THE PHILLIP WILSON TRIO – Live - Fruits (Circle Records / LP-1978)

Label: Circle Records – RK 14778/10

Format: Vinyl, LP / Country: Germany / Released: 1978

Style: Free Jazz, Free Improvisation

Recorded live at the Northsea-Festival in Den Haag, July 14, 1978, Holland

Design, Photography By [Back Cover] – Rudolf Kreis

Photography By [Front Cover] – Günter Voss

Recorded,  Producer By – Rudolf Kreis

Published By – Phillisaundi / Leo Smith Publ. Co.

Matrix / Runout (Side A): F 666 343 A 1

Matrix / Runout (Side B): F 666 343 B 1

A1 - Electricity ..................................................................................... 11:20

A2 - Leo's Tune ................................................................................... 10:21

B1 - F & L ............................................................................................ 14:04

B2 - Death Aint Supposed To Be Negative .......................................... 9:45

Phillip Wilson – drums

Leo Smith – trumpet, pocket trumpet

Johnny Dyani – bass

Wilson assembled the trio featuring Smith and Dyani for a performance at the Northsea Jazz Festival in Den Haag. The performance was on July 14, 1978. The record was produced by Rudolf Kreis for Circle Records, a small German label that recorded mostly progressive jazz from 1977 to the mid 1980s.

“Electricity” starts the set off at a clip, the drummer setting the pace. Dyani’s fast pizzicato plucks go up and down the fret board as Wilson’s light hi-hats keep the momentum. Smith’s strong vibrato-less tone fills the melodic role as the piece pushes on. The bass is high in the mix and Dyani takes advantage as he really wrestles tones out. The dialog between Smith and Dyani is intriguing. The call and response sections are of interest as the two develop an interesting dialog.

This is pure energy music with a free pulse allowing the musicians to really invest in their own sound. Smith keeps the energy up and texture dense with thick swathes of sound. The communication is good. Wilson plays the accompanist role until the middle where he commands a solo that starts at mid intensity and builds, rollicking along. Dyani returns with a solo letting the harmonics ring from his instrument with runs through the registers. It isn’t about intonation and melodicism as much as it is about sound creation, rhythm and texture.

Smith joins back with a blustery tone. The last couple minutes are interesting for the gear shifts, each soloist gets a chance to drive. The bass begins to walk, steering toward the conclusion, then slows with loud twangs as Smith ends with a long tone and Wilson’s cymbal splash.

“Leo’s Tune” is a melody written by Smith. It has a more restrained and thoughtful nature. Smith’s long tones and haunting altissimo are contrasted with a minimal drum part and off beat low strums from the bass. The meditative quality and restraint create a nice balance to the firey “Electricity”.
The group begins to diverge as Smith takes the solo lead. Wilson is in his own world with very subtle hits, mild hints of swing on the hi-hats. Dyani throws in some of his fleet fingered tricks from time to time before he takes his solo. He remains focused on the various sounds that he can emit with his strumming before slowing into a blues-ish strolling line. Wilson begins his solo with rolling snare into an off kilter bounce. The high-pitched bass introduces the ostinato plucking and Smith’s return to the melody. This is a really lovely piece.

The B-side starts off with what is perhaps Dyani’s most intense performance on wax, Wilson’s “F & L”. He starts off with some incredibly nimble finger work and bent notes. Dyani is really the engine here as Smith plays a long tone melody and Wilson stays in the background until the main dancing melody comes in. Dyani’s muscles are flexing as he hints at a bass line but continues to deviate favoring his own fireworks.

Smith begins his solo over Dyani’s funky, distorted (?) bass line. The form keeps switching from quick jam to free space. Definitely a head nodder. Smith sounds strong with his unbroken but arresting tone. Wilson’s drumming keeps with a funky snare hit with off beat ride cymbal work. Dyani finds all sorts of wild, yet minimalist, percussive ideas to mess with. Some pretty left field.

Dyani’s unique sense of groove and physicality on the instrument are on full display. Wilson shows his command of time by bringing his solo down to bare essentials, quick resonant hits on this drum or that, slow builds, a cymbal hit… Dyani brings us back (who else?). Very, very cool piece.

