The Necessary Blues

It’s that time of year – end-of-the-year lists! It was recently my privilege to again submit picks for the Francis Davis Jazz Poll, where ballots are limited to ten new albums, five archival/reissues, and three each for vocals and debut albums (I abstained from voting on the Latin album category). I’ll link to that poll when it’s published in a few days. Because this blog focuses on new music, I’ve limited this list to just new albums and expanded the list to my top 50. There’s so much great new music; it’s no problem at all listing 50 great albums from the last 12 months!

For consistency, I’ve retained the same top ten I submitted for the Francis Davis Jazz Poll. The order of my “rankings” roughly reflects my personal connection to these albums – but they are all great, and I unreservedly recommend them all.

One of the revelations from this list-making is to appreciate the incredible strength of music today and the boundless talent of the musicians who created it. We are truly blessed to have this art and these artists who deserve and need your support. I hope that you make some discoveries here or rediscoveries, perhaps. Enjoy, and Happy New Year!

1-Patricia Brennan – Breaking Stretch

2024 was the breakthrough year for vibraphonist and composer Patricia Brennan. Brennan was everywhere this year – a key component of Mary Halvorson’s Cloudward at the start of the year, and her vibes elevated every album she appeared on, from Stephan Crump’s Slow Waters to Alan Braufman’s Infinite Love Infinite Tears. And that was all before the September release of Brennan’s spectacular Breaking Stretch. With Brennan’s vibrant new album, every element was remarkable – the original compositions are advanced but direct, and she has found a way of combining the rhythmic complexity of her two prior albums (the solo vibes Maquishti and the percussion quartet More Touch) with expanded horn writing and explosive playing. Brennan has quickly become a key figure in today’s music – where will she go next? Here’s the full review at TNB.

2-[Ahmed] – Giant Beauty

2024 was also the breakout year for English piano great Pat Thomas. In 2024, Thomas was as prolific as usual, releasing a solo piano album, several interesting electronic experiments, and two outstanding piano trio records (I put one at #39 on this list). Still, Thomas’ most significant statement in 2024 was from his band [Ahmed]. With this band – a quartet with drummer Antonin Gerbal, bassist Joel Grip, and saxophonist Seymour Wright – the focus is on interpreting the music of legendary bassist Ahmed Abdul-Malik. Once you know [Ahmed] you know what to expect – each tune is stretched live into an almost hour-long performance that moves in waves of energy and noise, cathartic even on a record. In March, Thomas and [Ahmed] released two documents of that catharsis – the single disc Blues for Wood on Astral Spirits and the expansive five CD Giant Beauty on Fönstret. With the Francis Davis mid-year poll, I went with Blues for Wood on my list, which is the best primer for [Ahmed]. Once you’ve heard that, the deep dive of Giant Beauty, with its fascinating set of interpretations and trajectories over five one-tune sets, will keep you coming back. The second run of CDs is almost sold out, so get yours now. If you can make it to Big Ears in March, [Ahmed] will be there — their first visit to America — and you can experience this live.

3-David Leon – Bird’s Eye

No other album sounds like this, and after nine months of listening, David Leon’s Bird’s Eye has lost none of its magic. The unique sound of this album is due mainly to DoYeon Kim’s gayageum, a zither-like string instrument that sometimes sounds like a harp, sometimes a guitar, but is always striking and new. Leon has the wisdom to let that captivating sound occupy center stage, but the leader’s ideas and playing also quietly capture your imagination. Other albums did come and go from my rotation through 2024, but this music, with its beauty and wit, never left.

4-Tomeka Reid Quartet – 3+3

Tomeka Reid’s 3+3 is strong from start to finish, a three-movement suite that dances over Reid’s cello, with strong contributions from a rhythm section of drummer Tomas Fujiwara and bassist Jason Roebke. But the real magic is the locked-in chemistry between Reid and guitarist Mary Halvorson, two voices that sound like one. Take a listen to the album centerpiece, “Sauntering With Mr. Brown,” where you can hear this synergy as the cellist and guitarist build an interconnected web of phrases to a thrilling climax.

5-Immanuel Wilkins – Blues Blood

Link to purchase from Blue Note
Link to Apple Music

Wilkins’ Blues Blood is an ambitious document of a multi-genre, multi-media work that meditates on the “legacies of our ancestors and the bloodlines connecting us,” according to the press notes. What really got to me is the integration of Wilkins’ quicksilver sax with the voices of Ganavya, June McDoom, Yaw Agyeman, and a guest vocal by Cécile McLorin Salvant. The affecting melancholy is perfect late-night music.

6-Matt Mitchell – Illimitable

Over two CDs, Mitchell’s far-ranging mind and fingers take us on a trip through four expansive tracks (the longest is alone album length) that explore fascinating ideas not beholden to any one set of influences. Mitchell says, “All this music is 100% improvised, one take, no edits.”

7-Anna Webber – simpletrio2000

Webber’s Idiom was the most impressive album of 2021, a magnum opus of woodwind techniques and coiled small-group dynamics. Simpletrio2000 continues where Idiom left off, exploring more jaw-dropping rhythms played by a trio that is anything but “simple.”

8-David Murray Quartet – Francesca

Francesca was my go-to disc of 2024 to bask in Murray’s giant sound and inviting, warm melodies; every spin was like a reunion with an old friend. I also keep coming back for the luminescent piano of Marta Sanchez, Murray’s best foil since his salad days with John Hicks or Don Pullen.

9-AALY TRIO – Mats Gustafsson, Peter Janson, Kjell Nordeson – Sustain

Celebrating the vitality of free jazz repertoire stimulated some of this year’s most exciting music, like João Lencastre’s Free Celebration, (#33 below) Nexus Plays Dolphy (#36), the Henry Kaiser-associated cooperative that released Two Views of Steve Lacy’s The Wire (#50), Ohad Talmor’s Back To The Land, and especially this stunning album by the AALY Trio. As usual, Gustafsson’s saxes and flute are commanding, and interactive playing by bassist Janson and drummer Nordeson is there every step of the way. The liner notes outline a history of this group that is a bit too nuanced for me to follow, but suffice it to say this group has a lot of history and plays at the highest level here.

10-Carlos Bica – 11​:​11

It was tough rounding out a top ten in a strong year where many albums could have made the cut. I went with Bica’s 11:11 because it reminded me of Charlie Haden’s Revolutionary Music Ensemble and simply for the album’s arresting beauty. Every time I listen, I need to remind myself this is only a quartet – the rich colors created by José Soares’ alto sax, Eduardo Cardinho’s vibraphone, and Gonçalo Neto’s guitar and banjo over Bica’s bass were the most calming and enveloping music of the year. I also loved Bica’s Playing With Beethoven from last year – I’ll keep my eyes and ears open for what’s next.

11-Rafael Toral – Spectral Evolution

Toral’s incredible one-movement of warm guitar and modulating tones was the best ambient album of the year. I excluded it from the Francis Davis Poll because it’s not Jazz, so I’m placing Spectral Evolution at #11 on this list just to be consistent. But don’t miss this one—it’s a true tour-de-force.

12-Tyshawn Sorey Trio – The Susceptible Now

I’ve admired the previous Tyshawn Sorey Trio albums, where his ever-flexible drumming and Aaron Diehl’s perfect piano struck me as an update of Ahmad Jamal for the 21st century. This one wowed me with its marvelous dynamics and sleight-of-hand transitions from one theme to the next, and it confirmed for me that pianist Diehl is among the greatest today.

13-Kit Downes – Reflex: Dr. Snap

A live album recorded at Amsterdam’s BIMHAUS in 2022, Reflex: Dr. Snap captures an incredible band in flight over Downes’ catchy compositions. I didn’t see any hype for this one, but I’m sure it will grab you right away with its spirited fun and incredible virtuosity.

14-Tarbaby – You Think This America

Another great piano trio in a year full of them. I’ll defer to Hank Shteamer, who listed this as his album of the year for The New York Times.

15-[Ahmed] – Blues for Wood

Mid-year, this was second on my list, but I’ve swapped in the more epic five discs of [Ahmed’s] Giant Beauty in its place. Blues for Wood is still the best introduction to this band—listen and imagine you’re there, soaking in the waves of cathartic noise.

16-Christopher Hoffman – Vision Is The Identity

TNB covered Hoffman’s great Vision Is The Identity twice – here and here. I found Hoffman’s approach to electro-acoustic music and amplification of his instrument amazing, and said this album is  “wall-to-wall avant-bangers” that “expand the expressive range of the cello.”

17-Mary Halvorson – Cloudward

Mary Halvorson set the template for a great year with Cloudward; Halvorson and her band members were central to this year’s music. Here’s TNB’s album review.

18-Nick Dunston – Colla Voce

Nothing sounds like the innovative Colla Voce. TNB covered it in our string roundup, where I said that Colla Voce is “dense and hallucinatory” and that its string writing has a physicality that “makes sound tactile.”

19-Rob Mazurek – Milan

In 2024, I really discovered Mazurek – he’s prolific and put out a lot of great music this year. Milan was my favorite, a solo tour-de-force where Mazurek’s trumpet and prepared piano comment on each other, with an assist from extended percussion and a “magic yellow bucket.” Mazurek plays em’ all, no overdubs.

20-Jonas Cambien – Maca Conu

Oslo-based pianist (and notably here, organist) Jonas Cambien is a new name to me, and this swirling music reminds me of Don Cherry. It’s an exploratory and exciting album. Here’s a nice review at Dusted.

21-Marco Collana – Fabrizio Sperra – Children of This Land

I discovered bass clarinet virtuoso Marco Collana in 2024. He’s incredibly prolific, with at least 20 releases this year. I picked this one for its interactive and patient playing and listening.

22-Darius Jones – Legend of e’Boi (The Hypervigilant Eye)

Chapter seven of Jones Man’ish Boy epic lets you revel in his giant sound on alto sax and admire his terrific trio (Gerald Cleaver on drums and Chris Lightcap on bass) . Read this excellent review by Lee Rice Epstein at The Free Jazz Collective.

23-Adam O’Farrill – HUESO

Adam O’Farrill’s trumpet sounded spectacular this year on Patricia Brennan’s Breaking Stretch, Mary Halvorson’s Cloudward, and O’Farrill’s excellent HUESO. He also leads a band whose chemistry is palpable and writes excellent material. Peter Margasak is a fan.

24-Fuubutsushi – Meridians

Link to purchase from Catched Media

Link to Apple Music

Fuubutsushi’s new double LP is as beautiful as you’d expect, and they have expanded their sound since their legendary quartet of seasonally themed ambient albums. Here’s a good review at I Care If You Listen.

25-Vinnie Sperrazza – Sunday

Here, I reviewed both Sperrazza’s Saturday and Sunday, which are different but connected. A highlight of this tuneful but adventurous release, “Caffeine Dream,” has been one of my favorite songs of the year.

26-Amirtha Kidambi’s Elder Ones – New Monuments

In the liner notes to New Monuments, Amirtha Kidambi talks about making music where “hierarchies are eliminated and individuals come together to assert their voices communally.” New Monuments captures that sound, and was the most politically aware album of the moment in a very challenging year. Read the review by TNB co-founder Jesse Koblin at the Vassar Miscellany News.

27-Alan Braufman – Infinite Love Infinite Tears

A joyous free jazz romp with great sax and flute by Braufman with support from James Brandon Lewis and Patricia Brennan. Thom Jurek wrote an excellent review for AllMusic.

28-Amanda Gardier – Auteur: Music Inspired by the Films of Wes Anderson

Gardier has a flair for colorful compositions, and the emotional world of Wes Anderson is a good match – Auteur is Gardier’s best album yet. Here’s the TNB album review.

29-Miguel Zenón – Golden City

The release of a new Miguel Zenón album is always a cause for celebration, and Golden City features Zenón’s ambitious writing for a terrific nonet. JazzTrail says it’s a “visceral work inspired by the rich history of San Francisco and its surrounding areas, specifically from the perspective of its immigrants.”

30-Phillip Golub – Abiding Memory

From the first note, I knew Phillip Golub’s Abiding Memory would be on this list—I love the Andrew Hill-like aesthetic. Ethan Iverson wrote a definitive post on the “New Brooklyn Complexity,” which discusses in detail what’s special about Abiding Memory.

31-Nick Millevoi – Moon Pulses

Philly-based guitarist Nick Millevoi uses simple methods (only one guitar for rhythm and one for melody, played only with the thumb) to make expansive sounds. The result is an ambient gem and another great release by boutique label Island House. I’ve been playing “Moon Pulses 1” quite a lot on my new radio show, “Where Is Brooklyn?” on WVKR.org. Here’s the review of Moon Pulses at The Third Eye.

32-Ivanna Cuesta – A Letter to the Earth

Ivanna Cuesta’s A Letter to the Earth was my pick for the Francis Davis Jazz Poll’s debut album of the year. Cuesta’s original compositions are great, and so are her side people—Kris Davis and Ben Solomon enliven the music with every solo.

33-João Lencastre – Free Celebration

Listen to João Lencastre’s Free Celebration for proof that the compositions of Ornette Coleman, Thelonious Monk, and Herbie Nichols can fuel a free jazz party—something to celebrate! Read Jazz Music Archives for more on this compelling album.

34-Brad Mehldau – After Bach II

Another celebration that I’m 100% behind is Brad Mehldau’s exploration of Bach. Skip right to Mehldau’s glorious reharmonizations of The Goldberg Variations, programmed near the end of this album, to get right to why Mehldau’s After Bach II is so great. Read TNB’s review here.

35-Maria Reich – INTERDEPENDENZEN

This album features 11 solo violin and viola improvisations developed during iPhone field recordings. The range of techniques, ideas, and emotions is impressive, and Reich’s talent and creativity are obvious. I reviewed this album as part of my roundup of string recordings.

36-Nexus – Nexus Plays Dolphy

Another ‘free celebration’, this time of Eric Dolpy’s transcendent legacy. Nexus—a band led by Milan-based tenor saxophonist Daniele Cavallanti and percussionist Tiziano Tononi, who apparently has been playing free jazz for decades—does justice to this material and produces an album that is by turns ferocious and exuberant.

37-James Diaz feat. Julia Jung Un Suh – [speaking in a foreign language]

[speaking in a foreign language] is the debut of composer James Diaz, who has found a unique way of combining analog sounds from the beautiful violin of Julia Jung Un Suh and electronic manipulation done both in real time and in post production.  Read the TNB review here.

