Cover of Julius Hemphill
From Dusted:
Artist: Eli Keszler
Album: Oxtirn
Label: ESP-DiskArtist: Julius Hemphill
Album: Dogon A.D.
Label: International Phonograph Inc.Artist: Fabio Selvafiorita and Valerio Tricoli
Album: Death by Water
Label: Die SchachtelArtist: Cindytalk
Album: Hold Everything Dear
Label: Editions Mego
From Courant.com:
He knew he couldn’t write the “serial music” that was popular in Italy as well as the Italians could, and he was no longer interested in writing jazz and classical music. “I didn’t want to rely on European models,” he said. “I wanted to free myself from a musical culture that didn’t bleong to me.” So he decided to create a musical culture that did belong to him. “I found something that was my own,” he said. Decades later, Lucier, now 80, is a revered pioneer in the field of experimental music. This weekend, Wesleyan University in Middletown will salute Lucier, who taught there for 43 years, with a festival, featuring concerts, films, symposia, an art exhibit and a flash mob of students replicating his piece “Chambers.”
Cover of Louis Andriessen
From NYTimes.com:
Bang on a Can All-Stars (Saturday) A quarter century after its founding as a rebellious grassroots upstart, the groundbreaking composers’ collaborative Bang on a Can commandeers the basement of a veritable temple of high culture with a clutch of disparate, appealing works, as performed by its versatile, vivacious house band. Included is the New York premiere of “Life,” a recent work by Bang on a Can mentor Louis Andriessen, as well as pieces by Michael Gordon, David Lang, David Longstreth, K. Moore and Lukas Ligeti. At 9 p.m., Zankel Hall, Carnegie Hall, (212) 247-7800, carnegiehall.org; $31 to $50. (Smith)
Music of Robert Ashley (Friday through Sunday) An illuminating series devoted to Robert Ashley’s chamber music continues on Friday and Saturday evenings, with two performances each night. Friday’s early program includes powerful, haunting works for violin, string quartet and voice; Saturday brings an expansive mix of players. On both nights a new version of Mr. Ashley’s 1979 work “Automatic Writing” follows at 9 p.m. And on Sunday, the multidisciplinary ensemble Varispeed presents a novel interpretation of Mr. Ashley’s seminal video opera “Private Lives,” staging its seven scenes live in sites throughout Greenwich Village. Friday and Saturday at 7 and 9 p.m., Incubator Arts Project, St. Mark’s Church in the Bowery, 131 East 10th Street, East Village, (212) 420-1916, incubatorarts.org; $15, or $30 for a three-event package. Sunday from 11 a.m. to 11:30 p.m., see thingny.com for locations; free. (Smith)
Cover of Mark Helias
From NYTimes.com:
Ralph Alessi’s Modular Theater (Saturday) Collective improvisation is the mode and mission of Modular Theater, a slippery ensemble led by Mr. Alessi, an exacting trumpeter, and featuring Loren Stillman on alto saxophone, Drew Gress on bass and Mark Ferber on drums. At 9 and 10:30 p.m., Cornelia Street Café, 29 Cornelia Street, Greenwich Village, (212) 989-9319, corneliastreetcafe.com; $15 cover, with a $10 minimum. (Nate Chinen)
Brooklyn Babylon (Wednesday through Nov. 12) An intriguing multimedia collaboration between the graphic artist Danijel Zezelj and the jazz composer Darcy James Argue, “Brooklyn Babylon” concerns itself with issues of development and dystopia in a certain borough at an uncertain future date. The piece, part of the Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, will involve projected animation, live-action painting and an original score executed by Mr. Argue’s 18-piece band, the Secret Society. At 7:30 p.m., Harvey Theater, Brooklyn Academy of Music, 651 Fulton Street, Fort Greene, Brooklyn, (718) 636-4100, bam.org; $20, $14 for season tickets. (Chinen)
Marilyn Crispell (Friday) Ms. Crispell, a pianist equally celebrated for aggressive atonality and delicate lyricism, makes one of her infrequent club appearances, on intimate terms. Her first set, at 9 p.m., will be a solo recital; for the second set, at 10:30 p.m., she’ll be joined by the bassist Mark Helias, a longtime collaborator. At Cornelia Street Café, 29 Cornelia Street, Greenwich Village, (212) 989-9319, corneliastreetcafe.com; $15 cover per set, with a $10 minimum. (Chinen)
