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Gilmore Piano Festival 2024

by John Ephland
Irving S. Gilmore International Piano FestivalKalamazoo, MIApril 24 to May 12, 2024 Thelonious Monk ends his 1967 album Straight, No Chaser with the song We See." This Monk classic quartet remake from the 1950s was also the last piece of jazz music performed at this year's Irving S. Gilmore International Piano Festival. ...
Henry Threadgill: The Other One

by John Ephland
Listening to Henry Threadgill's music, the bobbing and weaving doesn't maintain a continuity but can jump from one strand to another, one scene to another, as in a dream. It is tonal and not, just as dreams are, perhaps, rhapsodic or unkempt, the story or plot being as tangible, fungible as a summer breeze.
Leo Genovese, Demian Cabaud, Marcos Cavaleiro: Estrellero

by John Ephland
Leo Genovese's piano can sound like an orchestra. It does as much amidst his voluminous solo work on bassist Demian Cabaud's Arbol Negro," his thick chords, the density of his playing full and ripe. From their new trio recording, Estrellero, which also features the light, sympathetic stylings of Marcos Cavaleiro on drums, are five ...
Mata Atlantica: Retiro e Ritmo

by John Ephland
The coastal rainforest of Brazil, otherwise known as Mata Atlantica, and its beauty and vivacity" are the inspiration for Retiro e Ritmo. It is an album frontloaded with a varied cast of characters from hither and yon. Maybe that casting is behind a project seeking to draw worldwide attention to the ongoing shit-storm that includes not ...
Sue Foley: A Witness to Certainty in a World Gone Mad

by John Ephland
Sue Foley Old Dog Tavern Blues Bash Live 2022 Kalamazoo, MI July 16, 2022 It was a variation on what one might see at a contemporary classical music concert. Lots of grey heads, lawn chairs, not much movement. But there were numbers, lots of them, out to see and ...
Ran Blake: Gray Moon, When Soft Rains Fall and Northern Noir

by John Ephland
I'm a sucker for musical duets. Duets that make me feel like I'm in the same room with the two of them. Here we have three recent releases with the iconoclastic, legendary Ran Blake, now 83, in what is his most typical setting. Yes, to hear Blake paired up like this is to hear ...
ELLNORA: The Guitar Festival

by John Ephland
Krannert CenterELLNORA: The Guitar Festival Champaign/Urbana, IL September 5-7, 2019 It takes place every other year; every odd year. Going back to 2005, ELLNORA: The Guitar Festival, held in the University of Illinois' Champaign-Urbana' one-stop-shop Krannert Center, has been celebrating the works of an amazing array of plectrists from all walks ...
Paul Bley: When Will The Blues Leave

by John Ephland
Ornette Coleman recorded When Will The Blues Leave" in early 1958, released the next year on Something Else!!!! (Contemporary). Paul Bley played Coleman's blues four years later on The Floater Syndrome (Savoy Records), a trio recording with bassist Steve Swallow and drummer Pete La Roca. Both versions--Coleman's in a quintet with trumpeter Don Cherry, bassist Don ...
Spring Quartet at Dalton Recital Hall

by John Ephland
Spring Quartet Dalton Recital Hall, Western Michigan University Kalamazoo, MI May 4, 2019 They had to add chairs. The 435-seat Dalton Recital Hall, on the campus of Western Michigan University, was filled with multiple generations of music fans from all walks of life. The alluring ticket, brought to town by ...
Sun Ra: Monorails & Satellites: Works For Solo Piano Vols. 1, 2, 3

by John Ephland
Sun Ra as a pianist could be in your parlor, entrancing you with all manner of wistfulness, star-gazing, even a dash of the down-and-dirty via some dusty blues or off- kilter, angular, jagged afterthoughts. In this three-disc solo piano set, the nine selections that make up disc three bring it all back home, the music coalescing ...