Jim Leftwich, Email Exchange with Chris Bidle About A History of Avant Jazz
2014
1. Sam Rivers
2. Bill Dixon
3. Bill Dixon, Sam Rivers, Black Artists Group, Oliver Lake
4. Globe Unity Orchestra
5. Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians
6. Juma Sultan, 1973 New York Musicians Jazz Festival, the Loft Era, Studio Rivbea, William Parker, October Revolution, Vision Festival,
7. festival, collectives, etc
8. some record labels -- Incus, ESP, Emanem, Atavistic, FMP
9. Carla Bley
10. The Jazz Composer's Orchestra
11. London Jazz Composer's Orchestra / Barry Guy
12. more labels -- Aum Fidelity, Eremite Records, Ayler Records, Intakt Records
13. Taran's Free Jazz Hour
14. strata & strata-east, Detroit Artists Workshop, Charles Tolliver and Stanley Cowell
15. Avant Music News
16. Fatigue, Farmers By Nature, the 80s
Chris Bidle <.>
11/2/14
to me
Helping host a free jazz int radio show now till 2p pst. BFF.fm
Suggestions?
Chris B
Jim Leftwich <jimleftwich@gmail.com>
11/2/14
to Chris
jack wright
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=jack+wright+sax
paul flaherty/chris corsano (the hated music)
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=paul+flaherty+chris+corsano
derek bailey
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=derek+bailey
tony oxley
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=tony+oxley
frank wright
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=frank+wright+jazz
noah howard
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=noah+howard+black+ark
peter kowald
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=peter+kowald+duets
black artists group (paris)
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=black+artists+group+paris
baikida carroll (spoken word)
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=baikida+carroll+spoken+word
muhal richard abrams
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=muhal+richard+abrams
Jim Leftwich <jimleftwich@gmail.com>
11/2/14
to Chris
anything you could use in that utterly arbitrary "top ten" i sent earlier?
Chris Bidle <.>
11/4/14
to me
Yes
We used a baikida & muhal piece and a Noah piece. Show was lots of fun. Big hit was Machine gun by peter octet. Check it out if you dare.
I have many songs qued up from your list for next week. Noon to 2 pst. BFF.fm on your internet dial. Tune in, tune out.
Why did it take me this long to turn on to free form jazz? No matter, doing it now. And to think it started with a youtube clip of sunny Murray.
Chris Bidle <.>
11/4/14
to me
Peter brotzmann octet
Jim Leftwich <jimleftwich@gmail.com>
11/4/14
to Chris
machine gun is great.
have you heard Last Exit?
Brotzmann, Sonny Sharrock, Bill Laswell & Ronald Shannon Jackson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_nt7rOHA5c
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzG9M6avrm8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66MJ-KOFBFQ
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1.
Sam Rivers
Jim Leftwich <jimleftwich@gmail.com>
11/4/14
to Chris
Sam Rivers
http://www.rivbea.com/
Studio Rivbea
http://www.npr.org/blogs/ablogsupreme/2012/01/06/144333414/what-i-learned-from-sam-rivers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fwtNs7zzWE
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=wildflowers+new+york+loft+jazz+sessions
http://www.bb10k.com/RIVERS.disc.html
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2.
Bill Dixon
Jim Leftwich <jimleftwich@gmail.com>
11/4/14
to Chris
Bill Dixon
http://www.scaruffi.com/history/jazz15a.html
October Revolution in Jazz, 1964
Jazz Composer's Guild
Bill Shoemaker: The October Revolution in Jazz is arguably the most seminal jazz concert series ever held. Organized by Bill Dixon in 1964, it was a comprehensive four-day survey of jazz's cutting edge, including Cecil Taylor, Jimmy Guiffre, Andrew Hill, Sheila Jordan, Steve Lacy, etc. ad infinitum. It gave birth to the Jazz Composers Guild, which paved the way for the Jazz Composers Orchestra Association, New Music Distribution Service, and a plethora of artist-produced recordings and concert series. It marked the beginning of the Golden Era of do-it-yourself jazz culture in the U.S.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q69yJhGH3MI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJLWAWCxTDU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DZ4PbfzhNk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tJJZMPzeJ4
http://www.pointofdeparture.org/PoD30/PoD30BillDixon.html
http://www.villagevoice.com/2011-07-13/music/bill-dixon-s-dance-notation/
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3.
(no subject)
Jim Leftwich <jimleftwich@gmail.com>
11/4/14
to Chris
Francis Davis: "[Our] relationship has provided not only a performance situation of increased dimensions, but also for a laboratory for exchange, experimentation, teaching, and a means to extend into areas inaccessible to [us] as individual artists," Judith Dunn asserted in her unsigned liner note to Intents. "This work situation has eliminated the gap between rehearsal and performance," the dancer and choreographer continued, presumably speaking for Dixon as well. "The performance, while special, is no longer the climax of the total working existence. The quality, concentration, energy, and attention remain equal whether the moment is called rehearsal or performance."
Dunn's impact on Dixon's compositional methods may have been considerable, although jazz parochialism means one must look for evidence of that relationship in recent books like Danielle Goldman's I Want to Be Ready: Improvised Dance as a Practice of Freedom and Melinda Buckwalter's Composing While Dancing: An Improviser's Companion, and not on the music shelf. From their earliest performances together under the aegis of the Judson Dance Theater in 1965 to the class they taught jointly at Bennington College in the early '70s, Dixon's artistic partnership with Dunn endured longer than any of his bands. Still, I'm guessing that bit about rehearsal being a defining experience independent of performance came straight from Dixon, because it smacks of a compensatory logic common among '60s avant-gardists for whom an audience remained a long-range goal.
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PATRICK JARENWATTANANON:
from What I Learned From Sam Rivers
Putting musicians in charge often results in unique experiences.
Sam Rivers is known as an influential participant of "the loft scene," an idea defined largely around the lower Manhattan loft dwellings used as performance/gallery venues in the 1970s. One such loft was Rivers' Studio Rivbea, a space that doubled as a home for his family. (The "bea" in Rivbea comes from Beatrice, his wife and business partner of many years.) Rivers set up Rivbea as an environment where musicians could rehearse, experiment, form partnerships and generally do the essential behind-the-scenes activities that musicians don't get paid for but need to do. It allowed for great art a commercial marketplace would not have supported, as evidenced in performances, recordings, festivals and interdisciplinary exhibitions from Rivbea and places like it — not to mention the many musicians who can testify to the loft community being crucial to their professional development. And of course, it is no coincidence that Rivers left us so many great recordings in the '70s (notably on Impulse, among several smaller labels): His very apartment was a hub of creative activity.
Free improvisation doesn't have to be "difficult."
Sam Rivers could certainly improvise over melodies and chord changes, but also prided himself on being able to improvise "freely," with minimal or zero predetermined guidelines. His ensembles with bassist Dave Holland often exemplified this idea. Because it is necessarily abstract, and often dissonant in common practice, this sort of music is sometimes thought of as abstruse. Sam Rivers sometimes came at you with that archetypal fire — but there was a readily identifiable logic to it. Sometimes he would fall into a funk or bebop beat as an anchor. Sometimes he would intrigue you with texture: Tenor sax, pizzicato bass and drum sticks one moment could become flute, arco bass and cloth mallets the next. Sometimes, relying on a deep understanding of music theory, he would create moments of tender lyricism or harmonic depth. If you gave him, say, five minutes, Sam Rivers' bands would give you "a way into" the music, something to center your listening comprehension, something to make "difficult" music inviting.
