Harvey Valdes - Novare: J​.​S. Bach Lute Works on Electric Guitar (April 8, 2022 Destiny Records)

1. Lute Suite in C Minor, BWV 997: I. Prelude (Arr. A-Flat Minor)

2. Lute Suite in C Minor, BWV 997: II. Fugue (Arr. A-Flat Minor)

3. Lute Suite in C Minor, BWV 997: III Sarabande (Arr. A-Flat Minor)

4. Lute Suite in C Minor, BWV 997: IV Gigue (Arr. A-Flat Minor)

5. Lute Suite in C Minor, BWV 997: V Double (Arr. A-Flat Minor)

6. Prelude, Fugue and Allegro in E-Flat Major, BWV 998: I. Prelude (Arr. D-Flat Major)

7. Prelude, Fugue and Allegro in E-Flat Major, BWV 998: II. Fugue (Arr. D-Flat Major)

8. Prelude, Fugue and Allegro in E-Flat Major, BWV 998: III. Allegro (Arr. D-Flat Major)

9. Prelude in C Minor, BWV 999 (Arr. D-Flat Minor)

10. Fugue in G Minor, BWV 1000 (Arr. A-Flat Minor)

Harvey Valdes: Electric guitar

Compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach

Produced by Harvey Valdes. Recorded by Harvey Valdes February 28th to March 9th, 2021 in Brooklyn NY. Mixed by Todd Carder with Harvey Valdes at The Bunker Studio. Mastered by Alex DeTurk. Cover photo by Harvey Valdes, design by Cameron Mizell. CD design by Ben Walker. Photo of Harvey by Shervin Lainez. Release Coordination by Cameron Mizell.

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Sun Ra Arkestra & Salah Ragab - Sun Ra Arkestra Meets Salah Ragab In Egypt (April 8, 2022 Strut)

Strut present the final instalment in their series of reissues of Sun Ra’s historic recordings in Egypt with The Sun Ra Arkestra meets Salah Ragab in Egypt plus the Cairo Jazz Band, originally released on Greek label Praxis in 1983.

Salah Ragab first encountered the Arkestra at a concert at the house of Goethe Institut ex-pat Hartmut Geerken during the Arkestra’s first visit to Cairo and Heliopolis in December 1971 and, although Ra and Ragab did not meet in person on that occasion, they did meet and bond together when Ra returned to Egypt in 1983, resulting in these recordings. The Arkestra had been touring Europe in March 1983 and made their way to Cairo, playing a number of concerts during April at the Il Capo / Il Buco venue before recording the two superb studio versions of Ragab compositions, ‘Egypt Strut’ and ‘Dawn’, at El Nahar Studios in Heliopolis in May, featuring Salah Ragab on congas.

Kostas Yiannoulopoulos, organiser of the Praxis festival in Greece, released the recordings as the A-side of this album, with three tracks by Salah Ragab and the Cairo Jazz Orchestra on Side B. ‘Ramadan’ and ‘Oriental Mood’ were first heard on the Cairo Jazz Orchestra album Egypt Strut released in 1973 while ‘A Farewell Theme’, received its very first release on this record, written following the death of Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1970; the piece was played at the much-loved President’s funeral.

This first ever official reissue of the album features previously unseen photos and memorabilia alongside brand new liner notes by Hartmut Geerken and Paul Griffiths. The album is released in its original artwork and is fully remastered by Technology Works. 

1. Egypt Strut

2. Dawn

3. Ramadan

4. Oriental Mood

5. A Farewell Theme

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Michael Scott Dawson - Music For Listening (April 8, 2022 We Are Busy Bodies)

Music For Listening, the sophomore album by Michael Scott Dawson, arrives April 8 via We Are Busy Bodies

The album is comprised of twelve ambient works for guitar. It follows his 2020 debut Nowhere, Middle Of which was built around generative synths. Not wanting to repeat himself, Dawson entirely abandoned the synthesizer, his primary instrument, on Music For Listening. The resulting guitar pieces lean heavily on tape loops and manipulations, and are accompanied by field recordings and spare piano elements. This music rests at the intersection of composition, improvisation, and chance, with patient and simple melodies emerging and recurring across the album like mantras.

Dawson’s inspiration grew from a phone call to his 95-year-old grandmother. As they talked, she shared observations about the birds outside her window, just as she’d done since he was a child. Upon hanging up the phone, he felt compelled to dig out recordings he’d made some summers before, while visiting family. These fragments were initially intended to be part of an album of prairie birdsong: he’d trekked through pastures and farmland on the outskirts of his childhood hometown to capture the audio. Field recordings in the truest sense.

Dawson abandoned this project because the raw audio was densely populated with the hiss and crackle of mosquitoes and insects swarming the microphones: but listening back, after that phone call and after many years, he was struck by the similarities between these recordings and the music he would come to compose. While the audio played, he found himself compelled to pick up a guitar and tinker along. Dawson’s commitment to the follow-up album he’d been deep into creating evaporated in that moment, and he switched course to begin crafting Music For Listening. 

1. No Rave

2. Campestral

3. Witness Marks

4. Summerfallow

5. Places I've Loved, People I've Been

6. This Young Century

7. Two Solitudes

8. Everything In Modulation

9. Praise and Other

10. Mineral Rights

11. North Dakota Stars

12. The Sentimentalist

Music For Listening was mastered by Taylor Deupree at 12K Mastering.

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Matt Gold - Midnight Choir (April 8, 2022 Ruination Record Co.)

