Ry Cooder is pissed off. I’ve been tracking his music for over forty years, and this is the most pissed off he’s been so far. He wraps an interview with Lynell George about his excellent new record Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down this way,

“These times call for a very different kind of protest song. ‘Where Have All the Flowers Gone?’ We’re way down the road from that.”

In a new review of the album, Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down “is in the tradition of the great titles of Woody Guthrie and Haywire Harry McClintlock.” Reviewer Cory Doctorow describes the album’s songs as “a combination of Mexican-style corridos, stomping blues, shitkicking C&W tracks, and other forms of great American music, tackling such themes as financial corruption, immigration, the plight of migrant workers, the double sorrow of dying for a war based on a lie, and other outrages of the modern age.”

Ry’s site at Nonesuch is great.

In 1981 Ellen Fullman began developing the “Long String Instrument,” an installation of dozens of wires fifty feet or more in length, tuned in Just Intonation and ‘bowed’ with rosin coated fingers. Fullman has developed a unique notation system to choreograph the performer’s movements, exploring sonic events that occur at specific nodal point locations along the string-length of the instrument.

The artist’s description of her breakthrough discovery from her fine web home.

From there a few excerpts from her artist’s statement.

My work resides between the fields of sound art and music.

My music explores natural tunings based on the physics of vibrating strings. Through observation, I have determined that there is an optimal bowing speed in which strings speaks most clearly in the longitudinal mode, presumably based on a relationship to the speed of the wave moving through the material, which in turn regulates the pace of the walking performer.

Ms. Fullman first came to my attention in 1997 when she released a record Suspended Music shared with the Deep Listening Band. After hearing it, I tracked down The Long Stringed Instrument, her annunciation of her innovation recorded in 1985.

A new recording, Through Glass Panes, is just out, its on its way; here a review at The Liminal UK. Full notes at Important Records. MP3 Download of the title track at Free Music Archive. embed:

Videos at Havenozen. h/t too.

Harmonic Cross Sweep download at Epitonic.

Fullman is an exemplar of the sound explorer. There’s much I might say about the essential gravity of the feminine principal in what the untutored might term avant-garde music–of the last fifty or so years. Called to mind are Eliane Radigue, Eleanor Hovda, Dana Reason, Ikue Mori, Hildegard Westerkamp, Zeena Parkins, Maryanne Amacher, many many more, and, above all, Pauline Oliveros*. Yet, to honor this principle means to me to just deeply stop and deeply listen.

*“Deep Listening is experiencing heightened awareness of sound, silence and sounding”

The Iranian-born, now US-based, singer, composer and auteur of dazzlingly original music, Sussan Deyhim, came to my attention on a track by the pianist Janis Mattox, embedded in the classic Asphodel compilation, Swarm of Drones in 1995. (The Asphodel drone series, three sets and seven discs, launched, literally, tens of my sonic quests.) The Mattox track stood out because Pauline Oliveros was there, and she’s a touchstone of mine for twenty years. For Deyhim’s part, she’s a soft ripple in the track’s wordless atmosphere. Yet, it led me to a recording she made with Richard Horowitz from seven years before this introduction, Desert Equations – Azax Attra (Made to Measure) and I was transfixed.

Sussan Deyhim & Richard Horowitz – Desert Equations – Azax Attra

If asked to describe Deyhim’s art, and she’s another artist I am moved to hear every last note, I would do her nowhere near enough justice by suggesting she is a middle eastern Meredith Monk. Going deeper, Deyhim, who started as a masterful dancer in Tehran, strikes me as a musician for whom the gestural and kinetics and movement of dance is deeply ingrained in her music. Knowing dancers dance to music, here, the music sounds to the dance.

Sussan Deyhim & Bill Laswell – Meykhaneh

In 2008, having released records infrequently, but having collaborated also with Peter Gabriel, Robert Rich and Bill Laswell, (and others,) she made up for her modest output by releasing five records on her own label, Venus Rising. These included unreleased sessions going back seven years and encompassed her entire range, from austere spiritual chants to beat driven downtempo to startling experimental flights. Deyhim’s flood of music left me hoping for even more.