38-John Surman – Words Unspoken

Link to purchase from ECM

Link to Apple Music

The only ECM entry on my list, saxophone player John Surman’s Words Unspoken was a refuge of beauty to return to again and again during a tumultuous year. Here’s the Free Jazz Blog review, which says it “feels like lying prone on a raft floating down a winding river.”

39-[Ism] – Maua

More Pat Thomas! Here he’s playing a Bösendorfer, and this album could not be more different than the [Ahmed] records at #2 and #15 on this list. Over the course of a 40-minute performance, Thomas explores piano language with far-ranging and surprising quotes while he also engages in the piano trio dynamics we expect with drummer Gerbal and bassist Grip. The Free Jazz Blog paints a picture.

40-Matthew Shipp – New Concepts in Piano Jazz

Bizarrely, I overlooked Matthew Shipp’s New Concepts in Piano Jazz until the very end of the year. I’m not sure what the “new concepts” are here – it sounds like a Matthew Shipp album, and a very good one at that. What other recommendation do you need?

41-C6Fe2RN6 – C6Fe2RN6

The mysteriously tilted C6Fe2RN6 (it refers to part of the color spectrum) is another Rob Mazurek album—including two from Exploding Star Orchestra, Mazurek released at least six albums in 2024. Here, Mazurek creates ambient soundscapes with guitarist Nick Terry, and it’s absolutely lovely trumpet music over electroacoustic settings for you to soak into.

42-Kris Davis – Run the Gauntlet

Kris Davis is another artist who releases one compelling album after another. Run the Gauntlet is the first recording of her new trio with Jonathan Blake on drums and Robert Hurst on bass – it’s been such an excellent year for piano trios! This new album is a great place to appreciate Davis’s compositional and piano language, which runs from catchy and melodic themes to impressive ‘outside’ techniques with prepared piano and Cecil Taylor-like giant chords. I could have (and did on the Francis Davis mid-year poll) put Rewilder by Borderlands Trio in here, a cooperative trio of which Davis is a member. The double-disc Rewinder is more expansive and experimental, and I recommend you check that out, too, for even more great Kris Davis.

43-Brad Shepik – Human Activity: Dream of the Possible

Dream of the Possible is an excellent title for this album about climate change, which captures guitarist Brad Shepik’s hopeful and affecting writing and playing. I especially love the use of Layale Chaker’s violin, which sounded great on her excellent Radio Aflout and is even better here. Here’s the review by Filipe Freitas at JazzTrail, who says it’s “brimming with emotion and heart.”

44-John Hollenbeck & NDR Bigband – Colouring Hockets

John Hollenbeck & NDR Bigband’s Colouring Hockets is built around a percussion quartet, and those percussionists are Hollenbeck joined by NDR percussionist Marcio Doctor along with Matt Moran and Patricia Brennan (yes, here she is again, what a year!). The combination of trap drums, extended percussion, vibraphone, marimba, and timpani is both adventurous and accessible, reminding me of Max Roach’s percussion experiments. Here’s a review at Making A Scene, which says that the imaginative percussion and writing make it “unlike any big band or even large ensemble effort you’ve heard.”

45-Meshell Ndegeocello – No More Water: The Gospel of James Baldwin

Link to purchase from Blue Note
Link to Apple Music

Meshell Ndegeocello’s wildly ambitious tribute to James Baldwin is a genre-blind mix of poetry and protest songs. Often, Ndegeocello will create an infectious groove, and they intentionally bend or usurp it in a brazenly experimental way – it’s brave and sometimes challenging music. Here’s the review at The Guardian.

46-The Rempis Percussion Quartet – Cochonnerie

I discovered saxophonist Dave Rempis from this album, where he and a band of bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten and two drummers (Frank Rosaly and Tim Daisy) patiently build fiery and propulsive riffs. I keep reading that I need to listen to Rempis’ Ballister—I’ll get to that soon. I’m not really in a rush; I’m enjoying this one so much.

47-Erik Friedlander – Dirty Boxing

I can’t think of any more spirited and simply fun album than cellist Friedlander’s Dirty Boxing, which sports uplifting and melodic themes played with swagger. Quite a band, too – Friedlander is supported by Uri Caine on piano, Mark Helias on bass and drummer Ches Smith

48-Elsa Nilsson – Atlas Of Sound – Quila Quina – -40​°​17​’​38​.​21​”​N, -71​°​45​’​68​.​48​”​S

I was a big fan of Nilsson’s Atlas of Sound Coast Redwoods (2022), which is patient, beautiful music. Quila Quina continues with more of the same—some of the most healing music and playing imaginable. TNB covered the album release concert in NYC that kicked off Elsa Nilsson’s tour.

49-Modney – Ascending Primes

Modney’s fascinating double-disc opus inspired my mid-year roundup of albums with strings. I feel like we’re entering a new era of cross-pollination between the “classical,” “new music,” and “jazz” worlds, where composed material and improvisation come together to pursue a similar aesthetic. Modney is at the vanguard of this revolution. Read my review here.

50-Ackley-Chen-Centazzo-DeGruttola-Kaiser-Manring – Two Views of Steve Lacy​’​s The Wire

Although I’m a massive Steve Lacy fan (check out my big Lacy-Mal Waldron post), I had never heard Lacy’s legendary album The Wire until this release made me seek it out. You can listen to the original on YouTube or at Inconstant SOL, where you can still get a download. After that, check out this cooperative album putatively led by guitarist (here on bass) Henry Kaiser. It takes inspiration from The Wire and interprets the material twice (hence, Two Views of The Wire).

(a Vintage Hitachi 3-band “Hiphonic” Transistor Radio – but any radio will do! Image Wikipedia Commons)

Readers of this blog will notice that I have not made any posts in over a month, which is the longest break in some time. Apologies, dear readers! However, I have been busy with another music-related project that will work into this blog and fuel more written content – I’ve started a new radio show! This show is called “Where is Brooklyn?” and is broadcast on WVKR, 91.3 FM Vassar Collage radio, broadcasting from Poughkeepsie throughout Duchess County, New York, and streaming worldwide at wvkr.org. The show broadcasts twice weekly for an hour, at 5 AM on Tuesday and 2 AM on Saturday. Yes, both are early in the morning in the eastern USA, but if you’re up, I’d love the company! And for our international readers, my show may fall right into your schedule and time zone.

Of course, the show’s name is inspired by Don Cherry’s classic album, recorded in 1966. Ornette Coleman wrote the liner notes to Where Is Brooklyn? and my show follows the advice of that oracle of the avant-garde: “the most rewarding state of today’s music is its newness, whatever its categories.”

The goals for my radio show are pretty similar to those of this blog – to explore improvisational music at the intersection of folkloric and “art” traditions, music that blurs genre distinctions, pushing expression into new forms. The show just hit episode ten, and I’ve been playing music that I loved in 2024, often — but not always — grouped around a theme. Recent shows explored electroacoustic music in 2024, the incredible releases this year on Clean Feed records, and new albums by indie-jazz pacesetter Kris Davis and multidisciplinary artist Rob Mazurek. Over the next few weeks, I plan on playing some of my favorite releases of 2024. On December 24th, you know I’ll be playing from An Ayler Xmas and paying tribute to the much-missed Mars Williams.  After that, I’m not sure where we’ll go next, but that’s all part of the fun. With this show, we’re on a quest for the new, the unexpected, the “sound of surprise” that only jazz can bring. I hope you’ll join me for the ride!.

As for The Necessary Blues, you’ll see much more content here very soon, starting with my year-end list for 2024 jazz and experimental music. After that, I plan to post on albums by the prolific Satoko Fujii, new ambient records, an update on my ongoing obsession with Pat Thomas’s music, more gig journals, and a much-delayed post on The Blue Notes. Stay tuned, both on the airwaves and at The Necessary Blues.

(a happy family tuning into Where Is Brooklyn? Won’t you join us?; Image Wikipedia Commons)

(Image from cover of Jazz Gallery flyer)

At the start of the second set at New York’s Jazz Gallery on October 16th, guitarist Miles Okazaki told the audience that for what they like in his playing, they should credit composer Thelonious Monk, “and what you don’t like,” Okazaki said, “you can blame me.” This humble comment set the tone for an evening-long meditation on Monk, whom Okazaki asserted is the greatest of all composers. For over five hours, broken into four sold-out sets, Okazaki played every one of Monk’s compositions, alone on solo guitar, from memory.

Just making it through everything felt like an incredible accomplishment. Okazaki, who also posts on Instagram about running, has himself made the analogy between a marathon and the act of surveying all 66 Monk compositions in one sitting. But while Okazaki’s Jazz Gallery concert was devoted to Monk, it also fully displayed all his strengths – the studied inventiveness with which he translates Monk’s music to guitar, his truly fertile imagination, and the sheer brilliance of his playing. By the time Okazaki finished the last chords of “Round Midnight” (at about 12:15 AM), I had both Monk’s themes and the sound of Okazaki’s guitar dancing in my head, a deep dive that was, for me, a singular experience.

To appreciate this accomplishment, it’s best to go back to Okazaki’s landmark 2018 recording of all the Monk tunes, Work. As Okazaki has stated in interviews and in that album’s excellent liner notes (which he wrote), the genesis of this six-disc recording came from discussions with fellow guitarist Steve Cardenas during Monk’s 2017 centennial year about how to translate Monk to guitar. Inspired to record all of Monk’s oeuvre on solo guitar, Okazaki developed rules for the project that kept the focus on Monk. He used just one guitar (an amplified 1978 Gibson ES-175 Charlie Christian), used no pedals, no overdubs, avoided reharmonizing Monk’s tunes, and focused his improvisations on the material provided by the compositions. Work is unlike any other Monk tribute album, an immersive experience that brings the listener into Monk’s sound world. The process for Work is integral to the result. The album was recorded over months and at home, where Okazaki would take just one of Monk’s tunes at a time, work on it until he was satisfied, and put it on tape. Work took the better part of a year to finish, and one of its charms is that each performance is a thorough and unique interpretation of the material.

Shortly after Work was released, Okazaki gave a podcast interview with Fretboard Journal and was asked if he had thought about performing the whole discography live in a concert. Sounding a little surprised by such a daunting challenge, he replied, “Maybe. . . if somebody gets me a gig, I’ll do it.” The Jazz Gallery must have been listening, because not many venues would have taken a chance on this type of concert. On October 16th, you could feel the anticipation in the air – the audience was unusually attentive, shying away from distracting iced drinks, not popping beer cans open, and not even sneaking a snapshot out of respect for the fact Frank Heath was filming the whole thing for future release. Jazz royalty was also in the house to bear witness – on the 16th, I saw Mary Halvorson, Tomas Fujiwara, and Caroline Davis in the audience for the first set, and Jacob Garchick sat right next to me for the last set. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an audience so raptly attentive: breaking the silence at the end of the first set, a woman remarked, “This show is intense!”

As you can imagine, there’s a lot to say about five hours of such heady and substantial music, so I’ll comment on the most singular things for me. Okazaki’s sound continuously struck me and felt like an ideal vehicle for presenting Monk. Okazaki has a rounded tone that is rhythmically assertive whether he plays with a pick or fingers, which allows the listener to appreciate Monk’s percussive and precise structures. My attention never flagged for a minute over four sets, something I can attribute as much to Monk’s durable music as Okazaki’s playing. The details of the interpretations were always fascinating, and when we get to see Frank Heath’s concert film, I’ll be interested to do back-to-back comparisons with the interpretations from the 2018 Work. To my ears, I heard a lot of changes that Okazaki has made with his approach to the material, a sign of his constant engagement, creativity, and/or willingness to give himself more license with this music. During the first set, Okazaki stretched out by playing the gloriously knotty “Skippy” with an extended intro of “Tea For Two,” a connection between the two songs that was only hinted at during Okazaki’s improvisation on the 2018 album version. Monk, who included a performance of a jazz standard on virtually every one of his albums, would surely have approved.

The confidence of Okazaki’s playing came through on the tunes that, to me (a non-guitarist, non-musician), seem especially formidable. The tricky double lines of “Epistrophy” bounced around authoritatively, and the demonic vamp of “I Mean You,” that comes from the big band version (and from Monk’s comping on the original recording), sounded electrifying. On Monk’s ultimate throwdown, “Brilliant Corners,” Okazaki played the repeat of the theme (in double time in the 1957 recording) at an impossibly fast tempo (triple time?). All these daring feats thrilled me, but the slower performances were just as commanding because you could soak in Monk’s connection to folkloric forms. Okazaki has made the point that the blues is essential to Monks’ language, ending each disc of Work with a Monk blues. Live, Okazaki’s performance of the blues – specifically “Bolivar Blues” – settled into a relaxed tempo with a lovely feel that had the crowd roaring applause. In a similar groove, Okazaki showed a subtle command of dynamics and tone with Freddy Green-like strumming on “Misterioso.” Other highlights were the evocative “extended” techniques that created ghostly harmonic effects on tunes like “Little Rootie Tootie,” “Pannonica,” and the exquisite “Ugly Beauty.” Okazaki’s range of approaches allowed me to soak in the enormous variety in Monk’s discography and to better see this music as a whole.

The fourth and last set on October 16 was especially magical, one of the most impressive performances I’ve ever seen, and one which I hope we’ll get to see in the future as it was filmed. The set started with an under-appreciated gem recorded only once by Monk, “Oska T.” Live at The Jazz Gallery, Okazaki brought a tone that convincingly replicated the blare of a big band on Monk’s live recording. With “Played Twice,” Okazaki said more with less, playing only the contours of the melody in a fascinating arrangement that made great use of dynamic contrasts. The angularity of “Boo Boo’s Birthday” was a nature fit for guitar. With each tune, the audience’s applause became more immediate, and Okazaki would cut right away into the next performance, building momentum through the set.

In an evening of music that loosely followed the eras Monk recorded his tunes, Okazaki saved six of his favorites for last, and the guitarist’s love of this music was more than evident. “Work” got an extended treatment, which suggested endless possibilities with the tune. “Nutty” featured a call and response between Monk’s singable melody and impressive interjections from Okazaki at the end of each phrase. The evening ended about a quarter after midnight, as I stated above, with “Round Midnight.” Okazaki told the audience, “you made it,” and after five hours, I felt as if we had completed a fascinating journey together. Okazaki interpolated several of Monk’s themes on the coda of Monk’s most famous tune, reminding the listener that this incredible body of work is interconnected and contains so many classic themes.

