#grachan

[jikosapojapan]

浜松市にあるJaws West 所属のブランドン橋本選手を撮影させていただきました。 橋本選手は2/26 Grachan60の無差別級決勝で戦います。 橋本選手は今僕が制作中の映画「君はなぜ戦うのか？ザ・ブルーシャーク」の瓜田幸造さんの対戦相手でした。 なんとJaws west は僕の実家の近所で、橋本選手の先生は屋宜さんといって10年来お付き合いさせてもらっている先生でした。 浜松出身者が幕張に集まって、幕張メッセでお会いできてびっくりしました。 屋宜先生と橋本選手のご好意で撮影させていただきました。ありがとうございました。 Grachanの岩﨑代表にもお世話になり映画制作を進めさせてもらっております。 映画は1人では作れないので、本当に感謝しかありません。 映画「君はなぜ戦うのか？ザ・ブルーシャーク」制作中です https://www.allwinmedia.net/bulueshark 映画　仮面ファイター　総合格闘技は日本から生まれた1985 ももうすぐ完成します。 https://www.allwinmedia.net/%E4%BB%AE%E9%9D%A2%E3%83%95%E3%82%A1%E3%82%A4%E3%82%BF%E3%83%BC #仮面ファイター #君はなぜ戦うのか #jawswest #ブランドン橋本 #grachan (JAWS WEST) https://www.instagram.com/p/CoQtFntSlZu/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[jazzdailyblog]

Grachan Moncur III: The Avant-Garde Trombone Pioneer

Introduction: Grachan Moncur III, a prominent figure in the avant-garde jazz movement of the 1960s, is celebrated for his innovative approach to the trombone and his contributions as a composer and bandleader. With a career spanning over six decades, Moncur’s work has left an indelible mark on the world of jazz. His ability to push the boundaries of the genre while maintaining a deep sense of…

[jt1674]

[arterrorist]

While exploring jazz recommendations I stumbled upon Eric Dolphy „Out to lunch!” album. As great as it is, I was particularly enamoured with Bobby Hutcherson’s presence. His vibe playing (those „suspended” notes!) makes all the difference. Looking for more of him, I’ve found another masterpiece of avant/post bop jazz: Jackie McLean „Destination… out!”, where Bobby is doing his magic, giving the album a mysterious atmosphere. Now it’s time for another one. And what a gem it is! Grachan Moncur III „Evolution”. It may be the best of them all, or at least a more than worthy companion. Bobby’s trademark „floating” notes are here in spades, but it seems his style inspired Moncur to build the whole composition this way. The title track is based on long, suspended notes, repeated again and again by several players along with Bobby - very dark and ominous tune. Brilliant! I also love the soundstage, with the drums/trumpet on the right, sax/trombone on the left, and vibes/bass in the middle. In my mind, positioning the drums like this suggests they are more like one of the leading instruments, and indeed Williams’ playing is very imaginative, far from being just a timekeeper. As a result it’s probably my favourite jazz album drum-wise ever! And I have an impression it’s somewhat obscure, compared to the other two 🤔So, If you like the abovemntioned albums, grab this one too, and thank me later :)

[ceevee5]

[musicandotherdelights]

Daily Listening, Day #119 - April 28th, 2020

Album: Evolution (Blue Note, 1964)

Artist: Grachan Moncur III

Genre: Post-Bop

Track Listing: 

"Air Raid"

"Evolution"

"The Coaster"

"Monk In Wonderland"

Favorite Song: "Monk In Wonderland"

[goatpalacezine]

Jackie McLean: Destination Out!

