Susie Ibarra - Radiance

Drummer Susie Ibarra has in her short time as a leader, assembled a trio that shines so brightly it seems incomprehensible that their "radiance" could be captured in a studio recording. Nonetheless, Radiance is the evidence of this band's wondrous versatility, taste and collective musicianship. Ibarra plays drums and assorted percussion. Veteran pianist Cooper-Moore (in his most understated performance on record) also plays harp and diddley-bo and violinist Charles Burnham from James Blood Ulmer's Odyssey band, join her. Over nine tracks, including the heartbreakingly beautiful title suite, Ibarra and company virtually reinvent modern jazz, carrying its rampant improvisational excesses over the edge into contoured statements of lithe chromatic lyricism and tact, and, creating a compositional framework for the expression of true collective and individual creativity. Radiance's three parts are a jazz folk suite. Ibarra's percussive subtleties are layered over by gorgeous violin work from Burnham playing parsed phrases and elliptical Eastern melodies as Moore offers the harp as a bridge between the two carrying forth melody and rhythm entwined. On the last movement he uses the diddley-bo as a contrapuntal device to Burnham's pastoral yet elegant lines. Further, there exists a wildly inventive cover of Jimi Hendrix's "Up From the Skies," with a gorgeous percussion and drum solo that is so sparse in its beginnings one would never guess that a tune follows it. When the melody finally does enter it's through the back door, with Burnham playing through a wah-wah pedal to bring it out a struggling note at a time. Still it moves and gives way to a phenomenal jam in the center, full of funk and groove. "Jagged Threads" is a Latin-tinged jazz variation on the tango. Cooper-Moore's depth of field here comes in handy, because it's his pacing and multifaceted solo that keeps the tune both focused yet expands its reach with multiples of arpeggiated scales filling up the intervals in the middle when the melody gives way harmonically, yet allowing Burnham to bring it back without a stitch. There are alternate takes of "Dreams" and "Laughter" from Radiance that fill the set, and given their striking melodic invention and extrapolated sense of Eastern harmonic sensibilities and their truly beautiful architecture, they stand alone as well as they do within the suite. This is the band to watch, folks. -- Thom Jurek

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Movie ChoOser - An other blog by jizzrelics!

Started a new blog: http://moviech00ser.blogspot.com/

Of course you will find links to Megavideo and similiar streaming platforms. The films are strictly selected, I will try to make good choices. Bookmark it and spread the world!

Jizz

An array of quotes (by Mingus)

A paint by Jay Mason.

Have a nice Christmas. In the next weeks I'm coming up with a massive Braxtonian upload (9 cds). In the meantime, something to read.

“Just because I’m playing jazz I don’t forget about me. I play or write me the way I feel through jazz, or whatever. Music is, or was, a language of the emotions.”

“Tastes are created by the business interests. How else can you explain the popularity of Al Hirt?”

“If someone has been escaping reality, I don’t expect him to dig my music.”

“Anyone can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the complicated simple.”

“Most of the soloists at Birdland had to wait for Parker’s next record in order to find out what to play next. What will they do now?”

“In my music, I’m trying to play the truth of what I am. The reason it’s difficult is because I’m changing all the time.”

“They’re singing your praises while stealing your phrases.”

“I’m too busy playing. When I’m playing I don’t pay attention to who’s listening. When I was listening I listened to symphony orchestras, Beethoven, Bach, Brahms, Stravinsky. You don’t listen to one instrument; you listen to music.”

“I always wanted to be a spontaneous composer.”

“I, myself, came to enjoy the players who didn’t only just swing but who invented new rhythmic patterns, along with new melodic concepts. And those people are: Art Tatum, Bud Powell, Max Roach, Sonny Rollins, Lester Young, Dizzy Gillespie and Charles Parker, who is the greatest genius of all to me because he changed the whole era around.”

“Had I been born in a different country or had I been born white, I am sure I would have expressed my ideas long ago. Maybe they wouldn’t have been as good because when people are born free–I can’t imagine it, but I’ve got a feeling that if it’s so easy for you, the struggle and the initiative are not as strong as they are for a person who has to struggle and therefore has more to say.”

“Let my children have music! Let them hear live music. Not noise. My children! You do what you want with your own!”

