Looking ahead to Friday and the release of Wandersphere

'Super-Organism' on Wandersphere underlines the feeling regardless of its substantial 30-minute duration that it's often good to trust your best instincts and stay the course. Recorded in late-2020 at The Samurai Hotel in the New York borough of …

Published: 14 Sep 2021. Updated: 2 years.

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'Super-Organism' on Wandersphere underlines the feeling regardless of its substantial 30-minute duration that it's often good to trust your best instincts and stay the course. Recorded in late-2020 at The Samurai Hotel in the New York borough of Queens, the album itself is issued by the Swiss Intakt label on Friday.

You won't however be rewarded by any instant gratification feeling of sturm und drang. It's definitely not an instrumental piece that you can even think about humming or opening the car window and blasting out however deliriously you may want to greet the traffic and the night air with its remarkable sound. I know you want to. That's because of its avant sound, chromaticism and the way it dangles fractured dissonance and lack of any easy resolution like a sword of Damocles within its internal drama and sense of abstraction. But you will collect a sense of flow and connection. And following note by note you will be kept guessing as a listener and come away enlightened.

Drummer Eric McPherson formidable here, well-known for his work with the great Fred Hersch, is here along with double bassist Stephan Crump (the long-time bassist in the enormously-acclaimed classic Vijay Iyer trio) and completing the trio the very widely-admired avant pianist Kris Davis. All three operate in an open space in terms of musical architecture and parity of esteem. In the lead-off piece streaming Crump dives in and mainly out and beyond the bar line, sometimes during a big Davis statement for instance he pushes and pulls with overt, strict metre, or not because sometimes there is a gravity-less feel to the beat. You get that most valued quality a head-bobbing sensation achieved and delivered not by swing, although there is often a triplet feel, because the trio do not use the classic language but choose instead a specific polyrhythmic and contrapuntal path of their own invention. It sounds fresh and compelling. Eric McPherson, above left, Kris Davis, Stephan Crump. Photo: Jimmy Katz

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Inspiration of the worldwide jazz festival movement George Wein has died aged 95

George Wein, the inspiration of the worldwide jazz festival movement, has died at the age of 95 in New York. Spokesperson Carolyn McClair announced his death. Wein was a pianist and had run the Storyville jazz club in Boston and became renowned for …

Published: 14 Sep 2021. Updated: 2 years.

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George Wein, the inspiration of the worldwide jazz festival movement, has died at the age of 95 in New York. Spokesperson Carolyn McClair announced his death. Wein was a pianist and had run the Storyville jazz club in Boston and became renowned for launching the Newport Jazz Festival in 1954 and led it for over half a century. Newport was immortalised in the consciousness of jazz fans globally in the classic documentary Jazz on a Summer's Day.

Wein later promoted at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and the Grande Parade du Jazz in Nice and his formats became a model for jazz festivals and other genres globally. As a musician he continued to play and released albums such as Wein, Women and Song and was named an NEA Jazz Master (America's greatest jazz honour) in 2005 two years after the publication of his autobiography, Myself Among Others: A Life in Music. In the book he wrote: ''Whether it’s one of the many festival producers throughout the world, or the concert promoters, or the individual nightclub owners struggling night to night – their contributions are essential to the history of this music. I’m glad to have been part of this process: in the development of the jazz festival, the acceptance of this music as art, the efforts to bring jazz to a wider audience worldwide.”