Trombonist Jeb Bishop lives in Boston, where he is an essential contributor to the local improvising music community. But he has been active, locally and internationally, on various scenes since the 1980s, when he played various instruments for a handful of rock bands in North Carolina. Between 1992 and 2012, he was an essential participant in Chicago’s revenant improvisational music community, during which time he established enduring relationships with Weasel Walter, Fred Lonberg-Holm and Ken Vandermark. After a few years back in North Carolina, he relocated to Boston, but since the 1990s he has also spent considerable time playing with European musicians. Jeb Bishop Centrifugal Trio (Astral Spirits), his most recording as a leader, is a completely improvised session with a German rhythm section of which Bill Meyer wrote, “The trio’s music is freely improvised, but their shared commitment to linear development and bold expression makes it sound like one very solid set of composed tunes.” Bishop has also made great records in the past year with Clucas / Bishop / Smith / Crane, Blonk / Bishop / Smith / Walter, and Cutout.
Here’s a selection of things I’ve been paying attention to, or returning to, since the beginning of the COVID era:
Buddhist Chant: A Recorded Survey Of Actual Temple Rituals — (Lyrichord LLST 7118)
Two-LP set of recordings of chants from Buddhist temple services in Kyoto. Beautiful graphic design. I’m not sure what it means for me, in my living room in Boston, to listen to something like this so removed from its functional role in a completely different cultural setting. But I like to put the track “Chanting of Morning Services” on in the morning while having tea. The accelerating bell ringing at the beginning of that track always reminds me of the guitar at the beginning of “Liars Beware” by Richard Hell and the Voidoids.
Sonny Rollins/Don Cherry/Bob Cranshaw/Billy Higgins — Complete Live at the Village Gate 1962 (Solar)
Music from the year I was born — a minor fixation of mine. In a certain mood, I feel like you could raise the same question (see #1) about this. A project for the upcoming winter is to do some detailed side-by-side listening to this and the Miles Davis Live at the Plugged Nickel box. My sense right now is that the dramatic contrasts in this are more pronounced than in the Miles box. There’s something about both of them that makes me think of the musicians as dramatis personae and the music as a constantly unfolding stage production. For years I’ve been trying to find the key to emulating Don Cherry’s approach to soloing in this kind of context, but I don’t feel any closer to figuring it out. As Steve Lacy says about Cherry in Derek Bailey’s book Improvisation: “His playing was really free.”
Mia Dyberg Trio — “Ticket!” (Clean Feed)
Mia Dyberg and I played together as part of a group during an evening of improvisation in Berlin in late September 2019. I got this CD from her then and have been listening to it on and off since. I like it when people find a way to make shorter, focused tracks in this music (this one has 14 tracks), maybe because I am not good at that. I also like the sense of development over the course of this CD.
Assata Shakur — Assata: An Autobiography(Lawrence Hill Books)
The cops and FBI tried to do to Assata Shakur what they did to Fred Hampton: murder her for being a radical Black political activist. Fortunately they didn’t succeed. But this book is about much more than that – it’s a wonderfully written story of an American life from early childhood on. There’s focused, justified rage at the injustice of our racist society, but there is also a sense of hope, beauty, and even humor.
Rainer Werner Fassbinder — Berlin Alexanderplatz
A lockdown winter is a great time to catch up on Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 14-part made-for-TV epic. The last episode is a mind-bending feature film all by itself.
Farida Amadou — 00:29:10:02 (19 mars productions)
00:29:10:02 by Farida Amadou
I got to see Belgian bass guitarist Farida Amadou play several sets in September 2019, at festivals in Antwerp and Mulhouse. Her recent solo release is raw and fascinating.
Tashi Dorji — Stateless (Drag City)
Stateless by Tashi Dorji
This is every bit as great as everyone is saying. If you’ll excuse the humblebrag, I’m proud to have helped put together the program of Dorji playing solo, followed by Paal Nilssen-Love’s Large Unit, for a show at King’s in Raleigh NC, when we were living down there a few years ago.
Werner Herzog — Herzog on Herzog: Conversations with Paul Cronin (Faber and Faber)
300 pages of interviews with the director. Some amazing stories and provocative thoughts about his craft (he dislikes being called an artist)
Eliot Cardinaux / Our Hearts as Thieves — “What the Wildflower Witnessed”
I met pianist/poet Eliot Cardinaux not long after moving to Boston. We did some playing together and, since he was living around the corner at the time, some good listening/talking sessions. I’ll confess that combining poetry and improvised music usually raises a red flag for me, which makes me admire all the more the strength of the solutions Eliot has found. I think his success at it comes down to the fact that his sense of how and when to deploy poetry in a musical situation is governed by his improviser’s sense of form, timing, and timbre. (His liner notes to Our Hearts as Thieves also address the question.)
Anyway, these two CDs and Around the Faded Sun, a collection of poetry (some of which shows up on the CDs,) are, taken together, a wonderful showcase for his work, or introduction to it. Our Hearts as Thieves is a really distinctive set of free improvisation, while A Living Past features his compositions, looking back in a way to his previous involvement with some part of the NYC jazz community. These recordings feature bassist Asger Thomsen, who also appears on the Mia Dyberg Trio CD.
