{"id":5702,"date":"2016-03-24T16:08:41","date_gmt":"2016-03-24T16:08:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.artinfo.com\/blunotes\/?p=5702"},"modified":"2016-03-24T16:08:41","modified_gmt":"2016-03-24T16:08:41","slug":"now-playing-new-and-forthcoming-cds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/2016\/03\/24\/now-playing-new-and-forthcoming-cds\/","title":{"rendered":"Now Playing (New and Forthcoming CDs)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"radio<\/a>Carla Bley\/Andy Sheppard\/Steve Swallow<\/strong> Andando el Tiempo<\/em> (ECM, May 6): As pianist, composer and arranger, Bley, who turns 80 in May, has always exuded a stern authority tempered with obvious tenderness and grace. And offstage, she\u2019s usually disarmingly humble, even childlike in the best sense. Such was the case last year when she accepted her NEA Jazz Masters Award. As I noted here<\/a>,\u00a0Bley told this anecdote from the podium:<\/p>\n

\u201cI asked my father, \u2018Where does the music come from?\u2019 He told me, \u2018A composer wrote it.\u2019 And I said, \u2018I would like to do that.\u2019 So I wrote hundreds of notes and he told me, \u2018No, no, this is much too hard for me to play. Get rid of most of these notes.\u2019 And so that was my first lesson.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Her new CD has, in spots, riveting emotional impact. It\u2019s in one sense a beautiful musical study in contrary motion of instrumental voices. But what strikes me most is how well Bley has incorporated that early lesson about economy into her music through the decades, and especially here.
\nMelissa Aldana<\/strong>\u00a0Back Home<\/em> (Word of Mouth Music): It was no surprise to me when tenor saxophonist Melissa Aldana won the 2013 Thelonious Monk International Saxophone Competition.\u00a0Aldana first captured my attention a decade ago, when she was a precocious 17-year-old whose tone, confidence and knowledge belied her age during late-night jam sessions at the Panama Jazz Festival. Pianist Danilo P\u00e9rez, the festival\u2019s founder, predicted big things from her, and she has delivered.
\nAldana, who is from Santiago, Chile and now lives in New York City, released two hard-swinging and supple-sounding quartet albums for saxophonist Greg Osby\u2019s Inner Circle label. The title of her new CD, \u201cBack Home,\u201d refers not to her native country, but to the piano-less trio format she fell in love with while listening to Sonny Rollins albums, and which she employs here.
\nDavid Murray, Geri Allen & Terri Lynne Carrington<\/strong> Perfection<\/em> (Mot\u00e9ma, April 15): Call it a \u201csupergroup.\u201d Or a \u201cpower trio.\u201d The sound is bold, ignited principally by Murray\u2019s bristling and active tenor saxophone (it\u2019s easy to take Murray for granted; but name another living saxophonist other than Sonny Rollins whose sound erupts and ripples with such visceral power). Part of the fascination here is how complete this trio (sax-piano-drums) sounds without the presence of a bassist. Yet this CD is about cohesion in difficult musical terrain more than sheer force. That cohesion stems from the fact that here are three established leaders (stars, really) and owes most of all to deep connections. These include the bond between Allen (who, for my money, is among he generation\u2019s most important musicians) and Carrington (as confident and versatile as any drummer in jazz; and who maintains an inventive trio with Allen and bassist Esperanza Spalding.
\nThe emotional core of the album is the title track, a previously unrecorded Ornette Coleman composition (here the group expands to sextet, including longtime Coleman associate Charnett Moffett on bass and Wallace Roney, Jr (son of Allen and trumpeter Wallace Roney) on trumpet. This group shook things up at January\u2019s Winter Jazzfest in New York City. On first listen, they seem to have settled into something no less provocative and yet more refined.
\n 
\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Carla Bley\/Andy Sheppard\/Steve Swallow Andando el Tiempo (ECM, May 6): As pianist, composer and arranger, Bley, who turns 80 in May, has always exuded a stern authority tempered with obvious tenderness and grace. And offstage, she\u2019s usually disarmingly humble, even childlike in the best sense. Such was the case last year when she accepted her … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Now Playing (New and Forthcoming CDs)”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5704,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[25,11,383,384,12,14,385,386],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5702"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5702"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5702\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}