What Jazz are you listening to now?

[Pap]

The greatest jazz guitarist ever, IMO. I will have to check out this disk. I would heartily recommend Northsea Nights with Niels Hening Orsted Pedersen.

incredible duo indeed.
Here they play one of the fastest versions of Donna Lee with no drummer to support them;[url]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q30bdy5b5-c[flash=200,200]

[SimonNZ]

Another early RVG from 1953:



Sal Salvador - Quintet

(recorded Christmas Eve '53, apparently)

and now this, recorded three days later:



Urbie Green - Septet

and from June of '53:



Elmo Hope - Introducing The Elmo Hope Trio / New Faces, New Sounds

and between that and his first session RVG was involved in this:



Kenny Drew - Introducing The Kenny Drew Trio / New Faces, New Sounds

[George]

First spin . . . in Mono.

[Brian]

Just listened for the first time ever (!) to Bird and Diz. Honestly, I was most taken with Monk's work on the album. The two title artists are more flash and less soul - at least on my first listen and on this particular outing. Time may change my opinion.

[aligreto]

The Billie Holiday Songbook....

[Andante]

Minor Swing - Django Reinhardt & Stéphane Grappelli

https://www.youtube.com/v/VpmOTGungnA

[Karl Henning]

Minor Swing - Django Reinhardt & Stéphane Grappelli

https://www.youtube.com/v/VpmOTGungnA

A sweet classic!

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk

[SimonNZ]

Gil Melle - Quintet, Vol. 2 (1953)



Kenny Dorham - Quintet (1953)

[king ubu]

just returned from Mulhouse ... spent four wonderful days at Météo festival, hearing, in sequence:

:: Wednesday 24th ::

afternoon (at L'Entrepôt):
- Zeena Parkins solo - harp & electronics ... and histrionics - great stuff!
- Clayton Thomas/Anthea Caddy - bass & cello used to produce sounds that reminded me of LaMonte Young and other drone music

evening (always at Noumatrouff):
- Louis Minus XVI - a french quartet of 2 sax, elb, d - rhythmically fun, punchy stuff, but the honking macho saxophones got tiring after a while
- Sophie Agnel/Joke Lanz/Michael Vatcher - Agnel's carte blanche trio in its first performance that worked out amazingly well - her on piano, inside and on keys, Lanz doing some extremely well-fitting sampling and other turntables stuff, and Vatcher on drums/percussion - was pure joy seing them react to each other and to their own performance, big grins all around
- The Thing & Joe McPhee - "ladies, motherfuckers, jazzfans!" - that was Mats Gutafsson's welcome message to kick off a high-energy set, him on tenor and baritone, McPhee on tenor and pocket trumpet, Ingebrigt Haker Flaten on double and electric bass and Paal Nilssen-Love on drums ... extremely concise, to the point, yet with lots of room for blowing - two highlights in a row, quite exhilarating really


:: Thursday 25th ::

children's concert (short solo sets at Bibliothèque Grand'Rue, 11:30)
- Per-Ake Holmlander - a fun bit of solo tuba ... he ended with a high-speed version of Dollar Brand/Abdullah Ibrahim's "Jabulani"

noon (12:30, always at Chapelle Saint-Jean):
- Alexandre Babel solo - a short percussion set - seemed to lack direction or purpose or focus - the sounds themselves were interesting but not quite enough to keep the attention up

afternoon sets I skipped for once (Hélène Breschand in duo with Kerwin Rolland - harp and effects, and then Mathias Delplanque, more electronics in solo), did some sightseeing around Mulhouse instead and took a much-needed nap

evening:
- Agustí Fernández/Kjell Nordeson & dieb13 solo - two half-sets, first a duo of piano and drums/vibraphone, which was pretty great, as I hoped it would be, Fernández being one of the most amazing free form improvisers of these times ... then a DJ set, not quite up to Joke Lanz the night before, but still good ... he sampled Ornette's "Lonely Woman" for a moment, and added some more jazz that I didn't recognize, it was pretty good really
- Mats Gustafsson Nu Ensemble - the piece they performed was announced by Gustafsson as an homage to Little Richard ... which only made sense insofar as singer Mariam Wallentin - fine voice, but somewhat of an accent - sang bits of blues and r & b clichés most of the time ... McPhee was on board again, so was bass clarinetist Christer Bothen - whose noon solo gig I had missed on Wednesday, he played after a duo set by "Luft" which consists of Gustafsson and Erwan Keravec on bagpipes, but it was too early for me to catch -, then Anders Nyquist was on trumpet, Holmlander on tuba, Fernández on piano, Haker Flaten and Jon Rune Strom on double basses, Nordeson and Nilssen-Love on drums, and dieb13 on turntables again ... I enjoyed the variety of the music, was expecting more of a blaringly loud blow-out, which it was clearly not ... it was well-paced and kept me interested all the way through, the only thing I found a bit annoying was Wallentin's accent ... if they include blues-clichés as vocals, if they want to pay respect, why not have her sing in her own language? I dislike that we live in the age of "everybody thinks s/he can speak english" ... would be a nice language, but people don't give a shit, yet it has to be english nonetheless, all of the time
- Ventil - an Austrian quartet - rather quintet if you include the video artist - doing more drone or rather semi-drone sounds ... it was loud and intense, synths and guitars with effects, and hard-hitting beats ... but after 10 or 15 minutes, I had quite enough of it and went outside where you could still hear it, but without your guts being shaken through ... I actually do like that feeling, but this was just not really my stuff


