Just got back from a Ruth Naomi Floyd concert. Hadn’t heard of her before, but she really gets the body and face into the act, with the voice careening from one end of the sound stream to the other. Electric! I’m not too familiar with modern jazz artists, listening more to 1960s material and prior, so tonight was a fine night for a 2010 introduction.
@Daniel
How were those Jimmy Smith discs? I need to get some Jimmy Smith, but there’s so much to choose from, it’s hard to know where to begin.
@Den
That’s a good song choice for him.
Peter Herbolzheimer has passed away; here is his bio from wiki
Herbolzheimer was born in Bucharest and migrated from communist Romania to West Germany in 1951. In 1953 he moved to the United States of America, where he worked as guitarist. He returned to Germany in 1957, took up the trombone and for one year studied at Nuremberg Conservatory. In the 1960s he played with the Nuremberg radio dance orchestra and with Bert Kämpfert’s orchestra. In 1968 he became member of the pit orchestra of Hamburg theater (Deutsches Schauspielhaus) directed by Hans Koller. In 1969 Herbolzheimer formed his Rhythm Combination and Brass (RC&B) for which he wrote most of the arrangements. This big band was unique in that it had an international lineup of eight brass, but originally only one saxophone, with Herb Geller in that chair. Brass players were amongst others Allan Botschinsky (Denmark), Art Farmer (USA), Dusko Goykovich (Bosnia), Palle Mikkelborg (Denmark), Ack van Rooyen (Netherlands) or Jiggs Whigham (USA). The rhythm section consisted of two keyboards, guitar, bass, drums and percussion and included renowned musicians such as Dieter Reith (Germany), Philip Catherine (Belgium), Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen (Denmark), Bo Stief (Denmark), Alex Riel (Denmark), Grady Tate (USA), and Nippy Noya (Indonesia). For special events the group was augmented as necessary, but the basic combination remained as such for several years. In the late 1970s the band toured successfully with a “jazz gala” program featuring guest stars such as Esther Phillips, Stan Getz, Nat Adderley, Gerry Mulligan, Toots Thielemans, Clark Terry (( Tony Lujan)) and Albert Mangelsdorff. In later years the RC&B played many concert tours, television shows and jazz festivals. It was later replaced by a regular sized big band that is still active today.
In 1972 Herbolzheimer wrote music for the Edelhagen Band’s opening of the Olympic Games in Munich. Later he worked for German television as leader and arranger, and accompanied visiting American musicians such as Al Jarreau and Dizzy Gillespie. Between 1987 and 2006 Herbolzheimer was the musical director of Germany’s national youth jazz orchestra, the BundesJazzOrchester (BuJazzo). He conducts regular workshops and clinics for big band jazz.
In 1974 Herbolzheimer’s Rhythm Combination & Brass entered an annual television competition held in the Belgian seaside resort Knokke, winning the coveted Golden Swan Award. He also won the International Jazz Composers Competition 1974 in Monaco. Herbolzheimer’s arrangements are a distinctive amalgam of swing, latin and rhythmic rock music.
Herbolzheimer died aged 74 in his hometown of Cologne, Germany on 27 March 2010.
Jazz , yes!
Davis, early and late Coltrane, Mingus, Monk, Holland, Ayler, Coleman, Bley, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Weather Report, Andrew Hill, Matthew Shipp, Dave Douglas, Kenny Garrett, Hiromi… the experimental ones like Triosk, Acoustic Ladyland, Spring Heel Hack and Supersilent. I even like Diana Krall hehe.
Nice!
A mate of mine, who is classically trained, doesn’t get it.
Whats not to get and love about sretching and exploring rhythm and melody, if your a muscian.
Envious that these guys never leave the states enough and wish I lived in New York
I had to put this on here because Jaco’s triplets are F-in’ Awesome!! (Kick in at 3:40)
Mulatu Astatke
I’ve only checked out Den’s clip, but I’ll try to check others out later.
