New J*** artists/recordings recommendations
Posted by: philip rubin on 10 December 2000
I would appreciate if somebody could recommend some newer artists and recordings. I am not particularly current on some of the newer artists out there. I listened to some Joshua Redman recordings and found them enjoyable.
I appreciate your reply. Thanks.
There are a lot of jazz men out there still making great music. Try some of these:
James Carter - The Real Quiet Storm
Joe Lovano - Quartets Live at the Village Vanguard
David Murray - Shakill's Warrior (esp. cut #8 "Milano Strut", featuring the great Don Pullen on organ)
Henry Threadgill - Where's Your Cup (my pick as the most inspired album of the last five years)
Ornette Coleman - Sound Museum (Hidden Man version)
Miles Davis - Tutu; Amandla; Live Around the World (all three recorded in the last years of Miles' life - very modern and totally dangerous)
Abdullah Ibrahim - No Fear No Die (soundtrack album)
Don Byron - Bug Music
Brad Mehldau - Vol. 2-Art Of The Trio-Live at the Village Vanguard
Jon Faddis - Remembrances
Dave Holland - Prime Directive
Marcus Roberts - Alone With Three Giants
Roy Hargrove - With the Tenors of Our Time
Andrew Hill - Dusk
"Invention is a motherfucker!" - Lester Young
Chick Corea - Eye of the beholder
Yellowjackets - Dreamland
All excellent!
John
If you like Joshua Redman, Mark Turner is an excellent Tenor Sax player with similar approach album.. Yam Yam
Dave Douglas ( trumpet) is in my view the most exciting, innovative jazz musician around at the moment. Try "In Our Lifetime", or this years "Soul on Soul". Im sure you wont be disappointed. As you live in New York Im sure you could see Douglas live at the Knitting Factory. His band is scintillating!Though he does play with several different lineups.
Surprisingly both of these musicians were probably born after 1969 recently decreed Jazz Year Zero by Chairman Lonorgan in these very pages. 
I
[This message was edited by John C on MONDAY 11 December 2000 at 10:42.]
Any other recommendations are welcome. For me, however, it is hard to improve upon the masters from the 50/60's. I picked up the Pat Methany Trio 99-00 and new Joshua Redman BEYOND CD and I find those worth recommeding.
Regards to all.
If your tastes include blues I'd also suggest anything by James Cotton - the man's voice really sounds like he's lived the life, not just sang the words.
Cheers,
John Schmidt
"95% of everything is crud" - Theodore Sturgeon
For something very contemporary on the jazz front, let's really jump a bit and try Nils Petter Malvaer's two disks on ECM, Khmer and Solid Ether.
They fuse cool jazz with techno dance beats, so aren't exactly trad! Courtney Pine's worked a bit fusing dance stuff into jazz too, with fairly well regarded results on Modern Day Jazz Stories. NPM's approach is more of a complete fusion with the loops, samples and beats as relatively equal partners to the jazz side, while CP's stuff is more jazz with elements of dance beats added, if that makes sense.
Pete.
Andy Summers, Peggy's Blue Skylight
The ex-Police bass player gets some mates round and bashes out some fairly nice jazz. Not as good as the Monk-based "Green Chimmneys" - but I liked it. Goes well with a Rioja.
Antonio Forcione, Live!
The man is a genius, 'Nuff said.
Fred Simon, Dreamhouse
Couldn't keep my foot still all night.
Jonas Knutsson, Malgomai
Scandanavian Jazz with cowbells. Gotta be heard. May not be belived. Refreshing.
Oscar Peterson, Night Train
A classic - recent remastered version from Verve has been in and out my CD player like ... well never mind what like...
Hope this brings some joy to someone.
Cheers
Jonathan
I second the previous mention of Don Byron. I'd add "Romance With the Unseen" as a title to get.
Others include Chris Potter, Greg Osby, and just about anything on the Naxos Jazz label. Hell, even if the music isn't that great, it's only $7.
quote:
Fred Simon, Dreamhouse
Couldn't keep my foot still all night.
Jonathan, they have some wonderful new medications for restless leg syndrome.
But seriously, thanks once again for the kind plug.
