Free Jazz Music

Archie Shepp (1937) é um daqueles raros músicos do free jazz que aprendeu a tocar seu instrumento com o passar do tempo. Saxofonista tenor, Shepp também se aventura com o soprano e o alto, além de dedilhar o piano e cantar. Iniciou sua carreira na década de 1950, fazendo uma música politizada - ele foi um dos mais engajados músicos de sua geração, rebelando-se contra as opressões sofridas pelo afro-americano nos EUA. Seus trabalhos iniciais resumem-se a grunhidos brutais e aberrações sonoras típicas da ala mais radical e irresponsável do free (basta dizer que nesse período ele trabalhou com Bill Dixon, Don Cherry, Cecil Taylor e John Tchicai). Mas Shepp deu a sorte de conhecer John Coltrane, com quem grava e trabalha em alguns clubes, recebendo do mestre o aval mais importante de sua carreira. Misturando sua atividade de músico com a de dramaturgo - ele se formou em teatro - Shepp também gostava de ler seus textos, bem como os de Malcolm X e James Baldwin, durante suas apresentações, baseado na crença de que sua música é `funcional' e é feita `para o povo'. Destacando-se como compositor original, Shepp afasta-se do free mais rudimentar e, na década de 1970, passa a utilizar explicitamente elementos mais tradicionais (embora muito mais sofisticados que qualquer produto free) do swing (algumas de suas passagens rascantes e guturais sugerem forte influência de Coleman Hawkins, enquanto as mais doces lembram muito o sopro aveludado de Ben Webster), do bebop (em alguns álbuns seu fraseado recorda o complexo e entrecortado tenor de Dexter Gordon), do blues e do R&B, reunindo tudo numa das sonoridades mais originais que o jazz já produziu.

Mais calmo, reflexivo e calado, Shepp passa a lecionar em universidades e a produzir excelentes álbuns, conciliando seus lampejos de fúria incontrolável com doces passagens açucaradas (Shepp, quem diria, gravou muitos álbuns de baladas). A partir da década de 1980, Shepp se apresenta constantemente na Europa, onde grava a maior parte de seus álbuns e produz alguns de seus melhores trabalhos. Para os amigos navegantes eu recomendaria dois álbuns. O primeiro é True Ballads, gravado em 1996 para a Venus. O incendiário descontrolado dos anos 1950/1960 é substituído pela brasa acolhedora, quase doce, de um tenor que aprendeu que música é apenas arte, essa arte invejada por todas as demais artes. Aqui não há libelos, não há política, não há moral, apenas beleza. Com Shepp estão os irretocáveis John Hicks (p), George Mraz (b) e Idris Muhammad (d). Deglutido sem maiores sofrimentos, pode o ouvinte interessado partir para o excelente Body and Soul, gravado em 1991 para a Enja. Trata-se de um magnífico duo com o contrabaixista Richard Davis, onde Shepp mostra toda sua técnica e sonoridade madura, impregnada de blues. Destaque para as faixas Body and Soul e 'Round Midnight, com 17min de duração cada uma. Lenda viva.

the soul of latin america in this album .
great ! innovator !
pioneer !
see also SUDAKA, by Ramiro Musotto , to check out one of the last Gato's recording in the track "Antonio das Mortes".
Gato is an icon in modern Latin America fussion music .

This album is apparently two albums put together. I am familiar with "El Gato," an album that is hard to find and too bad because it has wonderful songs on it, some of which are on this one. They are "Merciditas," "Ninos," and "El Parana" and "Vidale Triste." The first three are powerful compositions, affording Barbieri many opportunities to showcase his passion for music, his soaring altissimos, and his versions of John Coltrane's wall of sound (tens of rolling, boiling notes, packed into a time frame that is literally unbelievable). In addition, the percussion, piano and bass voices are all compelling, especially some of the bass lines, which, inspired by Barbieri's visions, scamper about and bubble up out of sheer joy.

When expressed through music, romantic (sexual) passions can take on spiritual or universal dimensions that far exceed the parameters of the original inspiration. Music can reframe our perspective from a stationary being in a stationary room to the reality of an object spinning in a circle on a globe that is whirling around a star that is itself twirling around a galactic center whose galaxy is flying around a galactic cluster. Good musicians always keep their eyes on the center as they trek through the dizzying loops of infinite forms (circles, ellipses). Some of the views the musicians on "Bolivia/Under Fire" offer up are truly spectacular. They are adept at contorting tempos almost beyond recognition, only to have them come careening back with added vigor. This, to me, is the most powerful kind of jazz fusion, where the violence is continually mitigated by sensitive hands.

