recent listening April 1-27, 2018

A lot of Cecil Taylor, Matt Shipp, ECM, David Liebman & Marc Copland…and more.

Cecil Taylor – Nuits De La Fondation Maeght
Cecil Taylor – One Too Many Salty Swift and Not Goodbye
Cecil Taylor – It Is In The Brewing Luminous
Cecil Taylor – Fly! Fly! Fly! Fly! Fly!
…and a lot of the WKCR Cecil Taylor memorial broadcasts.

Wes Montgomery – Far Wes
Wes Montgomery – Guitar on the Go
Wes Montgomery – Bumpin
Miles Davis and John Coltrane – the Final Tour
David Binney – the Luxury of Guessing
Matt Shipp – To Duke
Matt Shipp – By the Law of Music
Sun Ra – Nuits de la Fondation Maeght
John Stevens with Allan Holdsworth – Conversation Piece
Roscoe Mitchell – More Cutouts
Jackie McLean – Capuchin Swing
Marilyn Crispell – In Motian
Marilyn Crispell – Deep Memory
Ed Bickert – Bye Bye Baby
Kenny Wheeler – Six for Six
Michael Walden – Garden of Love Light
Ginger Baker’s Air Force

ECM Records

Jakob Bro – Returnings
Mathias Eick – Ravensburg
Tomasz Stańko – Wislawa
Kristjan Randalu with Ben Monder – Absence
Steve Eliovson – Dawn Dance
Paul McCandless – Skylight

Prog!

Brand X – Product
Brand X – But Wait… There’s More! Live 2017
King Crimson – Live in Vienna
Bruford Levin Upper Extremities
Bruford Levin Upper Extremities BLUE Nights
Al DiMeola with Tony Levin and Bill Bruford – Scenario
Yes – Fly From Here/Return Trip

Advertisement

Steve Eliovson with Collin Walcott – Dawn Dance

If there’s a leading candidate for an obscure ECM release needing to be reissued, Steve Eliovson’s Dawn Dance with Collin Walcott is that album. Only available briefly on CD and probably only in Germany. I used to have this on vinyl, I should have kept this one when I sold the collection.

Manafonistas tells the story:

He made one guitar solo album for ECM, in 1981, then fell from earth. A bit of research, and I found this story:

„I just got back from Cape Town, S Africa … I spent a week and a 1/2 making a nuisance of myself at various gigs/jams. I got to sit in with Bensonphile, Richard Caesar, Wes-o-phile, Alvin Dyers and other sundry bands/guys. So on saturday I was invited to a party at great pianist Robert Payne’s pad. There were a few people there, and one guy was introduced as „Steve“. About 1/2 way thru the nite I heard „Steve“ mention recording in Germany. I tentatively asked him for his last name, and his response FLOORED me: Eliovson. This was the legendary Steve Eliovson who recorded on ECM in ’80 and promptly vanished. He is a legend amongst SA gtr players, and here he was in front of me alive and well !!!!! He told me lots of stories of hanging with Towner and Abercrombie et al, and how the exigencies of survival forced him to abandon his gtrs in NY storage NEVER to return to music – sad freaking story … Anyway I pulled out my gtr and he played a bit. Rusty, but with glimpses of a Mclaughlin style … He told me he was in Europe to record his 2nd ECM date and the weekend before recording commenced he broke a leg ski-ing in the Alps. It all began to fall apart for him after that. They postponed the rec. date, and Steve went back to NYC where he was living at the time. He said he couldn’t really play gigs or get around with a cast up to his hip in NY and he was living on someone’s couch. He decided to store his belongings and head back to SA to regroup. He never got back … and it seems he lost momentum … I could sense the sad regret/loss behind his eyes … He mentioned hanging with Richie Bierach in those days, and that Richie was living in a literal „shoebox“: one room with barely space to move. He also recalled jams with Towner and Abercrombie where they all got so stoned that guys were literally falling over while playing … His sad story reconfirmed to me that if you can simply find a way to keep playing music in your life (never mind being a „star“ or „famous“) you can count yourself lucky …“ (Tom Marcello)