Wilson’s “Death Ain’t Supposed To Be Negative” closes out the disc. Wilson’s unaccompanied drums start off a mid pace groove. Dyani and Smith are quick to start up with minimal plucks and thoughtful bluesy blasts. Smith’s raw tone is especially nice here as he begins to pick up intensity into a gallop. The waltzy tempo set by Wilson dances along nicely as Dyani frames the piece with a descending line, his most harmonic playing on the disc. He also tries different rhythmic phrases on the line.

Smith and Dyani remain in the front of the mix. Smith’s poignant solo breaks off as Dyani comes in with his thrummed tones following the basic form, descending and descending. His bass hums. A very simple yet resonant (in more ways than one) statement. Wilson’s solo finds him a little busier as his snare and cymbals start to sing. He remains within the jazz lexicon throughout with flourishes of out stuff. Smith comes in plaintively. Very controlled end to this one.

"Fruits" is a magical live recording...

If you find it, buy this album!

DON CHERRY ‎– Orient (2LP-1973) and Blue Lake (2LP-1974)

Label: BYG Records – YX-4012-13

Format: 2 × Vinyl, LP, Album / Country: Japan / Released: 1973

Style: Free Jazz, Free Improvisation

Recorded in France, April 22 (B2, C1, C2) and August 11 (A, B1, D), 1971.

Artwork – Shigo Yamaguchi

Liner Notes [Japanese] – Masahiko Yuh

Photography By – Masatoshi Sunayama

Manufactured By – Toho Geion Co., Ltd.

A  -  Orient (Part-1) .................................................................... 16:21

B1 - Orient (Part-2) ....................................................................  8:57

B2 - Eagle Eye (Part-1) ............................................................... 6:50

C1 - Eagle Eye (Part-2) ............................................................... 5:31

C2 - Togetherness ..................................................................... 11:41

D  -  Si Ta Ra Ma ....................................................................... 19:30

All compositions written-by – Don Cherry

Musicians:

A-B1 - "ORIENT (Parts 1 and 2" / D - "SI TA RA MA"

Don Cherry – pocket trumpet, flute, piano, vocals

Han Bennink – drums, percussion, accordion, vocals

Mocqui Cherry – tambura

B2-C1 - "EAGLE EYE (Parts 1 and 2)" / C2 - "TOGETHERNESS"

Don Cherry – pocket trumpet, flute, piano, vocals

Johnny Dyani – bass

Okay Temiz – drums, percussion

Orient is a live album by jazz/world music musician Don Cherry recorded in 1971 and first released on the BYG label in Japan in 1973, originally untitled.

Orient captures the nomadic Don Cherry in two live sets in the early '70s with two different trios. Cherry's work from about 1967-1978 was concentrated in his desire to bring to bear as many influences from musical cultures around the globe as possible into his music. Prominent among these include Indonesian gamelan, Indian Karnatic singing, rhythms from West and South Africa, and American Indian rituals. Also common during this period was Cherry's tendency to spend equal time on piano, flutes, and vocals alongside his pocket trumpet. All of these figure into the two sets here, one including the great Dutch drummer Han Bennink, the other with the amazing South African bassist Johnny Dyani. Fans of Cherry will recognize several of the themes herein, including the very beautiful "Desireless" from his Relativity Suite, but it's fascinating to hear him work in material from Indian scales to township dance music to Herbie Hancock's "Maiden Voyage." Orient is definitely a valuable document and recommended.

_1.      Jazz music has never had the influence or monetary sway that pop or rock has had. It has had (when distilled to its most primal impulses) the temperament of defiant ingenuity and an eager willingness to always be open and ready for anything. In this respect, jazz is at once self-serving and giving in both its musical and cultural exchange.

Many jazz artists have experimented with sounds from all over the globe, helping give shape and form to what has come to be known as “fusion jazz” (jazz’s sometimes unfortunate offshoot). One artist conspired to go beyond all borders, confines and genres to create a highly expressive and unique presentation of melding cultures—jazz rethought and relived in the constant grind of invention. Don Cherry, born 1936, would essentially become the harbinger of a melting pot consciousness.

Having first learned the ropes as player in Ornette Coleman’s boundary-breaking and highly influential collective, Cherry first appropriated the stylings of Coleman’s free jazz workings, abandoning structure and form for free tonality. After his notable work on Coleman’s groundbreaking album, The Shape of Jazz to Come, Cherry would strike out on his own with a number of significant recordings for Blue Note, including Complete Communion and Symphony for Improvisers.

