Soul-jazz flutist Ragan Whiteside is Billboard’s top female artist for the second consecutive year

For the second consecutive year, soul-jazz flutist Ragan Whiteside is Billboard’s top female smooth jazz songs artist of the year. In the male-dominated genre in which only three females made it into the year-end top 10, Whiteside, powered by singles from her aptly titled new EP, “Five Up Top,” came in at No. 5 for 2020. Last year, the Atlanta-based musician-songwriter checked in at No. 3.

“I am incredibly thankful to be included. I hope it helps open doors for other female artists. I'm always grateful for any success, but this year even more so since the world was turned upside down. Everything was ten times harder, but we managed to pull through,” said Whiteside, who has a string of six consecutive Billboard top 10 singles.

On Billboard’s year-end chart, Whiteside single, “JJ’s Strut,” paraded into the No. 35 position. The joyous number inspired by her daughter’s moxie peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard singles chart and went No. 1 on the MediaBase chart. Whiteside is the only female to appear in Billboard’s year-end top 10 songs, which she did in a guest starring role on emerging trumpeter Willie Bradley’s “It’s On Now,” the No. 3 song for 2020. Bradley is featured on Whiteside’s “JJ’s Strut.” 

“Willie is a cool dude and I enjoyed working with him and producer-songwriter Jeff Canady on ‘It's On Now.’ Willie has been grinding for a long time and I'm happy he has been able to breakthrough this year,” said Whiteside.

Whiteside’s consistent success is all the more impressive in that she is the lone flute player on Billboard’s Smooth Jazz Songs Artists chart and the only flutist with a single to make the top 40 on the Billboard Smooth Jazz Songs chart. The conservatory-trained Whiteside said, “There was a time when the flute wasn't heard at all in smooth jazz, so it's exciting to see a shift in the landscape that allows flautists to flourish.” 

Whiteside cowrote four new songs for her fifth collection, “Five Up Top,” collaborating with her producers, influential soul-jazz keyboardist Bob Baldwin and Dennis Johnson (Celine Dion, Freddie Jackson, Melba Moore). Other singles from the EP to make the Billboard top 10 are the backyard barbecue-flavored joint “Jam It,” which went to No. 2 and reigned in the No. 1 position at MediaBase for five weeks, and a soulful contemporary jazz-R&B take on the Little River Band pop-rock hit, “Reminiscing,” which climbed to No. 8.  

Although Whiteside entered the year with the goal of releasing a full-length album, the coronavirus had the final say and the flautist settled for dropping the five-song EP last month. Whiteside finds hope and is energized by the connection between the EP title, “Five Up Top,” and being Billboard’s No. 5 artist for 2020.

“I've heard that the number five signifies freedom and creativity. Hopefully, this is a sign of huge musical growth in the coming year!”

Mark Harvey Group - A Rite for All Souls

Trumpeter, composer and bandleader Mark Harvey has been an uncompromising explorer of new sonic territories for decades. He has performed in David Douglas’s Festival of New Trumpet Music; appeared at the Knitting Factory, the Village Gate, the Public Theater, Roulette, the Berlin Jazz Festival, and the Baja State Theater (Mexico) among others; and shared the stage with Jaki Byard, Geri Allen, Ricky Ford and other luminaries. As a concert producer, he nurtured the early careers of notables like pianist James Williams, vibist Walt Dickerson and saxophonist Marion Brown. Among Harvey’s 200 works are pieces written for and premiered with jazz legends Joe Lovano, Sheila Jordan, Steve Turre, Jimmy Giuffre, and Ran Blake. Harvey is founder and music director of the internationally acclaimed Aardvark Jazz Orchestra now in its 48th season.

His early quartet, The Mark Harvey Group, featuring woodwind player Peter H. Bloom and percussionists Craig Ellis and Michael Standish, takes listeners on an epic journey of discovery in A Rite for All Souls (available July 17, 2020 via Americas Musicworks). The album reaches across nearly 50 years from a time of great social turbulence in the US to deliver a message of protest, compassion, and healing that resonates today.

The fully improvised 90-minute concert encompasses serenity and turmoil, ravishing sounds and silence, poetry and melody. Harvey discovered the reel-to-reel tapes in his basement, and when he and Bloom listened to them for the first time in five decades, “We knew this was something special that deserved to be heard,” Harvey says. The exquisite monaural recording has been digitally remastered for release in a 2-CD set, available at www.americasmusicworks.com

A Rite for All Souls was performed October 31, 1971, at Boston’s Old West Church, where Harvey, a Methodist minister, was pursuing a jazz ministry modeled on the work of his mentor John Garcia Gensel at Saint Peter’s in Manhattan.

