Master of a Small House

Jim Rotondi - 1000 Rainbows (Positone)

2010-08-13T11:18:00.000-07:00

Contextual questions of excessive repertory fealty are largely moot in the music of Jim Rotondi. A trumpeter who’s canny style blends Hubbard-like velocity and clarity with a persuasive lyricism, his fixation on a stripes of hardbop steeped in 60s Blue Note decorum is hardly worth getting bent about, though there are those who would likely fault him for it just the same. This set couples his lubricious brass with Joe Locke’s vibes and a standard rhythm section for a nine-song program that moves along at a brisk and mannered clip from the opening incisiveness of “Bizzaro World” through the lovely tone poem closer “Not Like This”.

Locke is a veteran player versed in a set of antecedents similar to those favored by his employer. He’s also imbued with a comparable instrumental command that engages multiple mallets in the crafting of complex melodic leads. He and Rotondi make for sharply cast team in the company of pianist Danny Grissett, bassist Barak Mori and drummer Bill Stewart, all of whom unflappably fulfill their respective roles. Mori and Stewart don’t get much in the way of solo space, but each man still makes his presence known through cogent and creative support.

The set list combines a handful of originals with a small clutch of tunes culled from popular songbooks. Buddy Montgomery is the source of the title piece, a lush ballad piece bracketed by soothing ensemble statements. Lennon and McCartney’s “We Can Work it Out” is thankfully denuded of most of its pop baggage, the unison theme working surprisingly well as a blowing vehicle for the two principals. It’s a very pleasant and well-parceled program, one filled with numerous platforms for the leader and Locke to strut their chops. Again, the collaborative catalogs of Hubbard and Hutcherson aren’t too far out of mind when listening to tunes like “Gravitude” and “One for Felix”. That’s hardly a trait worth a grimace or a grouse.

Schlippenbach Trio - Bauhaus Dessau (Intakt)

2010-08-12T07:33:00.000-07:00

The Schlippenbach Trio’s latest release is an album couched in celebratory anniversaries: the ensembles 40th coupled to their chosen venue’s 90th. Recorded at the vaunted German playhouse in the fall of last year it recalls their last Intakt outing in that saxophonist Evan Parker leaves his straight horn capped and cased. The resulting focus on tenor is something of a treat though it also means that his circular breathing feats of stamina and precision play out with comparative brevity and tempered speed on the larger horn. Rather than a detriment, it makes for a fascinating contrast. The tenor-centric nature of the set also precipitates the greater presence of jazz elements in his playing as interplay that ensues.

For their parts, pianist Schlippenbach and drummer Paul Lovens sidle back into their customary positions on bench and stool, respectively. The three players subscribe to a framework familiar from countless past concerts with a lengthy sectional piece followed by two shorter encores. At this point in their venerated partnership the thrills come through discovering how they shave away the weight of precedence and keep the long-standing shared vernacular free of hindering predictability. One thing remains certain, the tones and structures hatched upon are well enough removed from the litanies loosed on storied conclaves prior.

Play-by-play hardly seems prudent as the three hit their reliable strides and pacing, peeling off into duos and solos along with ensemble statements that fluctuate between heated and measured. Parker spools out some lushly nuanced melodic playing, particularly on the pair of encores, and it’s a vector buttressed by his partners from their own corners of the stage. Lovens manages his hat trick of assembling asymmetry, color and momentum without a sacrifice to any constituency. Schlippenbach scurries adroitly up and down his keyboard, expertly working the pedals for added gravitas while keeping a variable bead on his colleagues’ compass points. In sum it’s that rare breed of professional improvised performance, one that keenly calibrates fervor with skill.

The Schlippenbach Trio’s last Bauhaus hit was 28 years ago, a time lapse all but erased by the fresh scattershot of musical manna imbedded in the venue’s vaulted architecture this second go round.

