In a remarkable example of uncanny group-think, pianist-keyboardist and RareNoise regular Jamie Saft (Metallic Taste of Blood, Slobber Pup, Plymouth, The New Standard, Red Hill) joins with longtime collaborators Trevor Dunn on bass and Balazs Pandi on drums and master trombonist Roswell Rudd on the astounding, purely improvised Strength and Power. Recorded live in Saft's home studio near Woodstock, New York, this intergenerational offering features the 44-year-old pianist, 47-year-old bassist, 32-year-old Hungarian drummer and 80-year-old avant-garde pioneer blending organically, telepathically on a set of conversational music running the gamut of dynamics and emotions. 

As Saft explains, "All the music was completely improvised in the studio. No predetermined compositions at all. No hand signals, no charts: nothing but trust, deepest intuition, and mutual respect."

The key to this highly interactive session, says Rudd, was not chops but rather the participants' highly attuned listening skills. "The really important thing, especially with collective improvisation, is that you're playing off of each other. So the music comes as a result of listening to each other and your response to the other players. I really found myself delving deeply on this occasion because the other musicians were not only putting it out there but they were also responding in depth. When you're lucky enough to be in the company of very proficient musicians who not only can play but also can listen deeply, this is what I think I love more than anything else in the performance of music."

The revered trombonist, who came up playing Dixieland or trad jazz music while attending Yale University in the mid 1950s and later made his mark in the free jazz world through collaborations with Cecil Taylor, Archie Shepp, John Tchicai and longtime collaborator Steve Lacy, is a formidable presence on this RareNoise recording. Whether it's his lyrical playing on the spacious ballad "Luminescent," his unrestrained blowing on a surging "The Bedroom," his conversational plunger work on "Cobalt Is a Divine" and the title track or his early New Orleans tailgate-styled testifying on "Struttin' for Jah Jah," Rudd's trombone resounds with history, humor and humanity. Dunn provides thick grooves and potent contrapuntal lines throughout (particularly when he is paired in a duet with Rudd on "Dunn's Falls") while Pandi propels the proceedings with kinetic backbeats and swinging momentum. Saft, performing on his 1966 Steinway Model L piano at his home studio, adds spiky comping, cascading call-and-response lines and some exploration inside the piano. "This piano has a unique sound," he says. "It's darker than most modern pianos. Sometimes I will use paper and pen if they are handy as tools to modify the acoustic piano, but mostly it's just real time manipulation of the inside of the piano with these two hands."

"The piano is a strange and opulent instrument," adds Saft. "It is a physical object which requires adherence to the basic laws of physics. The greatest pianists understand how to harness the power of gravity and understand the internal mechanisms of the instrument and how they relate to the laws of gravity. I always work to use gravity to my advantage as an instrumentalist. With proper understanding of the way the piano and the human body interact, one can constantly push the instrument into new areas while retaining a deep and rich tone. Whether I'm seated at the piano or working inside the piano, I'm still always dealing with laws of physics. The idea is to let gravity do all the work for you. This gives a deep and crisp tone and maximum technical flexibility."

Saft explains that this collaboration with Rudd was partly born out of proximity. "Roswell and I live five miles or so from each other in Kerhonkson, New York. Roswell and Verna Gillis, his brilliant partner, have recorded a number of times at my studio Potterville International Sound. This is how we initially met. It was clear very quickly that we needed to make music together."

Rudd says that the Strength And Power session is a continuation of "the pursuit of mystery" that he has tirelessly been on throughout his entire career, from his days as a collegiate Dixielander to the present. "This river that runs through all of my performing and recording from the earliest times, it's essentially what we did over at Jamie's that day. It's a special recording and I look forward to getting back together with the musicians, Balazs, Trevor and Jamie, and doing more, taking it out and playing for audiences somewhere. I'd love to play it for a bunch of people with thirsty ears."

Adds Saft, who has also racked up numerous credits on various John Zorn projects over the years, "It's a great privilege to make music with a true legend of improvised music such as Roswell. His compositions are deep and vast, his sound is unmistakably brilliant, and most of all he's a truly beautiful human being. The last point is crucial here: when one improvises with such a beautiful person all is possible. Roswell constantly strives to impart his love of sounds to humanity. His positivity and shining vibe make this clear, obvious, and essential."

TRACKS
1. Strength & Power
2. Cobalt is a Divine
3. The Bedroom
4. Luminescent
5. Dunn's Falls
6. Struttin' For Jah Jah


Roswell Rudd - Trombone
Jamie Saft - Piano
Trevor Dunn - Acoustic Bass
Balazs Pandi - Drums


CD AND MULTIPLE DIGITAL FORMATS AVAILABLE IN STORES AND ONLINE ON FEBRUARY 26, 2016 AND THROUGH WWW.RARENOISERECORDS.COM. 

from  www.jazzcorner.com 

(Published: March 15, 2016)

For his new album Holding the Stage: Road Shows, vol. 4, the great tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins once again taps into his vast archives of his own concert recordings to compile superior performances for release in the acclaimed Road Shows series. The album encompasses some 33 years (1979-2012) yet coheres with all of the compelling logic and narrative force of an extended Sonny solo. 