The Mark Harvey Group was mourning, protesting, and commemorating the tragic losses of the Vietnam War, and the lives lost or threatened by poverty, discrimination, and inequality. Their music was a celebration and meditation, honoring souls departed and souls surviving during that turbulent time in American culture. “Today, we find ourselves in another dark and tumultuous time,” says Harvey. “A Rite for All Souls speaks for all of us, as we share sorrow, anguish and compassion. Then, as now, we search for spiritual healing and the rediscovery of a common humanity.”

A Rite for All Souls is a powerful statement of the group’s aesthetic vision, captured in the phrase “aural theatre.” Lit by candles, the chancel of the Old West Church (the concert “stage”) was crowded with exotic percussion instruments and “found” sound-making devices, arranged in sculptural form. Two enormous tarot cards—The Tower and The Moon—were positioned on stage. “We thought of our performance space as a conceptual installation,” Bloom says. As the concert unfolded, the musicians moved throughout the space. At one point, they left the room, and returned wearing monk’s robes and playing organ pipes.

As always, the group performed without score or musical notation. Bloom says, “When it came to the Rite, our intention was to explore particular artistic, social and spiritual territory. We chose four poems to recite as landmarks during the performance. But there weren’t specific cues, so it all developed very organically.”

The concert’s ritualistic opening, “Invocation,” begins with soft tones of mysterious identity, played on flute, a length of pipe, and a saxophone mouthpiece. Craig Ellis’ melodic trap drum solo ushers in Bloom’s tenor, with his big, embracing sound. A conversational exchange between Harvey and Bloom sets the stage for Ellis’s recitation of Gary Snyder’s, “Spel Against Demons,” that concludes with the foursome chanting in Sanskrit and leaving the stage. They return in their monk’s robes blowing organ pipes for “Fanfare.” A dialog between tenor and trumpet introduces Standish reading William Butler Yeats’ apocalyptic “The Second Coming.” Bloom’s tenor solo spirals in a widening gyre to a burning climax. Then Harvey’s trumpet solo offers contrasting intensity with benevolent lyricism, a broad yet distinctive tonal palette, and judicious use of silence as a frame for his phrases and tones.

The ensemble creates the dramatic arc of the performance through a dialectic between group and individual passages, the ebbing and flowing in the dynamics and density of the music, and the interplay of timbres, rhythm, and melody. You can hear the operatic tension on the second disc as the muted dynamics and textures of the group set up Ellis to read his poem, “Napalm: Rice Paper.” A sorrowful, compassionate response by Bloom on soprano and Harvey on French horn follows, until the accumulated outrage of the poem seems to erupt in a lengthy, powerful percussion duet.

Throughout the performance, percussionists Ellis and Standish collaborate with finesse. From Ellis, we hear range and depth: propulsive grooves, sonic explosions, and subtle use of space. Standish’s concise and nuanced work on small percussion instruments provides elegant punctuations, ever-suited to the moment. “Michael invariably delivered le son juste,” Bloom observes.

“A Rite for All Souls has powerful relevance today,” Harvey says. “We live in tumultuous times, and, as Albert Ayler said, music is the healing force of the universe. There are moments that are turbulent, and the music reflects that, but overall we were trying to point in a direction toward progress and healing.”

Trumpeter, composer, educator, minister, and jazz community activist Mark Harvey has been a force in the Boston jazz scene and beyond for 50 years. Between 1970 and 1983, he worked on behalf of the Boston jazz community as the founder and director of the nonprofit Jazz Coalition, the Jazz Celebrations concert series, the Jazz All Nite Concerts, and Boston Jazz Week festivals, all of which presented both resident and visiting artists. In 1973, he founded The Aardvark Jazz Orchestra, which he continues to lead as music director, principal composer and arranger. The band opens its 48th season this fall. The orchestra, which Jazz Podium called “one of the best jazz ensembles in the world,” has released 16 CDs, including 10 discs on Leo Records. As a trumpeter, Harvey has recorded with George Russell and Baird Hersey, and has appeared with Gil Evans, Claudio Roditi, Howard McGhee, Sam Rivers, Kenny Dorham, and many others. The Jazz Journalists Association named him a Boston Jazz Hero in 2015, and in 2019 Jazz Boston honored him with the Roy Haynes Award for “exceptional contributions to jazz and the jazz community.” Harvey is also music director of Kate Matson’s FiLmprov.

