Music Monday: London Jazz, Rob Mazurek, and Leo Wadada Smith

I know it’s Tuesday, but between the blizzard, travel, and late semester chaos, I’m not sure what day of the week it is or whether I’m coming or going. 

In other words, it makes as much sense to do Music Monday today as anything else going on right now. Plus, there are three albums that have come out over the last few weeks that I’m enjoying very much right now. 

The first of the three has already generated a good bit of buzz both among people interested in “the jazz music” and those interested in “the latest thing”: London Brew. This album brings together some of the brightest stars of the London jazz scene — many of whom I’ve blogged about there: Shabaka Hutchings, Theon Cross, Nubya Garcia, Tom Skinner and their colleagues — to produce an album inspired by Miles Davis’s iconic Bitches Brew.

London Brew is not a cover album. Nor is it an effort to recreate the particular sound and vibe of Bitches Brew. Instead, it’s a wholesale re-reading of Miles Davis’s iconic early 1970s outputs set in the context of early 21st century London. As a result, it sounds genuine, and even earnest at times, and is absolutely worthy of repeated listenings.  

Released the same day was the latest album from Rob Mazurek’s Exploding Star Orchestra, Lightning Dreamers. I like Rob Mazurek’s various ensembles and I listened to his last album with the Exploding Star Orchestra, Dimensional Stardust (2020), pretty consistently during the pandemic.

Lightning Dreamers has a kind of kinship with London Brew not only in its boldly abstract cover art, but in the seamless way in which it draws inspiration from the first generation of traditional jazz musicians who sought to integrate electronic music into their improvisation. At the same time, Mazurek continues to do new things, to make new sounds, and to engage with contemporary music.   

Finally, I have a soft sport for Leo Wadada Smith, one of the last remaining scions of the the AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musician) and a trumpet player of remarkable vitality and creativity. He not only played on some of my favorite 1970s albums — including Marion Brown’s Geechee Recollections — but has recorded over 5 decades of intriguing solo and small ensemble recordings of his own.

His latest album, Fire Illuminations, is with his new ensemble, Orange Wave Electric, and it channels Miles Davis’s 1970s electric period in brilliant new ways. Nels Cline’s guitar is particularly notable for giving the entire joint a kind of mid-70s vibe (and is another of the intriguing links between jazz and improvised music and punk).

As a bonus, here’s my buddy Mike Wittgraf (on electronic gizmos) playing with saxophonist Lynn Baker at a music festival last month. It’s pretty great: