December

I talked to Diedre Murray earlier in the year, and that interview is now out in Point of Departure, thanks, as ever, to Bill Shoemaker. We touch on her career as a cellist in improvised music, including her work with Larry Young (Khalid Yasin) in the 'Lawrence of Newark' band, with Henry Threadgill and Marvin Hannibal Peterson, with Fred Hopkins, with The Roots, and as a composer for the stage. A respected figure in the world of musical theatre for her arrangements of Gershwin, her collaboration with the likes of Chesney Snow, and as a composer of operas and musicals, Murray's prior career as an improviser has been sorely neglected in the often male-centric world of jazz criticism, but it's a crucial part of the legacy of American (and global) improvised  music. Hopefully this interview brings it some of the attention it deserves.

Also in the new Point of Departure, reviews of a Sam Rivers session, Undulation, and of the newly-rediscovered recording of John Coltrane performing the 'A Love Supreme' suite with an expanded group live in Seattle.  Another talk on that album, focusing more on its social and historical context, appears at Artforum, here.

And my essay on Gabrielle Daniels, writer-choreographer Ishmael Houston-Jones, and New Narrative appears in Journal of Narrative Theory.

Other things in the pipeline meanwhile, on the 'Occult School of Boston', musical responses to the Attica uprising, etc...

Four New from MATERIALS

Four new publications from Materials--

Gabrielle Daniels, Something Else Again: Poetry and Prose, 1975-2019 

“Daniels’ talents spin in every conceivable direction. Her writing continues to investigate and illumine corners of the world often neglected by the white capitalistic structures of patriarchy that shapes our lives from birth to death. Daniels’ work reveals a history, a legacy, a plan of action for the future. These are stories and poems with the punch of a novel in miniature.”      (Dodie Bellamy and Kevin Killian)

A5, perfect bound, 233pp 

Tongo Eisen-Martin, Waiting Behind Tornados for Food 

“I am trying to figure out the ruling class. How they raise their replacements...”

A5, perfect bound, 80pp

John DeWitt, 20 20 Pretzels  

“Can I have a water?
And and or or
A bowl of oceanic feelings bungled and split?”    

A5, saddle stitch, 52pp

David Grundy, Local Apocalypse 

“There’s a bird in the hand
A bird in the eye
Across the table
Across the afternoon
Clouds    Clouds     Clouds
Across the sky
May silence help you you”

A5, saddle stitch, 52pp

All available at http://material-s.blogspot.com/

Also: reviews of Jacques Coursil's posthumous Hostipality Suite from Savvy Contemporary and of a Sun Ra re-issue at Bill Shoemaker's Point of Departure.

And: A Black Arts Poetry Machine: Amiri Baraka and the Umbra Poets is now available in a cheaper paperback edition from Bloomsbury: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/a-black-arts-poetry-machine-9781350178380/