Johnston at 10

For Becoming Jane, Adrian Johnston delivers an elegant score that perfectly captures the poignant and bittersweet, utterly romantic tone of the film. Johnston was given permission to study the surviving music books that once belonged to the Austen family in preparation for scoring the film, and that study shows. By weaving music from the period throughout the score, he gives this highly speculative "biopic" a genuinely authentic feel. Particularly notable is the inclusion of themes from "The Irishman" in the tracks "Bond Street Airs" and "A Letter."

Storytelling and making – craft and narrative, and the ways in which they are both enabled and complicated by the presence of music – lie at the heart of Matthew Kaner’s compositional world, as revealed on this debut album devoted to his work.

Cambodian composer Chinary Ung was an extreme disadvantage in terms of his musical background; the only Western instrument he was able to study in his native Cambodia was the E flat clarinet, which he learned well enough to enter the Manhattan School of Music in 1964. Since earning his doctorate in music composition at Columbia in 1974, Ung has largely made his career in the United States as a teacher and, partly owing to that, missed the genocide conducted in his home country, although most of his family was not so fortunate.

For all those who have a big axe to grind with Brubeck, for all those who claim the band was only successful because they were predominantly white, or played pop-jazz, or catered to the exotica craze, or any of that, you are invited to have all of your preconceptions, tepid arguments, and false impressions hopelessly torn to shreds by one of the great live jazz albums of the 1960s…

Phillip Johnston's Big Trouble - Flood at the Ant Farm (1996) {Black Saint 120182-2}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 330 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 148 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 33 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1996 Black Saint | 120182-2
Jazz / Progressive Jazz / Avant-Garde Jazz / Modern Creative / Post Bop / Saxophone

The second CD by Philip Johnston's Big Trouble is jazz mixing great musicianship with a touch of madness. He treats Steve Lacy's "Hemline" as if it were penned by Raymond Scott (whose music was adapted for classic Looney Tunes cartoons) and "Bone" sounds like a wild improvisation on a childhood chant. Pianist Joe Ruddick's "Heaven, Hell, or Hoboken" has a nifty calypso beat with an intense cacophony of reeds and brass. Johnston is also a gifted composer; his "Pontius Pilate Polka" blends folk dances with swinging Dixieland interludes. "Mr. Crocodile" is a light samba with a touch of reggae. Highly recommended for fans of the great melting pot of jazz.

The Microscopic Septet - Seven Men In Neckties (2006) {2CD Set Cuneiform RUNE 236/237 rec 1983-1985} (Phillip Johnston)
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 959 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 313 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 45 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1983-85, 2006 Cuneiform Records / Phillip Johnston | RUNE 236/23
Jazz / Progressive Jazz / Modern Creative / Post-Bop / Saxophone

A nearly brassless little big band and a guitarless R&B group all at the same time, the Microscopic Septet was to the 1980s New York Downtown scene something of what the Art Ensemble of Chicago was to its own home town. Both bands were steeped in and respectful of the jazz tradition, but both deconstructed, recalibrated, juggled and played around with its component parts to create affectionate, often witty new amalgams of the old—and intimations of the future. The two-disc Seven Men In Neckties collects the Micros' immortal, mind-expanding but long unavailable, first two albums—Take The Z Train (Press Records, 1983) and the live Let's Flip! (Osmosis Records, 1985)—along with previously unissued, contemporaneous material.

Phillip Johnston's Transparent Quartet - Page of Madness (2009) {Asynchronous ‎001}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 314 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 185 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 32 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 2009 Asynchronous ‎Records | 001
Jazz / Progressive Jazz / Avant-Garde Jazz / Stage & Screen / Modern Creative / Post Bop / Saxophone

Page of Madness is an original film score for Teinosuke Kinugasa’s Japanese 1926 silent film masterpiece, Kurutta Ippeiji, (A Page of Madness). It was recorded in 1998, and is just being released on CD now for the first time. It features The Transparent Quartet, and was recorded by Jon Rosenberg.

The Microscopic Septet - Manhattan Moonrise (2014) {Cuneiform RUNE 370} (Phillip Johnston)
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 379 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 144 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 22 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 2014 Cuneiform Records / Phillip Johnston | RUNE 370
Jazz / Progressive Jazz / Modern Creative / Post-Bop / Saxophone

In the 80s, the band engendered a cagey slant on mainstream swing and then morphed into the risk-taking New York downtown scene, eventually garnering widespread attention and sell-out crowds at the Knitting Factory and other hip venues. They regrouped in 2006, carrying the torch for what has become a singular sound, ingrained in classic jazz stylizations, bop, funk, and the free-jazz domain. Known for its quirky deviations, razor-sharp horns arrangements and melodic hooks, the septet's spunkiness and tightknit overtures align with the stars on Manhattan Moonrise.