In the Minaret Minuets system there are two separate but equal branches: the electric guitar and the tenor saxophone. Composer slash instrumentalists — those roles smear — Scott Fields and Matthias Schubert find myriad methods to blend and contrast, to appear to be at one moment a larger ensemble and then to sound as just one. They perform virtuosic material virtuosically sans showoffness.
Music may be an abstract art, meaning, as Stravinsky used to say, “nothing more than its own sounds”, but when it's presented with a title like "Organic Modernism", we have some food for thought.
In his third appearance in the Clean Feed catalogue, Portuguese pianist and composer Júlio Resende confirms his love for the song format – "You Taste Like a Song" is a compromise between poetry and guts, combining beatiful, lyrical melodies, groovy rhythms and red hot improvisations.
There aren't many musicians tied to more than one musical scene, but Aram Shelton is one of those rare examples.Both the Chicago and the Bay Area avant-jazz and free improv circuits benefit from this horn player who improvises with a composing perspective and composes to serve collective improvisation.
Since the late fifties, Ornette Coleman's music has inspired many projects. The music of Cylinder shares Ornette's now-iconic chordless instrumentation (trumpet-reeds-bass-drums) - but the novelty here is in the way the harmolodic concept of the master saxophonist is applied through inventive compositions and creative musical structures.
By this time we have all learned to expect everything from trumpeter Nate Wooley, from post-bop heritage to the most abstract improvisation. This CD adds something more to what you already know about this extraordinary musician. Not because it mixes his diferent interests in one project – although it does –, but because he keeps things going forward, never repeating himself.
Do you believe in a separation between mainstream jazz and the avant-garde? "Wiry Strong" could be labeled as the former, but the music from this new release is fresh and has a profound energy suggestive of the urgent things in life.
Daniel Levin is "a samurai with a calligrapher’s brush in his hand instead of a sword,” writes Ed Hazell in his liner notes for Inner Landscape. It couldn't be truer: this is improvised music with force and grace in equal measure.
After thirty-four years, a good idea – another reconvening of three of the most intriguing and inspiring musicians of the creative jazz scene, namely Mark Helias, Gerry Hemingway and Ray Anderson – who have continuously developed into one of the best units in the planet devoted to imaginative combinations between the composed and the improvised.