1. Coming Up Shy 03:18

2. Remains

3. Wave Over Me

4. Midnight Choir

5. 190 Proof

6. Sing Us Till Dawn

7. One Half is True

8. Hazel, Friend of Mine

9. On Our Way Out

Matt Gold - voice, acoustic and electric guitars, electric bass, synth bass, wurlitzer electric piano, harmonium, mellotron, synthesizer, drum machine, percussion

JT Bates - drums (1, 3, 4)

Anabel Hirano - voice (6)

Bryan Doherty - electric bass (1)

Recorded by Matt Gold at Catfish Recording (Chicago, IL)

Mixed by Steve Shirk at Shirk Studios (Chicago, IL)

Mastered by Dave Cooley at Elysian Masters (Los Angeles, CA)

Drums on tracks 1, 3, 4 recorded by JT Bates at Salon Studio (St. Paul, MN)

Artwork and layout by Marine Tempels Black

All music and words by Matt Gold (ASCAP)

except "Hazel, Friend of Mine" - music by Matt Gold, words by Bryan Doherty (ASCAP)

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Curt Sydnor - Heaven is Begun (April 8, 2022 passerine records)

“Heaven is Begun” is an unconventional foray into the borderlands that separate gospel & secular songcraft. The lyrics speak to themes of doubt, death, and unknowability. The musical arrangements feature the masterful vocalist Laura Ann Singh backed by an avant-jazz rhythm section, operating fearlessly within Sydnor’s own traditional-experimental song structures. Proudly grandiose in its attempts to meld the mundane with the weird, “Heaven Is Begun” slips musical, lyrical, and metaphorical subversion into familiar source material.

1. Battle Hymn of the Republic

2. Not Even Past

3. Nature Strives for Beauty

4. Old Rugged Cross

5. Heavenwards

6. Beyond the Sunset

7. Adagietto

8. Covered in Clover

Curt Sydnor - keys, vocals

Laura Ann Singh - vocals

Scott Clark - drums

Adam Hopkins - bass

Ryan Seaton - orchestrations

Aaron Dugan- guitar on "Nature Strives for Beauty"

Alan Good Parker- lap steel on "Heavenwards"

Gary Kalar - guitar on "Covered in Clover"

Recorded and mixed by Lance Koehler

Mastered by Sarah Register

Album layout and design by Darryl Norsen

All songs by Curt Sydnor except:

"Battle Hymn of the Republic" (Howe/anon)

"Old Rugged Cross" (Bennard)

"Beyond The Sunset" (Brock/Rowswell)

"Adagietto" (Mahler)

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Michelle Willis - Just One Voice (April 8, 2022 GROUNDUP MUSIC)

MICHELLE WILLIS TO RELEASE NEW ALBUM ‘JUST ONE VOICE’

FEATURING

DAVID CROSBY, MICHAEL MCDONALD, BECCA STEVENS AND MORE

RELEASED APRIL 8 VIA GROUNDUP MUSIC

Singer, songwriter and keyboard player Michelle Willis’ is to release her second album, Just One Voice on April 8 2022 via GroundUP Music. In celebration of the upcoming release the,  first single “Green Grey” has been shared on YouTube HERE. The album, produced with Fab Dupont (Andre 3000, Gregory Porter) features guest performances by David Crosby, Michael McDonald, Grégoire Maret, Becca Stevens and Taylor Ashton. 

Just One Voice was written during the intensity of non-stop travel, penned from the cramped seats of buses, planes and countless green rooms. One night, out on the open road, Willis played the title track for Crosby, her mentor and bandmate, who urged, “No one else sounds like this. This is you. You have to make this record.” Shortly thereafter she was able to secure a prestigious grant from the Canada Council for the Arts which set the recording process in motion.

“This song is meant to be playful, fun and flirtatious, in the (sort of?) innocent first moments of attraction,” Willis says of ‘Green Grey.’ “I spent a few years following the trope of being a young, fun escape to other people’s sadness. That got old, and thankfully so did I. I originally heard this as a combo of Bonnie Raitt’s ‘Something To Talk About’ but with the energy of Simon & Garfunkel’s ‘Cecilia.’”

Of the rest of the tracklisting on Just One Voice, Willis notes, “I originally thought these songs were going to be about ‘being strong alone’ and all this ‘ra ra I can do it by myself’-ness, but in the end, looking at the lyrics I realized they were about the process of getting there, how there’s all sorts of ugly feelings to sort through once we're on our own that I needed to look at. I do feel stronger and wider for acknowledging them now, but hoo boy, can they be uncomfortable to look at.”

New Single: Green Grey

Available now worldwide

Michelle Willis is a Canadian singer-songwriter and keyboard player based in Brooklyn. A Toronto native, she moved to New York in 2016 with few prospects save for a monthly residency at Rockwood Music Hall. Within months she was touring in two bands led by David Crosby (David Crosby & Sky Trails and David Crosby & Lighthouse), another by pop/jazz composer Becca Stevens, and opening for jazz/funk collective Snarky Puppy across the globe. Willis has cemented her place as an in-demand keyboard player and singer, touring and recording with a diverse array of artists such as the aforementioned Crosby and Stevens as well as the Zac Brown Band, Iggy Pop, Laura Mvula and Michael McDonald. Just Once Voice follows her debut record, 2016’s See Us Through.

Just One Voice

1. 10ths 03:47

2. Liberty 04:42

3. Just One Voice 04:37

4. Green Grey 03:00

5. Trigger (feat. Taylor Ashton) 04:02

6. Janet 03:24

7. How Come (feat. Michael McDonald) 04:28

8. Think Well 03:33

9. 'Til the Weight Lifts (feat. Grégoire Maret) 04:13

10. On & On 04:23

11. Black Night (feat. Becca Stevens) 05:09

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Release Show

New York, come celebrate! One week before the worldwide digital release, Michelle and her band perform JUST ONE VOICE live at Joe's Pub with special guests TBA. A very special night indeed. Buy Tickets Here. Band listed below. It's HAPPENING!

Michelle Willis: keys, vox

Louis Cato: drums/percussion/vocal

David Cutler: bass

Christian Almiron: keys

Julia Easterlin: bg vox

Alan Braufman announces 1975 live album (April 8, 2022 Valley of Search)

ALAN BRAUFMAN ANNOUNCES NEW LIVE ALBUM FROM 1975

Live in New York City, February 8, 1975

VINYL / CD / DIGITAL PRE-ORDER

HEAR "CHANT" NOW

Today, Alan Braufman announces a new live album due on April 8, 2022. Live in New York City, February 8, 1975 is the recently unearthed recording of Braufman with his five-piece band, Cooper-Moore (piano, ashimba, recitation), William Parker (bass), John Clark (French horn), Jim Schapperow (drums) and Ralph Williams (percussion), in an early 1975 live radio session. Coupled with the album's announcement, Braufman shares the live version of his song "Chant" from Live in New York City album.

