Henry Kaiser has the gift. Whether it's the gift of empathy, of friendship, or simply a more pragmatic gift for creative collaboration isn't clear, but I think it's one of the first two. These guitar duos go all the way back to 1977, and "Wheels Right and Left" with the saintly Davey Williams, coming right up to date with "Infinitum Ad-Infinitum" with the currently omnipresent Ian Brighton. The set starts, properly enough, with "Chrysanthemums", a 1993 meeting with Derek Bailey, just a minute and a half in length, but it ends, even more appropriately with a much longer piece with John Russell called "Split the Difference". In between, you'll find warm, sometimes hilarious selfies with Nels Cline, Fred Frith, Jim O'Rourke, Elliott Sharp, Eugene Chadbourne, Bill Frisell, but also a few less familiar names like Debashish Bhattacharya, Sandy Ewen, Chris Muir and Roberto Zorzi; all this just laboured enough to suggest the range and warmth of Kaiser's creative relationships. These are, as he explains in a minimal sleevenote, friends who became heroes who became friends.
The ECM folks do much better by Wadada Leo Smith than ever before with this solo recording, a true masterwork of its kind and one of the purest, most enlightening demonstrations of the connected natures of folk, blues, jazz, and creative music. That Smith is the man to do this is certainly no surprise; he laid it all down in print years before this release in his self-published books and liner notes. But the way he does it, with so much grace and style (and with the excellent production by Steve Lake), really results in a totally polished statement. It is a deep and rich recording, with Smith playing in a manner that incorporates both versatility and the genius of simplicity, sometimes all in one note. Not just for fans of "out" music, this is one to pull out when you are trying to get friends to go beyond their Phish records.
Having recently appeared on Mosambique's "Big City Moves", Lyder Øvreås Røed returns to Jazzland with his own project, a melodic foray into a different species of jazz. Filled with late night, dark side of the mood compositions, alongside hot urban swing and summer day brightness, performed with hair's-breadth-perfect interplay.
The Chicago Symphonies represents another magnificent four-disc collection of extended compositions by composer, musician, artist and educator Wadada Leo Smith leading his Great Lakes Quartet in a celebration of Chicago and the rich contributions of the Midwestern artistic, musical and political culture to the United States of America. The first three symphonies, “Gold,” “Diamond” and “Pearl” are performed by Smith with three other contemporary masters of creative music, saxophonist/flutist Henry Threadgill, bassist John Lindberg and drummer Jack DeJohnette. The fourth, “Sapphire Symphony – The Presidents and Their Vision for America,” features saxophonist Jonathon Haffner with Smith, Lindberg and DeJohnette.