I’ve had “Lucid Lullaby” stuck in my head for weeks. It took an equal amount of time for the humor of the literal nature of the song title to wash over me, but that phrase singing forth from Linda May Han Oh’s bass, haunting me perpetually, is the perfect little melody. Oh as a composer has always been adept at writing perfect little melodies throughout her body of work. This is no more clear than in her latest release, Walk Against Wind, out Friday on Biophilia Records.

Walk Against Wind is in many ways the spiritual successor of Oh’s excellent 2013 album, Sun Pictures, an album I will still rock with just as much fervency as when it released four years ago, to the point that it may be one of the finest jazz albums of the past decade.

That album had Oh teamed up with saxophonist Ben Wendel, who remains in her quartet in this excursion, but this time around Matthew Stevens is on guitar and Justin Brown is on drums.

This quartet can go just as hard, if not harder, with the same kind of melodicism and brilliance that would would expect from a group of heavy hitters like these. However, this sound fills out even more with occasional additions from pianist Fabian Almazan and Minji Park playing assorted Korean instruments here and there.

Stevens’ guitar provides little angular moments of discord, giving a bit of an edge in spaces. Justin Brown takes his moments here and there to assassinate the drums as one would expect Justin Brown to do, for he is a murderer.

With this configuration, these things all of this would be expected, actually, but it’s through Oh’s careful arrangements and her even more aware compositions, with melodies that have the complexity of modern jazz but the sensibility of great memorable music (you can actually sing most of these songs; hey jazz musicians, isn’t that a bizarre notion?), that keeps a certain restraint throughout the album.

In Walk Against Wind, Oh has captured lightning in a bottle. The aforementioned opening song is haunting and hypnotizing and fades away into the ether. “Speech Impediment”, which feels like it could be autobiographical, captures voice as much as it captures emotion. It’s as if a blues could go jogging.

“Walk Against Wind” takes such dynamic but logical shifts in directions, it’s almost kindred spirits with Radiohead’s “Paranoid Android”. “Ikan Bilis” is just as much a comfort to sing along to as the rest of these songs, even with its rises and falls through hills and valleys, there’s still something there as an anchor. “Mantis” is fantastic, but the ramp up as this band swirls together, is everything to write home about.

This is a listenable album. It’s not just some art piece made to be difficult; it’s not abhorring the audience. Every time Linda Oh makes an album, it makes me thing would her compositions be this great if she didn’t have that anchoring mentality that bassists must have.

Linda May Han Oh is a planetary force and these compositions, so brilliantly crafted, are her gravitational waves. It would stand to reason that her band members would be able to maintain such perfect orbits, particularly when they’re all such top notch pilots (or perfectly sculpted moons, however you want to end this metaphor).

As a writer, Oh is the kind of musician that is the best of the genre of jazz. These are real songs with arcs and vibes and soaring sensibilities that relay the honesty of everything she wants to convey. As a performer, she’s even stronger, her bass a resounding, unwavering voice.

Linda May Han Oh is among the best of this music. It’s hard to think that an album as great as Sun Pictures could be lived up to, but having doubts about Linda Oh is just foolhardy. She’s just too talented to be held back, even by her own past accomplishments. She’s a musician, a person, so outstanding that even her name had to be larger, expanded, filled out, more expressive of all she is and all her identity.

An album is a statement about where an artist is at a given moment, a collection of works in a period giving an indication of mindset and development. If Walk Against Wind is any indication, it’s still exciting to see the places Linda May Han Oh will go next, but I could certainly hang around listening to this statement in time for quite a while until she feels like saying something again. Her statements are just that substantial.

Walk Against Wind, the latest album from bassist/composer Linda May Han Oh, is out April 14th on Biophilia Records.

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The post Linda May Han Oh – ‘Walk Against Wind’ appeared first on Nextbop Jazz.

Saxophonist Chase Baird’s career has been flourishing rapidly as of late. Drafted in drummer Antonio Sanchez’s Migration group which released the critically-acclaimed Lines In The Sand last year on CAM Jazz, the young Juilliard graduate also co-leads the band Venture, alongside drummer Mike Clark, vibraphonist Mark Sherman and electric bassist Felix Pastorius, with their 2018 debut Life Cycle out on Ropeadope.

