Last Option
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Last Option
''Last Option'' is the fourth album by the jazz group 8 Bold Souls. It was recorded in August 1999 in Chicago, and was released in 2000 by Thrill Jockey. The album features performances by saxophonist, clarinetist, and composer Edward Wilkerson, saxophonist Mwata Bowden, trumpeter Robert Griffin, Jr., trombonist Isaiah Jackson, tubist Gerald Powell, cellist Naomi Millender, bassist Harrison Bankhead, and drummer Dushun Mosley. Reception In a review for AllMusic, Sean Westergaard called ''Last Option'' the group's "finest album to date," and commented: "the results are stellar... Wilkerson's compositions and arrangements are the true star of the show, with everyone in the band playing beautifully in service to the compositions... Every soloist is up to the task." Mark Corroto, writing for ''All About Jazz'', stated: "Wilkerson's writing never muddies or gets stuck in this sound because he can easily shift from New Orleans to uptown Ellington... The band favors odd time signatures ...
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8 Bold Souls
8 Bold Souls is an American jazz ensemble, led by reedist Edward Wilkerson. The group was founded in 1985 by Wilkerson, also associated with the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. They began at Chicago Filmmakers, a performance spot in Chicago, where they played on Thursdays. The performances were dubbed "New Music for 8 Bold Souls", and the group eventually adopted the shortened name for performances elsewhere. 8 Bold Souls were active intermittently through the 1990s, recording for Arabesque Records, and in 1999 released an album on Thrill Jockey, following it with performances at the Chicago Symphony Center and at festivals. Mwata Bowden is among the musicians to play in the group. Other members include trumpeter Robert Griffin, trombonist Isaiah Jackson, original tubist Aaron Dodd and tubist Gerald Powell, cellist Naomi Millender, original bassist Richard Jess Brown, Jr. (also known as Jess Brown and R. Jess Brown, Jr.), bassist Harrison Bankhead, original ...
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Jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major form of musical expression in traditional and popular music. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, complex chords, call and response vocals, polyrhythms and improvisation. Jazz has roots in European harmony and African rhythmic rituals. As jazz spread around the world, it drew on national, regional, and local musical cultures, which gave rise to different styles. New Orleans jazz began in the early 1910s, combining earlier brass band marches, French quadrilles, biguine, ragtime and blues with collective polyphonic improvisation. But jazz did not begin as a single musical tradition in New Orleans or elsewhere. In the 1930s, arranged dance-oriented swing big bands, Kansas City jazz (a hard-swinging, bluesy, improvisationa ...
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Thrill Jockey
Thrill Jockey is an American independent record label established by former Atlantic Records A&R representative Bettina Richards and based in Chicago. History Richards started the label in 1992 with $35,000 of family and personal capital, while working at a Hoboken, New Jersey, record store, and ran the label from her apartment in New York City.Pareles, JonIt's Her Label and She'll Sign Who She Wants To New York Times September 23, 1998 accessdate = 2007-05-09 In 1995, she moved the label to Chicago, where "rent and taxes are considerably cheaper" according to Richards, and the independent label found some larger success. Thrill Jockey offers full-length streaming of every song on every release in its catalog. "I believe if people can listen to the albums, they tend to buy them," Richards said in a 2006 interview with ''Chicago Reader''. Artists who have recorded on the label include Double Dagger, Future Islands, Tortoise, The Sea and Cake, Bummer, High Places, Trans Am, Mous ...
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Ant Farm (album)
''Ant Farm'' is the third album by the jazz group 8 Bold Souls. It was recorded in July and August 1994 in Chicago, and was released later that year by Arabesque Records. The album features performances by saxophonist, clarinetist, and composer Edward Wilkerson, saxophonist Mwata Bowden, trumpeter Robert Griffin, Jr., trombonist Isaiah Jackson, tubist Aaron Dodd, cellist Naomi Millender, bassist Harrison Bankhead, and drummer Dushun Mosley. Reception In a review for AllMusic, Brian Olewnick wrote: "All the pieces are by leader Wilkerson, tending toward a jaunty swing spiced with a tinge of down-home rhythm and blues and a taste of gospel. Once again, his ensemble is made up of all fine instrumentalists, playing the written parts with verve and improvising imaginatively." The authors of the ''Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings'' awarded the album 3 stars, calling it "a fine continuation" of the band's previous release, ''Sideshow''. They noted that Wilkerson's "debt to Henry Threadg ...
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Edward Wilkerson
Edward L. Wilkerson Jr. (born July 27, 1953 in Terre Haute, Indiana) is an internationally recognized American jazz composer, arranger, musician, and educator based in Chicago. As founder and director of the cutting-edge octet 8 Bold Souls, and the 25-member performance ensemble Shadow Vignettes, Wilkerson has toured festivals and concert halls throughout the United States, Europe, Japan, and the Middle East. "Defender", a large-scale piece for Shadow Vignettes, was commissioned by the Lila Wallace/Reader's Digest Fund and featured in the 10th Anniversary of New Music America, a presentation of BAM's Next Wave Festival. His music can be heard on 14 recordings, including two film soundtracks and the critically acclaimed albums ''Birth of a Notion'', and ''8 Bold Souls'', both on his own Sessoms Records label. One of the great saxophone and clarinet players on the Chicago scene, Wilkerson from the 1980s into the new millennium may have become best known as a bandleader and composer, ...