Stephen Gauci/ Kris Davis/ Michael Bisio - SKM (Clean Feed)

2010-08-11T10:36:00.000-07:00

Operating under the ostensible leadership of saxophonist Stephen Gauci, but still very much an ensemble affair, versatility factors prominently on this straightforward trio set. Gauci and bassist Michael Bisio are well-established colleagues, their associations formed in the last decade on a number of projects for CIMP. Canadian pianist Kris Davis moves in similar circles having worked with New York notables like Tony Malaby and Tom Rainey. Their rapport manifests right away, stressing spontaneity rather than any predictable path with their instrumentation. It’s a “down to brass tacks” approach echoed in a simple initials-as-album title summary.

All but one of the program’s eight pieces is collectively composed. Only “Now” sources from Bisio’s pen, a solo feature for his signature emery board arco bass. Gauci sits out the opening minutes of “The End Must Always Come” setting a precedent that shapes the other tracks in the set. Sharply drawn duos and solos thread through various pieces with Davis and Bisio frequently pairing off for tightly braided interplay. The bassist is no stranger to pared down settings in the company of a piano and that familiarity serves him well here.

Davis responds in kind though repetitive aspects of her playing grate on occasion. In the closing minutes of the aforementioned opener she locks on an ostinato pattern wears it down to a nub as Gauci flutters in circles around her. It’s an action wrought with intent, but one that ends up sounding overwrought. “Something From Nothing” takes the tactic to an even greater extreme, barely equating with its title as the three musicians built a constrictive repeating weave from the barest of rhythmic materials. It’s an initially interesting exercise in self-imposed group parameters that ultimately feels overly hermetic.

Other pieces like the comparatively aerated Gauci/Davis duo “Groovin’ for the Hell of It” fare better in speaking to the trio’s strengths. Davis’ dusky and staggered chords have a Bley-like luster to them and Gauci’s fastidious feather-duster tone plies in the service of suitably diagonal phrasing. Those comparisons bring immediately to mind the classic Giuffre trio, but it’s really just a surface point of comparison. Balancing liberating extemporaneousness within the context of carefully considered structures these three players arrive at a music that both invites and largely withstands close scrutiny.

ROW: Stan Getz - Nobody Else But Me (Verve)

2010-08-11T06:14:00.000-07:00

The Getz/Gary Burton nexus was a relatively brief occurrence and one comprised almost completely of concert dates. This ‘lost’ session constitutes their only studio meeting in a pianoless setting and it’s quite the archival find. Bassist Gene Cherico and drummer Joe Hunt complete the ensemble in yeoman fashion, but it’s Burton who truly brings out a singular side of Getz, particularly on two originals “6-Nix-Quix-Flix” and “Out of Focus”. The vibraphonist’s veiled anecdotes hint at predictable frictions with his temperamental employer and the Bossa Nova strains that were the tenorist’s then-bread-and-butter infiltrate the rhythmic arrangements for ballad numbers like “Here’s That Rainy Day” and “Waltz for a Lovely Wife”, but there are shades of modal freedom audible in the principals’ exchanges as well. Vintage Van Gelder sound gives the instruments a greater clarity and balance than what they would encounter on air shots and audience recordings. Hard to find in these days of the waning compact disc, this set still stands out in Getz’s voluminous discography as a memorable departure from the norm.

Greg Lewis - Organ Monk (self-released)

2010-08-10T08:40:00.000-07:00

Don’t let the barefaced cover art on this one act as a disqualifier before disc meets laser. Organist Greg Lewis might be a bit lead-handed with his monastic imagery, but his work on the B-3 is brimming with shades and subtlety. It certainly helps that the side-persons he’s chosen for the date include the redoubtable Cindy Blackman and a new name to me, Ron Jackson, on guitar. All but one of the disc’s fifteen tracks come from the songbook of Thelonious, a brave move on Lewis’ part to begin with given the preponderance of tributes past and present to the inestimable hat-and-bearded composer.

