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Best Music of 2023- Phi-Psonics

Pensive and brooding with a touch of Tyner on a Fender Rhodes this music is something to wake up to, or perhaps while one reads their favorite novel during a mid-morning interlude. A welcome addition to the tranquil, yet turbulent music of your soul.

From UK Vibe:

It was the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer who first coined the phrase “music is the food of the soul”. And listening to this latest release from the LA-based jazz quartet Phi-Psonics, rarely has that phrase been so appropriate. Led by bassist Seth Ford-Young and featuring Sylvain Carton on woodwinds, Mitchell Yoshida on electric piano, and Josh Collazo on drums, their beautiful music draws on jazz and classical influences together with Ford-Young’s own musical experiences, relationships, and his introduction to spirituality, yoga and philosophy at a young age. Their unique brand of fully immersive, meditative jazz can’t help but soothe the soul and lift the spirits.

Originally from the Washington DC area, Ford-Young moved to California in the early 90s and fell in love with the sounds of the upright bass and the music of Charles Mingus, John and Alice Coltrane, and Duke Ellington along with Bach, Chopin, Pärt, and Satie. These influences can clearly be heard throughout “Octava”, with the group’s combined expression soaring in a quietly contemplative way. Their music glides effortlessly like a beautiful bird spreading its wings and catching the sunlight as it drifts from one gentle slipstream to another.

“Octava” is the group’s second album and like their debut “The Cradle” and its somewhat introspective approach to meditative jazz offers a welcoming space for uplifting contemplation. The warm melodies and thoughtful musical exploration take the listener on a lovely journey, one which offers a deep reward. Ford-Young shares a few thoughts on the recording: “This album is about change and evolution to a higher version of ourselves. Understanding this journey through the idea of ascending a musical scale and arriving at a new, higher octave is natural, especially for a musician. We move, struggle, and work through the various steps or tones and arrive at the octave a new version of ourselves, still the same person, but vibrating at a higher frequency.”

From Marlbank:

Cast your minds back to 2022 and in the same Pharoanic slipstream The Cradle that maxed out on the sheer feeling of space engendered on 'First Step' pivoting between the bass playing of Seth Ford-Young of US West Coast outfit Phi-Psonics to the floaty flute-playing of Sylvain Carton who also plays tenor saxophone on the album.

On the upcoming Octava clearly the balladic 'Green Dreams' dedicated to Ford-Young's wife is the best track with the slow tick of drummer Josh Collazo a human metronome that has somehow ceased being an inanimate object to deftly choreograph the dance that develops. But most tracks work in terms of a long play listen. Carton is all over the record and the tasteful Wurly playing is the work of Mitchell Yoshida.

Even more relevant since the passing of Pharoah Sanders last September. And even long before. Again the sax titan was at the heart of the awakening. What goes around coming around all the years on since his classic Karma all the way up to his last great statement, the incredible Promises. It is a circle that remains unbroken and the solar ripples span ever outerwards.

Maybe it says in its best expression a poetic commentary on the malaise of Western society more than any news cycle can even make a motion towards. Manchester label Gondwana is the original spiritual jazz label for the 21st century in the UK and while others may dabble at the style and frequently do, there is always a deep sense of exploration with the Halsalls & Mackness heads at the label even when they change tack.

From Goldmine Mag:

