Avant Music News
From Dusted:
Artist: Sun Ra
Album: Secrets of the Sun
Label: Atavistic
Review date: Nov. 10, 2008Artist: Alexander von Schlippenbach
Album: Piano Solo ’77
Label: FMP
Review date: Nov. 6, 2008Artist: Harris Eisenstadt
Album: Guewel
Label: Clean Feed
Review date: Oct. 30, 2008Artist: Erik Friedlander
Album: Broken Arm Trio
Label: Skipstone
Review date: Oct. 28, 2008
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New releases from Atavistic:
Sun Ra & His Solar Arkestra
Secrets of the Sun (Deluxe Edition Bonus Track)
Peter Brötzmann
The BRAIN Of The DOG In Section
Here is where I post, at a frequency of about once a week, a list of the new music that has caught my attention that week. All of the releases listed below I’ve heard for the first time this week and come recommended.
Mary Halvorson – Dragon’s Head (2008, complex free jazz)
Sun Ra – Horizon (1971, free jazz)
Bill Brovold and Larval – Surviving Death / Alive Why? (2007, progressive rock / composed jazz)
Byron Metcalf / Mark Seelig / Steve Roach – Nada Terma (2008, ambient electronic)
Stephen Haynes / Taylor Ho Bynum – Double Trio (2008, dense free jazz)
Mathias Grassow – Inner Light (2008, ambient electronic)
James Tenney – Selected Works: 1961-1969 (2003, experimental / electroacoustic)
The Legendary Pink Dots – Alchemical Playschool (2004, experimental rock / collage)
A chance to see the Arkestra tonight:
Under the direction of Marshall Allen, the great avant-garde alto saxophonist/multi-instrumentalist/composer and apostolic successor of Sun Ra, who died in 1993, the Arkestra celebrates Halloween with its cosmic jazz and comic pizazz Friday at 7:30 p.m. at the University of Connecticut’s von der Mehden Recital Hall on the Storrs campus.
Glowing Realm interviews THB.
Taylor Ho Bynum is a new music composer/trumpeter from New York. Working frequently with some of NY’s finest (Tomas Fujiwara, Mary Halvorson, Jessica Pavone) and leading groups such as SpiderMonkey Strings and The Thirteenth Assembly, Ho Bynum always brings a unique approach to composition, and improvisation. Also a frequent collaborator of Anthony Braxton’s, he has performed and recorded all over the world in any number of Braxton’s tone combinations. He also co-runs the great Firehouse 12 Records with Nick Lloyd. Readers of this blog will know Firehouse 12 because they released Tyshawn Sorey’s debut, which I gushed over awhile back. He also keeps a great great blog (his busy schedule is making it hard to keep it up to date, but read the past and ask nicely and maybe it will blossom again.)
Here is where I post, at a frequency of about once a week, a list of the new music that has caught my attention that week. All of the releases listed below I’ve heard for the first time this week and come recommended.
Anthony Braxton – Quartet (Moscow) 2008 (2008, composed / free jazz)
Paul Lansky – More Than Just Idle Chatter (1994, electroacoustic)
Aidan Baker – Phantasma Paratasie (2008, electronic / noise)
Sun Ra – Media Dream (1978, experimental jazz)
Sun Ra – Disco 3000 (1978, experimental jazz)
William Parker – Petit Oiseau (2008, modern free jazz)
Menace Ruine – The Die is Cast (2008, ambient / metal)
Rob Reddy – The Book of the Storm (2007, modern free jazz)
James Beaudreau – Fresh Twigs (2008, acoustic guitar)
Zebulon in Brooklyn is featuring Marshall Allen and Sam Hillmer in an upcoming show.
Trouble and Zebulon present
REGATTAS Record Release Party
featuring
MARSHALL ALLEN
(Sun Ra Arkestra)and
REGATTAS
(Sam Hillmer)OCTOBER 19, 2008 9PM
@ ZEBULON, 208 WYTHE ST
WILLIAMSBURG BROOKLYNCelebrating the release of Regattas’ first album (out October 19th on Shinkoyo) Regattas (Sam Hillmer) and legendary saxophonist Marshall Allen, long time leader of the Sun Ra Arkestra team up for a show at Zebulon on October 19th at 9pm. Hillmer will be accompanied by Darius Jones (Little Women) on alto sax, Jason Ajemian (Chicago Underground Trio) on bass, John Fell Ryan (Excepter) on keyboards, and John McClellan (Joe Maneri) on drums. DJs Coitus Mayfield (Skeletons/Shinkoyo) round out the bill.
Marshall Allen is a free jazz and avant-garde jazz alto saxophone player best known as the leader of Sun Ra’s Arkestra. Allen met Sun Ra around 1956, joining the pianist’s legendary Arkestra two years later. He would go on to lead its reed section for more than four decades, over time earning renown as one of the most distinctive and original saxophonists of the postwar era. Since the departure of Sun Ra and John Gilmore, Allen has led the Arkestra, and has recorded two albums as their bandleader.
