Eric Revis flexes conceptual sensitivity with release of Slipknots Through A Looking Glass

Heralded by critics as “powerful,” “raw” and “fierce,” Revis’ playing frequently becomes mischaracterized by way of omission. While he plays and composes with master-level intensity, the intrinsic vulnerability present in any form of experimenting — and deeply present in Revis’ artistry — rarely yields recognition among music writers. “I don’t mind those kinds of descriptions or monikers,” he says, “but not when it’s at the negation of everything else. There may be an air of robustness around my music, but there is a lot of sensitivity and intellectual content.”

Poised to challenge those limited views of Revis’ expression, Slipknots Through a Looking Glass — his eighth solo-led album, and first release on Pyroclastic Records — explores new territory alongside familiar travelers: drummer Chad Taylor, pianist Kris Davis and saxophone masters Darius Jones and Bill McHenry. “The band is kind of an amalgam of groups I’ve previously recorded with,” says Revis, who sought to combine the energies of various project iterations on a single record.

Much of the album’s music — primed for enquiry and collaborative input — emerged during several weeks of solitude. Through a partnership with The Jazz Gallery, the LA native received a 2017 grant from The Rockefeller Foundation to spend some time at the Kykuit estate in Pocantino Hills, NY. Two compositions from that retreat found their way on to Marsalis’ 2019 GRAMMY-nominated recording The Secret Between the Shadow and the Soul. Revis sought to interpret the remaining music through a range of treatments — both scripted and spontaneous — on Slipknots Through a Looking Glass, an album that exposes the full flower of his conceptualism. Master producer Ron St. Germain serves as production and mixing engineer for the recording – an instrumental force in the development of its character, at once sprawling and intimate.

Beginning as a developing conversation between Revis and Taylor, “House of Leaves” represents a conceptual flex for Revis as a composer. The track centers around textural shapes — each, according to Revis, its own island. Exploiting space, the artists leave one island and reenter “nothingness” before traveling to the next. “It was interesting to see how the band could collectively navigate these islands,” says Revis. “Without giving it over to the musicians entirely, the process was more, ‘I have this sparse idea; let’s develop it into this next sparse idea, and then go on from there.’”

Rendered as a “visceral approach to melody,” according to Revis, “Vimen” serves the artist’s appetite for exploring energies that surround the music — and the session — thoroughly and critically. “I wanted more emphasis on the energy than on exact notes or notation,” he says. He asked his collaborators to approach title track “SpÆ” with similar controlled spontaneity. “We kind of deconstructed the composition,” says Revis. The trio tune features Davis on prepared piano and Taylor on mbira. “We just played,” he says.

Incorporating three separate takes, the track features crossfades leading from one take to the next. “It’s almost like if you had people speaking in three separate rooms, and then you put them together — all of a sudden you have this great conversation that, even though it was intended to be about disparate things, really makes a whole lot of sense.”

An artist fascinated by the surrealist movement, Revis keeps a digital journal of images and concepts flashing before him so that he might one day use them in his music. “The image of slipknots through a looking glass came up and I thought, ‘Wow — this is really cool.’” Immediately he connected his own artistry to the image’s inherent symbolism: the slipknot’s ephemeral nature further complicated by its reflection through the looking glass — was it even there to begin with, and where does it go when it disappears? “All those ideas are very, very much a part of this record,” he says. “The idea of a journey — although it wasn’t something that I set out to do, it’s a theme that runs through all of this record.”

How listeners might interpret his music matters less to Revis than the act of composing and recording it. “We can hear things and say, ‘Wow, I feel a certain foreboding quality about this,’ and the next person says, ‘Wow, this is such a happy song,’ or for example, Tchaikovsky being able to evoke all this emotional gravitas and almost melancholy — out of major chords! He’s able to exact pathos from major chords.”

“Hopefully, it’ll be heard,” he says. “When somebody really doesn’t like something, I think that’s incredibly honest and beneficial. If [my music] truly evokes real happiness, that is absolutely beautiful. But if it makes you uncomfortable, that’s a real emotion. And to have something do that — I think that that’s amazing.”

Eric Revis is an award-winning bass player, composer and band leader. In addition to releasing a range of solo- and co-led records throughout his career, he has been an integral part of Branford Marsalis’ quartet since 1997 and has enjoyed creative associations with some of the music’s most unfiltered talents, including Andrew Cyrille, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Jason Moran and Betty Carter. Revis has enjoyed residencies and recurring performances at The Jazz Gallery in New York and The Blue Whale in Los Angeles, and currently tours internationally with his own projects.

Pianist-composer Kris Davis founded Pyroclastic Records in 2016 to serve the release of her acclaimed recordings Duopoly and Octopus with the goal of growing the label into a thriving platform that would serve like-minded, cutting-edge artists. In 2019, Davis launched a nonprofit to support those artists whose expression flourishes beyond the commercial sphere. By supporting their creative efforts and ensuring distribution of their work, Pyroclastic empowers emerging and established artists — including Cory Smythe, Ben Goldberg, Chris Lightcap, Angelica Sanchez and Marilyn Crispell, Nate Wooley, Eric Revis and Craig Taborn — to continue challenging conventional genre-labeling within their fields. Pyroclastic also seeks to galvanize and grow a creative community, offering young artists new opportunities, supporting diversity and expanding the audience for noncommercial art.

Faune, the debut album by drummer-composer Raphaël Pannier

The singular artistic vision of drummer-composer Raphaël Pannier bursts into brilliant, extraordinary focus on his first recording Faune, via French Paradox/L’Autre.

With musical direction by one of Pannier’s key mentors, MacArthur genius and star alto saxophonist Miguel Zenón, Faune presents a sequence of the drummer’s vibrant originals along with unique interpretations of French classical works and American jazz standards. Zenón has long been recognized for his work bridging his Puerto Rican roots with modern jazz, and his phenomenal balancing of tradition and modernity. Like his mentor, Pannier also links two traditions, French classical and American jazz, in startlingly innovative ways. “This album really does bring together my two worlds: my European upbringing and early classical studies with my American life and jazz education,” Pannier says. “In this, it has been such an honor to work with Miguel Zenón, a real hero of mine for the way he has melded his Puerto Rican roots and Latin traditions with socially conscious modern jazz.”

The highly imaginative universe of Pannier’s music is reflected in his choice of musicians, all players dedicated to music as a deeply human form of expression. Zenón, with his expansive palette of influences, monster technique, and exceptional creativity, offers magnificent, inspired saxophone solos. Pianist Aaron Goldberg brings profoundly felt, almost philosophical leanings to the keyboard with masterful improvisations and elegant playing rooted in the jazz tradition. With his self-taught stylings, bassist François Moutin brings an entirely new approach to his instrument, infusing vital, foundational energy into the rhythm section. The addition of the virtuosic classical Georgian pianist Giorgi Mikadze is a key component of Pannier’s vision of melding traditional classical scores and modern jazz. Pannier brings a high level of technique to his imaginative playing, laying down complex, varied rhythms that provide rich color and texture. Presenting the band in various duo, trio, and quartet configurations adds to the bounty of shapes, textures, and colors.

The French title Faune translates to “wildlife,” though it also references a mythical sense of the animal spirit famous in works of French modernism by Debussy and Mallarmé. The nod to Debussy’s famous prelude is apropos, as the album reflects an impressionistic sensibility, combining it with a keen rhythmic vitality. Like Debussy, Pannier is very much a colorist of his instrument, executing performances on the drums with graphic and imaginary play, creating a sonic impressionist landscape that’s reflected in both his original compositions and his arrangements. "Lullaby" is a journey into dreams, “Fauna” an exploration of an imaginative forest, “Monkey Puzzle Tree” an apparitional tree with incredible harmonies. “Midtown Blues,” an aural sketch of Manhattan executed as a joyful, swinging piano trio, perfectly depicts the feeling of being bumped and bounced while walking in Times Square.

Painterly tracks include the album’s centerpiece work by Messiaen (from his 1944 piano collection Vingt regards sur l'Enfant-Jésus), and a selection by Ravel (from his 1917 suite Le Tombeau de Couperin). The freshly lyrical take on Ornette’s classic 1959 ballad “Lonely Woman” expresses another side of Pannier, as does the pulsing, muscular “E.S.P.” (the Shorter-penned title track to the Miles Davis Quintet’s E.S.P. LP of 1965) and Hamilton de Holanda’s bounding “Capricho de Raphaël.” Multiple pieces, including “Forlane” and the intro/outro frames for “E.S.P.,” have additional electronic atmospherics created by Jacob Bergson.

The Ravel piece, played as a classical score with modern rhythms and textures interwoven, is just one example of Pannier’s unique approach. “Many jazz musicians have played ‘Forlane’ as jazz,” he says, “but I don’t think anyone has played the score and then reimagined a drum part within it quite as we’ve done.” By translating the traditional classical score and adding a modern vernacular, Pannier retains and builds on the emotional authenticity of the works.

