CHRIS SEARLE recommends a work of love and deep admiration for a great musician
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Moondoc magic finally gets recognition it deserves
KENNY MacASKILL relishes a fictionalised account of the life and death of the principled Irish anti-colonialist, executed for betraying his English imperial masters
FIONA O’CONNOR admires an ambitious first novel that loosens South Africa’s rainbow collective to examine the racial tensions within
Aussie mining corporation murder, Liverpudlian ex-cop amnesia, a naive vigilante tries to reset capitalism, and the riddle of the dead psychoanalyst
SYLVIA HIKINS is persuaded by an entertaining play that the true miracle of Lourdes would be for attitudes toward disability to change
JAMIE BRITTON recommends this fine analysis of the architectural, ecological and infrastructural destruction of the Gaza Strip
Jemeel Moondoc and Connie Crothers
Two
(Relative Pitch)
Jemeel Moondoc
The Zookeeper's House
(Relative Pitch)
Jemeel Moondoc and Hilliard Greene
Cosmic Nickelodeon
(Relative Pitch)
THE FIERY sonics of Chicagoan alto saxophonist Jemeel Moondoc revel in true jazz freedom and they have at last been recognised by a series of finely wrought albums on the Relative Pitch label.
Moondoc chose jazz and the blues as an alternative to a career as an architect and played in James Tatum's Blues Band before hearing the free and incendiary sounds of pianist Cecil Taylor that transformed his musical life.
He founded the Ensemble Muntu with bassist William Parker and later the Jus' Grew Orchestra, but such revolutionary musical formations were never going to be high earners and Moondoc's revolutionary, innovative music never gained the exposure it deserved.
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