/jazz/ general

free jazz edition

what are your favorite free jazz albums?

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blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2009/06/edgar-varèse-and-the-jazzmen-mp3s.html
rateyourmusic.com/release/album/dewan-motihar-trio-irene-schweizer-trio-manfred-schoof-barney-wilen/jazz-meets-india/
youtube.com/watch?v=DNS34qloaX4
youtube.com/watch?v=0t6ugeDVIao
youtube.com/watch?v=yke9KZpH5vU&ab_channel=nickwreiter
rateyourmusic.com/customchart?page=1&chart_type=top&type=album&year=1970s&genre_include=1&include_child_genres=1&genres=free jazz&include_child_genres_chk=1&include=both&origin_countries=&limit=none&countries=
elsewhere.co.nz/jazz/2058/free-jazz-of-the-seventies-missing-in-action-and-in-action/
the-hum.com/2016/01/17/flowers-in-the-dark-free-jazz-in-the-80s/amp/
youtube.com/watch?v=0XZqIp8a6zk
youtube.com/watch?v=TUc-WMpWmIM
rateyourmusic.com/~jazzthreadguy
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nigger "music"

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Did you know Varese once conducted a group of jazz musicians (including Mingus) and was into jazz? This website has the recordings. It was done in 1957 and is in the free jazz style- which this article notes was 4 years before Ornette Coleman's album "Free Jazz"

blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2009/06/edgar-varèse-and-the-jazzmen-mp3s.html

Pretty interesting, too bad the quality isn't a little better

I know science fiction by Ornette gets a good amount of chatter on here but man...that album is amazing. also anything by trane after 64, art ensemble of chicago- a jackson in your house, roscoe mitchell- sound, anything by the AIR trio. if anyone wants free jazz reccs let me know...this is kinda my main thing. also alices soloing on pic related is god teir, or swami teir.

so are you like the new jtg except with good taste?

What are some more good jazz albums with harp?

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me? im just a guy whos a tripfag for fun.
Uhm well anything Dorthy Ashby or Alice Coltrane in the 70s is probably worth listening to if your big into jazz harp. also its in instrumentation for like most kinda cheesy sinatra w strings or shirley horn kinda stuff but probably not in the way you mean.
>particular favorites
>Alice Coltrane- Journey in Satchidananda and Universal Conciousness
>Dorothy Ashby- Hip Harp

David Binney's Lifted Land is impressive. I'm surprised I didn't hear about it back in 2013.

While not entirely a free jazz album, this is an absolute masterpiece.
rateyourmusic.com/release/album/dewan-motihar-trio-irene-schweizer-trio-manfred-schoof-barney-wilen/jazz-meets-india/

What's some good free jazz from recent years?

ah man, theres been a lot. Rodrigo Amado had a cool album called This is our Language. Anything by Henry Threadgill, Matt Shipp, William Parker, Mark Dresser, Joe Morris, Craig Taborn, or Ran Blake that was recorded in the past 5 or 10 years is probably worth a listen, atleast i havent heard much from any of them recently i dont like. Specifically heres 3 reccs
>Joe Morris- Altitude
Henry Threadgill- In for A Penny, In for a Pound (this is easily a personal 10/10 these days. i really highly reccomend it, won a pulitzer and everything)
>Farmers By Nature- Out of this Worlds Distortions...

>Henry Threadgill- In for A Penny, In for a Pound
>Free Jazz

Just stop dude.

David Binney has a lot of good stuff and is pretty underrated.

jesus man...its a fucking blanket term. What would you call the threadgill record? contemporary improv, avant garde music, third stream, modern classical? i say free jazz because idk what the fuck else id call it seeming as though his fucking contrapuntal system he developed is inarguable a type of improvised harmony, which has always been associated with free jazz and i absolutely hear a distinct connection to more traditional styles of jazz music in his compositions and his bands improvisations. threadgills ties to the AACM also warrants him the title of being a free jazz guy, even if Zooid has a different aesthetic. im just trying to reccommend some shit to a guy. fuck you. i mean jesus man, i just got home from preforming in a free jazz group, youd think id know alittle.

local free jazz band Black Motor has a new album coming out soon. yay!

youtube.com/watch?v=DNS34qloaX4

I honestly for the life of me cannot get into free jazz. Like I understand the purpose of it and why the jazz scene evolved the way it did but goddamn is it a chore for me to listen to. Call me a pleb if you want but I just prefer listening to things with a recognizable groove/melody. I think the only free jazz album I've ever really cared for is Cecil Taylor's "Air Above Mountains", and that's more from the spectacle of him just fly all over the piano for 40 minutes at a time.

bait "post"

/arts/ forum/board when?

