Favorite Jazz bands????

[Prashant]

Lot's of good stuff mentioned here...

Haven't seen any "Third Stream" music listed, so I thought I'd add a few albums from that sub-genre:

1) Jimmy Giuffre 3 - "1961":
Giuffre, Paul Bley, and Steve Swallow playing double bass. If you dig the Bill Evans/LaFaro/Motian trio... this builds upon some of the harmonic aspects of that music, and takes it quite forward.

2) Dave Holland - "Conference of the Birds":
One of my favorite jazz albums. Braxton, Sam Rivers, Holland, and Barry Altschul (what ever happened to him?).

3) Any of Ran Blake's recordings with Jeannie Lee.

4) Paul Motian Trio - "Trioism":
Motian, Bill Frisell, and Joe Lovano. No bass player, but I couldn't really see a bassist fitting in.

5) Henry Threadgill Sextet - "Rag, Bush, and All": Double drummer ragtime-inspired AACM music. Can't really describe it...then again, if I could, why would it be music?

Admittedly, this isn't a good sampling for someone just getting into jazz...just a personal addendum to the great musicians who have already been mentioned in this thread.

[JimK]

Prasphant-
I totally dig Holland's COTB; have you checked out Altshul's playing with Circle or on Corea's ARC or THE SONG OF SINGING(w/ Holland)? Not sure what's happened to him...I also have one of his solo discs stashed somewhere.

...I'm not sure of the "Third Stream" genre; I thought it was some kinda Jazz/Classical mish-mash that "swung"(like the Modern Jazz Quartet); the stuff you mentioned(Holland, Threadgill,...)is Avant Garde/Free???

[Prashant]

JimK-

The Circle stuff is baaaaaaaaaad! A friend of mine layed that on me last year, and it was burnin'!

As far as the avant-garde/free thing...I see third-stream as a term that deals more with structured composition of some sort, whereas "free" refers more to an abstractionist tonal and/or rhythmic style of playing. Both are facets of "Avant-garde", just not necessarily an "either/or" choice...

Sorry to step into a semantic discussion, but it's my life's (subconscious) goal to make everything more needlessly complicated than is necessary. :-)

Prashant

[JimK]

Pras-
It's cool...
Third Stream had moments were the stuff would "swing"; Free stuff rarely "swings" in the traditional sense.
...agreed, just semantics, man.