GBSR Duo with Mira Benjamin - Barbara Monk Feldman: Verses (Another Timbre, 2021) *****

By Eyal Hareuveni

Barbara Monk Feldman is a contemporary Canadian composer (b. 1950s, Québec) of mostly delicate and minimalist, chamber and piano works. She studied with Morton Feldman, to whom she was later married. Verses is a collection of five chamber works from Monk Feldman written between 1988 and 1997 and performed by the contemporary British GBSR Duo - percussionist George Barton and pianist Siwan Rhys, with Apartment House’s violinist Mira Benjamin on one work. Verses is the second album of GBSR Duo for Another Timbre, following last year’s Oliver Leith: Good Day Good Day Bad Day Bad Day.

The GBSR Duo is a devotee of Monk Feldman's work and was fascinated by her austere, quiet and poetic compositions as well as her extraordinary level of sensitivity to subtle color, “the most intangible aspect of the music”, as Monk Feldman describes it. The duo describes Monk Feldman's music as having a meditative, unassuming quality, “but it is also hinted at a kind of heroic internal quest: always quieter, always purer, always less affected, as if stripping away the layers of the sounds themselves”. Monk Feldman herself has written in the past that “decay in the piano and vibraphone brings them closer to the background ‘wall’ of silence…. Sound and silence become attached to each other, not unlike sculptural figures attached to a wall”. A close description to the one of Morton Feldman who once highlighted how music slips away from us even as we are hearing it: “this departing landscape”.

In an interview with Rhys and Barton, Monk Feldman says that she thinks about the relationship of sound and silence as “about an inside and an outside for art itself, and how ephemeral that is. For example, an unexpected moment in the sculpture of Giacometti, where it’s as though you suddenly have a brief glimpse into infinity. Or where in Cézanne you have an equally unpredictable experience in a fleeting recognition of something transient in the landscape. These moments are like a kind of recognition – and ironically, they include something that seems to come to us from the inside”.

The five works radiate Monk Feldman’s “sense of the musical imagery hovering in one place, as it were, attended by a fluidity in the slow transitioning of the harmonic color”. GBSR Duo’s performance captures beautifully this kind of elusive sense of imagery. Rhys’ piano melts gently into the resonant, floating sounds of Barton’s vibes and vice versa. Their performance has a subtle, venerable intimacy, constantly flirts with silence and flows naturally with meditative and almost transparent ripples. The two extended pieces - “The I and Thou” (1988) for solo piano and “The Northern Shore” (1997), after the Gaspé peninsula in eastern Québec where the St. Lawrence river meets the Atlantic ocean, a place that Monk Feldman visits every summer, for the GBSR Duo with violinist Benjamin - demonstrate best the inspiring, poetic qualities of Monk Feldman.

GBSR Duo’s performance of Monk Feldman’s music offers a rare sense of quiet, healing catharsis, music that stretches into timeless distances. It gently molds a profound but unpretentious spiritual listening experience, with highly nuanced colors and a remarkable balance between sound, silence and space. Monk Feldman herself, when answering Rhys and Barton asked her if it is possible to write a musical version of haiku or haibun (haiku and prose), suggested her own haiku:

Thoughts
Without
Words
Music
Falling
river flows by

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Mark Cisneros / Nik Francis / Luke Stewart - We Were Here Before (CAA, 2021) ****½

By Matthew Banash

We Were Here Before, Parts I and II, is a recording dedicated to the late musician Aaron Martin by the trio of Mark Cisneros, Nik Francis, and Luke Stewart released by Catalytic Sound via its Catalytic Artist Album fundraising program which helps raise money for and awareness of for organizations that work in solidarity with the Movement for Black Lives and social justice. The trio has suggested that all donations received from the sale of this digital album should go to Empower DC, which since 2003 "has advanced racial, economic and environmental justice by investing in the leadership and organized political power of DC’s lowest income residents and communities."

