thanks wall matthews for sharing this lovely creation

Listening with good headphones in a quiet environment is recommended.

Related tracks:
https://soundcloud.com/hearingbeings/20211024-an-excerpt-from-a-syncopated-dawn-spring
https://soundcloud.com/hearingbeings/20211024-a-syncopated-dawn-spring

@Bandcamp

2021.10.24 Night Music. Spring.

Entourage Music and Theatre Ensemble 'The Mermaid's Purse: Live at Chatham College, 1976' out March 4th, 2022 on CD/digital, now available for pre-order.

In 1976 the Entourage Music and Theatre Ensemble reached a creative zenith. The nomadic troupe had just released The Neptune Collection, its iconic second album for Moses Asch’s Folkways Records, and decided to present the music to audiences across the rust belt in its most miasmic, elemental form. Extended stretches of full-group improvisation mingled with folk-tune like melodies during these performances, which featured multiple dancers spontaneously interpreting the music, at times in elaborate costume. Like contemporaries Popol Vuh, Sandy Bull, and Don Cherry, Entourage fused jazz and strains of traditional music from around the world to form a singular, kaleidoscopic vision of musical liberation. The Mermaid’s Purse: Live at Chatham College 1976 is the most complete, best-preserved audio recording of these performances, featuring music from across the Entourage catalog. It is being released for the first time 45 years after its recording, and features liner notes by lone surviving member Wall Matthews.

Entourage Music and Theatre Ensemble - Soft Fist / Cleopatra Music / Harbinger

First track off London Odense Ensemble Jaiyede Sessions vol. 2 - cut from the same sessions as vol. 1, but showcasing the more diverse nature of vol. 2 which broadens out the spectrum of the ensemble into new realms.

London Odense Ensemble: Reflective Shapes

Vol 2 out January 20 2023

Artist: London Odense Ensemble
Title: Jaiyede Sessions vol. 2


In recent years London has become an epicenter for experimental, visionary jazz. On this unique session, two of the finest exponents of the London jazz scene, Tamar Osborn and Al MacSween, join forces with members of the celebrated Danish psychedelic underground - Jonas Munk, Jakob Skøtt and Martin Rude – to create a heady sonic brew. On this first volume of material there's everything one could hope for in such a collaboration: sonically it summons the free flowing euphoria of Alice Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders' work in the late 1960s and early 1970s. But there's also a focus on rhythmic energy and vitality that calls to mind the grooviest krautrock or electric period Miles Davis, as well as a healthy dose of electronic experiments. 

Throughout these eight tracks the quintet paints with a colourful palette. Tamar Osborn shifts between baritone sax and flutes. Keyboardist Al MacSween doesn't just stick with the tried and true electric piano - an instrument which he masters - but showers these tracks in analog synths and effects as well. Add to that the fact that Jonas Munk took a somewhat creative approach when editing and mixing these pieces – with effects boxes wired in, occasionally giving the mix a dubby, ambient atmosphere. Similar to Munk and Skøtt's main project, Causa Sui, digging into the past becomes a vehicle to open up the future. What the quintet has created in these sessions is something quite unique.

Bios:
Tamar Osborn: 
Saxophonist, composer and multi-wind instrumentalist is the creative force behind modal jazz ensemble Collocutor (On The Corner Records). She is a member of the Dele Sosimi Afrobeat Orchestra, performs and collaborates regularly with Sarathy Korwar, Jessica Lauren, Emanative, Ill Considered and DJ Khalab.

Al MacSween: 
Keyboard player & founding member of Kefaya. Collaborations include American jazz legend Gary Bartz, Syrian qanun master Maya Youseff, London Community Gospel Choir, Palestinian jazz singer Reem Kelani & kora player Kadialy Kouyate.


Martin Rude: 
Multi-string instrumentalist & lead singer in Sun River. Doubles as stand-in bass player in Causa Sui.

Jakob Skøtt: 
Drummer in Causa Sui with a slew of side projects on El Paraiso, including Chicago Odense Ensemble, as well as being responsible for the label’s visuals.

Jonas Munk:
Guitarist in Causa Sui & studio wizard on most releases on El Paraiso. Also works with a wide palette of electronic music.

