ERIC DOLPHY — Muses (2013) MONO | Historical Series | FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

This Marshmallow release in its Historical Series features Eric Dolphy's previously unreleased studio recordings from the so-called "Douglas Sessions," supposedly produced by Alan Douglas who was an A&R man for United Artists. Some materials from these sessions have been released over the years from several different labels, including the album Conversations from the FM label and Iron Man from the Douglas label.
Tracks 1 and 3-5 are previously unreleased alternate takes from these sessions, and Track 2 is a newly discovered tune that was supposedly "rejected" and therefore thought to have been erased. The album opens with two stunning duo performances by Dolphy and bassist Richard Davis. Their interplay is intimate and at times telepathetic. "Iron Man" and "Mandrake" are played by a quintet featuring Woody Shaw on trumpet and Bobby Hutcherson on vibraphone. "Love Me" is a searing alto sax solo performance by Dolphy.
Tracklist :
1    Alone Together 12:07
Written-By – A. Schwartz
2    Muses 8:48
Written-By – E. Dolphy
3    Iron Man 8:27
Written-By – E. Dolphy
4    Love Me 3:39
Written-By – V. Young
5    Mandrake 4:18
Written-By – E. Dolphy
Credits :
Alto Saxophone – Eric Dolphy (tracks: 3 to 5)
Bass – Eddie Khan (tracks: 3), Richard Davis (tracks: 1, 2, 5)
Bass Clarinet – Eric Dolphy (tracks: 1, 2)
Drums – J.C. Moses (tracks: 3, 5)
Trumpet – Woody Shaw (tracks: 3, 5)
Vibraphone – Bobby Hutcherson (tracks: 3, 5)
Recorded in New York, July 1st (1,2), July 3rd or 4th, 1963.

AKI TAKASE | RUDI MAHALL — Duet For Eric Dolphy (1997) FLAC (image + .cue) lossless

Tracklist :
1    17 West 3:47
Composed By – Eric Dolphy
2    245 3:21
Composed By – Eric Dolphy
3    Hat And Beard 3:13
Composed By – Eric Dolphy
4    I'm Confessin' 4:02
Composed By – A.J. Neiburg, D. Daugherty, E. Reynolds
5    Something Sweet, Something Tender 2:28
Composed By – Eric Dolphy
6    A Chotto Matte 2:40
Composed By – Aki Takase
7    Les 2:30
Composed By – Eric Dolphy
8    Gazzeloni 3:09
Composed By – Eric Dolphy
9    Serene 3:39
Composed By – Eric Dolphy
10    Misha's Slipper 2:29
Composed By – Aki Takase
11    Straight Up And Down 1:29
Composed By – Eric Dolphy
12    Rudi My Beer! 2:26
Composed By – Aki Takase
13    The Prophet 4:09
Composed By – Eric Dolphy
14    Miss Ann 2:35
Composed By – Eric Dolphy
Credits :
Bass Clarinet – Rudi Mahall
Piano – Aki Takase

KEITH JARRETT — Sun Bear Concerts (1978-1989) 6xCD BOX-SET | FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

During the 1970s, solo piano box sets were rare. When Keith Jarrett's monolithic, ten-LP solo box, Sun Bear Concerts, arrived from ECM in 1978, the only comparable collection was The Tatum Solo Masterpieces, a six-disc set of the pianist's '50s sides. Jarrett's five Japanese concerts from November of 1976 in Kyoto, Osaka, Nagoya, Tokyo, and Sapporo were completely improvised and gloriously recorded by engineer Okihiro Sugano. Most jazz critics greeted it as a seminal work that set Jarrett apart from his peers.

When he hits a mysterious minor ninth to open the first concert in Kyoto, all bets are off. For nearly 80 minutes he balances tension with release, the pastoral with the cosmopolitan. He asks harmonic questions and develops non-conclusive answers, and melds emotion, technique, and inspiration in a dazzling, deeply moving display of virtuosity and inexhaustible creativity. The Osaka concert commences with inquisitive lyrical ideas before spiraling off in several directions. He investigates swing, stride, blues, bop, vanguard modal interludes, folk traditions, and pop songs, and briefly evokes Aaron Copland. Jarrett creates cascading rhythmic pulses and expansive harmonies that elude genre and resist reduction. In Nagoya, classical motifs -- romantic and modernist -- are developed with a rich, inquisitive interior logic that never forsakes musicality, even when pursuing the Muse toward dissonance during the final third. In Tokyo, Jarrett meanders for a time, offering one musical ellipsis after another until 12 minutes in, when he slips through the boundary with a series of five-note clusters. Then he's off and running across jazz piano history, nodding at Vince Guaraldi, Dmitri Shostakovich, Lead Belly, Debussy, Jerome Kern, and others before stripping his process down to its essences. It's the most rewarding show in the set, though not necessarily the easiest to listen to. In Sapporo, Jarrett is effusive. He delves into non-Western harmonic approaches, explores the piano's lower-middle register exhaustively, and finds lyricism between empty and dissonant spaces. For over 75 minutes he punctuates these explorations with dramatic glee, and often hums along. The Sun Bear Concerts offers a pinnacle of jazz improvisation.
-> This comment is posted on Allmusic by Thom Jurek, follower of our blog 'O Púbis da Rosa' <-
Tracklist :
CD1 - Kyoto, November 5, 1976
CD2 - Osaka, November 8, 1976
CD3 - Nagoya, November 12, 1976
CD4 - Tokyo, November 14, 1976
CD5 - Sapporo, November 18, 1976
CD6 - Encores (Sapporo, Tokyo, Nagoya)
Credits :
Piano, Music By – Keith Jarrett
Producer – Manfred Eicher