Peter H. Bloom has performed widely across multiple genres in a career spanning five decades. He has performed with Mark Harvey since 1969 and been a member of The Aardvark Jazz Orchestra since 1976. In addition, he has performed with the Makrokosmos Orchestra, is a founding member of the jazz and tap ensemble, the Modernistics, has played with FiLmprov since its creation in 1996, and has led his own jazz groups for decades. Jazz Improv praised his “exquisite melody…the improvisations growing organically out of the theme.” As a recitalist and chamber musician, Bloom has toured the world with Ensemble Aubade, Fortunato Ensemble, Ensemble Chaconne, the Henning Ensemble, and other groups. Composers such as Elliott Schwartz, Richard Cornell, Elizabeth Vercoe, Narong Prangcharoen, Edward Jacobs, Karl Henning, Pamela Marshall, and Richard Nelson have written for him. His discography includes 47 recordings on labels including Sony Classical, Navona, Dorian, Leo Records, 9Winds, and many others.

Sonny Rollins in Holland: The 1967 Studio & Live Recordings

Independent jazz label Resonance Records will continue its ongoing tradition of releasing previously unissued archival recordings as limited-edition Record Store Day exclusives with a stellar new three-LP collection of historic Sonny Rollins performances, Rollins in Holland: The 1967 Studio & Live Recordings.

Featuring more than two hours of music, this stunning collection, drawn from tenor saxophone master Rollins’s Netherlands tour of May 1967.

Resonance co-president Zev Feldman, known within the industry as “the Jazz Detective,” says of the forthcoming release, “The music on Rollins in Holland is extraordinary. Rollins fans will rejoice when they hear the news of this discovery. These performances follow an important time in his life, and he brought those experiences along with him to make this incredible music.”

In a new interview with Feldman included in the set, the 89-year-old Rollins says, “I’m so happy that Resonance is putting it out because it really represents a take-no-prisoners type of music. That’s sort of what I was doing around that period of time; that was sort of Sonny Rollins then—a wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am approach. It was very much me. And I loved it and I loved playing with those guys.”

The music heard on the Resonance album is drawn from a little-documented period in Rollins’s career. The musician’s 1966 Impulse! album East Broadway Run Down was his final record date before a studio hiatus that lasted until 1972. In 1969, mirroring a celebrated public exit of a decade earlier, he began a two-year sabbatical from live performing.

Rollins in Holland captures the then 36-year-old jazz titan in full flight, in total command of his horn at the height of his great improvisational powers. He is heard fronting a trio, the same demanding instrumental format that produced some of the early triumphs of his long career: the live A Night at the Village Vanguard (Blue Note, 1957) and the studio dates Way Out West (Contemporary, 1957) and Freedom Suite (Riverside, 1958).

During his brief but busy 1967 stay in the Netherlands, the saxophonist was supported by two of the nation’s top young players, bassist Ruud Jacobs and drummer Han Bennink. The pair had together supported such visiting

American jazzmen as Johnny Griffin, Ben Webster, Wes Montgomery, and Clark Terry, among others. Jacobs was a celebrated straight-ahead accompanist, while Bennink had developed a reputation as an avant-garde lion, having backed Eric Dolphy on 1964’s Last Date. The pair jelled magnificently behind their celebrated leader.

Rollins in Holland brings together material drawn from three separate appearances by the trio: a freewheeling May 3 concert at the Arnhem Academy of Visual Arts, at which Rollins stretched out in expansive performances that sometimes topped the 20-minute mark; a four-song May 5 morning studio session at the VARA Studio in Hilversum, where Dolphy and Albert Ayler had also cut unforgettable dates; and two live shots captured during the band’s stand that evening on “Jazz met Jacobs,” a half-hour national NCRV TV show presented from the Go-Go Club in Loosdrecht and hosted by bassist Jacobs’s pianist brother Pim and his wife, singer Rita Reys.

In his essay for the collection, Dutch jazz journalist, producer, and researcher Frank Jochemsen notes that while recordings of the Arnhem show (presented here with carefully restored sound) had been passed hand-to-hand by Dutch jazz buffs over the years, the rest of the music was only recently unearthed.