In a testament to his ambition, Baird has now elected to take up the reins fully and to express his creativity unimpeded by the status quo resulting in A Life Between, his sophomore effort as a leader, coming August 9th to Soundsabound Records.

In order to stand out from the crowd, a killer line-up was assembled featuring none other than Brad Mehldau on piano, the aforementioned Sanchez on drums, Nir Felder on guitar, and  Dan Chmielinski on bass, making up for a truly inspired, dare we say, epic recording complete with progressive singularities and sonic cosmicalities.

We are honored to premiere today “Ripcord”, the lead single from A Life Between, with its head-banging guitar riff, the poignant and incisive saxophone of Baird, and a paradigmatic Mehldau solo.

“Ripcord was basically the genesis for the whole album, an attempt to capture the spirit of Radiohead’s OK Computer in a jazz context,” recalls Baird. “I wrote the tune to be flexible, almost like a standard that could be played in many ways over the years and that I would never get bored of. The end of the tune builds to a full-on Thom Yorke moment. It’s my favorite part to perform when we do it live.”

A Life Between, the sophomore album by saxophonist Chase Baird drops August 9th via Soundsabound Records.

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The post Stream Saxophonist Chase Baird’s Lead Single “Ripcord” Off ‘A Life Between’ (Premiere) appeared first on Nextbop Jazz.

Looks Of A Lot was theater. It may have been theater that starred Jason Moran’s expert and innovative piano playing and compositions, but it was theater nonetheless. Let’s set the stage.

Symphony Center, Chicago. The stage, which normally hosts the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, has four levels, with different setups on each level. Throughout the stage were creations of Theaster Gates, a Chicago artist and social activist. Since he is known for repurposing buildings on the South Side, it did not surprise that many of these creations, ranging from a giant music stand for a big band saxophone section to a miniature siege tower of sorts, all looked to be made from pieces of wood reclaimed from trash heaps and abandoned buildings.

For the opening scene, Moran played the part of a ghost. As Gates read his poetry under a single light at the front of the stage, the ghost played a pump organ located on the highest level of the stage. He then floated over to the upright piano located on the bottom level opposite the organ. Next, his destination was a grand piano located on the opposite side of the bottom level. As he began to play with more intent, Nasheet Waits on drums, Tarus Mateen on bass, and Katie Ernst, one of Chicago’s rising young jazz bassists, slowly joined him.

After that third song, Moran came to life and spoke to the audience. He talked of his memories playing an upright piano at a friend’s house on Chicago’s west side and joked with the audience about everyone having an upright in their living room.

The next scene introduced the Kenwood Academy Jazz Band and Drumline, under the direction of Gerald Powell. They came marching out on stage to their own beat and took their place across three levels next to the upright piano and opposite Moran’s organ and grand piano. Said bassist and vocalist Katie Ernst, “Kenwood gave 100% to Friday’s performance, and they were treated like an integral part of the project from day 1.” Ken Vandermark, an active woodwind player on Chicago’s free jazz scene and artist-in-residence at the Chicago Jazz Fest in 2012, joined the Kenwood Academy musicians.

The musical selections of the first act careened back and forth between modern and early jazz, avant garde and r&b. At no point did it feel that any of the core musicians, Moran, Mateen, Ernst, and Waits, were in any way out of their depth. Every time a new groove or section was established, Moran had some insightful bit of melody or improvisation to share with the audience.

There was no intermission, but if there was to be one, it was the moment when the rest of the stage went black with a spotlight on a small table on the second tier. Seated at the table were Moran and Gates, each had a microphone pointed at his face, but the conversation they were about to have was not with words. No, they were armed with noisemakers, you know, the kind you twirl around at New Year’s.

For the next few minutes, Gates and Moran entranced the audience with their noisemaker conversation, and just as it reached a climax, Waits interrupted with a drum solo. After a booming statement from Waits, the Kenwood Academy Drumline got their say. Then, all three groups — the noisemakers, the drum set, and the drumline — all joined in to give this song a proper send off. This was definitely the big musical number that welcomes you back from intermission.

Many excellent individual aspects highlighted the second act. Bassist-now-vocalist Katie Ernst took center stage and left the audience speechless and breathless with her clear yet low, bellying ballad. As her voice rang through the rafters of the Symphony Center, the Kenwood Academy Jazz Band provided subtle support at a maturity level that far exceeded their ages.