Jazz is a happy thing and there are a lot of musicians around waiting to give a little happiness to a world filled with so much unrest. Jackie McLean“Destination Out!” (Blue Note Records, 1964/2022)

[mayolfederico]

Tony Williams

Tony Williams (12 dicembre 1945, Chicago – † 23 febbraio 1997, San Francisco) è stato un batterista grandioso della seconda metà del XX secolo che ha attraversato più linguaggi musicali caratterizzandoli sempre in modo innovativo e stupefacente: un vero Re Mida della batteria. Ragazzo prodigio (a 11 anni fa già alcune apparizioni in jazz club), non ha compiuto ancora ventanni ed è subito…

[prgnant]

top ten mid 60’s jazz records for me personally in my life are

Coltrane quartet- all of them but love supreme or meditations especially

Eric Dolphy- out to lunch

Andrew Hill - point of departure

Sun Ra arkestra- magic city

Albert Ayler - spiritual unity

Grachan Monchur III - some other stuff

Jackie McLean - destination out

Archie Shepp - fire music

Wayne Shorter - speak no evil

New York art quartet - self title

all 64-65 im pretty sure? arbitrarily but also something so special abt those two years <33333

[fredseibertdotcom]

Michael Cuscuna, photograph by Jimmy Katz

Michael Cuscuna

Michael Cuscuna, one of my great inspirations and sometime collaborator, passed away this weekend (April 19, 2024) from cancer. Being a cancer survivor  last year myself, when someone I’ve known and worked with for over 50 years it hit particularly hard.

Blue Cuscuna: 1999 promotional sampler from Toshiba-EMI [Japan]

Michael has been the most consequential jazz record producer of the past half century, a man who had not only a passion, but the relentlessness necessary to will the entire history of the music into being. Don’t believe it? Check out the more than 2600 (!) of his credits on Discogs. Substantial and meaningful he might have been, but to me, he was a slightly older friend who was always there with a helping hand. Hopefully, I was able to hand something back on occasion. 

As I said when he answered “7 Questions” eight years ago: “I first encountered Michael as a college listener to his “freeform,” major station, radio show in New York, and was fanboy’d out when a mutual friend introduced us at [an] open rehearsal for [Carla Bley’s and Michael Mantler’s] Jazz Composer’s Orchestra at The Public Theater (MC has a photographic memory: “It was Roswell [Rudd]’s piece or Grachan [Moncur III]’s. You were darting nervously around the chairs with your uniform of the time – denim jean jacket, forgettable shirt and jeans.”) By 1972 or 73, he’d joined Atlantic Records as a producer, and since that was my career aspiration, I’d give him a call every once in awhile. He’d patiently always make time for my rambling and inane questions, and I never forgot his kindness to a drifting, unfocused, fellow traveler. 

“...patiently always make time for my rambling and inane questions...” says a lot about Michael. His raspy voice could sometimes seem brusque, but ask anyone and they will tell you that he always made time to talk. Especially about jazz. 

I desperately wanted to be a record producer and Michael was one of the first professionals I encountered. He had already produced my favorite Bonnie Raitt LP when somehow or other I bullied my way into his Atlantic Records office, where he was a mentee of the legendary Joel Dorn. Over the next few years, Michael was often amused at some of the creative decisions I made, but he was always supportive and even would sometimes ask me to make a gig when he couldn’t. When I spent a year living in LA, he invited me over to the studio while he was mining the history of Blue Note Records that would define his life for the next half century. I completely failed to understand what the great service to American culture he was about to unleash. Along with Blue Note executive Charlie Lourie, Michael’s research resulted in a series of double albums (”two-fers” in 70s speak), but little did the world know what was on Michael’s and Charlie’s minds.

The Cuscuna/Lourie Blue Note “Two-Fers” that ignited Mosaic Records

“I don’t think it’s generally understood just how imperiled the musical and visual archives of Blue Note Records were at one point, and just how heroically Michael stepped in to make sure this unparalleled American music survived for future generations. If you like jazz, you owe the man.” –Evan Haga 

(Joe Maita does a great interview about Michael's career here.) 

Fast forward a few years. The air went out of my record producing tires, I became the first creative director of MTV, I quit MTV and along with my partner Alan Goodman started the world’s first media “branding” agency. Leafing through DownBeat one day I saw an ad that started a new relationship with Michael that would last, on one level or another, for the rest of his life: the “mail order” jazz reissue label Mosaic Records. 

