Darrell Katz | "Galeanthropology"

The artistic vision of jazz composer Darrell Katz recognizes no boundaries and Galeanthropology (JCA, November 19, 2021) is a varied showcase of his genre-spanning interest in American music from Jimi Hendrix’s “Belly Button Window” to original jazz-art song settings of the poetry of Paula Tatarunis. Working with the drummerless ensemble OddSong, which gracefully blends composition and improvisation into seamless performances, the album ranges from gritty blues to sublime meditations on the vagaries of life.

Settings of poems by Katz’s late wife, Paula Tatarunis, are among the highlights of the album. Few modern composers, in any genre, are as good as Katz at composing music for voice that reinforces the meaning of words. Sung with luminous transparency by vocalist Rebecca Shrimpton, “Guiding Narrative” is a poignant poem about the inevitability of misfortune in life. It features a melody seamlessly linked to the cadence of the words, while rhythmic phrases from the marimba and saxophones provide jazzy propulsion, and the instrumental scoring shades and deepens the meaning. Violinist Helen Sherrah Davies’ rhapsodic, melancholy solo beautifully encapsulates the poem’s rueful irony and sadness. The final line of the poem was originally scored for voice and violin, but Katz ended up scoring for a trio of voices. Written while Katz was recovering from knee replacement surgery, the poem is the source of the band’s name. “I was in the hospital, having a difficult time with my recovery from surgery,” Katz says. “And so it’s about me—I was lost in the forest of the night. Not only did it give me the name of the group, but it was a name that Paula called me.”

A little studio manipulation helped create the moving “Women Talking.” When the group performed it live, women members of the band talked among themselves at the opening of the song. But Katz didn’t feel it had the comforting quality he wanted, so he gave lines that Tatarunis had written to female members of the band, then created a collage of voices in the studio. The music shadows the words sometimes echoing them (the droplets of marimba notes when Shrimpton sings “rain whispering”) and sometimes amplifying the beautiful melancholy of the poem. Phil Scarff interweaves a lovely soprano sax solo into the ensemble and a collective improvisation is perfectly integrated into the flow of the score.

Vocalist Shrimpton (whose virtuosic solo rendition of Mingus’ “Duke Ellington’s Sound of Love” is an album highlight) recites “Outta Horn,” the story of a discouraged poet inspired seeing John Coltrane in a club, told in what Katz describes as Tatarunis’ “detective novel/film noir” voice. The accompanying music offers a commentary on the story that balances composition and improvisation. “There are scored passages, but also section that include only directions as to what person is playing and when, when everybody stops or what approach  they should take; it's mapped out,” Katz explains. “So, each performance has some kind of similarity to the others, but there are important differences.”

The title track, a witty and loving tribute to Tatarunis written by Katz, is playfully humorous (much like Tatarunis’ poetry often is) with a tender emotional twist at the end. The title derives from a mental condition in which patients believe they are a cat. The music is playful with the words—for instance, there’s a quote of Charlie Parker’s “Ornithology” in response to the question “Wouldn’t you really rather be a bird?” Alto saxophonists Rick Stone and Lihi Haruvi, in another nod to Parker, are the soloists.

Arrangements of “Sweet Baby James” and the Standell’s garage band anthem “Dirty Water” have their origin in Jazz Along the Charles, a 2018 outdoor concert in Boston during which jazz groups played their interpretations of Boston-related songs. Instead of the original spoken introduction to “Dirty Water,” Katz substitutes “Microtonal.” The tough guy persona of the poem’s voice fits with the song’s outlaw sensibility, but Katz’s abstract setting contrasts with the song’s famous rhythmic hook. Baritone saxophonist Melanie Howell Brooks uses that hook to propel her flowing, blues-inflected solo. Musically related, are settings of the folk song, “I Am a Poor Wayfaring Stranger,” Jimi Hendrix’s “Belly Button Window,” and Katz’s bruising ballad original, “The Red Blues,” an homage to Julius Hemphill. Katz translates them into the sound world of OddSong with his own riffs and rhythmic figures, tart and often surprising harmonies, and opens them to the band’s superb soloists.

OddSong handles the many demands of the music with graceful flair. Comprised of a saxophone quartet with violin, marimba, and voice, OddSong walks a fine line between classical chamber ensemble and big band sax section. Their passionate engagement with music, from the unclassifiable fusion of jazz and classical elements in “Guiding Narrative” and “Women Talking” to the jazzy harmonies and funky swagger of “Dirty Water” and “Belly Button Window,” indicate a band perfectly in tune with its leader’s vision. The instrumentation gives Katz plenty of opportunity to work with unusual textures and timbres and the group displays a fine-tuned balance that allows all the colors to shine through.

Musician-composer-bandleader-educator Darrell Katz is a composer of uncommon range and broad vision, able to weave influences from every musical sphere into his own unique voice. The Boston Phoenix called him, "one of Boston's most ambitious and provocative jazz composers." As director of the Jazz Composers Alliance (JCA), an organization he helped found in 1985, Katz has documented his large ensemble work on 10 previous CDs with the Jazz Composers Alliance Orchestra. His JCA Orchestra album Wheelworks was named one of DownBeat’s best CDs of 2015.

He debuted his smaller OddSong ensemble in 2016 with Jailhouse Doc with Holes in Her Socks. Lynn René Bayley, writing in Art Music Lounge, called it “one of the most fascinating jazz albums of 2016, possibly one of the finest albums I’ve heard regardless of genre.” Jerome Wilson, of All About Jazz says “Listening to Darrell Katz's music, it boggles the mind that he is not celebrated as one of the best jazz composers/arrangers around. He has been creating ambitious and accessible works full of humor, social conscience and creativity for decades…”

Satoko Fujii & Taiko Saito | "Underground"

Half a world away from each other, pianist-composer Satoko Fujii and vibraphonist Taiko Saito recapture the delicate intensity of their duo, Futari, on their new CD, Underground. After the pandemic prevented an in-person reunion during a planned European tour, Fujii and Saito agreed to carry on by exchanging sound files over the Internet. Although the format is remote, the resulting music is, if anything, even more intimate and compelling than their debut album, Beyond, which was recorded live in the studio.  “When we started Futari, I had no idea how it would come out. Then our debut tour and CD came out so well,” Fujii says. “Making Underground made us go deeper into our collaboration.” 

In the liner notes, Taiko explains that she approached her responses to Fujii’s music in different ways. Sometimes she listened several times to Fujii’s file and then improvised. Sometimes she would go back in and add another layer of sound, or change what she’s already played.  

Fujii worked in much the same way. “At the very beginning of this project, I listened to the music she sent me several times and then I just played along to it,” she says. “But when I played along to ‘One Note Techno Punks’ and ‘Finite or Infinite,’ I tried several times, and I didn’t like what I played. [Husband and trumpeter] Natsuki [Tamura] suggested that I ‘sing’ on ‘One Note Techno Punks.’ I did it once and I really liked it, but I wanted more, so I overdubbed another vocal track. On ‘Finite and Infinite,’ I assembled short phrases in a way that I liked; it’s the ‘Lego approach’ that I used on Piano Music. On some pieces we both did Lego construction. 

“I know many musicians and fans may think that we cannot make true music this way,” Fujii continues. “But I think this is just another way that we can make true music. We can fix all the notes before we play, we can improvise, and we can exchange music files online to make music. Actually, the reason I love music is because we can approach it in many ways. Music is 200-percent open to any approach you take to it. It is real, free art.”

Whatever the methods that Fujii and Saito use, they create a sound world unlike any other. It’s a beautiful, enigmatic space where conventional distinctions between sound and musical note, between timbre and melody, between spontaneous and composed, blur and fuse into a single visionary statement. So close are their interactions that it’s often hard to tell what instrument—piano or vibraphone—is making the music you’re hearing. The slowly pulsing, richly detailed title track has a massive sound presence, with textures and cryptic melodies playing across its surface. “Break in the Clouds” finds Fujii’s piano lines threading their way through billows of translucent waves of vibraphone. The give and take on “Frost Stirring” with its intertwining melodies and blending textures, is the closest approximation of a live performance. The intricately layered “Finite or Infinite” piles dancing phrases atop one another in a lively, joyful performance. Over and over again, on pieces like “Air” and “Street Ramp,” and “Memory Illusion,” Saito proves to be a wholly original voice on mallet instruments, her extended techniques, firm sense of time, and startling timbres creating arresting accompaniment for the equally inventive Fujii. 

Pianist and composer Satoko Fujii, “an improviser of rumbling intensity and generous restraint” (Giovanni Russonello, New York Times), is one of the most original voices in jazz today. For more than 25 years, she has created a unique, personal music that spans many genres, blending jazz, contemporary classical, rock, and traditional Japanese music into an innovative synthesis instantly recognizable as hers alone. A prolific composer for ensembles of all sizes and a performer who has appeared around the world, she was the recipient of a 2020 Instant Award in Improvised Music, in recognition of her “artistic intelligence, independence, and integrity.”

