Kahil El'Zabar Quartet - A Time For Healing (November 19, 2021 Spiritmuse Records)

Chicago’s legendary spiritual jazz shaman Kahil El’Zabar returns, leading an enviable ensemble of young masters from his hometown!

Kahil El’Zabar delivers yet another epic double LP’s worth of ancient/future music for the mind, body and soul. From swinging jazz that sings of his Chicago pedigree, to talking drums and soothing spiritual grooves that reconnect Black Classical Music with its African roots.

Multi-percussionist, band-leader, vocalist, composer, conductor and educator, Kahil El’Zabar has been at the forefront of the unceasingly creative avant-garde jazz scene in Chicago and beyond for over 4 decades. Considered the pioneer of spiritual groove and Afrocentric jazz, El’Zabar has recorded & performed with heavyweights such as Pharoah Sanders, Archie Shepp, David Murray, Billy Bang, Lester Bowie, Nina Simone and Stevie Wonder, to name a few.

Returning to his natural home on Spiritmuse Records, ‘A Time for Healing’ answers the urgent questions posed by his sold-out ‘America The Beautiful’ album, addressing the state of affairs today whilst calling for a better tomorrow. Hugely successful and universally acclaimed, the album was championed by Pitchfork, the Guardian and Gilles Peterson. As ever, the Chicago legend surrounds himself with the hottest young talent. Sonic scientist, Isaiah Collier joins on saxophone. Following his recent acclaimed album, ‘Cosmic Transitions’ LP, he has been hailed as the new ‘Coltrane’. Suffice to say, he doesn’t disappoint, as El’Zabar leads the ensemble through hypnotic groove after groove, providing Collier with ample space to improvise and uplift, channeling the spiritual sound of Trane and Pharoah.

Following stand-out performances on ‘America The Beautiful’ and the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble album, ‘Be Known Ancient/Future/Music’, El’Zabar disciple Corey Wilkes, considered one of best trumpeters in the world today, returns and shines once again. Having also worked with the likes of Roy Hargrove, Kurt Elling, Greg Osby and Marcus Belgrave, and who also filled the considerable shoes of Lester Bowie in The Art Ensemble of Chicago, leads stellar groups of his own, and has received plaudits from NPR and the Chicago Tribune.

Keyboard wizard Justin Dillard, who truly shone on his collaboration with El’Zabar on ‘Spirit Groove’, returns for another stellar performance, steeped in the heritage of Dr. Lonnie Smith and McCoy Tyner. Chicago Tribune puts it this way, “there’s something more to Dillard’s work as well; a quest for new ideas in music, in the manner of his AACM mentors”. His earthy Hammond grooves simultaneously ground and lift the quartet’s sound.

Kahil El’Zabar explores the gamut of Great Black Music in America, tracing its lineage through all the movements that’s flourished in Chicago, from the blues to R&B, soul, gospel, house music, spiritual jazz, and then back to all of its common African roots. This is captured brilliantly on the title track, where kalimba and spirit bowls evoke the ancestors, before the horns commence a yearning refrain, calling for guidance and healing. Then, El’Zabar’s new tomorrow hails its’ arrival on “The Coming Of Spring”, a beautiful swinging number full of joy and hope.

El’Zabar continues to pay homage to his mentors and idols, dedicating one “electrifying” number to tenor legend and electrified sax pioneer “Eddie Harris”. Long undervalued, his footprint nonetheless persists, as world renowned DJs no-less-than Theo Parris turn new audiences on to his avant-garde grooves. Elsewhere, “Resolution”, the central piece of Coltrane’s revered ‘Love Supreme’, is transformed by the quartet, with Dillard providing a fresh low-end groove on Hammond before delivering a stellar solo.

The album closes on a beautiful and hauntingly sparse treatment of Gershwin’s “Summertime”. Centered around El’Zabar’s legendary kalimba playing and a hummed groove. Wilkes, Collier and El’Zabar deliver the standard’s well-travelled melody with unheard depths and heart-wrenching spirituality.

Recorded in December 2020 in Chicago, ‘A Time For Healing’ is not only the answer to the urgent questions asked by El’Zabar’s ‘America the Beautiful’; its’ spiritual and ever probing human journey offers a regenerative opus in the face of growing global anxiety. What the world needs right now is exactly what El’Zabar and his quartet have on offer: A Time for Healing.

