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clifford

clifford has written 133 posts for bagatellen

Bags-Live, Second Round: Rempis/Rosaly Duo

By clifford ⋅ November 16, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
The Rempis/Rosaly Duo FINALIZES TOUR DATES for December 2009
Dave Rempis and Frank Rosaly, two of the most active players in Chicago’s world-renowned scene of jazz and improvised music, have finalized the schedule for their twelve-concert North American tour in late fall of 2009, coinciding with the release of their first duo cd, [...]

Earl Howard / Dom Minasi at Roulette, 11/12 & 12/10

By clifford ⋅ November 5, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment

This may be of interest to New York area Bags readers:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Interpretations Presents:
Earl Howard and Edmund Campion
Thursday, November 12, 2009
8PM at Roulette
20 Greene Street (between Canal and Grand)
“Alchemies between music and theater, text, movement, and ritual”
– Benjamin Frandzel, San Francisco Classical Voice
The 21st Season of Thomas Buckner’s innovative series of new music continues on [...]

Larry Willis & Paul Murphy - Foundations

By clifford ⋅ October 28, 2009 ⋅ 2 comments

Murphy Records
This review is from new contributor Dominic Fragman, a drummer and student of Paul Murphy’s. Look for more of his writing in these pages soon. - CA
Innovation requires unimaginable knowledge, ability and devotion. It is no easy feat to move away from the convenience of a pre-existing groundwork to serve a unique concept. [...]

David Sylvian - Manafon

By clifford ⋅ September 21, 2009 ⋅ 18 comments

Samadhisound
Blemish must have marked a mini-seismic ‘event’ for David Sylvian when it was recorded over a six week hiatus, marking a departure from his normal precision in the studio. The songs were stark, aching confessionals that recalled the work of the late modernist Samuel Beckett in the honest nature of their ruminations on everything [...]

Bill Dixon at AAJ, part 1 of 3

By clifford ⋅ September 15, 2009 ⋅ 3 comments

Trumpeter, composer and visual artist Bill Dixon almost always finds a way to provoke the thoughts and keyboards of the Bagatellen community. I got to spend a week with him in 2008, which was extraordinarily fruitful, even for a pre-existing fan such as myself. Though the saga of publishing the results isn’t something I’ll go [...]

Barry Guy & Mats Gustafsson - Sinners, Rather than Saints

By clifford ⋅ September 2, 2009 ⋅ 11 comments

No Business LP 6
Sinners, rather than Saints is only the fourth meeting on record of English bassist-composer Barry Guy and Swedish saxophonist Mats Gustafsson over almost two decades, and for that alone this vinyl-only release on Lithuanian imprint No Business should be more than a curio. The duo format is an interesting one, which [...]

Roscoe Mitchell Art Ensemble - Congliptious

By clifford ⋅ August 25, 2009 ⋅ One comment

Nessa NCD-2
While a hallmark of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, wide-open spaces and atomistic sound-rhythms (frequently on found “little instruments”) are an incomplete picture of how AACM groups were aesthetically manifest. Certainly, space was endemic to groups like the Creative Construction Company and records like Joseph Jarman’s As If It Were the [...]

Gato Barbieri - In Search of the Mystery

By clifford ⋅ August 11, 2009 ⋅ 11 comments

ESP 1049
ESP-Disk’ has long been a haven for the under-recognized in left field music, documenting valuable works by artists as diverse as saxophonist Marzette Watts and psych priestess Erica Pomerance. In a few cases, artists who released their debuts on ESP went on to some degree of commercial success, usually well-removed from their initial [...]

Interview with Nate Wooley (Apr — Jul 2009)

By clifford ⋅ July 29, 2009 ⋅ 7 comments

I first heard trumpeter Nate Wooley a few years ago on Transit’s eponymous debut (Clean Feed, 2005). A pianoless quartet outside the range of what one usually expects from such instrumentation, Wooley’s language is clearly crucial in setting Transit apart from its peers. Alongside Peter Evans, Taylor Ho Bynum and Rob Mazurek, Wooley is one [...]

Ombak - Framing the Void

By clifford ⋅ July 28, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment

Ombak
It’s long been the case that one doesn’t need to be in New York (or Chicago, or Berlin) to make a name for oneself in improvised music. Still, it seems like only recently that a fair number of regional outfits have gained the niche notoriety frequently reserved for the cosmopolitan. Richmond, Virginia’s Fight the [...]

