What Jazz are you listening to now?

[Stanfordian]

‘Way Out West’ - Sonny Rollins
with Ray Brown & Shelly Manne
Contemporary (1957)

[Stanfordian]

‘Gravy Train’ - Lou Donaldson
with Herman Foster, Ben Tucker, Dave Bailey & Alec Dorsey
Blue Note (1961)

[Jazzrook]

John Coltrane with McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison & Elvin Jones playing 'Love' from the overlooked album 'First Meditations' recorded on September 2, 1965 but not released until 1977:

https://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=E73Ji_xYAXY

JR

[Joseph K]

John Coltrane with McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison & Elvin Jones playing 'Love' from the overlooked album 'First Meditations' recorded on September 2, 1965 but not released until 1977:

https://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=E73Ji_xYAXY

JR

That's a fine album. I have it on CD.

[Joseph K]

John McLaughlin - Extrapolation

[Stanfordian]

‘Wahoo!’ - Duke Pearson
with Donald Byrd, Joe Henderson, Bob Cranshaw & Mickey Roker
Blue Note (1964)

[Ian Thumwood]

I have been listening to the music from Nubya Garcia's new album which you can hear on her site:-

https://www.nubyagarcia.com/

The reggae-influenced track is quite interesting because the piano vamp is very similar to that used on a composition by Paul Giallorenzo on an album that also included Jeb Bishop and Mars Williams. However, the arrangement subsequently evolves into something entirely different and probably more akin to Kamasai Washington. I like the track even if there is a lot of post-production in there. I have to say that I really like the sound she produces on tenor . It is extremely pleasing to listen to and she can certainly play. She also has her own sound.

It is quite interesting to hear some of these new jazz musicians coming out of London. The whole concept is refreshing and they are offering a contemporary spin on jazz which is obviously aimed to appealing to a younger demographic. I don't think the music produced is radically changing the music, rather re-casting it. If this message-board is anything to go by, it is being totally overlooked by the more typical jazz audience. It is strange because I feel that the music is "new" and "contemporary" but certainly not too challenging. more importantly, it actually sounds like jazz and the music doesn't sound like a load of exercises by music students. I felt felt totally disconnected with much of the contemporary British scene scene over the last 15 years but the likes of Nubya Garcia, Kassie Kinoshie, Shabacka Hutchings, Ashley Henry are producing the kind of jazz that I want to listen to.

I am intrigued why no on else seems to be raving about this stuff? Maybe the hype from the press is off-putting ?

[Jazzrook]

I have been listening to the music from Nubya Garcia's new album which you can hear on her site:-

https://www.nubyagarcia.com/

The reggae-influenced track is quite interesting because the piano vamp is very similar to that used on a composition by Paul Giallorenzo on an album that also included Jeb Bishop and Mars Williams. However, the arrangement subsequently evolves into something entirely different and probably more akin to Kamasai Washington. I like the track even if there is a lot of post-production in there. I have to say that I really like the sound she produces on tenor . It is extremely pleasing to listen to and she can certainly play. She also has her own sound.

It is quite interesting to hear some of these new jazz musicians coming out of London. The whole concept is refreshing and they are offering a contemporary spin on jazz which is obviously aimed to appealing to a younger demographic. I don't think the music produced is radically changing the music, rather re-casting it. If this message-board is anything to go by, it is being totally overlooked by the more typical jazz audience. It is strange because I feel that the music is "new" and "contemporary" but certainly not too challenging. more importantly, it actually sounds like jazz and the music doesn't sound like a load of exercises by music students. I felt felt totally disconnected with much of the contemporary British scene scene over the last 15 years but the likes of Nubya Garcia, Kassie Kinoshie, Shabacka Hutchings, Ashley Henry are producing the kind of jazz that I want to listen to.

I am intrigued why no on else seems to be raving about this stuff? Maybe the hype from the press is off-putting ?

There's a 4-page article on Nubya Garcia and an enthusiastic review of her debut album 'Source' in the current issue of Jazzwise(September 2020).

