Loft Sessions

1. Lost In You

2. Farewell

3. Say It Won't Be Long

4. Fear

5. The Stranger

6. Miss Pretender

Editorial Reviews

About the Artist
Michael James is not just another singer/songwriter who sounds like Dave Matthews, John Mayer, or Jeff Buckley. His music does not need to be compared to the likes of Radiohead, U2 and Coldplay to validate its potential to be successful. While he finds inspiration from many of these artists, James’ music is original simply because it isn’t trying to imitate any of them. "Too often" Michael says, "new artists liken themselves to music’s true innovators. By doing so, they ultimately lose some credibility and the potential to do anything original themselves." Michael James writes hopeful yet honest lyrics that have a uniquely darker quality than other popular artists in his genre. His songs are built with intricate, yet catchy melodies layered upon textured acoustic guitar.

Product Description
The 'Loft Sessions' EP is the first solo effort from Michael James. It is a collection of pop/rock songs that have been stripped down to little more than a voice and an acoustic guitar. However, do not assume that this EP comes across like a bad episode of ‘MTV Unplugged.’ In fact, the minimalist way in which these songs were recorded serves to highlight their strength. The songs on ‘Loft Sessions’ are chock-full of the one thing that great songs should be full of: melody, melody, melody. Furthermore, these melodies only become more interesting with each listen. Combine that with the unique tone of James’ voice and the layered textured guitars, this EP will leave you wanting more.

Tracks:

Jays - Kalaparusha/Chris White/Jumma Santos
New Times - Ken McIntyre/Richard Harper/Andrei Strobert/Andy Vega
Over The Rainbow - Sunny Murray/Byard Lancaster/David Murray/Khan Jamal/Fred Hopkins
Rainbows - Sam Rivers/Jerome Hunter/Jerry Griffin
USO Dance - Henry Threadgill/Fred Hopkins/Steve McCall
The Need To Smile - Harold Smith/Byard Lancaster/Art Bennett/Olu Dara/Sonelius Smith/Benny Wilson/Don Moye
Naomi - Ken McIntyre/Richard Harper/Andy Vega/Andrei Strobert
73 Degrees Kelvin - Anthony Braxton/George Lewis/Michael Jackson/Fred Hopkins/Barry Altschul/Phillip Wilson
And Then They Danced - Marion Brown/Jack Gregg/Jumma Santos

Tracks:

Locomotif No.6 - Leo Smith/Oliver Lake/Anthony Davis/Wes Brown/Paul Maddox/Stanley Crouch
Portrait Of Frank Edward Weston - Randy Weston/Alex Blake/Azzedin Weston
Clarity 2 - Michael Jackson/Oliver Lake/Fred Hopkins/Phillip Wilson
Black Robert - Dave Burrell/Stafford James/Harold White
Blue Phase - Ahmed Abdullah/Charles Brackeen/Mashujaa/Leroy Seals/Rickie Evans/Rashied Sinan
Short Short - Andrew Cyrille/Ted Daniel/David Ware/Lyle Atkinson
Tranquil Beauty - Hamiet Bluiett/Olu Dara/Butch Campbell/Billy Pastterson/Juney Booth/Charles Bobo Shaw/Don Moye
Pensive - Julius Hemphill/Abdul Wadud/Bern Nix/Phillip Wilson/Don Moye

Tracks:

Push Pull - Jimmy Lyons/Karen Borca/Hayes Burnett/Henry Maxwell Letcher
Zaki - Oliver Lake/Michael Jackson/Fred Hopkins/Phillip Wilson
Shout Song - David Murray/Olu Dara/Fred Hopkins/Stanley Crouch
Something's Cookin' - Sunny Murray/David Murray/Byard Lancaster/Khan Jamal/Fred Hopkins
Chant - Roscoe Mitchell/Jerome Cooper/Don Moye

