Stan Getz - Sweet Rain (1967)

Second Ron Carter post in a row, and another Stan Getz one following the recent Getz-Gilberto (link below).  The lineup on this breezy, nimble session from March 1967 is completed by Chick Corea on piano, whose compositions also bookend the album, and Grady Tate on drums.  

 

Right from the lengthy Litha, it's gorgeous late-summer bliss that shows Getz not so much in thrall to bossanova any more as having fully internalised Latin rhythms and influences.  A lovely mid-tempo take on O Grande Amor by Jobim/de Moraes does keep the Brazilian flame alive, and the album's first side closes out on the melancholy title track by Mike Gibbs.  Two lengthy explorations in Latin-inflected rhythms complete the album, lifted throughout by Corea's lightness of touch and the distinctive warmth of Getz's tone.

link

pw: sgtg

Stan Getz at SGTG:

Conception

Getz/Gilberto

Hermeto Pascoal - Slaves Mass (1977)

Wanted to give Hermeto Pascoal's music a try after that post of Live-Evil, so here's a jazz fusion classic with plenty of authentic Brazilian flavour thanks to the array of great guest musicians.  Recording in Los Angeles, Pascoal jammed with Weather Reporters Alphonso Johnson and Chester Thompson for one aspect of the album - lengthy fusion improvs led by Pascoal's electric piano.  Only one of these sessions made the album - the stunning opener Mixing Pot (Tacho) - but this CD reissue captures two more as bonus tracks, and at around fifteen minutes apiece both are welcome additions here.

The other lineup on the album centred around Flora Purim and Airto Moreira, married at that time and having shared history with Pascoal in the group Quarteto Novo.  They are joined by Ron Carter on bass and first introduced on the ritualistic, experimental title track - Airto is credited with "live pigs" here, which must've been an interesting recording session.  Side one of the album is filled out by the sunny, melodic Little Cry For Him (Chorinho Pra Ele), which reminded me of Egberto Gismonti circa Circense, and a composition in tribute to Cannonball Adderley that features flute, percussion and varispeed voices.

In another Gismonti similarity, this time to Dança Das Cabeças, Side two of Slaves' Mass starts out with solo piano, in the dazzling runs of Just Listen (Escuta Meu Piano).  The lovely and languid That Waltz (Aquela Valsa), with interplay between Pascoal's soprano sax and Raul De Souza's trombone, gives a bit of a breather before the final track.  The twelve minutes of Cherry Jam (Geleia De Cereja) are a straight trio performance between Pascoal, Carter and Moeira, and run through plenty of electric piano, sax and percussion solos to give a fantastic close to a highly recommended album.  As mentioned earlier, the three bonus outtakes are all worth hearing - a short track that features Pascoal on accordion and vocals, then two lengthy Johnson/Thompson workouts.

link

pw: sgtg

Charles Mingus - TIjuana Moods (rec. 1957, rel. 1962)

A nice bit of summery Mingus, inspired by a trip to Tijuana and recorded in July-August 1957, but due to contractual/financial complications the recording went unreleased by RCA until five years later.  After a swinging opener in Dizzy Moods, inspired by the titular figure's Woody 'N You, the music starts to take a more explicitly Mexican turn with the castanet-led Ysabel's Table Dance for an exhilarating ten minutes.  

 

The album's second half kicks off with the brief but complex Tijuana Gift Shop with its memorable ducking and weaving melody, then another lengthy track follows.  Los Mariachis features Mingus calling out the way through a bluesy introduction (which will be returned to), then more Latin-inflected melodies and rhythms fill out the subsequent sections to give another highlight to the album.  To close, we get a gorgeous rendition of Ted Grouya's jazz standard Flamingo.  A cracking early Mingus album that deserves to be just as celebrated as its better-known siblings.

link

pw: sgtg

Previously posted at SGTG:
Jazz Portraits: Mingus In Wonderland 
Oh Yeah  
The Black Saint And The Sinner Lady  
Mingus Plays Piano  
Let My Children Hear Music

