Tuesday’s radio transmission is archived on Mixcloud here.

I’m just learning about Om, a band that emerged in Switzerland in the early 1970’s and I’m wondering if they represent a neglected branch in the fusion family tree (or maybe I’m just late to all of this). Saxophonist Urs Leimgruber, guitarist Christy Doran, bassist Bobby Burri and drummer Fredy Studer melded rock and free jazz for a decade. They got back together in the 2000s and haven’t stopped. Drummer Fredy Studer passed away a few years ago and for this recent recording at the Südpol venue in Lucerne, Switzerland (released on Intakt Records), it took two drummers, Gerry Hemingway and Tony Buck, to replace him. I love the mixing of contemplative and ferocious expressionistic moods on this. Chugging komisch-like rhythms are enhanced with some tetanus inducing sand-blasted rust.

Slow Tiger is a composing collective of JP Schlegelmilch, Andrew Dow, Nathan Ellman-Bell, Adam Schneit and Kenny Warren, providing a variety of discrete moods on the album (languid, majestic, pensive, exhilarated, to name a few). And while there’s a hefty component of improvisation (some of it seemingly full group improv), much of this is quite composed with a healthy disregard for genre. It brings to mind the excursions taken by Yeah, NO, Wayne Horvitz’ The President, and Golden Valley is Now. I see Carla Bley and Italian library titans like Alessandro Alessandroni as forebears of this stream; but that isn’t musicological analysis so much as Rorschach projection.

A collaboration project from Italian artists Antonella Bianco and Renata Frana, who press into service an assortment of instruments - electric guitar, effects, electronics, field recordings, dilruba1, toys, synths. Renata Frana’s dilruba provides the predominant melodic voice and the duo approach each track differently, providing rhythm and harmony with just a few carefully chosen elements. Most of the cuts provide a contemplative state of mind, but “bridge” provides a gradually distorted caterwauling dilruba that had me cheering it on.

1

The dilruba is like a bowed sitar (you might remember it from “Within Without You”)

Apparently there is a vibrant experimental music scene on Tenerife, the largest of the Canary Islands (Google AI is informing me of a half dozen wanderlust inspiring festivals on the island). Retiro Espiritual is out on Keroxen Records, which has a relationship with Discrepant mailorder (from which I’ve previously got this Praeed, release and this one from Ma Estrela, both of which seem like aesthetic cousins of Gaf & The Love Supreme Arkestra). Keroxen is a label, but it’s also a festival, and I suspect much of the music from Gaf and the other bands would resonate with fans of the Los Angeles improvising scene (SML, ETA IVtet, Josh Johnson, et al.), Work Money Death, Ancient Infinity Orchestra, Makaya McCraven, The Sorcerers, and other groove and dub oriented improvisers that are currently bringing young folks to jazz. But I have to say Retiro Espiritual, the latest from Gaf & The Love Supreme Arkestra, is the most compelling for me, showing an eagerness to dig deeper into experimental chaos (reminiscent of Rip Rig + Panic). And you can tell the band has developed an advanced telepathic vocabulary over the years. This is great stuff.

The Semi Ancient Vinyl Nugget of Transformation for Tuesday’s radio transmission was Sunny Murray’s An Even Break: Never Give a Sucker, released in 1969 on the French Actuel label (he put out three albums that year on Actuel). Murray is credited with pioneering free jazz drumming in the late 1950s, freeing the drums from the steady pulse, unleashing a storm of sound as a bed for soloists. He was the perfect catalyst for Cecil Taylor and Albert Ayler through the beginning of the 1960s and toured Europe with them and then headed back to Europe with Frank Wright and again with Byard Lancaster who appears on this album on sax. Malachi Favors was already in Paris with the Art Ensemble at the time and he’s on bass here. The tenor player on this album is Kenneth Terroade who immigrated to Europe from Jamaica, but then headed back, apparently to do missionary work. Sunny Murray would go on through the 1970s as a stalwart in the loft scene and on into the 80’s 90’s with folks like David Eyges, Keshevan Maslak, Burton Greene, and David Murray, and he kept really busy into the 21^st century right up until he passed in 2017 at the age of 81. I love the long mournfully delicate melody on “Complete Affection”. The soloing doesn’t kick in until halfway through the piece. As my Sheepshead Bay-raised dad used to say, “Beauteeeful.”

For those subscribers who got this as an email, if you click on the headline (above) you’ll be able to listen in the app or your browser without having to click back and forth between album links and this article. You’ll be able to stay right there and listen. Of course I encourage you to click over to Bandcamp with your Paypal/credit card if you find something you love.

Like I said last week, I came across hundreds and hundreds of releases. These are the other 2026 highlights that reconfigured the chemicals in my bloodstream.

Here’s the link to the archived radio transmission of Part 2 of this 2026 review

Happy (virtual) crate digging!

I don’t want to accept that truth. I want to love The Tradition. And in my defense of my fealty to straight ahead jazz I will say that I just got a bunch of Errol Garner discs out of the library because somebody was writing about Garner and I wanted to dive into that rabbit hole (geez, I dont remember who wrote that piece on Garner - if that was you please raise your hand in the comments - you got me listening. Thank you.)

But I have to admit that this list says I love playful innovation and a slightly unconventional aesthetic, but in a way that is still mindful of rhythm, melody and harmony.

Anyway, these lists are provided as guideposts. We’ve done the digging so you don’t have to.

Here’s the link to the archived radio transmission of Part 1 of this 2026 review

I hope you find something here that delights you

Part 2 is coming next week…

Here’s the link to the archived radio transmission of this edition of North Star Sounds.

I’m still chewing on violist Mat Maneri’s previous quartet releases with drummer Randy Peterson, bassist John Hébert, and pianist Lucian Ban (Ash and Dust are the ones I’m familiar with). And the same is true for his Transylvanian Folk albums with Ban and John Surman - these works keep calling me back. Nonetheless, more dessert has arrived. Well, not quite. Mist will be out the end of this week, but you can hear the first cut on Bandcamp. I love how Maneri starts compositions/improvisations with a feathery bow, like an invocation, and adds and subtracts pressure for dramatic effect. Mist stays in a meditative gear and the way Maneri favors a legato approach enhances the spellcasting. And did I mention it’s a viola? Is Maneri carrying the flag for the whole viola community? (see my 5.5.26 show notes for a review of another violist, Szilárd Mezei. Are there any other improvising violists? And, before you throw out Eyvind Kang’s name, he plays a viola d’amore, and I don’t know how inclusive the viola community is).

Has bassist/composer Michael Formanek put out an album with a Hammond B3 player before? Alexander Hawkins rolled his B3 into the studio for this one, bringing a whole other flavor to the proceedings, but not the usual beloved smoky/greasy Hammond B3 approach; Hawkins is bringing a fresh vocabulary, free of hammondisms. In fact, on Quince, just as it seems like he might summon the slurry blues, he veers left and carefully articulates each note, fingers bouncing on the keys, like a horse trotting. The front line here is John O'Gallagher on alto, Chet Doxas on reeds, and João Almeida on Trumpet. Formanek also enlists his Thumbscrew comrades Mary Halvorson and Tomas Fujiwara. The solos on New Digs are captivating but, for me, Formanek’s compositions are what deliver the most endorphins per inch, providing a wide panorama, a diverse palette of colors and structures. Very fulfilling.

This album is bonkers!! I’m gonna say James Blood Ulmer (RIP) meets The Au Pairs in Etron Fou’s house. Do you remember Freshen-Up gum with the liquid center that squirted in your mouth? In this scenario the gum is jazz and the liquid center is an unrelenting post punk cortisol shot. Plus they cover the Art Ensemble’s Theme De YoYo. Come on now!

Speaking of bonkers… Here’s a cut from the 2015 release from the Tony Malaby Cello Trio (Fred Lonberg-Holm is the cello here and John Hollenbeck is providing perfectly selected percussive ingredients). About halfway through Lonberg-Holm invokes Sonny Sharrock and puts the crepe sole to the pedal and the trio levitates. This particular cut isn’t representative of the whole album, though. Warblepeck provides a nice array of other moods and the players are telepathically locked in, like a Cirque du Soleil juggling act. Also on this edition of North Star Sounds I also played a cut from Fred Lonberg-Holm’s Fast Citizens, released in 2012 on Delmark. Fast Citizens were a collective that took turns featuring somebody’s compositions. Gather is the album that featured Lonberg Holm’s work.