Since she burst onto the scene in 1996, Fujii has led some of the most consistently creative ensembles in modern improvised music. Highlights include a piano trio with Mark Dresser and Jim Black (1997-2009), and an electrifying avant-rock quartet featuring drummer Tatsuya Yoshida of The Ruins (2001-2008). In addition to a wide variety of small groups of different instrumentation, Fujii also performs in a duo with trumpeter Natsuki Tamura, with whom she’s recorded eight albums since 1997. She and Tamura are also one half of the international free-jazz quartet Kaze, which has released five albums since their debut in 2011. Fujii has established herself as one of the world’s leading composers for large jazz ensembles, prompting Cadence magazine to call her “the Ellington of free jazz.”

Award-winning mallet player-composer Taiko Saito was born in Sapporo but currently lives in Berlin. She studied with marimba virtuoso Keiko Abe and studied classical marimba and percussion at the Toho School of Music. In 1997 she began to improvise and to write music, and moved to Berlin, where she studied vibraphone and composition with David Friedman at the Universität der Künste Berlin. In 2003 she founded the marimba/vibraphone-piano duo with German jazz piano player Niko Meinhold. Their album Koko was released in 2005 and Live in Bogotá was released in 2014. Reed player Tobias Schirmer joins them to make the trio Kokotob. Together with Rupert Stamm, she also created the jazz mallets duo Patema whose recording was released by Zerozero in 2007. She is a founding member of the Berlin Mallet Group, which also includes her former teacher Friedman. She also performs with Fujii, Natsuki Tamura, Schirmer, and percussive dancer Mizuki Wildenhahn in Puzzle. She played with Mary Halvorson at the Berlin Jazz Festival in 2019, and with Silke Eberhard at the Moers Jazz Festival and Berlin Jazz Festival in 2020. 

Satoko Fujii | "Mosaic"

Pianist-composer Satoko Fujii hasn’t let the global pandemic slow her down. She’s recorded solo and duet albums at home and made others by swapping sound files over the internet. Now comes Mosaic, her new album with her trio This Is It!, her first pandemic album made in real time with one band member in a remote location. With drummer Takashi Itani 400 miles away in a Tokyo suburb and Fujii and trumpeter Natsuki Tamura at home together in Kobe, they overcame technical and artistic challenges to capture the buoyant, interactive spirit of their live performances. “This pandemic pushed me to find new ways to create that I have never tried before,” Fujii says. “Nothing can stop us from making music!” 

Fujii missed the opportunity to record the band live last year. “I had two shows in 2020, both at Pit Inn. The first day, I played with my Tokyo Trio and that was recorded and released as Moon on the Lake. On the second day, I played with This is It!, but I didn’t record it. I really regret that now.” 

However, from the beginning of the pandemic, the trio rehearsed online several times and enjoyed it. “I can make music exchanging files online,” Fujii says, “but this trio plays spontaneous improvisation and needs the inspiration that we get when we play together. So we decided to record a session on the internet.”

They discovered that it was not the same as performing and recording in person. For one thing, internet connections can sometimes delay the transmission of sound and they needed to compensate for that when it happened. Fujii found there was another challenge as well. “I had to consciously concentrate more on listening,” she said. “If we play in the same room, listening is as natural as breathing, I’m almost unaware that I’m doing it. But on the internet, it was not like breathing. My ears worked like listening carefully to another language; it required a little extra effort. But we found we could make music in this way.”

Indeed they can. The album bubbles over with the joy of music making, the sheer delight they take in challenging and supporting one another. They play with fierce urgency on “Habana’s Dream,” feeding off each other in a multi-layered ensemble performance. It features Fujii at her most percussive and explosive, with Tamura and Itani alternating brilliant flashes of sound and color with darker, grittier passages. “Dieser Zug,” featuring Itani on vibes, is a lovely construction of contrasting parts. In one section, Itani’s sparkling vibraphone dances around Fujii’s percussive note clusters as Tamura weaves soft low tones between them. It’s a stellar display of the ways in which the trio interlocks their ideas with compelling clarity and balance. The trio initially uses the melody of Fujii’s “Kumazemi” to guide their improvising, but they gradually move far afield from it, exploring timbre and sound as they build tension and momentum. “Sleepless Night” is a dark tone poem, with Itani’s metallic clicking and clattering making a disturbing racket as Fujii and Tamura engage in a troubled dialogue. “76 RH” takes the album out with a burst of energy, blending Fujii’s composition seamlessly with full-on free improvisation. If working virtually posed challenges for this group, it doesn’t show.

Drummer Takashi Itani plays everything from jazz to folk music to rock. He’s been a sideman with a truly bewildering range of musicians, including singer-songwriter Yoshio Hayakawa, new wave rock guitarist Masahide Sakuma; singer-actor Hiroshi Mikami; Michiro Endo, front man of the influential punk band The Stalin; West coast jazz saxophonist Ted Brown; and best-selling Japanese American pop star Hikaru Utada. In addition he has performed with some of Japan’s most prominent poets, including Mizuki Misumi, Shuntaro Tanikawa, Gozo Yoshimasu, and the late Takaaki Yoshimoto.

Trumpeter and composer Natsuki Tamura is internationally recognized for his unique musical vocabulary blending extended techniques with jazz lyricism. This unpredictable virtuoso “has some of the stark, melancholy lyricism of Miles, the bristling rage of late ’60s Freddie Hubbard and a dollop of the extended techniques of Wadada Leo Smith and Lester Bowie,” observes Mark Keresman of JazzReview.com. Throughout his career, Tamura has led bands with radically different approaches. On one hand, there are avant rock jazz fusion bands like his quartet. In contrast, Tamura has focused on the intersection of folk music and sound abstraction with Gato Libre since 2003. The band’s poetic, quietly surreal performances have been praised for their “surprisingly soft and lyrical beauty,” by Rick Anderson in CD Hotlist. In addition, Tamura and pianist Satoko Fujii have maintained an ongoing duo since 1997. Tamura also collaborates on many of Fujii’s projects, from quartets and trios to big bands. As an unaccompanied soloist, he’s released four CDs, including Koki Solo (2021), in celebration of his 70th birthday. He and Fujii are also members of Kaze, a collaborative quartet with French musicians, trumpeter Christian Pruvost and drummer Peter Orins. “As unconventional as he may be,” notes Marc Chenard in Coda magazine, “Natsuki Tamura is unquestionably one of the most adventurous trumpet players on the scene today.” 

Pianist and composer Satoko Fujii, “an improviser of rumbling intensity and generous restraint” (Giovanni Russonello, New York Times), is one of the most original voices in jazz today. For more than 25 years, she has created a unique, personal music that spans many genres, blending jazz, contemporary classical, rock, and traditional Japanese music into an innovative synthesis instantly recognizable as hers alone. A prolific composer for ensembles of all sizes and a performer who has appeared around the world, she was the recipient of a 2020 Instant Award in Improvised Music, in recognition of her “artistic intelligence, independence, and integrity.”

Since she burst onto the scene in 1996, Fujii has led some of the most consistently creative ensembles in modern improvised music. Highlights include a piano trio with Mark Dresser and Jim Black (1997-2009), and an electrifying avant-rock quartet featuring drummer Tatsuya Yoshida of The Ruins (2001-2008). In addition to a wide variety of small groups of different instrumentation, Fujii also performs in a duo with trumpeter Natsuki Tamura, with whom she’s recorded eight albums since 1997. She and Tamura are also one half of the international free-jazz quartet Kaze, which has released five albums since their debut in 2011. Fujii has established herself as one of the world’s leading composers for large jazz ensembles, prompting Cadence magazine to call her “the Ellington of free jazz.”

Tony Malaby | "The Cave Of Winds"

The 2020 pandemic forced most of us indoors, musicians included, resulting in a surfeit of new solo projects and home recordings. Saxophonist Tony Malaby took the opposite approach. Having hosted regular sessions at his home for years, resulting in countless new collaborations and inspired breakthroughs, he decided to take these creative get-togethers out into the streets (both as an antidote for cabin fever and out of consideration for his suddenly homebound neighbors).

Beginning in July of 2020, Malaby began hosting regular sessions underneath a turnpike overpass near his home in New Jersey. Leading a trio featuring bassist John Hébert and drummer Billy Mintz, Malaby invited such improvising luminaries as Tim Berne, Mark Helias, Ches Smith, William Parker and others to join him in the graffiti-covered, reverberant enclave that buzzed with the sound of nearby pedestrians, overhead traffic and the usual collision of nature and humanity that fuels the city.

“My artistic discipline comes from playing sessions,” Malaby says. “I just couldn't let that go. It was something I needed just to keep my head above water with everything that was happening with the pandemic and the [presidential] election. Everything was nuts, so I just had to go down there and throw sound with my guys. It got me through and kept me positive.”

The turnpike sessions proved to be not only a respite from Covid-related stir craziness but also a source of considerable inspiration for Malaby. The saxophonist felt rejuvenated by the freedom and unique sonic qualities of the space, elements that he wanted to carry into the studio. Feeling that a guitar quartet would make the ideal setting, he reconvened Sabino, the group with which Malaby recorded his debut album in 2000. With bassist Michael Formanek, drummer Tom Rainey and guitarist Ben Monder (stepping in for the original album’s Marc Ducret), he recorded the adventurous new album The Cave of Winds, due out January 7, 2022 via Pyroclastic Records.