Alexander Hawkins Ensemble - No Now is So

By clifford ⋅ July 6, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment

FMR 270-0209
Though only on his third recording and first as a leader (the other two – Convergence Quartet and Barkingside – are cooperative groups), it’s safe to say that English pianist Alexander Hawkins is coming into his own as a “young lion” of contemporary improvisation. His other projects feature a semi-typical horn-and-rhythm lineup, but [...]

Henry Kaiser/Damon Smith/Weasel Walter - Plane Crash

By clifford ⋅ June 29, 2009 ⋅ 11 comments

UGExplode 30
Bay Area percussionist Weasel Walter has helmed a number of powerful, overdriven sessions of free music during the last few years, often in tandem with bassist Damon Smith. Most of these aggregations have featured saxophonists or brass players – people like Elliott Levin, Paul Hartsaw, or Peter Evans. Walter’s adage is that, to [...]

Harry Miller’s Isipingo - Full Steam Ahead

By clifford ⋅ June 2, 2009 ⋅ 7 comments

Reel Recordings 012
Cape Town-born bassist Harry Miller was already well-established in London jazz circles, playing with figures like Kenneth Terroade, John Surman and Mike Westbrook, by the time fellow South Africans the Blue Notes arrived on the UK scene in 1966. It wasn’t until about five years later that Miller joined former Blue Notes [...]

Soft Machine - Drop

By clifford ⋅ May 28, 2009 ⋅ 4 comments

Moonjune 023
Mention the word “Canterbury” in certain circles and the likely reference is “Soft Machine.” Followers of the group’s transition from quirky psychedelia to a relentless and anthemic jazz-rock hybrid seem split on whether they like their Softs with Robert Wyatt’s otherworldly vocal whimsy or with only his drumming propelling organist Mike Ratledge, bassist [...]

FAB Trio and Nu Band on Porter

By clifford ⋅ May 28, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment

Bassist-composer Joe Fonda has been a stalwart figure in the international creative improvisation community since the late ‘70s, though his fifteen years of regular appearances with reedman-composer Anthony Braxton probably stand out the most in his lengthy discography. However, it would be incomplete to call Fonda solely a Braxton acolyte – his work with pianist [...]

Dominic Duval/Jimmy Halperin - Monk Dreams

By clifford ⋅ May 24, 2009 ⋅ 3 comments

No Business Records NBCD 2
“Monkish” is one of those descriptors that’s unavoidable in writing about jazz – Thelonious Monk’s imprint on the landscape of modern jazz and improvised music is huge and, more importantly, incredibly diverse. Odd-interval repetition, rhythmic bounce and dissonant delicacy have come to characterize a large segment of players, and soprano [...]

Rocco John Group - Devotion

By clifford ⋅ April 30, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment

COCA 1003
Being a reviewer certainly has its perks – one catches up on artists and recordings that, as a consumer, one might miss out on. Of course, the average critic gets sent far more music than they could listen to, let alone write about. So it’s pretty common for records – even very good [...]

Michael Jefry Stevens Trio - For Andrew

By clifford ⋅ April 8, 2009 ⋅ 2 comments

Konnex KCD 5212
Though in the Sixties the flashier superimpositions and cells of pianist Cecil Taylor got a significant amount of press as the more significant future path of the instrument, there were certainly other approaches to rhythm, tonality and “swing” in free piano music at the time. The equilateral pull of piano, bass and [...]

The Holy Modal Rounders Live and in the Studio on ESP

By clifford ⋅ April 6, 2009 ⋅ One comment

When I was first tapping the musical underground as I understood it in the 1990s, the term “folk-punk” flew around the ether, describing politically-charged acoustic music, done with a certain do-it-yourself aesthetic and pressed in very small runs. Of course, this term had very little to do with folk music as it happened in Greenwich [...]

Jurg Wickihalder Overseas Quartet - Furioso

By clifford ⋅ March 25, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment

Intakt 153
Swiss soprano and alto saxophonist Jurg Wickihalder noted in the liner essay to 2008’s A Feeling for Someone (Intakt), a series of duets with pianist Chris Wiesendanger, a strong affinity for Steve Lacy’s music and approach to the horn. Wickihalder studied with Lacy for a short time in 1992, and though his phraseology [...]