Amazon.com

In the mid-1970s, a jazz renaissance blossomed in large New York loft spaces that the musicians had reclaimed from the depressed blocks of the trendy Soho and Noho areas. The Wildflowers sessions, originally released on Douglas on five LPs, captured performances by almost 100 musicians in numerous configurations. The recordings were made over two weekends at the most famed of the lofts, Studio Rivbea, the home and workspace of saxophonist-flutist-composer Sam Rivers and his wife, Beatrice. Rivers orchestrated the lineup, played host to patrons, and performed as well. The sessions featured many figures well-established in New York, including Rivers, drummer Andrew Cyrille, and pianist Randy Weston, but they also attracted players from the seedbed of so much African American aesthetic jazz exploration in the 1960s and '70s, Chicago.

In addition, Rivers invited to town some key players from Philadelphia and New Haven; there were several newcomers to New York, too, including, from out West, a very young David Murray. The music all had immediacy and urgency fitting to the aesthetic task at hand--to consolidate the gains of the free-jazz and New Thing movements of the 1960s. Indeed, many of the players remain key figures today in that project: Anthony Braxton, Roscoe Mitchell, and Leo Smith among them. In addition to their performances, highlights of the package include Rivers's radiant meandering over his composition "Rainbow"; pianist Weston's impassioned homage to his father; and performances by important, but often under-recognized innovators, including saxophonist Ken McIntyre and pianist Dave Burrell. Here is a seminal document in American music. --Peter Monaghan

Customer Reviews:

Indespensible Snapshot of a Creative Time!.......2002-11-11

There are moments in artistic history where time, place and people all combine to create something unique and almost legendary. You could think of Florence or Venice in Rennaissance painting, the Bloomsbury group in England, the Second Viennese school in 30th century music, the list could go on. This CD documents one such time, though one that has not gotten the coverage outside of jazz circles that it deserves....The 22 tracks on this recording, recorded by some of the biggest names in avant-garde music as well as some who have remained obscure, document this period of intense creative ferment as nothing else does.

This recording, originally released on the Douglas label as a 5 album set, was recorded over a weekend festival in Sam Rivers loft, Studio Rivbea. Many great names are here, Anthony Braxton, Rivers, Jimmy Lyons, Air, Randy Weston, Marion Brown. And many people on this album have disappeared on record...Michael Jackson (no, not that one) gives a terrific performance, yet he remains almost unknown today. Not all of the music on this collection is equally inspired. Some of it wanders, some is less than compelling. But what works is electric. Highlights include the terribly underrecorded Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre doing his composition Jays...avant-garde meets Sly Stone, one of the first really successful applications of Ornette's Prime Time concept. (It's important to remember that, though Prime Time's first album was released in 1977, Ornette had recorded the material several years earlier and had been performing at his own loft frequently.) Sam Rivers is characteristically searing on Rainbows, a marvelous trio performance. Sunny Murray's ensemble, The Untouchable Factor, features the miraculous Byard Lancaster on alto, performing on two cuts, including a haunting version of Over the Rainbow. Sun Ra trumpeter Ahmed Abdullah leads a groups with another underated performer, Charles Brackeen on Blue Phase. Julius Hemphill's funky ensemble features Prime Time guitarist Bern Nix in an extension of the harmelodic concept that would eventually morph into the 80s no-wave style. Roscoe Mitchell shines in a trio setting with two drummers. And Hmmiet Bluiett leads a septet featuring Ola Daru on an almost New Orleansian slow blues...you can feel the ghost of Sidney Bechet in Bluiett's clarinet.

The music is marvelously diverse. For those who think of the Avant-garde as uniformly chaotic, this disc challenges that notion. Randy Weston plays a marvelous boppy tribute to his father. Dave Burrell is also suitably traditional. Some of the guitar based groups show the influence of jazz-rock, but with a rawness that the more mainstream groups never achieved. (Abdullah's Blue Phase particularly impresses as something you wish Freddy Hubbard had tried, rather than his warmed over funk.) And for fans of New York Energy playing, there's Andrew Cyrille's group which is as frenetic as any set by Cecil Taylor.

