Page 5 - Don Pullen News Today

Vijay Iyer has never shied away from ambitious projects. Originally conceived for a 2011 dance piece, UnEasy encompasses tunes written or adopted over the course of twenty years, now coalesced as commentary on the past few years’ political turmoil. Joined by fellow jazz geniuses Linda May Han Oh on bass and Tyshawn Sorey on drums (who also plays with Iyer in Fieldwork), the New York native paints vivid canvases that draw on multiple iterations of jazz without overtly paying homage to any ...

Photos by Jill Steinberg Iranian-American saxophonist Hafez Modirzadeh has spent decades straddling two traditions, finding the commonalities, and using them to create something entirely new. Born in Durham, North Carolina to an Iranian father and an Irish/Russian mother, he came to jazz as a teenager, enraptured by Charlie Parker, Sonny Rollins, Miles Davis, and Lester Young. “It wasn’t until I had to consciously consider who I was in this society and as a musician,â...

New York Daily News Archive/NY Daily News via Getty Images hide caption toggle caption New York Daily News Archive/NY Daily News via Getty Images Milford Graves, circa 2000, in front of his house in South Jamaica, Queens, N.Y. New York Daily News Archive/NY Daily News via Getty Images Drummer, scientist, educator and improviser Milford Graves died in his Queens, N.Y. home around 3 p.m. on Fri., Feb. 12. He was 79. Lois, his wife of sixty-one years, confir...

‘Reaching for inspiration back into the music’s deepest origins’ ... Milford Graves. Photograph: PR Image Sun 14 Feb 2021 07.32 EST Last modified on Tue 16 Feb 2021 07.53 EST Of all the freedoms opened up by the free-jazz revolution of the 1960s, none was more radical or, to many, disturbing than the freeing of rhythm from fixed points of bar lines and regular time signatures. The American drummer Milford Graves, who has died aged 79, was in the forefront of that move to create momentum t...

How Milford Graves Reawakened the Spirit of the Drum How Milford Graves Reawakened the Spirit of the Drum Late percussionists radical approach galvanized everyone from Lou Reed to Albert Ayler, and built a bridge between music and the healing arts Hank Shteamer, provided by FacebookTwitterEmail In September of 2008, an unusual performance took place at downtown New York club Le Poisson Rouge. At stage right, opposite fellow six-string adventurer Marc Ribot, sat Lou Reed, conjuring clouds of fr...

Reissue CDs Weekly: Charles Mingus @ Bremen 1964 & 1975 | reviews, news & interviews Reissue CDs Weekly: Charles Mingus @ Bremen 1964 & 1975 Reissue CDs Weekly: Charles Mingus @ Bremen 1964 & 1975 Live recordings where the jazz great wouldn’t ‘tone down his performance to meet the audience’s tastes’ by Kieron TylerSunday, 10 January 2021 George Adams (left) and Charles Mingus on stage, Bremen, 9 July 1975Sunnyside Communications, Inc. Two of the four CDs in this set are of ...

Why You Need To Hear Monty Alexander’s Love You Madly HomeAudiophile News, Audiophile, Audiophile MusicWhy You Need To Hear Monty Alexander’s Love You Madly 29 On the last Record Store Day event of 2020, several fascinating archival jazz releases were issued which I previewed (click here to read that). In that article I promised I would explore the releases there in greater depth, two of which I have done so far (click here for Resonance Records’ Bill Evans Live at Ro...

Share The Vinyl Vault presents some mid-70s fusion with a European twist when we’ll listen to a 1975 album from violinist Michal Urbaniak entitled “Fusion III.” Urbaniak, who hails from Poland, immigrated to the U.S. in 1973 and quickly joined the New York fusion scene. “Fusion III” features performances from several of Urbaniak’s compatriots as well as a number of highly regarded American musicians. For instance, both John Abercrombie and Larry Coryell each play a number ...

One-time pop star and acclaimed Mixmag columnist the Secret DJ continues to chronicle the last 30-plus years of dance music’s evolution as a superstar DJ before it all went pear-shaped. Yet Book Two is not a direct follow-up to the biographical The Secret DJ: From Ibiza To the Norfolk Broads. Rather, they take a more anthropological approach, recounting the purity of a youth movement falling prey to gentrification and filthy lucre. “No one in publishing would have the balls to touch this...