@Den
I never heard of Herbolzheimer, but I love Pat Metheny (the composer of the tune in your clip). Metheny is one of my favorite composers, and I really think his songs should be covered more. I’m always interested in hearing Metheny’s (and May’s) tunes arranged for a Big Band, too, so the clip was a nice treat.
i’m bored by traditional jazz but find MIles interesting and a lot of the fusion experiments since B.Brew are right up my alley. I enjoy a lot of the ethno-jazz released on Zorn’s Tzadik label as well as modern chamber jazz by downtown guys like Horvitz.
RIP Herb Elis, dead at 88):
i want to see the albert ayler documentary ! grrr !
Some great stuff I’ve been diggin’ recently—for all you cool cats out there: Robert Glasper. Really anything, but his Live at Bonaroo ‘07 with Chris Dave and Bob Hearse [sp.?] is pretty earth shattering—I’d give it an 8 on the Richter Scale, which is a big one!
@Queen
Didn’t know an Ayler doc existed? Is it new?
@Drew K
I’ve heard some of Glasper’s stuff, and there were some things I liked. Is Live at Bonaroo ’07 a cd?
Btw, I’ve been listening/watching a lot of Wayne Shorter videos on youtube particularly with his recent quartet (with Danilo Perez, John Patitucci and Brian Blade) and some live clips from groups in the 90s. In a lot of these clips, Shorter plays his compositions from the 80s and 90s—a period that was dismissed by a lot of critics. Well, that was a mistake, imo. The compositions and arrangements are very strong, imo.
Also, if any of you have a chance to check out Shorter’s recent quartet, I’d make an effort to see them. I haven’t seen them live, personally, but based on these youtube clips, this is a really terrific group. They really very cohesive unit that really knows how to swing/groove. They remind me of some of Miles Davis’ great rhythm sections.
I only really listen to jazz but my knowledge of it is from the 20’s to 70’s. Except for Wynton and Bradford I have absolutely no modern jazz in my collection. Can anyone list some must haves of the Jazz scene from the 80’s till present?
Wow, what a question—but a good one at that, Brian.
There’s two ways (at least) of answering your question, Brian. I can give you suggestions of albums that I think are great—independent of your preferences; or I could give you recommendations of albums that you would like. For the latter, it would be nice if you let me know what albums you liked and/or what kind of things you like in music.
I read jazz books and after free jazz and fusion there is a 10pg analysis of current jazz that is so uninformative and only says the future only knows what will happen. I would tend to think that the ones that are great and ones I would like might be the same for the most part. So you are into the current scene? I should get a subscription to Downbeat.
OK, let me try to think of some suggestions. Btw, I’ve also read books and investigated the music—and you’re right after fusion, there’s hardly anyting interesting written about jazz—no interesting innovations or identifying great jazz musicians. (Btw, I loved the process of listening to the way various innovations developed in jazz.)
The one guy that comes to mind, first and foremost, if we’re starting from the 80s is Bill Frisell. One of the criticism about the post-70’s jazz musicians (particularly the younger ones) was that no one had an instantly indentifiable sound like previous jazz greats. There’s some truth to that claim, but that doesn’t apply to Frisell. A few note from Frisell and you know it’s him. Imo, Frisell has created the most successful distillation of jazz, country/folk and Hendrix. If I had to recommend, I’d say check out This Land which has original compositions and arrangements for a medium sized group. It’s not my favorite album, but I think his vision came together quite well on that. However for just his playing, I like his harder/groove oriented approach (which doesn’t seem to be something he’s interested in) and you can hear some of that on Ginger Baker’s Going Back Home (with Charlie Haden on bass).
Did I mention that Frisell is a guitarist? That’s relevant because I think the jazz musicians with the most identifable sounds and doing some of the more interesting things have been guitarists—guys like John Scofield, John Ambercrombie and Pat Metheny (more for his compositions). (I’ll try to give you specific recordings of these guys if you want.)