These two albums were a far cry from the globe-trotting material Cherry would explore in his later years, but they hinted at the exotic musical delights of which the artist was enamoured with. In Symphony for Improvisers, one hears only the faintest traces of Latin influences that would eventually blossom on future recordings...

_2.      If anyone wanted to closely pinpoint where jazz opened up to a world and wealth of new sounds, they might look towards Cherry’s Mu, released in 1969. This recording is now regarded as a landmark work which introduced the world to a bevy of global sounds, including Indian Karnatic music, Latin and African percussion, Arabic scales and Native American folk. The blend of these worldly sounds are, surprisingly, undisturbed by the volatile cadences of Cherry’s jazz; they never dissolve into the heated flows of rhythm—they simply become the elemental grafts on the scrim of which Cherry conceives his designs.

Mu would simply be the beginning of a series of works that would expand upon the disparate influences that Cherry would pick up on his travels from around the world, each album exploring the respective culture he found himself immersed in at the time. Spells in places like Morocco, Turkey, France and the Far East would transform the artist into a roving human sponge, soaking up every curious sound laid bare to him by a newfound friend. Cherry made a lot of friends, in fact, and it was not unusual for many of them to become members of his constantly rotating collective.

Orient (1971) detailed Cherry’s adventurous and romantic exploits in the Far East and his hypnotic strains of Oriental instrumentation found a perfect and unlikely match in the alternately storming and restrained drum work of Hans Bennink and Okay Temiz. Tracks like “Si Ta Ra Ma” examined the shamanistic interiors of the soul with Cherry exploring traditions of Hoomii, the throat-singing of Mongolia.

Elsewhere, the jazz elements took precedent, such as on the frenetic crash-and-burn rhythms of the title-track. Cherry would push even further into Eastern sounds on the eerie, esoteric Organic Music Society, which further ploughed the depths of Indian mysticism he touched upon on Orient. By this time, the artist had fully steeped himself in the fashion of the times; Eastern philosophy, psychedelia and Zen teachings (introduced into public consciousness by the rise of hippie culture) were an integral part of Cherry’s work...

DON CHERRY ‎– Blue Lake (2LP-1974)

Label: BYG Records – YX-4022/4023

Format: 2 × Vinyl, LP, Album / Country: Japan / Released: 1974

Style: Free Jazz, Free Improvisation

Recorded live in Paris, France on April 22, 1971.

Liner Notes [Japanese] – Masahiko Yuh

Photography By – Masatoshi Sunayama

A1 - Blue Lake .............................................................................. 4:55

        Written-By – Don Cherry

A2 - Dollar And Okay's Tunes (Part 1) ........................................ 17:05

        Written-By – Dollar Brand, Okay Temiz

B  -  Dollar And Okay's Tunes (Part 2) ........................................ 15:14

        Written-By – Dollar Brand, Okay Temiz

C  -  East (Part 1) ......................................................................... 13:10

        Written-By – Don Cherry

D  -  East (Part 2) ......................................................................... 13:42

        Written-By – Don Cherry

Personnel:

Don Cherry – pocket trumpet, piano, flute, vocals

Johnny Dyani – bass

Okay Temiz – drums, percussion

Blue Lake is a live album by jazz/world musician Don Cherry recorded in 1971 and first released on the BYG label in Japan in 1974.

This live set, Blue Lake, is a worthy introduction to his solo work. The first part of the set begins with Cherry on a Native American flute. His simple song is as moving and spare as a New Mexico mesa. Next, he and his band move into their interpretation of some Dollar Brand tunes. First, they lay the melodies out straight and give the audience a window into this neglected composer's mind. Then it's time for their ferocious, free-wheeling, Ornette Colemanesque take on the same tunes. The last brace of tunes finds Cherry mostly singing á la Sam Rivers. Like Rivers' voicings, one forgets that this is a man, and hears only another instrument. Just when the tension rises to almost unbearable levels, Cherry breaks loose with some forceful, controlled soloing. The tone is muscular, and the ideas as sure and stringent as bitter salt. Cherry's journey as a musician has been that of a consummate artist. His remarkable career deserves stricter attention from fans and critics alike.

