Jerry Granelli-Drums, Simon Fisk-Bass, Danny Oore-Sax.
This song skronks as it swings. I haven't yet listened to this album all the way through yet, but I've yet to be disappointed by a Granelli album yet. A discography worth exploring. And for you emusic customers, I'm pretty sure a bunch of Granelli's older recordings just got released on emu.
Here's a cool Granelli interview on AAJ a few years back...
Big band with rock n' roll guts. Fans of Darcy James Argue and the Lounge Lizards should find plenty here to enjoy. The whole album is a damn fun ride. Also, giant robots on the cover.
Speaking of that album, you can stream the entire album (and purchase it, too) on Zubatto Syndicate's bandcamp page, found here...
Recorded at Avast! Seattle, engineered by Adam Burd. Featuring: Byron Vannoy drums David Marriott, Jr. trombone Greg Sinibaldi bass clarinet and tenor saxophone Francine Peterson bassoon Chad McCullough trumpet Janet Putnam oboe and English horn Tim Carey bass Mack Grout keys Mark Taylor alto saxophone Jim DeJoie baritone saxophone Jesse Canterbury clarinet Andrew Boscardin guitar.
For you Seattle-ites, these guys are pretty much all from around there. You should go check out one of their shows. Also, I recognize several of the names above from other ensembles. I think a couple of them appear on Origin label recordings, too.
This is the second fun big band tune we've had with the free mp3 of the day in the last 48 hours. Well worth the listen, especially if you're looking to expand your roster of big band selections on your cd shelf.
From his site:
Norman David directs, plays with and composes the music for his ensemble, The Eleventet. For the better part of 20 years, David led versions of the Eleventet in Boston, central Maine, and NYC. Among the noted musicians who have played with the band over the years are George Garzone, Dick Oatts, Tim Hagans, Seamus Blake, Jon Gordon, Greg Hopkins, Scott Robinson, John Fedchock, Dave Kikoski, Rock Ciccarone, John Swana, John H
Doing a little catch-up from the holiday weekend. Monday's free track was (and is still available) from John Stowell & Michael Zilber Quartet off their album Shot Through With Beauty...
Song = "Shot Through With Beauty", which can be downloaded off AAJ here...
Keep 'em comin', Jonah, I'm enjoying these. Have always meant to keep up with AAJ stuff, this reminds me to do it. I'm tagging them all AAJ in the comments for a smart playlist. Going back into the older stuff, I found the two Frisell live exclusives, prettycool
I don't have it in front of me, but this week we're running a bunch of older popular ones, including tracks by Jon Hassell, Either/Orchestra, Darcy James Argue, Dave Holland, and hm one or two others.
Submissions have been slow and I've been focusing my time on trying to develop some contacts as well as my vision for the feature.
Nothing solid yet, but we're looking at having a Taylor Haskins week near the end of the month which will include a track from each of his albums including the new one as well as some forum and other main page features. Also, I got a cold call from a Bandcamp jazzer who asked for some help getting the word out. I easily accepted. His music is good, sounds a bit like some of the mellower tracks off Pharaoh Sanders' "Thembi".
Amazing to me how difficult artists make it to get in contact with them.
I go through the new releases on emu. Anything sounds intriguing, I invite them to submit to the AAJ dotd. I google the artist site. No site? Okay, how about a myspace or bandcamp? No? Is there a label? Oh, hey, there's a label page. No contact info.
Three google searches, zero email addresses. This is happening frequently.
I'll be picking up all of those. Not sure you mentioned the Taylor Ho Bynum live contribution from last week...basically a free CD-length track. Mary Halvorson on electric guitar (1 of 2!)
Yeah, the Taylor Ho Bynum slipped past me. It was getting saved for the start of Vision Fest, which, ironically, I didn't see coming. I'll put a post up for that track soon.
Today has been a busy day getting things set up for the next couple weeks. We've got some neat things coming up. If Han-earl Park would email me an album cover or image of some sort, I'll be running his odd little electronics IDM not really jazz thing but pretty intriguing tune. I'm thinking about making the Saturday night dotd a real fringes of jazz thing. I emailed the Colorlist group, but didn't get any response; maybe didn't have the right email. But maybe Saturday could be some of these electronic or avant-classical acts that Brighternow and GP keep rec'ing.
