Announcing Rediscovery at All About Jazz

[jkelman]

Today's discovery is in my top 10 list of albums screaming for first-time issue on CD by Munich's venerable ECM Records. Gallery was a one-off, teaming vibraphonist Dave Samuels and Oregon's Paul McCandless with cellist David Darling, bassist Ratzo Harris and Michael DiPasqua—a drummer who, with a resume on the label that included Ralph Towner, Jan Garbarek, Double Image and Eberhard Weber, was well on his way to becoming a label staple before suddenly abandoning music completely for a quarter-century, until Weber managed to coax him back for Endless Days (ECM, 2001) and the more recent Résumé (ECM, 2012).

Still, those were just two appearances..and it would seem that they will be his last. In a 2013 All About Jazz interview with Weber, the bassist—who has, himself, been forcibly retired from bass playing as the result of a 2007 stroke—described re-recruiting Di Pasqua: "He was a great drummer," Weber recounted, "and I reactivated him for Endless Days. He hadn't played for 14 years, and he told me that he practiced a lot for that session. But he also said he was frustrated because in 14 years, you lose a lot of technical ability; but I thought that he managed to do it all really nicely.

"And then I thought, again, why shouldn't I ask them to play on Résumé," Weber continues. "He said, 'Yes, I can try,' but in the end, it's been even longer since he last played. Now he is saying that he doesn't think he will continue playing. He realizes now that the young drummers, they play the hell out of the drum set, and he just can't keep up with them. Michael may not have the chops he had 20 years ago, but the musicality is still there, and you can hear it on the record—the experience."

Experience that can also be heard on Gallery, available to me thanks to the hard work of a close friend who ripped it from vinyl and, after painstakingly declicking and denoising it, transferred it to CD. Largely ethereal in nature, the record features, in addition to three Samuels originals, one from McCandless, one by drummer/vibraphonist Glenn Cronkhite—best known for his tenure in pianist Art Lande's Rubisa Patrol, appearing on the group's self-titled 1976 ECM debut but largely (and sadly) relegated to obscurity since—along with a rare Di Pasqua composition...and one, credited collaboratively, to Gallery and ECM founder/producer Manfred Eicher.

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[jkelman]

Rediscovery on hiatus for a few days. In the meantime, if you've missed any of the 29 published since 12/22/14, now's the chance to catch up at All About Jazz!

[jkelman]

Today's Rediscovery will be a challenge for most; few will have heard of the record, and of those that have, even fewer will actually own it. Circles' biggest draw may be Paul McCandless--the reed and woodwind multi-instrumentalist who has, with Ralph Towner and Glen Moore,performed with the genre-busting Oregon since its inception 45 years ago. But the balance of the album's quartet--a trio of Italian musicians including keyboardist Mario Piacentini, bassist Roberto Bonati and drummer Tony Moreno--may have been less known at the time of Circles' release on the Italian Nuevo label in 1991, but in the ensuing years have participated in enough contexts to have brought them at least some degree of international exposure.

Bonati may be the most visible of the bunch outside his native country, having been a longtime collaborator with Gianluigi Trovesi, notably as a member of the clarinetist/saxophonist's Ottetto (octet) last heard on Fugace (ECM, 2003), in addition to releasing a series of albums under his own name (many recorded at the double bassist's annual Parma Frontiere jazz festival) including the elegant trio record Bianco il vestito nel buio (ParmaFrontiere, 2013). Moreno--of Italian descent but born in Manhattany--has appeared on recordings by Marc Mommaas, Ben Allison and Frank Kimbrough, while Piacentini has forged a career as a leader that includes the recent Néant (Incipit, 2014)--which, featuring Trovesi, Bonati, drummer Marco Tonin, Norwegian saxophonist Tor Yttredal and (another name known to ECM fans for his work with pianist Misha Alperin) French hornist Arkady Shilkloper, delivered one of the best performances at the 2014 Mai Jazz Festival in Stavanger, Norway.