While there are natural rock formations that share the name in both Niagara Falls and Colorado, The Cave of Winds is Malaby’s affectionate nickname for the turnpike bridge that he made his musical home for the better part of a year. “It was like a tunnel down there,” Malaby recalls. “Wild, crazy things would happen while we were playing in that cavern. Trucks were rolling by, sirens going off, birds singing. We would be down there in 30-degree February weather and the wind would be howling. It was incredible.”

The compositions that make up The Cave of Winds were directly inspired by Malaby’s tenure under the bridge. With the literal and figurative space offered by that environment, he was prompted to pen minimal pieces ripe for expansion by the trio and their guests; at the same time, they also are colored by a return to more traditional jazz contexts by this inveterate free improviser.

“Billy Mintz and John Hébert got me into playing standards and jazz repertoire again,” Malaby explains. That comes into play here. We still play freely, and so, you know, but doing that led me to think about harmonic color, the richness of my roots and the joy of playing changes with someone like Ben Monder.”

One of the most striking examples of this collision of the tradition and Malaby’s intrepid spirit is the album’s closing track, “Just Me, Just Me.” A contrafact based on the chord changes of the classic “Just You, Just Me” (memorably recorded by the likes of Nat King Cole and Thelonious Monk, among countless others), the tune is far more agitated experience than its jaunty predecessor, and while the title is a tongue-in-cheek play on the original it also captures the fervent individuality of these four musicians.

Similarly, the burnished bop melody of “Corinthian Leather” is a loose reinterpretation of Dizzy Gillespie’s “Woody ‘n You,” leading to unspooling invention from both Malaby and Monder as they stretch the flexible theme beyond recognition. Monder’s roaring heavy metal distortion introduces “Scratch the Horse,” which draws inspiration from the Native American ceremonies depicted in the Richard Harris western A Man Called Horse. “Recrudescence” is a hypnotic group improvisation reflecting on the cyclical nature of the musical life, interrupted though it may have been by recent events, while “insect Ward” suggests a sanctuary for Malaby’s restless, flitting soprano (parried by Formanek’s buzzing bowed bass). “Life Coach” is a duo improvisation by Malaby and Rainey dedicated to their former bandleader, bassist Mark Helias, whose presence the saxophonist insists he can hear in the rhythm and language they share.

The Cave of Winds marks the closing of a few chapters for Malaby. For one, it spells the end of the turnpike sessions and the period of research and exploration they represented. Coinciding with the lifting of pandemic-era restrictions, Malaby also left the New York area after more than 25 years for Boston, where he’s taken a position on the faculty of Berklee College of Music.

The album also brings Malaby’s career full circle as he embarks on this new venture. 20 years after the release of Sabino he revisits that quartet with three of his most longstanding collaborators. Malaby met Formanek while the saxophonist was still a student at William Paterson University, when both played with the Mingus Big Band. They were both enlisted by saxophonist Marty Ehrlich for a band that also included Tom Rainey on drums, forging a connection that would remain strong for the next three decades.

While Ducret was featured on the 2000 album, Ben Monder actually precedes him as Sabino’s guitarist, in an early version of the quartet that featured Jeff Williams and Ben Street. Malaby had initially heard the brilliant guitarist in Marc Johnson’s short-lived band Right Brain Patrol, then approached him at the bar of the Knitting Factory. They met again a week later on a session led by Guillermo Klein and have been working together regularly and fruitfully ever since.

Like the primal space its name implies, The Cave of Winds is vast and tempestuous, opening into a reservoir of mystery and inviting the curious to venture deep within. Encouraged by Malaby’s dauntless curiosity, these four stellar musicians delve into the furthest reaches and emerge with inspired riches.

Called “one of New York City’s most in-demand tenor saxophonists [and] one of the most distinctive artists of his time” by All About Jazz, Tony Malaby is an adventurous and acclaimed saxophonist whose work bridges the realms of post-bop and free improvisation. Originally from Arizona, he was based in New York from 1995 until 2021, when he relocated to Boston and joined the faculty of Berklee College of Music. Malaby has been a member of such notable jazz groups as Charlie Haden’s Liberation Orchestra, Paul Motian's Electric Bebop Band, Mark Helias' Open Loose, Fred Hersch's quintet and bands led by Mario Pavone, Tim Berne, Chris Lightcap, Kris Davis, Angelica Sanchez, Michael Attias and Marty Ehrlich. He leads several projects of his own including: Apparitions, the Tony Malaby Cello Trio, the quartet Paloma Recio and the trio Tamarindo.

The OGJB Quartet | "Ode to O"

Ode to O is the second release by the OGJB Quartet featuring four leaders in their own right, saxophonist Oliver Lake, cornetist Graham Haynes, bassist Joe Fonda and drummer Barry Altschul. As with their first release, Bamako, each member has contributed compositions to the new recording which also features two collective improvisations.   

Ever since its first performance at the Winter Jazz Festival in 2016, the OGJB Quartet has been highly acclaimed as one of the most creative collaborative groups working today. Two of its members, Lake and Altschul, are pioneers of modern improvised music going back to its origins in the 1960s, while each of the other two, Haynes and Fonda, have been a strong presence on the improvised music scene since the late 1970s.

The group’s name, an acronym of each musician’s first name, reflects its status as a true collaborative unit. Each member of the OGJB Quartet is also a composer in his own right and a master on his chosen instrument. Accordingly, their second recording together, which follows the highly acclaimed Bamako released in 2019, again features original compositions by all four of its members and two collective improvisations. 

The album is named after Barry Altschul’s composition dedicated to the late Ornette Coleman. According to Altschul, “Ode to O” is a melody that came to him in a dream after hearing of the passing of Ornette Coleman in 2015. The recording also features “Da Bang,” a composition originally dedicated by Altschul to the violin great Billy Bang and designed to stimulate improvising. 

Whereas Bamako was fully acoustic, Ode to O introduces a new element with Graham Haynes incorporating the use of live electronics on one of his two compositions on the new recording, “The Other Side,” and on one of the collective improvisations, “OGJB #4.” “Graham’s use of electronics took the quartet into a totally new zone,” says Fonda. “It opened up the music to new and fresh possibilities.” 

Oliver Lake contributed two compositions, “Justice” and “Bass Bottom.” “Each of them is unique and quite different from the other,” says Fonda. “Whenever anyone gets the opportunity to play Oliver’s music, they are transported into the Lake universe of sound. That is where the OGJB Quartet again went when we recorded his two pieces.” 

“This second recording by the OGJB Quartet draws from a wide range of musical influences that exist inside the quartet,” says Fonda. “On this recording, we pulled out all the stops.” 

“Ode to O represents the huge data set that is the collective experiences of Oliver Lake, Graham Haynes, Joe Fonda and Barry Altschul, representing a wide swath of what remains vital in jazz,” says Bill Shoemaker in his liner notes. “Each performance spools out like a quintuple helix, each strand containing the humanity of music that cries, hollers and sings.”  

TUM Records is a Finnish record label that began operations in May 2003. TUM produces high-quality music recordings and selectively organizes concerts and events, such as the TUMfest in Helsinki. The focus of TUM is on improvised, jazz-based music, placing particular emphasis on free expression and the performing artists’ own music. In addition to providing younger musicians with exposure and a musical platform, TUM promotes more experienced musicians whose work is not favored by the commercial trends of our time. TUM covers feature works by leading Finnish artists.         

Oliver Lake (b. 1942) is an accomplished saxophonist, flutist, composer, poet and visual artist. Lake was born in Marianna, Arkansas, but grew up in St. Louis, Missouri. He began drawing at the age of 13 and started playing the drums soon after, but only picked up the saxophone in high school at the age of 18. In his hometown of St. Louis, Lake first worked in R&B and soul bands with the likes of trumpeter Lester Bowie, then formed, in 1967, his first group as a leader, the Oliver Lake Art Quartet. During the 1960s, Lake was also one of the founders of the Black Artists Group (BAG) in St. Louis. After living briefly in Paris in the early 1970s, Lake settled in New York City and has led his own groups ever since. In 1977, he co-founded the World Saxophone Quartet with David Murray, Julius Hemphill and Hamiet Bluiett. It quickly became one of the most highly acclaimed groups in modern creative music and held that position for three decades, recording a total of 20 albums He is also a co-founder, with bassist Reggie Workman and drummer Andrew Cyrille, of Trio 3, a cooperative group that has over time become one of the main performing vehicles for all three of its members, recording more than 10 albums with several of the later ones also featuring a visiting pianist. Lake is known as a broadminded musician who is comfortable moving across musical genres. In the early 1980s, he led the reggae-influenced Jump Up, a group that attained considerable popular success with its two albums. Currently, Lake continues to lead his own groups, including the Oliver Lake Organ Quartet, as well as perform with Trio 3 and the OGJB Quartet, among others.   