Charlie Lourie & Michael Cuscuna at Mt. Fuji Jazz Festival, Japan 1987. Photograph by Gary Vercelli / CapRadio Music

Long story short, in 1982 Michael returned my check for the first two Mosaic  releases with a note asking for some help. Initially, Mosaic wasn’t the sure fire, instant success Michael and Charlie had hoped for, did I have any ideas? I did, but no time to do anything other than make suggestions, we were busy trying to get our own shop off the ground. This cycle repeated itself for another couple of years when this time when Michael called he said Mosaic was on death’s door. Fred/Alan was in better shape, so Alan and I, on our summer vacation, came up with the first Mosaic “brochure,” convinced the guys we knew what we were doing (I’d read a few paragraphs in a direct mail book in a bookstore) and, with nothing to lose, Charlie and Michael took the plunge with us. Success! 42 years later, the former Fred/Alan and Frederator CFO at the helm, Alan and I always answer any call from Mosaic.

The first Mosaic Record box set 1983

There aren’t many people in the world like Michael Cuscuna. The world’s culture will miss him. I will miss him. Most of all, of course, his wife and children will miss him. 

[jikosapojapan]

映画「君はなぜ戦うのか？ ザ・ブルーシャーク」（仮）撮影中 https://youtu.be/dgevdJywmIY 瓜田幸造さんは、12月4日のGRACHAN無差別級トーナメント準決勝に出場します。会場は幕張メッセです。追い込みの練習がメインでした。 掣圏会瓜田道場 https://seikens.jp/ GRACHAN58 https://grachan.jp/grachan58/ #grachan #君はなぜ戦うのか #瓜田幸造 https://www.instagram.com/p/ClSI-ytyO0w/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[projazznet]

Grachan Moncur III Octet – Exploration

Exploration is an album by trombonist and composer Grachan Moncur III. It was recorded in June 2004, and was released by Capri Records later that year.

[fearnoarts]

Dave Burrell with Grachan Moncur III, Marion Brown, and Reggie Johnson

[voskhozhdeniye]

Musical Obsessions 2022

Afrorack: The Afrorack

Aphex Twin‘s Radiator (Original Mix)

Arbiter‘s Clarity

Ari Lennox’s Pressure

The Belltower’s Plastic Man

Beyoncé: RENAISSANCE*

Bill Orcutt: Music For Four Guitars

Björk: fossora

Boards of Canada‘s 1969

Bob Moses’ Love Brand New

Bobby Timmons‘ Moanin

Chat Pile: God’s Country*

Coil, lots of Coil.

Cold Gawd: God Get Me the Fuck Out of Here

Conway the Machine‘s John Woo Flick & Stressed

Daniel Rossen: You Belong There

David Axelrod‘s The Human Abstract & The Fly

Depeche Mode‘s In Your Room

Dexter Gordon‘s Cheese Cake

Don Cherry: Brown Rice

Earth: Earth 2

Emeka Ogboh: 6°30′33.372″N 3°22′0.66″E

Eric Dolphy: Out There*

Fivio Foreign’s What’s My Name

Gnod: Hexen Valley

God Body Disconnect: Spiral of Grief

Grachan Moncur III*

Hainbach: Core Memory

James Nasty’s Don’t Stop

Kae Tempest‘s Salt Coast

Kilo Kish: AMERICAN GURL

Kristofer Maddigan‘s Funfair Fever

Lovesliescrushing, lots of Lovesliescrushing*

Mario Lino Stancati‘s Torna a sparire

Pan Daijing: Tissues

Paradise Blossom: Sunset Getaway

PJ Harvey, lots of PJ Harvey

Pusha T: It’s Almost Dry

Rachika Nayar: Heaven Come Crashing

The Smile’s Open The Floodgates, Waving A White Flag & Skrting On The Surface*

Sondra Sun-Odeon‘s Desyre & Hit

Sonic Youth: Washing Machine*

Sonny Sharrock*

Sudan Archives: Natural Brown Prom Queen

Yeah Yeah Yeahs: Cool It Down

Yellow Swans, lots of Yellow Swans*

Youth Valley: Youth Valley EP

Zola Jesus’s Sewn

Bold and italicized indicates a favorite released this year.