Holding the Stage, to be released by Doxy Records digitally April 8 and on CD April 15, the second album in a distribution agreement with Sony Music Masterworks and its jazz imprint OKeh, is truly a treasure chest that includes tunes Rollins has never before recorded and musical relationships previously undocumented. "This album consists of various periods of my career, with something for everybody," says Rollins. "It's who I am, and the music represents just about every aspect of what I do."

Three Rollins originals pay tribute to departed friends and colleagues. The soulful blues "H.S.," for Horace Silver, has been a concert staple since its appearance on Sonny's 1995 Milestone album Sonny Rollins +3. Saxophonist/arranger Paul Jeffrey, who died last year at 81, is remembered in the funky "Professor Paul," a new composition making its recorded debut here. Of "Disco Monk," from 1979's Don't Ask (Milestone) and rarely performed since, Rollins told CD annotator Ted Panken: "It was disco-disco-disco then, everywhere you went, but I heard something juxtaposed with [Thelonious] Monk within this disco craze, and I wanted to meld them in a way that both styles would be themselves and yet be one." 

Another highlight is a previously unreleased 23-minute medley (and concert closer) from his September 15, 2001 Boston performance, most of which had been immortalized in Rollins's final Milestone album, the Grammy Award-winning Without a Song: The 9/11 Concert. "Sweet Leilani," introduced on hisThis Is What I Do album of the year before, morphs into a richly evocative solo cadenza and an epically ecstatic "Don't Stop the Carnival."

In the Harlem of his youth, Rollins told Panken, "music was happening on every street corner. So the idea of ‘keep the music going' is in that song. Don't stop the carnival. In the case of 9/11, that was especially prophetic."

Since launching his Doxy Records imprint in 2006 with the Grammy-nominated studio album Sonny, Please, Sonny Rollins has been turning to his concert recording archive dating back nearly 40 years for release on the label. The selections in Volume 1 (2008) spanned nearly three decades and included a trio track from the saxophonist's 50th-anniversary Carnegie Hall concert, while Volume 2 (2011) focused primarily on his historic 80th-birthday concert at New York's Beacon Theatre. Volume 3 (2014) marked the first recording of "Patanjali" and hinged on a stunning 23-minute excavation of Jerome Kern's "Why Was I Born?"

Holding the Stage: Road Shows, vol. 4 was produced by Rollins and his longtime engineer, Richard Corsello. Personnel includes trombonist Clifton Anderson; pianists Stephen Scott and Mark Soskin; guitarists Bobby Broom, Peter Bernstein, and Saul Rubin; bassists Bob Cranshaw and Jerome Harris; drummers Kobie Watkins, Perry Wilson, Victor Lewis, Jerome Jennings, Al Foster, and Harold Summey Jr.; and percussionists Kimati Dinizulu, Sammy Figueroa, and Victor See Yuen.

More Information: http://www.sonnyrollins.com  

Cline Crafts Ambitious Double Album with 23-Piece Ensemble
Posted 6/23/2016

On August 5, Blue Note will release guitarist Nels Cline’s ambitious double album Lovers, which features a 23-piece ensemble of woodwinds, brass and strings. The 18-track program was arranged and conducted by Michael Leonhart, who’s famous for his work with Karrin Allyson, Donald Fagen and Rufus Wainwright.

Lovers includes Cline’s original compositions, as well as interpretations of Great American Songbook standards and songs by Sonic Youth and Arto Lindsay.

“I have been dreaming about, planning and re-working my rather obsessive idea of this record for well over 25 years, and it was always going to be called Lovers,” Cline said. “It is meant to be as personal in its sound and in its song selection as it is universal in its endeavor to assay or map the parameters of ‘mood’ as it once pertained, and currently pertains, to the perculiar and powerful connection between sound/song and intimacy/romance. In this I hope Lovers offers something of an update of the ‘mood music’ idea and ideal, while celebrating and challenging our iconic notion of romance.”

The guitarist, who leads the avant-garde band Nels Cline Singers and is also a member of the rock band Wilco, assembled an amazing array of talent for Lovers. Among the acclaimed musicians on the album are Steven Bernstein (trumpet, slide trumpet, flugelhorn), Erik Friedlander (cello), Ben Goldberg (clarinet), Julian Lage (acoustic and electric guitars), Kenny Wollesen (vibraphone, marimba) and the leader’s brother, Alex Cline, who plays drums and percussion.

Nels Cline will premiere the album at the Newport Jazz Festival on July 31. He will also present the material next year at UCLA in Los Angeles and SFJAZZ in San Francisco.

Lovers will be available in digital, CD and vinyl formats.

(Note: To watch a video of Nels Cline performing the new track “Beautiful Love,” click here.)

