Jazz Archives

:::Ebba Jahn - Rising Tones Cross (1985):::
Time: 112 mins
DVD label: FilmPals DVD 01 and the film's,
www.EbbaJahn.com 
through which the DVD can be purchased or the film rented for screenings.

Eye of Sound: It may sound difficult to believe it, but most of the artists listed above were once striving for recognition in the jazz scene and fighting for sheer survival. Ebba Jahn's Rising Tone Cross captures a moment when these artists were just starting to create a "scene", when their sparkling creativity was not yet comforted by certainty and success. More interestingly, perhaps, the film deals with issues of class and race and with the differences between the social contexts of improvised music in Europe and America, challenging many assumptions about musicianship, career building, and the possibilities for an artistic livelihood. What really distinguishes this from other "jazz films", however, is the visual and narrative focus on New York as the metaphorical force behind the musician's creative burst, portraying it as a dirty, poor, rough and lively city not yet tamed by shinny images of  success and bourgeois comfort.

  

This film is a documentary composition of new jazz, New York as the city that generates it, and the musicians playing it. The thoughts of the saxophonist Charles Gayle, the bass player William Parker, and Peter Kowald from Germany accompany the film. Shot on 16 mm in the mid 80s this film remains one of a kind until today.

"Rising Tones Cross is a nostalgia piece for some, a valuable historical document for others...Many of the musicians are still active players, and unsurprisingly the film captures many who have departed firmly in their element: Charles Tyler, Don Cherry, Frank Wright, Denis Charles, Jeanne Lee, Wilber Morris, Peter Kowald...
The film is romantic. There is a certain appeal and charm to images of a dirtier and grittier New York...and the music is wonderful, compelling stuff even for people jaded about improvised music. Rising Tones Cross provides some continuity, showing how jazz survived..." Andrey Henkin

 

BOY! ARE WE HAPPY TO SEE THE RELEASE OF THIS FIRST ITEM IN TODAY'S NEWSLETTER...
Ebba Jahn's documentary of the 1984 was shot partly at the New York Vision Jazz Festival curated by William Parker and Peter Kowald. Groups and musicians on film include Don Cherry & The Sound Unity Festival Orchestra; Jemeel Moondoc Sextet; Peter Brotzmann Ensemble; Peter Kowald Quartet; Billy Bang's Forbidden Planet; Charles Tyler Quintet; Peter Kowald Trio; William Parker & Patricia Nicholson Dance; Burton; Roy Campbell Jr.; Ruediger Carl; Daniel Carter; Dennis Charles; Ellen Christi; Curtis Clark; Marilyn Crispell; Charles Gayle; Wayne Horvitz; Masahiko Kono; Jeanne Lee; Wilber Morris; Bobby Previte; Irene Schweizer; David S. Ware; Frank Wright; John ZornThe early 1980s were a period of transition for the avant-garde fringe in New York. The loft scene -the days in which Ornette Coleman's home on Prince Street and Sam River's Studio Rivbea provided workshops for experimenters to develop their art - was drawing to a close, and the arrival of the Knitting Factory and its explosive impact on the Downtown scene was still a few years away. It fell to the artists themselves to create new opportunities.
As chronicled in Ebba Jahn's 1984 documentary, Rising Tones Cross, two such motivated visionaries were bassist William Parker and dancer Patricia Nicholson. The film centers around the Sound Unity Festival, a precursor to the couples' current Lower East Side bash, the Vision Festival.
It was the German bassist Peter Kowald, on an extended sojourn in New York that included a hefty formative role in Sound Unity, who convinced Jahn to make a film about the upstart festival. "It was clear to me that I wanted to have a German protagonist and an American protagonist," Jahn says. Her friend Kowald was the German choice, naturally, but America's representative had yet to be confirmed. "Originally, I had thought of Ornette Coleman. But on the day I arrived, first thing in the morning I met Charles Gayle, the most un-famous saxophonist at that time in New York City." That meeting, combined with a chance encounter with a cameraman who was working on Shirley Clarke's Coleman documentary, Made in America, led Jahn to shift her focus "from the most famous avant-garde saxophonist to the most un-famous."
"Instead of simply a compilation of festival footage - though performances by musicians like Jemeel Moondoc, Don Cherry, and Peter Broetzmann abound in the film - Rising Tones Cross was intended to be a "tool for music education. "For many people who saw the film in Germany, it was the first time they ever heard this type of music," she says. To help facilitate this reaction, Jahn put the most difficult music at the end of the film, easing the audience into it gradually. She also included a number of scenes intended to dispel common myths about free jazz. For example when Broetzmann's strapping 11-piece ensemble - boasting a tenor phalanx comprised of the leader, Gayle, David S. Ware, and Frank Wright - seems to be blowing chaotically onstage, Jahn's camera pans across Broetzmann's diagrammatic score to reveal an extraordinary amount of careful detail, planning, and scripting - the architecture girding the maelstrom. And having overcome an initial distrust and some reluctance to take part in the film, the enigmatic Gayle is revealed to be affable, erudite, and quite well-versed in jazz-history, a far cry from his dark public persona and stage presence. "He was perceived as a philosopher in Germany," says Jahn.
" In 1984, before Tonic or CB's Lounge or even the Knitting Factory and Rudy Giuliani, New York City was a rough-and-tumble place filled with a wonderful array of musicians in a state of hyper-creativity. Some of them had come out of the loft scene of the '70s or even earlier and were reconciling all the shades of the avant garde while others were creating entirely new vocabularies still being solidified today.
German filmmaker Ebba Jahn made 'A Jazz Film' that year with interviews, musical performances and fascinating visuals of the city before it became sterilized. For the film's 20th anniversary last year, Jahn put the film onto DVD format, a nostalgia piece for some, a valuable historical document for others. Many of the musicians featured are still active players: Charles Gayle, William Parker, John Zorn, Jemeel Moondoc, Irene Schweizer, Peter Brotzmann.
And unsurprisingly, the film captures many who have departed firmly in their element: Charles Tyler, Don Cherry, Denis Charles, Peter Kowald.
The two main voices of the film are Gayle and Kowald, an American and a German playing improvised music in basements and lofts and in the Sound Unity Festival, the precursor to today's Vision Festival. The film is romantic. There is a certain appeal and charm to the images of a dirtier, grittier New York.
The scene, always the scene, seemed to be more vibrant and the musicians less weighed down. And the music is wonderful, compelling stuff even for people jaded about improvised music. Rising Tones Cross provides some continuity, showing how jazz survived when pop and rap and heavy metal began to fully take over the public consciousness." (Steve Smith, Andrey Henkin, DMG)