Good musicians exist in a lot of different places.
In the early 1990s, Rivers moved to the Orlando, Fla. area. It was warm, for one — having lived through Boston and New York winters for decades, he was happy to escape — but more importantly, he discovered that the local theme parks employed a lot of high-quality musicians. Word quickly spread that Sam Rivers was new to town, and it wasn't long that he had a big band to write for and perform with regularly. In later interviews, he sometimes talked about the epiphany he had upon moving away from New York: that creative, top-flight players were to be found all over the map. (I remember talking to Rivers about a few Australian musicians he was newly impressed with, the names of whom now escape me.) That's a lesson I try to keep at the forefront of my mind. New York City may have the highest concentration of good jazz players, but it certainly has no monopoly on people who can make deeply affecting improvised music — and it would be terrible if it did.
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from the Studio Rivbea website:
Over the years Sam Rivers has composed a myriad of scribbles, musical phrases, technically difficult, twists, turns and whatever ideas he would conceive similar to an exercise in free association. Thematic material, which he estimates; will take at least a decade to expand into compositions ranging from 5 to 50 minutes. Through habit and as a mental exercise, he composed at least a page a day through a speed process of 15 minutes to a half an hour.
Sam Rivers’ entire life has entailed being an improviser, principle soloist and solo performer. His musical thoughts are transferred to paper in the same way that he improvises. He writes down improvisations as if he is performing a spontaneous creative composition.
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http://www.bb10k.com/RIVERS.disc.html
The Sam Rivers Sessionography
Sam Rivers: Visiting Artist, World Music Program, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT
[Down Beat August 19, 1971 p.11]
71.00.00 (4) - Sam Rivers and the Harlem Ensemble: Joe Gardner, Olu Dara, Ted Daniels, and Don Mcintosh (tp), Grachan Moncur, Dick Griffin, David Haroom, and Jack Jeffers (trombones), Ed Perry (frh), Bill Davis (tuba), Sam Rivers (ts, ss, fl, p), Paul Jeffries (cl), Harvey Lesene (ss), Rene McLean and Carlos Ward (as), Roland Alexander and Dave Young (ts), Kenny Rodgers (baritone sax), Fred Kelly (flute), Hakim Jami (b), Warren Smith and Wilson Moorman (dr), Juma (cga) / Wesleyan University Chapel, Middletown, CT
[Down Beat October 28 1971 p.33, review by Bill Cole:]
"...this concert was in jeopardy because of non-communication and general uncooperativeness by those representing the University. The money for the concert had not been secured until the Tuesday before the Saturday concert, which for Wesleyan is unusual. A request by Rivers for advance money to pay for the bus was denied. In fact, he wasn't notified about the money until Thursday, when he took the initiative to call to see what was happening. Food was supplied for the band when they arrived but they had to eat in one of the dormitory lounges, most of them sitting on the floor. When they arrived the chapel was completely closed, the piano was locked, no music stands were on the stage (which was entirely too small for a 25-piece band), and none of the amplifying equipment had been set up.
In other words, none of the courtesies afforded any other music performers on the campus were available to this band. But Rivers was determined to have his new work premiered.
The piece is called Shades. It was introduced by a procession of the musicians entering the chapel ringing bells and playing an assortment of percussion instruments. Rivers was the last to enter. Bedecked in a long, elegant white robe with black trim, he resembled a soothsayer... When percussionists Moorman, Smith, and Jami readied themselves and began playing, Rivers emotionally recited a poem by Yusef Rahman, All Praise to Allah, while the other musicians moved onto the crowded platform. ...Rivers picked up his tenor and the musical extravaganza began. The material seemed to be in four parts... about 90 percent of the music was improvisation with Rivers juxtaposing his lines against the full band, then a section, then another individual player, and then the percussion. The energy level... was incredibly high and it was sustained for the hour and 45 minutes it lasted... The stage area was so small that every time someone would move, music parts would fall off the stands and microphones would be hit... ...at the end I was exhilarated. And I wasn't the only one, the whole chapel seemed to burst at the seams, as if it hadn't heard anything like that in its entire history..."
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Benjamin Looker: The atmosphere in St. Louis at the time of BAG's formation was not particularly receptive to the new sounds being explored by Lake, Hemphill, and their musical comrades. Lake describes the lack of new-jazz venues and audiences as part of the impetus for forming the Black Artists' Group: "In St. Louis, it was about doing it or nothing would happen. If we wanted to get exposure for what we were doing, the only way to do it was to make it happen ourselves. Once we did realize that, things happened for us, we were really successful in St. Louis." Hemphill concurs regarding BAG's interest in taking a proactive promotional role, saying, "In the '60s, there was a lot of interest in exploring unfamiliar territory, in putting on concerts instead of waiting for someone else to do it, in playing in places other than clubs." Members of BAG actively promoted their own productions in response to the lack of established performance venues.
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Saxophonist Oliver Lake’s unique career path includes working with Lou Reed, A Tribe Called Quest, Bjork, composing for the Brooklyn Philharmonic and as long time member of the avant-garde jazz group World Saxophone Quartet. This genre-defying, wide-ranging and cross-pollinating creativity is a consequence of Lake’s musical roots in the radical Black Arts Movement of 1960s Afro-America.
Oliver Lake’s career began in a creatively charged time and place. In the late 1960s, Lake alongside Julius Hemphill and Charles ‘Bobo’ Shaw, co-founded The Black Artists Group (BAG), the St Louis-based equivalent to Chicago’s Art Ensemble of Chicago/Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians collective.
Out of this BAG collective came many other variant groups and arts projects which included The Human Arts Ensemble, Red Black & Green Solidarity Unit, Onawali Dancers, Malinque Rhythm Tribe, BAG Drama Dept., Great Black Music Orchestra of St. Louis, Fire-Earth-Air-Water, Me We & Them and the Julius Hemphill Quartet.
The first recordings from Oliver Lake and the Black Artist Group collective, true to keeping with the era’s radicalism, self-definition and economical empowerment value system, kept a wide birth from the mainstream music industry and were released on the private pressing record label, Universal Justice, self-distributed at concerts and events.
In 1971, after appearing on two collective projects by The Human Art Ensemble and Children of The Sun, Oliver Lake recorded his own debut album Ntu: The Point From Which Creation Begins, self-financed for release on his own Passin Thru’ record company. However, shortly afterwards the tape of this album was put in storage, as Lake and the other BAG members headed off to Europe in the path of The Art Ensemble of Chicago and other free jazz African-American musicians, many of whom were finding a new open-minded audience across the Atlantic.
Ntu: The Point From Which Creation Begins remained unreleased until 1976 when an association with major label Arista/Freedom issued a number of Lake and the Black Artists Group’s early releases and unreleased tapes. Long unavailable, this album has now itself become a rarity.