The featured nugget on this radio transmission was Oliver Lake’s 1979 album on Arista Novus, Shine. Arista Records always seemed like a strange home for jazz, but Clive Davis (RIP) wanted to open things up and he hired Steve Backer from Impulse Records to run the division. On the other side of Arista that year they released The Outlaws In The Eye Of The Storm, Angela Bofill’s Angie and GQ’s Disco Nights. But Oliver Lake’s shine was not an aberration. The Arista Novus division put out some great albums by Henry Threadgill, Muhal Richard Abrams, and Larry Coryell before transitioning to RCA Novus.

In 1979 Oliver Lake was 8 years into his recording career. He had come to NYC from St Louis (via Europe) with several of the other Black Artist Group folks and by 1977 he had cofounded the World Sax Quartet.

For more on Oliver Lake check out Tyler King’s wonderful overview. King points out that Lake’s multidisciplinary Black Artist Group roots still bear fruit; Lake has released an album of his poetry and continues to paint.

From Astaire to Sun Ra: A Jazz Journey

Oliver Lake

Read more

a year ago · 12 likes · 1 comment · Tyler King

Shine’s two sides come in different flavors. The second side is a trio date with drummer Pheeroan akLaff and guitarist Michael Gregory Jackson. This piece I played is from side one and features violinists Carl Ector, Clifford Morrison and George Taylor. Anthony Davis is on piano, Abdul Wadud on cello. The trio from side two is also here, Lake and Michael Gregory Jackson and Pheeroan akLaff. According to Discogs, “Kuon Ganjo (Infinity, Really This Moment)” is actually the second cut on the first side, at the 9:30 mark.

Other New Releases Played on
North Star Sounds June 16th

The original idea was to collect jazz articles around the web in digest form. But after coming to Substack I quickly realized that there were a lot of people already doing that and doing it really well.

Jazz Digest → Jazz Expedition has evolved over the past year.

If you follow or subscribe to Jazz Digest→ Jazz Expedition, on the Substack app or website, you will see many articles liked and restacked by me, which serves the original digest function. This feature will not show up in your email inbox, however.

As you’ve seen, over the last several months I have also started posting some show notes from the North Star Sounds radio transmissions and providing links to some selected new releases. This feels like a natural niche. All week long I am poring over dozens of new releases, on a quest to find the new recordings that fit well in the North Star Sounds format. In fact Jazz Quest was what I wanted to call this new version, but the name is already taken. I hope you share my enthusiasm for what these artists are doing. I provide links to their Bandcamp page so you can hear the music and, perhaps, be moved to show them some monetary love.

I’ll also continue to occasionally write articles about issues relating to music. I’ve got an article in the hopper about the Ticketmaster monopoly case.

So, welcome to Jazz Expedition.

Tuesday’s radio transmission is archived on Mixcloud here.

I can think of several sax quartets, but I’m drawing a blank on sax trios. Nevertheless, this trio’s existence makes a persuasive case for the grouping. Marcos Colonna brought his compositions and baritone sax to Renato Ferreira and Simone Allesandrini for collaboration and they dedicate the project to Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha. These compositions and improvisations don’t swing, per se, but they dance through a full range of expression. Compelling listening.

ICARUS FALLING

According to Brueghel in
2023
Icarus did not fall in the sea.
He got hit by a bomb
or a tank shell.
Shrapnel scattered his body
over the ruins of bombed
houses

and schools and museums.
There was no plough-man
but the strawberries and
grass
continued to grow, and the
dogs
and cats under the moonlight
scavenged piles of corpses.
No one heard the piece of
shrapnel falling
in the sea or the drones’
buzzing sound.

These live sesssions were recorded at The Rotunda in Philadelphia and they make me want to do a road trip. Legendary drummer Grant Calvin Weston calls Untethered’s approach spontaneous creative composition. Go ahead, don’t be shy, click that PLAY button and check out the relentlessly funky dub stew. Weston and Paul Geiss constitute the core of the Untethered project and Timothy Ragsdale’s bass is the perfect crossword answer in this scenario.

Marty Ehrlich has been consistently delivering cohesive and ambitious recordings for so long and this latest one is no exception. Cartographies of Flight: Lines Set Afloat Towards Hope features poet Erica Hunt on several cuts and her sparse questions, descriptions and reflections are delivered in a timbre that sits well between Erik Friedlander’s cello and Sara Schoenbeck’s bassoon. The rest of the ensemble includes bassist Matt Pavolka, drummer Satoshi Takeishi and Roy Horton on trumpet. Ehrlich’s compositions are emotionally mature and wide ranging (much of this is written out). Recommended.

Lagrangian Points makes a compelling case for the responsible use of electronics in an improvised setting. The three improvisors here, Sofia Borges, Reiko Okuda and Peter Van Huffel move between their acoustic instruments and electronic rigs with sensitivity and swagger. The point here is the combustible interaction, not just the tone/sound. You will be moved to put down your jug of chianti and cheer them on.

Tuesday’s nugget was Dial “B” for Barbra by the Horace Tapscott Sextet.

Horace Tapscott started the Pan-Afrikan People’s Arkestra in South Central Los Angeles in the early 1960s. He had just come off the road after a couple of years playing trombone with Lionel Hampton and was in the process of switching to piano. The band operated out of Tapscott’s garage and he kept it going for several decades. Musicians like Kamasi Washington, Michael Session Kamau Daaood, Butch Morris, Phil Ranelin, Arthur Blythe and Nate Morgan all spent time with the Arkestra. Much like the Black Artist Group in St Louis, the project was also multidisciplinary, involving dance and poetry.

A few years ago Chris May wrote about the project in All About Jazz upon the release of some live archival Arkestra recordings, “By the mid-1960s it had become a South Central institution, playing on a bandstand at South Park every weekend. When the Watts Rebellion broke out in 1965, the Arkestra set up to play in the middle of the road on a flat-bed truck. The police showed up, guns out, and tried to shut them down, accusing them of inciting the violence. By the end of the decade, Tapscott and the Arkestra were under surveillance by the FBI.”

Tapscott had a healthy disdain for the recording industry and touring but he did form a relationship with Tom Albach and his Nimbus label and Albach did book him on tours of Europe. Tapscott brought the Arkestra to Europe, just once, for the Moers Festival in Germany. Most importantly, however, the Arkestra was rooted in the community, functioning like a cultural preservation and education institution.

After Tapscott passed away in 1999, band members kept the ensemble together. The Arkestra continues to this day, under the scrappy guidance of Michael Session’s son Mekala and you can see a documentary on Youtube about Mekala’s efforts. It’s called The New West Coast Sound, Artbound, Season 11, Episode 2.

There’s a scene in The New West Coast Sound youtube video in which Mekala and Michael Session are going through piles of old Tapscott charts for a rehearsal and bemoaning the fact that many of the horn charts were never returned. It made me reflect on the close-to-the-bone nature of the Arkestra and how dynamos like Horace and now the Sessions have kept it going through their sheer force of will. Mekala continues the DIY effort with monthly Rent’s Due jam sessions in his garage.

The project also went under the name Society for the Preservation of Black Music as well as UGMAA, or Union of God’s Musicians and Artists Ascension collective, (or UnderGround Musicians and Artists - the underground there having to do with roots as much as anything else). But UGMAA is also a homonym of ujamaa, a swahili word meaning familyhood, which, under Julius Nyerere’s revolutionary Tanzanian government meant self-reliance and freedom from colonial exploitation, but also meant, more disastrously (and tragically), collective farming. Ujaama is currently most recognizable in the US as one of the Kwanzaa principles, meaning cooperative economics.

Note to self: Get copies of The Dark Tree: Jazz and the Community Arts in Los Angeles and Songs of the Unsung: The Musical and Social Journey of Horace Tapscott. I’m just skimming the surface here.

Tuesday’s radio transmission is archived on Mixcloud here.