But here, with Circles--recorded 13 years prior in the winter of 1991--Piacentini, Bonati and Moreno capitalize on chemistry already developed as a trio on Frozen Pool (Splasc(H)), released two years earlier. Adding McCandless to the mix was an inspired choice, and one that not only serves the Italian trio but McCandless as well, by placing him in a context that doesn't just lean on the Euro-centric approach that will give Circles plenty of appeal to fans of classic '70s/'80s ECM recordings by artists ranging from Art Lande and Arild Andersen to Jan Garbarek and Bobo Stenson (not to mention fans of McCandless' flagship group Oregon). Circles also has much to offer those more aligned to the American tradition, with one example being Bonati's fiery modal workout "Babìa la Magia," where Bonati and Moreno swing furiously behind Piacentini (who delivers his most impressive piano solo of the set) and McCandless, who, at that time, had often demonstrated plenty of passion with Oregon, but rarely this kind of fire. Clearly this quartet possesses plenty of breadth--and a healthy irreverence for artificial boundaries cultural, geographical and musical.

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[jkelman]

Today's Rediscovery falls under the category of "where is he now?" I first heard of keyboardist Lyle Mays in 1977, when Gary Burton's quartet (with guest Eberhard Weber), played at the Glebe Collegiate High School auditorium in my home town of Ottawa, Canada. After the show, speaking to the other members of the group--electric bassist Steve Swallow, drummer Dan Gottlieb and a then just starting out Pat Metheny--the guitarist told me that he and Gottlieb were leaving the vibraphonist in just two weeks to form his own group, and that he'd found a pianist "who's going to be the next Keith Jarrett."

Well, 38 years later, pianist Mays hasn't exactly attained Jarrett's rarefied status, though he certainly has a large community of fans who wonder why he's fallen largely off the map, with his last (and only fifth) solo recording, Solo: Improvisations for Expanded Piano (Warner Bros.), released nearly fifteen years ago. Still, Mays' tenure in Metheny's flagship Pat Metheny Group, from its humble beginnings in 1977 through to its (so far final) 70-minute epic, The Way Up (Nonesuch, 2005)--and the accompanying world tour that culminated in a massive outdoor show at the Festival International de Jazz de Montréal the same year--has ensured Mays a significant place when the history of jazz from the latter quarter of the 20th century through to early in the new millennium is written. As co-writer, alongside Metheny, of many of PMG's most memorable compositions--a lengthy partnership that truly made the pair the Lennon & McCartney of jazz--the keyboardist's importance in that history is even more assured.

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[jkelman]

t's not hard to see why the creator of today's Rediscovery, Hermeto Pascoal, was such a significant figure to everyone from Miles Davis and Gil Evans to Herbie Hancock and, of course, Flora Purim and Airto Moreira, who co-produced Slaves Mass. Had the Brazilian multi-instrumentalist only released this one album, he'd have already been assured a mention in jazz history. Slaves Mass would ultimately become a career-defining record, but Pascoal was already a major name in his home country, his career dating back to a first-known appearance on Brazilian pianist/composer Clovis Pereira's Ritmos Alucinantes (1956) but who, by 1960, began releasing albums with groups including Conjunto Som 4 and Quarteto Novo before finally releasing his first album as a leader, 1970's Hermeto Pascoal (reissued on CD as Brazilian Adventure).

Then-husband and wife team Moreira and Purim had, by the release of Slaves Mass, garnered significantly greater international attention than Pascoal for a collective résumé that included work with everyone from Chick Corea, Weather Report and Miles Davis to Santana, George Duke and Stanley Turrentine--not to mention their own albums, including Moreira's superb Free (CTI, 1972) and Purim's equally fine Butterfly Dreams (Fantasy, 1973). But though Pascoal would never attain the same popular status as his co-producers, he is a true legend in the history of Brazilian music: a musician's musician who, for those who care to dig deeper than the music's most superficial layer, is an inescapable name that comes up either as either an influence, a source of material...or, for the lucky ones, a guest performer.

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[Dean Watson]

Joyous Lake is amazing! The opening cut has some serious guitar on it. Superb fusion drumming!