What I've really enjoyed about this is that where before I would go through each and every new jazz arrival on emu and listen to a sample before deciding to ignore or SFL based on what I wanted in my itunes library, now I listen more to things like avant-guard and latin and mainstream, trying to suss out the special gems from the list in subgenres of jazz that I don't pay much attention to these days. It's giving me a new appreciation for things. There's this album by Mark O'Leary (et al) called "Snow". Pretty cool avant-guard jazz/classical. I wouldn't have given it more than 15 seconds of my time before; now, I email and introduce myself.
Coming up soon is this musician Alekos Vretos (maybe mispelled, doing this from memory) who plays an oud among other instruments. It's this crazy fusion but still kind of swings. Was absolutely thrilled when I first heard the track. Also, this band called Eyot who have a sound not unlike what it might sound like if Esbjorn Svensson Trio had recorded an ECM album and didn't pay much attention to Manfred Eicher's directions.
P.S. That band EYOT I was talking about in the post just above appears to be on Magnatune, if anyone here is still on that site. I think it's time I revisited it if it's got music like this on it.
I'm toying with the idea of creating some expectation with the AAJ dotd. I believe some people, maybe many, see the long list of free mp3s of (usually) unfamiliar names and just get overwhelmed and don't know where to start. So I'm thinking of having certain theme days. Like...
Big Band Friday - For big band and large ensemble tracks.
Avant-guard Saturday - Get your skronk here.
The Fringes Sunday - For stuff that barely qualifies as jazz, maybe even some avant-classical or some of that experimental stuff that Brighternow keeps rec'ing.
Old School Monday - Classic swing and bop. Straight-ahead and no surprises.
Tuesday -Thursday would be modern jazz or whatever I choose.
The immediate hurdle I see is that I'm designating four days of the week for the type of music that is least submitted. So maybe I make the Fringes a Saturday thing, move old school to Old School Sunday, and then Monday - Thursday is whatever I want, including avant-guard.
But it might be nice for people to know when they're looking at the list, hey, Friday's stuff is big band and I like big band, better grab this/check in on the site.
Does this sound appealing or do like the randomness of a seven-day-a-week grab bag better?
I'm not going to give advice because I don't know the answer...but some perceptions for what they are worth. I agree that as a jazz newbie/non-specialist it's hard to know what to download from the list; I'm kind of going by whether I like the cover art and band name for now, as it's essentially random experimentation for me at this point. But that does not help me actually learn the varieties. So I think for me it would be helpful to do some categorizing or clustering so that if I like something it's easier to look for another one like it - but I don't really have strong feelings about whether the categories are tied to days of the week because I don't check every day, I just go back and graze every so often.
Maybe you could have a couple of days for the more arcane genres with more than two genres tied to them, so that the overarching category is "one of several genres" rather than just one?
When you mentioned adding stuff at the electronic/avant classical fringe my ears did perk up. (Metaphorically anyway. I am not sure I know how to actually make my ears perk up.)
One possible downside to tying genres to days: the person who thinks they will never like anything in a given genre does not check the site on that day because they "know" they won't want it. This might not only change traffic patterns but also keep some people from discovery. There is something about the randomness of the emusic daily download that keeps me going looking every day even though I don't want most of them; I have found rather a lot of songs as a result that I would not have *planned* to download in genre terms. But maybe that's just me - maybe the average user would prefer to just check in one day a week. I don't know.
Thanks for that. I kinda use to feel the same way too about the AAJ dotd.
Ultimately, I think it would be cool to develop the Monday-Thursday modern selections into a day by day instrument.
Monday would be for sax led ensembles, Tuesday for piano, etc.
The thing is, I'd have to get way far out ahead in my scheduling to have the elasticity to shuffle tracks around to fit my daily criteria. If it was a full time job which paid, I'd be all over, but considering I'm just a volunteer, I need to keep my enthusiasm tethered closer to reality.
I thought about the discovery angle. My counter-thought was that if there were certain days that people could rely on stopping onto the site, like, hey I know today will be a big band tune because it's friday or, hey, today is Monday so none of that crazy shit they play on other days... that in a way, it will shorten the week, so to speak, and maybe make it easier for people to view the "unknowns" and maybe give them a chance. Not sure. Also keep in mind that people are checking into the site for things other than free mp3s. In fact, if I did a comparison of the number of downloads of free mp3s vs. site visit numbers, it might leave the dotd feature looking inconsequential.