Wynton Marsalis

Could someone please explain to me why Sonny Rollins is considered to be one of the most important saxophonists? He and Coltrane are often cited as the two best and most significant in jazz. But when I hear Coltrane I can understand the remark, and it is much more easily to compare it with what was going on at the time and how he used innovations, etc. Hearing Sonny, it's much more difficult for me to see that, though it's obvious he is a great player.

Clarification would be very much appreciated.

here's some cool free/improv from last year

youtube.com/watch?v=0t6ugeDVIao

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I think he's probs just triggered by something that's often got such a followable rhythm being called free.
This stuff comes in degrees though so the classification is a little fluid. Labeling is always gonna be fuzzy in art and your "point of departure" is pretty arbitrary.
Pic related is a more realistic as a way to think about it, but a little clunky when you just want a broad term that'll give a rough impression of the record. I think if you called it post-bop, third stream, modern classical or avant-garde you're not really giving as accurate or detailed a view of the music. Free captures a lot more of what's going on than any of those labels.

Anyone here from /blindfold/ remember when I put Steps on a playlist? I was pretty good at making poor track choices, but man, that must have been my worst. Especially unfair to the people who actually did the thing properly and just listened through stuff once.

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>Hearing Sonny, it's much more difficult for me to see that, though it's obvious he is a great player.
Well nobody really calls him innovative so they? Sometimes it's enough just to be a great player.

Anyway, his sense of motivic development was pretty much unmatched in the 50's and 60's.

He could shred like nobodies business. youtube.com/watch?v=yke9KZpH5vU&ab_channel=nickwreiter
AlsoHe was an emotive player who covered a lot of ground stylistically and wrote/played a lot of compelling music. Not every major figure in jazz was a maverick innovator.

I remember reacting reasonably positively to it

I think most people did! I remember there being a general consensus of "this is great, but it's a little monolithic to sum up in a short review".
It's just a long ass track with a lot going on and very little to hold onto. We had other long tracks, but it's especially difficult to look at a long free track cause you can't compartmentalise it as much when there's no regular structure.

When niggers make good music then turn to gross savage animals that need to be put down

Don't you people have DAMN. threads to pollute?

Did free jazz keep evolving into the late 70s? It seems like jazz went through a pretty rapid evolution to get to free jazz in the 60s, but did things kind of plateau innovation wise after more extreme 60s records like

Yeah man, Brotzmann has been evolving since Machine Gun came out, and Coleman started Free Funk in the 70s. I know some Free Funk doesn't really sit on the "free" side of things, but a lot of it does.

Of course it did.
rateyourmusic.com/customchart?page=1&chart_type=top&type=album&year=1970s&genre_include=1&include_child_genres=1&genres=free jazz&include_child_genres_chk=1&include=both&origin_countries=&limit=none&countries=

Yeah, Machine Gun is a continuation of some of the timbre experimenting people like Dolphy and Ayler advanced but it came out in the 60s.
Has he pushed the genre further since then? I'm not just talking about personal styles changing. Like, did the genre as a whole keep moving in different directions like it was in the 60s?
I'm aware there were free jazz records released in the 70s. This doesn't really answer my question.

Don't really like free jazz but I do love Sun Ra who has some releases in the genre I believe

elsewhere.co.nz/jazz/2058/free-jazz-of-the-seventies-missing-in-action-and-in-action/
the-hum.com/2016/01/17/flowers-in-the-dark-free-jazz-in-the-80s/amp/

>not solely listening to local free jazz ensembles that have never played together before
youtube.com/watch?v=0XZqIp8a6zk

I do believe Brotzmann has continued to push free jazz since then. Most of the European free jazz and avant-garde artists are heavily inspired by him.

Any recommendations for Brotzmann's side projects?