[jkelman]

Joyous Lake is amazing! The opening cut has some serious guitar on it. Superb fusion drumming!

Thanks, Dean...but gee, you're a bit behind, so I'll post that column again here.

[jkelman]

With Steven Wilson on the cusp of releasing Hand. Cannot. Erase. (Kscope, 2015), and Tim Bowness' Abandoned Dancehall Dreams (Inside Out, 2014) one of 2014's best releases, now's as good a time as any to revisit the pair's music together as No-Man—specifically, Together We're Stranger (Snapper, 2003), reissued last year on Kscope in a remastered and expanded edition that sounds even better on the Tetra listening instruments that were one of two reasons for starting this Rediscovery column.

It's hard to imagine that Bowness and Wilson first came together in 1987, when the singer was 23 and the multi-instrumentalist who'd go on to greater fame in a number of projects, including his flagship Porcupine Tree, was just 19. But from the outset, the duo's music as No-Man—which first began as a trio with violinist Ben Coleman on the group's 1993 debut, Loveblows and Lovecries—A Confession (One Little Indian), but quickly pared down to a duo by the time of Flowermouth (One Little Indian, 1994), albeit invariably with the participation of numerous invited guests—was a mélange of styles that should, in retrospect, be no surprise to fans of either artist. Both Bowness—in subsequent projects like Henry Fool and his own infrequent solo work—and Wilson (who, in addition to other projects, has become an important go-to guy for new surround sound and stereo mixes of classic progressive rock and, more recently, just plain pop albums) possess voracious musical appetites, and their individual and collective refusal to become boxed in by any reductionist definition is what has ultimately rendered No-Man's six studio recordings and two live recordings so distinctive...and so ultimately important in defining their respective careers.

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[jkelman]

Some albums come along without any real intention other than to be what the are yet, without any fanfare, completely change the possible ways music can be perceived, felt and created by those lucky enough to hear them. Today's Rediscovery is one such album, a record that wasn't just ahead of its time when it was released in 1994; it seems still ahead of its time today, more than twenty years later.

Initially a loose collective of musicians that, with bassist Bill Laswell and keyboardist Michael Beinhorn at its core, centered around New York City's avant-edged downtown scene, by the time of Hallucination Engine the No Wave group had really become synonymous with Laswell alone, having moved through everything from disco-tinged R&B (with singers Nona Hendryx and a very young Whitney Houston) and jazz-rock fusion to reggae-tinged funk and non-idiomatic free improv.

But while Laswell's increasing interest in music from many cultures had already begun to surface, with Hallucination Engine, he brought together a disparate bunch of musicians—from saxophone giant Wayne Shorter, P-Funk bassist Bootsy Collins, Indian violinist Shankar and tablaists Zakir Hussain and Trilok Gurtu, to in-demand Jamaican session drummer Sly Dunbar, P-Funk/Talking Heads alum keyboardist Bernie Worrell, longtime Laswell collaborator, guitarist Nicky Skopelitis, virtuosic electric bassist Jonas Hellborg and Naked Lunch author William S. Burroughs—for an album that truly transcended all attempts at classification.

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[jkelman]

Today's Rediscovery is another title that falls into the category of "begging to be issued on CD for the first time. When ECM Records released Life's Backward Glances--Solo and Quartet in 2009--part of its Old & New Masters Edition series of box sets that gathered together various albums, some never before on CD in their full form, others never on CD before ever--there seemed to be one notable absence from a box that collected pianist Steve Kuhn's 1974 solo album Ecstasy, his 1977 "Ecstasy Quartet" date Motility, and, finally, 1980's Playground, the first of two recordings for the label that the pianist made with singer Sheila Jordan. That album is Non-Fiction, today's Rediscovery, which reunited the Ecstasy group--but this time under Kuhn's name alone, and with one significant personnel change.