I'm still learning. There's a lot about the inner workings of AAJ that I'm unfamiliar with.
But as far as those Saturday The Fringes thing goes, if anybody here wants to nominate some of your favorite musicians, I'll gladly go ahead and approach them.
The next two Saturdays will be the first of my Fringes series (I guess I've already started looking to see if my idea will work operationally). The first by Han-Earl Park actually walked through the front door without my prompting; an electronics kind of IDM blip avant guard thing. The second by Mark O'Leary, this beautiful drone with jazz instruments; I'm totally in love with it.
It doesn't strike me that a genre-oriented schedule would work out well. I think you'd find it too constraining and an artificial burden as time passed. You could accomplish much of that goal by just categorizing tracks on the page itself (but even that might turn onerous unless you objectively relied on last.fm/allmusic categorizations). Otoh, I do think it would serve you to informally genre-track your selections, to help enforce eclecticism.
I think the biggest improvement you could make is to embed a streaming player for each on the list page, so people could go down the list and immediately sample tracks with no trouble.
I agree with the streaming player. Even though you can stream the song by clicking on the track on each "Page 2" (the same page you can download from), it's amazing how tough it is to get people to that page two. Besides, wasn't emu that way not long ago? If you wanted to listen to samples, you had to click on the album title? Now, I just go down the list of new releases one at a time and don't have to keep going in and out of a second screen to hear the music. Works much more efficiently that way.
I know they're making some site improvements, but I can't remember if a player was one of those. I'll definitely look into it.
I am concerned about it becoming a burden. I have no doubt I'll always be able to fill the Fringes spot and, probably, the Big Band spot. Old School I probably could too. For the time being, I'm just going to try doing it informally and see what happens. If I have some success filling the various slots without any material panic, then I can move forward and make it official with some words on the screen.
Follow-up: Don't know exactly when it's gonna get rolled out, but a music player is at the top of the current projects being worked on as well as setting up a platform for musicians to stream their music on our site from their Musician Profile. That way, if you read an article or review about a musician who interests you, ultimately, we'd like to be set up to where you can just bop on over to their profile page and listen to their music on the AAJ site. I don't know yet if the player will be separate from the page, since that would allow you to continue listening to the music while you peruse AAJ for other things.
But that's where things are with that right now.
Also, there's gonna be some tweaking of the dotd presentation, so that subgenres are showing up better and things like that.
Tomorrow, also, starts a long list of musicians I've approached about using the dotd feature. Other than a little bit of input on the Origin releases we'd been featuring, tomorrow really signals the start of my initial work into the dotd feature. In order to free up some of my current time, we've re-run some more popular jazz free tracks this last week, including by artists:
James D'arcy Argue
Either/Orchestra
Jon Hassell
Tommy Smith
Matt Jorgensen
Aaron Parks
Dave Holland
Here's the AAJ subforum where you can find a thread regarding each of the above...
Thanks for all the information Jonah - I've now set up an AAJ playlist on itunes with the last two weeks' releases, well over two hours of music there!
If you were sad not to be able to attend Vision Fest before, this epic track will cement that regret big time. Fantastic music here.
Taylor Ho Bynum cornet; Matt Bauder tenor saxophone and bass clarinet; Jessica Pavone viola and electric bass; Mary Halvorson and Evan OReilly electric guitars; Tomas Fujiwara drums
All compositions by Taylor Ho Bynum
Recorded June 10, 2008 at Vision Festival XIII, NYC
Roy Assaf (piano); Jorge Roeder (bass); Ronen Itzik (Drums).
A beautiful tune. Assaf's piano flies just overhead Itzik's insistent brushwork, while Roeder keeps the ensemble's cadence at a pace that doesn't outrace the ear.
From their site:
Augmented Reality is an intimate troupe of three gifted musicians whose roots trace back to opposite corners of the globe, only to converge in New York for an instrumental collaboration that fuses East, West, North, and South.
Frequent collaborators Roy Assaf (piano) and drummer Ronen Itzik have a musical synergy which sparked the creation of a new direction in jazz. With the addition of Peruvian bassist Jorge Roeder the trio forms Augmented Reality, a group whose jazzy improvisations and syncopations layer in melodies of world appeal. Their varied cultural and social backgrounds bring Middle Eastern, Latin, and European influences to the music, blending them harmoniously in subtly provocative but accessible instrumentation that introduces a fresh dimension to jazz.