The Beyoncé, Chat Pile, Emeka Ogboh and God Body Disconnect albums are my favorites from the year. The Daniel Rossen album gets a special mention for being beautiful, and sounding like Yellow House part 2. According to my Last.fm, I listened to more music this year than I did last year. I said I wasn’t going to do that, but oh well. I listened to over 50 albums from this year. That list only mentions 18 of them.

I have pretty much stopped listening to commercial radio. Ari, Fivio and Bob Moses are the only things I heard on the radio I liked this year.

The last two years have been me casting a rather large net, and seeing what I found that I liked. This year has been me exploring artists adjacent to the ones I learned about and fell in love with over these past two years. Then there was my desire to really dive deeper into jazz this year. While I’m sure that’s going to continue, because there’s just so much to explore. Next year I want to start digging through all of the electronic albums the synth bros swear are the most important albums ever made.

Beyoncé: Very early into getting into synths I realized that most of the synth forums are populated by obnoxious cis white heterosexual dudes. A guy I follow on Youtube made a video about his interactions with them a year or two ago. They are very closed minded. They do not respect artists of color, women, the usual shit. When Aphex Twin picks up an 808, it’s the greatest thing of all time. When Beyoncé or Metro Boomin pick up an 808 or Pharmakon uses her modular, that’s not music. The fact that RENAISSANCE explicitly culls its influences from Black dance music throughout the past 50 years has made listening to it the most fun I’ve had this year. If you’ve listened to any of the patches I’ve uploaded in the past 6 months, you’ll hear there’s been an influence.

Chat Pile: That’s what living in America feels like right now. Watching shit collapse around you.

Eric Dolphy: My first jazz albums were A Kind of Blue and other late fifties early sixties Miles albums. They all sound like what I expected jazz to sound like. It took me moving on to seventies Miles and finally late Coltrane for me to come back to those sixties albums. I’ve expanded what I listen to since then, but I really wanted this year to be the year I really went searching for jazz that scratched an itch the way I do for other styles. This was the year it really hit me that I’ll never get to hear all the music I’ll ever want to hear. There’s a sub genre of jazz named third stream, it attempts to meld classical and jazz together into a new genre. I’m not sure if he was actively attempting to do this while he was alive, but his music has become an example of the style. This is just a gorgeous, haunting album.

Grachan Moncur III: A completely different style of jazz compared to Dolphy. Moncur‘s style was incredibly moody and atmospheric. Him, Mingus and Alan Shorter are my favorite jazz composers I’ve stumbled upon so far. Moncur was basically my guiding light this year. After finding his bandleader work, I started to look for albums that had him as a sideman and composer. That would introduce me to other soloist I enjoyed, and then I’d start getting into them. Rinse and repeat. So my favorite thing this year is learning to actually pay attention to who composed a song, and using that to open doors. My favorite jazz song is Mephistopheles, the last track on Wayne Shorter‘s The All Seeing Eye. I learned his brother Alan wrote it years ago, and that’s how I got into Alan’s music. This year has just been me taking that idea to the extreme. When I say this is the most music I’ve ever listened to in a year. I mean it......