While Kuhn brought back saxophonist/flautist Steve Slagle and bassist Harvie Swartz (in recent years changing his name to just Harvie S), original drummer Michael Smith was gone and in his place was Bob Moses, a drummer already familiar to fans of the label for his work with Gary Burton, Pat Metheny, Steve Swallow and Dave Liebman. If Smith brought a more delicate approach to Kuhn and Swartz's original music, Moses lit a major fire beneath the group, evident from the very beginning of the bassist's ferocious "Firewalk," which opens the set. A John Coltrane-esque modal romp that nevertheless possessed a sound that was cleaner and less dense than the saxophone giant's work, Moses and Swartz--with a gut-punching tone that makes it curious why, despite being active enough, he never achieved greater popular acclaim--drive the changes hard, as Slagle delivers a high bar-setting soprano saxophone solo that Kuhn manages to match...and raise...with his own feature that follows.

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[jkelman]

There are some records that cannot helped but become etched in the memory as a reminder of times past...a happy circumstance, perhaps, or (though hopefully not) something less positive in one's life. Today's Rediscovery is an album that, no matter the time of year, brings back memories of warm summer evenings beneath a star-lit country sky. When Pat Metheny Group--the guitarist's then-six year-old group that had, by that time, been on the road ten months/year every year crisscrossing North America and Europe--hit the road in 1982 to play a collection of music from its first three studio recordings for ECM (1978's massively acclaimed Pat Metheny Group, 1979's American Garage and 1982's Offramp), as well as material from Metheny's duo album with PMG keyboardist Lyle Mays and guest percussionist/vocalist Nana Vasconcelos (who would subsequently go on tour with PMG), the unexpectedly experimental As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls (1981), the guitarist brought the show to Camp Fortune--a ski resort across the river on the Quebec side, just a short drive from my home in Ottawa, Canada. At the time, free shows were put on throughout the summer months, with a stage set up at the bottom of a ski hill and the audience congregating on the hill.

It was a warm and friendly summer's night, the hill packed with people who'd brought coolers filled with food and drink. When Metheny, Mays, Vasconcelos, drummer Dan Gottlieb and the group's newcomer since Offramp, bassist Steve Rodby, hit the stage with the familiar strains of Pat Metheny Group's "Phase Dance," it felt as though this was music made for a night like this, beginning in the light of the setting sun but ultimately going on through dusk and well into the evening.

For over two and a half hours the group not only covered a broad cross-section of material from those four albums, it introduced no fewer than eight new songs. When you're on the road ten months a year, new material is often introduced and rehearsed, out of necessity, during sound checks; but based on these performances you'd never know it. With Travels--the resulting double-LP live album (Metheny's first, but far from his last)--and today's Rediscovery limited by the length of vinyl (though two of its four sides pushed that limit, exceeding the 25-minute mark)--many of the more familiar songs were left off in favor of these eight new compositions, which collectively represented more than a full album's worth of new material.

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[jkelman]

It was sometime in 1992 when I came across today's Rediscovery. I was walking by a record store (remember those?) in my hometown of Ottawa, Canada when I suddenly heard this staggering guitarist playing over what sounded like a standard I thought I knew but couldn't place. His tone was gritty, but his lines sounded familiar as he ran incendiary line after incendiary line, supported by an equally fiery drummer and a bassist who was truly swinging mightily. I ran inside the store to find out who this guy was, only to learn that I was listening to an album not by the guitarist but by a saxophonist I'd known from drummer Jack DeJohnette's Special Edition group on 1987's Irresistible Forces and even better Audio-Visualscapes from the following year, both on Impulse! Records: saxophonist/flautist Gary Thomas. The album was Till We Have Faces, originally released that year on JMT and later reissued by Winter & Winter.

The guitarist? Well, listening to more of the album after seeing the cover in the "Now Playing" box on the cash counter, it became clear that I was listening to one of my favorites, Pat Metheny. But, barring his own extraordinary collaboration with free jazz progenitor Ornette Coleman, Song X (Geffen, 1985, reissued in expanded, remixed and remastered form by Nonesuch, 2005), I'd never heard him play like this—and even then, it was significantly different because of the demands of Coleman's music...and his own. And while his tone was not unlike that used on Pat Metheny Group pianist Lyle Mays' album-atypical "Are We There Yet?," from the band's Letter From Home (Geffen, 1989)—a new texture for the guitarist: tart, angular and overdriven—I repeat: I'd never heard him like this before...aggressive and as far from polite as he'd ever been.

