Free Jazz Music

Gary's sound easily ranks with the top notch jazz artist. He is everything that jazz is meant to be. I had the opportunity of seeing him perform live at Mario's Place in Riverside and Charles Bibbs' birthday celebration. Not only is he extremely talented, he's sexy too!

My teenage daughter turned me onto Gary's CD. We first saw Gary with the Earth, Wind & Fire horn section where he took some fantastic solos. I am normally a mainstream jazz fan, but I'll listen to anything with a jazz feel. This CD really let's Gary shine. He is totally in his element. The songs all have a great groove and are deeply rooted in jazz. Gary's a remarkable sax player who'll take you for a ride on this recording. Awesome!!

I've had the pleasure of listening to this artist in person. It's true that when this jazzman plays his horn, all my troubles go away. Can't seem to get enough of the wonderful sounds.

Not only does this man have tremendous talent for songwriting, but he also has enough stamina to produce such a smooth jazz album that puts you in the mood for groovin' or romancing. Each track continuously has a flow of musical stability and preciseness you can't deny, one bit. To sum it all up, this is definitely a CD that needs to be heard. Gary, my friend, you get an A+ on my grading chart of good music. Keep it up with that sax playing, even when you're on tour with Earth, Wind & Fire playing "Reasons" and other great songs with the EWF horn section. Best wishes from me to you.

2 B FREE is a must have for all jazz listeners. The smooth sounds of Gary Biasare soulful, relaxing & seductive. This is truely outstanding smooth jazz at its very best!! For those of you that have heard Gary Bias, you know what I'm talking about. For those that haven't purchased this cd, well, your missing out& I strongly reccomend thatyou give 2 B FREE a listen.

Gary's sound easily ranks with the top notch jazz artist. He is everything that jazz is meant to be. I had the opportunity of seeing him perform live at Mario's Place in Riverside and Charles Bibbs' birthday celebration. Not only is he extremely talented, he's sexy too!

My teenage daughter turned me onto Gary's CD. We first saw Gary with the Earth, Wind & Fire horn section where he took some fantastic solos. I am normally a mainstream jazz fan, but I'll listen to anything with a jazz feel. This CD really let's Gary shine. He is totally in his element. The songs all have a great groove and are deeply rooted in jazz. Gary's a remarkable sax player who'll take you for a ride on this recording. Awesome!!

I've had the pleasure of listening to this artist in person. It's true that when this jazzman plays his horn, all my troubles go away. Can't seem to get enough of the wonderful sounds.

Not only does this man have tremendous talent for songwriting, but he also has enough stamina to produce such a smooth jazz album that puts you in the mood for groovin' or romancing. Each track continuously has a flow of musical stability and preciseness you can't deny, one bit. To sum it all up, this is definitely a CD that needs to be heard. Gary, my friend, you get an A+ on my grading chart of good music. Keep it up with that sax playing, even when you're on tour with Earth, Wind & Fire playing "Reasons" and other great songs with the EWF horn section. Best wishes from me to you.

2 B FREE is a must have for all jazz listeners. The smooth sounds of Gary Biasare soulful, relaxing & seductive. This is truely outstanding smooth jazz at its very best!! For those of you that have heard Gary Bias, you know what I'm talking about. For those that haven't purchased this cd, well, your missing out& I strongly reccomend thatyou give 2 B FREE a listen.

Anthony Braxton may have his pulse on the future of music. He is unbelievably prolific, with music for a wide variety of ensembles, ranging from sponteneous blowing sessions to highly abstract, completely notated pieces for traditionally "classical" ensembles. And through it all, his music retains a sense of individuality in each medium, and remains fresh after over 30 years in the buisness.

This recording is for a midsize group featuring Braxton and Finnish musicians. Instruments include four reedists (two based on tenor and two based on alto but all playing a variety of instruments) trombone, violin, bass (doubling cello) and percussion. The disc was recorded live in 1988 in Finland. Two of Braxton's numbered compositions are played, No. 144 and 145. What impresses most about Braxton's group work is the seamless transitions between notated sections, controlled improvisation and all and out blowing. Braxton takes many attitudes toward the balance of improvisation and structure: in some sections the music is fairly strictly notated. Inh some sections, texture is chosen, and material is presented to the players with a fair amount of freedom. Some themes resemble frenetic "bop" heads, but are played with heterophonic decorations by the players. In some sections there is evidence of harmonic planning, or scale choices, and there is a really wild collective blowing section toward the end of the disc that leaves you breathless. It is a wonderful performance. And yet with all of this, the pieces do not sound like the traditional "suite" structure of many free jazz extended compositions (think Meditation) and it doesn't have a "head-solo" feel as many other pieces of the avant-gard can. It feels tight, like all of the pieces belong together structurally and the sections are related motivically. In other words, this piece can be judged with the same standards as work by the European avant-garde composers.

Braxton should have greater recognition in this country, both from the jazz and the classical establishment. His music is a great bridge between jazz and the avant-garde classical tradition. He is more cerebral than the average free player, and yet more emotional than the serialists. And he shows how to both loose control and retain control, how to balance freedom and structure, and to create stimulating and beautiful music at the same time.

IMPORTANT MESSAGE: This fantastic 2-disc set of live improvisations recorded on 4/1 and 4/2/99 by Kidd Jordan (tenor sax), Fred Anderson (tenor sax), William Parker (double bass) and Hamid Drake (trap drums) is BACK IN PRINT. I don't know why it's no longer carried here, but it has been available from the label's website (www.eremite.com) for several months now. If you have any interest in any of these guys individually or collectively, this is must-own.

