Results for "Sunny Murray"

Sunny Murray

James Marcellus Arthur "Sunny" Murray (born Idabel, Oklahoma in 1936) is one of the pioneers of the free jazz style of drumming. Murray spent his youth in Philadelphia before moving to New York City where he began playing with Cecil Taylor: "We played for about a year, just practicing, studying - we went to workshops with Varèse, did a lot of creative things, just experimenting, without a job" He featured on the influential 1962 concerts in Denmark released as Nefertiti the Beautiful One Has Come. He was among the first to forgo the drummer's traditional role as timekeeper in favor of purely textural playing. "Murray's aim was to free the soloist completely from the restrictions of time, and to do this he set up a continual hailstorm of percussion ..

Consequences Revisited

Label: ezz-thetics
Released: 2020
Track listing: Sound Barrier; We We; Consequences; Rufus; Crepuscule With Nellie; Trio; Where Poppies Bloom (Where Poppies Blow); Like A Blessed Baby Lamb; Consequences.

1964: Prophecy Revisited

By ALBERT AYLER

Label: ezz-thetics
Released: 2020
Track listing: Spirits; Wizard; Ghost 1st Variation; Prophecy; Ghost 2nd Variation; Saints; Ghosts; Wizard; Children; Spiritis (theme).

Albert Ayler 1965: Spirits Rejoice & Bells Revisited

By ALBERT AYLER

Label: ezz-thetics
Released: 2020
Track listing: Spirits Rejoice; Holy Family; D.C.; Angels; Prophet; Bells.

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 ...

Bertrand Denzler / Antonin Gerbal: Sbatax

By MARK CORROTO

With six and one-half minutes remaining in this single thirty-eight minute live tenor saxophone/drums recording, an audience member at a club in Berlin begins howling. Listeners to this recording will probably be saying to themselves, “where have you been? I've been shouting encouragement since I pressed play!" It's that kind of record. The two ...

John Blum and Jackson Krall: Duplexity

By TROY DOSTERT

A pianist of undeniable virtuosity and uncompromising intensity, John Blum has impressed free-jazz aficionados since the early 2000s with his uniquely potent approach to his instrument. One can easily hear the influence of Cecil Taylor in his ferocious, jaw-dropping power; but just as important are his ties to earlier pianists. There is just as much Art ...

New York Contemporary Five: Consequences Revisited

By MARK CORROTO

This 2020 reissue of the New York Contemporary Five recordings from 1963-64 can't help but draw one's attention to the social unrest occurring in America in 2020. In 1964 the riots in Harlem and Philadelphia over police brutality were followed by similar riots a few years later in Watts, Newark, Detroit, etc. In the growing civil ...

Paul Flaherty / Randall Colbourne / James Chumley Hunt / Mike Roberson: Borrowed From Children

By MARK CORROTO

Let's misquote a Rolling Stones' lyric here, with the music of Paul Flaherty “you can always get what you want," and maybe to a greater extent, “you get what you need." For more decades than he might want to count, the saxophonist has been making his self-described 'hated music.' We're talking hate as in a bugaboo, ...

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 ...