The 94-minute performance is spread over 5 album sides on 3 LPs and 2 CDs. Newly mastered with new liner notes by the host Susan Mannheimer. Live in New York City, February 8, 1975 will be available on vinyl, CD and to stream on April 8th via Valley of Search.

Live in New York City, February 8, 1975 was recorded soon after the recording of Braufman's debut album Valley of Search for the India Navigation Label and marks the first meeting for William Parker and Cooper-Moore, whose musical partnership has flourished ever since. Live in New York City arrives after 2020's reissue of The Fire Still Burns, the second album released under Alan's own name following 1975's Valley of Search.

Alan Braufman is an instrumental figure in New York City downtown culture. Born in Brooklyn, after studying at Berklee College of Music he moved to a vacant building at 501 Canal Street in Manhattan alongside several other musicians. Monthly rent at the time was $140 for a floor, and the space was transformed into a practice space and venue. This gritty, improvised set up in downtown Manhattan would blaze a trail for generations of creatives and set a do-it-yourself tradition for young jazz acts in the city that is followed to this day. During this period Alan recorded Valley of Search at 501 Canal Street, and released it with the label India Navigation. The album is a perfect snapshot of the energy and creativity of its era, and would come to achieve cult status. It was highly sought after by vinyl collectors, and in 2018 Alan reissued Valley of Search.

Live in New York City, February 8, 1975 vinyl

Alan Braufman

Live in New York City, February 8, 1975

Valley of Search

April 8, 2022

About Alan Braufman:

What we know of Downtown New York comes from the countercultural and creative flowering that emerged in lower Manhattan in the 1960s, attributable to cheap live-work spaces called lofts. These were often abandoned and disused small manufacturing spaces and they became a nexus for artistic practice and life. From a jazz perspective, lofts were alternatives to the club scene, and they gained notoriety in the 1970s. Places like Studio We, Studio Rivbea, The Ladies' Fort, Ali's Alley, and Environ became central in the development of the new music. But even the underground had an underground, and the happenings at 501 Canal Street on the West Side were a point of activity in which a small but dedicated number of people took part. In 1973 a cadre of free improvising musicians relocated from Boston to lower Manhattan: pianist Gene Ashton (now known as Cooper-Moore), bassist Chris Amberger, and saxophonists David S. Ware and Alan Braufman.

All had studied at Berklee College of Music, though they stood apart from most collegiate musicians. Ashton secured the building at 501 and the rent for the each of the four usable floors was $140 a month. The first floor became a performance space, while Ware and Braufman took the front and back of the second floor, respectively. Ashton was on the third floor with his young family, and Amberger was on the fourth. Later, drummer Tom Bruno and his partner, vocalist Ellen Christi would take Amberger's spot. Along with bassist David Saphra and drummer Ralph Williams, the Braufman-Ashton unit became the house band, rehearsing regularly and performing in the storefront.

Braufman was born in 1951 in Brooklyn and raised on Long Island, moving to Boston to attend Berklee in 1968. In his own words, he "started playing clarinet at eight; my mom was deeply into the music, so she would play Mingus, Eric Dolphy and Coltrane. It grabbed me - there was something exciting about it that I didn't hear in other music, so no matter what I was going to be a musician. When I was thirteen I got my first saxophone. I had a teacher who could teach me how to play but not how to improvise (which is what I wanted to do) so I had to figure it out. I didn't know changes, but I could pick out the patterns that were happening in free music and I could figure out what to do. I would teach myself patterns and scales, figure out some harmonics - I was self-taught until I got to Berklee."

Braufman's sound - "Alan had a huge sound on alto and voice that was his, and that was rare in a town where you had lots of young players coming up" (Cooper-Moore) - was immediately appealing and rooted in such forebears as Jackie McLean. In Boston, he made other connections, including drummer David Lee Jr.'s wife-to-be who ran the coat check at the Jazz Workshop. The saxophonist parlayed that into working lights at the venue and, more importantly, a friendship with Lee that resulted in the percussionist's place on this album. Braufman also sat in at the Jazz Workshop, which is how he met future mentor and collaborator Cecil McBee, whose partner Lucia, an artist, was also living in Boston - in this case, on the bandstand when the bassist was coming through town with Pharoah Sanders. Braufman later played on McBee's debut Strata-East LP Mutima, recorded in New York in May of 1974 and a precursor to the bassist's role in Valley of Search.

As Cooper-Moore tells it, "when we moved to 501 Canal Street... that's when I got to really play with Alan. When we started putting on concerts, we used the same musicians but [depending on the day it] would be either his band or my band. It was around that time Cecil Taylor did a concert at Carnegie Hall with his orchestra, and Gary Giddins, who was writing for the Voice, wrote very badly about David S. Ware. Tom Bruno was living at Canal Street then, along with Ellen Christi. Philip Polumbo, a bass player and painter, was living on the top floor, and they were all working at the Village Voice. Tom said, you know, 'we gonna get back at this guy Gary Giddins,' so they mimeographed these posters, little sheets about how Gary was an idiot and he couldn't hear, he really didn't know the music and he should come down to Canal Street sometime and hear what's going on there. So one week when it was Alan's band, Giddins showed up and reviewed us, and we got good press. He thought that the space was loud but the headline read 'Taking Chances at 501 Canal' and then people started coming." The article, in the June 13, 1974 issue of the Voice, discusses the music as it relates to figures like Taylor and Don Cherry, and notes the programs' "kaleidoscopic densities" and that Ashton and Braufman's linkage is what pushes the music forward.

