Jul 31 2018

Aaron Martin’s gorgeous new album “Touch Dissolves” is Album of the Day over at Bandcamp

 

For a little while there, we had a series going called Sunday Morning Jazz Album.  It highlighted albums with a gentle nature, dispensing the peaceful kind of music that suited angry hangovers, hushed sunrises and a sustained tranquility that one wished would never end.

This is the kind of music I like to start most all days with, and rarely does the selection of a particular album confine itself to the jazz genre.  An artist who has contributed to several albums that fill this particular need of mine is Aaron Martin.  The cellist has new album out.  It’s called Touch Dissolves.  It’s the Album of the Day over at Bandcamp.  Go check it out.  I wrote some words about it for The Bandacmp Daily.

And if you needed any additional motivation, here’s the second track from Touch Dissolves.  I swear, it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve heard all year long.

By • Announcement - Music • 0 • Tags:

Jul 30 2018

The Round-up: Disconnected from a life of motion

 

Here is some very good new music.

 

Ivo Neame – Moksha (Edition Records)

As much as I enjoy myself a good (great) Phronesis recording, it’s always nice to hear each of the trio members on their own side projects.  With Moksha, Ivo Neame continues to express his lyrical eccentricities in a way that is thoroughly embraceable.  It’s straight-ahead modern jazz that often jumps a path off the main road without ever cluing the listener in that they’re being guided through uncharted territories.  That’s pretty cool, and not easily done.  The pianist enlists a quartet that includes tenor saxophonist George Crowley, bassist Tom Farmer and drummer James Maddren.  Music from London.

Artist site | Listen | Buy:  Bandcamp – Amazon

 

Beekman – Vol.03: Live in San Francisco (Ropeadope Records)

What I like most about the Beekman ensemble is how their tendency to break down a tune’s structure leads to an explosion of melodic facets rather than muddying the waters and obscuring its definition.  It’s like a story that tangents huge into a supporting character’s backstory, providing details of information that seem to have nothing to do with the main plot line… until a return of focus to the lead character results in a far more nuanced and rich backdrop.  That’s how the Brooklyn-based quartet of saxophonist Kyle Nasser, pianist Yago Vasguez, bassist Pablo Menares, and drummer Rodrigo Recabarren go about the telling of their sonic tale, and based on the number of times I’ve written about their music, it’s clear this is something they do quite well.  This live performance in San Fran is yet more evidence.

Artist site | Listen | Buy:  Bandcamp

 

Jan Roth – Kleinod (Sinnbus)

There’s a lovely meditative quality to this session from Jan Roth.  The pianist displays a talent for generating a peaceful atmosphere right from go, and it carries on the strength of its introduction even if a particular piece veers into more tumultuous territory.  The wind instruments of Antonia Hausmann and Fritz Moshammer add some very appealing and necessary depth to the affair, providing harmonic weight to balance out the sunshine melodies from Roth’s piano.  Meanwhile, the bass and drums duo of Alex Binder and Maximilian Stadtfeld add some definition to the melodic arc of each piece, accentuating their motion when appropriate and keeping them corralled before a sense of randomness sets in.  Beautiful stuff.  Music from Leipzig, Germany.

Artist site | Listen | Buy:  Bandcamp – Amazon

 

The Maguire Twins – Seeking Higher Ground (Three Tree Records)

What I like about this recording is that each melody is bright as a moonbeam and leads along a winding path easy to follow and enjoy.  What I appreciate about this recording is that the Maguire Twins dive into the songbooks of the modern jazz scene, performing renditions of compositions by Gregory Tardy, Geoffrey Keezer, Donald Brown and Aaron Goldberg.  What makes me fond about the recording is that Gregory Tardy, Geoffrey Keezer, Donald Brown and Aaron Goldberg all contribute to the session, joining the duo of bassist Alan Shutaro Maguire and drummer Carl Seitaro Maguire.  Sometimes the form of expression is old school swing and sometimes it’s new school roam.  Music from Memphis, TN.

Artist site | Listen | Buy: Amazon

 

Mora Collective, Alan Schafer (Self-Produced)

This is jazz with some old school rhythm and blues and new school rock ’n roll all mixed in together.  Heavy on enthusiasm and every note thrown like a knockout punch, the Mora Collective quartet of bassist Chris Issacs, saxophonist Zach Puchkors, drummer Eric Yacula and keyboardist James Bonnette unleash everything they’ve got on these five very fun tracks.  It’s retailing at Name Your Price, so a nice opportunity to check out music that fits your budget.  Music from Dallas, Texas.

Artist site | Listen | Buy:  Bandcamp

 

By • Jazz Recommendations - 2018 • 0 • Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Jul 22 2018

Phronesis has a new album out soon, and previewing it is a good way to spend your Sunday afternoon

 

Please mark your calendars for September 14th, 2018, because that’s when the outstanding trio Phronesis returns with a new recording.  We Are All, the trio’s eighth album, continues the trend of cutting edge modern jazz, but of greater interest is how the trio is still coming into their own.  Their different perspectives as members of a trio sounds to be entering increasingly into a single confluence of vision, where the post-bop and folk and chamber elements are no longer individual facets, but a communion.  The album, naturally, is getting released on Edition Records.

Your album personnel:  Jasper Høiby (double bass), Ivo Neame (piano), and Anton Eger (drums).

You can pre-order the album on the artist’s Bandcamp page.  Pre-order also at Amazon.