Metheny was, of course, no stranger to jazz standards or the Great American Songbook, having dabbled with them occasionally on his own records including 1985's trio date with Charlie Haden and Billy Higgins, Rejoicing (ECM) and his 1989 set with Dave Holland and Roy Haynes, Question and Answer (Geffen), where he mixed original music with well-known material from Horace Silver, Miles Davis, Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein...and, of course, plenty of Coleman.

But he'd never done an album of all-standards. Till We Have Faces wasn't Thomas' first record of all-standards either; that would be 1990's While the Gate is Open, also on JMT and reissued on Winter & Winter in 2003. But, if it was anything, it was a spit in the face to the 1980s neocons, who'd set the progression of jazz back significantly by reasserting the tradition as the only real jazz.

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[jkelman]

For a group as young as Britain's Haken to find The Mountain selected by Prog Magazine's readers as one of "The 100 Greatest Prog Albums Albums of All Time"--and at an über-respectable position of #54--is a remarkable enough feat for a group with only two albums prior to this, its third record following its 2010 debut, Aquarius and 2011's Vision (all on Inside Out Records). That this hour-long (plus two bonus tracks) concept album actually beat out long-held classics of the genre like Rick Wakeman's The Six Wives of Henry VIII (A&M, 1973, #92), Mike Oldfield's similarly mega-selling Tubular Bells (Virgin, 1973, #60), King Crimson's career-shifting Discipline (E.G., 1981,#70), Supertramp's 1977 breakthrough Crime of the Century (A&M, #77) and {{m: Van Der Graaf Generator's post-hiatus masterpiece Godbluff (Charisma, 1974, #73) is an even more monumental achievement...and more than reason enough for Rediscovery.

While categorized in the sub-genre of Progressive Metal--and yes, there are some righteously crunching guitar power chords and thundering riffs to suggest that, at the very least, metal is in this British sextet's blood--like Sweden's darker, more hardcore Opeth and Pain of Salvation, to describe the group as such would be intrinsically and unfairly self-limiting. Like Opeth and PoS (in particular Opeth,whose last two albums have been unapologetically progressive, with little to none of the growling vocals and fist-pumping, ear-shattering power of earlier albums), Haken is much broader than that...but truthfully, unlike their Swedish cousins, it's always been so.

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[jkelman]

Today's Rediscovery is an album that, despite never being released officially on CD, is a relatively regular play chez Kelman, getting spun at least a couple times every year. New Rags (ECM, 1977), the second--and, sadly, final--recording by drummer Jack DeJohnette's Directions group, pares down the quintet of Jack DeJohnette's Directions debut, Untitled (ECM, 1976), to a quartet with the elimination of keyboardist Warren Bernhardt, leaving the Chicago-born drummer alongside guitarist (and fellow ECM label mate) John Abercrombie, lesser known but busy still session saxophonist Alex Foster and, on bass, another name less familiar to casual jazz fans but with a sizeable discography to suggest plenty of name power amongst musicians, Mike Richmond. It's an album that, perhaps even more than its broad-scoped predecessor, succeeds in positioning DeJohnette as not just one of jazz's most impressive drummers--even at this relatively early stage, about a decade into the then 35 year-old drummer's career, having already clocked up two major gigs with Charles Lloyd and Miles Davis--but as a composer, instrumentalist and bandleader of increasing significance.

DeJohnette and Abercrombie were already good friends by this time, the guitarist having played on the drummer's two Prestige dates, 1974's Sorcery and 1975's Cosmic Chicken--neither particularly well-received. DeJohnette returned the favour by appearing on Abercrombie's Timeless--the guitarist's 1975 ECM leader debut that quickly became a classic for both Abercrombie and the label--while the two began their on-again/off-again collaborative trio with bassist (and fellow Miles Davis alum) Dave Holland, Gateway, with its critically acclaimed eponymous ECM debut the same year.

