RIVERS
Joe Giardullo Trio
Language of Swans
Drimala : 2002

JG, soprano sax; Michael Thompson, bass; Chris Sullivan, percussion.

NOT GOOD
Joe Giardullo
No Work Today: Nine for Steve Lacy
Drimala :  2006

JG, soprano sax.

TWILIGHT AT NOON
Joe Giardullo
Shadow & Light
Drimala : 2002

JG, soprano sax; Joe McPhee, tenor sax; Michael Bissio, bass, Tanni Tabal, drums.

We’re thrilled to announce an exciting new venture — a monthly concert series curated by Destination: OUT at the Salt Space on 27th Street and Broadway in Manhattan. It kicks off on Friday, September 10th, with a show by the great Joe Giardullo!

Our Loft/Lab jazz series aims to recreate the feel and excitement of the great jazz lofts of the 1970s. It’ll be a lab where adventurous musicians can try out new ideas, configurations, and compositions. It’ll serve up live music without a net. We’re keeping the prices low and only featuring our favorite acts.  It’ll be curated with the same hand-picked care as the site.

We’re proud to kick things off with a concert from amazing saxophonist Joe Giardullo. A frequent collaborator of Joe McPhee, Giardullo is a formidable talent whose shows are legendary to those in the know. This is a rare opportunity to see Joe and get turned on to his music. For more about what Joe will be playing, scroll down.

The SALT Space is a brand new arts space on 28th Street and Broadway, in the former Tin Pan Alley district. It’s a beautiful loft on the top floor of the building that’s built for performances. Think the Jazz Gallery, but larger and with a bit more polish. SALT Space has already hosted events by DJ Spooky and Miho Hatori, and we’re honored to join their roster.

Spaces for live jazz in Manhattan have been steadily vanishing over the years – we’re happy to buck that trend and offer more adventurous jazz in the city. We hope our New York readers will come out and support the venture.

* * * *

CONCERT DETAILS:
Destination OUT’s Loft/Lab jazz series presents:
Joe Giardullo and Harvey Sorgen
Friday, September 10th at 8 pm.
SALT SPACE
1158 Broadway, 5th Floor
Entrance is on 27th Street
$7.00 admission.

* * * *

Even in the world of adventurous jazz, J0e Giardullo remains an undersung performer. Although his work has been acclaimed by everyone from Downbeat to The Wire to Signal to Noise, he remains the proverbial “musician’s musician” and his extraordinary work has yet to reach the wider audience it deserves. Joe was interviewed in December 2008 by Clifford Allen. This illuminating piece from Paris Transatlantic opens with a bio that provides the broad strokes about his unusual career:

Soprano and tenor saxophonist Joe Giardullo was born in Brooklyn in 1948. Though not as well known as some of his contemporaries in modern improvisation, his work as a soprano saxophone soloist stems from figures like Steve Lacy and Anthony Braxton, with a penchant for organizing sound in isolated units across a broad area that recalls the music of trumpeter-composer Wadada Leo Smith. After debuting on record in 1979 with the large ensemble work Gravity and assisting Anthony Braxton on the saxophonist’s Four Orchestras project, Giardullo ceased public performance until a chance meeting with Joe McPhee in 1991. Since that time, he has recorded solo, in duets with McPhee or violinist Carlos “Zingaro,” and in a notable “free” quartet with McPhee, bassist Mike Bisio and Tani Tabbal. More recently, Giardullo recorded a triumphant return to orchestration, convened a trio which explores his music as well as that of improvising composers like Paul Motian and Annette Peacock. He’s also worked in a duo with drummer Harvey Sorgen—an exploration of intensity between two longtime collaborators.

* * *

What you can expect at the Sept 10th show:
Soprano saxophonist Joe Giardullo and drummer Harvey Sorgen go back over 35 years and share a lifetime of creative music. On this night, the music will be about that lifetime and about form. Special attention will be given to remembering the great Steve Lacy, and the tao. This is a night of songs. Some will be from Steve, some will be familiar, some will be new but all will be in tune with the space, the place, and the moment.

