The Branford Marsallis Quartet "Mo' better blues" (1990)

Branford Marsallis

World-renowned saxophonist Branford Marsalis, born in 1960, has always been a man of numerous musical interests, from jazz, blues and funk to such classical music projects as his Fall 2008 tour with Marsalis Brasilianos.  The three-time Grammy winner has continued to exercise and expand his skills as an instrumentalist, a composer, and the head of Marsalis Music, the label he founded in 2002 that has allowed him to produce both his own projects and those of the jazz world’s most promising new and established artists.
The New Orleans native was born into one of the city’s most distinguished musical families, which includes patriarch/pianist/educator Ellis and Branford’s siblings Wynton, Delfeayo and Jason.  Branford gained initial acclaim through his work with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers and his brother Wynton’s quintet in the early 1980s before forming his own ensemble.  He has also performed and recorded with a who’s-who of jazz giants including Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Herbie Hancock and Sonny Rollins.
Known for his innovative spirit and broad musical scope, Branford is equally at home on the stages of the world’s greatest clubs and concert halls, where he has performed jazz with his Quartet and his own unique musical approach to contemporary popular music with his band Buckshot LeFonque.  In recent years, Branford also has become increasingly active as a featured soloist with such acclaimed orchestras as the Chicago, Detroit, Düsseldorf and North Carolina Symphonies and the Boston Pops, in a growing repertoire that includes compositions by Copland, Debussy, Glazunov, Ibert, Mahler, Mihaud, Rorem and Vaughan Williams.
As Marsalis continues to establish his presence in the classical realm, his propensity for innovative and forward thinking compels him to seek new and challenging works by modern classical composers.  One such composer, Sally Beamish, after hearing Branford perform her composition “The Imagined Sound of Sun on Stone” at the 2006 North Sea Jazz Festival, was inspired to reconceive a piece in progress, “Under the Wing of the Rock,” which he premiered as part of the Celtic Connections festival Beamish’s home country of Scotland in January 2009.  This performance followed on the heels of his two month classical tour with the Philarmonia Brasileira in a program featuring the music of Brazil’s master composer Heitor Villa Lobos and his friend, French composer Darius Milhaud, allowing the saxophonist the opportunity to more thoroughly engage the music and make it his own.

Marsalis’s nearly two dozen recordings in these various styles have received numerous accolades, with his latest CD, Metamorphosen, scheduled for release in March 2009.  Metamorphosen marks the tenth anniversary of Marsalis’ quartet, which features pianist Joey Calderazzo, bassist Eric Revis and drummer Jeff “Tain” Watts, and includes original compositions by all four members in a variety of moods, as well as features for Marsalis on tenor, soprano and alto saxophones.
His previous disc, the Grammy-nominated Braggtown, was acknowledged as his quartet’s greatest recorded achievement to date.  The Marsalis quartet’s Eternal also received a Grammy nomination as well as virtually universal inclusion in lists and polls for the best jazz recording of 2004.  Marsalis’ playing on the DVD Coltrane’s ‘A Love Supreme’ Live in Amsterdam also received a Grammy nomination for best instrumental jazz solo, while also garnering awards for music and video excellence from the DVD Association.
Marsalis is also dedicated to changing the future of jazz in the classroom.  He has shared his knowledge at such universities as Michigan State, San Francisco State, Stanford and North Carolina Central, with his full quartet participating in an innovative extended residency at the NCCU campus.  Beyond these efforts, he is also bringing a new approach to jazz education to student musicians and listeners in colleges and high schools through Marsalis Jams, an interactive program designed by Marsalis in which leading jazz ensembles present concert/jam sessions in mini-residencies.  Marsalis Jams has visited campuses in the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, Southeast and Southwest, and established an ongoing Marsalis Berklee Jams series with the Berklee College of Music in 2008.
These diverse interests are also reflected in Marsalis’ other activities.  He spent two years touring and recording with Sting, and was the musical director of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno for two years in the 1990s.  He has collaborated with the Grateful Dead and Bruce Hornsby, acted in films including Throw Mama from the Train and School Daze, provided music for Mo’ Better Blues and other films and hosted National Public Radio’s syndicated program Jazz Set.
Among the most socially conscious voices in the arts, Marsalis quickly immersed himself in relief efforts following the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.  He is the honorary chair of the New Orleans Habitat for Humanity effort to rebuild the city, and together with his friend Harry Connick, Jr. conceived the Habitat Musicians' Village currently under construction in the city's historic Ninth Ward.
Whether on the stage, in the recording studio, in the classroom or in the community, Branford Marsalis represents a commitment to musical excellence and a determination to keep music at the forefront.

