Hear music that leans towards eastern spirituality and/or the cosmic in work by Joshua Adams and Natural Information Society, the late Pharoah Sanders, and Maria Schneider Orchestra.

There’s music from American composer, multi-instrumentalist and bandleader Joshua Adams, a bass player who also plays the Moroccan guimbri, a bass lute with a trancey, hypnotic sound. From the 2023 release, Since Time Is Gravity, credited to Natural Information Society Community Ensemble with Ari Brown, listen to suspended distinctions between the natural and the transcendent. The music draws on minimalism, spiritual jazz, and Moroccan trance music to create a “perfect moving stillness”, especially in the piece “Murmuration”, “where the repeated wind figures of flute & alto saxophone combine with the interlocking patterns of harp, guimbri & frame drum (tar)”, (Stuart Boomer, liner notes on Bandcamp).

Also, hear music from the late Pharoah Sanders from a 1970 record, Pharoah, and a side-long piece called ‘Harvest Time’ which features harmonium as drone to anchor the cosmic jazz approach. Plus, music by Maria Schneider Orchestra and her Pulitzer Prize finalist work Data Lords, which happens to feature accordion. - Caryn Havlik

Program #4743, Eastern-Flavored and Cosmic Jazz (First aired 4/25/23)

ARTIST: Joshua Abrams and Natural Information Society Community Ensemble
WORK: Immemorial, excerpt [1:30]
RECORDING: Since Time Is Gravity
SOURCE: Eremite Records
INFO: eremiterecords.bandcamp.com

ARTIST: Maria Schneider Orchestra
WORK: *Sanzenin, excerpt [1:59]
RECORDING: Data Lords - 2 record set
SOURCE: ArtistShare
INFO: mariaschneider.com/home/albuminfo?id=1083

*NOTE - for the on-demand archive, we only offer a shortened version of Schneider's work, as she says, expanding on one of the themes of the double album, having her music available online for mass consumption in the digital age does not benefit artists like her, as they are not paid fairly. 

ARTIST: Joshua Abrams and Natural Information Society Community Ensemble
WORK: Immemorial [8:13]
RECORDING: Since Time Is Gravity
SOURCE: Eremite Records
INFO: eremiterecords.bandcamp.com

ARTIST: Pharoah Sanders
WORK: Harvest Time [19:56]
RECORDING: Pharoah
SOURCE: India Navigation Company
INFO: Try discogs.com

ARTIST: Joshua Abrams and Natural Information Society Community Ensemble
WORK: Murmuration [16:17]
RECORDING: Since Time Is Gravity
SOURCE: Eremite Records
INFO: eremiterecords.bandcamp.com