* * *

There’s no way to do justice to the breadth of Joe’s work in three tracks, but the accompanying tunes above will give you a general idea of his talents. “Rivers” is a trio piece that begins with some gentle African percussion. It quickly blossoms into a tune that marries a flowing groove and Middle-Eastern inflected melody. Note how Joe’s remarkable phrasings and rhythmic sense propels the band throughout.

“Not Good” is a virtuoso solo piece that includes phrases of Duke Ellington’s “I Got It Bad and That Ain’t Good” while spiraling in many other directions simultaneously. It’s full of aural fireworks and spiritual depth, referencing the tradition while pushing into new realms.

“Twilight At Noon” comes from the dramatic sessions for Shadow & Light. The quartet was set to record several set compositions on 9/11/01. Instead of canceling the session after the Twin Towers fell, they decided to improvise and create a snapshot of their feelings at that very moment. The album is both stirring and beautiful, privileging small gestures over grandstanding statements, pain and confusion over patriotic certainty, collective exploration over self-serving solos. The brief “Twilight At Noon” is an achingly lovely, somber, and almost ambient exploration of a historic moment, captured in real time.

* * *

For New Yorkers, we hope to see some of you next Friday. For everyone else, we hope you’ll dig this introduction to the music Joe Giardullo.

THE INSIDE SONG
(bonus track not on CD; rec. Cormons, Italy, Oct. 2008)
William Parker
I Plan to Stay a Believer: The Inside Songs of Curtis Mayfield
AUM Fidelity : 2010

WP, bass; Hamid Drake, drums; Dave Burrell, piano; Lewis Barnes, trumpet; Darryl Foster, tenor sax; Sabir Mateen, tenor sax, flute; Leena Conquest, vocals; Amiri Baraka: voice, poetry.

Here, courtesy William Parker and AUM Fidelity, is an advance taste of a massive project we have been aware of — and salivating over — for years now: Parker’s take on the music of soul legend Curtis Mayfield. Recorded over a span of almost ten years, involving a key core of musicians outfitted at various times with choirs of up to 90 members, I Plan to Stay a Believer is at once a celebration of Mayfield’s music and legacy, and an extension of it.

The princely Steven Joerg at AUM Fi has graciously allowed D:O to host this non-CD track — Parker’s original take on the Mayfield sound — for two weeks leading up to the street date of 14 September. For you early adopters, starting today, 31 August, the record will be available exclusively at the AUM Fidelity site. Purchase there and you will get access to additional, non-CD tracks via download. Highly recommended.

For additional context on the spirit behind the project, we have enlisted Parker himself to provide some illuminating details:

This is the first project, in my 30-year career, that I have devoted to the music of someone else.  It grew out of “Sitting by the Window,” a homage to Curtis Mayfield that I wrote for my band In Order To Survive. The current project develops this inspiration while trying to call upon the spirit in which Curtis Mayfield wrote his songs. We are trying to let that spirit find its voice today through musicians who not only know Mayfield’s songs, but more importantly, know themselves. They are familiar with the language of a music that includes Curtis Mayfield as well as Sun Ra.

I grew up listening to Smokey Robinson, The Temptations, Martha and The Vandellas, Gladys Knight and The Pips, and Curtis Mayfield and The Impressions. In my mind, their music was not separate from Marian Anderson, Count Basie, Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster, Don Byas, Sarah Vaughn, Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, Cecil Taylor, Bill Dixon, and Louis Armstrong. All this music is part of an African American tradition that comes out of the blues. The roots of the jazz known as avant-garde are also in the blues, the field holler, and the church. Avoiding artificial separations is the key to understanding the true nature of the music. All these artists ultimately speak using this reservoir of  sounds and colors that we can use to paint our own music.

The music that passed through the life and work of Curtis Mayfield cannot be duplicated. The question becomes, how can it then continue? I also ask myself this question in connection to Duke Ellington or Thelonious Monk. It always seemed to me that when Ellington died, the music physically died with him. We were left orphaned, with just the recorded part of his work and all these notes on paper, but that is not the reality. Once you realize this truth, you can find a different way to proceed to re-create the songs. Paradoxically, you can only find a way to play the music by initially affirming that it cannot be done. Let us imagine the Creator: part of his voice was expressed through Duke Ellington, a part through Albert Ayler, another part through Curtis Mayfield. The method doesn’t consist in following or imitating anyone’s style; the method consists of plunging into the Tone World, which is the source of all music. You can’t counterfeit a music. One can only collect strands and begin to weave a new tapestry out of them.

