king ubu

Cheers! Just wanted to post that too. The real Taj next to all that foogliness.

Still not too big on WP ... but the Roscoe Mitchell is excellent!

Most of the Basie, I think, corresponds to the Laserlight two disc set here: http://www.allmusic.com/album/count-basie-laserlight-mw0000533810 There must have been earlier editions of the same recordings.

Some good offers here https://www.jpc.de/s/Box-Sets+um+50%+reduziert!?searchtype=campaigntext

Went down to the 60€ range on some yurpeen amazon sites. I pre-ordered and paid around 90 or 100 I think. Here 'tis https://www.amazon.it/gp/aw/d/B003M3UJIK/

CAM has teased us with the four upcoming boxes - or rather, just with the artists they'll be dedicated to - here's what's left for them, I think (correct me where I miss something): David Murray: David Murray Big Band - LIVE AT "SWEET BASIL" - VOL.1 David Murray - LIVE AT "SWEET BASIL" - VOL.2 David Murray - INTERBOOGIEOLOGY David Murray - CHILDREN David Murray With Dave Burrell - WINDWARD PASSAGES * David Murray with Randy Weston - THE HEALERS Mal Waldron: David Friesen with Mal Waldron - REMEMBERING MAL Judi Silvano with Mal Waldron - RIDING A ZEPHYR ** Steve Lacy, Mal Waldron - COMMUNIQUÉ * All Star Session - REMEMBERING THE MOMENT Mal Waldron Trio - OUR COLLINE'S A TREASURE Mal Waldron with David Friesen - DEDICATION Mal Waldron, Steve Lacy - SEMPRE AMORE * Mal Waldron - UPDATE Kim Parker with The Mal Waldron Trio - SOMETIMES I'M BLUE Max Roach: Max Roach - IT'S CHRISTMAS AGAIN Max Roach Double Quartet - EASY WINNERS Max Roach Quartet - SCOTT FREE Max Roach Double Quartet - LIVE AT VIELHARMONIE Max Roach Quartet - IN THE LIGHT Max Roach Quartet - PICTURES IN A FRAME Muhal Richard Abrams: Muhal Richard Abrams - 1- OQA+19 Muhal Richard Abrams/Malachi Favors - SIGHTSONG Muhal Richard Abrams - DUET feat. Amina Claudine Myers Muhal Richard Abrams - COLORS IN THIRTY-THIRD Muhal Richard Abrams - SONG FOR ALL Muhal Richard Abrams - FAMILY TALK Roscoe Mitchell & Muhal Richard Abrams - DUETS AND SOLO * *) part of earlier boxes by Murray (Vol. 2), Steve Lacy (Duos & Trios) and Roscoe Mitchell, respectively **) no one needs this, methinks! Pretty cool to see the rest of Roach's albums coming out - I was disappointed by the first one in that it only contained three (out of six) discs that weren't duplicates of the Taylor and Braxton boxes! As for Muhal, I've bought all the missing ones separately by now (already had a few of them when the first box arrived), but I'm in for the Waldron (I think), the Roach and the Murray! The Muhal will be the second one I'll skip - the first one was the Jimmy Lyons, where I have the albums already (and why did they omit one of the duos from the Cyrille box? there's not going to be a second one by him, I assume, right - nothing left in the vault?

If only traffic were as smooth as Jamal/Crosby/Fournier!

Ordered an LP of this (CD goes for crazy prices) - always in for more grand late solo Hines!

Okay, I have to confess I'm not deeply enough into Armstrong's discography ... I'm still a big fan of the series, and in light of their communicating that this Intégrale won't contain each and every note recorded but that they will omit some stuff, I assume they were frank enough about it. However, now that you mention it, I am interested in this - maybe you feel like expanding on it in the thread dedicated to the series?

Lost Chords Meet Paolo Fresu (still on Carla's own WATT, I think - distributed by ECM) Chiaroscuro - in duet with Ralph Towner both pretty nice! he has a couple more that I don't know: https://www.ecmrecords.com/artists/1435047562/paolo-fresu

Was just poking ... I like this series a lot and am somewhat pissed by the fact that there's always someone on these sides to step in and mention that "I've known this even before WW I broke out, why are you so excited about this?" ... not everybody was around to buy the Miles and Basie concerts in previous incarnations, not everyone is in some Sinatra fan club that allows 'em to know that this Paris gig was around before, not everyone has 200+ Satchmo discs including some fifty or sixty concerts by the All Stars etc., so this is a nice series, be it to fill gaps, be it to make people aware of some stuff for the first time. And with Fremeaux, usually production credits are very high, even if, like with this series, booklets are on the small side (and yeah, much higher, for instance, than with the previous two incarnations of Trema/Laserlight reissues ... the old "Pour ceux qui aiment le jazz" edition of the Miles concerts from the 90s has a large booklet, but again, the only other release I have from that time is Ellington's "Théâtre des Champs Elysées, 29-30 Janvier 1965" - I was simply not able to buy more in the day (and probably not even aware this was a series worth looking for, beyond the Miles)

My condolences, Joel - your write-up gives a vivid picture of your friend, sounds like you had some great time together!