“It (jazz) isn’t like it used to be. The guys aren’t together. They’re all separated. Individuals now. Bird was a symbol. It was a clique, a clique of people. Who all believed in one thing: gettin’ high. And playin’.”

“That sound in tune to you? Sounds sharp to me. Sounds like I’m playing sharp all the time. My singing teacher told us you should do that. Maybe I got it from her. She said singers when they grow old have a tendency to go flat. So if you sing sharp as a young person, as you get older and go flat, you’ll be in tune. In other words, it’s never thought good to be flat. It means you can’t get to the tone.”

“Most customers, by the time the musicians reach the second set, are to some extent inebriated. They don’t care what you play anyway.”

“Good jazz is when the leader jumps on the piano, waves his arms, and yells. Fine jazz is when a tenorman lifts his foot in the air. Great jazz is when he heaves a piercing note for 32 bars and collapses on his hands and knees. A pure genius of jazz is manifested when he and the rest of the orchestra runaround the room while the rhythm section grimaces and dances around their instruments.”

Rava / D'Andrea / Vitous / Humair - QUATRE (1989 GALA records)

This is the first (of two) record of an european all-star quartet from late eighties. The group is made by the italians Enrico Rava on trumpet and Franco D'andrea on piano, swiss drummer Daniel Humair and Miroslav Vitous on bass. Each member contributes with nice compositions and the collective spirit is impressive, fed by the lyrical voice of Rava, the subtle harmonies of D'Andrea's piano and the variety of rhythms and timbres produced by Humair and Vitous.

I hope you'll enjoy it! ------------------- CJ

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Ornette Coleman - Colors

Ornette Coleman is certainly full of surprises in his 60s, recording a duo album with -- believe it or not -- a pianist. For this project, he chose the German pianist Joachim Kühn, who gratefully claims that it was Ornette's example that originally led him down the road to free jazz, and they recorded eight Coleman compositions live in the opera house of Kühn's hometown, Leipzig. Yet their collaboration is not really a radical departure from Ornette's sound worlds in his acoustic groups or in the electric Prime Time. The two seem to exist on parallel planes, not interacting or reacting rhythmically or harmonically, but carving out their occasionally entwined melodic lines separately. Nor does Ornette change his own alto sax manner; at times, he performs in the same rhetorical fashion as he does with Prime Time, while venturing on the outside far more often and scraping away on the violin or burbling on his trumpet when the odd impulse strikes. The music ranges from the relatively funky "Faxing" -- no doubt a spinoff from Tone Dialing -- to the atonal complexity of "Three Ways to One," and the technically formidable Kühn gets an ovation for his extremely intricate solo passage in the latter. Here is an example of the artist having it both ways, reintroducing an instrument that he became famous for banishing, yet without compromising the artistic conception that led to its banishment in the first place. Thus, Colors is a fascinating addition to the Ornette Coleman catalogue. by Richard S. Ginell

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Miles!! live in 1969

Frankly speaking, there is nothing I can say about this one....just enjoy it!

In this 1969 european tour date the music is already far away from what the quintet was playng few months before, and all that was going to happen is also there, hidden under an invisibility cloak. Shorter's tenor solo in gemini part I is simply stunning, listen and tell me. CJ

steve lacy - momentum 1987

This is one of my favourite Steve Lacy records, possibly because it is one of the first I heard! Still, I remember how I felt suprised when, after the two first wonderful tunes with blowing saxophones and driving bass, Irene Aebi's voice spreaded out of the blue in the third track "Utah" singing "Strawberry, strawberry...". Some may hate her eccentric way, but could you imagine someone else singing those complex and awkward songs? I can't.
Anyway, I hope you love it.... so here is it the rip of my (signed by the Author!) copy with the hystory of the compositions also briefly sketched by Lacy himself in the booklet. Enjoy, CJ

Frank Wright Sextet - Stove Man, Love Is The Word

Frank Wright Sextet - Stove Man, Love Is The Word

1. Stove Man, Love Is The Word
2. T-and-W
3. Rice Patch
4. Export

Frank Wright tenor sax
Ka-Kamal Abdul-Alm trumpet
Tony Smith piano
Richard Williams bass
Khalil Abdullah percussion
Gerry Griffin drums

Munich Loft, May 22, 1979

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