Current listening: Another Land by Dave Holland, featuring Robin Eubanks on guitar and Obed Calvaire on drums. 🎵
Posts in: Music
Dropped yesterday: Uneasy by Vijay Iyer with Linda May Han Oh & Tyshawn Sorey. Three jazz musicians at the absolute pinnacle of their instruments. It’s a beautiful album. 🎶
Happy new year / public-domain day! 🎶 📚
Happy new year & happy public-domain day! The works coming out of US copyright protection this year are pretty impressive: Mrs. Dalloway, The Great Gatsby, The Trial; music by Ellington, Jelly Roll Morton, & Fats Waller. Duke’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain has a detailed overview.
Your annual reminder that Geri Allen’s A Child is Born is the pinnacle of Christmas jazz, and the title track is sublime. 🎶
My favorite year-end list is always Ted Gioia’s 100 favorite albums of the year. I guarantee you’ll find something excellent you didn’t previously know about.
(If you think 100 albums isn’t quite enough, well, he includes 100 honorable mentions as well.) 🎶
Out this week: Songs from Home, beautiful solo piano from Fred Hersch. 🎶
Coffee + grading while listening to Mahler’s Sympony No. 5, prompted by this touching anecdote from Alex Ross. 🎶 ☕️ 🔗
Here’s 58.5 hours of Glenn Gould playing Bach for y’all. See ya next week. 🎶
Billy Hart Quartet, Live Streaming at the Village Vanguard 🎶
I just caught the Billy Hart quartet live at the Village Vanguard, thanks to the club’s streaming series. (Vijay Iyer’s trio is up next weekend.) Hart and his conspirators were excellent. All original pieces, I believe. I particularly love Turner’s piece, “Nigeria,” with which they closed their set. Personnel: Billy Hart, drums Ethan Iverson, piano Ben Street, bass Mark Turner, tenor Partial set list: ? (I missed the intro & half of the first tune) Aviation (Iverson) Teule’s Redemption (Hart) Showdown (Iverson) Ira (Hart?
Current listening: Pat Metheny, *From This Place* 🎶
I’ve been listening to Pat Metheny’s outstanding new album From This Place. From the compositions, through the arrangements (Metheny called in Alan Broadbent to help), to the musicianship of drummer Antonio Sanchez, bassist Linda May Han Oh, & pianist Gwilym Simcock. Highly recommended—& also available on Bandcamp.