Meshell Ndegeocello is spearheading the next installment in the ongoing Sun Ra tribute series, Red Hot + Ra, with the LP Red Hot & Ra: The Magic City, out April 12.
The LP isn’t a traditional “tribute” album filled with covers. Rather, Ndegeocello and her numerous collaborators honored Sun Ra with totally new compositions that used the intergalactic jazz giant’s ideas, words, and melodies.
The first offering from the album, “#9 Venus the Living Myth,” incorporates elements from Sun Ra’s “Rocket Number 9” and “The Living Myth” and features a saxophone duet...
The LP isn’t a traditional “tribute” album filled with covers. Rather, Ndegeocello and her numerous collaborators honored Sun Ra with totally new compositions that used the intergalactic jazz giant’s ideas, words, and melodies.
The first offering from the album, “#9 Venus the Living Myth,” incorporates elements from Sun Ra’s “Rocket Number 9” and “The Living Myth” and features a saxophone duet...
- 2/13/2024
- by Jon Blistein
- Rollingstone.com
Wayne Kramer, who died Feb. 2 at the age of 75, lived a truly rock n’ roll life, from his gloriously unhinged guitar playing with influential proto-punk revolutionaries MC5 to a prison term, years of addiction, and a musical comeback in the Nineties. In this 2018 interview, previously available only in audio form on our Rolling Stone Music Now podcast, he looked back at all of it. (To hear the full episode, go here for the podcast provider of your choice, listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or just press play below.)
You wrote in your book,...
You wrote in your book,...
- 2/3/2024
- by Brian Hiatt
- Rollingstone.com
Richard Davis, the prolific bassist who adorned jazz classics by Pharoah Sanders, Eric Dolphy, and Andrew Hill and laid the musical foundation for Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks, has died at the age of 93.
Davis’ daughter Persia confirmed her father’s death Thursday on both a memorial page and to Madison 365; Davis taught at the University of Wisconsin for over 40 years, but spent the last two years in hospice care. “We appreciate all the love and support the community has shown him over the years,” Persia Davis added.
The Chicago-born...
Davis’ daughter Persia confirmed her father’s death Thursday on both a memorial page and to Madison 365; Davis taught at the University of Wisconsin for over 40 years, but spent the last two years in hospice care. “We appreciate all the love and support the community has shown him over the years,” Persia Davis added.
The Chicago-born...
- 9/7/2023
- by Daniel Kreps
- Rollingstone.com
From Beyoncé’s Black Is King and the Hulu adaptation of Octavia Butler’s Kindred to the Black Panther films, Black science fiction — what scholars have coined Black Speculative Thought or Afrofuturism — has seen a steady rise over the past few decades. The latest entry, Netflix’s new animated series My Dad the Bounty Hunter, now streaming, brings outer space and Black familyhood to the forefront, staying true to the genre’s core mission: telling relatable and futuristic stories that center Black characters while expanding the audience’s imagination.
“A...
“A...
- 2/14/2023
- by Meagan Jordan
- Rollingstone.com
Chicago is one of the great musical powerhouses of America. Since the Twenties, its Black population has produced colossal talents, such as classical composer Florence Price and soul singer Curtis Mayfield, not to mention any number of jazz pioneers, from Sun Ra to Quincy Jones to Herbie Hancock. Less well known to the mainstream than some of the above, saxophonist Henry Threadgill has a place in this pantheon, having crowned an eventful 50-year career with the prestigious Pulitzer Prize in 2016.
When asked about his hometown, the 79-year-old Threadgill has an interesting historical point to make. “They used to describe it as being as far down south as you can go up north!”, Threadgill says on a clear transatlantic phone line. “That’s what the definition is because the majority of the population is from Mississippi. You gotta remember that it’s a Southern city, basically.” Although he has lived in...
When asked about his hometown, the 79-year-old Threadgill has an interesting historical point to make. “They used to describe it as being as far down south as you can go up north!”, Threadgill says on a clear transatlantic phone line. “That’s what the definition is because the majority of the population is from Mississippi. You gotta remember that it’s a Southern city, basically.” Although he has lived in...
- 11/12/2022
- by Kevin Le Gendre
- The Independent - Music
Click here to read the full article.
Pharoah Sanders, the legendary tenor saxophonist who performed alongside John Coltrane in the mid-1960s, has died. He was 81.
Sanders’ passing was announced on Saturday (Sept. 24) by his record label Luaka Bop, which released the influential jazz musician’s 2021 album, Promises, a collaboration with Floating Points and the London Symphony Orchestra. A cause of death was not provided.
“We are devastated to share that Pharoah Sanders has passed away,” Luaka Bop wrote on Twitter. “He died peacefully surrounded by loving family and friends in Los Angeles earlier this morning. Always and forever the most beautiful human being, may he rest in peace.”
Born in Little Rock, Ark., on Oct. 13, 1940, Sanders — whose real name was Ferrell Sanders — moved to the Bay Area in the late 1950s before relocating to New York City, where he met fellow jazz artist Sun Ra, who encouraged him to take the name Pharoah.
Pharoah Sanders, the legendary tenor saxophonist who performed alongside John Coltrane in the mid-1960s, has died. He was 81.
Sanders’ passing was announced on Saturday (Sept. 24) by his record label Luaka Bop, which released the influential jazz musician’s 2021 album, Promises, a collaboration with Floating Points and the London Symphony Orchestra. A cause of death was not provided.
“We are devastated to share that Pharoah Sanders has passed away,” Luaka Bop wrote on Twitter. “He died peacefully surrounded by loving family and friends in Los Angeles earlier this morning. Always and forever the most beautiful human being, may he rest in peace.”
Born in Little Rock, Ark., on Oct. 13, 1940, Sanders — whose real name was Ferrell Sanders — moved to the Bay Area in the late 1950s before relocating to New York City, where he met fellow jazz artist Sun Ra, who encouraged him to take the name Pharoah.
- 9/24/2022
- by Mitchell Peters, Billboard
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Pharoah Sanders, the saxophonist who helped John Coltrane explore the avant-garde and pushed jazz itself toward the spiritual, has died at the age of 81.
