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Mars Williams: An Ayler Xmas Vol. 4: Chicago vs. NYC
by Mark Corroto
For more than a decade, Mars Williams has been making (to borrow a phrase) Christmas music great again. He does so by exchanging the saccharine for the sublime, intersecting holiday classics with the music of Albert Ayler. Born out of his Chicago Ayler repertory band which can be heard on Witches And Devils At The Empty ...
Mark Corroto's Best Releases Of 2020
by Mark Corroto
Goodbye to 2020 and for the most part good riddance. Unless of course, we are talking about great music. Hopefully, your self isolation bubble had good sounds. Keeping in mind the global pandemic will not end soon, here's a list of my top 18 releases for 2020. I hope they can ease the pain of social ...
Kobe Van Cauwenberghe: Anthony Braxton Ghost Trance Solos
by Mark Corroto
Anthony Braxton's Ghost Trance Music (GTM) has been explained as his interpretation of Native American ritualistic circle or ghost dances, the means by which a people connected to their ancestors. The music appears to be unbounded, and it exists before the musicians take the stage and continues long after the performance has concluded. If we carry ...
Allen Shawn / Michael Bisio: Improvisations
by Mark Corroto
In this new world of fake news and alternative facts, you may like to challenge the title of pianist Allen Shawn and bassist Michael Bisio's Improvisations. This music is so properly presented, it has all the elements of composed music. To acknowledge these eight tracks as instant composing is sort of mind-blowing. Those immersed ...
Russ Lossing: Traces: Two Song Cycles
by Mark Corroto
There is an HBO television series, A World of Calm, which delivers thirty-minute vignettes on subjects from trees to snowfall to the vastness of the universe. The unhurried series is designed to elicit restfulness while at the same time provoking deep concentration. The same can be said of Traces, a quartet project by pianist Russ Lossing. ...
Misha Mengelberg: Rituals Of Transition
by Mark Corroto
It takes a master to speak like a child. Pianist Misha Mengelberg (1935-2017) was such a giant at the keyboard that he could shed all pretension and improvise with a simple innocence. Call it Zen enlightenment or just a blunt brilliance. His music is often absurd and paradoxical, like an inside joke, except he graciously lets ...
Rempis/Parker/Flaten/Cunningham: Stringers & Struts
by Mark Corroto
Imagine if the listener could choose bands or combinations of musicians like a fantasy football game. They would compile discographies and note when certain players crossed paths, or imagine new combinations of dissimilar styles. This is obviously not an original idea because Chicago saxophonist Dave Rempis has been drafting varying combinations of talented players for more ...
Albert Ayler: Albert Ayler 1965: Spirits Rejoice & Bells Revisited
by Mark Corroto
Being that 2020 is more than half a century since Albert Ayler (1936-70) recorded this music, the best way to approach might be through what the Zen Buddhists call Shoshin. Roughly translated as “beginner's mind," or the ability to experience things as if for the first time. Since we cannot transport ourselves back to 1965, taking ...
Noah Preminger: Contemptment
by Mark Corroto
If you followed saxophonist Noah Preminger's early career you might have read an interview where he revealed his fascination with boxing. The fact that he trained in the sweet science for nearly a decade while making music is evident in the pugilistic blues heard on self-released albums Pivot: Live At The 55 Bar (2015) and Dark ...
João Almeida: Solo Sessions *||||
by Mark Corroto
Listening to Solo Sessions *|||| by Portuguese trumpeter João Almeida, reminds one of a passage in Jack Kerouac's seminal novel On The Road, “The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who ...
