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I tesori della Emanem
by Enrico Bettinello
Gli appassionati di jazz europeo conoscono bene il nome della Emanem, l'etichetta fondata nel 1974 da Martin Davidson per documentare la scena londinese legata alla free improvisation e che nel suo vasto catalogo custodisce molti capolavori anche di artisti americani. Bobby Bradford e John Carter Tandem Tra le più ...
Spontaneous Music Ensemble: New Surfacing 1978 & 1992
by Glenn Astarita
This album offers a snapshot of the post-1976 version of the legendary free-jazz improvisational unit, Spontaneous Music Ensemble's (SME) reign as a quartet. Two thirds of the material is derived from performances by the guitar-violin-percussion rendition, captured at a 1978 concert in Newcastle, England. It was previously released on Trio & Triangle (Emanem, 1978) but the ...
Contrasting Faces of Spontaneous Music Ensemble
by John Eyles
For years, the Emanem label has had so many releases by Spontaneous Music Ensemble in its catalogue that it has become the de facto guardian of the SME legacy, the keeper of the flame. Although there have been excellent SME recordings on other labels--Karyobin (Island, 1968; Chronoscope, 1993) and Spontaneous Music Ensemble (Marmalade, 1969; Polydor, 1972) ...
The Not So Strange and Bizarre Life of Mike Taylor
by Duncan Heining
Composer-pianist, Mike Taylor, lies buried in a touchingly simple grave in a cemetery in Southend. His body was found on the beach at Leigh-on-Sea in Essex in January 1969. It was assumed that he had committed suicide. He was 30 years old and didn't leave much of a legacy--a couple of albums now highly prized, a ...
Kenny Wheeler: The Making of "Mirrors"
by Ian Patterson
It often comes as a surprise to people when they discover that trumpeter/flugelhornist/composer Kenny Wheeler is not British. Well, not British born, for although born in Toronto, Canada, in 1930, Wheeler has spent the last 60 years living in England, which surely makes him as English as Ploughman's Lunch or a pint of bitter. The recording ...
Stevens / Rutherford / Parker / Guy: One Four and Two Twos
by John Eyles
This release brings the very welcome return of an August 1978 studio session involving four legends of British improv: drummer John Stevens, trombonist Paul Rutherford, saxophonist Evan Parker and bassist Barry Guy. The first four of its five quartet tracks were originally released on LP in 1980 by View; all five were rereleased on CD in ...
Freeform in the U.K.
by Sammy Stein
Freeform and improvised jazz is having a hard time at the moment. Venues have to make tough choices between pleasing what is a smaller cohort of customers and bringing new, maybe transient, but paying clients who are attracted by big names, standards and music they know. Customers have less cash in these difficult economic times, so ...
The Beginnings of Free Form
by Sammy Stein
"Free form" is a term used to encompass a whole genre--or genres--outside mainstream jazz. Jazz has its roots in spiritual music, Dixieland, New Orleans, blues and ragtime, and after the 1940s these became fused into a catch-all assignation of genre. Jazz took on a predictability that was largely influenced not by the limitations of the players, ...
Foxes Fox: Live at the Vortex
by John Eyles
Foxes Fox--Evan Parker on tenor saxophone, Steve Beresford on piano, John Edwards on bass and Louis Moholo-Moholo on percussion--first came together as a quartet in 1998. Live at the Vortex is, however, only their third album, following Foxes Fox (Emanem, 1999) and Naan Tso (Psi, 2005). Unlike its predecessors, this release--captured in February, 2007--was recorded live ...