Ken Vandermark got to put his own artistic imprint on the second act when he began playing a low ostinato of sorts on his clarinet. He reiterated many times in the lowest part of his instrument, then distorted it in the extreme high register before returning to the lowest register to bring in the Kenwood Academy horn players. Lead by the trumpets, these fourteen high school students, some of whom were set to graduate within a week, did a funeral march around the bottom level of the stage to their own dirge, as Vandermark wrenched hearts with his poignant lines.

Certainly, the most unique and moving statement came from none other than Jason Moran and Theaster Gates. Moran climbed the aforementioned mini-siege tower and sat like a lifeguard atop the structure; Gates took his position lounging on one of the lower levels. Across the armrests of his perch, Moran delicately placed a plank of wood, which had attached a small metal contraption with a crank. As he began to turn the crank, a long strip of paper was fed through, and the notes of music box came ringing out.

The paper tumbled onto parts of the structure below, and as if also being fed by the paper, Gates began to musically orate over the top of the music box accompaniment. His mournful lines seemed in great contrast to the relatively light-hearted music box; however, Moran’s method of playing the music box was anything but light-hearted. As Gates shouted the climaxes of his lines, Moran vigorously cranked, at times greatly speeding up the music box and slamming the plank against the armrests. The three sounds — music box, voice, and wood-on-wood — rang throughout a silent hall. Muscles were paralyzed, thoughts were arrested, but emotions ran wild.

The theatrical concert ended on a happy note with Moran composing a special piece as a congratulations to the soon-to-be high school graduates sitting on stage. As quotes from “Pomp and Circumstance” rang out from the Kenwood Academy Jazz Band, Moran took his seat on the bench with their pianist, a physical representation of Moran imparting his generation’s knowledge and approval onto a younger generation.

And that was the most beautiful part of this performance. It was a great coming together of people, many ages, many races, many artforms, and musicians and non-musicians alike. It was a celebration of what Chicago should be known for: schools like Kenwood Academy, artists and social activists like Theaster Gates, and diversity and collaboration on many levels.

Alex Marianyi does weird music stuff sitting in his living room and is DJ Analytics in the Chicago-based hip-hop group Bellum.

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The post Jason Moran Live With Theaster Gates (Concert Review) appeared first on Nextbop Jazz.

We had the chance to catch up with Gerald Clayton during his visit at the Montreal Jazz Festival to talk about his debut album Two-Shade. Here’s what he had to say.

“I don’t like the words jazz, rock or classical. I think those just put people’s minds into a box. A lot of times people become close minded towards music that they’ve never even listened to because it’s classified under a certain genre. In this day and age, we all have iPods which hold entire record collections in the palm of our hand. That’s why it’s hard for me to say that my influences have come directly from one place.

While it’s true that I’ve spent a lot of years studying jazz, that I love the music and that I have so much appreciation and respect for the people, the legends, who’ve created this music, I just try to think about making honest music and sometimes it means pulling from all sorts of genres and styles and thus the name of the album Two-Shade.

The album’s about taking two opposite ideas and putting them together in order to create a new sound. It features jazz, some hip hop and a lot of improvisation. It’s a lot of communication between each person in the band, between the drums, the bass and the piano. So listen for that and hopefully we’ll keep your toes tapping and make you want to dance at the same time!”

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The post Gerald Clayton Discusses his ‘Two-Shade’ Album appeared first on Nextbop Jazz.

José James is releasing a new album, While you were Sleeping, on June 10. Kris Bowers recently released Heroes + Misfits, and plays keys in James’ live band. Their respective groups are currently touring in support of Bowers’ recent release and James’ upcoming release.

On April 18, they came through Boston and played at Sculler’s. While there, they were taped for the Funk It Blog, where those recordings are now available.

Check out a few audio streams after the jump.

José James “Park Bench People”

José James – vocals, guitar
Kris Bowers – keys
Solomon Dorsey – bass, Moog synthesizer, vocals
Brad Williams – guitar
Richard Spaven – drums

Kris Bowers – “Forever Spring”

Kris Bowers – keys
Solomon Dorsey – bass, Moog synthesizer, vocals
Brad Williams – guitar
Justin Tyson – drums

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The post Jose James and Kris Bowers Live at Sculler’s in Boston appeared first on Nextbop Jazz.

