WNUR Jazz Report, 11/26/96

NEWS

• On November 26th, Fred Anderson (tenor sax) and Hamid Drake (drums) visited our studios for an interview and played about 25 minute of live music. Fred Anderson has been involved with the AACM since its earliest days and appeared on Joseph Jarman's first two albums (now on CD on Delmark); as a leader, he released a spate of records around 1980, one of which (The Missing Link) has just been reissued on CD by Nessa and features Drake. Over the past two years another rash of recordings has been coming out on the Chicago-based OkkaDisk label, and Anderson's bar on the south side of Chicago, the Velvet Lounge, has stepped up its presentation of live music, which currently includes weekly gigs by Ernest Dawkins, Tony Mujica, and Eight Bold Souls as well as a Sunday afternoon jam session. Anderson and Drake appeared at the Empty Bottle last week with Harrison Bankhead and Jim Baker, the same quartet that's on the Birdhouse CD on OkkaDisk; see them there again tonight (11/27) for the first appearance of a new quartet with Ken Vandermark and Kent Kessler.
• Dutch improvising vocalist and sound poet Jaap Blonk visited our studios on November 19th for an interview/performance (where did one leave off and the other begin?). Two good intros to Blonk's work are his solo disc Flux de Bouche on Staalplaat, coming more from the sound poetry side, and a fine trio disc of improvised music with Mats Gustafsson (of Sweden) and Michael Zerang (of Chicago) which we hope to have at the station soon.
• Some web sites to check out:
  • Joe Moudry's Sun Ra web site at http://www-hrm1.vpad.uab.edu/saturn/ is finally up. It includes a discography (an abridged version of Robert Campbell's The Earthly Recordings of Sun Ra, available from Cadence) and lots of other resources.
  • More than a magazine, Cadence is also two record labels, a mail order house, and a distributor. They even sell socks. They're now on-line at http://www.cadencebuilding.com/. Even if you never order anything, their mammoth catalog is a valuable reference source. Unfortunately, the catalog isn't on-line yet, but lots of other useful information is.
  • Also somewhat incomplete but still worth checking out is the new website of another hybrid magazine/mailorder house, Forced Exposure, at http://www.fe.org/. They carry a wide variety of experimental music, not just centering on jazz/improv.

JAZZ SHOW TOP 25

* denotes reissue, @ denotes not real new.

1. Myra Melford: The Same River, Twice (Gramavision)
2. Anthony Braxton & the Fred Simmons Trio: 9 Standards (Quartet) 1993 (2 CD's) (Leo)
3. Willem Breuker Kollektief*: The Parrot (BVHaast)
4. Ivo Perelman: Sad Life (Leo)
5. Steve Beresford: Cue Sheets (Tzadik)
6. Eugene Chadbourne: Boogie With the Hook (Leo)
7. Ornette Coleman*: Body Meta (Harmolodic)
8. Sun Ra*: The Singles (2 CD's) (Evidence)
9. Billy Strayhorn*: The Peaceful Side (Capitol)
10. Wes Montgomery: Encores Vol. 2: Blue'n'Boogie (Milestone)
11. Chet Baker: In Bologna (Dreyfus)
12. Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers: Lausanne 1960, 2nd Set (TCB)
13. Bill Evans: Turn Out the Stars (highlights disc) (Warner Bros.)
14. Northwoods Improvisers: Fog and Fire (Arc)
15. Sonny Rollins*: Silver City (2 CD's) (Milestone)
16. Jimmy Smith: Angel Eyes (Verve)
17. Cinghiale: Hoofbeats of the Snorting Swine (Eighth Day)
18. Bobby Previte: Too Close to the Pole (Enja)
19. various*: The Birth of the Third Stream (Columbia)
20. Jodie Christian: Front Line (Delmark)
21. Evan Parker: Synergetics-Phonomanie III (2 CD's) (Leo)
22. McPhee/Parker/Lazro: (untitled) (Vandoeuvre)
23. Lennie Tristano & Warne Marsh*: Intuition (Capitol)
24. AMM*: Combine + Laminates (Matchless)
25. various: October Meeting 87 (Bimhuis)