ep1str0phy

I was just about to post this- I enjoy this recording. W/regard to your point - although I think that Barron acquits himself well, it also sounds like there's a bit of a remove there. Barron very much strikes me as a post-bop cat who was fluid enough to hang with open structures. But Cecil's music is rooted in motivic interplay (e.g., the unit structures thing), which almost necessitated the invention of a new idiom on multiple instruments. It's the fine line that separates Jimmy Lyons from Ken McIntyre or, speaking in broader terms, Andrew Cyrille from, say, J.C. Moses. Speaking in pure hypotheticals, this is the kind of free idiom that I can see McLean getting close to. Late Coltrane had a constant (if not static) rhythmic engine, which is at odds with the momentum-oriented playing that McLean excelled at. I can imagine McLean slotting into the Lyons role well, especially if supported by a drummer as literate as Cyrille.

Hello, all- I figure that this one may be of interest - our mutual friend Alex Hawkins is going to be visiting the Bay Area next week. We'll be playing some of my compositions + free improvisations, and the bands are fantastic. In the off chance that some O board longtimers are out west, it might be worth the visit. Hits: • Monday, October 14, 2pm, Palo Alto, CA // at Earthwise (600 EAST MEADOW DRIVE Palo Alto, CA 94304) // w/Jenny Scheinman and co. // Reservations HERE • Tuesday, October 15, 7pm, San Francisco CA // Jazz at the Make-Out: Alexander Hawkins (UK), Low Bleeds (3225 22nd Street, SF, CA) // No Cover/Donations Accepted • Thursday, October 17, 8pm, Berkeley, CA // Alexander Hawkins Quartet, Bruce Ackley Solo at Tom's Place (3111 Deakin Street, Berkeley, CA) // Donations Accepted The band features Lisa Mezacappa, Jordan Glenn (Fred Frith Trio; 10/14 and 10/15 only), and Donald Robinson (10/17). We'll be tackling some a handful of old standbys, including music from our recent record with Tatsu Aoki and Michael Zerang: https://sluchaj.bandcamp.com/album/what-else-is-there

To be fair, I think that Jackie's experiments with free tempo music were earnest and purposeful. I just think that there was disconnect between how he understood things like harmony and forward motion and how the more naturalistic free players dealt with those concepts. My sense is that there were plenty of players who understood free music on some level but did not play it - e.g., openminded people like Gerald Wilson. Then there were players who could play in more open idioms, but whose approaches were somewhat incompatible with pure free playing - e.g., McLean, Dennis Charles, Bill Barron, etc. Then there were guys who were capable free players but probably didn't want anything to do with the music in a longterm sense - e.g., Rahsaan, Art Taylor, and so on.

Whoa - my initial post was from 17 years ago. Mercifully, all of this stuff is now readily available. The landscape for digital media completely changed in the interim between then and now.

A (possibly) bizarre post, but most certainly of interest - this is essentially a reunion show for the One Step Beyond band. Of particular note is that Jackie isn't even on this recording. According to the YouTube comments, he was in a car accident. James Spaulding subs. Woody Shaw and Ron Carter also feature, with Moncur, Hutcherson, and Williams returning. The lack of McLean robs this music of some necessary surrealism, but Spaulding acquits himself well. The heads are a little shambolic, and "Frankenstein" in particular sounds like it was performed with only minimal rehearsal. Overall, however, the music is excellent. Tony and Ron are playing in full-on maximalist/VSOP mode, but it works here. Moncur sounds like his old self, Hutcherson is appropriately lyrical, and Shaw offers a bit of vintage fire. I was at an open air gig last Saturday where the bandleader had us play "Ghost Town" off of lead sheets. It was not great. What I came to realize - and this was confirmed by a quick spin of the record later that day - is that the One Step Beyond music is largely very "in." It's all modal structures with few hairy edges. The abstraction is derived from the band's interplay and the energy of the performances. I guess I had misremembered things. When McLean did veer into actual free jazz later in his Blue Note tenure, the music lost some of its identity. To me, this both (a) reconfirms the primacy of that stretch from Let Freedom Ring to '65 or so, which is truly unique in character, and (b) validates the notion that the free jazz music of the '60s wasn't just something you could slump into, regardless of good intentions.

