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September 1, 2010 - One of the most unusual, site-specific concerts of improvised music took place in late spring when saxophonists John Butcher from London and Joe McPhee from Poughkeepsie, N.Y. played within a unique structure in the Texas desert. This complex of four stone buildings, connected by a cruciform walkway, was constructed by a retired oil-rigger who has filled it with equally unusual art, reports Ben Judson on the Glasstire on-line site. Despite the fact that Cornudas, population 10, is the nearest population centre, the concert was well-attended by mostly non-locals. Judson perceptively describes the two saxophonists’ sonic strategies for improvising within mostly open structures where they also played about 200 feet apart from one another. READ
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Lone Star State Survivor: Dennis Gonzalez
August 25, 2010 - Although ironies frequently abound in the Free Jazz area, this article introducing his hometown North Texas audience to trumpeter/composer/artist Dennis Gonzalez seems more paradoxical than most. Dennis Hopkins’ Dallas Observer story profiles Gonzalez, who has been recording since 1978, and his bass playing son Aaron Gonzalez and drummer son Stefan Gonzalez, because all are featured on a new CD by “totally out-there Los Angeles freak-folk musician Ariel Pink”. At least some mention is made of Gonzalez’s long years of acclaimed gigs in Europe and elsewhere in the United Sates with players ranging from Portuguese saxophonist Rodrigo Amado to South African percussionist Louis Moholo-Moholo and even Mississippi drummer Alvin Fielder, as well as the two decades he spent hoisting a local jazz radio show. READ
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Hiding In Plain Sight: Trumpeter Jacques Coursil Re-appears
August 18, 2010 - Known, if at all, for participating in many legendary Free Jazz sessions in the 1960s on labels such as ESP and BYG, trumpeter Jacques Coursil also gigged in New York and Paris during that time with sound explorers such as pianist Burton Greene, and saxophonists Frank Wright and Sam Rivers; then he vanished for three decades. But, as he tells Jason Weiss, who is compiling an oral history of ESP-Disk, unlike other missing musicians he neither succumbed to addiction nor illness. Instead Coursil, who was born in Paris to a family from Martinique, became a professor of literature and philosophy at the University of Caen and Cornell University. When alto saxophonist/label owner John Zorn, who he had tutored at an international school years before, suddenly telephone in 2004, Coursil was persuaded to record again. Since that time he has put out CDs with other 1960s veterans like drummer Sunny Murray and clarinetist Perry Robinson. READ
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Chicago Appreciated Tenor Saxophonist Fred Anderson
August 11, 2010 - Although the death of tenor saxophonist Fred Anderson in late June took yet another of Chicago’s elder and acclaimed musicians from the music, Peter Margasak’s send off in the Chicago Reader’s properly assesses the saxophonist’s influence. Touching on Anderson’s early work with saxophonist Joseph Jarman among others, when the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (ACCM) came into being in the 1960s, the article also points to the saxophonist’s consistent support of younger players over the years, ranging from multi-instrumentalist Douglas Ewart to drummer Hamid Drake. Most notable was Anderson’s stewardship of the Southside’s renowned Velvet Lounge, a combination night club and community locus, which has given experimental musicians young and old a place to play since 1981. READ
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Below Houston Street: The Wall Street Journal discovers the Vision Fest
August 4, 2010 - Who knew that when bassist William Parker and dancer Patricia Nicholson founded New York’s Vision Festival in 1996, the bible of American capitalism – The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) – would eventually take note of their efforts? Yet this sympathetic article by Larry Blumenfeld does introduce WSJ readers – many of whom probably think of the festival’s annual $300,000 budget as pocket change – to a non-profit artistic endeavor where improvisation is the watchword. Besides, when musicians like saxophonist Sabir Mateen, pianist Muhal Richard Abrams and violinist Billy Bang are mentioned in a publication usually devoted to mergers and acquisitions, large corporations and mega deals, it means at least someone in that area can find out about musical enlightenment. READ
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KEN WAXMAN'S
REVIEW OF THE MOMENT
Read reviews of over 1,800 musicians
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Mujician
There’s No Going Back Now
Cuneiform Rune 232 (www.cuneiformrecords.com)
Kinetic and dramatic, this CD demonstrates the many ways in which this British quartet has attained the state of interactive perception that characterized earlier Free Jazz ensembles like John Coltrane’s classic quartet. Rarely does a note or phrase sound from one soloist without connective, reflective timbres arriving from another interlocking part of Mujician.
Together since 1988, the band’s four members function as they do because of nearly 20 years of shared history. Additionally, this disc’s one extended composition gives them ample space for connective displays. Unreeling concentrically from a gentle introduction, replete with calming piano chords from Keith Tippett and delicate reed colors from Paul Dunmall’s saxophones, the piece concludes diminuendo with barely-there keyboard runs and disassociated squeaks from Paul Rogers’ bass.
Most of the extended middle section includes erupting honks and screeching split tones from Dunmall’s tenor saxophone, as well as his peeping and cheeping soprano saxophone runs. Nevertheless, Trane quartet comparisons end with his authoritative reed power. That’s because Tippett is no modal monster like McCoy Tyner, depending more on key clipping and internal piano stops and Rogers’ thick harmonics are more upfront than Jimmy Garrison’s accompaniment ever was. Most notably, veteran drummer Tony Levin is an Elvin Jones’ contemporary rather than a descendent. His pinpointed rhythms glue the tune’s pieces together rather than bombastically attracting attention as Jones’ sometimes did
Appropriately titled, There’s No Going Back Now encapsulates the sentiment the quartet engenders with its powerhouse work. It also suggests that the future will bring forth other major statements.
-- Ken Waxman
CODA Issue 334
July 20, 2007
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