Since its inception in 2003, Helsinki’s Flow Festival has become a major highlight of the Finnish music calendar. This year’s seventh edition certainly didn’t disappoint. Perfect summer weather, a unique urban site, top-notch programming, and careful execution combined to create excellent reviews and a record-breaking 50,000-plus attendance. While Flow’s programming is decidedly varied—genres ranged fromContinue reading “Flow Festival. Helsinki, Finland. August 13–15, 2010.”
Genre Archives
Sun Ra. College Tour Vol. 1: The Complete Nothing Is…
This reissue of Sun Ra’s Nothing Is . . . comes “complete”—or at least more complete, with ninety minutes of extra music—one complete concert set from St. Lawrence University in Potsdam, New York, on May 1996, plus a partial second set and a sound check from that same evening. The liner notes, sadly, do not match theContinue reading “Sun Ra. College Tour Vol. 1: The Complete Nothing Is…”
Zu. The Way of the Animal Powers.
This vinyl re-release of the 2005 The Way of the Animal Powers finds Zu (Massimo Pupillo on bass, Jacopo Battaglia on drums, and Luca T Mai on saxophone) teamed up with Fred Longberg-Holm on cello. Longberg-Holm brings extra scintillation to a group known for aggressive and intricate punk-inflected jazz. Over the course of this briefContinue reading “Zu. The Way of the Animal Powers.”
Dave Liebman, Evan Parker, Tony Bianco. Relevance.
The saxophonists Dave Liebman and Evan Parker might not immediately strike one as likely associates: Liebman, a one-time member of Miles Davis’ electric band, usually works well within the jazz tradition; Parker is usually associated with free improvisation and a mastery of techniques including circular breathing and polyphonic lines. However they share strong common rootsContinue reading “Dave Liebman, Evan Parker, Tony Bianco. Relevance.”
Joëlle Léandre
For Joëlle Léandre it all begins and ends with the double bass. After playing the often unwieldy bull fiddle from the age of nine and carefully studying its intricacies, she creates with it sounds so personal that defining them as free music, new music. or anything else, is beside the point. Since the late 1970s, Paris-basedContinue reading “Joëlle Léandre”
Kyle Brenders
It’s 1999. The millennium is approaching, and Kyle Brenders, teenage saxophonist, is living the small-town Ontario version of the jazz life. He’s a member of the Bill Sherry Big Band, playing vintage swing tunes for dancers in the St. Thomas municipal arena, decades-old tunes echoing around the rafters. Brenders, who will ten years later jokeContinue reading “Kyle Brenders”
Spring 2012
Winter 2010
Stuart Broomer. Time and Anthony Braxton.
Stuart Broomer knows Anthony Braxton. He has listened to the American composer and multi-instrumentalist’s music from the beginning, attended concerts by him since the early 1970s, written about the musician many times, and over the years interviewed Braxton on many occasions. Because of this familiarity, Broomer sets himself a more difficult-than-usual task here. Unlike historicContinue reading “Stuart Broomer. Time and Anthony Braxton.”
Densités Festival. Fresnes-en-Woëvre, France. October 23-25, 2009.
A rural French hamlet in the Lorraine countryside isn’t the setting you would imagine for a world-class festival of unadulterated Electronic and Free Jazz music. Yet the Densités Festival in Fresnes-en-Woëvre—population five hundred—about eighty kilometres from Nancy, is just that. During three days in late October, the sixteenth edition presented a sonic banquet of unstoppableContinue reading “Densités Festival. Fresnes-en-Woëvre, France. October 23-25, 2009.”