Barbieri often starts at the destination and moves in retrograde fashion, which makes for some rough contours and sudden shifts. This is because he is intoxicated by visions and unconcerned with the future. Contrasted with this impulsiveness is the perfectly formed and developed structure of "Merciditas." On "Ninos," the most dramatic song, Barbieri pulls out all the stops, and lets out screetching altissimo wails near the end which are followed by a weathered descending line that is wonderfully fatigued. Meanwhile, the bassist has been charmed and his rubbery, supercharged notes fly about maniacally before drifting airily into the folds of Barbieri's luxurious curtain. Barbieri creates the musical equivalent of a South American revolution, with lots of little kids running around with machine guns.

This music has the anonymous character of, say, gothic art. And, like that art, it is engulfed in suffering and insights.

I usually do not listen to "Eclypse/Michellina" or "Bolivia" in their entirety - Barbieri can get overbearing and amateurish at times too. Another weakness is on "Antonico," a short, beautiful latin composition that he botches (in my humble opinion) by overproducing multiple sax voices that are spliced together rather clumsily. This ravishing melody needs only one voice, one that is allowed to convey its romantic thoughts in an unhurried manner, without interruption. Instead of the certainty of love, we get its confusion. I think what he was trying to achieve here could have been done, but by having multiple sax voices only in the last iteration of the melody, which would convey the scattering of the personality that romantic passions can produce. In the recorded version, they come in too early and muddy the water.

Some of Barbieri's vocals sound like an animal dying in the rain forest and do not produce the desired effect. (He's kind of a nutty guy.)

But this music is very powerful, has something existential about it, reflects what is now an extinct animal: the human being evolving, in touch with God. The musicians are more like supplicants, sacrificing themselves in the music, which is liquid and runs. The early 70's were heady times, especially in New York, where this music was recorded. Nothing else I've ever heard surpasses the intensity recorded on this album.

I remember the days when Gato Barbieri became the toast of jazz. Caliente had recently been issued and the song Europa was all over jukeboxes and FM radio. It was at long last a North American breakthrough to the mainstream for a man who had toiled in relative obscurity for the better part of two decades. Caliente is today still a best seller for him, but what about his other work?
Old-time cognoscenti and early-adopters of Gato Barbieri can be thankful now that his pre-Caliente solo work on the Flying Dutchman label is being reissued and made available to those of us who are second or third-generation Barbieri fans. I remember listening to more knowledgeable jazz fans talk of Barbieri when I was a young teenager but I never got to hear what they were talking about until Caliente swept the airwaves. I did eventually obtain Bolivia on cassette, but it certainly didn't have the rich fullness of sound as does this CD.
Gato Barbieri is perhaps the best tenor saxophonist of my lifetime and starting with the fabulous Merceditas, he wastes little time living up to that accolade. Soaring melodies and dense rhythms envelop the listener in a state of entrancement as the music progresses.
The entire CD is good, but I particularly enjoy Merceditas, Bolivia, Ninos, the frenetic El Parana, the smooth, flowing Antonico and Maria Domingas. Barbieri's rendition of Atahualpa Yupanqui's Yo Le Canto a La Luna demonstrates his rarely presented vocal ability.
If you are a Barbieri fan who came to his music upon the release of Caliente or later, you owe it to yourself to get this and hear where he came from. If you are an early fan, well you just need to get the CD and give your scratched up LPs a rest. Double your pleasure and order this today!

Michael Unruh - Bass Clarinet, Clarinets
Max Ridgway - Guitar Synthesizer, Guitars

"Atonal free improvisation that defies words" - Bud Norman, Wichita Eagle

"An extended stay at the outer reaches of their instruments" - Robert Iannapollo, Cadence

"Fantastically warped improv... incredibly nervy, chirping interplay... complex encrypted messages fly back and forth at blinding speed ... an insane barrage of tonal bombast and palette overload" - Nick Cain, Opprobrium

"Ridgway's a keen player of guitar synthesizer and "prepared guitar". His slinky, pointillist technique moves quickly, like scattershot, bearing a strange, unique array of microtones. Unruh does for bass clarinet what British free music deity Evan Parker does for soprano sax. Notes bleed against each other in a worried, tangled skein of oddly pitched sounds" - Andrew Bartlett, Midwest Jazz