Lewis hardly seems stymied by the challenge inherent in saying something new with the time-tested material. In fact he goes it better by not shying away from the humorous and downright weird. His command of his console is startling complete, beginning with a burning take on “Trinkle Tinkle” where he plies the spiral staircase melody without missing a beat. The corkscrew freefall of “Four In One” falls similarly in line under Lewis’ nimble digits. Elsewhere on “Criss Cross” he combines the floating atmospherics of Korla Pandit and Sun Ra as Blackman builds tension and release accents for a spate of bracing contrasts. “Boo’s Birthday” contains a swirling church-inflected prelude before the trio states the theme proper.

Lewis’ has obviously internalized the masters of pedal-built organ bass from Smith on down through Holmes. His corpulent patterns balance tonal weight with adroit articulation as during the frothy give and take with Blackman on “Played Twice”. Jackson shifts between thick bacon-cut comping and cleaner single note solos. In the latter capacity he sometimes almost sounds like an extension of Lewis’ keys so close and custom-calibrated are his chord voicings. His solos are fewer in frequency than those of his employer, but he makes them count, as does Blackman most commonly within the context of drum breaks.

A word also seems warranted regarding the disc’s artwork, which includes a stylized tray card photo of a shirtless Lewis seated, his nude wife straddling him as their infant soon coos nearby from a baby rocker. It’s a striking image and one initially incongruous with the music. Lewis’ visuals may err on the obvious, but his take on Monk’s music preserves that reservoir of spontaneity so often depleted from the tunes in the hands’ of other interpreters. This is certainly a set to audition for jaded listeners who’ve all but given up on the organ’s application as a vehicle for singular expression.

It was 39 years ago today...

2010-08-09T09:03:00.000-07:00

Stuck at the day gig today despite the arrival of a birthday. Thought I’d give myself a consolation present just the same by skipping a Monday review. Regularly scheduled programming to resume tomorrow. In the meantime, please dig this if you haven’t already: Jackie McLean on Mars

Dick Oatts - Two Hearts (Steeplechase)

2010-08-06T08:42:00.000-07:00

Ballad projects can be dangerous prospects for the sentiment-sensitive saxophonist. Dip too deep into the romance bag and the results run a strong risk of coming across as treacly or trite. Constrict the emotive spigot and the outcome can be construable as bland or aloof. Midwestern mainstay Dick Oatts is well-acquainted with negotiating such obstacles of temperament over a professional career that spans nearly four decades. Counting sideman and jam session appearances this is his nineteenth title for Steeplechase though it dates back to January of 2009. Pianist Michael Weiss, bassist Ugonnna Okegwo and drummer Rodney Green are regular Oatts confreres. Bassist David Wong pinch hits for Okegwo on three pieces without upsetting the programmatic flow.

The ten tune set is an assemblage of notable standards, all of which have revolved through the Oatts playbook at one time or another. It’s testament to Oatt’s improvisatory powers that such a program can still yield green pastures for his horn. A medium-slow tempo sortie through “If I Should Loose You” starts things off in relatively sedate fashion with the rhythm section offering up a warm accompaniment the leader’s ranging alto. Slower pieces actually offer more succulent fruits starting with the lilting interpretation “We’ll Be Together Again”. Oatts sounds even more inspired on Ellington’s “Come Sunday”, his by turns plush and piquant tonal shifts accentuating the aged standard’s beatific theme. Weiss works well as frequent foil, his deft chordal work aligning with the steady throb of Okegwo and the skeletal rhythms of Green.

Raising the tempo a couple ticks, “Yesterdays” brings a dark edge of Weiss’ rolling, pedal-weighted momentum and some acrobatic emoting by the leader. The mood shift proves short-lived thanks to the soothing trifecta of “My Foolish Heart”, “Darn That Dream” and “Angel Eyes”. Echoing the intimation of its concluding foray through “Hello Young Lovers”, this is an album to savor in the company of a spouse or lover, snifter of top-shelf cognac and comfortable couch at the ready to see what develops.