In modern days and times, when it comes to the pure and unadulterated genre of Jazz music, although it doesn't seem so, there are a plethora of recording artist's and musical ensembles who exemplify the pure and genetic coding of the roots of the genre of Jazz (in all of its classic sub-genres).  Whether it be Bebop, Hard Bop, Post Bop, Soul Jazz, Modal, Vocal Jazz, Jazz Funk, and even up to the mid-'70s incarnation of Jazz Fusion, respectable homages to those varied styles of classic traditional jazz music are alive and very present, today.  Phi-Psonics, having recently entered this realm with their debut album The Cradle (2020)—which we hope to review in the near future—have resurfaced in 2023 with their sophomore album, Octava, given to us via the very notable and respectable avant-garde and eclectic UK record label, Gondwana Records.  Aside from the Phi-Psonics, Gondwana's artist roster includes other phenomenal and note-worthy acts such as Chip Wickham, Allysha Joy, and Caoilfhionn Rose, to name a few; and the Phi-Psonics are right at home, fitting right in the musical mentality of the record label. Headed by the incredible writer, composer, producer and bassist, Seth Ford-Young, and completed with his line up of exceptional musicians: Sylvain Carton (saxophones and flutes), Mitchell Yoshida (Wurlitzer and electric piano), and Josh Collazo (drums), Phi-Psonics are a quartet of modern ethereal post bop and modal jazz, that has no choice but to garner respect from even the most discerning of Jazz music aficionados.  And all of this, out of Los Angeles, the 'music capital of the world', where Rock, HipHop, Pop, Soul/R&B, Punk, and even Smooth Jazz reign supreme ... come Phi-Psonics.

Octava is a brilliant sophomore effort if there ever was one.  And although I do not own their debut release, I have sampled it online, and I will say that, even as incredibly impressive as their breakthrough album The Cradle is, their sophomore release stands out even if just a hair more, than their debut does.  Boy, does the opening track,  "Invocation," immediately stir up mid-'60s post bop offerings from some of my most notable favorites.  It immediately threw me back to some of my favorite Eric Dolphy, Ron Carter, Charles Mingus and John Coltrane recordings.  Moving through the track-listing to "We Walk in the Gardens of Our Ancestors," I came to a place of the meditative Jazz ethers, where the minimalistic infusion of brilliant musicianship and composition met the sonic fingerprint of psychedelia, which was lead specifically by flute and Rhodes piano, and carried me through a pure Jazz dream state, reminiscent of circa ealy-'70s CTI label Hubert Laws.  "Green Dreams," is yet another 'beyond reality' work of art that invokes feelings of supernatural peace and subconscious self-reflection, yet in the midst of contemplation, all in a slightly more than five minute composition, which ends much to soon.  

Photo: Bobby Gordon

Best Music of 2023- Anja Laudval

Music that feels like it emanates from my youth-when electronic keyboards could elicit the newest and the most nostalgic emotions I experienced. Through the years this type of music in my ears has been lost, but here it's been found. Tranquil and ruminative. A spring in cool, fall air.

From The Quietus:

Pianist and synth player Lauvdal is a prolific collaborator. Her roots are in jazz, playing in countless ensembles in Oslo’s scene. She is one third of the shape-shifting improvisation trio Moskus, and also played on Jenny Hval’s 2018 EP, The Long Sleep. It’s only recently that she ventured into recording solo. From A Story Now Lost, produced with Laurel Halo, is a suite of woozy electronics and keys. Intricately layered, the tracks unfurl in gauzy webs and ebbs rather than marching out of the speakers.

Farewell To Faraway Friends is less layered, more hand-crafted, recorded at home with nothing more than two mics and a Wurlitzer keyboard. It’s an album that feels simultaneously itinerant and domestic, exploratory and private. Lacking the augmentation of her debut, it retains the knack of tumbling out the speakers like leaves twirling through the wind, with trickles of notes dancing through their own sustains. A sense of intimacy, that you’re listening in on a private ritual, is only amplified as you hear the creaks and soft clunks of the Wurlitzer as Lauvdal’s fingers move across its keyboard.

This feeling of being both homely and placeless, settled and roaming, makes sense when Lauvdal speaks about her life over the last decade or so. Years of touring internationally also meant years of travelling alone. Thanks to the generous parental leave available in Norway, after she had her first child, she opted to bring her family with her.

“When you’re away for longer periods, it’s strange, you change. At least I did,” she admits. “You get into this different way of being in the world, of travelling and seeing a lot of things. When you get home there’s a friction with that – who am I in this place? You need to adjust. When I was travelling with my daughter and partner we were more adventurous. We wanted to stay longer in each place and see more. We didn’t need that readjustment when we got back.”