Source: Branford Marsallis.com.

Brand X "Masques" (1978)

Proggressive rock

Progressive rock (also referred to as prog rock or prog) is a subgenre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s as part of "a mostly British attempt to elevate rock music to new levels of artistic credibility." John Covach, in Contemporary Music Review, says that many thought it would not just "succeed the pop of the 1960s as much as take its rightful place beside the modern classical music of Stravinsky and Bartók." Progressive rock bands pushed "rock's technical and compositional boundaries" by going beyond the standard rock or popular verse-chorus-based song structures. The Oxford Companion to Music states that progressive rock bands "...explored extended musical structures which involved intricate instrumental patterns and textures and often esoteric subject matter." Additionally, the arrangements often incorporated elements drawn from classical, jazz, and later world music. Instrumentals were common, while songs with lyrics were sometimes conceptual, abstract, or based in fantasy. Progressive rock bands sometimes used "concept albums that made unified statements, usually telling an epic story or tackling a grand overarching theme." Progressive rock developed from late 1960s psychedelic rock, as part of a wide-ranging tendency in rock music of this era to draw inspiration from ever more diverse influences. The term was initially applied to the music of bands such as Pink Floyd, King Crimson, Yes, Genesis, Jethro Tull, and Emerson, Lake & Palmer, reaching its peak of popularity in the mid 1970s.

PRECURSORS

Allmusic cites Bob Dylan's poetry, The Mothers of Invention's Freak Out! (1966) and The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) as the "earliest rumblings of progressive and art rock", while progressiverock.com cites the latter as its "starting point". The Beach Boys' concept album Pet Sounds (1966) and Jefferson Airplane's second album Surrealistic Pillow (1967) were both big influences for many progressive rock bands.
From the mid-1960s The Left Banke, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Beach Boys had pioneered the inclusion of harpsichords, wind and string sections on their recordings to produce a form of Baroque rock and can be heard in singles like Procol Harum's "A Whiter Shade of Pale" (1967), with its Bach inspired introduction. Freak Out!, released in 1966, had been a mixture of progressive rock, garage rock and avant-garde layered sounds. In the same year, the band "1-2-3", later renamed Clouds, began experimenting with song structure, improvisation, and multi-layered arrangements. In March of that year, The Byrds released "Eight Miles High", a pioneering psychedelic rock single with lead guitar heavily influenced by the jazz soloing style of John Coltrane. Later that year, The Who released "A Quick One While He's Away", the first example of the rock opera form, and considered by some to have been the first prog epic.
In 1967, Jeff Beck released the single "Beck's Bolero", inspired by Maurice Ravel's Bolero, and, later that year, Procol Harum released the Bach-influenced single "A Whiter Shade of Pale". Also in 1967, the Moody Blues released Days of Future Passed, combining classical-inspired orchestral music with traditional rock instrumentation and song structures. Pink Floyd's first album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, contained the nearly ten-minute improvisational psychedelic instrumental "Interstellar Overdrive".
By the late 1960s, many rock bands had begun incorporating instruments from classical and Eastern music, as well as experimenting with improvisation and lengthier compositions. East of Eden, for example, used Eastern harmonics and instruments such as a sumerian saxophone on the album Mercator Projected in 1969. Some, such as the UK's Soft Machine, began to experiment with blends of rock and jazz. By the end of the decade, other bands, such as Deep Purple and The Nice, had also recorded classical-influenced albums with full orchestras: Concerto for Group and Orchestra and Five Bridges. This use of classical music would crystallise in the '70s with Amon Düül's orchestral score on Made in Germany (1975), Pink Floyd's Atom Heart Mother (1970), and several works of Frank Zappa.