Graham Haynes (b. 1960) grew up in Queens, New York. He first became known as an experimental musician and composer looking for new directions in nu jazz, fusing jazz with elements of hip-hop and electronic music. With aspirations to push jazz beyond its traditional boundaries, Graham Haynes’ first foray into electronic music came in 1979 upon meeting alto saxophonist Steve Coleman. Together, they formed a band called Five Elements, which launched an influential group of improvisers called M-Base Collective in the 1980s. Soon, Haynes was also leading and recording with his own groups. Haynes has studied a wide range of African, Arabic and South Asian music and, after a move to Paris in 1990, incorporated these far-flung influences into his next releases. Haynes returned to New York City in 1993 to take advantage of the flourishing hip-hop scene and, a bit later, the emerging drum ‘n’ bass. Since 2013, Haynes has been a member of the Vijay Iyer Sextet and was featured on its debut recording in 2017. Haynes also performed over a period of several years with the late American cornetist, composer and conductor Lawrence D. “Butch” Morris (1947- 2013), originator of the Conduction method, and has begun working with various ensembles utilizing Conduction. Haynes has also composed works for classical ensembles and has worked on several critically acclaimed multimedia projects and composed music for films.  

Joe Fonda (b. 1954) was born in Amsterdam, upstate New York, and played guitar and bass guitar in his youth. At Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts (1973-75), he studied composition and arranging while also focusing on the double bass as his main instrument. After Berklee, he settled in New Haven playing and recording with trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith, among others. Soon after moving to New York City in the early 1980s, Fonda participated in the collaborative group Mosaic Sextet that both increased his prominence on the New York scene and served as a basis for some key relationships that continue today. In 1992, Fonda and Michael Jefry Stevens co-founded the Fonda/Stevens Group that became the longest lasting and perhaps the hardest working of all the collaborative groups in which Fonda has participated. Between 1993 and 2003, Fonda became particularly well known for his collaboration with Anthony Braxton and was Braxton’s bassist of choice during that period. In 1996, Braxton appeared on Fonda’s From The Source recording that served as a blueprint for the group From The Source, which Fonda continued to lead. Since that time, Fonda has toured and recorded with the FAB Trio, the 3dom Factor, The NU Band, Bottoms Out, Conference Call, Off Road Quartet, Trio Generations, Eastern Boundary Quartet, Dreamstruck and The J. & F. Band, among many others. 

Barry Altschul (b. 1943), was born and raised in New York City. He began playing the drums at the age of 11 after having earlier played the piano and the clarinet. In the late 1950s and the early 1960s, Altschul was involved in the local hard bop scene playing in jam sessions in the Bronx and in other New York City boroughs with his contemporaries. However, his first “proper” gig was with the Paul Bley Trio in 1964 resulting in Altschul working regularly with pianist Paul Bley for the remainder of the 1960s and sporadically during the next three decades. Altschul’s work with Paul Bley drew the attention of others active on New York’s free jazz scene of the 1960s and resulted in tours and/or recording sessions with many of the genre’s notables, while his familiarity with the tradition also led to performances with many mainstream musicians. Soon, Altschul was performing and recording with some of the most influential groups of the period, including those led by pianist Chick Corea and saxophonists Anthony Braxton, and Sam Rivers in the 1960s and the 1970s. Altschul has also led several groups of his own, particularly in the 1970s and the 1980s, recording some of the finest “freebop” albums of the period. After living in Europe for a decade and then focusing mostly on teaching following his return to New York City in 1993, Altschul returned to active playing in the new millennium establishing the FAB Trio (History Of Jazz in Reverse, TUM CD 028) with violinist Billy Bang and Joe Fonda in 2003. Since 2013, Altschul has led the 3dom Factor with saxophonist Jon Irabagon and Joe Fonda (The 3dom Factor, TUM CD 032, and Tales of the Unforeseen, TUM CD 044).  

Andrew Cyrille, William Parker, Enrico Rava | "2 Blues for Cecil"

2 Blues For Cecil brings together three legends of modern improvised music, drummer Andrew Cyrille, bassist William Parker and flugelhornist Enrico Rava, in a tribute to the late, great pianist and bandleader Cecil Taylor (1929-2018). Although the three played together for the first time as members of this trio, they share a common bond through their separate time spent performing and recording with Taylor. 

Enrico Rava and Andrew Cyrille are among the elders of improvised music with their careers going back to the 1960s. William Parker rose to prominence during New York’s loft jazz era of the 1970s. The three musicians share one major link in their respective careers. Namely, they all have at different times been members of Cecil Taylor Unit or other ensembles of the legendary late pianist and bandleader Cecil Taylor.  

Rava, Parker and Cyrille first performed together as a trio in a tribute to Cecil Taylor, with Taylor himself present, at the Whitney Museum in April 2016 as part of an exhibit/program under the heading “Open Plan: Cecil Taylor.” 2 Blues For Cecil was recorded on February 1 and 2 at Studio Ferber in Paris following the trio’s concert on December 31, 2020 under the heading “Tribute to Cecil Taylor” as part of the Sons d’hiver festival in Paris.

While 2 Blues For Cecil features compositions by all three of its members and even a standard, the emphasis is on improvisation. Four of the ten tracks are extended collective improvisations, including two versions of “Blues for Cecil.” The trio does not seek to emulate Cecil Taylor’s approach to creating music but rather draws on all the experiences, separate and shared, of its members. 

“Cecil was a spokesman for individuality, a musical warrior always operating on a high level,” says Parker. “He was not avant-garde, he was a human being who loves life as music. He would not be boxed in by the music world’s value system that asks artists to conform to their standards.” 

Although Andrew Cyrille was already an accomplished young musician at the time, his international breakthrough came with his membership in the Cecil Taylor Unit, which lasted for over a decade (1964-75), during which he established his position as one of the leading drummers in freely improvised music and participated in some of Taylor’s most legendary recordings. More than five decades later, Cyrille is still considered to be one of the most creative and versatile percussionists in modern jazz, equally at home in a modern mainstream setting as with more avant-garde music. 

Similarly, William Parker first recorded with Frank Lowe, Billy Bang and many others in the 1970s but became internationally recognized when performing with the Cecil Taylor Unit in 1980-91 and participating in more than ten recordings led by Taylor. Parker is now best known for the many groups he has led or co-led over the past four decades. As well as being an improviser, writer and poet, Parker is a prolific composer and has composed everything from operas, oratorios, ballets and film scores to soliloquies for solo instruments. To date, he has participated in approximately 500 recordings with well over 50 albums under his own leadership. 

Enrico Rava began his career in his native Italy in the mid-1960s but his work with saxophonists Gato Barbieri and Steve Lacy led to years spent living in New York City in the late 1960s and early 1970s and working with many of the musicians then active on the New York improvised music scene. Soon, Rava began recording under his own name. With more than 50 recordings as a leader or co leader, he is one of the most internationally known Italian jazz musicians and one of the best known in all of Europe. Although Rava met Cecil Taylor in the late 1960s in New York City, the two performed together for the first time almost two decades later, first in Taylor’s Orchestra Of Two Continents in 1984 and then in the Cecil Taylor European Orchestra in 1988. 

Andrew Cyrille (b. 1939) was born in Brooklyn, New York, into a family with Haitian parents. He was mentored in the art of drumming by the great Philly Joe Jones circa 1958 and began recording and performing with the likes of Walt Dickerson, Coleman Hawkins, Roland Kirk and Mary Lou Williams when barely 20 years of age. However, Cyrille truly made his mark through his membership in the Cecil Taylor Unit, which lasted for over a decade (1964-75), during which time he established his position as one of the leading percussionists in the then emerging freely improvised music. Cyrille soon became one of the most respected drummers in modern jazz through both of his own recordings as a leader and through his collaborations with virtually every important name on the contemporary scene. Since the 1970s, Cyrille has led or co-led a number of ensembles, including Maono, The Group, the percussion quartet Pieces Of Time and Haitian Fascination that pays homage to his Haitian roots. In 1992, Oliver Lake, Reggie Workman and Cyrille founded Trio 3, a cooperative group that has over time become one of the main performing vehicles for all three of its members, recording more than 10 albums with several of the later ones also featuring a visiting pianist. Altogether, Cyrille has released more than 30 recordings as a leader or co-leader and countless others as a sideman. His most recent recordings as a leader are The Declaration Of Musical Independence (with Richard Teitelbaum, guitarist Bill Frisell and bassist Ben Street) in 2014, Lebroba (with trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith and Bill Frisell) in 2017 and The News (with pianist David Virelles, Bill Frisell and Ben Street) in 2019. In 2020, Cyrille received the Doris Duke Artist Award. 

William Parker (b. 1952) is a composer, improviser, multi-instrumentalist, writer and poet born in the Bronx in New York City. He entered the music scene during New York´s loft jazz era in the early 1970s and quickly became a much sought-after bassist playing primarily with fellow improvisers, such as Billy Bang, Don Cherry, Milford Graves, Khan Jamal, Frank Lowe, Jemeel Moondoc, Charles Tyler and Frank Wright, among many others. Parker became internationally recognized when playing in the Cecil Taylor Unit from 1980 through 1991. Parker´s key collaborators have also included his spouse, dancer Patricia Nicholson, as well as Roy Brown, Peter Brötzmann, Rob Campbell, Cooper-Moore, Hamid Drake, Charles Gayle, Peter Kowald, Joe Morris, Matthew Shipp and David S. Ware. Since the early 1990s, Parker has increasingly led his own ensembles, including In Order To Survive, The Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra and the William Parker Quartet. Parker’s special projects have featured the music of Duke Ellington, Curtis Mayfield and Fats Waller, among others, and he has released several solo bass recordings as well as several duo recordings with fellow bass players. To date, Parker has participated in approximately 500 recordings, including well over 50 albums under his own leadership. Parker is a prolific composer and has composed everything from operas, oratorios, ballets and film scores to soliloquies for solo instruments. He is also a theorist and the author of several books as well as volumes of poetry. 