Curtis Mayfield was a prophet, a preacher, a revolutionary, a humanist, and a griot. He took the music to its most essential level in the America of his day. If you had ears to hear, you knew that Curtis was a man with a positive message – a message that was going to help you to survive. He was in the foreground, always in the breach, both soft and powerful at the same time. For these reasons, his music still resounds in my heart.

So, people, get ready.

By the way, while you are over at the AUM Fi HQ, you will also discover news of another Davis S. Ware landmark slab, a new trio disc with Parker and Warren Smith. Also worth your time and money.

As long as I can see the light...

Originally posted 17 December 2006

APHRODITE
THE SUN IS COMING UP

Ric Colbeck
The Sun Is Coming Up
Fontana : 1970

RC, trumpet; Mike Osborne, alto sax; Jean-Francois Jenny-Clarke, bass; Selwyn Lissack, drums.

It’s always satisfying and not a little surprising when one of the grails of avant jazz turns out, when finally found, to deliver the goods. It’s as if, for one brief, blazing moment, one’s faith is restored, and justified (if not one’s dorkiness). This quartet session has been canonized by none other than ecstatic noise conoisseur Thurston Moore. Moore’s Top Ten from the Free Jazz Underground originally appeared in 1995 in Grand Royal magazine (issue #2, with Lee Scratch Perry on the cover), and noted the following about his number five selection:

Issued in the UK only in 1970. Ric was an interesting white cat who came to the U.S. to blow some free e-motion with NYC loft dwellers. He’s most well known for his amazing playing on the great Noah Howard’s first ESP-Disk release (ESP 1031). The picture of Ric on the Noah Howard LP shows a man with race-car shades and a “cool” haircut playing his horn while a ciggie burns nonchalantly from his relaxed grip. A very hip dude. And very FREE. His only solo recording is this Fontana LP which he recorded while cruising through Europe. He connected with South African drummer Selwyn Lissack (whatever happened to…) and the UK’s famous avant-altoist Mike Osborne and bassist J.F. ‘Jenny’ Clark (student of 20th century compositionists Lucian Berio and Karlheinz Stockhausen) to create this exceptional and complex masterpiece.

Exploring some kind of Anglo-Franco-Africano deep soul axis, this group plays beautifully together, mining a free-bop vein that’s both instantly familiar (if you’ve heard any ESPs, say) and utterly singular. Not totally dissimilar in tone to Jimmy Lyons’ Other Afternoons either.

“Aphrodite” is a corker. Lissack opens the track with a calvacade of rhythm and continues to thrash away throughout. Jenny-Clarke alternately sprints and strolls, laying down a crabwise groove. Colbeck sprays, but not carelessly so, and Osborne provides one stunning statement after another.

The title track begins with a bass solo that sets up the dramatic entrance of the horns. As the song kicks into gear, the band slides slightly out of synch. Purposefully wobbly. The horns unfurl a series of long tones like they’re trying to regain their bearings. The piece builds to a ferocious crescendo where the number of horns seems to have suddenly doubled. It’s a carefully textured cacophony – or maybe a densely vocal colloquy. A visceral rush, in any case.

There are tantalizing clues that this record will soon see the light of day (so to speak) on CD. One can be found here. The complete Colbeck discography, incidentally, is here.

Regarding Moore’s note about Lissack, he is currently experiencing a reemergence, spurred by the DMG/ARC reissue of his Friendship Next of Kin / Facets of the Universe, comprehensively reviewed in the October Paris Transatlantic by Clifford Allen. Lissack is pretty much the last man standing from this quartet. Their sun is no longer coming up, but we can still don our race-car shades and bow to the East in respect, admiration, and love. Keep the faith.

BAIYINA
Pat Martino
Baiyina (The Clear Evidence)
Prestige : 1968

PM, guitar; Bobby Rose, guitar; Gregory Herbert, alto sax, flute; Richard Davis, bass; Charlie Persip, drums; Reggie Ferguson, tabla; Balakrishna, tamboura.

