Si tengono oggi a Londra al Vortex Jazz Club - luogo a lui caro - i due concerti in memoria del compianto Phil Miller (1949-2017), che proprio tra pochi giorni avrebbe festeggiato i settant'anni: A Life In Music.

https://philmillerthelegacy.com
https://www.facebook.com/PhilMillerTheLegacy
http://www.vortexjazz.co.uk/event/16314

Vortex Jazz Club
11 Gillett Square
London, N16 8AZ
T: 020 7254 4097
E: info@vortexjazz.co.uk

Esce per Good Child Music, come il precedente Three Harps, Tuning Forks & Electronics, l'album di Zeena Parkins che presenta il progetto iniziato tre anni fa nell'isola di Captiva nell'area del Golfo del Messico assieme alla coreografa Jennifer Monson: Captiva.

Così descrive il lavoro la danzatrice: "Zeena and I created a process of tracing photographs of tide lines along the beach to generate rhythmic patterns. We used these rhythms to develop 5 short pieces. We decided on a limited palette, designating particular rhythms/sounds/movements/spatial states as our focus. Zeena uses every part of the harp to give the music specific and unorthodox pitches and tones and often adds objects to prepare the harps or to activate the strings. She is highly gestural: whether sitting/standing, moving around the harp or playing it from behind. She also created a drum machine utilizing lowed pitched sine waves generated from an oscillator. The tide tracing rhythms were generated in the computer and played back through a speaker placed under the drum head, that excited the snare drum to ‘play itself ’. The dancer pares movement down to work inside of the rhythms with particular body parts as well as internal and external arrival points in the body. This is juxtaposed with sensed improvisational states. These compositions are never performed exactly the same way twice but have distinct and recognizable characteristics (harmonically/texturally/gesturally) and in that way, movement and music components juxtapose/co-exist/fit together like a puzzle."

https://zeenaparkins.bandcamp.com/album/captiva
https://www.discogs.com/Zeena-Parkins-Captiva/release/12947207
https://vimeo.com/140947339

Nel 2019 compiono entrambi cinquant'anni di attività l'etichetta Ecm e l'Art Ensemble of Chicago. E di questi, parecchi trascorsi insieme. Per festeggiare c'è un libro commemorativo di trecento pagine con una collezione di ventuno cd: The Art Ensemble of Chicago and Associated Ensembles.

The Art Ensemble of Chicago and Associated Ensembles is a 21-CD limited and numbered edition issued as the standard-bearers of Great Black Music prepare to celebrate their 50th anniversary. Both the Art Ensemble of Chicago and ECM Records were founded in 1969, and there have been many shared experiences. As Roscoe Mitchell says, “It has been amazing to have taken this journey together.”
With their first ECM album, the widely-acclaimed Nice Guys, the Art Ensemble’s revolutionary and polystylistic “ancient to the future” mix of musics - from the deeply spiritual to the fiercely experimental - was illuminated in new detail in Manfred Eicher’s panoramic production, and the stage set for many adventures to follow. These included the albums Full Force, Urban Bushmen, and The Third Decade with the classic AEC quintet line up of Roscoe Mitchell, Joseph Jarman, Lester Bowie, Malachi Favors Maghostut and Famoudou Don Moye. All of Bowie’s and Mitchell’s subsequent ECM recordings are also gathered together here. Charismatic trumpeter Lester Bowie is heard here with his Brass Fantasy group, with Wadada Leo Smith and with Jack DeJohnette. Multi-reed master and primary AEC conceptualist Roscoe Mitchell appears with his Note Factory band, with the Transatlantic Art Ensemble co-founded with Evan Parker, and with an historic trios project recorded at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art. Along the way, numerous distinguished creative musicians make appearances – the long list includes Muhal Richard Abrams, Henry Threadgill, Craig Taborn, Vijay Iyer, Matthew Shipp, Tyshawn Sorey, Fontella Bass, Charlie Haden, Kenny Wheeler, Corey Wilkes, Gerald Cleaver, Phillip Wilson, George Lewis, William Parker, John Abercrombie, Eddie Gomez, and many others, in ECM recordings made between 1978 and 2015.
This beautifully-designed box set incorporates a 300-page book reprising all original album covers, liner notes and poetry (by Joseph Jarman), as well as quotes from Art Ensemble members and the press, new texts by Craig Taborn, Vijay Iyer and George Lewis, a preface by Manfred Eicher, and an introduction by Steve Lake. Plus: many photographs (some previously unpublished), archival documents, and more.

https://www.ecmrecords.com/catalogue/1536576225