Unpopular Music - July 18, 2021

 

Here's another upload mostly featuring recent additions to the Unpopular Music library. Hopefully not so big of a break until the next one, but it's been an odd year.

 

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 In the absence of me playing DJ there are some program notes below, along with the playlist. 

I think Sound Prints is one of the best jazz groups around these days, and Life on Earth from their new album Other Worlds is a fine example. I particularly like Joe Lovano's tenor solo.

James Brandon Lewis brings a variation on my beloved two-bass format. On the left channel is Chris Hoffman on cello, while on the right is William Parker on gimbri, a traditional African bass instrument which he plays not dissimilarly to his usual bass style. Jessup Wagon album as a whole is a tribute to the African-American polymath George Washington Carver's mobile agricultural education unit which he used in the early 20^th century to teach those in the so-called Lowlands of Sorrow to grow new crops.

Lee Konitz is featured with a Birth-of-the-Cool-style nonet (although with a second trumpet rather than a horn). Recorded at Denmark's Jazzpar festival in 1992.

Jason Stein features Keefe Jackson on the contra-bass clarinet in a unique sounding interpretation of Charlie Parker's Dexterity.

This recording of John Coltrane's Equinox comes from a series of webcasts put on by Dezron Douglas and Brandee Younger (bass and harp, respectively). The tune and the instrumentation combines to evoke both Coltranes at once.

I've always liked Jim Hall as a musician who, like Lee Konitz, is always modern, but never avant-garde, grounding himself in the tradition which keeps him regarded as old-school, but never ends up sounding safe or unimaginative. We have him here in chamber-jazz mode at a later edition of the Jazzpar festival.

Here's another track from Floating Points' Promises album, where the three elements converge and interact – composer Sam Shepherd's ambient and ethereal synthesizers, Pharaoh Sanders' meditative tenor sax and the LSO's shimmering strings.

We take an interlude here with Mr. and Mrs. (I think) folky cover songs, Robyn Hitchcock and Emma Swift. He with a hauntingly beautiful rendition of Townes Van Zandt's Tower Song, she with the one of the highlights of her recent album of Bob Dylan songs.

I first became aware of Michel van der Aa through his association with the recently late Louis Andriessen. I was hipped to his Violin Concerto by the estimable Muddle Instead of Music podcast. Hysteresis is the other work on the album and it's an extremely sonically intriguing work with the clarinet and the electronics and the what-not.

It's not just to fill up time that I chose this half-hour performance of Fables of Faubus. I felt I found a definitive performance of a piece which already has two other definitive performances. This arrangement, along with some nifty three-horn harmonies, features a device I first heard in the '70s arrangement of Orange was the Color of Her Dress, then Blue Silk, where as each soloist goes through what I like to call Mingus's “obstacle course” song form with the tempo and groove changes along with the chord changes, there is a point where the form stops and opens up for improvisation, before returning to the song form

Thumbscrew's latest release was recorded in tandem with their previous release featuring Anthony Braxton compositions, the latest in their ever-growing series of fine recordings. This tune comes with one of Michael Formanek's typical sardonic titles.

On the Cumbia Siglo XXI album, Eblis Alvarez pays tribute to 1980's coastal cumbia, which was a style updating traditional cumbia with the modern sounds of the day. Alverz then filters this style through the modern sounds and ideas that make up the Meridian Brothers' aesthetic, in this case using Dusty Springfield's 1968 hit “Son of Preacher Man” as its jumping-off point.

And we sign off with a gentle lullauby from 17^th century England. Good night.

 

artist	title	album	comments	label / date
Sound Prints	Life On Earth	Other Worlds	Joe Lovano (ts) Dave Douglas (trp, tune) Lawrence Fields (p) Linda May Han Oh (b) Joey Baron (d)	Greenleaf Music 2020
James Brandon Lewis / Red Lily Quintet	Lowlands of Sorrow	Jesup Wagon	James Brandon Lewis (ts) Kirk Knuffke (crnt) William Parker (gimbri) Chris Hoffman (vc) Chad Taylor (d)	AUM Fidelity 2020
Lee Konitz	Leewise	Leewise	Lee Konitz featured with The JAZZPAR All Star Nonet: Jeff Davis (trp), Allan Botchinsky (trp, flgh) Erling Kroner (tbn) Niels Gerhardt (b-tbn, tba) Jens Søndergaard (ss, as, bs, cnd) Peter Gullin (ts, bs) Butch Lacy (p) Jesper Lundgaard (b) Svend-Erik Nørregaard (d) composition by Fredrik Lundin	Storyville Records 1992
Jason Stein Quartet	Dexterity	Lucille!	Jason Stein (bass clt) Keefe Jackson (contrabass clt) Joshua Abrams (b) Tom Rainey (d) tune by Charlie Parker	Delmark 2017
Dezron Douglas & Brandee Younger	Equinox	Force Majeure	Dezron Douglas (b) Brandee Younger (hrp) tune by John Coltrane	International Anthem Recording Company 2020
Jim Hall	Quartet + 4	Jazzpar Quartet + 4	Jim Hall (g) Chris Potter (ts) Thomas Ovesen (b) Terry Clarke (d) + The Zapolski String Quartet Alexander Zapolski, Jacob Soelberg (vln) Iben Bramsnæs Teilmann (vla) Vanja Louro (vc)	Storyville Records 1998
Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders & The London Symphony Orchestra	Promises - Movement 7	Promises	music by Sam Shepherd	Luaka Bop 2021
Robyn Hitchcock	The Tower Song	The Man Downstairs: Demos & Rarities	song by Townes Van Zandt	Tiny Ghost Records 2013
Emma Swift	One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)	Blonde On The Tracks	Emma Swift (voc, g) Patrick Sansone (g, keys, b, prc) Robyn Hitchcock (g) Thayer Serrano (pdl stl gtr) Jon Estes (b) Jon Radford (d, prc) song by Bob Dylan	Tiny Ghost Records 2020
Kari Kriikku / Amsterdam Sinfonietta / Candida Thompson	Hysteresis, for solo clarinet, ensemble and soundtrack - I	Violin Concerto / Hysteresis	composition by Michel van der Aa	Disquiet Media 2015
Charles Mingus	Fables of Faubus	Charles Mingus @ Bremen 1964 & 1975	Charles Mingus (b) Johnny Coles (trp) Eric Dolphy (b clt) Clifford Jordan (ts) Jaki Byard (p) Dannie Richmmond (d) recorded April 16, 1964, Dolphy would die on June 29	Sunnyside Records 1964
Thumbscrew	Emojis Have Consequences	Never Is Enough	Tomas Fujiwara (d) Mary Halvorson (g) Michael Formanek (b, tune)	Cuneiform Records 2019
Meridian Brothers	Cumbia Del Pichamán	Cumbia Siglo XXI	written and performed by Eblis Alvarez after Son of a Preacher Man by John Hurley and Ronnie Wilkins	Les Disques Bongo Joe 2020
Giovanna Pessi	Good night	Strike the viol	music by Anonyme	Label Flora 2009