Valley of Search is a document of the music at 501 Canal, but it's also a document of relationships - people who lived or worked together and were humanly close. Braufman met Bob Cummins, the founder of India Navigation Company, at a party at McBee's apartment in Harlem. The label had just been conceived, and Braufman would be its second artist. McBee, Lee, and Williams were obvious foils for their place in the saxophonist's work and life, the latter providing a bevy of instruments that he would later apply to work with trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith. In late 1974, Cummins set up microphones in the building's storefront, documenting two short sets by the band with no alternate takes or additional cuts.

Invoking with a dulcimer and bowed bass drone undergirded by flits of percussion, Ashton chants the Bahá'í prayer "God sufficeth all things above all things, and nothing in the heavens or in the earth but God sufficeth, verily he is in himself the knower, the sustainer, the omnipotent. God sufficeth all things above all things..." granting the music's higher search a stirring, declaratory shout amid mountain strings. Soon, liquid alto keen, harried screams, and rhapsodic piano chunks edge a dense fracas toward the sharp, sinewy groove and foamy crests of the following movement. One would imagine that the music on this recording reflects the overall feel at 501; the compositions are among those that were in their book at the time, fleshed out with a powerful array of percussion, whistles, and cries, McBee's bass steadily thrumming and in counterpoint to burred, throaty alto and briskly twined piano.

When Bruno and Christi moved from the fourth floor down to the first, that was the end of performances as they had been at 501 Canal; Ashton relocated to his home state of Virginia soon after, before returning to New York in 1985 as Cooper-Moore. Braufman would go on to work with drummer William Hooker and his own more commercially-leaning groups (as Alan Michael) before relocating to Salt Lake City, where he resides today. Valley of Search has enjoyed a cult status among followers of this music, and it captures a unique and very alive historical slice of New York's creative improvised underground.

1. Announcements

2. Rainbow Warriors

3. Ark of Salvation

4. Little Nabil's March

5. Destiny

6. Ashimba

7. Chant

8. Thankfulness

9. Love Is For Real

10. Forshadow

11. Announcements 2

12. Emancipation (Cooper-Moore)

13. Tree Of Life

14. Bright Evenings

15. The Muse

16. A Tear And A Smile

17. O Nosso Amour

18. Sunrise

Alan Braufman - Alto saxophone, Flute

Cooper-Moore - Piano, ashimba, recitation

William Parker - Bass

John Clark - French horn

Jim Schapperoew - Drums

Ralph Williams - Percussion

Susan Mannheimer - Host

Recorded live at WBAI Studio C, New York February 8, 1975

Mastered by Joe Lambert

Art by Mike Zimmerman

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Lionel Pillay (feat. Basil Mannenberg Coetzee) - Shrimp Boats (April 8, 2022 We Are Busy Bodies)

Assembling unreleased recordings from 1979 and 1980, Shrimp Boats is a South African jazz archival compilation from 1987 built around its epic side-long title track featuring saxophonist Basil "Mannenberg" Coetzee. The recording was made during pianist Lionel Pillay's November 1979 session with Coetzee for the As-Shams/The Sun album Plum and Cherry. Side Two is composed of material recorded in September 1980 from the session for Lionel Pillay's Deeper in Black album. The 1951 pop standard "Shrimp Boats" was first given its unlikely jazz arrangement by Abdullah Ibrahim (recording as Dollar Brand) in 1971.

Pillay and Coetzee take this seed of an arrangement to its furthest reaches with their mesmerising performance. Although the title track casts a big shadow, Pillay's "Slow Blues for Orial" is a welcome original composition on the flip side that stands proudly next to a rare 1970s cover of Winston "Mankunku" Ngozi's "Yakhal 'Inkomo" (Pillay was the pianist on Mankunku's original 1968 recording) featuring saxophonists Barney Rachabane and Duke Makasi. The set closes with a nod to the contemporaneous jazz fusion scene with a take on Weather Report's "Birdland" from 1977.

1. Shrimp Boats 25:07

2. Slow Blues For Orial 07:31

3. Yakhal'Inkomo 09:06

4. Birdland 05:50

Personnel on Track 1:

Lionel Pillay - Piano

Basil Coetzee - Tenor Sax

Stompie Manana - Trumpet

Charles Johnstone - Bass

Rod Clark - Drums

- Recorded 12 November 1979

Personnel on Tracks 2, 3, 4:

Lionel Pillay - Piano

Barney Rachabane - Alto Sax

Duku Makasi - Tenor Sax

Sipho Gumede - Bass

Gilbert Mathews - Drums

- Recorded 29 September 1980

Produced by Rashid Vally

Cat. No. MANDLA 001

Original Release 1987

We Are Busy Bodies Reissue 2022

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Jane Ira Bloom / Mark Helias - See Our Way (April 2022)

This music was recorded in multiple sessions over several months in 2021-22. It was done at Chateau Beyond Studio in upstate NY. The mixing and mastering was completed at Radio Legs Music in NYC. The pieces were collaboratively improvised and we allowed ourselves the freedom to just be with the music and create the sound as the moment moved us. It comes on the heels of our first duo release “Some Kind of Tomorrow” in 2020. It’s hard to put into words how extraordinary it feels to collaborate with a musician who you can coax composition out of the air with. It’s exhilarating, it’s dangerous, it’s like jumping off the high board and it’s our way.

See Our Way

Multiverse 1

See Our Way 4:35

Cut to the Chase 4:13

Laser Plane 4:28

Detectives 2:59

As Close As It Gets 3:26

Multiverse 2

Perfect Memory 2:59

Hard Science 4:55

Imaginary Fences 3:48

Folks Sing 5:38

Hold the Wire 3:25

Multiverse 3

Time Shear 6:25

Quelle 2:43

Second Hand Lonely 6:27

Mark Helias Radio Legs Music /BMI

Jane Ira Bloom Outline Music/ BMI

Recorded by Mark Helias & Jane Ira Bloom

Mixed & mastered by Mark Helias

Joseph Helias – Audio Consultant

Cover Artwork “Street Lamps” by Ching Ho Cheng

© 2022 Estate of Ching Ho Cheng/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Cover Design by Christopher Drukker

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Florian Arbenz / Joāo Barradas / Tineke Postma / Rafael Jerjen - Conversation Elemental #5 (April 29, 2022)

For the fifth installment of his ambition Conversations project, award-winning Swiss drummer Florian Arbenz presents the album Elemental (29th April) with Dutch saxophonist Tineke Postma, Portuguese Accordion virtuoso Joāo Barradas and Swiss-Australian Rafael Jerjen on bass .