Enrico Rava (b. 1939) was born in Trieste, Italy. Rava began playing the trombone in Dixieland bands when he was 15 but switched to the trumpet at 18 after hearing Miles Davis perform in Turin. Soon Rava was participating in local jam sessions and, in 1963, the Argentine saxophonist Gato Barbieri, who was then living in Rome, convinced Rava to join him there. Rava’s first recordings were in the mid-1960s with Gato Barbieri, Giorgio Gaslini and Steve Lacy. After Barbieri moved to Paris, Rava joined Steve Lacy's quartet, which led to extended stays in London, South America and eventually New York City. After moving to New York City in 1967, Rava soon played with many of the local musicians then active on the improvised music scene, such as Carla Bley, Lee Konitz, Jeanne Lee, Paul Motian and Roswell Rudd. Rava traveled back and forth between the United States and Europe and began making records both in New York City and in Europe with increasing frequency. Rava’s first albums as a leader were with the Enrico Rava Quartet in 1972 and 1973. His first album for ECM Records was The Pilgrim And The Stars in 1975 and thus began a relationship that still continues today and has resulted in a total of 15 albums with the most recent being Edizione Speciale in 2021. Rava has also continued to work with many other European improvisers, including concerts and recordings with a number of large ensembles, such as ICP Orchestra, Globe Unity Orchestra and Italian Instabile Orchestra. Altogether, Rava has participated in more than 200 recordings with more than 50 of those as a leader or co-leader.Although Rava met Cecil Taylor in the late 1960s in New York City, the two did not perform together until almost two decades later. Rava participated in the recording of Winged Serpent (Sliding Quadrants) in Milan in 1984 by Taylor’s Orchestra Of Two Continents as well as the European tour that followed. In 1988, Rava was a member of Cecil Taylor’s European Orchestra.  

Avishai Cohen | "Naked Truth"

There is a searching, yearning quality to Naked Truth, and a raw beauty and vulnerability in Avishai Cohen’s trumpet sound throughout. Very much music-of-the moment, found and shaped in the course of a remarkable recording session in the South of France, Naked Truth takes the form of an extemporaneous suite. For most of its length the Israeli trumpeter painstakingly leads the way, closely shadowed by his long-time comrades – pianist Yonathan Avishai, bassist Barak Mori and drummer Ziv Ravitz - who share an intuitive understanding, hyper alert to the music’s subtly-changing emphases. At the album’s conclusion, Cohen recites “Departure”, a poem by Zelda Schneurson Mishkovsky, whose themes of renunciation, acceptance and letting go seem optimally-attuned to the mood of the music. 

Avishai describes the album as the outcome of a “two-year meditation. I had been sitting with the main motif of Naked Truth since the start of Covid. The eight note motif you hear at the start of Part II was the beginning of the whole process. I wouldn’t say the motif has been ‘haunting’ me exactly, but it’s been accompanying me through this whole period and everything that I came to assemble for the album revolved around those eight notes and all the possibilities within them. 

“And as I explored that, a lot of other questions were coming up, as I asked myself what do I want to say in the music, what do I need to say. And the process also came to reflect a personal, emotional journey.” There were two parallel stories unfolding, he elaborates, the search for the compositional framework, and something more existential. 

“With earlier albums, like Into The Silence, the music was very much about the compositions. But with this one, the melodies somehow didn’t want to be written down before the recording. And at the same time, the story is definitely not about the solos…”

Cohen had just one rehearsal and one “mini-concert” with Yonathan Avishai and Barak Mori prior to the session at Studios La Buissonne. “The discussion about what to play and what not to play evolved out of that.” As one reference point, Avishai asked his comrades to listen to recordings of bansuri flute master Harisprasad Chaurasia, “who to me conveys so well the ability to play everything and also to play nothing except the essential.” Avishai also discussed trimming percussive details to a minimum with drummer Ziv Ravitz, more than a matter of simply playing less, this was a call to enter the heightened emotional tone and focus of the music (see Part IV here).

With everything stripped back to emphasize the soul-baring spirit of Naked Truth, small instrumental details have a large impact. When Avishai finally switches from crespuscular walking-on-eggshells muted trumpet to open horn playing in Part III, for instance, it is as if a searchlight is suddenly illuminating the music…

 “Departure”, a poem by Israeli writer Zelda Schneurson Mishkovsky (1914.1984), is a piece set to music and premiered by Avishai in a project with Danilo Pérez and Chris Potter and subsequently explored further in other Cohen group contexts. “When I first read that poem I was blown away by it.” With its reflections on mortality and its almost Buddhistic balancing (Zelda was Orthodox Jewish) of non-attachment and gratitude and wonder it makes an apt conclusion for Naked Truth. In the present realization, a logical ending, musically, too. 

Naked Truth was recorded at Studios La Buissonne in Pernes-les-Fontaines, in September 2021, and produced by Manfred Eicher.

Oan Kim Releases Leftfield New Jazz Track 'Mambo'

Mambo is the latest single from Oan Kim’s upcoming album ‘Oan Kim & the Dirty Jazz’. Inspired by the likes of Archie Shepp and Charles Lloyd, Oan’s inimitable jazz saxophone style is neatly entwined in this mysterious and minimal track.

The single follows on from the first release of the album Wong Kar Why, which features French musician Edward Perraud. The album was produced by Oan himself in his home studio in Paris, with Oan playing saxophone and guitar throughout. On Mambo, he explains ‘as with most of this album I wanted to mix different genres. It all started with the guitar and bass line alla Nick Cave or Timber Timbre. This bass line really sets a particular mood of subdued tension, that I wanted to do a jazz saxophone track on.’

Also singing on the track, Oan added ‘the lyrics describe a compulsive liar enjoying the joy and laughter that his lies provoke’. ‘I called it Mambo because it reminds me of music from the Mambo era and I liked the connotations, but it’s clearly not a mambo per se’.

Oan’s compelling sound palette follows from studies at Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris and the Bill Evans Piano Academy, whilst also being fascinated by contemporary music and the indie scene in which he played for a number of years with electro-rock duo Chinese Army and rock band Film Noir.

Having pursued a career as a filmmaker and photographer in parallel to his music, the multifaceted creative has won awards such as Silver Horn of the Krakow Film Festival, Emerging Documentary Filmmaker at DMZ festival, Swiss Life 4 Hands Award and more, as well as being a co-founding member of one of the foremost photo agencies in France, MYOP Agency.

Bringing together his musical and artistic influences into a melting pot of creativity, Oan’s passion for music and filmmaking is evident with the mesmerizing music video for Mambo. Featuring two contemporary dancers, the video showcases the ‘dynamics of seduction within a dance number’. Inspired by a mix of Pina Bausch and Fred Astaire, the video aims to show ‘where a couple is gaging each other, getting closer, pushing back, pulling closer, embracing, controlling the other, or falling into each other's arms’, whilst also keeping the urban settings of dance similar to in the film Pina by Wim Wenders. 

The dance is based on these ‘push/pull dynamics’, borrowing elements of ballroom dancing that match the retro elements of the music.

Mambo, the second single from the upcoming album ‘Oan Kim & The Dirty Jazz’, is available now on all major platforms.

J. Peter Schwalm and Markus Reuter | "Aufbruch"

Aufbruch, the title of the debut collaboration between electro-acoustic composer J. Peter Schwalm and guitarist Markus Reuter, translates as “departure” or “emergence.” Either definition offers an evocative interpretation of the powerfully immersive soundworld they’ve conjured together, but even more suggestive is the ambiguity between the two meanings. For the music of Aufbruch feels like both an awe-inspiring journey of discovery and a welling up from the murkiest depths of the subconscious.

Begun as a correspondence and fully realized as an in-person collaboration, Aufbruch captures and sustains an imposing air of alluring menace, an atmosphere that feels somber and distressed yet powerfully optimistic. “It seemed like we had the same sort of image in our minds,” Reuter says. “It feels like a dystopian future where the industrialized cityscape of the past has begun growing over with green. Which doesn't really surprise me.”

It’s true that the global conditions in which the album was produced might lend themselves to thoughts of rebuilding after an apocalyptic disaster rather then the somewhat more hopeful idea of preventing such disasters outright. But the Aufbruch, the “emergence” at which the title hints suggests that some remnant of humanity might be able to pull itself free from the wreckage and rebuild, about as cheery a thought as one could discern in these mesmerizingly bleak yet captivatingly rich aural landscapes.

That Reuter and Schwalm created such a vivid and cinematic set on their first meeting suggests the far-reaching imagination and gifts for intensive musical empathy that each man possesses. After trading files back and forth in an initial attempt at long-distance collaboration, the pair eagerly agreed to improvise together in the flesh. “When we met for the first time in my studio and started improvising, it was clear to both of us that a direct exchange was at least ten times more effective,” Schwalm explains. “We laid the foundation for eleven pieces in four hours.”

