John Coltrane: My Favorite Things

In 1990, when it was decided to explore jazz beyond the few recordings heard from the great Miles Davis, the two names that came up when figuring who to hear were the amazing Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane.  As much as Coleman astounded with his unusual approaches to harmony and time, hearing My Favorite Things, particularly its widely known title track in which the leader's soprano sax, rarely heard in those days, was a revelation.  As great as that tune is, there are also the exceptional covers of "Summertime," "Everytime We Say Goodbye," and "But Not For Me."  While I bought a number of Ornette albums at that time, I became obsessed with Trane and acquired as many recordings as my pocketbook would allow.

It wasn't until I acquired the box set, the strangely named The Heavyweight Champion: John Coltrane, The Complete Atlantic Recordings that the realization hit that there were just six days between 21-26 October 1960 when the saxophonist and his band of McCoy Tyner (who just left us in March) on piano, drummer Elvin Jones and bassist Steve Davis (Tyner's brother-in-law and a largely unknown figure) churned out almost two dozen songs that included those on My Favorite Things, released in March 1961, as well as pieces for Coltrane Jazz, which came out just a month prior, Coltrane Plays the Blues, issued in July 1962, and Coltrane's Sound, released in June 1964—the latter two hitting the shops well after Trane signed with Impulse and took his music to another level of brilliance.  That was a remarkable week, with the peak being the quartet of classic renderings on this still-astounding album.

Franz Joseph Haydn: The Erdödy String Quartets

Reading Daniel Boorstin's fascinating The Creators has just included a chapter of the innovators of 18th century classical music, including the great Franz Josef Haydn (1732-1809), whose phenomenal portfolio includes over a hundred symphonies, more than eighty string quartets, an immense number of piano works, and much else.  As Boorstin observed and echoed in the liner notes to the Naxos recording of the composer's string quartets, published in 1799, and dedicated to the Hungarian Count Josef Georg von Erdödy, Haydn was long-blessed with an enthusiastic and generous patron, Prince Nicolaus Esterházy, and he was able to generate the massive quantity and superlative quality of work over nearly thirty years.  When the prince died in 1790, his successor and brother was not musically inclined at all, so Haydn left and enjoyed two fruitful periods in London.  He then returned to work for the new prince of Esterházy, both at the family palace at Eisenstadt, as well as at Vienna, where Haydn lived until his death.

In 1797, he completed a half-dozen string quartets, dedicated to Count Erdödy, and the first three of the set comprise this disc, recorded in 1989.  They are performed beautifully by the Kodály Quartet, formed in Budapest, Hungary in the mid-1960s, and which has recorded the complete string quartets of Haydn, as well as those of Beethoven and Schubert.  The last of the trio of pieces, known as the Emperor Quartet, is the most widely known because of its quiet, stately and gorgeous second movement melody, written from the composer's "Emperor's Hymn" for the Emperor Franz of Austria and inspired by Haydn's hearing of "God Save the Queen" when in England. Also impressive is the first quartet with its sprightly first movement, its gorgeous and understated second movement, and its uplifting finale.

Music of the Bansuri: A Flute of Rajasthan

As noted here before, when, in 1990, world music became a prime area of interest, the JVC World Sounds sampler ordered from a magazine ad was a true eye-opener, revealing not just an enormous range of music from all over the planet, but an exposure to a wider world beyond the miniscule one experienced day-to-day.  Not much later, the purchase of Venu, a Rykodisc World 360 release from the amazing Hariprasad Chaurasia, who is still with us at age 82, was the first hearing of the bansuri, a bamboo flute with tremendous expressiveness, and his prodigious technique was a wonder to behold.

This album, recorded in New Delhi in June 1989, from the JVC series features the brothers Rajendra and Ajay Prasanna, whose father Raghunath was a legendary performer on both the bansuri and the shehnai, this latter often described as somewhat akin to an oboe.  The two tracks here include the "Poorbi Dhun," a folk song running over 17 minutes, followed by the "Raga Marwa, a tour-de-force of some 36 minutes duration with the usual gradual development leading to a powerful and dramatic conclusion.  Rajendra plays on the left channel and Ajay on the right and their playing is gorgeous, in synchronicity, in trading phrases and in soloing.  They are accompanied by Ratan Prasanna (another brother?) on the tabla and Onkar Nath on the tambura and enhanced by the delicate plucked string tones of the surimandle and these performances are excellent throughout.

Mike Watt: Ring Spiel Tour '95

It's still a bit of a marvel that Mike Watt, master of the "thunder stick" (that is, bass) who, with his Minutemen mates, drummer George Hurley and guitarist and vocalist D. Boon, refined the art of "jamming econo" (i.e., creating maximum musical effect with minimal trappings), worked for about fifteen years with the major label Columbia.  It began in the early Nineties with fIREHOSE, the brilliant trio including Hurley and guitarist and vocalist Ed Crawford, and continued with Watt's solo career, including three albums, the first of which is the remarkable Ball-Hog or Tug Boat? which was released in 1995.  That album had a staggering list of guest performers, from Iggy Pop to Eddie Vedder, Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic, the Kirkwood brothers, Petra and Rachel Haden, Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo, Nels Cline, Henry Rollins, Flea, Bernie Worrell, and, most memorably, Kathleen Hanna with a hilarious diatribe on the phone about sexism in music.

In April and May of that year, Watt, who was on the road a ton for years, embarked on a tour, with this great recording done at the Metro Theater in Chicago on 6 May.  The band included Grohl on drums and guitar, Vedder and Pat Smear on guitar and vocals, and William Goldsmith also on drums, and they tear through 16 tracks, most from the album, though a new Vedder song "Habit", a Blue Oyster Cult cover with "The Red and the Black," and the great Minutemen tune "Political Song for Michael Jackson to Sing" are also on the set list.  Vedder and Pearl Jam were massively popular and Grohl soon would achieve great success with The Foo Fighters after the tragic end of Nirvana, so there was probably a significant draw through them, but everyone plays together really solidly and truly "jams econo."  This is a great live disc from one of the true unsung heroes of whatever it is people want to call "rock 'n roll".