MATANA ROBERTS — Coin Coin Chapter One : Gens de Couleur Libres (2011) FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

Chicago-born, New York-based alto saxophonist and composer Matana Roberts made waves with her debut, The Chicago Project, in 2008, and earlier this year with her Live in London set issued by Barry Adamson's Central Control imprint. Coin Coin Chapter One: Les Gens de Couleur Libres on Constellation, is the opening salvo in a projected 12-part musical statement, and stands apart in her catalog. The large 16-piece ensemble was recorded in a Montreal studio live in front of a small audience. Roberts plays various reeds and vocalizes; she is accompanied by a stellar cast of musicians playing everything from horns and strings to electric looped guitars to a musical saw. The album is conceptual and dramatic -- yet stridently self-controlled -- a new chapter in the book of vanguard jazz. Her album employs family stories through the narrator's tales of a distant relative (alternately a physical presence and a ghost) named "Coin Coin" (a.k.a. Marie Therese Metoyer a freed slave from the 18th century who founded her own community along Louisiana's Can River; a giant figure in African American history), she portrays strong black female archetypes throughout history, around which she constructs her own myths (of interwoven facts and fictions). Roberts understands implicitly the power of restraint in these compositions, though free improvisation as a dialogue is also imperative. The wailing saxophone that commences the album on "Rise" is a clarion call answered by a piano responding and conversing for nearly two-and-a-half minutes before a muted trumpet and strings enter. The rhythm section begins haltingly, becoming more urgent as the piece progresses, creating a pole between piano and bass as horns flit in and out, up and around the strings; hints of melodies assert themselves fleetingly and disappear quickly. "Pov Piti" begins with the piano and droning strings before a vocalist utters a primal wave of wordless expression that builds to a crescendo before Roberts' alto enters, playing repetitive, haunting lines in a bluesy tone; she is answered by strings, horns, and other voices before she begins to vocally narrate. These pieces serve as an introduction for this ensemble's journey through a labyrinthine past. It's provocative, uncompromising, and quite moving emotionally. The completely sung, near-gospel call and response of "Libation for Mr. Brown: Bid Em In...." introduces the beautiful responsorial "Lulla/Bye," where Roberts' alto, strings, and piano highlight gorgeous females singing a near spiritual before it gives way to the urgent free playing that alternates dynamically in "I Am." The set closes with "How Much Would You Cost," wherein the question is asked literally and upfront in a deceptively simple, almost nursery-rhymed song that underlines the preciousness of human life, which is all the more powerful for its unassuming and unwavering directness. It is illumined only by a hypnotic bassline and ends this gorgeous, singular performance. Roberts is in her own league as an improviser, a composer, and conceptualist. Given the success of this album, she creates great anticipation for the next installment in her project.
-> This comment is posted on Allmusic by Thom Jurek, follower of our blog 'O Púbis da Rosa' <-
Tracklist :
1    Rise    7:27
2    Pov Piti    7:41
3    Song For Eulalie    8:26
4    Kersaia    7:33
5    Libation For Mr. Brown: Bid Em In... 9:48
Lyrics By [Arrangement Of A Poem] – Oscar Brown Jr.
6    Lulla/Bye    5:54
7    I Am    10:05
8    How Much Would You Cost?    4:19
Credits :
Alto Saxophone [Alto Sax], Clarinet, Voice – Matana Roberts
Baritone Saxophone [Baritone Sax] – Jason Sharp
Bass – Jonah Fortune, Thierry Amar
Bass Trumpet – Brian Lipson
Cello – Nicolas Caloia
Drums, Vibraphone [Vibes] – David Payant
Duduk [Doudouk] – Hrair Hratchian
Guitar [Prepared Guitar] – Xarah Dion
Piano, Organ – David Ryshpan
Saw [Musical Saw] – Lisa Gamble
Songwriter [Songs By], Arranged By [Arrangements Of Folk Traditionals By] – Matana Roberts
Tenor Saxophone [Tenor Sax] – Fred Bazil
Trumpet – Ellwood Epps
Violin – Josh Zubot, Marie Davidson
Voice – Gitanjali Jain