:: Friday 26th ::

children's concert:
- William Parker - he was great with the kids but in fact hardly played ... he had with him a pocket trumpet, a shakuhachi and the silly red/black-painted bass that he seems to take with him when traveling, alas on that instrument he produces no sound at all, no volume, no body, no resonance, just flat tones that die as soon as he plucks or bows them - anyway, it was great how he got some of the kids to interact, but doing a kangaroo jump in 7 - "hap-py hap-py kan-ga-rooh" and then right back to 1 with no break - proved a little too complicated

noon:
- Joachim Badenhorst - next highlight there ... the young Belgian clarinet player did a wonderfully haunting set, using some loops early on, playing clarinet, bass clarinet and tenor - of the church concerts I heard - I missed but the first with Luft and Bothen mentioned above - easily the best

afternoon (Église Sainte-Geneviève)
- Áine O'Dwyer - church organ (and bells) ... a meditative, slowly-evolving, captivating set ... there were drones again, long-held single notes or chords, but also intense parts, she ended it by coming down the stairs and dancing - turning around herself - through the aisles all the way from the back to the alter, clanging a bunch of long bells ... at the beginning, the also threw down the sheets of music from the gallery, on which the organ is placed
- Mike Majkowski - another solo, this time on double bass ... alas not on the level of the organ set, lacking ideas and coherence, it felt like stitched together fragments, sometimes even as if he was practising ... which could be a great thing of course, but alas it was just so-so

evening:
- Hamid Drake/William Parker/Pat Thomas - while I'm no fan of William Parker's, when he's alongside Hamid Drake, he can do no wrong, I guess ... his bass still didn't sound - all there was was amplification -, but this trio set with a piano player so far completely unknown to me, Pat Thomas, was very good indeed - powerful, and when Drake changed to his frame drum and started singing, Parker switched to gimbri, and it got truly haunting ... however, that gimbri sounded about as great as his bass - I really don't get the point about William Parker, I guess, but I'll keep trying)
- Green Dome - this was Zeena Parkins's big project, with two bearded contemporary hipsters on piano/effects and drums, funny enough both called Ryan ... didn't really work for me, was too much after the effect, also probably too notated to really allow the music to loosen up and breathe some - but her solo set was really good, and I'm glad I kept through this one too and stayed on for the closing set of the night ...
- Zeitkratzer: Lou Reed "Metal Machine Music" Parts 1-4 - now this was the odd one out that no one could really tell how it would end up ... Zeitkratzer is a mid-sized ensemble led by pianist Reinhold Friedl I guess, and he was after all the one that had most of the work in this amazing 66 minute set ... Frank Gratkowski - hey, where's my sheet music? - was on clarinet, Hild Sofie Tafjord did her best - wasn't always enough, I thought - on french horn, Hilary Jeffery was on trombone, them lined up between the piano on the far left, and the drums in the middle of the stage, played by Maurice De Martin, on his right there were four strings: Ulrich Phillipp on double bass, Elisabeth Fügemann on cello, Burkhard Schlothauer on viola and Lisa Marie Landgraf on violin ... the music was reminding me again of minimal music, I thought of various recordings of "In C" in the process - the horns and strings kept on churning out the same notes again and again, with some slight changes, some short soloist escapes by the trombone, the horn, some fills by the drums to add to the steadily prodding, walking, stomping beat ... the piano was playing around wildly for much of the duration though, as if forming a kind of counterpoint or anti-thesis to the rest ... this was, I guess, the unexpected - at least from my side - highlight of that night