Ted is a fantastic bandleader/keyboardist, too, for anyone who doesn't know. Some of the most insightful Dolphy stories I've heard come from Sunny Murray. (I head the stories secondhand, relayed to me by the great Bay Area saxophonist David Boyce.) I can only paraphrase what I was told, but apparently Dolphy was occasionally in danger of physical attack. The hulking Murray, who was a Golden Gloves winner, sometimes had to serve as his bodyguard. Murray also characterized Dolphy's living conditions as very spare - a bed and some protein. IIRC George Russell said more or less the same thing.

It's Bobby Bradford's birthday today - he turns 90. I'm certain that his music means plenty to everyone on this board. Bobby's longevity - and his continued creative excellence - more than merits celebration. (I've had the good fortune to know and play with Bobby for a number of years now, and he's one of the sharpest and most astute musicians I've ever met - and a deeply kind, generous, and funny guy.) In recognition of the moment, I thought I'd paraphrase an anecdote that Bobby always tells me to share (I'm recounting this from memory, so apologies for any minor inaccuracies) - Ornette's free jazz quartet only convened twice. Any information to the contrary is apocryphal. The second occasion was a performance in the midwest. The band was comprised of Ornette, Steve Lacy, Bobby, Don Cherry, Jimmy Garrison, Charlie Haden, Billy Higgins, and Ed Blackwell. The performance never happened. It was advertised as a "Free Jazz" concert (read: Free Jazz, like Free Chicken Nuggets, rather than "Free Jazz"), which fostered confusion among the audience. The band was customarily paid upfront for engagements of that nature, and the miscommunication about the advertising caused some issues with the promoter. Long story short, the band never took the stage and they went straight home. Subsequent articles played up the alleged "free jazz performance" as a source of controversy, but it was all pantomime on the part of the local music media. There was no controversy because the music never happened. An amusing wrinkle: Ed Blackwell didn't have drums for this gig. When he arrived at the airport, all he had were rhythm logs. (He played these on Shepp's The Magic of Ju-Ju.) Ornette was livid. Someone - whether the promoter, Ornette's manager, or whomever - called ahead to see if any local drummers were willing to lend Blackwell a kit. When the band arrived for the gig, three different drummers were willing to lend their gear. It was an honor to have those cats in town.

Sorry to hear this. I love her playing. Not only was she a great improviser in a vacuum, but she helped to establish the vernacular of piano playing in free music. I'd be hard pressed to find another player of her generation who was so deft at integrating into so many different stylistic environments. Her duo records are incredible, especially the recital with Louis Moholo-Moholo. That album should be required listening for anyone who wishes to understand how traditionalist idiomatic conceits can coexist with total free improvisation. They play a ton of tunes, but the composed content never gets in the way of the abstraction (and vice versa). You have to cherish the masters while they're still around.

I find this comparison fascinating. As someone who comes from a blues background, repetitive riffage is just part of the idiom. There isn't that much separating Grant Green from a Buddy Guy or Albert King. Green is only exceptional in that he's exercising these techniques in a more conventional jazz context.

I've had a difficult time reconnecting with Black Magic Man, but I adore Tenor and especially The Willisau Concert. I wish there were more documentation of McPhee playing with some of the more familiar names of his era, regardless of the superlative quality of his solo and more esoteric small ensemble work.

Hello, all- For those of you proximate to the SF Bay Area - my project Grex is proud to be presenting "Auntie + Tebs" - an experimental work that celebrates the sound of revolutionary change. The project premieres May 31 and June 1 in Oakland, CA. The project title “Auntie + Tebs” references two epochal figures: Miriam Defensor Santiago, my Aunt and a longtime Filipino public servant, and Louis Moholo-Moholo (“Tebs”), the innovative South African drummer and Anti-Apartheid activist. Both of these individuals devoted their lives to toppling corruption and oppression in their home countries. This project, which is centered on free jazz, spoken word, and experimental aesthetics, underlines the relationship between Bay Area activism and hard-fought battles abroad. For this project, we're excited to be welcoming the great Bobby Bradford (both shows) and firebrand Zoh Amba (6/1 only) to the Bay. It's a rare opportunity to see some unique, potent figures in an unusual setting. Details: Grex: “Auntie + Tebs” feat. Bobby Bradford, Zoh Amba, Francis Wong Friday, May 31, 8pm & Saturday, June 1, 8pm at Dresher Ensemble Studio, 2201 Poplar Street, Oakland, CA 94607, United States General Admission: $15; Students and Seniors: $10 TICKETS / MORE INFO

