New England has long been a breeding ground for avant-garde jazz and other creative music, but it seems like right now the region – especially Connecticut – is having its moment in the spotlight of skronk. The local collective behind the record label firstname lastname has been busily releasing music throughout 2022; Dancing is the
There has always been a dearth of quality writing on free jazz. Many mainstream jazz critics fundamentally have not understood the music and have distorted its reception, while in academia the music has often been shunned by conservative music programs. But in recent years, there have been a number of important books addressing some of
For years, I have been meaning to attend the Big Ears Festival which is held annually in Knoxville, Tennessee. It is one of the premier music festivals in the United States featuring cutting-edge, thought-provoking, and experimental music. This year was my first time at the festival and I was impressed by the range of music
I listened to “ghostly.ridiculous” the night before getting my first COVID vaccine shot. It was – somehow – the perfect situation to take in this album. The title is an apt summation of the unsettling reality of both this work and the absurd, spectral nature of the 2020s so far. ghostly.ridiculous is a (mostly) solo
After time spent visiting the estate of Harriet Tubman in Auburn, New York, Viktor Le Givens and Angel Bat Dawid presented a new work, Suite Harriet, on the main stage of BRIC Jazzfest in Brooklyn on the 21st of October. Le Givens’ work seeks to deepen and broaden our contact with the “etheric realm” through
Multi-instrumentalist Koichi Matsukaze was born in 1948 in the Shizuoka Prefecture. A musician with a busy schedule, he is still active these days, leading his own quartet, and other past or present activities include participations in the Shibuya Takeshi Orchestra, Essential Ellington, the Sax Workshop, and the Yuji Imamura group, among other projects. Recently, his
Tilt Brass managed to fill the Pioneer Works performance space with sound and people in Red Hook on October 12th. Their performance was the 12th in a monthly series called False Harmonics put on by Pioneer Works highlighting new improvisational music. Tilt Brass, an ensemble led by trombonist and composer Chris McIntyre, performed pieces by
Minimal packaging design on a CD can mean one of two things. It could grace a demo or a bootleg – something unfinished, low in quality, not ready for public release. Alternatively it can be an artistic statement – that the music speaks for itself and doesn’t need much framing to enhance its own powerful
During the Covid pandemic, I experienced contrasting periods of artistic lucidity and activity and periods of despondency. Overall, the former won over, and I’m happy to share a few developments that occurred during this time. When the pandemic first hit, I knew if I didn’t stay active playing piano I would go insane, so I
It’s not everyday that everyday looks like any day. https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=2249446941857509 The pandemic was a time of opportunity, perhaps, to woodshed, to workshop, to reflect, to reassess. It was also, for me, a time of uncertainty, anxiety, and of doubt. Keeping busy, and doing “the good work,” seemed at once absolutely necessary, but searching the
