Mosaic’s forthcoming Anthony Braxton set, The Complete Arista Recordings, is a long-awaited dream-come-true for fans of the jazz avant-garde, and it’s now available for pre-order at the Mosaic website. The set’s liner notes were written by musician and scholar Mike Heffley, who gave Mosaic a draft that was twice as long as what they were able to use.
Continue Reading »
|Leave A Comment »
Eric Dolphy emerged from the thriving mid-20th-century Los Angeles jazz scene and became an important player in the groups of Chico Hamilton, John Coltrane, and Charles Mingus. A highly-skilled musician who played alto sax, bass clarinet, and flute, Dolphy created a bracing, unique sound forged in both bop and the avant-garde that many consider to be his masterpiece, Out to Lunch, which displayed impressive strides in both his playing and compositional abilities.
Continue Reading »
|Leave A Comment »
Carla Bley is renowned today for her big-band writing and its wide-ranging use of musical and emotional elements, but it was small-group recordings of her work in the 1960s by musicians such as Jimmy Giuffre, Gary Burton, George Russell, and her husband Paul Bley that introduced her to the jazz world. In her teens Bley abandoned home, religion, and school, eventually making her way to New York City, where she worked as a hatcheck and cigarette girl in jazz clubs such as Basin Street and Birdland. She…
Continue Reading »
|Leave A Comment »
HatHut Records, the European label that some consider to be the modern Blue Note (er, wait a minute, Blue Note still exists…but as a very hip man once observed, things ain’t what they used to be) has posted some choice titles as forthcoming reissues–among them…
Continue Reading »
|Leave A Comment »
Word is that we’ll probably see the following reissues from Nessa Records in several months: Roscoe Mitchell’s Nonaah (with bonus material), Charles Tyler’s Saga of the Outlaws, and…
Continue Reading »
|1 Comment »
Gary Giddins writes it up in the new New Yorker, though strangely enough, he doesn’t mention Coleman’s previous, somewhat legendary appearance there in 1962. The lately-revived…
Continue Reading »
|Leave A Comment »
Lots of Mosaic Records news lately–now it appears, according to a post at freejazz.org, that the long-talked-about Anthony Braxton 1970s set featuring his recordings for Arista and Freedom may be on its way to manifestation in the reality-based retail community…coming this…
Continue Reading »
|2 Comments »
In the early 20th century African-American composers began to write extended musical depictions of black American life–Scott Joplin with his unstaged opera Treemonisha, pianist James P. Johnson with his Yamekraw: a Negro Rhapsody, and–perhaps most successfully–William Grant Still with his Afro-American Symphony in 1931. That same year Duke Ellington told a reporter, “I’m going to compose a musical evolution of the Negro race.” It took Ellington…
Continue Reading »
|Leave A Comment »
A number of radio stations around the country have picked up the Night Lights show Dear Martin: Jazz Tributes to Martin Luther King Jr. Station links and air dates follow:KSJD-Cortez, Colorado: Monday, Jan. 21 at 1 p.m…
Continue Reading »
|Leave A Comment »
First a Pulitzer, then a Grammy and a presentation on the Grammy TV show (somewhat akin to seeing a holy man appear in the temple of Babylon), now a feature in Rolling Stone…at the age of 77, Ornette Coleman has finally received the…
Continue Reading »
|Leave A Comment »
Subscribe to the