Her new album, City of Leaves, dials back the experimental mission for the sake of recapitulating her multiple perspectives on her own sound. Still, and as always, her mettle as composer and singer and sonic alchemist is proven again in questing music that is visionary, achingly persona, and intensely modern. Her new record is a great starting point to launch a journey through Deyhim’s boundless artistry.

Sussan Deyhim home
Interview at Worldstreams

A facile formulation I could employ to qualify pianist Stan Tracey‘s stature would be to call him the Sonny Rollins of British Jazz. This would capture his sturdiness over a career almost equal in duration to that of Rollins. This would also provide intimations of other similarities, but one would have to be familiar with those shared qualities, such as virility, the magnitude of their sounds, Tracey on the piano, and Rollins–of course–on tenor saxophone. And this formulation would also be suggestive about their shared artistic integrity and different yet uncompromising artistry. All of this is stretched over close to sixty years, with both men, once and long ago, being attentive students in the school of be-bop.

I’m dissatisfied with the formulation. It measures music but seems unhooked from the one factor that separates the two, for Rollins is well known as the nonpareil tenor titan, whereas Tracey is at best well known as the greatest jazz pianist Great Britain has yet produced. And, therein rears the problem of context that weighs down my formulation.

The fact is, to the best of my experienced reckoning, even vigorously committed jazz fans in the U.S. may have never spent much or anytime with Tracey’s music, would probably be unaware of Tracey’s place in British jazz, and, would not be able to leap with my formulation to its vaunted estimation, both Rollins and Tracey are true masterly lions.

I may be wrong, but I believe I read somewhere that Tracey has been to the U.S. less than a handful of times, last fall being one of those times. I am more secure in pointing out that in my own collection of forty or so Tracey recordings, two were released here in the U.S. That all the others were released in the UK, only, diminishes yankee opportunity, only. Otherwise, Stan Tracey simply has been one of the world’s greatest jazz artists for the better part of his almost sixty year long career. And, as a leader for over fifty years, he’s been documenting on LP and CD his extraordinary findings as one of the foremost masters of the School of Duke and Monk.

I was soon enough astounded in 1980 when I checked out one of his recordings on Steam, a solo piano date Hello old Adversary (1979). I was inspired to do so by a review, perhaps in Cadence, that tossed off an accolade, ‘Great Britain’s answer to Thelonious Monk.’ This was the only association I needed. The record arrived, I slung it on the mat. Dropped the spike.

And, I was blown away. At that time, solo piano in my world was Tatum, Monk, Keith Jarrett, Dollar Brand (Abdullah Ibrahim,) and McCoy Tyner. Where had this Tracey guy been? I had at the time the same feeling I had the first time I heard Pee Wee Russell, which was: how could music this good have escaped me?

I went out and blew a paycheck at Northcountry and bought a copy of every Stan Tracey Steam record in their stock. Maybe it was four or five records. I grabbed by friend Thorne, and we had a session and we were both shocked, hooked, and, all of sudden, paying close attention to this titan. He was so at the time, in the British scheme of things. Without going into the many details of our discographical journey over the next fifteen years, the two of us bacame Tracey’s foremost fans in Vermont! I suppose this all one can say.

The thrust of our affection was aimed at taking in the only Tracey we could touch, those Steam Records. We learned early on Tracey was not coming our way. The appeal of Tracey’s series of records, made for the label he was compelled to start to document his work, is straight-forward. Ranging from solo to duo, (especially with another British piano legend, Keith Tippett,) to four-five-six-seven-eight-orchestra, every single record is an exercise in onrushing modern swing, intense exploration of the flux of melody and rhythm, and, it’s all moved by a seemingly volcanic urge to etch a musical voice without compromise.

I wish I could tell you Tracey’s music is sort of like this or that, yet it seems to be to transcend comparisons. Tracey melds his forthright and propulsive chords-into-shards piano style with his immense book of original compositions to forge a sound that is utterly unique. His music doesn’t sound like that of Mingus, yet it is, similarly, absolutely earnest, ferociously direct, and resolute in its travels along Tracey’s distinctive bluesy, folkloric trajectory. I guess, one apt comparison, along a shared quotient, one with energies aimed to evoke joy, would be with Don Pullen and George Adams.