Hairy Bones!

Depending on who you ask, it's what he's known for.
His better free stuff was usually stuff done with a bit more preconceived vision or wasn't entirely free ala .
He has a sickening number of blindly improvised tracks that just aren't very good, like on pic related.

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Here's an extremely in-depth and informative article on the subject by Gunther Schuller

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>what are your favorite free jazz albums?
For Alto by Anthony Braxton. Pure brilliance.

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Atlantis title track is so distinctive that it should be a stand-alone on an EP or an single LP album.

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Rahsaan Roland Kirk is underrated as fuck. 5:15 onward has the best intro to a solo ever and than one of the greatest solos ever.

youtube.com/watch?v=TUc-WMpWmIM

So youve already gotten some very well informed answers but i would like to add some personal opinion and make a "why i love sonny so much" case. For me, sonnys playing is so intensly focused on a deep, dark groove. His tone adds to this for me but his feel for time always seems to be focused on a heavy 1 and 3 which give him a wide, bomb-dropping feel. I never feel all 4 beats with him, its usually just focused on the strong (bass and bass drum) beats. I dont think hes particularly innovative in an academic sense, but his pocket and groove i think are innovative in their own way. Ex. Night and Day from the Standard Sonny Rollins.

Brotzmann pushed in my opinion a more abrasive free jazz distinct from some of the American styles of free form, compared that to the work of Braxton which was to be was more structured, calculated and abstract. Brotzmann's Machine Gun is a prime example of pure abrasive brilliance.

Extremely underrated. Not to mention that he was a multi-instrumentalist (tenor saxophone, clarinet, stritch, manzello, flute, keyboards, cor anglais, percussion). He could also play multiple instruments simultaneously. And on top of all of that, he was blind.

I'd love this. I don't know much about art but I'd love to see discussion

Has Hiro created a single new board?

Die like a dog quartet is AMAZING.
Surprisingly enough, most of the free jazz senpaitachi and musician i have talked to do not know much or talk much about brotzmann. Even william parker who plays with him. I think a lot of the european free jazz, including brotzmann has a bad habit of leaving the spiritual aspect out of the music. Doesnt make them bad and i love brotzmann but i think that leads to some rejection by the old black free jazz community.

Agree largely, but never understood the "he was blind" argument. Seems to me that could just enhance someones ability to play, since there's no distractions when playing. I mean, at a certain lvl musicians don't need to see their instruments anymore, also ones who can see. Being blind won't make it harder to play.

I mean, Art Tatum was blind. It really didn't matter because he didn't need to see the keys. The only thing i suspect it does to a human being is get him more in tune with his hearing.

>Seems to me that could just enhance someones ability to play, since there's no distractions when playing.
What's interesting with him is that he became blind as a result of a poor medical treatment which he had in his early childhood.

Can't read music though. That doesn't mean you can't just get really good at doing stuff by ear, but it certainly is more a hindrance than a help if you wanna play complex prewritten arrangements or learn tunes with exceptionally difficult harmony.

>not reading braille sheet music

That's true. You'd still need to learn everything off completely, but it'd be easier than having someone show you how to do everything.
Do you know if Kirk read Braille music?

too fucking technical

Honestly i have no idea. He doesn't seem the type to me to read music but rather try shit out for 9 hours a day.

Maybe you could view it as an invitation to learn more about music rather than getting angry about it

Anyone know any good orchestral jazz albums?
I'm in love with pic related (ornette coleman - skies of america)
Really love long orchestral drones and shit over some jazz.
Any recs?

jazz is supposed to be fun. you shouldn't have to study theory an analyze it to enjoy it.

JAZZ IS SRS BUSINESS

Its patrician art music

>you shouldn't have to study theory an analyze it to enjoy it
Well, you can define studying however you want, but without music theory you couldn't even begin to grasp the concepts of jazz. That's the reality of it.

Well that's the cool thing about good jazz. You can listen to it at a surface level and see it as fun music, but you can also break it down and analyze it at a deeper level.

Some of us like to know how and why things work. It's can be a lot of fun and allows you to listen to music at a much deeper level. It makes it possible to talk to other people about the music beyond just "I like it" or "I don't like it."