It’s always amazing to learn how well esteemed jazz is in Japan. It’s even moreso to learn how many have such great chops at the American invention. When one thinks about some of the great groups from that country, Libstems would definitely make that list. The quartet of bassist Keisuke Furuki, pianist Shunsuke Sawada , guitarist Yosuke Wada, and drummer Yosuke Nagayama have been together since 2008 and have grown together to release their excellent debut album, Daydream Sounds.

It’s an album with a great energy to it. These four sound quite spirited and exhibit great chops. It’s frankly more inspired than some American releases around. It’s sure to surprise you. Check out a sampler mix of the album after the jump.

Anthony Dean-Harris is a contributing writer for African-American Reflections and hosts the modern jazz radio show, The Line-Up, Fridays at 9pm CST on 91.7 FM KRTU San Antonio.

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The post Libstems Releases ‘Daydream Sounds’ appeared first on Nextbop Jazz.

Trumpeter Terence Blanchard, despite merely being part of Generation Jones, has a kind of elder statesman air to him. The man is doing as one should in the jazz world, continuing to grow and make interesting work whether on his own or for practically any Spike Lee Joint you may have run across in the past.

For his upcoming album, Magnetic, which marks Blanchard’s return to the iconic Blue Note Records, he has assembled a top notch band of young folks including drummer Kendrick Scott (making at least two albums Scott is on this year that are absolutely fantastic beside his own Conviction out now), saxophonist Brice Winston, newcomer bassist Joshua Crumbly, and pianist Fabian Almazan (a guy so talented he sits in for Jason Moran in ERIMAJ when Moran isn’t off on one of his eighty jobs being amazing).

The album also has special guests bassist Ron Carter, guitarist Lionel Loueke, and fellow Blue Note artist saxophonist Ravi Coltrane. Sounds like just the thing a modern-day jazz master would do.

To give you a little sample of what’s to come before Magnetic‘s May 28th release, listen to the title track after the jump.

Anthony Dean-Harris is a contributing writer for African-American Reflections and hosts the modern jazz radio show, The Line-Up, Fridays at 9pm CST on 91.7 FM KRTU San Antonio.

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The post Stream Terence Blanchard’s “Magnetic” appeared first on Nextbop Jazz.

Last night while halfway watching the Democratic National Convention (because I’m a democrat but I’d much rather read Ezra Klein and co. break down policy than a week long pep rally), I hopped on Google Chat to talk with Vijay Iyer about his upcoming project with spoken word artist Mike Ladd, Holding It Down: The Veterans’ Dreams Project. What follows is an edit of our talk about the development of this third major collaboration with Ladd, the idea behind this project, and a little about how it ties together with the First Lady putting US troops to the fore where they should be.

Anthony Dean-Harris: So I was hoping you could explain ‘Holding It Down’, what it’s about, why this is the next thing you’re doing with Mike Ladd, how this came together… All that

Vijay Iyer: ok–As you know (?), Mike and I have worked together for a decade now. We did two major projects – In What Language? (2003-04) and Still Life with Commentator (2006-07). These works were commissioned, so luckily we had some resources behind us, but they also were these truly organic experiments in collaboration. I’d known Mike since the late 90s – we met in Cambridge, MA, in ’97 when I was touring with this San Francisco-based hip-hop band called Midnight Voices¹. We were on a bill together. He just struck me immediately as this deep innovator, with an activist orientation and a real distinctive taste in music. His own work was really mysterious and powerful. If you haven’t heard his early albums, check out Easy Listening 4 Armageddon and Welcome to the Afterfuture, two turn-of-the-millenium classics.

ADH: I really only know other smaller things of his with you and I heard a track he did with Daedelus some time ago [Daedeuls – Exquisite Corpse (2005) – “Welcome Home”].

Iyer: He had been a part of the “spoken word” movement in the 90s, along with people like Yasiin Bey, Suheir Hammad, Beau Sia, and Saul Williams.

ADH: I appreciate the Morehouse shout out

Iyer: You know it.
So he has this connection with art and/as activism. That has actually been my orientation all along as well. That perspective has helped me understand my place in the world and it’s helped me make empowered choices.
Sorry I’m moving slowly here

ADH: Halfway listening to Gov. Patrick?

Iyer: Just typing slowly. But yes, that too
You know that his dad played with Sun Ra and Monk?