The other important “movement” that occured (in America anyway) was the M-Base movement—which combined funk and be-bop; basically, the music can be described as odd-metered funk with boppish vocabularly. Some of the in the 80s are a bit rough, imo, and I would recommend listening to Dave Holland’s recent group (with Chris Potter on ts and Robin Eubanks (trb). I don’t know if they would be pleased with being call “M-base”, but they certainly have similar qualities.
One other group that I would mention: The Brian Blade Fellowship—especially their album, Perceptual. Like I said, I actively looked for new things in jazz and this was one of the most exciting recordings I’ve heard. Perhaps, the music is not dramatically innovative (ie. swing to be-bop), but it’s different from jazz that was played in 60s and even 70s. The tunes and arrangements are really strong, imo (a rarity these days), and the interplay is also very good. I really love the two guitarists (there we go again) in the group, Kurt Rosenwinkel and Dave Easley, who plays pedal-steel guitar in a rocking/jazzy way that I just loved.
Some other musicians:
Brad Mehldau a pianist with talent comparable to Keith Jarett (perhaps). He mostly has recorded in a piano trio format that’s not really innovative per se, but it’s good music. His most recent album, though, may be a breakthrough in terms of pushing the genre.
Pat Metheny Group: Still Life Talking and Letter from Home. OK, maybe not a huge advance on Metheny’s work from the 70s, but these are strong albums imo, combing jazz, pop, and Brazilian music in a way that few have topped, imo. (Metheny and Mays are two of my favorite composers, too.)
Esperanza Spalding, bassist and vocalist. She’s young and not quite there, but she has potential. She has a beautiful voice and can really play, too. The jury’s still out though.
(Btw, Downbeat and the other major jazz publications aren’t very good at pointing out new, innovative musicians, imo.)
Love Dexter Gordon. Mark Isham’s Blue Sun is my favorite album, he made it as a tribute to Miles Davis.
I will check these out. Esperanza Spalding was giving a preformance a couple of weeks ago in my city; I missed it becuase I assumed since she was new she couldn’t be good. I tend to think that way and really hope to find someone new that rewards me like when I first discovered parker and 60’’s blue note.
@Brian
You might have been disappointed with Esperanza. I saw her on Austin City Limits (you can see her peformance on line) and I was disappointed. So she’s one with potential. Actually, see if you can sample her self-titled album, which is what first caught my attention. The one thing that I must say I liked is that she didn’t sound like a typical jazz singer from the past. There are a lot of good-to-very-good jazz singers nowadays, but they sing and play music in a way that could have came from 1950. (I liked what Cassandra Wilson was trying to do, but her music never really grabbed me.)
Btw, check out a site like lastfm or lala.com to sample some of the musicians/recordings I mentioned.
@Uli
Love Gordon, too.
Looking at my local library they have these albums from Bill Frisell some as a sideman: The bees made honey, a trio with Carter and Motian, Dialouges, Disfarmer. the elephant sleeps, a McCoy album called Guitars, history mystery, the sound of summer, running, time and time agian, and unspeakable.
What would you reccomend from this selection?
From Brian Blade I can only see albums with him as a side musican: w/ Danilo Perez; Motherland, till then; w/ Redman, compass; w/ Kenny Garrett; Beyond the wall, Black hope
Daniel Aleman
@jazzaloha, some of the recent purchases i’ve enjoyed were
Ike Quebec’s Heavy Soul & Easy Living
Ray Charles Genius + Soul = Jazz
Jimmy Smith Live at Baby Grand vol. 1&2
Freddie Redd’s Shades of Redd
and Louis Smith’s Here Comes Louis Smith
they are all blue notes except ray charles, which is impluse…but i’ve recently been collecting Northern Soul & Chicano Soul…rare and random…but easy to find here in san antonio, haha.