New York Post December 9, 2020

Carla Bley & Steve Swallow - Duets (1988) {Watt–ECM 837 345-2}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 223 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 132 Mb
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© 1988 Watt Works / ECM Records | WATT/20 / 837 345-2
Jazz / Post Bop / Modern Jazz / Piano / Bass

Carla Bley's band keeps shrinking. In 1971, she recorded Escalator Over The Hill with a cast of dozens; a decade later, she was leading a 10-piece group; after that, it was a sextet. Now, it's just a piano-bass duo with the masterful Steve Swallow. The textures may be thinner, but the ideas are as big and outrageous as ever, and the playing is so accurate it's almost scary.

For many years Evan Parker, one of the greatest post-Coltrane saxophonists, has played a monthly gig at the London club The Vortex. These gigs in part illustrate Evan’s close ties with the fragile ecosystem of clubs that support the jazz world; the small venues that allow an intimate and powerful connection between the artist and audience that is at the heart of jazz creativity. Evan called these events his ‘jazz’ gigs, the knowing hyphenation an indication of the problematic use of the J word, an acceptance of the Vortex as a ‘jazz’ club, and a nod to his origins in jazz history. I took a friend there one time and it seemed to me that the trio’s performance (Evan, John Edwards and the great and sadly departed Tony Marsh) came close to seeing Coltrane or Ayler playing at the 5 Spot or one of the other legendary New York venues.

Africa and Latin America together have moulded American popular music since the beginning of the twentieth century. African influences have led to the development of jazz, gospel and blues while successive waves of dance music from Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Cuba, Puerto Rico and Jamaica have largely determined its rhythm. Dance forms and musical stylings such as habanera, bolero, tango, rumba, conga, samba, baion, calypso, mambo, charleston, cha-cha-cha, bossa nova and twistall have their origins outside the USA. This compilation aims to demonstrate just how far back the roots of Latin jazz stretch, well beyond the partnership that Dizzy Gillespie forged with Chano Pozo in founding cubop, the post-war marriage of bebop with Cuban music.