Since the concert, I have (delightfully) had little other than Monk melodies on my mind. One realization from an evening steeped in this music is that while Monk is famous for innovations in harmonics and gem-like compositions, Monk’s melodies are just as central to his genius. Part of the reason Monk is so loved is that each composition delivers every aspect of music at its optimum – composition stripped down to its essential elements, generative harmonic suggestions for improvising, structures that are both accessible and profound, and a rare element in modern music — pure singability. Monk has it all, as did the audience who had the privilege of experiencing Miles Okazaki play it all in one fabulous night. If you have the chance to see Okazaki play this material, don’t miss it!

(At The Jazz Gallery, Okazaki displayed copies of all his Monk LP’s that are his reference source and inspiration; photo James Koblin)

More Notes on Okazaki and Monk

The Monk Discography
There is some dispute about how many tunes Monk wrote. Okazaki recorded 70 of them on Work based on Steve Cardenas and Don Sickler, who published transcriptions of all of Monk for the first time in one place in their fake book. In a recent radio interview with Dave Lake on Evening Eclectic (WRUU 107.5 Savannah, GA), Okazaki said for The Jazz Gallery gigs he’s playing the 66 Monk tunes that have all the hallmarks of a composition, including repeated heads, rather than improvisations on the blues that pushed the Cardenas/Sickler transcriptions to 70 tunes. The interview with Lake is also an excellent review of Okazaki’s journey with Monk’s music and features live performances during the interview that you should check out. Highly recommend.

Keep Up With Okazaki
Okazaki has an excellent website that summarizes what he’s done and where he’s going. It also looks really great, not surprising given the emphasis Okazaki puts on visual art and its interaction with music.

Listen to Miniature America
Although the October 16th and 18th Jazz Gallery concerts and Work express Okazaki’s connection to Monk, it’s only one side of this artist’s creativity. For a completely different view of Okazaki, I recommend the recent album Miniature America, inspired by the “remarkable and mysterious” sculptures of Ken Price that Okazaki encountered on the trip to the West Coast. Okazaki is very much an interdisciplinary thinker, and he was inspired to create an album that would “relinquish the form of the final work to unpredictable variables.” There’s so much to say about this album, and I recommend reading Okazaki’s liner notes on his website, which I’ve briefly quoted above. I’ll simply say that these evocative miniatures remind me of the pleasure of discovering pebbles or shells at the beach, each one contrasting from the next, surprising and often delightful.

(Elsa Nilsson and the Band of Pulses in performance at Rizzoli; photo by James Koblin)

Sustaining performance spaces for creative music in New York City has always been challenging work, so it’s great to celebrate a new place to see live music. How perfect, then, to enjoy a well-attended concert of top-flight music at the beautiful Rizzoli Bookstore. On September 29th I had the pleasure of hearing Elsa Nilsson and her quartet, Band of Pulses, amidst the store’s glossy art books and high ceilings as part of the “Music Aperitivo” series hosted by Rizzoli in conjunction with Mondo Jazz. The early hit time on a Sunday (5 PM) and a complimentary glass of wine with a reasonable cover price make attendance here an easy sell. That seemed to have been the case at last Sunday’s concert, where a full house came out in spite of the rainy afternoon.

In his opening remarks at the concert, Mondo Jazz radio host and concert emcee Luigi Granvassu observed how Nilsson’s music fits well in the surroundings because of its connection to poetry. Nilsson and her band play music that explicitly incorporates poetry into composition and performance, not to mention the poetry of Nilsson’s sound itself. During the concert, she switched back and forth between a concert C flute and a larger bass flute, always with a rounded and complex sound and the resonant overtones that make the flute so naturally evocative. It’s an aesthetic that’s a pleasure to hear live.

My entry point for Nilsson’s music comes from her 2022 release with the geographically specific title Atlas Of Sound – Coast Redwoods – 41​°​32’09​.​8″N 124​°​04’35​.​5″W. I stumbled across this album on Bandcamp in mid-2022 without knowing anything about Nilsson. Seeing its “pay what you wish” price, I bought it and listened with no particular expectations. I remember being really moved by the quiet beauty of the music, which is based on improvisations Nilsson recorded during a post-pandemic trip to the Pacific Northeast. Coast Redwoods is the first of a planned series that creates “a long-form musical exploration of humanity’s connection to place.” It’s an album I can easily recommend because of the eloquence of the compositions and flute playing, as well as the strong connection between Nilsson’s flute playing and Jon Cowherd’s piano.

In concert at Rizzoli, Nilsson didn’t play anything from Coast Redwoods, but instead, she and her band performed the first half of the forthcoming second edition of the “Atlas Of Sound” series, out on October 11, 2024. Based on what I heard performed from Quila Quina – -40​°​17​’​38​.​21​”​N, -71​°​45​’​68​.​48​”​S, there’s just as much haunting beauty as its predecessor. During the concert, Nilsson explained that the continuing inspiration of this music is in the sounds and rhythms of nature, this time from her trip to the Patagonian region of Argentina. The four compositions she and her band played from this album find inspiration in bird songs, the medicinal properties of plants, and the calm, serene lake where Nilsson stayed. I’m pretty excited about this new release. Check it out next Friday!

But the revelation for me during the Rizzoli set was Nilsson’s ambitious long-form composition Pulses, a forty-minute piece that comprised the majority of the concert. Nilsson built the composition  Pulses around the voice of Maya Angelou in her poem “On The Pulse of Morning,” which Dr. Angelou famously read at President Bill Clinton’s 1993 inauguration. Introducing Pulses to the audience, Nilsson said she was able to purchase the rights to use Angelou’s poem, and together with her band, she developed music based on the pitches of Dr. Angelou’s voice. During the performance of this work, Nilsson would periodically use a pedal to trigger a sample of Dr. Angelou reading “On The Pulse of Morning,” over which the band would play unison parts that highlighted the rich musicality and still-relevant meaning of a poem about how America can find a hopeful future despite the “wrenching pain” of history. Pulses brought out an exciting side of Nilsson’s playing; while on the “Atlas of Sound” material, her playing is attractive and melodic, on Pulses, her flutes were much more aggressive, with an often thrilling attack.

There was also plenty of space for the band to shine, and everyone made great solo statements. Santiago Leibson plays the piano in the recording of Pulses and the new “Atlas of Sound,” but as Rizzoli doesn’t have a piano, he played keyboards at the concert. Nothing felt amiss, however, and in his playing, I heard kernels of melody that he would develop into convincing solo statements. The bassist, Marty Kenney, and drummer, Rodrigo Recabarren, also played wonderfully (I liked the bass solo Kenny played in mid-set), but the band’s togetherness was the real star. This band developed and composed the Pulses material together and played the unison parts with the authoritativeness that comes from a deep connection to the material, and also moved easily between the written and improvised sections. It’s a great band. For a sample from the concert, check out this video, which captures one of Nilsson’s solos. If you have the chance to see Nilsson and her band perform Pulses, don’t miss the opportunity; it’s a remarkable work that is just extraordinary live. You can also purchase the recording from Bandcamp. Nilsson and her Band of Pulses are on tour right now, with stops in the next month in California, Arizona, and back in New York on 10/23 at ShapeShifter Lab (in a double bill with Brad Shepik), and next month on 11/23 at Lydia’s Jazz Cafe in Stone Ridge.

After the show, I spoke to Nilsson about Pulses, and she told me that the inspiration was from the musical quality of Angelou’s voice, whose phrasing reminded her of Ornette Coleman’s melodies. Nilsson also mentioned John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme, one of the definitive examples of connecting the voice and jazz playing in a suite form. In both the “Atlas” volumes and Pulses, Nilsson’s music emphasizes interconnectedness – between nature and humanity and between the voice, the word, and her playing. This music acts as an agent to bond, heal, and make the universe a little bigger. At Rizzoli Bookstore, these were connections that the audience could hear, participate in, and feel the power of music to heighten feeling and awareness of the world.

Nilsson Notes, More Mondo Jazz and Maya Angelou

Elsa Nilsson on the Web
Nilsson has a very complete website where you can keep up with everything she’s doing. Her albums are available on Bandcamp for extremely reasonable prices, showing how much she wants to share this music with you. As I mentioned above, but will repeat here – Nilsson has a new album coming out this Friday, October 11 – Quila Quina – -40​°​17​’​38​.​21​”​N, -71​°​45​’​68​.​48​”​S. Based on the portion of the music she played at Rizzoli, I can tell you it’s gorgeous.

Catch the next “Music Aperitivo”
I again recommend checking out this excellent series of concerts at Rizzoli. The next one will be on October 20, a tribute to Federico Fellini and Nino Rota as well as the 60th anniversary of Rizzoli. The link for the concert is here.

Listen to Mondo Jazz
“Music Aperitivo” is the brainchild of Luigi Granvassu, who also hosts the Mondo Jazz radio show on internet station Radio Free Brooklyn. Mondo Jazz airs every Wednesday from 10 PM to Midnight, where Granvassu plays new and recent jazz albums. His show is especially invaluable for its focus on European jazz, which otherwise does not get much notice in the United States, and Granvassu is an expert on that scene. I can’t tell you how many artists and albums I’ve discovered through his show – you should listen. If you can’t catch Mondo Jazz live, the shows are posted in podcast form a week later (usually how I listen). Here is the link to Mondo Jazz on Apple Podcasts.

More Maya Angelou
I only vaguely remember Dr. Angelou reading “On The Pulse of Morning” at the 1993 Clinton inauguration, so it was a blast to revisit this moment in history. Angelou was the first African American and first woman to read a poem at a Presidential inauguration, and her style of clear declarative oration is remarkable – I’ve watched this clip several times. Here’s a link to the poem’s full text, a valuable aid to enjoying Nilsson’s masterful Pulses. I’m no expert on Angelou’s work, which makes me really grateful to Nilsson for her multidisciplinary creation – it opens doors for the listener that may have not been opened before.

It’s been an exceptional year so far for jazz and experimental albums (see my mid-year round-up), but even amidst that bounty, I’m most excited about Patricia Brennan’s Breaking Stretch, out this Friday, September 6th, on Pyroclastic Records. Brennan is one of the most notable jazz musicians around and has been an essential side person in the bands of Mary Halvorson and Tomas Fujiwara, as well as on albums by Stephan Crump, Alan Braufman, Matt Mitchell, and many others. But as great as her side person work is, Brennan’s leader records are the ones I’m obsessing over. Her first album, 2021’s Maquishti, introduced Brennan’s rich and percussive sound on solo vibraphone and marimba and documented her experimental streak where she tweaks the vibraphone with subtle electronic effects. Maquishti is a luminous tour de force that contains mystery and rhythmic complexity. With her follow-up a year later, More Touch, Brennan expanded on the rhythms in her debut with a quartet of her vibraphone plus Marcus Gilmore on trap drums, Mauricio Herrera on persuasion, and Kim Cass on bass. It’s an album that presents music woven into a complex but introverted dance, where no one line dominates the others. More Touch is a feast for headphone listeners where you dance in your mind.

With Breaking Stretch, Brennan builds on the well-developed sound of the More Touch quartet by adding three horns – Adam O’Farrill on trumpet, Mark Shim on tenor saxophone, and Jon Irabagon on alto and sopranino saxophones. The music of Breaking Stretch still has the dense complexity and heady compositional ideas of its two predecessors, but the addition of horns coincides with a shift in attitude – where Maquishti centered a meditative quietude and More Touch glowing introverted rhythms, Breaking Stretch takes an exciting extroverted turn. The rhythms now loudly proclaim themselves, and Breaking Stretch not only dances, but also burns.

There’s so much to discuss about this album, but a few things stand out to me. Right away, you can hear the intricate writing for the three horns. For example, on the title track, those horns play the tune’s melody while elaborately embroidering the melodic line, tugging at the melody in hypnotic patterns. “Breaking Stretch” features several sections where the horns play beautifully written material, often framed by voicings that seem spontaneous. I’m not sure I can tell the some of the written material from the improvisations, surely a sign of a group with the talent and the permission from their leader to stretch out. The arrangements throughout Breaking Stretch give the group an outsized, vibrant footprint – Brennan states in the liner notes she is “asking the horn players to explore the outer edges of their sonic envelopes,” which “gives the illusion of a larger-than-seven sound.” Brennan seeks to “push sonic boundaries up-to-but-not-over the tipping point, while staying true to the inherent nature of the music.” The result sounds truly assured in every way.

The musicians sound particularly inspired in this context, and rise to the highest level. This music trades heavily in percussion — the playing of Marcus Gilmore and Mauricio Herrera sound as if they are one, and their beats play a crucial role in organizing the nuanced music. For an example of their simpatico playing, check out the incredible last three minutes of “Palo de Oros (Suit of Coins),” or better yet, the video of that performance by Frank Heath. Bassist Kim Cass supports the rhythms with a dynamic tone that sounds like an electric bass, but you’ll see in the Frank Heath video that he’s playing an upright, which shows that Cass can do anything. Listening closely to Cass’s bass lines is rewarding; his playing is always on the move, simultaneously playing rhythmically and melodically and providing urgency at every step.

The extroverted personality of Breaking Stretch really highlights the horn players, who are all incredible. Adam O’Farrill’s trumpet plays a brilliant high end, and he adds electronic effects to his playing on three tracks. It took me multiple listens to figure out that the menacing sound at 1:40 into the opening track is O’Farrill’s trumpet with electronics – mysterious and amazing! The prolific Jon Irabagon plays with his typical fire, taking solos that push all kinds of boundaries throughout, both on alto sax and sopranino. I have to give a special mention to Mark Shim. Frankly, I have not heard his playing since the album New Directions, which came out 24 years ago. What a revelation to listen to Shim now! His husky tenor sax tone contrasts with the brighter tone of the other players, and the flow of his solos sounds very alive and in the moment, with a spontaneity that reminds me a bit of Joe Henderson. Yes, that’s high praise – Shim is incredible here, and I really hope he will record and play more often.

