Rolling Jazz Thread 2024

Ari Hoenig on fire right now!

This Herbie Hancock tour announcement reads like it was written with AI. As someone who used to work with the Relix folks (and even wrote a few pieces for the magazine), this makes me very sad.

Jazz legend Herbie Hancock has dropped a new slate of dates, which will take him on the road in the early fall. The impending run of concert appearances will occur throughout the U.S.’s Southern region and up the East Coast. Along the way, the headliner and his unannounced group of instrumental accompaniment will perform 12 concerts, leading up to a tour closer at the esteemed Massey Hall in Toronto on Oct. 1.

Hancock and company’s newly dropped schedule begins on Sept. 13 with the first of three Sunshine State appearances, which will roll out nightly with ensuing into Sept. 14 and 15. From there, the billed act moves onto Auburn, Ala., for a Sept. 17 follow-up at a TBA venue. Descending into the South, the tour will take the notable member of the Miles Davis Quintet to Nashville, Tenn., for an evening at the Schermerhorn Symphony Center.

From Music City, Hancock’s next live show arrives at the Wilson Center in Wilmington, N.C., on Sept. 21, with Sept. 22 presenting another gig, which time in Norfolk, Va. Another pair of North Carolina concerts prelude East Coast dates, following up shows in Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, conjuring in Newark, N.J., before the Toronto finale.

News of Hancock’s September 2024 tour arrives after the announcement that the artist will pay tribute to 50 years of Head Hunters on Wednesday, August 14, at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. Adding to the intrigue, the event is billed to include a reunion lineup featuring Harvey Mason, Bennie Maupin, and Bill Summers, with Marcus Miller standing in for the late Paul Jackson.

holy shit, someone should get fired for that

Can you fire AI?

much like a bad middle manager, everyone hates AI, AI does a terrible job over and over again yet keeps getting chances and continues to fail upward

A collaborative program subtitled “Weaving Strands of Sound from Addis to Chicago,” that might answer the equation of AACM x Ethiopiques. The evening features an expanded version of cellist Tomeka Reid and double bassist Silvia Bolognesi’s Hear in Now group (bonus all-stars: violinist yuniya edi kwon and drummer Chad Taylor), in musical conversation with Qwanqwa, a supergroup of Ethiopian experimentalists. This could get great. (Wed 4/3, 8p @ Roulette, Downtown Bklyn - $25/$30)

Saw this on the Dada Strain email. I saw Ethiopian group Qwanqwa on their last US tour 2 years ago by themselves and they were great. This collaboration with them was probably good too. Qwanqwa are touring the US now too. Gonna see them in Alexandria, Virginia near Washington DC.

they are playing minneapolis later this month, i'm definitely considering going

with Marcus Miller standing in for the late Paul Jackson

Is this meant to imply that Herbie normally tours with a dead guy on bass?

RIP Tootie Heath

Oh! RIP. Great musician and very funny person.

new shane parish solo acoustic record (cf. tompkins sq. thread) w/ covers of "lonely woman" and "journey in satchidananda"

https://shaneparish.bandcamp.com/album/repertoire

RIP Tootie

voodoo chili recommended the new Josh Johnson album on a different rolling thread, but anyone who liked that rad Anna Butterss album or recent Jeff Parker stuff (JJ plays on the Enfield Tennis Academy record) would prob dig this: https://joshjohnsonmusic.bandcamp.com/album/unusual-object

The Emmet Cohen Trio show last weekend was fantastic, truly. He told some good Tootie Heath stories too (although of course he kept saying that all the best ones were wholly inappropriate to tell on stage).

Also really enjoyed watching this set w/Tootie, for the stage banter alone. He really had some deep New Orleans elements in his playing, moreso than any of the other famous Philly drummers, it's interesting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgAkz3uM-pM

Also had a good time going through the recordings Vinnie Sperazza mentions here:
https://vinniesperrazza.substack.com/p/for-albert-tootie-heath

That Josh Johnson album sounds great so far, a lot like Sam Gendel except less anti-jazz.

I'm liking it exponentially more than that new Kenny Garrett electronic record, sorry Kenny.

I went to see (ahmed) tonight, last night of a four-night residency at Cafe Oto in London. They were incredible and relentless.

very jealous

I do hope they reissue those earlier [Ahmed] LPs

Did anyone get that CD box set? I thought at first it was a straight reissue of the aforementioned LPs but I guess it's actually a recording of a 2022 residency.

I bought one at the show but haven’t unwrapped it yet. A friend who’s heard it was raving about it.

I saw Makaya McCraven and Greg Ward in a local dive bar the other night, playing highlife, it was a treat. They were reviving this band:
https://occidentalbrothers.bandcamp.com/album/likambo-te

(the guitarist Nathaniel Braddock was really great too, he was working hard since they didn't have a vocalist)

Oh I remember Occidental Brothers. I just did an an ilx search to further refresh my memory (!) and saw I wrote in 2009 that the group did a kitschy but nice highlife version of New Order's "Bizarre Love Triangle."

Too bad they didn't have with them the vocalist who is on a number of cuts from that new Bandcamp album release - Samba Mapangala. He's Congolese but later moved to Uganda, Kenya, and then the US

Another major historian and curator, Michael Cuscuna, has passed away. (He was being treated for cancer for a while.) Good guy, and given the work he was doing until the end and his wealth of knowledge (much of which was gained from his own research and lifelong experiences), it feels like a major loss.