In my oversimplified mental map of the evolution of “free jazz” I’ve got Ornette and Cecil Taylor in the 1950’s pushing past the conventions of the jazz standards’ song forms and functional harmony, Sun Ra moving to NYC and continuing that reconstruction project in the early 1960s while Sunny Murray (DE)constructed the notion of pulse itself with Albert Ayler. If this were a Schoolhouse Rock cartoon, this Eisenhower/Kennedy era would be Part one. Part two would take place in mid-60’s Chicago, in Delmark’s North Michigan Avenue studio with Roscoe Mitchell, Joseph Jarman and their AACM colleagues loading in all their little instruments. George Lewis, in A Power Stronger Than Itself cites a Tape Op article describing the difficulty the engineer’s faced when confronted with Mitchell and Jarman’s music - a much broader dynamic range, given the many “little instruments” and the lack of “soloists.” How do you mic and mix this stuff? I love how this studio engineering lens frames the expansion of the music’s vocabulary. For this composition, Non-Cognitive Aspects of the City, Jarman brought his working band: Thurman Barker, Charles Clark and Christopher Gaddy into the studio. Jarman recited his text which ends:

these states on planes

farout as these lives become

thoughts

final lasts works there

spots for treason

last word

non-cognitive

doom

The Sephardics are a German quartet fusing jazz and other elements with the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish (Sephardic) musical tradition. The Sephardic Dialogues is a stylistically broad 3 disc release. The first disc is collaboration with Biensüre, a Marseille-based group focused on Turkish and Kurdish disco. Part III brings in Elliot Sharp for something completely different. Part II splits the difference, with Australian German guitarist Oren Ambarchi and Indian German percussionist Ramesh Shotham. And no, for the record, I don’t think the “Love Supreme” quote in “Rosa” is hokey. There is SO much on these 3 discs. I’m still digesting it.

Slovak guitarist Miloš Železňák moody trio recording came out on the Italian Caligola Records label a couple of years ago. This is the composition entitled Unidentified. I love how the math-prog section spills into a lovely slow 6/8 dance (bringing to mind the feel of the instrumental parts of that first Hatfield & the North album). And I don’t know who is playing the vibes. Not listed.

Oh man, there’s so much exciting territory covered on cellist Janel Leppin’s Ensemble Volcanic Ash albums! Leppin’s singular vision is the connecting thread for all this work. On the first few cuts of this recent release Leppin’s dab of reverb brings some cinematic drama to the proceedings. She also deploys her distortion pedal to good effect (an effect that she also mines on her solo album, released this month on Cuneiform Records as well). Ensemble Volcanic Ash is Janel Leppin – cello, Larry Ferguson – drums, Anthony Pirog – guitar, Brian Settles – tenor saxophone, Luke Stewart – bass.

More from the proggy end of the jazz continuum. This one is from Parisian-based clarinetist Joséphine Besançon’s ensemble, Felsenmeer. The album came out last month on Aut Records. Much of Felsenmeer’s music is composed but the looseness and laying back on the beat reads as jazz. The choral vocal sections are gorgeous and compelling.

Hamid Drake helps elevate the proceedings here, and everybody shifts into a higher gear when he kicks in on these improvisations. There’s Nicole Mitchell’s searching and spellcasting flute, Rhodrie Davies’ harp, but also Matthew Wright’s turntables and live sampling to add some grit with Hawkinss’ synths and sampler. No Nation But Imagination is out on Intakt today.

There’s some caffeinated sand in this free improv oyster, for sure. Drummer Bruno Pedraso makes sure nobody hardens into a set pulse. The strings on this session meld nicely like a three-headed sea cucumber: bassist João Madeira, violinist Carlos “Zíngaro,” and cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm speak in painful undulations and death bed declamations. Whole truths discovered.

Tuesday’s semi-ancient vinyl nugget of transformation was Ken McIntyre’s Home, recorded in 1975 for the Danish Steeplechase label and licensed, like many Steeplechase albums, to Inner City Records. Inner City was an interesting label that released hundreds of albums from the mid 70’s through 1980, releasing a wide variety of styles, including reissues of classic recordings. At the time of this recording, McIntyre was teaching at the African American Music department at SUNY Old Westbury, near where I grew up on Long Island. McIntyre taught there for a few decades (I would like to get in a time machine and sit in on his classes). The album is a great example of a type of 1970’s post bop that stays within the tradition but absorbs a variety of forms and genres into the tradition’s aesthetic (although many of these compositions were penned by McIntyre in the early 1960s). For this date McIntyre brought in Jaki Byard, Andrei Strobert and Reggie Workman, who seems to be playing through one of those Ampeg B15s that were ubiquitous at the time. In the liner notes, McIntyre lays out the fraught sexual associations with the term jazz, making the case that this is music in the African American tradition and that the term jazz is not something the original practitioners used for their music. The white musicians of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band seemed to have opened up the term for popular usage. Fast forward to the next century and we’re still juggling usage of the word jazz like a hot potato. (Lewis Porter devoted seven Substack posts to the derivation of the term.)

Tuesday’s radio transmission is archived on Mixcloud here.

Caroline Davis’ latest has been on repeat in my car, headphones and the stereo near my stationary bike. It’s so fresh in a late-80’s cassette underground meets AACM in a retreat house kind of way. Dr. Davis is multitracking with just her alto and an Organelle, as well as a couple of speech samples and field recordings from her Ucross Foundation residency in Wyoming. These simple ingredients cohere brightly.

Hollow Ships by Emily Rach Beisel from her Sumptuous Branching album. WAYO DJ Pete Badore and I ran over to Buffalo to catch her at Hallwalls. She performed the album, using harmonizers and looping pedals to accompany herself, singing into her bass clarinet mouthpiece as well as one composition with piccolo in which she banged into her mouthpiece to create a looped rhythm track. Bill Sack opened the show with a solo guitar set exploring extended techniques with a looper and volume pedal and assorted metal tools.

After reading Nikola Marković’s Substack review of the Jazzahead festival in Bremen, Germany, I reached out to Marković for some recommendations of Serbian artists. He was gracious in recommending a few and I played three on this radio transmission, reeds player Jasna Joviċeviċ, pianist Marina Džukljev and viola player and composer Szilárd Mezei. Mezei is incredibly prolific and his compositions stir the waters at the confluence of jazz and contemporary composed music.

The Tiptons’ latest, a live recording following their tour of Europe. They bring joy and endorphins in a completely authentic and singular way. Amy Denio: alto sax, voice, Jessica Lurie: soprano, alto, tenor saxes, voice, Sue Orfield: tenor sax, voice, Tina Richerson: baritone sax, voice, Robert Kainar: drums, percussion

Tuesday’s nugget was James Blood Ulmer’s first solo album, Tales of Captain Black, released in 1979. Ulmer had played on Ornette Coleman’s Dancing in Your Head a couple of years previously, initiating Ornette’s electric band. Ornette, Denardo and Jamaaladeen Tacuma then joined Blood in the studio for his first album on Artists House and it is definitely a classic that I’ve been rediscovering these past few weeks. A little asterisk here. Blood had previously recorded a quartet date with George Adams, Cecil McBee and Doug Hammond but that recording languished in the vault until 1999.

A new trio date release from drummer Phil Haynes, guitarist Ben Monder and saxophonist Peyton Pleninger entitled Terra. I hadn’t heard from Pleninger before but his website tells us he studied with Milford Graves and has a club a little south of Woodstock. Haynes’ trio recorded Terra live at Bucknell University and the textures are deep and rich. It was the first time everybody played together.

Serbian pianist Džukljev’s left hand sets up a driving ostinato and Dyberg brings a determined and resolute dance to it.

This is the building and unfolding that you came for. A story. Delivered.

From Bloxham Tapes, a cassette only label, Mo’ong & Bilawa, an Indonesian duo drawing on a variety of traditions and traditional Indonesian acoustic instruments as well as electronics. OK, it isn’t “jazz” but you can wear a beret to it.

Portuguese tenor player Rodrigo Amado’s latest release, This Is Our Language Quartet. The album is Wailers (think Amiri Baraka - Wailers are we / We are Wailers). He is joined by Joe McPhee, Kent Kessler and Chris Corsano.

Last call. Who played triangle on this? Damn!

On the other hand, no we didn’t.

Nothing we spun in the CD player or turntable really swung In The Tradition and most everything was released in the last half dozen years and just about everything eschewed song form. But within that world there are multitudes - fractal patterns of improvisational approaches.