Tracey also leads a big band, and its own attractions are equally invigorating. Well, this provides another case of wanting to hear every note. I’ve never heard Tracey lead even close to a mediocre recording session. Tracey turns 85 at the end of this year. He’s been recently prolific, having issued brilliant dates with Evan Parker, with the young saxophone star Simon Allen, Bobby Wellens, Guy Barker, with his trio, octet, and orchestra–adding up to eleven new dates in our new century. In different ways, every darn time out Tracey astonishes.

Clark and Stan

And, I mean equal. The percussive back-and-forth, with Clark all over the kit, and using it surgically, partnering with Stan at his punchy, ducal best, comes of as dance; dancing. This is Clark’s best outing, among a lot of great work, on record. What a great idea, to wax one of your very best records in a six decade recording career with your own son! The piano-drum duo is always the rare bird of formats. Here, on what is simply a spectacular record, the Clarks have made one of the most engrossing records of this or any year.

1-Ripped Off In Bogota 7:28
2-Sam Loves Mary Loves Sam 10:55
3-Mule Rules 7:25
4-Louis at Novara 5:19*
(various radio recordings/*Louis Moholo-Moholo-drums))

Stan Tracey’s home on the web

Clark Tracey’s home on the web

Resteamed Records; also the provider of many of the classic Steam recordings.

…one of last year’s improv highlights.

Steve Coleman, who has been producing his distinctive and innovative music for over twenty-five years, could typify the problem of contextualizing jazz artistry in our current era. The basic challenge is this: jazz has been traveling its entrepreneurial epoch for several decades. This has come about as the necessary artistic response to the amped-up vagaries of the music business, a business that, obviously, has been sundered by its own challenges over the last fifteen or so years.

Although I strongly stand against the insipid myth-making and ranking mechanisms that have tended toward making close to arbitrary distinctions about artistic merit, I also understand even intelligible distinctions have become difficult to promote in the non-stop shuffling of artistic ‘profiles’ in the current environment. The requirement, for the adept listener, I would argue is to become a tenacious tracker of singular and committed artists. And, yet, one can’t track them all.

Coleman (bio) has been worth keeping track of right from the beginning when his debut recording in 1985. Motherland Pulse served to introduce his artistry, and, the artistry of Geri Allen, Cassandra Wilson, and, Graham Haynes. It is one of those lantern-like recordings, showing the way, and it came into play right in the midst of the neo-classical jazz frenzy. Coleman at this time was the main creator of the M-Base Collective, a cooperative based in Fort Green that aimed, as I saw it, to reestablish an accessible and innovative original post-bop music that would prove resistant to being hijacked by the dominant culture. In other words, the M-Base instigation was never to become a brand or a fashion.

Coleman’s artistry is very important both for its musical boldness and acuity, and, because he has thought deeply about his music’s context. Subjectively, given the totality of his opus and his thinking about its context, Steve Coleman reminds me of the composer and jazz auteur and teacher George Russell.

Russell, who developed the Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization, is one of the great masters of the music, and similar to Coleman, he invoked his artistry in a determined effort to advance the music on multiple fronts, as composer and bandleader of course, but also did this by teaching and philosophizing and mentoring. Russell’s own musical context, viewed normatively, stretched the boundaries of what were, during the late fifties, sixties, and seventies, presented as a small range of artistic possibilities. So, that range of traditional, swing, be-bop, hard bop, groove bop, free bop, free music, came under a lot of pressure from Russell’s eclectic and rigorously organized music.

Coleman, like Russell, is onto what I’d term a comprehensive approach. He expands this to consider the political and economic factors bearing down on what it is to work as a creative musician too. This isn’t a necessary move, yet it isn’t surprising either because, unlike the jazz eras of the fifties to the seventies, artistic choices have furiously expanded over the past thirty years, the core jazz audience has aged, and, music business has been transformed radically.

Although I could speak of what Coleman’s M-Base vision seems to me to be, it would be much harder to reduce a description to a concise characterization of what his music sounds like. Coleman has been developing his music in a number of different and innovative directions over more than two decades. It might be possible to string together a bunch of labels too, a time-honored descriptive short cut one can employ, yet Coleman’s music strikes me as having developed far beyond facile touchstones.

