The lineage of jazz has long drawn upon ideas from gospel music, whether Louis Armstrong’s presentation of spirituals or Duke Ellington’s or Mary Lou Williams’ sacred music compositions. However, to some, the connection between faith-based songs and contemporary improvised music seems more tenuous. Artists are more likely to find a space between jazz and hip […]
“From the snowy, windswept peaks of Lapland to the desert of the Empty Quarter, Three Seconds | Kolme Toista is an adventure unlike any other!” Okay, that’s not Jussi Reijonen’s stated program behind Three Seconds | Kolme Toista (Challenge Records, 2022), which is at once more ambitious and more personal. Yet the music conceived by the Boston-based […]
My annual list is the only time each year I try to get more personal with my writing, speaking in the first person and laying out my thoughts on the year passed. While at the outset of 2022, I decided to feature more interviews on the site, I never intended to focus so overwhelmingly on […]
From the mixes of a beat scientist to a double work with a string quartet, our team’s selections for the best albums of 2022 reflect the vibrancy of the contemporary improvised music scene. Some works pull your heartstrings, others are incredibly cerebral, yet others are super funky and make you want to groove. In many […]
In the second part of our conversation with composer Anthony Davis, we do a deeper dive into his work, X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X. Part one of our discussion can be found here. PostGenre: X was first presented in 1986. What was behind your decision to revisit the work over thirty years later? Anthony […]
When one looks beyond the jokes about “the fat lady” singing or baseless accusations of the form being boring, one can find operas sharing some of the most intriguing stories ever told. These tales present the full range of human emotion, from devastating loss to insuppressible joy. Often overlooked, however, are these works’ political overtones. […]
We continue our conversation with NEA Jazz Master Donald Harrison, Jr. (read part one here) by digging into Mardi Gras Indians, Dr. John, Miles Davis, The Notorious BIG, and more. PostGenre: Keeping with the topic of New Orleans tribal culture, one of your prior albums, Indian Blues (BMG, 1992), digs deep into the music of […]
While the history of improvised music is replete with works of artistic brilliance, such recordings seldom reach outside the confines of their usual audiences. It is not merely difficult but near impossible for improvisation-laced instrumental music to resonate with the larger popular culture. But there are always exceptions. One of these rare recordings is Herbie […]
In an interview with Ethan Iverson on his Do the M@th blog, writer Ben Ratliff related an anecdote that Paul Motian once told him. “Hank Jones said to [Motian] one day, after they’d been playing, ‘I know your secret.’ [Ratliff] said, ‘Oh yeah? And what do you think he meant?’ And [Motian] said, ‘I don’t […]
There is much in this world that we do not understand. Phenomena not easily understood by science or human reason. Unexplained mysteries are impossible to distinguish as either shocking reality or mental delusion. As bassist Trevor Dunn writes in the liner notes to Séances (Pyroclastic, 2022), his group Trio-Convulsant’s first release since 2004, “[w]e are […]