Credits

PETER KOWALD QUINTET
Melting - Lines - Cycle

Charles Gayle
Peter Kowald
Marilyn Crispell
Rashied Ali

PETER KOWALD TRIO
Harvest Green

Charles Gayle
Peter Kowald
John Betsch

JOHN ZORN DUO
Sunday Afternoon at Life Café

John Zorn
Wayne Horvitz

BILLY BANG`S FORBIDDEN PLANET
Music For The Love Of It

Wayne Horvitz
Billy Bang
Oscar Sanders
Kim Clarke
Bobby Previte

WILLIAM PARKER & PATRICIA NICHOLSON ENSEMBLE
A Thousand Cranes Opera

Wayne Horvitz
Ricardo Strobert
Masahiko Kono
William Parker
Denis Charles
Lisa Sokolov
Jeanne Lee
Ellen Christi
Patricia Nicholson-Parker
Maria Mitchell
Carol Penn Muhammed
Frank Boyer
Keith Dames
A.R. Penck piano

CHARLES TYLER QUINTET
Life Can Be Whatsoever

Curtis Clark
Charles Tyler
Roy Campbell jr.
Wilber Morris
John Betsch


DON CHERRY & THE SOUND UNITY FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA
Kangaroo Hoopie

Don Cherry
Peter Brötzmann
Rüdiger Carl
Daniel Carter
Ellen Christi
Felice Rosser
Peter Kowald
Wilber Morris
Denis Charles
Maria Mitchell

JEMEEL MOONDOC SEXTET
In Walked Monk

Jemeel Moondoc
Roy Campbell jr.
Rahn Burton
Ellen Christi
William Parker
Rashied Ali

IRENE SCHWEIZER DUO
For Julian Beck

Irene Schweizer
Rüdiger Carl

PETER BRÖTZMANN ENSEMBLE
Alarm

Peter Brötzmann
David S. Ware
Frank Wright
Charles Gayle
Jemeel Moondoc
Roy Campbell jr.
Masahiko Kono
Irene Schweizer
Peter Kowald
William Parker
Rashied Ali