Allen’s mastery of effects on the alto is well known; he has said that he “wanted to play on a broader sound basis rather than on chords”. He also developed his own reed instrument (dubbed the “morrow”) by attaching a saxophone mouthpiece to an open-hole wooden body. Allen collaborated regularly with Babatunde Olatunji, emerging as one of the first jazz musicians to fuse the avant-garde with traditional African music.
Sam Hillmer (aka Regattas) co-founded the band/chamber ensemble Zs as well as Wet Ink, a new music presenting organization, ensemble, and composer’s collective. In addition to his work with Zs, Hillmer is currently playing and performing with Regattas, Dirty Projectors, MOTH, and John Dwyer (of Ohsees).
Hillmer is also active as a curator and educator. In collaboration with artist Laura Paris, he organizes the biannual performance festival and installation YOU ARE HERE: 21 nights of performance in a sculptural maze. Hillmer is currently producing the youth hip-hop recording series Representing NYC. The first volume, The Fly Girlz’ “Da Bratz From Da Ville”, is due out this November on Wisdom Through Music and Socketts CDs.
Hillmer has had the privilege of working with and playing the music of Mick Barr, Weasel Walter, Joe Maneri, Christian Wolff, Phill Niblock, Roscoe Mitchell, Petr Kotik, Louis Andriessen and Larry Polansky. Recordings of his music are available on labels threeoneg, Planaria Recordings, Epicene Sound Systems, Tzadik, Zum, Gilgongo, Socketts, New Sonic, and Troubleman Unlimited.
Shinkoyo is the ectoplasm connecting a diverse group of composers, visual artists, improvisers, instrument builders, thinkers, scholars and healers exploring new syntheses of sound and art. We operate on terms of collectivity and collaboration, while supporting the individual voices of all Shinkoyos. Shinkoyo submits to no genres, but Ancient Futurism, Noise Age, and True Age are terms to be discovered. Born in 2000 at the Oberlin Conservatory, we began releasing music in fall of 2002. Shinkoyo has spread its wings from California to New York, with its headquarters at the Paris London West Nile Performance/Gallery Space – Brooklyn’s donation-based center for experimental performance and art. In summer 2008, Shinkoyo launched its SHINKOJUKO free jukebox and donation-based online music store, showcasing our catalog of music releases from 2002 to the present.
About Zebulon: “Akin to a smoky beatnik bar in Montparnasse, French-owned-and-operated Zebulon offers free experimental live jazz and blues nightly by mind-blowing local musicians and drop-ins by the occasional vagabond. Pale yellow spheres of light illuminate the dark room like a dozen mini-Parisian moons. The decor feels fresh with a smattering of old jazz concert posters and album covers. Perch atop a bar stool or sit at a stage-side table for an unfettered view of the action.”
From NY’s ISSUE Project Room:
IMPROV WEEK – Curated by Zeena Parkins and Suzanne Fiol
Monday October 13th: Evan Parker + Ned Rothenberg
Wednesday October 15th: Aki Onda + Shelley Hirsch
Friday October 17th: Wobbly + Bevin Blechdom
Saturday October 18th: Peter Evans + Josh Sinton + Matt Bauder
From DMG:
William Parker Qt! Braxton in Moscow! Trio X 7CD Box! Elliott Sharp DVD! McGregor/Phillips/Moholo! Malaby Cello Trio! Noonan/Ribot/Maneri/Tacuma!
Flaherty/Nace Thurston! More archival Sun Ra! Dick/Baczkowski/Padmanabha! Locke/Kimbrough! Massaron/Bozulich/De Rossi! Tina Marsh! Anthony Davis! Charles Ives!
From Atavistic:
SUN RA & HIS ARKESTRA – Secrets Of The Sun
Secrets of the Sun was a transitional album for Sun Ra and his Arkestra. It was recorded during 1962 at a time when the musicians were relocating from Chicago to New York. Perhaps because of this, the Arkestra isn’t at its full size, and the assembled performers toy with new ideas that would eventually feed into better known works like Out There A Minute. Older compositions are reworked here too: ‘Space Aura’ dates back to the Chicago period, but the slow, horn-heavy swing takes on a more cumbersome sound to the version that appeared on Interstellar Low Ways. Secrets Of The Sun is a satisfying and by no means impenetrable entry into Sun Ra’s catalogue, and is packaged with ‘Flight To Mars’ a seventeen-minute, highly experimental work from the same era, notable for opening with a pretty radical tape collage.
JOE MANIERI & PETER DOLGER – Peace Concert (1964)
The Peace Concert was recorded in 1964, and only resurfaces today thanks to Stu Vandermark’s (that’s Ken’s dad, by the way) salvaging. This twenty-five minute recording has never been released previously and is supported on this disc by a 2006 interview with Bostonian alto player Maneri conducted by Vandermark himself. There’s a composerly discipline to Maneri’s languid improvisations, exhibiting a greater concern for melodic and harmonic invention than showing off combustive technical prowess. Frummer Peter Dolger does a fine job of maintaining this air of seriousness and discipline, firmly retaining the brooding, moderate tempo during his solo spots. Peace Concert, for all its contorted interval leaps is an immensely listenable slice of free-jazz history, and a relevant document for any followers of those other iconic saxophonists Coltrane, Coleman and Ayler.
Avant Music News