Since October 2017, Friday nights have been dedicated to posting the music of the great jazz masters we listened to, and occasionally even saw perform, back in the 1970s. We could go on with this series, we'd be glad to, but it feels like the New Year is as good a time as any to change things up a bit and recognize some of the modern masters playing and recording today.
The Artifacts Trio of flutist Nicole Mitchell, cellist Tomeka Reid, and drummer Mike Reed seems as good a spot as any to start. Members (I wonder if they get to carry cards?) of the esteemed and prophetic Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, the trio's goal is to engage with the legacy of that organization while pulling the music into the present. Mitchell electrified her flute and Reid and Reed tangle in dense rhythmic thickets, while their debut album includes covers of compositions by AACM luminaries such as Roscoe Mitchell and Jeff Parker, Muhal Richard Abrams and Steve McCall. The tune above, A Light on the Path, is "an earworm-worthy tune recorded by 8 Bold Souls" (tenor saxophonist Edward Wilkerson Jr.) according to Downbeat Magazine.
Artifacts, as Reed has put it, is “acting on the front of ‘ancient to the future.’” They will be performing at this year's Big Ears Festival in Knoxville.
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