Let’s just focus on new releases - Here are five of the new releases we played:

I learned from the liner notes that Elliot Sharp was a piano prodigy as a child but stopped when the incessant pressure of practicing triggered his asthma. He turned to woodwinds, in part to develop his lung strength, and picked up a guitar as a teen. Guitar, bass clarinet and electric bass - those are the instruments I’ve associated him with for these last 45 years. However, in the mid 1980’s Sharp returned to keyboards during a European tour and continued back in NYC as developments in computer software and triggering devices caught his attention. This album contains three works from that period, a live keyboard piece performed at the Kitchen, an ensemble piece derived from his keyboard forays at the time and these “KLAV” performances. Sharp’s aesthetic comes through on these pieces, despite the different E# delivery device (the KLAV pieces were done on early desktop software with some randomizing components written in). Compelling and bracing. Head nodding optional.

Speaking of downtown NYC in the early 1980’s, cellist Ismael Ali’s Burn the Plastic, Sell the Copper recalls that era’s fertile cross-fertilization and exploration beyond conventions. There are two cello solos here, fervently focusing on harmonics/overtones (“Fear Chased Hope in Tight Circles” is a song title with a visceral wallop - the music distressingly embodies that description). The other compositions/improvisations embody a wonderful expressive nonchalance. Can something be flippant and meticulously focused at the same time? BTW, the liner notes inform us that the album title comes from a casual remark in the studio upon the failure of an XLR cord. There’s the insouciance; right there.

There are many moods and approaches on this album, proving humans haven’t yet squeezed all the juice out of the bass, drums and guitar trio format yet. Filippo Sala is a drummer and composer from Bergamo, Italy (I looked on the map - it’s closer to Switzerland than Rome). For the show I played Senz’acqua for the radio show because I loved how the song drifted in and out of the 6/8 post-rock feel. Maree came out on Aut Records last month. Have you checked out Aut Records yet? I’ve been enjoying their releases these past few years.

This album is my introduction to Adam Schatz. I didn’t know about his band, Landlady, which I’d love to run into at one of the local bars in Rochester, NY, (unfortunately, a thing that is not likely to happen). I also didn’t know about his work with Japanese Breakfast, a solo act that got Grammy attention and which is way outside of my aesthetic preferences. Civil Engineering Vol. 1, however, is definitely made for my taste buds. It’s lighthearted and quirky and approaches the record button with an open mind. For the radio transmission on Tuesday night I chose the cut entitled “A Growing Line at the Returns Counter” at least partially because it seems like it could be a Raymond Carver story, but also because the contrast between Schatz’ playful piano and Quill’s harmonic arco bass is very cool indeed and the increasing reverb at the end is entirely satisfying.

Damn. A moment of silence for Clean Feed’s long run of amazing releases. Not that the label is closing it’s doors. You’ll still be able to fill your basket with their back catalogue. But for whatever reason, they are ceasing recording, pressing, promoting and distributing new works. I can’t imagine how much work is involved in bringing a notion to fruition the way small labels do. For this release, the trio Chrome Hill joins the duo Dōjō and the combo works. Asbjørn Lerheim deploys his Fender VI on just a couple of tunes, so the spaghetti western vibe is less present than other Chrome Hill albums, which is fine. Atle Nymo and Tamaya Honda bring their respective reeds and drums to some fine mating rituals on the last two improvisations. On Red Sun Rising the assembled improvisors finds their natural path from background to foreground and back again with dancers’ grace. Damn.

North Star Sounds airs every Tuesday 9-midnight EST on jazz901.org. My cohost Rick Petrie is at the controls next week. Our shows are archived on Mixcloud.

I’ve timestamped the show so you can see what is being played.

I got this sample email (below) from them a couple of days ago and I posted something on Facebook and tagged my music-loving friends. Please feel free to copy and paste the email and contact your friends and colleagues and/or post on social media.

I’m sharing a petition to urge the NY legislature to law to put an end to predatory ticketing resale practices by companies including StubHub, Vivid Seats, SeatGeek and other resellers (read the background below.)

I’m a member of Fan Alliance and knew you’d be interested. They do great work.

The legislation would:

• cap resale prices at face value plus reasonable fee,

• ban speculative ticketing - where resellers don’t actually own the tickets they sell.

• prohibit deceptive URLs and fake venue or artist websites,

• ensure full transparency of fees,

Resellers are increasing their lobbying budgets to block these reforms. Would you sign (and share if you’d have time) the petition?

A few easy steps you can take:
1. Sign the petition: End ticket scams - support fair ticketing in NY
2. Send this email (with your note) to 5 (or 10) friends who love music.
3. Share this email with organizations you know, your favorite local music venues, or anyone who can think of who might want to add their voice.
4. Reach out to Donald Cohen at Fan Alliance if you have ideas on how to spread the word. (donald@thefanalliance.org)

Background
The resellers are spending billions each year on advertising so they come up first in Google searches when looking for concert tickets. Companies such as StubHub, SeatGeek, Vivid Seats and others

Many, if not most, people click on those links to buy their tickets - at higher prices than the venue’s platform. Sometimes many multiples of the price the artist intended.

Brokers use deceptive URLs, paid advertisements, and unauthorized venue, festival, and artist imagery to make consumers think they are buying from the source. Resellers are known to sell “spec” tickets to shows that haven’t gone on sale and tickets that don’t actually exist.

Thanks,

Your name

Did you do it? Did you sign the petition?

Thank you. Social change movements need to score victories to build momentum. This one is winnable. On to regulating streaming services!

Here’s what I posted on social media:

I’m providing two links to radio transmissions sampling some of the music we heard at Big Ears. If you haven’t been there yet then maybe this helps provide a glimpse of the festival. However, the variety of music is so vast, covering so many genres and sub genres that these playlists don’t do it justice.

The morning after I got back I recorded a show for Onejazz.net in England.

Bleary eyed, I chose songs from artists that I saw at Big Ears and recorded it in my bedroom studio. The other show is a recording of the North Star Sounds program Greg and I did on Jazz 90.1, debriefing on the shows that we attended. Greg and I have a lot of common musical interests but we spent most of the time at different shows. This seemed to be true of a lot of people that we met.

There were 250 performances (and panel discussions, presentations and movies) at 20 assorted venues. Music starts early and goes late. One of our days was 15 hours from start to finish. In some ways the pacing, layout and scale is similar to the Rochester International Jazz Festival. Big Ears, however, is tilted further off the center of the mainstream.

Knoxville is walkable. The distance between the furthest venues is about a 15-20 minute walk. A couple of times I rented one of those scooter thingies and zipped my senior citizen body across town in a few minutes. Some shows are more popular than others and you need to get on line far in advance. However, you can get into most shows. A VIP pass costs more but cuts down on waiting and you will always get in.

Knoxville is also fairly gentrified, which among other things, means that there’s a nice variety of places to grab food or sit down and enjoy a meal.

The music is mostly adventurous, with much that is fairly accessible. There are more extreme festivals, sailing even further over the edge of the known musical world. The two dozen shows I saw lived up to my expectations. I got to see jazz artists that don’t come to Rochester, NY. If I had a notion to go and see all these bands down in NYC the logistics of that many repeated trips down to NYC would be overwhelming and cost prohibitive. Not that Big Ears is cheap. You could easily spend a week’s wages on the trip, although, judging by the fancy clothes of some of the attendees, maybe it’s a day’s wages for some people.

One thing I didn’t anticipate was meeting so many similarly obsessed jazz fans. It was cool to chat with people on line who dig the same fairly thorny music. A lot of people were sporting T-shirts of their favorite bands, many of them wonderfully obscure.

I’m pretty sure I’ll be going again next year.

I’m off to the Big Ears fest tomorrow - here’s an abbreviated, just-the-facts preview of tonight’s North Star Sounds (streaming live 9pm - midnight EST on jazz901.org).

Tenor sax player Alexandra Grimal and keyboard player Giovanni Di Domenico’s duo album, Shakkei on Relative Pitch

Kaja Draksler’s Octet album Gledalec, from 2017

Blue Mountains from the album entitled Haar from Nabelose. Nabelose is an Austrian duo. Ingrid Schmoliner plays prepared piano and Elena Margarita Kakaliagou plays french horn. They’ve been together as a duo for a decade and the album Haar is just out on Trost Records.