D Douglas -- Soul on Soul (really excellent)
Masada (John Zorn) -- Live At Sevilla 2000
D Holland -- Prime Directive & Points of View
John Scofield -- Bump
Hockman 
I'm not sure if you get on with vocals but check out Patricia Barber's Cafe Blue & Betty Carter's Everything but the melody.
I've only recently discovered Barber. Heard her for the first time at the 500 dem in Seattle. I liked what I heard at the dem and made a mental note to check her out. A busy schedule kept me from it but I finally got the disk. It's a gem.
agree, night train is a great great album... now that you have reminded me, i will dig it up and play it again tonite...
enjoy...
ken
may i suggest that you try "soapsuds, soapsuds" by ornette coleman and charlie haden. rather "strange" record, but very enjoy on a naim system in full song...
i believe i have mentioned this album before in the old forum.
enjoy...
ken
Just picked up a great jazz CD - Dave Holland Quintet "Prime Directive" - best new jazz cd I've purchased since Henry Threadgill "Where's Your Cup". Love the 'bone.
quote:
Just picked up a great jazz CD - Dave Holland Quintet "Prime Directive"
Then you'll probably like his earlier release "Extensions" even more. Great music and a great recording. Catch them live when you can also - he surrounds himself with young, talented and fun-loving artists.
Cheers
Keith.
ex-audiophile
On a gentler note the soundtrack to the movie FINDING FORRESTER (not a bad movie with Sean Connery)is all about jazz, especially Miles Davis. Worth a listen if you are lacking in the Miles Davis department.
You mean you don't dig Ornette or James Blood Ulmer? What a shame! I've always been thrilled by "tough" music. After all, Thelonius Monk, Charlie Mingus, Eric Dolphy, John Coltrane were all considered very "tough" when they came on the scene. I'm dismayed at the popularity of someone like Brad Mehldau, who really has nothing new to say. It's one thing to enjoy a "dinner jazz" type of sound when you want to relax or whatever, but when you want to have communion with the heart of humanity and try to figure out why we're all here, bring on the "tough" stuff every time. Sorry you didn't like the Threadgill. He's not nearly as tough as a lot of stuff out there (Albert Ayler, Coltrane's "Live in Japan", "Meditations", Ornette's "Free Jazz", etc.) My favorite cuts on "Where's Your Cup" are #1 "100 Year Old Game" and #4 "And This". Listen to "100 Year Old Game" - after the opening accordion intro, Threadgill states the main theme on alto sax with a haunting tango-like rhythm behind him. The theme is then restated, before he launches into his solo. The solo builds to incredible peaks with Threadgill blowing his ass off, before the ensemble speeds up and then slows down, eventually returning to the opening theme. The invention in this piece is intoxicating. I don't know how you could describe this music as "tough", except that it is open, honest and expressive. Skip to #4, which opens again with solo accordion. The whole opening is a build up for Threadgill's solo, which takes off on one of the most mind boggling flights of inspiration I've heard since Jerome Richardson's soprano sax solo on the first cut of Mingus' "The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady". Brandon Ross' guitar solo then sets the table for another virtuoso solo by Threadgill. Have you ever gotten into "Lonely Woman" on Ornette's "The Shape of Jazz to Come"? Some great solo alto work there also. I hope you give this music some more time to get into your bones. It's worth the effort.
"Invention is a motherfucker!" - Lester Young
quote:
"Invention is a motherfucker!" - Lester Young
Lester doesn't exactly fit your definition of "tough."
Humans do not live by "tough" alone, and just because it ain't "tough" doesn't mean it's lame dinner jazz, which Mehldau is certainly not. He may not be "tough," but he can be "thorny," and very moving as well.
Music certainly doesn't need to be "tough" in order to "have communion with the heart of humanity and try to figure out why we're all here" ... there's lots and lots of music that accomplishes that without being "tough."
Funny coincidence, that - recently I went to the shops with the mission to buy a piano trio jazz disc. It boiled down to Mehldau’s latest offering and your “Dreamhouse”. I got the latter …
I can understand both Peter’s as well as your point of view – after properly listening to your album, I thought – oh well, nice, but a bit airy fairy. Put on Coltrane, OTOH, and you’re really forced to enter into communion with the music from the word go (if I don’t, it’ll just get on my nerves).
However, after I played “Dreamhouse” the fourth or fifth time, everything that’s deep about the music revealed itself to me – once you see beyond the evident beauty, you see the subtlety and depth (OK, enough brown-nosing).
