Freedonia Music releases four new CDs

Freedonia Music, the St. Louis-based independent label run by multi-instrumentalist Jay Zelenka, has released four new CDs from local/regional jazz and creative music performers:

Ghost Machines (pictured) is a sampler album showcasing the label's various recordings of "avant-garde, free jazz & free improv artists from St. Louis USA," including the Human Arts Ensemble, EXILES, The Free Jazz Posse, Squid Choir Orkestra, J.D. Parran, Michael Castro, Greg Mills, and Dave Stone.

Needle of Light is a previously unissued recording of vintage performances featuring saxophonist James Marshall's iteration of the Human Arts Ensemble teamed with poet Michael Castro for "old school free jazz avant-blues & theatrical constructions...deep roots performance poetry 30 years before it became a fashion & acquired a name."

Infinite Circus is the latest release from Squid Choir Orkestra, an electronic free-improv ensemble that includes Zelenka, Jeremy Melsha, Dave Stone, Ajay Khanna, Aaron Smith, and Derek Leu.

Zelenka and Stone also figure in the fourth new release, Lifeline, a series of improv duets and trios for voice, baritone sax and electronic alto sax that also features vocalist Lika Shubitidze.

StLJN will have some impressions of these recordings in a future post, but you can hear extensive audio excerpts from all four albums, and/or purchase your very own copies, right now at the Freedonia Music website.

So What: Local News, Notes & Links

Here's the latest wrap-up of assorted links and short local news items of interest:

* Music for Lifelong Achievement's recently concluded musical instrument drive was the subject of a feature story this week on local Fox affiliate KTVI.

* The new cabaret ensemble Women Under the Influence is profiled by the St. Louis Beacon's Terry Perkins. The group will make their performing debut Saturday night in a sold-out gig at Joe Buck's restaurant downtown.

* And speaking of cabaret, Post-Dispatch theater critic Judith Newmark reports that producer/director Tim Schall is convening a town hall meeting of "stakeholders" in the local cabaret scene at 2:00 p.m. this Saturday, November 17 at the Regional Arts Commission building, 6128 Delmar Boulevard.

* Jazz on Broadway has posted to their Facebook page photo albums of recent performance by funk/fusion band Soul Cafe and singer Joe Mancuso.

* Jazz Times has put online an excerpt from the new autobiography by saxophonist Dave Liebman, in which Liebman talks about his experiences joining Miles Davis' band in the early 1970s.

* Also at Jazz Times, they've collected online several videos of saxophonist David Sanborn (pictured) talking about how he selected the tunes and assembled his new retrospective CD set Then Again.

* The blog Destination: Out this week featured a vintage downloadable track from St. Louis' Human Arts Ensemble.

StLJN Audio Archive: Human Arts Ensemble - Whisper of Dharma

This week's Audio Archive post comes to us once again from the fine avant-jazz music sharing blog Nothing Is v2.0, and features Whisper of Dharma, a rare album by the Human Arts Ensemble that originally was issued in 1972 on the Committee for Universal Justice label (pictured, above left), and later reissued in 1977 on Arista Freedom (pictured, below left).

The Human Arts Ensemble was an offshoot of St. Louis' Black Artists Group, created as a vehicle for musicians of all races to perform together, while including a core of musicians from BAG. HAE first recorded under the nominal co-leadership of drummer Charles "Bobo" Shaw and saxophonist James Marshall, who conceived the idea, and then just Shaw, but from all accounts the group essentially functioned as a musical collective.

Whisper of Dharma was recorded on October 6, 1972 in St. Louis, and features of lineup of players that includes Shaw (drums, small instruments) and Marshall (alto sax, radong, wooden flutes) as well as Joseph Bowie (trombone, congas, small instruments), Oliver Lake (tenor sax, radong, flute, small instruments), J.D. Parran (tenor and sopranos saxes, bass clarinet, small instruments), Floyd Leflore (trumpet, small instruments) and Baikida E.J. Carroll (gong, small instruments). The album also marks the recording debut of Oliver Lake's son Gene Lake, now a respected professional drummer, then just 6 years old and credited on the session with drums and small instruments. Whisper of Dharma includes what in the original LP format were two side-long pieces, the title track and "A World New," and has never been reissued on CD.