British sax player and composer Anna Chandler King’s latest album, which is also apparently the first album of her compositions, Why Can I Still See You, written for a nine piece ensemble, including vocals.

German clarinetist Rebecca Trescher with her quartet from her album Changing Perspectives, on Enja.

Here is a duo release from sax player Erin Rogers and bass player Kelsey Mines (who has recently relocated to Brooklyn from Seattle). Both players also have solo albums on Relative Pitch and this one is on Relative Pitch as well.

Swiss vocalist and harp player Julie Campiche, from Unspoken on Ronin Rhythm Records. Released this past January.

Stasi Cinetica by Italian violinist Anais Drago from her album Relevé Live.

Norwegian alto player Amalie Dahl has a new album out on Sonic Transmissions Records. She brought together a large ensemble for a date at Moldejazz last year, one of the oldest European jazz festivals, held in Norway each year.

Alto player Mia Dyberg and drummer Axel Filip from their duo release from last year on Relative Pitch.

Caroline Davis’ Portals Volume 2. Davis has a solo multitrack project coming out at the end of the month. For this album she brought together Marquis Hill on trumpet, Julian Shore on piano, bassist Chris Tordini and drummer Allan Mednard.

British sax player Trish Clowes with cellist Louise McMonigle. They’ve worked with each other in a variety of setting for the last 15 years and this duo release just came out this year.

Argentinian tenor player Camila Nebbia is based in Berlin. She released 5 albums last year by my count. Here’s one she did with bassist Gonçalo Almeida and Sylvain Darrifourcq on drums. Hypomaniac in the name of the album and it was put out by defkaz records.

The Dietrichs, a father and daughter duo featuring tenor player Don Dietrich (of Borbetomagus) and Camille Dietrich on cello. This is just out on Relative Pitch.

Freedom Suite, Vol. 2 by Eva Novoa trio with Daniel Carter and Francisco Mela. Her composition was entitled Mainstream Media. Freedom Suite Vol. 2 came out on 577 records.

Barbara Donald & Unity from the Olympia Live album recorded in 1981.

A piano cello duo. This one is by Francesco Guerri and Nicola Guazzaloca, respectively. They put out this one, entitled, Keep Your Hands Free, on Aut Records in November of last year.

Brussels-based Italo-Vietnamese artist Nguyễn Zen Mỹ’s song cycle based on the texts of Claude Royet-Journoud. Out on Maple Death Records.

Tonight’s nugget is from the late trumpeter Jaimie Branch. This is the second in her Fly or Die trilogy, Bird Dogs of Paradise, on International Anthem Recordings. Her core quartet was Lester St Louis on cello, Jason Ajemian bass, and Chad Taylor on drums. Branch dubbed herself on trumpet on this one. This composition is entitled Simple Silver Surfer and it’s got that buoyant Branch joy in it.

Singer Laura Ann Singh from her Fracas Quintet, featuring drummer Scott Clark, bass player and record label head Adam Hopkins, John Lilley on sax and Bob Miller on trumpet. The album is entitled Mean Reds and it’s out on Hopkins’ Out of Your Heads Records.

Vibraphone player and composer Patricia Brennan delivered another amazing album last year, Of the Near and Far. It’s a large ensemble work that includes a string quartet and is conducted by Eli Greenhoe. Like a couple of her other albums, Of the Near and Far is out on Pyroclastic Records.

A song from from Rarichi, an album Sicilian singer and composer Rachele Amore put out on Aut records last year.

Something from Swiss piano player and composer, Margaux Oswald and Collateral Damage, from an album entitled In Time, Hollow Oaks Become Chapels. There are three double basses on this and two guitars, as well as drums. Players were recruited from all over Europe. This music is spontaneously improvised and you’ll notice how the musicians reorganize themselves into smaller groups, continuously reforming. The album came out on Clean Feed, which is closing down production soon, sadly.

From the album a shadowed fulguration, that was there is Appearance, from which they ramify, by cellist Helena Espvall, guitarist Ernesto Diaz Infante and flautist and multi instrumentalist Marjorie Sturm. Diaz Infante and Sturm run the San Francisco based Pax Recordings and Espvall is a veteran of the alt and psych folk scenes.

The title track from Strange Heavens, an album from bassist Linda May Han Oh, released last summer, on Biophilia Records. Her trio includes drummer Tyshawn Sorey and Ambrose Akinmusire on trumpet.

Take care of yourself.

If you got this far, and are so moved, please click the little heart, below.

Over the past few days I’ve seen posts from Jason Moran, Benny Green, and Veronica Swift. Champion Fulton posted a video pointing out that the same thing had happened to Holly Cole, Jazzmeia Horn, Freddy Cole and the late Joe Henderson. Commenters on that post added the names of John Scofield and Immanuel Wilkins to the list of targeted jazz artists.

When the crappy AI Laurel Canyon-like band Velvet Sundown came out with a release on Spotify I remember thinking, OK, this is bad, and it’s going to make a difficult economy for actual musicians even worse.

But we’ve now entered another phase. This is targeted assault.

The current situation has its roots in the late 1950s and 60s. Do you remember those Top 10 hits compilation albums sold in drugstores that featured the top hits recorded by quickly assembled session musicians? Fast forward to a few years ago to Spotify playlists that included music by bands that didn’t even have bios or photos. These were cuts that were done in-house by Swedish musicians working for Spotify with no royalty claims.

Then we started to see AI generated songs on these lists. In 2023 Universal Music Group got their lawyers to go after AI generated music that claimed to be by the Weekend and Drake. That same year, Spotify made headlines by taking down tens of thousands of tracks submitted by Boomy, an AI company that was boosting the listening count with bots. Forbes reported that Boomy claimed to have created over 14 million songs, totaling almost 14% of the “world’s recorded music.” This is now complicated by the fact that AI programs are listening to popular music created by AI (and deemed “popular” due to bot listening) in order to make more AI songs. This is infinite regression mirror-pointed-at-another-mirror stuff.

This raises the question whether jazz artists are being disproportionately targeted. Is this a case of first they came for the jazz artist and I didn’t do anything because I wasn’t a jazz artist? Are they coming after jazz because they don’t think anybody will notice or care?

Jazz artists now have to wade through Spotify forms to make a claim about identity theft. Another job added to the list of things artists have to do to survive in today’s economic landscape. Reportedly, some artists are uploading “black albums” of noise in order to fool the AI platforms vacuuming up data to learn on.

What does this mean for the future of music? Are we in the last chapter of fans having access to recordings by their favorite musicians? Or is this an inflection point in which casual listeners and actual fans now diverge even more sharply into separate economies and platforms (something that Joel Gouveia pointed to here)? Or some other dystopian future we can’t even imagine?

I came up surrounded by second wave feminists and read some of the classic feminist tracts and read those copies of Sojourners and Ms. magazines around the house before we had kids. I notice when men interrupt women in meetings and when women smile at men, but men don’t smile at anybody etc. And I know that jazz is a male dominated culture; but the sinking feeling I got when I went through my music collection to pick women jazz artists to play on North Star Sounds during Women’s History Month… I mean, wow. I thought I had a clue.

You’re soaking in it.

Not that there weren’t albums by women that are among my favorites. Not that I wasn’t able to grab a huge pile of amazing recordings with women leading the date or featured prominently. But the single digit % reality of flipping through albums and CDs and MP3 files is some cold water indeed.

Is there an equivalent of Notes and Tones from a woman’s point of view? Please leave suggestions in the comments.

This month North Star Sounds is highlighting women in jazz. You can hear this week’s show here.

Links are provided in the hopes that you all can do some shopping and support these jazz artists.

Flower after Flower, from drummer Susie Ibarra. It’s a Tzadik release from 2000 and Ibarra brought together Wadada Leo Smith on trumpet, bassist John Lindberg, violinist Charles Burnham, Assif Tsahar on bass clarinet, Chris Speed on clarinet and the late Pauline Oliveros plays accordion. Cooper Moore is on piano at the end. I love how this piece is arranged into (r)evolving duos, trios, quartets and more. A mesmerizing travelogue.