As for the leader, her playing here is as remarkable as always. The sound of her vibraphone playing is magnetic, often surreal, and I especially love the marimba solo on “Mudanza (States of Change),” which calls back to the beauty of Maquishti. But the revelation here, even more than Brennan’s playing, is the depth of her writing, concept, arranging, and bandleading. For her compositions, Brennan draws on many sources of inspiration, often explicitly intellectual, emotional, and musical. For example, “Sueños de Coral Azul (Blue Coral Dreams)” paints a musical portrait of an immigrant’s journey, depicting the mixture of feelings when leaving one’s home and creating a new one. Other songs find sources of inspiration in poetry, astronomy and astrology, sculpture, and psychology. At the same time,  the music is rooted in fascinating musicological concerns. “555” is a play on repetitions of the number five, which divides the composition and meter into groups of five elements. “Palo de Oros (Suit of Coins)” takes the shape of the pentacle from the game of the song’s title and uses that as inspiration for its rhythmic structure. Brennan states that the title track “juxtaposes binary and ternary feels, creating the illusion of constriction and dilation coexisting within the same space.” The brilliance of this set of compositions is that they allow for multiple entry points for listeners and also have the depth to keep you coming back again for more.

Breaking Stretch continues an exciting narrative in Brennan’s leader discography. Maquishti, More Touch, and now Breaking Stretch form a unified whole as well as a dynamic narrative. These albums document a growing aesthetic, advanced conceptual ideas, and the creation of one of the world’s most exciting working groups. With Breaking Stretch, Patricia Brennan has established herself as one of the most accomplished leaders in improvised music, one who has a specific vision, can write compelling tunes, and has realized that vision with the perfect musicians. It’s time to celebrate this moment by seeing this music live (in New York, that’s tomorrow at Nublu). This is music of the mind has now been lit up with an incredible fire; time to move the tables apart and dance!

More notes on Brennan and Breaking Stretch:

Bandcamp Friday!
Don’t forget that Breaking Stretch releases on Bandcamp Friday (9/6/2024). In addition to this excellent album, you’ll want to support your favorite artists on the day the biggest chunk of your purchase goes directly to the creator. After you’ve listened to Breaking Stretch, I recommend you check out new albums by its musicians. You can start with the new album by trumpet player Adam O’Farrill, HUESO, where O’Farrill gets to show his lyrical gift and features his very simpatico Stranger Days quartet. It’s a great release. You can also check out sax player Jon Irabagon, who always has several new records out. Just in July, he put out Blue Hour, a duet with Brian Marsella on keyboards, Dinner & Dancing, a live date from 2023 with the great quartet of Mark Helias, Barry Altschul, and Uri Caine supporting Irabagon’s battery of saxes, and I Don’t Hear Nothin’ but the Blues Volume 3 Part 2: Exuberant Scars, another live date with percussionist Mike Pride and the two guitars of Mick Barr and Ava Mendoza. Excellent stuff, and keep an eye on Irabagon’s label; when you come back, something new will surely be waiting for you. Finally, bassist Kim Cass recently released Levs on Pi Records, an album of intricate rhythmic explorations set against moody voicings. Cass, Matt Mitchell, and Tyshawn Sorey set a new standard for virtuosity here. Don’t forget to check out these outstanding releases!

Videos by Frank Heath
It’s always a revelation to see music being created in action, so the video that Frank Heath has made for the opening single “Palo de Oros (Suit of Coins)” offers a great insight into how this band works, especially the dynamic rhythmic interplay of the percussion. Heath also made a very different video for the second single, “Earendel,” which imaginatively captures the essence of a song about the furthest star from the Earth.

Interviews with Brennan!
To prepare for this piece, I read a number of terrific interviews with Brennan, which I recommend for further exploration of this great artist. I would start with the recent interview at Burning Ambulance, where Brennan composed thoughtful responses to written questions. Last year, Troy Collins at Point of Departure did an interview with Brennan that went into detail about her inspiration for an exploratory approach to sound, for which she credits groundbreaking drummer Evelyn Glennie. The longest and most thorough interview with Brennan is at Dada Strain, where Brennan talks at length about the vibraphone and marimba, her approach to playing, how she developed her sound, her writing process, and her relation to the tradition. Also, check out the fun Downbeat blindfold test, where Brennan insightfully breaks down music thrown at her with no prep!

Definitive Solo Vibes
I keep returning to Brennan’s debut album as a leader, Maquishti. If you haven’t heard Maquishti and hear either Breaking Stretch or More Touch first, you may be surprised what a quiet, peaceful listen Maquishti is. It’s just solo vibraphone and marimba, with Brennen playing material that relies on sound and space with subtly deployed rhythmic ideas. It’s an album that demands some patience from the listener but pays it back many times over, as they say. It’s a modern classic, and I can’t recommend Maquishti highly enough. Plus, you can still get the vinyl at Bandcamp – my copy is below!

Sorry if I’m a bit late getting to a mid-year round-up post since we’re already hurtling towards the end of the summer. However, it’s still a good time to look back at the bounty of albums we’ve had in the first half of 2024. I recently had the opportunity to vote in the Francis Davis Mid-Year Jazz Critics Poll, published at The Arts Fuse. It is a tremendous honor to be among the knowledgeable and amazing critics and journalists invited to vote, and it’s a great experience to help recognize the incredible music released in the first half of 2024. So that invite (thank you, Tom Hull!) and the exercise of picking just ten albums has inspired this mid-year album round-up.

The poll results mirror my excitement for a half-year deep in exceptional music. I knew a lot of the albums on the Francis Davis/Arts Fuze results, and others were new to me – so far, everything has been great, and I do recommend them all. What differentiates the albums at the top of my list and the top of the poll results is really a matter of taste, not quality. Of course, fandom is closely intertwined with advocacy; every listener wants the music close to their heart to be pushed to the top, and the whole world to love their heroes. So with those thoughts, I’m glad that more listeners will hear my #1 album, Tomeka Reid’s fabulous 3+3, and my #2, Blues for Wood, by the one-of-a-kind avant-garde powerhouse that is [Ahmed]. (Reid is #5 on the Arts Fuse list; [Ahmed] is represented both by the multi-disc Giant Beauty at #10 and my pick, Wood Blues, at #44.)

On the other hand, I think the brilliant Illimitable by Matt Mitchell should have ranked higher (only #46 on the Arts Fuse list with two voters). For me, the most sorely overlooked album is David Leon’s Bird’s Eye (which came in at #55) – no album sounds like it, and had I known the poll results beforehand, I might have been tempted to vault it to #1 on my list. Make sure you listen to it! Also absent from the top 50 are my #7, #8, and #9 picks, but you can read more about them below. But as I said above, in such a strong year, your list and my list will surely look different, and it’s easy to change one’s rankings – it probably changes every day.

So, without further ramblings, here’s my list. Happy listening!

1. Tomeka Reid Quartet, 3+3 (Cuneiform)

What makes an album your favorite? Although Reid 3+3 is uniformly captivating, what puts it to #1 for me is the album’s centerpiece, “Sauntering With Mr. Brown.” Reid’s pizzicato cello opens the tune with a hushed tone that is equally lyrical and beguiling. As the band joins, the center of the music becomes the incredible chemistry between Reid and guitarist Mary Halvorson. Their exchanges are the highlight of 3+3, and I gave the nod to this album rather than Halvorson’s excellent Cloudward because of the pure magic created here by two great improvisers.

2. [Ahmed] – Blues for Wood (Astral Spirits)

Blues for Wood provides the most convincing documentation of one of the world’s greatest live bands – pianist Pat Thomas, saxophonist Seymour Wright, drummer Antonin Gerbal, and bassist Joel Grip play as one, soloing collectively in an orgasmic eruption. Now, you can be there, on your headphones or in your speakers. Recorded live at the North Sea Jazz Festival in 2022, [Ahmed] howls and screams with their instruments over their interpretation of Ahmed Abdul-Malek’s “Blues for Wood.” A vocal and transported audience also howls and screams, almost a fifth band member. What do we need to have Thomas come to New York? Maybe a GoFundMe? Calling all fans, let’s make it happen!

3. Matt Mitchell, Illimitable (Obliquity)

The two discs of Matt Mitchell’s Illimitable are an incredible journey. The opening title track is the most concise at 14 minutes of harmonically bewildering cycles that bring Andrew Hill’s Smokestack to mind. From there, Mitchell’s far-ranging mind and fingers take us on a trip through three more expansive tracks (the longest is alone album length) that explore fascinating ideas not beholden to any one set of influences. ‘Free’ in the best sense – hear something truly new being created. Mitchell says, “all this music is 100% improvised, one take, no edits.”

4. David Leon, Bird’s Eye (Pyroclastic)

David Leon Bird’s Eye is one-of-a-kind, in no small part due to the sound of DoYeon Kim’s gayagum. The zither-like string instrument is the core element of Bird’s Eye, and sometimes sounds like a harp, sometimes a guitar, but always striking and new. In Kim’s hands, the gayagum creates an astonishingly flexible rhythmic counterpoint, sketches structural elements of the music, makes gorgeous solo statements, and creates lovely ornamentation. Bird’s Eye also features varied and imaginative playing from Leslie Mok, both on the trap kit and extended percussion. Often, Kim and Mok seem like they are the focus of Bird’s Eye, but don’t let David Leon’s humility fool you; on alto, soprano, and flute, Leon’s tone is commanding, and his ideas are fascinating. Bird’s Eye engages the mind and soul with each listen – it’s #4 on my list right now; maybe it’ll be #1 by the end of the year? Also, please check out the archived Roulette performance of Leon’s incredible collaboration with puppeteer Yuliya Tsukerman, A Divine Echo.

5. David Murray Quartet, Francesca (Intakt)

David Murray is back and better than ever! I remember Gary Giddens comparing Murray’s sax playing to Niagara Falls, and I’ve always remembered that image – nobody’s playing is as voluble, overwhelming, and dumbfounding. With Francesca, Murray presents his music in the quartet format that has always been where he gets to stretch out into galvanic flights of sax fervor. Same as it always was. The difference here is the piano chair, where Marta Sanchez provides Murray’s best foil since his salad days with John Hicks or Don Pullen. Sanchez’s comping spells Murray beautifully, and when she solos, she paints luminescent patterns from the keyboard.

6. Amirtha Kidambi’s Elder Ones, New Monuments (We Jazz)

No album of the year 2024 felt more of the moment than New Monuments. Kidambi’s singing interrogates power while evoking an incredible soundscape. Repeat listens reveal just what a ferocious band the Elders Ones is, each player combining into an earth-shaking whole. Check out more on this album in a piece written for the Vassar Miscellany News by The Necessary Blues co-founder Jesse Koblin.

7. Christopher Hoffman, Vision Is the Identity (Out of Your Head)

I’ve written about Hoffman’s Vision Is the Identity twice this year—check out my reviews of this fantastic album here and here. Hoffman’s cello and electronic mini-opus is elevated by great guest soloists and is one of the most concise and potent albums I’ve heard this year.

8. Vinnie Sperrazza Apocryphal, Sunday (Loyal Label)

Sperrazza has two recent and terrific albums, Saturday (2023) and Sunday (2024), which I wrote about here. Last year’s Saturday is a beautiful showcase for Ethan Iverson – lyrical, deep, and fun. Sunday by Vinnie Sperrazza’s Apocryphal has the same lyricism and confidence but adds an attractive bite, especially from Brandon Seabrooks’ wild guitar and banjo. Sperrazza recently gigged with the Apocryphal band; I couldn’t make it, unfortunately. Keep your eyes peeled.

9. Nick Dunston, Colla Voce (Out of Your Head)

In our recent review of string music at TNB, I called Colla Voca “dense and hallucinatory” and said that its string writing has a physicality that “makes sound tactile.” Dunston is a deep thinker and ambitious conceptualist, and Colla Voca is his most impressive album yet. I’m intrigued by the LP album of remixes (which I have not yet heard)—check it out here.

10. Borderlands Trio [Stephan Crump-Kris Davis-Eric McPherson], Rewilder (Intakt)

So far in 2024, two albums have taken on the considerable task of redefining the hallowed piano trio – Matthew Shipp’s New Concepts in Piano Jazz and Rewilder from the Borderlands Trio. For me, Borderlands gets the nod for pure imagination, and the courage to go deep with 20-minute-long performances spread out over two CDs. Keep your headphones on – it’s deep and immersive.

REISSUES/ARCHIVAL:

1. Sonny Rollins, Freedom Weaver: The 1959 European Tour Recordings (recorded 1959, Resonance)

Everybody knows the best Sonny is live. The material collected on Freedom Weaver was previously only available as coveted bootlegs of the legendary nine-day, five-country European tour. Resonance Records has cleaned up the sound and presented the music with a 56-page book and interviews, including with Rollins. The music is the main thing—almost every tune has some revelation where the tenor takes flight into a rhapsody that only Rollins can do. Essential.

2. Alice Coltrane, The Carnegie Hall Concert (recorded 1971, Impulse!)

Link to Apple Music
Link to Spotify
The Alice Coltrane revival continues with the strikingly beautiful Carnegie Hall Concert. The music shows the incredible range of Coltrane’s music, from ecstatic beauty to the avant-garde fire that she helped create with her late husband. Check out the excellent review written by Hank Shteamer for Pitchfork.

3. Emahoy Tsegue Maryam Gebru, Souvenirs(recorded 1977-85, Mississippi)

Newly released music by Emahoy Tsegue Maryam Gebru is something to celebrate – it radiates unparalleled centeredness and peace. Check out this blog’s appraisal of Emahoy’s music written on the occasion of her 99th birthday.

4. Mal Waldron & Steve Lacy, The Mighty Warriors: Live in Antwerp (recorded 1995, Elemental Music)

Link to Purchase CD at Bandcamp (not a digital release)
Our deep dive into the music of Steve Lacy and Mal Waldron aimed to create a context for appreciating this 1995 album of newly released music. The Mighty Warriors: Live in Antwerp shows Waldron and Lacy playing equal parts Monk and originals with the superb rhythm section of bassist Reggie Workman and drummer Andrew Cyrille. This is an important release, and as I wrote about, there’s more of this band in the can that needs an official release.

5. Charles Gayle-Milford Graves-William Parker, WEBO (recorded 1991, Black Editions Archive)

Gayle/Graves/Parker is the perfect free jazz trio; WEBO does not disappoint. I remember seeing Gayle in a duo with William Hooker at the long-defunct Cooler, and I’ve never forgotten that sound. WEBO is a great reminder and an essential document for those who didn’t have the opportunity to see Gayle live.

