based Icelandic pianist Kristjan Martinsson. Dos ...

Dave Liebman: Placing Free Jazz and the Avant Garde in Musical and Historical Perspective

by Victor L. Schermer
February 22, 2021

Like free jazz, this interview arose spontaneously from an informal “how are you doin'" telephone conversation between saxophonist Dave Liebman and All About Jazz contributor Vic Schermer. Schermer phoned Liebman to compliment him on his new e-book The Art of Skill: Establishing the Mindset for Unleashing the Music Inside You published by Michael Lake, and how ...