This time in jazz unfotunately didn't last. ...And, with the advent of the Marsalis Mafia, most of these players retreated from general public view. This is really a shame, since much of this music is really commercially viable...unlike late Coltrane or the "free" music of the 60's, 70s avant-garde is much more varied, modal, and structured. The "skronk" factor is less strong, or at least less chaotic, and yet the creativity is intense.

So this disc is essenstial to anyone willing to re-evaluate this period in music. There are unexpected delights all over the disc. And as a time capsule, it's unique...comparable to the early bop bootleg recordings or the Coltrane Vangard sessions. It captures more than just the music...it captures the entire ambiance of the time. Would that we could recapture some of that creativity in this era of warmed over Art Blakey licks!

Great Sampler For The Price.......2002-03-20

This set is a great document of the loft scene of the early 70's as well as a good introduction/sample of a lot of the great, but somewhat lesser known players of this music. There are a lot of these guys out there, and most have a lot of recordings, so it could get kind of expensive to go out and buy a ton of Cd's by a bunch of these artists to see what they are/were doing. But, with this set you can spend a little over 20 bucks, and be able to check out what guys like Anthony Braxton, Henry Threadgill, Leo Smith, Marion Brown, Randy Weston, Oliver Lake, Byard Lancaster (the list goes on, and on, and on) etc. sound like. All in all, I think it's a great way for someone who is familliar with the major creative forces of this music (Cecil Taylor, Ornette, Sun Ra, Coltrane etc.) to dig in a little deeper and get a good taste of some of the lesser heard (but just as relavent)players without draining your wallet. One more thing I should mention is, if you see the names and think (like I did) that this is just gonna be hours and hours of a crazy, nonstop, OUT THERE blowing fest, you'll be surprised! There is actually a lot of really beautiful, interesting, organic music contained herein (especially on disc 2) as well as a good helping of the more full throttle energy music that you were expecting. It shows you that these musicians knew how to make the most of the instruments, of their bandmates/ensembles, as well as the music the've been given. HIGHLY RECOMENDED FOR THE MONEY!

Not to be missed musical experience.......2000-10-04

My critical comment is - go for it. The rest is mainly "gush" and if that's not for you, stop right here. Since 1979 I've had a great affection for this beautiful music, and my love for it came back with a rush on hearing Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre on tenor, Chris White on Electric Bass and Jumma Santos on drums on the opening track on Disc One, a piece by Mr McIntyre called JAYS. But the wonder of these 3CD's which contain the original 5LP's is that the music is completely at one with the evolution of the search for freedom which Afro-Americans had sought throughout the 20th century. It was recorded just post Vietnam, another white man's folly, with Mr Ford in the White House. Up until the 1970's the great artists of that century's most important musical development were celebrated as entertainers (Louis Armstrong) or patronised as upmarket nightclub performers who adopted the titles of European royalty (Duke Ellington). But with Sam and Bea Rivers, among others, the best of the new players (artists) broke free of the commercial imperatives set by record companies, broke free of the musical boundaries set by Tin Pan Alley and the European tempered scale, broke free of musical fashion of the day - fusion, rock, whatever - and played what they felt and thought freely. There was no turning back. Many had shown the way, in their way, including Louis, and Duke, but it was an audacious move to release 5LP's of improvised music featuring no single well known artist instead allowing the young artists themselves to determine the content, and course, and duration of the music. This democratic decision by the producers Sam and Bea Rivers and Alan Douglas of Douglas Records resulted in one of the best live recordings ever, capturing the excitement of the moment with technical fidelity. Mr Rivers is a musical and social hero of mine and his work on this release - RAINBOWS- rivals that on my favourite single CD of his STREAMS which is another live recording. Note also that Mr Rivers, forever modest, leads on only one track of the 22 that are on these 3CD's. Some of the greatest musicians in the music are featured - Ken McIntyre, Sunny Murray, David Ware, David Murray, Dave Burrell, Julius Hemphill, Anthony Braxton, Roscoe Mitchell, Jimmy Lyons - but less well known excellent musicians include Phillip Wilson (drums) Lyle Atkinson(bass) Karen Borca (Bassoon) Khan Jamal (vibes) as well as the social historian, essayist and critic, Stanley Crouch (drums). The greatness of this music is centred on the fact that it was the direct and heartfelt expression of musicians who were proudly taking a lead in their field in their time in the greatest battle that can be fought - the one to be free. These 3CDs are an essential historical document as well as a beautiful musical and spiritual experience. Not to be missed. PS. Dig Sonelius' Smith's solo on THE NEED IS TO SMILE (CD1, Track 6) or Byard Lancaster's wry solo on OVER THE RAINBOW (CD1, Track 3) or Ken McIntyre's beautiful flute solo on NAOMI (CD1 Track 7) but I have to say EVERY track has its moments.