The album’s cover art, an image of a work by Theo van Doesburg, reflects Pannier’s generous, wide-ranging aesthetic. Founder of the European artistic movement “De Stijl” at the beginning of the 20th century, van Doesburg believed in the universal power of abstract art. Playing with light and colors, simple cubic volumes, and rhythmic concrete lines, he gave birth to a refined, rhythmic new style that would inspire artists including Mondrian and the Bauhaus, and now, Pannier.

Faune is a complete work of art with a level of performance and expression unusual in a debut. It traces, by its very design, the formation of a refined and timeless music, one based on the imagination and executed with virtuosity and excellence.

Born in Paris in 1990 and now living in Harlem, Pannier started playing drums at age 5 and performing professionally by 13. He earned a scholarship to the Berklee College of Music in Boston, studying with Terri Lyne Carrington, Ralph Peterson Jr. and Hal Crook, among others. At Berklee, Pannier met Azerbaijani jazz pianist Emil Afrasiyab, with whom he began performing a unique fusion between jazz and mugham, the traditional music from Azerbaijan. Pannier completed his master’s degree at the Manhattan School of Music and was then awarded a scholarship to attend the competitive Betty Carter Jazz Ahead program at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., led by Jason Moran and Eric Harland. Pannier also received a scholarship to study with Mark Turner and Alex Sipiagin at the “Generations” workshop in Switzerland. The drummer won first prize in the Six Strings Theory Competition organized by fusion guitar star Lee Ritenour, with whom he toured various festivals in the U.S., recorded in the studio and performed at the Blue Note Tokyo. Pannier has also played alongside the likes of Steve Wilson, Bob James, Marcos Valle, Eric Lewis, Manuel Valera, Rotem Sivan and Lage Lund, appearing at jazz festivals from Montreal, Paris and Tokyo to Brazil, Spain, Estonia and Azerbaijan. His performances in New York have run the gamut from Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center to the Apollo Theater and Minton’s Playhouse. In 2018, Pannier released as a co-leader the album These Times with saxophonist Chad Lefkowitz-Brown, pianist Holger Marjamaa and bassist Ben Tiberio.

The George Coleman Quintet in Baltimore

One of jazz’s most powerful tenor saxophonists, George Coleman, is heard at his freewheeling, unfettered best on The George Coleman Quintet in Baltimore, a hitherto unheard live recording due from Reel to Real Recordings as an exclusive, limited-edition Record Store Day Black Friday LP release.

The high-energy set, captured at the Famous Ballroom in Baltimore on May 23, 1971 by engineer Vernon Welsh for the Left Bank Jazz Society, and restored for Reel to Real by Chris Gestrin, will subsequently be issued as a compact disc and digitally on December 11.

The set marks the second project from the Left Bank—which mounted live jazz shows in Baltimore from 1964 through the ‘90s—to be unearthed by noted “Jazz Detective” Zev Feldman, who is partnered with Reel to Real Vancouver-based jazz impresario and saxophonist Cory Weeds. Reel to Real previously issued A Soulful Sunday by vocalist Etta Jones featuring the Cedar Walton Trio.

Now 85, Coleman was the product of the fertile jazz scene in Memphis, which produced such renowned contemporaries as Charles Lloyd, Phineas Newborn, Jr., Frank Strozier, Booker Little, Hank Crawford, and the tenorist’s longtime band mate Harold Mabern. From the early ‘60s, he was a noted sideman, perhaps best known for his 1963-64 stint with Miles Davis’ “second great quintet,” which included Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and Tony Williams. He also made notable records with Hancock (the classic Maiden Voyage), Lee Morgan, Chet Baker, Jimmy Smith, Charles Mingus, and Max Roach, among others.

Coleman cut his first studio album as a leader in 1977; he played and recorded regularly with Mabern until the keyboardist’s death in 2019. Reel to Real’s new release represents the saxophonist’s earliest available live offering fronting a nonpareil combo of his own.

He is joined by trumpeter Danny Moore (whose credits include work with Quincy Jones, Count Basie, Oliver Nelson, Buddy Rich, and Dizzy Gillespie), pianist Albert Dailey (Sonny Rollins, Stan Getz, Hank Mobley, Kenny Dorham, Art Blakey), bassist Larry Ridley (Horace Silver, Jackie McLean, Philly Joe Jones, Randy Weston, Barry Harris), and drummer Harold White (Gary Bartz, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Eddie Jefferson). “This is one hell of a band,” jazz historian and archivist Michael Cuscuna notes in his comprehensive overview of the date. “This concert is a rare early glimpse at George Coleman in charge and, as always, playing magnificently.”

In a new interview with Weeds included in the set, Coleman looks back at his days at the venue that was a regular hitching post for him in the ‘70s.

“Oh yeah, the Famous Ballroom was great,” Coleman says. “We used to get up there quite a bit, with Wynton Kelly, Ron McClure and Jimmy Cobb. Those were some of the good moments. I really enjoyed playing there. The people were nice, too. A lot of black folks used to go there, too. It was integrated - I mean, black, white, whatever. They were there to listen to the music. It was a really great era.”

Feldman, who selected the ’71 Famous Ballroom set from a trove of Left Bank recordings, says, “Cory and I have total reverence for Coleman and we wanted to roll out the red carpet for him on this very special production….George Coleman is someone who is extremely important in this music. Now that he's in the twilight of his career, it's nothing short of a blessing to be able to present this music for the very first time.”

Weeds, who has himself presented the tenor player at his Vancouver club the Cellar, says of the Baltimore date, “Coleman is playing with reckless abandon, not concerned with perfection or even precision. He is clearly feeding off the energy of the crowd and riding high above the beautiful accompaniment from the top-flight rhythm section. He is going for it. The no-holds-barred approach that is his signature is on full display throughout this whole date, and it’s absolutely delightful.”

Heatedly charging through Clifford Brown’s compositions “Sandu” and “Joy Spring,” John Lewis’ “Afternoon in Paris,” and puissant readings of “I Got Rhythm” and “Body and Soul,” Coleman ably demonstrates that he remains one of the most underestimated soloists in jazz.

Neatly summing up the collection in an interview with Weeds, the band leader’s student and self-defined disciple Eric Alexander succinctly sums up The George Coleman Quintet in Baltimore: “It’s about the music and the music is f***ing great.”

Josh Johnson releases his debut album Freedom Exercise

Josh Johnson—the LA via Chicago multi-instrumentalist/composer who has toured and recorded with Jeff Parker, Kiefer, Makaya McCraven, Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, Leon Bridges and Marquis Hill—has released his debut album as a leader, Freedom Exercise, out via Northern Spy Records. 

The first single, "Western Ave," is named for the city-spanning thoroughfare of both Los Angeles and Chicago—two places with a substantial imprint on Josh Johnson’s sound. The memorable track is a rugged, colorful arrangement propelled by Aaron Steele’s afro-beat-inspired drums and an earthy bass line.

When Chicago-area native Josh Johnson moved to Los Angeles eight years ago, he thought his stay would be temporary. The saxophonist and keyboardist would spend a year or two there: enough time to learn from two of his heroes, Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter, but not a complete geographic pivot. After all, for musicians — especially those making improvised, collective music — where you live and what scene you are part of can have a monumental effect on the kind of art you make. His hometown had a vibrant musical community in which he was already immersed; there was no immediate reason to seek out something new.

But eight years later, Johnson is still in L.A., where he recorded his debut album Freedom Exercise with three of his closest friends that he describes as “musically omnivorous” — the same quality that inspired him to stay on the West Coast.

“A lot of people I've connected with here have opened me up to a lot of things I hadn't imagined,” he says. Johnson’s corner of the L.A. improvised music scene has its epicenter at a long-running Monday night gig helmed by his friend and frequent collaborator (and fellow former Chicagoan) guitarist Jeff Parker at a bar called ETA in Highland Park. There, when he’s not experimenting with Parker — on whose latest album, the critically-acclaimed Suite for Max Brown, he’s featured — Johnson has gotten to know musicians and artists of all stripes. The vibe is intimate and expansive at the same time, much like the album itself: as numerous as Johnson’s influences are, on Freedom Exercise they’re showcased in a way that feels organic, straightforward and unpretentious. Even at its most surprising and complex, the project is ultimately still inviting.

“It brings in a lot of people who don't go to jazz clubs,” he says. “It's a thing that's been very stimulating for me, because it doesn't feel insular.” That diverse community helped him remember that music-making was most fun for him when he resisted genre orthodoxy — like when he was in high school, learning saxophone and jazz while playing keyboards in church, making minimalist electronic music on his parents’ computer, playing in indie bands and listening to hip-hop and Chicago post-rock. Through friends he met at ETA, he became the touring musical director for crooner Leon Bridges; an unlikely assignment as his reputation has grown rapidly in the jazz world thanks to his work alongside Makaya McCraven and Jeremy Cunningham, but one he says has been transformative. “It’s helped me be a better listener in improvised settings,” he says. “Not just playing to play, but really thinking about why, and what something is for.”

That intentionality is self-evident on Freedom Exercise, a collection of songs tied to that same idea of genreless exploration — jazz, post-rock and electronic music are certainly all inspirations, but none reigns exclusively. The stripped-down, urgent album is built on layers of intertwined, distinct melodies occasionally softened by distortion, delay and reverb. Asymmetrical but still inviting, Johnson’s compositions spotlight his sensitivity and restraint; the synth seamlessly interspersed throughout adds an unexpected dimension. The result is concise — 10 songs, most under five minutes — but still expansive, like an intimate gathering in a sprawling city.