A recording that reveals integrity in a fluid din of disparate sounds in variegated unity as subtle shifts in playing compound the trio's potency. Easily a release to get lost in. I have started and scrapped several efforts to highlight specific parts and it is not like there are any passages where the musicians shine and transcend. But words fail me with this release.

Luke Stewart on bass illustrates his chops and why he is in such demand, Mark Cisneros, reeds, and percussion is fluid and creative, spontaneous but locked into the groove and Nik Franci, who delivers a diverse smattering of sounds underneath it all that always keep you guessing and progressing, is a revelation for me; he is a drummer/percussionist who uses his whole kit and serves the music extremely well without surrendering his identity. The same can be said about Cisneros and Stewart but subjectively the drums center this release for me and that is no slight to the other two artists.

It is a flat-out immersive experience and following the outline provided in the release below is helpful but not required.

I. Beginning - Family/Culture/Origin

II. Escape - Leaving/Searching/Taken

III. Crossings - Danger/Struggle/Unknown

IV. Equality - Rights/Assimilation/Bigotry

V. Identity - Work/Art/Pride/Family/Allies

VI. Action - Advocacy/Activism/Engagement

VII. New Beginning (Closing theme)

It can be daunting to find the words and examples to declaim the achievements of this recording. One risks being obtuse to extoll its passion. It is best to let it wash over you, opening your mind to its cinematic but direct qualities.

Art is more than asking questions and certainly more than giving answers but offering a new, personal authentic perspective.

This release offers the flip side of having been here before. Struggle strengthens you. We Were Here Before is a marvelous album for its depth, diversity, and integrity of purpose. And it grooves, wails, screams, and hits the Soul.

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Ingrid Schmoliner & Hamid Drake – Awon Ona (Klanggalerie, 2021) ****½

By Stef Gijssels

Throughout this album, the listener is taken from one suprise to the next. The music is an unreal mix of structural and compositional cleverness, improvisational inventiveness and stylistic collision and harmony. 

You cannot possibly find two more different musicians finding a common voice. Austrian pianist and composer Ingrid Schmoliner comes from a classical avant-garde background, with experience in free improvisation. Chicagoan Hamid Drake is one of the most versatile jazz drummers around, the king of polyrhythms and with an encyclopedic knowledge of rhythmic patterns from around the world. 

The combination is extraordinary in both the literal and metaphorical sense of the word. This is not world music, because the genres do not blend into some in-between-state, but keep their strength and character while being in full harmony. Schmoliner and Drake find themselves on various levels: the rhythmic complexities, the shamanistic singing, even if the styles are again totally different, their openness to new forms and the universal language of music, the solemn freshness and the natural organic flow of their sounds. 

Schmoliner's style on her prepared piano is all her own: rich, intense, harmonic, with lots of repetitive and rhythmic elements, dramatic at times, cinematic at others, and she has the incredible power to be controlled and full of musical abanon at the same time. Harmonically, her playing remains deeply rooted in the classical idiom, not in jazz. She is also a trained singer, specialised also in overtone singing and yodeling.

The album tracks and the title all come from the Yoruba language from Nigeria, at least from what I could deduct from some internet searches (Keke (wheel), Igbi (wave), Eeru (ash), Afefe (air), San (stream), Ina (fire), Joidi (?), Emi (me), Aago (time), E Dupe (thank you), Gbogbo Ibi (everywhere). The album's title could mean "ways", an apt description of the different roads in music can all lead to the same place. 

"Emi" is an amazing 13-minute mesmerising piece built around repetitive phrases and with a steady rhythm, that first flows like rapids, relentlessly, wild and powerful, allowing Drake to show is artistic mastery of adding even more complex rhythms to the endless stream of notes and harmonies that gush from the piano, and even later in the piece, when the speed diminishes, she produces a superfast repetitive playful phrase with her right hand, and Drake is with her, despite the change, despite the sudden shift in mood. 