Lovesliescrushing: Cough Syrup Shoegaze

The Smile: Every album Thom has worked on over the last decade has had an unreleased Radiohead song on it. Radiohead were the last band I super obsessed over when that was a thing I did. They’ve played a lot of these songs live, so I know and have heard them many, many, many times. I’ve known Skrting On The Surface for a decade now. It was my favorite of the unreleased songs. Skrting On The Surface has become another in a line of songs where I prefer the live version to the album version. Of course I can always look them up on Youtube, but everybody hears the album version. Who is looking up a poorly shot video with pristine audio of a unreleased Radiohead song from 2008. As a side note, this has ruined Swans’ To Be Kind and The Glowing Man for me. Those pre album live versions destroy the studio versions. The way The Seer, She Loves Us and Bring The Sun feel like bombs live. Michael was having rips of Not Here/Not Now pulled off of Youtube back when it came out. They sold it as a way to fund recording To Be Kind, but if you ever get a chance to hear that.... The live version of Avatar rearranged my DNA back in 2012.

Sonic Youth: Sonic Youth remind me of Miles Davis. I got Goo and Experimental Jet Set, Trash And No Star years ago, and just did not like them. I love Tunic, and that’s the only thing from them I would listen to. I kept hearing people talking about how amazing they were. Eventually I asked a mutual what albums they were listening to. He said he hated Goo and Experimental Jet Set, Trash And No Star too. He pointed me in the direction of Bad Moon Rising. I liked that and started moving forward. I picked up Washing Machine this year. If only I had started there........

Sonny Sharrock: Damn, damn, damn, damn!

Yellow Swans: I am typing this in late September. Right now I’m making beat heavy music with the Digitone and Syntakt, but in my dreams I make noise and drone.

I have not chosen what albums are going in the car next year. I usually choose months, if not years, yes years, in advance. I’m going to wing it next year.

Last year’s list.

[theanticool]

Yamato Nishikawa vs Yuki Kawana - Shooto 2021 Vol.6

Fighting professionally since the tender age of...13, Yamato Nishikawa (21-3-6) is set to make his UFC debut this Saturday (Oct. 22) at the ripe old age of...19. Yeah. The teenager has fought for promotions like Shooto, P4P FC, and Grachan in Japan and hasn’t lost a fight since he was like 15.

Nishikawa is set to face his toughest fight to date in his UFC debut, powerhouse Magomed Mustafaev (14-4).

[theloniousbach]

ALMOST LIVESTREAM: SHERMAN IRBY with Andre Hayward, Tyler Bullock, Gerald Cannon, and Willie Jones III, JAZZ ST LOUIS, 16 MAY 2024

SHERMAN IRBY along with Andre Hayward too are veterans of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and so colleagues of JStL president Victor Goines. I didn’t know them but the rhythm section members are all Small’s/Mezzrow’s regulars. Gerald Cannon’s and Willie Jones III’s presence on a gig are strong recommendations and Tyler Bullock was merely a familiar name whom I will circle back to.

IRBY is an appealing alto sax player who plays smart within the very straight ahead tradition that makes Wynton Marsalis’ JLCO such a beast. Having seen Joe Ford, a McCoy Tyner veteran, with Chris Beck earlier in the week, I am on a check out altos project that started with Jackie McLean. McLean played with trombonist Grachan Moncur III enough that the presence of Andre Hayward on this gig also helped seal the deal. Hayward’s nickname is Butter and he is smooth.

While this was far from smooth jazz, it wasn’t as gritty as Ford or as much of the Small’s regular, more uptown than the West Village. Maybe this is, in practice, the test of the W Marsalis aesthetic. So I found it solid solid solid, but not spectacular even if there was much to like.

Like, Irby’s duet with Cannon on A Train which had plenty of invention and risk. That was the highlight.

Like, playing tunes by and in that way acknowledging Roy Hargrove and John Hicks.

Like, the rich smart lines with the alto/trombone sonorities.

Like, Hayward’s nimbleness and rich tone.

Like, Bullock’s strong accompaniment and energetic piano solos.

Like, Cannon and Jones III being the consummate pros that they are, elevating the gig.

I suppose there’s a reason I didn’t prioritize this one. It would have been fun enough to be there in person, but the stream was enough.