In 2017, the four stereo tracks from VARA Studio were discovered by Jochemsen, and they were authenticated by Ruud Jacobs and Han Bennink as they were being digitized for the Dutch Jazz Archive (NJA). In 2019, Jochemsen also discovered the audio from the “Jazz met Jacobs” appearance in the Dutch Jazz Archive, along with a unique set of photos shot at the sound check and live broadcast of this lost TV show.

Jochemsen says, “I find it an exciting idea that so much has been recovered and documented from this modest tour and that the music is indeed of such high quality. Even more sensational is the fact that the whole world can listen to it now. The great Sonny Rollins at his best, accompanied by a great rhythm tandem, which makes me, as a Dutchman, extra proud.”

An extensive overview of Rollins’s Holland trek is supplied by jazz journalist Aidan Levy, whose biography of the saxophonist will be published by Da Capo Books. Levy says, “Rollins in Holland is a resounding, still-urgent argument for jazz as a universal art form, transcending time, place and race. This is jazz at its most international and interdependent, with no boundaries or borders.”

Rollins in Holland also includes an in-depth interview by Levy with Han Bennink and Ruud Jacobs, conducted a year before Jacobs’s death from cancer in July 2019. In it, the late bass virtuoso recalled the experience of playing with the American legend as “something spiritual. [There was] a very special atmosphere on the stage where I felt I could do anything.”

The opportunity to bring Rollins’s exceptional Netherlands performances to the public for the first time has proven a special moment for Resonance, Feldman says: “Working with Mr. Rollins has been the experience of a lifetime, and I’m so grateful that he has put his trust in Resonance and our team to bring forth this newly unearthed, previously undocumented chapter in his career.”

Jazz vocalist Allegra Levy showcases bold new voice on Lose My Number: Levy Sings McNeil

With Lose My Number: Levy Sings McNeil, jazz vocalist Allegra Levy finds a bold new voice: edgy, breezy, sassy, brassy, and often as staccato as a trumpet. That’s because this album, her fourth from SteepleChase Records – and the 900th record to be released by SteepleChase overall – is a collaboration with famed jazz trumpeter John McNeil. Levy has penned words for nine of his previously published compositions which had no lyrics until now.

“I’ve always wanted to do this project,” says Levy, a rising singer-songwriter based in New York. McNeil is not only a longtime friend and mentor, but produced her first two albums – Lonely City, hailed by The New York Times as “fresh,” “exotic,” and “far beyond the ordinary,” and Cities Between Us, which prompted JazzTimes to pronounce Levy “a double-barreled talent” and “unquestionably one to watch.”

McNeil himself is someone who has been watched and widely listened to since he first hit the New York jazz scene in the mid-70s, playing with the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra, Horace Silver Quintet, and Gerry Mulligan, as well as leading bands of his own. As one of the world’s most original and creative jazz artists, he has also written a lifetime’s worth of music. But he was open to having a new take on some of those songs.

“Allegra Levy’s lyrics have a somewhat cynical, noir-ish take on the world – right up my alley,” says McNeil. “Collaborating with her was an absolute joy.”

That feeling was mutual. “John is my most important collaborator,” Levy says. “He’s always been in my corner, and always been such an empathetic and important person in my life. I always felt that his melodies

memorable, and that they told these stories.” She wanted to help give those stories new meaning. “Lyrics only add to the experience by letting people find their own stories in the music,” she says.

All these songs were first recorded by McNeil in the 1980s to early 2000’s, but adding lyrics and updating the arrangements has made them into new entities. “They’re definitely different works from what he recorded,” Levy says. “ This kind of really brings them into now.” But as current as the new record may sound, it still has a Great American Songbook quality. “The music is timeless, so I didn’t want to change it. I just wanted to bring my own voice into the picture.”

That voice comes through loud and clear in Levy’s distinctive singing style, as well as her spare and often specific choice of words. As for the project itself, one of the many words that might be applied is “feminist.” Although all the music was written by McNeil, Levy conveys her own experiences in many of his songs. With the exception of the trumpet cameos provided by McNeil on three tracks, the album features an all-woman band: Carmen Staaf on piano, Carmen Rothwell on bass, and Colleen Clark on drums.

This was a choice Levy made as a member of the leadership team of the Women in Jazz Organization. Much of WIJO’s mission is “to level the playing field in the field of playing,” she explains. That goal has led her to perform more often with other women on the jazz scene. But the women she chose were also just people with whom she was excited to play. “I have to say that it was the most fun I’ve had on any session,” she says. “They played the hell out of the music.” She also felt a different kind of energy and unprecedented level of support, she says. “It was total sisterhood.”