Cecil Taylor With Tristan Honsinger and Evan Parker: The Hearth

In summer 1988, Cecil Taylor, always, as so many experimental jazz musicians have been, more highly regarded and appreciated in Europe than at home in the United States, spent an enormously productive month in Berlin, just a few years from German reunification, as part of a month-long residency which led to many concerts.  A result was an 11-disc box set, issued by FMP (Free Music Productions), called In Berlin '88, which was then reissued by Desintation: Out in 2015, with two additional CDs as The Complete Cecil Taylor in Berlin '88.  This blogger doesn't have either set, but does have several of the discs that came from them.  One of the more interesting is The Hearth, a slightly-longer-than-an-hour excursion into amazing improvisation between the titanic pianist, tenor sax giant Evan Parker, and the lesser-known, but very impressive, cellist Tristan Honsinger.

There are moments where the trio works together really well, especially during Parker's well-constructed and brilliantly laid-out solos, and there are duos between Taylor and the sax player and then between Honsinger and the maestro that are also superlative.  While Taylor was known in duos, especially, for overwhelming his partner with his dazzling display of keyboard pyrotechnics, and there is some of that here, he does interact beautifully with Parker and Honsinger in some of the most exceptional passages of this phenomenal recording.  It's hard to believe he's been gone for two-and-a-half years, but, with a prodigious output from the 1970s and for years afterward, with the Berlin residency yielding so much remarkable music, there is no shortage of material to turn to when the mood is there to hear an iconoclastic master pour out his astonishing performances.

Harry Partch: The Bewitched

With his system of monophony and its 43-unit "microtone" set leading him to build his own instruments to play the strange and wonderful music he created, Harry Partch was a musical iconoclast of the highest order.  He was also remarkably contrarian, dismissive of the "abstract" practices from the Middle Ages onward that tore music away from dance and drama as was and is still done in other societies, and not at all shy about condemning those who differed from his views.  Still, while he worked largely in obscurity, Partch had a small devoted coterie of supporters, followers, and musicians who did what they could to present his music where possible when he was alive and do so today nearly a half-century after his death.

In 1955, when The Bewitched was completed and soon performed at a music festival at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, it would hardly be expected to be on the radar of all but the most devoted of alternative music lovers.  65 years later, it would certainly sound bizarre and out of tune to newcomers, but, with some exposure to the music of other parts of the world, including gamelan from Bali, so-called "Peking opera" from China, and so on, what Partch was doing does make more sense.  

It isn't opera, but has a structure somewhat reminiscent of it, with twelve scenes bearing wonderful titles like "The Romancing of a Pathological Liar Comes to an Inspired End" (hmmm . . . ), "Visions Fill the Eyes of a Defeated Basketball Team in the Shower Room," and, my favorite, "The Cognoscenti Are Plunged into a Demonic Descent While at Cocktails."  Instruments included standard ones such as clarinet, piccolo, and cello, though there is also a Japanese koto, as well as Partch's bamboo marimba, or "boo," cloud-chamber bowls, harmonic canon, kithara, spoils of war, bass marimba, and chromelodeon.  Percussion is central to the music here, as in much of Partch's remarkable work.

Here are some excerpts from Partch in the liners about this amazing musical journey: "The Bewitched is in the tradition of world-wide ritual theatre.  It is the opposite of specialized . . . it is a seeking for release—through satire, whimsy, magic, ribaldry—from the catharsis of tragedy.  It is an essay toward a miraculous abeyance of civilized rigidity . . . each of the 12 scenes is a theatrical unfolding of nakedness, a psychological strip-tease . . . we are all bewitched, and mostly by accident: the accident of form, color, and sex; of prejudices condition from the cradle on up, of the particular ruts we have found ourselves in or have dug for ourselves because of our individual needs."  Given that the nation had just emerged from the McCarthy "witch trials" and the "man-in-the-gray-flannel-suit" mentality was very much holding sway, Partch's jeremiad against conformity is striking if not specified.  This 1990 release on CRI (Composers Recordings, Inc., a non-profit for the promotion of contemporary music) is a stimulating, if very challenging, example of Partch's stunning music.

Gagaku: The Imperial Court Music of Japan

This recording issued in the late Eighties by Lyrichord Discs was recorded by the Imperial Court Music Orchestra in Kyoto and represents the traditions of gagaku, or elegant/refined/correct, music accompanying dance dating back nearly 1,500 years ago with origins from China, India and Korea and which, then, is the oldest orchestral music existing on the planet.  Notably, this music was not played publicly until the mid-1950s and there are occasional new pieces composed for such events as a royal wedding, with about a hundred pieces and over fifty dances in the repertoire.

Instruments include the koto, a well-known Japanese zither, the taiko drum, which is also recognizable to many, other percussion pieces including bells, a bamboo flute called the hichiriki, and the sho, which is a group of seventeen bamboo pipes in a wind chest shaped like a cup.  While most of the eight pieces accompanied dances and the visual impact of both must be spectacular, the music is striking, being majestic, solemn, stately and otherworldly.  It has an ethereal beauty that is redolent of ancient history retaining its power in the modern world.

The Durutti Column: Valuable Passages

When this retrospective issued on Factory Records was purchased as a cassette back in 1986, not long after I saw The Durutti Column open, along with The Fall, for New Order, it was listened to a great deal.  Looking in recent years to buy the CD proved challenging because they're rare and, naturally, expensive, but I was able to get one recently for under $15.  These seventeen tracks from 1979-1985 and covering albums from The Return of the Durutti Column to Circuses and Bread, along with other other releases (samplers, a 7" single, an EP, etc.), represent an excellent overview of the finest work Vini Reilly and his varied compatriots had to offer.