Regular and attentive readers of this fairly young venture will have noticed our propensity to cite, with notable frequency, a collection optimistically titled Jazz Satellites, Volume One. We hold this collection in high esteem largely because it carries that ineluctable mojo of the super-fine mix tape. Plus it opened up some doors to all that was wise and wonderful about fusion, aka kozmigroov. (There was some contempo stuff lining the cracks, too, but the real magic came out of the ’70s vault.)

We tip our hats to compiler Kevin Martin – who went on to righteous acclaim as a producer/songwriter/musician in his own right. We highly recommend both The Bug’s London Zoo (ragga dancehall meets dubstep) and King Midas Sound’s Waiting for You (think a more Irie and eerie Massive Attack).

It’s a turn on to be turned on to stuff, and almost as much of one to do the turning. The right compilation, like the mix tape of our adolescent dreams, can (re)awaken the pure joy of discovery, and spritz the addictive scent of whatever’s just down the road. A few such sparkling collections that come immediately to mind are Guitar Paradise of East Africa and The Music in My Head, an imaginary soundtrack to the book of the same name by Mark Hudson. These are the new vistas.

So, anyway, as “Volume One” suggests, there were plans – fairly advanced plans, it would seem – for Jazz Satellites, Volume Two. It was even going to be a multi-disc set. Sadly Virgin UK dropped the project and the compilation went unrealized. However, we discovered a projected playlist for Volume Two and it included this track from Pat Martino. Now normally we wouldn’t give Martino even a passing glance, but if K. Martin thought enough to include this on the second Satellites, well, we’re all ears.

And a good thing, too. “Baiyina” is a wonderfully breezy and willowy piece of fusion. It may not be all that free, but it certainly is loose. The vibe is lazy and hazy but also something more. There’s a nice sense of propulsion here, foregrounded by the slightly ominous tamboura drone and a flute that’s alternately stinging and meandery. The chiming ebb-and-flow of the guitar reminds us a bit of The Butterfield Blues Band’s epic “East/West,” another track ripe for rediscovery. Martino’s casually adventerous tune might be easily overlooked in the midst of an otherwise mediocre album. Which is where the fine art of the mixtape comes in: cherry-picking the best tracks and placing them in a new context, where they can be heard with fresh ears.

So free jazz fans, meet Pat Martino. A man whose life to date would be deemed too unlikely, soapy, and/or operatic for the likes of the Hallmark Channel. This album was subtitled “a psychedelic excursion through the magical mysteries of the Koran.” Ahem. Times are strange; 1968 was stranger. You can almost hear it all here: the possibility and paranoia, and the pleasure of a summer’s afternoon.

Originally posted 23 January 2008.

CHAMELEON
Herbie Hancock
Flood
Sony : 1975

HH, electric piano, clavinet, Arp synthesizer; Bennie Maupin, sax, bass clarinet, flute, percussion; Dewayne “Blackbyrd” McKnight, guitar; Paul Jackson, bass; Mike Clark, drums; Bill Summers, congas, percussion.

Flood captures Herbie Hancock’s famed Headhunters band in concert. Recorded live in Tokyo during the summer of 1975, this double album has only been available on CD in Japan. We originally tracked it down because, among some Kozmigroov enthusiasts, it has the reputation of being the last gasp of the Mwandishi aesthetic. To be sure, it’s much wilder than the studio work of the Headhunters ensemble. But we don’t wanna get carried away – this doesn’t begin to scale the electronic futurist peaks of Sextant, Crossings, or Mwandishi. Instead, its best tracks find an interesting common ground between the two modes. Demonstrating that even if Hancock wasn’t going back to the future, he still knew what time it was.

You can best hear this on the (inter)stellar version of “Chameleon.” In Woebot’s recent catch-all jazz survey, he singled the track out: “The awesome version of ‘Chameleon’ throws the tidy version from the Headhunters LP from the bay-door of an orbiting space ship and watches it burn apart in re-entry.” Indeed. Dig how the steady groove gets pulled apart as, at the five minute mark, Hancock starts aggressively spraying electronic graffiti all over the track.