On "Joidi", Schmolinger's singing brings an update from "Kumts" on "Watussi" from 2013, an incantation that demonstrates her vocal skills and spiritual force. 

"Aago" is built around sustained deep tones, possibly the result of strings being stroked inside the piano, with Schmoliner singing. Drake emphasises the eery feeling and sense of anticipation. The darkness of the percussion and the single repeated piano note contrast with her bright singing and beautiful melancholy tone. 

"E Dupe" starts with some incredibly rich drumming by Drake, inviting Schmoliner in with her own percussive repetitive fireworks, and evolving into Drake's Arabic spiritual chanting, without any of the intensity of the piano or drums losing any of its power. 

I will not review all improvisations, but the combination of contrasts and alignment, its bifurcation and convergence is omnipresent, of the modern with the ancient, the particular with the universal, the boundary-breaking with the traditional, all blending into this wonderful co-creation of relatively unique and often spectacular music. 

The first CD was recorded in "Live At Artacts" festival in Austria on March 6, 2020, the second CD at the Jazz Cerkno Festival in Slovenia on September 19, 2020. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

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Joëlle Léandre / Pauline Oliveros / George Lewis - Play As You Go (Trost, 2021) *****

By Eyal Hareuveni

French double bass master Joëlle Léandre and American accordionist and electronics player Pauline Oliveros and electronics player and trombonist George Lewis are great pioneers of free and experimental music on both sides of the Atlantic, influential thinkers and role models and inspiring educators. Play As You Go is the only recording of these three masters sharing the same stage, captured by the national Czech radio station during the festival VS. Interpretation in Prague in July 2014.

But these musicians have known each other since the early eighties. Léandre first met Oliveros in New York when she was performing British-American composer Bernard Rands’ “Memo 1” for solo double bass, and later played with her in festivals all over Europe. In 2002, Oliveros and Fred Frith invited Léandre to be a visiting professor, teaching improvisation and composition at the Mills College in Oakland. This cooperation led to the recording of The Space Between (482 Music, 2003, with shakuhachi player Philip Gelb and pianist Dana Reason). Léandre first recorded with Lewis in 1982, as a free-improv quartet with Derek Bailey and Evan Parker, 28 Rue Dunois Juillet 1982 (Fou, 2014). Two years later Lewis invited Léandre to record his seminal composition Rainbow Family with Bailey, Steve Lacy and Douglas Ewart (Carrier, 2020), and throughout the eighties, they continued to collaborate with outfits led by Irène Schweizer and Anthony Braxton. Their last collaboration as a duo was recorded at the 2008 edition of the Vision Festival, Transatlantic Visions (RogueArt, 2009).

Play As You Go accumulates decades of experience in improvising and spontaneously composing at the moment. Obviously, and as sax player and scholar Tracy McMullen mentions in her insightful liner notes, deep listening, sonic awareness are essential for such a meeting, or as Oliveros taught us: full attention and openness to another, another which is sound, includes the sound that you make. Deep listening demonstrates that we can conceive of our relationship to the other not in terms of being recognized, but in terms of generous giving. Lewis adds to Oliveros Buddhist-tinged concepts the idea that we can live in an ever-present now and this idea denies the reality of history and the habits and momentum that shape our racist, sexist, capitalist present, and this leads to a resistance to accept the dualisms of the West. Our practice is to perceive things clearly, respond appropriately (that is ethical, born out of clear-perception) and to understand the biggest picture: that the ignorance of the world is not the world. Léandre wraps these notions in a simpler way: have fun and love each other. Then, at a certain point, we may find ourselves in a space where no instruction is needed, no remembering is needed.

