Results for "Lester Bowie"

Lester Bowie

Lester Bowie was one of the most adventurous and proficient manipulators of the trumpet, having made use of everything from strict melodic lines to abstracted explosions of sound. He became a member of the newly- established Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, and it was through this he met the musicians with whom he went on to form the radical Art Ensemble of Chicago. Lester Bowie was born in Frederick, Maryland in 1941, but he was raised in St. Louis, Missouri. His trumpet- playing dad was a high school band director who owned a master's degree, then, not an easy feat for a black man. By age five Lester was taking lessons from a proud father and by 14 he was under the wing of St

Vincent Chancey Trio: The Spell

By JOHN SHARPE

It's not everyone who gets to be name-checked in the title of an album by Sun Ra, but Chicago-native Vincent Chancey inhabits a select club thanks to Taking A Chance On Chances (Saturn, 1977), (mis-)named after an improvised duet between his French horn and Ra's piano. As well as the Arkestra, Chancey's French horn has also ...

Muse Records: Ten Smoking Hot Albums

By CHRIS MAY

Alone among the other great jazz labels of the 1960s and 1970s—Blue Note, Prestige, Riverside, Impulse!, Strata-East and Atlantic—Joe Fields' Muse is rarely anthologised, written about or otherwise celebrated. Yet like its peers, Muse was prolific, releasing over 200 premium-grade albums during the 1970s, its most active decade, alone. This relative obscurity is ...

The MacroQuarktet: The Complete Night: Live At The Stone NYC

By JOHN SHARPE

The Complete Night presents forward looking trumpeters Herb Robertson and Dave Ballou in a series of long form improvisations from NYC venue The Stone in 2007, in a foursome with bassist Drew Gress and drummer Tom Rainey. The first set was previously issued as Each Part A Whole on Robertson's Ruby Flower imprint, but in its ...

Jazz & Film: An Alternative Top 20 Soundtrack Albums

By CHRIS MAY

Jazz and the movies have a shared history stretching back almost a hundred years. The relationship came into its own in the US in the mid twentieth century. Elia Kazan's 1950 movie Panic In The Streets is an early example of how film makers used jazz-based soundtracks to enhance drama and atmosphere and create ambiances of ...

Moers Festival 2020

By MARTIN LONGLEY

Moers Festival Eventhalle Moers Germany May 29-June 1, 2020 Under the lockdown, this year's Moers Festival wasn't able to welcome its accustomed audience in the flesh, but artistic director Tim Isfort refused to cancel or postpone, instead opting to livestream the entire four-day proceedings, with artists ...

Time for Listeners’ Favorites

By MARC COHN

It's a show with a number 5 in it (show 425 to be precise). So, it's time for listeners' favorites from shows 411-420. See if yours made the list. Toes tappin' mask on! Enjoy! Playlist Gary Burton “Boston Marathon" from Good Vibes (Atlantic) 00:00 Jack McDuff “Hunk O' Funk" from To Seek a ...

A Jazz Immuno-Booster: Part 5

By LUDOVICO GRANVASSU

Back to popular demand! Here's some more musical therapy for these trying times, the fifth installment of this popular mix-tape series, featuring selections by Tim Berne, Theo Bleckmann, Stefano Bollani, Tommaso Cappellato, Taylor Ho Bynum, Dominique Fils-Aimé, Mats Gustaffson, Maya Keren, Brad Mehldau, Aaron Parks, Rosa Brunello and Ben Wendel. Happy listening! Stay safe ...

AACM: Together We Are Stronger

By CHRIS MAY

With the passing in 2017 of the pianist Muhal Richard Abrams and trumpeter Phil Cohran, the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, formed in Chicago in 1965, lost the last two of the four musicians who organised its inaugural meeting. But with two succeeding generations of standard bearers stepping up to the plate, the AACM ...

Jazz in the Time of Pandemic

By KARL ACKERMANN

The first week of April 2020: images crystalized the daily news reports; a dystopian Times Square; Piazza Navona in Rome, emptied of tourists, Barcelona's Basílica de la Sagrada Família standing like an abstract ruin, makeshift morgues in hospital parking lots. The jazz world is small but still a microcosm of society with interdependencies that run deep. ...