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Mwata Bowden
Mwata Bowden (born October 11, 1947 in Memphis, Tennessee, United States) is an American jazz reeds player associated with the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians and an instructor in improvisational Jazz at the University of Chicago. He is part of a group known as 8 bold souls but also frequently engages in collaborations with Tatsu Aoki, and helped establish the Miyumi Project which was a blend of music with different ethnic backgrounds, highlighting contributions from Japanese ''taiko'' drumming in the framework of jazz music. As part of his regular repertoire, Mr. Bowden plays a range of saxophones and clarinets (including the E-flat clarinet, B-flat clarinet, bass clarinet, contra-alto clarinet, and contrabass clarinet), as well as flute, ''zamada'', and didgeridoo The didgeridoo (; also spelt didjeridu, among other variants) is a wind instrument, played with vibrating lips to produce a continuous drone while using a special breathing technique ca ...
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Harrison Bankhead
Harrison Bankhead is an American jazz double-bassist. Career Bankhead became associated with the Chicago jazz scene in the early-1980s. Early in his career, he performed with Fred Anderson on tour and at Anderson's Chicago club, the Velvet Lounge. Bankhead has worked with Oliver Lake, Roscoe Mitchell, Von Freeman, Malachi Thompson, 8 Bold Souls, and Hamid Drake, and is a member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. His first album as a leader, '' Morning Sun/Harvest Moon'', was released on Engine, a sub-label of ESP-Disk, in 2011, and featured sidemen Edward Wilkerson, Jr., Mars Williams, James Sanders, Avreeayl Ra, and Ernie Adams. He followed this with '' Velvet Blue'', with Wilkerson, Williams, and Ra, whose name and title track pay tribute to Fred Anderson and the Velvet Lounge.Peter MargasakBassist Harrison Bankhead, back in front ''Chicago Reader'', January 24, 2014. Discography As leader *'' Morning Sun/Harvest Moon'' (Engine Studios, 2011) ...
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AllMusic
AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the database was first made available on the Internet in 1994. AllMusic is owned by RhythmOne. History AllMusic was launched as ''All Music Guide'' by Michael Erlewine, a "compulsive archivist, noted astrologer, Buddhist scholar and musician". He became interested in using computers for his astrological work in the mid-1970s and founded a software company, Matrix, in 1977. In the early 1990s, as CDs replaced LPs as the dominant format for recorded music, Erlewine purchased what he thought was a CD of early recordings by Little Richard. After buying it he discovered it was a "flaccid latter-day rehash". Frustrated with the labeling, he researched using metadata to create a music guide. In 1990, in Big Rapids, Michigan, he founded ''All Music Guide' ...
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Tom Hull – On The Web
Tom Hull is an American music critic, web designer, and former software developer. Hull began writing criticism for ''The Village Voice'' in the mid 1970s under the mentorship of its music editor Robert Christgau, but left the field to pursue a career in software design and engineering during the 1980s and 1990s, which earned him the majority of his life's income. In the 2000s, he returned to music reviewing and wrote a jazz column for ''The Village Voice'' in the manner of Christgau's "Consumer Guide", alongside contributions to ''Seattle Weekly'', ''The New Rolling Stone Album Guide'', NPR Music, and the webzine ''Static Multimedia''. Hull's jazz-focused database and blog ''Tom Hull – on the Web'' hosts his reviews and information on albums he has surveyed, as well as writings on books, politics, and movies. It shares a functional, low-graphic design with Christgau's website, which Hull also created and maintains as its webmaster. Career In the mid 1970s, Hull accepted a job ...
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Spin (magazine)
''Spin'' (stylized in all caps) is an American music magazine founded in 1985 by publisher Bob Guccione, Jr. Now owned by Next Management Partners, the magazine is an online publication since it stopped issuing a print edition in 2012. History Early history ''Spin'' was established in 1985 by Bob Guccione, Jr. In August 1987, the publisher announced it would stop publishing ''Spin'', but Guccione Jr. retained control of the magazine and partnered with former MTV president David H. Horowitz to quickly revive the magazine. During this time, it was published by Camouflage Publishing with Guccione Jr. serving as president and chief executive and Horowitz as investor and chairman. In its early years, ''Spin'' was known for its narrow music coverage with an emphasis on college rock, grunge, indie rock, and the ongoing emergence of hip-hop, while virtually ignoring other genres, such as country and metal. It pointedly provided a national alternative to ''Rolling Stone's'' more e ...
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All About Jazz
''All About Jazz'' is a website established by Michael Ricci in 1995. A volunteer staff publishes news, album reviews, articles, videos, and listings of concerts and other events having to do with jazz. Ricci maintains a related site, ''Jazz Near You'', about local concerts and events. The Jazz Journalists Association voted ''All About Jazz'' Best Website Covering Jazz for thirteen consecutive years between 2003 and 2015, when the category was retired. In 2015, Ricci said the site received a peak of 1.3 million readers per month in 2007. Another source said that the site has over 500,000 readers around the world. Ricci was born in Philadelphia. He heard classical and jazz from his father's music collection. He played trumpet and went to his first jazz concert when he was eight. With a background in computer programming, he combined his interest in jazz and the internet by creating the ''All About Jazz'' website in 1995. The website publishes reviews, interviews, and articles pe ...
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Chicago Tribune
The ''Chicago Tribune'' is a daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, owned by Tribune Publishing. Founded in 1847, and formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" (a slogan for which WGN radio and television are named), it remains the most-read daily newspaper in the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region. It had the sixth-highest circulation for American newspapers in 2017. In the 1850s, under Joseph Medill, the ''Chicago Tribune'' became closely associated with the Illinois politician Abraham Lincoln, and the Republican Party's progressive wing. In the 20th century under Medill's grandson, Robert R. McCormick, it achieved a reputation as a crusading paper with a decidedly more American-conservative anti-New Deal outlook, and its writing reached other markets through family and corporate relationships at the ''New York Daily News'' and the ''Washington Times-Herald.'' The 1960s saw its corporate parent owner, Tribune Company, rea ...
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