From DJ Mag:

“I think that for a long time, I didn’t really need it,” Lauvdal says, explaining why it took so long to put out her own music. “I really enjoy collaboration, and I have a very social relationship to music. It’s hanging out with friends and playing together, which is a really nice way to be in the world. But maybe six months before the pandemic, I was extremely tired from touring a lot and from being sort of dragged in a lot of different directions with all the many different projects, and so I sort of needed to gather my thoughts.”

Lauvdal decided to take a bit of time off — then Covid came along, and she had a lot more time off. “I suddenly found myself sitting in a room and playing alone for myself,” she says, “not having an audience and not having anybody at all, not even somebody recording it. I was completely alone, and that was a super-weird and intense feeling for me. Like, who do I do this for? It was a very, very new experience, but also sort of what I needed to get back the joy.”

The album was produced by Laurel Halo, the Ann Arbor-born, Berlin-based artist who, like Lauvdal, has a penchant for aural experimentation. The process, true to Lauvdal’s background, was a collaborative one, initiated by sending sketches over to Halo. “We found some mutual favorites,” Lauvdal recalls, “and we talked a lot about process, and then she asked, ‘Do you ever improvise with your own improvisations?’ That was really a door-opener for me, because up till then, I’d only sampled other people and other instruments.”

From Crack:

There’s something to be said about full-length debuts from artists some years into established professions. There’s often an eagerness from all manner of fans and critics, who await such releases with an additional air of excitement. Prospective listeners may well ponder how the creators of these highly-anticipated, long-awaited projects will make sense of colourful careers and reconcile the various offshoots of their work into a singular album, after extended spells of time spent honing a craft, working closely with peers and experimenting across a diverse spectrum of musical landscapes.

Anja Lauvdal is a Norwegian musician and composer who released her solo debut From a Story Now Lost last year via Smalltown Supersound. Hailing from the small town in the south of Norway where label founder Joakim Haugland started the imprint in the 90s, the record was a full circle moment for more than just Lauvdal. Created with LA-based producer and Awe founder Laurel Halo – who herself shared a remarkable album, Atlas, just a few weeks back – From a Story Now Lost was exquisite and transportive, and chronicled an artist in a clear moment in both time and place. A graduate of the prestigious Trondheim Conservatory of Music, the release marked the latest stop in a musical odyssey that has seen her particulate in various ensembles and collaborate with renowned artists like Jenny Hval both in the studio and on stage over the past decade or so.

 

Best Music of 2023- Daniel Villareal

 

Disoriented by the world's growing violence and the political fantasies of the right, music has had a difficult time cutting through to my psyche. This brew by Villarreal, a musician I had not heard of until recently, brought in synch with my sanity and reminded me that there are sonic places where you can begin to align in this dispiriting environment that 2023 is. That is what my tastes are looking for the days and I'm sure my selections will reflect this.

From Uncut:

Last year Villarreal released his debut solo album, Panamá 77 (named after the place and date of his birth), an irresistibly groovy, instrumental set that threads psychedelic funk, soul and jazz through traditional Latin-American folk. It was recorded with a large cast including guitarist Jeff Parker, known for both his work in Tortoise and solo records, and LA-based Australian bassist Anna Butterss, who’s served with Phoebe Bridgers, Jenny Lewis and Ben Harper and in 2022 released her first solo album, Activities.

All Villarreal’s projects see him expanding on his folkloric roots (though in fact, he cut his teeth on Panama City’s punk/hardcore scene in the ’90s), but with his second album he’s stretching out in a different way, relaxing the rhythms of cumbia, salsa and Afrobeat into sparer and more silken freeform pieces that channel the spirits of Ray Barretto, the Fania All Stars and Tony Allen, while sharing a genre ambiguity with Chicago adventurers like Tortoise, Isotope 217, New Fracture Quartet and the solo Parker. Lados B – it translates as “B sides” – draws from the same improv sessions as Panamá 77, specifically recordings made over two afternoons in October of 2020. Due to pandemic restrictions, the “studio” was Chicali Outpost, a patio garden in the LA home of International Anthem’s co-founder Scottie McNiece. Earlier live sessions in both LA and Chicago, plus several Outpost sessions, provided Villarreal with a ton of material to choose from and a handful of the recordings with Parker and Butterss made it onto that first album. One “super magical” session, though, demanded a release of its own. As Villarreal told Uncut: “It felt organic and raw improvising as a trio, with very minimal vibe to add in post-production. That’s what characterises those tracks [and led me to] thinking this can be a whole other album.”

