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…
Bassist Nick Dunston is set to issue his debut as a leader, Atlantic Extraction, Nov. 1 through Out of Your Head Records.
(Photo: Gaya Feldheim-Schorr)Bassist Nick Dunston’s name just keeps cropping up.
If you didn’t catch him on Amirtha Kidambi’s release with Elder Ones, From Untruth, keep an eye out for the upcoming Dave Douglas recording, Engage, with his contributions.
The bassist, though, also is an ambitious bandleader and composer who’s writing can make his quintet sound like a massive ensemble, flits among dense and aggressive pieces (“Tattle Snake”), and breathy, spacious snatches of calm (“A Rolling Wave Of Nothing”) on his upcoming debut, Atlantic Extraction, due out Nov. 1. For “S.S. Nemesis,” an avant-leaning cut off that album premiering below, he reaches back through history to reassess the melody of a Stephen Foster work.
“I want to also think about the other definition of ‘extraction.’ ‘Oh! Susanna’ is a minstrel song, and the tradition of appropriating historical artifacts (sometimes racist ones), as a means of subverting, creating and thriving is something that Afrodiasporic people are all too familiar with,” Dunston wrote in an email. “All of this stems from a fundamental goal of my work, which is to establish a deeper connection with my ancestry and to contribute my own narrative to the continuum of that lineage, whether it be biological, social and/or artistic. ”
For more on Dunston’s work, visit his homepage. 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…
As Ted Nash, left, departs the alto saxophone chair for LCJO, Alexa Tarantino steps in as the band’s first female full-time member.
Mar 4, 2025 1:29 PM
If only because openings for JLCO’s 15 permanent positions appear about as frequently as sub-freezing days on the…
“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…