Heavily progressive, rhythmical and intense, the album features Lake alongside an all-star cast of St. Louis’s finest radical, avant-garde and deep jazz musicians which includes Joe Bowie (Lester’s brother, who also later formed Defunkt and worked with James White and The Blacks), Don Moye (on loan from the Art Ensemble of Chicago), and regulars such as Charles Bobo Shaw.
Lake returned from Europe to live in New York in the second-half of the 1970s to firmly ensconce himself in the emerging Loft Jazz scene, which soon became the dominant avant-garde movement of this era, and Lake an intrinsic member. At this time Lake also formed the World Saxophone Quartet alongside Julius Hemphill, Hamiet Bluiett and David Murray, which continues it’s own radical path to this day.
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4.
Globe Unity Orchestra
Jim Leftwich <jimleftwich@gmail.com>
11/4/14
to Chris
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globe_Unity_Orchestra
Globe Unity was formed in autumn 1966 with a commission received by Alexander von Schlippenbach from the Berlin Jazz Festival.[1] It had its debut at the Berliner Philharmonieon 3 November combining Gunter Hampel's quartet with Manfred Schoof' s quintet and Peter Brötzmann's trio:[2] Hampel (bcl,fl); Willem Breuker (bs,ss); Schoof (tp) with Gerd Dudek (ts); Alexander von Schlippenbach (p); Buschi Niebergall (b) and Jaki Liebezeit (d) on one side, Brötzmann (saxophones), Peter Kowald (b, tuba), Sven-Åke Johansson (d) on the other.
During the next years this core group was completed by other European and American musicians: Johannes Bauer (tb), Anthony Braxton (as, cl), Willem Breuker (ts), Rüdiger Carl (as, ts), Günter Christmann (tb), Gunter Hampel (bcl), Toshinori Kondo (tp), Steve Lacy (ss), Paul Lovens (drums), Paul Lytton (drums), Albert Mangelsdorff (tb), Evan Parker (ss, ts), Michel Pilz (bcl, cl, bars), Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky (as, cl, fl), Enrico Rava (tp), Paul Rutherford (tb), Heinz Sauer (ss, ts), Bob Stewart (tuba), and Kenny Wheeler(tp).
Globe Unity Orchestra
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5KodfbAkJ8
Alexander von Schlippenbach & Sam Rivers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skPt1Oozps8
Gunter Hampel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fykWJfldk78
Gunter Hampel Group + Jeanne Lee
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfAFeVVo_8Y
Paul Lovens / Paul Rutherford
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2xerN0PDNE
Paul Lovens/Pul Lytton
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGe_gp1XF9w
Evan Parker
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upf62DJ9-Gc
Cecil Taylor, Evan Parker, Barry Guy, Tony Oxley
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4K8kCOEK-o
Steve Lacy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UX-P5iJmUek
Anthony Braxton
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwNt7sHZaXY
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5.
AACM
Jim Leftwich <jimleftwich@gmail.com>
11/4/14
to Chris
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_for_the_Advancement_of_Creative_Musicians
Muhal Richard Abrams
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEnCwynaqiA
Muhal Richard Abrams & Malachi Favors
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBy8_ZbktzQ
Phil Cohran
http://www.allmusic.com/album/on-the-beach-mw0000339937
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLkj0yNay1g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYaLAKP2h40
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NT3E-sgpwMQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdeK1Ca3c6U
http://www.redbullmusicacademy.com/magazine/philip-cohran-guide
“We didn’t have any models, so we had to create our own language. It was based on sound,” Cohran told John Szwed for his book Space Is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra. “You had to think space, to expand beyond the earthly plane – that’s why everyone was so creative.”
Steve McCall (with Amiri Baraka & David Murray)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2i8Wg-U9YU
AIR (Steve McCall, Fred Hopkins, Henry Threadgill) with Amiri Baraka
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehRSCQn38Ho
Chico Freeman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buFUP2LvK2s
Wadada Leo Smith & Jack DeJohnette
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TG3nxgoqbl4
Wadada Leo Smith ("workshop") in 4 parts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jw05CdJPPTc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laEAwEisPzg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WIOClwW0gw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFsoaGZNp0Q
Yo Miles! (Wadada Leo Smith & Henry Kaiser)
https://archive.org/details/YoMiles
http://www.wadadaleosmith.com/pages/interviews_jazztimes.html
When you match our music up and you play them right side by side with jazz, they stand out as un-jazz. If you talk to the players that play what they define as jazz from that tradition, they don't see us as playing jazz. And if you look at some of the writers who write about this music, they don't see us as playing jazz, even though they write about us as being jazz.
There is kind of a heavy penalty that somehow doesn't give us the chance to say exactly what it is that we do. It's a political penalty. For example, the European players who came out and said they were playing free improvisation, nobody balked at them at all. Everybody writes about them in terms of free improvisation. No one put them in the jazz community. But when it comes to an American who happened to be African-American, they lump them in there. What is this thing? I don't know what it is except I think it's a political move. Maybe it used to be based around marketing, but now it's not based around that at all.
Anthony Braxton, Wadada Leo Smith, Leroy Jenkins
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_XJUTCLyMI
The Revolutionary Ensemble
Leroy Jenkins, Sirone, Jerome Cooper
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0RudEQRziA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AqsR91zgeM
George Lewis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cd44vTL4Qc8
Anthony Braxton & George Lewis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nV8KGHYSTa4
Derek Bailey, George Lewis, John Zorn
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfVOQ0U9iQ8
George Lewis
Improvising Tomorrow's Bodies: The Politics of Transduction
http://www.hemi.nyu.edu/journal/4.2/eng/en42_pg_lewis.html
With Ryle, I felt some support for my overall view of improvisation, which can be described (if not defined) as exploration, discovery and response to conditions, part of a ubiquitous human practice of real-time analysis, generation, manipulation, exchange, and transformation of meaning, mediated by (among other factors) the body, history, temporality, space, memory, intention, material culture, and diverse methodologies. My claim is that improvisation is fundamental to the existence and survival of every human formation, from the individual to the community, through the postnational body to the species itself.
If we can conclude that improvisation is the ubiquitous practice of everyday life, a primary method of meaning exchange in any interaction, we could go further in suggesting that an improvisative orientation could well be transformative to the hybrid discipline of performance studies—although it would probably be an error to presume that we can begin our retheorization of improvisation by constructing the practice as a subspecies of performance, except to the extent that performance itself is a condition of being in the world. On this view, if anything, improvisation’s ubiquity becomes the modality through which performance is articulated.