ADH: Wow, I didn’t… I thought you were still talking about Mike Ladd, okay, that’s even more shocking

Iyer: haha yeah
So anyway, Mike and I stayed in touch and I started running into him more after I moved to NYC, at the end of 98. We’d talked about collaborating. Then an opportunity came my way, in the form of an invitation from the Asia Society. Rather than do what was perhaps expected of me, which was to celebrate my heritage through some India-centered project, I wanted to use the opportunity to start a larger dialogue about communities of color since the commonality of our experiences as people of color is central to my own perspective, my own rationale for making this music in the first place.

So anyway the project In What Language? grew out of that impulse. It is a series of micro-narratives by various people of color in transit or at work in and around an international airport. It grew organically over a year, as we figured out how to work together. And it all happened in the aftermath of 9/11, surveillance, fear, racial profiling, war, Bush, etc. We came to realize that airports are these contact zones where you have these intense, fleeting encounters and where the potential for dialogue is rarely realized. And yet all that near-contact and failed connection has its own potency and its own way of generating meaning.

After we made that project, this thing called the blogosphere was born and this revolution in personalized media, and the mania of 24-hour news, and just in general our relationship to digital culture was undergoing a massive transformation – all in the context of wartime. So we were invited by UNC Chapel Hill and Brooklyn Academy of Music to create a new project and decided to focus on this new, surreal landscape.

So that’s what Still Life with Commentator is. What I said above, about “contact zones,” held up even more now in this virtual sphere, and that project is much more surreal and sort of anti-narrative, in that it’s never quite straightforward about who is speaking. And it’s also much more satirical. I’m very proud of “Cleaning Up the Mess,” “Jon Stewart on Crossfire”, “Mount Rather” from that project. To me they capture everything we were trying to say – that this (at the time) new relationship we have to technology and to the news media is personal, emotionally charged, surreal, a little sickening, and maybe sometimes redemptive, too.

Anyway, that’s all prologue! Your guy the mayor is on.

ADH: I never changed the channel… Oddly, there’s nothing else on so it’s good I’m feeling some local pride tonight.

Iyer: Hm, should i pause?

ADH: You can keep going, half of this is every profile you’ve read of him in the last few days anyway, and if you can tell the twins apart, you’re definitely set.³ That’s the level you’ve got to work on.

Iyer: ok…
So I guess in late 2008-early 2009, Mike and I were talking about “completing the trilogy”.
[oops, just got hit up by Kassa, sorry]²

ADH: Ha!

Iyer: …from Kassa:
“fasho say i said yo! in the interview haha / cyber interview crashers”

Iyer ok… “completing the trilogy” —
We felt that those two projects started to set out a perspective on things, to make an argument that couldn’t really be made any other way. But the spectre of war was behind all of it, and we never really dealt with it directly.

ADH: It’s funny that I never realized that

Iyer: In fact, one of the points of Still Life… [we call it SLWC] was that the distance was too great — that “we” are at war but somehow most people don’t have to experience it, and can view it from a convenient distance. In fact our experience of it was managed by the Bush admin– down to him not avoiding soldiers’ funerals, barely publicly acknowledging the human (let alone economic) costs of war, even trying to prevent photos of coffins from appearing in public. Then something like the photos from Abu Ghraib surface, or the techniques used in Guantanamo, or some other very inconvenient truth about the fucking brutality in our midst. The wars that we were paying for with taxes, that was sold by lies, all that insanity that we just came to treat as normal, even ignored after a while. But of course there are people in our midst, millions of them, who have lived these wars, carried them out, followed their orders, and continue to carry those experiences with them. You’d almost never hear from them, and most Americans are afraid to look or listen.

Why that fear? Partly, I suppose, because war is the ultimate dirty work, and partly because it’s hard to face our own complicity in the whole debacle/quagmire/etc.

ADH: Or also because we’ve reached a point in the country where we actually have that option available to us.

Iyer: Well that’s just it — who is fighting these wars on our behalf?

ADH In a country of this size with a volunteer army, where class structure determines where we pay attention, there are enough folks who can just afford to not pay attention.

Iyer: It’s an all-volunteer army, and we have such a strange — ah you beat me to it. Yes, indeed.

ADH: That’s the funny thing about listening to the mayor of San Antonio right now. Part of the reason why San Antonio weathered the recession so well is because it’s a city with three military bases.

Iyer: Well this is something so interesting about military culture, as I’ve been learning through this project

ADH: It’s something that has been almost impossible for me to ignore, but that goes sort of to the “we are what we see everyday” idea I’ve been exploring.

