17 Musicians in Search of a Sound: Darfur | ||||
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Live album by | ||||
Released | 2008 | |||
Recorded | June 20, 2007 | |||
Venue | Angel Orensanz Center, New York City | |||
Genre | Jazz | |||
Length | 56:38 | |||
Label | AUM Fidelity | |||
Producer | Bill Dixon | |||
Bill Dixon chronology | ||||
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17 Musicians in Search of a Sound: Darfur is a live album by American jazz trumpeter Bill Dixon. The project, a tour de force of orchestral composition, conduction and improvisational exploration, was specially commissioned by Arts for Art, recorded at the 2007 Vision Festival and released on AUM Fidelity. [1]
Review scores | |
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Source | Rating |
AllMusic | [2] |
All About Jazz #1 | [3] |
All About Jazz #2 | [4] |
All About Jazz #3 | [5] |
Pitchfork | [6] |
In his review for AllMusic, Michael G. Nastos stated: "this is not an angry or disgusted expressionistic music, but one that reflects the distant outcries of the people in Darfur who need help from the world community... This is a project of austere emotion, clever counterpoint, and searing reality in dedication to a condition in the so-called civilized world that should never, ever be." [2]
Writing for All About Jazz, John Sharpe remarked: "Trumpeter Bill Dixon works with an orchestral conception, even when playing solo, so it is fascinating to hear what happens when he has 17 musicians at his disposal... it is hard to think who else could deploy such forces to such deft effect, creating a towering work in a class of its own." [3] In a separate review for All About Jazz, Mark Corroto wrote: "Dixon was given talent but little time for rehearsal and changes. This makes for a part composed, part improvised series of passages. There's the feeling that Dixon is guiding this who's who of creative players, but at other times they are free to fill in as their own muse dictates. The music is, nonetheless, up to Dixon's standards. Players create moods for his vast open landscape of a vision, crafting solos in between caverns of sound... 17 Musicians In Search Of A Sound has the feel of a coarse-sewn rug, made from very fine materials. Given time and perhaps a long tour... this music might become tighter and more easily consumable. But, then again, it wouldn't be Bill Dixon music." [4] Nic Jones, in another All About Jazz review, stated: "It's clear, on something like In Search Of A Sound, that instrumental color must have been one of Dixon's abiding concerns. He summons up static blocks of sound comprised of individual voices in the service of some grim, foreboding end that remains unrealized..." Jones concludes by calling the album "a program of music designed not for comfort listening but for challenging and, perhaps, raging against mortality and the horrors and restrictions it imposes." [5]
Joe Tangari, writing for Pitchfork, commented: "From a listener's standpoint, the project's tonal and textural variety and relatively simple organization makes it more approachable than a great deal of free music for newcomers to the genre, though it still takes a willingness to abandon usual structures. In fact, for its flow from violence to calm and back, it bears as much similarity to modern chamber works like Olivier Messiaen's 'Quartet for the End of Time' as it does to Albert Ayler, Cecil Taylor and other free jazz luminaries. Whatever the associates, though, Dixon has created an outstanding work of modern jazz and political commentary." [6]
William Parker is an American free jazz double bassist. Beginning in the 1980s, Parker played with Cecil Taylor for over a decade, and he has led the Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra since 1981. The Village Voice named him "the most consistently brilliant free jazz bassist of all time" and DownBeat has called him "one of the most adventurous and prolific bandleaders in jazz".
Steve Swell is an American free jazz trombonist, composer, and educator.
J. D. Parran is an American multi-woodwind player, educator, and composer specializing in jazz and free improvisation. He plays the soprano, alto, tenor, baritone, and bass saxophone, as well as the E-flat clarinet, alto clarinet, bass clarinet, contra-alto clarinet, piccolo, alto flute, bamboo flute, Native American flute, bamboo saxophone, and nagaswaram.
Karen Borca is an American avant-garde jazz and free jazz bassoonist.
The New Jazz Composers Octet is an all-acoustic jazz ensemble founded by trumpeter/arranger David Weiss in 1996. NPR's Josh Jackson described them as "part New York hustle and part writer's workshop, all of it redolent with the aroma of newness." The title track of The Turning Gate won the group a Chamber Music Association grant.