William Parker continues to churn out CDs on a pace that might rival Steve Lacy, Satoko Fujii, or David Murray's epic proportions. While each project reaches ever higher levels, this recording from the twelfth annual Vision Festival in New York City might be close to his zenith. Three long compositions allow his some 16-piece band of horns, woodwinds, and strings to not only cut loose with potent solos as you would expect, but exist as a single crystalline entity with multiple and equal facets of ethnic, improvisational, and modern compositional forms. The music is as stunning as any Parker has devised in his career, but there are some caveats. For one, Parker plays no acoustic upright bass, leaving that to Shayne Dulberger. The oud of Brahim Frigbane and electric guitar of Joe Morris adds a lean and sparse element. But the music is generally broad ranging, expansive, and layered, thanks to the immense talents of accomplished modernists like trumpeter Lewis Barnes, alto saxophonist Rob Brown, tenor saxophonist and clarinetist Sabir Mateen, violinist Jason Kao Hwang, Jessica Pavone on the viola, and twin drummers Gerald Cleaver and Hamid Drake. Of the three long pieces, "Lights of Lake George" is a true magnum opus. A 7/8 modal bassline joins the dancing baritone of David Sewelson and Frigbane's oud, then the wordless East Indian vocals of Sangeeta Bandyopadhyay make way for string solos from the brilliant Hwang and Pavone, the burnished trumpet of Barnes, the shenai or musette of Cole and Parker, and clarinet of Mateen. The piece is not so much about improvisation as the consistent symmetry and balance from the entire band throughout weaving intricate colors. The double reeds open on the 4/4 "Neptune's Mirror," as the distinct and jangly guitar of Morris takes over, Sewelson leads horn punctuations with a cello aside by Shiau-She Yu, then cello and oud. The piece has an eerie yet earthy feel as all strings chime in, and Bandyopadhyay recites a poem of enlightenment, while reminding us of either loved or allegedly hated humans who have passed that "we can not bring them back to life." The opener "Morning Mantra" is a modal ostinato bass and drums riff with a quick guitar from Morris under long tones from the ensemble dominated by the high-pitched double reeds in a universal tonality, with Bandyopadhyay again poetically waxing on the wind, light, and life over a multilayered framework of dense tones, themes and world-wide excursions. One who listens closely, and more than once, will reap great rewards from this, another excellent document in the growing and substantive discography of the consistently forward thinking Parker.

:::Review by Michael G. Nastos:::

William Parker - Double Sunrise Over Neptune (2008)

1. Morning Mantra 15:08
2. Lights Of Lake George 27:18
3. O'Neals Bridge 0:37
4. Neptune's Mirror 22:39

Credits
Bass - Shayna Dulberger
Cello - Shiau-Shu Yu
Drums - Gerald Cleaver , Hamid Drake
Guitar, Banjo - Joe Morris
Oud - Brahim Frigbane
Reeds [Double] - Bill Cole
Reeds [Double], Performer [Doson'ngoni], Conductor, Written-by, Producer - William Parker
Saxophone [Alto] - Rob Brown
Saxophone [Baritone] - Dave Sewelson
Saxophone [Tenor], Clarinet - Sabir Mateen
Trumpet - Lewis Barnes
Viola - Jessica Pavone
Violin - Jason Kao Hwang , Mazz Swift
Voice - Sangeeta Bandyopadhyay

The Die Like a Dog Quartet came together four years after recording their first album for the 30th Total Music Meeting festival in Berlin that took place in November 1997. The sets that the quartet performed over the course of the three day festival were subsequently released by the FMP label in two volumes entitled Little Birds Have Fast Hearts. Peter Brötzmann plays tenor, of course, as well as some tarogato and clarinet, and he is joined by bassist Wiliam Parker, drummer Hamid Drake, and trumpeter Toshinori Kondo who occasionally utilizes electronic effects. On this first volume, the quartet is in it for the long run; there are just two parts, totaling over an hours' worth of music. They go long, but not without pause, for there are definite let-ups over the course of "Part 1" (which remains engaging and varied throughout its 45 minutes), and "Part 2" is a relatively low-key piece. But "calm" and "low-key" for this group are still strongly out; there is no "casual" mode, there is no collapsing into old forms, this is a work-out, and all four musicians give 100 percent as they are known to do. This is not music for people wanting to hear some nice jazz, some hum-along-able standards; this is music for listeners who want to take a journey and are willing to let this quartet steer. The Die Like a Dog Quartet is not improvising for an audience, they are improvising because. Because that is how you find music. Little Birds Have Fast Hearts, No. 1 is a great example of why that is important.

:::Review by Joslyn Layne:::

Die Like A Dog Quartet -  Little Birds Have Fast Hearts, No. 1 (1998)

1. Part 1 45:45
2. Part 2 21:59

Credits
Clarinet, Tárogató, Saxophone [Tenor], Composed By - Peter Brötzmann
Double Bass - William Parker
Drums - Hamid Drake
Trumpet, Electronics - Toshinori Kondo