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Adam Lane 3: Zero Degree Music
by Clifford Allen
Reedman-composer Vinny Golia has found a home in playing scenarios of all stripes (orchestra, solo, and duets with collaborators from seemingly all walks of the improvisational spectrum), but the small-group format of the power trio is a favorite. Apparently the first in a two-volume set, Zero Degree Music, under the leadership of bassist-composer Adam Lane (who ...
Prince Lasha's Inside-Outside Story
by Clifford Allen
Alto saxophonist, flutist, composer and multi-instrumentalist Prince Lasha was born in 1929 near Fort Worth, Texas, and came up with Ornette Coleman and Charles Moffett, but his travels have taken him both far away from and nearer to that tree. During the 1960s, after moving to New York from California, Lasha associated regularly with Eric Dolphy ...
Bernard Stollman: The ESP-Disk Story
by Clifford Allen
Founder of the iconoclastic jazz and protest-music label ESP-Disk, Bernard Stollman initially commenced recording and releasing new music in 1964 with Albert Ayler's Spiritual Unity, a classic of modern improvised music, and continued in a stylishly off-the-cuff yet wholly documentary vein releasing contemporary jazz, folk, rock, punk and outsider art music until the threat of bankruptcy ...
The Humus of Don Cherry
by Clifford Allen
“If we're going to speak about words, we could talk about a word like 'aum.' Because you don't say the word 'aum,' you sing it. And you have to sing it where you use the 'a' as 'ah,' which is the throat. Then you're singing, sustaining the tone 'ah.' Then you go to the 'u,' and ...
Pharoah Sanders: Pharoah's First
by Clifford Allen
Pharoah Sanders Pharoah's First ESP-Disk 2005 (1964) Hindsight can work wonders on the perception of a jazz musician's career, which makes it an exceptionally valuable tool to look at that artist's early recordings. Through the historian's lens, we can find snippets of what is to come in that first solo, ...
Eric Dolphy: Iron Man / Live at the Five Spot, Vol.1; Nathan Davis: The Other Side of Morning
by Clifford Allen
In many ways, the fence-line between avant-garde and mainstream jazz was towed by Ornette Coleman and Eric Dolphy, two reedmen whose influence crossed as many boundaries as Coltrane and who might be said to be among the true leaders of the front-line soldiers, paving the way for aspects of a sonic revolution that, ubiquitous as it ...
Grachan Moncur III: Exploration
by Clifford Allen
For as much as the post-Ornette lineage of jazz and improvised music has engendered instrumental freedom both sonically and rhythmically, this language has also given a wealthy palette to the composer. With the work of figures like Andrew Hill remaining in the spotlight and Grachan Moncur III's recent return from a lengthy hiatus, it is worth ...
ESP-Disk
by Clifford Allen
Sometimes it does take a bit of a reminder--especially in the days of corporate conglomerates managing almost every aspect of one's media experience--that the history of improvised music has been forged not only by left-field artists and visionaries, but also by record labels just as independent as their rosters. Commodore, Savoy, Dial, Transition, Blue Note, Prestige, ...
Herb Robertson: Elaboration & Mark Dresser: Unveil
by Clifford Allen
The lower half of Manhattan is full of as much jazz history as Harlem, South Chicago or Watts, despite the fact that it is currently a bit more “upscale" than it was in the years after the Second World War. During the 1960s, it was a haven for the new movement in jazz, where Eric Dolphy, ...
James Finn: Plaza De Toros & Michael Blake: Right Before Your Very Ears
by Clifford Allen
From Sonny Rollins' stint at the Village Vanguard (famously captured on three Blue Note records) to “Chasin' the Trane, the venerable format of tenor saxophone, bass and drums has produced a staggering amount of innovative and fiery recording situations (Ayler, Sam Rivers, Peter Brötzmann, the list goes on). With all the landmark trappings that the “power ...
