Today is the official street date for AUM Fidelity‘s two June releases, Farmers By Nature’s Out Of This World’s Distortions (AUM067) and David S. Ware/Cooper-Moore/William Parker/Muhammad Ali’s Planetary Unknown (AUM068).

Out Of This World’s Distortions is the second recording by the improvising trio of Gerald Cleaver (drums), William Parker (bass) and Craig Taborn (piano), which takes its name from its acclaimed 2009 debut, Farmers By Nature (AUM053). This latest effort further demonstrates the highly fruitful level of interaction its members have cultivated over the past four years.

“This isn’t a piano trio with rhythm and the keyboard out front,” explains AllAboutJazz.com’s John Sharpe. “The three parts are wholly equal…an almost telepathic understanding, promoting exciting seat of the pants navigation and unfettered expression, safe in the knowledge that any unexpected turns will be spiritedly pursued. Their egalitarian outlook ensures ample space for each, arising in unforced natural progressions.”

Point of Departure‘s Troy Collins adds, “This studio session pristinely conveys a continuous exchange of ideas that expand through a wide range of dynamics, veering from understated pointillism to raucous expressionism. Their conversational interplay espouses the hushed tones of pellucid key strokes, bowed string harmonics and shimmering cymbal washes as readily as the dense note clusters, thrumming bass drones and roiling trap set palpitations of their more aggressive excursions—often segueing seamlessly between approaches in the same tune…a novel variation on an enduring format that transcends customary expectations through considered interplay and empathetic unanimity.”

Farmers By Nature will celebrate its new release with a performance at Montreal’s Suoni Per Il Popolo Festival on June 21st followed by a six-city tour of France, Slovenia and The Netherlands beginning June 24th.

Planetary Unknown documents the birth of the new improvising supergroup of the same name, while also marking the first collaboration by Ware and Cooper-Moore (né Gene Ashton) in 30 years and the first appearance on record by Ali since the early 1980′s. The all-star quartet just made its live debut at Vision Festival 16 on Friday night, an event Time Out New York named one of its 25 must-see NYC summer jazz shows.

“Almost immediately,” writes The Wire‘s Julian Cowley, “the collective force of this stellar group kicks in, evolving dynamic forms that revitalize yet again the blazing language of free jazz. Cecil Taylor once observed that John Coltrane’s tone was beautiful because it was functional, meaning that it was always involved in actually saying something, never an empty display of his formidable technique. Such functional beauty is the business of this quartet.”

“Every moment is breathtaking,” declares The New York City Jazz Record‘s Marc Medwin. “The level of invention is staggering, Cooper-Moore matching Ware in every trill, arpeggio and overtone-laden growl with swoops, chordal passages and inter-registral showers of crystal…expanding on every implication in Ware’s vast vocabulary. The team of William Parker and Muhammad Ali is no less engaging.”

Point of Departure‘s Ed Hazell adds, “David S. Ware plays with such solemn power and majesty that his soloing begs comparisons to mountains or waterfalls. In fact, it’s hard to avoid ecological metaphors when discussing his latest album, Planetary Unknown, so completely do Ware, pianist Cooper-Moore, bassist William Parker, and drummer Muhammad Ali create their own world of sound, a landscape in which one can sense the presence of the divine in much the same way that Walden inspired Thoreau or Yosemite John Muir. Listening to this quartet makes Transcendentalists of us all.”

Planetary Unknown is currently planning future performances, but Ware is celebrating the record, as well as his other recent titles on the label, with a series of solo shows in Toronto (this past Sunday night), Montreal (tonight at the Suoni Per Il Popolo Festival) and New York (June 24th at The Stone and June 25th at Undead Jazzfest).

Learn more about AUM Fidelity, which will present two weeks of music at The Stone starting on Thursday night, at http://aumfidelity.com

Today is the official street date for Other Doors (Allos Documents), the third release from Chicago-based clarinetist/composer James Falzone‘s working quartet, KLANG.

