Jazz in Elsewhere
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PAT METHENY INTERVIEWED (2020): Him and Ornette dancing in their heads
11 Feb 2020 | 4 min read
After more than a decade as the golden guitarist at ECM cracking commercially successful albums (by jazz standards), selling out concerts and winning critical acclaim, Pat Metheny was itching for freedom. At 23 he'd told Downbeat “I have as much chops as anyone playing. But I don't want to be thought of as a hot, young guitar player” and “I'm thinking of the long run, not... > Read more
ONE WE MISSED: Corea/McBride/Blade: Trilogy 2 (Concord/Southbound)
11 Jan 2020 | 1 min read
Although Elsewhere unashamedly indulges in free jazz (and has written about some of its more obscure corners here), there is something satisfying, reassuring and comfortable about hearing some of the idiom's finest practitioners playing off each other in a small acoustic setting, often on standards which get reinvented in that instant between thought and expression. That is why we will... > Read more
Serenity
Dixon Nacey: The Edge of Chaos (Rattle)
24 Nov 2019 | <1 min read
Auckland guitarist/composer Dixon Nacey here with the usual suspects/fellow travellers – saxophonist Roger Manins, keyboard player Kevin Field, bassist Olivier Holland, drummer Andy Keegan and guest vocalists on one track -- slides effortlessly between shapeshifting jazz-rock (Habituation), bouncy bop (Bench Wrecker) to delicacy (Etiquette, which suggests he could do a refined version of... > Read more
Beeper
Matana Roberts: Coin Coin Chapter Four: Memphis (Constellation)
18 Nov 2019 | 1 min read
This extraordinary collision of free jazz, hard bop, spoken word, folk-blues and more is the fourth installment of sonic biographies by Chicago's multi-instrumentalist and classically-trained Matana Roberts who has worked with Vijay Iyer, Roscoe Mitchell, TV on the Radio and Godspeed You! Black Emperor and has been an artist in residence at the Whitney, is a longtime member of AACM and an... > Read more
As Far As the Eye Can See
Mike Stern and Jeff Lorber Fusion: Eleven (Concord/Southbound)
11 Nov 2019 | 1 min read
Guitarist Mike Stern is the man Miles Davis fans loved to hate. Probably even today. That was because he brought the hard rock textures – which Davis wanted – to Miles' band at the dawn of the Eighties, captured on the double live album We Want Miles. He was in Blood Sweat and Tears before joining Davis and six years ago came to New Zealand to play with the Rodger Fox... > Read more
The Comet is Coming: The Afterlife (Impulse!/digital outlets)
28 Oct 2019 | <1 min read
Billed as “a companion piece to the group's breakout album Trust in the Lifeforce of the Deep Mystery”, (an Elsewhere favourite from earlier this year) this six track, 30 minute mini-album further advances the project of this UK jazz-cum-electronica phenomenon. Released to coincide with an American tour, this announces itself with All That Matters is the Moments which features a... > Read more
Byron Asher's Skrontch Music: Skrontch Music (Sinking City/digital outlets)
27 Oct 2019 | 1 min read
Clarinetist/saxophonist/composer Byron Asher is not only based in New Orleans (hence the record label's name) but deeply immersed in its unique music and singular history. With a 10-piece band on this ambitious but immediately engaging debut album, the award-winning composer crafts a five-movement piece based on his jazz research at Tulane University and interviews with members of the... > Read more
Elegy
Radical Invisibility: Radical Invisibility (577 Records/digital outlets)
25 Oct 2019 | 1 min read
Start with the side-long weNyamombe and Gomukomu weSimbi by this New York jazz quartet and you might think you've stumbled into a strange but beguiling ECM session where Miles Davis has teamed up with Ornette Coleman's Prime Time band (toned-down) with Bill Frisell alternating with James Blood Ulmer on guitar. The title apparently refers to two musician-poets from Mozambique in... > Read more
John Coltrane: Blue World (Impulse! digital outlets)
9 Oct 2019 | 1 min read
The past couple of years have been busy times for great jazz musicians no longer with us: out of the vaults recently has emerged Miles Davis' previously unreleased Rubberband (not that great unfortunately), the Stan Getz Quartet live at the Village Gate in '61 (fascinating, Getz at a kind of crossroad), radio recordings of Charles Mingus live in Detroit in '73 (recommended) and pianist Errol... > Read more
Blue World
Miles Davis: Rubberband (Warners)
19 Sep 2019 | 1 min read
After almost three decades at Columbia, in the mid Eighties Miles Davis quit in a huff, as he told it to Elsewhere at the time. They had a hot new young trumpeter who was less problematic (Wynton Marsalis, who dissed fusion and therefore much of Davis' recent work) and so Davis headed off into a contract for Warners. When he turned up for Warners he delivered –... > Read more