Record label Luaka Bop, which released Sanders and Floating Points’ acclaimed collaboration Promises in 2021, announced the jazz legend’s death Saturday; no cause of death was provided.
“We are devastated to share that Pharoah Sanders has passed away,” the label wrote on Instagram. “He died peacefully surrounded by loving family and friends in Los Angeles earlier this morning. Always and forever the most beautiful human being,...
Record label Luaka Bop, which released Sanders and Floating Points’ acclaimed collaboration Promises in 2021, announced the jazz legend’s death Saturday; no cause of death was provided.
“We are devastated to share that Pharoah Sanders has passed away,” the label wrote on Instagram. “He died peacefully surrounded by loving family and friends in Los Angeles earlier this morning. Always and forever the most beautiful human being,...
- 9/24/2022
- by Daniel Kreps
- Rollingstone.com
Re Styles, who recorded and sang with The Tubes and contributed to their unique stage attire, has died. She was 72 and passed on April 17, according to multiple news accounts.
Born Shirley Macleod in the Netherlands in 1950, she modeled in Penthouse and Playboy, then moved on to appear in Alejandro Jodorowsky’s film The Holy Mountain and Sun Ra’s science fiction film Space is the Place.
She met The Tubes at an art school show, and quickly fell in with the troupe. By 1975, she was coordinating their clothes and stage maneuvers, while appearing onstage herself. In one memorable take, she appeared as heiress Patty Hearst. She would also dress in leather outfits and dance with lead singer Fee Waybill during the song “Mondo Bondage.” In 1979, she married Tubes drummer Prairie Prince.
Styles performed the female lead vocal on the Tubes hit “Prime Time” from the 1979 album Remote Control. She appeared...
Born Shirley Macleod in the Netherlands in 1950, she modeled in Penthouse and Playboy, then moved on to appear in Alejandro Jodorowsky’s film The Holy Mountain and Sun Ra’s science fiction film Space is the Place.
She met The Tubes at an art school show, and quickly fell in with the troupe. By 1975, she was coordinating their clothes and stage maneuvers, while appearing onstage herself. In one memorable take, she appeared as heiress Patty Hearst. She would also dress in leather outfits and dance with lead singer Fee Waybill during the song “Mondo Bondage.” In 1979, she married Tubes drummer Prairie Prince.
Styles performed the female lead vocal on the Tubes hit “Prime Time” from the 1979 album Remote Control. She appeared...
- 4/23/2022
- by Bruce Haring
- Deadline Film + TV
Image Source: YouTube user FX Networks
Great news for "Atlanta" fans: we're in the home stretch of the FX dramedy's long-awaited return. On Dec. 22, 2021, the series announced that, after a three-plus-year hiatus, season three will premiere on March 24 with not one but two new episodes to kick off its 10-episode comeback. Season's three first teaser trailer dropped this past Christmas, and, as we see in the clip, the story picks up with Earn (Donald Glover), Paper Boi (Brian Tyree Henry), Darius (Lakeith Stanfield), and Van (Zazie Beetz) adjusting to their foreign surroundings and newfound success on a European tour.
This past Halloween, show creator Glover surprised fans with a first look at "Atlanta"'s third season, tweeting "happy halloween" with a link to a mysterious "nite-site" called Gilga (which users can only access between 8 p.m. and 3 a.m.).
Related: Andrew Garfield Swaps Spidey Suit For Detective Gear in New True-Crime Series
In the clip,...
Great news for "Atlanta" fans: we're in the home stretch of the FX dramedy's long-awaited return. On Dec. 22, 2021, the series announced that, after a three-plus-year hiatus, season three will premiere on March 24 with not one but two new episodes to kick off its 10-episode comeback. Season's three first teaser trailer dropped this past Christmas, and, as we see in the clip, the story picks up with Earn (Donald Glover), Paper Boi (Brian Tyree Henry), Darius (Lakeith Stanfield), and Van (Zazie Beetz) adjusting to their foreign surroundings and newfound success on a European tour.
This past Halloween, show creator Glover surprised fans with a first look at "Atlanta"'s third season, tweeting "happy halloween" with a link to a mysterious "nite-site" called Gilga (which users can only access between 8 p.m. and 3 a.m.).
Related: Andrew Garfield Swaps Spidey Suit For Detective Gear in New True-Crime Series
In the clip,...
- 3/21/2022
- by Njera Perkins
- Popsugar.com
Hauntingly beautiful and deeply enigmatic, “Neptune Frost” has enjoyed perhaps the most coveted festival run of 2021. Blending science fiction, dance and allegorical elements, the striking Afrofuturist feature debuted at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival. It has since been invited to screen at some of the top showcases: Toronto, New York, London, Sundance, Rotterdam and Gothenburg — all venues where African cinema, especially experimental, formally ambitious work, remains relatively uncommon.
The opening scenes of this curious film hint at the poetic paths it intends to take. Past and future, dreams and realities, mourning and possibility, death and other dimensions comprise the terrain. And if you think that sounds vague or thrilling or frustrating, you’d be right on all counts. Directed by Saul Williams and his partner Anisia Uzeyman, this debut feature rebuffs the easy comforts of storytelling.
Shot and set in Rwanda, “Neptune Frost” takes on war, capitalism, identity and liberation. It begins with an unseen narrator.
The opening scenes of this curious film hint at the poetic paths it intends to take. Past and future, dreams and realities, mourning and possibility, death and other dimensions comprise the terrain. And if you think that sounds vague or thrilling or frustrating, you’d be right on all counts. Directed by Saul Williams and his partner Anisia Uzeyman, this debut feature rebuffs the easy comforts of storytelling.
Shot and set in Rwanda, “Neptune Frost” takes on war, capitalism, identity and liberation. It begins with an unseen narrator.
- 2/5/2022
- by Lisa Kennedy
- Variety Film + TV
“Hip-hop is ancestor worship,” Greg Tate wrote in The Village Voice in the fall of 1988. He always chronicled music with that fiercely worshipful spirit of sacred ritual. Reading Tate was a revelation, then or now, because he was a writer who celebrated all kinds of music, from every era — an Afrofuturist rebel without a pause. That’s why the news of his death hits so hard today. To sum up his voice, you have to go back to the words he wrote about Chaka Khan back in 1992: “She is...