Staaf, who won the Mary Lou Williams jazz pianist competition and is now the pianist and musical director for NEA Jazz Master Dee Dee Bridgewater, had performed on all three of Levy’s previous albums, including 2018’s Looking at the Moon, which was featured as an editor’s pick in both DownBeat and JazzTimes. Yet she had never played with bassist Rothwell before. “And Colleen Clark was just so cool. We really vibed right away when we started playing.”

Having an all-female ensemble may also have helped provide a fresh new take on some classic tunes. To Levy’s knowledge, previous recordings of McNeil’s music featured male artists exclusively. “There’s this interesting dichotomy between the older male generation having written the music, and then the young female stories that are told with those melodies,” Levy notes. “I think it was important to have these strong young women’s voices play the material.”

In his New York Times review of her debut album, Ben Ratliff noted, “She’s not out to clobber you with speed… – she hangs back but arrives at the notes responsibly, without a big show, incorporating careful 1950s cool but authentic modern cynicism, too.” That was then. This is now. The modern cynicism is still there, but the notes often fly nonstop at near-lightning speed.

The challenge was not only to sing McNeil’s complex, trumpet-centric compositions, but to find words that reflected each of their lives. “There’s a little bit of both of us interwoven throughout the record,” Levy says. “It was tough, because as much as John has always been in my corner, I’m my own toughest critic, and he’s a close second..” She wanted to make sure she was doing his melodies justice.

Some tunes, she found, spoke to her so directly, despite their differences in both age and gender, that she thought, “This is totally a story from my life. This song is my story.’” For others, Levy sensed that there was too personal a tale behind the tune for her to insinuate herself, so she interviewed McNeil about his motivation and then tried to convey his story.

A typical example is “Tiffany,” a soulful ballad. “It was the most moving story,” Levy says. “It was his future wife’s birthday, and he’d just come off a gig.” McNeil found himself walking by Tiffany’s, the posh jewelry store, in the early morning, thinking, ‘If only I could buy Lolly something from here. Something nice.’” His abject longing led him to write a song instead. “The truth is they didn’t really need things,” Levy says. “They had each other.”

Then there are the tunes that Levy’s lyrics easily allowed her to make her own. Such was the case with “Strictly Ballroom.” Although it was originally inspired by the 1992 movie of that title, Levy’s take (“We’re just dancing, not romancing. Don’t you dare! You’re no Fred Astaire!”) has transformed it into a gutsy diatribe about a man who takes too many liberties while ballroom dancing, “one of the few remaining activities in which the man is still usually the leader.”

Another song, called simply “CJ,” was written by McNeil about someone he met long ago, but Levy’s lyrics – “You’re like an animal/And you don’t seem to care your disregard will bring doom and gloom” – may apply instead to an unnamed, prominent politician with decidedly different initials.

The two managed to find common ground in the title track, “Lose My Number.” According to Levy, McNeil is one of the gentlest, kindest, and most compassionate people she has ever met. Yet as anyone who knows him can attest, he is also infamous for his wicked wit and an acerbic side he makes no attempt to hide. “I don’t know how else to say it, besides for he’s the most ‘lose my number’ kind of guy in many ways,” she says. “He doesn’t suffer fools and can be brutally honest.” Still, it’s a tendency shared by many. “Sometimes I feel that way too,” Levy admits. “We all feel that way.”

Levy’s first two albums, for which she penned both the music and lyrics herself, also centered on universal themes, romantic and otherwise. And in that respect, in Lose My Number she has lost absolutely nothing. “My philosophy overall is to always try to keep it simple with lyrics,” she says. “I think some of the best lyrics say the most with the least.” The most basic messages often speak volumes, she says, and speak to the most people possible. “I hope I did that here.”

Four Timeless Holiday Jazz Titles By Ella Fitzgerald, Kenny Burrell, Ramsey Lewis And Jimmy Smith Boxed Up For New Vinyl Set, 'Verve Wishes You A Swinging Christmas'

This holiday season, Verve Records/UMe is boxing up some of the most classic jazz holiday titles and wrapping them in a new vinyl box set titled Verve Wishes You a Swinging Christmas. This lavish collection brings together Ella Fitzgerald's Ella Wishes You a Swinging Christmas (1960), Kenny Burrell's Have Yourself a Soulful Little Christmas (1966), Ramsey Lewis's Sound of Christmas (1961) and Jimmy Smith's Christmas '64 (1964) (also known as Christmas Cookin') for the first time. With the holidays just around the corner, it's the perfect swinging, syncopated backdrop to get you in the Yuletide spirit and soundtrack your festivities.