Prince Lasha - Insight (Dusty Groove/CBS UK)

2010-08-05T07:12:00.000-07:00

Flirtations with major labels are an infrequent occurrence for most free jazz musicians. For Prince Lasha the call came during a European sojourn in the mid-60s. Lasha assembled a crew of ten musicians in a UK studio, mixing and matching them on a standards-weighted program of six tunes. Fielding plastic alto like his old pal Ornette along with wooden flute he tailored each to his designs and came up with an album that still stands out in discography checkered by lengthy lapses in recording. David Snell’s guitar-like harp and the use of two bassists in tandem along with a modest brass section of trumpet and trombone pulls the instrumentation out of the quotidian. Les Tompkins liners, reproduced in the booklet, give detailed play-by-play as well as the basic particulars behind the session’s inception. Lifted from a pristine vinyl copy, the fidelity is clean and crisp.

Dusty Groove’s decision to dust off the session and reissue it on their cd boutique label makes perfect sense. The platter is right in line with the rare but righteous criteria that the other discs in the catalog subscribe to. Lasha’s take on the standards leans heavily to the “inside”, but he still injects passages of New Thing brio and fire, especially on the dedicatory original “Impressions of Eric Dolphy” with a spate of intervallic chirrups. British pianist Stan Tracey and fellow expatriate Joe Oliver raise the bar a notch, the latter man bringing playful Monkisms to his work on the riff-driven opener “Nuttin’ Out Jones” and elsewhere. Of the standards, “Everything Happens to Me” is the standout and a piece that prognosticates some of the travails Lasha had ahead of him in the coming decades. “Body and Soul”, rendered on lilting flute, is a close second with solid supporting work from the brass.

As is so often the case in major label meets outre artist, the CBS session ended up a one-shot and Lasha once again slid into obscurity in its wake. Numerous ups and downs followed in subsequent years before he found a partial late-career renaissance on the CIMP imprint in the company of Odean Pope. The renascence proved short-lived with his passing in December of 2008. This classic set is something a lost-and-found gem and a true pleasure from start to finish. As strong as his early Firebirds sets with Sonny Simmons for Contemporary are, in terms of instrumental variety and “outside-turns-inside” appeal this formerly hen’s-teeth rare platter just might have the appreciable edge.

Aram Shelton Quartet - These Times (Single Speed)

2010-08-04T17:40:00.000-07:00

Pressed on Aram Shelton’s own imprint, this modest album is a logical minor variation on the reedist’s long-standing partnership with saxophonist Keefe Jackson in the Fast Citizens, a collective that’s recorded twice for Delmark. Both horn players have strong ties to the Chicago creative pool that is now several iterations onward from the Vandermark-led vanguard of a decade earlier. The variant in this case is drummer Marc Riordan, a new recruit who fits with the extant ensemble like a moistened reed in mouthpiece.

With Shelton’s name on the masthead four of the six compositions naturally come from his quill. Of the remaining two in the set, Jackson and bassist Anton Hatwich take one apiece. There’s a similar equilibrium regarding Shelton’s choice of reeds as the alto pieces serve as bread slices to the clarinet cold cuts in the programmatic sandwich. He name-drops Ornette, Johns Tchicai and Carter as muses and the pieces loosely reference freebop frameworks established by those storied progenitors in using brisk pretzel-patterned themes as sources for collective improvisation.

At this point Shelton and Jackson share a rapport that makes sessions like this one sound somewhat effortless even though the collaborative energy spent to get there was obviously deep and rewarding. On the opening title piece, the pair negotiates a see-sawing unison theme before dropping out and leaving Riordan’s brushes front and center. Shelton bats first with a solo steeped in jittery intervallics followed by Jackson in similar form before a tandem marked by lean vertical riffing by the former and blustery forward momentum by the latter.

