Reviews that mention Stan Tracey
September 26, 2015
The Late Great
SWP 037
Mike Osborne
Dawn
Cuneiform RUNE 392
Participating in the transition from Jazz to Free Jazz were two British musicians who physically or mentally didn’t survive the 1970s. Individually, alto saxophonist Mike Osborne (1941-2007) and drummer Phil Seamen (1926-1972), participated in many of the define sessions that marked the definition of Jazz in the United Kingdom as a separate, non-American idiom in the 1950s and 1960s (Seamen) and the 1960s and 1970s (Osborne) and these CDs collect some of their most notable work. MORE
August 8, 2009
Music Outside, Contemporary Jazz in Britain
By Ian Carr
Northway Publications
Hindsight may be 20/20, but this reprint of Ian Carr’s 1973 classic Music Outside, reveals that he beats the law of averages. However, anything written 36 years ago resonates with the attitudes of the time. Some musicians who seemed significant then are more the province of nostalgia than admiration; others mentioned briefly are major figures.
Parenthetically that sense of being of one’s time makes Roger Cotterell’s contemporary postscript frustrating. While he does tie up loose ends and outlines the subsequent career of some musicians, a few are still ignored. His updates are also mostly personal anecdotes. MORE
June 14, 2004
Suspensions and Anticipations
psi 04.02
Back in the 1950s there was a whole series of records called something like “Jazz Music for People Who Don’t Like Jazz”. This CD could bear a similar subtitle: “An Evan Parker CD for People Who Don’t Like Evan Parker”.
Not that this pioneering exponent of BritImprov has altered his style to make it more listener friendly. But this match-up with pianist Stan Tracey, the 77-year-old iconoclastic British jazzer, finds the 60-year-old Parker -- who sticks to tenor saxophone throughout -- creating a gentle, balladic disc that may attract those outside of the hardcore Free Improv crowd. MORE