Roscoe Mitchell
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eb0-58x_cus
Roscoe Mitchell interview
http://www.furious.com/perfect/roscoemitchell.html
Lester Bowie / Amina Claudine Myers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZ4WzYnI0qQ
Joseph Jarman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PL4FnEu7Hn4
Art Ensemble of Chicago
People in Sorrow complete
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PMcRuh8O74
BAP-TIZUM complete
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m32ajzD5pRA
Live, Chateauvallon, 1970
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSNbFxtdEdY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OI7Qn8G2dg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rNJwQJKPuQ
Fred Anderson, Billy Brimfield, Larry Hayrod, Hamid Drake (1980)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtpIHvRS-xE
Fred Anderson, Hamid Drake, Kidd Jordan, William Parker (1999)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmALQA1RbO4
Fred Anderson, Harrison Bankhead, Hamid Drake (2006)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFh115q4df0
When the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians first began to develop as a school in the '60s they faced a Chicago aesthetic that demanded danceable tunes, strong rhythm, and an assertive, almost rough, sound. Even Sun Ra knew how far out not to go in Chicago, and his wondrous space jams were yet to come when he moved to New York. All the more remarkable then, that the AACM was able to pull together everything that Chicago had to offer -- blues, swing, church music, comedy routines, bebop, marches, church picnic spirit, classical experimentation -- and bring it together in a music that broke all the rules. It was a style too diverse to define: soft, loud, folky, and abstract; unafraid to borrow from the world's resources, but always very different from any other city's music; they were eager to explore instruments and cultures of every kind, and yet had great respect for their own musical past.
If this undefinable and diverse music of the AACM has any parallel aesthetic, it's what we call jazz has become today. (John Szwed, 2011).
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6.
(no subject)
Jim Leftwich <jimleftwich@gmail.com>
11/5/14
to Chris
http://jumasarchive.com/
“July 8, 1973: This day should be dedicated to all of the musicians who dedicated their lives to music. This includes all of the greatly known and unknown innovators of the past, the present, and the future.
All should come together and make a joyous sound of love and peace…”
Juma Sultan’s planning notebook for the 1973 New York Musicians Jazz Festival.
The sounds–joyous and otherwise–that Juma Sultan called for on that summer day in ’73 arose during one of the least documented and most misunderstood eras of 20th Century progressive music: the so-called “Loft Era” of American Jazz. With its roots in the 1960’s avant garde, the Loft Era emerged during the early 1970’s in venues such as Studio We, Studio Rivbea, Artist’s House, The Ladies Fort, Ali’s Alley, and Studio WIS.
http://www.nyu.edu/library/bobst/research/fales/DowntownMusic/cherches8.html
Peter Cherches: Jazz critic Gary Giddins denies that there is any style of music that one could call "loft jazz," stating that "Loft jazz is any jazz played in a loft."[2] For practical purposes, however, one can identify certain elements that characterize a great deal of the music performed at the lofts in the 'seventies. It was clearly music that fell outside the jazz mainstream, carrying forward the legacy of 'sixties free jazz but informed by other strains. The musicians continued to eschew the popular-song harmonic foundation of bebop while often foregrounding the blues elements that were somewhat more subliminal in much of free jazz. Rhythmically, some of the music began to incorporate influences of funk, African and Afro-Caribbean music, alongside the more abstract free-jazz foundation. Most important, however, was the infusion of a critical mass of new blood. In the first half of the decade a number of extremely talented musicians arrived in New York from vital scenes in the Midwest and on the West Coast: Chicago's A.A.C.M. (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians), the Black Artists Group (B.A.G.) of St. Louis, and the circle of the charismatic and influential Los Angeles pianist-composer Horace Tapscott. Many of these musicians would become major forces both in the downtown lofts and the international jazz scene in years to come, among them Oliver Lake, Julius Hemphill and Hamiet Bluiett (St. Louis), Anthony Braxton, Leroy Jenkins and Henry Threadgill (Chicago), and David Murray and Arthur Blythe (Los Angeles). These musicians brought, among other things, an interest in incorporating free playing within more complex compositional structures.
In addition to Sam Rivers' Studio Rivbea, other key Soho and Noho venues included: Ali's Alley, run by drummer Rashied Ali, a veteran of the John Coltrane quartet; pianist John Fischer's Environ; and The Ladies' Fort, run by singer Joe Lee Wilson, just down the street from Studio Rivbea. Studio We was on Eldridge Street, on the Lower East Side, and percussionist Warren Smith's Studio WIS and The Brook were located in Chelsea. Other venues that occasionally featured the same musicians included the Tin Palace, a club at Bowery and 2nd Street, Jazzmania Society, a loft in the East 20s, and La Mama theatre on East 4th.
http://www.bb10k.com/RSS.html#Wildflowers
Vladimir Simosko: Studio Rivbea's Spring Music Festival 1976 could not be considered an unqualified success, since the atmosphere lent by the circumstances of the open recording session and long delays between sets seemed excessive and may have been responsible for the less than fully inspired performances given by several of the groups. However, it must stand as a historic event in presenting so many vital, current musicians together, playing for the most part what can only be identified as creative music of the mid-1970's, being recorded for LP issue. More and more LPs of contemporary creative music have been appearing recently, and if this series of recordings is released as planned, much will have been accomplished in defining the state of the art in the mid-1970's and bringing greater exposure to both the younger musicians and the established but still underexposed pioneers of the contemporary scene. Now, it remains to wait for the records planned for release from these sessions to learn whether that promise is fulfilled.
http://www.50milesofelbowroom.com/articles/72-william-parker.html
William Parker: 1977 is when the funding began. Right after the musicians got the funding, Douglas Records came in and recorded their Wildflowers series around that time at Studio Rivbea. By then things were set up and we had to go to the next level, beginning to get write ups, record companies, and beginning to go to Europe, so the loft scene died out.
But also what happened was the music started to polarize itself to certain geographical locations in the city. It was moving out of its communities, because instead of me staying in the Bronx, I came to Manhattan. So if I had stayed in the Bronx, I would've had to start a music community there. I would've had to start a club, a workshop, and orchestras, and have people from Manhattan come up and play. For me it was like, well, I didn't have a car and all the music was down here. The musicians were down here [and] it was cheap to live down here. You could get an apartment for $65, so all the musicians were coming down to the Lower East Side. It was convenient. The clubs were down here. So eventually it got it out of the communities and it sort of drained down to a certain location, away from the people. People question why there's no black audience for this music - we lost the support of the community. We drained the music out of the community. We lost contact with them. We weren't there on those hot summer days to do an outdoor concert. There was the Jazzmobile, but basically you needed a club in the community, where every night there's a concert, 52 weeks out of the year, for 10-20 years, establish it, then you have an audience. But we took the music out of the community and it drained down to the Lower East Side.
William Parker: There was some sort of fallout from the Sound Unity Festival because a lot of people didn't understand the concept, they wanted more than $100. They also felt a little jealous, here comes Peter Kowald, "German cat comin' to New York thinkin' he owns New York and takin' over the music . . ." That might have been a little fuel for us to start the Lower East Side Music Festival, which was done by myself, Jemeel Moondoc, Butch Morris I think was on the committee, Roy Campbell, a few other people, I can't remember everybody. So we rented C.U.A.N.D.O. and we did a small festival. We did two of those and they were successful on a small level. No funding at all, but again, it was a political thing. We're doing our own Lower East Side festival by musicians. We don't need outside help. So by 1988 when we did the second Sound Unity Festival, the attitude was a lot better amongst the musicians. There was less distrust.
[The] What is Jazz [festival] came right after Sound Unity in 1988. But it takes more than money and doing it to have a good feeling at a festival. [You need to be] treating musicians nicely and having a nice vibration at the space where you're playing to have a successful festival.
