Rainey Marie Highley

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is the new Netflix film, out December 18, that stars Viola Davis as blues icon Ma Rainey and the late Chadwick Boseman in his final on-screen performance. Today, the soundtrack, featuring original music from Branford Marsalis, has been announced; it’s also out on December 18 (via Milan Records).

Three master musicians walking the tightrope of spontaneous creation, crafting music of ferocity, warmth, and beauty in front of a live audience. Ben Goldberg, Nels Cline, and Tom Rainey present a special concert of intensely focussed improvisations, recorded live at The Owl Music Parlour in Brooklyn on May 26, 2016.

In his trio, Tom Rainey – one of the busiest drummers on the New York scene – has united with two of his closest musical allies. Ingrid Laubrock, the saxophonist extraordinaire who left England for the USA some years ago, causing quite a stir with her own band projects as well as in groups from Anthony Braxton to Mike Reed. Plus Mary Halvorson who in recent years has earned herself a superb reputation as one of the most interesting guitarists in contemporary Jazz and has worked in projects with musicians ranging from John Zorn to Yo La Tengo, as well as with her own groups. Both Laubrock and Halvorson who are also active composers took first places in the DownBeat 2018 Int'l Critics Poll. With these outright individualists Rainey founded his trio in 2009 which now celebrates its tenth anniversary.

Dreamlike experiences. Sparks fly and a musical interaction works without arrangement or plan. An organic musical process develops out of intuition alone. The same magic happens every time.

From one of this country's most important intellectuals comes a brilliant analysis of the blues tradition that examines the careers of three crucial black women blues singers through a feminist lens. Angela Davis provides the historical, social, and political contexts with which to reinterpret the performances and lyrics of Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday as powerful articulations of an alternative consciousness profoundly at odds with mainstream American culture.

After making the studio recording 'Camino Ciel Echo', New York drummer Tom Rainey’s trio has now recorded a “live” album containing the distilled essence of numerous concerts including several European tours.

This book is such an intense reading experience, simultaneously painful and perfectly accurate. It brought me back twenty years to the vividness of being a teenage girl, even though the main character, Rainey, is nothing like the teenage girl I was. I love the author's use of language so sharp and cutting and inventive as well as the characters in the book.