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Larry Ochs and Vinny Golia: Twisting the Tales of John Coltrane and Albert Ayler
by Clifford Allen
Though the word “innovation often implies a purely technical standpoint, new approaches in art demand as much feeling and spirit as they do technique. In service of the self as much as something higher, the saxophone's lofty manifestations in the hands and breath of such figures as Albert Ayler and John Coltrane are multiphonic as much ...
Irene Schweizer: Ramifications
by Clifford Allen
One of the leading exponents of free piano playing in Europe from the late 1960s onward, Swiss-born Irène Schweizer occupied a somewhat lonely place in the high-energy FMP canon as she worked with Peter Kowald, Evan Parker, Manfred Schoof, the Wuppertal reedman Rüdiger Carl and others in European free improvisation's heyday. Renowned as a soloist and ...
Ted Daniel: Brass Tapestry
by Clifford Allen
Trumpeter Ted Daniel was born in Ossining, New York on June 4, 1943. Encouraged early on by his father and brother, Daniel played trumpet from age nine and throughout high school played in bands with his brother and the guitarist Warren “Sonny" Sharrock, a neighborhood pal. Stints at Berklee and SIU provided some context, but the ...
Carlos Ward: A Tough and Lyrical Journey
by Clifford Allen
Alto saxophonist and flutist Carlos Ward has worked steadily with some of improvised music's most diverse and captivating figures--musicians like John Coltrane, Don Cherry and Abdullah Ibrahim--but despite being a well-regarded presence in their ensembles, Ward has not received quite the recognition that even a host of other sidemen have. Ward's alto tone is gritty and ...
Archie Shepp: Knowing the Life
by Clifford Allen
Saxophonist, pianist, writer and composer Archie Shepp was born in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida May 24, 1937 and grew up in Philadelphia playing with hard-bop luminaries such as Lee Morgan and Bobby Timmons. A move to New York in the 1960s and early gigs with Cecil Taylor aligned him with the avant-garde, leading to work with John ...
Peter Br
by Clifford Allen
Peter Brötzmann The Complete Machine Gun Sessions Atavistic 2007 Almost forty years have passed since the 1968 recording of German reedman Peter Brötzmann's Machine Gun at the Lila Eule in Bremen. The session, now regarded as one of the cornerstone records of European free improvisation, was a combination ...
Braxton/Fonda; Rodrigo Amado; TECK String Quartet: Strings & Reeds
by Clifford Allen
There is an aspect of instrumentation alluded to by Peter Brötzmann in the title of his tune “Alto Lightning In A Violin Sky, an homage to departed fellow saxophonist Jimmy Lyons. The sound of reeds and strings, whether in unison or scrabbling against one another, has a common quality. Maybe it's the distant relationship between reeds, ...
Amanda Monaco 4: Intention
by Clifford Allen
The midrange frequently offers more interesting textures, colors and possibilities in improvised music, precisely because it is sometimes a music that's, even to the initiated, thought of as an art form that embraces the extremes. But for every John McLaughlin or Wes Montgomery, there is a Joe Morris, an Attila Zoller, or an Amanda Monaco.
Alvin Fielder: It's About Time
by Clifford Allen
Drummer Alvin Fielder grew up in Mississippi, but the fruition of his musical career in Chicago came in the 1960s, when he worked with Sun Ra and appeared on Roscoe Mitchell's legendary Sound (Delmark, 1966) LP, one of the first AACM recordings to be released. After returning to a pharmacy career in Mississippi in the late ...
Burton Greene: Ins and Outs; Signs of the Times; Retrospective 1961-2005: Solo Piano (August 18, 2005)
by Clifford Allen
The era that ushered in free jazz was perhaps marked more greatly by hornmen than by the pianists. Chicago-born pianist Burton Greene, who came to prominence on three 1966 ESP recordings, seems to have been given a bit of short shrift in the history books, mostly because until the last decade or so a significant amount ...