Fortunately for those who might want to venture farther into Coleman’s music, he makes it easy. Actually, he is second-to-none as a contemporary artist in putting his music and thoughts in the so-called open source. Just go to M-Base and download the many hours of his music he’s made available for free*, read his writing, especially the Symmetrical Music Concept, and, please consider his seriousness and commitment.

One doesn’t have to agree with Coleman’s pretensions to engage his sonic experiments.

Steve Coleman and Five Elements, currently configured with the leader on saxophones, and Jen Shyu, vocals, Jonathan Finlayson, trumpet, David Virelles, keyboards, piano Miles Okazaki, guitar, is one of the most compelling groups in music, period. Coleman has recently been touring as a trio with Shyu and Okazaki. Shyu is especially intriguing in capturing something like the flavor of the spirited high-wire vocalizing of Jeanne Lee.

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*Many people have asked me what are my reasons for giving away music for free. Well, why not?  Why should everything always cost something?  For me music is organized sound that can be used as sonic symbols to communicate ideas.  Since my main goal is the communication of these ideas to the people, then why not provide this music for free and thereby facilitating the distribution of this music to the people. (Why Do I Give Away Some of My Music)

Flying Burrito Brothers Live at Fillmore East 1970, (released this year.) Chris Hillman, years after the night captured on this energetic new addition to the Flying Burrito Brothers discography:

Sneaky Pete’s steel guitar shines throughout and may be his best performance on record.

What happened to The Flying Burrito Brothers the next year, 1971, ushered in twenty-five years of what I would term, fractal dynamics, as different configurations of players, constituting a kind of shifty strange attractor, bubbled up and out and up again, all around either the original ‘brand,’ The Flying Burrito Brothers, or Burrito Brothers, and, finally, Burrito Deluxe. Pedal steel icon Sneaky Pete left the band late in 1971, only to find a new attractor three years later, as the band rose once again after all but disbanding a few months and a European tour after another shuffle of personal followed in the aftermath of Chris Hillman, Michael Clark, and Bernie Leadon all moving on to greener pastures.

Sneaky Pete remained not quite the central constant in the midst of various permutations, with each at least securing the ‘Burrito’ part of the band’s name. Yet, the result is that there is a lot of Sneaky etched on legitimate and illicit recordings strung between 1974 and Sneaky’s last recordings, released in 2009 with Burrito Deluxe.

Although there was a certain measure of cynicism likely in the motivation for some of these configurations, and, each of the studio recordings are dragged down to different degrees by mediocre material and, at times, too much obedience to the commercial trends (in country music) of their day, there is also a lot of terrific Sneaky Pete steel guitar on display. Other moments of grace are supplied by musical evidence that supports just how much the shape-shifting cast of characters enjoyed playing with each other. Amongst the likes of talented and heart-felt players such as John Beland, Joel Scott Hill, Gib Gilbeau, Kleinow was the only first tier player, yet under the different variations of ‘Burrito’ the various crews kept their ‘Bakersfield sound’ inflected California country rock going against, really, the odds.

Of course Chris Hillman wasn’t onboard for the ensuing messy history, so he didn’t get to hear the ace steelman do his thing on many a long lonely night. Sentimentally, I will always feel Sneaky’s amazing essays on The Guilded Palace of Sin are not only his best work on record, but represent a pedal steel guitar-driven country rock moment second to none. Still, especially in the various Burrito ensembles of the eighties, there exist a plenitude of recorded and stunning Sneaky moments. This was especially the case throughout the eighties. (I will offer up a mix in a later post.)

a clip from the rear cover of Pacific Steel

Here’s 30 minutes worth of the Sneaky Pete, with five tracks taken from two albums, Suite Steel, and Pacific Steel, that featured his playing along with other virtuoso players.