Iyer: All of us artsy liberals have these knee-jerk responses to war, but most don’t really know who or what’s involved.
[At this point, First Lady Michelle Obama just started her speech.]
Oh my, I’m being ambushed by Michelle watchers here. I think I need to pause–

ADH:: Yeah, that’s what I was thinking

Iyer: Ok, soon. I didn’t mean to ramble so much! Anyway, we’re getting there.
[After the First Lady’s speech]

ADH: Yeah, we can never turn to an Ann Romney.

Iyer: Wow. Well there you have it.
I have to say, the embrace of the human stories of the military is really an important contribution of the Obamas. He’s actually done a lot to improve the VA structure and services, and that speech was a great example, in stark contrast to last week.

ADH: A lot of the DNC will cover the other side of things that republicans have glossed over. It goes back to what we’ve been talking about concerning those who have the luxury of overlooking these things. Though, when you have democrats being more carefully hawkish, it would be sort of foolish not to address that.

Iyer: True, but of course Obama is the commander-in-chief, and he has been good about connecting veterans’ affairs to other issues of the day. It’s an economic issue, it’s a social and cultural issue, it’s connected to unemployment and health care and everything else. Basically, this is all part of the aftermath of Bush, the enormous tangle of disasters that Obama has been tasked with working through and cleaning up. It’s about taking responsibility for the millions of veterans from a decade of war which is what a compassionate commander-in-chief would do. With this project Holding it Down, we wanted to help start a conversation that we weren’t hearing at the time, in 2008 and early 2009, of veterans and civilians truly connecting and beginning a healing process together. We face a massive, collective, nationwide recovery from all of that. We really wanted to focus on veterans of color, for a lot of reasons —

ADH: With the efforts, much of which brought about by the First Lady, to give attention to our veterans over the last few years, though, do you think Holding It Down is a little late in starting the conversation or more showing up at just the right time?

Iyer: It’s just been growing at its own pace for years. We couldn’t really hurry it, because we had to really make contact with people from that community and win their trust. It’s important that this is really a collaboration with veterans, not just a project “about” veterans. (I mean it’s important to us for the integrity of the project, not “THIS IS IMPORTANT”.) Mike and I are civilians and we know that there are things we’ll never understand. But what we wanted to do is involve veterans in the creation of this project. And we were really fortunate in that respect, because in Dec 2009 we met this dude Maurice Decaul, a former Marine sergeant who served in Iraq, who is now a poet. He’s been at Columbia through their program for GI’s, and he’s a NY’er of Afro-Caribbean Descent. And he was connected to a group called “Warrior Writers”, and to a number of other vets who are writers and poets. Mike had been conducting interviews with vets and he’d adapted some of them into poems, many of which are amazing. But still, we were really interested in the simple reality of vets onstage. It would tell a story like nothing else. At that point it stops being art, and reality erupts into the space. I’m really interested in that boundary. It really makes you think and feel everything anew, as if from scratch. I’m amazed but it’s really happening, in a non-exploitative way. We’ve worked with Maurice for the last two years and he’s written about 40% of the material for the project. Now we also have another vet named Lynn Hill who was a sergeant in the Air Force who was a drone pilot — i.e., she dropped bombs on people in Iraq & Afghanistan from a video deck in Las Vegas. And she is writing and performing in the piece too. And her perspective is endlessly complicated, rich, terrifying, and inspiring.

So it’s taken us awhile but we’ve been fortunate to have the project bear fruit in this way. We can stand behind it with pride, because the material and the performances can organically, authentically do 10x the work that we vaguely hoped or dreamed we could do.

ADH: It sounds much grander in scope than the rest of the trilogy because of all this collaboration.

Iyer: The scope is indeed expanded by their two perspectives, plus those of a number of vets who were interviewed as well. The show features video clips of interviews and also a good portion of Mike’s pieces are from interviews.

And I didn’t clarify, but the whole project is about dreams. What are veterans able to dream about, in civilian life? For many it’s complicated and harrowing. Especially since something like over 90% of vets have some form of [Post Traumatic Stress Disorder] which can mean that dreams are the worst part of their lives, but then some can have happy, silly or surreal dream, too. And the “logic” of dreams is familiar to everyone. So we felt that this would give people a way in. It’s that final place where you have to embrace someone’s humanity. And ultimately the “dream” theme focuses the project. It becomes something tangible that holds it together and helps us make choices, too.