Reuter instigated the music on his self-developed Touch Guitar, digitally processed and manipulated in real time. Schwalm added his own colors via newly-devised synth sounds and later edited the improvisations into their final forms. On two tracks the duo is joined by the remarkable Belgian-born, Berlin-based vocalist Sophie Tassignon, whose late appearance returns a trace of the human to the stirring machine-made environments.

“Markus is the painter and I am the sculptor,” Schwalm says. “What made it very pleasant working together was that he incorporated so many ideas into the work process and gave me the green light to do what I wanted with them.”“It's a mystery to me how Peter does what he does,” Reuter adds. “I don't really understand the internal process he uses to make his decisions, but any decision he made was perfect for me.”

Both artists can boast a storied history of brilliant collaborations and startling sonic palettes. In 1998 Schwalm’s electro-jazz ensemble Projekt Slop Shop caught the ear of legendary musician/producer Brian Eno, instigating a six-year partnership that included recording the album Drawn From Life, composing the soundtrack to Nicolas Winding Refn’s film Fear X, and the creation of a multi-channel sound installation in the crater of the Volcano del Cuervo on the Spanish island of Lanzarote. Schwalm released Musikain, the first album under his own name, in 2006; since then he’s released four other albums, the last three for RareNoise: The Beauty of Disaster in 2016, How We Fall in 2018, and Neuzeit with Norwegian trumpeter Arve Henriksen last year.

Reuter's work as recording artist, solo performer and collaborator spans (and frequently fuses) electrophonic loop music, contemporary classical music, progressive and art rock, industrial music, world jazz, jazz fusion, pop songs and pure improvisation. Over the course of a two-decade career, he has been a member of multiple bands, ensembles and projects (including centrozoon, Stick Men, Tuner, The Crimson ProjeKct and Europa String Choir) as well as a solo artist. His prolific output bridges genres both within and between projects, and he has worked with a wide swathe of exploratory musicians including Ian Boddy, Robert Rich, Tim Motzer, Mark Wingfield, Asaf Sirkis, Kenny Grohowski and several members of King Crimson.

“Markus didn't come into the studio as a solo guitarist, but as a co-sound designer, co-improviser and co-composer,” says Schwalm. “He is extremely productive, an artist with unlimited creativity and a massive output.”

The swarming distortion of the title track inaugurates the album, growing from void to immense proportions from the emptiness of the ether, shrouding the listener in a swirling, shifting cloud of noise. The calming shimmers of “Von Anbeginn” are undercut by the agitated buzzing underneath, growing ever more insistent until the piece erupts into howling industrial rhythms. Reuter’s reverberant tones float weightlessly at the outset of the mournful “Rückzug,” while “Abbau” suggests images of rainfall spattering the rusted girders of an abandoned factory.

The distorted hiss and skittering, untraceable noises of “Ein Riss” presents the music at its most unsettling, while the spectral march beat of “Der lange Weg” has the haunting feel of a ghostly parade. The sudden appearance of Sophie Tassignon’s ethereal voice on “Lebewohl” is almost shocking in its introduction of a more organic feeling into the proceedings, prompting a more open, airy sensation in the piece. Tassignon also graces the following track, “Losgelöst,” one drone among many that contributes to the sound of a hybrid pipe organ. The album closes with the blissful, somberly soaring “Abschied,” a steely but determined gaze into an uncertain future.

Mike Pride | "I Hate Work"

Mike Pride was not a fan of legendary punk band MDC – a straight-edge hardcore devotee, you could even say he had a chip on his shoulder about this more mainstream, less disciplined form of punk – when he suddenly found himself on a tour of Europe as their drummer sometime in the early ‘00s. Twenty years later, now a longtime fan and friend of the band, Pride unexpectedly turns to the band’s raucous catalogue as a source for jazz standards on his warped new album, I Hate Work.

Out via RareNoiseRecords, I Hate Work draws its material exclusively from MDC’s iconic 1982 debut album, Millions of Dead Cops. Despite his long-established passion for bringing the extremes of hardcore and heavy rock into the jazz and improvised music realm (and vice versa), Pride instead does the unexpected, transforming MDC’s pummeling punk into swinging acoustic jazz. 

For the occasion he enlisted pianist Jamie Saft and bassist Bradley Christopher Jones, both master re-interpreters of a wide swath of pop and rock music, as well as special guests Mick Barr (Ocrilim, Krallice), JG Thirlwell (Foetus), Sam Mickens (The Dead Science) and MDC frontman Dave Dictor.

“I literally didn't know anybody when I moved to New York in 2000,” Pride recalls. “So to go from that to joining MDC, not realizing their history and how famous they were in certain aspects of the music world, was really eye opening. And doing 90-day tours without a day off was a serious ass kicking. In hindsight it was a great experience. I would never do it again, but it was a great experience.”

Pride quit the band in December 2004 after two years of touring and recording the album Magnus Dominus Corpus, though he’s maintained a close relationship with both vocalist Dave Dictor and guitarist/songwriter Ron Posner. Not long after, he began incorporating his experiences in the punk realm and his hardcore roots into “jazz” projects like his bands From Bacteria To Boys and Pulverize the Sound.

“Those projects really reflected my idea of the popular music I was into,” Pride explains. “I was getting to a phase of my musical output where I was trying to reflect the music that surrounds me rather than just following my id. I wanted to take tunes from my musical history and started thinking about ways to incorporate more aggressive music in the same way that certain pop tunes became jazz standards. That led me to think about trying to do something with these MDC tunes.”

The strangeness of the songs on the original Millions of Dead Cops was a product of its unusual recording, a marathon, speed-fueled session in which the entire album was recorded without a break. When he landed the gig two decades later, Pride had to transcribe every dropped beat and missed eighth note; he ended up reading from sheet music for his first year with the band, a definite curiosity in the largely untrained punk world that endeared him to his older bandmates.

That attention to detail paid off when it came time to revisit the songs for I Hate Work. “There’s a lot of meat on the bones of some of these tunes,” Pride says. “Originally I thought we could just play them really fast and blasty, which is probably what people would expect of me anyway. Then I decided it would be even cooler to slow them way down, figure out some chord progressions other than the usual I-IV-V stuff, and reimagine the melodies Dave might sing if everything wasn't happening at a breakneck tempo and he was able to really sing.”

That approach is in direct opposition to Pride’s actual tenure in the band, when the goal was to attempt the fastest possible version of each song on stage. The record came one night in Amsterdam, when this album’s title track, “I Hate Work,” clocked in at a blistering 24 seconds, nearly half the previous record. For its album-closing rendition on the present recording, the song is stretched into an 8-minute nightclub crooner, with Dictor bizarrely channeling his inner Sinatra (albeit Ol’ Blue Eyes in his present condition, disinterred and martini thrust into his decomposed clutches). 

I Hate Work opens with Pride’s chattering cymbal patterns setting the pace for a finger-snapping “Corporate Death Burger,” with Saft eloquently exploring the unearthed melody in much the same way as the eclectic pianist has songs by the likes of ZZ Top or Bob Dylan in his own projects. The serrated shredding of Mick Barr enters as the tune transitions into “Business on Parade,” where the guitarist plays like a death metal Sonny Sharrock. 

Barr’s presence on the album was a must, as the guitarist, along with Mr. Bungle bassist Trevor Dunn, was integral in encouraging Pride to join MDC in the first place. He returns for the funhouse mirror cabaret take on “Greedy and Pathetic,” featuring Pride’s frequent collaborator Sam Mickens on vocals. The drummer played with and served as musical director for the ex-Dead Silence singer’s Ecstatic Showband and Revue.

Foetus mastermind JG Thirlwell contributes his rasping purr to “America’s So Straight,” sounding like a showtune for a musical not only off Broadway but deep below it, in some subterranean lair. Saft switches to a calliope-like mellotron for the lilting “Dick for Brains,” trading buoyantly with Pride in the solo section. “Dead Cops” begins with a precision intro before settling into a lurching swing, with Saft essaying another dazzling turn at the keys.

In keeping with a series of threes marking the project – a 3-sided LP, a trio of guest vocalists – Pride also contributes three original compositions to the album, which take the ideas he derived from exploring and expanding the MDC songs into wholly different territory. He plays whispering brushes on the dirge-like “And So You Know,” and propels “Annie Olivia,” named for his young daughter,” with a methodical rumble. Jones’ vehement bowed bass and Saft’s droning mellotron combine in the ominous melody of “She Wants a Partner With a Lust for Life,” dedicated to Pride’s wife.

Family is central to Pride’s philosophy, perhaps helped by his tenure in MDC. I Hate Work is dedicated to bassist Mikey Donaldson, who died of an overdose at the age of 46. “It’s important to me that my family isn’t subjected to a terrible home life because their dad is a musician,” he says. “So I try to always give them some love on the albums.”

As Dictor’s memorable vocal turn implies, the members of MDC have given the project their blessing, which also was important to Pride. “They're very excited about it,” says the drummer, whose nickname during his time in the band was Baby Mongo. “With the generational divide, they definitely feel like proud uncles in some way. I hope it comes off respectful and sheds some light on their music, which is much more interesting than I ever would have assumed previous to joining the band.”

Canadian Smooth Jazz & Folk Chanteuse Catia Dignard Celebrates Starting Again with New Single, “Rather”

Learning from past experiences without reliving them is one of the key ways to win at this game called life, and Canadian jazz singer-songwriter Catia Dignard places us at the beautiful starting line of leaving the past behind with her new single, “Rather”.