This project is every mega-fan's wet dream: the chance to make a feature-length film about the subject of one's passion, only to override that subject with one's own ego. Claudia Heuermann is essentially the star of her little film. She relegates Zorn, his music, and the Downtown New York milieu to the sidelines so she can muse droningly about the art of filmmaking and how important she is to the process that's supposed to be happening here. Each time this film shows some potential to give us some depth -- through the music if not its evasive subject's own words -- it fails, drifting off to another of Heuermann's musings about film and, less often, Zorn. There are dozens of prime concert clips, interview fragments, and other teasers in this film, but they are simply left as that: teasers, reminding us briefly that the subject is supposed to be Zorn and not the director. Now someone needs to come along and *really* make a film about this misunderstood genius, Zorn.

I can't say I loved every second of this movie. I found the filmmaker and her narratives so irritating I wanted to shoot her by the end of the film. However, what she did manage to capture of John Zorn and his process is so fascinating I can't help but recommend it to ANYONE who is interested in making music, whether they can wrap their heads around his music or not. Sure, you have to put up with her drivel and her whining, but it's worth it in my opinion just to watch Zorn instructing an improvisational ensemble on the use of flash cards, directing an orchestra that includes a guy slurping and spitting water and another sawing the legs off chairs, and of course his strangely insightful if cryptic theories on music. As an artist and musician, I found it massively inspiring and I recommend it to all my like-minded friends, with the caveate that she's intolerable and they probably won't dig all the music right away...

The negative reviews of this documentary and its creator Claudia Heuermann are unfair. It's pretty obvious that John Zorn's decision to absent himself from the film-making process ("I hadn't spoken to Zorn for over a year," Heuermann says at one point) is at the heart of the documentary's problems. Without its subject's active participation, Heuermann seems to have had to fall back to a different, problematic approach to her film and its subject (that she was evidently passionate about and committed to) which ultimately leads to the issues that the other reviewers here so eloquently kvetch about.

Heuermann's 'Sabbath In Paradise' (1997) is an interesting and accomplished investigation into the beginnings of the NYC Radical Jewish Culture scene. With informed, thoughtful input from Anthony Coleman (the movement's intellectual powerhouse for my money), Andy Statman and Marc Ribot, among others, it proves that Heuermann is a talented director with the vision to work in an area of contemporary music that requires documenting in an intelligent way, such is it's highly-conceptual basis.

This is still interesting though. Good footage of Zorn's various projects, game piece rehearsal footage, Naked City stuff, Masada stuff, some classical stuff and a bit of Zorn sounding off about Germany. Perhaps Heuermann could have gone to Zorn's peers for the insight that Zorn was not able/willing to give her (sadly, as his contributions to the extra documentary on the 'Sabbath In Paradise' DVD are entertaining and interesting enough) but she didn't.

So, flawed and a missed opportunity, yes - but I really don't believe the vehement criticism here is justified or even directed in the right direction. It's OK, and it's all that's out there. And Zorn is such a unique character that surely any attempt to 'capture' or explain him is doomed to failure.

Claudia Heuermann's "A Bookshelf on Top of the Sky: Twelve Stories About John Zorn" is not quite what it seems. Expectations ran high, a documentary about John Zorn, the man who rarely grants interviews and when he does, seems to say everything and not say anything at all, whose music jumps genre to genre in a matter of seconds, captivates some, horrifies others, and has a strange sway over its fan.

What Heuermann did though was quite a bit different-- she told the story about her trying to make the movie, about her relationship with Zorn, from the moment she first discovered him (a friend playing her Naked City's "Torture Garden") to her meeting him for the first time, travelling to New York and deciding to make a movie about Zorn. It's really a piece abuot self-discovery, about learning to be one's "own parent".

Along the way, we get snippets of interviews with Zorn, brilliant statements, footage of rehearsals, recording sessions, remastering of "The Big Gundown" and live performances from Naked City, Painkiller, Masada, Bar Kokhba, Emergency, and "Rituals". We also get a brief explanation of game pieces and a picture of a frustrated artist who can't stop looking, who views music as problem solving, and who does it not for listeners, but for himself and the musicians.