- 12/7/2021
- by Rob Sheffield
- Rollingstone.com
Many years in the making, Fire Music tells the many-stranded story of free jazz, a chronically misunderstood and often maligned expansion of the improvisatory African-American art form that exploded as a movement in the 1960s through the innovations of path-breaking titans like John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Albert Ayler and Sun Ra. Although this avant-garde has been around long enough to become its own tradition – its oldest living exponents are in their 90s – the music still remains somehow outside the mainstream. Even this week, Twitter was abuzz over Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon’s mockery of the German […]
The post “…The Parts That Were Left out of the Ken Burns Documentary”: Tom Surgal on the “Historical Corrective” That is His Free Jazz Documentary, Fire Music first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.
The post “…The Parts That Were Left out of the Ken Burns Documentary”: Tom Surgal on the “Historical Corrective” That is His Free Jazz Documentary, Fire Music first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.
- 9/10/2021
- by Steve Dollar
- Filmmaker Magazine-Director Interviews
At his leisure, the musician Mavi plays with space and time. The 21-year-old rapper from Charlotte, North Carolina sees storytelling as a way to speak his truth while he’s alive. His latest EP End of the Earth was released to critical praise and marked a significant step towards what could be a major sophomore album from the rising star. The EP’s cover art takes after Shel Silverstein’s Where The Sidewalk Ends, and the metaphor tracks. End of the Earth features Mavi’s sharpest lyrical skill melded seamlessly with shapeshifting lo-fi sonics.
- 6/11/2021
- by Clarissa Brooks
- Rollingstone.com
It is remarkable how few people know that the same person produced Bob Dylan’s three defining early albums (as well as “Like a Rolling Stone”), the first two Velvet Underground albums, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention’s debut “Freak Out” and pivotal music by jazz legends Sun Ra and Cecil Taylor (including tracks with John Coltrane), among many others.
It was Tom Wilson, a visionary music producer who died in 1978 at the age of 47.
He was even the man who in 1965 overdubbed a folk-rock backing onto a song he’d recorded the previous year by an acoustic duo who had already split up and were living on different continents — that would be Simon & Garfunkel — resulting in the smash hit that ignited their career, “Sounds of Silence” (the duo quickly reunited and hastily recorded a new album). He also produced key songs by the Animals (the classic “Don’t Bring Me Down”), Nico,...
It was Tom Wilson, a visionary music producer who died in 1978 at the age of 47.
He was even the man who in 1965 overdubbed a folk-rock backing onto a song he’d recorded the previous year by an acoustic duo who had already split up and were living on different continents — that would be Simon & Garfunkel — resulting in the smash hit that ignited their career, “Sounds of Silence” (the duo quickly reunited and hastily recorded a new album). He also produced key songs by the Animals (the classic “Don’t Bring Me Down”), Nico,...
- 6/10/2021
- by Jem Aswad
- Variety Film + TV
The Residents will debut a special new performance, Duck Stab! Alive!, to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the long-running alternative variety/music show, Night Flight. The performance will air June 5th on the Night Flight Plus app.
Duck Stab! Alive! is described in a release as a “contemporary ‘live-in-the-studio’ re-imagining” of the Residents’ 1978 album, Duck Stab! The performance was directed by video artist John Sanborn, who has regularly collaborated with the Residents since the Nineties.
Along with showing Duck Stab! Alive! the 40th-anniversary Night Flight special will include a marathon...
Duck Stab! Alive! is described in a release as a “contemporary ‘live-in-the-studio’ re-imagining” of the Residents’ 1978 album, Duck Stab! The performance was directed by video artist John Sanborn, who has regularly collaborated with the Residents since the Nineties.
Along with showing Duck Stab! Alive! the 40th-anniversary Night Flight special will include a marathon...
- 5/10/2021
- by Jon Blistein
- Rollingstone.com
In The Forty-Year-Old Version, first-time filmmaker Radha Blank (who also wrote and stars in the movie) plays a fictionalized version of herself. A satire of “the theater world, middle age, New York, the racial and gendered expectations of commercial art,” as K. Austin Collins detailed in his review, the beautiful black-and-white film stands as a celebration of New York City’s diverse communities and cultures.
In a new featurette video, Blank shares more of her inspirations, plus candid conversations with contributing musicians — Khrysis, Mickey Factz, Babs Bunny, Courtney Bryan, Styles P...
In a new featurette video, Blank shares more of her inspirations, plus candid conversations with contributing musicians — Khrysis, Mickey Factz, Babs Bunny, Courtney Bryan, Styles P...
- 12/9/2020
- by RS Editors
- Rollingstone.com
Last summer, Liza Richardson read the script for the first episode of Lovecraft Country, and she tried to wrap her head around how she might choose music for the show.
“I could tell how unique it was,” the veteran music supervisor says. The series, which is set in 1955, stars Jonathan Majors as Atticus Freeman. In the first episode, he — along with Uncle George (Courtney B. Vance) and his childhood friend Leti (Jurnee Smollett) — takes a journey across Jim Crow America in search of his father, uncovering monsters both fictional and very real.
“I could tell how unique it was,” the veteran music supervisor says. The series, which is set in 1955, stars Jonathan Majors as Atticus Freeman. In the first episode, he — along with Uncle George (Courtney B. Vance) and his childhood friend Leti (Jurnee Smollett) — takes a journey across Jim Crow America in search of his father, uncovering monsters both fictional and very real.
- 9/19/2020
- by Patrick Doyle
- Rollingstone.com
Kesha had just finished previewing her new album, Rainbow, for industry types at a Los Angeles recording studio three years ago when she encountered a stout, bearded guy with a “friendly, happy” vibe in the hallway. “You must be an artist,” he said, referring to her bright-red Nudie suit festooned with images of sea creatures.
She didn’t know who he was — and, it turned out, he didn’t recognize her either — but she soon learned he was a producer named Hal Willner, and he immediately recognized her name when she introduced herself.