Arbenz’s choices for Conversation #5 were selected for their unmistakably unique voices on their respective instruments. Arbenz himself says, “it doesn't happen so often that I immediately get captured by a musician by just hearing him/her on a record. And I think this is a big link for me to Tineke, Joāo and Rafael.”

An improvised exploration of the realm between jazz and classical chamber music, the ensemble’s sophisticated and open-minded sound is equally comfortable in either world. Strikingly vast in texture and feeling, the ensemble shifts rapidly between tight, syncopated grooves, flurries of virtuosic saxophone playing, passages melancholic openness, and powerfully dense accordion harmonies.

With a slew of awards and world-class collaborations under their belts, the ensemble’s collective international reputation cannot be understated.

From Postma’s appearances on two Grammy winning albums and Downbeat Magazine’s Rising Star for soprano saxophone award, Barradas winning the World Accordion Trophy (twice!), Jerjen’s National Emerging Jazz Composers Prize and Arbenz’s European Award for Culture, each member of the quartet is a powerhouse in their own right. 

1. Sin Tar-Danza

2. Small Talk

3. Reverie

4. Waking With a Start

5. Luna Volver

6. Shooting The Breeze

7. The Passage of Light

8. Prelude

9. Freedom Jazz Fugue

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Gerald Clayton - Bells On Sand (April 1, 2022 Blue Note)

Pianist & composer Gerald Clayton explores the impact and abstraction of time on his ravishing 2nd Blue Note album Bells On Sand, which features contributions from mentor Charles Lloyd on saxophone, father John Clayton on bass, longtime friend and peer Justin Brown on drums, and new collaborator MARO on vocals. “Each musician on the record represents a different aspect of the axis of time and its shifting sands,” says Clayton. “My father and Charles Lloyd, who has been a mentor figure to me, reflect new permutations of my past, and the lineage of elders who have shaped my development; Justin Brown, being my contemporary and musical brother, represents my present; and MARO represents the future—she is part of the next generation, and points to a brand new collaboration.” The music includes new originals, pieces by Catalan composer Federico Mompou and Gerald’s uncle Jeff Clayton, as well as two stunning solo piano versions of the standard “My Ideal.”

If the digital album is purchased, you will receive the full album via email on April 1st, 2022.

Standard digital downloads are delivered as MP3 44.1khz/24-bit audio files.

Please note, digital downloads are only available in the U.S. 

1. Water’s Edge feat. John Clayton & Justin Brown

2. Elegia feat. John Clayton

3. Damunt de tu Només les Flors feat. MARO, John Clayton & Justin Brown

4. My Ideal 1

5. That Roy feat. Justin Brown

6. Rip feat. Justin Brown

7. Just A Dream feat. MARO

8. My Ideal 2

9. Peace Invocation feat. Charles Lloyd

10. This Is Music Where You’re Going My Friends

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Dave Douglas - Secular Psalms (April 1, 2022 Greenleaf Music)

Inspired by and dedicated to The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb by Jan and Hubert van Eyck - a polyptych originally painted for display in St. Bavo’s Cathedral in Ghent, Belgium. Begun in the mid 1420s and completed by 1432.

Secular Psalms took shape over a medieval-seeming time span. The first messages from Wim date to July 10, 2018, when we began to formulate a plan to celebrate the 600th anniversary of the Altarpiece with creation of new music. Research led to a few discoveries: elements of the polyptych were moved and/or stolen, then almost entirely recovered over the years. A restoration begun in 2012 discovered that the work had been mostly overpainted around 1550—removal of the overpaint revealed an almost entirely new contemporary vision of the piece.

The Van Eyck worked in the court of Philip The Good of Burgundy, speaking multiple languages. It’s likely they would have encountered composer Guillaume Dufay and writer Christine de Pisan in the same court. Bringing in elements of both these artists helped give me a connection to the atmosphere of those times. With a band and instrumentation in place, we were on our way.

Then all work came to a halt. Initially, like for so many of us, it was unclear how work would carry on. I kept writing. The meaning of the piece (and the title) took on a new scope as we dealt with the global crisis. Close communication with the assembled musicians, shut down in their own home countries, helped cement the message and the meaning of Secular Psalms: sacred songs for all of us as we are. We continued working. The first parts were recorded around May 2020. Over the course of a year and a half, my score came to life as I worked with each musician to create their performances. New techniques had to be invented to capture interactive improvisations. And new texts came in as I began to write them myself, in addition to the Latin Mass, Marvin Gaye, and Christine de Pisan.

Dave Douglas © John Abbott

This music came to life as a result of many forces: artistic, spiritual, pragmatic, physical, psychic, poetic, and interpersonal. In a visual sense, the piece begins in the space of the outer panels, with muted colors and dank interiors. Subsequent sections explore the inner panels, full of light, showing people from all walks of life. With Edge of Night, the piece returns to the mysterious and darker panels of the Arrival, where Van Eyck’s Gabriel and Mary play out this mystery for all eternity.

Very special thanks to Wim Wabbes of Handelsbeurs for staying with me through the long process of getting this piece made. Thanks to Keller Coker for talking me through the matrix of Dufay. Thanks to Tyler McDiarmid for being available to go through the countless sound and tech issues as they arose. Thanks to all the musicians for your patience, persistence, and belief in me. Thanks also to my entire family of loved ones, friends, colleagues, correspondents. We hung together through this and we will always have each other eternally. I am grateful for this most of all.

