The Meeting

Maybe we should just rename May Steve Swallow month and be done with it. But while saxophonist Hans Ulrik, guitarist Niclas Knudsen and drummer Anders Mogensen are not exactly household names, although the creamy toned Ulrik worked with Swallow …

Published: 5 May 2020. Updated: 3 years.

Maybe we should just rename May Steve Swallow month and be done with it. But while saxophonist Hans Ulrik, guitarist Niclas Knudsen and drummer Anders Mogensen are not exactly household names, although the creamy toned Ulrik worked with Swallow before (as has Mogensen), unless your very own happy domesticity is Locking Down in wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen. Bookended by Milton Nascimento and Carla Bley tunes Ulrik does quite a bit of the arranging on The Meeting, an Ulrik produced studio album recorded in 2019. Swallow classic 'Ladies in Mercedes' gets a look-in as does 'Ever After,' an inclusion that will please fans of the Impossible Gentlemen pining for their heroes no end.

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Larry Willis' last album

The final recordings by pianist Larry Willis, who died in September, are to gain a release later this month. These recordings were made at the Rudy Van Gelder Studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, where Willis first began his professional …

Published: 5 May 2020. Updated: 3 years.

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The final recordings by pianist Larry Willis, who died in September, are to gain a release later this month. These recordings were made at the Rudy Van Gelder Studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, where Willis first began his professional recording career. His first recording there was in late-January 1965 as a sideman for Jackie McLean on the album Right Now!

On these last sessions he is joined in a quintet by drummer Victor Lewis and alto saxophonist Joe Ford, with trumpeter Jeremy Pelt and bassist Blake Meister completing the line up. Look for the release on High Note.

'Let's Play,' currently streaming, a new version of a Willis composition that was included as the title track on a 1991 Steeplechase trio album on which Victor Lewis also performed is featured on I Fall in Love Too Easily: The Final Session at Rudy Van Gelder's to be released on 29 May.

Larry Willis top. Photo credit: unknown