Ended the weekend and started the week after a swim with KMH: Piano Music in the Continuous Mode the debut album by the pianist Lubomyr Melnyk. It was originally released in 1978 and then re-released by Unseen Worlds in 2007.

In the late 1980s, The Village Voice named KMH as one of the "10 albums you can't live without".

In his review of the 2007 re-release, Stephen Eddins (Allmusic) praised Melnyk's performance, saying that it "boggles the imagination" and that it would appeal to "fans of minimalism and maverick experimentalism with an immensely attractive sound." Mike Powell (Pitchfork) described the music as "minimalism at its most lush, ornate, and taxing" and compared it to works by La Monte Young and Erik Satie.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GTrALVbTyk&list=OLAK5uy_nENRFCZVKBWK2DfqmzpbTfnYp7oJn2k0Y

#LubomyrMelnyk #minimalism #piano #debutLP #morningmadnessmusic #ukrainianmusic

Ended the weekend and started the week after a swim with Chants, Hymns and Dances on ECM New Series by Anja Lechner and Vassilis Tsabropoulos from 2004.

Tyran Grillo wrote for ECM Reviews:

"The enigmatic sound-world of G. I. Gurdjieff (c.1877-1948) made its first appearance on ECM via the spirited renditions of pianist Keith Jarrett. Now another wizard at the keyboard, Vassilis Tsabropoulos, joins kindred spirit cellist Anja Lechner for a redrawing of old maps alongside the newly discovered continents of Tsabropoulos’s own stilling compositions around Byzantine hymns. The result is less a hybrid and more of a conversation across (and of) time. Harmonically a simple world, it elides the trappings of the social, forging its own divine concept in the grip of ideological binds.."

https://ecmreviews.com/2012/04/07/chants-hymns-and-dances/

#Gurdjieff #ecm #ecmreviews #VassilisTsabropoulos #AnjaLechner #morningmadnessmusic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8ueZ8dtl2o&list=OLAK5uy_nrBuAMA5ZrftqBFTlt0EL9uDGk3kaVCWs&index=1

Welcomed sleep and greeted Thor's day after my swim with Guitar Forms a 1965 album by Kenny Burrell, featuring arrangements by Gil Evans. Evans' orchestra appears on five of the album's nine tracks.

Guitar Forms Review by Richard Mortifoglio

...Witness his landmark 1965 collaboration with Gil Evans, Guitar Forms, which rivals anything the arranger did with Miles Davis. Indeed, the track "Lotus Land" has a bolero form very reminiscent of Sketches of Spain. There is no stinting on the blues here, either, as evidenced on "Downstairs" and "Terrace Theme." But the highlights are the bossa nova version of Alec Wilder's "Moon and Sand," as well as a characteristically slow and luxurious treatment of Harold Arlen's "Last Night When We Were Young." Throughout, Burrell takes thoughtful, concise, and utterly musical solos, and even switches to acoustic classical guitar on "Prelude #2" and "Loie."

#kennyburrell #gilevans #jazz #ververecords #morningmadnessmusic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0w5amYH7NeM&list=PLvxWibFr0wiLXaegSULNzwUcrz5c4K5Pm&index=2

Ended the lovely weekend and greeted the blue skies of Monday after my swim with Another Sunrise from 2002 by Peter Garland who is a composer, writer and publisher of Soundings Press.

A student of James Tenney and Harold Budd, much of Garland's work could be considered post-minimal although many of his postminimal works such as "The Days Run Away" (1971) were written in the early 1970s at the same time as the first minimalist works. He is also an expert on Native American music, and on the music of Silvestre Revueltas. He is the author of Gone Walkabout: Essays 1991-. Garland started his Soundings Press series in 1971 after attending a publishing workshop with Dick Higgins at CalArts.

Wikipedia

This LP features

Aki Takahashi, piano & harpsichord
Essential Music
John Kennedy & Charles Wood, directors
Karen Burlingame, soprano
Marion Najarian, mezzo-soprano
James Javore, baritone

#petergarland #morningmadnessmusic #postminimal

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hShI_jwGkTU&list=PLfgDNV482HHT-6jO2sIDdF6kqqoGTMTWb&index=1

Welcomed sleep and greeted Thor's day after my swim with Alika Rising – Kahil El' Zabar's Ritual Trio At Leverkusener Jazztage recorded in 1989 and released in 1990.
"A really wonderful recording from percussionist Kahil El'Zabar and his Ritual Trio – a set that features our favorite incarnation of the group – with the mighty Malachi Favors on bass, and Ari Brown on both soprano sax and piano! Tracks are all nice and long, and build in that beautifully spiritual style that made Kahil one of the real standouts on the Chicago scene in the period – one of the few cats who didn't just go avant for freedom's sake, and instead worked in this open, flowing, soulful style that nobody else was touching at the time! The title cut's a great illustration of this approach – a really beautiful 16 minute cut that draws gentle modal energy from interplay between bass and kalimba, then lets Brown really stretch out over the top..""