Play As You Go offers 44 magical minutes. This piece draws you immediately into a colorful, almost psychedelic and spiritual sonic adventure that has its very own timeless logic and highly expressive language. It may sound at first as a secretive, exotic language that only Léandre, Oliveros and Lewis share but very soon you may feel quite proficient in their coded, layered messages, imaginative but refined dialects and fascinating nuances. Eventually, you will feel that these generous listeners-improvisers see you - the listener - as an integral part of their journey, and want to share with you the deep joys of celebrating being in the moment, a moment that holds at once all of our past and all of our future. An emotional and poetic moment that goes beyond the dichotomy of free and not free, acoustic vs. electronics, or improvised vs, composed. For a brief 44 minutes Léandre, Oliveros and Lewis become one with the music, sharing and enriching each other’s ideas and making it bigger than themselves, feeling the rare elation of reaching such close and profound understanding, but not taking themselves too seriously, and insist on having fun.

A masterpiece.

vs. Interpretation 2014 - Play as you go - George Lewis / Pauline Oliveros / Joëlle Léandre from Agosto Foundation on Vimeo.

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Benoît Delbecq 4 – Gentle Ghosts (Jazzdor, 2021) ****

By Anthony Simon

Some music grabs me by the shirt collar, seizing my attention and refusing to let go, perhaps with an irresistible melody, or an infectious groove. Other music accosts me with a melee of sonic projectiles, bombing and blasting, daring me to search for something stable to grab onto. And still other music extends me an invitation to consider entering a space containing a wide variety of phenomena—details that can be appreciated from a distance, or curiously examined up close, or anything in between. To my ear, this album of quaintly intricate tunes mostly inhabits the lattermost description. (Of course, there’s also music that achieves all the above and more, praise be!)

The performing ensemble on Gentle Ghosts (Jazzdor Series, 2021) is led by Benoît Delbecq, who wrote all compositions, plays piano and prepared piano, and simultaneously contributes real-time electronic feedback through a fascinating process he terms “post-radiophonic.” Mark Turner plays tenor saxophone, and has been in Delbecq’s ensembles since at least 2003. Gerald Cleaver plays drums and John Hébert plays bass, with whom Delbecq has played on two excellent albums as the John Hébert trio. These four artists’ prior recording was the wonderful Spots on Stripes (Clean Feed, 2018).

On the heels of The Weight of Light (Pyroclastic, 2021), Delbecq’s remarkably creative solo effort from earlier this year, his Gentle Ghosts album endeavors further innovation—the aforementioned “post-radiophonic.” It involves a software that records each performer and permits Delbecq to immediately playback fragments of an individual statement, or of the entire ensemble. The feedback is often quieter, rather in the background, and processed with subtle effects that can give it a bent translucence, like a playful phantasm. During the recording, each musician hears and spontaneously responds to periodic intervals of feedback that Delbecq initiates. The video “album teaser” gives a good sense for how this shapes the musical interplay.

To my ears, one of the finest tracks is “Gentle Ghosts.” Delbecq’s undulating piano work is pensive, gorgeous, as he duets with slightly refracted apparitions of his playing (i.e., post-radiophonic). Turner’s sax brings a warm and slightly bluesy glow, and a current of nostalgia swirls in the mix that is persistently unsettled by rhythms that stumble gracefully and chords that fray at the edges. Hébert culls just a few choice notes that hang in the air, and Cleaver’s rustling brushwork casts a deep hush.

In the film about the making of The Weight of Light, Delbecq offers insight about his music: “The ‘let me show you my emotion in art’ aspect is not so interesting for me in music. I’m interested in others doing that, in peers doing that. But that’s not my method. I prefer to conceive states that may be luminous, showing a music that has a certain type of illumination, into which one will be able to dive—and I leave the choice of emotion to the listener.” Indeed, Delbecq’s style on the piano can be clinical, or playful, or impressionistic, but it rarely feels like it nudges the listener in a particular emotional direction. To my ear, Turner shares some of these qualities, but when paired with Delbecq’s piano, his tone reveals bits of emotional valence, occasionally wistful. Indeed, Delbecq’s playing, which can be beautifully spare, on this recording is injected with a good deal more energy and fullness, courtesy of the measured drive and dynamism brought by drums, bass, and sax.