International Cooperative Quartet Kaze Meets Laptop Wizard Ikue Mori On New CD Sand Storm

On Sand Storm, Kaze – the cooperative quartet featuring Japanese composer-pianist Satoko Fujii and trumpeter Natsuki Tamura along with French trumpeter Christian Pruvost and drummer Peter Orins ­– welcomes pioneering laptop player Ikue Mori as a special guest.

It’s no easy task for a band that’s been together for 10 years to add a player without upsetting a well-developed group balance, but the merger proves to be a natural one. Sand Storm’s vibrant collective improvisations and brilliant soloing make this a highpoint in the life of the band. “I knew Kaze would sound great with Ikue,” says Fujii, “but I have to say it turned out even better than I imagined it would. She brought fresh, new sounds to the band and a very strong feeling.”

For Fujii, Mori was a natural choice for a special guest. “While Kaze was on tour in Europe in spring 2019, Peter got an offer for us to play at the Sons d’Hiver Festival in Paris in January 2020,” she remembers. “They also said we could invite a special guest. When I heard this, I had this strong feeling that Ikue would fit great in the group. I could feel it. It is hard to explain, but I knew it would work. I told Peter and he loved the idea.”

A one-week tour in Austria, France, and Russia was set up for early 2020 and Fujii’s intuition proved correct. “We only had one short rehearsal right before our first concert in Vienna, but we knew immediately that the music would be great,” she says. “We were all so comfortable. We hadn’t planned on recording together, but we really wanted to after the tour.”

Sand Storm is the result of that collective enthusiasm generated by the tour. From the opening swirl of granular sounds on Pruvost’s “Rivodoza” (a Malagasy word for “hurricane”) that hits the listener with coordinated intensity, it’s clear this is a deeply attuned quintet. The subtle little details, rapidly changing timbres, and the ease with which everyone interacts indicate a group in which each member is selflessly dedicated to creating vivid, organic improvisations. Similar passages of highly musical sound abstraction also highlight “Kappa” and “Noir Soir.” Three short collective improvisations also showcase their strong intuitive bond as a group. Their command of extended techniques for their respective instruments often makes it’s hard to tell whether a sound is acoustic or electronic.

Each member of Kaze contributes distinctive compositions that provide frameworks for individual solos as well as collective interaction. On Tamura’s “Kappa,” Tamura takes a bravura turn, ranging freely through lyricism, soft tones, high wails, percussive notes, and humorous sounds. Pruvost follows with his own unique blend of pure sound and musical notes. Fujii’s dark and urgent piano highlights “Noir Soir.” Mori, whose presence is felt strongly throughout the album, solos eloquently on Orins’ “Noir Poplar.”

“I love playing with both Kaze and Ikue because they think of the music first, not themselves,” Fujii says.

Critics and fans alike hail pianist and composer Satoko Fujii as one of the most original voices in jazz today. She’s “a virtuoso piano improviser, an original composer and a bandleader who gets the best collaborators to deliver," says John Fordham in The Guardian. In concert and on nearly 100 albums as a leader or co-leader, she synthesizes jazz, contemporary classical, avant-rock, and folk musics into an innovative style instantly recognizable as hers alone. A prolific band leader and recording artist, she celebrated her 60th birthday in 2018 by releasing one album a month from bands old and new, from solo to large ensemble. Franz A. Matzner in All About Jazz likened the twelve albums to “an ecosystem of independently thriving organisms linked by the shared soil of Fujii's artistic heritage and shaped by the forces of her creativity.”

Trumpeter and composer Natsuki Tamura is internationally recognized for a unique vocabulary that blends extended techniques with touching jazz lyricism. This unpredictable virtuoso has led bands with radically different approaches throughout his career. He’s played avant-rock jazz fusion with First Meeting, the Natsuki Tamura Quartet, and Junk Box. Since 2003, he has focused on the intersection of European folk music and sound abstraction with Gato Libre. He also has recorded three albums of solo trumpet. A member many of Fujii’s ensembles, he has recorded 7 duet CDs with her.

Peter Orins is a French drummer and one of the founders of the Muzzix collective. He’s developed his playing over the years, performing in various jazz bands in Lille since the early 90’s, and participating in experimental and improvised music projects. In addition to serving as an artistic director of Muzzix and helming the record label Circum-Disc, he leads several bands including Toc, Abdou/Dang/Orins, and Wei3. Among the musicians he plays with, both inside and outside the Muzzix collective, are Dave Rempis, Sophie Agnel, Didier Lasserre, Joke Lanz, Jasper Stadhouders, Petr Vrba, Maciej Garbowski, Jarry Singla, and Didier Aschour, among others.

Insatiable innovator of the whole sound spectrum of the trumpet, Christian Pruvost developed a very poetic and personal language for his entirely acoustic expedition. He is involved in collaborations as much in jazz as in creative and experimental music (founding member of the Muzzix and Zoone Libre collectives). In perpetual research on horns and pipes as well as different resonators and their transformations, he performs free improvisation and contemporary music with many artists in France and on all continents. He is a member of several ensembles and collectives such as Muzzix, Dedalus, Ensemble UN, Organik Orchestra, The Bridge, Ouïe Dire, and Ensemble 0, among others.

Ikue Mori arrived in New York in 1977 and started playing drums in the band DNA. In the mid 80’s, she started playing drum machines and got involved in the downtown improvising community and she has since collaborated with numerous musicians and artists throughout the US, Europe, and Asia, while continuing to produce and release her own music. Ikue won the Distinctive Award for Prix Ars Electronics Digital Music in 1999 and shortly after started using a laptop computer to expand her vocabulary not only to play sounds but create and control the visual work. She received a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts in 2006, and an Instant Award for improvising music in 2019.

www.satokofujii.com/

Angelica Sanchez teams up with Marylin Crispell with release of ¨How to Turn the Moon¨

For the past two decades, pianist-composer Angelica Sanchez has shocked, bent and blurred lines and perceptions that separate composition from improvisation. How to Turn the Moon, her first release on Pyroclastic Records, offers a momentary culmination of that expression.

Within the expansive nature of her piano duo debut, Sanchez explores intimacy and transformation alongside creative colleague and mentor, pianist-composer Marilyn Crispell, whom Sanchez first heard on a Fred Anderson record when she was just 16. Together, the artists allow their shared moments to expand Sanchez’s short form written compositions and co-create spontaneous ones.

Across 10 tracks of original material, Sanchez and Crispell find points of departure, reentry and rippling expansion. They explore their own interpretations of space and texture, seeking always to complement each other’s expressions – and express a truthful sound. The idea of creating short compositions designed for expansion – designed for players to begin in the middle of the form, should the moment desire it – excites and challenges Sanchez. “It’s not such an easy thing to figure out,” she says, “and it only works with people that you trust.”

“Windfall Light” at times sounds scripted – even reminiscent of a written suite. Entirely improvised, the track serves as one of many extended moments of deep, active listening between Sanchez and Crispell that settles and expands and transforms. “There are certain parts where it almost felt like we went into set harmony,” says Sanchez, who contends she and Crispell continually allowed for shifting in context throughout the piece.

“Sullivan’s Universe,” named for a painting by folk artist Patrick Sullivan, features an improvised gesture but for the short-form composition introduced in its entirety as the end of the track. Another instance of compositions as codas appears on “Ancient Dream,” a tune beginning in wild strummed resonances from inside the piano.

Sanchez tends to let melody lead her though written form and improvised expression, rendering a range of texture within her playing. “Lobe of the Fly” includes parallel passages as well as expressions of counterpoint, while “Ceiba Portal” – the longest written form on the recording – according to Sanchez, moves into “circular melodies” toward the end of the piece.

Drawing inspiration from patterned and un-patterned ways the human form imitates nature, Sanchez nurtures her expression away from the piano as earnestly as she does in front of it. As many have on past records, track titles on How to Turn the Moon emerge from her varied connections to nature and neuroscience. “Twisted Roots” relates in part to the composition’s snaky counter point and evokes the underground image of a tree. An iteration of that same image prompted titling “Lobe of the Fly,” which Sanchez named for Santiago Ramón y Cajal’s drawings that feature cells in the optic lobe of a fly and resemble trees and roots.

She titled “Calyces of Held” for one of the central nervous system’s largest synapses, meditating on a related idea that cells often communicate with one another despite a lack of synapse connection.

This kind of profound, unfacilitated communication serves the creative union between Sanchez and Crispell. The two had been nurturing a friendship for more than a year when they entered into an artistic partnership with the intention of recording How to Turn the Moon. After roughly six months of ideas sharing, they booked two days to rehearse and record at Nevessa Production Studios near Woodstock, New York – Crispell’s preferred recording space. “We didn’t discuss much before the recording,” says Sanchez, “we just sat down, enjoyed each other’s presence and went for it.” On the album, engineer Chris Andersen helps serve its subtle transitions from scripted to spontaneous gesture and enhance both artists’ tendencies toward mutual experimenting.