EARLY BANDS

Bands formed by the end of the 1960s included The Moody Blues (1964), Pink Floyd (1965), Soft Machine (1966), Barclay James Harvest (1966), Gong (1967), Genesis (1967), Jethro Tull (1967), The Nice (1967), The United States of America (1967), Van der Graaf Generator (1967), Yes (1968), Caravan (1968), King Crimson (1969), Supertramp (1969) and Gentle Giant (1969).
Although many of these bands were from the UK, the genre was growing popular elsewhere in continental Europe. Triumvirat led Germany's significant progressive rock movement, while Tangerine Dream, Faust, Can and Neu! led the related Berlin School and Krautrock movements. Italian progressive rock is an important sub-genre led by PFM, Le Orme, and Banco, all of which gained significant international recognition. Other notable Italian bands include New Trolls, Area, Goblin, Museo Rosenbach, Il Balletto di Bronzo, Maxophone and Locanda Delle Fate.
Focus and Trace formed in the Netherlands, France produced Ange, Gong, and Magma, the Quebec-based Harmonium were one of the first significant North American progressive bands, and Greece saw the debut of Aphrodite's Child led by electronic music pioneer Vangelis. Spain produced numerous prog groups, including Triana. Scandinavia was represented by Norwegian band Popol Vuh, Swedish band Kaipa, and Finnish band Wigwam.

PEAK IN POPULARITY AND DECLINE

Progressive rock's popularity peaked in the mid-1970s, when prog artists regularly topped reader polls in mainstream popular music magazines in Britain and America, and albums like Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells topped the charts.
By this time, several North American progressive rock bands had been formed. Kansas, which had actually existed in one form or another since 1971, became one of the most commercially successful of all progressive rock bands. Pop star Todd Rundgren moved into prog with his new band, Utopia. Toronto's Rush, who formed in 1968, became a major band, with a string of hit albums beginning in the mid-1970s. In Japan, Osamu Kitajima's 1974 progressive rock album Benzaiten, featuring Haruomi Hosono, utilized electronic music instruments such as a synthesizer and drum machine. Back in Britain, Electric Light Orchestra, who formed in 1970 as a progressive offshoot of "The Beatles sound", saw their greatest success during the mid-1970s.
Bruce Eder claims that "the rot" in progressive rock "started to set in during 1976, the year Emerson, Lake & Palmer (ELP) released their live album Welcome Back My Friends". Eder claims that this album was "suffering from poor sound and uninspired playing" which "stretched the devotion of fans and critics even thinner." He claims that "the end [of progressive rock] came quickly: by 1977, the new generation of listeners was even more interested in a good time than the audiences of the early 1970s, and they had no patience for 30 minute prog-rock suites or concept albums based on Tolkienesque stories." He asserts that by the late 1970s and early 1980s, "ELP was barely functioning as a unit, and not producing music with any energy; Genesis was redefining themselves ... as a pop-rock band; and Yes was back to doing songs running four minutes ... and even releasing singles."
In 1974, four of progressive rock's biggest bands – Yes, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Genesis and King Crimson – all went on indefinite hiatus or experienced personnel changes. Members of Yes and ELP left to pursue solo work, as did Genesis lead singer Peter Gabriel, who left his band (though Genesis would continue with Phil Collins as lead vocalist), and Robert Fripp announced the end of King Crimson after the release of their Red album. When, in 1977, Yes and ELP reformed, they had some success, but were unable to capture their previous dominance.
The 1975 and 1976 period saw progressive rock bands using more and more elaborate stage shows, thus moving away from its original "music first" ethos.
In the late 1970s Great Britain was going through difficult times due to a poor economy, frequent strikes and shortages. Progressive rock with its exotic, literary topics had nothing to say to British youth growing up in that era. Punk rock, a simpler and more aggressive style of rock that emerged in this era, and disco, which also emerged during this period, helped move critical opinion and popular support in the UK away from progressive rock, ending the genre's reign as a leading style there. However, established progressive bands still had a strong fan base; Rush, Genesis, ELP, Supertramp, Yes, Queen, and Pink Floyd all regularly scored Top Ten albums with massive accompanying tours, the largest yet for some of them. By the end of the 1970s and 1980s, progressive rock had fallen into disrepute. It was dismissed as overblown, pretentious and elitist. Fans were embarrassed to publicly admit they liked an act associated with the genre and record stores stocked progressive rock acts in the back of the store sans labels.
Despite this supposed opposition between the two styles, bands which emerged in the aftermath of punk, such as Siouxsie and the Banshees, Japan, Cabaret Voltaire, Ultravox, Oingo Boingo, Simple Minds, and Wire, all showed the influence of prog, as well as their more usually recognised punk influences.