Charles Tyler, Saga of The Outlaws (@Studio Rivbea)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uamH4soYLOE
Arthur Blythe In Concert (@The Brook)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nozJzhwW0SY
Hamiet Bluiett (@The Ladies' Fort)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ec8m_dxjWU4
David Murray (@The Ladies' Fort)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZr7g8tJ3yo
Rashied Ali / Leroy Jenkins
Swift Are The Winds of Life (Survival Records, 1975)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0w7-fYg2MXQ
Jemeel Moondoc - Muntu Ensemble
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQZTJkckf0M
http://www.organissimo.org/forum/index.php?/topic/73569-loft-jazz-recommendations/
http://www.jazzdiscography.com/Labels/indianav.htm
Leroy Jenkins Solo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRkHevaGwks
William Parker: I was rehearsing at 151 Avenue B, and I met Peter Kowald over there. It was 1980, '81. I knew about him because I heard him on a record by Karl Berger. We talked and I invited him over to my house, 141 1st Avenue, and we played some bass duets. He invited me over to play in my first FMP festival in 1982. So we became friends and colleagues in the music. I guess what happened was that Peter came over in 1984, he had gotten a grant to be an artist-in-residence in New York for a year. He had also met this artist, A. R. Penck, who wanted to do a music festival and would provide the funding. So we had a meeting because you can't just be someone from Germany, come into New York with money, and expect to pull something off because by that time all the mass paranoia had set in with musicians, from being ripped off. Mostly black musicians were being ripped off by record producers, the usual thing, club owners, musicians ripped themselves off sometimes. You also had people who were just kind of worn out about living in America, which also makes you paranoid.
So in order to facilitate the idea, Peter needed help. He didn't know musicians, so he needed a crew. So the one person became a "we". Daniel Carter's wife Marilyn [Sontag] thought of the name Sound Unity. We sort of collectively figured out things. The Sound Unity Festival was going to be the beginning of an organization of self-determination. The key thing was that we weren't doing a leader concept; everyone was gonna get paid $100. We're paying musicians as individuals, not as groups, even though people played in groups.
October Revolution in Jazz 1964
New York Musicians Jazz Festival 1973
Studio Rivbea's Spring Music Festival 1976
Sound Unity Festivals 1984 & 1988
Vision Festival 1996 -
Vision Festival Mission Statement
Arts for Art, Inc. is a multicultural, artist-initiated and artist-run organization whose purpose is to build awareness and understanding of avantjazz and related expressive movements. Our principal activities are the presentation of cutting edge music, multi-discipline performances, and the exhibition of visual arts installations. Arts for Art, is devoted to the presentation of experimental American music from an Afro-American perspective and traditions. Avantjazz is a direct outgrowth of jazz, historically an African-American music. It has gone world wide and gained audience and artists from all cultures. Our programming is multi-racial, reflecting this development of avantjazz into a multi-cultural art form. Yet we respect and encourage the roots of this music, which are essentially black.
GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO
http://www.npr.org/blogs/ablogsupreme/2014/06/25/324877189/the-future-of-intense-art-a-free-jazz-event-looks-forward
In 1994, Nicholson Parker spearheaded the formation of the Improvisers Collective, which held weekly shows that always began with presentations and performances, and ended as group improvisations. She tried to lay down a communal approach to the collective's management, but found herself doing almost all the work. It folded after two years, and in 1996 the Parkers refocused on starting a single annual event. The first Vision Fest was held that year, and it's run consistently ever since.
"I'm the chief cook and bottle washer, and I can't do that anymore. If that's how it's going to be, the festival is going to come to an end — but I think we'll be able to transition," she told me during a recent interview at the couple's East Village apartment. "This is a kind of intense music that's about pushing your edges and living your life according to ideals. That's the same impulse as it is to be a resistance worker, and I think we need to spread it."
Four years ago, William Parker started giving music lessons at Campos Plaza, a housing development on the Lower East Side. Arts for Art's education program has kept growing: Weekly classes at Campos now run for the full school year, and a handful of affiliated musicians work with teachers throughout the city to help them bring free improvisation into their lessons.
Last fall, Nicholson Parker launched the Under_Line Series, a monthly concert and discussion group aimed at engaging young adults in conversations around the music. (The hangs have been small, but they seem to hold promise as a think tank toward future action.) Each week, the organization's year-round Evolving Music Series presents affordable, sample-platter concerts with three varying bands.
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7.
festivals, collectives, etc
Jim Leftwich <jimleftwich@gmail.com>
11/5/14
to Chris
i've been wanting to organize this time-line and context for a while now.
festivals, collectives and related matters have been on my mind since
before we moved to roanoke, in the fall of 2005.
from dixon's october revolution to the 2014 vision festival, 50 years of
this process unfolding. the context is jazz and nyc, but also much more
than that. chicago, of course, and st. louis, globe unity in europe, and
then there's rivers in orlando.
anyway, all of these emails are basically me "thinking out loud". maybe
some of it connects with some of what you're doing and thinking.
Chris Bidle <.>
11/5/14
to me
Glad to have it
Jim Leftwich <jimleftwich@gmail.com>
11/5/14
to Chris
glad to hear it
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8.
some record labels
Jim Leftwich <jimleftwich@gmail.com>
11/7/14
to Chris
INCUS
Formed in 1970 as the first UK musician-owned independent label.Tony Oxley had the original idea, Michael Walters put up the money, and Derek Bailey and Evan Parker were recruited as co-directors. Up to the mid-80s released 52 LPs, one EP of AMM, three reel-to-reel tapes of Derek Bailey solo (now re-released by the Cortical Foundation), and two cassettes, one of Derek Bailey with dancer Min Tanaka, the other Derek Bailey solo - the most important and innovative music of its era. The first recording made for Incus was by the then three directors (Oxley, Parker and Bailey) but it was never issued and the master tapes have disappeared (as have the master tapes for what was to become Incus 1 Topography of the lungs).
pre-Incus
The Music Improvisation Company
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7feqWMh6GcI
Joseph Holbrooke Trio (Derek Bailey, Gavin Bryars, Tony Oxley)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttlKtxI9llw
Notes by Derek Bailey: "A certain amount of grumpiness from any of the local musicians who occasionally chanced their arm at sitting in with us, invariably with unhappy results, wouldn't have been surprising, but I wasn't aware of any. Dissatisfaction of a more significant kind for me, usually manifested itself on the rare occasions that one of my earlier musical associates would turn up in the audience. Their attitude was perhaps best expressed by GEORGE PAXTON. GEORGE and I had worked together in a band in Edinburgh some years previously. He was, in my estimation, a brilliant pianist and our association had been very beneficial for me. I hadn't seen him since that time but one Saturday, touring, GEORGE arrived at the Grapes. He came during the first set and I didn't get to speak to him until the break. GEORGE'S objections were of a theoretical nature. 'What the fuck do you think you're doing?' were his first words. This was not a question I was in a position to answer at that time but, knowing there was one area in which we had always agreed, I bought us a drink. The rest of our conversation consisted of GEORGE asking me questions to which he didn't really want answers and me happily not supplying them. But, it was amicable enough and, before returning to play the second set and aware of the likely developments coming up, I suggested GEORGE might like to cut his losses and leave now. In fact, he didn't. He stayed to the end. But, leaving he gave me what I think is described as a 'quizzical look'.