1. Arrival

2. Mercy

3. We Believe

4. Agnus Dei

5. Instrumental Angels

6. If I’m In Church More Often Now

7. Hermits and Pilgrims

8. Righteous Judges

9. Ah Moon

10. Edge of Night

Dave Douglas, trumpet, voice

Berlinde Deman, serpent, tuba, voice

Marta Warelis, piano, prepared piano, pump organ

Frederik Leroux, guitars, lute, electronics

Tomeka Reid, cello

Lander Gyselinck, drums, electronics

Production Credits:

Executive Producer: Dave Douglas

Produced by Dave Douglas

Recorded separately by each musician between May 2020 and August 2021

Berlinde Deman vocals recorded by Koen Gisen in Ghent, Belgium

Tomeka Reid recorded by Ralph Loza, Experimental Sounds Studios, Chicago

Marta Warelis piano recorded by Jasper Stadhouders at Splendor, Amsterdam

Ms. Warelis pump organ recorded by Marielle Groven at Orgelpark, Amsterdam

Edited and Mixed by Tyler McDiarmid and Dave Douglas

Mastered by Tyler McDiarmid

Altarpiece Photography / Images courtesy Sint-Baafskathedraal Gent, www.artsinflanders.be, Dominique Provost

Graphic design by Lukas Frei

All compositions and arrangements by Dave Douglas (Dave Douglas Music / BMI)

Commissioned by Handelsbeurs Concert hall (Gent, Belgium), in co production with KAAP/Concertgebouw Brugge; Jazzfest Berlin; November Music. With the additional support of the City of Ghent and Baloise Insurance.

PRE-ORDER

Alabaster DePlume - GOLD (April 1, 2022 International Anthem)

The lightning rod for Alabaster DePlume’s luminous follow up to the widely-acclaimed 2020 release To Cy & Lee: Instrumentals Vol. 1 was personal. “Someone was going through a thing,” says the Mancunian poet-performer. “I said, ‘go forward in the courage of your love’. And then I thought 'yeah, that's what I need to hear as well’.”

Gold is a sonorous double album that celebrates the communal act of making music and the relationships that can be explored when you purposefully avoid the standard way of doing things.

It contains filmic pieces that oscillate between the otherworldly and the trenchantly grounded, rendered maximally human through the recording process. There is laughter mid-track and studio chatter. There is the music of shouting and applause generated by a handful of people who were listening from the doorframe and the corridor. Complex vocal harmonies circle the songs like small birds and there’s an undercurrent of steely toughness, necessitated by the musician’s engagement with personal vulnerability and collective politics.

In late summer 2020 Alabaster DePlume (real name Gus Fairbairn) booked two weeks of sessions at the influential Total Refreshment Centre in London, recording to tape with Kristian Craig Robinson (aka Capitol K). He invited a different set of musicians each day, who would record the same tunes at the same speed so that DePlume – who produced the record – could cut them together later, like ingredients. “They didn’t have enough preparation to be able to hide behind this piece of material or skill,” he says. “They had to look up and respond to each other, and that’s what we've recorded.”

There were two rules that were essential to the process: that musicians wouldn’t be given enough time to rehearse and that they wouldn’t listen back to the music they recorded. “The method is part of the mission. It wasn’t like school. We had mayhem. We were having fun. That’s the story and the process – and I want to live that way,” he says.

The singer and percussionist Falle Nioke’s solo on “Again” is an example of the album’s unusual and liberating recording process. The tune was planned as an instrumental but Falle sang out spontaneously, and stilled the room with his arresting contribution. “He was just one voice in the choir but he suddenly sang lead because he felt it,” says DePlume. “It’s one example of what we were able to record,” he says, “because people felt genuinely personally welcome. Their own voices were made welcome. That is what this album is made of and it’s what the best things in our society are made of. We can either make people welcome or we can make them unwelcome; unseen.”

After the recording, the artist made a map, because frankly he needed a map after recording more than 17 hours of music. The map dictated which bits of each session to pull into the orbit of the record and it was drawn on a long scroll of paper with lines drawn across it, each line representing one analog tape. The triangles, dots and colors – red for fire, pink for beauty and blue for breath – shaped what emerged. The map has since been requisitioned for a gallery exhibition, and a photograph appears on the Gold artwork.

The music that emerged ranges from sparse understated bangers “Fucking Let Them” and the hypnotic pulse of “Visitors XT8B – Oak” to skilfully soothing instrumentals which will feel familiar to the many people who found To Cy & Lee a pandemic panacea (including Bon Iver, who sampled that album’s top track, “Visit Croatia”).

Gold opens with the Portuguese-titled “A Gente Acaba” which itself opens with the hum of voices, rich and human. There are gentle strings, gently strummed. The saxophone leaves vibrating trails in the air. “The Sound of My Feet On This Earth Is A Song To Your Spirit” is beauty and breath, generating the kind of deep warmth and connection that requires no lyrical explanation.

There is circularity. One piece of music arrives and leaves repeatedly, and a phrase is repeated:

I have all I need for the glory of being. I recognise you and celebrate. I am brazen, like a baby, like the stupid sun and I go forward in the courage of my love.

“I’m Good At Not Crying” is a self-accusatory lullaby that lists out the things he excels at (not eating much, not being the bad guy) whilst plaintive and harmonically-rich singers spill and spiral around the low tones of his voice.

On “People What’s The Difference” he unpicks the selective deafness that surrounds the refugee crisis within a gentle punk-funk frame and towards the end, there’s a lament for the broken earth marked out with plucked strings and harmonies that dip in and out like sharp bells. Softness, in the hands of this Mancunian poet-performer, can be a weapon.

“The reason for To Cy & Lee was to help people have peace,” he says. “The reason to make Gold is to give people courage and love by putting myself in a situation where I had to bring courage and love. It’s how I made it, it’s what it’s about. It’s what we need next.”

This is the sound of an artist attempting full transparency and maximum relationship. It is also the sound of an artist who has achieved the sound he hoped for. This is the sound of soft power. It’s golden.