_3.      It wasn’t until 1975, however, that Cherry’s fusion between the core jazz elements of his work and the ethnic influences he experimented with truly found the musical equilibrium he had been seeking for years. Brown Rice, a smorgasbord of international flavours that pulled from every corner of the world, was infused with the renewed electricity of the burgeoning funk scene that bled over rock, pop and disco.  The album’s title-track is pure kitchen-sink drama (that would be everything and the sink); warbles of cosmic funk intermingle with saxophone skronks and electro-bongos to create the closest thing a jazz artist could ever come to pop. It was not just new ground for Cherry but for jazz as well, and the remaining album cuts showcased an even deeper understanding of global-pop aesthetics.

In the heart of the album the two numbers, “Malkauns” and “Chenrezig”, were further travels along the astral bodies of spiritual sounds; mired in the trance-inducing thrums of Charlie Haden’s bass, the two cuts pointed, once again, toward Cherry’s previous influences of Indian ragas. A daring, peculiar and darkly mysterious effort, Brown Rice has also proven to be one of Cherry’s most misunderstood recordings. Drawing a clear line between jazz purists and fusion enthusiasts, Brown Rice has continued to polarize fans of both Cherry and jazz in general, a testament to the artist’s ability to provoke and stir listeners by the sheer force and flow of ideas alone...

_4.      One of Don Cherry’s last excursions into music was Multikulti, his 1991 effort that refined some of the rougher edges of his earlier work for a smoother confluence of multicultural sounds. A notable release that garnered some praise for Cherry’s ability to incorporate newer, contemporary influences, Multikulti can be seen as a bridge that unifies the emotional impulses of both pop and jazz.

A few years later following Multikulti, Cherry would pass away from liver failure, having left behind a legacy of work not always rightfully acknowledged or widely embraced. His stepdaughter, Neneh (who’s own work has encompassed everything from hip-hop and punk to R&B, jazz and pop), had already reached a level of fame around this time with her own inspired brand of music, no doubt influenced by her stepfather.

It was reported once that Neneh had stated that artistic success depended on good ideas rather than expertise. This sentiment echoes both the struggles and triumphs that her stepfather would undertake throughout the trajectory of his career; true enough, Cherry, at times, was criticized for his technique. Yet it was the constantly renewed energy of spontaneity and joy alone that gave him his musical longevity. Cherry’s travels stopped in 1995, the year of his passing.  Nearly 20 years later, his music continues to travel – through the world, space, time, mind, soul…

I'm offering you today only a small fragment of his genius. Enjoy!

If you find them, buy these albums!

DETAIL - Johnny Dyani/Frode Gjerstad/ John Stevens – Backwards And Forwards - First Detail (1982-85)

Label: Impetus Records – IMP CD 18203

Format: CD, Album, Reissue; Country: UK - Released: 2000

Style: Free Jazz, Free Improvisation

Recorded at Staccato Studios, Stavanger, Norway on 11th October 1982

Track C previously unreleased, recorded in 1985, no other details.

Original cover artwork (front cover reproduced above) 1 2 NO 1 by John Stevens

Original LP design by Fay Stevens

Engeneer By – Kjell Arne Jensen

The free jazz group Detail, co-founded by Norwegian saxophonist Frode Gjerstad and British drummer John Stevens, was most often a trio. In the beginning the third member was Norwegian pianist Eivin One Pedersen. Pedersen left shortly after bassist Johnny Dyani joined. After Dyani's death in 1986, Kent Carter took over as bassist. Detail continued performing and recording until Stevens' death in 1994. The group's seven recordings were released on Impetus, Cadence, and Gjerstad's label, Circulasione Totale.

Frode Gjerstad is one of the few Norwegian musicians playing modern improvised music outside the 'ECM-school'. He has chosen to play with foreign musicians because there is no tradition in Norway for free improvised music.

His relationship with John Stevens which started in 1981 and lasted up until Stevens' death in 1994 was of great importance both musically as well as on a personal level. Through Stevens, he became acquainted with the playing of some of the finest British improvisers. His longstanding group with Stevens, 'Detail', started as a trio in 1981 with keyboardist Eivin One Pedersen, though Johnny Mbizo Dyani came in on bass in 1982 and Pedersen left later that year. The group played mainly as a trio until Dyani's death in 1986, though they did invite occasional guests to fill out the lineup; they undertook a tour of Britain in 1986 as a quartet with Bobby Bradford on cornet. Bradford did another tour with Detail with Paul Rogers on bass and then one with Kent Carter on bass; a quartet tour of Norway was organised with Billy Bang in 1989. The group then continued as a trio with Carter till 1994 when Stevens died.