Everything is here is excellent and, while some may favor the earlier material, such as the sketches for summer and winter, or others lean towards "The Missing Boy" or "Tomorrow," which were among the better-known, if such applies to TDC, tracks, I'm still very partial to the haunting and heart-breaking "Never Known.  Again, though, all of these pieces are great and I find myself returning to the album again and again.  Reilly, whose health was always fragile, suffered a stroke nearly a decade ago, and has not been very active at all since then, but this early-stage music and the often-remarkable work that followed remain as the enduring work of a totally underappreciated musician.

The Art Ensemble of Chicago: Urban Bushmen

I was very fortunate in being able to buy the massive box set, The Art Ensemble of Chicago and Associated Ensembles, released by ECM Records in 2018 and containing 21 discs from the group and side projects involving various members.  The set was missing the box and the first CD, comprising Nice Guys, the first ECM album by the group and released in 1979, but the cost was only $50 plus tax and I soon after bought a used copy of Nice Guys for $5, so this was a spectacular deal.

The music is pretty amazing, including some excellent AEC studio work, such as Full Force, the first album of theirs that I heard thirty years ago, live albums, and the wide-ranging "associated" material, including solo albums by members of the ensemble and recordings by others, like Jack DeJohnette, which featured AEC personnel.  As great as the studio albums were, the live recordings are remarkable, including 1982's double-disc Urban Bushmen.  It features all the hallmarks of the Ensemble, including dense percussion, atmospheric soundscapes, blistering horn playing, and one of the best rhythm teams around with chaos, joy, tradition, innovation, power, beauty and many other adjectives all fitting the bill at various times.

As Joseph Jarman's notes about the group preparing for this performance at the Amerikahaus in Munich, Germany on 6-7 May 1980: "They arrive, without name nor form but as the personators of GREAT BLACK MUSIC—ANCIENT TO THE FUTURE; as it flows from the then to now, the beginningless beginning to the endless end, from the center of the center to the unlimited bounds of the universe."  Listening to this phenomenal album, it really does feel that way and it is, ultimately, uplifting music, especially in the strange year of 2020.

Antonio Vivaldi: Violin Concertos, Volume 2

During these trying times, it has often been important to listen to music that is melodic, harmonically rich, and, frankly, uplifting and relaxing (though, at other times, turbulent and roiling music is what is wanted!)  Often, baroque music, whether it be Bach, Handel, Monteverdi, or any number of other great composers of that era, is a tonic and balm to help maintain a positive mood in the face of so many trials and tribulations.  Today's featured recordings fit the bill to a T, these being the five-disc set comprising the second volume of violin concertos recorded by the Israel Chamber Orchestra conducted by Shlomo Mintz and reissued by Nimbus Records in 2009 from an early 90s release by MusicMasters.

The so-called Red Priest, Vivaldi (1678-1741) was a violin maestro as well as a master composer and these pieces are really a pleasure to hear.  They are often laden with emotion, including with contemplative as well as uplifting elements, filled with gorgeous melodies, and with tight and unified harmonies.  The playing of the chamber orchestra, formed in 1965 and led for a few years by Mintz, is excellent.  I've run through the entire set of five hours a few times lately because this music really is a great way to help navigate the troubled waters in our uncertain world.

Souad Asla: Lemma

This is a great recording, issued in 2018 under the Musique du Monde series from Buda Musique and Universal France, and comprises a remarkable ensemble of eleven women, led by Souad Asla, from the Saoura region of southwestern Algeria not far from the border with Morocco, with most coming from the city of Béchar or the nearby town of Kenadsa.  This is a harsh region of the Sahara, but occupied with people who have a rich culture among trade routes and, more lately, coal mines, which drew a diversity of workers and others from southenr Europe, as well as Berbers, Jews and sub-Saharan blacks.

The word lemma refers both to the ensemble and to gatherings that, as the very informative liners states, the purpose of which "is to meet and together ward off the spell that threatens to spoil the unity of the moment."  This music is very much a unity, the tightly devised rhythms for percussive instruments and hand-claps, the chants and singing, and the lyrics which are largely tied to everyday activities and events.  It is hypnotizing, mesmerizing and evocative of deeply-rooted tradition, which Asla and her troupe are devoted to preserving amid dramatic change and for which they are to be thanked and commended.

Pete Namlook/Klaus Schulze/Bill Laswell: The Dark Side of the Moog VII

This fascinating series of excursions deep into the realm of ambient electronic music comprising eleven volumes from 1993 to 2008 from FAX Records impresario Pete Namlook (Peter Kuhlmann), Klaus Schulze (briefly in Tangerine Dream), and, on four of the albums, the ubiquitous bassist and producer Bill Laswell, is not only given an excellent punning title, but the word play continues with individual tracks further playing off the output of Pink Floyd.  In this case the 50-minute piece in this seventh volume released in 1998 is called "Obscured by Klaus" in reference to that band's seventh album, Obscured by Clouds.  Namlook noted, though, that there was no connection or homage to the British group, other than having fun with puns.

There is plenty of diversity in the sound elements when listening to this recording, either at high volume (as in the car) or, even better, with headphones.  Washes of sound, varied textures, often strong rhythms, found voices and other components work well over the course of the six parts, which are well organized and programmed.  There is often a beguiling beauty in the more ambient sections, but the variety with more percussive sections and a range of electronics with the Moog as the backbone make this an excellent entry in the series.

George Russell: Electronic Sonata for Souls Loved by Nature

This is an amazing work by a remarkable theorist, composer and arranger who had a tremendous influence on many musicians, including Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Eric Dolphy, who are big favorites of this blogger.  George Russell, however, never received the recognition he deserved and this stunning album is likely the best example of why.  It's ambitious, complex, innovative, expertly composed and arranged and well-played, but it was far afield from the commercial world, especially as jazz was becoming less popular.

