Tony Malaby's Tamarindo - Tamarindo Live

Tony Malaby's Tamarindo - Tamarindo Live (Clean Feed, 2010)

Tony Malaby: tenor & soprano saxophones
William Parker: double bass
Nasheet Waits: drums
Wadada Leo Smith: trumpet

1. Buoyant Boy
2. Death Rattle
3. Hibiscus
4. Jack The Hat (with Coda)

Having a trio like the one founded by saxophonist Tony Malaby with the likes of William Parker and Nasheet Waits was enough motive to rejoy, and truth is the CD released by Clean Feed with "Tamarindo" as title caused a big wave of wonder. Now, Tamarindo comes back with a live recording where this group responsible for the most captivating creative jazz played nowadays is transformed into a quartet, by the addition of the trumpeter extraordinaire Wadada Leo Smith as special guest. Only to know it would make anyone eager to listen to what can result from such an association of incredible talents – well, if you have high expectations, here are the very good news: the music inside is even better than everything you can imagine. This is powerhouse free bop performed with the most magical collective chemistry. Finally, we can say jazz is very far from being dead or from smelling funny. It's really alive and capable of the most astonishing acomplishments. "Tony Malaby's Tamarindo Live" is a serious contender for the best jazz album of 2010 – as a metter of fact, for the best jazz album of the last decade. It’s the 200th record in the catalogue of this Portuguese label, a number representing the fulfillment of a dream. (from TheJazzLoft)

HERE

Tony Malaby - Tamarindo

TONY MALABY - Tamarindo (Clean Feed, 2007)

Tony Malaby: tenor & soprano saxophones
William Parker: bass
Nasheet Waits: drums

1. Burried Head
2. Floral and Herbacious
3. La Mariposa
4. Tamarindo
5. Mother's Love
6. Floating Head

The end of the year still held a serious contender for the best albums of 2007. Tony Malaby is an absolutely exquisite saxophonist, whose first records "Sabino", "Apparitions" and "Adobe", offered a modern creative kind of jazz, but then he moved into free-er territory with Angelica Sanchez (his wife) and Tom Rainey (two albums which are easy to recommend), but what he brings here exceeds all expectations. This is free music of the highest levels, with three musicians at the top of their skills, with William Parker on bass and Nasheet Waits on drums. It seems after several listenings that for each of the tracks the only anchor point is a wonderful melody that Malaby keeps up his sleeve for a long time into the piece, while the trio builds up to its release. And the build-up is extreme, moving over the whole emotional range humans can have, from anger and fear to joy and happiness, with everything in between, captivating from beginning to end, with all three musicians exceeding themselves : Malaby can play hesitantly, sensitively, he soars, sings, stutters and screams, Parker too is sensitive, playing his raw arco, but every so often falling back on powerful vamps, then releasing tension again for more pointillistic efforts, and Waits is stunning too, creating wonderful accents, impacts and depth into the music, counteracting with violence when the melody is soft, or being very subtle in the harder moments. And all three play with melody, sound, rhythm and tempo as if it's the easiest thing on earth, changing them, playing them, changing them again, ...

On the first track "Burried Head", Malaby's playing is sensitive, hesitant, while the rhythm sections just offers support, without rhythm, acting as a sounding board rather, then Parker starts a fast bass run, followed by Waits, pushing Malaby to some high rhythmic stutters, evolving into a repetitive theme conjured up from nowhere, leading into a powerful, fast and mad solo in the middle section, then breaking down again in plaintive and melodic resignation, while Waits plays in different tempo, with counter-rhythms, yet Parker brings them all back together, Malaby ending with a soft melody, a precursor to the albums main theme coming up later.

"La Mariposa" is a softer piece, more abstract in its harmonic development, with Malaby on soprano soaring high like a butterfly. The most beautiful piece is the title track, which starts with a great melodic theme, evolving into some more free expansion of it, then repeating the theme in a whailing, lamenting kind of way, somewhere between jubilant admiration, joy and pain, evolving into screeching fear and utter chaos of the whole trio, until they find their footing again, repeating the theme, resigned, somehow still in jubilant wonder.

On the intro to "Mother's Love", Malaby creates flute-like sounds on his sax, gentle, moving, inviting Parker in to the music with some subtle arco, Waits adding raw percussive accents, flowing the whole into some ambiguous environment of beauty and emotional strain.

The last track "Moving Head" starts with a nice Parker ostinato bass, Waits lightly propulsing the track forward, while Malaby flies above this, not really playing a melody, but talking really, speaking, crying, ... lightly touching upon the theme of the title track, ending in a plaintive long whail.

