Roscoe

Roscoe Mitchell Quartet - Come and See What There Is to See (2020) {The LAB LAB004 rec 2018}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 331 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 154 Mb | Cover | 5% repair rar
© 2020 The LAB | LAB004
Jazz / Avant-Garde Jazz / Modern Creative / Saxophone

Recording of The Lab’s December 7, 2018 live performance with saxophonist and composer Roscoe Mitchell and his quartet with Ambrose Akinmusire, Junius Paul and Vincent Davis. Liner notes by Joshua Marshall. This marked Mitchell’s last performance in before he returned to Madison, Wisconsin, celebrating his eleven-year contribution to the Bay Area as the Darius Milhaud Chair of Composition at Mills College. An iconoclastic figure in contemporary music whose work ranges from classical to contemporary, from wild and forceful free jazz to ornate chamber music, Mitchell is an internationally renowned musician, composer, and innovator.

This December 1977 recording features two of the most prominent AACM musicians, Roscoe Mitchell and Anthony Braxton. Mitchell's composition 'run the gamut, beginning with the darkly gorgeous opener that features Braxton's contrabass clarinet nestling evocatively beneath the composer's earthy flute, Mitchell's other pieces investigate the sparer, more abstract realm, as the duo's wide variety of reeds populate the sonic environment with scattered moans, squeaks and pops. Overall, this is a fine meeting between two of the most forward-looking thinkers and players in the music. Recommended. ' - Brian Olewnick, Allmusic

Roscoe Mitchell Sextet - Sound (1966) {Delmark DE-4408 rel 2018}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 389 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 168 Mb | Artwork | 5% repair rar
© 1966, 2018 Delmark Records | DE-4408
Jazz / Avant-Garde Jazz / Free Jazz / Saxophone / Clarinet

Fifty years after Sound was first released on Delmark Records (Delmark 408), not only has music changed, our ear has changed. Music is not a universal language, as well intended but poorly informed authors like to say. The musical ear is a historical and social construct that belongs to a specific society and a specific time. A 21st century listener would be more amazed than surprised or shocked by this music; amazed by its maturity, its balance, and its sense of structure. Instead of the cataract of adjectives and superlatives this music provoked in its initial reviews, one now can justly appreciate how much of its language has become integrated into the current “historical ear”. Re-issued from the original Stu Black analog mix for the first time!

Italy's Alfredo Casella has been talked up as the great unknown composer of the first half of the 20th century. He was influenced by Debussy, Mahler, Schoenberg, and Stravinsky in turn, yet he mixed and matched elements of their styles with a distinctive formal imagination. Casella was largely responsible for the reintroduction of Vivaldi to the musical world, and some of the neo-classic music he composed later in his career had direct Baroque references. This album lacks that aspect of his work, but these three pieces, each made up of short chunks of music, probably offers an easier introduction to Casella than do the weightier symphonies. The Concerto for Orchestra, loosely neo-classical, appeared in 1938 and thus lay between Hindemith's and Bartók's works with the same title.

Review by James Manheim