Weekly Picks and Misc.
Picks
Photo credit: Grace Widyatmadja for NPR
Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet - Four Guitars Live The original album was a mind-boggling force of nature, it delighted on so many levels. The quartet—with Orcutt, Wendy Eisenberg, Ava Mendoza, and Shane Parish, who transcribed the original—take everything I loved about the album and widens it like a cinemascope lens.
Steph Richards - Power Vibe I audibly yelped alone in my home office when this album announcement came through. Richards (in duo with Dino J.A. Deane) is featured in this substack’s main image, she is one of my all-time favorite players. Once again, she’s playing with Joshua White, one of SoCal’s most exciting pianists. Power Vibe is, like many of Richards’s albums, fun, heavy, and funky.
Misc
I spent much of the weekend listening to The Complete Candid Recordings Of Cecil Taylor and Buell Neidlinger, which are a fascinating snapshot of Taylor’s early trio/quartet, rounded out by Archie Shepp and (mostly) Denis Charles. The playing is extraordinary, and the song structures are closer to standard. And all of it got me thinking about who our Cecil Taylor is now. I have some thoughts, which I may or may not ever share. Still mulling, but I suspect it’s not a pianist, for one. Would love to hear what others think, though.