It features a new book of original compositions and arrangements Falzone created after receiving an invitation to commemorate the Benny Goodman centennial at the 2009 Chicago Jazz Festival.

KLANG’s core line-up of Jason Adasiewicz (vibraphone), Jason Roebke (bass) and Tim Daisy (drums) is augmented by special guests Josh Berman (cornet), Keefe Jackson (saxophone and bass clarinet), Jeb Bishop (trombone) and Fred Lonberg-Holm (cello and electronics) for a program that juxtaposes reimaginings of some of Goodman’s best-known music with new pieces inspired by Falzone’s exploration of the iconic clarinetist’s history.

“Falzone’s links to Goodman shine throughout the disc,” writes DownBeat Associate Editor Aaron Cohen in the liner notes, “primarily an unquestionable virtuosity on the clarinet, along with a sense of fun to make octave leaps sound not just easy, but joyful. Still, while Goodman led most of his groups through hard driving swing, and others through his commissioning of modern classical compositions, Falzone makes these turns through one group—KLANG—and often during a single tune. What winds up being created from throwing all of this together is Falzone and KLANG’s vision of their current environment.”

In his review for Point of Departure, eminent music journalist Brian Morton described the record as “so unmistakably right,” “immensely impressive” and “music driven along by Falzone’s remarkable, capacious imagination and grasp of group dynamics.”

“Blending new pieces with startling arrangements of old standards,” adds AllAboutJazz.com’s Troy Collins, “the record provides a fresh look at the legacy of a respected icon. Falzone’s originals exude a bracing balance between avant-garde invention and spirited traditionalism, with the abstruse angles, dynamic structural shifts and pithy rejoinders of ‘The 4:08′ and ‘Goodman’s Paradox’ serving as cogent examples. Supported by the lively contributions of his sideman Other Doors easily sidesteps the nostalgic clichés that plague many similar homage’s by bringing a freewheeling and modernistic vitality to the enduring work of a celebrated innovator.”

Falzone talks more about the project in feature articles from ALARM Magazine and The Columbia Chronicle.

KLANG will celebrate the release of Other Doors at The Hideout in Chicago on May 25th and Sugar Maple in Milwaukee on May 27th.

Learn more about James Falzone and his various musical projects at http://allosmusica.org

The newly published April issue of the online journal Point of Departure features extended reviews of three of our clients’ latest releases, Darius Jones & Matthew Shipp’s Cosmic Lieder (AUM Fidelity), KLANG’s Other Doors (Allos Documents) and Other Dimensions in Music Featuring Fay Victor’s Kaiso Stories (Silkheart Records).

In his review of Cosmic Lieder, Brian Morton writes, “It’s a lovely recording (made, I have to tell you, a year to the day after Lévi-Strauss’s death), beautifully mixed and mastered by Michael Marciano and produced with the lightest of touches by Steven Joerg.”

“If titles mean anything,” he adds, “Cosmic Lieder is rather clever. Lied in the singular simply implies song with some degree of literary quality behind it, but Lieder tend to deliver some kind of cyclical narrative, some sense of journey or soul’s progress, and that is exactly what these two remarkable musicians have created here: a sequence of out-of-body journeyings that you might reasonably imagine Sun Ra and John Gilmore making, significant as much in their silences and elisions as in anything actually said, full of dark matter and tonal dust, interrupted by violent outbursts, punctuated by calms that seem prepared to run on forever.”

Morton also reviews Other Doors, James Falzone‘s unconventional homage to fellow Chicago-born clarinetist/composer Benny Goodman. “Falzone has ‘no interest in sounding like Benny Goodman,’” he explains, “and when he took up a suggestion from Neil Tesser and the Jazz Institute of Chicago for a centenary tribute (after some reluctance) it was clear, if only from Falzone’s already well-attested self-determination, that it was unlikely to be an act of respectful ventriloquism.”

The review goes on to describe moments on the record as “so unmistakably right,” “immensely impressive” and “music driven along by Falzone’s remarkable, capacious imagination and grasp of group dynamics” before concluding, “KLANG made a remarkable start with last year’s Tea Music. This consolidates the debut, adds a layer, and does thoughtful honor to Benny and Hamp and Charlie and Gene, which is no small feat.”