- album writeup by Emma Warren 

1. A Gente Acaba (Vento Em Rosa)

2. Don’t Forget You’re Precious

3. Fucking Let Them

4. The World Is Mine

5. The Sound Of My Feet On This Earth Is A Song To Your Spirit

6. I'm Gonna Say Seven

7. Do You Know A Human Being When You See One?

8. Visitors YT15B – Jerusalem, Palestine

9. I’m Good At Not Crying

10. Now (Stars Are Lit)

11. Again (feat. Falle Nioke)

12. Mrs Calamari

13. People: What's The Difference?

14. Visitors XT8B – Oak

15. Who Is A Fool

16. I Will Not Be Safe

17. Visitors YT15 – Krupp Steel Condition Pivot

18. Broken Like

19. Now (Pink Triangle, Blue Valley)

Alabaster DePlume – tenor sax, guitar, synths and voice

Falle Nioke – voice, percussion

Rozi Plain – guitar

Sarathy Korwar – drums, tabla

Tom Skinner – drums

Kenichi Iwasa – percussion

James Howard – guitar

Tom Herbert – double bass

Natalie Pela – voice

Rosa Slade – voice

Elly Condron – voice

Luisa Gerstein – voice

Matt Webb – double bass

Michael Chestnutt – synths

Ursula Russell – drums

Conrad Singh – guitar

Hannah Miller – cello and voice

Donna Thompson – voice

Paddy Steer – synths and percussion

Danalogue – voice and synths

Matthew Bourne – piano

Dilip Harris – Small clone and mimeophon

Produced by Alabaster DePlume.

Engineered by Kristian Craig Robison at Total Refreshment Centre.

Mixed by Dilip Harris.

Mastered by Greg Obis at Chicago Mastering Service.

Artwork by Raimund Wong.

Photography by Chris Almeida.

Scan of the map by Fabrice Bourgelle.

Layout and insert design by Craig Hansen.

Special consultation on production and mix engineer from Danalogue.

Sequencing consultation from Scottie McNiece.

Titling consultation from poet Chris Almeida.

Management consultation from Stephen Bass.

PRE-ORDER

NEW RELEASE: GRAMMY® Nominated Vocalist Catherine Russell's 'Send For Me' is out April 1, 2022 via Dot Time Records

GRAMMY® Nominated Vocalist Catherine Russell to Release New Album,

Send For Me, Out April 1, 2022 via Dot Time Records

Release Tour Kicks off February 4 through May 13

“One of jazz’s most celebrated vocalists…a dogged song sleuth with a vast and varied book of salty blues, swooning ballads, pre World War II pop tunes, and vintage R&B.”

– San Francisco Chronicle

“At a moment when the world can seem out of balance, it’s still possible for a musician to project a groundedness and a joy…a strength, good humour and intelligence…”

– New York Times 

GRAMMY®-nominated vocalist Catherine Russell, when asked to characterize her new album, Send For Me, replied, “I love romance that swings.” Due out on April 1, 2022 via Dot Time Records, Send For Me features a baker’s dozen of newly recorded tunes on her eighth album as a leader, meeting a simple exacting standard. “Songs that inspire or touch me in some way. When I find a song I like, it haunts me until I learn it.” Her mission is finding songs that you might not have heard but deserve attention. 

Russell’s deep connection to her chosen material is part of a calling. As the daughter of pioneering and legendary musicians, pianist/orchestra leader/composer/arranger Luis Russell, and bassist/guitarist/vocalist Carline Ray, Catherine Russell was born into jazz royalty. In culling material for her new album from the likes of Billie Holiday, Nat King Cole, Luis Russell, Betty Carter, Kay Starr, Joe Liggins, Earl King, Jack Teagarden, Helen Humes, Frank Sinatra, Dakota Staton, Henry Red Allen, and Louis Armstrong, the vocalist swims in familiar waters. She sings a language that comes naturally, furthering a profound legacy.

Send For Me is a follow up to Russell’s 2019 release Alone Together, which received a GRAMMY® nomination for Best Jazz Vocal Album, and landed on the JazzWeek year-end radio chart as the #1 most played album. “I like to invite the people in,” she says of her new album, which is also her philosophy of performing live. The album is an invitation, welcoming the audience to come along on a journey.

“Send For Me”, the title track, was first recorded by Nat King Cole, and became a crossover hit in 1957, reaching #1 on the U.S. R&B charts, and #6 on the U.S. Pop Chart. “Nobody thinks of Nat King Cole as a blues singer, but he sang some really great blues,” observes Russell.

“At The Swing Cats Ball”  has a strong family connection.  Russell recalls, “My mother had given me sheet music a long time ago, saying, ‘your father co-wrote this tune, and Louis Jordan covered it.’” The song was among the first recordings by Louis Jordan. Luis Russell never recorded his tune, although he performed it on gigs. “We found a live version performed by my dad’s orchestra on a radio broadcast, and we adapted his arrangement. I love the image of people going to a swing dance.”

Another highlight is “Make It Last,” a gorgeous standard written by Dick Haymes and Bill Paxton, made famous by Betty Carter in 1958. “A good friend of mine sent me “Make it Last” and when I heard it I said, ‘wow, this is another great tune with an interesting chord progression, and a Melba Liston horn arrangement.’ Another connection: Russell’s mother worked with trombonist/arranger Liston and a young Russell had seen Betty Carter perform, leaving a great impression. “Make It Last” is about holding onto what’s really important, and hoping it will continue.  “It’s not wanting to lose a beautiful moment, because tomorrow the moment may be gone,” the singer reflects. 

Catherine Russell by Sandrine Lee

“Going Back To New Orleans” was written and originally recorded by Joe Liggins, who shared bills in the late 1940s with both Luis Russell and His Orchestra and The International Sweethearts of Rhythm, including Catherine’s mother, Carline Ray, on guitar and vocals. Interestingly, these intersections happened years before Luis Russell and Carline Ray first met in 1955; Luis was 23 years her senior and they married before Catherine was born in 1956.  

