New World

Overlapping textures and soft, shifting timbres are the most recognizable features of Morton Feldman's music, and his attractive sonorities draw listeners in ways other avant-garde sound structures may not. This music's appeal is also attributable to its gentle ambience, a static, meditative style that Feldman pioneered long before trance music became commonplace. The three works on this disc are among Feldman's richest creations, yet the material in each piece is subtly layered and integrated so well that many details will escape detection on first hearing. In Piano and Orchestra, the piano is treated as one texture among many, receding to the background and blending with muted brass and woodwinds in a wash of colors. Cello and Orchestra might seem like a conventional concerto movement, especially since the cellist is centrally placed on this recording and plays with a rather lyrical tone. However, Feldman's orchestral clusters are dense and interlocked, which suggests that the cello should be less prominent and blend more into the mass of sounds behind it. No such ambiguity exists in the performance of Coptic Light, which Michael Tilson Thomas and the New World Symphony Orchestra play with even dynamics and careful attention to the work's aggregate effect, which is mesmerizing.

The Last Gig is a new live album from Adam Holzman & Brave New World. It was recorded live on March 12th, 2020 at Nublu 151 in New York City, one day before lockdown started. Featuring Gene Lake on drums, Freddy Cash jr. on bass, Ofer Assaf on sax, Jane Getter on guitar and Adam Holzman on keyboards, it is a live follow-up to Adam’s critically acclaimed recent release Truth Decay. The Last Gig might indeed be the last blazing jam before the pandemic silenced the night club scene. Check it out for a good dose of high energy jazz-rock in these strange times!

David Murray is a giant of modern jazz. His saxophone fuses all the great things that black music has produced: Gospel sounds, free jazz, Afro-Caribbean, blues and soul as well as the beautiful standards of classic jazz. Murray's colorful tone, unsurpassed intonation, flair for swing, melancholy tones, and improvisational power and ingenuity make him one of the most important voices in music today. The newly formed Brave New World Trio congregates style-setting jazz greats with bassist Brad Jones and drummer Hamid Drake. Together they draw from the African-American tradition as well as from other cultures and with Seriana Promethea they present an impressive musical statement.

New World was an Australian pop group that existed from the mid-1960s to the late 1970s. They are best known for their Top 10 hit single, "Tom-Tom Turnaround", which was released in 1971. Most of their biggest successes were written by Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman. Broad of collar and bright of shirt, New Zealand's New World exemplified the kind of bright-eyed, lightly sentimental folk-pop that threatened to devour the UK charts of the early 1970s. Pre-glam, pre-prog, and almost prepubescently harmless, the trio emerged out of British television's Opportunity Knocks talent show and briefly threatened to become their homeland's biggest ever export. Especially after the all-conquering combination of label-head Mickie Most, producer Mike Hurst, and songwriters Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman ganged up on a generation's ears and soft-soaped them into submission.

Ray Barretto's Taboo features a new, smaller version of his New World Spirit ensemble. Hector Martignon, who composes along with Barretto, is still here, as are Satoshi Takeishi, Ray Vega, and Jairo Moreno. Saxophonist Adam Kolker takes the sax chair vacated by Jay Rodriguez, and guitarist Alfredo Gonzales has not been replaced. The material is far jazzier on Taboo. Barretto explored the roots of Latin jazz as it transformed itself into the New York version of son and salsa on 2003's Hot Hands: Ancestral Messages, and Taboo serves as a guidebook to present and future tenses of Latin jazz. For starters, one can read between the lines that Ray Vega's charts have moved far a-field of the standard notions surrounding big band arrangements. Everything here feels fluid and relaxed; the playing leaves spontaneity in the air whether it is on a Barretto or a Martignon original, such as on "Bomba-Riquen," "99 MacDougal St," or something from the hard bop cannon by Nat Adderley and Oscar Brown, Jr., such as the classic "Work Song," or a modal tune like McCoy Tyner's "Effendi".