JR

[Jazzrook]

Albert Ayler with NHOP(bass) & Ronnie Gardiner(drums) playing 'C.T.' in Copenhagen, January 14, 1963:

https://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=gqFT9z2v76Y

JR

[Serial_Apologist]

I have been listening to the music from Nubya Garcia's new album which you can hear on her site:-

https://www.nubyagarcia.com/

The reggae-influenced track is quite interesting because the piano vamp is very similar to that used on a composition by Paul Giallorenzo on an album that also included Jeb Bishop and Mars Williams. However, the arrangement subsequently evolves into something entirely different and probably more akin to Kamasai Washington. I like the track even if there is a lot of post-production in there. I have to say that I really like the sound she produces on tenor . It is extremely pleasing to listen to and she can certainly play. She also has her own sound.

It is quite interesting to hear some of these new jazz musicians coming out of London. The whole concept is refreshing and they are offering a contemporary spin on jazz which is obviously aimed to appealing to a younger demographic. I don't think the music produced is radically changing the music, rather re-casting it. If this message-board is anything to go by, it is being totally overlooked by the more typical jazz audience. It is strange because I feel that the music is "new" and "contemporary" but certainly not too challenging. more importantly, it actually sounds like jazz and the music doesn't sound like a load of exercises by music students. I felt felt totally disconnected with much of the contemporary British scene scene over the last 15 years but the likes of Nubya Garcia, Kassie Kinoshie, Shabacka Hutchings, Ashley Henry are producing the kind of jazz that I want to listen to.

I am intrigued why no on else seems to be raving about this stuff? Maybe the hype from the press is off-putting ?

For the present the enthusiasm is encouraging although that alone doesn't guarantee quality music. In this instance I am hearing something of a re-hash of the early 1980s club scene centred mainly around Working Week, except that back then the players had the free jazz disapora to fall back on once the illusions that in clubland lay the future had been laid to rest. The future actually came to rest on the initiatives led by Gary Crosby and Django Bates - in the former case more firmly bedded in British Caribbean culture - ska/reggae and adapted homegrown funk, which continues; in the latter an embrace of the Surman/Collier/Wheeler generation that was at the same time something of a fond reaction, with initiatives spawning from where the F-ire, Loop and Leeds scene collectives seized the baton from the Loose Tubers, with support and not just blessings from Django. Inevitably with contemporary jazz [sic] becoming an alternative magnet to the poor prospects of classical careers, for logistics as much as reasons to do with the questionability of where classical modernism and its support systems in the arts establishment has gone post-Birtwistle & co, an attraction that is primarily to complexity will make for contrasts between those for whom elaboration of technique is the thing in itself and others who still choose to embrace jazz as signifying or taking part in radical change in the bigger picture of a collapsing capitalist superstructure.

My guessing is that Nubia and her associates will remain committed to a renewed form of Afrobeat. If one cites Alexander Hawkins as prototypical, and that Shabaka Hutchings - notwithstanding that he doesn't always seem sure of his own direction, which in itself is symptomatic of the present crisis in jazz and looks both ways - the most creative and at the same time edgy possibilities still lie in the latter direction.

[Joseph K]

Now playing here: Emily Remler - East to Wes

... the remaining tunes of this fine album (from Sweet Georgie Fame onwards) yep - I have a tendency not to listen to a whole album in one sitting ...

[Ian Thumwood]

For the present the enthusiasm is encouraging although that alone doesn't guarantee quality music. In this instance I am hearing something of a re-hash of the early 1980s club scene centred mainly around Working Week, except that back then the players had the free jazz disapora to fall back on once the illusions that in clubland lay the future had been laid to rest. The future actually came to rest on the initiatives led by Gary Crosby and Django Bates - in the former case more firmly bedded in British Caribbean culture - ska/reggae and adapted homegrown funk, which continues; in the latter an embrace of the Surman/Collier/Wheeler generation that was at the same time something of a fond reaction, with initiatives spawning from where the F-ire, Loop and Leeds scene collectives seized the baton from the Loose Tubers, with support and not just blessings from Django. Inevitably with contemporary jazz [sic] becoming an alternative magnet to the poor prospects of classical careers, for logistics as much as reasons to do with the questionability of where classical modernism and its support systems in the arts establishment has gone post-Birtwistle & co, an attraction that is primarily to complexity will make for contrasts between those for whom elaboration of technique is the thing in itself and others who still choose to embrace jazz as signifying or taking part in radical change in the bigger picture of a collapsing capitalist superstructure.