On the Jackson-scripted “Rings”, Shelton’s mercurial clarinet makes for an even sharper tonal contrast to the composer’s tenor and the riff-lead roles reverse. Bass and drums buttress and challenge from their flanking positions, drawing respective lines in bold primary colors. Hatwich’s “Relief” moves from a feature for Riordan to overlapping legato lines from the saxophones that ramp in density and intensity before a surprisingly sedate and lyrical coda. Shelton’s “Rise and Set” reflects its title galvanizing horn fisticuffs giving way to bass and drums interludes and onward to a cathartic release.

At just over 37-minutes it’s a relatively short set, but that built-in brevity isn’t a minus given how well everything holds together. Considering that other titles on Shelton’s young label have lapsed out of print this isn’t one for interested parties to sleep on.

ROW: Raymond Scott Quintette - Microphone Music (Basta)

2010-08-04T05:46:00.000-07:00

How to effectively summarize Raymond Scott? Studio recording wizard, futurist swing composer/pianist, draconian band leader, early electronicist pioneer- all are appellations rightly attached to his name. This double-disc collection of choice air shots and rehearsals covers nearly every major base of his early songbook. Humorous non-sequiturs and playful mash-ups are regular facets of both song titles and charts, among them such rambunctious ditties as “Yesterday’s Ice Cubes”, “Harlem Hillbilly”, “Hypnotist in Hawaii” and “The Girl with the Light Blue Hair”. Scott could rival Spike Jones in terms of frenetic slapstick humor and split-second collaging of instruments would have a far flung influence on bands like the Grand Ole Opry’s Hoosier Hot Shots and cartoon composer Carl Stalling who lifted various Scott melodies for his work with Warner Brothers. Unlike the often anarchic Jones, there was always a palpable discipline balancing the arch comedy in his creations and his band, a six-piece outfitted christened the Quintette comprised crack studio musicians. The arguable ace Scott’s deck was percussionist Johnny Williams (father to the film composer of the same name) whose kit was festooned with all sorts of peripheral devices from wood-blocks to tympani to finger cymbals. Based on his eclectic and driving work on these numbers rivals Sonny Greer and Cie Frazier in the category of crafting convincing "jungle" rhythms. Working with just three horns Scott created the illusion of an orchestra, one hopped up on Mexican jumping beans and spiked sarsaparilla. Folks coming to this stuff fresh are in for an extended treat and even those who’ve heard the sides a dozen times are still all but sure to uncover something new with each encounter.

Goooooooooooooooold!!!!

2010-08-03T06:02:00.000-07:00

A link to the Smalls Jazz Archive has been up for some time here, but as with most things, time for delving into the site’s many musical wonders remains a luxury I’m not often able to enjoy. Cruising by there yesterday I noticed the place has grown substantially since my last visit. Specifically, there’s a huge archive of tenorist Ned Goold’s performances, the bulk of them with his working trio with bassist Jamale Davis and son Charles on drums. Despite a continuing association and presumably lucrative gigs with Harry Connick, Jr., Goold’s been rather ill-served on record to date and this trove effectively multiplies his available music by four. He’s also a kindred spirit with MoaSH staple Stephen Riley, evincing a highly personal system of harmonic improvisation and a tone that pulls from the lesser tapped in of the spectrum previously occupied by cats like Gonsalves, Rouse and Marsh.

In addition to the plentiful sounds there’s the cool & colorful reel-to-reel animation that plays while the sets stream. The only downside is an absence of track lists and the occasionally erroneous personnel listings, but these are paltry quibbles considering the bounty on offer gratis. The office soundtrack @ my day gig just got a whole lot more interesting…

Mike Mainieri - Crescent (NYC)

2010-08-02T17:42:00.000-07:00

Trane tributes remain a reliable if sometimes rote jazz tributary. Vibraphonist Mike Mainieri seems to recognize their resilient ubiquity on this outing, tweaking the formula in a number of intriguing ways and coming up with a program both familiar and singular in the execution. The success is due in no small part to his sidemen, both of whom easily sidestep the strictures of that largely outmoded signifier. Altoist Charlie Mariano was at the end of a long and fulfilling road when the session was waxed in 2005, but his impending demise is only fleetingly apparent in his playing which retains a plangent edge and tart vibrato while sustaining an unerring underlying swing even in the seldom moments when he overreaches.