A couple of weeks later, back in Kilmarnock after his tour, GEORGE got in touch again. He sent me a GET WELL SOON card." (1999)
http://www.efi.group.shef.ac.uk/labels/incus/cincus.html
Incus 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7sK-ySqfa0
http://www.efi.group.shef.ac.uk/labels/incus/cincuscd.html
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/incus-records-by-kurt-gottschalk.php#.VFxnNPnF-n1
ESP
http://espdisk.com/official/series/1000cover.html
there's a lot of great jazz on ESP
Albert Ayler, Sun Ra, Frank Wright, Noah Howard, Steve Lacy, Charles Tyler
Sonny Simmons
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6F9a8Dth_vc
Burton Greene
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68iQEt3n8DY
Marion Brown
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2uSqUARhsI
Henry Grimes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaSl7HkcO80
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Grimes#External_links
Giuseppi Logan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ii5yJinh9g
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giuseppi_Logan
and some exotica like Yma Sumac
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtkCztEaReM
and some great 60s freak beams like
The Fugs
Pearls Before Swine
The Godz
and The Holy Modal Rounders
there's even a Burroughs record
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJUEzE_2008
but the guy who ran it was a predator:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESP-Disk
Emanem
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emanem_Records
http://www.emanemdisc.com/discography.html
BYG Actuel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BYG_Actuel#Discography
http://absintheforbreakfast.blogspot.com/search/label/BYG%2FActuel%20series
"Facts are facts, but we all have our individual realities, bent and shaped by ever evolving perceptions and awareness impacted largely by experience. It’s inarguable that BYG/Actuel was one of the many labels dedicated to releasing avant-garde jazz during its initial explosion, but the solidity of this fact leads to wildly differing realities. For Steve Lacy and Sunny Murray, the men behind BYG were crooks and gangsters, but Gong’s Daevid Allen felt that Jean Georgakarakos and Jean Luc Young were leaders in the advancement of the counter-culture. You might quibble that I’m confusing reality with opinion, but it’s my impression (my reality, if you’ll indulge me) that opinions are easily formed (and changed) while our individual realities are often impossible to shake. Again, experience. Lacy, Murray and Allen held their above positions into the new millennium, a very long time after Actuel ceased to function as a thriving entity. Even when operating far outside conventional norms, jazzmen are still jazzmen (and women, yes), and the reality for Lacy and Murray is that they were ripped off. Allen arrived at the label from the burgeoning Hippie Movement and still feels the founders were prime instigators of cultural change. Getting paid vs. revolutionary intent: Oil and water, yes, but in the case of BYG/Actuel these perhaps contradictory sensibilities were equally essential to what has ultimately proven to be the label’s enduring relevance."
Atavistic Unheard Music Series
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unheard_Music_Series
The series, running since 2000, is curated by Chicago writer and producer John Corbettand focuses mainly on free jazz recordings from the 1960s and 1970s. The series includes reissues of previously out-of-print recordings, notably from the catalog of the German label FMP, and also incorporates previously unreleased material. The project was conceived after Corbett received a fellowship to research material in German radio archives.[1]An initial blurb from the label's website stated: "Drawing from radio archives, private tapes, collections of rare vinyl, and all sorts of unreleased sessions, often working hand-in-hand with the artists themselves, the series will focus on filling gaps in the historical record and illuminating otherwise dark corners of the musical continuum."
FMP (Free Music Production)
http://www.plosin.com/milesahead/fmp.html
http://www.fmp-label.de/freemusicproduction/index_en.html
Ulrich Kurth: 40 Years of FMP (2009)
Prelude: In autumn 1964, the politicized black musicians in New York proclaimed theOctober Revolution in Jazz with Free Jazz concerts and free admission. In London, theMusicians co-op was founded with the objective of taking the economic existence into one’s own hands, without promoters and publishers. A double bass player from Berlin (Jost Gebers) and a saxophone player from Wuppertal (Peter Brötzmann) picked up the impulse and organized the first Total Music Meeting in 1968, in the Jazzclub ‘Quartier von Quasimodo’. Brötzmann’s invitation to the official Berlin Jazz Festival had been cancelled, after he could not guarantee that the members of his band would go on stage at the Philharmonie wearing the mandatory black suit. The four nights at the Quasimodo – parallel to the Jazz Festival – represented, in the midst of the frowst of the sixties, a beacon of the new times. Here, European working bands and ad-hoc-line-ups were playing. American stars from the Philharmonie were coming to do latenight sessions and jammed together with European colleagues in front of an enthusiastic audience. However, there were mishaps. The disappearing cash box with the entrance fees and the tickets. Gebers, who himself had participated as bass player, therefore came to the conclusion that an active musician could not take over the organization of a festival as well as play. He was further strengthened in this view when, half a year later, a frustrated audience broke up a concert during a Workshop Freie Musik in the Academy of Arts, the programme of which he had put together with Brötzmann. They expected blues rock from the Alexis Korner Band, the headliner of the workshop, but not free music, even if Korner was involved.
FMP: also an Improvisation. In summer ‘69 Gebers spent more time in Wuppertal than in Berlin. Brötzmann had the idea of launching a company for the new sounds, which neither had the chance of being adequately presented by commercial promoters nor with record companies. Once again, the initiative came from Brötzmann, if I could take care of whatever had to do with management and such. And then we sorted it out somehow, between us, and in September 69 I founded the company Free Music Production.
But how? Nobody had any idea of how to do it. I didn’t know you needed a trade licence and things like that. I only did all that years later and finally made it official. Over the first years, until the beginning of ‘72, Brötzmann and I, for example, did all the programming for the Workshop Freie Musik and the Total Music Meeting, FMP developed as a company by musicians, with the intention of realizing the demands for emancipation of their times: Self-determination and self-utilization of one’s own projects (publishing and licence rights), no more dependency on a producer.
Chris Bidle <.>
11/9/14
to me
J
Thanks! This is supremely useful inform. Compiling the play list for tomorrow's show this evening. (BFF.fm 3p eastern)
And like any jazz radio hosts we try to give the stats out. We're novices on an internet program- so so what. It's fun and I wouldn't dive into this genre nearly so much so fast without having the show. The studio is in the mission. A friend Dan has the slot. And I'm out here another week or two painting a couple houses in Mill Valley.
Jim Leftwich <jimleftwich@gmail.com>
11/9/14
to Chris
there's more, of course, everywhere you look, vast rabbit holes, wonderlands under every rock.
i might send some more info, but i know you know how to look for yourself.
glad you're digging it. me too.
Jim Leftwich <jimleftwich@gmail.com>
11/9/14
to Chris
sonny simmons used to play on sunday afternoons at a little dive on haight
down towards stanyan, i can't remember it's name
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9.
Carla Bley
Jim Leftwich <jimleftwich@gmail.com>
11/10/14
to Chris
The Jazz Realities 1966
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecfgMPQaOwA
Dinner Music 1977
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwLoPFLPj5k
Social Studies 1981
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HO3-jvdVLQ4
The Lost Chords Find Paolo Fresu 2007
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0lOrTARICo
http://www.allmusic.com/album/the-lost-chords-find-paolo-fresu-mw0000490384
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10.
