Author Archives: Matt P (movingtheriver.com, soundsofsurprise.com)
Dan Wilson: Things Eternal
These days, jazz/rock generally dials up the ‘rock’ and dials down the ‘jazz’. But, on Ohio-based guitarist Dan Wilson’s fourth solo album Things Eternal, the balance is redressed. Harmony is king, promoted by the repertoire touching on Stevie Wonder (‘Smile Please’), Freddie Hubbard (‘Birdlike’), Herbie Hancock (‘Tell Me A Bedtime Story’), Michael Brecker (‘Pilgrimage’), McCoy […]
Andrew Cyrille/William Parker/Enrico Rava: 2 Blues For Cecil
Even as streaming platforms gain an ever more forceful stranglehold on recorded music, savvy record companies can still deliver impactful physical products which could never be replicated in the digital space. Finnish label TUM are doing that in spades. A key artefact is the recent album by Andrew Cyrille, William Parker and Enrico Rava, 2 […]
Wayne Shorter (1933-2023): Don’t Forget The 1980s
The sad death of soprano/tenor sax titan Wayne Shorter has inspired many column inches but, reading most of the obituaries, you might be forgiven for thinking that he was completely dormant during the 1980s. Nothing could be further from the truth, even if he took more of a backseat in his ‘day job’ co-leading Weather […]
New John McLaughlin book: your feedback
Soundsofsurprise.com wants YOU! My new book on master musician John McLaughlin will be published worldwide by Rowman & Littlefield in September. The design department have put together a few draft covers, and I’d like to know which one YOU most like the look of. It would be good to get your feedback, and you’ll get […]
Miles Davis: The Bootleg Series Vol. 7 1982-1985
The heart always beats a little faster when there’s news of a ‘previously unreleased’ Miles project. And if it’s from the 1980s, even better. The era is still one the least understood/lauded periods of Miles’s work, despite the stellar efforts of George Cole. It also has not been served well posthumously, particularly by his final […]
Book Review: Elegant People (A History of the band Weather Report) by Curt Bianchi
‘The baddest shit on the planet’ – that was Weather Report keyboard player/co-founder/chief composer Joe Zawinul’s assessment of his band’s music. He wasn’t alone – many credit them as the greatest jazz/rock unit in history, pretty impressive considering they developed out of a ‘scene’ that also included The Mahavishnu Orchestra, Return To Forever and Herbie […]
Bennie Maupin Does…’Baker Street’?
The streaming revolution has seen the major labels dredging up the damndest ‘extra tracks’ for inclusions on catalogue albums. One of the weirdest is Bennie Maupin’s ‘Baker Street’, which has appeared at the end of his 1978 Moonscapes record. Of all the great 1960s and 1970s jazzmen you wouldn’t expect to go ‘disco’ – or, […]
Book Review: The Jazz Standards (A Guide To The Repertoire) by Ted Gioia
Like most good ideas, it’s a very simple one; an A-Z guide to the Great American Songbook from a jazz perspective – who wrote the tunes, why they wrote them and a roundup of the best versions. Gioia, a highly respected jazz writer and author, comes up trumps with ‘The Jazz Standards’, a well-researched, witty, […]
McCoy Tyner/Freddie Hubbard Quartet: Live At Fabrik
These two giants of their instruments – Tyner on piano, Hubbard on trumpet/flugelhorn – crossed paths many times in the 1960s, particularly on three of the latter’s most famous Blue Note albums. (Tyner of course is probably best known for his work with the fabled John Coltrane Quartet.) So it was only natural that they […]
Rescued From The Vaults: Eddie Gomez’s Mezgo (1986) & Power Play (1987)
Even amidst this digital revolution, there are still classic jazz and fusion albums which just resolutely refuse to appear on streaming platforms, due to copyright problems, label problems or whatever. Eddie Gomez’s excellent late-1980s albums Mezgo (later rereleased as Discovery) and Power Play are cases in point, recorded for the Japanese arm of the Epic […]
Book Review: Letters To Gil by Malik Al Nasir
Gil Scott-Heron’s work could hardly be more relevant as we move into 2022. The singer, songwriter, musician, novelist, poet and activist, who died in 2011, was arguably one of the most influential recording artists to emerge since the 1960s. Malik Al Nasir, the poet, musician and activist formerly known as Mark Watson, has quite a […]
Album Review: Solo Live by Edward Simon
It’s somewhat surprising that Solo Live is Venezualan pianist Edward Simon’s first unaccompanied recording, after a stellar 30-year career in the bands of Greg Osby, Kevin Eubanks, Bobby Watson and Terence Blanchard, and 15 albums as leader. It’s also a testament to the format’s challenges – not all pianists relish having to be the whole […]
Book Review: Sophisticated Giant (The Life And Legacy Of Dexter Gordon) by Maxine Gordon
Jazz books written by ‘jazz widows’ are pretty rare. Only a few come to mind: Laurie Pepper’s ‘Art: Why I Stuck With A Junkie Jazzman’, Jo Gelbart’s ‘Miles And Jo: Love Story In Blue’ and Sue Mingus’s ‘Tonight At Noon’. But, as Val Wilmer’s ‘As Serious As Your Life’ demonstrated some 50 years ago, behind […]
Level 42: Every Album, Every Song
‘Level 42 – Every Album, Every Song (on track)’ is the first in-depth study of the jazz/funk/pop supergroup’s illustrious catalogue.
