Articles by Matt Marshall
Holy Ghost: The Life & Death of Free Jazz Pioneer Albert Ayler
by Matt Marshall
Holy Ghost: The Life & Death of Free Jazz Pioneer Albert Ayler Richard Koloda 312 Pages ISBN: #9781911036937 Jawbone Press 2022 There's a special enthusiasm in the jny: Cleveland, Ohio, jazz orbit for avant-garde saxophonist Albert Ayler—an insistent push to celebrate, memorialize, canonize a legend thought to be unjustly forgotten by his hometown—that isn't seen for, say, Tadd Dameron or Jim Hall. (Leading this charge is New Ghosts, a three-man team dedicated to ...
read moreThe Black Butterflies: Luisa
by Matt Marshall
On their two previous releases, 1 de Mayo (2010) and Rainbows for Ramon (2012), The Black Butterflies built soulful, searching jazz with dense, kinetic layers of Latin and African rhythms. Using both group improvisation and individual statements, they freely, yet unhurriedly, explored the boundaries of their music, often lingering in spots to let the tonal palette shift organically. With Luisa they've tightened their focus, strongly favoring tango and other Argentinian folk forms, while keeping solos brief and holding most tracks ...
read moreBanda de los Muertos: Banda de los Muertos
by Matt Marshall
It is common practice among groups that play Sinaloan banda music--a style that emerged from small village brass bands in Northwestern Mexico after the Revolution, typically featuring a few clarinets, trumpets, trombones and saxhorns, plus a tuba, snare drum and tambora--to link their name to their place of origin. Thus we get Banda El Recodo and La Arrolladora Banda El Limón, two of the music's most popular groups. This village association, and the broader regional identity of the music, is ...
read moreAtomic at Nighttown
by Matt Marshall
Atomic Nighttown Cleveland Heights, OH February 10, 2015 Fresh in the glow of its 50th anniversary celebration, kicked off by a party a few nights earlier and extending through the end of the month, Nighttown put its eclecticism fully on display February 10, presenting powerful Scandinavian free-jazz group Atomic. The Nighttown faithful are, by and large, a straight-ahead crowd (two Manhattan Transfer shows set for Friday, February 13, sold out well in advance, for example), ...
read moreBob Dylan: Shadows in the Night
by Matt Marshall
After spending the past 50-plus years mining the traditional music of what Greil Marcus has termed “old, weird America," and expanding it into the contemporary worlds of folk, rock, country, gospel and other singular hybrids thereof, on Shadows in the Night Bob Dylan gives us his take on the Great American Songbook. Thankfully, Dylan doesn't jettison the weirdness for the trip, choosing (unlike so many other rock and pop stars) to interpret these standards in his own idiom; choosing, that ...
read moreThe Nels Cline Singers: Macroscope
by Matt Marshall
With the release of this album by The Nels Cline Singers, Detroit's Mack Avenue Records takes a bold leap into the outer fringes of jazz. Their impressive slate of artists already included the likes of Kenny Garrett, Sean Jones and Christian McBride, who are open to pushing jazz boundaries, but the label had no one who goes as far afield as guitarist Cline. In fact, it's probably best to think of Cline, whether leading the Singers or any of his ...
read moreMatt Marshall’s Best Releases of 2013
by Matt Marshall
Rudresh Mahanthappa Gamak (ACT) Ivo Perelman/Joe Morris/Balazs Pandi One (RareNoise) Chris Potter The Sirens (ECM) Joe Lovano Us Five Cross Culture (Blue Note) KAZE Tornado (Circum-Libra) Ketil Bjørnstad La notte (ECM) Howie Smith/Mike Nock Opal Dream (Open Blue) Matthew Shipp Piano Sutras (Thirsty Ear) Cécile McLorin Salvant WomanChild (Mack Avenue) Gordon Grdina/Mark ...
read moreChicago Jazz Orchestra: Burstin' Out!
by Matt Marshall
Covering the Great American Songbook can be tricky, thankless work for a singer. The options for handling the material just aren't as numerous (i.e., nigh infinite) as they are for instrumentalists. Severely warping a melody, chopping it up or getting rid of it altogether work perfectly well if you're blowing through a horn. But such abstractions of voice can seem forced or simply too weird within a straight-ahead format. There's scatting, of course, and other forms of nonverbal vocalization, but ...
read more2013 Tri-C JazzFest: Cleveland, OH, April 19 - 27, 2013
by Matt Marshall
34th Annual Tri-C JazzFest ClevelandCleveland, OHApril 19-April 27, 2013There was a determined effort by Tri-C JazzFest Managing Director Terri Pontremoli to give this year's event more of a festival atmosphere than it has perhaps enjoyed in years past. For starters, many of the outlying venues, such as the East Cleveland library, a regular festival haunt, were scrapped in order to concentrate events downtown, with most concerts staged either in the grand theaters of Playhouse Square or on ...
read moreLakeland Jazz Festival 2013: Kirtland, Ohio, February 22-24
by Matt Marshall
41st Annual Lakeland Jazz FestivalKirtland, OhioFebruary 22-24, 2013 Scanning the list of guest artists who have appeared at the Lakeland Jazz Festival since its inception in 1973 reveals a history of acts with connections to the Northeast Ohio/Western Pennsylvania/Western New York area, with an internationally recognized name--Clark Terry, Donald Byrd, Kenny Burrell, Phil Woods--popping up every fifth year or so.Always the focus has been on fostering an educational environment, providing a venue for ...
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