Keir Neuringer & Rafal Mazur - The Continuum (Fundacja Słuchaj, 2020) ****

By Stef Gijssels

Both altoist Keir Neuringer and acoustic bass wizard Rafał Mazur have a unique voice on their instrument,  and their combined sound is even more unique: intense, warm, relentless and technically brilliant. 

Their first reported album dates from 2010, "Improwizje" soon followed by "Unison Lines" in the same year. They released two more duo albums: "The Krakow Letters" (2014) and "Diachronic Paths" (2016). 

This album brings us a live performance at a concert in Krakow in 2018. The first track "The Distant Path", is a breath-taking 26 minutes long high energy powerhouse. Mazur alternates between arco and pizzi and Neuringer's circular breathing and repetitive phrases around a tonal center result in a mesmerising performance. The timbral quality of both instruments, their relentless forward-moving physicality and the deep emotional power of their delivery leads to something unique. The second track "The near past", is even more uptempo and full of frenetic agitation, and their nervous interaction continues on "The Present". 

The initial dynamics of "The Near Future" are more hesitant and interrupted, with a more questioning attitude of the instruments, and little pockets of quiet even. "The Distant Future" is more welcoming and even gentle, with even moments with joyous phrases and interaction. 

Rafal Mazur explains the philosophy behind the music and the title of the album and its tracks in the long liner notes: "When you abandon the conventional limitations on thought and cognition and look at the world with a systemic approach to life, beginnings and ends begin to blur, lose their focus, lose their previous meaning, and ultimately cease to be clear." I can only encourage interested listeners to read the whole text. 

A real treat. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp.

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Neuringer/Dulberger/Masri –Dromedaries II (Relative Pitch, 2020) *****

By Fotis Nikolakopoulos

Irreversible Entanglements is one of the very few free jazz/improv outfits of today that really worth noting down that they are pushing the envelope of jazz tradition. Having their roots (not just musically I would comment) in the period (late 60’s-early 70’s) when free jazz met the wider black tradition (remember what Archie Shepp did during those years), they channel the distress of our dystopian present. I really love everything they have recorded.

Keir Neuringer is their saxophonist and a main factor of their sound. I cannot say I’ve listened to a lot of his other stuff (which is definitely the case for drummer Julius Masri and double-bassist Shayna Dulberger), but after listening to this amazing cd, I should look and listen closer. On a first level Dromedaries II is the second part of a cassette that came out three years ago and I haven’t listened to it.

But Dromedaries II is one hell of a cd! Many-many kudos must also go to Relative Pitch head man (solo after the sad death of Mike Panico) Kevin Reily. The label is still staying strong, producing ever-expanding musics of top quality. I’m a fan, I know, but you should be too. Dromedaries II consist of four long tracks (from ten up to thirteen minutes) that move like a spiral between improvisation, the energy of free jazz, and melody with a strong essence of eastern traditions. This is mostly because Masri’s playing never stops zigzagging between all those, while keeping the rhythm with an ease and flexibility of someone who knows his stuff.

Neuringer’s playing is fierce and sometimes even far out. I really like how the sax’s growls, screams, yelps follow Dulberger’s double bass in path of duophonic mayhem. At the same time they incorporate almost silent moments, passages that each musician shines, making his way not as some over the top soloist but as an individual voice that, sometimes, is heard by itself.

There is a constant flow of energy and ideas, a motion of feelings. Dromedaries II is a gripping cd that never lets you down, does not leave you with even a second of “oh, I’ve heard this before” feeling. If I had listened to it a few weeks back it would have definitely make my top list for this strange year. Still a great, difficult recording that demands full attention from the listener.

@koultouranafigo

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New Hermitage - Unearth (self-released, 2020) ***½

By Keith Prosk

Canadian quartet New Hermitage evokes cinematic sketches with their expressive chamber music on Unearth. Their sound is spacious, slow, quiet, delicate, and cherubic. Less concerned with direct communication or extending timbral and structural boundaries than contributing to an atmosphere or embellishing the silence, often cathartic in its bittersweetness. Besides “Pine Bottle Skylight” and “In Amber,” the music is played freely, though its undeniable resemblance to its vivid titles suggests there’s a good bit of intent behind it. At eleven tracks over just 35 minutes, the pieces are fleeting, but not hasty; the calm nature of the music makes the pace across tracks feel more lightning bug than lightning, more warm glow than flash. Impressionistic.

