News & Updates — avant-garde

Give the bassist some! I always loved NHØP's bass playing on so many great jazz records that I felt the need to point out his birthday today and show some respect. From Denmark, he started playing bass at 13 and went pro pretty quickly. At 17 he was offered the bass role in the Count Basie band but was too young to legally travel to the US for work. He supported many visiting jazz artists at the Jazzhus Montmarte in Copenhagen, including playing with Sonny Rollins, Roland Kirk, Dexter Gordon, Bud Powell, Stan Getz, Albert Ayler, Archie Shepp and others....

Here's a salute to the recently deceased Jaki Liebezeit, the human metronome for Can, among other projects. After playing free-jazz in Germany in the mid-to-late '60s, including an ensemble led by Manfred Schoof, as well as with Globe Unity Orchestra (with a young Peter Brotzmann on sax!) he decided to go with a decidedly more disciplined "motorik" beat as a founding member of Can, a band of Stockausen's students that were really into the Velvet Underground and "world music" and forged a whole new template for out-rock. Indeed, Can are synonymous with the "Krautrock" history. Brian Eno called Krautrock's "motorik"...

Happy birthday to that bitter bastard genius, the incomparable Miles Davis!! From bebop to cool jazz to modal to out-funk/fusion to pop, Miles played it all and never cared what the critics thought of him! My personal favorite era was his '70s hard-avant-funk, some of which sounds so brutal that it borders on proto-death metal!

"The Viking of 6th Avenue", Lewis Hardin was better known as "Moondog", composer, instrument-builder, philosopher and mystical NYC street character. He was from a Kansas farm and was blinded at 16 by dynamite. He attended music school for the blind and lived briefly in the South during the late '30s/early '40s before moving to NYC in '43. There he quickly befriended Charlie Parker, Toscanini, Benny Goodman, Leonard Bernstein and other musical luminaries. He was a busking musician and earned money selling his poems. He spent 25 years on the streets of NY, often along 6th ave, between 52nd & 55th...