The Iceberg Effect

This CD traces Jelly Roll Morton's period in New York, starting with his second record date in the Big Apple. A few of the sessions have Morton joined by an excess of musicians, with the results certainly being spirited, if bordering on getting out of control. "Tank Town Bump" and "Red Hot Pepper Stomp" are the best of these numbers. In addition, Morton is heard on four excellent piano solos (including "Seattle Hunch" and "Freakish"), leading a nucleus taken from the Luis Russell Orchestra on four other songs, and playing as a sideman with vaudevillian clarinetist Wilton Crawley's pickup band, sometimes to hilarious effect. One of the true jazz giants, every recording by Jelly Roll Morton is well worth acquiring in one form or another.

Lee Konitz, Chick Corea, Jack DeJohnette, Miroslav Vitous.
This is the first of two CD compilations coming from the Creative Music Studio's Woodstock Jazz Festival, a tenth-anniversary celebration for the upstate New York progressive "world music" study center of Karl Berger and friends, which took place during a stormy day on the Oehler Lodge Olympic soccer field next to the CMS studios, classrooms, and living quarters, on September 19, 1981. The day-long festival, organized by Jack DeJohnette and his wife Lydia as a benefit for CMS, captures the better portion of a dead-on tour de force presentation featuring Chick Corea on acoustic piano with drummer DeJohnette, bassist Miroslav Vitous, and duets with alto saxophonist Lee Konitz and Corea…