Since the dawn of jazz, the genre's innovators have pulled material from all corners of the Great American Songbook and beyond as springboards for improvisation — and the Christmas canon is no exception. On Ella Wishes You a Swinging Christmas, the First Lady of Song approaches Great American Christmas songs like "Jingle Bells," "Sleigh Ride," "The Christmas Song," and "Frosty the Snowman" with vivacity and sophistication. Sixty Christmases after its release, the album's timeless appeal has only grown over the years. In a retrospective review, All Music proclaimed, "this is as good as jazz Christmas albums get," and just last year, Rolling Stone ranked it No. 1 on their "40 Essential Christmas Albums" list, calling the set "superb" and praising Fitzgerald's "exquisite phrasing and subtlety." In celebration of the album's 60th anniversary, "Frosty The Snowman" has received its first-ever official video, a charming animated video by Fantoons Animation Studio that features Ella and Frosty in a winter wonderland storybook setting. Watch here: https://youtu.be/Hmw4Fu4XupE

Verve Wishes You a Swinging Christmas includes a variety of jazz greats' instrumental takes on the Christmas canon via three albums that haven't seen a vinyl reissue since the '60s. On Have Yourself a Soulful Little Christmas, guitar master Kenny Burrell serves up soulful renditions from the carol book ("The Twelve Days of Christmas," "Away in a Manger"), down the church aisle ("Mary's Little Boy Chile," "Children Go Where I Send Thee") and the R&B wheelhouse ("Merry Christmas, Baby"). JazzTimes declares it "was and is a landmark album" while All Music admires Burrell's "pensive, meditative, precise playing" and calls it "a must-have."

The box cranks the fun up a notch with Sound of Christmas by the Ramsey Lewis Trio, which features bassist Eldee Young, drummer Isaac "Red" Holt, and string arranger Riley Hampton. By swerving around any potential treacle and keeping things light at a mere 29 minutes, Lewis and his colleagues ensured Sound of Christmas was a highly accessible slice of holiday cheer. "Lewis avoids the overly reverent... in favor of songs he can tear through with the brisk gait of a sleigh ride and the delight of a full stocking," All About Jazz mused."[H]is sensitivity to the tastes of the public served him well here."

Rounding out the collection is a yuletide offering from Jimmy Smith, the master of the Hammond B-3 organ. On Christmas '64, which was known for decades as Christmas Cookin' after being reissued in 1966 with the alternate cover and title, Smith offers up a mix of secular Christmas songs and traditional carols backed by a big band and several trios. He makes a heel-turn from dignified orchestral overtures, like on "We Three Kings (of Orient Are)," injecting the proceedings with funky, down-home energy to get bodies moving this December. "It's hard to believe that 'Silent Night' could ever swing as much as it does here," All About Jazz noted. But all you have to do is drop the needle on these bluesy interpretations to believe Christmas could be so danceable. For the first time in more than five decades, the LP will be released with its original cover and title.

Why wait until the Christmas shopping rush to secure your vintage sounds? Verve Wishes You a Swinging Christmas offers four titles in their original packaging, all beamed from jazz's past to warm up your holiday season in the present.

Freda Payne Pairs with Johnny Mathis For Gershwin Duet "They Can't Take That Away From Me"

When Freda met Johnny –Freda Payne and Johnny Mathis, that is - chemistry and musicality abounded as they breathed delicious life into George & Ira Gershwin's classic, "They Can't Take That Away From Me." As tantalizing sneak peek evidence of Freda Payne's first project since 2014's acclaimed Come Back to Me Love, the sound of these legends' voices together on one mic for the first time anywhere/anytime is a treat for the ears and hearts of all, arriving just in time to warm them for the holidays…a season of love, sharing and wistfulness as special for the singers as it is their ardent fans. 

