Jan 21, 2025 7:54 PM
Southern California Fires Hit the Jazz Community
Roy McCurdy and his wife had just finished eating dinner and were relaxing over coffee in their Altadena home, when he…
Saxophonists Samuel Blais (left), Donny McCaslin, David Binney and Dave Liebman make up the Four Visions Saxophone Quartet, a group that can trace its lineage back to jazz and the work of classical saxophonist Marcel Mule.
(Photo: Courtesy Sunnyside)Unlike other ensembles, The Westerlies also spend considerable time workshopping their arrangements before ever performing them at shows, often waiting a year or more to debut new material. During that time, the group will work and rework an idea until they’ve collectively discovered a unique way of expressing a piece of music. “We put our brains together and really crack open each piece and rebuild it in a way that’s interesting,” Clausen said.
In 2016, the ensemble released its second album, The Westerlies (Songlines)—all clean, dynamic originals—and they have two more albums on deck for 2020. In January, the band plans to self-release its most varied album to date, Wherein Lies The Good—a jumble of tunes culled from disparate sources: a solo piano work, a 1930s vocal group and its own democratically vetted original ideas. Later next year, they’ll also unveil a recording of collaborative efforts with vocalist/composer Theo Bleckmann, Songs Of Refuge And Resistance, a dive into protest music past and present.
With these two pending albums, The Westerlies are moving in sync with their stated mission: to “amplify unheard voices, paint new sonic landscapes and cultivate a global community.” It’s a mission that group members take seriously, and one that influences the repertoire they choose, the musicians with whom they collaborate and the gigs they curate.
Sporting this forward-leaning vision, The Westerlies join a decades-long line of wind players who helped shape jazz history, each with a unique brand of genre agnosticism and freedom fighting. WSQ could share The Westerlies’ mission statement.
Liebman, however, takes a more sweeping view of jazz innovation: “That Marcel Mule. He really started something big.” DB
Gerald and John Clayton at the family home in Altadena during a photo shoot for the June 2022 cover of DownBeat. The house was lost during the Los Angeles fires.
Jan 21, 2025 7:54 PM
Roy McCurdy and his wife had just finished eating dinner and were relaxing over coffee in their Altadena home, when he…
“She said, ‘A lot of people are going to try and stop you,’” Sheryl Bailey recalls of the advice she received from jazz guitarist Emily Remler (1957–’90). “‘They’re going to say you slept with somebody, you’re a dyke, you’re this and that and the other. Don’t listen to them, and just keep playing.’”
Feb 3, 2025 10:49 PM
In the April 1982 issue of People magazine, under the heading “Lookout: A Guide To The Up and Coming,” jazz…
The Old Country: More From The Deer Head Inn arrives 30 years after ECM issued the Keith Jarret Trio live album At The Deer Head Inn.
Jan 21, 2025 7:38 PM
Last November, Keith Jarrett, who has not played publicly since suffering two strokes in 2018, greenlighted ECM to drop…
“The first recording I owned with Brazilian music on it was Wayne Shorter’s Native Dancer,” says Renee Rosnes. “And then I just started to go down the rabbit hole.”
Jan 16, 2025 2:02 PM
In her four-decade career, Renee Rosnes has been recognized as a singular voice, both as a jazz composer and a…
“If you don’t keep learning, your mind slows down,” Coleman says. “Use it or lose it.”
Jan 28, 2025 11:38 AM
PolyTropos/Of Many Turns — the title for Steve Coleman’s latest recording on Pi and his 33rd album overall —…
