Latest posts
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Billie Holiday’s Lady in Satin: The Voice, the Orchestra and the Meaning of a Late Masterpiece
A Voice at the Edge When Billie Holiday entered the Columbia studios in New York in February 1958 to record Lady in Satin, she was no longer the singer who had transformed American popular song during the 1930s. More than twenty years had passed since her early recordings with Teddy Wilson, and the voice that…
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Chivo Borraro and the Pampean Astral: Andean Roots, Electric Fusion, and the Portenho Melancholy of ‘High Blues’
The Chronicle of an Era: The Buenos Aires Avant-Garde, The Microfón Label, and the 1974 South American Fusion Zenith By the arrival of 1974, Buenos Aires was operating as one of the most intense, sophisticated, and socio-politically volatile cultural pressure cookers in the Southern Hemisphere. Beneath the heavy shadow of imminent political transitions, the Argentine…
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John Stevens and the Democratic Swarm: Radical Total Improvisation, Egalitarian Textures, and the Fluid Mechanics of ‘In Concert’
The Chronicle of an Era: The London Underground Networks, the Post-Punk Collision, and the 1981 Affinity Pressings By the arrival of 1981, the landscape of British experimental art was operating under a heavy, highly polarized socio-political cloud. The aggressive rise of Thatcherism, industrial decay, and intense urban unemployment had fueled a bleak, confrontational counter-culture across…
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Michael Carvin and the Primal Pulse: Ritual Percussion, Ancestral Trance, and the Spatial Architecture of ‘The Antiquity’
The Chronicle of an Era: The European Expatriate Sanctuaries, SteepleChase Records, and the 1975 Acoustic Explorations By the arrival of 1975, the socio-political and economic pressures facing radical Black jazz innovators in the United States had reached a critical, suffocating breaking point. The American recording industry had aggressively pivoted toward commercial electronic funk, pop-inflected fusion,…
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Angel Bat Dawid and the Lo-Fi Sanctuary: Cell-Phone Overdubs, Ancestral Grief, and the Spiritual Urgency of ‘The Oracle’
The Chronicle of an Era: The Chicago Underground, International Anthem, and the Twenty-First Century Spiritual Renaissance By the arrival of 2018, the landscape of creative improvised music in Chicago was undergoing a radical, highly localized transformation. For decades, the city had been a fortress of avant-garde history, shaped by the historic Association for the Advancement…
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Al Neil The Pianist Who Walked Out of Jazz and Into the Avant-Garde
Before the Piano Became Something Else Long before Al Neil became one of the strangest and most important figures in Canada’s experimental arts, he was a jazz pianist trying to understand the implications of bebop from a city thousands of miles from New York. That geographical fact matters. Vancouver in the late 1940s and 1950s…
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David S. Ware: The Tenor Colossus Who Carried the Fire Into Another Century
Before the Sound Became Monumental There are tenor saxophonists whose identity can be recognized through a phrase, and others whose identity seems to arrive before the phrase itself. David S. Ware belonged to the second category. At full force, his tenor could feel less like an instrument producing notes than a physical body occupying the…
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François Tusques: The Pianist Who Freed French Jazz — Then Asked What Freedom Was For
Buy Amazon Before French Free Jazz Had a Name When François Tusques recorded an album simply titled Free Jazz in Paris in 1965, the title was more than a stylistic description. It sounded almost like a declaration of independence. Ornette Coleman had already transformed the vocabulary of American jazz, Cecil Taylor was dismantling conventional assumptions…
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Brother Ah The French Horn Visionary Who Turned Jazz Into a Spiritual Journey
Before Brother Ah, There Was Robert Northern Long before he became Brother Ah, Robert Northern had already lived several musical lives. He had been a conservatory-trained French horn player, worked inside classical orchestras, played Broadway and nightclub jobs, and entered recording studios with some of the most important figures in modern jazz. His credits would…