ADH: The dreams help us make choices or are you saying focusing on dreams helped you make choices about where to go in this project?

Iyer: I meant the latter.

Iyer: I’ve talked a lot already but I just wanted to finish one point I started, which was about working with soldiers of color in particular, and with Harlem Stage. We felt going into this that we never really got to hear from veterans of color, but we knew that there were a lot of them. Somehow the American narrative of the patriotic soldier enlisting to defend his country was coded as white, in the national imagination.

ADH: Much like many other narratives in the national imagination

Iyer: Ha, indeed. But of course knowing the class structure of an all-volunteer army, that couldn’t be true since people have so often enlisted for reasons of need, or perceived need and since we also knew that to wage these wars, military recruiters were using predatory tactics on young, poor minorities. But there’s also a counter-trend that makes this different, which is that after 9/11, waves of people really did enlist out of patriotism, to defend this country from the enemy. And of course especially under Bush, this was a racialized war.

We wanted to therefore look at minorities fighting an American war that had race as a principal component. What is it like when the person on the other side of the rifle looks more like you than your [commanding officer] does? And, how is this further complicated when the American Commander-in-Chief is a brown man of African descent? Anyway there were no easy answers but you do hear those themes emerging or as a subtext in some of the lyrics.

All right, I’ll stop talking now, blah blah. Sorry I hardly let you get a word in.

ADH: Nah, it’s cool. I didn’t know there was this much context but it was all necessary.
Iyer: Anyway, what’s your second question? LOL

ADH: I was just thinking about you explaining what this was and then talking about something entirely left field, but the DNC turned out to be that second thing and it dovetailed really well.
I did want to ask, though… I imagine you’re going to release this as an album, right?

Iyer: It’s our intention, though there’s no easy way to do that just yet. We might need to do Kickstarter or something. Anyway, we aim for it to be out in the first half of next year, one way or another.

ADH: After this, does it feel like the trilogy will be completed or do you think there’s another idea you and Mike will be thinking about next? Even though spending four years on this one already seems like talking about the next thing could be putting the cart before the horse, which now makes my question feel just a tad silly now that I think about it.

Iyer: Well, there is another kind of companion piece that came together last year called “Sleep Song” — which involves Mike, Maurice, and a poet from Iraq.

ADH: Is it like a single, long-form composition?

Iyer: No, it’s a similar structure — Mike really wanted to hear from the other side of war, the civilians who live with it, so that project is a kind of performative summit. It has a very different energy from Holding it Down, but to my ear it’s this really intense encounter.

ADH: So it’s like a very deep B-side.

Iyer: Yeah, basically; that’s a good way to put it… if entire albums could have giant b-sides.

Holding it Down: the Veterans’ Dreams Project will be performed at Harlem Stage in New York City from September 19-22. 

Anthony Dean-Harris is a contributing writer for African-American Reflections and hosts the modern jazz radio show, The Line-Up, Fridays at 9pm CST on 91.7 FM KRTU San Antonio.

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<sup>1. According to Wikipedia, the lead singer of Midnight Voices, Mohammed Bilal, was a houseguest on MTV’s The Real World: San Francisco in 1994. This would mean that Iyer has a connection to The Real World, a fact that grows weirder and cooler the more you think about it. 
2. The wonderful coincidence of Kassa Overall should be apparent. Overall is the drummer for this project along with other Iyer/Ladd collaborations. In addition to Overall handling percussion, the personnel for Holding it Down include the much aforementioned Iyer on piano, laptop, & compositions, Mike Ladd handling poetry, vocals, sampler, analog synthesizer, and much of the interviews with the veterans that crafted this project; veterans Maurice Decaul & Lynn Hill who lend their poetic skills here, Guillermo Brown with vocals & auxiliary electronics; Liberty Ellman on guitar; Okkyung Lee on cello; and Latasha N. Nevada Diggs on vocals and live electronic processing. 
3. Rep. Joaquin Castro has chubbier cheeks than Mayor Julián Castro.</sup> 

The post GChatting with Vijay Iyer about ‘Holding It Down’ appeared first on Nextbop Jazz.