Though she’s drawn to through-composed music, “playing without a net,” alongside someone she trusts and reveres inspires and truly challenges Sanchez. “I still get excited when I sit down at the piano,” she says, “because you don’t know what’s going to happen.” How to Turn the Moon rises in earnest to that challenge.

Pianist, composer and educator Angelica Sanchez has released a number critically acclaimed albums as a leader over the course of her evolving career. The Arizona native moved to New York in 1994, seeking opportunities to develop artistic relationships with such similar-minded artists as Marilyn Crispell, Wadada Leo Smith, Paul Motian, Richard Davis, Jamaladeen Tacuma, Nicole Mitchell, Rob Mazurek, Tim Berne and Mario Pavone. Her work has received favorable press from local, national and international outlets, including JazzTimes, NPR, The New York Times, New York City Jazz Record and Chicago Tribune. Her most recent trio project Float The Edge featuring bassist-composer Michael Formanek and drummer-composer Tyshawn Sorey and has received worldwide praise from critics and peers. Sanchez holds a Master of Fine Arts in Jazz Arranging from William Paterson University, and currently works as lecturer at Princeton University.

Marilyn Crispell has been a composer and performer of contemporary improvised music since 1978. For 10 years, she was a member of the Anthony Braxton Quartet and the Reggie Workman Ensemble and has performed and recorded extensively as a soloist and with players across the U.S. as well as internationally. She’s worked with dancers, poets, filmmakers and visual artists; as an educator, she’s led workshops in improvisation. Crispell is the recipient of three New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship grants, a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust composition commission.

Pioneering Afro-Transcendental and Ambient Music icon LARAAJI releasing 2nd new album of 2020

Pioneering Afro-Transcendalist and Ambient music icon Laraaji is releasing Moon Piano, a companion volume to the Sun Piano album on Brian Eno's All Saints Records. It was recorded at the same session in a Brooklyn Church. Whereas the former record lent itself to the more uplifting side of Laraaji's keyboard improvisations, Moon Piano explores the more introspective and minimal pieces captured by Jeff Zeigler (Kurt Vile, The War On Drugs, Mary Lattimore) and edited by Christian Havins (Dallas Acid). I'm hoping you'll consider covering this release via album review. I'm glad to send a DL or physical copy upon request. In the meanwhile you can listen here: https://soundcloud.com/all-saints-records/sets/laraaji-moon-piano/s-9Xy6cCQcd7U

Laraaji describes this set of tracks as "Contemplative sound painting, embracing quiet tranquil unfolding of nurturing reflection". In a recent interview with Aquarium Drunkard, Laraaji described the improvisatory process of making both piano albums: "I'd sit down, touch the piano and through free association, also blending it with my prepared mental state, I was able to tune in and affirm my highest sense of presence. The piano became an instrument for the imagination to suggest higher or finer worlds, to suggest a joy, euphoria, bliss, also to suggest silence, minimalism, relaxation, and contemplation. So, all of that music was spontaneous but with those influences shaping and guiding it along the way."

Whilst Moon Piano almost shades into melancholy with a contrasting nighttime vibe to Sun Piano's daytime joyfulness, certain themes from the first record reoccur - side two's "Pentatonic Smile" is a longer edit on the central riff underpinning the former album's "Temple Of New Light".

Sun Piano has been widely praised as a new phase in the new age icon's career in a wide range of influential outlets including NPR's All Songs Considered, Pitchfork, The Guardian Washington Post etc. Moon Piano is the second release in a trilogy which will culminate in an extended EP of piano/autoharp duets.

This Fall Laraaji will perform three unique livestream concerts presented by NYC's Le Poisson Rouge and NoonChorus. Attempting to mine the same improvisational spirit so present in his newest piano-based releases, each show will feature Laraaji exploring those recent themes again, riffing in real time and reaching new depths, all captured in the highest quality audio and video on LPR's beautiful corner stage.

Laraaji is a musician, mystic and laughter meditation practitioner based in New York City. Steeped in music from an early age, he grew up playing gospel and church music in 1950s New Jersey, and listening to R&B and jazz on the radio. To begin with he would imitate his favourite piano players, such as Fats Domino, Errol Garner, Ahmad Jamal and Oscar Peterson, before moving onto writing his own choral and doo-wop pieces whilst still in high school. From 1962 to 1964, he attended the groundbreaking Howard University in Washington DC where he studied music theory and composition with a piano major, and he met Curtis Mayfield, Donny Hathaway and Bobby Timmons. At college he took a left turn into comedy, which led him to the nightclub stand-up circuit in New York City. During this period he compered at the legendary Apollo Theater in Harlem, warming up for artists such as Barry White and Roberta Flack, appeared in a theatre production alongside a young Morgan Freeman, and had a bit part in cult film Putney Swope wih Antonio Fargas.

By the early-70s he was working at the Aquarius Coffee Shop in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and playing Fender Rhodes electric piano in a fusion band, The Winds Of Change. In the mid-70s a spiritual awakening led him to trade his guitar in for an autoharp, and he began to play more freeform, cosmically inclined improvisations on the streets of New York City. Brian Eno saw him playing one night in Washington Square Park and invited him to record an album for his seminal Ambient series (Ambient 3: Day Of Radiance, released 1980).

In the 80s Laraaji self-released a prolific series of experimental home-recorded cassette albums which were sold on the street, in psychic bookstores and new age 'head shops'. An early proponent of the DIY tape underground that is still thriving today amongst artists working in noise, synth, drone and other left-of-the-dial genres, this period of Laraaji's music has been extensively reissued in the past few years by labels such as Leaving Records, Light In The Attic and Numero Group, and is a treasure trove of tape manipulated harp jams and space age soul hymns.

In the late-80s he made the much-loved Flow Goes The Universe album for All Saints Records (produced by Michael Brook) and contributed sound system style chants to an album by Japanese dub reggae outfit Audio Active. More recently he has appeared on recordings with Pharoah Sanders, Bill Laswell and Jonathan Wilson, and released collaborative albums with a younger generation of artists including Blues Control, Sun Araw and Dallas Acid. Appreciation of his music has reached new heights in the past few years resulting in international touring and the patronage of visual artists such as Grace Wales Bonner. His most recent albums for All Saints were the related duo of Bring On The Sun and Sun Gong, produced by Carlos Niño. This also led to the remix set Sun Transformations, featuring re-interpretations of his work by contemporary beatmakers such as the late Ras G, DNTEL, Flako, Photay, and his lifelong friend, disco legend Larry Mizell.

The new piano trilogy, which started with the release of Sun Piano back in July, opens up a new chapter in Laraaji's musical history; both completing a circle that began in his childhood, and revealing a whole new side to his sound to longtime listeners, showing off a different side of his instrumental accomplishments, and an innate ability toward spontaneous composition that has been honed over many years.

Nate Wooley releases new edition of internationally acclaimed series Seven Storey Mountain VI

Genre-defiant trumpet player and composer Nate Wooley brings together artists from seemingly disparate musical communities with the release of Seven Storey Mountain VI on Pyroclastic Records, the sixth iteration of his ecstatic song-cycle.

In the spirit of creation through energetic confrontation, Wooley engages 14 artists who identify with varied and mingling musical lineages, using their musical histories and strengths as the building blocks of the composition. Seven Storey Mountain features contributions from core collaborators: drummers Chris Corsano, Ryan Sawyer and Ben Hall, and violinists C. Spencer Yeh and Samara Lubelski — all of whom Wooley considers the series’ “nuclear family.”

“The SSM family has grown over time, but these artists have played on almost every single one,” says Wooley. The album’s extended family comprises lauded pedal steel guitarist Susan Alcorn; Rhodes players Emily Manzo and Isabelle O’Connor; and electric guitarists Ava Mendoza and Julien Desprez, the latter of whose playing Wooley describes as “kind of like someone threw a machine gun into a blender.”

This movement of the Seven Storey Mountain song cycle, which began in 2007, is the first completely new version since Seven Storey Mountain V which Wooley recorded in the fall of 2015. In the interim, his ensemble has grown and his composition has developed through multiple performances across Europe, Canada and the United States.

This release also reflects the first version of Seven Storey Mountain that utilizes song material outside of Wooley’s original composition, using the first eight lines of Peggy Seeger’s 1979 song “Reclaim the Night” as a compositional and emotional touchstone throughout the piece. As the album releases from the peak of its ecstatic energy, channeling its momentum into a new resonance, listeners encounter an all-female choir performing an arrangement of Seeger’s anthem by Wooley and singer-composer Megan Schubert, who led the choir and lent her singing and speaking voice to both performance and recording.

Seven Storey Mountain VI premiered live in November, 2019 at Saint Peter’s Episcopal Church in Manhattan to an audience whose members encountered music that rose from almost silent humming to the raw power of the 21-person choir that concludes the piece. The group recorded the next afternoon under the guidance of studio and production master Ron Saint Germain (Bad Brains, Sonic Youth, Ornette Coleman), who captured, preserved and elevated that thrilling energy on the record. “This is the most beautifully reproduced version I’ve ever had of not only the monolithic sound of the ensemble but the ecstatic spirit of the music,” said Wooley.

