"Allen Lowe’s massive, five-hour opus (Louis Armstrong's America) may turn out to be one of the most important recordings of the 2020s."

[AllenLowe]

"Allen Lowe’s massive, five-hour opus may turn out to be one of the most important recordings of the 2020s, if only more people well spend time with it. Lowe’s music is personal, deeply thoughtful, and addictively listenable. Lowe spends a great deal of time reading, writing, and thinking about jazz and the blues, their intersection, the influences that birthed rock and roll, and he’s taken all that and channeled into five hours of horn-drenched, witty and delightful music."

 

https://www.freejazzblog.org/2024/12/allen-lowe-constant-sorrow-orchestra.html

 

strangely, the more reviews I get like this, the more depressed I get. I think it's called Inverse Reality.

Edited December 30, 2024 by AllenLowe

[kh1958]

Simultaneously listening to disc 2 of volume 1.

[jlhoots]

Great 4 CDs.

Maybe it'll make you feel better about the music of (some) others.

[HutchFan]

Allen, congrats on this excellent review -- in addition to all the others.   

I hope your work -- and the good press you've earned -- opens doors for you.

 

[AllenLowe]

2 hours ago, jlhoots said:

Great 4 CDs.

Maybe it'll make you feel better about the music of (some) others.

If your implication (as others have made) is that I put down other music to elevate my own....well, you haven't read enough of my writing. There is a strange historical parallel here, of writers and others who wrote fiction/plays and who also wrote critically of other writers: Isaac Rosenfeld, Delmore Schwartz, Richard Gilman, George Bernard Shaw, Randall Jarrell, John Berryman, Harold Rosenberg  - I doubt if you would criticize them in the same way though they were much more aggressive than I am. It's part of a give-and-take which few people engage in any more; criticism tends to read, these days, like press releases. But before you think ill off me for doing this kind of critical work, get a better sense of the history of American writing. There was a whole movement of the '40s and '50s called the New York Intellectuals, and my work is quite mild compared to theirs, though I am inspired by their willingness to question conventional wisdom, which is rampant in the jazz world.

And I haven't mentioned Brecht, whose attacks on contemporary theater were detailed and devastating.

And the truth is that much of what I say is agreed to by others who do not want to go public. I get private messages to this effect all the time.

Edited December 30, 2024 by AllenLowe

[jlhoots]

59 minutes ago, AllenLowe said:

If your implication (as others have made) is that I put down other music to elevate my own....well, you haven't read enough of my writing. There is a strange historical parallel here, of writers and others who wrote fiction/plays and who also wrote critically of other writers: Isaac Rosenfeld, Delmore Schwartz, Richard Gilman, George Bernard Shaw, Randall Jarrell, John Berryman, Harold Rosenberg  - I doubt if you would criticize them in the same way though they were much more aggressive than I am. It's part of a give-and-take which few people engage in any more; criticism tends to read, these days, like press releases. But before you think ill off me for doing this kind of critical work, get a better sense of the history of American writing. There was a whole movement of the '40s and '50s called the New York Intellectuals, and my work is quite mild compared to theirs, though I am inspired by their willingness to question conventional wisdom, which is rampant in the jazz world.

And I haven't mentioned Brecht, whose attacks on contemporary theater were detailed and devastating.

And the truth is that much of what I say is agreed to by others who do not want to go public. I get private messages to this effect all the time.

I never thought or think that you're trying "elevate" your own.

You just don't like what you hear from some (?many) others, & that's entirely up to you. Doesn't make you right or wrong.

[AllenLowe]

29 minutes ago, jlhoots said:

I never thought or think that you're trying "elevate" your own.

You just don't like what you hear from some (?many) others, & that's entirely up to you. Doesn't make you right or wrong.

ok. Though I should mention that I heard a young group recently that I think is the best thing in jazz in the last 10 years.

They are on Instagram as Numusic.

[mikeweil]

Jaut saw my regular German mail order has it listed. I will put it on the wish list for my birthday in February. Fifty bucks is a reasonable price and it saves me the hassle with customs.

[kh1958]

I assume you are kidding or I have the wrong group? https://www.numusicgroup.com