Saturday, December 19, 1970 For first-time listeners to The Cellar Door Sessions 1970 (Columbia, 1970), the first four discs can be like a side trip to unfamiliar neighborhoods of a well-known place. The language is the same, the architecture familiar, but the details are new and delightfully alive. Arriving at discs five and six is […]
The vibraphonist Bill Ware is perhaps best known for his work with The Jazz Passengers and Groove Collective. He has a cross-genre bent that includes work with Steely Dan and Elvis Costello. He is also incredibly prolific. Since 2016, he has composed over two hundred and fifty pieces, including sixty during the pandemic. These pieces […]
Here is a fun exercise for a reader’s consideration. Consider these two quotes: “[It is] just a bunch of notes thrown together without melody or soul—hardly what I’d call music” and “[It’s] not music… [it] doesn’t require musicianship….” What genre of music are they referring to? Here is a hint- the music grew organically through […]
Although instruments like the Teleharmonium plugged in as early as the late Nineteenth Century, it was not until the 1970s that electronic sounds would meet the depths of human improvisation-based music by the name of jazz. At the height of fusion, synthesizers added to the works of Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Weather Report, and others. […]
The comparison of a familiar hell to a strange heaven drives Australian-born bassist and composer Linda May Han Oh’s thinking for her trio album Strange Heavens (Biophilia, 2025). It is far too easy to be lulled by society into complacency and benign acceptance of social and political conditions. Strange Heavens stands opposed to this status […]