In a measured act of resistance toward playlist culture that often exalts the digestible single, and in an effort to translate the live experience to tape, Wooley chose to present the entire album as an extended 45-minute track.

“In performance, the idea behind that has a lot to do with duration,” he says. “You should sit and listen to it, especially in the space where it’s incredibly loud and the sound bounces around. It’s meant to give an ecstatic feeling. And I wanted it to feel full on the record, to flow from one bit to the next.”

As with all Seven Storey Mountain releases, the music culminates in a massive arc of energy when, according to Wooley, the artists are playing at their rawest, most vulnerable states of consciousness. “A lot of the parts can feel aggressive,” he says. “I view all of that as something that is necessary to the production of something new. That feeling of ecstasy has to come from some sort of pressure.”

Producing a new version of Seven Storey Mountain, so much depends upon new readings of existing work. Wooley integrates samples, melodic loops and essential patterns from past SSM recordings and live performances, stripping down any layers of sound or construction he deems inessential. This compositional process not only serves to connect the music from one SSM to the next but to continue the project’s familial legacy, often including manipulated mixes of past collaborators who may not appear on the current version’s release.

Another hallmark of the Seven Storey Mountain sound philosophy is the collaborative paradigm Wooley has termed “mutual aid music.” Rather than chart out music for the album in a singular format, he meets his collaborators where they flourish as individuals. Some of his fellow artists prefer chord charts; others prefer to learn music through listening and oral direction; while others feel most comfortable reading meticulously notated orchestral scores. All of his collaborators thrive somewhere on the spectrum between notation and improvisation.

“Integrating the mutual aid music paradigm is a big deal for me because it goes beyond the piece of music itself,” says Wooley. “It’s a way for communities to come together without everyone having to learn a separate language.” In many ways, communion is key to Seven Storey Mountain VI, from the inclusive composition process to the gathering of “family” musicians; from sharing of the ecstatic experiences to engaging a broader community via Wooley’s album’s royalties donation to the National Council Against Domestic Violence. Through its spirited confrontation comes energetic creation.

At 13, trumpet player and composer Nate Wooley began playing professionally with his father, a big band saxophonist in Clatskanie, Oregon. In 2019, he debuted as a soloist with the New York Philharmonic. Considered one of the leading lights of the American movement to redefine the physical boundaries of the horn, Wooley has gathered international acclaim for his idiosyncratic trumpet language. Since moving to New York in 2001, he has become one of the most in-demand trumpet players in Brooklyn’s intersecting jazz, improvised, noise and new music scenes. He’s performed regularly with John Zorn, Anthony Braxton, Eliane Radigue, Annea Lockwood, Ken Vandermark and Yoshi Wada, and premiered works for trumpet by Christian Wolff, Michael Pisaro, Annea Lockwood, Ashley Fure, Wadada Leo Smith, Sarah Hennies and Eva-Maria Houben. In 2016, he received the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award. Nate currently works as editor-in-chief of their online quarterly journal Sound American.

Pianist-composer Kris Davis founded Pyroclastic Records in 2016 to serve the release of her acclaimed recordings Duopoly and Octopus with the goal of growing the label into a thriving platform that would serve like-minded, cutting-edge artists. In 2019, Davis launched a nonprofit to support those artists whose expression flourishes beyond the commercial sphere. By supporting their creative efforts and ensuring distribution of their work, Pyroclastic empowers emerging and established artists — including Cory Smythe, Ben Goldberg, Chris Lightcap, Angelica Sanchez and Marilyn Crispell, Nate Wooley, Eric Revis and Craig Taborn — to continue challenging conventional genre-labeling within their fields. Pyroclastic also seeks to galvanize and grow a creative community, offering young artists new opportunities, supporting diversity and expanding the audience for noncommercial art.

Diana Krall | "This Dream Of You"

This Dream Of You, produced in May 2020 by Ms. Krall, was mixed by Al Schmitt, who worked closely with the artist to achieve notable intimacy and immediacy with her voice in the final balance. 

The performances come from sessions in 2016 and 2017, on which Krall worked with her friend and longtime creative partner, Tommy LiPuma.  Mr. LiPuma passed away in 2017 at the age of 80.  

The album features Krall in a quartet with long-time colleagues, John Clayton, Jeff Hamilton and Anthony Wilson on “Almost Like Being In Love” and “That’s All”, as well as a trio with Christian McBride and Russell Malone who play on “Autumn in New York” and “There’s No You.”

The duos include a wonderful first-take performance of “I Wished On The Moon” from Krall and bassist, John Clayton and two vocal cuts – “More Than You Know” and “Don’t Smoke In Bed” with accompaniment by pianist, Alan Broadbent, who also provided the string orchestration for “But Beautiful” and string arrangement on “Autumn In New York.”

The final session for this album took place at Capitol Studios with an ensemble featuring guitarist, Marc Ribot, the fiddle of Stuart Duncan and a rhythm section of Tony Garnier on bass and Karriem Riggins on drums. This line-up played “Just You, Just Me,” Irving Berlin’s “How Deep Is The Ocean” and the Bob Dylan song, “This Dream Of You,” on which Randall Krall plays accordion.

This Dream Of You is music for right now but it is also a “long playing record,” one that feels like a movie that you might share with someone because you know they’ll stay with it until the final reel. As Diana says, “If ‘But Beautiful’ is the overture, then ‘Singing In The Rain’ is the end title.”

Diana Krall is the only vocalist, in the jazz category, to have nine albums debut at the top of the Billboard Jazz Albums chart. To date, her albums have garnered five Grammy® Awards, ten Juno® Awards and have also earned nine gold, three platinum and seven multi-platinum albums.  

Krall grew up in Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada. Her grandfather was a coal miner and he along with her grandmother worked in a small diner in their later years. Her mother taught library and music and her father was a chartered accountant who collected 78 rpm records and also played the piano. Her Uncle, Randall Krall is also a musician. She was surrounded by a deep love and respect for music and art. Diana grew up listening to music played on 78 records. “West End Blues”, a song composed by Louis Armstrong was a song she listened to over and over. She learned to play 78 records on a windup gramophone and discovered many artists through playing those recordings at a very young age. Diana’s first job was playing piano in a local bar in her hometown when she was 15 years old. She learned from so many great musicians who generously gave their time experience and kindness. Many musicians she had the opportunity to learn from and play with were the very artists who created the art form she honors in her playing.

Diana has worked as a piano player, who also sings, all over the world. She is blessed to have a loving husband and two beautiful children. They live in New York City and Vancouver, Canada.

Angela Predhomme | "So Good To Be Free"

There’s something powerful and inspiring about an independent artist who pursues her passion and finds widespread success on her own terms, rather than following the generally accepted mainstream paths of others. Embracing her innermost creative truth, Angela Predhomme’s career got off to a fast start in 2007 when she sold the second song she had ever written to a major TV and production company. 

Since including the prophetically titled “Just Like Magic” on her self-titled 2008 debut album, the multi-talented singer songwriter has been unstoppable, releasing four more full-length albums and placing as a finalist in major songwriting competitions. Over the years, her songs have been streamed nearly five million times around the globe via commercial business licensing. Beyond building her fan base via Spotify and YouTube, her voice has become familiar via placements in-store, in office, retail and corporate settings and through licensing to popular TV films and series. Impressively, she achieved all this not by following her dreams to industry hotspots like L.A., New York or Nashville, but simply by creating and sharing her musical heart, writing and recording from her longtime home of Michigan.  

Having made the decision to take the plunge when she realized “there is always a place for strong, heartfelt music,” her warm, inviting vocals have earned strong comparisons to those of Norah Jones. Yet she fashions herself more like a blues and soul inflected, Beatles-esque pop singer songwriter whose influences range from The Rolling Stones and Ray Charles to Sheryl Crow, Jewel and Sarah McLachlan. 

Signing recently with Symphonic Distribution, a top digital distribution and music publishing company, Angela is gearing up to roll out two dynamic new singles that showcase different sides of her ever-evolving artistry. On “So Good to Be Free,” the singer blends wit, wisdom and thoughtful and blissful self-confidence with an infectious beat that pays homage to Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Bo Diddley, a favorite of her dad’s. A defiant anthem expressing the true freedom that comes from non-conformity and loving who you are, the song is about having the courage to be yourself. 

A definite advantage of achieving success after raising a family and serving as an instructor of English as a Second Language at two major universities (Michigan State and the University of Michigan) is the ability to like what you see in the mirror and write inspiring lyrics like: “Your rules don’t apply to me/So I blow away all the pressure to measure up to/What don’t mean a thing. . .I don’t need the look or the trend. . .’Cause I’m free to be whatever I choose to be.”

“I’ve just gotten to the point in my life where I don’t feel the need to worry about anything like that anymore, about fitting into people’s expectations of what I’m supposed to be,” Angela says. “I’m comfortable with the fact that my personal values are different from those of a Hollywood-imposed standard where a woman’s appearance, age and fashion sense is of primary importance to our culture. Of course, I worried about those things when I was in my 20s, but even when I was emerging later as a singer and songwriter, I never chased the trends. ‘So Good to Be Free’ is my declaration of independence from such limited thinking.”