1 Flying Burrito Brothers::Star Of The Show 4:10
2 Sneaky Pete Kleinow::Splittin’ Image 1:58
3 Flying Burrito Brothers::Did You See 2:58
4 Sneaky Pete Kleinow::Medley: My Back Pages, Peaceful Easy Feeling, Wheels 3:55
5 Sneaky Pete Kleinow::It Makes No Difference 5:07
6 Sneaky Pete Kleinow::Blackbird 2:06
7 Sneaky Pete Kleinow::Cannonball Rag 2:25
8 Flying Burrito Brothers::Hot Burrito #2 4:38

h/t Tim Connors offers up a capsule history of all permutations Burrito on his essential web resource about all things The Byrds.

Robbie Robertson

Kevin O’Hare interviewed Robbie Robertson about his new album. The above video is from that page. …Robbie journeys to make a record with Eric Clapton. Yay.

There’s a comment on the page for this video praising the band at the same time the writer offer the group didn’t “have the perfect guitarist.” …caused me to chuckle. My three favorite rock guitarists who don’t slip a slide on their little finger are Clarence White, Robbie Robertson, and Richard Thompson, so, I’m admittedly biased in feeling Robertson wasn’t only the perfect guitarist for The Band, but is also a perfect guitarist, as he goes about subjecting his virtuosity to his soul’s expressive and poetic wishes.

Randy Weston is a giant in stature and musically. His music pulls the archaic Harlem into the archaic north Africa. In this there lay the most profound kind of jazz myth, the archetypal, sonic myth that proposes the ur-impulse of Great Black Music. And, this furthermore, to borrow from the philosophy of the Chicago avant-garde, tells of human origins expressed in sound from the ancient to the future. Africa was our originating locale. The mythic centering idea of what I term School of Ellington(*) is that its artists are all playing ‘Africa.’

On April 6, Randy Weston turns 85. His debut record was released the year I was born, 1954. In 1972, CTI issued Weston’s Blue Moses. I started working full time as manager of a record store that year, and my boss, loving everything CTI and KUDU, often played the record. I was, at the time, not even a year into my obsessive enthusiasm for jazz. Blue Moses was one of the first big band records I ever heard, along with Miles Davis, and Sketches of Spain and Porgy and Bess. But the Davis records don’t shout and the Weston record does. I got ‘it’ right off the bat. It probably was Harvey Pekar who told me in the store one day, “It’s the worst record Weston ever made.” Whoever offered their vertical opinion, it caused me to be intrigued.

Ganawa Blue (Blue Moses) from Blue Moses

Tanjah was released in 1973, another big band record. But, there wasn’t anything else I could take in. I was out of luck. I filed my enthusiasm away and bought Blue Moses and Tanjah and wore it out. There was no recourse to searching out Weston as a sideman because he was unique in forging a career under his own name right from almost the beginning of his career. Appearances on other artist’s records were scant and not available in any case. The flood of Weston reissues didn’t commence until three years later, and it wasn’t until 1976 that deliverance was at hand, out of chronological order and seemingly all at once. Into my musical world came the Riverside trios, the United Artists and Jubilee sides, along with the contemporaneous Freedom records.

Among the masters in the School of Ellington, it is Weston who expression of the transformation of Harlem into Africa resonates most deeply. I have witnessed live only his mate in the confrere of Ellington, Abdullah Ibrahim, more times. And, with these two exponents, the circle has been drawn tightly between the impulses provided by South Africa in the case of Dr. Ibrahim, and North Africa in Weston’s case.

Randy Weston - Functional (from The Way I Feel Now)

I once sat on the stage next to Randy after a seminar he gave at the Discover Jazz Festival (in Burlington, Vermont.) I asked him about the relationship between the two ends of Africa. I don’t, alas, recall the details of his response, but it echoed Ibrahim’s sketch of the ancient history of music, through which the medicinal and healing quotient of African sound spread throughout the continent as a matter of the sharing of the vital efficacy of various musical antidotes. Music was the language that possessed universal features which needed little translation.

His piano style was fully formed by 1959. Weston is a traditionalist when viewed as a stylist within a universal African sonic context. On record, when he settles down to work through Ellington and Monk, his essays of president and provost are without exception profound and diamond-like. Fifty-five years later, Weston’s body of recorded work supports his visionary and mystical role. He serves, fundamentally, as a guide to the deep spiritual wellspring of Harlem-by-way-of-Africa.

