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On McCoy Tyner
I’m happy to announce my debut as a preview and feature writer for Time Out New York. First up: McCoy Tyner, starting Tuesday, Dec. 9 at the Blue Note.
A pair of pairs
Jim McAuley, The Ultimate Frog (Drip Audio, 2008) Chris Gestrin, After the City Has Gone: Quiet (Songlines, 2007) These two double-disc releases share a lot in terms of mood, timbre, game plan. They’re worlds you can get lost in; time well-spent. McAuley, a West Coast acoustic guitar improviser, goes some way toward reconciling the arid experimental sound of Derek Bailey with
Ayers’s two cents
About as unconvincing as it gets. Under the guise of soul-searching, Ayers offers an exercise in self-flattery. He and his comrades in the Weather Underground, we’re to believe, were idealists, exquisitely concerned with the value of human life. No mention, of course, that they subscribed to an authoritarian ideology, Marxism-Leninism, and had outright contempt for the principles of liberal democracy.
Hate in Hebron
Eamonn McDonagh and Gene are right: the Arab-hating Jewish settlers of Hebron are scum. But when Gene asks, “Will it take the death of a soldier or policeman at the hand of a settler before the government cracks down?”, he ought to recall that the settlers’ movement has the murder of an Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, on its hands.
Khalidi’s two cents
Rashid Khalidi, disgracefully maligned by the McCain-Palin campaign two months ago, has his turn at bat, talking with Akiva Eldar of Haaretz.
The week on disc (33)
In case you missed the last one… Pete Rodríguez, El Alqiumista/The Alchemist (Conde Music) RIDD Quartet, Fiction Avalanche (Clean Feed) Mark Masters Ensemble, Farewell Walter Dewey Redman (Capri) Odean Pope, What Went Before Vol. 1 (Porter) Luis Perdomo, Pathways (Criss Cross) Nora McCarthy (with John di Martino), Circle Completing (ind.)
Last Knit
Of all the worthy sounds heard Tuesday night, the final night of jazz at the Knit, what stood out most was the slashing, furious freak-jazz of the DaHa Orchestra, short for Andrew D’Angelo and Curtis Hasselbring, both in fantastic form at the helm of a big band. With the unstoppable frenzied pinpoint assault of Jim Black on drums. If it
Brains at the UN
Having written favorably during the campaign about Obama foreign policy adviser Susan Rice, I wanted to express my delight over her appointment as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. Just as John Bolton represented the worst that America had to offer the organization, Rice represents the best. John Nichols of The Nation says otherwise and is bashing Rice already — this