Simply perfect and groovy.......2000-06-17

Perfect real and 100% live jazz session by some master's in business... Just perfect!

Average customer rating:

Jazz Loft Sessions
Various Artists
Manufacturer: Douglas Records
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

Avant Garde & Free Jazz | Jazz | Styles | Music

Bebop General | Bebop | Jazz | Styles | Music

General | Jazz | Styles | Music

Modern Postbebop | Jazz | Styles | Music

General | Compilations | Jazz | Styles | Music

Contemporary Big Band | Swing Jazz | Jazz | Styles | Music

General | Miscellaneous | Styles | Music
ASIN: B0000019BS
Release Date: 1997-10-07

Tracks:

Tranquil Beauty - Hamiet Bluiett
Jays - Kalaparusha
Over The Rainbow - Byard Lancaster
Black Robert - Dave Burrell
Clarity - Michael Jackson
Shout Song - David Murray
Potrait Of Frank Edward Weston - Randy Weston
Naomi - Ken McUntyre
Pensive - Julius Hemphill
73 S-Kelvin - Anthony Braxton

Average customer rating:

Jazz Loft Sessions
Various Artists
Manufacturer: Knitting Factory
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

Avant Garde & Free Jazz | Jazz | Styles | Music

Bebop General | Bebop | Jazz | Styles | Music

General | Jazz | Styles | Music

Modern Postbebop | Jazz | Styles | Music

General | Compilations | Jazz | Styles | Music

Contemporary Big Band | Swing Jazz | Jazz | Styles | Music

General | Miscellaneous | Styles | Music

General | Jazz | Indie Music | Stores | Music
ASIN: B000050JD0
Release Date: 2000-07-11

Tracks:

Tranquil Beauty - Hamiet Bluiett
Jays - Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre
Over the Rainbow - Byard Lancaster
Black Robert - Dave Burrell
Clarity - Michael Gregory Jackson
Shout Song (For Cecil Taylor) - David Murray
Portrait of Frank Edward Weston - Randy Weston
Naomi - Ken McIntyre
Pensive - Julius Hemphill
73-S Kelvin - Anthony Braxton

Average customer rating:

Loft Sessions
Michael James
Manufacturer: The Orchard
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Alternative Rock | Styles | Music

Singer-Songwriters | Pop | Styles | Music

Pop Rock | Pop | Styles | Music

Adult Alternative | Pop | Styles | Music

General | Rock | Styles | Music

Pop Rock | Pop | Indie Music | Stores | Music

Tracks:

Lost In You
Farewell
Say It Won't Be Long
Fear
The Stranger
Miss Pretender

Album Description

The 'Loft Sessions' EP is the first solo effort from Michael James. It is a collection of pop/rock songs that have been stripped down to little more than a voice and an acoustic guitar. However, do not assume that this EP comes across like a bad episode of `MTV Unplugged.' In fact, the minimalist way in which these songs were recorded serves to highlight their strength. The songs on `Loft Sessions' are chock-full of the one thing that great songs should be full of: melody, melody, melody. Furthermore, these melodies only become more interesting with each listen. Combine that with the unique tone of James' voice and the layered textured guitars, this EP will leave you wanting more.

Average customer rating:

Loft Sessions

Manufacturer: Michael James
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Folk | Styles | Music
ASIN: B000CAJFMW
Release Date: 2005-05-17

Average customer rating:

Great Document of the Loft Scene

Jazz Loft Sessions
Various Artists
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

Avant Garde & Free Jazz | Jazz | Styles | Music

Bebop General | Bebop | Jazz | Styles | Music

General | Jazz | Styles | Music

Modern Postbebop | Jazz | Styles | Music

Contemporary Big Band | Swing Jazz | Jazz | Styles | Music

General | Miscellaneous | Styles | Music

General | Jazz | Indie Music | Stores | Music
ASIN: B00004DS3K
Release Date: 2000-01-06

Tracks:

Tranquil Beauty - Hamiet Bluiett
Jays - Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre
Over the Rainbow - Byard Lancaster
Black Robert - Dave Burrell
Clarity - Michael Gregory Jackson
Shout Song (For Cecil Taylor) - David Murray
Portrait of Frank Edward Weston - Randy Weston
Naomi - Ken McIntyre
Pensive - Julius Hemphill
73-S Kelvin - Anthony Braxton

Album Description

The Douglas Jazz Loft Sessions were recorded at the loft home of Saxophonist-composer Sam Rivers over the course of seven exciting nights May 14-May 23, 1976 at Studi Rivbea 24 Bond Street, NY, N.Y. Many of the msot important changes of the

Customer Reviews:

Great Document of the Loft Scene.......2001-06-21

As the 1960s turned into the 1970s, jazz became pretty lame. Most of the Blue Note artists, including Horace Silver, Grant Green and Bobby Hutcherson traded their straight jazz licks for a funky boogaloo groove. Miles Davis started making electric music (which I enjoy but others don't), and his colleagues from Wayne Shorter to Chick Corea to Herbie Hancock followed suit. And countless others jumped on the fusion bandwagon. With clubs booking more commercial acts, how was a jazz musician from the post-Coltrane school going to make interesting music, not to mention make a living? The answer was for these musicians to pool their resources and form cooperatives where those still interested in exploring the boundless possibilities of improvised music could hone their craft and continue the evolution of the jazz tradition. In Chicago this movement was known as AACM, and in New York it became the Jazz Loft Scene.

"Jazz Loft Sessions" collects ten recordings made over ten days in May of 1976 at the studio and loft home of tenor saxophonist Sam Rivers. Released by Alan Douglas on his own Douglas Music label, with the help of Michael Cuscuna, this disc is an important document of a movement that in hindsight may have saved experimental jazz as we know it today. Some of the musicians featured here were the big names in 70s and 80s avant-garde jazz -- David Murray, Hamiett Bluiett, Oliver Lake, Julius Hemphill, Dave Burrell, Fred Hopkins and George Lewis. Others like Anthony Braxton, Sunny Murray, Randy Weston, Barry Altschul and Ken McIntyre established themselves in the 60s, but contributed immeasurably to the further development of jazz in the 70s. And others still have dropped off the radar screen, like Michael Jackson (no not the pop star but the guitarist), Byard Lancaster and Kalaparusha, though not due to lackluster musical skills. Despite the fact that these are live recordings made in someone's home, the sound is excellent (come to think of it Rudy Van Gelder's studio was his home too). My reason for withholding a fifth star is that like most compilation CDs, "Jazz Loft Sessions" suffers slightly from an overall inconsistent feel, and on top of that this music is very modern and not for everyone. But for those interested in the real jazz made in the 1970s, "Jazz Loft Sessions" is an excellent purchase for both musical and historical reasons.

Rock Music:

Rock Music