Friday, November 21st, 2008 ... 3:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m. ... KZSU, 90.1 FM

(Return to playlists.)

(I saw the ROVA/Nels Cline Celestial Septet and I"m gonna write something about it here. Just you wait and see. )

Format:
ARTIST -- "TRACK TITLE" -- ALBUM TITLE (LABEL, YEAR)
Horizontal lines denote microphone breaks.

Source: CDBaby.com

Happy happy jazz/world mix. The overall sound falls more on the jazz side (jams infused with swingy horns and plenty of contemporary ideas), but also picks up the sunny flavor of African musics, along with percussion and occasional vocals to complete the setting. Uplifting stuff in small, sometimes too-small, doses.

It's definitely more "jazz" than "world," with tracks like "The Limiter" and "The Most Beautiful Thing" calling out horn lines that seal the question. African influences shine on the chugging "Ochun" or the swingy, South African-vibed flute solo in the title track. And then you've got the fun tracks, like the old-timey "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out" or the slow, tasty N'Orleans vamp on "Hard Times Killin' Floor Blues."

Wayne Horvitz -- "Action 5: It's a Lie" -- Joe Hill: 16 Actions for Orchestra, Voices, and Soloist (New World, 2008)

Previously noted here.

Source: CDBaby.com

Previously noted here.

On the surface, they're a straight-jazz trio, but they keep an open mind and drift outwards from time to time. Tracks like "Jetlag Blues" and "Yrrehs Mas" come from a simple, bluesy place, but then you've got "Small Farmer's Fight Song," which includes some twisted, strangled sax before sliding into an even-handed jam with a cool single-note bass pulse and splashy drums. "Sunspots" gets into some overblowing, too, although at it's heart it's just a good, fast straight-jazz track.

* Ron George -- "The Floating Bubble" [excerpt] -- The Floating Bubble (Innova, 2008)

An American builder of percussion instruments, George performs long gamelan-like pieces with an all-percussion ensemble. The Floating Bubble includes three long pieces by or for George, who died in 2006.

Wadada Leo Smith -- "Tabligh" [excerpt] -- Tabligh (Cuneiform, 2008)

Previously noted here.

* Oliver Lake Organ Trio -- "Spirit of Man" -- Makin' It (Passin' Thru, 2008)

Previously noted here.

*! Sam Shalabi -- "Eddie" -- Eid (Alien 8, 2008)

Previously noted here.

The concert calendar showed a one-off gig including Lithuanian drummer Vladimir Tarasov of the famed Ganelin Trio, a jazz/improv group that's been together more than 35 years, dating back to the old Soviet Union. The Ganelin's work, together and apart, has been richly documented by the Leo Records label, and I'd just gotten a cool new CD from Lithuania, so the combination suggested a short conceptual set...

Vladimir Miller, Vitas Pilibavicius, Vladimir Tarasov -- "Is This Fool a Wizard?" -- Frontiers (Leo Records, 1995)

It probably would have been best to play an actual Gamelan Trio CD to celebrate Tarasov, but this particular disk hadn't gotten a spin since we instituted our Zookeeper online database circa 2001, so I gave it a chance. It's another piano-based trio, with Miller on the keys, and this short encore track gives Tarasov a nice soloing spot on the drums. Overall, the music is the usual free-improv that the Gamelan Trio would pursue, open-ended and carrying some ideas from the free jazz camp.

Source: NoBusiness

NoBusiness is a brand new label from the proprietors of the Thelonious record store in Lithuania. They're devotees of the music who put on shows every now and then and have started releasing the results on record. This is their first CD, to be followed by a solo Mats Gustafsson record and a release from Trio X (Joe McPhee, Dominic Duval and Jay Rosen), both on vinyl.

I found out about this label from Peter Stubley's European Free Improvisation pages, a resource that goes back nearly a decade now, predating blogs and all that. Stubley's amassed information -- biographical and discographical -- on folks like Derek Bailey, Han Bennik, Evan Parker, AMM, Peter Brotzmann ... and the list includes some non-European names like Cecil Taylor. Stubley has given up on keeping the entire resource up-to-date, but he files occasional updates about new releases and new labels. Definitely a resource worth bookmarking.