PROGGRESSIVE ROCK FANS
The genre had a period of great popularity in the United States during the 1970s. The vast majority of progressive rock concert attendees were male. Audiences were reserved in their behavior tending to sit and intently concentrate on the performance. This contrasted with more overt and emotional reactions of audiences of other rock music genres.

1980s REVIVAL

The early 1980s saw a revival of the genre, led by artists such as Marillion, UK, Twelfth Night, IQ, Pendragon, Quasar, and Pallas. The groups of this period are sometimes referred to as neo-progressive rock, influenced by 1970s progressive rock groups like Genesis and Yes, but incorporating elements of New Wave and other rock elements found in the 1980s. The digital synthesiser became a prominent instrument in the style. Neo-prog continued to remain viable into the 1990s and beyond with bands like Arena and Jadis.
Some progressive rock stalwarts changed musical direction, simplifying their music and making it more commercially viable. In 1981, King Crimson regrouped with a more techno-rhythmic sound and Asia, a new supergroup composed of members of some of the major prog acts of the 1970s, released a mainstream rock-oriented debut album. This demonstrated a market for more commercialised British progressive rock – combining progressive rock with hard rock elements, in a style similar to that played by North American Top 40 stalwarts such as Styx, Journey, and to a lesser extent Rush. Genesis changed to a more commercial direction during the 1980s, as did Yes with a comeback album entitled 90125, featuring their only US number one single, "Owner of a Lonely Heart".