Kadri Voorand - vocals
Tia Fuller - alto saxophone
Ralph Bowen - tenor & soprano saxophones
Clifford Adams, Jr. - trombone
Jonny King - piano
Kenny Davis - bass
Adam Cruz - drums
Freddie Bryant - guitar (9)
Anthony Branker - composer/musical director
Personnel:
Alekos Vretos Oud
Konstantina Kyriazi Violin
Bassam Saba Nay, Flute
Takis Paterelis Soprano Sax
Dimitris Sevdalis Piano
Giorgos Roulos Double Bass
April Centrone Arabic Percussion (Riqq, Bendir, Shakers)
Luis Enrique Bu Pasqual Kikitcha Latin Percussion (Congas, Bongos, Shakers)
Seraphim Mpelos Drums
Really a fun tune. It keeps a ferocious pace while retaining a whimsical lighthearted melody throughout. This track was a real surprise to me, having never heard of Alekos before, but his music is definitely something I'll be looking to hear more of.
Today's free track kicks off a new aspect of the AllAboutJazz Free MP3 of the Day feature. I'll be instituting certain theme days as a way of bringing a sense of expectation to the dotd feature. One of those theme days I'm unofficially referring to as...
Saturday The Fringes
... which will feature songs that stretch and challenge the definition of what is jazz through experimentation and musical risk taking. I have no doubt that many listeners, at some point, will not even consider my Saturday The Fringes selections jazz at all, and sometimes they'll be right. Mostly I'm just looking for cool new music that I think will appeal to people who listen to jazz.
Han-earl Park has already established a track record of experimentalism, and the track featured today is no exception. The song begins with IDM blips, sound/vocal effects, and guitar that sounds as if being played through a radio station with a hazy frequency, and it's a sound that carries through the entire track before ending with a wave of pretty guitar and undercurrent of electronic drone.
Track = "Carrier", which can be downloaded from AAJ here...
Edward Simon on piano, Stephen Keogh on drums, and Philip Donkin on bass.
If you enjoy solid piano trio jazz, this should be right up your alley. Song keeps a brisk but casual pace, never sleepy but can inspire some introspection. A nice example of Simon's talent.
Dejan Ilijic - piano
Marko Stojiljkovic - bass
Milos Vojvodic - drums
Sladjan Milenovic - guitar
A dynamic ensemble that will appeal to fans of EST and Nik Bartsch's Ronin. Strong piano presence, a guitar which swells with electronic effects, and a rhythm section that keeps the ball moving.
Comments
Song = "Bones", which can be downloaded from AAJ here...
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/jazzdownload.php?id=6550
Jerry Granelli-Drums, Simon Fisk-Bass, Danny Oore-Sax.
This song skronks as it swings. I haven't yet listened to this album all the way through yet, but I've yet to be disappointed by a Granelli album yet. A discography worth exploring. And for you emusic customers, I'm pretty sure a bunch of Granelli's older recordings just got released on emu.
Here's a cool Granelli interview on AAJ a few years back...
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=26979
Song = "Mechas Over Manhattan", which can be downloaded off AAJ here...
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/jazzdownload.php?id=6573
Big band with rock n' roll guts. Fans of Darcy James Argue and the Lounge Lizards should find plenty here to enjoy. The whole album is a damn fun ride. Also, giant robots on the cover.
Speaking of that album, you can stream the entire album (and purchase it, too) on Zubatto Syndicate's bandcamp page, found here...
http://music.zubattosyndicate.com/album/zubatto-syndicate
Recorded at Avast! Seattle, engineered by Adam Burd. Featuring: Byron Vannoy drums David Marriott, Jr. trombone Greg Sinibaldi bass clarinet and tenor saxophone Francine Peterson bassoon Chad McCullough trumpet Janet Putnam oboe and English horn Tim Carey bass Mack Grout keys Mark Taylor alto saxophone Jim DeJoie baritone saxophone Jesse Canterbury clarinet Andrew Boscardin guitar.
For you Seattle-ites, these guys are pretty much all from around there. You should go check out one of their shows. Also, I recognize several of the names above from other ensembles. I think a couple of them appear on Origin label recordings, too.
Enjoy!
Song = "Tuesday Overture", which can be downloaded from AAJ here...
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/jazzdownload.php?id=6568
This is the second fun big band tune we've had with the free mp3 of the day in the last 48 hours. Well worth the listen, especially if you're looking to expand your roster of big band selections on your cd shelf.