“‘Rather’ is about starting love anew once we have lost our innocence,” Dignard explains, adding that it also touches on “carrying the scars of our pasts without them becoming liabilities.”

A torch song about not carrying one, “Rather” atmospherically sets such a stage for renewal with its lovely, interwoven piano and sax intro melody. Dignard’s yearning declaration of “wanted for so long to feel this peacefulness inside on my own” opens a channel to calmer waters after the storm.

“I’d rather be with you here than in the past.”

Weathering her own personal challenges — like going back to grad school, moving to a new city and ending a long-term relationship — provided the impetus for Dignard to release “Rather” now after initially writing and recording the song a few years ago.

“It’s one of these songs just ‘waiting’ for the moment to find its place in the world,” says the Montréal-born, Toronto-based artist. “Life changes and a great deal of soul searching made me revisit it with a new perspective.”

With Acadian heritage and having lived in Latin America and North Africa during her childhood, Dignard draws inspiration from the sea and her travels. As such, “Rather” flows along on a rolling sea of piano, saxophone and percussion with Dignard’s smooth, sultry vocal at the crest of the wave, journeying from one stage of life to the next.

“This song has also travelled quite a bit,” notes Dignard. “It was written in Montréal. Its music [was] composed and charted in Toronto. Then, recorded and performed first under the stars in Havana in December 2019 and finally mixed and mastered in the Eastern Townships, Quebec in the spring of 2020.”

A magical collaboration while visiting Cuba just prior to the first pandemic lockdown provided Dignard with the instrumental foundation for “Rather;” the musicians she met and recorded with in the musical hotbed of Havana helped give this song its wings just before a time during which creative flight has felt nearly impossible for many.

“In the midst of these turbulent times, both on a personal and global level, I found a safe haven musical community of collaborators and friends for this piece to come about,” she shares.

“Rather” was recorded at Manane Records Studios in Playa, Havana and produced by Miguel Ángel Wong Díaz — who also plays guitar on the track. In addition to Díaz are the “incredible team of Havana-based musicians,” Dignard says, including Lendy Fernández (piano), Francisco Spek Silveira (saxophone), Yan Sanabria Betancourt (bass), and Carlos A. Valdés Bastante (drums) — along with Dignard’s “long-time accomplice” and saxophonist David Elias engineering and mastering the track.

Musical and academic education have gone hand in hand for Dignard. While studying vocal jazz under the tutelage of Catherine Bastarache and Marie Vallée and attending multiple workshops and musical camps in Québec and Europe in the early 2000s, Dignard was also pursuing a second university degree. During this time, she also gained performing experience as lead vocalist for jazz guitar virtuoso Mike Gauthier’s combos at Bishop’s University and participated in Kim Richardson’s jazz jams at Montréal’s Dièse Onze club.

These formative years encouraged Dignard to start writing and recording her own compositions with her partner, double bassist Jean-François Martel. That led to collaborations with trumpet player Maxime St-Pierre, guitarist Louis Trudel, Cuban pianist and JUNO Award nominee Rafael Zaldivar and the recording of Dignard’s debut album, Strange Coziness, released in 2018.

Since then, Dignard’s music has found its way to Canadian radio with airplay on CFLX in Sherbrooke, Québec and CIUT in Toronto, as well as international airplay first in Australia, on Banks Radio and Valley FM 89.5, then in the U.K. and the U.S..

Not one to follow a singular path, Dignard also recently collaborated and performed with Toronto-based funk rock and soul band Bad Breed at the Canadian Music Week and Bloom online music festivals. This while pursuing a PhD in Hispanic Studies at the University of Toronto and currently working on more new music for release in early 2022.

For now, though, this rising jazz artist would ‘rather’ put the focus on her music that’s in the moment.

Eugenie Jones | "Players"

“Wide-ranging” takes on a new meaning with the March 11 release of vocalist, Composer, and  lyricist Eugenie Jones’s Players on her own Open Mic Records. Jones’s third album is the result of an odyssey that took her from her Pacific Northwest base (Seattle) to the Deep South (Dallas), the bustling East Coast (New York), the Midwestern Plains (Chicago), and back again, working in the process with a jaw-dropping spectrum of major jazz musicians that includes (among others) bassists Reggie Workman and Lonnie Plaxico, trombonist Julian Priester, keyboardist Shaun Martin, drummer Dan Weiss, and percussionist Bobby Sanabria. 

The multiple settings and ensembles are not incidental; making music in each region of the United States is the double-disc recording’s central concept. “It was way beyond anything I’d ever done,” Jones says, who produced the album and shared A&R duties with Workman. “And while it was a foreboding prospect, once I make up my mind, I’m very tenacious about doing what it takes to achieve my heart’s desire.” 

The diversity of Players extends to its tunes as well. Its Dallas session alone (featuring bassist Lynn Seaton and drummer Quincy Davis along with Martin) includes the Gershwins’ joyous swinger “I Got Rhythm” and two distinctive Jones originals: “There Are Thorns,” an anthem of determination, and the darkly soulful “One More Night to Burn.” Chicago’s output includes two Irving Berlin pieces in contrasting styles; “You Can Have Him” has a late-night lounge feel, while “Blue Skies” has an urgent, funky cast, highlighted in a Fender Rhodes solo by Kevin O’Connell.

In Seattle, Jones explores Billy Strayhorn’s moody ballad “Multicolored Blue,” Nina Simone’s blues-drenched “Do I Move You," and four of her own tunes, using three completely different lineups across the six tracks. Meanwhile, the New York session focuses on Jones’s originals, but these range from a hard-edged Latin groover (“Ultimo Baile En Casa,” featuring Sanabria) to a mellow, Quiet Storm-like ballad (“As Long As”) that trumpeter Marquis Hill underlines in a beautiful solo. 

The common bond, of course, is Jones. Her full alto voice, impeccable delivery, inventive rhythm, and expressive technique form an indelible stamp on songs of every type, across every city and musician. Imbuing her original compositions with remarkable verve and passion, she also breathes startling new life into the standard repertoire, claiming the familiar tunes as completely her own.

Eugenie Jones was born and raised in Morgantown, West Virginia, in a singing family: Her parents, Eugene and Tommie, were members of the choir at Friendship Baptist Church. Surrounded as she was by music, however, Jones at first had other plans for herself. She earned an MBA and moved to Seattle, where she started both a family and a successful career in marketing communications. 

In 2008, when Tommie passed away, Jones wanted to hold on to a piece of her mother. That drew her back to singing, which in turn drew her to the rich local jazz scene in Seattle. After spending several years honing her craft with the finest musicians in the Pacific Northwest, she recorded Black Lace Blue Tears in 2013. It was greeted with widespread acclaim on release, becoming the first vocal album ever to win the prestigious Earshot Jazz NW Recording of the Year. 2015’s Come Out Swingin’ was similarly celebrated, breaking Jazz Week’s Top 50 and winning Jones another Earshot Jazz award (NW Vocalist of the Year). 

Even as she thrived as an artist, however, Jones brought her considerable skills as a businesswoman to the local music industry. She founded two nonprofits, the education-centered Music Discovery Center (MDC) and the event-producing Music for a Cause. Under the latter auspices, she serves as Executive Producer of the Jackson Street Jazz Walk, an annual block party community event that both commemorates Seattle’s contributions to African American music history and raises funds for local community service organizations. 

This combination of creativity, skill, and resourcefulness leaves no doubt that Jones has the capacity to outdo even the impressive accomplishment of Players. “As a lifelong learner in pursuit of being better today than I was yesterday,” she says, “I will always look to answer that internal question of ‘what’s next.’” 

This winter and spring, Eugenie Jones will be bringing the music of Players to the cities where it was recorded, starting with a hometown show at the Royal Room, Seattle, Sat. 3/12, then cross-country to the Cloakroom, Harlem, NY, Sat. 4/2, and the Jazz Forum, Tarrytown, NY, Sun. 4/3. Additional dates will be announced soon.

Jazz Greats Kirk Whalum, Chris Standring and Jason Rebello Headline New 'Ultimate' Play Along App

London-based UK Music Apps Ltd has launched the 'ultimate play along' app for iPad and iPhone: Jazz300 features over 300 professional jazz, blues, soul, funk and pop backing tracks aimed at practicing and improvising musicians.

Jazz300 music app for iPhone and iPad contains over 300 professional backing tracks performed by 21 of the world's finest musicians including jazz legends Kirk Whalum, Chris Standring and Jason Rebello.

The brand new app offers musicians of all abilities the opportunity to play along to a huge collection of tracks - including over 200 jazz standards - recorded by 21 of the world's finest musicians including twelve-time GRAMMY® nominated Kirk Whalum (Whitney Houston, Luther Vandross), seven-time Billboard #1 Chris Standring and jazz impresario Jason Rebello (Sting, Jeff Beck).

In addition to its huge musical content, Jazz300 takes advantage of the latest advances in mobile audio technology. Users can change the key of the track on the fly and seamlessly speed up or slow down the music with just one touch.

Animated chord charts and crystal clear chord diagrams (for Piano, Guitar and Ukulele) help users learn new chords and improve their skills. There's an option to remove solo instruments - allowing users to play their own solo over the top, and the opportunity to create multiple playlists.

