The place for jazz videos

[Serial_Apologist]

Readers of The Wire back in the 1980s might be curious to have read about the documentary film that has just been made about the legendary Leeds saxophonist Xero Slingsy. His is a name I have not heard for ages but he was something of a cult figure in the 1980s jazz revival. He was one of those musicians like Jan Kopinski who gravitated towards the "Punk Jazz" that tooks its cues from Ornette Coleman's Prime Time. The music also reminds me a bit of the late Thomas Chapin.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CX_xx85AjXk

Thanks Ian for posting this link. This is the first time I have heard Xero's playing. There's another similar Ornettish contemporary to him - a Bristolian called Aaron Standon you might have heard of.

[elmo]

Joe Henderson at the Molde Jazz festival with Kenny Drew, NHOP and Albert Tootie Heath - as the Jazz emcee from the "Fast Show" would say - Nicccce

https://youtu.be/4wazNsLbCJE?feature=shared

elmo

[Jazzrook]

Phineas Newborn Jr. with Al McKibbon & Kenny Dennis playing Sonny Rollins' 'Oleo' in 1962:

https://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=mADxQjfxL54

JR

[Tenor Freak]

Thanks Ian for posting this link. This is the first time I have heard Xero's playing. There's another similar Ornettish contemporary to him - a Bristolian called Aaron Standon you might have heard of.

SA, I know you're based in Sarf London but often travel up north. According to someone on the Sax on the Web forum there was a bloke playing alto sax down Stoke Newington market in 2015. His horn was inscribed so:

Might still be around, though I understand that London is quite large so it may be a long shot. PS: apparently the gent playing the alto shown above was Alan Wilkinson.

[Ian Thumwood]

SA / Tenor Freak

I can remember the obituary fro Zero Slingsby in The Wire . I think that there was a lot of interest in the local scene at that time because London had been receiving a lot of the attention before the journalists realised that there the "jazz revival"was happening out in the provinces too. For me, charcters like Xero Slingsby represented much of what was happening outside of London. From recollection, there was a pianist called Paul Reid who was based in Sheffield (from recollection) who featured on the front cover of the magazine one month. I had never heard of him but the reporter discovered that Reid had his fingers in the pie of all sorts of projects from small groupd through to a big band.

Seeing the clips, I have to admit that the kind of music played by Slingsby was really typical of what was happening in the Uk jazz scene in the late 1980s. There were so many bands busking in Southampton at that time including a Soul group called "Get smart" who seemed to be everywhere at that time. There were loads of venues in Southampton where you could hear both professional and amateur groups ranging from Trad, Gypsy jazz, piano trios and modern jazz. The local BBC radio station used to run a gig guide and it went on for ages because there were so many venues offering jazz. When you read about the revival in the 1980s, the stereotype of New-Neos gets trotted out all the time but the reality was that there were more bands going in different directions as opposed to everyone following the Wynton model. The jazz scene was far more vibrant than that and I feel less dominated by college students than it is today. You certainly do not see the guerilla approach to jazz of Xero Slingsby now. There was an element in jazz back then that was slightly anti-establishment which seems to be missing these days.

[Serial_Apologist]

SA, I know you're based in Sarf London but often travel up north. According to someone on the Sax on the Web forum there was a bloke playing alto sax down Stoke Newington market in 2015.

Might still be around, though I understand that London is quite large so it may be a long shot. PS: apparently the gent playing the alto shown above was Alan Wilkinson.

Alan's a well known Peter Brotzmann-type free alto, baritone sax and bass clarinettist, from E London originally - a friendly guy who has run a basement for free jazz at a place called Ryan's Bar in Stoke Newington for maybe 20 years now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBmYNZdSMfI

I used to go there when it was easier to get to than now. I'm left wondering if Zero bequeathed Alan his saxophone. Elton Dean left his saxello to Paul Dunmall - not sure how many people know this.

[Serial_Apologist]

SA / Tenor Freak

I can remember the obituary fro Zero Slingsby in The Wire . I think that there was a lot of interest in the local scene at that time because London had been receiving a lot of the attention before the journalists realised that there the "jazz revival"was happening out in the provinces too. For me, charcters like Xero Slingsby represented much of what was happening outside of London. From recollection, there was a pianist called Paul Reid who was based in Sheffield (from recollection) who featured on the front cover of the magazine one month. I had never heard of him but the reporter discovered that Reid had his fingers in the pie of all sorts of projects from small groupd through to a big band.

Seeing the clips, I have to admit that the kind of music played by Slingsby was really typical of what was happening in the Uk jazz scene in the late 1980s. There were so many bands busking in Southampton at that time including a Soul group called "Get smart" who seemed to be everywhere at that time. There were loads of venues in Southampton where you could hear both professional and amateur groups ranging from Trad, Gypsy jazz, piano trios and modern jazz. The local BBC radio station used to run a gig guide and it went on for ages because there were so many venues offering jazz. When you read about the revival in the 1980s, the stereotype of New-Neos gets trotted out all the time but the reality was that there were more bands going in different directions as opposed to everyone following the Wynton model. The jazz scene was far more vibrant than that and I feel less dominated by college students than it is today. You certainly do not see the guerilla approach to jazz of Xero Slingsby now. There was an element in jazz back then that was slightly anti-establishment which seems to be missing these days.

It still does exist but tends to get more bracketed in with free improvisation these days, Ian, hence the absence of representation on our two main jazz broadcasts - not helped in my view by Corey's concentration mainly on free and experimental stuff abroad.