Composed in 1968 with a fascinating merging of jazz, classical, electronics, field recordings and other elements, Electronic Sonata for Souls Loved by Nature, takes the attentive listener to an alternate reality that is of its time, but doesn't sound dated a half-century later.  While Miles definitely deserved plenty of kudos for his audacious leap into new directions of music with Bitches Brew, released not long after and which sold well (even leading to absurd claims that Davis "sold out" by using electric instruments and pop and rock rhythms and effects), Russell's masterpiece, released in 1969 on producer Bob Thiele's Flying Dutchman and remastered and reissued almost fifteen years later on the great Italian label Black Saint, and his work generally should be better known.  Let's hope some day it is. 

Krzysztof Penderecki: Orchestral Works, Vol. 3 (Symphonies Nos. 2 and 4)

Note: This post was intended to be uploaded on 1 April and here we are 7 1/2 months later.  We'll blame it on COVID and demands on time, but the intention is to resume sharing interesting music, but even more concisely than before.  So, here goes:

Another towering figure in modern music died in late March when Krzysztof Penderecki, the Polish composer whose remarkable career engendered controversy in its earlier, more experimental days and more recognition during his more straightforward later period, passed away at age 86.  The latter is emblematic with the two symphonies, the Second and Fourth, in this third set of orchestral works released by Naxos.

The second and fourth symphonies show a range of emotions through passages that express intense emotions, a tense ominousness and calming pastoral interludes.  The liner notes state that the turbulent and roiling dynamics refer to the turmoil rocking the composer's county of Poland at the end of Soviet domination and Communist control (though now the nation is dealing with the rise of right-wing politics and protests over such issues as the access to abortion procedures.)

This is powerful music from 1979 and 1989 when Poland was experiencing traumatic political periods and Penderecki, formerly a young lion of the avant garde, was moving into a different phase of his composing, merging the old and the new.

Deadline: Down By Law

Manu Dibango, a Cameroonian composer, saxophonist and vibraphonist, died last week in Paris at age 86 of the COVID-19 virus.  He first achieved fame in the early Seventies for his propulsive "Soul Makossa" which hit the streets of New York like wildfire and which may be best known to later generations for its refrain of "mamase, mamasa, mamakossa" that Michael Jackson and Rihanna appropriated, among others.

A dozen years or so later, his Electric Africa album, released in 1985, was produced by bass player Bill Laswell, whose work with Celluloid Records included work with other African groups like Toure Kunda, whose 1984 live album Live Paris-Ziguinchor was an early foray into "world music" for this blogger, though it didn't register that Laswell produced that record.

Dibango then appeared on another Laswell endeavor, Deadline, with the bassist teaming with jazz and blues drummer Phillip Wilson (Art Ensemble of Chicago, Anthony Braxton, Julius Hemphill, Paul Butterfield Blues Band) to create a remarkable fusion of African, funk, and electronics.  There are the usual diverse participants as per Laswell's modus operandi, including the legendary bassist Jaco Pastorius, percussionists Aiyb Dieng and Steve Turre, cornetist Olu Dara, keyboardist Bernie Worrell of Parliament/Funkadelic fame, bassist Jonas Hellborg, and Butterfield.

Dibango appears on "Afro Beat," "Boat Peoples" and "Makossa Rock" with his signature sax and vocal sounds and the latter, spanning 11 minutes, is the high point of a strong album, with a groove that is endless.  Really, though, the record is uniformly excellent (with "Boat Peoples" another highlight) and Laswell and Wilson, in their co-producing roles, made great use of the stellar performers and their diverse instrumentation.

Any loss to this COVID-19 pandemic is to be regretted and mourned and Manu Dibango is one of those to be missed for his distinctive contributions to bringing well-balanced fusions of African and western musics. 

McCoy Tyner: Sahara

It was very surprising to find that there was not yet a post on this blog focusing on an album by the prodigiously talented pianist McCoy Tyner, who died today at age 81.  There have been several posts here on John Coltrane albums on which Tyner was a member of the so-called Classic Quartet with bassist Jimmy Garrison and drummer Elvin Jones, but nothing from Tyner's long and uniformly excellent solo career.

Tonight's post is a belated look at my favorite Tyner release, Sahara, released on Orrin Keepnews' Milestone Records in July 1972.  Tyner had been releasing albums for almost a decade by that point, working for Impulse! and Blue Note, including some fine recordings, but Sahara was a supremely confident, wide-ranging, and thrilling recording.

"Ebony Queen" is powerful, propulsive and includes some stunning sax work by Sonny Fortune, who'd later join Miles Davis for the Dark Prince's mind-blowing mid-Seventies work, including the staggering live albums Agharta and Pangaea, both of which, someday, will be featured here, as well.  Fortune blasts his way through his solo and sets the table for Tyner's stunning solo, filled with complex runs, signature left-hand block chords, and gripping intensity.  This piece is a highlight of the leader's career.

"A Prayer for My Family" is a beautifully evocative, harmonically complex, and deeply introspective solo showcase for Tyner and shows his formidable gifts of speed, strength and dexterity in the ultimate of emotive expression on his instrument.  "Valley of Life" shows the leader's penchant during the era for introducing new instrumentation to provide a dash of color to his palette of sounds, specifically utilizing the koto, the Japanese lute-like instrument.  The use of the koto, however, is not a novelty, but a careful synthesis of sound, along with Fortune's fine flute playing and Alphonse Mouzon's percussion, to Tyner's compositional strengths. 

