Photo from Delfeayo Marsalis’ MySpace page by Nick DeRiso For all of the many wonders of Duke Ellington‘s Such Sweet Thunder, the 1957 ode to the writings of William Shakespeare left plenty of room to tinker. Many of the compositions, which explored literary familiars from Othello to Hamlet, were but brief bursts of sound. That opens the door for an [...]

by Mark Saleski While many “serious” jazz fans will turn up their precious noses at the jazzification of pop tunes, we here at SomethingElse! steadfastly believe that life is too short to be keeping that bow tie so tight. Sure, we love us some Miles and ‘Trane, but that doesn’t mean we’re against letting our hair down. C’mon, we’re just [...]

by Nick DeRiso “Like Sonny,” reportedly based on an element of a Sonny Rollins solo — perhaps during “My Old Flame,” from Kenny Dorham’s 1957 Jazz Contrasts record? — illustrates the remarkable attention to detail that still makes John Coltrane‘s music not just interesting but important. He wasn’t a stylist, or someone attempting to mimic someone else. Coltrane was trying [...]

by Nick DeRiso Drummers, even the rare ones who find fame, are enablers. They spend the bulk of their time refocusing the spotlight on others. It’s no different on Nommo, the sterling new quartet release by Turkish-born Ferit Odman. He assembled a thoughtful group of notables for sessions held in Brooklyn, N.Y., and then smartly allowed each of them to [...]

by Nick DeRiso A group of cross-country friends with day jobs got together to produce Rochester Express, this chummy, Woody Herman-style amalgam of galloping jazz joys. By day, the members of Rochester, Minnesota-based TakeTwo work as a cardiovascular surgeon, a respiratory therapist, and an IBM engineer. In this two day recording session, however, they emerged from their shiny office edifices [...]

by Pico So a couple of years ago we saluted the national shopping holiday called Black Friday with some musings about a 1975 Steely Dan song of the same name. This time, we’re going to mark the occasion with another ditty by the Boys From Bard (Walter Becker and Donald Fagen), called “Everything Must Go.” This, of course, is the [...]

by Pico Ever since the music business as we know it first came into existence, there have always been musicians for whose need for artistic purity and/or just out of financial necessity has made them into “do it yourself” musicians, producing homemade music for a limited audience. More accurately, a portion of that audience who actually were able to find [...]

by S. Victor Aaron Washington, D.C.’s Matta Gawa’s self-described “cinematic chunks of post-hardcore improvised sound” is, however else you might describe it, standing apart from the main body of whack jazz. Sounds created from more than forty guitar pedals generating loops, sample, octave altering, various synthesized noise effects created and layered all at once and rounded out by some mad [...]

by Mark Saleski Over at A Blog Supreme, they’re tossing around an interesting question: What’s The First Coltrane Album You Fell In Love With? That’s an easy one for me: it was Interstellar Space. It sort of confused me (OK, it confused the heck out of me!) but I totally dug the barely-controlled energy levels, the wild interplay, and how [...]

by Pico Within the realm of improvised music saxophone players, Anthony Braxton has few peers, but David S. Ware has to be considered a lifetime member of that exclusive club. A free jazz saxophonist who is also a technician of the highest order, Ware has that rare ability to blur the lines between inside and outside playing. Every time I [...]