Cryptogramphone at the Stone (Friday through Sunday, Tuesday through Nov. 13) Cryptogramophone, a stylishly progressive Los Angeles label run by the violinist Jeff Gauthier, has taken over the Stone for the next couple of weeks, airing out its left-of-center aesthetic one show at a time. Among the coming week’s highlights are Trio M, an enlightened collective (Friday at 8 p.m.); Mr. Gauthier’s chief band, the Goatette (Saturday at 8 p.m.); a quintet led by the alto saxophonist Tim Berne, playing new music (Saturday at 10 p.m.); and Tiny Resistors, a chamber jazz-rock group led by the bassist Todd Sickafoose, augmented by a string quartet (Thursday at 10 p.m.). At 8 and 10 p.m., the Stone, Avenue C and Second Street, East Village, thestonenyc.com; $10 cover per set. (Chinen)
Peter Evans Quartet (Sunday) The trumpeter Peter Evans has a mind-boggling recent album, “Ghosts” (More Is More), that pursues complex derivations of standard form. He works here with the same slashing band as on the album, with the pianist Carlos Homs, the bassist Tom Blancarte and the drummer Jim Black; in their freely improvised second set they’ll be joined by John Butcher, a British saxophonist known for his extended technique. At 8:30 and 10 p.m., Cornelia Street Café, 29 Cornelia Street, Greenwich Village, (212) 989-9319, corneliastreetcafe.com; $10 cover, with a $10 minimum. (Chinen)
Paradoxical Frog (Thursday) So much possibility rumbles from this improvising collective — with Kris Davis on piano, Ingrid Laubrock on tenor saxophone and Tyshawn Sorey on drums, and all three contributing tunes — that on its superb self-titled debut, released last year on Clean Feed, you don’t have time to fixate on its free-jazz pedigree or wonder who’s running the show. Which is as it should be. At 8:30 p.m., Cornelia Street Café, 29 Cornelia Street, Greenwich Village, (212) 989-9319, corneliastreetcafe.com; $10 cover, with a $10 minimum. (Chinen)
From Portland’s The Creative Music Guild:
We are extremely happy to announce The Outset Music Series – a new ongoing series that will feature local musicians in an intimate setting at Revival Drum Shop on the 1st and 3rd Wednesday of every month. The goal of the series is to provide a reliable local outlet for experimental, improvised and avant-garde music that will focus on solos and smaller groups as well as host the occasional touring musician or group. See below for more information.
The inaugural show will be on November 16th, at 8PM and will feature solos by Marisa Anderson and Doug Theriault.
Marisa Anderson is a composer, guitarist and multi-instrumentalist living in Portland Oregon. Anderson’s second solo record, The Golden Hour, was released January 2011 on Mississippi Records. The Golden Hour is inspired by Delta blues, West African guitar, country and western radio from the 60?s and 70?s, gospel, noise, rhythms, cycles, mortality, and praise. The Golden Hour features 12 improvisations for guitar and lap steel.
Doug Theriault is a musician and artist based in Portland, Oregon. His work is concerned with the development of live electronic music systems on custom made instruments of his own design.
Next up: 12/7/11: Outset Series, performers TBA
12/18/11: CMG presents NYC trumpeter Nate Wooley at Bamboo Grove with Eva Aguila, Danny Sasaki, Jonathan Sielaff and more.
Image via Wikipedia
From The A.V. Club Milwaukee:
In Top Five, we dig into the back catalog of one of city’s many independent record labels and get the back-stories on five of the label’s more significant releases. In our second installment, we focus on free jazz label Okka Disk Records, and talk to label head Bruno Johnson.
The label: Started in 1994 by pushing its roots into the Chicago free jazz scene, Okka Disk Records has since become known worldwide as one of the best places to go for modern American free jazz. By championing musicians such as Peter Brotzmann and Ken Vandermark, Okka Disk has carved out an admittedly small but very important corner in the world of jazz, and music as a whole.
The label head: While Okka Disk began in Chicago, label head Bruno Johnson currently calls Milwaukee his home, where he runs both the Sugar Maple and Palm Tavern in Bay View. Both bars have hosted a number of different musicians over the past few years, including the annual Okka Fest, a three-day free jazz fest that heavily pulls from the Okka Disk roster.
