Music Monday: Some Spontaneity for Snow Time

I had a whole bunch of relatively low stakes writing to do this past week. This included a first draft of a paper that I’ll be giving in a couple of weeks, some very easy letters of recommendation to write, and some administrative verbiage that no one will ever read. More than that, we had a couple snow days where I found myself sitting with my laptop in front of a fire. I find that these situations call for music and, whenever possible, some kind of live recordings that remind me that despite being cooped up and obligated to do something utterly mundane and mechanical a certain amount of spontaneity exists in the world.

First, I have been listening to a bit of Steve Coleman lately. I honestly don’t know much about him other than as founder of the M-Base concept of improvised music. And to be more honest, I don’t really understand what M-Base is, but whatever it is won him a MacArthur Fellowship in 2014.

His album Live at the Village Vanguard, Vol. 1 (The Embedded Sets) apparently is a manifestation of the M-Base approach to music making with long tracks that appear to my rather untrained ear to be equal parts improvised and orchestrated. Whatever the case, the album has a grove and momentum that made it an inspiring soundtrack to a boring, snowy, day. There’s something about it that keeps drawing me back in. 

Check it out here.

Taking nothing away from M-Base and Coleman, his Village Vanguard sets made me hungry for more improvised music to enliven the long weekend. I put on Darrell Grant’s The New Black: Live at Birdland. 

This album had been tempting me for the last few months (or at least since its release in July!) and while I hadn’t heard Grant’s apparently iconic album Black Art (which I’ve now added to my list), I knew and appreciated trumpet player Marquis Hill. The album is good. It’s a smokey counterpoint to Coleman’s vividly recorded sets at the Village Vanguard. Grant’s album is raw, compressed, and almost bootleg quality which accentuates the spontaneity of the band and the (apparently) unexpected recording of the performance. In other words, there’s something very real about this recording that made me listen harder. 

You can check it out here.  

Finally, I’ve really enjoyed something a bit less spontaneous and maybe just a bit less serious (or serious in a different way). As we practiced our hunkering during the first blizzard of you year and I sipped (guzzled) a martini, I listened to the new album from Ezra Collective Where I’m Meant to Be.

Check out their release event from London’s Ronnie Scott’s. It’s what my colleague Sharon Carson might call “Monday get out the door music”:

I particularly appreciate the boxing references at the start of the video as it embodies the 

The album is here and it’s a great warm up.