_ By Joslyn Layne, Rovi

Impetus Records:

http://www.impetusdistribution.co.uk/css/pages.ID/imp.id.html

Buy this album!

BLUE NOTES – Blue Notes For Mongezi (1976 / 2CD-2008)

Label:  Ogun – OGCD 025/026
Format: 2 × CD, Album; Country: UK - Released:2008
Style: Free Jazz, Free Improvisation
Recorded on 23 December 1975 in a rehearsal room in London. 
It is the spontaneous tribute of four musicians who had assembled in London for the Memorial Service for their friend.
Producer – Chris McGregor, Keith Beal
Reissue Producer – Hazel Miller
Remastered By – Martin Davidson
Photography [Back Cover] – George Hallett, Peter Sinclair
Photography [Front Cover, Mongezi Feza] – George Hallett

BLUE NOTES (1964) From left to right: Dudu Pukwana, Monty Weber, Chris McGregor, Mongezi Feza

...The Ogun box necessarily cuts straight to Blue Notes For Mongezi, and as the redux version now occupies two full CDs this will be the main attraction for many buyers. Although the Blue Notes had not played together as the Blue Notes for some years, they nevertheless reunited at Feza’s memorial service and without saying much of anything went straight to a rehearsal room directly afterwards, set up their instruments, and played and played and sang and played for something like three and a half hours without a break. Due to the limitations of vinyl, the original double album was necessarily a set of highlights but still made for one of the most harrowing listening experiences I can recall; the passion, the grief, the words, above all Johnny Dyani’s words, seemed almost too painful for public consumption, but as an act of catharsis and reconciliation it was surely needed, and over the course of its four sides the music did seem to reach a point of acknowledgement and resolution.

Over two CDs, however, the playing time has effectively doubled in length, and we now have the complete record, or as complete a record as we’re going to get, of everything that was played and taped on that day; according to engineer Keith Beal, the musicians started playing practically the moment they came into the room, while the recording equipment was still being set up, and there is an abrupt but small break in the music between the two CDs which marked the point where the tape reels had to be changed, but otherwise the performance is complete.

The completeness also alters the listener’s perspective on the music radically, such that one is effectively listening to a new extended piece of music altogether; the grief is immediately apparent as the music fades in, Dudu’s alto squealing, Dyani’s bowed bass scribbling, McGregor’s piano an abstracted ghost on the far left, Moholo’s drums busy but strangely subdued. The pace is necessarily slower and more organic than on the original vinyl release but the overall picture is critically more detailed; we have Dyani’s urgent ostinatos and parched Xhosa (and occasional English) cries but they are now set in a more complex landscape where there are long periods of straight swing or Coltrane-type waltz passages. In the “ Second Movement ” Dyani’s bass solo remains poignant to the point of unlistenable (in terms of unalloyed, bereaved sorrow), though clearly influenced by Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra recording of “ Song For Che ” with rattling percussion from all direction accompanying his playing and Dudu’s solemn alto succeeding him in the foreground with an eventual martial feel of defiance in the group’s rhythm. This is then succeeded by Dyani and Dudu’s vocal harmonies and chants, again accompanied only by free percussion.

From this point of prayer-filled stasis, the music gradually picks up again on the third CD; Pukwana picks up on “ Yellow Rose Of Texas ” from nowhere in particular (though in the English vocal sections I notice lots of “ We love you ” s but also Dyani’s ominous “ We know your enemies ” ) and turns that too into an ANC-worthy anthem of hopeful triumph, while the band as a whole suddenly swing through a whole series of Blue Notes/Brotherhood standards, most notably a spirited run through Feza’s “ Sonia ” with a terrific McGregor/Dyani duet section. Ultimately we arrive, after a lengthy and patient set-up, at the lilting major key tribute to Feza which concluded the original album, where the Blue Notes appear to will their own rebirth and “ live ” once more. Blue Notes For Mongezi is their “ Everything’s Gone Green ” and just as devastating a listening experience...



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