Wow you’ve seen and experienced some amazing people.
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When I was a teen, a group of my buddies and I used to drive to New York on many weekends, and go to the great jazz clubs: Village Vanguard, Village Gate, Five Spot, Blue Note, Eddie Condon’s, Basin Street East, etc. I was able to see many of the greats in person: Miles Davis, Bills Evans, Thelonius Monk, McCoy Tyner, Charles Mingus, Modern Jazz Quartet, Eric Dolphe, Roland Kirk, Peggy Lee, Maynard Ferguson, Dave Brubeck and others. It was a profound experience, and framed my musical life in ways unexplained.
I am sure it fired my quest to recapture the feelings of those live experiences through audiophile reproduction. I do remember one Sunday afternoon listening to Bill Evans at the Village Vanguard, and the performance was being recorded on a Nagra recorder. It still gives me chills today when I listen to Sunday at the Village Vanguard, wondering if that was the master I witnessed being recorded.
I am so grateful to these incredible musicians for opening my ears to great jazz, and for the audiophile industry for making it live again.
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The Dutch do jazz a tad differently 
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Thanks to Roon Recommendations, I have been getting recommendations in my favorite genres, one of which is Female Jazz Vocal. So now I have a new favorite in addition to Diana Krall, Opie Bellas, Melody Gardot and Nora Jones: Halie Loren.
With the dCS Bartok and the Raal SR1a’s it it like she is singing right in front of me on Simply Love, a fabulous recording.
Perhaps one reason is that she was not only the performer, but also the producer and engineer on a number of these tracks. Leave it to the performer to direct just how she wants the final result to sound.
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The 1970s were so incredibly rich for jazz. Braxton was a big part of that, as a leader and as a member of other bands and collectives. Two of my favorite Braxton-associated albums (both ECM) are Conference of the Birds (led by Dave Holland, with Sam Rivers and Barry Altschul) and Afternoon of a Georgia Fawn (Maron Brown, leader, with Bennie Maupin, Jeanne Lee, Chick Corea, Andrew Cyrille and a few others). Those LPs (and/or streams) come out at least once a week. I often return to AB’s stunning Town Hall '72 live album (w/Holland, Philip Wilson, Jeanne Lee, Atschul, John Stubblefield), as well. Of course, there’s about a billion Braxton recordings and so many iterations and ensembles and music systems – including a 7-or-8 CD set that came out this week. Impossible to keep up with, but I’m pleased to see so much available on platforms like Qobuz, and of course there’s the bottomless Bandcamp page … But the 70s stuff, especially on Arista, is I think very accessible and fun … The later stuff is, too, but can be more challenging if you’re going in cold.
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Thanks, @Steve_Dollar, I will check them out. Sounds like an all-star team of musicians.
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I recently paid about 60 bucks for the Marion Brown LP (Faun), but if you have streaming should be easy. It flexes in a liminal space between jazz, chamber and free music … Terrific headphone album with sound flying everywhere.
And the Holland LP is fairly common.
I just came across this group. It sounds well recorded and they’re very talented. Piano, drums upright bass trio - kind of like a less ‘out there’ bad plus:
Alboran Trio - Meltemi
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Nice. Very minimal jazz trio. One of my favorite genres. Decent recording as well. Thanks for the tip!
I particularly liked “Balkan Air” and “Cinque Lunghissimi Minuti”. Well done!
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This is quite the album, experimental, at least from my perspective with my knowledge of Jazz. The Utopia must pull this apart. I sometimes find this kind of composition challenging but there is enough cohesion to it that I can oddly stick with it. Interesting.
I like this, looks like the group only made 2 albums, at least according to Wikipedia.
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It was the first in a trilogy related to impressions of Georgia and the work of Jean Toomer … (also noted in the Wiki), although I think the personnel for the recordings may have been more of an assemblage rather than a working ensemble? I used to know a lot of this stuff but my scholarship has fallen off … In any event, it’s a terrific headphone listen and also a thrill on the main system, which images all those discrete sounds really sharply across a wide soundstage … If you enjoy the music, there’s a lot more in the same ballpark via musicians associated with the Art Ensemble of Chicago and AACM (as some of Brown’s colleagues were). The 1970s were impossibly rich with possibilities.
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Glad you are digging it … Not so much “jazz” as conventionally thought of rather than aural impressionism.
This is very nice, @Resolve. I’m trying to listen more to the Hive this weekend. This is good content. Nicely recorded. Airy.
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Very nice album. Languid and bluesy, but precise at the same time. Well recorded. Thanks.
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Glad you enjoyed it. Such a great album. May I ask which of your headphones you tend to reach for for an album such as this? I’m contemplating my next set of headphones and admire your lineup.
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I started with Focal Utopias for the first track, then switched to Raal Requisite SR1a’s for the rest. Both outstanding.
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