Not your ordinary violins, violas, and cellos

(Modney pictured; photo from video by Frank Heath)

Maybe it was seeing Marshall Allen and the Sun Ra Arkestra play “Holiday for Strings” at NYC Summerstage, but I’ve had strings on my mind with the coming of summer. And yes, I know “Holiday for Strings” was conceived by Ra as a piece with no strings, but there’s been such a wealth of great new releases featuring violinists, violists, and cellists that it’s a great excuse to focus on string music. It’s time for picnics and summer holidays, which make me think of music, but the strings below likely won’t be playing at your next family barbecue (although maybe they should be😉). So here’s our first volume celebrating the power and lively dissonance of strings!

Modney – Ascending Primes

Since moving to NYC in 2007, violinist and composer Josh Modney (now simply Modney) has been part of an artistic space rooted in modern classical music but strongly influenced by jazz and improvisational music practices. With Ascending Primes, Modney plugs in and becomes a rock star. You experience this transformation right away on “Ascender,” the opening track of this two-disc collection. Modney’s solo violin plays a soaring unamplified theme, but a minute in, Modney hits the distortion pedal, and from that point, “Ascender” alternates between acoustic violin phrases and buzzing in-your-face feedback. The effect is bold and, yes, electrifying. Modney returns to his pedal throughout Ascending Primes; dramatic distortion tags the end of “Everything Around It Swells,” and “Fragmentation and the Single Form” is bookended by two amped violins. The last three minutes of that composition may be the most overt rock moment of the album, one that wouldn’t be out of place with a noisy punk or shoegaze band.

But while noise is an important element of Ascending Primes, it’s only one part of a varied and sophisticated program, and there are plenty of quiet moments and music of great beauty. In an excellent interview on the radio show Evening Eclectic (where disc jockey Dave Lake also spins the whole album), Modney states his goal is to expand the continuum of music from consonance to dissonance by employing both equal and just temperament systems. This gives him the widest palette of harmonic possibilities and the greatest range of expression. Ascending Primes brilliantly juxtaposes these elements: for example, in what Modney calls the “heart center” of “Fragmentation and the Single Form,” lovely cornet playing by Ben LaMar Gay and wordless vocals by Charmaine Lee contrast the noise that bookends the piece. The quintet “Everything Around It Moves” is introduced by aggressive intervallic strings that transition into a gentle theme expressively played by violist Kyle Armbrust, and behind that, evocative colors from the piano of Cory Smythe. Even Modney’s solo performance that opens the album carefully reveals contrasting elements – the center of the performance features rich and consonant whole tones that are a far cry from the burning noise elements that Modney also embraces. Ascending Primes is deep in contrasts between consonance and dissonance, beauty and cacophony, and composed and improvised spaces. It’s a rich album that demands and rewards multiple listens, and I’ve been coming back again and again.

One of the points that Modney makes in an interview with PostGenre is that New York City has become the home to a unique cross-pollination between musicians associated with “jazz” and those who play “modern classical” or “new music.” Ascending Primes is a perfect distillation of this exciting and fertile environment. It features music that moves easily in the spaces between these worlds and employs musicians who convincingly erase any boundaries. There’s a lot more to say about this remarkable album, and I can direct you not only to the Dave Lake and PostGenre interviews but also to a review of this album by the always-insightful Peter Margasak. Ascending Primes presents stimulating and deeply conceived music with perfect execution and presentation from all involved.

Paula Sanchez – S​ó​lo un pasaje

If you found Modney’s use of an amped violin as thrilling as I did and want to hear that approach carried to its extreme, you should listen to Paula Sanchez’s new S​ó​lo un pasaje. Sanchez is a cello player based in Switzerland whose bio says her music is “situated at the intersections of experimental music, free improvisation, and performance art.” In her notes to this release, Sanchez says, “I would like to think of sound as a passage, an endless transition. . . A path that shows itself as it is traveled.” That philosophy typifies a release that is a snapshot into both an artistic process and what it may be like to experience this music live.

S​ó​lo un pasaje consists of improvised solo performances recorded at two different venues. The first track, “Solo at Cave 12,” begins quietly enough, with the use of lots of space and spare amplified pizzicato over an arco drone. The music steadily builds until 15 minutes in, when Sanchez has added layers of earth-shaking noise and distortion that could frighten the neighbors. The next track, “Solo at Tobe Gallery,” is half the length and dives right into the chaos and dissonance from the start. S​ó​lo un pasaje is not subtle and does not aim to be – it’s about the visceral experience of totally out, freely improvised music. Hearing this live might just be the ticket – so get yours now to see Sanchez with Fred Frith at Cafe Oto on October 20th – a great reason to jump on a plane to London.

James Díaz (with Julia Jung Un Suh) – [speaking in a foreign language]

After all the intensity and noise from Modney and Paula Sanchez, you may need a breather. Composer James Díaz has just released an album of cool, ethereal, and mysterious music based on violin with electronics. The Philadelphia-based Díaz has composed scores for internationally renowned orchestras, as well as written chamber and solo works. For his first solo album, Díaz operates in a quieter realm; on [speaking in a foreign language] Julia Jung Un Suh plays solo violin music, to which Díaz applies electronic processing in real-time and also later in the editing process. The result is one of the most unique albums I’ve heard this year.

Both the music and the process are fascinating. Díaz uses his electronic kit to modify the pitches and sound of Jung Un Suh’s violin, allowing you to simultaneously experience the natural sound of the acoustic instrument with its deep well of associations and a ghost-like mirror image that is uncanny and new. The effect is jarring, beautiful, and subtly trance-inducing. The novel soundscape allows Jung Un Suh to play very melodic material that also has a faint air of menace and is never trite. As the album unfolds, Díaz shifts the mix subtly towards the electronic elements; eventually, those electronics swallow the violin altogether, and [speaking in a foreign language] ends with a hall-of-mirrors effect of eerie echoes and static, warbles and blips. Díaz has created a unique enmeshing of acoustic sounds and modern digital effects – it’s also the perfect late-night listen!

Nick Dunston – Colla Voce

I also keep returning to bassist Nick Dunston’s Colla Voce, which combines disparate elements to create something layered, complex, and utterly fantastic. Right away, you can judge if this is for you – the opening track, “Ova’churr,” is a sound collage that compresses the album’s sonic material into a dense and hallucinatory minute and a half. Then, “Designated Antagonist” introduces the sound of the JACK string quartet, whose approach is the central element of Colla Voce. JACK contributes a wide and nonconventional palette of sounds. For example, volleys of streaking strings shoot between your speakers on the opening to “Blinding, Joyous, Fearful.” Elsewhere, percussive string effects segue into a low growling drone on “Lo and Behold.” There is one startling example after another of the JACK quartet sounding nothing like any chamber group you’ve heard.

But that’s only part of the sonic elements Dunston uses to create the tapestry of Colla Voce. He also employs an ensemble in Berlin (where Dunston lives), which augments the JACK quartet, adding cello, guitar, drums, and another violin (played by Maria Reich – more on her below), along with Dunston’s bass. The tracks recorded in Berlin also add four vocalists – Cansu Tanrıkulu, Sofia Jernberg, Isabel Crespo Pardo, and Friede Merz – who deliver wildly innovative wordless vocals that capture the album’s themes of surrealism, the subjective view of reality, and subverting musical forms. Dunston calls it an “anti-opera.” Then, on top of all that, Dunston adds processing with the help of producer Weston Olencki, creating a heady brew of music that is simultaneously disorienting and enthralling. When I first listened to Colla Voce, I had to turn it off because there was just too much to absorb. After multiple listens, I’m coming to understand more of what’s going on. What has grabbed me the most are the radical experiments in string writing, where the physicality of the playing makes sound tactile. Each time I put Colla Voce on, it gets better and richer.

Maria Reich – INTERDEPENDENZEN

Violinist Maria Reich is one of the core players on Nick Dunston’s Colla Voce. If you love the strings on that album, Reich’s new album INTERDEPENDENZEN is a great way to spend more time appreciating the range of sounds and approaches that the violin (or, on two tracks here, the viola) is capable of. I’m not sure whether INTERDEPENDENZEN is so rewarding in spite of, or because of, its humble process: Reich assembled the album from solo field recordings made using her iPhone. Like the best field recordings, the player and the instrument are only part of the story – the lo-fi sound expressively captures the sonic qualities of the spaces where the recordings were made, and the approach gains impact from the haze of reverb in the sound space that creates an aura around the playing.

Nothing here is by chance, and Reich’s imaginative playing and organized concepts are always clear. The first track of INTERDEPENDENZEN sounds at first like it comes from a more conventional violin recital, but by the end of “Ent-täuschen,” Reich explores a range of approaches to melodic material and to sound itself. The pizzicato playing of “Spiegelungen” sounds like raindrops; the third track, “The Fabric,” appropriately sounds like paper tearing. I especially love the “World in(forms) us,” built around a descending theme that you could imagine being played by a string orchestra, but here presented humbly and winningly as a soft pizzicato quietly played near the violin’s bridge. Sometimes (well, pretty often) “experiments” in sound can bore the listener, but not on INTERDEPENDENZEN. Reich uses simple low-tech tools to create fascinating sonic worlds. I initially had this music on in the background, and it kept diverting my attention from other things – a sign of a captivating approach as well as deep ideas.

Janel Leppin – Ensemble Volcanic Ash: To March Is To Love

The 2022 self-titled release Ensemble Volcanic Ash was one of that year’s best albums, recognized at Bandcamp, JazzTimes, and here at The Necessary Blues. That album stood out for a sound that centered bandleader Janel Leppin’s cello in the context of a unique group of harp, guitar, tenor and alto sax, bass, and drums. With the new To March Is To Love, Leppins’ group is now a septet without Kim Sator’s harp, but the music and playing have lost none of their potency. In a recent interview, Leppin says, ‘I tried to make things a little more concise. . . I omitted a lot of improvisation on this recording, which I don’t like to do, but I also like to vary records.” There’s still plenty of solo space, but that conciseness lends power to the music, most prominently on the album’s use of muscular pedal point played by Leppin’s cello. At times, Leppin’s cello carries the bottom end, while Luke Stewart’s bass solos over the cello line, and other times, vice versa. None of the players dominate the group sound, but there’s plenty of opportunity to take the spotlight; Sarah Hughes takes a great solo on “Oh Johnny Dear,” and Brian Settles’ powerful tone is a crucial element of the title track and “Tennessee’s A Drag.” Another mark of maturity is the restraint with which Anthony Pirog’s guitar is deployed as part of the fabric of the written themes. All the more impact when Pirog takes center stage – don’t miss the smoking guitar solo on “Union Art.” Above all, the combination of the powerful ensemble sound and Leppin’s great original compositions and arrangements make To March Is To Love a winner.

Janel and Anthony – New Moon In The Evil Age

Released on the same day as To March Is To Love, New Moon In The Evil Age is a new double album from Leppin and her husband Anthony Pirog, who record as Janel and Anthony. This much anticipate release is their first music together as Janel and Anthony since 2012’s Where Is Home. The press kit for New Moon In The Evil Age states that they create “original music with a clairvoyance that their other projects cannot approach,” a claim I can’t dispute based on the terrific and varied sounds on this project. Disc one contains duets where Leppin’s cello and Pirog’s guitar shadow each other beautifully. On the second track, “Boom Boom,” Leppin plays koto, a practice that she says has influenced her cello playing. I especially like the tribute to jaime branch, “jaime’s Song,” which is built around an appropriately moving cello line with strumming counterpoint from Pirog. “Rhizome,” another highlight, is named after the DC club, a crucial gestation place for much of this music, and features truly soaring cello and guitar. I was struck by what a unified and convincing listening experience the first disc of New Moon In The Evil Age is – and I think you can hear what a labor of love it is too.

After the mellow vibe of the “New Moon” disc, it was a real surprise when the first track of disc two opens with a drum machine and Leppin’s singing. With bassist Devin Hoff joining Leppin and Pirog and percussion added from Dr. Ali Analouei, “Surf the Dead” sounds very much like a new wave pop song. The liner notes call this “synth-driven layered avant-pop,” and it’s a pleasant surprise, to be sure. Leppin sings on every track of disc two, which sticks with the synth-based sound. From the press kit: “The gorgeous, Portisheady crawl of “Fly Over Iceland” paints a mountainous landscape using Janel’s powerful vocal range while conveying the yearning she felt on tour, away from her partner. ‘Evil Age’ touts a commanding chorus and foreshadows the era of Trump and Covid; ‘Surf the Dead’ finds common ground between Broadcast, Sonic Youth and Yeah Yeah Yeahs.” The album ends with the optimism of “Find A Way,” with a chorus that declares: “If there’s one thing music can do/It will carry you through.” Albums like this do that! With New Moon In The Evil Age, Leppin and Pirog have given us a surprising curveball that will delight many, and more of the gorgeous cello and guitar atmospherics that their followers have been waiting a decade for. It’s a warm collection of music that quickly feels like an old friend, inviting you to keep coming back.

Christopher Hoffman – Vision Is The Identity

When Christopher Hoffman’s Vision Is The Identity came out in April, I did a post celebrating the guest appearance of Henry Threadgill on the track “What Comes,” and I wrote a bit about how fond I am of Hoffman’s cello playing and writing. Hearing Janelle Leppin’s New Moon In The Evil Age and its “new wave” vibe brought me back to Hoffman, a cello player who has also bathed his new album in synths. But these are very different albums — Vision Is The Identity is Depeche Mode to Leppin’s Kate Bush. Hoffman loves a dark minor-mode groove, and these seven gripping tracks really do dig their claws into you and don’t let go. The guest appearances are all great (highlights aside from Threadgill are Anna Webber on flute and Alfredo Colon on EWI), but multiple listens have brought home to me the excellence of the core trio of Hoffman with Frank LoCrasto on keyboards and Bill Campbell on drums. Hoffman’s music is carefully assembled around electronic tracks and tightly constructed arrangements, to which the added drums and keyboard parts are played with a wonderful economy — only what’s needed, nothing more. It’s is a sign of musicality when the album’s subtleties become apparent after many repeat listens.

