Sunday Session: April 15, 2018

Nina Simone

Here's a roundup of various music-related items of interest that have shown up in one of StLJN's various inboxes or feeds over the past week:

* The British jazz explosion: meet the musicians rewriting the rulebook (The Guardian)
* Monika Herzig’s SHEroes Addresses Gender in Jazz (DownBeat)
* Why Hip-Hop Is Taking Center Stage On Netflix's Original Music Programming (Forbes.com)
* At Tiny Telephone music studio, recording to tape is not a metaphor (KALW)
* MATA at 20 (New Music Box)
* How Drummer Albert "Tootie" Heath Learned to Play Jazz (Westword)
* Philadelphia native James Mtume returns to celebrate 35th anniversary of ‘Juicy Fruit’ (New Pittsburgh Courier)
* Jimmie Vaughan’s B-3 Vibe (Jazz Times)
* The Deceptively Accessible Music of Cecil Taylor (The Atlantic)
* Illuminating Cecil Taylor with Pianist Jason Moran, on The Checkout (WBGO)
* Turning The Tables: The 150 Greatest Albums Made By Women (As Chosen By You) (NPR)
* “All at Full Fullness”: Remembering Cecil Taylor - Steve Coleman, Vijay Iyer, Jason Moran, Matthew Shipp and Wadada Leo Smith pay tribute to an avant-jazz icon (Jazz Times)
* All That Jazz: A #JazzAppreciationMonth Podcast Round-up (Arts.gov)
* Music Publishers Win Major Copyright Fight Over Streaming of Legendary Rock Concerts (Hollywood Reporter)
* Composer Tyondai Braxton: 'I'm at war with myself. That's what the piece sounds like' (The Guardian)
* Spotify could kill Jazz, Soul and Classical music. Really. (SoulTracks.com)
* Q&A with Al Di Meola: In a Good Place (DownBeat)
* The New Jazz Torchbearer: Kamasi Washington on His Musical Message (Rolling Stone)
* Cecil Taylor and the Art of Noise (The New Yorker)
* The Revolutionary Genius of Cecil Taylor (The New Yorker)
* The British Guitar Embargo: When Brits Were Banned from Buying American (Reverb.com)
* How Nina Simone Captivated a New Generation (Rolling Stone)
* In Memoriam: Cecil Taylor (DownBeat)
* ‘It’s an insane project’: Toronto resident documenting city’s live-music history through posters (The Globe and Mail)
* Esperanza Spalding: Redefining Production - The bassist, composer and bandleader on her innovative recent "pop-up" album, "Exposure" (Jazz Times)
* How Musicians Are Using Field Recordings to Capture the Politics of Place (Pitchfork.com)
* ‘A Singular Sound, A Singular Force’: Artists Remember Jazz Great Cecil Taylor (BedfordAndBowery.com)
* Saxophonist Kamasi Washington Announces New Album 'Heaven and Earth' With Two Teaser Videos (NextBop.com)
* Hitting Reboot: Manhattan Transfer (DownBeat)
* American orchestras: Revamping the model, or embracing the obvious? (Washington Post)

Miles on Monday: Looking back at the electric music of Miles Davis

When Miles Davis went electric in the late 1960s, his new direction sparked discussion and controversy that persist into the present day. The trumpeter's electric music has been the subject of an uncountable number of conversations, reviews and critical essays, as well as a couple of books that supplement their examinations of the topic with websites offering a lot of additional material to consider.

Miles Beyond: The Electric Explorations of Miles Davis 1967-1991, written by Paul Tingen and published in 2001, is based on interviews with musicians who worked with Davis. The accompanying web site offers samples from the book, as well as news updates, photographs, memorabilia, and 50,000 additional words of articles.

The Last Miles is a 2005 book by George Cole that focuses specifically on Davis' final decade from 1981 to 1991. It's based on interviews with band members (from that time period and before), producers, engineers, members of Miles’ road crew, photographers, and video directors who worked with Davis. As with Miles Beyond, the book's website includes samples from the text as well as lots of supplemental material that's been added since publication, adding up to hours worth of reading.

For another perspective on Davis' electric music from someone who was a participant in it, check out the discussion in the embedded video windows below. It's a debate that took place in 2010 at the Amistad Center for Art & Culture in Hartford, CT between James "Mtume" Forman, the percussionist and producer who worked with Davis in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and author and critic Stanley Crouch, who remains skeptical of the trumpeter's work after 1967.