Paul Sissons, Executive Producer said: "Jazz300 offers a unique source of musical accompaniment. Not only is there a huge variety of real musical content which has been performed by world-class musicians, but the degree to which you can tailor each backing track in terms of key and tempo - while maintaining the quality of the audio - really is something new."

The content of Jazz300 is offered to users on a 'royalty-free' basis allowing them to play it anywhere and also use elements of the content in their own musical works - commercially or otherwise. Tracks can easily be exported from the app as stereo files but users who want to remix, rework or further develop Jazz300 tracks have the opportunity to download the multitrack version of any track. This is delivered to them as a GarageBand (Apple) project allowing access to the separate musical parts. This export option is available as a $0.99 (£0.99) in-app purchase.

Jazz300 is available from the Apple App Store at $15.99 (£13.99).

Ann-Margret & Sonny Landreth | "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree"

It has been awhile since one of Hollywood's brightest lights and star of the film classics such as Bye Bye Birdie and Viva Las Vegas, Ann-Margret, has gifted the world with new musical recordings. So what better time than Christmas for the woman once dubbed the “female Elvis Presley” to return to the medium that launched her epic career? Ann-Margret is happy to announce the release of her brilliant and vivacious new version of “Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree” today on all digital platforms. With special guest, southern blues icon Sonny Landreth, joining in the fun, these two artists have crafted a vibrant rendition of a holiday favorite that seems tailor-made for Ann-Margret's sultry voice.

The track presages a new full-length album that Ann-Margret has been hard at work on and will be released in 2022. The project will pair her with several stellar guest artists including Bobby Rydell (who co-starred in Bye Bye Birdie), Blondie's Clem Burke, Wrecking Crew member Don Randi, rockabilly superstar Danny B. Harvey and more!

Also, for those in the Los Angeles area, Ann-Margret will be making an appearance at a special private engagement on January 13 at the Montalban Theater with special guest Rydell!

Fred Hersch | "Breath By Breath"

Iconic pianist/composer Fred Hersch was an early adopter of new technologies and new ways forward when the pandemic hit in early 2020. But he’s also been among the most eager to return to live performance and collaboration now that life has begun to resume some semblance of normality. In August he returned to the studio to record one of his most ambitious projects to date: Breath By Breath, his first album ever pairing jazz rhythm section with string quartet. 

“I’ve put all my streaming gear away,” declares Hersch, whose lockdown months started off with daily performances on Facebook and culminated in last year’s solo release Live From Home. “It was great while that was what it was, and now I'm in this place where it's live or nothing.” 

Due out January 7, 2022 via Palmetto Records, Breath By Breath draws inspiration from the pianist’s longtime practice of mindfulness meditation, centered on the new eight-movement “Sati Suite.” But while the album is certainly contemplative and lustrous, it’s far from being merely an ambient backdrop for blissful relaxation – the music on Breath By Breath is as fully engaged and emotionally rich as any that Hersch has made over the course of his remarkable career.

In part that’s due to the musicians Hersch has enlisted for the album. Bassist Drew Gress was a member of the pianist’s first trio and has been an inspiring bandstand partner for more than three decades. Jochen Rueckert is one of the most in-demand drummers on the modern scene, having played with such greats as Kurt Rosenwinkel, Mark Turner, Melissa Aldana and Pat Metheny. The Crosby Street String Quartet, named for the NYC address where they first rehearsed with Hersch, combines four of the city’s busiest freelance string players: violinists Joyce Hammann and Laura Seaton, violist Lois Martin, and cellist Jody Redhage Ferber. 

“String quartets have been some of my favorite music to listen to my whole life,” Hersch explains. As he writes in the album’s liner notes, “I grew up listening to string quartets as a very young musician in Cincinnati. My piano teacher was the wife of the cellist in the famous LaSalle Quartet. I used to lie on the rug in their living room as an elementary school student while they rehearsed, quietly following along, hearing how the viola part meshed with the first violin, or the second violin and the cello. And ever since I started studying composition at age eight, almost all of my music has always focused on four melodic parts - so string quartets are a natural musical configuration for me.” 

The string writing on Breath By Breath spotlights the broad scope of Hersch’s compositional imagination. With each piece the quartet seems to take on a new role in relation to the piano trio: a lush background on one tune, an equal partner in dialogue on the next, an abstract instigator on yet another. “It was important to me that we record live with the strings so I could interact with what they were playing,” Hersch says. “I didn't want to lay down the music and then have them come in later and overdub. I felt like the fun of the project was to do it live.”

“Sati” is a Pali word meaning “mindfulness” or “awareness,” an idea that is central to Hersch’s meditation practice – which itself took on an even more profound importance during the pandemic. “It basically saved me,” he says with no hint of exaggeration. “Meditation is not about not emptying your mind; it's about observation. The phrase I like to use is, ‘relax, allow and observe.’ When I meditate it’s about recognizing sensations or thoughts as they come in and out, observing them and realizing that they're just phenomena. The brain thinks, and there's nothing wrong with that.”

The first movement, “Begin Again” references the cycle of renewal that begins fresh with each moment. Other pieces touch on different aspects of the process. “Know That You Are,” the composition that initiated the suite, refers to the foundational instruction, “When you sit, know that you are sitting and when you breath, know that you are breathing.” The often frantic activity of a mind struggling to be at rest is the subject of “Monkey Mind,” while “Mara,” which features a guest appearance by percussionist Rogerio Boccato, is the name of the god who tempted Buddha with wine, women and wealth.

Bringing meditation to the forefront of his music brings Hersch full circle in a sense, as he recognized when he began the practice decades ago. “When I started, I realized that in a way I've been meditating my whole life – but on a piano bench. I close my eyes when I play and I go into in that world. Occasionally I get distracted, but I don't get wrapped up in it. Instead of my breath being an anchor, the anchor is the sound that I get, the tactile feeling of my fingers on the keys, hearing the space around the music, and leaving that space for other musicians to contribute.”

Breath By Breath, then, is a recognition that meditation has been a way for Hersch to align his daily existence with the enlightened state he reaches while playing the piano. With the release of this captivating new recording, the rest of us are fortunate enough to glimpse that place and to feel its life-affirming impact on our own hearts and souls. 

A select member of jazz’s piano pantheon, Fred Hersch is an influential creative force who has shaped the music’s course over more than three decades. A fifteen-time Grammy nominee, Hersch has long set the standard for expressive interpretation and inventive creativity. A revered improviser, composer, educator, bandleader, collaborator and recording artist, Hersch has been proclaimed “the most arrestingly innovative pianist in jazz over the last decade” by Vanity Fair, “an elegant force of musical invention” by The L.A. Times, and “a living legend” by The New Yorker. For decades Hersch has been firmly entrenched as one of the most acclaimed and captivating pianists in modern jazz, whether through his exquisite solo performances, as the leader of one of jazz’s era-defining trios, or in eloquent dialogue with his deeply attuned duo partners. His brilliant 2017 memoir, Good Things Happen Slowly, was named one of 2017’s Five Best Memoirs by the Washington Post and The New York Times.

Charlie Peacock | "Blue For You"

Grammy® award-winning record producer Charlie Peacock adds another Jazz entry to his discography, an acoustic quintet set titled BLUE FOR YOU. Players are: ERIC HARLAND/drums, JOHN PATITUCCI/upright bass, CHRIS POTTER/tenor saxophone, MARCUS PRINTUP/trumpet, and Peacock on piano. The quintet performs Peacock’s compositions, “Refuge of the Wild”, “Blue For You”, and “Up Jumped Freddie.” 

While Peacock is known for his music production prowess, he has recorded with a long list of prominent jazz artists and musicians. 

Peacock followed his 2005 jazz debut, Love Press Ex-Curio (featuring Ravi Coltrane, James Genus, and Joey Baron) with Arc of the Circle (2008), an improvisational duets record with saxophonist Jeff Coffin featuring contributions from Marc Ribot and Derrek Phillips. Peacock’s solo piano outing, Lemonade, was released in 2014 and peaked at #4 on the Billboard Jazz Chart. All of Peacock’s jazz recordings have charted Top 5 on iTunes and Amazon, including 2018’s When Light Flashes featuring Jeff Coffin, Ben Perowsky, Felix Pastorius, Hilmar Jensson, and Matt White. In 2020, Peacock collaborated with bassist Steve Swallow on the single, “After All These Years” and yMusic Ensemble members, CJ Camerieri and Gabriel Cabezas on “Surprised Me Too.” In 2021, Peacock recorded “Brooklyn Brother Bond” with John Patitucci and Go Light, Go Free with the Turtle Island String Quartet.

Short Bio: Charlie Peacock is a Grammy Award-winning, multi-format performer, composer, and record producer. Peacock's production credits include Americana successes such as The Lone Bellow, Holly Williams, Ben Rector, Brett Dennen and "Misery Chain" for Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell featuring Joy Williams, from the soundtrack to the film, 12 Years A Slave. Peacock composed the title theme to the AMC drama Turn: Washington’s Spies featuring Joy Williams and The National’s Matt Berninger. Peacock founded the Commercial Music Program at Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee and served as Director of the School of Music.