From his site:
Song = "Shot Through With Beauty", which can be downloaded off AAJ here...
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/jazzdownload.php?id=6541
John Stowell - electric and acoustic guitars
Michael Zilber - tenor and soprano saxophones
John Shifflett - acoustic bass
Jason Lewis - drums
Nice laid-back tune, guitar weaving around saxophone calls. Very nice. Origin just can't seem to put out a bad release these days.
Submissions have been slow and I've been focusing my time on trying to develop some contacts as well as my vision for the feature.
Nothing solid yet, but we're looking at having a Taylor Haskins week near the end of the month which will include a track from each of his albums including the new one as well as some forum and other main page features. Also, I got a cold call from a Bandcamp jazzer who asked for some help getting the word out. I easily accepted. His music is good, sounds a bit like some of the mellower tracks off Pharaoh Sanders' "Thembi".
I go through the new releases on emu. Anything sounds intriguing, I invite them to submit to the AAJ dotd. I google the artist site. No site? Okay, how about a myspace or bandcamp? No? Is there a label? Oh, hey, there's a label page. No contact info.
Three google searches, zero email addresses. This is happening frequently.
So I move on to the next album on the list.
In all seriousness Jonah, if you needed street addresses I could help, but e-mail is tougher and costs money.
Craig
I'll be picking up all of those. Not sure you mentioned the Taylor Ho Bynum live contribution from last week...basically a free CD-length track. Mary Halvorson on electric guitar (1 of 2!)
Today has been a busy day getting things set up for the next couple weeks. We've got some neat things coming up. If Han-earl Park would email me an album cover or image of some sort, I'll be running his odd little electronics IDM not really jazz thing but pretty intriguing tune. I'm thinking about making the Saturday night dotd a real fringes of jazz thing. I emailed the Colorlist group, but didn't get any response; maybe didn't have the right email. But maybe Saturday could be some of these electronic or avant-classical acts that Brighternow and GP keep rec'ing.
What I've really enjoyed about this is that where before I would go through each and every new jazz arrival on emu and listen to a sample before deciding to ignore or SFL based on what I wanted in my itunes library, now I listen more to things like avant-guard and latin and mainstream, trying to suss out the special gems from the list in subgenres of jazz that I don't pay much attention to these days. It's giving me a new appreciation for things. There's this album by Mark O'Leary (et al) called "Snow". Pretty cool avant-guard jazz/classical. I wouldn't have given it more than 15 seconds of my time before; now, I email and introduce myself.
Coming up soon is this musician Alekos Vretos (maybe mispelled, doing this from memory) who plays an oud among other instruments. It's this crazy fusion but still kind of swings. Was absolutely thrilled when I first heard the track. Also, this band called Eyot who have a sound not unlike what it might sound like if Esbjorn Svensson Trio had recorded an ECM album and didn't pay much attention to Manfred Eicher's directions.
I'm toying with the idea of creating some expectation with the AAJ dotd. I believe some people, maybe many, see the long list of free mp3s of (usually) unfamiliar names and just get overwhelmed and don't know where to start. So I'm thinking of having certain theme days. Like...
Big Band Friday - For big band and large ensemble tracks.
Avant-guard Saturday - Get your skronk here.
The Fringes Sunday - For stuff that barely qualifies as jazz, maybe even some avant-classical or some of that experimental stuff that Brighternow keeps rec'ing.
Old School Monday - Classic swing and bop. Straight-ahead and no surprises.
Tuesday -Thursday would be modern jazz or whatever I choose.
The immediate hurdle I see is that I'm designating four days of the week for the type of music that is least submitted. So maybe I make the Fringes a Saturday thing, move old school to Old School Sunday, and then Monday - Thursday is whatever I want, including avant-guard.
But it might be nice for people to know when they're looking at the list, hey, Friday's stuff is big band and I like big band, better grab this/check in on the site.
Does this sound appealing or do like the randomness of a seven-day-a-week grab bag better?
Maybe you could have a couple of days for the more arcane genres with more than two genres tied to them, so that the overarching category is "one of several genres" rather than just one?
When you mentioned adding stuff at the electronic/avant classical fringe my ears did perk up. (Metaphorically anyway. I am not sure I know how to actually make my ears perk up.)