1. A Time for Healing

2. Drum Talk (Run’n in the Streets)

3. Urban Shaman

4. Eddie Harris

5. The Coming of Spring

6. Resolution

7. We’ll Get Through This

8. Time IS

9. Summertime

Kahil El'Zabar: drums/ earth drum/ cajon/ kalimba/ voice

Corey Wilkes: trumpet/ spirit bowls/ percussion

Justin Dillard: keyboards/ percussion

Isaiah Collier: tenor and soprano sax/ reeds/ percussion

Art & Art Direction: Nep Sidhu

All compositions by: Kahil El’Zabar except ‘Resolution’ by John Coltrane and ‘Summertime’ by George Gershwin

All arrangements by: Kahil El’Zabar

Recorded at Music Garage Chicago, December 2020

Recording Engineers: Lee Farmer and Sizwe Banzi

Mix Engineer: Lee Farmer

Mastering by: Frank Merritt at The Carvery, London

Videography: Christopher Andrew, Stoptime Live, Chicago

Photography: Katrina Monea & Christopher Andrew, Stoptime Live, Chicago

Liner Notes: Dominic Valvona

PREORDER

David Ornette Cherry - Organic Nation Listening Club (The Continual) October 15, 2021 Spiritmuse Records

When I play I think of how the phrases move as a dance, or something in nature like a bird or a shooting star.” – Don Cherry

The new album by ‘Cosmic Nomad’ David Ornette Cherry in his father’s tradition, the legendary jazz innovator Don Cherry. This a mosaic of healing soundscapes blending spiritual jazz, leftfield electronica, Eastern & native, indigenous sounds into musical parallels that transport the listener through doorways of ancient pathways to futurist crossroads.

David Ornette Cherry talks about vision and approach and Don Cherry’s remarkable influence as an artist : “When I started my musical journey, my father, Don Cherry, took me under his wings. “To be an Artist/ Musician is a commitment, you must learn the music… own the music you create... and give it back. You must have a vision.”

"When I play I think of how the phrases move as a dance, or something in nature like a bird or a shooting star.” – Don Cherry

The new album by ‘Cosmic Nomad’ David Ornette Cherry in his father’s tradition, the legendary jazz innovator Don Cherry. This a mosaic of healing soundscapes blending spiritual jazz, leftfield electronica, Eastern & native, indigenous sounds into musical parallels that transport the listener through doorways of ancient pathways to futurist crossroads.

This is a phenomenal, unique album, bringing together multi-genre funky, earthy Indigenous sounds, organic soundscapes and cosmic melodies that transport to a higher level where the Ancestors weave their magic and join the cosmic dance!

David Ornette Cherry talks about vision and approach and Don Cherry’s remarkable influence as an artist : “When I started my musical journey, my father, Don Cherry, took me under his wings. “To be an Artist/ Musician is a commitment, you must learn the music… own the music you create... and give it back. You must have a vision.”

“In my world, the piano, the keyboard, sounds of nature and numerous instruments of traditional peoples and those who reside in urban society, touch and effect each other with a calming and symbiotic fervour. I compose with the idea that all exist in a world of harmonies which mirror life evolving away from the chaotic (to the positive). There's not just a co-existence but a melding of forms to produce a single musical expression.” - David Ornette Cherry

"Invisible forces of David Ornette Cherry’s musicality are framed by his latest offering. Delicately balanced and perfectly paired with a palette of delicious grandiloquence--sounds summon the discerning ear to bathe in the light of ancestral voices. Notes reverently layered, his fingers unfold a pastiche of dancers in fluid movements of shadow and light that sonder across the polished foundation of his musical ark. In the Continual, Cherry unveils his creative genius that resonates, merging assonance, dissonance in musical parallels that work to woo--to transport the listener through doorways of a legendary Alhambra to a futurist crossroads where the Highlander’s war pipes bid us join in the revelry--we heed the funky call." - DJ Watson

"David Cherry was born into a cosmic-centered family I say this having known both Don and Carletta Cherry his parents as well as his sister, violinist Jan Cherry. In ‘Organic Nation Listening Club (the Continual)’, David continues his work which is represented in organic grooves/Organic Nation bending and reshaping genres to suit his artistic and musical vision. The voices, the sitar and percussions embody the essence of the simplicity of complexity without the banality that some minimalism slips into. For those who have ears, David and the Organic Nation are a force to reckon with." - Tom Porter 

