Jazz - What's your bag, man?

[cybot]

Great music and wonderful recording.

Have we made any progress at all?

Yes, we can do things badly, much quicker now!

LOL

[markof]

[markof]

[Cyndale]

I picked up this great jazz LP from a fairly new record label called Gearbox, all analog mastering.



The music and the sound is stupendous!

[cybot]

I picked up this great jazz LP from a fairly new record label called Gearbox, all analog mastering.



The music and the sound is stupendous!

Wow!

Thank you Cyndale! Had a listen on the site and ordered it immediately. Within two minutes of reading this lol!

I've heard of the label and had a quick look but quickly forgot about it. That ain't' gonna happen from here on! Now that's what I call MUSIC. Wow!

[mcq]

One of the most extraordinary talents working right now is Mary Halvorson.  Listening this evening to her amazing 2016 album, Away With You, on repeat.  This is utterly invigorating music that is freely and breathlessly inventive as you would expect from these veterans of the New York improv scene.  The music is diverse and challenging and engages equally the head and heart.  

Perhaps the most surprising inclusion here is pedal steel guitarist Susan Alcorn.  I know she has worked with John Zorn before but I do not recall having encountered her before.   A very interesting talent whose contributions here develop and expand upon the tonal palette of this ensemble.  Time to hunt down her recordings and educate myself, I think.

Here she is in this excellent duo live session with Halvorson:



And here she is solo performing a beautiful version of Messaien's O Sacrum Convivium:

[cybot]

Thanks for that Paul. Not for everyone but so glad they keep doing their stuff irrespective of whether people are listening or not.....Anyway here's a nice little primer.

[mcq]

First listen this evening to two new records from Mary Halvorson's power trio, Thumbscrew, where she is joined by her regular sparring partners, bassist Michael Formanek and drummer Tomas Fujiwara.

These albums were released concurrently earlier this month.  "Ours" is devoted entirely to original compositions whereas "Theirs" centres on cover versions of jazz standards.  Despite the critical attention afforded to Halvorson, this is very much a group of musical equals, actively listening and responding to each other in the moment.  "Theirs" is perhaps the more readily accessible of the two whereas "Ours" leans more heavily on free and improvised musics.

The more I hear from her, the more respect I have for Mary Halvorson, both for her unwavering musical intelligence but also for her courage to insinuate herself into many different musical environments.  As a player and composer she excites me like few other musicians on the scene today.  A deeply cerebral musical thinker, she has absorbed much from the tuteage of the great polymath Anthony Braxton and assimilated more of Derek Bailey's influence than any of her peers.  What is particularly striking to me is her sense of time.  The time signatures at play in her music may be fractured and appear to be jaggedly discontinuous but the way in which she attacks a note or formulates a phrase or incorporates space into her soloing imbues a sense of order and logic to the music.  Perhaps the most interesting thing about her playing is how easily she can unite the visceral side of the music with the cerebral and identify the groove within the music.

An extraordinary talent (perhaps the most extraordinary talent of her generation), whose gifts to me appear genuinely limitless. In a week when so much critical attention in the jazz world centred on the release of a long lost session from John Coltrane, we really have to stop deifying the greats of the past and start paying attention to the greats of the present.

[Seán]

Hi Paul, I really like that performance, you have sparked my interest, thanks for sharing it.

[mcq]

So glad you enjoyed those performances, Sean. I really think she is a remarkable talent. It is not easy listening, by any stretch of the imagination, but it is serious, creative, thoughtful music-making which profoundly rewards close and attentive listening.