:: Saturday 27th ::

noon:
- Clayton Thomas - another double bass solo ... though Parker only had played one short final piece on bass actually ... Clayton Thomas had been heartily recommended to me by a friend from Berlin who has heard him often while he was still living there, as the duo with Anthea Caddy gave really no idea at all how he was as a bass player, I was very curious, and the solo set indeed turned out pretty well ... he used the bow, different kinds of mallets and drumsticks and other objects and put together a really nice set that had the focus and successfully managed to create those larger arcs that Majkowski didn't really achieve

now this was a very busy closing day (which was why I skipped the children's concert by the same Erwan Keravec on bagpipes ... heard a few tones while passing by the library, which is right next to the chapel) ... at 14:30, there were two events, an open air concert and a short conference with Roscoe Mitchell - I picked the later, and it was pretty interesting actually. Alexandre Pierrepont, who has written a book on the AACM, did a (rather too long) introduction and then started asking a few questions (thankfully mostly just in english) and it was pretty interesting to hear Mitchell talk, though it was all a bit on the polite side (except for an Italian lady in the audience that kinda implied AACM had a racist policy going on) and Pierrepont could have really prepared a few more focussed questions to not just have Mitchell talk some (which was nice enough, he has plenty of stories to tell and is willing to share his insights, too - after all he is teaching as well)

afternoon (at La Filature) - just one set:
- Der Verboten - this is a quartet that took shape at Météo a few years ago, if I understood correctly - Franz Loriot on viola, Antoine Chessex on tenor sax, Cédric Piromalli on piano and Christian Wolfahrt on percussion ... they performed a long-form improvisation in the wonderful room with its very fine acoustics ... glad I rushed there, it was excellent

evening (there was a free concert at 7 p.m. first, then the main event, as usual at 9):
- Native Instrument - Stine Janvin Motland on voice and electronics and Felicity Mangan using field recordings and adding more electronics - this turned into an almost danceable set, many of the older jazzheads disliked it, many left even though it was just 30 minutes short ... the duo kinda attempted to adapt vocally and electronically the sound of their nature, one being from Norway, the other from the land of OZ - the resulting soundscape was a times almost danceable, and really interesting

- Sonic Communion - the main event, pt. 1 - this is a collective of Jean-Luc Cappozzo on trumpet, Douglas Ewart on various horns and little instruments - sopranino sax, wooden flute, bells, english horn ..., Joëlle Léandre and Bernard Santacruz on double basses and Michael Zerang on drums ... they struck a chord together - or rather more than just one, and a free one, too, of course ... a lovely set that to me showed with ease how naturally European improvisers and American jazzers can find together and create something that is common - I guess in this case it was mostly the French fitting into a kind of AACM/Chicago frame, but that was done without them negating their own voices ... as for voices, of course Mme Léadre did some singing in the end, and it got quite hilarious indeed - dada lives!
- Roscoe Mitchell Trio - the main event, pt. 2 - actually, together with The Thing/McPhee the concert that made me book a hotel and a festival pass ... Mitchell again teamed up with two Europeans, two brits this time, namely Mark Sanders on drums and the one and only John Edwards on double bass - best bass player there is currently, for any kinds of free and energy playing ... Mitchell had with him his alto, soprano and sopranino saxophones, and he was fully THERE from the very first second, not dominating, not imposing, but just THERE, with the brits giving him great support and getting their solo and duo spots, free-wheeling and driving the music hard, while Mitchell engaged in his circular-breathing for long stretches ... they even came back for a short encore, and one needn't be afraid that the level went down, they just picked up again where they had left off and added a couple more minutes - stellar closing concert to a mighty fine festival


And on Saturday, another former concert-going friend, now in a wheelchair and alas not in a condition to attend concerts regularly, passed by to say hello (and spend some time with other friends, they're all a couple of decades older than me and have attended concerts together since the seventies) and asked me if I would go to Willisau next week and told me there was a John Zorn special ... indeed, six bands on Saturday afternoon and evening, starting out with the mighty Masada itself ... so on the train back home, I booked a room and bought tickets online ... damn!

[aligreto]

Great that you enjoyed the festival and that you are already looking forward to the next one 

[king ubu]

Great that you enjoyed the festival and that you are already looking forward to the next one 

actually the three concerts (plus one short solo concert by John Edwards - gotta catch that opportunity even though it means getting up early that Saturday morning) plus the one night will probably cost me more than hotel, festival pass and train fair to Mulhouse ... but yeah, I'm excited about this chance to catch a large dose of Zorn/Masada (book 3 actually, wasn't even aware that book 2 has been concluded) and as I am able to squeeze it in over a weekend, that's all the better!