On the whole, I am very partial to beauty – it seems, though, that the very concept of beauty has been tarnished, perhaps by advertising and the body cult, by the way modern society works. Beauty is not taken seriously anymore.
Please excuse this post. The wine I had with my dinner is simply too *beautiful* to stop at one glass.
Thomas
(not there yet) and neither are any of the 'new' bands.
Don't understand your comment about Lester Young. I never implied that his music was "tough". Just that he said "Invention is a motherfucker". That is to say, coming up with originality of invention is not an easy thing. I'm sorry I touched a sensitive nerve with my comment about Brad Mehldau. He's a fine musician with great chops, sensitive touch, and beautiful tone, but "Mehldau's music, as lovely and swinging as it often is, is utterly anonymous. And that's why the critics are quick to compare him to Bill Evans -- or, less frequently, to Paul Bley or Herbie Hancock -- because he has yet to find his own unique and unmistakable musical voice."(Not my words, David Prince's, although I couldn't agree more.) Imagine you're a young white dude in the late 1930s or early 1940s. You enjoy the music of the big bands, dancing with your girl to the smooth sounds of Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, and Glenn Miller. One night, half drunk, you stumble into a club and happen upon Bird, Diz, Lester Young, or maybe even Thelonius Monk playing bebop so fast that you don't know what hit you! What the fuck do you think you would you make of it on first exposure? That's what invention is. Remember Igor Stravinsky? Le Sacre du Printemps was trashed at its first performance. It certainly was very "tough". BTW Lester may not seem "tough" to us now, but he was one totally dangerous motherfucker in his day. Ever heard "Tickletoe"?
quote:
However, after I played “Dreamhouse” the fourth or fifth time, everything that’s deep about the music revealed itself to me – once you see beyond the evident beauty, you see the subtlety and depth
Truer words were never spoken (insert your favorite emoticon here)
quote:
On the whole, I am very partial to beauty – it seems, though, that the very concept of beauty has been tarnished, perhaps by advertising and the body cult, by the way modern society works. Beauty is not taken seriously anymore.
Thomas, I could not agree with you more. And to the reasons you posit, I would add the cult of music criticism, which, in general, sneers at beauty ... beauty is not hip, beauty isn't cool, beauty is suspect of being devoid of substance, which is a silly notion on the face of it -- beauty, in and of itself, is not automatically vapid, just as grittiness is not automatically substantial. True beauty can certainly bring one to "have communion with the heart of humanity" just as well as other aesthetics.
Thanks for taking the time to listen more deeply.
Regarding Brad Mehldau: I happened to hear him last night, and I agree -- he has "great chops, sensitive touch, and beautiful tone" but I don't agree that he sounds anonymous. It's true that he owes a certain debt to those who came before, but what player doesn't? He's young ... he's got time. In an interview Mehldau once complained, and rightly so in my opinion, that so many critics lazily compared him to Evans, largely because he was white, played "pretty," and had had a drug problem. Of course, nearly every modern pianist owes something to Evans, but the musician to whom Mehldau owes the greatest debt is Keith Jarrett, although he has been steadily moving away from that influence and establishing his own voice ... the Mehldau I heard last night seemed less like Jarrett, or anyone else, than I'd ever heard him.
Finally, speaking of Bill Evans, I came across a quote from him in Ashley Kahn's book on the making of Kind Of Blue that has some bearing on aspects of this conversation:
"It's this preoccupation with 'who's the most modern' instead of 'who's making the most beautiful, human music.' [The most beautiful] may very well be the most modern thing as well, but to make just avant-garde the criteria has gotten to be almost a sickness, especially in jazz."
[This message was edited by fred simon on SUNDAY 21 January 2001 at 00:04.]
Right on about Bud Powell. His piano work was truly definitive in the bebop arena. No one could play "across the line" better than Bud (Sonny Clark was close). But to refer to Monk as "on the fringes of bebop"? I don't know. One of my favorite records growing up was "Bird and Diz", and Monk bebops quite well. More angular, more dissonant, and yes, more "sparse", but definitely a bebop titan. Don't get me wrong about beauty, BTW, I love Bill Evans. I just think a lot of people don't invest enough effort into "tough" music. Oh well, different strokes...