She didn’t know who he was — and, it turned out, he didn’t recognize her either — but she soon learned he was a producer named Hal Willner, and he immediately recognized her name when she introduced herself.
- 9/2/2020
- by David Browne
- Rollingstone.com
Summer’s canceled, so kick back with the latest batch of sizzling cinematic oddities, delivered to your door! July’s twenty four new releases celebrate Sun Ra, Roberta Findlay, John Saxon, Adam Ant, Ray Lovelock and Gloria Guida! Cool off with a wild wet T-shirt contest, then contort with your new Russian yoga instructors! Also, cash in …
The post Skate, Surf, Wet T-Shirts and Bloody Mini Skirts. New Summer Doubles from Frolic Pictures are here! appeared first on Hnn | Horrornews.net.
The post Skate, Surf, Wet T-Shirts and Bloody Mini Skirts. New Summer Doubles from Frolic Pictures are here! appeared first on Hnn | Horrornews.net.
- 8/6/2020
- by Adrian Halen
- Horror News
The Sun Ra Arkestra will revisit some of the late jazz legend’s classic compositions on the outfit’s new album Swirling, their first studio LP in over 20 years.
Under the direction of bandleader Marshall Allen, the Arkestra convened in Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Soundworks to record new arrangements for Sun Ra standards like “Satellites Are Spinning,” “Door of the Cosmos,” “Rocket No. 9” and “Angels and Demons at Play,” which the Arkestra shared to preview the album.
Swirling, due out October 9th via Strut Records, also features the first-ever recording of...
Under the direction of bandleader Marshall Allen, the Arkestra convened in Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Soundworks to record new arrangements for Sun Ra standards like “Satellites Are Spinning,” “Door of the Cosmos,” “Rocket No. 9” and “Angels and Demons at Play,” which the Arkestra shared to preview the album.
Swirling, due out October 9th via Strut Records, also features the first-ever recording of...
- 7/16/2020
- by Daniel Kreps
- Rollingstone.com
Sun Ra Arkestra, the pioneering jazz collective founded by the late Sun Ra, have announced their first studio album in over 20 years — since 1999’s Song for the Sun.
The LP, whose title has yet to be announced, was recorded at Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Soundworks and will be released later this year on Strut Records.
On Tuesday, Sun Ra Arkestra shared the first taste of the new album, “Seductive Fantasy,” a fresh take on a composition originally recorded for 1979’s On Jupiter. The single comes with an abstract animated music video...
The LP, whose title has yet to be announced, was recorded at Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Soundworks and will be released later this year on Strut Records.
On Tuesday, Sun Ra Arkestra shared the first taste of the new album, “Seductive Fantasy,” a fresh take on a composition originally recorded for 1979’s On Jupiter. The single comes with an abstract animated music video...
- 6/23/2020
- by Claire Shaffer
- Rollingstone.com
Hal Willner wasn’t known for playing music himself. But the producer, who died Monday at 64, had a unique gift for making music happen. Through his marvelously eclectic tribute albums — which featured everything from Tom Waits yowling out Snow White’s “Heigh Ho (The Dwarf’s Marching Song)” to Debbie Harry singing a wordless tune from Fellini’s La Dolce Vita and Chuck D declaiming passages from Charles Mingus’ autobiography — he turned countless sonic what-ifs into reality. As he once put it, through his curation he was “trying to to...
- 4/7/2020
- by Hank Shteamer
- Rollingstone.com
Hal Willner, a music producer and longtime sketch songwriter for “Saturday Night Live,” has died at the age of 64, TheWrap has confirmed.
Willner died Tuesday of an illness, according to a representative. No cause of death has been determined, though Willner’s symptoms were consistent with Covid-19.
Willner served as the sketch music producer for “SNL” for nearly two decades, first joining the NBC program in 1981. His Twitter bio poked fun at how long he’d been with the show, describing him as “so-called Music Producer & Saturday Night Live sketch music guy since Raging Bull debuted, Another One Bites the Dust a hit & Kim Kardashian was born. Oy Vey.”
Willner also served as the music coordinator on Lorne Michaels’ short-lived “Sunday Night” musical variety program on NBC. The music-centric program, hosted by Jools Holland and David Sanborn, ran for two...
Willner died Tuesday of an illness, according to a representative. No cause of death has been determined, though Willner’s symptoms were consistent with Covid-19.
Willner served as the sketch music producer for “SNL” for nearly two decades, first joining the NBC program in 1981. His Twitter bio poked fun at how long he’d been with the show, describing him as “so-called Music Producer & Saturday Night Live sketch music guy since Raging Bull debuted, Another One Bites the Dust a hit & Kim Kardashian was born. Oy Vey.”
Willner also served as the music coordinator on Lorne Michaels’ short-lived “Sunday Night” musical variety program on NBC. The music-centric program, hosted by Jools Holland and David Sanborn, ran for two...
- 4/7/2020
- by Reid Nakamura
- The Wrap
Had he lived long enough, Sun Ra, a man equally invested in preserving history and welcoming the future, just might have been a Bandcamp fan. At this point, more than 100 albums by the late keyboardist-composer, Afrofuturist icon, and April 1969 Rolling Stone cover star can be found on the service, many in expanded and remastered versions. Reissues from the Evidence label and Atavistic’s Unheard Music Series helped to keep Sun Ra’s music circulating in the Nineties and early 2000s, but never before has so much of his work been...
- 1/3/2020
- by Hank Shteamer
- Rollingstone.com
Unless you’re a hardcore jazz aficionado, you might not know the name Horace Tapscott. But to several generations of L.A. musicians — including breakout saxophone star Kamasi Washington — the late pianist and composer is a near-legendary figure.
“I grew up in Leimert Park and his footprint is all over that area,” Washington said in 2015 of Tapscott’s importance to his South L.A. neighborhood. “We all learned his music and his philosophies from the elders who played with him that are still with us. Horace is one of the...
“I grew up in Leimert Park and his footprint is all over that area,” Washington said in 2015 of Tapscott’s importance to his South L.A. neighborhood. “We all learned his music and his philosophies from the elders who played with him that are still with us. Horace is one of the...