Three of this album’s compositions also appear on The Weight of Light, and it's interesting to compare versions. In the case of “Anamorphoses,” the theme is charming, almost Monk-ian, but the spare and even monastic feel of the solo version has become a jaunty swinger in the hands of the quartet. With “Chemin sur le Crest,” the solo version offers the slightly tense theme with a completely decentered sense of rhythm, while the quartet version gives the tune’s pace a pliable yet firm drive, even while the sax and piano explore the theme with a contrasting oblique rhythm. This tune has some colorful “post-radiophonic” shading that sometimes blends indistinguishably with its original utterances just moments earlier, like the edges of a mirage slowly revealing what’s actually there.

All the songs on this album hang together well, similarly inhabiting the unique sound of this ensemble—curiously sweet, playfully elusive, with an understated serenity that invites introspection. What do you think?

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Jeff Cosgrove - History Gets Ahead of Itself (s/r, 2021) ****

By Kenneth Blanchard

I have something of a history when it comes to reviewing drummer Jeff Cosgrove recordings. Back when I was blogging by my lonely self, he sent me a copy of Motian Sickness: for the love of Sarah. You can follow that link to my review. I will be so bold as to quote a bit here.

“The sound is string-heavy and, as you might expect, it is dominated by Maneri's viola and Masefield's mandolin in that order. This is dense, moody, and moving music. The real tribute to Motian here, and it is genuine and worthy of that master, is the marvelous dialogue between the musicians. This is what a Renaissance painting would be if four masters were stroking at the same time, each paying close attention to the other three.”

That was 2012. Two years later I reviewed Alternating Current, a trio with Matthew Shipp on piano and William Parker on bass.

If you pick up those two and History gets ahead of itself, you are not going to suffer from ennui this week, my friend.

History, one of the many intriguing words in the title, places this closer to the Motian album. It is an interpretation of compositions by William Parker. Now, I have a fan crush on Parker, so be advised. I think he is one of the great composers. I can scarcely imagine how difficult it was to select the final cut for this album. I won’t try to second guess Cosgrove on this one.

This is another trio, with Cosgrove on drums, Jeff Lederer on soprano saxophone, clarinet, and flute, and (drum roll, please, Jeff…) John Medeski on organ. Organ? Okay. I say: good idea.

It wasn’t hard to guess which Parker composition would be on the recording. 'O’neal’s Porch' is probably Parker’s most recognizable composition. It is rich color veins against a bluesy background; dramatic, without the least bit of compromise. I really like it. Cosgrove’s trio plays it mostly straight from the original recording, but only mostly. There is some avant-garde updraft, early on. It returns quickly to the substance. You won’t want to get distracted when Lederer and Medeski converse. The organ paints with a sponge brush, while we get deft strokes from the horn,

Cornmeal Dance loses something by abstracting from the vocals on Parker’s album. 'Gospel Flowers' is the gospel truth, in so far as jazz is truth. 'With Little Birds', the flute tells a whole’nuther story, as we say back in Arkansas.

Moon is a delicious bowl of flavor. 'Things Fall Apart', a rather timely title as I write this, is much more pensive than the previous offerings. I think here, Cosgrove’s percussion presents its most compelling genius.

This is very fine jazz. Get it, and you will be hunting for more Jeff Cosgrove.

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Jaimie Branch - Fly Or Die Live (International Anthem, 2021) *****

By Martin Schray

When someone does something unusual, critics immediately try to pigeonhole it and hardly anywhere are unfamiliar sounds so quickly and crudely labeled as in jazz, a genre which is actually based on improvisation and freedom. Jaimie Branch’s band Fly Or Die has been one of the most talked-about projects in recent years and very quickly the media called their music punk-jazz. That’s okay for Branch, in an interview with the German weekly “ZEIT“ she said that she used to be a punk rocker and that she appreciated the love in this kind of music. However, some people envied her immediate success. After her first appearance in Germany, at Jazzfest Berlin, she entered the stage in a tracksuit in November 2018, only to thoroughly rouse the more contemplative part of the audience with her trumpet. Thereupon, some critics - all male, by the way - nagged about her scruffy, sloppy tone. It didn’t occur to them that this might be intentional.