Mingus Moves
Changes One & Two
Cumbia & Jazz Fusion
plus:  

The Quintet: Jazz At Massey Hall
Blue Moods  
Money Jungle  
BBC Proms Tribute by Metropole Orkest

Manchester Collective / Mahan Esfahani - Górecki, Eastman, Tabakova etc (BBC Proms 2021)

String-based brilliance from a live concert broadcast last Tuesday.  The Manchester Collective ensemble were founded five years ago, and have since been making waves in the contemporary classical world with works by groundbreaking composers like those featured here.  For their Proms debut, the Collective led by Rakhi Singh appeared with harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani.

 

Esfahani is the star turn on the programme's opener and closer, starting with Górecki's uncharacteristically rollicking Harpsichord Concerto, a suitably energetic curtain-raiser.  The ensemble then dial down the tempo for Edmund Finnis' atmospheric The Centre Is Everywhere, which lent its title to the Collective's debut album.  The first half of the concert concludes with Julius Eastman's Holy Presence Of Joan D'Arc, its churning ten cello arrangement reconfigured for full string ensemble.  Shame we don't get the full sung prelude (it's condensed into a brief spoken passage), but the ensemble's version of the main piece is fantastic.

 

After the interval comes another work that's featured on these pages before (all links below) in Dobrinka Tabakova's Suite In Old Style, its Rameau-influenced writing as entrancing as ever.  Mahan Esfahani returns for the fun swing and mellow blues of Joseph Horovitz's Jazz Concerto in its version for harpsichord, making for a memorable finale.  That's not all though, as the Collective return for a great encore performance of the frenetic Orawa by Wojciech Kilar.  Highly recommended, top-notch playing all round in a superb programme.

 

link

pw: sgtg

Henryk Górecki at SGTG:
Early works
Symphony No. 3
Beatus Vir
O Domina Nostra
Miserere
Kleines Requiem / Lerchenmusik

Totus Tuus

Julius Eastman:

Unjust Malaise (incl. Holy Presence & full Prelude)

Femenine (live 1974)

Femenine (live 2016)

Edmund Finnis:

In Situ (Proms 2020)  

Dobrinka Tabakova:

String Paths (incl. Suite In Old Style)

Centuries Of Meditations (live 2019)

Lambert, Hendricks & Ross - The Hottest New Group In Jazz (1959)

Picked up this cracking little vocal jazz album following a recent binge of the Fargo TV series.  Dave Lambert, Jon Hendricks and Annie Ross started working together in 1957 and quickly became a successful "vocalese" trio.  Per this definition, their agile voices were able to imitate jazz instrumentation with snappy, witty lyrics, and combined with boppish small-group backing made this 28-minute record a perfectly-formed winner.  

 

Not a note is wasted in the succinct running time, and every song is good, whether putting lyrics to popular jazz tunes or in material fully penned by members of the trio.  One teenage fan up in Saskatchewan was so influenced by the record - "I considered that album to be my Beatles. I learned every song off of it" - that she later returned the favour by covering two songs from it on her own albums: Annie Ross' Twisted on Court & Spark, and Edison/Hendricks' Centrepiece on The Hissing Of Summer Lawns.  

 

The original versions of those two songs are great to discover after being so accustomed to Joni's versions, and other highlights for me (among many) are the languid Moanin' (used to such great effect in Fargo), Sermonette, Summertime... pretty much all of them.  Love this uplifting little treasure.

link

pw: sgtg

Traffic - The Low Spark Of High Heeled Boys (1971)

Jazzy, folky prog in its prime from the revived lineup of Steve Windwood & co, which always gets a fair bit of summer playing from me, so why not drop it in here.  Ghanian-born percussionist Reebop Kwaku Baah, one of two 70s Traffickers who'd wind up in Can, came on board at this point, and bassist Ric Grech made his only studio appearance with the group here.  Gordon, Capaldi & Wood fill out the lineup.