From Spellbinding Music:

Originally from Panama and now based in Chicago, Daniel Villarreal is a DJ, percussionist and drummer with several progressive alt-rock or folk-infused bands he co-leads such as Dos Santos, the Valebo duo or Yda Y Vuelta and which were all born out of the Latinx cultural hubs in North America. The drummer derives his style from a blend of popular Latin dance rhythms like Columbian Cumbia, Afro-Caribbean Salsa or Mexican Son with psychedelic rock, afrobeat, funk and jazz influences.

Following on from two well-received LPs with Dos Santos for the excellent Chicago-based International Anthem label, a 2019 impromptu gig in Los Angeles with a small ensemble sowed the seeds for what would become Daniel Villarreal’s first solo album.

Recorded over 5 sessions between 2019 and 2020 in three different locations, featuring 12 guest musicians and released on 20 May 2022 last, Panamá 77 is a fantastic instrumental album brimming with a vibrant creative energy. Released a year later, Lados B features unreleased music from the same performances and showcases Daniel Villarreal’s music in a striking trio formation.

From AllMusic:

When Dos Santos drummer/percussionist/composer Daniel Villarreal-Carillo issued the adventurous, polygenre Panamá 77 in 2022, he utilized an alternating cast of players. Two of the musicians, bassist Anna Butterss and guitarist Jeff Parker, also co-wrote five of that album's 12 tunes with him. Parker and Butterss are Villarreal-Carillo's accompaniment on Lados B. They recorded it during the pandemic over two days in October 2020 in the backyard of L.A.'s Chicali Outpost. This set differs from Panamá 77. In place of carefully constructed, painstakingly layered jams melding Latin styles with jazz, funk, rock, and psychedelia, we instead get a deeply intuitive, loose, open, and largely introspective three-way musical conversation, mildly related in feel to Parker's wonderful Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy (its lineup also included Butterss).

Villarreal-Carillo introduces opener "Traveling With" using various cymbals, cowbells, and chimes before his bandmates enter with a mysterious call-and-response Latin vamp. Bassist and bandleader accent (via overdubbing) and extrapolate the groove into a jazz-rock approach without sacrificing pulse. As the trio interact, their statements and responses serve to extend and buoy the groove into infinity. "Republic," at just under three minutes, is one of the most unfettered tunes here. Parker's West African-influenced guitar playing rides and glides atop Butterss' joyous bassline, hand drums, small percussion instruments, and a drum kit that double- and triple-times the band. "Chicali Outpost" is introduced by Butterss' upright alongside shakers and hand percussion. Parker plays a circular vamp via the guitar's ringing harmonics until Villarreal-Carillo joins with a drum kit and Parker begins to solo rhythmically and mercurially, winding around the riff, cutting through it, adding modal blues, post-bop, and edgy psychedelia. An upright bass solo, vamp, and spectral percussion introduce "Bring It." Parker's sonic guitar washes create an ambient backdrop as the drummer improvises alongside Butterss. The delightfully funky "Salute" is laden with organic drum breaks, a round, warm, elastic guitar vamp, and a contrapuntal bassline. Neal Francis joins the trio on a Rhodes piano, adding fingerpopping rhythm, harmony, atmosphere, and ballast to the vibe. "Daytime Nighttime" is edgier. Parker's treated guitar erects one vamp that's joined by Butterss. Villarreal-Carillo frames it by adding a shadow beat for Parker's solo, which weds blues and jazz to tango. The longest cut, "Things Can Be Calm," is a subtle, mysterious, drifting meditation in texture, syncopation, and repetition before closer "Rig Motif," which is full of fusion chaos and rock dynamics that careen into a 21st century futurist take on post-punk Panamanian salsa. Each instrumentalist solos, but always inside tightly structured rhythms.