"I was so happy that he agreed to do it," Freda delights beaming! "Many singers request for Johnny to sing duets but he doesn't grant that wish for everybody. I thought I was more honored to work with him but he was honored, too - tickled and honored. It reminded me of when David Gest and I saw his show at The Mirage in Las Vegas then went backstage with Steve Wynn and his wife to say hello. When Johnny came out to greet us, I was so in awe…but he was giving me waves and bows of playful 'I'm not worthy!" It touched me so to see that he was not afraid to give kudos to others. So, when I saw him walking down the halls of Capitol Records in Hollywood into 'Studio A,' I was like, 'He has arrived – thank you Jesus!' It was lovely recording our vocals perched on stools side by side."

Producer Rodrigo Rios had the idea for Freda to cover "They Can't Take That Away From Me" and to sing it as a duet with Mr. Mathis. He handled the business overtures himself and, once Mathis graciously accepted, Rios turned to Grammy-winner Gordon Goodwin to pen the arrangement and bring in his Big Phat Band to accompany them. Everything came together like hands in silk gloves – with charm and grace as the pair glided smoothly through the time-kissed melody.

"They Can't Take That Away From Me" is a 1937 popular song with music by George Gershwin and lyrics by Ira Gershwin that went on to become a Jazz standard and a chestnut of The Great American Songbook. It was introduced by Fred Astaire in the film "Shall We Dance" singing on the foggy deck of a New Jersey to Manhattan ferry to Ginger Rogers who remains silent listening throughout. No dance sequence follows which was unusual for the Astaire-Rogers numbers (though they did dance to it later in their final/reunion musical, "The Barkleys of Broadway" for MGM in 1949). Subsequent recordings of note range from the groundbreaking Charlie Parker with Strings LP in 1950 to Frank Sinatra in 1954, and Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong in 1956.  

Now Freda Payne and Johnny Mathis add their magical and heartwarming spin on the gem for a new generation to swoon over and enjoy!

"They Can't Take That Away From Me" was produced by Rodrigo Rios, co-produced by Freda Payne and executive produced by James M. Goetz.

Benjamin Boone Broadens His Explorations of Poetry & Jazz with "The Poets Are Gathering"

Benjamin Boone takes his fascination with the merger of poetry and jazz to stunning new heights on The Poets Are Gathering, set for release on Origin Records. True to its title, the album finds the saxophonist-composer assembling a large group of acclaimed American poets—11 in all, including Tyehimba Jess (Pulitzer Prize), Patricia Smith (LA Times Book Award/National Slam Poetry Champion), Juan Felipe Herrera (U.S. Poet Laureate), and Edward Hirsch (MacArthur)—intertwining their work with that of 20 musicians, including pianist Kenny Werner, guitarist Ben Monder, bassist Corcoran Holt, and drummer Ari Hoenig.

The poetry addresses ripped-from-the-front-page topics such as police murder, racism, immigration, poverty, inequity, and mass shootings. As Gene Seymour writes in his extensive liner notes, “There are incantations and supplications to be found here. Also: elegies and headlines, howls and mantras, reveries and outbursts. They instruct and affirm.”

Boone has already made waves in the jazz and literary worlds with his poetic experiments, specifically with his widely acclaimed 2018/2019 two-part collaboration with the late U.S. Poet Laureate/Pulitzer Prize recipient Philip Levine, The Poetry of Jazz, voted #3 “Best Album of 2018” in DownBeat’s 83rd Annual Readers Poll. A colleague of Levine’s and Boone’s, Juan Felipe Herrera (below right), inspired the current gathering.

“Juan and I set three of his poems to music for his culminating U.S. Poet Laureate event at the Library of Congress in 2017, and I was moved by his empowering message that everybody is a poet, everyone has something valuable to offer, everyone’s voice is important and deserves to be heard,” says the saxophonist. “So when we decided to do this album, we naturally wanted to address issues of equality, empowerment, and action.”

And that they did. The album’s diverse voices offer perspectives on the world that is the United States in 2020. The social, cultural, political, and emotional turmoil of the moment is a recurring theme. In “Against Silence,” Tyehimba Jess offers a panorama of American violence and its toll, speaking against indiscriminate and unjust murder, both by police officers and drones, while Patricia Smith’s “That’s My Son There” condenses that panorama, providing a raw, intimate examination of the horrific and needless pain caused by these murders. Haitian American poet Patrick Sylvain twice meditates on immigration, portraying both the fraught journey and arrival (“Marooning”) and what it leaves behind (“Ports of Sorrow”). However, there is also room for less overtly political expression, whether in T.R. Hummer’s “The Sun One (Homage to Sun Ra),” Edward Hirsch’s nostalgic reflection “Branch Library,” or Marisol Baca’s cosmic abstraction “Spiral."