The Jazz Composer's Orchestra
Jim Leftwich <jimleftwich@gmail.com>
11/10/14
to Chris
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazz_Composer's_Orchestra
Communication 11 pt. 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEWMUnMt9aY
Communication 5
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfXp2cBiG68
Don Cherry & The Jazz Composer's Orchestra
Relativity Suite
1973
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxQG55DSrHk
Clifford Thornton
The Gardens Of Harlem 1974
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPSHxJOY2QM
Grachan Moncur III
Echoes of Prayer (1974)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ2JTQdgFNI
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11.
London Jazz Composer's Orchestra / Barry Guy
Jim Leftwich <jimleftwich@gmail.com>
11/11/14
to Chris
ODE
http://www.intaktrec.ch/ljcoode-a.htm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRHG5O4lbOo
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12.
more labels
Jim Leftwich <jimleftwich@gmail.com>
11/12/14
to Chris
http://www.aumfidelity.com/home.htm
TEST is a collective creative improvising quartet based out of the NYC Underground; figuratively and literally. They have performed on a weekly + basis since 1992 in the streets and subway stations of New York City (Grand Central; Astor Place being the present regulars); filling the commuters various selves with anything ranging from joy to confusion; flustered looks to looks of revelation; responses dependant on their own attendant baggage. Marked by the near constant interweaving of the front-line (as opposed to solo trading between the horns), and a far-ranging textural diversity (due in part to the multiple wind instruments mastered by Daniel and Sabir), TEST presents a collective of forward motion: all for one, cutting pure and true through the presently ruling culture of destruction.
Drummer Tom Bruno has been a member of the New York City Artists Collective for the past 25 years; one of the original dwellers in the building at 501 Canal St which also housed David S. Ware and Cooper-Moore during the early 70s loft scene days. Self-determinancy, distrust of the biz, and a headspace running strict to the music being the reasons his name is not on the list of better known quantum leaps. Same thing with Daniel Carter (add in a devout belief in functional anarchy), who for years and years has been recognized as a supremely distinguished master of sound by all who have come in touch with him, (count Sun Ra, Cecil Taylor, Sam Rivers, David S. Ware, William Parker, and Matthew Shipp among them). He is also a member of OTHER DIMENSIONS IN MUSIC and, with Sabir, ONE WORLD ENSEMBLE. Sabir Mateen is another extremely gifted mult-instrumentalist who has been out PLAYING for years (um, 20 plus), just now in the past few getting some decidedly well-deserved recognition for the same (check Eremite Records for prime documentation). Matthew Heyner, the youngster of the crew at 27; a former student of William Parker's (and one who took the Master's advice seriously by going out and just Playing) is a great talent fully in the making; a member of the No Neck Blues Band, and regular perfomer in a number of other configurations with David Nuss (of NNCK), Sabir, Daniel and others. -Steven Joerg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6hTbacJH0Q
Discography
LIVE/TEST.. Eremite 1999
TEST AUM Fidelity 1999
test Ecstatic Peace!.. 1999
Test Ahead! NowJazz/Ramwong Ltd. LP.. 1999
Eremite Records
http://eremite.com/eremite
Solidarity Unit, Inc.
Red, Black & Green
http://eremite.com/album/mte-52
Solidarity Unit, Inc were an offshoot of BAG (Black Artists Group), a collective of black artists, musicians, poets, actors, dancers & thinkers from St. Louis, Missouri. Principal members included saxophonist/flautist Oliver Lake, trombone player Joseph Bowie & drummer Charles "Bobo" Shaw, who with a host of other musicians became Solidarity Unit, Inc. Recorded at a concert the group dedicated to Jimi Hendrix & performed on 18 September 1970, the day that he died, Red, Black & Green lets fly with three compositions that capture the social tension & hunger for change that was present at the beginning of the 1970s.
Both "Something to Play On" & "Floreo" are bristling with exciting new variations on the free jazz formula, with Martin's Sharrock-style electric guitar playing on the latter track breaking apart the horn barrage, while Shaw's steady but lively drumming steers the group safely through the improvisational rapids. The side-long "Beyond the New Horizon" takes in superb contributions from Bowie & especially Lake, who transcendental concluding flute solo, accompanied by Shaw, is one of the record's high points. As Ajulé of The Shadows' righteous rap on the sleeve of this exquisitely packaged reissue states, "We need young Black men like these --they should be encouraged."
Sunny Murray
Big Chief
http://eremite.com/album/mte-51
Sunny Murray's Big Chief was recorded in Paris in 1969, a year beforeRed, Black & Green, & it's very much a product of its time. Names familiar from various BYG releases populate his eight-member ensemble, & the studio recording is much more dynamic & detailed than Red, Black & Green. Murray was already a veteran of groundbreaking work with Cecil Taylor & Albert Ayler, & had led a couple of his own sessions. His compositions are fairly simple, more in Ayler's vein of short strong launching points for full-on sound exploration than Taylor's ultra-detailed elaborations on lucidly imagined structres. Murray's drumming is like orchestrated steam, controlled hiss that envelopes rather than propels. There are times when the horns seem almost superfluous, so monolithic is the striated wall raised up by Murray, pianist François Tusques, & string players Bernard Guérin & Alan Silva. But they do make their mark, especially on a tragiccomic rendering of Rogers & Hammerstein's "This Nearly Was Mine."
Ayler Records
http://www.ayler.com/
By Any Means Live At Crescendo
Charles Gayle, as
William Parker, b
Rashied Ali, dr
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_N6xYwaTKSM
Intakt Records
http://www.intaktrec.ch/store.htm
BARRY GUY, LONDON JAZZ COMPOSERS ORCHESTRA
ODE
http://www.intaktrec.ch/ljcoode-a.htm
Barry Guy: As a performer and composer, it seemed to me that the way to integrate the original music of improvising musicians with the composer's idea was to reach into the heart of what each discipline was setting out to achieve and to recognise specific parameters where a meeting point could be negotiated. The process was not so much intellectual - more being guided by feelings and searching for the source of our collective creative spirits. The performer in me felt the intense heat and concentrated energy of improvising with colleagues. The process was spiritually awakening, communicating, inventing, learning, healing with a wide open space controlled by a wonderful balance of ego, humility and explosive creativity. Here was sound as energy.
Switching hats to the «composer», the first obvious point is that my body and brain are one and the same as the improviser. However, the parameters under consideration (naturally) take a different focus since musical space is being organised and prescribed according to the hoped for sonic result. «But why bother» is an often heard question - «improvisation does not need such regulation». Well of course I agree(d) with that statement, but then a different kind of music would emerge if there was even a minimal ordering of events. Large free groupings in particular are prone to «ideas congestion» on the one hand and tentative negotiation on the other unless of course the ensemble had the luxury of constant rehearsals to understand the territory being investigated. The chances of coincidental simultaneities and co-ordinated movements are rare, so what better than a scenario of free and ordered space. In free jazz and improvised music there have been and no doubt will be, incredible moments where musical strands coalesce to produce a music that no composer can imagine. That is as it should be.These moments are unpredictable and surely not repeatable except for the knowledge that certain chemistries between players can create an energy flow that has always the possibility of transcending the sum of its parts. My second tenet therefore was to recognise these possibilities and juxtapose groupings (and solos) to produce an ebb and flow of musical tension. In other words, the energy suggested structure with the composed music being directly related to the individual musician's personal expression. After 25 years the prospect of writing a new piece still excites me with the same adrenaline flow when I think of the musicians that will join me on the stand to make the music live and breathe.