The other part of Vision Is The Identity I find compelling is Hoffman’s cello. In this post, we’ve discussed a lot of string players who use pedals and distortion when playing, and in my view, Hoffman has the most convincing approach of them all. Hoffman is able to use effects to flexibly make his cello sound at one moment like a heavy electric guitar on “Better & Better” or a bass during “Farewell Forever.” But even more impressive is Hoffman’s use of pedals to create a burr-like texture that becomes this album’s focal point and emotional highlight. Hoffman’s arco solos on “Cloudbuster,” “What Comes,” and “Farewell Forever” all deepen the intensity of the music through a processed sound that hightens the singing quality of the natural strings. That sound above all is the heart of Vision Is The Identity, where Hoffman expands the expressive range of the cello. I think you can tell I love Vision Is The Identity, it’s wall-to-wall avant-bangers and one of the most concise and compelling albums of 2024.

Brad Mehldau, piano
(released May 10, 2024, Nonesuch)
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I was very excited when I heard that Brad Mehldau was releasing a new album devoted to Bach – now that it’s out, I can report that After Bach II is wonderful for fans of Mehldau, fans of J.S. Bach, and listeners in between. This album (mostly) uses the formula of its 2018 predecessor After Bach — Mehldau first faithfully plays Bach compositions on piano, then uses those performances as a starting point for his own compositions or improvisations. Above all, what I find deeply satisfying about After Bach II is the dialogue it creates with Bach’s music, which becomes both the object of our appreciation and an inspiration for new music that reconfigures Bach’s ideas for here and now.

After Bach II opens with a Mehldau composition, “Prelude to Prelude,” which frankly reminded me more of Schumann than Bach but also brings the right touch of lyricism and whimsy. After two “straight” readings of preludes from Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, Mehldau performs his “After Bach: Toccata.” Mehldau’s ideas here are fascinating – over this composition’s almost 15 minutes, the tempo modulates several times while Mehldau plays patterns from Prelude No. 6 that unspool the dissonance locked in Bach’s writing and find a connection between Baroque music and minimalism. Other highlights: Mehldau’s patient reading of the Haydn-like Partita for Keyboard No. 4; his wistful “Intermezzo” which transitions from Bach’s Fugue No. 20 in A Minor, and above all, rewrites of the Goldberg Variations (I’ll get to that in a minute). As observed by both All About Jazz and The Guardian of 2018’s After Bach, Mehldau does not play “jazzed up” versions but instead creates an extension of Bach’s sound world that encourages you to appreciate the power of Bach’s originals and the invention of Mehldau’s contributions; both elements feel like a unified whole, which makes After Bach II a very seamless and satisfying album to play (and play on repeat).

But I’m burying the lede: After Bach II features seven Mehldau improvisations on the Goldberg Variations, and they are fantastic! Mehldau programs these Goldbergs near the end of After Bach II – so make sure to catch them – skip right to them if you must. Rather than play Bach’s score and then perform variations, Mehldau improvised his own reharmonizations that notably use modern time signatures. Variation III is especially wonderful – it’s in 7/4 time and puts the right-hand line in a bright, dancing syncopation. Variation V, which Mehldau calls “Jazz,” reminded me a bit of the jazz/classical mashups of Nicolai Kasputin, with jazz harmonies cascading up and down the keyboard. That variation segues without interruption into what Mehldau calls “a high-energy finale,” which displays virtuosic ideas and energy in both hands. Mehldau really goes for broke with his take on the Goldbergs; they are short, dazzling runs of pianistic brilliance that form a 20-minute suite with one foot in Bach’s world and one in ours. What a blast!

I’ve been playing Mehldau’s improvised variations over and over, but hearing only seven out of the 30 variations that comprise the whole of the Goldbergs may leave you wanting more. To get your fix, I can recommend pianist Dan Tepfer. I knew some of Tepfer’s music from seeing him with alto player Lee Konitz a few years ago. Tepfer played in Konitz’s bands for over ten years and had a special connection with Konitz that you could hear immediately. Like Konitz, Tepfer has a strong identity as a player, a gift for melody, and is a fearless improviser. Tragically, Konitz died from COVID-19 in 2020, so to hear the magic of Tepfer’s piano with Konitz, you can check out the 2018 recording Decade. For more excellent Tepner in a jazz setting, I recommend the radiant piano and sax duets on last year’s co-leader date with Miguel Zenon, Internal Melodies.

Only knowing this “jazz” side to Tepfer’s music, I was happily surprised to learn about Tepfer and Bach. I discovered that Tepfer has been recording and performing Bach for over 15 years and has an especially deep rapport with the Goldbergs. In his essay “Doing In Backwards,” Tepfer explains that he learned piano by playing Bach, but because he made a professional career as a jazz improviser, there was initially no crossover between his classical and jazz playing. Then, in a flash of inspiration during a grueling solo piano tour in 2008, Tepfer injected some of the Goldbergs into a free jazz recital. Tepfer states, “I walked off stage feeling that something special had happened. So I tried it again the next night. Bach’s genius suddenly struck me, hard: instead of panning for gold dust in a cold and barren stream, which is how it increasingly felt to make improvisations up out of nothing, using the Goldbergs as inspiration was like starting with a giant gold nugget in my hand.”

Dan Tepfer, piano
(released November 8, 2011, Sunnyside)
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From that point, Tepfer worked on playing the Goldbergs and improvising on them in parallel to his jazz playing. This practice produced the 2011 Sunnyside album Goldberg Variations/Variations, in which Tepfer created studio performances of each Bach variation followed by an improvisation on that variation. The 2011 Variations/Variations is a fascinating laboratory for the contemporary possibilities of improvising on Bach – each of the 30 variations has its own strategy for how to make a fresh musical statement, and the effect is enthralling. When you’ve heard Bach’s music played faithfully over and over, Tepfer playing Bach’s originals and his improvisations side by side makes you hear the music anew. There’s nothing frivolous about improvising in Bach in this way — the intention of understanding Bach more deeply and bringing his music more fully into the present is loud and clear.

But Tepfer kept working on the Goldbergs and, by his account, got better at playing them and creating his own variations. Tepfer states that while touring after his 2011 album, he challenged himself to play the whole Goldbergs from memory live, which he had been unable to do in the studio. This dedication to Bach’s variations has made Tepfer a uniquely compelling interpreter of Bach. Classical critic Anthony Tommasini wrote a glowing review of Tepfer’s performance of the Goldbergs at Le Poisson Rouge in 2013. In a video from a 2015 Madrid performance of the Goldbergs, you can experience how compelling Tepfer’s concept is live. It has my highest recommendation.

More recently, Tepfer posted a 2020 YouTube video playing all the Goldbergs and his improvised variations in an uninterrupted recital. Tepfer commendably makes this a “warts band all” performance where there are some mistakes, but more than compensated by the excitement of the exploration and invention. This video and the 2015 Madrid concert confirm the degree to which Tepfer is creating in the moment when he improvises on Bach – the ideas he uses for his own “variations” are often quite novel and different in each version. I love all these performances – I’ve been playing Tepfer’s Goldbergs for days and find new insights from his improvisations with each listen.

And yet, there’s more! Tepfer has also done another investigation of Bach, where he uses technology to create versions of the Goldbergs which are inversions of the music – a mirror image where the notes are played in the opposite direction. Tepfer calls this project “#BachUpsideDown.” At Tepfer’s website, he’s collected videos where he performs the pieces “right side up” and then uses a player piano to perform the notes inverted. The results are stimulating and again give a fresh insight into well-worn music. Anthony Tommasini, obviously a fan, writes about this project here, calling the results “wonderfully” disorienting. Tepfer has also expanded on his Bach playing with his Inventions/Reinventions, where he takes Bach’s 15 keyboard Inventions and adds nine of his own improvisations, each in a different key, that complete an exploration of all 24 major and minor keys. The New York Times – Anthony Tommasini again – writes, “he is honoring Bach by going all out in creating a conversation with him.” Tepfer’s on tour now in Germany with live performances of his Inventions – if you have the chance to see this music live, don’t miss it!

With their explorations of Bach, Mehldau and Tepfer show the value of the improviser’s approach to classics written over 250 years ago. The point is not to “jazz up” or a ridiculous attempt to “improve” Bach but instead to find new ways into timeless music and a fresh appreciation of its potential in a new context. It’s well known that Bach was an improviser himself, and part of the vitality of Bach’s keyboard works is how close the notes on the page are to improvisation – something that was done in Bach’s day through ornamentation and in the cadenzas of the concertos. Mehldau and Tepfer are simply taking the next step, one that an improviser like Bach would do if he were alive today. What’s surprising is that improvising on Bach is not done more often.

(Photograph by Baron Wolman / Getty)

After the long essay on Mal Waldron and Steve Lacy (apologies if it was too long), I hope to post shorter pieces more quickly for a while. First, we need to acknowledge two amazing events of planetary, no, universal importance – today, May 22, 2024, is the 110th anniversary of Sun Ra’s arrival day, and then May 25 is the Marshall Allen centennial. I trust there will be coverage of these two important events elsewhere because I can’t hope to fully capture their importance. Instead, I’ll add links to coverage in the notes below as I read what people have to say about two of the all-time great musicians.

Sun Ra, who passed into the next plane 31 years ago, is an epochal musical and spiritual force, a trailblazer of more styles and ideas than anyone. I really can’t top the way WKCR described Sun Ra at the time of his centennial: “the living myth commonly known as Sun Ra” is “an integral part of the Afro-Surrealist and Afro-Futurist movements, [and] has left the genre of jazz with an incredibly prolific collection of music, poetry, philosophy and more to listen to and learn from.” To celebrate, make sure you listen to WKCR, who will be playing 24 hours of Sun Ra that started at 1 AM and runs through the entirety of May 22. Stream WKCR here, or if you’re in the New York area, you can listen at 89.9 FM.

Another fantastic way to celebrate arrival day is to listen to the new archival release on Elemental Records, Sun Ra At the Showcase, Live in Chicago 1976-1977.  The set, released for Record Store Day and available on Bandcamp, consists of mid 70’s live recordings of the Arkestra which canvass an array of the bands’ styles and compositions. The lead essay, authored by John Corbett, perceptively calls Ra’s mid-70s live shows the “Ra Revue” because of the way they summarize all the periods of Ra’s music that came before. An ideal introduction! Throughout the two discs of this set, you’ll hear Sun Ra’s percussion-centered Afro-Futurism, music from Ra’s big band and bop roots, and a swirling mix of pan-African, free jazz, spiritual, blues, and other dimensional music. There are killer solos from John Gilmore, Marshall Allen, and Ra himself on a battery of electronics and synthesizers. The set comes with excellent essays by an eye-popping array of creative music stars such as Michael Weiss, David Murray, Jack DeJohnette, Dave Burrell, Matthew Shipp, and Thurston Moore. The period photos from the gigs and album artwork are also top-notch. The booklet alone is worth the purchase – yet another winner from Zev Feldman (AKA the “Jazz Detective”).

Sun Ra’s discography is far too immense for me to even scratch the surface here, so I’ll point you to some resources for your listening enjoyment. There is tons of Sun Ra on Bandcamp – search “Sun Ra” there and you’ll find over 130 albums available to sample before you buy. So a natural place to go are the two guides that Bandcamp put together – A Guide to the Many Sun Ra Albums Now Available on Bandcamp by Patrick Jarenwattananon and A Further Exploration of the Many Sun Ra Albums on Bandcamp by Piotr Orlov. I can also recommend a good 2017 guide by Andy Beta published in New York Magazine. One thing I plan on doing for arrival day is to watch the 1980 documentary that features a lot of Ra playing in the Philadelphia period, A Joyful Noise. So many places to go, but that’s the fun, isn’t it? Almost any Sun Ra fan will have their own personal favorites, and it’s a joy to listen widely and make your own.

For a contemporary channeling of the Sun Ra muse, the series of tributes by the Red Hot Org is a remarkable demonstration of Sun Ra’s legacy and relevance. Last May, Georgia Anne Muldrow, Angel Bat Dawid, and Irreversible Entanglements tackled Ra’s Nuclear War, followed in October by the delightful Sun Ra in Brasil. Meshell Ndegeocello was on one track from that last album, and in the latest entry of the series, she creates a whole album redesigning the classic The Magic City. Using Ndegeocello to cover/recreate this music was a stroke of genius, and she’s supported by Immanuel Wilkins, Darius Jones, and, yes, Marshall Allen himself.

(Wikipedia Commons – Marshall Allen in 2019)

Speaking of Marshall Allen, that brings us to the second phenomenal celebration this week: Saturday the 25th is the 100th birthday of the ongoing and amazing Marshall Allen. Not only is Allen one of the featured soloists on the Arkestra records above, but he has continued leading that group into the current millennium. Allen’s alto sax is a wonder – he effortlessly threads bop and jazz roots music with the avant-garde, and in “free” mode, his bracing sound is unique. I love the observation by Scott Yanow that Marshall Allen is “Johnny Hodges from another dimension,” a quote that captures Allen’s centrality in the Arkestra and his mix of high art with folkloric forms. You can hear plenty of Allen on the recent Swirling (2020) and Living Sky (2022). It’s a miracle that Allen sounds so vital on these albums, well into his 90’s. Here’s the Arkestra’s Halloween 2014 Tiny Desk concert, which observed Ra’s centennial. Ten years on, now it’s Allen’s centennial. Although given his age, Allen has understandably retired from touring outside of the Philadelphia area, I believe he’ll be in NYC when the Arkestra plays with Yo La Tengo at New York Sony Hall on June 15 and for a free show with Kim Gordon at NYC Summerstage on June 13. I’m still kicking myself that I missed Sun Ra with Sonic Youth in 1992, so don’t make that mistake – I’ll see you there!

Updated May 25, 2024

Happy 100th birthday to the great Marshall Allen! When I wrote this article, I didn’t know WKCR would be doing a marathon for Allen’s birthday. They are! Tune in here or at 89.9 FM if you’re in NYC and want to use an old-fashioned radio.

Allen performed last night in Philadelphia to celebrate his 100th birthday! Incredible. You can find a picture of Allen performing last night at Union Transfer here. 

It’s a great day to appreciate Allen’s enormous legacy. Check out this interview in The Guardian from this February, where Allen reflects on his life and playing with Sun Ra. Allen interviewed with CBS42 just a few days ago. I love how he credits the music for making it to 100. That’s a good reason for us all to listen!