Re: adventurous guitarists that might rightly be considered modern jazz or post-bop: Zoller is a great callout. If we're talking early, mid-60's, there is a bit of a recorded scarcity of guitarists operating in more contemporary contexts. In retrospect, I'd assert that the advent of Hendrix really altered the the perceptual range of possibilities for guitar. Speaking as a guitar player, I think a lot of this has to do with technology and innovation. The vernacular(s) of jazz guitar operate in this liminal space between horns and piano. It isn't an ideal instrument for either expressive melodicism or harmonic density - the guitar can do both, but other instruments are better suited to either extreme. It isn't a coincidence that a slew of new, decidedly modernistic guitarists emerged in the 1960s. The minute louder amps and effects pedals became more widely available - and after guitarists like Hendrix established what could be done on the instrument - it became easier for people to find a role for guitar in modern jazz ensembles. What many may not understand about gain on guitar is that it compresses your signal. Overdrive/distortion/fuzz are not merely effects - they actually change how lines articulate. A guitarist with a well-controlled fuzz pedal can play as fluidly as a horn player, even with the jazz/high-gauge strings that allow for stability of intonation. All this is to say that a guy like Grant Green may very well not have played like Grant Green had different technology been available in his youth. (And that's the story of music.) Case in point: consider Ray Russell, a very capable English guitarist who plays in a linear style not fundamentally dissimilar to a Zoller or Coryell (although he's somewhat less fluid and more angular-melodic - more akin to Jim Hall than Tal Farlow): This is from '68. You can already hear the inflection of the Coltrane-Miles continuum of modalism - which is to say that he's playing as more of a melodist and less of a vertical (harmonic) improviser. He just hasn't put it all together yet - he's missing that extra layer of expressivity. This is from '71: The fuzz grants Russell and extra layer of expressivity - there are explicit overtures to American fusion and free jazz. This version of Russell (essentially the same that would play "Stained Angel Morning," which by a certain metric might be considered the guitar equivalent of Spiritual Unity) is capable of contributing to a more contemporary ensemble in a meaningful way. See what happened to Derek Bailey toward the end of the '60s, James Blood Ulmer in the '70s, and Sonny Sharrock after his resurgence and you get roughly the same picture.

Maybe not the paradigm for Monk drummers, but I favor Shadow Wilson. It's wholly possible that my opinion has been colored by the presence of Coltrane on the Monk records that Wilson appears on. Wilson is fleet and liquid in a way that tempers Monk's internal groove very well.

BTW - thanks for the kindness, guys. I've definitely missed being here! Having a kid has completely recalibrated so many of my old habits.

Exactly. There's a reason that Booker Ervin exists. I don't want Booker to sound like Joe Henderson - they're different players that operate effectively in different contexts. It's worth mentioning that a ton of our knowledge about Grant is based on his recordings. Firsthand accounts are sparse. Grant's career mostly coincides with an era when amplifiers were not designed to compete with the (often) punishing volume levels of modern jazz. This dude was playing with organs in loud clubs. It may not be immediately evident if you don't have firsthand, experiential knowledge of playing guitar on stage, but you can't simply turn an amplifier up. There are certain gestures and registers that will invariably project better in a loud room. I can more or less guarantee that Grant's style played better in live environments than the approach favored by many of his contemporaries. He's comparable in this way to someone like Buddy Guy, who often sounds pinched and thin on records but who has probably destroyed every single room he ever played. For reference: there's all that talk about how Wes played with the Coltrane band. I can absolutely understand why this might be the case. Wes's harmonic vocabulary was surpassing, but he also figured out how how to solo with octaves in an era when people hadn't yet developed a facility with that technique. I can't imagine too many other players who were able to play over Elvin in an era before good live sound and freely available gain/distortion options.