Trio Antipodes: Upside Downwards (MAPL/Rattle)
19 Aug 2019 | 1 min read
Interesting band name and title on this album by a jazz trio out of Canada. Interesting because the guitarist/composer in this bass-less line-up – guitar, piano and drums – is Keith Price, now a lecturer in the School of Music at the University of Auckland . . . which is sort of the antipodes of Winnipeg, and certainly upside downwards on the globe from there.... > Read more
Max Headroom
Nerija: Blume (Domino/digital outlets)
12 Aug 2019 | <1 min read
While attention of the contemporary jazz scene hasn't completely shifted to London, there is no doubt that the new music coming out of there – which sometimes mixes everything from Ellington and Coltrane to elements of African and Indian musics, hip-hop and grime – is commanding . . . and commanding serious consideration. In many ways it is a reflection of multi-culti London in... > Read more
STEVE MARCUS. TOMORROW NEVER KNOWS (2019): Bringing jazz to the Beatles and Byrds
31 Jul 2019 | 3 min read
When saxophonist Steve Marcus died in 2005 age 66, he left behind a small but interesting legacy of albums, one of the most curious – not the least for who played on it as much for what they played – was recorded in 1968 with producer Herbie Mann for ATCO. It was Tomorrow Never Knows, named for their 11 minute exploration of the Beatles' title track. Big producer for a big... > Read more
Tomorrow Never Knows
Gary Bartz: Music is My Sanctuary (Capitol)
21 Jul 2019 | <1 min read
Saxophonist Gary Bartz was a graduate of Juilliard and in the early Sixties was a real frontline player with McCoy Tyner, Eric Dolphy, Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers and others. He could play in the pocket (as they say) but also get into the free jazz/Black Consciousness movements of the late Sixties and early Seventies with his Gary Bartz NTU Troop which melded funk and soul alongside jazz.... > Read more
RECOMMENDED REISSUE: Marion Brown: Three for Shepp (Superior Viaduct)
8 Jul 2019 | 1 min read
Although that is Archie “let my notes be bullets” Shepp staring intensely out of this album's cover alongside saxophonist Marion Brown, and despite three of the six pieces being penned by him, the great saxophonist doesn't actually appear on this '66 release. No matter in way, because altoist Brown was a powerful and melodic player – he was 30 at the time, he died in 2010... > Read more
Ethnic Heritage Ensemble: Be Known; Ancient/Future/Music (Spiritmuse Records)
4 Jul 2019 | <1 min read
At a time when some young jazz musicians are reaching back to the project of black American spiritual and political jazz for their platform, it's thrilling that this long-running outfit steered by Chicago percussion player Kahil El'Zabar delivers an album as emotional and as powerful as this. Located somewhere between the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Sun Ra, the Revolutionary Ensemble, Albert... > Read more
KIM PATERSON PROFILED, AT AUDIOCULTURE (2019): The modest star of New Zealand jazz
30 Jun 2019 | 1 min read
In 2012, when the album The Duende by multi-instrumentalist Kim Paterson was released, he was widely acknowledged as one of the senior statesmen in New Zealand jazz. Yet his catalogue of solo albums was alarmingly small, especially given he had been a mainstay of many acclaimed bands and excellent recordings by others for over four decades. In fact, The Duende was only... > Read more
Myele Manzanza: A Love Requited (First World/digital outlets)
28 Jun 2019 | 2 min read
From the album title and the opening bars here, this drummer/producer and composer – raised in New Zealand, very much a global citizen these days – invites a big comparison which jazz lovers will immediately get. But as that opening track Ritual spirals out through Matthew Sheens muscular piano and then a post-bop fury of horn lines, it is clear Manzanza has a wide reach from... > Read more
Resilience
The Stan Getz Quartet: Getz at the Gate; Live at the Village Gate, Nov 26, 1961 (Verve)
22 Jun 2019 | 2 min read | 1
And here's another gift and “lost” jazz album from the vaults in the manner of last year's Charlie Haden/Brad Mehldau live album, Coltrane's studio session and live recordings of Charles Mingus in Detroit and Errol Garner in Amsterdam. In 1961, the melodically fluid post-bop saxophonist Stan Getz – who had helped define the cool sound of West Coast jazz in the late Fifties... > Read more
Where Do You Go?
Various Artists: If You're Not Part of the Solution (Ace/Border)
20 Jun 2019 | 1 min read
As we've previously mentioned, if you are a DJ seeking out rare grooves, obscurities and deep cuts (and whatever the current jargon is), then compilation like this must be very irritating. Because this one – subtitled “Soul, Politics and Spirituality in Jazz 1967 to 1975” – puts great and rare music into the hands and ears of ordinary civilians. And... > Read more