“We need all the aspects of it [jazz] and that’s okay. We need the Wynton Marsalis and we need the Anthony Braxton and we need a Chris Botti and we need Christian Scott. We need a Ledisi and we need a Rachelle Ferrell. We need everything… We need it all because that word doesn’t belong to anybody anymore. It’s become so broad that to me the only element of that word that has any meaning universally is just improvisation. Jazz can be anything but maybe the only element that’s there across the board is that people are creating it in the moment.” Esperanza Spalding, [April 2, 2010]

We here at Nextbop tend to often draw a line in the sand regarding things we like, dislike, and define as fruitful in this genre we love so much. Often, we’ll take an ideological stance on issues in the genre. We may take part in the rifts and infighting that plagues music criticism. To alleviate that, our management usually doesn’t speak for all of us so Nextbop isn’t always on the forefront. Still, the three of us agree on things more often than not, and we’ll often agree with others around us.

Seb and Christian Scott have the same foul mouths (and it’s starting to rub off on me to the point that I’ve lifted my “I don’t curse” stance). Seb and Justin agree on a lot of album preferences whereas I may be on the outs for a couple of artists’ works. Seb and I seem to have an eerie hive mind 90% of the time. It’s sort of cool to work with folks who are so amiable and passionate about the genre and this particular subset of the genre.

It’s also pretty cool to take part in discourse with other folks on subjects like the credibility of a particular genre “game changer”, the stodgy nature of Marsalis campers, or how the blending of genres in live shows gives the genre a new audience à la Search and Restore and incorporating opening acts. But at the end of the day, we have to admit that we are only a few guys who have our limited opinions on a wide spanning artistic movement.

We may not be right in drawing our lines in the sand as it relates to the overall jazz industry and press. Our stances, while periodically bombastic, may not be helpful to the discourse, and certainly not helpful to the newcomers to whom we’re trying to appeal. Perhaps the Marsalis campers (ahem, traditionalists) are the barometer for modern jazz enthusiasts to measure their craft.

Maybe we should stress expanding our horizons instead of constantly drawing our lines in the sand. Maybe this with us or against us mentality isn’t as beneficial as we may thing. This house of jazz that is so clearly divided is fearful of no longer standing. We should hold to the stance that we really do need everything in this genre, whether we as individuals like it or not.

Perhaps it’s time we in the jazz community became as open minded as Esperanza Spalding.

Anthony Dean-Harris is a contributing writer for African-American Reflections and hosts the modern jazz radio show, The Line-Up, Fridays at 9pm CST on 91.7 FM KRTU San Antonio.

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The post No More Lines in the Sand appeared first on Nextbop Jazz.

Home / Jazz Music Artists / Jazz Drummers / Mark Guiliana / Stream Mark Guiliana’s New Album MARK

Mark Guiliana, a name synonymous with rhythmic innovation and genre-bending collaborations, has always been a musical iconoclast. From his early days absorbing the raw energy of grunge to his ascent as a world-class drummer and composer at the forefront of contemporary jazz (and beyond), Guiliana’s career has been one of constant evolution and self-discovery.

His latest album, MARK, is a reflection of this reality – an intimate and introspective expression of his musical identity. Performing solo on a vast array of instruments, Guiliana crafts a captivating record that interweaves his signature grooves with experimental percussion, ethereal synth textures, and spoken word.

A departure from his more recent projects as a leader, Guiliana harkens back to the raw energy and unrestrained creativity of previous endeavors like BEAT MUSIC! BEAT MUSIC! BEAT MUSIC!, showcasing his fearless love of electronic influences.

Forget any preconceived notions of what a solo drummer sounds like – this isn’t it. MARK is a cohesive and riveting outing, interwoven with an astonishing array of instruments and samples. A masterstroke in production, it transcends the confines of a traditional solo drum album and amounts to a raw and unfiltered exploration of self, music, and the universal quest for meaning.

In its essence, MARK is a testament to the boundless potential of electroacoustic music and evokes the spirit of visionary electronic artists like Squarepusher and Aphex Twin, some of Guiliana’s primary influences.

Buy Vinyl on Amazon

Mark Guiliana’s MARK defies categorization and is a testament to Guiliana’s relentless pursuit of artistic expression and his unwavering commitment to pushing musical boundaries from jazz to electronic music and beyond.

Listen to the album now and let us know what you think in the comments!

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The post Stream Mark Guiliana’s New Album MARK appeared first on Nextbop Jazz.