And if the trio is new to you, definitely check out my interview of the bassist, Jasper Høiby, in which he talks about the trio’s music and his solo projects.  Plenty of good info, plus embedded music to listen to.  The interview is sitting at The Bandcamp Daily.

By • Album Preview • 0

Jul 16 2018

I am here for these solo percussion works on Ventor Records

 

Melbourne, Australia label Ventor Records states they are here for the rhythmically obsessed.  Nothing about the three solo percussion albums on their Bandcamp page would give any other impression.  Speaking from personal experience, this music will have no less appeal to those of us who consider ourselves more in the camp of incurable melody addicts.  It sure as hell applies to me.  I’m going to run each of ’em down for you.

Let’s begin.

 

Ronny Ferella – Invisible Skin

This album bleeds a magnetic personality.  Ronny Ferella holds court on Invisible Skin.  The pace is breezy and the chatter is light on its feet, but there’s a weight of importance to every little sound stirred up.  It’s an onslaught of sound, but it’s a measured aggression, the kind of thing where volatility doesn’t discharge a recoil kickback upon the listener.  The invitation is that it’s safe to immerse yourself in the music.  It’s easy.  Rivulets of percussion and the drone of melodica shape the path of drums, giving form to a state of pure momentum.  It has a run time just exceeding a half hour, and each instance of it reaching the finish line, I can’t believe it’s over so soon.    I am addicted to this recording.

Give the album a listen and purchase it on the artist’s Bandcamp page.

 

Sam Price – Rubicon

Now where Ronny Ferella was holding forth with conversation, Sam Price constructs a menagerie of cryptic messages.  On Rubicon, the pieces pulse with a lively energy, and their staggered tempos and intermittent signals of electronic effects hint strongly at a hidden meaning behind the seemingly random occurrences.  Even when the droning “Sehnsucht” opens things up for Price’s drum chatter to come through loud and clear, he delivers it as an urgent whisper… which has the effect of enhancing the sense of mystery that already hangs heavily in the air.  When “First Rodeo” lights things up with a foot-tapping tempo and a catchy melody, their gradual deterioration into dissonance by song’s end becomes yet another signal that all is not as it seems with Rubicon.

Give the album a listen and purchase it on the artist’s Bandcamp page.

 

Nat Grant – Marengo

It’s easy to miss at first.  Just for a moment, Nat Grant teases what will come much later.  If it gets past you, at first blush, it appears there’s no mystery to Marengo.  It comes off as the more straight-laced sibling to the wildly unconventional brothers Invisible Skin and Rubicon.  There’s no electronic effects nor any overdubbing of additional percussion instruments… just a musician with her drum set and something to say.  And that seems to be what Nat Grant is doing on Marengo.  It’s the most common of motivations for an artist of any medium… take all of the thoughts and emotions and ineffable ingredients that comprise who that artist is, and give them life through creative focus.  There’s a comfort to be gained from something grounded in the bare essentials.

But that’s not where things end up.  The hydrophone makes its presence known, and the first impression of a straight-ahead recording transforms into a new impression of something quite different.  The flame of intrigue starts to burn at the half way point of the recording, and what was hinted at so subtly in the first fifteen seconds begins to emerge.  It’s a slow reveal, and it gradually increases in speed.  It becomes more than just the dialog of a drum set.  The dialog achieves a richness that has subtlety as its foundation, where the addition of textures, though dramatic at times, burn brightest as nuance, and are best viewed not in how they drive the conversation, but, instead, how they surround it.

It’s a single track of just over thirty-seven minutes, and there ain’t a moment during that span when it seems like Grant is struggling to come up with something more to say.

Give the album a listen and purchase it on the artist’s Bandcamp page.

 

By • I Listen To All Of This, Jazz Recommendations - 2018 • 0 • Tags: , , , , ,

Jul 12 2018

Sonny Rollins and The Bridge

 

There is a petition drive currently underway to get Sonny Rollins‘s name added to the Williamsburg Bridge.

Back in the day, when I was first getting into jazz, I had been told the legend of Sonny Rollins becoming a hermit from the NYC jazz scene to do some serious creative soul-searching, and that the saxophonist had found a refuge on the Williamsburg Bridge.  It had become his practice space, which led to new directions in his music.

John Loquidis of Jerry’s Record Exchange (once a gem of Denver’s Capitol Hill music store mecca) had all kinds of Rollins anecdotes from his own NYC days.  He was something of my mentor as I dedicated myself to a lifetime addiction to classic jazz recordings.  He helped guide me to stuff I might not otherwise have scooped up, and gave me some background on albums that might otherwise not quite register as strong without that knowledge.  The story of Rollins and the Bridge was the precursor to purchasing the Sonny Rollins album The Bridge, an album that came about as the result of Rollins’ residency above the East River.

I enjoyed the album just fine back then, and I still do now.  But knowing that history, of Rollins and his hours, days, months spent on the Williamsburg Bridge, it makes the album that much more special to me.  I, also, have gone into hiding when working on a new writing project, not seeing people I know and places I like to go to for months at a time, just because I’m on a new creative path and become so immersed in the navigation that everything else falls away.  Thinking about Rollins on that bridge as I listened to the music, it made everything resonate so much stronger for me.  The music became more than a series of notes pleasing to the ear; It also appealed to my psyche, and the struggle all creative endeavors inevitably lead.  It made the music feel more important to me, because it was important to Sonny and because that kind of action is essential to so many artists.

The Sonny Rollins Bridge Project is looking for signatures for its petition.

You can purchase a copy of the Sonny Rollins recording The Bridge on Amazon.

By • Other Writing • 0

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