Her latest album Fly Or Die Live breathes this exact Berlin gig spirit. It’s a concert recording, one-and-a-half hours, from the Moods jazz club in Zurich, recorded on January 23, 2020, shortly before the music world shut down due to Covid. When she hit the stage like a rapper, she nervously rearranged her base cap, announced that the band was going to play just one 90-minute set instead of two shorter ones, and encouraged the audience to yell, shout, applaud or get drinks because they were "not one of those quiet bands." The Fly Or Die band of the Zurich evening are Branch (trumpet, vocals, vibraslap), Lester St. Louis (cello, vocals, tiny cymbal), Jason Ajemian (bass, vocals, egg-shakers) and Chad Taylor (drums, vocals, mbira).

Fly or Die Live is like a summary of the band’s two studio albums, dipped into the intensity of a live show. At the beginning, the musicians takes their time. Chad Taylor plays a long intro on the mbira, the sub-Saharan thumb piano that originally was used to help connect with ancestors during ceremonies. It’s like the evocation of a paradisiacal state from which one has been expelled. The sound is bouncy and soft, multi-layered; it opens the ears. It takes three minutes for the trumpet to appear. Branch’s sounds is warm and full. She plays brightly and fast, the restrained reverberation almost reminds me of Miles and Chet Baker. Yes, she can play like this as well, but she also has her signature sound. And this becomes clear in the next piece, when the whole thing tips over. “Prayer for Amerikkka Parts 1&2“ certainly is Branch's most important piece, an angry blues in which she screams out all her anger, as on the studio version, sometimes her voice even flipped that night. The trumpet riffs here range from heart-felt blues melodies to improvisations over Phrygian chords, bridging the gap to Mexican mariachis. And, of course, this is a musical commentary on the situation in the U.S.A. under Donald Trump. How could you play that with a clinically pure, nice and beautiful trumpet sound? This has to be dirty, and that’s the Jaimie Branch style. Then again, to bring her playing to the one point is difficult. Sometimes it’s wide-meshed, sometimes snappy, her compositions sound always up-to-date. “To have a good sound, you always have to sound good,“ she says in the ZEIT interview. "I spent a lot of time playing long tones, and I still do. I love resonance and fullness. But there can't be 2500 John Coltranes. To me, that sounds hollow. If someone plays like Albert Ayler, it doesn't mean they sound like Albert Ayler." That's why it has been important to her to find her own voice, to formulate her vocabulary - and she’s definitely done that. Moreover, she benefits from her band, which colors her sketches. They provide an elastic-drifting rhythm carpet on which Branch’s melodies can fly, whether it’s on more contemplative pieces like “Waltzer“ or tightly knit numbers like “Leaves of Glass“.

The set closes with three longer pieces around the seven-minute-mark. Here they simply rock the house and once again keep the promise from the beginning that they are not a quiet band. The audience even sings along at the end in "Love Song" - all that feels very natural, it’s not embarrassing at all. And for a last time Branch’s trumpet is delightfully unclean, she enjoys being very slightly off-key.

Coming back to labels: Her approach might be a bit punk-like, but it also draws a lot of hiphop’s energy. But why categorizing her? She’s just a great musician. One of jazz’s rising stars, that’s for sure.

Fly Or Die Live is available on vinyl (it’ll be released soon), as a CD and a download. You can listen to the album and buy it here: https://intlanthem.bandcamp.com/album/fly-or-die-live

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Jemeel Moondoc (1946 - 2021)

 Photo by Michael Wilderman, 2019

The passing of free jazz altoist and band leader Jemeel Moondoc was announced today by Arts for Arts on Twitter. 

Born in August 1946, Jemeel Moondoc will be remembered for his role in the New York jazz loft scene in the seventies, for his singular vision and devotion to jazz. 