To download a copy of the Human Arts Ensemble's Whisper of Dharma, go here, scroll down to the bottom of the post and click on the link that says "Download Whisper of Dharma." That takes you to a Rapidshare page with the download; look for the green button that says "download" and follow the instructions there.

The StLJN Audio Archive links only to recordings that are out-of-print or that never have been commercially available. The purpose of the Audio Archive is encourage discussion, appreciation and knowledge of St. Louis jazz artists, and we encourage you to support them (or their estates) by purchasing authorized recordings and merchandise or, whenever possible, attending live performances.

(Edited after posting to fix a typo.)

Freedonia Music releases five new CDs

The St. Louis-based label Freedonia Music, which specializes in free jazz and improvisation, has just added five new CD titles to its catalog. The new releases are:

* Autonomous Oblast from The James Marshall Human Arts Ensemble, which originally was recorded in 1975 and has been digitally remastered from the original studio tapes. The CD (pictured) is described as "big band old school free-blown' free jazz. Featuring rare performances by Maurice Malik King, James Marshall, Luther Thomas, Thurman Thomas, Jim Miller, Carl Arzinia Richards, Papa Glen Wright, and others."

* Esfoma, a 1984 set of solo improvisations by pianist Greg Mills, also digitally remastered.

* Dave Stone Solo, featuring newly recorded improvisations from Stone on tenor, soprano and baritone saxes and alto, soprano and bass clarinets.

* Kokopilau, from poet Michael Castro and multi-reedman J.D. Parran, described as "a ceremony of the ancient future celebrating a 30 year collaboration...Retelling mythic tales of life, death & rebirth with voice, tenor sax, indigenous hand crafted instruments and postmodern techniques."

* Endless Root, a 1996 live recording of performance poetry with music, from Michael Castro and multi-instrumentalist Joe Catalano.

The label, which is headed by saxophonist/multi-instrumentalist Jay Zelenka, also has a revamped Web site with a new look, improved functionality and more information about the various products and artists. Listeners can hear numerous short excerpts from each CD on the home page, and download full length MP3s of selected tunes. All Freedonia Music releases are available from the site for $10 each, which includes shipping in the USA and Canada.

Get free downloads of rare material from Miles Davis, Human Arts Ensemble

A recent perusal of selected music-sharing blogs turned up three St. Louis-related jazz albums available for free downloading.

Via Penny Tray, Miles Davis All-Stars Live in 1968-59 featuring John Coltrane collects a number of radio airchecks (recordings from live broadcasts) of Miles Davis from the time when his group included such now-legendary players as saxophonists John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderly, bassist Paul Chambers, pianists Red Garland and Bill Evans, and drummers Philly Joe Jones and Jimmy Cobb.

It features a good chunk of the band's customary pre-Kind of Blue repertoire, as performed at Birdland and Cafe Bohemia in NYC and the Spotlight in Washington D.C., as well as one cut from a TV appearance featuring Miles, Cannonball, Garland and an all-star band.

The next two albums come from Nothing Is. First is Miles Davis: Philly May 12 & 17, 1975, a bootleg of a show from a Philadelphia club called Just Jazz. The band includes Davis on trumpet and organ, Sam Morrison (soprano sax, tenor sax, flute), Pete Cosey (guitar, percussion), Reggie Lucas (guitar), Michael Henderson (electric bass), Al Foster (drums), and James "Mtume" Foreman (conga, percussion).

Regarding the session's origins, the post by NI blogger James Benjamin says, "Don't know much about this one other than that the recording is from May of 1975 right as Miles was getting ready to retire. The set is pretty much what one might expect to hear at a Miles gig around that time. Sound quality is a bit dodgy (as one would expect from a bootleg live recording), but gives a decent idea of how Miles and band were sounding at the time."

Finally, also from Nothing Is comes the Human Arts Ensemble's Streets of St. Louis, ripped from a long out-of-print 1978 Moers Music LP. This session was recorded September 6, 1974 at NYC's Studio Rivbea by a band including Charles "Bobo" Shaw (drums), Lester Bowie (trumpet), Hamiet Bluiett (baritone sax), Julius Hemphill (pictured, alto sax), Joseph Bowie (trombone), Abdul Wadud (cello) and Dominique Gaumont (guitar). The cuts include "Streets of St. Louis", "Miles Beyond", "Entensity Big" and "Hard Light".

As always with these sorts of things, there's no telling how long these downloads will be available, so if you're interested, it would be best to act quickly.