Andrew MacKelvie’s soulful zephyrean offerings on saxophones and bass clarinet blend with breath and key clicks to underscore the low volume, low density, and fragility of the music. Bright twinkling and plucked melodies grounded in nursery rhymes or similar traditional musics from harpist Ellen Gibling most often provide a more recognizable beauty and light to the environment. The whinnying arco and suspenseful swells of India Gailey’s cello temper the sound with melancholy. And Ross Burns’ guitar gives the atmosphere edge with transcendent ebow drone, deep om, amplifier buzz, and some twang. To mention just a few approaches of these musicians.

The sound seems intimately attached to the titles given to it, many of which reference creation through destruction. Gas born from boiling, a sprout’s upward charge against the topsoil’s battlements, a desert growing from consuming the landscape, the preservative prison of amber. Some titles render nature’s reclamation of materials from the human realm. Rubble. Rust. Skeletons. All of these processes are slow, marked by little violent breakthroughs. A ped of soil cracking. The final jar of an insect touched by gluey sap. A wall, or a rib, fracturing and falling from the weight and weathering of time. Just like this quartet’s interjections into the constancy of silence.

While New Hermitage deftly establishes scenes that feel authentic and lived-in, they can also feel static. Though the brevity of most tracks suggests that there’s not much time to go anywhere - and sometimes it does seem they pass just a little too quickly - doubling or tripling the time does not add like value, mostly because similar techniques are used in similar ways from beginning to end. And while the quartet demonstrates commendable control of time and space, and there are moments of building volume and density, less linear and more diverse dynamics would supply some development for the longer tracks. But, Unearth is still a special listen, dreamy and visual, emotive. If clustered on a mood board, it might fit with the sound of Boxhead Ensemble, Rachel’s, Penguin Cafe Orchestra, and early Brokeback better than groups more firmly rooted in the spheres of jazz or classical - great improvised chamber rock for films, though judiciously sparser.

Unearth is available on CD and digitally.

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Hugo Antunes, Nate Wooley & Chris Corsano - Old Is Gold (Self, 2020) ****

 By Stef Gijssels

"It is a rare treat to hear a trio of trumpet, bass and drums. The format is a challenging one for all involved, both player and listener, but, it is also rewarding when the players are as talented as the Sangha Trio. The band succeeds because they take special care to vary the textures, moods and grooves, and because the three musicians pass around the role of lead and accompaniment so unselfishly melding that ability with wonderful equal voice polyphony. (...) This is one of the best young bands playing improvised music anywhere", writes an enthusiastic Ron Miles in the liner notes of the Sangha Trio, with 'Nathan' Wooley on trumpet, Eric Warren on bass and Charlie Doggett on drums. The album is called "Frantically, Frantically Being At Peace" and really worth looking for. I found a copy in a jazz store in Philadelphia many many years ago, but I guess that was a stroke of luck. Then, at the age of 23, Nate Wooley had already something to say. 

In the meantime Wooley explored musical languages in styles in many formats and projects, but he somehow kept coming back to the basic trio of trumpet, bass and drums. There is "Trio" with Tim Barnes and Jason Roebke, "Six Feet Under" with Paul Lytton and Christian Weber, and "Malus" with Hugo Antunes and Chris Corsano. 

Now, because of corona, Brussels-based Portuguese bass player Hugo Antunes decided to put some existing recordings on  Bandcamp, including this wonderful trio with the "Malus" line-up. There is no further explanation of when this was recorded or how it organisationally relates to "Malus". 

As with the Sangha Trio, this is a real trio album, with all three musicians taking their role in determining the sound of the band, and the music is still performed with the same enthusiasm, spontaneity and energy as so many years ago. Of course there's no comparison possible. We hear three musicians with lots of experience and maturity. The technical instrumental skills are clearly more advanced, as is their confidence in performing as a trio, possibly best illustrated by the fact that they don't feel the need to fill moments of silence.  The "challenging format" that Ron Miles described, is not an issue here, I would even say to the contrary, the format allows the musicians a lot of freedom to move in any direction they want, and they do, with discipline and with a good sense of adventure. 

It is not boundary-breaking, it does not sound like something you've never heard before, but that does not bother. It is also not the intention. You get three musicians enjoying their skills of listening and creating music together, full of spontaneous energy and emotional connection. 

It's a simple jazzy format. Authentic and fun to listen to, reaching down to deep roots, including Antunes walking bass in the second track, but which branches reaching to open-ended skies (I know: I've used the metaphor before, but it's still useful to describe the breadth and sound of the band). 