Originally from Chicago, he first moved to Boston, then to New York, first performing in R&B and blues bands, picking up courses from different colleges including the New England Conservatory and from Cecil Taylor at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. That period was influential in the sense that Taylor's course also "emphasized the impact of African musical, linguistic, and cultural origins; the African American experience as enslaved peoples in the United States; and Black Christian churches as spaces of resistance before and after the Civil War." (Cisco Bradley, Universal Tonality, 2020)

At NEC, Moondoc created his first ensemble as a leader, Muntu, then a 12-piece band. He then moved to New York where the loft scene was just starting, and where he met William Parker and Rashid Bakr, and together they formed the nucleus of the new band, first with Arthur Williams on trumpet, later with the late Roy Campbell Jr, rehearsing a lot and refining their music. Their first album came out in 1977 and has been re-issued by NoBusiness together with the albums the followed in the Muntu box. This comes highly recommended, not only for its historical value but also because of the quality of the music. 

Moondoc describes the concept in the accompanying booklet: "Muntu is about the transition and survival of an old world culture connected to me by birth. Muntu is about me traveling back centuries into an ancient world known to me only through my ancestors. This connection is spiritual, and embraces the living and the dead. When performing music, the execution of contacting ancestors requires a religious belief. This process can be an outer body experience causing one to be possessed, but can also bring into the room the spirits of ancestors known and unknown. The intent of the performance is not to merely entertain, but to uplift, and awaken the listener’s spiritual powers."(Jemeel Moondoc, “Muntu: The Essay”)

Muntu disbanded after William Parker and Rashid Bakr joined Cecil Taylor's ensemble, and even if that was tough for Moondoc, he continued to perform with Parker in various ensembles, including Parker's own bands, and they released the "New World Pygmies" album as a duo and its follow-up as a trio with Hamid Drake (see video below). 

Afterwards, Moondoc created his own bands, usually a trio, but he released albums with quartets, quintets, tentets and his 'Jemeel Moondoc All-Stars.' 

In his last years, he was member of Steve Swell's 'Fire Into Music' quintet. 

One of his signature compositions was 'Judy's Bounce', which we find back on several albums: on Judy's Bounce (1982), on Quartet Muntu – The Athens Concert (1982) and on We Don't (2003), a duo with drummer Denis Charles. 

Over the last years, he still continued to release new albums, which were always a treat for fans. The last review we wrote about his work, Astral Revelations (2018), also contains his discography. In my personal opinion, his most recommended albums - in my personal opinion - next to the Muntu box two other Muntu releases: The Intrepid - Live In Poland (1981) and The Athens Concert together with Revolt Of The Lawn Jockeys (2000), The Zookeeper's House (2014) and New World Pygmies, Vol. 2 (2002). 

In sum, Moondoc was a significant figure in the development of free jazz, someone with his own vision on music, and with a clear perspective on what his sound could be in this context. 

Even if I never met him personally, he and his bands have offered me hours and hours of musical joy.

Our thoughts are with his family and friends.

- Stef Gijssels

***

We are also happy to share an interview with Jemeel Moondoc by our colleagues from Burning Ambulance. 

The video below is from the Vision Festival in 2018 with William Parker and Hamid Drake. 

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Ronald Shannon Jackson and the Decoding Society - Live at the North Sea Jazz Festival 1983 (The Decoding Society, 2021) ****½

 By Lee Rice Epstein

One of the pros, and cons, of digital releases is how quickly some recently discovered sessions, outtakes, or bootlegs can be converted for a proper release. Requisite caveats aside (fidelity, length, detailed credits, and so on), it would be extremely difficult to turn down a gift like the continuing reissue and live recordings project The Decoding Society, dedicated to the music of Ronald Shannon Jackson.