—Izzy Yellen

from  www.downbeat.com

E.S.T. SYMPHONY release announced

 
The album with symphonic versions of the music of e.s.t. Esbjörn Svensson Trio has just been recorded with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orcestra, conducted and arranged by Hans Ek feat. Dan Berglund (b), Magnus Öström (dr), Iiro Rantala (p), Marius Neset (sax), Verneri Pohjola (tp) and Johan Lindström (git). 

‘Singles: The Definitive 45s Collection’ will be released on a three CD volume, and two volumes on vinyl, with all music fully remastered, and including rare photos, poster artwork, extensive sleeve notes and detailed track by track and session notes.

The collection has been produced with the blessing and close working relationship with the Sun Ra Estate, spanning his immense and prolific output during the 1950s through more sporadic years to 1991. 

Most of Sun Ra's 45s were only pressed in small runs and have since become extremely rare and sought after. Some have only been discovered in physical form in recent years and  some were planned and penciled but allegedly never made it to vinyl. Some appeared as one-off magazine singles and posthumous releases.

The three CD collection, a vinyl box set with ten 45 singles and a limited edition vinyl LP will be released on November 25th 2016 followed by a second box of 45s and a gatefold three LP set in March 2017.

from www.jazzfm.com

(Published: October 08, 2016)

On April 26, 1974, two wildly gifted and very different artists, Art Pepper and Warne Marsh, met again, for the first time in 17 years, by accident, on the stage at Donte's in North Hollywood, because Jack Sheldon had to cancel. It must have made for an unforgettable night for those who found themselves sitting in the legendary club and listening totwo cult heroes, two profoundly great musicians, playing for the audience and each other -- out of the lives they'd lived at the same time, in the same places, but personally and stylistically so far apart. 

Now we can join that audience. The music was recorded. And it will be released as a 3-CD set on November 11, just in time for the anniversary of Widow's Taste, the label Laurie Pepper started ten years ago to bring her collection of Art Pepper's unheard live performances to his fans.

In 1974, Art was at the very outset of what would be his last great comeback. He'd quit his job managing a bakery and was making a living playing bar mitzvahs and weddings. He had just started playing in Jack Sheldon's band, once a month, at Donte's.

Unlike Art's, Warne's career had been relentless and ongoing. He'd been touring with his own bands for years, and in 1974, he was traveling the world with Supersax, with whom he'd won a Grammy.

Though Warne forbade recording at his gigs, this gig was recorded. On reel-to-reel, quarter inch, quarter-track tape. The original tapes were quite good; the audio was probably picked up from the sound board. And the tapes were sent to Laurie Pepper by persons never known or now forgotten. She rediscovered them while cleaning out a closet. As she tells us in her liner note: "Sometimes, the way things and people come to me for Art's sake is -- I want to use the word -- miraculous." A good word for this night and those tapes. Laurie gave them to the incomparable Wayne Peet of Newzone Studio, who, "knows how jazz, how Art should sound." He balanced and enriched the onstage sound, killed excessive noise, and dealt delicately with inevitable glitches that occur in live recording. Laurie, a non-musician, goes on to talk about the Pepper/Warne distinctions in the language of a dedicated fan.

"Art lives down in the grime of earth. You can find him on the L.A. Freeway. You can get into your car, roll up the windows, put on any of Art's blues or ballads and delve into your pain and scream aloud to it. 
"Warne seeks sublimity, improvising music that's transcendent, that makes mere passions puny. He can take you to a level where sh*t doesn't matter.
"Warne offers to distract us. He offers art, the endlessness and possibilities of art, the infinite inventiveness and charm. Something in me, if I'll listen, hears his rhythmic and harmonic revelations and responds with pleasure, satisfaction, even laughter, as to a mystic's holy trickery.
"Art discovers, witnesses, makes us confront, the disasters and the raptures swimming through our own, shared, volatile blood, beyond the reach of language. He knows our grief, our joy, our rage, and turns them into something timeless. His music seems to talk about real, actual life, the one that's nasty, sweet, and short. And he convinces us, repeatedly, that, just as-is, it's sacred." 

This latest album joins the catalog of previous albums from the "Unreleased Art Pepper" series. All have gotten rave reviews from well-known critics. They are:

Volume I, Abashiri (2-CD set)

Volume II, Last Concert: Kennedy Center

Volume III, Croydon (2-CD set)

Volume IV, The Art History Project (3-CD set)

Volume V, Stuttgart (2-CD set)

Volume VI, Blues for the Fisherman: Live at Ronnie Scott's (4-CD set)

Volume VII, Sankei Hall, Osaka (2-CD set)

Volume VIII, Live at the Winery

And all (except Volume IV, which is available for download only) are available at both Amazon (http://bit.ly/buyArtPeppe...) and CD Baby (http://www.cdbaby.com/Artist/ArtPepper). Laurie says she'll keep releasing yearly miracles as long as she keeps finding them. She says there are still plenty in her closets. Maybe, next year, a ballad set? Maybe. 

More Information: http://www.lauriepepper.net

from  www.jazzcorner.com