After a mellow beginning in Hidden Treasure, the 11-minute title track is next.  Slowly building into a memorable snappy groove in the choruses, the lyrics are one of the better-written 'music business' gripes, and it was my instant highlight when first hearing it on a best-of.  The funky Rock And Roll Stew closes out the original LP's first side.

Side two contains another three tracks, all of which are fantastic.  Plenty of electric piano and flute to luxuriate in on the mid-tempo Many A Mile To Freedom, and funked-up fuzz guitar in Light Up And Leave Me Alone.  The atmospheric Rainmaker, with its central Chris Wood flute line, is my other highlight of the album, and features future Only Ones member Mike Kellie behind the drumkit.

link

pw: sgtg

Karel Goeyvaerts - Pour Que Les Fruits Mûrissent Cet Été, etc (2013 compi, recordings from 1973 & 77)

Great reissue of all of one album and his half of a shared album by Belgian composer Karel Goeyvaerts (1923-1993).  Goeyvaerts studied at Darmstadt in the 50s, striking up a friendship with Stockhausen, and went on to work in serialism, electronic music and latterly minimalism.

Three works in excess of 20 minutes each give a nice immersion in Goeyvaerts' sound in the 1970s, starting with Pour que les fruits mûrissent cet été (1975-6).  Written for an ensemble of Renaissance instruments in an "evolving repetitive technique", it's a really enjoyable, mellow listen that brings to mind Julius Eastman if he'd decided to go pre-baroque.

Ach Golgotha (1975) is next, and was originally paired with Pour que... on LP in 1977.  Named after a part of Bach's St Matthew Passion that it very loosely morphs around, it's a slow, minimal percussion piece with organ and harp that again isn't far off Eastman's DIY-minimalism, or even the track at the end of that Jon Gibson album.  Lastly, we get to hear Goeyvaerts' electronic/tape music in Op Acht Paarden Wedden, from a 1973 split LP with fellow Belgian Lucien Goethals.  Lots of great queasy drones, electronic whines and tape manipulation of instruments make for an engrossing end to a highly recommended collection.

link

pw: sgtg

Miles Davis - Dark Magus (rel. 1977, rec. 1974)

One more Electric Miles Friday post for now, and probably the most ferocious-sounding live document of his career, besting even Agharta for sheer sonic assault.  With most of the band in place who would travel to Japan the following year for Miles' pre-retirement period concerts, the music on Dark Magus was recorded in March 1974 at Carnegie Hall, NYC.  The recordings wouldn't be released for another three years - or 23 years, for the world outside of Japan.

In his liner notes for the eventual 2-CD reissue, saxophonist Dave Liebman recalls being inducted into Miles' band with only the barest of preparation for what they were going to play - a fragmentary vamp here, a listen to the densely layered grooves of a Sly Stone record there - and the rest would just be led by Miles on stage.  A full-throttle thrash of drums introduces Moja Part 1 - the original four LP sides were simply named after the numbers one to four in Swahili.  Miles is in full wah-pedal trumpet and smears of Yamaha organ mode, and new guitarist Dominique Gaumont burns through Hendrix-style solos.  This calms down just a little in Moja Part 2, which eventually fades into a spacious atmosphere of reved-up drum machine from James Mtume.

 

Things get funkier for Wili Parts 1 & 2, then Disc 2 kicks off in similar fashion to Agharta with another storming jam, before again petering out via drum machine into the organ riff from Calypso Frelimo.  Drum machine weirdness skitters all over the slowburning start to Nne Part 1, which is nominally sub-titled Ife, but as on Live-Evil, only resembles that piece occasionally, and is a dark, atmospheric slow exploration.  The final stretch of Nne is another belter, to close out one of Miles Davis' most uncompromising, thrilling releases.  Dark Magus is sometimes described as "jazz metal" in latterday appraisals, and why not.

