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matana roberts

alocispepraluger102

By alocispepraluger102
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alocispepraluger102 Newbie

alocispepraluger102

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Matana is great.

I have both of her Sticks & Stones CDs.

Her quartet disc on Utech is also wonderful with Taylor Ho Bynum on trumpet.

http://www.utechrecords.com

This is a limited edition of 200.

Just received her solo disc of Ellington songs directly from her.

msmatana@gmail.com

matana is a beautiful beautiful alto player.

thanks so much for opening these doors.

i am not very comfortable or familiar with the utech site.

i will write about the solo disc.

Larry Kart Proficient

Larry Kart

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I heard Matana Roberts live in a mainstream-modern setting several times about eight years ago. She was into Osby (and/or Steve Coleman) and clearly was going to be something. Then I heard her a few times in the last several years with her Sticks and Stones trio. I have to say that this group in person sounded two or three times better than it does on disc. In fact, IMO neither Sticks and Stones album is what it should be/could be, both in terms of sound quality and inspiration/intensity. In any case, Roberts is the real deal.

alocispepraluger102 Newbie

alocispepraluger102

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Matana is great.

I have both of her Sticks & Stones CDs.

That's a terrific group.

Hear samples on Matana's MySpace page:

http://www.myspace.com/matanaroberts

more info:

http://www.482music.com/musicians/matana-roberts.html

A Temperate Avant-Gardist

The New York Times, June 4, 2005

Ben Ratliff

The alto saxophonist Matana Roberts stepped up to introduce her quartet at the Jazz Gallery on Thursday night wearing glitter, face paint, seven pale pink roses pinned to a cutoff denim vest, and a wine-colored taffeta petticoat. She tossed a few more roses on the floor around her as she talked. "Excuse me while I change the atmosphere a little," she said, putting it nicely.

On the outside, Ms. Roberts, who has been working around New York for the last three years, radiates fearless, wall-to-wall hippie-punk energy. There is a famous causal link between that personality type and aesthetic transgression. But jazz isn't easily reduced; it resists transgression, and she knows it. Ms. Roberts comes from Chicago, which breeds a temperate kind of jazz avant-gardist, catholic minded about new directions but inclined to see bebop as earthy and nourishing rather than a venerable, unkillable oppressor. On Thursday, if you closed your eyes, you didn't hear a rebel, but a musician admiring different kinds of form in the last half century of jazz, and seeking to click them into alignment.

After she played two stout, balanced long tones, she indicated a rubato melody, and her band plunged into the recognizable whirl of post-Ornette Coleman form. The trumpeter Taylor Ho Bynum generated a babble; the bassist Thomson Kneeland and the drummer Tomas Fujiwara put on a steady boil of rhythm, keeping the song afloat without pointing out the beats and bar lines.

Then there was a break, and all the musicians stopped but Ms. Roberts. In a concise few minutes of solo improvisation, she played one invented melody after another, then built up dense curtains of sound, rolling together low notes and high overtones, a little in the manner of Evan Parker.

Without stopping, she cued the band into an old Dexter Gordon tune, "For Regulars Only," neat and piquant. And in that segue she basically proved her point: having just dealt with some of the most frenetic corners of jazz, she opened up the easy, strolling quality of the Gordon song, and of Gordon's playing.

Later in the set, there were some gurgling, clinking electronics, triggered by Mr. Kneeland. At one point, Ms. Roberts played the clarinet for a placid sequence, before the band started a crescendo of collective skirmishing over a bass pedal. And toward the end, she distributed to her musicians scores notated with bright blots of color rather than musical notes. The result was a skilled blend of avant-garde jazz styles since 1965 or so: from the most unusual stimulus came the most usual music of the night.

Ms. Roberts isn't just mildly curious to expand her medium: she seems driven to do it. But rather than her group sound, it is her own instrumental voice, a calm, melodically organized way of playing, that may do the job first.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

  • 4 years later...
  • 3 months later...
mjazzg Grand Master

mjazzg

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Got my Coin Coin on pre-order. Read good things about the live presentation so hoping this'll compensate for the unlikelihood of a UK performance.

Agree that Live in London is strong

papsrus Newbie

papsrus

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I'll have to grab the Live in London disc. I think I was vaguely aware of it, but it wasn't really on the radar. So thanks for the heads-up there. :tup

I'm really fascinated with Coin Coin though. Much more thematic, personal, investigation of the/her traditions, etc. She certainly seems to have put a great deal of effort and energy into this project.

I wonder if anyone here has seen a live performance of it?

johnlitweiler Newbie

johnlitweiler

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Mixed feelings. Liked her melodies at first hearing (concert), was badly disappointed by the (first?) Sticks and Stones CD, liked much of her dramatic 'Coin Coin' performance (free-jazz, folk-jazz) in Chicago but thought it lacked variety after the first hour (she did not stretch out nor extend ideas very far), and was disappointed hearing her play standards in a trio about 2 years ago. Still, so much promise that she should be heard.

  • 2 weeks later...
mjazzg Grand Master

mjazzg

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Posted

Coin Coin arrived.

Stunningly powerful album. The lineage of Roach and Shepp is apparent (to me, at least) but this is an original statement by a talented writer, arranger and player

  • 3 years later...
  • 2 weeks later...
  • 4 years later...
JSngry Grand Master

JSngry

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Had not heard too much of anything out of her for a while, so this blurb in the new New Yorker is plenty of good news about that!

Matana Roberts

DiMenna Center

The saxophonist, composer, and multidisciplinary artist Matana Roberts put herself on the map with "Coin Coin", a breathtaking trio of albums that evoke black American history and culture with ferocity, inventiveness, and compassion. (A fourth installment arrives in October). In "I call america: Sandy Speaks...", part of a newer series of multi-media installations-performances sparked by present-day concerns, Roberts marshals a team of improvisers, media artists, and members of the International Contemporary Ensemble to contemplate the life and untimely death of Sandra Bland. After Ward, in a four-night Stone residency, Roberts returns to bare essentials with the drummer Gerald Cleaver, the guitarists Ava Mendoza and Liberty Ellman, an the pianist Vijay Iyer. (Aug 17 at 8; Aug. 20-24 at 8:30)

  • 10 months later...
Rabshakeh Grand Master

Rabshakeh

Posted
Posted

I have been enjoying the Coin Coins a lot over the last couple of weeks.

Having digested them, I'd like to hear more of Matana's playing, perhaps without the narrative and vocal elements of the series (although those are obviously a key part of what makes the series so good).

Her solos are really good. I would like more of them. 

Could anyone recommend a record of hers (or perhaps her playing on someone else's date) that isn't part of the Coin Coin series?

Would the Sticks & Stoneses still be the best place to start, or are there other albums that have taken their place since this thread began? 

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