The trio session grew naturally out of a string of prior duo performances with rehearsals and arrangements foresworn in favor of spontaneous play. Mainieri wisely added bassist Dieter Ilg, a colleague of Mariano’s, to the mix as an anchor and fulcrum and his supple bass lines are equally accomplished in supportive and lead roles. Trane originals alternate with a handful of standards that were regular residents of his stage and session songbook. The three men make the most of the inherent space and harmonic density of the tunes. The rendering of “Giant Steps” on the second disc is a capsule of this sort of versatility with Ilg taking the lead at the onset, obliquely sketching the cascading theme with vigorous string stops before Mainieri’s mallets flesh it further in a stream of luminous clusters. Mariano’s recessed riffing expands into an ensemble passage where Ilg switches to a sturdy Latin bounce.

Stacked against the handful of now-hoary standards, the Coltrane pieces like “Mr. Syms” fare better, but representatives of the former camp still contain surprises. Ilg brings an ample amount of funk to the “I Love You” without upsetting the balladic mood, gently goosing Mariano into some spirited syncopations of his own that recall an Art Pepper-like insouciance. “Bye Bye Blackbird” opens with several choruses of jaunty dialogue between vibes and alto, Ilg sitting on the sideline before entering with a supple walking line. “Body and Soul” also gets a coat of fresh paint thanks to Mainieri’s shimmering unaccompanied preface and the closing take on the national anthem miraculously manages to avoid schmaltz while remaining mellifluous.

Mainieri’s spent much of his career in fusion settings most often with his own outfit Steps Ahead. Those experiences translate to his expert use of his instrument’s pedals and motor in constructing colors and textures. This set is a welcome change of scenery for his mallets and proof that his talents are just as applicable to pared down settings. It’s certainly made me want to check out more of his earlier work while using Crescent as a handy yardstick.

July's Blue Hole

2010-08-01T17:39:00.000-07:00

Summer’s had it’s sultry way with me and July is now a wash. Apologies to those who’ve stopped by in the last month only to find stasis and silence on the site page. Various situations conspired against my regular maintenance of this small house including a tornado’s brush with my own actual residence. The death of Harvey Pekar, a much-needed trip to Duluth and points north, and a nurse’s strike narrowly averted at my day gig were just some of the other events that occupied my thoughts and time at the expense of daily updates here. What to do with the “blue hole” of content that formed in the interim?

It may seem a cheat, especially given the early pledge of a new review per weekday that started this place, but I’ve got no shortage of previously published reviews from which to cherry-pick. So, slapping palm to forehead, it occurred to me that a reprinting of certain said pieces might be just the proper fix. July’s now filled with several dozen of these heirlooms documenting recordings of the past few years and prior that continue to strike my fancy. Please take the time to peruse them if you have the inclination. New content renews tomorrow with the chronic case of summer writing hiccups hopefully behind me. Thanks again for your patience and continued patronage. And thanks to the artists and labels for the music without which this place would not exist.

Roswell Rudd – Blown Bone (Emanem)

2010-07-30T12:49:00.000-07:00

Martin Davidson, proprietor of Emanem, has long made it a custom to include helpful “File under:” tags on his releases to aid harried record shop clerks in correctly identifying contents. Blown Bone, a reissue of a 1979 Japanese-only Philips platter, carries the colorful signifier “Jazz (Free/Blues/Latin),” a definite first in the commonly free improv-focused catalog and one that speaks directly to trombonist Roswell Rudd’s career-spanning eclecticism. The cast of characters is just as colorful with Steve Lacy, Enrico Rava, Paul Motian, Sheila Jordan and seven others convening for a small handful of ensembles. Rudd has always been about placing his slippery slide-calibrated brass in unexpected contexts. This consistently entertaining hodgepodge doesn’t disappoint a whit on that score.