Everything on this album is to enjoy. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

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Mark Solborg - TUNGEMÅL Vol. I+II (Ilk Music, 2020) ****½

By Eyal Hareuveni

TUNGEMÅL means tongue or language in Danish. It is the title of a new multimedia project of Danish-Argentinian guitarist-composer-improviser-educator Mark Solborg - 3 discs and about 2.5 hours of music, focusing on the electrified guitar as a voice in contemporary chamber-musical contexts, plus two books with corresponding and insightful reflections, graphic illustrations, scores and photos. This project was developed over three years and maps Solborg’s fascination and investigation of the spatial topography of the guitar and the guitar as a musical voice. This extensive and profound artistic study seeks to expand our awareness to the sonic horizons that modern guitar inhabit, solo and with close comrades, acoustically or being translated through a loudspeaker or a set of satellite speakers, or simultaneously, and asks if can come closer to the intimate speaking voice of the creating musician.

TUNGEMÅL Vol. I focus on solo works, and all the 19 intimate pieces were recorded live in one take, in one room, with no overdubs. Solborg divides the pieces on the two volumes into conversations, debating and arguing with himself, using a sampling device that operates in a rather chaotic, random and unpredictable way; string and fingers, using his right-hand fingers without a pick in order to explore intriguing dynamics and sounds; songs, simple melodies that function as “ear-cleaners” between the longer and abstract pieces; preparations and devices, employing different objects to prepare the guitar in order to produce new textures and timbres; and pitches, using a variety of speaker combinations and controller to tweak the pitch or bending and adding pressure to selected strings, and Solborg mentions that he was inspired by the work of Mary Halvorson. In the second volume, he adds another category, spaces, a set-up in selected rooms, with guests who join in the investigation of Solborg’s habitat.

Attentive listening to Solborg’s musical language and vocabulary on the 19 short pieces of TUNGEMÅL Vol. I may identify echoes of the imaginative harmonics and the unique manner of pitch organization of Derek Bailey, the mysterious, resonations guitar environments of Steve Tibbets, the quirky, angular lines of Halvorson, the beautiful, folk-ish melodies of Egberto Gismonti and Ralph Towner, and exotic West-African and Far-Eastern string-instruments sound. But every time that you may think that Solborg is quoting one of these seminal sources, you immediately realize that he turned these elements and ideas into whole new sounds and timbres, made them as part of his own rich and organic TUNGEMÅL.

Solborg writes in the first book: “I find more and more that the magic lies in the imperfections. Authenticity. An opening - and the notion that a person is behind. That something is at stake. That the courage to lose control is present in the performance. Intentionally or as a form of unspoken accord among the performers. A wise friend and colleague recently said that she considers imperfection a space of possibilities - and always welcomes it… Do I want the imperfect? Unperfect? Yes”.

TUNGEMÅL Vol II is a double album that contains works for duo and trio, recorded on three sessions at The Village Studios in Copenhagen, offering written material, improvisations and TUNGEMÅL spatial concept in constellations of three duos and one trio. Solborg invited pianist Simon Toldam, reeds player Lars Greve (clarinets, bass clarinet, soprano, tenor and baritone saxes) and Italian reeds player Francesco Bigoni (who co-leads with Solborg the On Dog quartet), who plays the tenor sax and clarinet. The 20 pieces are described as “a catalogue or thesaurus” related to Solborg’s investigations.

Solborg says that he wanted his guitar strings to breathe and adopt a similar approach to phrasing, attack, and especially the intonation of the reeds instruments. And he wanted to emphasize the “string side” of the guitar and the piano, prepared or played with fingers, and to balance with the sound of the acoustic grand piano with its long strings and vast harmonic spectrum. This approach allows trigger sonic experiments that immediately visit enigmatic but poetic, sound-oriented territories. All the pieces are contemplative in spirit, some are quite noisy ones, others are more spacious and quiet soundscapes. “Letting it live its own life or actively stopping it to make space for silence or new sounds”, Saolborg adds. “Playing veeery quietly makes me listen more… and creates a lot of space...maybe, instead of assumptions, narratives and eager stories being told, there’s room for a question?”

Solborg’s guitar materializes here as an adventurous and provocative new instrument, distorted, processed, enlarged and geographically displaced, a sound box that keeps surprising with new dynamics and timbres. An instrument that puts more questions and dilemmas than clear answers, about experiencing sound in the most physical manner possible, the process of making music and the listening experience, all focused on the electrified guitar acting in an acoustic landscape. “What happens to the conversation if your voice is - or isn’t - soft enough for you to be able to hear other voices in the room? Is there a tongue - et tungemål - for both instruments? Can I have both worlds? Play two layers of guitar simultaneously, live, in the musical moment… and how do I record and communicate what I discover? The two volumes of TUNGEMÅL leave plenty of time to meditate and ponder on these fascinating sonic koans.