One possible downside to tying genres to days: the person who thinks they will never like anything in a given genre does not check the site on that day because they "know" they won't want it. This might not only change traffic patterns but also keep some people from discovery. There is something about the randomness of the emusic daily download that keeps me going looking every day even though I don't want most of them; I have found rather a lot of songs as a result that I would not have *planned* to download in genre terms. But maybe that's just me - maybe the average user would prefer to just check in one day a week. I don't know.
Ultimately, I think it would be cool to develop the Monday-Thursday modern selections into a day by day instrument.
Monday would be for sax led ensembles, Tuesday for piano, etc.
The thing is, I'd have to get way far out ahead in my scheduling to have the elasticity to shuffle tracks around to fit my daily criteria. If it was a full time job which paid, I'd be all over, but considering I'm just a volunteer, I need to keep my enthusiasm tethered closer to reality.
But we'll see. I'm hard to tether.
I thought about the discovery angle. My counter-thought was that if there were certain days that people could rely on stopping onto the site, like, hey I know today will be a big band tune because it's friday or, hey, today is Monday so none of that crazy shit they play on other days... that in a way, it will shorten the week, so to speak, and maybe make it easier for people to view the "unknowns" and maybe give them a chance. Not sure. Also keep in mind that people are checking into the site for things other than free mp3s. In fact, if I did a comparison of the number of downloads of free mp3s vs. site visit numbers, it might leave the dotd feature looking inconsequential.
I'm still learning. There's a lot about the inner workings of AAJ that I'm unfamiliar with.
The next two Saturdays will be the first of my Fringes series (I guess I've already started looking to see if my idea will work operationally). The first by Han-Earl Park actually walked through the front door without my prompting; an electronics kind of IDM blip avant guard thing. The second by Mark O'Leary, this beautiful drone with jazz instruments; I'm totally in love with it.
I think the biggest improvement you could make is to embed a streaming player for each on the list page, so people could go down the list and immediately sample tracks with no trouble.
In theory, yes, they should be from new(ish) releases. Though I make exceptions according to my whim (and the scheduling of site owner and manager).
@Karg
I agree with the streaming player. Even though you can stream the song by clicking on the track on each "Page 2" (the same page you can download from), it's amazing how tough it is to get people to that page two. Besides, wasn't emu that way not long ago? If you wanted to listen to samples, you had to click on the album title? Now, I just go down the list of new releases one at a time and don't have to keep going in and out of a second screen to hear the music. Works much more efficiently that way.
I know they're making some site improvements, but I can't remember if a player was one of those. I'll definitely look into it.
I am concerned about it becoming a burden. I have no doubt I'll always be able to fill the Fringes spot and, probably, the Big Band spot. Old School I probably could too. For the time being, I'm just going to try doing it informally and see what happens. If I have some success filling the various slots without any material panic, then I can move forward and make it official with some words on the screen.
Cheers.
Follow-up: Don't know exactly when it's gonna get rolled out, but a music player is at the top of the current projects being worked on as well as setting up a platform for musicians to stream their music on our site from their Musician Profile. That way, if you read an article or review about a musician who interests you, ultimately, we'd like to be set up to where you can just bop on over to their profile page and listen to their music on the AAJ site. I don't know yet if the player will be separate from the page, since that would allow you to continue listening to the music while you peruse AAJ for other things.
But that's where things are with that right now.
Also, there's gonna be some tweaking of the dotd presentation, so that subgenres are showing up better and things like that.
Tomorrow, also, starts a long list of musicians I've approached about using the dotd feature. Other than a little bit of input on the Origin releases we'd been featuring, tomorrow really signals the start of my initial work into the dotd feature. In order to free up some of my current time, we've re-run some more popular jazz free tracks this last week, including by artists:
James D'arcy Argue
Either/Orchestra
Jon Hassell
Tommy Smith
Matt Jorgensen
Aaron Parks
Dave Holland
Here's the AAJ subforum where you can find a thread regarding each of the above...
http://forums.allaboutjazz.com/forumdisplay.php?f=44
Song = JP & the Boston Suburbs, Parts 1 & 2 Woods whYeXpliCitieS, which can be downloaded from AAJ here...
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/jazzdownload.php?id=6556
If you were sad not to be able to attend Vision Fest before, this epic track will cement that regret big time. Fantastic music here.