But if Timeless explored a combination of keyboard-driven electricity and stripped down acoustic elegance, and Gateway found that unique nexus where Holland's predilection for groove met with the freewheeling trio's collective improvisational chemistry, New Rags explores three DeJohnette compositions of remarkable diversity, along with Foster's more harmonically ambiguous but potently swinging "Flys," and "Steppin' Through"--the rocking, near (but not quite) fusion powerhouse that closes the album on a supremely fiery note, moving from pedal-to-the-metal intensity with Foster's opening salvo to more spacious, open terrain, only to return to its unrelenting, riff-driven intro for a solo from Abercrombie. Overdriven and unfettered, it's one of the guitarist's best of the set--pushed to even greater extremes by DeJohnette's cymbal-heavy power groove before the entire quartet brings things down for an ultimate fade-out.

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[Trane]

Thanks, man, but I'd really appreciate it if you would post comments, as suggested by the post, against the article at All About Jazz. If you have a Facebook, twitter or google acct you can log into the DISQUS comment software using one of those.

trying to centralize everything, since this goes to 7 social media portals, including two additional Facebook groups, plus two bulletin boards. Having to run around to all of them to see what folks say (a) is a bit of a time consumer, but more importantly, (b) if they were all in one place we might have more active discussion, and one of this Rediscovery column's purposes is to engender discussion.

Thanks, as ever, for your cooperation!
John

I've posted comments there.

I just joined the forum... but don't expect me to post on fb or other social networks means
will your reviews be viewable from the forum??

[jkelman]

I just joined the forum... but don't expect me to post on fb or other social networks means
will your reviews be viewable from the forum??

I post the first 2-3 paragraphs of the articles, as I do with all my writing, with a link then to the main All About Jazz site, where you can read the full articles. If you want to comment, I am asking you use the DISQUS comment section at the bottom of any article's page...you do need to sign into DISQUS, and you can either create a DISQUS account or sigh in with your FB or Twitter account, if you have one..

The reason? To try and centralize all comments because I spread news about my articles to seven social media platforms, two bulletin boards (including PE) and a number of Yahoo groups. Since I feel it's the right thing to do to reply to any comments that folks take the time to make, it's a lot easier doing it in one place than having to look at posts at nine or more places. Hope that makes sense.

But the full articles are never published anywhere but the main All About Jazz site (and that includes the All About Jazz forum too, which is treated no differently than PE), because since the site is kind enough to publish my work, it seems like the right thing to do to drive traffic back its way. Hope that also makes sense.

I am happy to discuss my usual articles here at PE (or anywhere else), but because one of the primary purposes of the Rediscovery column is to engender discussion, it makes sense, at least to me, to try to centralize it all where the articles actually live...at All About Jazz.

Hope you understand, and your cooperation, should you wish to read and participate in the discussions, will be very much appreciated. And, knowing your posts from PE, it'd be great to have you weighing in, should you have the time and inclination.

Thanks!
John

PS: But joining the All About Jazz forum doesn't make a diff. The forum is a separate entity from the main All About Jazz site, where we publish articles, and where comments can be made against articles. Here's an example (scroll to the bottom of the page). The forum, on the other hand, is simply another forum, just like PE.

Unfortunately, the forum and main site cannot be fully integrated because the main site, other than DISQUS, consists entirely of homegrown software (which is why it can do so many thing other music sites either do not or cannot), the forum software is actually the same third party software used by PE (I.E.: Vbulletin) and, while its pretty good forum software (which is why All About Jazz's founder/publisher uses it), it doesn't really "play well with others" ( ), meaning it cannot be integrated with the main site, much as it's long been a desire. The publisher keeps hoping new versions of Vbulletin will include greater flexibility that will allow such integration, but so far, no dice....