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Steph Richards - Supersense (Northern Spy, 2020) ****½

 By Stef Gijssels

Canadian trumpet player and New York resident Steph Richards is truly breaking through with her own voice and ideas. Her new album "Supersense" is far removed from the music of Kanye West or David Byrne with whom she performed. She also played in the bands of Henry Threadgill, Anthony Braxton, John Zorn and Taylor Ho Bynum. Less known are her collaborations with classical ensemble as with Robert Erickson on "Camera Lucida". I recommend you listen to this piece on Youtube on which she plays with a chamber ensemble. Another recent avant-garde classical work is "Stones/Water/Time/Breath" by Dean Rosenthal. Her stylistic span is as impressive as her instrumental skills. She is also the co-producer of the Festival of New Trumpet Music (FONT), together with Dave Douglas.

She has received quite some positive reactions to her first albums. I did not care too much for her debut album "Fullmoon", on which she explores the acoustic possibilities of the trumpet which were then altered by electronic sound artist Dino J.A. Deane. I think she had too much respect for electronics, delivering in my opinion relatively cheap exercises of resonance and sound without too much musical vision. 

With "Take The Neon Light", reviewed very positively by colleague Troy, she was already moving in the direction of "Supersense", with a similar line-up of trumpet, piano, bass and drums, exploring the middle ground between jazz and her personal voice, but still branching in too many directions to have a cohesive core concept. 

"Supersense" is much more mature, coherent, and with a stellar band, consisting of Jason Moran on piano, Stomu Takeishi on bass, Kenny Wollesen on drums, and Andrew Munsey on drums on one track. The concept of the album is to reflect the full effect of our senses by capture the experience of a live performance. She wonders “What if I could create an experience where listeners felt even closer to the music by involving their other senses?”, taking this literally and asking "smell artist" Sean Raspet to create scents to inspire her compositions and the band's improvisation: "So with Raspet’s help, she crafted the album’s scents and compositions simultaneously, writing his concoctions into her score: As they played, the musicians would be directed to open numbered boxes containing scents that they would then respond to with improvisation".

The actual physical album comes with the scents, so you can smell the pieces and see how they relate to the music. We do not have that privilege, but that does not make the listening experience any less interesting. 

Her non-rational and deliberate sensual experience also determines her music, that is organised, structured and non-linear at the same time. Themes and explicit structure seem absent, yet all compositions have their specific character and nature, and like scent, their boundaries are vague and intangible, unpredictable yet recognisable. You feel things you know from before: some bop, some funk even, some more romantic moments, but vaguely, ever so vaguely, because her bouquet of flowers send you elsewhere: into a sonic environment that is essentially different and without categorisation. You know without knowing it. It sounds somehow familiar but it's impossible to grasp. Once you think you can put your hand on it, it's gone into something new, equally hard to assess. 

I have listened to it dozens of times now, and its elusive essence is still there. It's beautiful, compelling and strange. This is not the kind of music that I would automatically associate Jason Moran, Kenny Wollesen and Stomu Takeishi with, or even stronger, I thought this would be well beyond their more structured comfort zones, but apparently it's not. Their skills and understanding of where Richards wanted to go is extraordinary. 

An impressive statement. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp.

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Soft Works - Abracadabra In Osaka (Moonjune, 2020) ****

By Paul Acquaro

Tumbling into the rabbit hole of Soft Machine began with Third. It took me a long time to understand how it all came together - from the group's early psychedelic days to the various mutant offspring that began already in the late 70's with Soft Head and Soft Heap, and then later with Soft Mountain, Soft Bounds, and then Soft Works, and finally Soft Machine Legacy.* 

I've enjoyed many, if not all, of these incarnations of the soft groups that Hugh Hopper and Elton Dean spearheaded, except one: Soft Works. Even though 2003 release Abracadabra was the great reunion of Hopper and Dean with long-time drummer John Marshall, and guitar legend Allen Holdsworth, with such a line-up, I expected just a bit more of a 'kick' out of the album. So, my hope was that Abracadabra In Osaka, a double CD documenting a concert by the group back in the early aughts, would fill in the pieces that I felt the studio album missed. I am happy to report it does. 

Elton Dean's unique saxello seems just a little more sour, in a painfully good way, and Hopper and Marshall are just a bit edgier, to my ears. Holdsworth, especially, kicks it up a notch or two. The opening track on both the studio album and this live recording, 'Seven Formally', starts slowly and builds to a boiling point in both cases, but the studio recording's version is softened by synth and lacks that extra bit of crunch that the live version brings. The Hopper penned track 'First Train' similarly fares just a little better on the live recordings, and Holdsworth's solo around the 4-5 min mark reaches an orgasmic intensity. Soft Machine staple 'Kings & Queens' also gets an airing on the live album, which provides Dean essentially a showcase to play a extended, relaxed solo over a suspenseful, familiar background. 

