Music
Current listening: A Supreme Blue by Nicholas Payton and Butcher Brown.
As the title hints, this is a reworking of Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue and John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme. I must have listened to each album 200 times, but this recording makes these tunes new. Highly recommended. 🎶
Incredible day for new jazz releases—a posthumous live set from Al Foster, albums from Sam Yahel & Thomas Strønen, then finally the excellent new album from super group Out Of / Into. Happy Friday! 🎶
Between the bookstore, Bandcamp, & the good ol’ USPS, Christmas came early for me today! 🎶📚
Current listening: Aaron Parks’s new quartet album By All Means—beautiful music; delightful cover art. I’ve been waiting for this one for a couple months and it’s worth the wait! 🎶
Current listening: Charles Lloyd’s beautiful new album, Figures in Blue, which kicks off with a haunting, spacious rendition of “Abide with Me” and never lets up. Very highly recommended. 🎶
Here’s a wonderful guest post from jazz bassist Thomas Morgan on Ethan Iverson’s Substack.
Morgan draws out the connections between jazz and hacker culture:
Whatever is shared, discovered, or invented has the potential to be applied in the very same moment or soon after. With such a tight feedback loop, ideas can compound, and the music is essentially optimized for learning as much as possible every time you play.
The essay goes deep into the weeds on how Morgan created his strange digital instrument WOODS, featured on Morgan’s new album Around You is a Forest. 🎶
Current listening: the new album from my favorite active jazz trio: Wolfgang Muthspiel, Scott Colley, & Brian Blade, Tokyo 🎶
Current listening: Johnathan Blake, My Life Matters 🎶
Current listening: Arvo Pärt, Alina (30th Anniversary Edition). 🎶
Only and already 30 years old, it feels both ancient and immediate.
Current listening: Field’s Complete Nocturnes, beautifully performed by Alice Sara Ott.
I love listening to Chopin’s nocturnes in the evenings during bedtime reading; it’s delightful to go back to the OG. 🎶
It’s always a good day when Wolfgang Muthspiel, Scott Colley, & Brian Blade release a blistering new single & announce a new album 🎶
Current listening: Aaron Parks / Little Big, Live in Berlin 🎶
Current listening: Anouar Brahem’s beautiful, haunting new album After the Last Sky. Brahem is accompanied by two brilliant peers, Dave Holland on bass and Django Bates on piano. 🎵
Grateful to have caught Bill Charlap at the Dakota tonight. The trio included the great Kenny Washington on drums and, unexpectedly for me, David Wong on bass.
An absolutely incredible set. Highlights were Charlie Parker’s scorching “Segments” & the encore, “Some Other Time.” 🎵
Two absolutely killer albumss released today. One could do worse than spend the weekend listening to these two. 🎵
Boy do I wish I had been in Chicago last Friday 🎵
Get out there right now & watch Esperanza Spalding & Milton Nascimiento’s beautiful Tiny Desk (Home) Concert. A stunning collaboration between a true great of Brazilian jazz & a young musical genius. 🎵
Current listening: Pat Metheny’s beautiful new solo guitar album, Moondial.
The album includes a beautiful version of “My Love & I”—but that’s redundant, since every version of “My Love & I” is beautiful. 🎵
Current listening: Ron Carter, All Blues.
Roland Hanna’s solo on “Light Blue” is a beautiful little miracle. 🎵