Following up her 2019 album Love, which featured songs that explored that concept with a universal, “hippie” like sensibility, Angela’s other new track “Changeless Sky” is an unabashedly romantic song that finds her returning to her stripped-down piano and vocal performance roots. Its simple arrangement allows the sweet emotional subtleties of her voice to take center stage. While she offers her cheeky side with playful lines like “You got me for good/Outlasting your black tattoo,” her overall sentiment in the chorus is pure timelessness: “I am your changeless sky/No matter the sun and shade passing by/The world might be twisting, thrashing right outside/But I am your changeless sky.”

Angela’s lifelong passion for music was cultivated early in her life. Her world changed at age 10, when her grandmother moved from a house to a condo and gave her family a piano – which quickly became her first instrument. She later studied classical voice and the acoustic guitar. Influenced early on by the music her family listened to and what she heard on radio stations in nearby Detroit, Angela absorbed everything from 50’s R&B and Motown greats like Smokey Robinson and Marvin Gaye to Ray Charles and Sam Cooke. 

With a discography that includes her albums Don’t Wonder(2011), Let It Fall (2013), Will (2015) and ten indie singles, Angela’s catchy, heartwarming songs have been heard by millions through television, film and in major retail chains. Her major credits include the popular 2018 Hallmark movie “Christmas on Honeysuckle Lane,” Lifetime’s hit show “Dance Moms,” Freeform’s “Switched at Birth,” TLC’s “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo,” commercials for ING Bank and Fiat, and closing credit placement in the film “A Wedding Most Strange.” 

Featured on the radio industry hub AllAccess and interviewed as a “rising star” in Thrive Global and Medium’s Authority Magazine, Angela was also a finalist in Adweek’s advertising music contest and was a Song of the Year contest finalist for “Extra Day,” “My New Favorite Song” and “This Might Be Good.” “This Might Be Good” and “Too Much Time” won honorable mention in the World’s Best Songs competition and Gary Allen’s Song Contest, respectively. Angela’s tunes have also been heard on AAA, public and college radio.  

“I’ve built my career on making music for people to enjoy and connect with, and I always strive to move them, touch their lives, bring them up and contribute something positive in some way,” she says. “I made a conscious decision early on to be a socially responsible artist, and I want my songs to offer a sense of hope while encouraging listeners to believe in themselves and what they can accomplish if they embrace and go after their dreams.”  

Nina Simone's classic 1965 albums I Put a Spell on You and Pastel Blues released as definitive audiophile grade versions

Nina Simone's classic 1965 albums I Put a Spell on You and Pastel Blues will be released as definitive audiophile grade versions as the third installment of Verve/UMe’s recently launched audiophile vinyl reissues series Acoustic Sounds. Utilizing the skills of the top mastering engineers and the unsurpassed production craft of Quality Record Pressings, the LPs, which will be available November 6, were mastered in stereo from the original analog tapes, pressed on 180-gram vinyl and packaged by Stoughton Printing Co. in high-quality tip-on gatefold jackets. Like all Acoustic Sounds titles, the releases are being supervised by Chad Kassem, CEO of Acoustic Sounds, the world’s largest source for audiophile recordings. 

I Put a Spell on You and Pastel Blues are two of the seven incredible albums that Simone recorded for Philips Records during an extremely prolific four-year period from 1963-1967. Lauded during their initial releases, both albums have only grown in stature and popularity over the years as Simone’s timeless recordings, many covering such important territory as race and equality, remain as vital and relevant as ever 55 years later. A distinctive contralto vocalist and Julliard-schooled pianist who expressively melded jazz, blues, pop and classical in her repertoire, Simone was unlike most other top-line vocalists of her time as the ardent political activist often used her voice to protest racial inequality and became a siren of the civil rights movement. In 2018 Simone was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, who proclaimed: “Her triumphant voice sang what it meant to be young, gifted and black in a sometimes unjust and troubled world.”

Dubbed the High Priestess of Soul, Simone radiantly covers a wide range of emotional territory on I Put a Spell on You, including angst in relationships, true love blooming in the trees, the bluesy acceptance of life, and moody anger. Producer, arranger and conductor Hal Mooney contributes the compelling orchestral support along with Simone’s guitarist Rudy Stevenson in creating the perfect backdrop for Simone to express, sometimes viscerally, sometimes joyfully.

The album opens with her hit title track written by Screaming’ Jay Hawkins whose 1956 recording was selected years later by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a seminal genre shaper. Simone, who named her 1992 autobiography after the song title, sings with a devilish enchantment in a ballad-like setting as the ominous strings swell. She also covers Jacques Brel’s “Ne me quitte pas” in a moving rendition of a tragic lost love, ranges upbeat with the witty “Marriage Is for Old Folks,” leads the band in the instrumental “Blues on Purpose” with tasty licks by the pianist and Stevenson, and wonderfully zips into the popish swing on “Gimme Some,” which is Simone’s lusty embrace of love. In the original liner notes, she says, “We need somebody not to make fun of sex but to praise it.” In 2017 NPR ranked I Put a Spell on You #3 on its list of “150 Greatest Albums by Women,” 

While I Put a Spell on You is buoyed with strings, Pastel Blues, released four months later, finds Simone leading a subdued quintet through a nine-song set of wit, protest, catharses, yearning and even a touch of fun. She’s expressing the blues—not the blues of old but a more modern moan that shows the depth of her emotion. Simone puts a piano dance into the bones of the blues standard “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out,” wraps her mourn around “End of the Line” as she feels like a “discarded Valentine,” and then goes upbeat and hopeful in an R&B vein with her take on the vaudeville-era tune, “Trouble in Mind,” an often-covered tune that the Blues Foundation in 2020 inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame as a “classic Blues Recording.” 

You can hear Simone own the compelling lyrics as she concludes that through all the troubles “the sun is going to shine in my back door someday.” But Pastel Blues also has the rage when Simone dives into “Strange Fruit,” with the vehement protest she had expressed a year earlier when she debuted her controversial “Mississippi Goddam.” Simone ends the album with a piano punch on the 10-minute-plus prayer “Sinnerman,” an African American traditional spiritual played with gospel grooves, ecstatic vocals and a poignant message of redemption. In the ‘60s when she was playing in Greenwich Village, she used this tune as her set finale. Many of the tracks from the album have influenced the music of hip-hop throughout the years and continue to be frequently sampled by the likes of Talib Kweli, Timbaland, Flying Lotus, Brother Ali and others. Pitchfork ranked Pastel Blues #21 of the “200 Best Albums of the 1960s” in 2017.

Now with these Acoustic Sounds Series releases pressed at Quality Record Pressings, two of Simone's most revered albums are on audiophile grade vinyl and sounding better than ever.

Jazz Legend Grover Washington, Jr. Commemorative Vinyl Released

Lightyear Entertainment has released a commemorative double vinyl of beloved artist Grover Washington, Jr. on Black Friday for Record Store Day. This release marks 20 years since the passing of the immensely popular artist who was largely responsible for creating a bridge between jazz and R&B.  

Grover was well loved by his fans but also by the many musicians who worked with him over the years. He was a contemporary jazz artist whose music topped the “Smooth Jazz” charts, but his sound was funky, and his music was respected in all jazz and R&B circles.  His live performances and worldwide success prove that he was a timeless gem of an artist who entertained his audiences with a powerhouse band of some of the best players in the business. 

This superb live recording – cut in June 1997 at the Paramount Center for the Arts in Peekskill, upstate New York – captures the essence of Grover’s greatness. With a coterie of ‘A’ class musicians in support, the legendary sax man’s work on this album demonstrates why he was not only a leader in his field but a pioneer capable of blending the subtleties of jazz with the funk and sweat of soul music. 

In addition to Grover himself on tenor, soprano, alto, and baritone sax, the album features Donald Robinson on keyboards, Gerald Veasley on bass, Richard Lee Steacker on guitars, Steven Wolf on drums, and Pablo Batista on congas and percussion. It was produced by Grammy winner Jason Miles, and Executive Produced by Christine Washington, Jason Miles and Tim Ryan.

“We released a CD of these recordings in 2010, which has sold well for 10 years,” said Lightyear President Arnie Holland. “But when Grover’s family suggested we do a vinyl, we were thrilled to do it. The album was lovingly remastered for vinyl by Peter Humphreys at Masterwork, and lacquers cut by Joe Nino-Hernes at Sterling Sound.  The result sounds amazing and feels like you are at the show.”

The Double Vinyl with download card is in a gatefold jacket with satin coating and metallic gold highlights. The vinyl itself is 180 Grams audiophile quality and gold metallic opaque colored vinyl was utilized, to match the gold on the cover of the album.

The album was released on November 27 to Record Store Day retailers on an exclusive basis for 90 days, after which it will be available generally.

Brazilian-born guitarist Ricardo Grilli shifts perspective on personal, musical and global history on 1962

“Once upon a time” has to start somewhere. On his last album, 1954, guitarist/composer Ricardo Grilli chose to begin his own story in the year of his father’s birth – a date that also coincided with the dawn of the Space Age and the height of bebop in New York City. With his inviting yet evocative follow-up, 1962, Grilli shifts perspective by leaping forward to a new starting point: this time, his mother’s birth year.

