Source: Bandcamp Daily.

It’s a few days before Tomeka Reid is set to release her second album as a bandleader, and the cellist/composer is busy. Not so much with album prep and tour, but with all of the other things she does when she’s not leading a band. Reid is currently teaching composition at Mills College, and is the Darius Milhaud Distinguished Visiting Professor this semester. “It’s super awesome; it’s just so last-minute,” Reid says of the honor, on a call. “I had a full tour scheduled this fall, so fitting it all in has been very interesting, to say the least.” In a day, she’ll be performing in Los Angeles, then flying out to Rome, where she will tour Europe as a member of the legendary Art Ensemble of Chicago. Then, she’ll briefly return home to Queens before flying back to California to teach again.

Somewhere in between the travels, Tomeka Reid Quartet’s thrilling and highly anticipated second album, Old New will be released. For that album, Reid reconvened the group that was first heard on the crackling 2015 debut: drummer Tomas Fujiwara, double bass player Jason Roebke, and guitarist Mary Halvorson. Its songs strike out in bold, lyrical directions, the three string instruments darting amongst one another like bees in a garden. “We’re always all busy, but we find moments somehow to make it happen,” she says. “It keeps it fresh and I’m always excited for it.”

Source: The Quietus.

Born in Monroe, Louisiana, in 1955, Hamid Drake is widely acknowledged to be one of the finest percussionists working in jazz and improvised music today. Drake’s style is a blend of elements from wildly diverse cultural and genre backgrounds. He has played with many of the leading names in jazz, including Don Cherry, Herbie Hancock, Pharoah Sanders, Fred Anderson, Archie Shepp, David Murray and Peter Brötzmann. He has appeared in numerous line-ups and on countless recordings with the great double bassist, composer and poet, William Parker. Along with the likes of Steve Noble and the Dutch free-jazz colossus Han Bennink, Drake is a drummer that I’ve heard more than one fellow Cafe Oto attendee refer to as a personal favourite. I took the opportunity to talk to him during the excellent recent Parker/Drake Oto two-day residency, and we discussed some of the recordings and personalities that have influenced him on his own musical and spiritual path. It becomes clear from the onset that the erudite and personable Drake is going to have difficulty sticking to a mere 13. “There are a lot of things I could choose,” Drake begins. “Bernard Pretty, Wilson Pickett, Sam and Dave, Creedence Clearwater, the Band. I could talk about all of those. All of those things have had an influence on me, so 13 is like!? I mean, we could talk about 50 recordings.”

The following 13 albums (with additional honourable mentions) do not appear in order of importance. Click the image of Hamid Drake below to begin reading the selections.

Source: Rolling Stone.

In this second installment of our two-part deep-dive into the history and influence of King Crimson’s “21st Century Schizoid Man,” we look at how various lineups of the band have made the song their own, and how it’s inspired artists from the worlds of prog, metal, punk, hip-hop, and beyond during the past half-century.

Source: Rolling Stone.

In this first installment of our two-part deep dive into the history and influence of King Crimson’s “21st Century Schizoid Man,” the band’s co-founders look back on the writing of the iconic song, and contemporaries recount its initial impact onstage and on LP.