Just giving the new "Karyobin" it's first spin - great to finally have it in a proper edition! Guess the second parcel (with the Shaw and McNair) will arrive in the next days, too (the SME package should also have contained the Colbeck, but I was too late in reconfiguring the order, adding another item or two to it).

Yeah, but they will certainly not pay anything for recordings older than 50 years. The fact that it's not amazon but those third party sellers that offer them in the US is rather telling I assume. They could, I guess, have a different license (pay royalties) for US distribution, and then the sets would be available through all regular channels, I'd assume?

They're from Universal Europe ... and as such prob. to be considered boots in the US (as they're PD, no matter if "official" or not). Ain't that funny?

nothing new but hey, not everybody interested in jazz was already around when you could buy those Buddy Bolden cylinders at the drug store

I guess I reach out to those that speak that crap daily ... but 'ey, you wuhh'n think so but they had a good teacher:

Debussy: "Pelléas et Mélisande", Covent Garden/Boulez - from here:

Very sad news indeed - don't know much of his work, alas, but wherever his name pops up, I'm mighty interested!

Some great stuff lately ... trying to sum up some (for those who read German, go here for more detailed reports) Last night (May 21), at a friend's, it was Nicolas Masson "Parallels" with Colin Vallon, Patrice Moret and Lionel Friedli. Pure bliss to be in a small room (probably 60 or so people attending, some out in the corridor) and witness music making of such quality and intensity. Started out with a tune (all compositions by Masson) that reminded me slightly of Miles Davis' "second quintet" ... but Vallon (on upright, opened so he could tackle the strings with various little things) and Friedli are totally different from Hancock/Williams, and the music took other turns anyway. Masson (on tenor) was impressive, classic (and classy) storytelling that sounded perfectly organic and - that was the best part, I thought - still succeeded in integrating the quartet into one close-knit unit. The others all had their turns as soloists as well, and made great use of it. Pure bliss to be there and witness it, as I said. The two nights before were spent at Taktlos Festival, 33rd edition. The first night (May 19) started off with Matthew Shipp solo. I found it intriguing and pretty good, also quite amazing to watch him play (when he does that "rowing" thing with both his arms/shouldes, like: left hand at the piano, right pulled back, and then vice versa) - never saw him live, am somewhat ambivalent about his music, but always fascinated enough to keep listening to some of his output (which is way too huge for me to keep up, nonetheless). He was moody but clear, into it yet somewhat detached, letting things flow in a way that yet constantly interrupted everything again. And of course he harks back to all kinds of jazz, from Ellington to Tristano to Taylor. Not a great concert, but great to have finally seen him live! Second set was the low point of the entire festival (I skipped the third night, yesterday - another venue would have had Sheila Jordan at the same time ... can't these folks coordinate somewhat better please?!?), Tiptons Sax Quartet + Drums. I guess they meant well, but it boiled down to a so-so high school project of kids that are constantly being told by their parents how exceptional, how unique, how very special, how great they are. No. Jessica Lurie was the best soloist by far, Amy Denio not half bad (and she did one wonderful klezmer-like tune on clarinet, though after her solo Lurie followed on alto and was at least as great), but Sue Orfield on tenor was a constant nuisance, Tina Richardson on baritone just so-so, and Austrian drummer Robert Kainar, while clearly a very good musician, was busy accompanying and reacting, instead of every intruding and pushing and giving the occasional slap that might have helped. Too much singing, too (and not good singing, mind me). So, okay, I was quite pissed after that, tried to relax as it went on and got somewhat better. What about the final set? Well, that was some kind of ambient-y hommage to electric Miles, I guess, by Vallon-Michel-Götte-Chansorn, a quartet of Swiss musicians (the former two from the Romandie, the latter two from Zurich). Chansorn hit the simples of rock beats in a real hard way, while the others sort of merged into one, and that was the fascinating part of it. Michel, who's a great flugel and trumpet player (he was with the late Vienna Art Orchestra for a long time) had lots of delay and echo on his sound and merged with the Fender rhodes played by Vallon, as well as Götte's electric bass (which was sometimes played like a guitar, to pretty nice effect). Not a bad ending, but again, not outstanding either. We left a bit early, and Vallon told me yesterday that some ten or fifteen minutes later they had to end the concert because they had some severe feedback/sound issues. Second night at the Taktlos looked somewhat less promising to me on paper, but it turned out to be, as they sa, da shit! The opening set was by Ephrem Lüchinger, another local guy, keys