Less than a decade separates the inspirations behind the two halves of Grill’s musical diptych. Yet the eras are markedly distinct: with 1962 the guitarist cast his mind back to a time when bebop had fused with R&B to create the more raucous sounds of hard bop; rock and roll was evolving from its freewheeling origins to take on the rich complexities that would lead to the British Invasion and psychedelia; and his native Brazil was undergoing a tumultuous time period that would soon culminate in the 1964 coup d’état ushering in two decades of military rule.

All of that was on Grilli’s mind, but as on 1954 he avoided explicitly referencing the sounds and styles of the past when composing the music for its sequel. Instead, he focused on the idea of evolution and change that characterized the 1960s and imbued his own music with those themes. Then he enlisted a remarkable quintet with the ability to fluidly explore the guitarist’s modern concepts while harkening to the lessons of the past. Bassist Joe Martin and drummer Eric Harland rturn from 1954, joined here by saxophone great Mark Turner and pianist Kevin Hays.

Reflecting on the past, Grilli explains, doesn’t necessarily mean looking backwards. In his view, framing his own origins through the lifespan of his parents has allowed him to take a wide perspective of the present day while recognizing the recurrent echoes of history. “With both albums, I wanted to create connections between the past and how the future looks from there. It’s always interesting to think about what was going on back then, the context that my parents grew up in and how their taste in music passed on to me. This music takes those aesthetics and tries to modernize them through my own voice.”

Though 1962 is far from a protest record, it does take a slightly darker view from both ends of its timeline. Grilli’s own birth in 1985 coincided with the end of Brazil’s military dictatorship and the country’s first direct elections. In 2020 things seem to have come full circle with the far right’s rise to power in Brazil along with uncomfortably authoritarian tendencies in Grilli’s adopted home in the U.S. “It’s amazing to see how short people’s memories,” he laments. “It’s a pretty tricky political scenario in Brazil; we went through a few calm years and now it seems like we’re in another edgy period. It makes for more hectic, turbulent times for everybody, and I think that influenced my music.”

Whether it’s those political parallels or simply his concern for his family back home, Grilli found the influence of Brazilian music emerging much more strongly in his music for 1962 than it has in the past, though again the influences are subtle and filtered through his own singular vision. “Coyote,” for instance, is at its core a slow samba, while “Lunàtico” is built on the foundation of a maracatu groove, albeit slightly bent, as the title suggests. The name is also a reference to Brooklyn’s Bar Lunatico, a beloved venue close to the guitarist’s home.

The atmospheric intro “1954-1962” bridges the two albums, with Grilli playing alone through effects-laden guitar tones to suggest a journey through time. The band then enters on “Mars,” which continues the composer’s fascination with astronomy through a soaring piece inspired by the Red Planet. That theme also appears on “Voyager,” another title with a double meaning – in addition to suggesting the exploratory spacecraft launched in the late 70s, Voyager is also the name of Harland’s adventurous band. “Eric’s approach is to have very minimal written material and then just let the music happen. I decided to try that with this tune as my nod to Eric. It’s a fun one to play, and I feel it really takes advantage of his energy.”

In his liner notes, recently retired Smalls Jazz Club founder Mitch Borden writes, “Every decade creates its own Bird, Bud or Monk. But it becomes the goal to be not of an age but for all time.” That idea resonates with Grilli’s thoroughly modern reimagining of the jazz idioms of the past, and for his own generation Smalls was a beacon. “183 W. 10th St.” remains the club’s address, and the piece is Grilli’s take on the forward-looking bop vibe that found a home there for musicians like Mark Turner. It was also a home base for guitarist Peter Bernstein, to whom Grilli pays homage on “Signs.”

“E.R.P.” looks farther back into that lineage, its title both a dedication to bop pioneer Bud Powell (whose birth name was Earl Rudolph Powell) and a callback to “E.S.P.,” the classic Wayne Shorter piece originally recorded by Miles Davis’ second quintet (whose existence roughly coincides with this album’s timeframe, as the first quintet did with 1954). “The Sea and the Night” finds inspiration in the isolation and darkness found adrift in the limitless ocean, while “Virgo (Oliver’s Song)” was written for the birth of Grilli’s cousin’s first son.

Beyond the two timelines suggested by the album titles, Grilli sees this pair of recordings as the two halves of an interstellar journey – if 1954 launched listeners into the stratosphere, 1962 brings them home, wiser but still marveling at the vast expanse of the universe. “This album to me feels to me like we’ve gone way out there, but we’re able to make the trip back. I like to divide the journey into those two periods, with both being equally here and out there but in an inverse basis. I think it provides a nice closure for this project, at least for now.”

Born in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and based in New York City, guitarist and composer Ricardo Grilli is one of the most prominent voices of the modern guitar. He has performed with such renowned musicians as Chris Potter, Chris Cheek, Will Vinson, John Escreet and EJ Strickland, among others. In 2013, he released his debut album, If On A Winter's Night, a Traveler, followed in 2016 by 1954, which featured Aaron Parks, Joe Martin and Eric Harland. Grilli holds a bachelor's degree in guitar with honors from Berklee College of Music and a master's degree in Jazz Studies from New York University.

Pianist Cory Smythe Releases "Accelerate Every Voice"

Pianist and composer Cory Smythe evokes cyborg choirs and coastal floods on Accelerate Every Voice, his second release for Pyroclastic Records and the follow-up to 2018 album Circulate Susanna. Bringing together five vocalists from the a cappella, new and improvised music scenes, AEV cradles Smythe’s piano in an uncanny valley of voices before submerging it in an undersea expanse.  

“It began with my appreciation for Andrew Hill’s Lift Every Voice,” says Smythe. “It was kind of a fanciful idea about whether I could pay homage to his record while taking part of its logic to the nth degree, replacing the whole band with vocalists — vocal percussion, vocal bass, etcetera.”  

Smythe began discussing the project almost immediately with vocal-percussionist and director Kari Francis, whose acclaimed work on the a cappella scene includes a stint on NBC’s “The Sing Off,” and whose knowledge extends backward from present-day collegiate a cappella into its early history with the Yale Whiffenpoofs.  

“I had been into the idea of collegiate a cappella embodying a kind of optimism,” says Smythe, “and maybe a complicated kind of optimism, a poisoned-by-whiteness American kind of optimism.” Francis pointed him to what many consider “the founding document of the whole scene, ‘The Whiffenpoof Song,’” says Smythe, “which is itself based on a poem by Rudyard Kipling — of ‘white man’s burden’ fame — called ‘Gentlemen Rankers.’ The speaker of this poem is born into wealth and privilege, and now he’s bemoaning his loss of status — or perhaps sardonically celebrating his descent from a place of safety to one of imminent danger.”   

Dotted with elements of Hill’s music, the recording also offers traces of “The Whiffenpoof Song.” On title track “Accelerate Every Voice,” dissonant fragments coalesce into the borrowed Whiffenpoof refrain, “Pass and be forgotten with the rest,” before the featured improvisers Michael Mayo and Kyoko Kitamura deliver searing solos.  

Smythe rounds out the soloing, performing on a hardware setup conceived during a project with colleague Craig Taborn that features a small keyboard set atop his piano to play a piano sample tuned a quarter tone sharp. “This allows me to play the pitches in between the pitches,” says Smythe, who treats the setup both as a compositional tool and as an extension of his instrument, allowing him to improvise within the album’s glossy, spectral harmonies.  

Microtonal harmonies figure prominently in the vocal writing as well. One such sonority opens “Northern Cities Vowel Shift,” whose precisely tuned intervals and evolving layers of vowel sounds create the impression of a moving, molten mass above Francis’ beats and Steven Hrycelak’s bass line. On “Kinetic Whirlwind Sculpture I,” a stretto vocal progression of improvised vowel sounds melds with the piano Smythe has transformed via talk box to emulate the singers’ vocal formants. Momentum gathers moving into “Vehemently,” where lead singer Raquel Acevedo Klein floats above a texture of Kipling quotations, a cappella vocables and a refrain borrowed from the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement.   

Hill’s seminal recording offered Smythe more than sonic inspiration. Named for James Weldon Johnson’s “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing,” the poem-turned-song that became the Black national anthem, Hill’s Lift Every Voice reflects an of-its-time social and political resonance — “a music,” says Smythe, “of transcendent optimism in the face of overwhelming harm.”  

Another caustic harm upends the record on closer “Piano and Ocean Waves for Deep Relaxation” — part ironic venture into new age and part imaginary realization of Annea Lockwood’s “Southern Exposure,” which calls for a piano to disappear into advancing tides. As the world watches in horror the accelerating rise of global sea levels (whose anthropogenic source artist Julian Charrière depicts in images that adorn the record’s cover and interior), Smythe notes: “It seems like Annea’s could be the piano music of the very near future.” 