[jkelman]

Guitarist John Abercrombie's emergence as a guitarist of singularity seems, in retrospect to have happened very quickly. A band member in the horn-driven jazz-rock band Dreams alongside drummer Billy Cobham and the Brecker Brothers, as well as stints with fusion keyboardist Barry Miles, saxophonist Gato Barbieri and Cobham's own group, it was a remarkable period of evolution for the guitarist. Abercrombie made his first ECM appearance with Dave Liebman on the saxophonist's own label debut Lookout Farm (1974), but within seven months of its recording in October, 1973, he was back in the studio making his first ECM album as a leader (and the beginning of a relationship that continues to this day). Timeless, released in 1975, quickly established the guitarist as a bandleader and writer of note, with its lyrical, atmospheric title track ultimately becoming an off-covered modern standard.

But at this time, Abercrombie was still finding out who he was musically; as great as Timeless is, it's hard not to feel the spirit of Mahavishnu Orchestra's John McLaughlin looming large over this trio date with Jack DeJohnette and ex-Mahavishnu keyboardist Jan Hammer = 7369}}. But while Abercrombie had already forged a strong relationship with DeJohnette--appearing on the drummer's earlier Prestige albums but, more importantly, as a member of the collaborative Gateway trio (with bassist Dave Holland) and the drummer's Directions band, whose New Rags (1977) was a recent Rediscovery--it was his ongoing relationship with guitarist/pianist Ralph Towner that had an even more lasting impact. In a 2004 All About Jazz interview, Abercrombie cited Towner as someone with whom he immediately connected as a friend when they were living in Boston in the late '60s. More important, however, was his comment that "He was a powerful influence on me as a player and also as a composer. He's one of my favorite musicians, period, but his songs really attracted me and that influenced how I started to write songs."

While Gateway's 1975's eponymous ECM debut was extremely well- received--suggesting that change was certainly in the air for the guitarist--it was more of a transitional album for Abercrombie. So, too--but to an even greater degree--was the 1976 debut of Abercrombie's duo with Ralph Towner, Sargasso Sea. But the real watershed album for the guitarist--positioning Abercrombie as a writer of note and a player who'd completely left his fusion days behind him, emerging as a guitarist who never seemed to play the same thing twice, was refreshingly free of the signature licks that even some of his similarly talented peers seemed to fall back upon at times, and yet never sounded like anyone else, is today's Rediscovery. Characters is a true solo recording, where the guitarist wrote all eight compositions and, overdubbing electric and acoustic guitars alongside the electric mandolin that became a personal signature through to the early '80s, remains one of the most impressive solo guitar records ever made. With a largely warm, reverb-heavy tone on electric mandolin and guitar, with Characters Abercrombie had left any vestiges of McLaughlin far behind, more akin, instead, to Jim Hall (if anyone) in his ability to remain relentlessly fresh and non-repetitive.

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[Dave (in MA)]

John,

Someone in the Oregon Facebook group is citing a statement from an Italian promoter purporting to have knowledge of Glen Moore leaving Oregon, to be replaced by Italian bassist Paolino Dalla Porta. I can't find any info anywhere to back this up. Have you heard anything along these lines?

[jkelman]

John,

Someone in the Oregon Facebook group is citing a statement from an Italian promoter purporting to have knowledge of Glen Moore leaving Oregon, to be replaced by Italian bassist Paolino Dalla Porta. I can't find any info anywhere to back this up. Have you heard anything along these lines?

Yup. It's true. Ralph and Paul issued a press release today.

While I'm sure Porta will be wonderful, I really see this as the end of an era. There are ether bassists out there than Moore...but none who bring the same dry sense of humour to his playing. Plus the telepathic connection with Towner and McCandless (and Walker; we must remember no other percussionist - including co-founder Collin Walcott - has been with the group as long as he) has always been part of the appeal.

Oregon will continue and will, no doubt, still make very good music...but it's the end of the magic trifecta that will no longer bring that something extra and special to the group.

As a pathological Oregon fan since I heard Winter Light in 1973, this is a sad day....