- 5/31/2019
- by Hank Shteamer
- Rollingstone.com
In a recent interview with Qwest, Chicago jazz artist Angel Bat Dawid discussed the importance of cultivating a tight bond with her bandmates. “We went grocery shopping and sat down and had a meal together like a real family,” the multi-instrumentalist and composer explained of her group’s recent trip to New York’s Winter Jazzfest. “The way we cook together is the way we play together, like everyone is trying to make the other person sound good.”
That sensitivity and compassion also pervade Dawid’s new album, The Oracle,...
That sensitivity and compassion also pervade Dawid’s new album, The Oracle,...
- 2/10/2019
- by Hank Shteamer
- Rollingstone.com
For some, Ken Burns’ 2001 PBS series Jazz was a definitive, open-and-shut take on its subject, as comprehensive a portrait of the genre as one could hope for. For others, the series was a major slight. As Tom Surgal, director of the new doc Fire Music put it in a 2015 interview, Burns’ 10-part program “really got into pretty thoroughly depicting the entire history of the jazz continuum and virtually ignored free jazz altogether.”
Fire Music, which screens Monday night at the New York Film Festival, is his feature-length corrective. Whether you...
Fire Music, which screens Monday night at the New York Film Festival, is his feature-length corrective. Whether you...
- 10/1/2018
- by Hank Shteamer
- Rollingstone.com
Attendees of the 39th annual Montreal International Jazz Festival likely all had a familiar refrain in mind: the heat is on. The fest, which runs June 28 to July 7, faced summer temperatures well into the 90s this week, but jazz fanatics, party people, families and tourists alike are braving the weather to enjoy a wide range of musical entertainment and outdoor spectacles.
High profile performers like Ry Cooder, Seal, Snarky Puppy and saxophone sensation Kamasi Washington brought their big stage shows to appreciative audiences, along with veteran jazz stalwarts like Archie Shepp and guitarist Al Di Meola. Performing American rockers like George Thorogood, Ben Harper and the jam-friendly Bela Fleck and the Flecktones were all honored with great hospitality and presented with official festival awards.
Singer/guitarist Ry Cooder appeared at the Théâtre Maisonneuve on Friday night, showcasing his unique spin on American roots music and playing the blues with style and grace.
High profile performers like Ry Cooder, Seal, Snarky Puppy and saxophone sensation Kamasi Washington brought their big stage shows to appreciative audiences, along with veteran jazz stalwarts like Archie Shepp and guitarist Al Di Meola. Performing American rockers like George Thorogood, Ben Harper and the jam-friendly Bela Fleck and the Flecktones were all honored with great hospitality and presented with official festival awards.
Singer/guitarist Ry Cooder appeared at the Théâtre Maisonneuve on Friday night, showcasing his unique spin on American roots music and playing the blues with style and grace.
- 7/1/2018
- by Mitch Myers
- Variety Film + TV
Michael Cosmic: Peace in the World / Phill Musra Group: Creator Spaces (Now-Again)
For fans of avant-garde jazz who like to dive deep into the music's history, this combination of two rarities is the reissue of the year. Michael Cosmic and Phill Musra are twins who were born, respectively, Thomas Michael Cooper and Phillip Anthony Alfred Cooper in Chicago in 1950. Falling under the influence of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians after being recruited as teens by Aacm member Roscoe Mitchell, they studied with Mitchell, Anthony Braxton, and Aacm founder Muhal Richard Abrams. A year at the University of Wisconsin (1970-71) gave them the opportunity to take Cecil Taylor's class, after which they moved to Boston along with fellow student Jemeel Moondoc.
Boston in the early '70s was a hotbed of avant jazz, and associate producer Clifford Allen's detailed liner notes say the brothers got to play...
For fans of avant-garde jazz who like to dive deep into the music's history, this combination of two rarities is the reissue of the year. Michael Cosmic and Phill Musra are twins who were born, respectively, Thomas Michael Cooper and Phillip Anthony Alfred Cooper in Chicago in 1950. Falling under the influence of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians after being recruited as teens by Aacm member Roscoe Mitchell, they studied with Mitchell, Anthony Braxton, and Aacm founder Muhal Richard Abrams. A year at the University of Wisconsin (1970-71) gave them the opportunity to take Cecil Taylor's class, after which they moved to Boston along with fellow student Jemeel Moondoc.
Boston in the early '70s was a hotbed of avant jazz, and associate producer Clifford Allen's detailed liner notes say the brothers got to play...
- 12/13/2017
- by SteveHoltje
- www.culturecatch.com
Dani Leventhal's PlatonicThis review, I think, might best be understood as an example of “slow criticism.” This is a term coined by Filmkrant editor Dana Linssen to describe “wayward articles,” ones that have a personal or political element that is somehow not timely. We can imagine that the reverse of this is “fast criticism,” the up-to-the-minute report from a film festival, the 140-character response tweeted out the minute the first press screening is over. These thoughts are not timely. The Whitney Biennial closed on June 11th, and the film program screened its final program on May 21st. So although I expect many of these films to have a life long after their appearance at the Whitney, I am not providing any kind of late-breaking news flash from the film or art world by writing about these works in this forum.But in a way, that is the point. Even...
- 8/1/2017
- MUBI
Every week, IndieWire asks a select handful of film and TV critics two questions and publishes the results on Monday. (The answer to the second, “What is the best film in theaters right now?”, can be found at the end of this post.)
This week’s question: Apropos of absolutely nothing (and definitely not in response to a certain world leader taking disastrous steps towards dooming the environment of the only inhabitable planet we have), what is the best film about the end of the world?
Erin Whitney (@Cinemabite), ScreenCrush
It’s a hard tie between “Melancholia” and “Take Shelter.” One is a devastating meditation on depression, isolation and death, and the other is a dramatic masterpiece that evokes the dread and anxiety of a looming end. They’re very different films (and coincidentally opened within months of each other), but both end on final shots that left me breathless.
This week’s question: Apropos of absolutely nothing (and definitely not in response to a certain world leader taking disastrous steps towards dooming the environment of the only inhabitable planet we have), what is the best film about the end of the world?
