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Kris Tiner and Mike Baggetta: There, Just As You Look For It
by Rex Butters
East meets west with this collaboration between California's Kris Tiner and New York's Mike Baggetta. With various trumpets and prepared acoustic guitar, they explore a variety of compositional models while leaving plenty of room for showcasing improvisational prowess. Tiner plays through a spectrum of tones and approaches, well matched by Baggetta's inventive, wiry guitar inventions. Both ...
Emily Hay: Like Minds
by Rex Butters
Emily Hay comes in off the bench to smack one over the center field wall on Like Minds. A ubiquitous presence on the West Coast improv scene as a pianist, vocalist, and flutist, Hay works as an entertainment copyright paralegal, radio DJ/host, promoter, and soundtrack producer and supervisor--when she's not playing with Vinny Golia, Jeff Kaiser, ...
The Jeff Kaiser Ockodekete/The Kaiser/Diaz-Infante Sextet: The Alchemical Mass/Suite Solutio
by John Kelman
With most peoples' ears attuned to common musical elements such as melody, harmony, and rhythm, free improvisation and contemporary classical composition can sometimes come across like disturbing chaos. There are often precious few recognizable patterns to hang one's hat on, and with extended techniques used by some instruments, it can often be next to impossible to ...
Brad Dutz: Nine Gardeners Named Ned
by John Kelman
West Coast percussionist Brad Dutz may have a lot of more conventional work to his credit--he's contributed to television and film scores including Star Trek: The Next Generation and Mission Impossible, as well as performing and/or recording with artists including Tribal Tech, Rickie Lee Jones, and Frank Sinatra--but when it comes to his own recordings, he's ...
Brad Dutz: Nine Gardeners Named Ned
by Jim Santella
Percussionist Brad Dutz leads an all-star ensemble on this program of his creative compositions. Each piece tells a story. The ensemble, including many of Southern California's leading improvising artists, accurately shades each piece with colors and patterns that evoke various moods. The session's standout instrumental voices include Dutz on marimba and vibraphone, Kim Richmond on clarinet, ...
Steuart Liebig/Minim: Quicksilver
by John Kelman
Finding a meeting place between contemporary chamber composition and improvisation can be a challenge. All too often artists who spend their time in the more rigid confines of the classical world fail as improvisers, because they work most commonly with formal structure, where expression is defined in terms of subtle nuances in dynamics and phrasing. Pure ...
Steuart Liebig: Quicksilver
by Robert R. Calder
On this set bass guitarist Steuart Liebig shows none of his rock credentials and nearly no jazz affiliation. It's a set of European concert chamber music, thoroughly organised. It's hard to determine how much is improvised, how much written, how much just a filling in of sketches. Is this a compilation of recordings of various improvisations, ...
Jeff Kaiser Ockodektet/Kaiser-Diaz Infante Sextet: The Alchemical Mass/Suite Solutio
by Rex Butters
Straight out of Ventura, California, Jeff Kaiser releases the CD version of his recent performance with his Ockodektet and the Ojai Camerata, The Alchemical Mass. A riveting exercise crossing modern composition with improvisation and choral arrangements, all in the service of an authentic 15th Century alchemical text, its author having passed from royal court astrologer to ...
Many Axes: 2 Many Axes
by Rex Butters
For over a quarter of a century, Susan Rawcliffe has designed and played ceramic flutes and other instruments. Many are based on studies of instruments played by pre-Hispanic cultures like the Aztec, Mayan, Zapotec, and Olmec, and after making and mastering them, Rawcliffe then adds creative redesigns to invent her own playable sculptures. She lectured at ...
Steuart Liebig: Quicksilver
by Michael Davis
Bassist/composer Steuart Liebig has been one of LA's most prolific jazz jugglers for years now. At any given time, he may have half a dozen bands in the air, a couple behind his back, and a few improvisational relationships on the side. Over the last decade, he's put out recordings on Nine Winds, Cryptogramophone, Cadence Jazz, ...