I looked forward to the re-release of this for almost 2 years and wasn't disappointed when I finally bought it/heard it. This set is four of the best Adventurers In HeartSound the USA has ever produced, doing what only a few musicians can do. Genuinely create together. There is jazz, which alot of people can play, and then there's THIS. University music programs all over the world crank out graduates every year who will never approach the stuff that goes down on these 2 discs.

If you've seen any of my reviews elsewhere on this site and know how I feel about all these guys (and William and Hamid as a core bass & drums unit specifically), consider this set to be another (a little less than) 2 hours of prime reasons why I love them so much. This group can go from being more outside than Ayler or '66 Coltrane (though neither Kidd nor Fred play like either of them), or more quiet and pensive than most any "jazz" anywhere, and then they start pushing and pulling and the mercury congeals and they're grooving so hard you're dancing in your chair. I don't mean 1 song ends and a new uptempo one begins. There are no breaks here. 4 guys stand in the corner of a room and say hey let's hear what can happen tonight. Then they proceed to cut holy rivers out of sound.

These guys play the collective moment. At times they scour the edges of your mind only to lay you gently on a pillow of melancholy, or power-groove you outside of yourself. This is not the more famous free-jazz of 40+ years ago where oftentimes it was always ecstatic catharsis with little dynamic range. This is total freedom music, not just a strict rejection of the straight-ahead rulebook.

The only reason I give this 4 stars is because musically it's one of their best ever but on disc 1 William's bass isn't recorded with as much oomph and presence as on other discs, or even disc 2 here. I try to give the stars out at certain levels since I've reviewed so many William and Hamid, etc... albums. Still, your ears will adjust and then... WOW.

This is a two disc set. Each disc is a different concert with the same players: Kidd Jordan and Fred Anderson play tenor saxophones with William Parker on bass and Hamid Drake on drums. Both concerts are recorded extremely well. All the instruments are heard in fine detail.
The first disc (1st day)begins with Hamid Drake's torrential drumming and the intensity doesn't let up when the others join in. The saxophones are breathing fire, each man deftly weaving ribbons of sound within a rhythmic pool, grounded by the choice bass notes of William Parker. The horns occasionally meet when an agreeable melodic line is repeated...then it's back to the stratosphere where the testifying continues. Both Jordan and Anderson are playing at the top of their game. The continuous string of ideas that flow out of each player's horn is breathtaking.
The second concert(day 2)starts slowly and with less ferocity. The intensity is still there yet the saxophones take their time soloing and playing collectively. It's another day and everyone seems to have a relaxed feel to their playing. It makes a nice contrast to the very hot first disc.
All the musicians are really giants on their instruments. What makes this 2 disc set required listening is the stellar playing of the two grandfathers. Jordan and Anderson both elected to stay in their home towns and it's there they developed their particular and distinctive tenor voices. To listen to them together is exilarating and challenging. It's a challenge I wouldn't want to do without.
Thanks to Erimite for releasing the set and thanks to Amazon for carrying it- at such a bargain price!

Roscoe Mitchell continues to be an astounding post-Coltrane sax player on this album with pianist Matthew Shipp. Some of the improvisations often remind me of Xenakis's more pointilistic sound mass compositions. Both musicians create swirling, dense textures which emerge organically from the sum total of their lines. Very nice and thick. On other tracks, there is a more subdued feel and a thinner texture, reminiscent of Webern. Quiet and slow done very nicely.

Mr. Mitchell seems to have the upper hand on the younger Mr. Shipp in terms of technique. While Mr. Shipp can create quick lines and dense textures, I think he could stand to alter his tone color and dynamic level more often than he does. In the end, though, this doesn't hurt this album too much.

Found this (actually both the 20 and the 23) at local store, used, wasn't sure, but it appealed to me. Well, it's very listenable and fun. I had read a negative review once, but it's good listening. Especially because of the guitarist, he's really good. All tracks were recorded live at various festivals in Europe, but there's very little audience or ambient noise at all. It's well recorded. But the idea that this group has a greater authority in this repetoire than the Keith Jarrett Trio, is (to me) absurd !

Just when you thought that the practice of playing on standards had been exhausted of all fire and imagination, this album appears ("23 Standards" is just as good, by the way). . . extraordinary, unforgettably moving playing, by Braxton and O'Neil in particular, with more ideas on one track than in the entire recorded corpuses of certain "young Turks" who will go unmentioned. . . Braxton forever!

Yes, this group is simply the best jazz quartet playing standards that exists on the planet. This music grooves through various moods; at times buoyant, exuberant, melancholy, always unpredictable and -- unlike some music from Braxton that might scare some away -- very accessable. This group is re-interpreting the standards in a way that should give them much more recognition than they've received. I was, and still am, a huge Keith Jarrett fan and appreciate what he's doing with his Standards group, but this music by Braxton does all that Jarrett's group does, plus that much more.

Braxton is ever-inventive on reeds and if Kevin O'Neil is not soon known as one of the finest jazz guitarists in the world, something is amiss with the world. They are ably backed by the rich sounds of Andy Eulau on bass and Kevin Norton on drums.

This package, like it's companion 4-CD set, "23 Standards" (also on Leo Records) is generous -- most CDs run 70 mins each, so you about five hours of astounding music. Freedom Jazz Dance is a standout for me -- if for no other reason than I dont' think I've ever heard Braxton backed by music that could be called "funky," and yet, this is. Quirky, yes, but definitely funky.

This CD highlights cool West Coast jazz compositions, with a nod to Dave Brubeck on tunes like Blue Rondo ala Turk and Take Five (Paul Desmond was an influence on Braxton), amoung others, but, again, played like you've never heard them before.

The Leo Records site reports that it is sold out of its limited edition of 1,000 copies of the 23 Standards CD. This new CD is also limited to 1,000 copies. So you've been warned. Get it before you end up paying a fortune on E-Bay or worse, never hearing it at all. This is THE jazz group to pay attention to.