(Steve Lacy and Mal Waldron, photo by Hugo Peeters)

Jazz music has always been the home of great partnerships. The best of those collaborations find a space where the players can be unrestrained but also serve the music and complement each other. So many incredible partnerships come to mind: Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn, Lester Young and Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, John Coltrane and his Classic Quartet, and many others are justly celebrated. However, one musical partnership that should get more attention is the collaboration of pianist Mal Waldron and saxophonist Steve Lacy. These two unique musicians first played together in New York in the late 1950s, but the story of their music together began in earnest when they met as expatriates and recorded together, mainly in Europe, from 1971 to 2002. Their collaboration is an ideal balance of unique voices and bold musical affinity. Waldron and Lacy have styles that are contrasting yet complementary, they share a deep musical connection and a personal relationship built around musical goals in common, and they embody essential virtues of collaboration: deep listening, sensitivity, and mutual respect. Unfortunately, these two men are gone; Waldron died in 2002, and Lacy died two years later in 2004. With the new release of a 1995 concert of Waldron and Lacy with the rhythm section of drummer Andrew Cyrille and bassist Reggie Workman, we have the opportunity to take another look at one of the great musical partnerships and appreciate the wisdom and power of the music that Waldron and Lacy created together.

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That new release is called The Mighty Warriors, released by Elemental Music Records on streaming April 26 and as a limited vinyl release for Record Store Day. Links to purchase this album at Bandcamp or stream it are above. The music comes from a September 1995 concert at the De Singel Arts Center in Antwerp, Belgium, where Lacy and Waldron played a program that was part of a series of concerts to celebrate Waldron’s 70th birthday. Although the album is credited to both Waldron and Lacy, it’s clear that Waldron is the leader. Not only was this his birthday concert, but it was Waldron’s band – Workman and Cyrille were his regular rhythm section at the time. The album consists of two discs, each a set played back to back as part of an evening-long concert. One of the joys of this release is that you feel you are there, witnessing a special event. With one exception I’ll discuss below, the band sounds in optimal form, playing tunes by Monk and original compositions from Waldron, Lacy, and Workman.

According to the liner notes, the title for The Mighty Warriors comes from Workman, who, in a play on Mal Waldron’s initials, said he’s a “mighty warrior.” Of course, I’ll defer to the Workman’s assessment – he played with Waldron through the ’80s and ’90s and is likely the most inventive and simpatico bass player to support Waldron’s piano, as this new release ably shows. But I must register my complaint with this title – with music so committed to a personal vision made by people who led lives of creation and dedication to their craft, I’m not enthusiastic about calling Waldron and Lacy “warriors.” Waldron described himself as an “introvert” and was outspoken about the horror of war when he composed White Road/Black Rain Suite for Improvisers to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Hiroshima. Lacy led a humble life of tireless practice, built a unique musical vision and sound world, and created an aesthetic centered on listening and patience. For me, a better title would have been that used in the title track of the duo’s 1971 album, “Journey Without End.” Waldron and Lacy are all about the process of creating art, dedication to craft, and a life lived expanding the boundaries of expression. Let’s look at that journey to create a context for listening to this new album.

Lacy, Waldron, and Monk

I’ve talked about Waldron and Lacy, but not yet about the third musical legend in this story, Thelonious Monk. Monk is the muse who brought Lacy and Waldron together, and Monk’s music is central to their art and lives. Steve Lacy’s fascination with the music of Thelonious Monk is legendary – Lacy talks about his connection to Monk in the incredible book of interviews, Steve Lacy Conversations, edited by Jason Weiss. Lacy says “Monk’s tunes are the ones I most enjoy playing. I like his use of melody, harmony, and especially his rhythm. Monk’s music has profound humanity, disciplined economy, balanced virility, drama, nobility, and innocently exuberant wit.” (Conversions, 13). Monk’s music would become a driving force for Lacy and later for Waldron, too.

Lacy devoted his second album, 1958’s Reflections, exclusively to the compositions of Monk. At the time, Monk’s music was appreciated by only some of the jazz community, and the fame that came to Monk with being signed to Columbia Records and appearing on the cover of Time Magazine was a few years off. Lacy intended Reflections to be a demonstration of the possibilities of Monk’s repertory – even Monk himself only kept a handful of his tunes in his book at the time, and it was then unheard of for others to perform Monk’s compositions. But since the raison d’être of Reflections was to play Monk tunes without Monk, who to use on piano? Lacy chose Mal Waldron. Waldron’s darkly percussive approach to piano is related to Monk but also has a strikingly original way with harmony and repetition. Reflections was an important step in creating recognition of Monk’s genius and also the first sign of the great chemistry between Lacy and Waldron.

From there, Lacy and Waldron’s careers took divergent paths. Lacy formed a Monk-centric group with Roswell Rudd (captured on the Hat Hut album School Days), played on Gil Evans’s first album, and collaborated with the Jazz Composers Orchestra. But when economic opportunities dried up in New York, Lacy relocated to Europe — first to Italy in the mid-60s and eventually to Paris in 1970, where he remained for 30 years. Meanwhile, Waldron’s career went on its own trajectory. Waldron’s playing fit more easily than Lacy’s with the commercially successful hard bop of the late 50s and early 60s, and Waldron became the house pianist for Prestige Records. Waldron’s harmonically centered and rhythmically propulsive piano was perfectly suited to players like Jackie McLean, Gene Ammons, and Charles Mingus. Waldron was also a remarkable accompanist for singers, the most high profile being Billie Holiday’s piano player from April 1957 until Holiday’s death in July 1959.

While Prestige produced commercially successful albums in the jazz mainstream, Waldron also had an ear open to the cutting edge, and he was recorded in one of the hottest rhythm sections of all time on July 16th, 1961. On that day avant garde visionaries Eric Dolphy and Booker Little made legendary live recordings at the Five Spot club with Waldron on piano, Ed Blackwell on drums, and Richard Davis on bass. One thing I love about the Dolphy-Little Five Spot recordings is that after the blazing horn solos, the music coalesces around Waldron, who (while battling the Five Spots’ infamously out-of-tune piano) builds incredible edifices of propulsive piano vamping. Waldron’s Five Spot solos on “Bee Vamp” and “Lotsa Potsa” use strong rhythmically based left-hand lines embellished with right-hand vamps that move up and down over the bassline. It’s a firmly tonal style with hard bop roots, but gets its edge from incessant driving repetition that’s never boring because Waldron makes constant adjustments and embellishments to the vamps. In an essay on Waldron, Ethan Iverson memorably calls this repetitive, intense style “banging his rocks,” an image that I love. Through grinding session work and the caldron of live playing at clubs like the Five Spot, Waldron developed one of the most recognizable piano styles in music.

Then the music almost stopped for Waldron – in 1963, he suffered a nervous breakdown as a result of a heroin overdose and only luckily survived. In a 2001 Interview with Ted Pankin, Waldron said of his breakdown: “I couldn’t remember where I was. I couldn’t remember anything-about the piano or anything else. I lost my coordination, and my hands were shaking all the time.” Waldron had to convalesce for months in a hospital, and his medical condition was so severe that he could no longer play the piano, which he had to re-learn — by listening to recordings of himself! After recovering, he was offered the chance to record in Paris, and he got a one-way ticket and never returned to live in the United States. In the interview with Pankin, Waldron states that he remained an expatriate in Europe because he was treated with respect there, which he contrasted with the racism and poor working conditions for musicians in the United States. We must not forget how bad the past was for the oppressed – and always be mindful of how close we still are to that past now.

Waldron’s recordings in Europe (such as 1969’s Free at Last, the recording that started the ECM label) show that after Waldron’s health crisis and relocation to Europe, he developed into an even more fiery and individualistic version of himself and boiled down his style to its essential and definitive elements. Waldron removed unnecessary ornaments from his playing, taking out superfluous complexity, and developed “rhythmically instead of soloing on chord changes,” as Waldron wrote in the liner notes to Free At Last. Waldron’s touch was even more recognizable, and his commitment to repetition in his playing was even more hypnotic.

The Journey Continues – Waldron and Lacy in the 1970s

This is where Waldron and Lacy’s stories come back together. On November 30, 1971, Waldron and Lacy recorded again in a Paris studio, creating the album Journey Without End. Unfortunately, this vital recording has never been reissued in any format and has been out of print for decades. As of this writing, you can still download a vinyl rip of it from the blog inconstant sol. Another album begging for a reissue! At any rate, on Journey Without End, you can immediately hear why Waldron and Lacy gravitated toward each other. The album is credited to both as co-leaders; side A is all Waldron tunes, and side B is all Lacy. Lacy’s sax sounds fluid and at ease, and you can really appreciate his beautifully fast vibrato and shining tone. Journey Without End also has some great compositions — the title track is built over an earthy bass figure, and Waldron and Lacy both deliver probing solos. On side B, Lacy introduces the tune “Bone,” an important Lacy composition that later became the centerpiece of his Tao Suite. The iconic album cover photo above captures it all. Pictured are two fellow travelers: Waldron and Lacy pose in front of a narrow passageway, smokes in hand (a habit Waldron never gave up; a dangling cigarillo is a constant companion in almost every Waldron photo). Waldron looks incredibly debonaire and photogenic, and Lacy is humble but really hip, too. You can see in this picture that these two men are so different but share a connection and a common passion.

Waldron and Lacy must have felt their alchemy because they were back in the studio the following year for the wild Mal Waldron with the Steve Lacy Quintet. Waldron is pictured on the cover and credited as the leader, but that’s not what I hear in the grooves. This is the one Waldron/Lacy album where Lacy chose the band, and he showed up with his crew – wife Irene Aebi on cello, saxophonist Steve Potts, and bassist Kent Carter. Maybe America Records didn’t pay the band because Lacy and his players sound positively angry! Even most “free jazz” records are more programmatic than the rabid music Lacy’s players unleash. To my ears, Waldron’s more tonal style sounds a little out of step with the music on this release, yet strangely his authoritative sound and emotional power build their own center of gravity, too. The palpable friction creates one of the most remarkable listening experiences in jazz music, especially on “Jump for Victor,” where Waldron solos with his trademark vamping amidst the onslaught. I could write much more about this fantastic and somewhat anomalous date – it will be the subject of a future post!

Waldron must have enjoyed the aural chaos of the America date because he named it one of his five favorites from his albums in the 2001 Pankin interview. Waldron and Lacy continued to collaborate through the 1970s, with all the issued recordings being with Waldron’s band. Hard Talk (1974), One-Upmanship (1977), and Moods (1978) are Waldron leader dates with Lacy, with either Makaya Ntshoko or Allen Blairman on drums, Isla Eckinger, Jimmy Woode or Cameron Brown on bass, and Manfred Schoop or Terumasa Hino on trumpet. All these records were released on the German ENJA label, and each has its charms and is a classic in its way. Hard Talk is a crackling live date where Blairman gives a rock feel on his tom-toms, and Waldron, Lacy, and trumpeter Schoof sound particularly energized. On One-Upmanship, Lacy’s tone and power are incredible; his sax playing over Waldron’s dirge “The Seagulls Of Kristiansund” is some of the most moving music I’ve heard. Moods mixes an international cast of musicians with Waldron solo tracks, placing the emotional impact of Waldron’s piano front and center. Waldron and Lacy hit a groove across the 1970s of building resonant and impactful music that shows each of them to great effect. With each of these records, their collaboration feels like they are building toward something.

The Duets and the Return of Monk

The playing of Waldron and Lacy through the 1970s focuses on original compositions, some of them stone-cold classics like Waldron’s “Snake Out” or “The Seagulls Of Kristiansund.” I don’t know who planted the seed, but a significant change was about to take root: the return of Monk’s compositions to the Waldron/Lacy discography, which they had not recorded together since Lacy’s 1958 leader date. If I’m going to speculate, it must be Lacy who instigated the change. Lacy had a deep relationship with Monk’s music, and he started playing Monk again in the 70s after several years of focusing on his own compositions (for evidence of the change see the Monk program on Eronel, a 1978 record in the Italian Horo label). Also, Lacy pursued a compositional style that iterates on Monk’s compression and mercurial wit – Monk’s music is always central to Lacy’s concept. Whatever the reason, Waldron and Lacy gathered together in August 1981 at the Dreher club in Paris and, over four nights, made live recordings that balanced equal parts Monk’s compositions with originals by Lacy and Waldron. From that point on, Monk tunes are a prominent part of the discographies of both men.

The 1981 Dreher records also bring another sea change to the Waldron/Lacy joint discography – these recordings are just the two musicians, no rhythm section. Almost all of their subsequent joint recordings for the next 20 years were in a duo format. What’s the reason? I’m not convinced the 1970s rhythm sections did justice to their music, and Waldron and Lacy may have realized they preferred playing without other band members getting in the way. Both players have very strong rhythm and organized ideas, and you never miss the drummer. While handling the logistics of leading a band (and getting the band paid) might have been a factor, the perfection of the Waldron/lacy duets argues that they realized this was the ideal format for the music they needed to make.

For proof of their potent new concept, the place to go is the 2003 Hat Hut four CD release, Mal Waldron And Steve Lacy Live At Dreher Paris 1981. This epochal four-and-a-half hours of live music is mercifully available on streaming services. If there’s one thing you take from this essay, please go to either Apple Music or Spotify and dip into the mother lode. Waldron and Lacy are on fire, and the music is revelatory. They cover essential Monk repertory such as “Round Midnight, “Epistrophy,” ‘Well You Needn’t,” and their personal Monk talisman, “Let’s Call This.” They also give definitive readings of Waldron and Lacy’s compositions, such as Waldron’s “Hooray for Herbie” and “The Seagulls Of Kristiansund,” and Lacy’s tunes like “No Baby” and “Bone.” The unflagging invention, energy, and simpatico camaraderie are the height of artistic creation. I could go on, but I’ll let you listen instead. If I had to take one record to the proverbial desert island, for me, this may be it.

Waldron and Lacy continued to lean into their muse in the duo format, and were just getting started. The recording from 1982 at Amsterdam’s Bimhuis released in 2006 as Steve Lacy & Mal Waldron – At The Bimhuis may be even better than the Hat Hut recordings due to its conciseness. Lacy’s “Blues For Aida” is spooky and mesmerizing and with this version of “Snake Out,” Waldron’s trademark vamping morphs into a stunning gospel-tinged rave-up. On “Reflections” Lacy delivers a solo of aching beauty. Also recommended from the trove of duets is the deep and mellow exploration of Duke’s music on 1986’s Sempre Amore, and the excursion into the music of Herbie Nichols on Hot House (1990). There are a lot of Waldron/Lacy duo records (see the discography below), and they’re all great. With the Waldron/Lacy duets, two musicians who are outstanding individually join together to form music that is elevated to an extraordinary level.