Disc 1 link

Disc 2 link

pw: sgtg

Miles Davis at SGTG:
Conception
Walkin'
Blue Moods
Bags' Groove
Miles Ahead (with Gil Evans)
Sketches Of Spain (with Gil Evans)
Quiet Nights (with Gil Evans) 

A Tribute To Jack Johnson

Live-Evil
On The Corner

In Concert

Big Fun
Agharta

Luciano Berio / Bruno Maderna - Electronic Works (1992 compilation of pieces created 1958-62)

Great collection of early electronic/ electroacoustic/ tape music by Luciano Berio (1925-2003) and Bruno Maderna (1920-1973), in the years following their joint founding of the Studio Di Fonologia Musicale Di Radio Milano.  After WDR Köln and GRM Paris, this was intended as a third resource in Europe for producing new music with innovative electronics and tape manipulation.

Over an hour of engrossing sounds on this BV Haast CD effectively gives us a short album's worth from each composer, starting with Berio and the jittering sounds of Momenti (1960).  The avant-garde classical singer Cathy Berberian (who was married to Berio at the time) is heavily featured on the rest of the material, with cut-up fragments of James Joyce (1958) and then in a lengthy exploration of more primal vocal sounds on Visage (1961).

From Maderna we get two sixteen-minute pieces, starting with Le Rire (1962).  It's a great immersion in electronic sound and fragments of laughter and chatter that might be my pick of the disc.  Lastly, Invenzione Su Una Voce aka Dimenzione II (1960) features Cathy Berberian performing vocal phonemes prepared by the German poet Hans G Helm.  All incredible stuff to listen to, especially if you liked previous Luigi Nono posts.

link

pw: sgtg

Berio/Maderna at SGTG:

The New Music, Vol. 2 (scroll past big list)

Berio at SGTG:

Coro

Sequenza IXb

Frank Zappa / Mothers Of Invention - One Size Fits All (1975)

This album is about as far as I go with 'songwriter Zappa' - after 1975, it's pretty much just his increasingly ambitious instrumental music and ever-better lead guitar noodlings that tickle my fancy, so more of that in the coming months.  For now, here's the wonderful OSFA (that anagram of 'sofa' not escaping anyone's notice), which kicks off with one of Zappa's most satisfyingly oddball song masterpieces.

We actually heard Inca Roads a couple of weeks back in its Helsinki performance from the previous year, and here it is in studio-polished form with parts of the Helsinki guitar solo expertly grafted in, and of course the closing shout-out to Ruth Underwood's sterling performance.  Purportedly mocking the pretentiousness of progressive rock lyrics, the UFO narrative sung by George Duke gets progressively sillier, with his high-pitched vocal inadvertently bringing Jon Anderson to mind - especially when Yes duly obliged the exact stereotype with Arriving UFO a few years later.

Can't Afford No Shoes is next - as a mid-70s economic malaise lament with "can you spare a dime" references, it's like Stephen Stills' Buyin' Time a year early, only way better/wittier.  Other highlights include two versions of part of the 'Sofa' suite from earlier in the 70s, one instrumental and the other with partly German vocals; the lengthy guitar solo in Po-Jama People, and the always entertaining San Ber'dino with Beefheart harmonica cameo.  Source for this classic album is another 2012 remaster, so everything sounds exactly as it originally did - a shout out here is definitely due by now to this fantastic resource for keeping me right.

 

link

pw: sgtg

Previously posted at SGTG:

Lumpy Gravy

Waka/Jawaka

The Grand Wazoo

Roxy & Elsewhere

You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore, Vol. 2: The Helsinki Concert

The Perfect Stranger (live 2018)

Miles Davis - In Concert (1973)

For this double-live helping of electric Miles, we're in the dark, dense funk of the On The Corner era. Just under 90 minutes of smoking-hot dankness was drawn from a concert in New York City on 29 September 1972, and packaged in another eye-catching Corky McCoy cover drawing.  When originally released on vinyl, the four sides had no track titles, although the two records were sometimes known as "Slickaphonics" and "Foot Fooler" from the illustration captions on the inner sleeves.