Akhenaten Suite is the seventh album by American jazz trumpeter Roy Campbell, an extended work inspired by Amenhotep IV, Pharaoh of the 18th dynasty of Egypt. The project was specially commissioned by Arts for Art, recorded live at the 2007 Vision Festival and released on AUM Fidelity.
Time Is of the Essence Is Beyond Time is the third album by free jazz collective quartet Other Dimensions In Music, composed of trumpeter Roy Campbell, multi-instrumentalist Daniel Carter, bassist William Parker and drummer Rashid Bakr. For this special quintet, recorded live in 1997 and released on the AUM Fidelity label, they are joined by pianist Matthew Shipp.
Sunrise in the Tone World is an album by American jazz double bassist William Parker, which was recorded live in 1995 and released on the AUM Fidelity label.
Double Sunrise Over Neptune is a live album by American jazz musician and composer William Parker, which was recorded in 2007 and originally released on the AUM Fidelity label. Though best known as a bassist, Parker on this album plays various ethnic double reed instruments and the African stringed instrument doussn'gouni.
Summer Snow is an album by bassist William Parker and drummer Hamid Drake, which was recorded in 2005 and released on the AUM Fidelity label. The album is the second volume of duets by the pair following Piercing the Veil (2001).
Wood Flute Songs is an eight-CD box set by bassist and composer William Parker which was recorded in California in 2006, Houston in 2007, Geneva and Montreal in 2011and New York in 2009 and 2012, and released on the AUM Fidelity label.
Envoi is an album by American jazz trumpeter Bill Dixon, which was recorded live at the 2010 edition of the Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville and released on the Canadian Victo label. Dixon reassembled the nonet previously employed on Tapestries for Small Orchestra. It was his last concert, which took place less than a month before he died. Dixon’s failing health required that his solos were prerecorded and played back during the performance.
Tapestries for Small Orchestra is an album by American jazz trumpeter Bill Dixon, which was recorded in 2008 and released on Firehouse 12 Records. The triple disc set includes two audio CDs of specially commissioned original music plus a documentary film featuring interviews and session footage. The small orchestra is a nine-piece group with personnel drawn, for the most part, from the large ensemble that recorded 17 Musicians in Search of a Sound: Darfur a year before.
Altitude is an album by American jazz guitarist Joe Morris which was recorded live in 2011 and released on the AUM Fidelity label. It documents the first time performance by Morris, bassist William Parker and drummer Gerald Cleaver as a trio during a two-week of dates curated at John Zorn's club The Stone by label owner Steven Joerg. For the second set, excerpted in the final two cuts of the album, Parker played sintir, the Moroccan bass lute, instead of upright bass. All the tracks are collective and completely improvised.
Rocket Science is the eponymous debut album by the collaborative quartet assembled by trumpeter Peter Evans and featuring British saxophonist Evan Parker, pianist Craig Taborn and computer musician Sam Pluta. It was recorded live at the Vortex in London, at the start of the quartet's first tour which then visited the Bimhuis in Amsterdam and the Moers Festival in Germany. Evans recorded Scenes in the House of Music with the Parker-Guy-Lytton trio, and is a member of Parker's Electro-Acoustic Ensemble. Taborn played piano in Parker's Transatlantic Art Ensemble which recorded Boustrophedon. Pluta is a member of the Peter Evans Quintet that recorded Ghosts.
Cosmic Lieder is an album by American jazz saxophonist Darius Jones and pianist Matthew Shipp, which was recorded in 2010 and released on the AUM Fidelity label. This 13-part song cycle was the first collaboration between Jones and Shipp.
Grass Roots is the eponymous debut album by the free jazz collective quartet consisting of Sean Conly on bass, Alex Harding on baritone sax, Darius Jones on alto sax and Chad Taylor on drums. It was recorded in 2011 and released on the AUM Fidelity label.
Rolldown is the debut album by the band led by American jazz vibraphonist Jason Adasiewicz featuring cornetist Josh Berman, saxophonist Aram Shelton, bassist Jason Roebke and drummer Frank Rosaly. It was recorded in 2005 and released on 482 Music.
Joseph Peter Daley is an American educator, jazz musician, composer and arranger known for his work with the tuba, trombone and euphonium.