[Tenor Freak]

Quite enjoyable quartet session from Köln (yes I have included the umlaut for all German grammar pedants) recorded last year.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7IcZMXJfZk

[Tenor Freak]

Melissa Aldana (ts) again, Köln again, this time with Lage Lund (g) Pablo Menares (b) and Kush Abadey (dr) in a quartet date from 2021. Enjoying this one, I have been listening a lot recently to Ms. Aldana. Her style is similar to Mark Turner's but with some significant differences.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkG4jGrnr5Y

[burning dog]

Enjoyed that Tenor Freak

[kindofblue]

Enjoyed that Tenor Freak

Me too, thanks for sharing.

[Ian Thumwood]

Bruce

It was ineresting to her Melissa Aldana with her own group as my experience of her playing was limited to a couple of guest appearances on an Emmett Cohen CD where she was the best thing on the record. I will need to listen at length to this but my first impressions was that her playing owed alot to Michael Brecker but without the range of dynamics and sense of swing that the late saxphonist had.

I was intrigued by your comments as I usually find myself concurring 100% with what you usually post. I have to say that I feel that I am not the fan of this kind of stuff that I might have been 10 years ago. There is a problem for me with quite a bit of post-Brecker tenor players where there is almost an indentikit element about it. I hear the same thing with Joshua Redman and Mark Turner where they all sound like they come out of the same college system with little real variety. It seems amazing that people on this board in the past have been critical of players like Branford Marsalis yet his playing always has a degree of fire about it. This stuff just strikes me as really lightweight. It is also a photo-copy of jazz - technically brilliant , cpmplex amd assured but it is a really pale immitation of James Brandon Lewis, J D Allen or even James Carter. When they play, their music has some balls about it. It is strange how someone like James Brandon Lewis, for example. is so over-looked and, to my ears, done the right thing by going back to the freer elements of jazz of the late 1960s but reinvesting it with the technique of today. Aldana is ok but so are hundreds of other tenor saxophonists who are churned out by the system. In 2024, having a fabulous technique is a given. A lot of the players these days seem to assured and comfortable and I am not longer positive that I have the patience to listen to alot of it. Whenever records come out with the likes of Mehldau, Redman, Turner, Cohen etc get released it just seems totally pointless to me. There seems to be no risk with this stuff and I find it palls with alot of pre-1980s jazz. How incredible would the likes of Arthur Blythe, David S Ware or David Murray sound if they had arrived on the scene now ? If you compare this contemporary jazz to legends like Rollins, Henderson, Coltrane, Shorter, it doesn't seem to stand up . I don't agree with SA's assessment that jazz must continually innovate to be relevant, but I think it should have some balls! I rarely listen to Contemporary jazz now as it has become too refined and smooth. When I was discovering jazz in the 1980s, I used to be shocked by the sounds jazz musicians were making. I rarely get that feeling with jazz these days. It has become very boring.

[Serial_Apologist]

Bruce

It was ineresting to her Melissa Aldana with her own group as my experience of her playing was limited to a couple of guest appearances on an Emmett Cohen CD where she was the best thing on the record. I will need to listen at length to this but my first impressions was that her playing owed alot to Michael Brecker but without the range of dynamics and sense of swing that the late saxphonist had.

I was intrigued by your comments as I usually find myself concurring 100% with what you usually post. I have to say that I feel that I am not the fan of this kind of stuff that I might have been 10 years ago. There is a problem for me with quite a bit of post-Brecker tenor players where there is almost an indentikit element about it. I hear the same thing with Joshua Redman and Mark Turner where they all sound like they come out of the same college system with little real variety. It seems amazing that people on this board in the past have been critical of players like Branford Marsalis yet his playing always has a degree of fire about it. This stuff just strikes me as really lightweight. It is also a photo-copy of jazz - technically brilliant , cpmplex amd assured but it is a really pale immitation of James Brandon Lewis, J D Allen or even James Carter. When they play, their music has some balls about it. It is strange how someone like James Brandon Lewis, for example. is so over-looked and, to my ears, done the right thing by going back to the freer elements of jazz of the late 1960s but reinvesting it with the technique of today. Aldana is ok but so are hundreds of other tenor saxophonists who are churned out by the system. In 2024, having a fabulous technique is a given. A lot of the players these days seem to assured and comfortable and I am not longer positive that I have the patience to listen to alot of it. Whenever records come out with the likes of Mehldau, Redman, Turner, Cohen etc get released it just seems totally pointless to me. There seems to be no risk with this stuff and I find it palls with alot of pre-1980s jazz. How incredible would the likes of Arthur Blythe, David S Ware or David Murray sound if they had arrived on the scene now ? If you compare this contemporary jazz to legends like Rollins, Henderson, Coltrane, Shorter, it doesn't seem to stand up . I don't agree with SA's assessment that jazz must continually innovate to be relevant, but I think it should have some balls! I rarely listen to Contemporary jazz now as it has become too refined and smooth. When I was discovering jazz in the 1980s, I used to be shocked by the sounds jazz musicians were making. I rarely get that feeling with jazz these days. It has become very boring.

May I surprise you by saying I find myself in general agreement, Ian! Where we probably disagree is as you say over my view about innovation being the pre-essential ingredient for a peak listening experience in jazz now, where so much of it seems to have been over-theorized and worked out to the point where there is little room to allow for controlled accidents and risk-taking. I've long thought that the complexity that makes for excitement in a world of musical predictability needs to come out of spontaneous interaction rather than being "arranged in" in scores overcrowded with complex time signatures that put what is being improvised over the top at a disadvantage or makes them seem downgraded in the scheme.

[Tenor Freak]

Dutch altoist Tineke Postma and her quartet from the Bimuis on the IJselmeer in Amsterdam. This is very good. Unfortunately no studio audience because COVID.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIxpscyemNg&t=2054s

[Tenor Freak]

This is excellent - Trish Clowes (ts) and Ross Stanley (p) play her piece "Decently Ripped" from her new album "Journey To Where" which is released tomorrow.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LcfJK6dz74