BODY SOUND is the forthcoming album from violist Whitney Johnson, cellist Lia Kohl and violinist Macie Stewart, on International Anthem. The titles of the improvisations on the album are from Yoko Ono’s Grapefruit. This cut is entitled Laundry/Blood. Yoko’s Laundry piece is dated Summer 1963 and goes: In entertaining your guest, bring out your laundry of the day and explain to them about each item. How and when it became dirty and why, etc. Blood Piece is dated Spring 1960 and goes: Use your blood to paint. A) Keep painting until you faint. B) Keep painting until you die.

Mandorlo Mirra, from Italian bass player Silvia Bolognesi’s Almond Tree, from the album Il Mandorlo, which came out a dozen years ago on her Fonterossa Records label. These past few months I’ve been learning more about the European scene and realizing just how little American jazz fans are exposed to the deep well of European jazz artistry. Matt Merewitz’ post about the end of American jazz exceptionalism is an eye opener. I love how this piece bounces, unhurredly and breathes open space. Tony Cattano: trombone, Pasquale Mirra : vibraphone, Silvia Bolognesi : double bass, Daniele Paoletti: drums.

Dance! Skip! Hop!, is the fourth album from the Tomeka Reid Quartet. And yes these are indeed some buoyant compositions. The quartet is Reid on cello, Jason Roebke on bass, Tomas Fujiwara on drums and Mary Halvorsen on guitar. Tomeka Reid keeps turning up on so many of the releases we play on North Star Sounds. In fact, I think she’s on two other cuts on this particular show. I’ve seen social media photos of Tomeka Reid touring with her durable carbon fiber cello, which makes so much sense given how busy she is on the road in so many other excellent ensembles.

I got to see Nicole Mitchell’s large ensemble at the Visions Fest last year and her set was awesome - grooving and reflecting life’s complexity with sung texts that illuminated without a hint of didacticism. Val Jeanty’s turntablism was like some nicely incorporated cardomom in that dal. I think this album comes closest to what Mitchell brought to Brooklyn last year.

Adventurous Snail, a Yalena Eckmoff composition. The Russian-born keyboardist has been living in the US for several decades now and has a fairly eclectic discography with some folky and proggy inclinations in addition to jazz. Riccardo Bertuzzi brought the understated guitar on that cut and I loved the batty envelope filter keyboard sound here.

I’ve been playing The Webber Morris Big Band quite a bit these past few months. Their latest is Unseparate and tenor players Anna Webber and Angela Morris split the composing duties on this album. Their variety of arrangement structures and compositional approaches is really engaging. Feels new and familiar at the same time.

Let Spin, with their forthcoming album I am Alien and their first for Discus Music. The band is Finlay Panter on drums, Moss Freed guitar, Chris Williams on reeds and Ruth Goller here on a very trebly bass, invoking Chris Squire’s set up. My response to your accusation that I snuck a post-rock cut into the set is that it’s all jazz to me. Goller has a solo bass album out and let’s get to that next time.

Canadian-American composer and trumpeter Steph Richards has a cool duo project, Talk Show, with percussionis Qasim Navqi. She has played with Henry Threadgill, Anthony Davis and Anthony Braxton as well as Bang on a Can’s Asphalt Orchestra. The album is Miss America and is out on the Finnish We Jazz label. Gradually unfolding and compelling. I like how the reverb allows the overtones to dance together.

From Trumpet player and composer Sarah Wilson’s 2025 album Incandescence, a release with a wonderful assortment of moods and compositional approaches as well as a consistent aesthetic. Her front line for this band is Kasey Knudsen on alto, and Mara Fox on trombone. The rhythm section is Lisa Mezzacappa on bass, John Schott guitar and Jon Arkin on drums on this cut.

A huge album from last year, Mama Killa by Ava Mendoza, Gabby Fluke Mogul and Carolina Perez. It came out on Burning Ambulance and made Popmatter’s top 20 metal album list. The album includes a few free jazz duets but these trio cuts are just amazingly ferocious. I don’t want to make the King Crimson Red comparison because it isn’t fair to either group, but Fluke-Mogul’s violin does evoke David Cross at times, which brought back a memory of an excellent encounter with cough syrup in the mid 70’s.

Jane Bunnett’s Maqueque performed at the Rochester Jazz Fest in 2018 and Bunnett brought a previous afro cuban project many years earlier as well, (2002 I think). My wife and I enjoyed the 2018 show, but I picked up a semi-ancient vinyl copy of In Dew Time at the Bop Shop last week, an album she did in 1988 with Vincent Chancy, Dewey Redman, and Larry Cramer joining her on the front line, Don Pullen on piano and a rhythm section of Claude Range and Scott Alexander. This album points to a whole other aspect of her work, like a Man in the High Castle alternative future, only with compelling post bop compositions instead of Nazis. I had no idea about this side of her work. Bunnet did a duet record the following year with Dewey Redman, then a live record from Sweet Basil with Don Pullen and Billy Hart and then ten years later a project with vocalist Dean Bowman, Dewey Redman and Stanley Cowell. In Dew Time is a powerful but unheralded album, and Claude Ranger, a drummer I hadn’t heard before, is kicking up a storm. Bunnet takes the first solo on soprano and Chancy follows on french horn, Pullen takes a solo, then Cramer on trumpet, and Redman takes it home to Ranger.

Shards and Constellations, a duet album from Alexander Hawkins and Tomeka Reid from Intakt from 2020. I’m starting to take note of the particularly effective combo of cello and piano. Reid and Hawkins are masterfully and psychically tuned in. Reid’s wide pallette really shines through here.

From Roboquarians Volume 2 - Brooklyn-based sax player Ayumi Ishito and the Roboquarians who are the duo of guitarist George Draguns and drummer Kevin Shea. Both volumes are brought to us via the 577 Records label. Ishito’s discography is like a series of crazy cinematic road trips. Up for anything and excelling at having a blast.

Can I pick two favorites from this particular radio transmission? German alto player Angelika Niescier set up shop in Chicago in a studio. Joining her were Nicole Mitchell on flute, Mike Reed drums, and, all the way from DC, Luke Stewart on bass. Elsewhere on the album Jason Adasiewicz shows up on vibes and Dave Rempis adds his tenor. Recorded last year and released this year on Intakt. These could be end days for humans on planet earth, but these recordings keep the soul fed while we do what we can to resist.

From British tenor player and composer Trish Clowes’ A View With a Room from her 2022 Greenleaf Records album, that was a composition entitled Almost. Clowes played at the Rochester Jazz Fest in 2019 in Christ Church. She’s got a duet release with cellist Louise McGonigle and we’re gonna try to get to that on another edition of North Star Sounds.

My other favorite. Signe Emmeluth - alto saxophone, composition, Karl Bjorå - guitar, Ole Mofjell - drums, Christian Balvig - piano. Those bass arco sounds at the 4 minute mark on Pling Plong (not available unless you plop down cash) is Christian Balvig on keyboards. Some art just speaks to you.

Delphine Joussein and Mats Gustafsson throwing down flute through some pedals (emphasis on stomp) like they are Johnny and Dee Dee Ramone.

Until next time, take care.

You can listen to the whole show on Mixcloud. Click here.

We started this edition of North Star Sounds with something from Bare, Unfolding, the latest release from Slovenian pianist Kaja Draksler and her octet. On this composition the octet is initially used as a tidal wave of sound, however, the ensemble progresses into more intermittent and sparse sounds. The two vocalists keep it nicely abstract and unconventional.

A very harmolodic sounding album from an electric quintet Joe Morris brought together (two drummers hard panned left and right), recorded live in 1993 and out in 1998 on About Time records, the last release from that label. About Time only put out 10 albums, but each one of them is amazing. Is Morris tuning to E like Blood Ulmer here?

Federico Calcagno and The Dolphians, that’s Eric not Flipper. Face the Music is the name of the album and it came out in the fall of last year on Da Vinci Jazz Records. Nice balance of improv and composition on this 2025 release (similar to Dave Douglas’ balance). Calcagno is on reeds and Andrea Mellace’s vibes add some nice herbs and spices.

Another one from Italy. Koro Almost Brass is a brass quintet with an alto sax replacing the second trumpet. This album of Kurt Weill covers came out this year and that was Cabaret. Koro Brass put out an album of Monk covers last year on the Caligola Records label. Caligola came out of a cultural association in Venice and they’re in their third decade of releasing hundreds of Italian jazz albums. I love that idea of a cultural association and I’m wondering if we have anything like that here in the states?

