jazzmatazz | upcoming | recent | reviews | books | links | musicians | labels | sale list | stores | sweetnighter
previous review | reviews home | next review
This is an album of exotic-sounding duets, bookended by two beautiful solos (on bamboo flute and shenai). Bill Cole creates a meld of Eastern music and western jazz, of Asian and African musics. Cole plays an assortment of Asian instruments, including the Indian shenai, the Chinese sona and the Korean piri, all double-reed shawms (a type of oboe); the Tibetan trumpet, the dung, which plays long, deep notes; and the Australian digeridoo.
Cole's partners are: Warren Smith on gongs and trap drums; William Parker on bass; and pianist Cooper-Moore on diddley bow and horizontal hoe-handle harp. (The Diddley Bow is a one stringed musical instrument with roots in the African instrument called the Umakweyana. It's often played with a slide, and sounds somewhat like a string bass here.)
Cole has been playing, studying and teaching music for over thirty years, but has seldom been recorded. It's quite interesting to hear his mixture of free jazz improvisation and Asian musics on this unusual album of spacious, mysterious and beautiful solos and duets.
— Alan Lankin, Apr 2001
Release Date:
January 2001
Available from
Cadence (cadencebuilding.com)
Trumpeter Roy Campbell designs his music around an articulated rhythm and then a riff (an almost ditty-like snippet of melody) off of which he improvises. With his bass-drum trio, the railroad-tracks of the percussion stand as the guiding force, even more than the 'melody' lines.
Campbell's play can be expansive, but it often regresses to trumpet exercises, so the recording is a mixed bag (with the exception of the abundantly creative play of bassist William Parker, who is extraordinary whether bowing or fingering). This recording has its moments, but both owes too much to Lester Bowie and many of the pieces have too little in the way of compositional structure to merit repeated listening. But there are surprises, and potent ones at that.
— Jules Epstein, March 2001
Ethnic Stew and Brew
Release Date:
6 March 2001
A true gem in Label M's series of live recordings is Philadelphia pianist Ray Bryant's Somewhere In France; a 1993 concert date resurrected from a cassette tape burrowed in the musician's china closet. Bryant is a blues-drenched soloist, almost more in the tradition of the barrelhouse and stride pianists than of post World War II jazz. This means that the melody remains intact, that the left hand is hefty, and even Strayhorn's "Take The A Train" is reformatted as a blues. Deceptively simple, Bryant proves himself a master in the small details, as on his version of "Django" when his left hand strums the keys as the gypsy guitarist did the strings of his instrument. His reading of "Good Morning Heartache" is eloquent, and the entirety of this event was, and remains, a listening pleasure.
— Jules Epstein, March 2001
Somewhere in France
Release Date:
26 September 2000
Outreach for audience was part of the format on Rahsaan Roland Kirk's
Here Comes The Whistleman, Kirk's first for the Atlantic label, recorded in 1965. It is perversely commonplace, as Kirk emphasizes bluesy routines and catchy melodies,
but the glint of mad genius cannot be dimmed—here and there, he foments surprise and creativity with multi-horn choruses, nasal song, his signature flute, and circular-breathing that permits his horn to play beyond any human's capacity.
Kirk was mainstreaming here, although his audience chatter has his characteristic mix of folk-loring, prophecy and a touch of minstrelsy and preaching. This is more a historic oddity than an exemplary effort, but it also was a jumping off point for his career, a place from which he gained freedom and the audience he deserved.
— Jules Epstein, March 2001
Heres Comes the Whistleman
please send comments to jazzmatazz@att.net
last update 10 April 2001