Sabir Mateen "Other Places Other Spaces"

Tenor, alto saxophonist, Bb clarinetist, alto clarinetist, flutist, composer, Sabir Mateen, born in Philadelphia, has been a musician most of his life. Starting in the Philadelphia area as a percussionist, he started playing flute as a teenager.Gradually evovling from alto to tenor saxophone, he has been through a number of musical transformations. He started out playing rhythm and blues in the early '70s which led him to the tenor saxophone chair of the Horace Tapscott Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra. >From there he has or is performing with Cecil Taylor, Sunny Murray, William Parker, Alan Silva, Butch &Wilber Morris, Raphe Malik, Steve Swell, Mark Whitecage, Roy Campbell, Matthew Shipp, Marc Edwards, Jemeel Moondoc, William Hooker, Henry Grimes, Rashid Bakr, Kali Fasteau and numerous others. He also is a member of the cooperative band TEST. Sabir also performs with, Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra, William Parker's Inside The Music Of Curtis Mayfield, Earth People, the Downtown Horns and The East 3rd Street Ensemble. He is the leader of "The Sabir Mateen Quintet", Shapes Textures & Sound Ensemble, TRIO SABIR, and other bands*.

Customer Reviews:

Sabir Mateen is one of those highly active free jazz musicians who play in many bands (TEST, William Parker's Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra,
The Other Other Quartet, Earth People to name but a few). By comparison, he has released relatively little as a leader, and that's a pity. Apart from
Mateen on tenor, alto, flute, clarinet and alto clarinet, the band further consists of Raymond A.King on piano, Jane Wang on bass and cello and Ravish
Momin on drums, talking drums and percussion. Mateen has always been a free jazz man in heart and soul, enjoying the rhythms, enjoying the freedom,
enjoying the expressiveness, enjoying the interplay, and going at it to the full. Mateen is great on this album, and so is the band, and they are at
their best in the high energy full steam moments, when the four musicians push each other forward relentlessly. The slower tracks such as "For
The Unborn One", or the more avant-garde tracks such as "Shades Of Khusenaton" I find a little less focused or less engaging. But all
the rest is raw and intense, and especially on the longest tracks do all musicians, and especially Mateen get the space to unleash their musical
power. And the last track "Journey Into The Deepness Of Positive Light" is surely one of the highlights of the album, showing both the power
and the tenderness of the band. And all that straight from the heart. No embellishments. No pretense. No water added. Straight. The real
deal.rnrnhttp://freejazz-stef.blogspot.com rn© stef