After the two atmospheric pieces, "Rebirth" is a bracing return to power and precision with Mouzon providing a brief opening solo and bassist Calvin Hill keeping a very impressive rapid tempo as Tyner launches in to some of his fastest and most precise solo work in his lengthy career.  The stamina of the trio of masters is pretty incredible to hear and, just before the three minute mark, Fortune leaps in and delivers another great performance with Tyner employing those heavy block chord vamps as accompaniment before the leader takes another short solo to wind things down.

Finally, there's the epic title track, clocking in at 23 1/2 minutes, but seeming not nearly as lengthy, due to its variations in tempo, intensity and instrumentation.  There are echoes of Coltrane's classic Africa, with a variety of percussion from everyone but the horn player, a trumpeted elephant sound from Mouzon, and Tyner coming in with a sweeping introduction.  Fortune doubles on the theme with the pianist before taking off with another superlative solo with Tyner again providing tremendous accompaniment before switching to flute while Fortune keeps going with his solo.  At about thirteen minutes, there is a break with flute, percussion and a Hill solo.  At about twenty minutes, the band returns to the main theme and brings this great piece and fantastic album to a close.

While Tyner delivers some of his very best soloing and Fortune also putting together some phenomenal work, credit has to also be given to Mouzon and Hill for giving top-notch support in keeping this stunning record on track.  It is hard to imagine that any of the quartet did better work than on this epochal recording.

When I started going to a lot of jazz shows from 1990 to the later part of the decade, especially at the original Catalina Bar and Grill, one of the first performers I saw was Tyner, who I heard a few times during that era.  One show, I sat right behind the pianist and was all but peering over his right shoulder.  I was mesmerized by his prodigious technique and deeply emotive style.

One performance included Avery Sharpe on bass and Aaron Scott on drums and a testament to true leadership from Tyner was when Scott began a solo on a typically hard-charging tune.  As Scott worked his way around his kit, it became readily apparent that he had entered a zone he'd rarely found himself in before.  I remember a look in his eye and then looked over to see Tyner smiling and nodding, encouraging the drummer to see it through.  The solo had to have been much longer than normal and Scott was so locked in that the audience began to clap, then offer shouts of encouragement, then yells of appreciation, and finally screaming and shouting as the drummer went into hyper-speed.  When he finished, the room seemed to uniformly rise to its feet and burst into applause the likes of which I've never experienced in hundreds of concerts.  Tyner's encouragement no doubt gave Scott the freedom to take his incredible solo as far as it could go.

I don't recall if it was that night, but Tyner and I were in the restroom washing our hands when I simply told him that it was an honor and privilege to hear him and his band play and his modesty as he thanked me was truly striking.  I'll never forget those concerts and will always appreciate the amazing work this musical titan provided us over more than a half-century.

Wire: Object 47

Wire has been a consistent presence on the playlist of late, particularly albums made since Object 47, the first recording after the departure of Bruce Gilbert, was released in 2008.

While there have been lots of commentary on how many late-period Wire albums just don't measure up to the groundbreaking, innovative work of early classics like Pink Flag or Chairs Missing, those remarks seem inherently unfair.

This is especially true because, how many bands that came up in the late Seventies when Wire did, are even still around, much less regularly releasing new material of consistent high quality, as opposed to, say, running around the reunion and revival circuit rehashing the greatest hits from days of yore?

Having not heard Wire until 1987 probably precludes obsessive comparisons between recent material and the early recordings that inspire so much nostalgia, much of it understandable.  Still, how about looking at the later-period albums on the merits.

Given the above, Object 47 was, after the abrasive and bracing blast that was the remarkable Send (2004) including a Los Angeles performance at a small venue that was blisteringly loud, a reflection of how the three-piece without Gilbert could carry on and make excellent music that carries the spirit of Wire forward.

"One of Us" is one of many Wire tunes that, in a more equitable but likely improbable world, would be a hit.  It has a fine Graham Lewis' bass riff, an anthemic chorus, an excellent Colin Newman vocal, and Robert Grey's metronomic drumming holding the piece tightly together.

In fact, the album's sequencing is very strong with "Mekon Headman" (mistaken by some as an attack on the cult band, The Mekons) and "Perspex Icon" being other highlights.  "Hard Currency" has a hypnotic bass line and some fine stop-time breaks along with Grey's cymbals as the main rhythmic guide. The finale, "All Fours" has a growling guitar riff with the bass and drums in a propulsive synchronicity under which is maybe Newman's best vocal on the album.  Page Hamilton's "feedback storm" adds a welcome measure of extra tension and texture.  It was a great way to end an excellent and reaffirming recording.

So, whatever the comparisons to the "good old days" might be, Object 47 was proof positive that Wire without Gilbert was not only viable, but capable of great artistic relevance and development.  Things just got better with such recordings as Change Becomes Us, Red Barked Trees and subsquent albums, especially Wire.

King Crimson: Radical Action to Unseat the Hold of Monkey Mind

A few weeks ago was the fourth time seeing King Crimson, the first in 1984 at the Greek Theatre with the quartet of Robert Fripp, Adrian Belew, Tony Levin and Bill Bruford at the end of the tour that was followed by the termination of that phase of Crimson.  At eighteen, I had no interest in seeing a "prog" band when I was first asked to go, but the friend who asked loaned me several albums from In the Court of the Crimson King to Starless and Bible Black and on to Discipline and it was the latter 1981 classic that convinced me to go.

The concert was amazing for so many reasons, including the interlocking guitars of Fripp and Belew, the latter's songcraft and easy stage banter, Levin's prowess on the bass and Chapman stick, and Bruford's superlative drumming.  When Crimson splintered, though, I ended my budding interest in the band (buying the Vroom EP in 1994 did not stir enough to rekindle the desire to pick up the thread) and that lasted all the way to 2009.