Waldron and Lacy and the Band

Before the release of the new album The Mighty Warriors, there were a dozen officially released albums of music performed by Waldron and Lacy together from 1981 onward, and all but one had no drummer. Only The Super Quartet of Mal Waldron featuring Steve Lacy, released in 1987, reveals Waldron and Lacy in a quartet format, with Reggie Workman on bass and Eddie Moore on drums. So the newly released The Mighty Warriors provides a needed look at Waldron and Lacy performing with bass and drums. And with no ordinary bassist and drummer! Reggie Workman had played with Waldron for years at the time of this concert, starting with the record with Up Popped the Devil from 1973. Waldron’s working group with Workman and Ed Blackwell is one of the most potent of the 1980s, which Ethan Iverson celebrates in his fascinating post on Waldron that I mentioned above. Andrew Cyrille was a more recent associate for Waldron, but the Waldron/Blackwell/Cyrille rhythm section worked a lot together for years before this concert and is captured together by the Waldron release Soul Eyes (1997). So getting to hear Waldron and Lacy with a rhythm section – and this rhythm section – alone justifies The Mighty Warriors coming out – it’s an absolute pleasure to hear these musicians together. So, let’s talk about this new release.

The evening’s music is captured over two discs. The first disc consists of two Monk tunes (“Epistrophy” and “Blue Monk”) and a composition each by Waldron and Lacy – “What It Is” and “Longing,” respectively. The sound quality of the recording is quite excellent, although the mics are back from the stage and maybe toward the drums; you may want to turn the volume up to hear everything. While the music is adventurous, attention to melody abounds. At this point in his career, Lacy had dispensed with much of the exploration of noise and extended techniques that once were the center of his playing. His solos on Waldron’s “What It Is” and the two Monk tunes are constructed of motivic patterns that the listener can easily grasp. Waldron sounds both relaxed and in very good form – on “What It Is,” he uses his unique technique of building a solo around rhythmic blocks, but without the breathless rush that characterizes many of his solos. Here, the more relaxed pace allows you to appreciate the beauty of his melodic development and his incredible sound. The rhythm section is seamless and subtly inventive – listen closely. Workman’s bass playing is constantly probing, an interesting counterpoint to Lacy and Waldron. Cyrille elevates the whole concert—the sound of his cymbals mesmerizes, his time is slippery and enchanting, and his solos, such as on “What It is,” are dynamic and exciting. Cyrille has a great ability to make the drums trace the melody as he plays through the tune’s structure. Amazing stuff.

The two Monk covers are surely the highlights of the first disc – at this point after a lifetime with Monk’s music, Waldron and Lacy were definitive interpreters. This version of “Epistrophy” glides effortlessly through the tricky structure of the tune, perfectly capturing the intensity of the iconic baseline and the jaunty chromaticism of the melody. The disc one closer, “Blue Monk,” is even better. Waldron and Lacy take the tune at a stately pace and build an interesting piano counterpoint into the arrangement of the tune. Waldron’s solo on “Blue Monk” is a great example of how his famous sense of humor off the bandstand sometimes peeks out in his playing – amidst the dark, intense clusters of his melodic solo, he quotes “Oh! Susanna.” The audience audibly loved it.

Lacy’s one tune presented in the concert, “Longing,” is the only misstep of the night. The title “Longing” is, among many other things, a witty pun – it’s a long-form composition (42 bars) and takes almost two minutes to play the head in this performance. The composition is a melodic haiku and it’s classic Lacy, but needs patience from players and listeners alike. I believe Waldron, Workman, and Cyrille were all new to “Longing” and they sound a bit tentative here (see the documentary A Portrait of Mal Waldron, which I discuss below; at 16 minutes you’ll see Lacy teaching the tune to the band, seemingly for the first time, at the rehearsal before the concert). Also, the distanced mics don’t do the performers any favors on this spare composition, and tracing the form at this slow tempo, especially during Workman’s bass solo, feels challenging. “Longing” is a remarkable composition – please check out the definitive interpretation on Lacy’s album Bye-Ya with his close associates John Betsch and Jean-Jacques Avenel, or the amazing unreleased version that I talk about in the notes below.

Chalk it up to this blog’s preference for experimental music, but the more avant-garde second disc seems more assured and inspired to me. This is especially true of the almost 25-minute performance on Reggie Workman’s “Variation of III.” The whole band is energized in the second disc, and their ideas, individually and collectively, are intensely creative. “Variation of III” starts with a playful collective rumination that sounds like an orchestra tuning up. Workman delivers an arco bass statement, then switches to pizzicato, and then the center of the music switches to Lacy. Lacy seems to relish the open form of this tune, and from 4:00 to 9:00, he plays with a quizzical, probing tone, deft use of space, and abstract but clear ideas that characterize his best work. Cyrille accompanies sparingly, but it’s all Lacy in top form for five glorious minutes. There’s nobody like him, and if this is your introduction, diving into the rest of his discography is one of life’s great joys.

At 9:00, the performance shifts gears, and Workman delivers a fleet and nuanced solo statement. At 13:00, we hear from Waldron again, who plays rubato chords that move up and down the keyboard, sounding like a race car driver waiting for the flag to drop. Then Cyrille’s ride cymbal winds the music up, dramatically shifting the energy, and Waldron’s playing develops into his trademark two-hand rhythmic structures. The injection of Waldron’s piano energy calls back to his playing at the Five Spot from 34 years earlier, with Waldron stealing back the center of the music and “banging his rocks,” to use Ethan Iverson’s phrase, all over again. I love this! When Waldron goes to this place, nobody has a more robust musical vision, and the stage becomes his. That’s only half of the 25 minutes of this performance – then Lacy returns with a focused solo while Waldron develops more stimulating ideas, Workman pushes it all along, and then we get a simmering drum solo. Suddenly, the band plays what sounds like the head – but for the first time at the end of the song! Have we been listening to a deconstructed version of the tune all this time, or is this “out chorus” a marvelous bit of group improvisation? With players this confident, I can’t really tell. “Variation of III” is a keeper and the highlight of the evening.

Then the group wraps up the night with their surefire burner – Waldron’s definitive rave-up “Snake Out.” “Snake Out” is a really a blowing vehicle, and Lacy delivers the first solo with brisling ideas over Waldron’s assertive comping. Most Waldron/Lacy versions of “Snake Out” then plunge into a Waldron solo, but here he dramatically lays back, and by turns, Workman and Cyrille deliver lengthy and interesting statements over the song form. When it’s Waldron’s turn, he delivers a knockout surprise by interjecting another song altogether – his emotional tribute to Cecil Taylor which he first recorded on 1987’s Update, “Variations On A Theme By Cecil Taylor.” I’m not sure this performance rises to the incredible levels of that recording, but the drama of the live performance more than makes up for any nitpicking I can throw its way. The setting is suitably dramatic, and it’s a satisfying end to the performance when the band returns to the thundering chords of “Snake Out” to play the out chorus and end the evening of music. The lore about audience reactions in continental Europe is that they tend to be politely restrained, but even so, you can hear the crowd break into the waves of applause – was there an encore? I don’t know, but I’m glad we have this new document of a memorable night of music from the sunset of Waldron and Lacy’s careers.

While they both went on to individually record worthy albums after this event, The Mighty Warriors is now the penultimate officially released recording of these two men together. They made one last record together, One Last Time, recorded in 2002 and released before Waldron’s death in December 2002. Lacy died from cancer only two years after that. Waldron and Lacy left enormous legacies on their instruments and their compositions, as well as their approach to music, improvisation, and collaboration. Their discographies are each huge and immensely rewarding, and the processes of discovery and rediscovery continue to reveal how much power this music provides to us, years after its creation. The Mighty Warriors gives us a chance to look back and appreciate the depth and greatness of what Waldron and Lacy did together and to understand how they changed music. Their music offers approaches and solutions that have not been fully explored by today’s practitioners and offers a wealth of wisdom and beauty for the ages. As Andrew Cyrille says in the album’s liner notes about Waldron, these musicians are “points of light.” That light lives on in the music; when you listen, the journey continues.

Links to explore more Waldron and Lacy

Here is the Waldron/Lacy Joint Discography!
In preparation for this post, I tried to find a discography online that included all of the known recordings of Waldron and Lacy together, and I could not find one source that covered it all. So, to remedy this problem, I created a Mal Waldron and Steve Lacy joint discography. I hope this is a resource that will lead to your discovery of Waldron and Lacy’s music and that you’ll find it helpful. I’m still reviewing and looking for errors, corrections, or additions, so please, if you have suggestions, leave a comment so I can make this better.

The Joys of the Discographer
In the past, I’ve been a listener who only spent a little time with discographies (excepting those in Mosaic boxes, R.I.P. Michael Cuscuna), and the discography linked above is my first stab at compiling one. Putting this information together was critical to my understanding of the arc of Waldron’s and Lacy’s music and reinforced for me the importance of understanding the chronology of an artist’s work. Also, studying the details of the Waldron-Lacy discography uncovered some interesting mysteries for me. The biggest discovery concerns the epochal 1981 Dreher duets. The releases are really confusing, owing to Hat Hut having issued this music over five albums prior to the 2003 four-CD set (hatOLOGY 4-596). However, I was under the impression that hatOLOGY 4-596 put everything out, and since that’s the only one of the Dreher releases I have access to, I thought I had all the music from these four nights from 1981 in Paris. However, I discovered that the liner notes to the long out-of-print 1986 LP Mal Waldron And Steve Lacy – Let’s Call This state that the album’s performance of “Epistrophy” is a trio with the addition of trumpet player Erico Rava. Here are the credits and liner notes on the back cover:

I don’t own the 1986 LP Let’s Call This, but listening to both versions of “Epistrophy” on hatOLOGY 4-596, there’s no trumpet to be heard! At least to my ears, it seems the 2003 release did not reissue the “Epistrophy” with Rava, contrary to existing discographical information. This is a mystery that I will be digging into. I would like to hear the version of “Epistrophy” with Rava, and I’ll try and track down an affordable copy of the 1986 LP. Further, this discrepancy suggests there may be more music to hear from Waldron and Lacy’s four nights of performances, which, given the caliber of what we have, would be incredible. I’ve already emailed Hat Hut, and I’ll report my findings here when I get to the bottom of this.

Calling the Jazz Detective – Release the 1990 Bimhuis set next!
The Mighty Warriors is a great release that increases our understanding of one of music’s most important musical partnerships. However, listeners of WKCR’s program Deep Focus may know there is an unreleased recording featuring the musicians on The Mighty Warriors, plus trombonist Roswell Rudd and trumpeter Enrico Rava. This sextet was captured in a live performance on February 27, 2000, at Bimhuis in Amsterdam. You can hear the whole performance on the three-hour-long Deep Focus broadcast and also dig excellent commentary by saxophonist Phillip Johnson and host Mitch Goldman. It’s archived in three parts: part 1, part 2 and part 3. This exceptional recording frankly sounds even better than The Mighty Warriors. The whole band is in great form and is focused and energetic over ten tunes – eight by Monk and one each by Waldron and Lacy. Interestingly, the Lacy tune is the same one they play on The Mighty Warriors , “Longing.” I said above, the band sounds underrehearsed on the 1995 Antwerp date, but by 2000 at Bimhuis, Waldron, Workman and Cyrille sound really tight. The addition of an incredible-sounding Roswell Rudd and an exuberant trumpet from Rava does not hurt, either. The Bimhous “Longing” captures the patient, loping melody and the menacing undertone of the composition beautifully. Another extraordinary part of the Bimhaus performance is the boisterous approach to Monk, which reaches its apex on the out-choruses of “Monk’s Mood” and “Bemsha Swing,” where the band morphs into Dixieland with joyous collective improvisation. The Mighty Warriors is a great start, but the 2000 Bimhuis is the next step — this recording needs to be released!

A Great Documentary about Waldron
As part of my preparation for this post, I watched an excellent documentary, A Portrait of Mal Waldron. You can really appreciate the wit and character of Waldron, understand his music better, and learn a lot about him. Also, this doc is a great companion to the music of The Mighty Warriors because it includes extensive interviews with all of the band members, apparently made the same week as this concert. A revelation from the documentary is that at 10:30 to 12:30, and again under the closing credits, there is video from the same concert documented in The Mighty Warriors. If this concert can be released with both the video and audio of that night, that would be something to celebrate!

Waldron/Lacy Gold on YouTube
Another discovery I made while researching this piece was a YouTube video archive called “Vintage Music Experience.” One of the Waldron/Lacy recordings archived there is of an August 29, 1986, FM broadcast of a tentet playing Monk. The band is billed as “Thelonious Monk Orchestra Reunion” and has a legit relationship with Monk – Ben Riley is the drummer, and Charlie Rouse is the principal soloist. The music is joyous, and both Lacy and Waldron sound great here. Every major city should fill its bandshells and public spaces with free Monk performances! It’s fantastic to find these gems on YouTube, curated by passionate music lovers who want the great message of this music to get out.

Check out Snake Out, the Mal Waldron Blog
I also discovered an exceptional blog devoted to Mal Waldron’s music – Snake Out. At Snake Out, you’ll find reviews of every one of Waldron’s official releases, along with very knowledgeable annotations and interviews with filmmaker Tom van Overberghe and bassist David Friesen about Waldron. The passion for Waldron’s music jumps out on every page – it’s a great way to get to know and appreciate Mal Waldron’s artistry better.

Read Ethan Iverson’s “On Mal Waldron”
I remember reading Iverson’s piece about Mal Waldron on the old Do The Math blog when he published it in 2010. You can find Iverson’s essay here. A lot of my listening to the great pianist was inspired by reading “On Mal Waldron.” Returning to Iverson’s piece to prepare this essay, I found it’s shorter than I remember (about 2,000 words) but just as insightful. Iverson’s description of Waldron’s style as “banging rocks” and dubbing Waldron/Workman/Blackwell as the “evil trio” are irreverent but terrific. Also, Iverson makes sure you know where his heart is when he admits, “I owe one hell of a lot to Mal Waldron.”