MATANA ROBERTS — Coin Coin Chapter Two : River Run Thee (2013) FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

Mississippi Moonchile is the second chapter in saxophonist and composer Matana Roberts' projected 12-part work, Coin Coin, which examines race, class, gender and personal experience through the prism of American history. The first chapter, Gens de Couleur Libre, was a large-scale offering, combining out jazz with narrated and sung sections that commenced at the dawn of slavery on North America's shores through the Civil War. It was at once moving, arresting, provocative, and militant, combining histories and mythologies personal, actual and spiritual. By contrast, Mississippi Moonchile was composed with her New York sextet in mind. The ensemble -- Roberts (saxophone), Shoko Nagai (piano), Jason Palmer (trumpet), Thomson Kneeland (double bass), Tomas Fujiwara (drums), and Jeremiah Abiah (an operatic tenor) -- delivers a wildly creative, contrasting, and wide-ranging musical theater performance that embodies three folk songs and 15 original compositions, narration, chorus and solo singing, divided into 18 sections yet played as a continuous whole. The music often reflects the origins of blues and jazz from the Delta and New Orleans, but is woven seamlessly with modern sounds (the meld of gospel, blues, and modal music in "Humility Draws Down Blue" is the epitome of "art music" rooted in American folk traditions and Latin sounds), scat singing, post-bop, and Abiah's gorgeous voice anchoring nearly every cut. Roberts' horn more readily reflects her speaking and singing voices here; it is much warmer and calmer. It reflects blues because it comes straight out of them. Palmer's trumpet is informed by bop and hard bop; it closely follows her lines and underscores them. Nagai's piano builds bridges between various musical traditions and players. Check the meld of briefly articulated free playing, blues, and swing in "Twelve Sighed," which moves briefly toward modal jazz. The use of "Frère Jacques" in "River Ruby Dues" comes out of "My Lord What a Morning," with Abiah offering Roberts' own melody wordlessly as she blows a quote from Coltrane's "Meditations." She showcases the legacy of her studies with the AACM at the beginning of "Responsory," as Abiah delivers her words. Roberts and Palmer trade lines on the outer fringes of the melody as the rhythm section walks a tightrope between; a minute and a half in, it erupts into a gorgeous, slow, King Oliver-inspired blues. The music allows Abiah's mellifluous voice and Roberts' singing and speaking, a warm, inviting space. Her flow of personal narration in "Was the Sacred Day" offers Christian prayers, entries from her grandmother's (the muse of the title) diaries, and sung fragments of "Motherless Child"; the effect is riveting. Even in its relative gentleness, Mississippi Moonchile asks more provocative questions than its predecessor--offering a view of family history and the struggles in juxtaposing thwe African American Experience with "freedom" inside the American Dream. Both albums are parts of a coded memorial quilt, that critically examines the racist design of "official" history, even as it reveals attempts to sublimate it in the veneer of the present era.
-> This comment is posted on Allmusic by Thom Jurek, follower of our blog 'O Púbis da Rosa' <-
Tracklist :
1    Invocation    4:17
2    Humility Draws Down Blue    1:35
3    All Nations    0:08
4    Twelve Sighed    2:15
5    Spares Of The World    2:29
6    Secret Covens    1:45
7    River Ruby Dues    4:21
8    Confessor Haste    1:25
9    Amma Jerusalem School    4:11
10    For This Is    1:04
11    Responsory    3:50
12    The Labor Of Their Lips    1:49
13    Was The Sacred Day    4:25
14    Lesson    3:30
15    Woman Red Racked    4:28
16    Thanks Be You    4:25
17    Humility Draws Down New    0:47
18    Benediction    1:59
Credits :
Alto Saxophone, Vocals, Conductor [Conduction], Voice [Wordspeak], Artwork – Matana Roberts
Arranged By [Operatic Vocals] – M. Roberts
Double Bass, Vocals – Thomson Kneeland
Drums, Vocals – Tomas Fujiwara
Piano, Vocals – Shoko Nagai
Tenor Vocals – Jeremiah Abiah
Trumpet, Vocals – Jason Palmer
Written-By [Operatic Vocals] – Joseph D. Howard
Written-By, Composed By – Matana Roberts (tracks: 1 to 6, 8 to 14, 16, 17)