Jazz great Gary Bartz teams up with London’s Maisha on new Night Dreamer recording

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Jazz great Gary Bartz teams up with London’s Maisha on new Night Dreamer recording

Legendary saxophonist Gary Bartz has been at the forefront of some of the greatest recordings over the past six decades, performing alongside Art Blakey, Miles Davis, Pharoah Sanders, Woody Shaw, McCoy Tyner, Jackie McLean and numerous others, while also putting out many groundbreaking records with his own bands, including the spiritual jazz ensemble NTU Troop, and collaborating with the Mizell Brothers on the jazz-funk anthem “Music Is My Sanctuary”. On his latest recording, the jazz great teams up with leading UK group Maisha on a a special straight-to-disc session for the London-based label, Night Dreamer.

On this incredible recording, Bartz and Maisha recapture the brilliance found on some of those iconic NTU Troop-era albums from the seventies, nicely blending together Bartz’ soulful saxophone melodies with funky percussion grooves and Afro-jazz influences. The five track session includes two Bartz/NTU Troop classics in “Uhuru Sasa” and “Dr. Follows Dance”, as well as three brand new collaboratively written compositions in “Harlem to Haarlem”, “The Stank”, and “Leta’s Dance”.

From being featured on Gilles Peterson’s 2018 Brownswood compilation We Out Here, to releasing their critically-acclaimed debut LP, There Is A Place later than same year, Maisha continues to make a strong name for themselves as one of the leading spiritual jazz groups out of the London scene. Led by drummer Jake Long, and also featuring guitarist Shirley Tetteh, keyboardist Al MacSween, bassist Twm Dylan, trumpeter Axel Kaner-Lidstrom, and percussionist Tim Doyle, the group first collaborated with Bartz as one of the headline acts at last year’s inaugural We Out Here festival. The chemistry between Bartz and the group went so well that a full tour shortly followed, including a performance at the London Jazz Festival, celebrating the 50th anniversary of his seminal album Another Earth.

Like previous Night Dreamer releases (Seun Kuti & Egypt 80, Seu Jorge & Rogê), this new album was recorded in just one-take, straight-to-disc at Artone Studio in Haarlem, which is a city just outside of Amsterdam. This approach really helps capture the purity of the performance, avoiding post-production embellishments. Part of the beauty of this recording is the rawness and energy that is present throughout.

This meeting of multi-generational jazz visionaries seems to have pushed everyone on the session to new heights, resulting a truly brilliant recording. Remarkable from start to finish, this is definitely one of the best jazz releases of the year.