#freejazz #morningmadnessmusic #aacm #kahilelzabar #malachifavors

Welcomed sleep yesterday and greeted the blue skies of Woden's day with Have You Heard? an album by Jack DeJohnette featuring Bennie Maupin, Gary Peacock and Hideo Ichikawa recorded in Tokyo in April 1970 and released on the Milestone label.
Percussive and modal improvision. Excellent.

#jackdejohnette #berniemaupin #garypeacock #modal #jazz #1970inmusic #morningmadnessmusic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqwDaPk8ZcA

Welcomed sleep and greeted April with Interaction an album by Art Farmer's Quartet featuring guitarist Jim Hall. It was recorded in 1963 and originally released on the Atlantic label.

"The session features Farmer's quartet playing standards with swinging subtlety [...] Interaction, from 1963, is a vehicle for the intertwining improvisations of guitarist Jim Hall and Farmer, on flügelhorn, who weaves through and around Hall's sublimely understated lines with disarming ease, elegance, and sensitivity. Their approach draws to mind the great duet outings Hall made with pianist Bill Evans (Undercurrent and Intermodulation). Bassist Steve Swallow, at this time still strictly an acoustic player, and drummer Walter Perkins are also given lots of the spotlight in a intimate mix that highlights the quartet's telepathic interplay."

—Scott Yanow (All Music Guide)

#artfarmer #jimhall #jazz #morningmadnessmusic #1963inmusic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehw9PRwlKNU

Ended the weekend and welcomed the week after my swim with Virgins the seventh studio album by Canadian electronic musician Tim Hecker, released on October 14, 2013 by Kranky and Paper Bag Records.

Pitchfork ranked it 37th in their 50 Best Ambient LPs of all time and Phillip Sherbourne wrote:
"Ambient music has a tricky relationship with form: Make the structure too obvious, and too obviously musical, and you move into a different realm. The result might be a song, or a dance track, or a composition, but it’s no longer ambient—that formless form whose outline is blurry by definition and its center squishy. Virgins goes right to the heart of that conundrum...The influence of classical minimalism is tempered by opaque echoes and dark streaks of tapes run backward, and no melody is strong enough to escape the terminal gravity of Hecker’s black-hole pedal tones. It’s ambient music as the event horizon."

#timhecker #ambient #morningmadnessmusic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3R3wbtjAb_8&pp=ygUUdGltIGhlY2tsZXIgdmlyZ2lucyA%3D

Welcomed sleep yesterday and then greeted Friday with Eulogy for Evolution is Icelandic producer Ólafur Arnalds' first studio album, released on 1 October 2007 by Erased Tapes Records. With the album, Arnalds set out to document the journey of life, from birth to death.

Arnalds wrote on the occasion of the 2017 reissue and remastering of the LP:

"It was an ambitious outing. When I was 18 my uncle passed away from cancer. It was the first time I had experienced the passing of someone close to me, so I dedicated my work to him. Around the same time, his first grandchild was born, and was named after him. I was inspired by the joy and positivity he brought, and saw that somehow life was extended after our death. So I set out to create a solid piece of music that would take us through the circle of life."

#ÓlafurArnalds #nilsfrahm #evolution #journeyoflife #morningmadnessmusic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDDC7j-72H8&pp=ygUjZXVsb2d5IGZvciBldm9sdXRpb24gb2xhZnVyIGFybmFsZHM%3D

Ended yesterday and started today with Open Sky a group led by David Liebman with their eponymous LP from 1973.

Liebman wrote:

"This group represents the first organized music I took an active part in with my long time associate, drummer Bob Moses and bassist Frank Tusa...The “Open Sky” recording was a live concert at the public radio station ,WBAI in New York City."

Eugene Chadbourne wrote in The Calgary Herald
"Open Sky is itself a skyward growth. Start side one and enter another dimension with the beckoning notes of Liebman's flute...

...The drum solo seems almost like the intense fast-paced scurrying flight of birds across the drums...

...Liebman and his trio have a free-flowing feel much like... well, an open sky. And Liebman constantly steps out of the blue to play intoxicating flute, soprano, and tenor sax."

#opensky #jazz #bobmoses #DavidLiebman #1973inmusic #morningmadnessmusic #eugenechadbourne

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcnOQ6sIvtc