Brainy but intensely pleasurable piano-saxophone/clarinet duets; judiciously allusive, searching and rigorous.
Ortiz is a protégé of Muhal Richard Adams whose playing riddles Noncarrow with rumba, Messiaen with Monk, Yancey with yambu. Don Byron is a favourite of ours way back to Tuskegee Experiments and his revival of Mickey Katz.
The opening tribute to Catalonian jazz pianist Tete Montoliu — who smuggled flamenco into post-bop — is twinned with something from Musica Callada, by Federico Mompou, a kind of Catalonian Satie. (“The complexity of simplicity,” Ortiz calls it. “Mompou’s music doesn’t land the way we expect it to, and the resolution is like a door to what’s happening next. Mompou’s pieces have a lot of these doors, and they give a lot of space to creativity.”) There are interpretations of Black And Tan Fantasy (by way of Thelonious Monk Plays Duke Ellington), Benny Golson’s Along Came Betty and Geri Allen’s Dolphy’s Dance; and a luminous arrangement of a Bach violin partita for solo clarinet. Byron chips in compositions dedicated to Lorraine Hansberry and Andy Capp; Ortiz some twelve-tone serialism and a tune based on ‘the triangular relationship within a series of three notes’.
Invigorating music; brilliantly recorded.

Don Cherry meets the Groupe de Recherches Musicales!
Recorded in 1977 at the Paris MIX festival organised by INA grm and hosted by François Bayle, this is a terrific, deeply congruent, soulful encounter.
Cherry plays pocket trumpet extensively and beautifully (also n’goni and whistles), with characteristically unguarded, elemental sublimity; Nana Vasconcelos is dazzlingly, hypnotically grooving. Electro-acoustic pioneer Jean Schwarz — a collaborator of Jean-Luc Godard — contributes elegant tape-work, synths, and treatments; his long-time associates Michel Portal and JF Jenny-Clark are highly accomplished European jazz legends. (Feted recently by Souffle Continu, the clarinettist is a mainstay of the Jef Gilson set-up, who recorded with Serge Gainsbourg, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Sunny Murray; the bassist played on DC’s 1965 Blue Note classic Symphony For Improvisers… not to mention Brigitte Fontaine’s Comme à la Radio).
Remastered from the original master tapes; out here for the first time.
It’s a must.

Luminessence Series.

‘How Time Passes and Essence were issued at a time when jazz history was being made practically on a monthly basis. There are a few reasons why they became submerged in the tsunami of groundbreaking albums released in the first years of the 1960s. For starters, Candid and Pacific Jazz simply did not have the market clout of Atlantic, Impulse, and other labels. Furthermore, Don Ellis’ music differed significantly from that of the avatars of free jazz, occupying a space between contemporary jazz and mid-century chamber music. However, the times eventually caught up. More than sixty years after their initial release, these recordings were as prescient as they are brilliant.’

With Jaki Byard, Ron Carter and Charlie Persip, in the earlier group; then Paul Bley, Gary Peacock and Gene Stone / Nick Martinis.

Shades Of Blues (1965), Dusk Fire (1966), Phase III (1968), Change Is (1969), and Live (1969).
Just one!

Bringing the funk in 1968, with George Benson, Lonnie Smith, Blue Mitchell, and Leo Morris (who became Idris Muhammed)... not forgetting Dapper Dan.

‘Classic Vinyl.’

‘Blue Note Classics’ series.

Relaxed, maybe, but not subdued. Actually a lovely mixture of swingers, blues and ballads, and one of the great trumpeter’s most unmissable sets, beautiful stuff, with Tommy Flanagan on top form, Paul Chambers, and Art Taylor.

Live at the Jazz Workshop in San Francisco, at the close of 1961. Jackie Mac is on fire. Tearing version of Una Mas a year before the Blue Note. Leroy Vinnegar, Walter Bishop, Art Taylor.
Scorcher!

Originals, and covers of Coltrane, Horace, Shorter and co. Bobby Hutcherson’s Little B’s Poem steals the show, with the great Jean Carn singing. From 1974.

The legendary jazz-funk album recorded in Auckland, New Zealand, in 1971, mapping ‘the same territory as such acolytes of Miles Davis’s late- 60s explorations as Return To Forever, Weather Report, and Tony Williams Lifetime. Experimental studio techniques combine with blazing artistry, juxtapositioning trippy electronic textures and improvised jazz, creating a hypnotic kaleidoscope of sound.’
Lovely job as usual by Wallenbink: heavyweight tip-on gatefold sleeve featuring archival photographs; sound restoration and remastering at Abbey Road (including previously unreleased recordings and outtakes); 180g vinyl. A limited edition of six hundred: half for NZ; just three hundred copies for the rest of the world.

‘The session somehow consolidated their shared energy in an unexpected way — the drummer’s incredible warmth and sense of buoyancy, the saxophonist and trumpeter’s preternatural musicality and quest for social justice. The recording started with McPhee reciting words by Harriett Tubman, resulting in the title track; Drake’s support was an achingly slow Max Roach-like beat. From this inspired, inspiring starting point, the twosome frolicked through a rich program, McPhee donning tenor and alto saxes, and pocket trumpet, Drake turning momentarily to the frame drum. Each musician contributes an introspective solo track. McPhee at one point plays trumpet into an open gong, which gives him otherworldly overtones, a sort of acoustic version of electric Miles…’

Solo acoustic guitar renditions of nine Thelonious Monk tunes.
‘Baker will remind you through his playing that the idiosyncrasies of Monk’s composing are further dimensions of the Americana continuum (and source musics) that has been his turf for years. Especially in Monk’s centennial year, many will address Monk’s oeuvre, in fact hundreds will interpret the scores, but very few can inhabit this music in the way Duck Baker does here.’

Superlative solo acoustic guitar interpretations of the compositions of the brilliant, offbeat pianist. (Herbie’s two mid-fifties Blue Note LPs are unmissable; dazzlingly just a totter sideways of Monk. He co-wrote Lady Sings The Blues with Billie Holiday.)
Acoustic Guitar magazine called it ‘one of the best guitar records ever recorded — by anybody.’
“Nowadays a lot of people are giving Nichols’ music the attention it deserves, but only Duck Baker’s playing makes me feel Herbie in the room” (Roswell Rudd).
Warmly recommended.