Erin Whitney (@Cinemabite), ScreenCrush
It’s a hard tie between “Melancholia” and “Take Shelter.” One is a devastating meditation on depression, isolation and death, and the other is a dramatic masterpiece that evokes the dread and anxiety of a looming end. They’re very different films (and coincidentally opened within months of each other), but both end on final shots that left me breathless.
- 6/5/2017
- by David Ehrlich
- Indiewire
Ben Wheatley’s thriller about a protracted gun battle, starring Brie Larson and Cillian Murphy, has no plot – but it’s smart, stylish and dazzlingly put together
The restlessly inventive director Ben Wheatley gives us the crime-thriller equivalent of a violently atonal jazz suite lasting an hour and a half, like a Sam Peckinpah movie storyboarded by Ornette Coleman and Sun Ra. Gunshots here are as frequent, numerous and noisy as an avant garde drumroll. The film turns out to be plotless, formless, shapeless, McGuffinless, directionless and ruthless, but it is dazzlingly well put together, with some lethal zingers amid the gunfire and a droll use of John Denver on the soundtrack – alluding subtextually, I suspect, to the urban myth about Denver’s war service in Vietnam.
It’s supremely stylish and smart, and the melee becomes so disorientating that you forget, almost, that the whole thing is taking place in just the one place.
The restlessly inventive director Ben Wheatley gives us the crime-thriller equivalent of a violently atonal jazz suite lasting an hour and a half, like a Sam Peckinpah movie storyboarded by Ornette Coleman and Sun Ra. Gunshots here are as frequent, numerous and noisy as an avant garde drumroll. The film turns out to be plotless, formless, shapeless, McGuffinless, directionless and ruthless, but it is dazzlingly well put together, with some lethal zingers amid the gunfire and a droll use of John Denver on the soundtrack – alluding subtextually, I suspect, to the urban myth about Denver’s war service in Vietnam.
It’s supremely stylish and smart, and the melee becomes so disorientating that you forget, almost, that the whole thing is taking place in just the one place.
- 3/30/2017
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
Mubi is exclusively showing Joel Wanek's Sun Song (2013) from November 21 - December 20, 2016 in the United States.How do you know I'm real? I'm not real. I'm just like you. You don't exist in this society. If you did people wouldn't be seeking equal rights. You're not real. If you were you'd have some status among the nations of the world. So we're both myths. I do not come to you as a reality, I come to you as a myth because that is what black people are: myths. I came from a dream that the black man dreamed long ago. I’m actually a present sent to you by your ancestors. I’m going to be here until I pick out some of you to take back with me.—Sun RaSun Song is my love letter to the mystic/musician/philosopher Sun Ra. The film takes it's title from...
- 11/29/2016
- MUBI
Kendrick Lamar is very likely going to win some Grammys this year. That's a good thing, because Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly deserves every piece of praise it earned last year. It's a rich, challenging work that marries jazz, hip-hop and funk to Lamar's dense, knotty and socially conscious rhymes. Any wins for Lamar and Butterfly are net gains for music. At least one of those wins, however, would also be a win for George Clinton, founding member of Parliament, Funkadelic and one of the chief architects of funk music and by extension, hip-hop. Clinton is nominated as part of...
- 2/11/2016
- by Alex Heigl, @alex_heigl
- PEOPLE.com
If you check the television landscape for prime-time science fiction programs, you will see black characters, some with well-rounded personalities and even complex story lines. But rarely does a sci-fi TV show/film deal in themes and issues that have a direct effect on people of African descent, with a cast of black characters from various economic/social classes. Except for "Brother From Another Planet" (1984), "Meteor Man" (1993),and "Space Is the Place" (1974, starring the late jazz composure/musician Sun Ra), I can't recall any others. "Tales From The Hood" (1995) could be forced into this group, but I feel that it's more along the lines of...
- 10/20/2015
- by Kai Arnold
- ShadowAndAct
The term ‘Afrofuturism*’ was coined by an American writer, Mark Dery, in 1994, and many of the key artists and theorists associated with the movement — Sun Ra, George Clinton, Janelle Monae, Flying Lotus, Greg Tate, Octavia Butler, Samuel R. Delany, Alondra Nelson, the list goes on — are/were American. But is it solely an American deal? In curating the film program ‘Space is the Place: Afrofuturism on Film’ at Brooklyn’s BAMcinématek, I wanted to highlight that the movement also has a distinct international, pan-African reach.** I included Wanuri Kahiu’s superb “Pumzi”, which is Kenya’s first science fiction film. “Afronauts” by Frances Bodomo — who grew up in Ghana (and Norway,...
- 4/11/2015
- by Ashley Clark
- ShadowAndAct
Ashley Clark, who's curated Space Is the Place: Afrofuturism on Film, the series that opened at New York's BAMcinématek yesterday and runs through April 15, picks out a few highlights for the Guardian, including John Coney's Space Is the Place with Sun Ra, Ngozi Onwurah's Welcome II the Terrordome, John Akomfrah's The Last Angel of History and Terence Nance's An Oversimplification of Her Beauty. Also, more on Walerian Borowczyk, an overview of the career of producer and director James B. Harris, a major Frederick Wiseman retrospective in Chicago, noir westerns such as Robert Wise's Blood on the Moon and Budd Boetticher's The Tall T in San Francisco and films by Gregory J. Markopoulos in Los Angeles. » - David Hudson...
- 4/4/2015
- Fandor: Keyframe
Ashley Clark, who's curated Space Is the Place: Afrofuturism on Film, the series that opened at New York's BAMcinématek yesterday and runs through April 15, picks out a few highlights for the Guardian, including John Coney's Space Is the Place with Sun Ra, Ngozi Onwurah's Welcome II the Terrordome, John Akomfrah's The Last Angel of History and Terence Nance's An Oversimplification of Her Beauty. Also, more on Walerian Borowczyk, an overview of the career of producer and director James B. Harris, a major Frederick Wiseman retrospective in Chicago, noir westerns such as Robert Wise's Blood on the Moon and Budd Boetticher's The Tall T in San Francisco and films by Gregory J. Markopoulos in Los Angeles. » - David Hudson...