If caught in a particular mood, we channel Herbie’s interior thoughts like so: “Yes, yes, the grooves, the grooves are funky. Yes, those are some tasty bass licks … yeessssss … [five minutes in] … but do not forget, MOFOS, THAT I PLAYED WITH MILES AND WAYNE AND THEM, AND WE WORKED THIS SHIT UPSIDE-DOWN AND SIDEWAYS AND WENT SO DEEP THAT IT FELT LIKE YOUR FRONTAL LOBES HAD SWITCHED PLACES WITH YOUR EARS BLEEAAAAAAAAARRRRRGGGGGGG … aaaand: outro.”

Keeping in mind that Miles and them (3.0) had detonated in Japan only half a year earlier, for the epochal Agharta/Pangaea sides. And for whatever it’s worth, those records and Flood share an engineer, one Tomoo Suzuki.

* * *

More Herbiage: For the full report, see this great Herbie Hancock discography site.

Special thanks to Steve Erickson for help with this entry.

You must take the Driebergen train, if you wanna make it to Zeist.

Originally posted 4 December 2006.
In lieu of a full memorial post on Breuker — we’ve been hampered by computer/site problems of late, in addition to the slowing effects of this summer’s soupy slog — we are reanimating this entry on Breuker from 2006. Please see also this great contemporary response from Andrew Durkin, and the fine John Fordham obit from The Guardian.

DRIEBERGEN-ZEIST
WHAT?

Willem Breuker Kollektief
Driebergen-Zeist
BVHaast : 1983

WB, soprano, alto, tenor saxes, clarinet, arrangements; Boy Raaymakers and Andy Altenfelder, trumpets; Garrett List and Bernard Hunnekink, trombones; André Goudbeek, alto sax, clarinet; Maarten van Norden, tenor sax, clarinet; Henk de Jonge, keyboards, Hawaiian guitar, glockenspiel; Arjen Gorter, bass; Rob Verdurmen, drums.

ACCOLADES
“Dutch saxophonist, clarinetist, composer and bandleader Willem Breuker is probably the single most well known, prolific, and influential figure in 20th century Dutch music.” –All Music Guide entry

HISTORY
“In 1967, Han Bennink and Misha Mengleberg organized the Instant Composer’s Pool with Breuker, who represented a still younger and more iconoclastic generation. A year earlier, the German pianist Alex Schlippenbach founded the Globe Unity Orchestra, the most ambitious of the internationalist collectives. Neither group proved satisfactory to Breuker: the ICP was close-minded about his theatrical and avant-garde endeavors, the GUO was given to conceptional free-for-alls. In 1973, he formed his Kollektief, a ten- or eleven-piece orchestra with an emphasis on compositional form.” –Gary Giddins, Riding on a Blue Note

LAUGH TRACK
Chilly:
This music is fun.
Drew: Funny, too.
Chilly: The avant garde gets a bad rap for not having a sense of humor. Especially free jazz. This gives the lie to that notion.
Drew: Like some of Jaki Byard‘s music, I get the sense that Breuker is often cracking jokes through the tunes. A little stand-up. Some serious mirth-making.
Chilly: The free jazz Spike Jones?
Drew: Well, I don’t know about that…

LOONEY TUNES
“The satire is almost relentless; often the [Kollektief] band seems to be conducted by Daffy Duck in a Gestapo uniform.” –John Litweiler, The Freedom Principle

MUSICOLOGICALLY SPEAKING, PART ONE
“Breuker’s music combines harmonies that alternately cleave and chafe, melodies that recall (frequently with direct and extended quotations) numerous musical cultures, ensembles of anarchist windiness and startling precision. In their theatricality, eclecticism, sardonic humor, and whispers of Weill and Eisler, Breuker’s recordings call to mind Carla Bley’s Escalator on the Hill; on a more general level, an obvious analogy can be drawn to Charles Mingus and the Art Ensemble of Chicago. But what distinguishes Breuker is his use of devices that are determinedly and relevantly European.” –Gary Giddins

PASTICHE
Drew:
The title track reminds me a bit of that Braxton big band pastiche we posted a while back. This piece feels more of a comment on music than an expression of music. And I don’t mean that in a bad way.
Chilly: So it’s like an essay that jumps, jives, and wails? Maybe so. Oddly enough, it’s actually more engaging and vigorous than some of the forms it’s “critiquing.” A rare achievement.