Taylor Ho Bynum cornet; Matt Bauder tenor saxophone and bass clarinet; Jessica Pavone viola and electric bass; Mary Halvorson and Evan OReilly electric guitars; Tomas Fujiwara drums
All compositions by Taylor Ho Bynum
Recorded June 10, 2008 at Vision Festival XIII, NYC
Song = "Tabacon", which can be downloaded from AAJ here...
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/coverart/2010/augmentedreality_st_dss.jpg
Roy Assaf (piano); Jorge Roeder (bass); Ronen Itzik (Drums).
A beautiful tune. Assaf's piano flies just overhead Itzik's insistent brushwork, while Roeder keeps the ensemble's cadence at a pace that doesn't outrace the ear.
From their site:
And an AAJ review of the album:
http://www2.allaboutjazz.com/php/review_print.php?id=39713
AAJ has a front page article, and interview, on Anthony Branker on the main site...
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=39641
...and as a result, he's released a track from two of his albums.
The first is from his album Blessings...
Song = "Ascent", and can be downloaded from AAJ here...
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/jazzdownload.php?id=4185
A solid straight-ahead release on Origin back in 2006.
Steve Wilson - alto saxophone
Ralph Bowen - tenor & soprano saxophones
Clifford Adams Jr. - trombone
Bryan Carrott - vibraphone
Jonny King - piano
Belden Bullock - bass
Wilby Fletcher - drums
Renato Thoms - congas
Anthony Branker - musical director
The other track is from his more recent album Dance Music...
Track = "The House of the Brotherhood of the Black Heads", which can be downloaded from AAJ here...
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/jazzdownload.php?id=5995
Kadri Voorand - vocals
Tia Fuller - alto saxophone
Ralph Bowen - tenor & soprano saxophones
Clifford Adams, Jr. - trombone
Jonny King - piano
Kenny Davis - bass
Adam Cruz - drums
Freddie Bryant - guitar (9)
Anthony Branker - composer/musical director
Enjoy!
Song = "Foud", which can be downloaded from AAJ here...
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/jazzdownload.php?id=6581
Personnel:
Alekos Vretos Oud
Konstantina Kyriazi Violin
Bassam Saba Nay, Flute
Takis Paterelis Soprano Sax
Dimitris Sevdalis Piano
Giorgos Roulos Double Bass
April Centrone Arabic Percussion (Riqq, Bendir, Shakers)
Luis Enrique Bu Pasqual Kikitcha Latin Percussion (Congas, Bongos, Shakers)
Seraphim Mpelos Drums
Really a fun tune. It keeps a ferocious pace while retaining a whimsical lighthearted melody throughout. This track was a real surprise to me, having never heard of Alekos before, but his music is definitely something I'll be looking to hear more of.
Download and enjoy!
Saturday The Fringes
... which will feature songs that stretch and challenge the definition of what is jazz through experimentation and musical risk taking. I have no doubt that many listeners, at some point, will not even consider my Saturday The Fringes selections jazz at all, and sometimes they'll be right. Mostly I'm just looking for cool new music that I think will appeal to people who listen to jazz.
Han-earl Park has already established a track record of experimentalism, and the track featured today is no exception. The song begins with IDM blips, sound/vocal effects, and guitar that sounds as if being played through a radio station with a hazy frequency, and it's a sound that carries through the entire track before ending with a wave of pretty guitar and undercurrent of electronic drone.
Track = "Carrier", which can be downloaded from AAJ here...
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/jazzdownload.php?id=6472
Han-earl Park (guitar) and Richard Scott (electronics).
Song = "How Deep is the Ocean", which can be downloaded from AAJ here...
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/jazzdownload.php?id=5905
Edward Simon on piano, Stephen Keogh on drums, and Philip Donkin on bass.
If you enjoy solid piano trio jazz, this should be right up your alley. Song keeps a brisk but casual pace, never sleepy but can inspire some introspection. A nice example of Simon's talent.
Song = "Horizon", which can be downloaded from AAJ here...
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/jazzdownload.php?id=6627
Dejan Ilijic - piano
Marko Stojiljkovic - bass
Milos Vojvodic - drums
Sladjan Milenovic - guitar
A dynamic ensemble that will appeal to fans of EST and Nik Bartsch's Ronin. Strong piano presence, a guitar which swells with electronic effects, and a rhythm section that keeps the ball moving.
You can stream the entire album on their site...
http://magnatune.com/artists/albums/eyot-horizon/