This is the second time I've watched this-- the first time was when it first came out, and I was still in the process of discovering Zorn's work through a chance encounter at an independent movie theater (Naked City was the house music before the show, and somehow I knew who it was). Three months and a dozen or so Zorn CDs later and this came out to guide my way, to help put the pieces together.

A year after that and my Zorn collection is bordering on obscene and the piece still holds weight. It still is entertaining, and yeah, its not a lot of revelatory stuff, but it's a worthwhile viewing. Truth to be told, in many ways, the piece gave validity to my own view on my choice of career and my great passions. And I keep thinking that maybe when my coworkers ask why I'm making the four hour trip to New York City yet again to see some obscure musician who they've never heard of (and who if they did hear, they'd probably dislike), maybe in those situations I should let them borrow this and certainly Heuermann's experience isn't really that much different from mine. Isn't that powerful enough to merit a recommendation to someone else?

If you're just learning about Zorn, get this, it's critical. If you're already initiated, you probably already have it. It's got its flaw, but invariably, it's a deeply personal expression, how could it not? Either way, it's a fun film to watch. Recommended.

I hesitate to call this film a documentary, for it seems to serve the mystique of John Zorn rather than circumvent it (or move through it) to examine the work of a man who has broke open a whole new way of composing music. Even more than serving the mystique (done through endless misses between the film maker and her subject matter and only brief glimpses of music being made), the film ultimately seems to serve the film maker to muse upon the process of creating films...but hardly in any way that provides insight.

There are interesting, brief glimpses into Zorn putting together a game piece performance, for example, but I came out of this feeling that I had been given some opportunity to glimpse some of the people behind the music, but no further understanding of the music or the artist behind the music than what I have devised through my own listening and through articles I've read talking about noise as well. Obviously, this film wants to examine the music more than the man, but I think it did it very poorly, with only brief peeks at Zorn's various styles and some interesting blurbs from Zorn himself, but more I felt that I just watched someone trying to make a documentary about Zorn and generally failed, so she decided to put herself in the movie to fill it out some.

A lost opportunity.

I am right on the verge of giving this 5 stars. It could go either way, depending on my mood. The strongest factor in my giving this 4 right now is that I just reviewed Stone/Water, a cd that is definitively 5 stars from start to finish.

Still, this is fantastic. I'm starting to believe that Peter Brotzmann is the King of reeds & traps duos. He just GETS IT, though that's an odd statement because there's nothing to "get". These guys aren't going for some sort of new Interstellar Space at all. Brotzmann really owns this realm. I recently reviewed [[ASIN: B000G28QF8 Live At The "Bottle" Fest 2005]] but as an overall package, this is better. The sound here is even better than on that one, and depending on my mood, Brotzmann himself is better here, though I prefer Nasheet Waits to Peeter Uskyla, in that the drum solos here are lulls in between the duo magic.

Brotzmann's tone is so fluid. He can express everything. His playing paints pictures in my mind. Strange little structures that bow outward and fold inward, crumbling onto themselves only to grow new branches out of another little fold. He is an amazing musician, and in terms of just his own playing I'd not be likely to argue if someone told me this was his best playing in one of these reeds & traps duos. I don't have all the ones he has done, so I could never say for sure if it is or not (his best duo playing), but this certainly takes me on a journey.

I think Brotzmann has gotten better as he's gotten older. Some of his earlier and most famous work could, I think, be written off by some people as simply being "energy music". He cannot be tagged as such anymore. His range seems so much larger now. He can play slowly, pulling you right in to the overwhelming nature of his sound and tonal command, or he can still blow shingles off the roof of your house. I think he has more to offer now. Unending, crusty, scouring, shimmering rivers of some of the most dynamic tone anyone has ever produced.

I may have given 5 stars to the other Brotzmann duos I've reviewed. Listening to this and Stone/Water on the same day makes me say that that one edges this one (if only because that one has ten people all creating one of the most incredible 40-ish-minute passages of music I've ever heard) but for Brotz' own playing, and the sonic quality of the recording, this does top Bottle Fest and is right there or beyond Dried Rat Dog

I didn't have this cd listed as one of my most hotly anticipated releases of 2008 but I am so glad I bought it. It's certainly going down as one of the albums of the year.

(3/25/08 edit: AHHH!! I accidentally did click 5 stars. A fantastic album for sure, but Stone/Water is MONUMENTAL... the type of thing where you can't even believe what just happened as that cd was spinning around).