At the time, KC had just gone through a short tour the prior year and plans for a 40th anniversary tour were aborted due to scheduling (and, likely, other) conflicts.  Fripp then went through a series of lawsuits over royalties and other issues, worked on a book that apparently has been shelved, and stated he'd never tour again.

Suddenly, in 2013, that all changed, and a new concept for Crimson was formulated by Fripp, including a front-line trio of drummers, the return after forty years of the amazing Mel Collins on flute and saxes, the always-reliable Levin, and the introduction of Jakko Jakszyk on vocals and guitar.

In 2014, the band came to Los Angeles and played the beautiful old Orpheum Theatre and, after thirty years, it was quite a sight to see Crimson again.  The first half-hour, though, was a challenge trying to acclimate to the massive wall of sound created by drummers Pat Mastellotto, Bill Rieflin and Gavin Harrison.  All of them are fantastic at their instrument, but it did take that time to adjust to hearing the din and, probably, they were still working out the dynamics of playing together.

Obviously, we were in the cheap seats and couldn't see Robert Fripp or Jakko Jakszyk (the intent was to get tickets on the other side of the venue), but the drum corps was so impressive it didn't matter, plus Collins and Levin were their usual stellar selves.  While some folks ignored the request to avoid photographs or videos, the vast majority of us dutifully waited until the end to snap our images of the band at the concert's conclusion.

A 40-minute taster was released from the shows at the Orpheum and, enjoyable, as that show was, it became clear, as would be expected, that getting the seven-headed beast to gel was going to take some time.  So, subsequent releases recorded in Toronto and Chicago, for example, demonstrate how the new version of KC refined their sound.

In 2017, the band was back, though were now four drummers with the addition of the unknown Jeremy Stacy and he and Rieflin also played keyboards.  The June show at the Greek was also very enjoyable and the band played really well.

BUT, the seven-piece (Rieflin sat out this tour) that walked onto the stage at the Greek on Tuesday sounded miles ahead of that excellent ensemble and it was the trio of drummers who really propelled the band forward in what can only be described as a powerful, thrilling and stunning performance by a thoroughly road-tested and stage-hardened juggernaut.

The truth is that everyone played great.  Mel Collins was fantastic on his various saxes and flutes and even threw in bits of old tunes like "Tequila" to build the fun that isn't always associated with the band.  Levin is always awesome, providing just the right amount of low end to hold everything together, including playing with three monster drummers.  Jakszyk was in top vocal form and seemed much more comfortable with tunes associated with great vocalists like the late Greg Lake and John Wetton as well as Belew.

As for Fripp, it is abundantly clear that he is vastly more energized and playing with far more enjoyment with this group than at any time.  As with earlier shows, his guitar may have been given a little less volume than it could be, but his playing demonstrates the enthusiasm of working with an ensemble at its peak level of performance.

The Radical Action to Unseat the Hold of Monkey Mind box set includes three CDs of live performances from 2015, with discs devoted to "Mainly Metal," "Easy Money Shots," and "Crimson Classics" and shows the band gelling to the degree that the type of telepathic interplay, between the three drummers and the ensemble generally, was becoming institutionalized, but not in a robotic rote way.

The added benefit are three discs (one Blu-Ray and two standard DVDs) of videos of live performances, so that the ensemble can be seen as well as heard generating the reworking of so much classic material, along with some newer pieces.

Who knows whether this 50th anniversary tour means in terms of the future of King Crimson, but the concert was remarkable and this longest-lasting incarnation seems primed to keep going and audiences are there to support it.

Anthony Braxton and Marilyn Crispell: Duets, Vancouver, 1989

Wednesday night was the fulfillment of a long-deferred dream—to hear Anthony Braxton live.  I bought his Antilles release Six Compositions when it was released in 1991 and, in the years since, have purchased and avidly listened to dozens of recordings in his prodigious discography since.

The setting last evening was highly unusual.  The Broad, the contemporary art museum opened four years ago by Los Angeles capitalist Eli Broad, has an exhibit on contemporary black art and a music component was introduced.  This included Braxton performing a duet with harpist Jacqueline Kerrod in the lobby of the institution.

On one hand, this was an odd and jarring setting with many museum visitors walking past, some talking very loudly, and, behind Braxton and Kerrod, pedestrians and vehicles moving past on Grand Avenue.  The usual setting of attendees sitting and having their attention (should they enjoy what they're hearing, that is) fixated on the performers was completely turned on its head.

Yet, there was something intriguing and compelling about the environment, though maybe the external elements and forces melted away simply because Braxton and Kerrod created a spellbinding performance over about an hour and ten minutes that drew the attentive listener in and kept them locked in due to the remarkable interplay and stellar playing.

I was also transported back to the early Nineties when I went frequently to the old Catalina Bar and Gill on Cahuenga Boulevard in Hollywood to hear some of my favorite musicians, including McCoy Tyner, Horace Tapscott, Elvin Jones, and many others.  After figuring out that, if I got there early enough to be in front of the line, and got to be known, at least by sight, to Catalina Popescu and her husband Bob, it was usually easy to get a bistro table and two chairs at the front and literally be inches from some of the greatest musicians in the world.  Having been to hundreds of rock concerts where the separation was notable, the intimacy of the jazz club was intoxicating.

At the Broad, I wasn't right up front, but got within several feet after slowly sliding my way forward as casual listeners wandered away.  Literally, drawn in.  Kerrod was tremendous, being very much in tune with what Braxton was doing, and playing traditional runs on the harp, but also engaging in scraping, plucking and tapping in very experimental but always supportive ways. 

In turn, Braxton gave her plenty of space, played off her ideas, and then wandered thrillingly through the registers of his alto, soprano and sopranino saxophones.  If silence was called for, he made full use of it, as well as the use of staccato notes, blistering runs (at 74, he appears to have lost none of his staggering technique), slurs and smears, and other elements. 