1. So & So & So and So

2. Parallel Experience

3. Ancestors Are Calling

4. Cultural Workers (The Continual)

5. The Frame of Creativity

6. Eagle Play

7. Hidden Sounds

8. Najour

9. Cosmic Nomad

David Ornette Cherry – vocal, soundscapes, douss’n gouni, percussions, electronic percussions, piano, keyboards

Crystal Blackcreek Carlisle – spiritual message, vocals

Gemi Taylor – guitar

Joe Janiga – African banjo

John L. Price – drums, dun dun, pahkagudu, timpani

Kenichi Iwasa – muted trumpet, Don Cherry’s instrument blue reeds

Nadene Rasmussen – viola

Naima Karlsson – electric piano

Ollie Elder Jr – acoustic bass, electric bass

Paul Simms – trumpet

Ralph Jones III – Vietnamese flute, Norwegian flute

Renato Caranto – sax

Tyson McVey – vocal soundscapes

All compositions by David Ornette Cherry

Mastered by Frank Merritt at The Carvery Studio

Art and Art Direction by Nep Sidhu

Pre-order

Mark de Clive Lowe and Cosmic Vibrations - 'OLBAP' reimagined by Mark de Clive Lowe (Spiritmuse Records)

Spiritmuse records is celebrating the one year anniversary of the universally loved spiritual jazz opus, ‘Pathways & Passages’, by legendary vocalist Dwight Trible, and LA jazz supergroup, Cosmic Vibrations. To mark the occasion they are proud to release a special remix of album highlight “OLBAP”, reworked with true love and care into a broken beat masterpiece by the electronic jazz pioneer and pianist, Mark De Clive Lowe.

Mark de Clive-Lowe magically balances virtuoso piano playing with addictive synth grooves and live remixing flair. He left his home in New Zealand at an early age, finding himself at the center of London’s underground music scene, “joining-the-dots” between jazz and electronic music. Becoming a leading figure of the burgeoning broken beat and wider electronic jazz scenes, MdCL was championed by the likes of Gilles Peterson and revolutionised the live potential of underground sound, before moving to LA in 2008.

Cosmic Vibrations is a supergroup of heavyweight musicians with a vast combined experience, an ensemble of 6 souls, all based in LA, who approach improvisation full of spirit and without ego. As Kevin Le Gendre put it for Jazzwise, “this is a west coast supergroup whose members have the kind of credits that cover a huge swathe of black music history: Dizzy Gillespie, Horace Silver, Ramsey Lewis, Minnie Riperton and Nicole Mitchell, to name but some. That wealth of experience is priceless, and any one of the 11 songs on offer thus carries the kind of gravitas that takes Cosmic Vibrations beyond the potential cliché of ‘deep jazz’ and into the realm of deep meditation.”

Fronted by Dwight Trible, undoubtedly the most acclaimed and in-demand vocalist currently working in the realms of spiritual jazz, the band has been performing steadily over the last four years, building a reputation in LA and further afield for their mesmerising performances. ‘Pathways & Passages’ marked the first time that their transcendental sound had been recorded and publicly released.

This remix marks a perfect inter-generational meeting of LA’s long vibrant music scene. Dwight’s central role in LA is difficult to miss, from directing the Horace Tapscott Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra and leading the incredible Build An Ark ensemble alongside Carlos Niño, to forming the deep jazz supergroup, Cosmic Vibrations. Likewise, since moving to LA, Mark has united a multi-generational who’s who of LA and the world’s most respected jazz, soul, hip hop and electronic artists at his much loved CHURCH club night, and earned the role of Founding Artist in Residence for La Ceiba Festival.

The “OLBAP” remix is due for release on September 28. It marks the perfect step in Trible and MdCL’s musical relationship, since the latter contributed played piano on Trible’s acclaimed “Mothership” album, alongside Kamasi Washington, Carlos Niño and Miguel Atwood-Ferguson.

OLBAP is from the debut album by Cosmic Vibrations ft Dwight Trible 'Pathways & Passages'.

1. OLBAP reimagined by Mark de Clive Lowe 05:22

2. OLBAP by Cosmic Vibrations 09:32

COSMIC VIBRATIONS

Dwight Trible voice /kalimba

John B Williams acoustic bass

Derf Reklaw congas / percussion / flute

Pablo Calogero tenor sax / bass clarinet / woodwinds / flutes

Christopher Garcia - indigenous percussion

Breeze Smith - drums / percussion / loops

PREORDER