the line-up for Saturday (three sets at 2 p.m., three at 8 p.m., Edwards will be at 11 a.m. and I'll catch Mat Maneri/Randy Peterson and Joachim Kühn Trio on Sunday at 2 p.m., closing concert) is the following:

Masada Quartet

John Zorn (as)
Dave Douglas (t)
Greg Cohen (b)
Joey Baron (d)

Banquet of the Spirits plays Masada — The Book Beriah

Shanir Blumenkranz (b)
Tim Keiper  (d)
Brian Marsella (keys)
Cyro Baptista (perc)

Cleric plays Masada -The Book Beriah

Matt Hollenberg (g)
Nick Shellenberger (keys, voc)
Dan Kennedy (b)
Larry Kwartowitz (d)

Simulacrum

John Medeski (org)
Matt Hollenberg (g)
Kenny Grohowski (d)

Gyan Riley and Julian Lage play The Bagatelles

Gyan Riley (g)
Julian Lage (g)

Asmodeus plays The Bagatelles

Marc Ribot (g)
Trevor Dunn (b)
Tyshawn Sorey (d)
John Zorn (cond)

[Spineur]

Thank you for this inspiring review.  You make everyone wish they would have attended this festival.  The only jazz festival I attend once in a while is "Jazz a Vienne".  Each time it was great fun.

[Andante]

Quintette du Hot Club de France: Stéphane Grappelli -- violin; Django Reinhardt, Pierre "Baro" Ferret, Marcel Bianchi -- guitars; Louis Vola -- double-bass

                                                                       Chicago


https://www.youtube.com/v/B0pWQP0YgYE

[SimonNZ]

Tal Farlow - Quartet (1954)

[Parsifal]

Count Basie/Lester Young

[SimonNZ]

Billy Taylor - Cross Section (1954)
Ellery Eskelin - Arcanum Moderne (2003)

[king ubu]

Thank you for this inspiring review.  You make everyone wish they would have attended this festival.  The only jazz festival I attend once in a while is "Jazz a Vienne".  Each time it was great fun.

It's definitely a festival worth considering! Tickets are fairly cheap (actually several of the concerts are free - all of those noon Chapel solo ones, as well as some of the late afternoon ones) and the hotel I had was okay and cheap, too. The atmosphere is great, very relaxed, and it's all walking distance (okay, the heat made me use the tramway a couple of times, plus there's a free shuttle to and from Noumatrouff, which is a bit further out, but we still walked to/from there a few times). Anyway, it's of course a festival for those with a pretty adventurous taste in jazz and improvised music (and electronics). I plan to go there again if the programme will be interesting enough in the next years ... this year it was McPhee/The Thing and Roscoe Mitchell that made the decision easy, but as you can read above, there were several other highlights (and the two mentioned did keep up to expectations, if not surpassed them).

[SimonNZ]

Barbara Lea - A Woman In Love (1955)
Lou Mecca - Quartet (1955)

^Lea does an introductory verse for Love Is Here To Stay that I hadn't heard before, even from Ella who usually included all the openings in her Songbook recordings.

https://www.youtube.com/v/WhzmruwFDoY

(what's the name for that bit at the start of showtunes, before the song proper starts, that are often left off? There's a specific term for it, but I can never remember)



James Moody - Wail Moody Wail (1955)
Mundell Lowe - Guitar Moods (1956)

[Brian]

Albums I'm bringing for the car on my road trip through the Pacific Northwest over the next 8 days (stars* indicate first listens!):

- Monk: The Complete Prestige Recordings (have only heard 1 of the 3 CDs)
- Duke Ellington: The Great Paris Concerts (a great Bogey pick!)
- Lionel Hampton and His Golden Men of Jazz at the Blue Note (Telarc)
- Mingus at Antibes
- Basic Basie Vols. 1* & 2*
- Sweets Edison: Patented by Edison* and Sweetenings*
- Monk: Live in Geneva '66*
- Hawkins/Eldridge/Hodges Alive!* and Hawkins Alive! at the Village Gate*
- Cannonball: What Is This Thing Called Soul*
- Al Grey: Last of the Big Plungers* and Thinking Man's Trombone*

[SimonNZ]

^great driving (or any time) music there!

played at various points of the day - another knockout string of first-listen RVGs, these ones all from 1956 (continuing to skip over the more famous sessions I already know):



Jutta Hipp - With Zoot Sims
Jutta Hipp - At The Hickory House



Randy Weston feat. Cecil Payne - With These Hands
Phil Woods and Donald Byrd - The Young Bloods



Lee Konitz - Inside Hi-Fi
Randy Weston - Trio and Solo



Jon Eardley - The Jon Eardley Seven
Bennie Green - Walking Down