He has been playing his original repertoire with a working band for the better part of thirty years. When he comes to town, it is a must-hear opportunity. (We’re lucky in Cleveland because his good friend and co-writer of his autobiography African Rhythms, Willard Jenkins, has helped bring him here many times.) There are many highlights in my experience of Weston up close. Hearing him play solo at The East Cleveland Library several years ago was very special. He basically turned the small meeting space into an African church.

His new record provides another, glistening, heart-stirring, chapter.

Randy Weston’s web home

Live version of Blue Monk and Blue Moses from a recent tour featuring the band from Weston's superb new record, The Storyteller.

(*)Below the fold, an essay on The School of Ellington republished from Mantra Modes

My default position with respect to my willingness to make broad distinctions about what moves me musically is to make the distinctions so broad that they do not accidentally draw boundaries which exclude important sources of inspiration, knowledge, and gratification. This default fits with my core bias: to me artistry is horizontal and reflects creativity and soulfulness. When documented we are privy to how this comes to be captured in a moment of time. This is against the vertical sensibility for which a kind of grading comes to the fore, through which sensemaking comes to elevate one document over the other document. I listen critically but not, usually, do I listen vertically.

My sensibility stands against most myth making, especially with respect to jazz. I do see the limited validity of the great man, or iconic musician, theory of jazz development, but, at the same time, it only makes its limited sense to me when it is framed in a specific social-economic context. Grading short of this context, seems senseless. The aesthetic context cannot stand alone.

With respect to this, horizontally, it makes sense that John Coltrane is an iconic musician, but that Booker Ervin and Bobby Hutcherson and Art Pepper and Jackie McLean, to name some examples, are artistic equals. Of course, if aesthetic judgments are loosed from mythic fundamentals, then those judgments are ‘made horizontal.’ To qualify this kind of equivalence is subjective.

My position is Deweyian; the listener completes the artistic transaction in his or her own way. A fellow jazzbo, not knowing me, and not knowing anything about where I am come from to jazz, recently disparaged late Coltrane. Although I accept the other ways of hearing through Coltrane’s artistry, for me, the transaction I get the most out of is with late Coltrane. Yet, while I understand somebody might not like late Coltrane, or feel Coltrane’s last years were musically inferior, I think they would be hard-pressed to defend this objectively, maybe by deploying the usual combination of myth-mongering and aesthetic judgment; with the latter stripped of its social-economic context. The latter is critical because it is in this context that the arbitration of cultual taste is ratified. I might better say ‘was’ ratified, because the landscape has become so altered over the years, since the prime of Blue Note, Orrin Keepnews and Bob Thiele passed–during the sixties.

My own tastes, given my way of hearing through jazz, nevertheless count on several narratives. Wholly subjectively, I report I love pianistic artistry above all. However this mild vertical sentiment, doesn’t attach other claims to it. It isn’t a vertical claim when I also say this love is most often oriented to a secondary narrative that apprehends what I term the School of Ellington. So, Duke Ellington and all the pianists beholden to him constitute an encompassing artistry, or meta-artistry. This all lays out horizontally, even if I subjectively recognize Thelonious Monk is preeminent within this school, is the artistry I have returned to over and over again, the ‘most.’ The grading with respect to Monk is subjective, he was not best, he was the artist who earned the most attention, from me.

Nor is the school of Ellington the best piano school. It’s just the broad form I am most attracted to. It matters little for me to parse distinctions betwixt Willie the Lion Smith, Count Basie, Carl Perkins, Herbie Nichols, Mal Waldron, Jaki Byard, Misha Mengelberg, Stan Tracey, Irene Schweizer, Abdullah Ibrahim, Ran Blake, Alexander Schlippenbach, Cecil Taylor, Bobby Few, Jessica Williams, Matthew Shipp, Geri Allen, Aki Takase, Randy Weston, and all the others of the hosts, Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk. The connecting threads are enough.

It is enough to hear the School of Ellington to be ancestral music, and for it to reflect the artist-in-the-moment pulling down the only true ‘vertical,’ that of inspired connection to what is at once universal, unique, tested, and ancient.