Russell’s professional life began at age 7, when she first took the stage as a dancer with Katherine Dunham’s company for four seasons at The Metropolitan Opera’s production of Aida. After graduating with honors from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, she was fortunate to work with David Bowie, Steely Dan, Cyndi Lauper, Paul Simon, Jackson Browne, Michael Feinstein, Levon Helm, Wynton Marsalis, Dr. John, Rosanne Cash, Toshi Reagon, and Carrie Smith, among others. Russell performed extensively as a backup singer, multi-instrumentalist, and lead singer, before launching her solo recording career in 2006. She amassed decades of experience touring and recording with cutting edge songwriters and iconic artists, appearing on over 200 albums.

Co-producers Katherine Miller, Paul Kahn and Catherine Russell, the team behind Russell’s albums, Alone Together (2019) and Harlem On My Mind (2016), both GRAMMY® nominees for Best Jazz Vocal Album, are reunited on Send For Me, their 6th album together. The winning streak began with Inside This Heart of Mine (2010), which reached #1 on iTunes  and Amazon jazz charts. Strictly Romancin’ (2012) was awarded the Prix du Jazz Vocal (Vocal Album of The Year) by the French Jazz Academy and Grand Prix du Hot Club de France. Her fifth solo album, Bring It Back (2014), received a 5 Star Review in Downbeat Magazine. 

Significant film and TV credits include Russell contributing the song, “Crazy Blues,” as a featured artist on the 2012 GRAMMY® winning soundtrack album of the HBO series, Boardwalk Empire.  In 2017, she performed the song on PBS-TV’s Great Performances special, ‘Grammy Salute To Music Legends’. In 2019, she had a cameo in the feature film Bolden, a biopic about jazz pioneer Buddy Bolden, while also contributing lead vocals on two songs to Wynton Marsalis’s soundtrack album.

Russell’s versatility shines through on an array of new recordings released over the past 18 months. She added harmony vocals on albums by Sarah Jarosz (a GRAMMY® Award winner for Best Americana Album in 2021), Brett Eldredge, and Little Feat, while also contributing a song on renowned banjo player Tony Trischka’s new album Shall We Hope. In addition, she appeared as a guest lead vocalist on albums by Andy Farber and His Orchestra (Early Blue Evening), reedman Evan Arntzen (Countermelody), and on Steven Bernstein’s MTO featuring Catherine Russell, Good Time Music, the second album in the four-part Community Music series by trumpet player and arranger, Steven Bernstein. Russell continues to tour with Steely Dan, as recently as in the fall of 2021, and she sings on two new releases including Northeast Corridor Live! and a live version of the acclaimed album by Donald Fagen, The Nightfly Live. 

Sixteen years into her solo career, Catherine Russell is on the move. Her band, including guitarist/musical director Matt Munisteri, pianist Mark Shane, bassist Tal Ronen, and drummer Mark McLean, has performed at major festivals on four continents, while also selling out concert halls from SFJazz Miner Auditorium in San Francisco, to Zankel Carnegie Hall in New York City, to Tchaikovsky Hall in Moscow. In addition, Catherine has appeared as a featured vocalist with today’s leading big bands and symphony orchestras including the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis, Vince Giordano’s Nighthawks, Count Basie Orchestra, Andy Farber and His After Midnight Orchestra, Knoxville Jazz Orchestra, Jazz Philharmonic Orchestra of St. Petersburg, Russia; Miami’s New World Symphony, The Philly Pops, and The Pasadena Pops Orchestra. Most recently, Russell joined forces with John Pizzarelli to perform a salute to Billie Holiday and Frank Sinatra. 

As Catherine sings on the title track of her new album, “Anywhere, Oh Yeah, Send For Me, and I’ll be there.”

1. Did I Remember (Harold Adamson, Walter Donaldson)

2. Send For Me  (Ollie Jones)

3. At The Swing Cats Ball (Luis Russell, William Campbell)

4. Make It Last (Dick Haymes, Bill Saxton)

5. Going Back To New Orleans (Joe Liggins)

6. If I Could Be With You  (James P. Johnson, Henry Creamer)

7. You Can Fly High  (Earl King, John Vincent)

8. East of The Sun (and West of the Moon) (Brooks Bowman)

9. In The Night  (Norman Mapp)

10. You Stepped Out of A Dream (Nacio Herb Brown, Gus Kahn)

11. Blue And Sentimental  (Count Basie, Mack David, Jerry Livingston)

12. Sticks and Stones (Cavanaugh/Razaf/Palmer)

13. Million Dollar Smile  (Porter Roberts, Lionel Hampton)

Upcoming Catherine Russell Tour Dates 2022

Feb 4-5 / The Lift at Cascade Village/ Durango, CO

Feb 14-19/ Birdland / New York, NY

Mar 9-10 / Jazz St. Louis / St. Louis, MO

Mar 15  / Theatre at Renovation Square / Rochester, NY

Mar 16 / Sarasota Jazz Festival / Sarasota, FL

Mar 18-19 / Jazz Forum / Tarrytown, NY

Mar 24 / Carnegie Hall / New York, NY

Mar 26 / Rose Theater, Jazz at Lincoln Center / New York, NY

Mar 31 / Jimmy’s / Portsmouth, NY

Apr 1 / Scullers / Boston, MA

Apr 8 / Modlin Center for The Arts / Richmond, VA

Apr 14-17 / Jazz Alley/ Seattle, WA

Apr 19 / Yoshi’s / Oakland, CA

Apr 20  / Kuumbwa Jazz / Santa Cruz, CA

Apr 21 / Irvine Barclay Theatre / Irvine, CA

Apr 29 / Festival Hall / Greensboro, GA

May 6 / Kupferberg Center for The Arts / Queens, NY

May 7 / Kingsborough Community College / Brooklyn, NY

May 13 / Kleinhans Music Hall / Buffalo, NY

Catherine Russell · Send For Me

Dot Time Records · Release Date: April 1, 2022 

For more information on Catherine Russell, please visit: CatherineRussell.net

Dot Time Records