A 1978 album from Cecil Taylor. Jimmy Lyons was still with Cecil at the time and this was the sextet with Raphe’ Malik on trumpet, Ramsey Ameen on violin, Sirone on bass, Ronald Shannon Jackson drums. This was from the same recording session as the Cecil Taylor Unit. These sessions are not free jazz. Taylor organized the compositions into sections with solo piano, duos, trios and the entire band. There is a lot here and it rewards repeated listening.

An interesting album from Italian drummer Ivano Nardi out on the Floating Forest Records in the piedmont region of Italy. Verbania is north of Milan and south of Locarno Switzerland. The album is what we use to call a mail collaboration in the cassette underground. Nardi sent collaborators a file with a drum track for them to lay down their reactions. In this case a couple of dozen artists are playing with the same drum track that Nardi sent all of them. It’s an interesting concept and I love listening to these short songs, but only in short bursts. Here’s Nardi on drums with Bruno Gussoni on flute.

California-based alto player and composer Nicole McCabe. Color Theory came out a few days ago. Trumpeter Adam O’Farrill joined the quartet on this composition. I played A Song To Sing, her album from last year, a good bit and I suspect we will be returning to this one in the months to come. The compositions on this album cover a lot of ground and evoke a variety of moods. It’s a quartet with guest artists on a few cuts.

Out on Relative Pitch Records. Butcher is solo on this album, exploring extended technniques. He had my attention on these cuts. Compelling.

Joanna Duda’s piano trio doesn’t engage in traditional swing. These are songs with a steady pulse and coherent structure, mostly diatonic. I love how the band throws a tantrum in the middle of this cut, violently disrupting the (almost Windham Hill) affability. Would you say this approach has prog roots?

The duo of Portuguese bass player Joao Madeira and tenor player Bruno Parrinha from their album 2x2 on 4DARECORD. Madeira and Parrinha do some skillfully inspired mirroring of each other.

British pianist Jesse Hacket from his forthcoming release Nocturnes. Album descriptions don’t usually do much for me, but the Hive Mind Records copy was particularly evocative and accurate, describing the album as spectral piano and gothic chamber pieces. Yes. That’s it.

Don Pullen’s 1975 solo piano album on Black Saint. Pullen covers a lot of moods and approaches on this album, without much knuckle busting. I like the sweet simplicity of this one, the title track.

Finnish reeds player Pauli Lyytinen’s latest, out on Eclipse Music. This is Lyytinen’s Rabbit Hole trio project that channels Lewis Carrol’s reality bending spirit through their sound manipulation and elastic sense of time.

A live 1982 duet performance from Worcester, MA, Marty Ehrlich and the late Julius Hemphill out on Relative Pitch. Two masters dancing together. Ehrlich has been taking responsibility for Hemphill’s archives and projects, including the sax sextet. This piece (as Ehrlich explains in the intro) is for a character in a play written by Black Artist Group member Malinka Elliot.

A free improvisation project coming out of Portland Oregon, Okzat-Ozkat. How’d they do that? This sounds composed. They put this album out at the end of last year.

From a 2013 performance at the Kesselhaus in Berlin, that is the Heinz Sauer and Daniel Erdmann 4tet. Sauer and Erdmann are both German tenor players. The Kesselhaus is a restored industrial building that was a famous brewery that the nazis took over using prisoners of war to produce equipment for the war. After the Soviet Union took control of East Germany the communists nationalized the brewing company and produced beer for the people. Now that the wall has come down the site is a cultural center and we have this live recording from Sauer and Erdmanns 4tet. Jazdor is a French label.

A short one from Derome and Ensemble de flutes Alize out on Ambiances Magnetiques. The album is a compilation of Derome’s chamber music from 1992-2012.

Tuesday’s Semi Ancient Vinyl Nugget of Transformation was from that semi-ancient year 1975 and is from tenor player Frank Lowe. Val Wilmer starts her book As Serious As Your Life with a scene at Milford Graves’ storefront cultural center after a Frank Lowe performance, with a woman in the neighborhood shouting in Frank Lowe’s face - “You knocked me out, you knocked me out, you really got to me.” Lowe grew up in Memphis and worked at the music store attached to the Stax Recording Studio. He studied sociology instead of music because he didn’t want to freak out his family. He was a vocalist but switched to saxophone after hearing Gene Ammons which is something that makes sense when you think about Lowe’s style. Lowe had his horn sand blasted so that it looked like the horns of the older players. This was his way of aligning himself in the tradition. He went to San Francisco in the 1960s, hooked up with Ornette Coleman and then headed to NYC to play with Sun Ra and tour with Alice Coltrane. Lowe had been playing with guys from the Black Artists Group from St Louis, and for this album, Flam, he brought together Charles Bobo Shaw on drums, Joseph Bowie on trombone, Leo Smith on trumpet and Alex Blake on bass. The album came out on Black Saint. Blake plays electric bass and on this cut he is deploying his thumb and slapping, an early adopter of Larry Graham’s technique but something that jazz bass players would eventually agree was something better left out of jazz. I think it works in this context.

That is from the 18^th volume of Spiritual Jazz. Behind the Iron Curtain is a two part release. We heard from the Estonian band, Collage. They seem to have started in the Swingle Singers vein and then veered into folk jazz. I had fun going down that rabbit hole. But that whole Spiritual jazz series is worth checking out. Bad Sickle is the best song title I’ve heard in a long time.

Wishing Flower is from Brooklyn based alto player Jeremy Udden. On this cut Udden is playing the lyricon. Udden is joined by guitarist Ben Monder, drummer Ziv Ravitz and Jorge Roeder on bass. It’s a Sunnyside release from 2023.

Italian guitarist Michele Bonifati with his Emong quartet (guitar, alto, trombone and drums). The album is on the Nusica label, an Italian non-profit arts organization. You don’t see this instrumentation that often, and it’s refreshing to hear. The album steers clear of uptempo tunes and roots itself in meditative moods with occasional cinematic swells.

The Jimmy Giuffre 3 with Giuffre on baritone sax, Jim Hall on guitar and bassist Ralph Pena. The album came out in 1957 and was one of a few examples of bands going pianoless AND drummerless. I’ve been told that there was the Red Norvo Trio with Tal Farlow and Charles Mingus and Teddy Charles has a pianoless and drummerless trio as well a handful of years before this one from Giuffre.

Solo violin album from Mark Feldman on the Intakt Records label. Feldman does some overdubs and leaves us wondering which part he did first.

The Swedish quintet Oddjob from their latest album Atlas. An eclectic album that swings and floats. I love the synthy bits.

Philipp Gerschlauer and Gebhard Ullmann’s Teufelsberg, an album they recorded in the graffiti covered abandoned spy towers in Berlin’s Teufelsberg. After the war the West Germans trucked rubble from the bombing to the outskirts of Berlin. The rubble created a huge hill which the Americans then constructed a tower upon to spy on the East Germans and jam their radio signals. I think you can hear all of that in the echoes on this album.

You can listen to the whole show on Mixcloud. Click here.

1. WTF – look it up (the Gen X and Boomer Way of Discovery™ is the path to human scale beauty; there are no short cuts – follow the breadcrumbs, you must find your own way)

2. Are you kidding me!? Jazz is so insanely multifaceted that there is no way I can help you find your aesthetic niche – you would have to undergo an MRI to map your musical inclinations, followed by days of beta testing

3. This is Spotify’s fault – the playlistification of music has severed the connection between listeners and artists and labels – you can’t get there from here

4. The internet and helicopter parenting threatens an evolutionary path to the scene of the dissipated humans in WALL-E, requiring spoon feeding

However, I have discovered an even more ugly suspicion around this dynamic.

“I’m new to jazz, what do you recommend?” sounds to me like a question somebody would ask a vendor at a stall at the public market. This is the scenario that comes to mind, “I’ve got a blue couch and my walls are a light grey, do you have anything that would go with that?”

When my friends talk about a new album or artist they have discovered they don’t sound like they are describing a scarf that they just picked up at Marshalls; they sound like they have undergone an experience involving the reconfiguration of the chemicals in their bloodstream. When you find your jazz, it will be more like discovering your significant other than that amazing vacuum you found on Amazon.

