Ahmed

???? [Ahmed] make music about the music of Ahmed Abdul-Malik, a NYC bassist, oudist, composer, educator and philosopher. A potent(ial) influence on Coltrane and Monk (we imagine), he was also a significant composer in his own right. (Ignored into creative obscurity, he spent his final decades teaching, and performing seldom). His albums Jazz Sahara (1958) and East Meets West (1960) fuse aspects of Arabic and East African musics and thought, his committed long-term relationship with Sufi Islam, and then-modern jazz and thinking – in revolutionary and vital ways. The product is exciting, radical, raw, and beautiful. But, as well as honouring these traditions, Abdul-Malik invented and imagined a lot*. Abdul- Malik’s straddling, synthetic and inclusive vision is one of the great projects of the imagination in jazz. He mixed sounds and ethics, meanings and beliefs in open, experimental ways without dogma.

Sven ?ke-Johansson: Two Days at Cafe OTO

by Fran Kursztejn
August 28, 2025

Sven ?ke-Johansson's death in 2025 felt distinctly like a chapter closed. There is a cliche in Jazz to characterize players of a certain class and longstanding influence as “youthful" or otherwise endlessly inventive despite multi-decade, multidisciplinary careers. Its excessive use is justified by elements of the medium's own construction and history. Jazz itself appears to be ...

Big Ears 2025: A Personal Perspective

by Mark Adams
April 10, 2025

More than simply size, the “big" in Big Ears (March 27-30, 2025, Knoxville, TN) most certainly points to breadth, diversity, a widening or expanse. This is not the Fast Feet festival, though a pair are necessary to accommodate the ever-expanding footprint of venues in Knoxville. This isn't the Huge Heart gathering, though it certainly feels like ...

John Sharpe's Best Releases of 2024

by John Sharpe
January 3, 2025

From the 200 or so discs that I heard in 2024, here are the ten new issues and three gems saved from obscurity, which gave me the most pleasure. As always these selections are entirely subjective, and take no account of the many other albums which I would no doubt have loved if I had heard ...

Giant Beauty

By Ahmed

Label: F?nstret
Released: 2024
Track listing: Nights on Saturn; Oud Blues; African Bossa Nova; Rooh (The Soul); El Haris (Anxious).

James Brandon Lewis, Federico Ughi, Matthew Shipp & Fall Raye

by Maurice Hogue
March 4, 2024

There are a lot of superlatives for the playing of saxophonist James Brandon Lewis floating about these days, and they're all well-deserved. JBL continues to make great music. His new Transfiguration with his quartet of Aruan Ortiz, Brad Jones & Chad Taylor--out on the Intakt label from Switzerland---keeps the momentum rolling. Mark this one down for ...

Dominic Lash / Pat Thomas: New Oxford Brevity

by John Sharpe
December 18, 2022

For the potential listener seeing Dominic Lash's name on a record sleeve, there is the conundrum of which of his guises this might signal. While primarily known as a bassist, he pursues his craft across several areas, from straightforward free improv, as heard on Discernment (Spoonhunt, 2021), to composition based left field jazz, with his Quartet ...

Antonin Gerbal

Drummer, improviser and composer based in Paris. Active in bands like [Ahmed] with Pat Thomas, Seymour Wright and Joel Grip ; [Ism] with Pat Thomas and Joel Grip ; Sbatax with Bertrand Denzler ; large ensembles like Umlaut Big Band or ONCEIM. As an eclectic musician, Antonin Gerbal has developed a singular approach to rhythms and sound - questioning the unity of the drums in the first swing orchestras, bebop, free jazz and in the fields of contemporary improvised, composed and experimental musics. He has collaborated with Alexander Von Schlippenbach, ?liane Radigue, Peter Ablinger, Evan Parker, John Tilbury, Stephen O��Malley, Jim O'Rourke, Jean-Luc Guionnet, Seijiro Murayama or Axel D?rner.

John Sharpe's Best Releases of 2021

by John Sharpe
December 30, 2021

Whether due to pent up creative energy or release schedules making up for lost time, more terrific music has come my way than for several years, in spite of the last twelve months. From the 200 or so discs that I heard in 2021, here are ten new issues (in the order I came across them), ...

Ahmed: Super Majnoon (East Meets West)

by Mark Corroto
December 29, 2019

There are discoveries in jazz waiting (patiently) to be unearthed. Most of them are hidden in plain sight, like the music of Ahmed Abdul-Malik. Born in Brooklyn in 1927, the bassist performed and recorded with, among others Art Blakey, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, and Randy Weston. Besides double bass, he pioneered the oud in jazz and ...