A real plus from this release for me is that I've come to appreciate the studio album better as well. The subtleties come into better contrast and the points where the fusion becomes a bit too fusiony are easier to let pass by. Overall a nice addition to the reincarnated Soft Machine. Then, be sure to check out the latest version of Soft Machine's Live at the Baked Potato, a wonderful documentation of an ever adapting band.

* There are plenty of Hopper/Dean collaborations that did not use the "Soft" prefix as well, so please do not consider this an exhaustive list ... it barely breaks a sweat.

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João Lencastre - No Gravity (s/r, 2020) ****

By Paul Acquaro

No Gravity is a collaboration between Lisbon based drummer João Lencastre, RED Trio pianist Rodrigo Pinheiro, and bassist João Hasselberg. The group spins shimmery web of electro-acoustic sound that at times seems impossibly delicate and other times deadly effective.

The opening track, 'First Encounter', begins with Pinheiro's gently dripping notes, slightly dissonant, and somewhat suspenseful. Hasselberg emerges from the misty background, soon joined by gentle splashes from Lencastre's cymbals. This is followed by 'Harnessing Fear' where both the electronics enter the picture and the subtle pops and fizzes become a consistent undercurrent in the music. The track builds in tension through repetitive figures from the piano increase in velocity and the drum with focused vigour. 

The album doesn't really reach its explosive potential  until the half-way mark, instead smaller interactions and musical ideas unfold at a consistent and insistent, and restrained manner. However, when it does, it hits hard. After the stuttering blips of 'Trying to go Unnoticed', 'Slam Dance' begins with an insistent patter of the drums and aggressive distorted bass. When the piano joins there is no warm-up, the music is instantly a rolling wave of motion. 

The remaining four tracks balance the power and tempo well. They continue to explore the sonic overlaps, experience small electric storms, and reach new agitated peaks, like in the penultimate '2020'. The title track, which caps off the recording, is a calm, floating musical entity, capping off this subtly adventurous album.

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Free Jazz Blog's Album(s) of the Year 2020

And so here it is, the Free Jazz Blog top album(s) of 2020. Last week we presented the top recordings of 2020 culled from everyone's top 10 lists and then held a vote for the top album.

In first place, moving up from the top 3 with last year's Columbia Icefield, is trumpeter Nate Wooley's Seven Storey Mountain VI on Pyroclastic records.

1. Nate Wooley - Seven Storey Mountain VI (Pyroclastic Records)

 

In his review, Martin Schray writes: 

"So the bar was set high for Seven Storey Mountain VI - and Nate Wooley's band doesn’t disappoint. The trumpeter is explicitly political this time, the composition being about women's rights. The choice of musicians alone makes this clear, eight of the 14 musicians are women this time. Seven Storey Mountain VI is again one long composition (45 minutes) based on Peggy Seeger’s “Reclaim the Night“ (from her album Different Therefore Equal) ... In contrast to its predecessor Seven Storey Mountain VI was recorded in a studio. It’s even more beautiful than Part V, and the most convincing one in its coherence, exuberance and grandness." 

 
In second place is pedal steel player Susan Alcorn with her Relative Pitch release "Pedernal".

2. Susan Alcorn Quintet - Pedernal (Relative Pitch)

In his review, Matthew Banash writes:

"The Susan Alcorn Quintet is composed of talented artists who use their skills and musical reference points not to reinvent the wheel or polishing the mirror. Under her aegis they simply and masterfully create a recording of grace, subtlety, unity, and compelling musicianship that balances and investigates the modern and the ancient."

3. Tied for third place this year is:

• Ingrid Laubrock – Dreamt Twice, Twice Dreamt (Music for Chamber Orchestra and Small Ensemble) (Intakt Records)
  
  
• Rich Halley, Matthew Shipp, Michael Bisio, Newman Taylor Baker - The Shape of Things (Pine Eagle)
  
  
• Anna Högberg Attack - Lena (Omlott)

Like we had said before, our heartfelt congratulations to everyone whether in the lists and not. The sheer amount of recordings that were released, and the smaller, but still overwhelming amount that came into our purview, is daunting but encouraging and invigorating.

Of course, thank you to the hard work of the collective. Without you contributing your time and efforts, the site simply would not exist. 

And finally, thank you to our readers. Much appreciated for your continued trust!

The past year has been one of challenge and resourcefulness and we truly wish everyone a return to "normal" in the coming year and we hope to see you at a show!