Lados B offers an entirely different M.O. from the more stridently produced Panamá 77. That's not a knock. If anything, the more open approach to creating tunes on the spot is exceptionally appealing. That said, don't let sonic appearances deceive you: the music here is exquisitely complex, often subtle, and kinetic. It's probable that listeners will find Lados B a stronger outing than its predecessor, simply because its adventure and intimate conversations inspire exceptionally inventive sounds.

 

The Fith Power-Tribute to Lester Bowie

A tribute to Lester Bowie in Frederick this last Friday produced by Frederick Experimental Music Association:

Richard Davis, Bass Extraordinaire Gone at 93

Here is an excellent write-up about Richard Davis;

Richard Davis, the versatile bass player with over 3,000 recording credits, has died at the age of 93. Davis’ daughter Persia Davis confirmed her father’s death Thursday on a memorial page.

“We appreciate all the love and support the community has shown him over the years,” Persia shared in a statement.

Perhaps no artist besides Davis could claim to have worked with musical giants as different as Igor Stravinsky, Eric Dolphy, Frank Sinatra, and Bruce Springsteen. A prolific and supremely versatile bass polymath, Davis spent his seven-decade career refusing to abide by musical barriers, playing everything from jazz (both the bebop and avant-garde varieties) to blues, pop, rock, folk, and classical music. He cited one artist in particular for this inspiration: Duke Ellington. Ellington “didn’t classify any genres,” Davis told Bob Jacobson in 2014. “To him, there were only two kinds of music: It’s either good or bad. I’m with Duke Ellington on that.”

Though popular audiences might not know Davis by name, they certainly know many of the records on which he played, particularly platinum-selling pop-rock masterpieces by Bruce Springsteen (Born To Run), Paul Simon (There Goes Rhymin’ Simon), Van Morrison (Astral Weeks) and Janis Ian (Between The Lines). But though Davis’ pop and rock excursions certainly helped him financially and took his name into the wider public domain, his heart belonged to jazz, and he played with some of the genre’s biggest names, from trumpet pioneers Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie to jazz singer Sarah Vaughan and avant-garde magus Eric Dolphy.

Famed for his deep, rich tone and musical dexterity (he could pluck, strum, and bow the bass equally well), Davis was a master technician who could alternate between acoustic and electric bass and was in high demand as a sideman. He also found time to record over 20 albums under his own name and enjoyed notable LP collaborations with ex-Coltrane drummer Elvin Jones, vibraphonist Walt Dickerson, and saxophonist Archie Shepp. The classical music world, too, benefited from Davis’ expertise; he worked with the Russian-American composer Igor Stravinsky (who once purportedly described Davis’ virtuosity as “god-like”) and also played under the baton of several eminent conductors, including Leonard Bernstein, Pierre Boulez, and Leopold Stokowski.

But Davis would probably contend that his greatest contribution to music was his role as a teacher, which began in 1977 when he took up the post of a music professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he stayed for 39 years. He firmly believed in passing on his knowledge and wisdom. “I love teaching,” he said in 1979. “I believe you should share what you have.”

Davis was a Chicagoan by birth, born on April 15, 1930. Music hooked him early thanks to his mother’s collection of 78-rpm jazz records, which he played incessantly. His first taste of active music-making was singing in a family vocal trio, coached by a cousin. But it wasn’t until he was 15 that Davis felt the urge to take up an instrument. Bashful as a child, Davis wasn’t drawn to a front-line instrument like the saxophone or trumpet but while attending DuSable High School, where his classmates included future saxophone star Clifford Jordan and blues man Bo Diddley (then known as Ellas McDaniel). He was fascinated by the upright bass. “The bass was always in the background, and I was a shy kid,” he told Steve Krakow in 2022. “So I thought maybe I’d like to be in the background.”

