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| STEVE TINTWEISS SPACELIGHT BAND “LIVE AT NYU: 1980”  This is my fifth archive release produced for the INKY DoT MEDIA label. This concert at the NYU Loeb Student Center Eisner and Lubin Auditorium, for their New Music Showcase series, was an opportunity to present two sets of my original tunes performed by the Spacelight Band at a high point. Saxophonists Byard Lancaster and Charles Brackeen provided the front-line along with vocalist Genie Sherman Walker. Drummer extraordinaire Lou Grassi and I held down the varying rhythm. I especially enjoy listening to the spontaneous arco 5-string double bass and bass clarinet duet sections playing with Byard Lancaster. He, and now Charles Brackeen are gone. Thanks for the Light everyone.—Steve Tintweiss The music on this recording is classifi ed as free jazz, but that term doesnʼt do justice to the evocative, theatrical, often hair-raising sounds herein. Some are dreamlike, others nightmarish. Lines are incanted hypnotically and mutate subtly. Youʼll hear a chirping flute that could be an agitated bird; a marching band with an air of menace; a saxophone that lets out a ghoulish cackle. All the while, an unexpected lyricism brightens even the darkest corners. The leader is bassist Steve Tintweiss, a long-distance runner in an exceptionally challenging fi eld. This recording, which had long sat untouched in Steveʼs archive, captures a night in 1980 when his Spacelight Band played in a new-music concert series at the Loeb Student Center of New York University. By that time, Steve, who had grown up in Brooklyn and Queens, was a fifteen-year jazz veteran. While still a teenager, he had played on Patty Waters Sings, a bone-chilling underground milestone; Steve went on to work for years with the pianist on that album, Burton Greene. In 1970, he joined the last tour of saxophonist Albert Ayler, another avant-garde giant, who died that November. Steve founded the Spacelight Band in 1976 and maintained it until 2003. Like him, the other members had carved out firm positions in the vanguard of free jazz. Genie Sherman, with her instrumentalized, sometimes wordless vocals, was a muse of that scene. Another of its fixtures was the bristling saxophonist Charles Brackeen, a child of the Deep South. Byard Lancaster, a multi-reed player and fearless improviser, had leapt into view on a 1966 album by the pioneering free-jazz drummer Sunny Murray. Drummer and percussionist Lou Grassi kept one foot in experimental music and the other in straight-ahead jazz. The pieces here, all by Steve, are fi lled with surprise. "Spring Raga" borrows the Indian musical tradition of a set scale used as a springboard for improvisation. In "Risk-O-Disk, " Steveʼs growingly insistent bass serves as a snake charmer for Byard Lancaster, whose fl ute-playing rises sinuously into the stratosphere. The same thing happens on "Vermont Tune, " where Genie wails like a woman possessed. "Loveʼs Fortune" fi nds the band in a trance, repeating and embroidering on a phrase whose rhythmic shifts keep things constantly off-balance. Genieʼs syncopated drone—"to love to love to love you"—suggests a woman tossing and turning in a dream that wonʼt end; then she breaks into an anguished soliloquy. That night, says Steve, "everyone was really in tune with the music and one another." As usual, the Spacelight Band blew peopleʼs minds. "People would come back after a concert and say, ʻThat tune that you did, what was that called? I canʼt get it out of my head.ʼ Theyʼd start singing it, and talk to me about the music and their impressions of it." Now that experience comes rushing out of the past, as vivid and immediate as before. —James Gavin, New York City, 2022 [James Gavinʼs books include biographies of Chet Baker, Peggy Lee, and George Michael. Musicians: Steve Tintweiss - 5-string double bass, melodica, voice, leader Charles Brackeen - tenor and soprano saxophones Byard Lancaster - alto and soprano saxophones, flute, piccolo, bass clarinet Genie Sherman - vocals and dramatic reading Lou Grassi - drums and percussion Artist: STEVE TINTWEISS Title: SPACELIGHT BAND LIVE AT NYU: 1980 Label: INKY DoT MEDIA IDM 007 2-CD Artist Website: inky.media Release Date: OCTOBER 22, 2022 write your comments about the article :: © 2022 Jazz News :: home page |