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Vinny Golia: Birdology & On The Cusp Of Fire And Water
by Clifford Allen
Reedman Vinny Golia is to the Los Angeles new music scene today what clarinetist John Carter was in the 30 years following Ornette's West Coast debut. Golia was co-conspirator in one of the most invigorating and versatile reeds-bass-percussion trios on the modern music map, with bassist Roberto Miguel Miranda and California “Sun Percussionist"? Alex Cline. He ...
David Eyges: Ace
by Clifford Allen
Despite its seeming obscurity, the cello has a fairly long history in jazz and improvised music. Apart from Oscar Pettiford's use of it in the early '50s, the instrument came into its own in the '60s and '70s under the guidance of such figures as Calo Scott, Ron Carter, Joel Freedman, Alan Silva, Abdul Wadud, and ...
Sonny Simmons: Jewels
by Clifford Allen
Solo saxophone recordings (and, for that matter, solo recordings in general) offer more than just a glimpse into the process of self-composing, of testing material and approaches to sound as well as getting into the nature of the instrument. Though it lacks the sparring that begets improvisation (for that reason, Derek Bailey prefers to call it ...
Mat Marucci & Markus Burger: Genesis
by Clifford Allen
Mat Marucci and Markus Burger Genesis Cadence 2004 Like a quote worked into a freewheeling improvisation, sometimes the real grounding for a piece (or pieces) of music is the players involved. Whatever direction the improvisation takes, the arisal of a constant provides a ground or context for the ...
Borah Bergman and Tom Chapin: Toronto 1997
by Clifford Allen
Naked confrontation, or a pact made between two individuals to make something from nothing... freely improvised duets are, if not the “meat and potatoes" or backbone of free music, then at least one of the truest expressions of such an art form. A dialogue formed between two individuals, each with their own language, is that call-and-response ...
Peter Br
by Clifford Allen
Peter Brötzmann is probably more famous (or infamous) for his lung power and ability to break a rib blowing a bass saxophone than for his ability to direct a truly cooperative group and extend a multitude of concepts over several bands. A contemporary of and heir to Frank Wright, power is not out of the question ...
Kalaparush and The Light: Morning Song & The Moment
by Clifford Allen
With this latest incarnation of The Light, the moniker bestowed on most of reedman Kalaparush Maurice McIntyre's ensembles over the years, the sparse moodiness of AACM “little instruments" and side-long suites has been replaced by a more ebullient and lyrical spirituality contained in a crack tenor-tuba-drums trio. This particular version of The Light was formed as ...
Raphe Malik: Last Set & Sympathy
by Clifford Allen
What is sometimes sorely missed among the current crop of players in the jazz “tradition" (and by “tradition" I mean both straight-ahead and free music) is a sense of weight. This weight, or gravity, is both sonic and metaphysical and improvised music is at a loss without it. While he was a regular member of the ...
Dna: DNA on DNA
by Clifford Allen
There are certain strong alliances between the punk ethos and free music, for a do-it-yourself aesthetic pervades both, in medium as well as practice--self-produced albums and concerts, and collectivity (the Arkestra house as a punk house?) for example, as well as the fact that both have been strongly aligned with protest, both in America and in ...
Ilgenfritz/Khoury/Michalowski/Weaver: Babardah
by Clifford Allen
Free improvisation is a tool, just as paint or the written word, in the process of making art. Art critic Clement Greenberg might roll over in his grave that I quote him on such generic art-making terms, but his oft-repeated line on the modernist process carries some weight here: “Modernism... [is] the use of the characteristic ...
