Vision Festival 17

The 17th Arts for Art Vision Festival kicked off this week, sadly without me in attendance. Lucky for us, they are streaming the entire festival at Ustream.tv. The Vision Festival channel can be found here. Yesterday's line-up was particularly impressive, and I stayed up late last night and caught the last part of the Farmers By Nature (Gerald Cleaver, William Parker & Craig Taborn) set, as well as the entire Darius Jones Quartet set. The latter played material solely from his latest album, Book of Mæ'Bul (Another Kind of Sunrise), but both sets were strong.

William Parker's In Order to Survive (Parker plus Cooper-Moore, Rob Brown, Roy Lewis Barnes and Hamid Drake), one of the best jazz ensembles of the past 15 or so years, were up next, but I fell asleep (they were due on stage around 4 or 5 AM over here). Lucky for us, yet again, they have put up the recorded shows on Ustream as well. You can watch the In Order to Survive set here, or on the embedded video below.

EDIT: the recorded video of In Order to Survive seems to have been removed. Live streaming from the festival should continue throughout the festival, though. Just click on the channel link above.

Vision Festival XV

This year's Vision Fest kicks off next Sunday (the 20th of June) in downtown Manhattan, and the line-up is full of treats.

The first day is dedicated to various combos of words/poetry and music. Darius Jones Trio, with Adam Lane on bass and Jason Nazary on drums, and Lowest Common Denominator (Tim Berne ++), as well as William Parker's Little Huey Septet and the Roy Campbell Trio would be my picks for Monday the 21st. Celestial Funk Band, with Parker, Cooper-Moore, Kidd Jordan, Hamid Drake, Vernon Reid and others should be worth checking out on Tuesday 22nd. Wednesday is packed with various ensembles that include several of the above-mentioned musicians, as well as Rob Brown, Matthew Shipp and others. Muhal Richard Abrams plays two gigs on Thursday, one solo and one trio.

But those are just a few picks from the first days. The festival continues right on through to Wednesday the 30th, with Billy Bang and David S. Ware among those playing in the second week, so I suggest you click the link above and check out the full line-up for yourself. Once again, though, I'm stuck on the wrong side of the Atlantic, but I'm hoping to be able to attend next time around.