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Mayte Martin Interview

 

Though I have known of Mayte Martin for decades I only started listening to her recently. What a treat! Here is an interview with her from deflamenco.com:

One thing Mayte, your last names…what’s the origin?
Well, I’m a mixed bag.  My parents were from Catalonia and Málaga, my grandparents were from Murcia and Asturias…my father’s side is Andalusian, but on my mother’s there was a little of everything.  “Cadiemo” is a last name I haven’t seen anywhere outside of my family.

The reason I ask, is because of your background…to see who’s to blame.
I think my love of flamenco comes from my love of music in general.  The thing is, it was the first music that caught my attention.  The first thing that got me hooked was flamenco.  It made me feel emotions and cry, it made me want to sing.

Who was singing?
Marchena, Valderrama, la Niña de la Puebla.  Flamenco in the earlier lyrical line.  

They’re the ones who led to the great stylistic debate.
I don’t mean to say there aren’t two kinds of flamenco.  There are, and there always have been.  And they’re perfectly differentiated.  What’s absurd is to establish a differentiation of quality.  That’s crazy.  The style or form of things has nothing to do with that.  Marchena was flamenco and so was Caracol.  Each one had his own story.  The same thing with Manuel Torre and Chacón.

But look, when I started out I can tell you I discovered flamenco thanks to Valderrama, but it felt like something was missing, and after a time I understood.  I loved that cante, but needed…how can I say it?…something more funky, more visceral…so I went searching.  My brother Paco helped me, in those days he was accompanying me on guitar.  Together we investigated and came upon Agujetas, Chocolate, Caracol…in other words, everything that was missing.  That was the other side of the coin, but don’t think they were country bumpkins, what they were doing was plenty sophisticated in its own way.

But then, later on, I discovered la Niña de los Peines, and that’s where I saw there was someone who brought everything together, from my point of ear, she did everything and made it one.  That was Pastora Pavón.

“The end result mustn’t be a concern.  It’s the journey that matters, and how you feel about yourself.  The fruits of your labor will come later on, first plant the tree and care for it, and that tree is your truth.  If it isn’t your truth, what difference does it make if it bears fruit or not, or how big and lush it becomes?”

How old were you when that happened?
I was 19.  Had I discovered her earlier, I would have taken that step much sooner.  It was a kind of love affair, like when you meet the person you identify with.  That “mirror” as so many people call it.  In her I found what I considered flamenco to be.

Flamenco is elegant phrasing with a gutsy quality, and risking everything at each moment.

That certainly comes through in what you do.
That’s important.  Hard work and experience help you improve and express yourself better, but make no mistake, the main thing is to be free.  If I couldn’t be free on stage, I assure you I wouldn’t be in this line of work.  I can’t conceive of it. 

Well, many performing artists are pressured by the record companies…deadlines, collaborations, promotion…sometimes they miss being completely free, or so it seems at least.
That’s a consequence of the world we live in, but it cannot be a priority.  I’d like to be rich and famous, but that can’t be my priority.  It’s immoral for an artist to think like that…anyone who does is unworthy of being called an artist.  Art exists in order to be free, to release things that can’t be felt or done in day-to-day life.  It’s the sublimation of emotion, know what I mean?

I think only two things take you to that point: love and art.  That is what liberates you and shows you who you are, it gets things out of you that you didn’t know were inside.

If anything limits you, that can’t be.  You can’t be pressured because something you do isn’t commercial, or worrying about pleasing people because you’re insecure…none of that matters, you can’t go on stage like that.  The end result mustn’t be a concern.  It’s the journey that matters, and how you feel about yourself.  The fruits of your labor will come later on, first plant the tree and care for it, and that tree is your truth.  If it isn’t your truth, what difference does it make if it bears fruit or not, or how big and lush it becomes?

