A source for news on music that is challenging, interesting, different, progressive, introspective, or just plain weird
Source: Forbes.
Eyal Maoz is a musician who has been active in New York City for over 20 years, and has watched the city’s music scene change over the years. His music is more than just jazz, as it incorporates avant-garde, electronic and what he calls “a radical Jewish-Middle-Eastern sound.”
Source: Perfect Sound Forever.
RON GEESIN
Composer’s early days & Floyd connectionGOOSE LAKE FESTIVAL
Detroit’s version of WoodstockLES RALLIZES DÉNUDÉS
Psychedelic musical terrorismRIP JON HASSELL
PSF ARCHIVES
TRIBUTES | ARTICLES | INTERVIEWSANGUS MACLISE
The Velvet’s forgotten avatarANTHONY MOORE
Interview: Henry Cow yearsVINYL ANACHRONIST
Dispatches from the Lossless Wars
Source: IM-OS. IM-OS is new music journal focused on improvised music, open scores in various forms like prose, graphic and action notations.
Editorial (Carl Bergstrøm-Nielsen) 4
Music from drawing lines and a map of Harlem (John Voigt) 5
Reflections on the Scratch Orchestra (Alan Brett) 10
Transcript of BBC interview with Cornelius Cardew 16
about the Scratch Orchestra, 1972 (Alan Brett)
Excerpts from Meditations (VII) for any ensemble 19
(Andreja Andric, 2019)
Cornelius Cardew, the Scratch Orchestra and its Text Scores 1966 – 72. 22
(Stefan Szczelkun)
Compositions No 1 and 2 for the Scratch Orchestra (Stefan Szczelkun) 41
Voicepiece (Christopher Hobbs, 1967) 42
Small notes (Carl Bergstrøm-Nielsen)
Source: East Bay Express.
The first time Karl Evangelista counted off the tempo and strummed the opening chords of his epic jazz suite Apura, he abruptly halted the proceedings after a few notes. False start. He bailed out of a second attempt just as quickly. But looking calm and unflappable, he found the sweet spot the third time, launching the quartet on an enthralling music journey that bridged cultures and generations. Though far more easily overcome, it was hard not to see the hiccups as symbolic of the many obstacles and complications he navigated in assembling his stellar cast last week at the Oakland Jazz Workshop.
Source: Bandcamp Daily.
In 1969, the guitarist Sonny Sharrock released his debut album, Black Woman, a searing suite of abstract free jazz meant to convey the nuances of Black womanhood in the Civil Rights era. Though Sonny’s name carried the biggest font on the front cover, the star of the album was his wife, Linda, an experimental vocalist whose primal screams impart despair better than her husband’s instrument. That’s not a knock against him; across this album, his frenetic chords complemented Linda’s voice beautifully. But there was something magical in her performance, the way she captured the rage of an era without speaking any words. The technique became her calling card. She’d slide up and down the scale, her tone pivoting between sorrow, angst, and joy.
Source: Bandcamp Daily.
Fred Rzewski, who passed away on June 26th of this year, was not only one of the great composers in modern classical music but one of the greatest political artists in American culture. As Rzewski himself pointed out, those two things normally didn’t go together. In 1997, he told K. Robert Schwarz of the New York Times, “People keep harping on this political motif, and I’ve never understood why they think it’s so important. If it were pop music, it would be considered natural. But an American classical composer is supposed to be right-wing or an academic or just removed from reality.”
Source: Bandcamp Daily.
To say that Alessandro Cortini sounds excitable in conversation is an understatement. More than once during a recent chat he mentions “running on a lot of coffee.” But there’s also the well-earned satisfaction he gets from his work: “I work every day and record stuff, so I know that there will be an output from this phase of my life, probably a little brighter than usual, even.”
His use of the phrase “brighter than usual” is key: Cortini is well-known for both his dark-hued electronic compositions and, since 2005, his participation in various iterations of Nine Inch Nails. First recruited by Trent Reznor for the tour supporting With Teeth Cortini, a few years’ break aside, continues in this role on keyboards, bass, and other instruments as well as contributing to the group’s studio work.
Source: New Sounds.
Hear music inspired by the jazz clarinetist Tony Scott, who slowed things down to ambient back in 1965, before ambient or “new age” was even a term. Listen to work from Charles Lloyd, Jeremiah Cymerman, and Herbie Mann as well.
Source: Bandcamp Daily.
After spending a year in Vietnam, where he had served as a “tunnel rat” armed only with a flashlight and pistol, Sgt. E5 William Walker, known to family and friends as Billy Bang, returned to New York in March 1968. Lost, haunted by what he’d seen in the war, and strung out on drugs and alcohol, he became an arms expert for revolutionary political groups. One day, while on a mission to buy guns for a group from a pawn shop, he came across a violin in the corner of the store.
The instrument became a kind of therapy for him. He began immersing himself in the New York loft scene, playing with such luminaries as Sam Rivers, David Murray, and the artist who would become his most regular collaborator, William Parker, before the bassist became a member of Sun Ra’s Arkestra.
Source: Bandcamp Daily.
John Coltrane’s earliest records as a bandleader for the New York-based independent label Prestige are interesting problems. They’re not particularly loved, and they’re also far better than most jazz made by most people—in any period. They were produced with a certain cynicism, yet the ways in which they transcend their own type—the quick and cheap “blowing-session” record—generally come down to Coltrane’s own probity and introverted intensity. They include tons of repetition, tons of licks and stepping stones, and the musical equivalent of predetermined parking spaces: sometimes more than you may know what to do with. And so they may be secondary, but they’re not slight. They’re instructive and dignified and often more personal, and non-acquiescent, than they seem on the surface.
