Mar 30, 2026 10:30 PM
Flea Finds His Jazz Thing
In the relatively small pantheon of certifiable rock stars venturing into the intersection of pop music and jazz, the…
On Feb. 26, two new ECM albums are set to hit the street: John Abercrombie’s Cat ‘N’ Mouse and Invisible Nature: Live In Tampere And Berlin by John Surman and Jack DeJohnette.
Cat ‘N’ Mouse features Abercrombie on guitar, Mark Feldman on violin, Marc Johnson on bass and Joey Baron on drums. Feldman had previously worked with Abercrombie, and the idea for the new ensemble, recorded in December 2000 in New York, was to “continue the relationship with Feldman and develop a music that was still more open-sounding,” Abercrombie said. Keyboards were abandoned for the recording, with an emphasis placed on strings.
Invisible Nature was recorded live at the Berlin Jazz Festival and the Tampere Jazz Happening in November 2000. It’s the follow-up to The Amazing Adventures Of Simon Simon, the 1981 debut by the Surman-DeJohnette duo. The musical relationship between the two men goes back further, however. In 1968, when DeJohnette was in London with the Bill Evans Trio at Ronnie Scott’s Club, he took time out to improvise with local musicians. “Jack instigated a jam session series in the afternoon, and the word got out,” Surman said. “So I was there, along with John McLaughlin, Dave Holland and Tony Oxley.”
“Cerebral and academic thought is a different way to approach music,” Flea says of his continuing dive into jazz. “I’ve always relied on emotion and intuition and physicality.”
Mar 30, 2026 10:30 PM
In the relatively small pantheon of certifiable rock stars venturing into the intersection of pop music and jazz, the…
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