What they play here is so free, so open, so melodious, yet at the same time so coherent in its sound, its structure and execution, that you wonder how they did it. I've listened to it more than ten times now, I think, yet it's a revelation again with each listen. It's broad, deep, rich, intense, beautiful. This album is superb. Not to be missed. (from Free Jazz)

HERE

Jason Ajemian's Daydream Full Lifestyles - Protest Heaven

Tony Malaby: tenor saxophone
Rob Mazurek: cornet
Jeff Parker: guitar
Chad Taylor: drums
Jason Ajemian: bass

Sure, these musicians did know each other, and they had played together, but not in this line-up, and not with this music. So they meet, they play for an hour, and the result is this incredible fourty-five minutes of freely improvised pieces of fantastic music.

The "Daydream Full Lifestyles" are Jason Ajemian on bass, Tony Malaby on tenor saxophone, Rob Mazurek on cornet, Jeff Parker on guitar, and Chad Taylor on drums. You can also consider it a somewhat altered version of the Chicago Underground Duo/Trio/Quartet, with Malaby on sax.

The music is lyrical, open-ended, unhurried and deeply sensitive. The instruments weave wonderfully floating textures of sound, with a strong inherent beauty.The big difference with the later incarnations of the Chicago Underground bands is the lack of electronic/electric experimentalism: the music here is entirely acoustic, and there are indeed moments that are pretty extreme, yet the totality of the sound is rather eclectic, integrating all that is great in the American jazz tradition: there is some blues, some bop, free jazz and more avant forms. This forms are mostly integrated into the totality of the concept, but to the band's credit, the different tracks also have a different feel and character, showing the various aspects of the same approach.

The only concept the band had was to respect each other's breathing pace : "Instead of music composed to a time signature or external clock, this is timed to each performer's internal clock. Everyone plays along to their own breath patterns. It's a chance operation. You compose music so it can fit into any overlapping of people’s breath patterns."

The result is a staggering performance by five stellar musicians. Free jazz at its best : expressive, innovative, joint creativity, instant composing, and first and foremost a great listening experience.

Don't miss it. (from FreeJazz)

2010 PROTEST HEAVEN (rapidshare/mediafire)

Daniel Humair, Tony Malaby, Bruno Chevillon - Pas de dense

Daniel Humair: drums
Tony Malaby: saxophone
Bruno Chevillon: bass

Two years ago, Swiss drummer Daniel Humair released "Full Contact" with Tony Malaby on sax and Joachim Kühn on piano for a whirling series of intense improvisations. Now, two years later, the piano is replaced by French bassist Bruno Chevillon.

The playing is no less intense, and spread over 12 "séquences", that move quite organically one into the other. Although fully improvised, the pieces are quite boppish and Malaby's natural lyricism make this a quite accessible album. Humair's drumming is like on the previous album : powerful and subtle at the same time, a fine quality which also defines the overall nature of the music. Malaby is never less than sensitive, whether in the weak squeals of "Séquence HCM 4", or in his full-voiced Latin phrasing of "Séquence HCM 3". Fans of Malaby will recognize some of his signature phrasings on several pieces, yet that does not really bother, quite to the contrary, since there is again such a wealth of ideas that there is no risk of repetition from previous albums.

Whether swinging or abstract avant-gardism, the three musicians feel equally at ease in every environment, and have sufficient stories to tell, playing with tone, timbre, silence, phrasing, rhythm, interaction, density, volume, pulse in a way that can only be admired from beginning to end. The relative shortness of the pieces forces the musicians to create with a rare immediacy: you have to listen and be in the improvisation on the moment to make it work : there is no time to listen and absorb the other's ideas. And that's possibly the unusual power of this album: even if the improvisation is only two minutes long, or even one minute, the trio moves the initial notes or rhythm into a tiny story, with its own characteristics, development and ending, an improvised capsule of intimate conversation. So there is no real soloing, the trio creates the sound together, as one dense mass, yet full of shifting flavors. The last piece, because of its length, shows a different, more expansive side of the trio's possibilities, with room for soloing, and it is a great ending for the album.

Even if the music is less expressive than on "Tamarindo" or "Voladores", possibly because of the compactness of the pieces which does not allow for long developments, the end result is an absolute joy.
(http://freejazz-stef.blogspot.com/2010/05/daniel-humair-tony-malaby-bruno.html)

2010 PAS DE DENSE