EVERYTHING
“The symphony should be like the world; it must contain everything.” –William Breuker (or maybe Mahler, same difference)

EMOTIONALLY
Drew:
This music is a great melange, but the emotional content isn’t always there for me.
Chilly: The emotions seem to be more about instantaneous thrills, like a good roller coaster ride, than heat-rending lyricism or spiritual uplift. An entire album of this could be exhausting, but a handful of tunes really get me going.
Drew: Sure. I mean, we need rollercoasters and houses of worship. It’s a big world out there.

MUSICOLOGICALLY SPEAKING, PART TWO: The Neoboogie Hypothesis
“The subject matter of Breuker’s musical theater is Europe’s bourgeois culture. He presents pageants, one piece always segueing into the next, of juxtapositions, exaggerations, perversions, pastiches of styles; the music is compulsively busy at a uniform volume level, to the pounding of fast, preferably two-beat rhythms. Tawdry, neurotic Valkyries ride in Breuker’s Europe; lunatic Gypsies dance a neoboogie; a Rachmaninoff concerto slides into stride piano; fearful peasants dance in the middle of a funeral march; on oberek is contorted into a medieval dance…” –John Litweiler

THESE SONGS
“‘What?’ comes about as close as possible to duplicating ‘Take the A Train’ without ever quite getting there — a bravura demonstration indeed. ‘Driebergen-Zeist’ sounds like some otherworldly melding of Ellington, Gershwin, and Carl Stalling as themes collide, disappear, and arise from nowhere, each more gorgeous than the last, and are undermined by false starts, fake endings, and composed ‘mistakes.’” –All Music Guide

WITH APOLOGIES TO WALLACE STEVENS
I do not know which to prefer
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendos,
The Kollektief performing
Or just after.

CAUTIONARY TALE
This album also includes “No Wave Samba,” a song with a title so mind-bogglingly wonderful that it can’t possibly live up to it.

RANDOMLY
Another Dutch group that mixes improv, different forms of music, and freely engages jazz players from Europe – punk anarchist squat legends the Ex. Who we ostensibly mention on account of the Netherlandish connection but really just because we dig them so much. Holland rocks!

ALTO 1
Kaoru Abe
Solo 1972
PSF : 1994

KA, alto sax.

Dear C,

No doubt you’ve heard how blisteringly hot it is here. The asphalt bubbles up from the streets and sticks to your soles. Our air conditioner blew a fuse, so we sweat it out in the apartment with fans aimed at our foreheads. There’s noise in the city, but lately it isn’t loud enough. There’s nothing that can match the insistent scorch of the thermometer. We’re slowly losing our minds, baby.

You remember that scene in Hal Hartley’s Simple Men? It’s about an hour into the movie and everything has been typically deadpan and soft-spoken. Then Martin Donovan’s character rushes into the frame, kicks his hat, and screams “I CAN’T STAND THE QUIET!!!” Cue the opening chords of “Kool Thing” and the characters begin a choreographed shimmy to that Sonic Youth nugget. You smartly pointed out the dance was pilfered from Godard’s Band of Outsiders. But originality be damned, that moment is exactly what we need right now.

It feels like even the web site has been too sedate lately. When not broken. We need a jolt of pure noise to shake things up. This morning, after a series of bracingly cold showers, we reached for our trusty Kaoru Abe records, looking for some face-melting saxophone fury that could temporarily erase the heat from our fevered minds. We picked a solo show from November 4th, 1972 — smack dab in the center of his prime fire-breathing years.

But damn if even Kaoru proved too quiet. The album’s first track finds him in an almost contemplative mood. It’s startlingly lovely and lucid, but he’s not trying to destroy the universe from the inside of his horn. He patiently builds to a section of piercing lyricism, then becomes a gonzo one-man marching band. Just when we’re ready to follow him into the streets, he shifts gears and offers some unabashed beauty.

But beauty is not what we need. We crave something so loud and immersive that it will obliterate our unpleasant surroundings. You once hipped us to that great riddle of a last line from Annie Dillard’s An American Childhood:  “In New Orleans — if you could get to New Orleans — would the music be loud enough?”

We now know the answer. It can never be loud enough. Kaoru Abe sounds like Ben Webster to our sadly unpopped ear drums. Please send suggestions for something terrifying that will destroy our hearing and what’s left of our fragile egg-shell minds.

Much love,
The boys from D:O

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