Hollywood tells us that jazz is sophisticated and hip, surrounded by smoke. Instagram offers a false jazz iconography of commodified status and identity (well, not the actual Instagram posts of jazz artists – those posts are a mix of joy, camaraderie and the grind of incessant practicing). The reality is that objects in mirror are closer than they appear.

Falling in love with a work of art is a gradual and circuitous process. This is not like asking your sister-in-law to recommend an electrician.

There is no short cut here. You must follow your heart and allow the relationship to gradually unfold. It’s OK to falter.

It’s OK:

• to need sonic footholds if your deep listening muscles are undeveloped

• to check out stuff that isn’t a good fit

• to listen while you are folding laundry or doing the dishes

• to come back to something and listen to it from another angle

• to be distracted for a few years

• to step sideways.

However, if I’m going to give a tangible directive, it would be to go listen to live jazz first. At the club politely tell your friends that you will not be talking or listening to them for a little while. And this is counterintuitive, but maybe close your eyes for a bit. Live jazz first. Recorded jazz second.

Deep Focus has the added advantage of my favorite jazz artists talking thoughtfully about my favorite jazz legends. My apologies to all you other jazz podcasters, but crappy laptop or cell phone mics and sharp reverberant room noise are deal breakers for these old tinnitus-plagued ears. If I’m missing a gem, put it down in the comments and make your case.

The Deep Focus podcast comes out of Mitch Goldman’s Monday night radio show at WKCR, a slot he has held down since the Reagan administration. The premise of the podcast is simple, Goldman invites a jazz artist onto the show to discuss another jazz artist’s life and work while they listen to rare live recordings drawn from the vast WKCR archives.

Deep Podcast host Mitch Goldman

I love hearing the live concert recordings but what I enjoy even more is listening to the guest artists provide insight, anecdotes and perspectives, often placing the music in its broader historical and social context. These conversations are illuminating. And interestingly, artists seem to be more analytically insightful when they are talking about other artists’ work.

Last October Vernon Reid came on Deep Focus to talk about James Blood Ulmer. In the beginning of the podcast Vernon connects the dots between the first time he saw James Blood Ulmer perform with Ronald Shannon Jackson at the Public Theatre and Vernon’s subsequent connection with Jackson’s Decoding Society through his friend from Brooklyn, bassist Melvin Gibbs. Recounting his experience in a late 70’s R&B band playing with Kashif Salim - pianist with BT Express (a band that included Carlos Ward, who played with Coltrane and was a longtime member of the Abdullah Ibrahim band), Reid sketches the late 70’s NYC music scene, a period when jazz artists would also play in popular bands, a point he underscores by mentioning trumpeter Michael Ray, of Sun Ra’s Arkestra, who would tour with Kool and the Gang. It’s a great interview, but that’s just the first 15 minutes.

In December Henry Threadgill came on the podcast to discuss Ahmad Jamal and Threadgill praises Jamal’s touch, control and his extensive arrangement structures, something he would try to accomplish with Air. Threadgill also reverently describes the thriving jazz and cultural scene in mid-century Chicago.

Many guests have left lasting impressions on me – Eric Person on Arthur Blythe, Roy Nathanson on Woody Shaw, Adam Rudolph on Yusef Lateef; the list is extensive, hundreds of shows stretching back to 2010.

Deep Focus episodes are usually 3 hour-long sessions, with generous helpings of live music, interwoven with conversation. The balance feels just right.

Highly recommended.

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I was born during the Kennedy administration and fusion was my entry point into jazz (like most of my contemporaries). I learned about music from the arts and leisure weeklies that we’d pick up around town. And the library. And college. I took a jazz theory course and joined the campus radio station and spent hours in the station record library listening and reading liner notes. Gary Giddins at the Village Voice and Robert Palmer in the NY Times provided guideposts. There was Musician magazine and Op and sometimes I’d even open a copy of Downbeat. We logged hours in record stores and traded cassette tapes like they were samizdat.

If I’m being charitable I am empathetic to young people who are overwhelmed by all the information available to them. If I’m being a cranky boomer I am aghast that a young person can have an internet machine in their pants pocket, backpack or purse and have the nerve to ask me to do some work for them.

Look it up on your internet machine!

Asking me where to start with jazz is insane. The genre is just way too broad and inclusive. Hence the title of this post: I’m New to Food. What Do You Recommend I Try Eating? - because that’s what this sounds like to me. You’ve got to be kidding. There are dozens of entry points. It’s jazz. How can you ask me that?!

I heard from a skeptical millennial over the holidays that Gen Zers are getting into jazz because they want to be seen as cool or hip or whatever the word is these days. I don’t want to believe that is true but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was - not because Gen Zers are awful, but because humans are awful. But, on the other hand, since when is jazz cool?! Me and my jazz fan friends will take on any group of Star Wars fans, Dungeons and Dragons or Magic aficionados in a battle for the Top Nerd Crown. We are all deeply and weirdly nerdy. There is no social cache in this realm. And you are totally welcome to join.

But there are probably reasons for this phenomenon. I would point to Spotify as a main culprit. The playlistification of music is undermining the relationship between music lovers, artists and labels. Streaming playlists have severed our emotional connection to artists and labels. Boomers and Gen Xers can’t imagine growing up with playlists fed to us instead of albums. For our generation the titration of information and breadcrumb clues along the trail were a perfectly human amount. We were not drowning in a firehose of data. And we grew up having to do everything ourselves; like, hitch to work, ask a librarian for help, shop at the local mall for jeans and rolling papers. We got the message loud and clear from all adults around us – we were on our own. Then we turned around and sent the opposite message to our kids. But I don’t say that self-righteously. I think it is useful for us to reflect on the immediate gratification and convenience landscape that boomers and Gen Xs created and the impact it has on people’s consciousness. We created this mess.

But that doesn’t change my response. From here on out, my response is, I’m sorry, you’ve got to find that out yourself. Jazz contains multitudes. Figure it out.

Labarrière’s Puzzle is a vibrant fully realized series of songs dedicated to Thérèse Clerc, Angela Davis, Emma Goldman, Jane Avril, and Louise Michel. Labarrière composed five short pieces for the album and then recruited François Corneloup, Marc Ducret, Sylvain Kassap and others to elaborate on her composed themes before recording them with a different group of artists (Catherine Delaunay - clarinet, Robin Fincker – saxophone, Stéphane Bartelt – guitar, and Simon Goubert - drums).

Five of the six songs travel through a variety of evocative moods and textures, with the sixth cut, Souvenir, a foreboding meditation. The songs hit a sweet balance between composition and improvisation, with the band breaking off into smaller duos and trios and drummer Simon Goubert brashly and excitedly upending vamps by playing against the rhythm (while maintaining the pulse). Guitarist Stéphane Bartelt deploys his pedalboard and whammy bar in various sections, raising the heat several degrees. Melodies are delivered with rhythmically dynamic post bop drive, bringing to mind Tim Berne. Labarrière’s bass playing bounces like Dave Holland and Fred Hopkins and animates everything around it. In some solo sections she mirrors the melody but plays with tempo, a surprisingly effective technique. This is an album that would sit comfortably in the Cuneiform catalog.

So, given the quality of compositions, recording and playing, why the lack of recognition? Labarrière has had a long and successful career in Europe, playing early on with Art Farmer, Lee Konitz and other American headliners as they passed through Paris. She worked as a sidewoman in a variety of projects and then began fronting her own ensembles on festival stages across Europe. She cites bassist Dave Holland and drummer Daniel Humaire as having formidable impacts on her musical conception. She has played in a variety of contexts including Ars Nova, theatre, dance, chanson, and has done collaborations around text and images.

Yet, when her album came to my attention I had never heard of her. And as I dug into the web to find out more, I didn’t find her presence on any of the usual American jazz platforms. I could be wrong but it doesn’t seem like the French jazz scene succeeds in poking through to the American jazz establishment. We hear about the scene in Scandinavia. J-Jazz gets a lot of attention. These past couple of years I’ve been checking out the adventurous music of Portuguese musicians and I regularly receive promos about the Berlin scene. The Soweto to London connection is famously celebrated. Even Indonesian fusion gets some attention. But not much from France. Why is that?