Home » Search Center » Results: Sunny Murray
Results for "Sunny Murray"
John Sharpe's Best Releases of 2020
by John Sharpe
With so few performance opportunities since March, and musicians in continuing limbo, the continued stream of new releases has been a surprise, but a welcome one. For me, and many others, music has been a source of solace in an otherwise dreadful year. That makes it all the more invidious to pick and choose between honest ...
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 ...
Peter Hansen - Peeter Uuskyla: JULY 1, 1979
by Mark Corroto
The year was 1979. Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols died, so did jazz legend Charles Mingus. While punk rock was in a duel with disco, jazz as commercial music was dying the death of a thousand cuts. Miles Davis was in hiding, as jazz fusion (the disco equivalent in jazz) was forcing the retirement of ...
Albert Ayler Trio: 1964: Prophecy Revisited
by Mark Corroto
Albert Ayler is often quoted as saying “Trane was the Father, Pharoah was the Son, I am the Holy Ghost," referring to John Coltrane, “Pharoah Sanders," and himself. It might be better said that Ayler was John The Baptist, the musical prophet that proclaimed the coming of free jazz. Like many a prophet, his end was ...
Borah Bergman - Wilber Morris - Sunny Murray: Monks
by John Sharpe
For free jazz aficionados, it is much like unearthing a hitherto unknown archaeological treasure. For ordinary listeners, dulled by all the Monk retreads, there has been little to prepare them for the startling reinvention on Monks by pianist Borah Bergman, bassist Wilber Morris and drummer Sunny Murray. It has taken a while to surface. After the ...
