The album that introduced me to the possibilities of jazz clarinet. Byron's got a top notch band here, including guitarist Bill Frisell and pianist Edsel Gomez, who provides some tremendous solos that mix Cecil Taylor pyrotechnics with straight and latin jazz comping. There's also a masterful bass/bass clarinet duo between Byron and Reggie Workman. Even the spoken word piece works. A personal lodestar.
Bill Frisell, the singular and much admired/emulated jazz guitarist, is a case study in uncategorizability. As he's often said, in one form or another: First I was tagged as the ECM guy, then the downtown guy, then the Americana guy. In reality, those were all always the same guy. As early as the 1982 recordings for his debut on ECM, In Line - solos, overdubbed solos and duets with bassist Arild Andersen - there was this odd… more »
Uri Caine personifies the postmodern musical impulse; he's recorded straight-ahead and not so straightahead jazz, funk, klezmer, Brazilian pop, turn-of-20th-century Tin Pan Alley songs and breathtakingly novel and diverse arrangements of 18th and 19th Century classics. Depending on the setting, he'll play grand piano, electric piano, their ancestor the pianoforte (as when wittily improvising on Beethoven's Diabelli Variations), harpsichord, organ, synthesizers - pretty much anything involving black and white keys. Most anyone else trying all… more »