Yeah it really is a loss to jazz (as the owner of so many records he produced, reissued, etc.)

My latest Stereogum column is up. It includes an interview with Kenny Garrett and reviews of new albums by Jeremy Pelt, Matthew Shipp, Isaiah Collier, Dave Douglas, Melissa Aldana and others. Plus a gratuitous shot at Bill Frisell!

Leave Bill Frisell alone!

That Jeremy Pelt track sounds great, will have to check that one for sure. That Miles Davis interview at the bottom hits hard (the endless debate).

A little Frisell goes a long way

Could probably pick a few threads to post this in, but excited to check out the debut from Beings, There is a Garden, out on No Quarter soon:

https://beingsnyc.bandcamp.com/album/there-is-a-garden

I mean, this lineup!

Zoh Amba - saxophone, vocals, acoustic guitar, harmonium, piano
Steve Gunn - electric guitar
Shahzad Ismaily - bass, synth
Jim White - drums

wow!

Saw Terence Blanchard with the E-Collective, Turtle Island Quartet, & guest opera singers Justin Austin & Adrienne Danrich. The night was billed as "Fire Shut Up in My Bones: Opera Suite in Concert. The main portion of the night was pieces from the opera with backing visuals , but the concert opened and closed with Blanchard and the musicians doing other compositions. He made a reference to Wayne Shorter re the first one. Blanchard's trumpet sounded strong throughout and especially touching on the operatic suite. Blanchard's jazz and the operatic vocals ended up meshing together pretty well. I wasn't wowed by electric guitarist Charles Altura whose playing was more prominent on the non - opera suite efforts. Too '70s rock-jazz fusion for me. Longtime drummer Oscar Seaton seemed better when he was trying subtle things as opposed to just pounding hard. Would like to see the full opera version with dancers, orchestra, costumes and sets.

"Fire " the opera recently re-opened a few weeks ago at the Met in NY (after its initial 2021 run) and got a mixed review

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/09/arts/music/met-opera-fire-shut-up-in-my-bones.html?unlocked_article_code=1.nk0.6ll_.FitoGw3e1o-i&smid=url-share

I think “Fire” was filmed by the Met for its Live In HD Program so it may rerun at a movie theater near you or a DVD come out.

I would have gone but I saw Marc-Andre Hamelin play at the Library of Congress last night doing Charles Ives’ Concord Sonata, an essential trip for me.

Not particularly interested in the opera but I've enjoyed Blanchard's last couple of albums with his group.

I wrote about the new Tomeka Reid Quartet album in this week's Burning Ambulance newsletter.

"I like in and out."

me too! lol

I interviewed Kamasi Washington for Stereogum. I love the fact that the longest section of this interview is him talking about working with Gerald Wilson.

Nice.

I don't know if I've ever seen this much effort put into a video by a jazz (adjacent) group:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VABfAOXrQgQ

All my Bandcamp purchases today are old albums from the 80s on Italian jazz labels:

Hamiet Bluiett, Resolution
Baikida Carroll, Shadows And Reflections
Billy Harper, Black Saint and In Europe
Beaver Harris, Beautiful Africa
The Leaders, Unforeseen Blessings
Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre, Peace And Blessings
Dannie Richmond, Dionysus
Woody Shaw, Time Is Right

not from this year but i'm digging pianist Rodney Franklin's album In the Center. i had never heard of him. sounds like he veered pretty quickly to smooth jazz, but this album, his first, is really cool and varied. most of it would fit well with late 70s soul jazz like lonnie liston smith - some disco-funk, one with vocals, a couple spiritual jams. the closer, "life moves on" is a killer

Does Tomeka Reid still live in DC? Had no idea she released something on Cuneiform.

I saw Reid a couple weeks ago doing a great composed tribute to Duke Ellington at the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater.
Right now I’m in Brooklyn at the Long Play festival and saw a fantastic set by Darius Jones doing his Fluxtet music. He killed it was so great. At the end he did some Pentecostal vocalizations over a string ostinato. Very moving.

Having dinner right next to Ingrid Laubrock and Tom Rainey

!

Incredible interview with Charles Gayle from a Buffalo, NY newspaper in 1970(!). Reveals more about his early life than I ever knew before. I wonder if the tapes he talks about are still in the ESP archives?

RE: Laubrock/Rainey, I was in Brooklyn for Bang On A Can's Long Play Festival, where both were on the bill: Rainey in the DoYeon Kim Quartet and Laubrock had written a string quartet that was premiered there. Great festival, a smaller more manageable Big Ears in a cooler city (Sorry, Knoxville).

I kicked off this month's Stereogum column with a deep dive into the history of Last Exit (Bill Laswell's jazz-metal improv band featuring Peter Brötzmann, Sonny Sharrock, and Ronald Shannon Jackson), since their catalog has basically doubled in size in the last couple of years thanks to a half dozen live recordings he's put up on Bandcamp for subscribers. Lots of great albums reviewed, too.

Reid is Chicago-based but moving around a lot due to visiting professorships and touring. I'd love to hear the Ellington material and also the expanded Stringtet. 3x3 is absolutely superb.

Finally got to the new Charles Lloyd, wow it's great. Listened to it twice straight through.

Some Charles Lloyd videos available here from 1994 at the North Sea Jazz Festival. They seem to be opening up their archive. There's also a great video of Joe Henderson playing "Recorda-me" from the same year, but it's cut off when the bass solo starts. The entire playlist is being updated regularly.