Jazz & Coffee Music Monday (Tuesday Edition)
Music Without Holiday Themes, Instagram Recaps, and 2023 Favorites Redux
With the holiday season approaching its apex, I send good vibes, thoughts, thanks, and peace to all—however, wherever and with whomever you are/aren’t celebrating. Today’s edition is a day later than usual due to the holiday (and my first bout of COVID-19), but I expect to be back on schedule for the New Year.
Now Playing:
I accidentally stumbled across this while looking up a detail on the extraordinary Astigmatic by the Krzysztof Komeda Quintet. Komeda was a Polish composer best known for scoring several Roman Polanski films, including Rosemary’s Baby. While that may be the claim to fame that made him a household name outside of his native Poland, it’s Astigmatic that you should hear right away as it’s one of THE BEST European jazz records ever. This track is a live take on “Svantetic” recorded a few months ahead of the studio version, and it’s a MONSTER.
There’s a YouTube video embedded at the end of this newsletter where I spend an hour or so discussing some of my favorite records of 2023 with YouTuber Ken Micallef. I also discuss one of my highest hopes for reissue in 2023: Mike Taylor Quartet’s Pendulum. It’s one of my Top Ten favorite jazz records of all time, though it’s a criminally obscure and mega-rare album. I’ve never even seen a copy. But as the track “To Segovia” did appear on the Journeys in Modern Jazz: Britain compilation that teases titles under consideration in the ongoing Decca British Jazz Explosion series, hope springs eternal. Fun fact: some of you already have Mike Taylor on your shelves without even knowing it—he wrote "Passing the Time," Pressed Rat and Warthog," and "Those Were the Days" on Cream’s Wheels of Fire.
I have an Instagram review in progress for the Sam Records reissue of Sahib Shihab and the Danish Radio Jazz Group, formerly unobtanium and now available from the Sam Records website. Act fast—this is a limited edition of 3000 copies, and originals are impossible to find. This record is superb, and the 2023 reissue blows my 2001 Japanese reissue out of the water.
Instagram Recaps:
This Christmas Eve session is my favorite Wayne Shorter record and my Top Ten all-time favorite albums ever. Speak No Evil caps quite a year for Wayne Shorter—his third record as a leader in ‘64 alone. Plus three as a Jazz Messenger! And it’s worth mentioning he wrote 24 new compositions that year, took the sax chair to complete Miles Davis’s Second Great Quintet, and still found time to play on records like Lee Morgan’s Search For The New Land. Shorter brilliantly encapsulates his most productive, creative year so far with a record that nods to prior experiences by reimagining them for the future. While his new role in Davis’s combo carried expectations that his compositions would shape their new direction(s), here, Shorter is writing just for himself, and the results are mesmerizing. The music here is enigmatic but never inscrutable—it follows a certain “Wayne Shorter logic” better experienced via listening than reading. You’ll hear it in the elusive sense of swing that seems like it’s been hiding, its subtle swagger teasing us for a moment before it disappears into spaces as necessary to the music as the notes themselves. To my ears, Speak No Evil is a perfect jazz record—a timeless, flawless, iconic jazz masterpiece that should loom large in every jazz collection. It is a bittersweet anniversary nod this year—the first without the great Wayne Shorter on our planet. But any melancholy is fleeting and dwarfed by gratitude that Shorter’s spirit, music, and impact remain widely celebrated. The title inspires me this evening as many prepare to find joy and solace with friends and/or family in a troubled world, and my heart goes out to those lonely souls who, by nature or by choice, have only their thoughts to keep them company. Let the mantra to “speak no evil”—even (and especially) towards those we believe deserve it—be our true north, and as we head into 2024, may we wish for others what we wish for ourselves. Merry Christmas, all!
It’s a favorite, yet the element of surprise remains powerful. This desert island disc inspires me more with every spin, blurring the line between structure and improv as Hill & Co. narrates tales of the unexpected with blues, bop, and enigmatic grooves. Point of Departure isn’t a free-for-all or an atonal honk-fest. However, the rhythmic and tonal centers are rarely stationary and often elusive. If you’re looking for a soundtrack to finish washing the dishes before gettin’ down on a Thursday night, you’ll be using paper plates on Friday while you see a chiropractor. Yet I don’t want to give you the impression that this record is too challenging for ANY jazz listener because