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New (y)Ears Roundtable 2020

Photo by Susanne Baltes

We asked the writers at the Free Jazz Blog to share their thoughts on this past year. Lee Rice Epstein posed the two questions "what will I remember when I look back at this year" and "what was listening like this year." Considering the unusualness of the past year, we added a catch-all "anything else" to the list and then gathered replies. Below you have responses from 12 contributors, in order of receipt ... and we'd like to hear from you as well in the comments.

Colin Green

What will I remember when I look back at this year?

Frankly, as little as possible.

What was listening like this year?

More time than usual, although I’m not sure that equates with better listening. Music provides some comfort but it’s increasingly difficult to prevent the outside world from impinging.

Anything else?

In a number of respects, predictions about the future are now more speculative than they have ever been. Looking forward however, I think there are likely to be some big changes in the world of free jazz/improv. There’s usually a delay of a year or so between a recording taking place and its release as an album. For much of this last year we’ve been hearing pre-Covid material, some of it unearthed from archives, etc. in order to generate additional income in the absence of live dates. As with new movies and TV drama, I expect this supply to diminish further during the next year and for there to be a corresponding increase in “home-made” recordings and releases. I predict, perhaps rashly, that when it comes to considering albums of the year next December a significant proportion will have been recorded in someone’s living room, though there may be an increase in historic/reissued albums.

The possibility of live dates, from which many albums are pulled, is also troubling, see: this item from the New York Times about the state of the performing arts generally. I suspect the position in other countries is much the same and that previously available public funding will be harder to come by. 

Free jazz has never been a money-spinner and musicians will be suffering the economic consequences of Covid restrictions for years to come, as indeed will many of those who purchase the albums. Expect a marginal market to become even more marginalised. There may even be some big names from whom we will not hear again. As with so many aspects of our lives we have reached a watershed and I can see nothing particularly rosy about the years to come. I know it’s easy to be a doom and gloom merchant at the moment, but it’s difficult to imagine anything other than a very bleak future for all of us. Sorry. 

Martin Schray

What will I remember when I look back at this year?

Of course I will remember that my life has changed. As a teacher I had to teach in a very different way, and I discovered that it was not the way I've always liked teaching. What was more, my whole adult life I've gone to concerts which now was hardly possible anymore. In the summer months I went to some live events but mostly I just wanted to have the live feeling again. To be honest, the concerts themselves were mostly mediocre. I also noticed that concerts were more than the mere live act, they are often also about talking to other visitors and talking to the musicians - especially at festivals. To quote Joni Mitchell: "You don't know what you've got til it's gone".

What was listening like this year?

If it comes to listening I have to admit that after ten years of listening almost exclusively to freely improvised music I've started to listen to other musical genres much more often - blues, country, hiphop, new wave. Free Jazz has lost a bit of its fascination to me. I don't know if this is because I'm longing for a certain harmony in these days and if this reflects in my musical preferences, it's just the way it is. If I listen to free jazz it's quite often historical recordings or re-releases like the Modern Jazz Quintet Karlsruhe, Rashied Ali's releases, Cecil Taylor and The Black Unity Trio.

Anything else?

I miss meeting Paul.

Matthew Banash

What will I remember when I look back at this year?

Music saved my life, again...

What was listening like this year?

Deep and resonant

Anything else?

Saigyo in poetry, Sogi in linked verse, Sesshu in painting, Rikyu in the tea ceremony - the spirit that moves them is one spirit.

Paul Acquaro

What will I remember when I look back at this year?

That somehow there was less time in all of the extra time. In early spring when everything began shutting down, I thought, it's time to get going on all those projects. However, I seemed to spend more time at the computer working, clicking, working, clicking than ever. I will remember cleaner air and long walks and exploring my neighborhood in hyperlocal detail.

I think what this year highlighted for me was that the importance of live music is more than just the music itself, but the small conversations and unanticipated interactions. As anyone who has been at it for a while knows, the scale of this music makes it possible to feel a part of a community.

I also feel a lot of angst for everyone's whose livelihood and the musical venues that have been negatively impacted by the pandemic. On the other hand, I also ended up seeing more of some artists than ever ... and this example isn't free jazz by any means, but I have watched several broadcasts of Robyn Hitchcock and Emma Swift doing weekly concerts from their living room. It's a powerful connection of old approaches and new mediums.

What was listening like this year?

The summer offered a nice reprieve, I saw some live music and took in as much as I could outside. I tried going to one show inside and felt uncomfortable and decided to split. That was an odd experience, especially since I looked forward to seeing the band.

As for recordings, I don't think I listened to more than I have in other years, though the situation would seem to support doing so. I did of course continue to discover new music and am absolutely bowled over by the amount of music that was made and released this year.

Anything else?

Yes, it would be nice to meet up with Martin and hit that over-priced record store again.