[jkelman]

Well, it's been a good couple weeks since the last Rediscovery, leaving the pile of potential choices even higher than usual. So what better way to resume operations than to revisit an album that already sounded terrific when it was first released in 1996 but, remastered 18 years later as part of Art of Groove's Collectors Premium Jazz series, now sounds even better? The Collectors Premium Jazz series--pairing significant out of print recordings as two-CD sets along with, where possible, relevant bonus material--had already reissued two of Indian percussionist Trilok Gurtu's finest records from his time with the now-defunct CMP label: 1994's Believe, his first to feature an album-encompassing band--and released in the percussionist's first Collectors Premium Jazz set from earlier in 2014--was teamed with the record that provided the name for this group: Crazy Saints, his 1993 all-star session that featured stellar appearances from guests including Pat Metheny, Joe Zawinul, Ernst Reijseger and Louis Sclavis.

But it's one of the releases from Gurtu's second Collectors Premium Jazz set that is the subject of today's Rediscovery. 1996's Bad Habits Die Hard, Gurtu's fifth album as a leader and his first live date, features a slightly altered Crazy Saints quartet that also adds two guests--saxophonist Bill Evans and violinist Mark Feldman--lifting this October 1995 Cologne performance from merely great to truly transcendent.

Evans was a Miles Davis alum, and so being recruited for Gurtu's electrified version of east-meets-west fusion was an obvious choice. Less obvious was Feldman--a violinist better known in the left-of-center New York scene that includes artists like John Zorn, Bobby Previte and Dave Douglas. Still, in a career that has also included a lengthy tenure in guitarist John Abercrombie's "string" quartet--responsible for ECM Records' Class Trip 2004) and Third Quartet (2007), and which, no doubt, led to the violinist's own extraordinary ECM release, What Exit (2007)--it's a revelation to hear him play with a different kind of reckless abandon in the context of the Crazy Saints' often knotty, largely high octane and always groove-heavy music.

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[jkelman]

Today's Rediscovery, after a bit of a hiatus, looks at an album by Eberhard Weber that is of particularly significance in the German bassist's discography. Fluid Rustle, released by ECM Records in 1979, was, in fact, one of many anomalies in Weber's discography for its unusual instrumentation (electric guitar/balalaika, vibraphone/marimba, bass/tarang, voices); but beyond that, it stands out as the album that introduced guitarist Bill Frisell to the world.

As Frisell explains in a 2001 interview that was ultimately published at All About Jazz in 2011, Bill Frisell: The ECM Years:

"Soon after I got to Belgium, in 1978," said Frisell, "I get a call from Mike Gibbs, who had a tour of England with his own big band, and his regular guitarist, Philip Catherine, wasn't able to do the tour. I had played in Mike's band at school, so I knew the music, so he called me and asked me if I could do his tour. There were a lot of British musicians in the band, like [drummer] John Marshall and [trumpeter] Kenny Wheeler and [saxophonist] Charlie Mariano. Eberhard Weber was playing bass, so I was kind of thrown in with a lot of the guys I had been listening to already.

"It was just an incredible opportunity for me to be able to play with all these guys," Frisell concluded. "So, during that tour, there was a little area every night where Mike Gibbs let Eberhard and me play some free improv, and it really felt great; it felt like we were connecting--there'd be moments where it lifted off, with just two of us playing. This was in October or something, of 1978, and Eberhard had this recording coming up with Gary Burton that was going to be Fluid Rustle. Man, I couldn't believe it; I had done a couple little recordings in Belgium, but nothing that was a big recording. That was how I met [ECM label head/producer] Manfred Eicher the first time, and I think I was so terrified of the whole thing, I didn't know what I was doing. Even traveling and staying in the hotel, I didn't know what to do; I didn't even know how you checked into a hotel or anything. And I wasn't able to get much going; I was pretty inhibited during that recording."

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With the combination of Weber's electro-acoustic bass, Gary Burton's vibes, a very young Bill Frisell's guitar and the ethereal voices of Norma Winstone and Bonnie Herman, it sounds absolutely gorgeous on my Tetra 333 listening instruments. A great album just got even better!