13.
Taran's Free Jazz Hour - Main - 30/2014
Chris Bidle <.>
11/14/14
to me
http://taransfreejazzhour.com/podcast/302014.html
Jim Leftwich <jimleftwich@gmail.com>
11/14/14
to Chris
thanks
some nice stuff here
lots of folks i haven't heard
On Fri, Nov 14, 2014 at 11:38 AM, Chris Bidle <.> wrote:
>
>
> http://taransfreejazzhour.com/podcast/302014.html
>
>
> Chris Bidle
>
Jim Leftwich <jimleftwich@gmail.com>
11/14/14
to Chris
i spent a good while last night listening to Charles Tolliver and
Stanley Cowell
Strata-East records
check em out
i had some of their stuff back in the mid-70s
hadn't heard it in 35 years or more
Jim Leftwich <jimleftwich@gmail.com>
11/14/14
to Chris
this is great
no business
ascent of the nether creatures: Earl Cross - trumpet/ Idris Ackamoor - alto and tenor saxophone/ Rashied Al Akbar - bass/ Muhammad Ali - drums
http://nobusinessrecords.com/
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14.
strata & strata-east
Jim Leftwich <jimleftwich@gmail.com>
11/16/14
to Chris
Strata
John Sinclair:
In the creative cauldron that was the Detroit Artists Workshop we learned to develop cooperative ensembles and cross-cultural collectives, manage our own gallery and performance facility, produce our own concerts and cultural events, design and print our own books and magazines, publicize our products and productions, and keep our creative activity firmly rooted in the immediate community. It was the D.I.Y ethic in action. From the Workshop’s fertile clime germinated the Strata Corporation.
http://www.detroitartistsworkshop.com/strata-a-detroit-movement-defined-by-john-sinclair/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strata_Records
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urvdmHqX6OQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJqbkL3XaVI
Strata-East
http://www.redbullmusicacademy.com/magazine/strata-east-guide
Andy Thomas:
Strata-East’s independence was not initially born out of choice. Charles Tolliver and Stanley Cowell had appeared on some of the great jazz sessions of the 1960s. A year after both playing on Max Roach’s Members, Don’t Git Weary they formed Music Inc., and released the LP The Ringer (under the name Charles Tolliver and Music Inc.) on Polydor in 1969. But by the time they had finished recording their next LP, jazz was losing its commercial pull. When they took the material to the majors at the start of the ’70s they were met with indifference. “Our surprise at not being able to place the freshly recorded tapes with a major company for a sufficient advance morphed into our determination to self-produce it,” explains Stanley Cowell. “The ’60s Black Power movement in the United States had an effect on many black artists toward self-reliance, entrepreneurship and self-determination.”
At the time, one such group of artists was operating out of Detroit under the name Strata. Cowell and Tolliver were so inspired by this grassroots collective they began to work on plans for a similar operation in New York. “Kenny Cox and Charles Moore came to New York with their papers for Strata Corp. and inspired us to form a corporation,” recalls Cowell. “Strata-East, Inc. would be part of a larger artist-controlled concept. As we saw the potential for our catalogue to expand more rapidly, we decided to form Strata-East Records, Inc.” And so the label was born at the start of 1971 with the Music Inc. Big Band LP.
Pharoah Sanders
Izipho Zam
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjXnkPnVau4
George Russell
Electronic Sonata For Souls Loved By Nature
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lbFwrfrymw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qbIR3sHJ6Q
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15.
Free Jazz Blog Reviews | Avant Music News
Chris Bidle <.>
11/19/14
to me
I imagine you are familiar with this site. If not, here it is. Big big
http://avantmusicnews.com/2014/10/01/free-jazz-blog-reviews-432/
Jim Leftwich <jimleftwich@gmail.com>
11/20/14
to Chris
i haven't seen this in a while. some good stuff here, obviously.
this will be Great
http://avantmusicnews.com/2014/11/19/vision-festival-20-july-2015/
20-year celebration
i just finished watching this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loiRtO96-TM
Bill Russell bio
it's really good, whether you care about basketball or not
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16.
Fatigue
Chris Bidle <.>
12/4/14
to me
Lying in bed not sleeping waiting for the pill to kick in. The pill of every night losing its efficacy a little bit at a time. And the daytime is a hazy fog of forgetfulness, confusion, fatigue and unpleasant disorientation. About a constant year now. They call me bags down by the tracks. My eyes you know.
But for pleasure tonight I put on headphones and got a groove on. Farmers By Nature -Love and Ghosts- the album, "seven Years In" the piece. I haven't found a link to it for you, but I like it enough to go to weirdo records and steal- no no- purchase it. If so will send it on.
Diggin Machine Gun right now. Moved into Mt Fuji, Noah Howard on Black ark. And away we go again!
Anyway, got back from SF sick. Sick on the plane, sick at thanksgiving ,sick thru the weekend. Well it happens.
Me, Lynda, and 3 of my sisters are going to New Orleans this weekend for my sixtieth bday. They are so nice. I just hope im not bored to death with the jazz there since thanks to you my eyes have been opened to the real.
And as far as plastic art and progress that way.....well we'll see. Seeing as I have been hitting the canvas blind hoping to pull out Jung's archetypal beasts and such. This needs more exploration and maybe wall-of-death-edumacation.
Tak,
Chris
Ps john montes came and stayed in the mill valley crash pad while I was there. He is quite a character whose still buzzin on the go
Jim Leftwich <jimleftwich@gmail.com>
12/4/14
to Chris
ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh-HA! found a cut,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tku8BjTwt8w
William Parker is the Man. played bass with everybody in the last 30 years or so. insanely prolific. i've heard a bunch, a whole bunch, all of it really good. never heard of Farmers By Nature - until now. this is great.
there's so much out there, and so much of it is available on you tube, hundreds of hours of amazing listening just on you tube. this is on the short list of reasons to carry on.
60 huh. who would have thought, 30 years ago, that we both of us wouldn't have driven ourselves off of a cliff by now? i'll be 59 in march.
i'd be looking for the descendants of this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-zXkB4FW-A
professor longhair, tipitina,
if i was in new orleans. there's got to still be some of this energy around there somewhere.
i'm writing a lot, as always, Writing-Against-Itself, always, poetry as a full-scale war on language.
i remember when montes was staying with me on baker street he went one night to a church of the subgenius gathering at mabuhay. it must have been 85. that was the link to mail art, neoism, all that madness, that we were kicking around our emails, whenever that was, a month or so ago. i could have used that shit in the 80s. that convergence of networks. i didn't find any of it until 94.
anyway, yeah, i should probably be asleep myself. my cure for insomnia is not trying to sleep.