Keith Prosk

What will I remember when I look back at this year?

Certainly the pandemic and the isolation it brought, racial inequity bubbling up into mass consciousness, and the depravity of leadership in the US. On a more personal level, my wife and I were able to purchase a home with easy access to the city but far enough in the hill country to have very little noise and light pollution, with lots of windows and natural light, and a big yard rich with life, all of which have done wonders for my psyche. It was also our first full year with our (giant!) labrador/pyrenees, Hildegard, who has brought immeasurable joy to my life.

What was listening like this year?

I experienced a bit of listening anhedonia for the first third of the year. I started listening to a podcast (yuck!) for Street Fighter and other fighting games; the only new improvised music I regularly returned to was Joanna Mattrey's Veiled; I found a bit of joy in Oval's Scis, Vladislav Delay's Rakka, and an AE_LIVE update; and I listened to some Andy Stott, Carly Rae Jepson, and Ariana Grande from 2019. In the early summer, releases from Nate Wooley, Carl Testa, Sabine Vogel, Matthias Muller, and Michael Thieke got me re-engaged with improvised music and from there I haven't been able to keep up. I wouldn't say that the pandemic had any effect on my listening habits this year. I would say that I've slowly developed an especial appreciation for acoustic drone that emphasizes harmonic interactions. I also started to familiarize myself a bit more with southeast Asian scenes of improvised music (though I still have a very long way to go). Right now, I'm catching up with some 2020 releases from Marshall Trammell, Weston Olencki, Andrew Smiley, Ruth Anderson, Ian Power, and Roger Tellier-Craig; I got my wife (and really me too) a beginner viola for Christmas so I've been listening to a lot of Julia Eckhardt; and I'm trying to expand my horizons in stuff closer to the spheres of classical music, so a lot of Pauline Oliveros, Annea Lockwood, Eliane Radigue, Ash Fure, Catherine Lamb, James Tenney, Giacinto Scelsi, Morton Feldman, John Cage, and Edgard Varese for now.

Anything else?

As always, a massive thank you to Paul, Stef, the rest of the collective, and the readers for making this blog what it is.

Nick Metzger

What will I remember when I look back at this year?

It's difficult to say what will really stick to the ribs over the long haul, but what I remember off the top of my head is the warmth of spending extra time with my immediate family. The horrible emotions, uncertainty, and coping mechanisms of the first few months of lockdown. MacGowran Speaking Beckett. Watching my kids and their teachers struggle to make the best of virtual learning. The strength of my wife. Homemade masks. The murders of Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, and Breonna Taylor. The political and social ugliness. Working from home. A Zoom chat with Paul Lytton. Standing in line for hours to vote. Virtual holidays and missing family and friends. Hope for the future.

What was listening like this year?

It was more difficult for me as I normally have a fairly long drive to work and listen to a lot of music then, so I had to make time for it at home which actually made me listen closer. I spent more money on digital music this year trying to help out on Bandcamp Fridays. The deluge of releases by artists that couldn't tour means we've definitely missed some great stuff, so I'll be mining 2020 music for some time to come. Virtual festivals and concerts kept our minds and ears busy and I've definitely come out of this year with new artists I'll be watching for.

Nick Ostrum

What will I remember when I look back at this year?

The absurdity of it all, and a lot of musicians (and artists, and gig workers, and more traditional workers, and, well, almost everyone) who were denied their traditional modes of living and working and were forced to do nearly everything outside the nuclear household remotely. At least, for a time.

What was listening like this year?

Intimate. I carved out my own little soundworld of choice records and CDs and a lot of new music recorded or released during the pandemic. Many of these were close-mic solo efforts, some meant to barely reach perception and others meant to fill the room with sound. I am not sure how much of this was really new 2020, but, as a listener, I was listening more attentively and with greater intention to relate personally to the music. I am pretty sure something changed with the sender(s); I am absolutely certain the receiver had been altered and was more attuned.

Anything else?

Cheers to all of those engaged in this tiny corner of the music world (musicians, labels, distributors, venues, record stores, and, yes, Bandcamp), who took a terribly adverse situation and made it tolerable for themselves and for us.

Gary Chapin

What will I remember when I look back at this year?

How Bandcamp became the most important platform for this kind of music. How the pandemic led to a flood of archival releases that -- by me, at least -- were very welcome. How much I miss being in a room with humans. How out of my depth I feel reading the Free Jazz Collective because of the sheer amount of material out there that I have (literally) never heard of.

What was listening like this year?

For me it was a series of deep dives. Rather than sampling widely and shallowly, I found myself fixating on a musician or group or theme and just going insanely deep. This has happened in the past, but not for a long time, and it was honestly a welcome phenomenon. I paid attention to a lot less, but paid attention much more closely.