Prominent as the poets are, it is the musicians on The Poets are Gathering that astutely amplify the messages. “Poem by Poem,” Herrera’s moving elegy for the Charleston church shooting victims, gains dimension and resonance through Craig VonBerg’s tender piano. Another luminous pianist, Kenny Werner, joins with Boone’s soprano to set “Marooning’s” mood of hardship and (dashed) hope. Guitarists Ben Monder and Eyal Maoz evoke an altered-reality soundscape on T.R. Hummer’s “The Sun One (Homage for Sun Run),” while bassist Corcoran Holt and drummer Ari Hoenig amplify Jess’s message on “Against Silence.” Rapper Donald Brown II wears “Black Man’s” combination of pathos and righteous anger on his sleeve, but it’s Boone, violinist Stefan Poetzsch, and the keyboards of Alberto Díaz Castillo and Donald Brown (the rapper’s father) that bring them to life. The elder Brown, a revered pianist-composer in his own right, produced this album as well as the Poetry of Jazz volumes. (Above right: Tyehimba Jess)

Even so, it is the scribes who lend the project its artistic identity. “I am touched by the issues these poets so eloquently address. Their messages are profound. They call us to action and to work for a better, more just world,” says Boone.

Benjamin Boone has garnered 18 national/ international awards and honors for his music, which appears on 28 albums and has been featured on several National Public Radio broadcasts. Born in Statesville, NC, he has been a longtime professor at California State University, Fresno after stints in Boston, Knoxville, and New York.

His March 2020 Origin Records release, Joy, recorded with The Ghana Jazz Collective while he was a U.S. Fulbright Scholar to Ghana during 2017-18, won critical acclaim for its fresh exploration of the confluence of African and American jazz traditions.

“Joy was released at the beginning of the pandemic, and we had to cancel the release concerts,” says Boone. “We considered waiting to release this project, so that we could actually do a tour this time, but we have an imperative to engage the moment and deliver our reactions with as much timeliness and honesty as possible, in spite of the pandemic. The message of these poets is too important, critical, and relevant to current events to wait.”

Nation Beat returns with a whole new plan and a fabulously funky, brash new CD: The Royal Chase

The chase has been on for a longtime for drummer/percussionist extraordinaire Scott Kettner. With his collective Nation Beat, he has long explored the folkloric musical traditions of Brazil and Louisiana. That exploration of the shared history and culture of these two incredibly rich musical areas has led to a hybridity, one mixed with his jazz influence, inspiring Kettner and his crew to compose and perform new music that brings all of these influences together.

The chase has led Kettner to a royal payoff. The Royal Chase (NBM), out now, is an album that represents a new distinctive sound for Nation Beat. It is the primal sounds of brass instruments mixed with drums and percussion, reinterpreting classics and presenting original songs for curious listeners who thrive on musical pluralism and surprises. The new Nation Beat sound is unplugged and funky. Forró, Funk, Brass ’n’ Sass!

“I wanted to reimagine the classic forró songs from Brazil as vehicles for improvisation in a funky brass band format.” Kettner enthuses in the studio where he co-produced The Royal Chase with longtime friend and collaborator Rob Curto (Lila Downs, David Krakauer), “I’ve always imagined my musical heroes making music together and what it would sound like, what kind of energy it would generate. Dr. John and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band meets Chico Science and Jackson do Pandeiro.” Kettner also partnered with Paul Carlon Tenor Sax (Tony Allen) on the horn arrangements, which helped shape the new sound of the band.

That energy comes through this album in spades. The original compositions blur the lines between genres and bridge the gap between traditional and contemporary music. Throughout, there is a fascinating and funky blend of the roots styles of New Orleans and Brazil. NOLA jazz slips and slides around Brazilian Baião; insistent maracatu beats push a Second Line swagger. Guest vocals and a stellar production add to the overall power of The Royal Chase.

The Royal Chase represents all that is evident in cross-cultural explorations and the importance of sharing, learning and discovering. But forget the musical history; this is music to make you dance.

When touring opens up again, Nation Beat will be ready to bring The Royal Chase to stages across the country and beyond. Their live shows are joyous, rocking, affairs, lifting the feet - and the souls - of audiences with the group’s singular musical mojo that calls across time and continents with the force that blew through Louis Armstrong and the power that gets Brazilians swinging in the streets for carnival.

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.