player, composer, songwriter, producer of pop acts etc., and trained pianist, he learned with Simon Nabatov who tried to break him, as he mentioned in an interview ... but he refused to go into the jazz school grind, and I guess it pays off now, almost 20 years later. His triple album "Are You Prepared" which was released last year (I think) was based on recordings done in 2008 and then re-worked and treated in all kinds of ways. He had also, hence the title, worked with a prepared piano. How to do that on stage? Well, he had two pianos, one mostly left as it comes, the other heavily prepared, he had an Akai synth on top of one of them, a notebook and various other stuff ... and he succeeded superbly in creating a flowing set of sounds that was quite gorgeous indeed! So yeah, off to a great start! Second set was Poing + Maja S. K. Ratjke, doing their traditional programme for workers day (they seem to play this kind of concert yearly in Norway on April 30th) - a mix of songs by Brecht/Weill, Eisler, Norwegian stuff, for starters Lennon's "Working Class Hero", and they also did a Bowie song, "Rock'n'Roll Suicide" ("this is not on one of our records, we're not that commercial"). Great on all counts, Ratkje's singing and vocalising paired with her amazing stage presence was terrific to witness (first time I saw her live, alas!), and musically, the guys (Frode Haltli on accordion, Rolf-Erik Nystrom on alto and sopranino, sometimes simultaneously, and Hakon Thelin on double bass) were great, too. I was totally floored after that. (As an aside: they were so much more adventurous and musically so much better than the Tiptons, yet they had perfect stage presence all the time ... and they even watched the clock and stopped in due time - alas, as I could have gone on listening to them for another hour or two, easily!) The final set of the night was to be Ken Vandermark-Nate Wooley, and I was ambivalent about it as I heard about a failed concert in Berlin a few days ago (and could relate to the reasons the guy who told me about it mentioned), which was in a quartet setting though. So let's relax and be open-minded about it, okay? It turned out a pretty fine set, Wooley was quite okay most of the time, and Vandermark played clarinet for about half of the time. They did pieces by John Carter as well as originals, and to close things, a wonderful version of Ornette Coleman's "I Heard It on the Radio" (an outtake from the first session for "This Is Our Music"). The music was hardcore jazz after the very different two acts before, and it was kind of difficult to get into it, after all a clarinet/trumpet duo isn't the most attractive sonic combination (which made VDMK's good tanor and baritone contributions more welcome than they would have been in a band setting - I like him best on clarinet, by a clear margin), but after two or three tunes, they really caught on with me. Also, a few days before, on Tuesday (May 17), I had the immense pleasure of finally catching Kris Davis live, finally. Again, this was in a private setting, but much bigger-scale than the concert yesterday. She did an amazing solo set first, which displayed plenty of character, while harking back to Tristano quite regularly it seemed to me. She piled waves of sound on top of each other, played tiny little variations and combined melody and sheer power in a great way. Will truly have to check out more of her music (I started by buying "Save Your Breath" from her, the only disc she had with her). The week before that (May 13), I went to the tiny WIM in Zurich. First set was Jacob Wick on solo trumpet, doing a set of minimal breath-music, not one actual "tone", and permanent circular breathing ("Has anybody seen LaMonte Young?", he asked before he started), which was pretty fascinating, if somewhat hard to focus on ... but eventually it turned out quite interesting as sounds started ot appear about which I really couldn't tell if they were just in my head or actually in the room. It was this kind of experience that throws you back into yourself, into your own head and brain. Then he was joined for the second half by Christian Weber on double bass, and off they went, both using their instruments to produce any kind of amazing sounds, including, now, conventional trumpet tones (but lots of quarter/microtones, too). The second set that night was by a trio of Bertrand Denzler (ts), Axel Dörner (t) and Antonin Gerbal (perc). This turned out to be a rather typical free improv set, but a pretty fine one at that! Denzler has a gorgeous sound and just as Dörner used circular breathing and all kinds of unconventional ways to produce a broad sonic palette. Gerbal had a very basic set of drums, just a few toms and one cymbal which was barely used for a long time, but he allowed the others to follow their path(s) and he joined in most of the time, not being content to just manage time. Dörner played a trumpet with valves plus a slide added, allowing him to adapt his tone seemlessly, and he made good use of that. Too long since I cauht him live (12 years, I think?), and actually this was - finally! - the first time I caught Denzler. No photos, btw, as I left my stupid phone in my pocket this time.

So the auto-duplication bug isn't yet fixed, either.