- 4/4/2015
- Keyframe
Austin - “People write me letters all the time. I do my best to answer but they think we’re pen pals.” Henry Rollins has a lot to do, y’all, which sometimes makes him "crotchety." The former Black Flag and Rollins Band singer continues to tour with his spoken word material. He has a column in the L.A. Weekly and Rolling Stone Australia, plus his Kcrw radio show and the Henry & Heidi podcast. He’s dropped by for acting cameos on “The Kroll Show,” "RuPaul's Drag Race" and “Adventure Time,” had recurring roles on “The Legend of Korra” and “Sons of Anarchy” and is still out working for his next acting gig. He’s an activist and author and he’s got a three story building just to house all the records he owns. He mostly listens to them all, too. He just probably doesn’t have time...
- 3/27/2015
- by Katie Hasty
- Hitfix
Damon Locks is a visual artist and musician based out of Chicago. Throughout his career he has consistently found exciting and original ways in which to incorporate both visual and audio elements into his work, to collaborate, and to find a range of communities and venues within which to work. In two recent projects, New Moons for the Experimental Sound Studio and Freedom/Time, Locks uses animation to address unheard music from the Sun Ra archive and to work with inmates at Stateville Correctional Center, respectively. I sat down with Locks to talk about both projects. Filmmaker: I want to talk […]...
- 12/1/2014
- by Alix Lambert
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
Damon Locks is a visual artist and musician based out of Chicago. Throughout his career he has consistently found exciting and original ways in which to incorporate both visual and audio elements into his work, to collaborate, and to find a range of communities and venues within which to work. In two recent projects, New Moons for the Experimental Sound Studio and Freedom/Time, Locks uses animation to address unheard music from the Sun Ra archive and to work with inmates at Stateville Correctional Center, respectively. I sat down with Locks to talk about both projects. Filmmaker: I want to talk […]...
- 12/1/2014
- by Alix Lambert
- Filmmaker Magazine-Director Interviews
Yusef Lateef, who died on Monday after a bout with prostate cancer, was a devout Muslim who did not like his music to be called jazz because of the supposed indecent origins and connotations of the word (although those origins are still debated). He preferred the self-coined phrase "autophysiopsychic music." Furthermore, his music encompassed an impressively broad range of styles, and the only Grammy he won was in the New Age category -- for a recording of a symphony. Think about those things amid the flood of Lateef obituaries with "jazz" in the headline.
That said, certainly Lateef's own musical origins indisputably revolved around jazz. Growing up in Detroit, a highly fertile musical environment in the 1930s and beyond, Lateef got his first instrument, an $80 Martin alto sax, at age 18. Within a year he was on the road with the 13 Spirits of Swing (arrangements by Milt Buckner).
A Detroit friend,...
That said, certainly Lateef's own musical origins indisputably revolved around jazz. Growing up in Detroit, a highly fertile musical environment in the 1930s and beyond, Lateef got his first instrument, an $80 Martin alto sax, at age 18. Within a year he was on the road with the 13 Spirits of Swing (arrangements by Milt Buckner).
A Detroit friend,...
- 12/25/2013
- by SteveHoltje
- www.culturecatch.com
It's the 90 minutes of television we've been waiting for all day long -- "Lady Gaga and the Muppets' Holiday Spectacular." This is going to possibly be the best thing TV has ever known.
In addition to Lady Gaga, the special is welcoming guests Sir Elton John, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, RuPaul and Kristen Bell. It's going to be amazing. So join us here starting at 9:30 p.m. Et for a live blog -- all the sketches, songs and GIFs. We can hardly wait.
All times Eastern.
9:30 -- It's here! Pepe the prawn is welcoming us to "Pepe's Holiday on Shaved Ice Television Spectacular." We would totally watch that.
9:33 -- The opening number is Rocket Number Nine Take off for the Planet Venus by Sun Ra, which ... if we had had to guess the opening song for this, we literally never would've guessed that song if we had until the end of time.
In addition to Lady Gaga, the special is welcoming guests Sir Elton John, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, RuPaul and Kristen Bell. It's going to be amazing. So join us here starting at 9:30 p.m. Et for a live blog -- all the sketches, songs and GIFs. We can hardly wait.
All times Eastern.
9:30 -- It's here! Pepe the prawn is welcoming us to "Pepe's Holiday on Shaved Ice Television Spectacular." We would totally watch that.
9:33 -- The opening number is Rocket Number Nine Take off for the Planet Venus by Sun Ra, which ... if we had had to guess the opening song for this, we literally never would've guessed that song if we had until the end of time.
- 11/29/2013
- by editorial@zap2it.com
- Zap2It - From Inside the Box
Whatever you think of Janelle Monáe as a singer, songwriter, and performer, this much is undeniable: She is an excellent concept. She’s a 27-year-old artsy-fartsy feminist Afro-futurist who has brought Cab Calloway’s saddle shoes, Little Richard’s pompadour, and James Brown’s dance moves back into popular culture. She makes extravagant sci-fi-themed albums that toss together hip-hop and psychedelic soul and R&B and funk and jump-blues and spaghetti-Western soundtrack music and cocktail jazz, among many other styles. There are few performers in current pop whose songs take in so much history, slapping together unexpected musical juxtapositions and flavor combinations. Listening to Monáe’s new record, The Electric Lady, I kept jotting down names: not just Calloway and Richard and Brown, but also Outkast (Big Boi is one of the album’s executive producers); Prince, who duets on one song; Parliament-Funkadelic, Sun Ra, and David Bowie, Monáe’s...
- 9/5/2013
- by Jody Rosen
- Vulture
Reuben Atlas previously worked at Legal Aid, a maximum security prison, and as an entertainment lawyer before he started making films. This year he brings "Brothers Hypnotic" to the festival. What it's about: Eight brothers, extraordinary musicians from Chicago’s roughest neighborhood, seek to uphold the legacy of their anti-establishment, jazz legend father in the face of worldwide success. On the challenges: "Balancing the number of characters. Telling a story about eight brothers is tough enough, but adding to the mix their father, whose history is the history of Chicago music, and their super-dynamic mothers, was a big challenge. When celebrities like Prince, Mos Def, Damon Albarn (Blur, Gorillaz), and Sun Ra showed up in the story, we had to make them footnotes!" What's next: "I'm directing with Sam Pollard a Sundance Institute and Ida supported documentary about the community-organizing group, Acorn, and finishing a short documentary about Karim...