1990s AND 2000s

The progressive rock genre enjoyed another revival in the 1990s. A notable impetus to this revival was the 1991 foundation of the Swedish Art Rock Society, an association created to rescue the values of classic progressive rock, with Pär Lindh as chairman. This society was a catalyst for new Swedish bands such as Anekdoten, Änglagård, Landberk and Pär Lindh Project, which joined the scene between 1992 and 1994. These bands became part of progressive rock's "Third Wave", spearheaded by Sweden's The Flower Kings, the UK's Porcupine Tree, Norway's White Willow, and from the United States, Dream Theater, Spock's Beard, Echolyn, Proto-Kaw (a reincarnation of an early lineup of Kansas), and Glass Hammer. Arjen Anthony Lucassen's Ayreon project, featuring the backing of an array of talent from the progressive rock genre, produced a series of innovative prog-metal concept albums starting from 1995.
Several of the bands in the prog-metal genre – U.S. bands Queensrÿche, Fates Warning, and Dream Theater, as well as Sweden's Opeth – cite pioneer progressive hard-rockers Rush as a primary influence, although their music also exhibits influences from more traditional metal bands such as Black Sabbath and Deep Purple. Tool (U.S.) have cited pioneers King Crimson as an influence on their work. King Crimson opened for Tool on their 2001 tour and expressed admiration for the group while continuing to deny the "prog" label.
Progressive rock has also served as a key inspiration for genres such as post-rock, avant-garde metal, power metal, neo-classical metal and symphonic metal. Former Dream Theater drummer Mike Portnoy has acknowledged that the prominent use of progressive elements and qualities in metal is not confined to bands conventionally classified as "progressive metal". Many underground metal styles (especially extreme metal styles, which are characterised by extremely fast or slow speed, high levels of distortion, a technical or atmospheric, epic orientation and often highly unusual melodies, scales, vocal styles, song structures and, especially in death metal, abrupt tempo, key and time signature changes; folk metal is known for often employing uncommon instruments and other unusual elements) and some seminal bands such as Watchtower, Death, Celtic Frost (a band having pioneered several styles) or The 3rd and the Mortal remain poorly known even to genre fans.
Former members of the pioneering post-hardcore band At the Drive-In, Cedric Bixler-Zavala and Omar Rodriguez-Lopez went on to form The Mars Volta, a successful progressive band that incorporates jazz, funk, punk rock, Latin music, and ambient noise into songs that range in length from a few minutes to more than thirty. They achieved some crossover success with their 2005 album Frances the Mute, which reached number 4 on the Billboard 200 chart after the single "The Widow" became a hit on modern rock radio. Coheed and Cambria are another band known for their lengthy solos and off-the-beaten-path songwriting direction, in which each song corresponds to an important event in the graphic novel and novel series, The Amory Wars, which was written by lead singer/guitarist Claudio Sanchez. Other successful mainstream rock bands, including Radiohead, Muse and 30 Seconds to Mars, have been cited in the mainstream press as inheritors of the progressive rock mantle, along with Pure Reason Revolution, The Mystery Jets, Nude and Mew.
The first decade of the 2000s saw progressive rock gain popularity in eastern Europe, especially in Russia, where the InProg festival was founded in 2001 and bands like Little Tragedies, EXIT project, Kostarev Group and Disen Gage achieved relative success in the Russian rock scene and were also noted outside Russia. Other notable north and eastern European bands are the Danish band Prime Time, the Turkish band Nemrud and Latvian band Olive Mess and the Polish band Riverside. In Asia, some progressive rock bands such as the Uzbek band FromUz were also founded.

FESTIVALS

Renewed interest in progressive rock in the 1990s led to the development of festivals. ProgFest, organized by Greg Walker and David Overstreet in 1993, was first held in UCLA's Royce Hall, and featured Sweden's Änglagård, the UK's IQ, Quill and Citadel. A festival called CalProg is held every year at Whittier, California in Los Angeles. NEARfest held its first event in 1999 in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and has held annual concerts ever since.
Since 2003, many artists from the progressive scene have appeared at Gouveia Art Rock in Portugal: Van der Graaf Generator, Peter Hammill, Robert Fripp, Tony Levin, Premiata Forneria Marconi (PFM), Richard Sinclair, Amon Düül II, Present, Univers Zero, Daevid Allen, Mike Keneally, Isildurs Bane, California Guitar Trio, and Miriodor.
Other festivals include the annual Rites of Spring Festival (RoSfest) in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, The Rogue Independent Music Festival in Atlanta, Georgia, Baja Prog in Mexicali, Mexico, and ProgPower USA in Atlanta, Georgia. Progressive Nation was held in 2008, featuring progressive metal bands Dream Theater, Opeth, Between the Buried and Me, and Three. Progressive Nation 2009 was held the following year featuring Zappa Plays Zappa, Bigelf, and Scale the Summit touring across the United States and Canada, as well as an additional international tour.

Source: Wikipedia.

Brand X "Missing period" (1989)

Brand X "Livestock" (1977)

Brand X "Moroccan roll" (1977)

Brand X "Unorthodox behaviour" (1976)

Brand X

Brand X was a jazz fusion band active between 1975–1980 and 1992-1999. Noted members included Phil Collins (drums), Percy Jones (bass), John Goodsall (guitar) and Robin Lumley (keyboards).
In 1992, original members Goodsall and Jones formed a new trio version of Brand X, with drummer Frank Katz.