Pianist Cory Smythe has worked closely with pioneering artists in new, improvisatory and classical music, including saxophonist-composer Ingrid Laubrock, violinist Hilary Hahn and multidisciplinary composers from Anthony Braxton to Zosha Di Castri. His own music “dissolves the lines between composition and improvisation with rigor” (Chicago Reader), and his first record, Pluripotent, garnered praise from Jason Moran: “Hands down one of the best solo recordings I’ve ever heard.” Smythe has been featured at the Newport Jazz, Wien Modern, Trondheim Chamber Music, Nordic Music Days, Approximation, Concorso Busoni and Darmstadt festivals, as well as at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart festival, where he recently received an invitation to premiere new work created in collaboration with Peter Evans and Craig Taborn. He has received commissions from Milwaukee’s Present Music, the Banff Centre for the Arts, the Trondheim Jazz Orchestra, the International Contemporary Ensemble — of which he is a longtime member — and The Shifting Foundation, which supported both Accelerate Every Voice as well as his 2018 release Circulate Susanna. Smythe received a Grammy award for his work with Hahn and plays regularly in the critically acclaimed Tyshawn Sorey Trio. 

Pianist-composer Kris Davis founded Pyroclastic Records in 2016 to serve the release of her acclaimed recordings Duopoly and Octopus with the goal of growing the label into a thriving platform that would serve like-minded, cutting-edge artists. In 2019, Davis launched a nonprofit to support those artists whose expression flourishes beyond the commercial sphere. By supporting their creative efforts and ensuring distribution of their work, Pyroclastic empowers emerging and established artists — including Cory Smythe, Ben Goldberg, Chris Lightcap, Angelica Sanchez and Marilyn Crispell, Sara Schoenbeck, Eric Revis and Craig Taborn — to continue challenging conventional genre-labeling within their fields. Pyroclastic also seeks to galvanize and grow a creative community, offering young artists new opportunities, supporting diversity and expanding the audience for noncommercial art. 

Modern Romance: Their Greatest Tracks

Modern Romance are a popular Latin American-influenced band (Salsa Pop), active since 1981 in the UK. Original band members who enjoyed success with the band from the first hit, ‘Everybody Salsa’, included DAvid Jaymes (Bass), Robbie Jaymes (brother of David and Keyboard player), John Du Prez (trumpets and horns), Andy Kyriacou (drums) and later, Michael J. Mullins (lead vocalist 1982-85).

Between 1981 and 1983 the group had a string of UK hits including 'Everybody Salsa' (No. 12), 'Ay Ay Ay Ay Moosey' (No. 10), 'Queen of the Rapping Scene / Nothing Ever Goes the Way You Plan' (No. 37), 'Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White' (No. 15), 'Best Years of Our Lives' (No. 4), 'High Life' (No. 8), 'Don't Stop That Crazy Rhythm' (No. 14), and 'Walking in the Rain' (No. 7 - went on to become one of the highest selling singles of the year). Two albums also entered the top 50 in 1983. Modern Romance made a total of 13 appearances on Top Of The Pops.

They band were huge in Europe and Japan, also achieving a No. 1 hit in the Far East with their single 'Walking in the Rain'. The album 'Adventures in Clubland' (1981) hit No. 1 in Venezuela, earning them a Gold Disc.

Andy Kyriacou took over lead vocals in 1999 and has been at the helm ever since.  The band’s resurgence was buoyed by the ‘Best Years of Our Lives’ track being featured in the very first Shrek movie. The band continue to perform at festivals and Retro events all over Europe.

This album features many of their hits including ‘Best Years of Our Lives’, ‘Ay Ay Ay Ay Moosey’, ‘Everybody Salsa’ & ‘Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White’, as well as new songs, ‘Rhythm Is My Lover’, ‘Come To Me’ & ‘Mi Chica Latina.’

Andy is currently working on a book, transcribing the diaries he kept in the 80’s which will be published through Agent Fox Media in 2021, (approximately August/September), to coincide with the 40-year anniversary of the first Modern Romance single, ‘Everybody Salsa’. The book will feature some great references to other 80’s acts, funny little stories will be retold, and there will also be the obligatory “interesting reading” one should expect from a book written by a member of a high profile 80’s pop band, drawing from a very honest diary. Say no more!!

Before that, an album “Their Greatest Tracks” will be released through Nub Music which will also feature 6 new songs.

Elton John Unveils Previously Unheard Jazz Version of 'Come Down In Time'

In celebration of the 50th anniversary of his seminal album 'Tumbleweed Connection', Elton John has today unveiled a previously unheard jazz version of 'Come Down In Time'. Listen here. Limited to just 5,000 copies of 10" vinyl available today from here, 'Come Down In Time (Jazz Version)' hadn't been heard for close to 5 decades until this year, it was uncovered deep in the archives whilst researching rarities for Elton's forthcoming boxset 'Elton: Jewel Box' (released 13th November on UMe).

'Come Down In Time (Jazz Version)' and 'Ballad Of A Well-Known Gun (DJM Studio)' Released Today as Strictly Limited Edition 10" Single - Listen Here https://eltonjohn.lnk.to/CDITJVDigPR

Recorded on 20th March 1970 at London's Trident Studios, 'Come Down In Time (Jazz Version)' more than doubles the length of the final version (re-recorded 3 months later with different musicians) that appears on 'Tumbleweed Connection'. Without the orchestral arrangements by Paul Buckmaster which coloured the album version, the track ends in the same way as the original with Bernie's line "while some leave you counting stars in the night" before starting up again as a jazz-influenced instrumental. The track features some astonishing piano and guitar interplay between Elton and Caleb Quaye, supported by the Hookfoot rhythm section of David Glover on bass and Roger Pope on drums. 'Very nice!' producer Gus Dudgeon exclaims as the track breaks down, before resuming with yet more freestyle playing.

'Come Down In Time' was originally taken from Elton's seminal 1970 album 'Tumbleweed Connection' which celebrates the 50th anniversary of its original release today (Friday 30th October 2020). 'Tumbleweed Connection' is a much-loved album within Elton John's back catalogue. Steeped in what was to become known as 'Americana', it was written and recorded entirely in London from 20th March to 6th June 1970, fitted in amongst Elton's various promotional dates in UK and Europe for his previous, eponymous, album. Although released afterwards, it was made before 'Your Song' had become a hit and Elton's triumphant debut performances at the Troubadour in Los Angeles in late August - the first time Elton and Bernie stepped foot on the soil they had written about so eloquently about on the LP. Its iconic sepia sleeve evokes a long-forgotten West, and the album itself contains some of Elton and Bernie Taupin's greatest early songs: 'Ballad Of A Well-Known Gun', 'Burn Down The Mission' and 'Amoreena'.

'Come Down In Time (Jazz Version)' is now available to buy here on 10" vinyl only. This release is restricted to 5,000 copies only

10" Vinyl Format details: 

Side A – Come Down In Time (Jazz Version)

Side B – Ballad Of A Well-Known Gun (DJM Demo)

Stefano Bollani | “Jesus Christ Superstar”

Stefano Bollani started playing the piano at the age of six. An enfant prodige (later graduating from the Music Conservatory of Florence), he devoured music whenever he could, constantly searching for stimulations, everywhere, in all the music of the past, and even more so by exploring the present. He was fourteen years old when he first saw the film “Jesus Chris Superstar.” Young Bollani instantly fell in love with the music, the story and the atmosphere of the scenes and soon learned every lyric. Now – after over 30 years of multi-faceted music-making, numerous recordings, significant encounters and concerts all over the world – Bollani has recorded his own version of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s masterpiece critically acclaimed, GRAMMY® Award-winning production. Exactly 50 years after release of the original concept album “Jesus Christ Superstar” Stefano Bollani presents “Piano Variations on Jesus Christ Superstar” available via Alobar (Alobar, AL1007).

In an effort to distinguish his version from the original, Bollani decided to present the music as a solo piano format. “I have chosen the piano solo formula because the love affair here is actually between the rock opera and myself,” Bollani explains, “And I know a love affair is better when it stays intimate.” Most grateful for the exceptional permission granted to him to re-interpret the cult opera “Jesus Christ Superstar,” Bollani has freely, and respectfully, approached and improvised on the original tunes and songs by following his own playful wit and musical spirit, informed by many of the musical traditions, genres, styles and encounters that have influenced him, and shaped and consolidated what is considered his very own idiom.

To create a warm, mellow and uniquely dense yet clear piano sound, Bollani chose to tune his piano to 432 Hz. That tuning allowed Bollani to express the profundity and warmth of Lloyd Webber and Rice’s strong and round film characters. Bollani insists on respecting the narrative structure of what he considers to be “the most fascinating story ever told, about love and hate, devotion and more.” Nonetheless, when approaching the single tunes of “Jesus Christ Superstar,” Stefano Bollani follows his own musical spirit and genius by freely improvising on and fantastically elaborating the original material in the moment – with deep respect and with beautiful fantasy.

The 2-LP heavyweight 180g vinyl edition comes in an elegant high-quality Gatefold packaging with poly-lined inner sleeves, and the CD edition in a 6-side Digi Sleeve with an 8-page booklet. Both editions contain liner notes by John Higgs as well as drawings and a photo by Valentina Cenni.