Jazz
If you are not familiar with Wadada Leo Smith as an artist or as a thinker, you could start with The Chicago Symphonies and know that you are engaging with some of his finest work.
Pianist Billy Lester is an amusingly dry fellow who is also a deeply serious, idiosyncratic musician.
Others may hear a painfully flawed Latin jazz album, but what I heard was a brilliant postmodern ironic jam session in the mode of Ornette Coleman. I’m probably wrong, but I don’t care, because this album is a blast.
Oscar Peterson always seemed at his best live, which is how we find the pianist in this beautifully recorded, newly issued set.
Prodigy, post-Parker junkie, dead by homicide at a young age (1938-1972). Whatever. The myth shouldn’t crowd out the player. Musically, trumpeter Lee Morgan was a muthahfucka..
To this listener, the quartet generates a drama of gradual enlightenment, as if extroversion signified some sort of illumination.
This album offers a Baedeker of pianist Ran Blake’s cinematic effects, the mis-en-scene for a narrative musical imagination unlike any other.
“When you play with authority, then that’s what the music is about, like ooooh baby, and sing it.” — Cecil Taylor
Unlike musicians who operate on the surface and create a beautiful veneer, pianist Lennie Tristano’s music asks harder questions.
Unlike a lot of modern jazz releases, this isn’t so much about displaying virtuosity (though all the musicians are virtuosos) as it is about setting a mood and a groove and dancing on top of it.
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