It features recording information, musical analysis, studio gossip, full credits, stories from the road and contributions from head honcho Mark King and key past members Gary Husband and Phil Gould.
Album Review: In His Own Sweet Time by Tommy Flanagan
Pop/jazz keyboardist/producer/impresario David Foster recently remarked in a podcast that the best jazz players seem to have the ‘big picture’ in mind when they start a solo, with a natural sense of storytelling/structure. It rang a bell when listening to a recently rediscovered 1994 solo concert from piano master Tommy Flanagan, now released by […]
Ben Sidran: Talking Jazz (An Oral History)
They say that if you want to understand why an instrumentalist plays the way he or she plays, listen to them speak. That makes total sense when hearing Wayne Shorter or Ornette Coleman being interviewed. And now, courtesy of Ben Sidran, there’s never been a better chance to hear other examples of this. Sidran is […]
Bruford: One Of A Kind Revisited
In the late 1980s, some ‘long-lost’ cult tracks took on almost mythical status amongst my musician friends and I. There was Frank Zappa’s ‘The Black Page’, Rush’s ‘YYZ’ and ‘La Villa Strangiato’, UK’s ‘In The Dead Of Night’ and Bill Bruford’s ‘Five G’ and ‘Travels With Myself And Someone Else’. Guitarist Allan Holdsworth, who died […]
Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers/IDJ Dancers: 35 Years On
1986 was a watershed year for the so-called ‘1980s Jazz Revival’. Indeed it was one of the few positives in a fairly duff year for music. Style magazines like The Face were on board and DJs such as Baz Fe Jazz, Patrick Forge, Gilles Peterson and Paul Murphy were spinning Blue Note sides for a […]
Milford Graves 1941-2021
One of the most memorable music documentaries broadcast in Britain during the late 1980s was ‘Speaking In Tongues’, directed by Doug Harris for German TV and originally shown in 1982. It began with John Coltrane’s funeral on 21 July 1967, featuring music from drummer Milford Graves, trumpeter Donald Ayler and saxophonists Ornette Coleman and Albert […]
Album Review: Data Lords by Maria Schneider Orchestra
The ‘political’ jazz concept album has a rich history, taking in Max Roach’s We Insist! and Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra through to Sonny Rollins’ more recent Global Warming and Darcy James Argue’s Real Enemies, amongst many more. But multi-award-winning composer/arranger Maria Schneider’s latest collection and critical smash Data Lords could hardly be more timely, […]
Album Review: Truth, Liberty & Soul by Jaco Pastorius
Even as the streaming revolution sweeps all before it, there are a few aspects of physical music that seem to be thriving: vinyl and the ‘historical discovery’. Bass superstar Jaco is now a worthy recipient of both, courtesy of Truth, Liberty & Soul, a complete gig recorded at the Avery Fisher Hall in New York […]
Album Review: Conspiracy by Terje Rypdal
Five seconds of silence and then a slowly-building synth, like the spiralling of winter ghosts, accompanied by a cello-like lead guitar and flat ride cymbal: it could only be the new album by Norwegian six-string pioneer Terje Rypdal. He has forged a unique chamber-jazz/rock sound, strong on atmosphere and melancholy, an instantly recognisable blend of […]
Neil Cowley Trio: ‘Live At Montreux 2012’ Interview/Review
The NCT would seem a natural fit for the live DVD format with their witty stage repartee and unusual blend of rock, minimalism and jazz piano. And this Montreux Jazz Festival gig (which followed Tony Bennett in the Miles Davis Hall) doesn’t disappoint. The band take to a stage lit with eerie cobalt blue, the […]
Book Review: The Ballad Of Tommy LiPuma by Ben Sidran
What exactly does a record producer do? Of course the role covers a multitude of aspects but generally falls into two categories – the techie or the psychoanalyst. Tommy LiPuma was definitely in the latter camp, a five-time Grammy winner, label boss (courtesy of his cult imprint Blue Thumb) and bona fide music fan who […]
Book Review: ‘Ornette Coleman: The Territory And The Adventure’ by Maria Golia
For such a key figure in the jazz pantheon, Ornette Coleman has arguably been under-represented in print. Certainly this writer’s touchstones have been short-form pieces – Gary Giddins’ extended essay from ‘Visions Of Jazz’; Francis Davis’s ‘No Success Like Failure’; Richard Williams’ ‘The Skies Of America’; Art Taylor’s groundbreaking interview in ‘Notes And Tones’. So […]
Sounds Of Surprise 