My guessing is that Nubia and her associates will remain committed to a renewed form of Afrobeat. If one cites Alexander Hawkins as prototypical, and that Shabaka Hutchings - notwithstanding that he doesn't always seem sure of his own direction, which in itself is symptomatic of the present crisis in jazz and looks both ways - the most creative and at the same time edgy possibilities still lie in the latter direction.

Here is the review of this album in All about jazz. It is written by Chris May who is usually very partisan towards British artists:-

https://www.allaboutjazz.com/source-nubya-garcia-concord-music-group

The tracks I have heard from the record are aimed at the kind of people who are buying records by the likes of Robert Glasper, Kamasi Washington, etc. This kind of record needs to be looked at in comparison with the likes of records by Jimmy Smith and Stanley Turrentine. Whilst Nubya may be influenced by Joe Henderson, I think that her music is a similar attempt to reconnect with audiences who may not necessarily have listened to jazz before. I would also add that I think the jazz media is also picking up on the fact that throughout most of the late 2000s and 2010's what was passing as "jazz" was often painfully disconnected from the "real" music. (Thinking about bands like Go-Go Penguin, Portico Quartet, Neil Cowley, etc which tend to channel in EDM, New Age and Chas ' Dave respectively.) Having grown up thinking that "British jazz" meant Kenny Wheeler, John Surman, John Taylor, Mike Westbrook, etc and that the people previously bringing "new" ideas in to jazz were, as you say, the likes of Django Bates and Gary Crosby, I never felt that the newer British jazz musicians emerging in the 2000's were that interesting. As I said, even the more "technical" stuff seemed like exercises by students. The music produced by Garcia, Henry, Kinoshi, at least sounds like jazz. The SEED Ensemble album does blend elements of hip-hop in to the music and it is unreservedly "contemporary" in it's approach yet , for what of a better word, it seems more "authentic" than so much other British jazz I have heard for a long time. I don't see this as being at all to do with any perceived "crisis" in jazz. It is just a way of responding to make jazz sound like it belongs in 2020 and not just from it's rich heritage in the past. You would have to be particularly curmudgeonly not to enjoy the title track from her new album!

I am not a fan of the idea of development in jazz being linear as you suggest but I think that there is another factor at play which is to try to make the music seem relevant again. The marketing and publicity machine around NG is probably symptomatic of the age we live in. I am not a fan of it as I prefer to stumble upon something new by myself. As to whether this music will have any legs ( I am taking it that you do not believe this music to do so) , we will have to wait and see. What I think is not in doubt is that something very interesting is happening in the current UK jazz scene and that this has by-passed the tried and tested routes that have existed in the last 30 years in developing technically gifted musicians who have relatively little to say. What I have heard by Nubya and her fellows bodes well in my opinion. Given that this is the first, full-length album under her own name, no one seriously expects it to be "A love supreme" yet I feel her arrival on the scene is certainly a cause for celebration. Listen to the album and then judge.

[Joseph K]

Joe Diorio - Solar

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tB_k_Ma5OdA

[Joseph K]

You would have to be particularly curmudgeonly not to enjoy the title track from her new album!

It's ok - nothing to write home about. The keyboard solo was more adventurous/jazzier than the horn. The reggae aspect is a bit staid.

[Joseph K]

It's ok - nothing to write home about. The keyboard solo was more adventurous/jazzier than the horn. The reggae aspect is a bit staid.

... ok, so now I'm listening to the whole album... I have 'The Message Continues' on which is more like it IMO, compared with the title track.