Out There: Magnus Nygren’s Don Cherry Book Project

Notable jazz resources online and elsewhere.

8” Pyral test pressing of Don Cherry’s Togetherness. Cherry family archives

If you have followed jazz publications these last few years, chances are you’ve come across Magnus Nygren’s work on Don Cherry. A former editor of OrkesterJournalen, the historical Swedish jazz magazine, Magnus has been researching the life and work of Cherry since 2012. The ultimate goal has always been to write a book-length biography of the trumpeter, a massive work that should be completed toward the end of the year now that a publishing contract has been signed.

I think it is safe to say that Magnus has gone beyond what anyone else had done in terms of research, with an interview count in the 200s, access to family archives, many hours of unreleased music, and much more. Magnus has done research in Tågarp, the Swedish countryside school bought by the Cherry family in 1970, but also in Los Angeles, New York, Woodstock, Paris, London, Copenhagen, and Berlin, following the zigzagging paths of the always-on-the-move Cherry.

This research has already produced a big coedited Blank Forms Editions tome in 2021, liner notes for two sets of unreleased recordings that same year (The Summer House Sessions and Organic Music Theatre), articles for The Wire, We Jazz, and others.

To support the massive work that finishing the Don Cherry biography will represent, Magnus has launched the The Don Cherry Book Project, a Substack-like newsletter featuring exclusive material (for instance, an original interview with Jon Appleton). It is no secret that whether writing is purely opinion-based or the result of extensive time-consuming research, it pays the same. For this reason, some of this material is placed behind a paywall.

Magnus’s latest post deals with a most important Don Cherry album, Togetherness, a 1965 recording that has remained shrouded in mystery. You can read it here:

Togetherness One on an 8-inch.

It addition to dealing with the context around the making of the album, the post also contains an unreleased excerpt of the Togetherness band playing live. I have provided some input regarding the mystery of Togetherness’s recording location, we agree that the matter might be settled!