Jazz in Elsewhere
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Esperanza Spalding: Chamber Music Society (Head Up)
Because we could safely assume few aggrieved Justin Bieber followers will ever come to Elsewhere, it is safe to write about this hitherto little-known jazz singer-composer-bassist who won the Grammy for Best New Artist over the glorious child who has been the sensation of the Twitter Generation. At first blush you can forgive their anger that their man -- boy? -- didn't win because he... more >>
Added: 20 Feb 2011
SHEZ RAJA PROFILED (2011): Jazz with a world view
British jazz bassist Shez Raja confounds expectation in the best possible way. A scan of reviews and comments in the British press for the Shez Raja Collective (which included saxophonist Andy Sheppard and trumpeter Claude Deppa on the new album Mystic Radikal) refer to funkmeister Bootsy Collins and Marcus Miller (behind Miles Davis albums such as Tutu), Stanley Clarke and the Mahavisnu... more >>
Added: 10 Feb 2011 
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DON CUNNINGHAM: Exotic and erotic lounge-jazz in a Playboy world
Some albums come with a great back-story. There have been books written about Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue and John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme. The recording of a Britney Spears album might not be quite so interesting, although the picture book or dress-me-up doll might have some market value. And as Britney proves, you cannot judge the quality of an album by the enticement of its... more >>
Added: 7 Feb 2011
FREEDOM, RHYTHM AND SOUND: Jazz with a raised fist and a copy of Malcolm X speeches in the other hand
Few people today -- musicians included -- consider rock or jazz as “political”, even in the broadest sense of the word. Yet back in the late 60s and through the 70s large areas of both certainly were. Less than a year after that remarkable year 1968 (student demonstrations, assassinations, political oppression and revolutionary activity) the dialogue changed. Jefferson... more >>
Added: 31 Jan 2011
Blood and Burger: Guitar Music (Derniere Bande)
The great jazz, post-Hendrix and entirely Elsewhere guitarist James Blood Ulmer delivered exceptional albums of post-Ornette Coleman harmolodic music such as Tales of Captain Black and Are You Glad To Be In America on John Snyder's short-lived but creditable Artist House label. But then he slowly evaporated from critical sight. His albums on CBS in the... more >>
Added: 24 Jan 2011
JOE LA BARBERA PROFILED: Counting the beats
For some reason - perhaps because they work in a loud profession - you expect drummers to shout. Few do, and while Joe La Barbera may have started his career in the appropriately named Thundering Herd led by Woody Herman, the quietly spoken drummer doesn't shout about it, and doesn't bellow about his illustrious career either. For the past decade he has taught percussion at the... more >>
Added: 24 Jan 2011
Trygve Seim/Andreas Utnem: Purcor; Songs for Saxophone and Piano (ECM/Ode)
On a blindfold test -- "What record label is this on?" -- my money would be on greater than 90 percent of music-aware Elsewhere people saying immediately "ECM", and about half of those left over making an inspired guess and saying the same. Much as this is all things which its oddly under-claiming promo makes for it ("a thoughtful and reflective album, of great... more >>
Added: 23 Jan 2011
MILES DAVIS, A TRIBUTE TO JACK JOHNSON: And a fighter by his trade . . .