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The Discovery of Gil Melle

 

From Jazz Times, a good summary of Gil Melle's development, the first white musician to get signed at Blue Note in the 50's and the guy who replaced the piano with an electric guitar in the small jazz ensemble:

10-inchers and the 12-inch LP Patterns in Jazz for Blue Note, all reissued on CD as The Complete Blue Note ’50s Sessions; three records for Prestige, Primitive Modern, Gil’s Guests and Quadrama-must sound thoroughly grounded in the cool school. Mellé played baritone with a graceful lightness and a vibratoless tone, and his music, even in driving moments, has a cool distance to it, not announcing itself in broad gestures but insinuating with peculiar details.

Mellé’s oddities begin with some of the very first songs he recorded. On “Four Moons”-one of a host of Mellé originals with astrology/astronomy titles that turn up on the Blue Note sides-Monica Dell adds a spacey, low-moan scat so bizarre that it seems to anticipate the intergalactic chants of Sun Ra. Mellé’s interest in classical composition-Bartók in particular-surfaced in 1955 with the complexly structured suite “Five Impressions of Color” (from the last Blue Note 10-inch) and the almost narrative “Ghengis” from Gil’s Guests (1956).

“I was into translating Bartók’s architectonic thinking into jazz,” Mellé says. “There are movements and sections that Bartók wrote that have a pulse like you wouldn’t believe. They really move. And I thought, ‘My God, if I can just rethink this and make it work within a jazz composition.”

The music Mellé made for Prestige is not only more rich, confidant and fully realized than his Blue Note work, it’s also more densely populated with unexpected twists and turns. The creative firecrackers threaded into the recordings give the music an almost casual air of the avant-garde. Consider, for example, “Ironworks” from Primitive Modern (1956): Ed Thigpen uses an unorthodox drum kit that is expanded to accommodate large pieces of piping, which gives him a machine-shop sound, and there’s a unexpected break in the tune where the whole band drops out save Cinderella, who emits a beam of abstract sound-a totally static moment and an early echo of Mellé’s future in electronic music.

“I wasn’t playing bebop,” Mellé says. “And for that matter, neither was Monk, neither was George Russell, neither was Teddy Charles, neither was Lennie Tristano. There were some of us who had a little more respect for Bird and Diz and Miles than to just imitate them-steal their lines-which is what everyone was doing. We just picked our own direction.”

By this time Mellé’s own directions were several. Alfred Lion liked Mellé’s artwork enough that he encouraged the saxophonist to design his own album covers from the start. “Alfred was like a second father to me. He took me to museums, the MOMA, the Guggenheim and all these places I had never been. We went to see a lot of foreign films. He gave me a peek over the pigsty, which is what Jersey was. That changed my life.”

 

Moutin-Omicil-Moutin at Pausa

Sometimes you can find some excellent improvised music on the Internet. This trio has a lot of imagination. Wish the microphone on each instrument could have been better to capture the nuances of the interplay. But grateful it was recorded.

New Coltrane

 

From New Yorker's Richard Brodey on Coltrane's new release from the early 60's:

Rightly understood, the new release (available on CD, vinyl, and digital formats) is as valuable for tyros as for aficionados. I don’t believe in cultural starter sets; with great artists, there’s no point to beginning at a simpler, more conventional stage, or with a sampler. In my experience, what matters is to come in where the passion runs high, and in the Village Gate album, the entire band plays with an astonishing, even overwhelming intensity. The spectrum of achievements that the recording documents for Coltrane and Dolphy is narrow, but it reaches further into the musical future—the musicians’ and that of jazz at large—than any other recordings of theirs from the early sixties that I’ve heard. Here, Coltrane, in particular, offers audacious premonitions of a jazz avant-garde, running years ahead to prefigure the way he’d be playing from 1965 through the end of his life, in 1967.

