Category: Interviews

Interviews with artists and other interesting people

Ava Mendoza Interviewed Ahead of Portland Performances

~ Mike ~ Leave a comment

Source: Portland Mercury.

To fully understand what it’s like to be a modern musician, particularly one that plays in that cloudy space where free jazz, experimental, American Primitive, and contemporary classical fogs up the landscape, you just need to ask guitarist Ava Mendoza what’s on the horizon for her. In addition to the shows she is playing in Portland on Tuesday December 10 at No Fun and Wednesday December 11 at Turn Turn Turn, as part of a short residency curated by the Creative Music Guild, and the concerts she talks about below, the 36-year-old musician will have her work featured on at least 11 albums that will be released at some point in 2020.

Don Moye Interviewed About the Art Ensemble of Chicago

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Source: Jazzwise.

Celebrating their 50th anniversary, the legendary Art Ensemble of Chicago show no signs of slowing down. The group’s new double-album, We Are On The Edge, finds longstanding members Roscoe Mitchell and Famoudou Don Moye joined by guests including Nicole Mitchell, Tomeka Reid and Dudu Kouyate on a typically adventurous set. It’s a fitting testament to this iconic, ever-challenging band, who took Paris by storm in the late 1960s, and remain as relevant as ever. Don Moye tells it like it is to Kevin Le Gendre

Roscoe Mitchell and Shabaka Hutchings Interviewed

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Source: Clash Magazine.

The Art Ensemble Of Chicago is a powerful force in avant garde music. Emerging from a coterie of jazz musicians in Chicago, the astonishing force of their live performances helped break left field music out of the boxes others tried to place it in. Building a lengthy, inspired catalogue, the Ensemble’s work has formed a unique aural universe, one it can confidently claim as its own. Celebrating their 50th anniversary this year, the Art Ensemble Of Chicago toasted this milestone with phenomenal new album ‘We Are On The Edge’. Breaking free of their history, it finds the group locating 21st century kindred spirits, with guests ranging from Moor Mother to Jean Cook and Nicole Mitchell. Touching down in London for a rare live set as part of EFG London Jazz Festival, the Art Ensemble Of Chicago played a blistering, exuberant, riotous set at the Barbican. Guests on the night included Mercury nominee Shabaka Hutchings, with Clash sneaking in to witness an extraordinary, illuminating soundcheck. After this, we sat down with Art Ensemble Of Chicago founder Roscoe Mitchell and Shabaka Hutchings for a full conversation.

Suzanne Ciani Interviewed

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Source: DJMag.com.

At Portugal’s Semibreve festival, we sat down with Suzanne Ciani, a pioneer of electronic music and modular synthesis, and dance music disruptor Rian Treanor, who specialises in software manipulations. In conversation, surprising parallels are found in their work, and in their appreciation of sound, space and spontaneity

December / January Perfect Sound Forever is Out

~ Mike ~ Leave a comment

Source: Perfect Sound Forever.

PATRICK BRENNAN
Interview- jazz composing in lower case

FAUST
Interview- Zappi constructs their odd story

PETER FRENCH
Interview- Atomic Rooster, Cactus pedigree

ANNE MIDGETTE
Interview- Classical writing and #MeToo

PERE UBU
Interview- David Thomas on high/low-brow

TOOL
Is Fear Inoculum a real comeback?

DAVID TOOP
Book excerpt- becoming a music scribe

VINYL ANACHRONIST
2019- Year of Globetrotting, Awards

On Patricia Nicholson

~ Mike

Source: Jazz Right Now.

Patricia Nicholson is an artist and the founder and director of the free jazz organization Arts for Art (AFA). In 2016, I was interning at Arts for Art and taking one-on-one dance classes with Patricia when William Parker suggested I interview her in the perspective of putting a book together. Here are some excerpts of our conversations, important biographical elements, and anecdotes.

Irmin Schmidt Interview

~ Mike

Source: The Quietus.

Even within the wave of German groups of the late 1960s and early 70s that came to be labelled krautrock, Can, the band that Irmin Schmidt founded in Cologne with Holger Czukay, Michael Karoli and Jaki Liebezeit, stood out for their fierce commitment to experimentation that went way beyond space-age effects and a motorik beat.

His 100 or so soundtracks for film and television include a string of collaborations with Wim Wenders; he has conducted symphony orchestras and composed an opera, Gormenghast, based on the gothic fantasy novels of Mervyn Peake; he has also been a student of Karlheinz Stockhausen and Gyorgy Ligeti. His contribution to music has been recognised in France, where he now lives, with the Ordre des Artes et des Lettres.