The latest release, an hour-long set from the 1983 North Sea Festival features Jackson’s Decoding Society right in the pocket of its, no pun intended, prime time. Jackson was on an epic run, beginning with Eye On You, Street Priest, and Nasty, his group at the time had just released Mandance and was touring for the legendary Barbeque Dog. Although the credits list a different lineup, it’s actually the same from that album and tour: Jackson on drums and flute, Henry Scott on trumpet, Zane Massey on saxophones, Vernon Reid on guitar and banjo, and Melvin Gibbs and Reverend Bruce Johnson on electric basses. As with his mentors Cecil Taylor and Ornette Coleman, Jackson directs each bass player to fill a different, specific role. And there are jaw-dropping moments, from Masset and Scott’s fiery, synchronized melodic runs, to the opening riffs of “Mother’s Day,” where Johnson and Gibbs play mightily off Jackson, always a metaphorically eight-limbed player.

Many highlights abound, including a high-octane “Iola” leading to “Mystery At Dawn,” where Jackson switches to flute for the melody, and Reid swaps guitar for banjo. There’s a searching quality to the playing, less contemplative more like a beacon lighting a path. The music is meditatively transcendent, like most of Jackson’s playing: the rhythm and melody achieve a kind of harmonic equilibrium, underlining the application of harmolodics as a framework, more than merely one man’s methodology. 

Writing in The Washington Post in 1983, Geoffrey Himes remarked, “There has always been an underlying order in the seeming anarchy of Ornette Coleman's melodic jazz. That order, though, has rarely been as evident or as compelling as it was in the show by Ronald Shannon Jackson & the Decoding Society at the 9:30 club Saturday night.” This was in January, and the sextet grew remarkably stronger over the course of that year’s shows. Closing on a lengthy version of “Alice In the Congo,” the opening track off Mandance, the sextet does not hold back. Gibbs, Johnson, and Reid perform an incredible tripartite improvisation, with Jackson smashing cymbals and rolling through epic drum fills. 

There is free jazz, and then there is the kind of jazz that demonstrates freeness. Decoding Society always seemed to deliver on the latter. Jackson was a brilliant writer of funky, addictive, and multi-threaded compositions, and the promise of more tapes like these is a wonderful gift.

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

Also available, a subscription to The Decoding Society 

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John Blum and Jackson Krall - Duplexity (Relative Pitch, 2020) ****

By Paul Acquaro

When I first put on the drum and piano duo of John Blum and Jackson Krall, I felt a familiar sensation. It was that same, immediate and visceral reaction that I felt the day I stuck Cecil Taylor's Conquistador into my car's CD player, driving away from Jack's Music Shoppe in Red Bank, NJ, where I had just bought a used copy of it, oh so many years ago. It was a shot of adrenalin mixed with the warm satisfaction of developing an (instantly) acquired taste. Weird, but not unattractive, unusual and pulsating music delivered with force and a sixth sense of what fits where.

Blum's bona fides are bountiful: he's played with a international roster of the avant-garde elite and studied with the likes of Taylor, Borah Bergman, Milford Graves, and Bill Dixon, so making this comparison actually does not seem so outlandish. His partner here, Jackson Krall, also has a connection with Taylor, as he played with him in the pianist's later career, and brings sensitivity and intensity to this duo date.

The two tracks that make up Duplexity are plentiful in intuitive choices and decisiveness. One never feels like there is a lull in ideas or a browse through aisles of inspiration, 'Blood and Bone' starts things off fast with a crash of chords and high-energy snare roll. After this, the speed and certainty at which the duo goes at it is certainly the result of the thirty of years of experience they have playing live together. Krall plays with the density of his drum work, sometimes busier than others, but always adding something. The second track 'Wind and Wing' may even be more intense than the first. Here, after a crisp explosion of arpeggios from Blum, Krall ups the intensity with a shower of percussive sparks. The ensuing track then actually seems to feel a bit lighter, but it never looses its drive. 

The two's approach, a duality of interlocking complexity, converges effortlessly in the uniquely captivating Duplexity. 

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