WKCR's Sam Rivers fest rolls on and continues to amaze. listen as much as you can here. high points for me thus far have been a scorching Rivers/Rashied Ali duo, the formidable Streams session, and a candid and funny George Lewis interview (plus a chance to listen to the awesome Contrasts album on ECM that teams Lewis w/ the regular Rivers trio of the '70s).
maybe my favorite thing so far though was the Jason Moran interview yesterday--he's a really smart and gracious guy. i loved revisiting Black Stars, his album from '01 that featured Rivers--beautiful stuff that i'd never really reckoned with before. an awesome aside Moran made at one point was that Jaki Byard was his musical father, while Andrew Hill and Sam Rivers were like his uncles. i guess he was taught by the first two and then collaborated w/ Rivers obviously. anyway, there's been a lot of talk during this fest about Byard, since he and Sam were in Boston together for a time--also Byard rules on Rivers's debut, Fuchsia Swing Song. made me realize that i'd never really seen footage of Byard, and lo, what did i uncover...
this is some very, very deep trio stuff from '65, almost like a suite. check out the insane tempo he sets at the beginning and the number of distinct moods he conjures. i feel like w/ Jaki, you listen more closely to the straightforwardly groovin' stuff b/c you know that he could subvert that mood at any moment. wondrous stuff.
That Byard clip was awesome. Thanks for posting.
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