Back in 2018, when jazz fans heard that a previously unreleased John Coltrane album was set to come out, they immediately zeroed in on the date.
The fact that the tapes dated from 1963, right in the middle of the saxophonist’s most celebrated period, signaled that this was a major find. The same applies to Just Coolin’, a never-before-released album from Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers that’s due out in April from Blue Note: Its recording date of March 1959, just a couple of months after the release of...
The fact that the tapes dated from 1963, right in the middle of the saxophonist’s most celebrated period, signaled that this was a major find. The same applies to Just Coolin’, a never-before-released album from Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers that’s due out in April from Blue Note: Its recording date of March 1959, just a couple of months after the release of...
- 3/20/2020
- by Hank Shteamer
- Rollingstone.com
Next month, John Coltrane’s label, Impulse!/Ume, will release Blue World, a new album by the legendary saxophonist. Recorded in 1964 and largely unreleased until now, the 37-minute session was intended as a soundtrack for Le chat dans le sac (“The Cat in the Bag”), a film by the Quebecois director Gilles Groulx. Only 10 minutes’ worth of the music actually appeared in the film, and none of it has appeared on any prior album.
Like Both Directions at Once: The Lost Album, an unearthed mid-Sixties Coltrane LP released for the...
Like Both Directions at Once: The Lost Album, an unearthed mid-Sixties Coltrane LP released for the...
- 8/16/2019
- by Hank Shteamer
- Rollingstone.com
Jazz is an art form that can be examined any number of ways — historically, racially, structurally, even philosophically — but choosing one of those runs the risk of ignoring the equally-important rest. Sophie Huber’s thoughtful but unfocused documentary “Blue Note Records: Beyond the Notes” falls short primarily because it tries too much, examining history, modern-day impact and legacy all in one.
Nevertheless an engaging thumbnail overview of the record label’s heyday, its key players, and the descendants and disciples committed to carrying on its name and vision, “Beyond the Notes” succeeds better as an introduction to Blue Note and jazz in general than as an expert or in-depth examination of the musical genre or one of its most iconic distributors.
Part of the challenge is deciding where to start: With the musicians who pioneered the genre, or the earliest fans-turned visionaries who helped get them heard? Huber begins with Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff,...
Nevertheless an engaging thumbnail overview of the record label’s heyday, its key players, and the descendants and disciples committed to carrying on its name and vision, “Beyond the Notes” succeeds better as an introduction to Blue Note and jazz in general than as an expert or in-depth examination of the musical genre or one of its most iconic distributors.
Part of the challenge is deciding where to start: With the musicians who pioneered the genre, or the earliest fans-turned visionaries who helped get them heard? Huber begins with Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff,...
- 6/12/2019
- by Todd Gilchrist
- The Wrap
Musicians young and old drop a lot of heavy-duty jazz wisdom throughout Beyond the Notes, a new documentary about Blue Note Records that features commentary from the label’s Sixties stars such as Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter and new-school trailblazers like Robert Glasper and Ambrose Akinmusire. But the film’s single most eloquent statement might come from A Tribe Called Quest’s Ali Shaheed Muhammad who, reflecting on how Blue Note’s output fueled his own art through sampling, says that improvisation is akin to “finding a portal that...
- 6/12/2019
- by Hank Shteamer
- Rollingstone.com
For devotees of John Coltrane, whose adoration of the late, pathfinding saxophonist borders on the religious, 2018 has been a banner year.
In March, Sony Legacy released a four-cd set of Coltrane’s 1960 European live performances with trumpeter Miles Davis, with whom he had famously worked on and off since the mid-‘50s. The collection – the first legit issue of material previously available only in gray-market packages – compiled concert dates on which Trane upstaged his boss with boundary-pushing, screaming playing that drew cheers and catcalls in equal measure.
The import of those exciting sides is superseded this week with the materialization of an unexpected and thrilling treasure, finally unburied: a never-before-released session featuring Coltrane in the full flush of his solo fame, with his “classic quartet” of pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Jimmy Garrison and drummer Elvin Jones.
Titled “Both Directions at Once: The Lost Album,” the set released by Impulse!/Verve...
In March, Sony Legacy released a four-cd set of Coltrane’s 1960 European live performances with trumpeter Miles Davis, with whom he had famously worked on and off since the mid-‘50s. The collection – the first legit issue of material previously available only in gray-market packages – compiled concert dates on which Trane upstaged his boss with boundary-pushing, screaming playing that drew cheers and catcalls in equal measure.
The import of those exciting sides is superseded this week with the materialization of an unexpected and thrilling treasure, finally unburied: a never-before-released session featuring Coltrane in the full flush of his solo fame, with his “classic quartet” of pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Jimmy Garrison and drummer Elvin Jones.
Titled “Both Directions at Once: The Lost Album,” the set released by Impulse!/Verve...
- 6/29/2018
- by Chris Morris
- Variety Film + TV
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