* Blink. -- "Displacement" -- The Epidemic of Ideas (Thirsty Ear, 2008)

Previously noted here.

Previously noted here.

Scott Amendola Band -- "Cesar Chavez" -- Believe (Cryptogramophone, 2005)

Previously noted here. "Cesar Chavez" is the track that opened the ROVA/Nels Cline show, as noted above.

* Plays Monk -- "Little Rootie Tootie" -- Plays Monk (Long Song, 2007)

Previously noted here. Scott Amendola in a context wholly different from his own band, or ROVA or Nels.

Previously noted here. Granted, as a DJ, it's kind of a cheap, obvious trick to follow up one Monk song with another version of the same song. But come on -- this is NRBQ! Playing for Hal Wilmer, no less -- this compilation is amazing and deserves a CD rerelease, if it hasn't already gotten one.

Previously noted here.

Previously noted here.

Kahil El'Zabar Infinity Orchestra -- "This Little Light of Mine" -- Transmigration (Delmark, 2007)

Previously noted here.

Previously noted here.

Previously noted here.

! Marco Benevento -- "Atari" -- Invisible Baby (Hyena, 2008)

Emily Hay, Brad Dutz, Wayne Peet -- "It Can Be Thick" -- Emily Hay, Brad Dutz, Wayne Peet (pfMentum, 2007)

Previously noted here.

? Gyorgy Kurtag -- "Kafka Fragments" (various tracks) -- Kafka Fragments (Ondine, 1996)

Source: Cal Performances
A difficult, grating, hour-long set of pieces for soprano and violin. It's spare and prickly, with a wide emotional range for both instruments. Aside from the physical difficulty of the music, that range apparently makes this a difficult work to perform; many of the pieces last only a minute or less, with the next piece calling for a whiplash change of emotional direction.

Soprano Dawn Upshaw and violinist Geoff Nuttall gave performances of the piece back in 2005, in a staging created by director Peter Sellars. They're both dressed in weekend work-at-home clothes, with Upshaw doing mundane tasks like laundry while singing the fragments. The staging includes projections of Kafka's texts, translated into English for our benefit, and of various photographs to help set moods.

Upshaw, Nuttall, and Sellars joined up to give a handful of "Kafka Fragments" performances this year, with one of the chosen sites being Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley this weekend. That's a photo from the Cal Arts promo material, at left.

It's all a compelling story -- not just the Kurtag piece itself, but the background of turning it into an elaborate staged set. I decided not to shell out the $68 for it, though.

Reading material:

• A preview of the 2008 run
• The subsequent New York review
• A less complimentary review. He might have a point about the photographs.
• From 2005, some cool photos of a post-opening party, from the lens of cellist Eric Cheng.

A nod to Steve Smith's excellent Night After Night blog, which among other things keeps me up-to-date on his NY Times classical reviews, and which clued me in on Upshaw's upcoming performance.

Source: NHIC site

Not entirely improvised, these are short new-classical compositions with an avant-jazz attitude and the occasional touch of King Crimson. It's a large group, so the mood of a piece can depend on who's playing in the foreground -- is it the strings, the jazzy woodwinds, or the two electric guitars? I do enjoy the artsy sound on some tracks, as well as the outright goofing off. The 22-track album includes two clusters of 30-second miniatures that can be a lot of fun. What I'm really enjoying about the album is that the quieter, more serious tracks are drawing me in just as much as the louder, ear-catching ones.

! Belle Monroe and her Brewglass Boys -- "Fire on the Mountain" -- Belle Monroe and her Brewglass Boys (self-released, 2007)

Floratone -- "Mississippi Rising" -- Floratone (Blue Note, 2007)

Previously noted here.

Previously noted here.

* = Item in KZSU rotation
! = Pop anomaly
? = Item not in KZSU library

-- Go back to Memory Select playlists.
-- Bay Area free/improv music calendar: http://www.bayimproviser.com.