Transferring to digital does give us individual track divisions and titles, but doesn't really clean up the album's notoriously murky sound - arguably though, the fuggy mix sort of works in favour of Miles' music at this point in time rather than against it.  A full-steam Rated X gets Disc 1 into gear, before Honky Tonk highlights Reggie Lucas' guitar and the noisy smears of Miles' wahed-trumpet.  On the old second side of the LP, the Theme From Jack Johnson kicks up a gear again, with plenty of solos for Miles and Carlos Garnett, then the groove changes abruptly to Black Satin from On The Corner.

Most of Disc 2 is taken up by a lengthy Ife jam, although the identifying bassline from Big Fun doesn't make an appearance until halfway through.  It's a nice long midtempo stretch for everyone in this future-funk band to pile on solos and effects pedals, and probably the highlight of the album for me.  Right Off/Sanctuary takes us to the end, in another fast and furious free-for-all.

Disc 1 link

Disc 2 link

pw: sgtg

Miles Davis at SGTG:
Conception
Walkin'
Blue Moods
Bags' Groove
Miles Ahead (with Gil Evans)
Sketches Of Spain (with Gil Evans)
Quiet Nights (with Gil Evans) 

A Tribute To Jack Johnson

Live-Evil
On The Corner

Big Fun
Agharta

Tom Newman - Bayou Moon (1985)

Okay, in that cover image we may have a literal example of 80s New Age looming large over the artistic stylings of a musician/producer who'd been around since the 70s, but I do like this one for its guitar sounds and atmospherics.  Tom Newman is perhaps best known for helping a certain latterday space-botherer build the Manor Studio and launch the careers of Virgin Records and Mike Oldfield, and he released three prog-ish solo albums between '75 and '77.

Come the mid 80s, Newman signed with Coda (a new age imprint of Beggars Banquet) for a couple of releases, Bayou Moon being the first.  Intending to evoke "the swamplands and the everglades of the Mississippi Delta", the album has a fair bit of Paris Texas-esque guitar twanging that sounds very nice, particularly when the backing isn't too busy, such as on Fur Traders Descending The Missouri and Voodoo De Bayou.  Moonrise is a particularly interesting track in its arrangement, with a large synth swell midway through giving way to a jaunty harmonica/percussion/synth section.  In fact, the only real stinkers here are Gumbo Fling and its three reprises - seriously, it will get on your nerves so much by the end it's perhaps advisable to just skip each iteration.

link

pw: sgtg

Egberto Gismonti with Naná Vasconcelos - Dança Das Cabeças (1977)

Egberto Gismonti's debut appearance on ECM was originally planned as a completely solo album, the travel costs imposed by the Brazilian government precluding a full band.  Shortly after arriving in Norway though, Gismonti had a chance encounter with Naná Vasconcelos, and their instant kinship is what elevates this album from just incredible music to something even more special.

The concept that the two musicians agreed on, according to Gismonti, was "two boys wandering through a dense, humid forest, full of insects and animals, keeping a 180-feet distance from each other".  This is evoked straight away in the atmospheric introduction (named Quarto Mundo, possibly even before the late Jon Hassell used the term "Fourth World"), with flutes and voices evoking Amazonian wildlife.  The album's first suite then focuses on Gismonti's stunning guitar playing and Vasconcelos' percussive versatility.  Six songs are ran together for the LP's first side, including two from Academia Da Danças (link below).

The first half of the side two suite is given over entirely to Gismonti's piano, in a gorgeous piece called Tango that casts him as a Brazilian Keith Jarrett.  A low rumbling gong reintroduces Vasconcelos for a more atmospheric interlude including voices and handclaps, then Gismonti briefly returns to guitar.  To finish, a rush of shaken bells from Vasconcelos leads in to the choppy piano coda.  Both musicians would go on to international renown from here, on ECM and elsewhere, and on Dança Das Cabeças they produced a lasting landmark in their careers from a fortunate chance meeting.

link

pw: sgtg

Previously posted at SGTG: 
Academia Da Danças
Sol De Meio Dia 
Circense
Sanfona

Duas Vozes (with Naná Vasconcelos)
Dança Dos Escravos
In Montreal (with Charlie Haden)