In fact, despite his cold and academic reputation and there was some notation (or at least, figures and drawings) on music stands, I found much of what he did very soulful and emotive.  Perhaps this was in response to the Kerrod's harp, because he did play more of the higher register saxes than the alto and it worked beautifully with her playing.

At the end, following sustained and enthusiastic applause from those of us who stood the entire time and were maybe half of who started off listening,  Braxton spoke emotionally about his return to the city after so many years and expressed hope that change would come to the country, an obvious reference to the turmoil experienced in America (Braxton has long expressed the idea that music can directly affect life in the universe).

After he walked off the small stage, I went over to Braxton, shook his hand, and merely said, "I want to thank you for this.  I've been waiting thirty years [OK, twenty-eight] to hear you.  Thanks again" and wandered out with my wife (who was a trouper for putting up with this, even though she had to sit on the floor for the last fifteen or so minutes.)

Definitely a night to remember and, again, a long-held ambition realized.

The highlighted recording here from the Music & Arts label is another fabulous duet, one of many in Braxton's long and storied career.  In this performance with the stunning pianist Marilyn Crispell, whose music has been covered here before, the telepathic interplay is just amazing to behold.  Crispell remains a largely unknown figure in modern music, which is really a shame, because, as Braxton says in the notes"I believe her music will be considered required listening by future students of exploratory creative music."

He adds, "she can execute in every area (and even more importantly, she creative contributes,)" which allows Braxton to roam freely through marches, notated music, and totally improvised work with a sense of organic harmony that is phenomenal.  For all of his talk of "my evolving music system of interconnected identity/states" or "material [which] forms the evolving architectural 'tri-state' of my vibrational model," there is a rare level of sympathetic hearing and playing between Braxton and Crispell which is found in his best duo works, as well as other larger ensembles, including the quartet with the pair and Gerry Hemingway and Mark Dresser, best known through the quartet work of the Eighties.

This is a longer post than usual, but the experience of hearing Braxton, who said he hadn't been to Los Angeles in twenty years, with Kerrod as an excellent collaborator, brought to mind this wonderful recording from just before I started listening to this modern musical master.

Camarão Plays Forró: Dance Music From Northeastern Brazil

This is fabulous music from northeastern Brazil with emphasis on virtuoso accordion playing by Reginaldo Alves Ferreira, known as Camarão (shrimp in Poruguese because of a sunburn he once sported in the studio), who gets billing and a few pieces by Arlindo Dos Oito Baixos, whose work with the eight-bass button accordion is featured on four pieces.

Released in 1998 on the great British label Nimbus, which has issued so many remarkable recordings of world music, this album's music employs several styles including forró, baião, xote, arrastapé and chachado, which are basically unknown to most foreign listeners who identify Brazilian music with the samba and bossa nova.

This is also more country music, though migrants seeking work and better opportunities have brought the music of the northeast to the large cities of the south.  Accompanying the accordions on these pieces are light percussion on the triangle, cow bells and bass drum, while some guitar and vocals are interspersed, giving the tunes additional variety.

Camarão was quoted in the liner notes about the importance of not "modernizing too much" and keeping tradition in a way that was "essentially simple and direct," while he strives to "play music that smells of the land" in his native Pernambuco town of Caruarú.

In America, we think of dance music as often very beat heavy, whereas this music is light and airy, with the mastery of the accordion sensitively complemented by the other instruments and the vocals also treading softly but with much melodic emphasis.  This is a gorgeous recording not often heard here and a welcome addition to the fine collection of world music offered by Nimbus.

Mick Harris: Hednod Sessions

This two-disc set released in 2004 on Hidden Art Recordings were culled from sessions created by the former Napalm Death drummer who turned to dark, slow tempo electronics in all kinds of guises including Scorn, Lull, Quoit and in many collaborations, but who has largely been silent for a number of years.

Harris' forte consists forbidding washes and undercurrents of processed sound over steady, heavy beats, or, as often was the case with Lull, pulses.  Variability is often subtle and slowly evolving and the simplicity can be deceiving when he introduces change in ways that are disarming.  While Scorn was generally very heavy on the beats and Lull increasingly mitigated them with a glacial pace of change in pulse, the Hednod Sessions strike something of an (un)happy medium.

These thirty tracks were created in 1999 in Harris' minuscule home studio, a converted bathroom labeled "The Box."  They were initially issued as a quartet of 12" singles on the hushhush label with additional tracks provided to subscribers of a series comprising the four sessions and five bonus pieces added later.

As befits the location where these works were created, there is often a claustrophobic, or, if preferred, intimate sense in hearing these pieces.  Some of this is the muted percussion, but a great deal of the effect comes from the eerie employment of sound sources.  There is something compellingly immersive about listening to these recordings, especially with headphones.

In instances like this, Harris can be at his most appealing and interesting when he creates that atmosphere and environment in music that essentially consumes the full attention of a dedicated listener.  Again, the results tend to be best appreciated by focusing attention on the subtleties of the sound as it works through and around the steady application of rhythm.

When this set was purchased new some fifteen years ago, the shock was that it was acquired extremely cheaply—literally a few dollars on eBay—for reasons that remain a mystery.  This is hardly a "you get what you pay for" statement, but it did seem like a stroke of great fortune in getting such a bargain for such utterly absorbing sound worlds.

John Zorn/George Lewis/Bill Frisell: News for Lulu

For all his reputation as a musical enfant terrible in the late 1980s, master saxophonist and composer John Zorn could create some pretty accessible and impressive recordings.  His 1988 album News for Lulu with compatriots George Lewis and Bill Frisell and released on the Swiss Hat Hut label is perhaps the best example of this.

Just as importantly, this amazing album is a heartfelt and deeply respectful tribute to some of the most talented, but not as well known jazz composers of so-called post-bop period of the 1950s.  Zorn, a master saxophonist with an impeccable pedigree in jazz (best epitomized by his staggering Masada quartet) built News for Lulu on compositions from Kenny Dorham, Hank Mobley, Sonny Clark and Freddie Redd.