Finally, in his review of Kaiso Stories, Other Dimensions in Music’s Calypso-meets-free-jazz collaboration with vocalist/composer Fay Victor, Ed Hazell declares, “As unlikely a pairing as it sounds, the album is a roaring success for both ODIM and Victor. The ensemble playing is detailed and cohesive and the album features some of Victor’s most powerful and passionate singing on record. Her vibrant mix of melodic abstraction and sensual sounds and textures, her more buoyant spirituality and earthy sense of humor mesh well with the quartet.”

He adds, “[Roy] Campbell is heard on a variety of nonwestern flutes and pipes, and [William] Parker plays gembri and duduk, instruments used out of their traditional context that nevertheless infuse the music with global sounds. It’s the group’s ability to fit all these sounds into shaped and dramatic improvisations that make the album so exciting.”

Today we explore the results from the second of five sections of our recent survey of 50 prominent jazz writers and editors.

This section, called Web and print habits, asked about the jazz-related publications, blogs and Web sites these professionals are reading, how they access them, and if what they read there impacts their own work.

As shown in the chart above, we first asked respondents to indicate which of the eight major jazz magazines they read on a regular basis. The list, which featured English-language publications only, included AllAboutJazz-New York, Cadence, DownBeat, Jazz Improv, Jazziz, JazzTimes, Signal To Noise and The Wire. We also made it possible for people to write-in any other publications as well.

The clear winner was AllAboutJazz-New York with 54.5%. The runner-up was Signal to Noise with 51.5%, followed by DownBeat and JazzTimes, which each scored 48.5%. The Wire (39.4%) and Cadence (18.2%) were next, while Jazziz and Jazz Improv each scored less than 10%.

One write-in vote each was cast for Cuadernos de Jazz, Coda, Improjazz, Jazz Journal and Ritmos del Mundo.

We then asked if the coverage in these publications influenced the respondent’s own work (i.e. discovering new releases, coloring their judgement of artists/releases, etc.).

The results (above) were clear as 85.3% answered in the affirmative.

Next we asked which jazz-related Web sites respondents visit on a regular basis, again spotlighting eight popular choices and giving people the chance to write-in any others they prefer.

AllAboutJazz.com was the clear favorite with 77.4%, with AllMusic.com finishing a close second with 61.3%. Next came Bagatellen with 32.3%, followed by Jazz.com and NPR Music, which each earned 29%. Avant Music News (16.1%), Jazz Corner (12.9%) and PopMatters (6.5%) also got multiple votes.

A significant number of write-in votes were cast for blogs, which we tackle in the next question, but Point of Departure was a popular choice (an admitted oversight on our part), as were Pitchfork and Dusted.

Again, the majority (82.4%) indicated that the content of these sites influence their own work.

When tackling the subject of blogs, we asked respondents to list five of their favorites. Oddly enough, more than half skipped this question completely, and only 37.5% filled in all five slots. Some even dedicated one or more of the slots to expressing their dislike for reading and/or discussing blogs at all.

The calculations don’t apply to write-ins, but the most popular choices were Destination: Out, Do The Math, Free Jazz, Jazz Beyond Jazz, Lerterland and Secret Society.

But this time, when we asked if what they read on these blogs influenced their own work, only 44.4% said yes.

When it comes to accessing the blogs they read, the Web is by far the most popular way with 94.1% giving that answer. Using a built-in blog reader in one’s browser and using a stand-alone RSS feed reader represented the rest of the vote with 8.8% each.

Finally, we asked if any of the respondents have a Twitter account.

Unlike with the blogs, everyone who took the survey answered this question, but only 35.3% said yes.

Tomorrow we’ll look at the third section of our survey, Personal Listening Habits, which features questions about writers’ interaction with jazz radio, their preferences for format (CD, MP3 and vinyl) when purchasing music for personal use, and the amount of music they purchase in a given year.

Please stay tuned!