This new release from ESP features the Frank Lowe Quartet in unreleased tracks that didn’t make it onto Lowe’s 1973 ESP release Black Beings. As a free-jazz set, The Loweski is distinguished by its silences, one helping each, at the beginning and end of the set, where the ensemble ventures a few tendrils into theContinue reading “Frank Lowe. The Loweski.”
Genre Archives
Coat Cooke & Rainer Wiens. High Wire.
The pairing of Coat Cooke and Rainer Wiens in High Wire, results in a performance of dualities. Complexity versus simplicity, density versus scarcity are all at play here. Wiens creates complex sound environments on eclectic guitars and thumb pianos while Cooke soars overhead with clear, clean lines. Interaction is evident and the music is highlyContinue reading “Coat Cooke & Rainer Wiens. High Wire.”
Coat Cooke & Joe Poole. Conversations.
Vancouver saxophonist Coat Cooke has always been in full control of his horn and is capable of great heights of creativity. He leads the NOW Orchestra and is extremely active in many parts of the Canadian music community. But few projects have given him, as this one does, the freedom to express the full breadthContinue reading “Coat Cooke & Joe Poole. Conversations.”
John Butcher and Mark Sanders. Daylight.
The saxophone–drum duo has a long history in free jazz—a primal pairing that achieved an early high in the 1967 John Coltrane and Rashied Ali recording called Interstellar Space. Such fire-breathing antecedents might seem distant from the music of English saxophonist John Butcher, often concerned as it is with acoustic resonances, sounds found in theContinue reading “John Butcher and Mark Sanders. Daylight.”
300 BASSES. Sei Ritornelli.
There’s something wonderful about first hearing an instrument transformed, such as Eric Glick Rieman preparing a Fender-Rhodes electric piano or Seymour Wright playing a saxophone by tapping and amplifying it, not blowing it for long stretches of time. As fine as those experiences might be it’s more striking still to hear an ensemble playing theContinue reading “300 BASSES. Sei Ritornelli.”
Winter 2012
Derek Charke
Derek Charke is irresistibly attracted to the North. In 2006 he found himself in the Yukon, dogsledding with the Kronos Quartet. For a composer with a love of the Arctic it doesn’t get better, or more surreal, than this. A few days earlier he had been in a Whitehorse hotel room where Kronos was rehearsingContinue reading “Derek Charke”
Burkhard Beins, Christian Kesten, Gisela Nauck, Andrea Neumann, eds. Echtzeitmusik Berlin: Self-Defining a Scene.
Echtzeitmusik Berlin: Self-Defining a Scene is a welcome and expansive document on the improvised music scene in Berlin. The term “echtzeitmusik,” which translates into “real-time music,” is the current working description for the type of music practiced by such musicians as Axel Dörner, Werner Dafeldecker, Annette Krebs, Ekkehard Ehlers, and the four editors, all ofContinue reading “Burkhard Beins, Christian Kesten, Gisela Nauck, Andrea Neumann, eds. Echtzeitmusik Berlin: Self-Defining a Scene.”
Thomas Tilly & Jean-Luc Guionnet. Stones Air Axioms.
One of the most striking things about medieval stone cathedrals is the massive volume of air that is encased in their naves. Upon entering one of these cathedrals, you feel the air pressure enveloping you with a stunningly present stillness. Any sound adds to this feeling, as you become increasingly aware of the physical parametersContinue reading “Thomas Tilly & Jean-Luc Guionnet. Stones Air Axioms.”
Stone Quartet. Live at Vision Festival.
The great French bassist Joëlle Léandre first assembled the Stone Quartet for a single performance in 2006. Heard here four years later, the free improvising quartet includes pianist Marilyn Crispell, violist Mat Maneri, and wind player Roy Campbell, who plays both flute and trumpet. The bulk of the performance, Vision One, is a thirty-two-minute explorationContinue reading “Stone Quartet. Live at Vision Festival.”