You should really consider trying to study the music at a little deeper level if you enjoy listening to jazz.

this one is essential if you haven't heard it

I for one appreciate this kind of stuff and want to see more of it in these threads. Where did you find these?

Unfortunately my main recc would be Skies of America.

These come from a cool magazine called The Jazz Review. Unfortunately it only ran from '58 to '61 but they have some really well-written articles

Free or otherwise? Waddada Leo Smith's Ten Freedom Summer is a good "orchestral" free album too. It's a bit of a rare breed though.
Stuff like Micheal Formanek's The Distance is similar stylistically but there isn't a string section.
Otherwise, I mean:
Gunther Schuller's concerto for jazz quartet
Bernstein Plays Brubeck Plays Bernstein
Andromeda Mega Express Orchestra
Bill Evans - Symbiosis
Nina Simone With Strings

Charles Mingus - Let Children Hear My Music
Miles' Gill Evans collabs
Duke Ellington - Such Sweet Thunder

Are all good, large ensemble jazz albums with a somewhat classical bend. The first couple have strings, the last few don't.

Thanks for the responses, I appreciate it, and I now understand the case for Rollins more. Still I can't yet see why Coltrane is supposed to share the position with him, but maybe that will change.

Btw, while we're talking about jazz with strings, does anyone actually think this is a good album? Clifford's playing is heartfelt but I've never heard him play so safe before. It's like he's afraid of tripping people up by getting too technical.
It's all painfully slow ballads that sound identical all with the same uncreative, saccharine, cookie cutter arrangements. It's just everything that's wrong with a "With Strings" record and a severe disappointment.

I think most everyone puts Coltrane at a tier above Rollins. Most jazz fans will agree that Trane is probably the most important and influential tenor player in history, and probably in the top 5 most important figures in jazz overall. Rollins is an influential and important figure but not quite on that same level.

Sure, that was a great question man. However, i think its prudent not to compare them on the grounds that you are using. Theyre both absolutely incredible, world-changing musicians, and should be given a serious listen! No need to wonder why the public views them the way they do, form your own opinion about their influence and such. I will say ive always been curious about the amount of discussion about tranes quartet as opposed to the lack of discussion about sonnys band with jim hall, bob cranshaw, and micky roaker. I personally think tranes group was more important but youd think there would be more comparisons due to the heavy line ups and the fact they were both some what long term working bands.

Bumping with Pat Metheny's best album

>charles mingus
>miles davis
>john coltrane
>charlie parker
>art blakey
Those are my general favorite jazz musicians. How do I go further down the rabbit hole with this genre?

You talked with William Parker? Cool

I really like Unit Structures

Just start branching out. Try out controversial periods from your favourite artists, try seminal live dates, check out major and moderate artists from acclaimed labels, and most importantly, listen to sidemen! I have never had trouble finding new jazz using this method of going deeper, jumping somewhere else, and moving laterally.

As you listen to their records start keeping track of who your favorite player on the record is (besides the leader), maybe the pianist or the drummer or the saxophonist stands out. Look up who they are and try some of their records or look for other records that they play on that sound interesting.

you're really not out of very well known players yet
as again when you are acquainted with most of the really big names, there's no need to cut corners

sorry, i didnt have my tripcode on cause i was phone posting. Im one of William's students and he asked me to play a gig with him later this year. i have a feeling some of the /jazz/ regulars are tired of me talking about him but if you have any questions or anything ill try my best to answer
me too friendo
Bright Size Life man

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Joe Harriott hasn't been mentioned yet.
He's not my absolute favorite, but Free Form and Abstract are good albums.

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I haven't been around these threads since the jtg days. Good to see that there's still players around.

ah, thanks man. glad to see your getting in on the discussion!

This album really has no right to be as good as it is. I thought it was gonna be 40 minutes of wank and that Matana wouldn't be able to sustain a solo performance for 5 minutes, let alone 40.
But this is well paced, restrained and kind of beautifully introspective and intimate. It's by no means a masterpiece, but for an unaccompanied, improvised solo sax record, it's really fantastic.

Currently writing up a 5 star review for my 350th rating.
rateyourmusic.com/~jazzthreadguy

Anyone want to guess as to what it will be?

wew