London Odense Ensemble: Casper's Green

From Playing for the Man at the Door: Field Recordings from the Collection of Mack McCormick, 1968 - 1971, out August 4th on Smithsonian Folkways: https://folkways.si.edu/playing-for-the-man-at-the-door

In the 1950s and 60s, the blues was the dominant form of Black vernacular music throughout Texas and the surrounding areas. In segregated neighborhoods, community members gathered in saloons, dancehalls, and each other’s homes to hear their neighbors sing their stories of sorrow, heartbreak, jubilation, and triumph. Robert “Mack” McCormick, an academically untrained but fanatical devotee of the blues, stepped into this world and became one of its most devout advocates and documentarians. By photographing Black and Latino Texans and their neighborhoods, as well as recording and interviewing musicians—many of whom never stepped foot into a proper recording studio—McCormick endeared and eventually embedded himself into these communities. By the time he died in 2015, McCormick had amassed a collection of 590 reels of sound recordings and 165 boxes of manuscripts, original interviews and research notes, thousands of photographs and negatives, playbills, and posters. Because McCormick never published or released most of these materials, his collection became a thing of legend and intense speculation among scholars, blues aficionados, and musicians alike.

Playing for the Man at the Door: Field Recordings from the Collection of Mack McCormick, 1958–1971 is the first compilation of music drawn from this fabled collection, which indelibly documents a pivotal moment in African American history. It features never-before-heard performances not only from musicians who became icons in their own right—including Lightnin’ Hopkins and Mance Lipscomb—but also, crucially, performers whose names may be unfamiliar to even the most devoted blues fans and scholars. Newly mastered recordings and accompanying photographs bring to life many of these forgotten figures: offering insight into their lives and illuminating in new, enlightening ways their joys and anguish, deep social connections, distinctive voices, and cultural networks. The collection spans gospels, ragtime, country blues dirges, the unclassifiable music of George “Bongo Joe” Coleman, and more, showing that no community, no matter how tight knit, is monolithic.

Accompanying the music is a 128-page book, which contains breathtaking photographs by McCormick and his associates, as well as contextual essays by producers Jeff Place and John Troutman on McCormick’s life, and by musicians Mark Puryear and Dom Flemons on some of the marginalized communities throughout “Greater Texas” to which McCormick devoted his life’s work. This release is a partnership with the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.

Playing for the Man at the Door: Field Recordings from the Collection of Mack McCormick, 1958 - 1971

Leroy “Country” Johnson with Edwin “Buster” Pickens - Train Roll Up

First  issued  over  25  years  ago,  and  now  remastered  from  original tapes. The vinyl edition comes with six high-quality lithograph  art  prints representing  each  of  the  birds  on  the  album by UK  illustrator Hannah Alice. Fully interactive: the cover image is interchangeable with any of the prints, while the deluxe ‘bookback’ CD comes with 20 page book. Out 5th February 2016.

Bert Jansch - Kingfisher

Mala

Devendra Banhart: "A Gain"

Stillpoint

Steve Roach - Serenity in Waves

Nuuksiik is Tsimka's three original songs first, then collaborative remixes with talented electronic producers Handsome Tiger, Michael Red, Pacha Papa and Sweet Anomaly. 

The album artwork, a diving osprey, is by Ora Cogan.

Nuuksiik means "composing a song". Levi Martin is my main mentor, is featured on Kakawin, and helped me with a lot of the lyrics.
This project was made possible with the support of a First People's Cultural Council arts grant.

Owl [Michael Red Remix]

Clychau Dibon

Future Strings

Artist Debbie Millman's narration of her wondrous illustrated love letter to the garden: https://www.brainpickings.org/2020/07/24/debbie-millman-love-letter-to-my-garden

VISUAL AND TEXT

Debbie Millman reads her love letter to the garden

Smithsonian Folkways Recordings is the nonprofit record label of the Smithsonian Institution, the national museum of the United States. We are part of the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, located in Washington, D.C. 

We are dedicated to supporting cultural diversity and increased understanding among peoples through the documentation, preservation, and dissemination of sound. We believe that musical and cultural diversity contributes to the vitality and quality of life throughout the world. Through the dissemination of audio recordings and educational materials we seek to strengthen people's engagement with their own cultural heritage and to enhance their awareness and appreciation of the cultural heritage of others.

The Smithsonian may archive materials posted on this website pursuant to its document retention policies. By posting content, you are giving the Smithsonian and those authorized by the Smithsonian permission to use or modify it for any educational, promotional, or other standard museum purpose, in media of all kinds whether now known or later developed. For more on the Smithsonian's terms of use and privacy policies visit: http://www.si.edu/termsofuse 

Entourage Music and Theatre Ensemble - Soft Fist / Cleopatra Music / Harbinger

Smithsonian Folkways

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