Synthesist, composer, and ambient maestro Steve Roach, in my world, is an iconic music maker. I have this week collected his autograph for the third time on a new release, provided directly via the artist’s web store. He also serves as a paragon of skipping the middle dudes and providing one’s artistry directly to the consumer, and doing so with the human touch. In fact, he’s been doing so for about a decade.

The beautifully packaged box pairs The Desert Inbetween and Immersion Five: Circadian Rhythms (two discs.) The former record, made with Brian Parnham, mines Roach’s tribal sonics with the help of multi-instrumentalist Parnham, especially his didgeridoo. Immersion Five is indeed the fifth release in Roach’s series of minimalist and meditative ambient explorations.

Steve released five recordings last year. Too much? No. I’m an advocate on behalf of artistry of the profound type, unleashing as much as is necessary. Sign of Ages was my favorite of a glorious outpouring. Here we are in the first month of 2011, and I’d describe the three discs of Roach’s new set to be necessary chapters.

Here’s a year-old taste of the Steve Roach sound, produced by Andres CV; on Vimeo.

Steve Roach music New age from andres cv on Vimeo.

Dave Holland with Miles Davis, back in the day

My guess is this concert photograph is from 1969.

Most of time I’m amazed by how old many of my favorite musicians have become. It’s not that I haven’t integrated the mere passage of time, it’s that their vitality remains undiminished, whether, for example I’m thinking of Sonny Rollins (80), Cecil Taylor (81), Randy Weston (84), Abdullah Ibrahim (76), Roy Haynes (85) and others. Heck, Herbie Hancock will turn 70 on April 12.

However, it’s different with, for example, Anthony Braxton (65) and Dave Holland, who is all of 64. When I grant the immensity of their body of work, it still amazes me Braxton and Holland began recording in 1968. (I turned 14 that year.) Both continue to add masterful documents of their artistry; Braxton to the tune of three-plus recordings every year. I have to remind myself we’re all in the baby boomer cohort.

Dave Holland released one of my favorite records last year, Pathways. He also released a stirring record of jazz-flavored flamenco with guitarist Pepe Habichuela, Hands.

Also, in what counted as one of the most thrilling archival issues of last year, Columbia Records put out Bitches Brew: 40th Anniversary Collector’s Edition. It includes material material not included in the previous Bitches Brew extravaganza, and, a concert video from Copenhagen that is a priceless capture of an evening of revolutionary jazz.

(I first got seriously bitten by the serious jazz bug when the owner of the record store I worked in dropped the spike on A Tribute to Jack Johnson, and, In a Silent Way. This probably was in 1971.)

Dave Holland, 22 years old when he brought his virtuosity to the Miles Davis band, is all over these essential testaments. Over his 42 year career as a major jazz player, as sideman, he has no peer as a contributor to various iconic sessions in the jazz canon. This catalog includes famous sessions, such as those made with the Circle Quartet, and Sam Rivers, as well as lesser known masterpieces. For example there are the two brilliant recordings made for Muse by drummer Barry Altschul, Another Time/Another Place and You Can’t Name Your Own Tune. There are tens of recordings where Holland exemplifies peerless.

His run with ECM Records established his reputation as a composer and bandleader right from the beginning with his solo debut Emerald Tears (1977.) He has not made a misstep. More due to the fragmented political-economy of the jazz business, he remains under-appreciated as a composer, although he is every bit in the league of, for example, the late Andrew Hill, or Wynton Marsalis. His artistry seems unbounded. He has proven as much in solos, duos, trios, quartets, quintets, little big bands, and big band.

His virtues as an improviser are many and deeply realized. Two that stand out for me are his horn-like lines and his canny ability to listen and respond to his fellow players. He is an outstanding rhythmic colleague in the conventional ‘rhythm section’ sense, yet he’s a terrific instant composer, to use Paul Bley’s pithy formulation, of striking ‘songful’ solos.

DAVE HOLLAND a short documentary from Ulli Gruber on Vimeo.

This documentary is a must-see. Also, Holland’s web site is gracious and interactive and oriented to his fans in a way other musicians might aspire to.