From two.one.five magazine.
“Free Jazz! What does this even mean?” Dutch drummer Han Bennink remarks in a small room on the 3rd floor of the Philadelphia Art Alliance. “Does it mean you won’t get paid?” He laughs at his own sarcastic question. Free jazz, he explains, means you can make the music anything you want, which is exactly what he did, playing, for the first time in history, in a duet with world-renowned jazz pianist Dave Burrell.
From CapitalBop:
Berne himself has emerged as simply one of the most celebrated and respected creative musicians in the world, and these days he keeps an insanely busy schedule. Still, he found the time recently to speak to me about his musical development, and the New York scene. Here’s what he had to say.
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From Paris Transatlantic:
WINTER 2011: Editorial: Interviews with GRAHAM COLLIER , BERTRAND DENZLER and FREDERIC RZEWSKI ; In Print: Echtzeitmusik ; On Eremite: Juma Sultan’s Aboriginal Music Society ; On Erstwhile: Toshimaru Nakamura / Taku Unami & Takahiro Kawaguchi / Greg Kelley & Olivia Block / Jérôme Noetinger & Will Guthrie ; Reissued!: Can / Julius Hemphill ; On Family Vineyard: Loren Connors / Akira Sakata, Jim O’Rourke & Chikamorachi ; VINYL SOLUTION: Astral Social Club / Jim Haynes / Kostis Kilymis & Leif Elggren / Thomas Lehn & Marcus Schmickler / Machinefabriek & Gareth Davis / Stephan Mathieu / RLW / Sculpture / Xela ; JAZZ & IMPROV: Albert Ayler / Derek Bailey, John Butcher & Gino Robair / Samuel Blaser / Taylor Ho Bynum / Andrew Cyrille / FAB Trio / Bill Dixon / Peter Evans / Grutronic and Evan Parker / Haptic / Boris Hauf, Steven Hess, Keefe Jackson & Juun / Julius Hemphill & Peter Kowald / The Imaginary Soundscapes / Iskra 1903 / Daunik Lazro, Benjamin Duboc & Didier Lasserre / Fred Lonberg-Holm & Aaron Zarzutzki / Roscoe Mitchell / Manuel Mota & Jason Kahn / Magda Mayas & Anthea Caddy / With Lumps ; CONTEMPORARY: Jeremiah Cymerman / Jason Eckardt / Morton Feldman / Ellen Fullman / Peter Garland / Maki Ishii / Christian Wolff / Theresa Wong ; ELECTRONICA: Artificial Lover / Moniek Darge / James Ferraro / Francisco Lopez & Novi_Sad / Metamono / Bob Ostertag / Janek Schaefer / The Vegetable Orchestra
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From The Quietus:
Eyvind Kang is a composer, arranger, multi-instrumentalist and performer who gained prominence in 2010 when he worked on arrangements for SUNN O)))‘s much-celebrated Monoliths & Dimensions, helping the famed doom/drone unit transcend their guitar-based roots and connect with modern composition and experimental music. But beyond his numerous collaborations (which also include work with the likes of Bill Frisell, Laurie Anderson and John Zorn), Kang has established himself as a potent artist in his own right, as demonstrated in two albums released on SUNN O))) guitarist Stephen O’Malley‘s Ideologic Organ imprint, Aestuarium (credited to Kang and his partner Jessika Kenney) and Visible Breath; and an upcoming release on Ipecac Records, The Narrow Garden. All three albums reflect the diversity of Eyvind Kang’s musical output, with none sounding at all like the others, but also his singular approach to tones and atmospheres.
Image by ampersandyslexia via Flickr
From Westword.com:
Secret Chiefs 3 (due tonight at the Bluebird Theater) is the brainchild of Trey Spruance, whom you may know from Mr. Bungle. With Secret Chiefs 3, Spruance seemingly follows every musical idea he can think of down every rabbit hole imaginable. Along the way, he has learned to play a plethora of exotic instruments in an attempt to realize his musical vision. Really, the Secret Chiefs 3 is a blanket name for various incarnations of the band that make use of more specific aesthetics from Middle Eastern-flavored experimental music, death metal, soundscaping and whatever else emanates from the minds of Spruance and his numerous collaborators. Each of the band’s shows is a bit of an audio-visual feast and never less than impressive. We recently spoke with Spruance about the influence of Pythagoras on his music, Wizard Prisons and Laibach.
From Houston Music:
Alvin Fielder helped found the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) in Chicago, worked for the Nixon Administration and spent much of his life running the family drug store. However, hearing him talk about all of his accomplishments by phone from his Mississippi home, winning Nameless Sound‘s “Resounding Vision Award” could very well be his favorite achievement.
From CapitalBop:
In the past five years, a new crop of musicians — this time, most of them with South Asian roots — has pronounced its strong and embedded interest in bringing Indian classical together 21st-century jazz. The music they are creating is more directly tied to the sounds of the Indian subcontinent than was that of the ’60s experimenters; look to Vijay Iyer, Rez Abbasi and Dan Weiss for examples of such globalization-era brew. But especially, take stock of the bitingly alert alto saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa. Mahanthappa, who was first inspired to bring Indian classical music into his jazz playing after hearing a Kadri Gopalnath record during college, makes some of the current day’s most bracing and exciting music.
From Anthony Braxton’s Tri-Centric Orchestra:
Kamala Sankaram’s voice (and accordion!) is one you won’t forget. And, surely, you’ve heard her before. As a performer, Kamala has collaborated with and premiered pieces by the Philip Glass Ensemble, the Wooster Group, eighth blackbird, Phil Kline, Fred Ho and many others. Her compositions have been featured as part of the Bang on a Can Summer Festival, the Santa Fe New Music Festival, the Lucerne Festival, the Music With a View Festival at the Flea Theater, American Opera Projects’ series “Opera Grows in Brooklyn” and in the article “More Song, Less Art(ifice): The New Breed of Art Song” in New Music Box magazine. And, for the animation fans out there, she’s voiced many a character on the Cartoon Network and Comedy Central. Kamala sings the part of Helena in Trillium E and has always brought a truly joyful spirit to her work in the Tri-Centric Orchestra. Read on about her latest project, “Miranda,” opening on January 12th in New York.
From NYTimes.com
But Ms. Mitchell has been absent from the local scene lately. Her performances of her composition “Harambee: Road to Victory” with the Chicago Sinfonietta at Wentz Concert Hall in Naperville on Jan. 15 and at Symphony Center on Jan. 16, will be two of only a handful of appearances on local stages since July. One reason is financial. It proved to be a challenge for even so accomplished a jazz artist to make a living at her craft here, so she moved 2,000 miles away, to Long Beach, Calif., to take a “dream job” and earn a steady paycheck. In August Ms. Mitchell, 44, became assistant professor in a relatively new program integrating composition, improvisation and technology at the University of California, Irvine. “It’s always been important to me to have that role, as a teacher, because I feel really fortunate for the mentorships I’ve had,” she said.
From NewMusicBox:
David Borden’s neglect is somewhat surprising, though, considering his formidable category-defying musical accomplishments which are a direct precedent to today’s largely DIY contemporary music landscape. Borden’s path is so related to the current scene that when The New York Times ran an article about the indie-classical movement in December 2011, the photo they chose to illustrate it with was not of any of the many 30-something composers cited therein, but rather an image of the septuagenarian Borden during a concert appearance at Brooklyn’s ISSUE Project Room back in June.
