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Idris Ackamoor & The Pyramids: Shaman!
by Chris May
California-based tenor saxophonist and composer Idris Ackamoor, who has one foot in magical realism and the other in the politicised school of spiritual-jazz, relaunched his 1970s band the Pyramids in 2015. A year later, the group released the acclaimed We Be All Africans, which was followed in 2018 by the equally noteworthy An Angel Fell (both ...
Atlantic Records: More Giant Steps: An Alternative Top 20 Albums
by Chris May
Ahmet and Nesuhi Ertegun's Atlantic Records differs in one key respect from Prestige, Riverside, Impulse!, Strata-East and Flying Dutchman, the most prominent labels covered so far in this Building A Jazz Library series. Those labels' discographies consist almost exclusively of jazz. Atlantic had parallel interests in soul and rhythm-and-blues and, later, rock. This had consequences, as ...
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 ...
Ahmed Abdullah, Jimmy Cobb, Jill Barber and More
by Joe Dimino
The show must always go on. We have been reaching out to the jazz community to discuss the loss of live jazz due to COVID-19 and, with our programming we offer our contribution to keeping the jazz flame alive in these trying times. We profile new music from Ahmed Abdullah, Dave Liebman, Johnny Summers and Jill ...
Sex & Drugs & Jazz & Jive: Top Ten Stash Records Albums
by Chris May
With all the transgressive flair you would expect of bohemian New York City in the 1970s and 1980s, Bernie Brightman's Stash Records made its name with a hugely entertaining series of sex and drugs-themed compilations of swing-era recordings. The first was Reefer Songs in 1976. But Brightman's legacy extends much further. There was a finite amount ...
Prestige Records: An Alternative Top 20 Albums
by Chris May
Along with Alfred Lion's Blue Note and Orrin Keepnews' Riverside, Bob Weinstock's Prestige was at the top table of independent New York City-based jazz labels from the early 1950s until the mid 1960s. Like those other two labels, Prestige built up a profuse catalogue packed with enduring treasures. Originally a record retailer, Weinstock ...
Idris Ackamoor: An Afro-Futurist Odyssey
by Chris May
In summer 2020, Idris Ackamoor will release Shaman! on Britain's Strut label. It is his third album with the post-2015 incarnation of his 1970s band, The Pyramids. It reunites Ackamoor with flautist Margaux Simmons, with whom he had co-founded The Pyramids in 1972. Ackamoor's route to Afro-Futurist jazz began in the US in ...
Bob Gluck: Early Morning Star
by Karl Ackermann
Composer/pianist/electronic artist Bob Gluck's musical repertoire is particularly diverse. Among his many electro-acoustic projects are the borderless duo album Textures and Pulsations (Ictus Records, 2012) with Aruán Ortiz, Tropelets (Ictus Records, 2014) featuring improvisations based on Jewish biblical chants, and Infinite Spirit (FMR Records, 2016) where he pays tribute to Herbie Hancock's Mwandishi Band. In the ...
Jazz Musician of the Day: Sun Ra
All About Jazz is celebrating Sun Ra's birthday today! Eclectic, outrageous, sometimes mystifying but always imbued with a powerful jazz consciousness, the music of Sun Ra has withstood its skeptics and detractors for nearly three generations. And well it should, since Sun Ra has been both apart of and ahead of the jazz tradition during that ...
Matthew Shipp: Poetic Connection
by Seton Hawkins
It is difficult to describe the impact of pianist and composer Matthew Shipp without descending into hyperbole. A core figure in the now-legendary David S. Ware Quartet, a bandleader with a staggering recording output, a groundbreaking curator for the influential Blues Series of Thirsty Ear Records, Matthew Shipp has also more recently broken new ...
