On Sundays I try to at least quickly note some of my favorite listening from the week prior — things I would later regret having not written about in more depth, so better to share here briefly than not at all.
Today, that means two live sets.
▰ If this live set by the Jeff Parker ETA IVtet was an EP, it’d be one of my favorite releases thus far this year. And if you’d told me any of the other players (in addition to guitarist Parker: Josh Johnson, alto saxophone; Anna Butterss, bass; Jay Bellerose, drums) was actually the leader, I’d have believed it.
▰ I very much enjoyed Nicolas Collins’ recent book, Semi-Conducting — Rambles Through the Post-Cagean Thicket, and think with some regularity about the anecdote in it when a young Collins walks bt Miles Davis‘ home in Manhattan and hears the trumpeter experimenting with a wah wah pedal. It’s a common element in Davis’ electric-era work, and especially central to this live concert, which was recorded at Chateau Neuf in Oslo, Norway, on November 9, 1971. That’s in between the two albums he released that year: Jack Johnson and Live-Evil. Davis’ band is: Keith Jarrett, keyboards; Gary Bartz saxophone; Michael Henderson, bass guitar; Leon “Ndugu” Chancler, drums; and on percussion, both Don Alias and James Mtume.