- 6/11/2013
- by Indiewire
- Indiewire
The 12th and last in the series of the Chicago screenings of the L.A. Rebellion touring film series, will take place this Friday June 7, with a screening of a newly restored print of filmmaker Larry Clark’s seminal 1977 feature film, Passing Through.The film deals with a jazz musician, recently released from prison and refusing to play for the powers that be, who control the music industry. Looking for inspiration and a sense of purpose he searches for his musical mentor, Poppy Harris (played by Clarence Muse). The film is a fusion of fiction documentary and concert film with a brilliant score featuring the music of Charlie Parker, John Coltrane and Sun Ra and was called by...
- 6/4/2013
- by Sergio
- ShadowAndAct
He's a New York City legend, at least among some of us: A small African-American man on the subway who announces that he's an alien who needs money to repair his broken-down spaceship so he can return to his home planet, who then plays screaming avant-garde jazz alto saxophone until people donate. Sometimes he's dressed in a flamboyant outfit, complete with cape, that makes him look fresh out of the Sun Ra Arkestra; sometimes he makes do with a pair of antennae wobbling on his head.
Not everybody likes screaming avant-garde jazz alto saxophone, sadly, but the thing is, the guy's actually good at it, and he's been doing it for decades. One time, post-midnight on the 1 train, I saw him get a standing ovation. On the other hand, for a while in the late '90s he was playing a smashed/crushed alto and said he'd been beat up; then,...
Not everybody likes screaming avant-garde jazz alto saxophone, sadly, but the thing is, the guy's actually good at it, and he's been doing it for decades. One time, post-midnight on the 1 train, I saw him get a standing ovation. On the other hand, for a while in the late '90s he was playing a smashed/crushed alto and said he'd been beat up; then,...
- 4/5/2013
- by SteveHoltje
- www.culturecatch.com
American composer who created 'conduction', a fusion of conducting and improvisation
The globetrotting projects of the American composer Lawrence "Butch" Morris, who has died of cancer aged 65, drew on the talents of players from many backgrounds, including Us and European jazz, Turkish sufi music, Japanese kabuki theatre, and classical music, dance and poetry. Morris described his approach as "an improvised duet for ensemble and conductor". Although he steered these encounters with a baton, his sign language was a homegrown technique he dubbed "conduction" – the definition of which has variously been given as a fusion of conducting and improvisation, and of combustion, ignition and propulsion. Morris staged more than 150 conductions (most of them simply entitled by their number in the sequence) in more than 20 countries in as many years.
His methods were a hybrid of conducting gestures borrowed from Horace Tapscott, Charles Moffett, Sun Ra, Lukas Foss and the electronics and computer composer Larry Austin.
The globetrotting projects of the American composer Lawrence "Butch" Morris, who has died of cancer aged 65, drew on the talents of players from many backgrounds, including Us and European jazz, Turkish sufi music, Japanese kabuki theatre, and classical music, dance and poetry. Morris described his approach as "an improvised duet for ensemble and conductor". Although he steered these encounters with a baton, his sign language was a homegrown technique he dubbed "conduction" – the definition of which has variously been given as a fusion of conducting and improvisation, and of combustion, ignition and propulsion. Morris staged more than 150 conductions (most of them simply entitled by their number in the sequence) in more than 20 countries in as many years.
His methods were a hybrid of conducting gestures borrowed from Horace Tapscott, Charles Moffett, Sun Ra, Lukas Foss and the electronics and computer composer Larry Austin.
- 2/4/2013
- by John Fordham
- The Guardian - Film News
Written and directed by Martin Guigui, award-winning filmmaker who has helmed several shorts and films, along with music themed documentaries about Dizzy Gillespie, Lionel Hampton and Sun Ra's, the long-in-gestation screen biopic titled Sweetwater seems to be moving full speed ahead. A Sunset Pictures and Main Street Films production partnership, Sweetwater is set in the fall of 1950, during the time "the game of basketball changed forever when Nat "Sweetwater" Clifton entered the NBA. The first African American to play in the NBA." According to Guigui, who confirmed Wood Harris' starring turn as basketball icon Nat "Sweetwater" Clifton...
- 1/4/2013
- by Vanessa Martinez
- ShadowAndAct
Marzette Watts: Marzette Watts & Company (Esp-Disk')
In the brief period when I did a little work for Esp-Disk', this was the album the most people (especially record store owners and musicians) enthusiastically nominated for reissue. And now, here it is!
This album is distinguished by a number of factors, not least the fact that this is its first issue on CD in the U.S. (a few European reissues are in inferior sound). Recorded on December 8, 1966, it was Watts's first session as a leader (though, not released until 1971, it was his second album to appear, following a now-rare Savoy LP). Watts (1938-1998) never made any more albums after those two, alas, nor did he record as a sideman, though he appears in the credits on some albums from the free jazz scene as the engineer.
Watts is heard here on tenor and soprano saxophones and on bass clarinet; Byard Lancaster (b.
In the brief period when I did a little work for Esp-Disk', this was the album the most people (especially record store owners and musicians) enthusiastically nominated for reissue. And now, here it is!
This album is distinguished by a number of factors, not least the fact that this is its first issue on CD in the U.S. (a few European reissues are in inferior sound). Recorded on December 8, 1966, it was Watts's first session as a leader (though, not released until 1971, it was his second album to appear, following a now-rare Savoy LP). Watts (1938-1998) never made any more albums after those two, alas, nor did he record as a sideman, though he appears in the credits on some albums from the free jazz scene as the engineer.
Watts is heard here on tenor and soprano saxophones and on bass clarinet; Byard Lancaster (b.
- 7/12/2012
- by SteveHoltje
- www.culturecatch.com
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