Results for "James Blood Ulmer"

James Blood Ulmer

Born: February 2, 1942

Free jazz has not produced many notable guitarists. Experimental musicians drawn to the guitar have had few jazz role models; consequently, they've typically looked to rock-based players for inspiration. James "Blood" Ulmer is one of the few exceptions—an outside guitarist who has forged a style based largely on the traditions of African-American vernacular music. Ulmer is an adherent of saxophonist/composer Ornette Coleman's vaguely defined Harmolodic theory, which essentially subverts jazz's harmonic component in favor of freely improvised, non-tonal, or quasi-modal counterpoint. Ulmer plays with a stuttering, vocalic attack; his lines are frequently texturally and chordally based, inflected with the accent of a soul-jazz tenor saxophonist

Off Da Hook – Or, You Got Rock in My Jazz

by Patrick Burnette
August 3, 2023

We all know about fusion--the (sometime unholy) union of jazz and rock that tried to find a new audience for instrumentalists in the 1970s. But there have always been, well, odder experiments with electricity in jazz, more like intrusions of the rock world than integrations, and we look at four rather varied examples in this here ...

Musiche Corsare a Bari

by Libero Farnè
April 28, 2023

Musiche Corsare 2023 Teatro Forma Bari 20-23.4.2023 Sotto la direzione artistica di Roberto Ottaviano, la cui esauriente intervista è stata pubblicata su queste pagine alla fine di marzo, si è articolata in modo esemplare la seconda edizione di Musiche Corsare. Il festival, che quest'anno era dedicato a George Russell, ha palesato ...

More Jazz From 2022

by Jerome Wilson
January 16, 2023

The year 2022 produced a bumper crop of worthwhile jazz recordings, so many it was impossible to give all of them their due in a timely fashion. Here are belated appreciations of six titles that deserve praise. Doug Wamble Blues In The Present Tense Halcyonic Records 2022 ...

Queen Esther

Born: June 30

Solo Performer. Vocalist. Topliner. Writer. Musician. Songwriter. Playwright. Librettist. Actor. TED Speaker.

Described as “...the unknown queen of Americana…” (Feedback, Norway), “..a Black Lucinda Williams…” and a “...brutal, original, explosive singer…”  (Vanity Fair, Spain), Queen Esther’s creative output musically is the culmination of several critical Southern elements, not the least of which are years of recording and touring internationally as frontwoman for several projects with her mentor, harmolodic guitar icon James “Blood” Ulmer, including a stint in his seminal band Odyssey.  Raised in Atlanta, GA and embedded in Charleston, SC’s Lowcountry – a region with African traditions and Black folkways that span centuries and constantly inform her work –  Queen Esther uses her Southern roots as a touchstone to explore cultural mores in America, deconstructing well-worn historical narratives while creating a reclamation-driven soundscape.  

Bobby Previte: Boom-Boom. Due volte Boom

by Vic Albani
October 3, 2022

Dopo sostanziali anni di attività per certi versi limitata, il genio Bobby Previte torna a cavalcare comete musicali di infinita bellezza e intelligenza. Credo esistano ben pochi musicisti così profondi, analitici, curiosi ed allo stesso tempo così schivi e umili come Previte, da sempre nel cuore di ogni illuminato cultore di musiche moderne. Illuminato ...

Charlie Ballantine: Reflections/Introspection: The Music Of Thelonious Monk

by Chris M. Slawecki
January 1, 2022

Reflections/Introspection... follows-up guitarist Charlie Ballentine's Life is Brief: The Music of Bob Dylan, the guitarist's tribute to another (and very different type of) iconoclastic modern composer and one of the best albums of 2018. He absolutely bounces through this double-LP (one trio, one quartet) on a merry joyride through the compositions of “the onliest Monk."

Rediscovery and Re-Creation, and an NYC Farewell

by Chris M. Slawecki
December 26, 2021

Greg Abate Magic Dance: The Music of Kenny Barron Whaling City Sound 2021 Musicians will sometimes honor another musician who influenced their lives or work with a tribute or memorial recording after that influential musician has passed on. There's an abundance of first-rate music on the ...

Charnett Moffett: New Love

by Jerome Wilson
September 2, 2021

If one thing is obvious from this CD, it is that electric bassist Charnett Moffett is a happy man these days. His playing leaps out of the speakers on these tracks with joy and high spirits. That may be because he works here in the company of his “new love," his wife, guitarist Jana Herzen. The ...

Gustafsson / McPhee / Håker Flaten / Nilssen-Love: The Thing She Knows...

by Chris May
August 22, 2021

The Hat Hut and ezz-thetics family of labels is in 2021 just three years shy of its fiftieth anniversary. This is a remarkable, perhaps unique, achievement for an independent company which has concerned itself exclusively with the avant-garde end of jazz and conservatoire music from the get go, and has done so with the highest (for ...