An inch over six feet and usually weighing in just under 200 pounds. Jack Johnson was perfectly proportioned for a heavyweight fighter. But as a kid in Galveston, Texas in the 1880s, he let his older sisters fight for him. At 12, Johnson jumped a ship for New York, returning a year later to work on the docks where he had his share of beatings. So he took boxing... more >>
Added: 14 Jan 2011 3 Comments
DAVE BRUBECK (2011): A jazz life of constant discovery
Dave Brubeck, whose hit album in 1958 was Time Out, understands time better than most of us. In December 2010 he turned 90 and although ailing, as expected, he had been playing right up until his late 80s – and been collecting awards and accolades. For many jazz listeners and critics Brubeck was always considered an intellectual rather than an instinctive musician, although the... more >>
Added: 10 Jan 2011
FREE JAZZ WITH A BLEEP: The Norwegian electronic-jazz label Rune Grammofone
Thelonious Monk said, "Jazz and freedom go hand in hand”. We can guess he meant freedom in a political sense, because jazz is about individual expression and in that regard was a vehicle for the aspirations of his people. It's about freedom and post-Monk found its voice in free jazz. Free jazz is much maligned, largely because it’s difficult to assimilate and... more >>
Added: 23 Dec 2010
John Niland: Barnett Lane (Eelman/Jayrem)
Here's a surprise: I hadn't heard of pianist Niland since his Inside album of the mid Eighties which he recorded with drummer Ross Burge and bassist Rob Mahoney in Wellington's Marmalade Studios. It was nomintaed for Jazz Album of the Year at the annual music awards (I'm sure I voted for it) and then Niland was off to Sydney. And here he is again after al these decades. Although this... more >>
Added: 5 Dec 2010 1 Comment
THE ACT LABEL, SIGNATURE EDITION (2010): Getting their ACT acts together
There is something smart about a record label adopting the idea of generic covers: certainly the distinctive Reid Miles design for covers for Blue Note (frequently using Frank Wolff's photos) became a hallmark of quality, and ECM came into the world (after a false start) with those cool, enigmatic photos which gave little away but sugested interesting contents within the sleeve. The Rattle... more >>
Added: 5 Dec 2010
MILES DAVIS AND QUINCY JONES AT MONTREUX: The circle is unbroken
It was emblematic of the soul rebel career of Miles Davis that in his final years he was painting as much as he was playing, had a cameo spot in a movie (Dingo) playing a pre-electric period jazz trumpeter, exchanging tapes with Prince, recorded with rapper Eazy Mo Bee and – most surprising of all turned up at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1991 to play some classic tunes from his... more >>
Added: 29 Nov 2010
LLoyd Miller and the Heliocentrics: Lloyd Miller and the Heliocentrics (Strut)
Both London's Heliocentrics and their label Strut have an admirable practice of getting different artists together for projects (see here and here) and sometimes they just soar. This is one such project, the Heliocentrics with multi-instrumentalist Miller who grew up on Dixieland/New Orleans jazz but then, when his dad was posted to Iran in the late Fifties, began to pick up local... more >>
Added: 22 Nov 2010
Chet Baker: In New York (American Jazz Classics/Southbound)
Although you could hardly argue with a line-up which had tenor player Johnny Griffin, pianist Al Haig, bassist Paul Chambers and drummer Philly Joe Jones alongside trumpeter Chet Baker, the result was a fairly mainstream, late Fifties sessions which -- while admittedly pushing Baker in a way he hadn't previously -- don't really separate themselves from the pack. Of course there is fine... more >>
Added: 21 Nov 2010
JACO PASTORIUS: Doomed genius
For a jazz musician, Jaco Pastorius died in pretty creditable rock n’ roll style: drug, delusions, alcohol and itinerancy. And beaten to a pulp by a nightclub manager who didn’t recognise the persistent drunk battering on his door at 4am as a former genius on electric bass. Pastorius’ remarkable but brief life is inscribed in an almost too convenient arc. He was left for... more >>
Added: 21 Nov 2010 1 Comment
JOHN McLAUGHLIN: Live in Paris . . . and New York
The opening track on guitarist John McLaughlin's Live in Paris, usefully serves as a microcosm of his career. It starts slow, melodic and considered with McLaughlin peeling off memorable phrases, then picks up speed to hit a furious pace as he skitters around the fret-board like ferret freebasing. Things then cut back to irresistible refinement as it gathers in its melodic sharpness... more >>
Added: 15 Nov 2010
Mike Nock: An Accumulation of Subtleties (FWM/Rhythmethod)
This quite exceptional double disc by New Zealand-born pianist/composer Nock arrives with the advantage of great timing: Norman Meehan's fine biography of Nock, Serious Fun, has just been published (see Elsewhere review here) on the occasion of Nock's 70th birthday. Well, age shall not weary him as the first, exquisite and commanding disc illustrates. With the sibling rhythm section of... more >>
Added: 14 Nov 2010
PAUL HORN INTERVIEWED (1992): The healing force within
For a man pegged as “the founding father of new age music," jazz saxophonist and flute player Paul Horn has a clear, pragmatic view of the music – which was spawned in the wake of his Inside album, recorded in the Taj Mahal in the late Sixties. That meditative piece -- which used the long acoustic delay within the building -- has been hailed as one of the earliest of... more >>
Added: 8 Nov 2010
Vijay Iyer: Solo (ACT/Southbound)
This gifted, multiple-award wining pianist and rather ferocious intellect has been profiled at Elsewhere previously (here) and this album is perhaps the one which will be persuasive evidence that he really is something. Eleven pieces played solo -- among them Monk's Epistrophy, the standards Darn That Dream, Ellington's Fluerette Africaine and Black and Tan Fantasy, alongside a number of... more >>
Added: 1 Nov 2010 1 Comment