These are not the familiar names of Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins and other notables, but here Zorn gives them and their work their full due. As Peter Watrous points out in his liner notes essay, the musicians employ "hard bop as a base from which to build their own ideas on improvisation, arrangements, melodies."

Additionally, by eschewing a rhythm section of bass, drums and piano, Zorn and his partners "expose the way the tunes work, making them even more intense, and taking the project out of the constrains of the jazz tradition."  Art Lange, in his remarks, observed that the trio could play these tunes largely as conceived "or break free into contrapuntal abandon, energized every step of the way by bebop's enthusiastic buoyancy and an added jolt of 80s adventurism."

Zorn added his own reflections, emphasizing the telepathic interplay he shared with trombonist Lewis and Frisell, whose wider exposure as a guitarist was yet to come.  He highlighted the former's "beautiful sense of harmony and counterpoint," while the latter "kills you with one of his tasty country funk lines" and his "tonal blend."

As challenging as Zorn's music could be in these early years, News for Lulu is a paramount example of how he could experiment and yet provide a clear listenable experience.

Franz Schubert: Piano Trios D.929 and D.897

The tragically short-lived composer Franz Schubert left behind a remarkable body of work in so compressed a span, including eight symphonies and the amazing unfinished ninth, lieder or songs of significant number and import, and a great many works for small ensembles.

This Naxos release from the late 1980s is a masterful recording by the Stuttgart Piano Trio, comprised of violinist Rainer Kusmaul, cellist Claus Kannglesser, and pianist Monika Leonhard, of two of the master's piano trios, the E-flat and the Nocturne.

The former is a stunning evocation of the form, spanning over 45 minutes through four movements.  It displays beautiful melodicism, exquisite harmonies, powerful dynamics and superb playing.  Composed in late 1827 for a friend's engagement and performed early the next year and then publicly in March, the trio is one of the few works the composer heard played during his brief life.

One observer notes that second movement of this piece was used in Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon and that the auteur noted that the trio "has just the right restrained balance between the tragic and the romantic.  This could be said probably of much of Schubert's music as he bridged the eras of, say, Beethoven and Liszt.

The Nocturne was evidently a discarded draft of the andante second movement that Kubrick used and, even as an outtake of sorts, it is still a gorgeous piece of music.  There is much dramatic interplay, quiet passages of deep emotion, virtuosic flutterings of notes on the piano that are noteworthy, and an overall synchronicity of the three instruments that make this single movement a fascinating complement to the massive and memorable E Flat Major trio.

Ustad Mohammad Omar: Virtuoso From Afghanistan

This 2002 release from the Smithsonian Folkways label was very timely in a political and cultural sense.  The Taliban regime's retreat from Afghanistan in the aftermath of 9-11 and the American-led military mission there allowed for the return of music, which was made illegal by the Taliban.

Reference was made in the liner notes to a conference in Holland at which ethnomusicologists spoke about the effects of this edict on the musicians of that oft-suffering nation.  There are also statements about in Islamic societies, music is a question of controversy, with religious conservatives condemning it as promoting undesirable behavior, while it was also pointed out that some of the most remarkable music from the Muslim world has been very spiritual.

Mohammad Omar (Ustad is a title referring to musical mastery) was the director of the National Orchestra of Afghanistan for many years and a virtuoso on the rabab, considered to be an ancestor of the Indian sarod (Ali Akbar Khan, for example, has been highlighted on this blog).

In November 1974, Omar performed live at the University of Washington and was accompanied by a young and not-well-known tabla player, Zakir Hussain.  The two first met the morning of the concert and though they did not share a spoken language, their fluency in music easily compensated.  They simply rehearsed and then put on a spectacular show.  Omar died in 1980, so this was his sole recorded performance in America.

Fortunately, though it took nearly three decades, this stunning concert was remastered and issued by the storied label and it provides a rare opportunity to listen to classical Afghan music with accompaniment by Hussein, who is now widely recognized as a master of the tabla.  The liner notes, as is typical for a Smithsonian Folkways release, provides helpful information on Afghan music, Omar and his instrument, the concert program, and Hussain.

Macro Dub Infection, Volume One

This is a fascinating two-disc set issued in 1995 on Virgin Records with American distribution by Caroline Records that is an absorbing fusion of dub and electronica.  Among the familiar names to this listener are Automaton (a Bill Laswell project), Coil, Laika, The Golden Palominos (Anton Fier and company), Tricky, Scorn (Mick Harris), and Mad Professor.

Some of this music is far more directly tied to dub, while others are more of an electronica vein, though the use of studio experimentation with the manipulation of sound, so maybe trying to parse out what is "dub" is a pointless exercise.  Moreover, that doesn't make any of these pieces intrinsically better than others or a better work because it has a dub connotation.

Still, the quality of these 23 tracks is uniformly high and intriguing, Also interesting are the liner notes bearing the heading of "Scientist Meets the Ghost Captain," and which are comprised of dated comments, though not in chronological order, from 1955-1995.

Put together by the album's compiler, K. Martin, these notes include quotes from famed reggae and dub figures like Lee "Scratch" Perry and Augustus Pablo, avant-garde literary figures such as William S. Burroughs and Marshall McLuhan, and musical experimenters including George Russell and John Zorn.  Martin's text about dub and other experimental forms of musical experimentation and broad cultural statements are striking, if disjointed.  That, though, might be the point, a la Burroughs' "cut-up" approach.

In any case, Macro Dub Infection, Volume One is a mind-bending and enjoyable excursion into the many intersections of electronic music and dub and well worth the effort to locate.  A second volume, not as strong as the first, was issued in 1996, but is still very enjoyable.