1975-80

Brand X started in 1975 as a "jam" band funded by Island Records, whose A&R rep Danny Wilding wrote down the name "Brand X" to keep track of their activity in the studio calendar and the name stuck. Original drummer/vocalist Phil Spinelli and rhythm guitarist Pete Bonas quit the band after recording the 1st (disappeared/unreleased) Brand X album. Genesis drummer Phil Collins took over on drums and in early 1976 Unorthodox Behaviour was released to coincide with an extensive UK tour. Collins was replaced in following years by a formidable array of drummers, including Kenwood Dennard, Chuck Burgi and Mike Clark. Most recently the drum chair was filled by Frank Katz. Percussionist and composer Morris Pert was added later for the follow-up Moroccan Roll. (The band had previously employed other percussionists, including Gaspar Lawal, Bill Bruford and Preston Heyman).
In early 1977, Brand X decided to recruit a replacement drummer for Collins due to conflicting schedules with Genesis (although Collins rejoined for strategic dates throughout the year) and Kenwood Dennard of Pat Martino's group was recruited in New York, making his debut on the band's US tour (a 32-date affair in May and June 1977) and appearing on part of the live album Livestock. Collins came back to the fold for a series of dates in September 1977 including two appearances on the same day in London (Crystal Palace garden party) and Paris (Fete de l’Humanite) - the first time ever a band played two open-air shows in different countries on the same day. A second US tour followed late in the year, again with Dennard on drums.
In 1979, Collins re-joined Brand X for part of the series of recording sessions which would generate enough material for two albums, 1979's Product and 1980's Do They Hurt?. These took place at Startling Studios, located in Ringo Starr's countryside home (formerly owned by John Lennon), with two distinct line-ups operating in alternation (Mike Clark again providing drums on the other tracks), as Jones later explained. "Our record and management companies were both complaining about poor record sales and telling us we had to make the music more accessible. Some of the guys agreed to go along with this but I felt that to do this would not generate a new audience but would probably just alienate the one that we already had. The only solution was to have two bands, one being more accessible and the other being more experimental. For my stuff the lineup was Robinson, Clark, Goodsall and me; for the other direction it was Lumley, Collins and Goodsall with John Giblin on bass. We recorded in shifts, ours was 8pm to 4am and the others, 10am to 6pm".
A UK tour took place in April and May 1980 (co-headlining with Bruford), with Mike Clark again on drums. After Brand X's 1979 world tour (the last with Collins), Goodsall moved to Los Angeles and worked as a session musician, and as a member of the band Zoo Drive (1980–1987), which included Doug Lunn, Paul Delph and Spinal Tap drummer Ric Parnell.Goodsall & Ric Parnell have created music together for many years.Parnell was instrumental in helping Goodsall get beyond the London/UK music scene. Some notable recordings from this time include Atomic Rooster-'Nice'N'Greasy' and Sandoz-'Pay Attention' and Goodsall has also performed and/or recorded with Bill Bruford, Desmond Dekker, Peter Gabriel, Billy Idol, Bryan Adams, Toni Basil and Mark Isham. Goodsall released two albums with his band Fire Merchants, before reforming with Brand X and recording Xcommunication and Manifest Destiny.

1992-99
Goodsall and Jones formed a 'power trio' version of Brand X with drummer Frank Katz in 1992, releasing Xcommunication the following year. To make up for the lack of a keyboard player, Goodsall used a Gibson Max midi guitar system to trigger synths, samples and keyboard sounds along with his guitars. This line-up went on to record X Communication,1996's Manifest Destiny, and tour Japan and Europe in 1997 with keyboard player Kris Sjobring and ex-Gong drummer Pierre Moerlen replacing Katz.
In recent years, Goodsall has recorded with Franz Pusch and performed regular solo concerts with guest musicians. Jones and Katz formed Tunnels (1993–2006), releasing five albums. Goodsall played guitar on Tunnels:Progressivity (2002).

Source: Wikipedia.com.

Albert Collins "The ice axe cometh" (1978-80)