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Medeski, Martin and Wood: A Retro Phenomenon for the New Millenium
by Mike Brannon
From the 1995-2003 archive: This article first appeared at All About Jazz in April 1999. No, they're not a law firm, and though they're not yet a household word either, MMW is a trio of formidable sonic integrity and groove. 'Fronted' by Hammond B-3 organist John Medeski, the trio has been described as everything ...
Tom Lawton: Not Less Than Everything
by Victor L. Schermer
Not known, because not looked for But heard, half-heard, in the stillness Between two waves of the sea. Quick now, here, now, always-- A condition of complete simplicity (Costing not less than everything) --T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets; “Little Gidding" This poetic quotation ...
Lonnie Liston Smith & The Cosmic Echoes: Expansions
by Chris May
If ever a first wave jazz-funk album deserved a 180gm vinyl reissue in 2020 it is this near masterpiece. It was originally released in 1975 on Flying Dutchman, the label Bob Thiele set up after he left Impulse!. Jazz-funk divided the jazz world in the 1970s as much as free-jazz had done a ...
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 ...
The Funky Side of Sonorama
by Jakob Baekgaard
If you look up “funk" in the New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, you get the following definition: “A style of black American popular music which developed in the mid-1960s out of soul music. It is characterized above all else by complex, interlocking, syncopated rhythmic patterns in duple meter." As suggested in the quote, funk can be ...
Matthew Shipp: Poetic Connection
by Seton Hawkins
It is difficult to describe the impact of pianist and composer Matthew Shipp without descending into hyperbole. A core figure in the now-legendary David S. Ware Quartet, a bandleader with a staggering recording output, a groundbreaking curator for the influential Blues Series of Thirsty Ear Records, Matthew Shipp has also more recently broken new ...
Aruán Ortiz with Andrew Cyrille & Mauricio Herrera: Inside Rhythmic Falls
by John Sharpe
Cuban pianist Aruan Ortiz' fifth release for the Swiss Intakt label sits midway between his solo Cub(an)ism (2017) and dates by his Trio such as Live In Zurich (2018). In spite of the title, while there is a greater rhythmic impulse than on the unaccompanied session, the interaction largely pulls back from the intoxicating momentum of ...
Bob Thiele's Flying Dutchman Records: Ten High Altitude Albums
by Chris May
Bob Thiele is best remembered for his years as the artistic director and house producer of Impulse!. He took over from founder producer Creed Taylor in 1961 and stayed with the label until 1969, when he left to run his own Flying Dutchman Records. Thiele's tenure at Impulse! was its most glorious period, when Thiele curated ...
Matthew Shipp: The Piano Equation
by Mark Corroto
Let the celebration of pianist Matthew Shipp's 60th birthday year 2020 commence with The Piano Equation. Having released a dozen or so prior solo sessions, this also is a recording sans nostalgia. Shipp, like Cecil Taylor, Sun Ra, or Thelonious Monk before him, does not pine for the past, but ceaselessly forges a path onward. And ...
