Music / jazz

Clarity


Reviews (2)


AllMusic

d. ]. undefined [20

By

By

Michael G. Nastos

d. ]. undefined [20

"Michael Gregory Jackson's first recording as a leader has been reissued on CD from the ESP-Disk group, and it's a vivid reminder of how melodically charged his music is from a more subtle perspective".


All about jazz

d. 8. June 2010

By

By

Clifford Allen

d. 8. June 2010

"Guitarist, composer, improviser and songwriter Michael Gregory Jackson is a figure who paved the way for the Black Rock movement in the 1980s, recording for Arista and Island and heading the power-trio Signal (with drummer Pheeroan AkLaff and bassist Jerome Harris). Gregory's first LP as a leader was recorded in 1976. This session, Clarity, shows a slightly different direction, as he was then simultaneously involved in the New Haven coffee shop folk scene and creative improvisation. Here, Gregory is joined by regular associates, reedman Oliver Lake and trumpeter/multi-instrumentalist Wadada Leo Smith, as well as tenor saxophonist David Murray across a set of seven original compositions ... These early investigations have granted a quality that Gregory's music retains; his current trio Clarity, with drummer Kresten Osgood and bassist Niels Praestholm, fuses the melodic/rhythmic units of earlier work within a contemporary jazz-rock form. Rarely is a vision sowide-rangingencapsulated by such basic tenets as clarity".