Anything else?

I fell in love with YouTube reaction videos. I know! I was surprised, too. Are there reaction videos out there for Free Jazz? Something about watching someone else hear a piece of music for the first time allowed me to feel as if I were hearing it for the first time -- which I never knew that I was craving. I would love a reaction video for AEC, "Nice Guys."

Lee Rice Epstein

What will I remember when I look back at this year?

We bought a house earlier this year, after our landlord surprised us by putting our rental up for sale. And, we definitely imagined we would start a few home projects during the first year, but we had no sense of how much time we would be able to put into the house. By year's end, we have almost completely transformed our space, now a middle school, an elementary school, and two offices, in addition to a dining room, a living room, a vegetable garden, a fruit orchard, and a pasture for a small flock of chickens. We filled our house with as much life as we could, and praised the silver lining that meant more time with our children than we would normally have at these ages.

Waves of scares, losses in extended family and friends' family and friends, we of course escaped nothing. And yet, with slightly more time spent online, several acquaintances evolved into friends, and many friendships deepened, as days and weeks of text chains and lazily winding phone calls wore on.

Maybe this was the worst year. But maybe, too, it had some bright spots.

What was listening like this year?

I listened much more this year than normal, with quieter work days at home. Music played in the background more often, not always with headphones on, many days on the stereo. I dipped into loads of older albums, spending the summer revisiting Dave Brubeck and Dizzy Gillespie, reading detailed stories about past lynchings and present crimes against Black Americans. And I spent a lot of time chatting online with other listeners and musicians, discussing all the great music that channeled the wildly complex emotions from this year. It was conversely a more private and public listening year, and each new album felt glorious, a heartfelt triumph against the day.

Stef Gijssels

What will I remember when I look back at this year?

The painful solitude of so many musicians in lockdown, coping with declining revenues, cancelled concerts, and reduced record sales. At the same time it led to many solo (living room) performances and new creative approaches to co-create music digitally and without physical presence

What was listening like this year?

Also a solitary experience. I usually sit a lot in my car in traffic jams or on the road, in planes and hotel rooms, the ideal moment to listen to music. This year has been in lockdown mostly, with no access to offices and no travel whatsoever. It required to re-organise the time to listen too. I've heard wonderful new albums. The crisis did not diminish the in-flow of new albums. Many musicians and labels decided to check their archives and bring out existing performances and recordings. I listened a lot, and wrote little.

Anything else?

What struck me this year is the high visibility and strong quality presence of female musicians: Ingrid Laubrock, Susan Alcorn, Lina Allemano, Susana Santos Silva, Elsa Nilsson, Anna Högberg, Rhonda Taylor, Samara Lubelski, Judith Hamann, Okkyung Lee, Satoko Fujii, Hermione Johnson, Luise Volkmann, Katharina Ernst, Tomeka Reid, Kaja Draksler, Jaimie Branch, Rachel Musson, Alexandra Grimal, Cath Roberts, Catherine Sikora, Elisabeth Harnik, ... and I'm just browsing through our posts of this year.

Antonio Pošćić

What will I remember when I look back at this year?

Like for many others, 2020 will be a year I'd rather forget than remember. The death of close ones. Multiple terrifying and devastating earthquakes in my home country. The global pandemic and all of its consequences.

Instead of remembering anything from it, I choose to sublimate the year into an idea of change—a thought of metamorphosis born from all this chaos and negative energy. Indeed, 2020 laid bare all the inadequacies and inequalities of our current system and ushered a timid flame—a hushed but insistent announcement—of a paradigm shift.

We're living one of those moments in history when the doors behind which transformation awaits creaked open. A moment not meant for reminiscence, but for envisioning a different, more empathetic and compassionate, fairer, and sustainable future. A future worth fighting for.

What was listening like this year?

With concert spaces closing, and some of them disappearing for good, listening became an even more intimate and isolated activity for me.

The suffocating claustrophobia of lockdowns then forced me to look towards musical extremes, both dark and light. The forlorn, aggressive, and pained side of the spectrum provided me with friends in despair, while their luminescent counterparts showed me glimmers of hope when I needed them most.

Anything else?

I'd like to salute and take a bow to essential workers, artists, and cultural workers all over the world. Our societies rest on their shoulders, and they deserve to live without worrying how they'll survive another day.

Stephen Griffith

What will I remember when I look back at this year?

That I couldn't see live music.

What was listening like this year?

More limited than normal.  There were still good releases that came out but not as many as usual.  I still had difficulties listening to as many things as I wanted to.

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