Coltrane was a late bloomer. Born in 1926, he came to prominence as a sideman, playing tenor saxophone in Miles Davis’s groups, in 1955, and stayed with him, on and off, through 1960. Though Coltrane made many recordings under his own name throughout that time, only in 1960 did he form his own working band, the core of which, heard here, is the pianist McCoy Tyner and the drummer Elvin Jones. (On “Evenings at the Village Gate,” two bassists, Reggie Workman and Art Davis, perform together.) Dolphy, too, had a long musical gestation. Born in 1928 in Los Angeles, he came to New York in 1959, and began to record as a leader in 1960, but worked mainly as a sideman (notably, in Charles Mingus’s group). In the album’s liner notes, Ashley Kahn quotes an interview with Coltrane from soon after this gig: Coltrane said that he and Dolphy had been “talking music for quite a few years, since about 1954.” He added, “A few months ago Eric was in New York, where the group was working, and he felt like playing, wanted to come down and sit in. So I told him to come on down and play, and he did—and turned us all around.”

That turnaround was a revolution, one that’s all the more remarkable for being a revolution within a revolution, because Coltrane was at the center of mighty and epochal change. Coltrane was already at the forefront of jazz modernity. With his sophisticated ideas about harmony and its mighty complexities, he made recordings in the nineteen-fifties that were definitively characterized by the critic Ira Gitler as “sheets of sound,” colossal skeins of notes that ran at high speed, in long-breathing phrases, through ferociously intricate sets of chromatic variations.

Early in 1960, Coltrane was ready to start his own band, but Davis, who had booked a European concert tour, persuaded him to come along. During that tour, Coltrane’s impatience was evident, and he gave it furious musical expression, soloing—usually at much greater length than Davis—with a vehemence that ripped the sheets to shreds. (These concert recordings are among my favorites of Coltrane’s.) In the course of that tour, Davis bought Coltrane a present—a soprano saxophone—and, according to Davis’s drummer at the time, Jimmy Cobb, Coltrane spent most of his time on the tour bus “looking out the window and playing Oriental-sounding scales on soprano.” Later that year, back in New York, Coltrane formed his group. His recording of “My Favorite Things,” which he made on soprano sax, was released in March, 1961, and became, of all things, a jukebox hit. Coltrane built that long-limbed, loping studio performance on the expanded sense of musical space that he had developed with Davis. (That track runs nearly fourteen minutes.)

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Ciao Joao

From the NYT obituaries, Jon Pareles writes about Donato's life:

João Donato, a Brazilian composer, musician and producer who was a pioneer of bossa nova and who went on to cross-pollinate music across the Americas, died on Monday in Rio de Janeiro. He was 88.

His death, in a hospital, was announced on his Instagram page. Brazilian news media reported that the cause was pneumonia.

Mr. Donato was in the coterie of Rio de Janeiro musicians — among them Antonio Carlos Jobim, João Gilberto and the guitarist Luiz Bonfá — who developed the subtle swing and harmonic sophistication of bossa nova in the mid-1950s.

But Mr. Donato didn’t confine himself to any genre. In a recording career that extended from the 1950s into the current decade, he released some three dozen albums as a leader and collaborated with a wide range of artists on many more. Although he was best known as a keyboardist, he was also a singer, accordionist and trombonist.

As a pianist, Mr. Donato was known for his blend of a frisky, restlessly syncopated, harmonically intricate left hand with relaxed, sure-footed right-hand melodies. As a composer, producer and arranger, he constantly — and playfully — fused and stretched idioms and production styles. He once said he had a “sweet tooth for funky ideas.”

Mr. Donato played MPB (as Brazilian popular music is widely known; the letters stand for “música popular brasileira”), jazz, funk, salsa, American pop and pan-American hybrids that were entirely his own. He worked with generations of Brazilian musicians, including the singer and movie star Carmen Miranda; the singers Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Milton Nascimento and Marisa Monte; and the rapper Marcelo D2.

He also recorded with Eddie Palmieri, Michael Franks, Mongo Santamaría and Ali Shaheed Muhammad from A Tribe Called Quest. Throughout his life, he sought new grooves.

The president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, said on Twitter: “João Donato saw music in everything. He innovated, he passed through samba, bossa nova, jazz, forró, and in the mixture of rhythm built something unique. He kept creating and innovating until the end.”

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Worldwide FM · Gilles Peterson: Joao Donato Mix