Bouncy freebop gets the party started on “It’s Happening” with Rava, Lacy and Rudd frolicking through a syncopated head and into tasty solos from the trad jazz reminiscent horn configuration. Obscure session man Wilbur Little lays down a rubbery bass line and Motian maintains one of his signature aerated rhythms to keep the quintet percolating nicely. Both get belated solo space in the track’s waning minutes. Vocalist Sheila Jordan joins the action on the ecologically-oriented “Blues for the Planet Earth," a loose funeral dirge steeped in brassy drones that recalls the Art Ensemble of Chicago and paints impending planetary peril in polyphonous hues. The title piece, first in a four-part suite, unfolds as a rambunctious throwback to Rudd and Lacy’s roots in progressive Dixieland bands with a septet strolling another swinging ditty girded by Patti Brown’s comping electric piano.

The craziest combination crops up on the nine-minute “Cement Blues,” where venerable blues guitarist Louisiana Red, his axe ladled with plenty of echo, fronts an octet with Rudd, Lacy, soulful saxophonist Tyrone Washington and trad jazz doyen Kenny Davern on clarinet. The ensuing piebald jam is a mash-up of styles and temperaments that surprisingly works. It’s also one of the finest blues-jazz fusions on record, staying true to its constituents styles while simultaneously evincing a helluva lot of fun and not feeling the least bit forced. Inserted as added centerpiece, “Long Hope” originates from nine years earlier and features some rhapsodic Rudd solo piano. The percussion populated “Bethesda Fountain” completes the suite with an octet rounded out by Jordan Steckel’s bata drum and Rudd’s delicate overdubbed mibra working over an effervescent Afro-Cuban groove. More please.

[Originally published 10/25/06 @ Dusted Magazine]

Kalaparusha McIntyre Quartet – Extremes (CIMP)

2010-07-29T12:51:00.000-07:00

A fine line separates eccentricity and error in improvised music. Saxophonist Kalaparush McIntyre, surreptitiously having dropped Maurice, is a personification of the subjective tightrope between the two. McIntyre rightly holds elder statesman status as an aged member of the AACM, though his four decade plus career is comparatively slight in the discographical department. His last ensemble, The Light, cut a handful of records but now appears kaput. This new group reunites him with bassist Michael Logan who served on his first CIMP session back in 1998. Will Connell, doubling on expressive bass clarinet and alto, is another CIMP veteran having served under trombonist Steve Swell’s leadership on several occasions. Warren Smith needs no preamble and his presence at the drum kit is an unqualified boon for the session, lending a sense of order to proceedings when the leader seems otherwise preoccupied.

McIntyre’s music also embodies the blurred boundaries between accident and mistake, the latter connoting the possibility of volition. Some of his choices on the record sound like mistakes, as when his tenor intrudes on Connell’s heated alto solo on ‘What do you see…” and is summarily parried back. Such a flub could be construed as indication of failing faculties and the album notes do make mention of befuddlement on the part of McIntyre’s band mates in reaction to certain of his moves, humorously dubbed “senior moments”. The logic behind them, however internal, does appear intact and intentional, as on the ballad “Closeness” where McIntyre jumps ranks and travels his own tenor trajectory independent of the support proffered by Logan and Smith. His ironclad rationale in the aftermath: “That’s the way it’s supposed to be. It’s between me and my old lady- closeness”. The “little instruments” segments that bracket a rangy bout of horn harmonizing on the prolix “Early Morning” are also of arguable merit, as are various peculiar pauses and asides.

To some, such insularity of expression will no doubt breed annoyance and even ire. Taken on its own terms, McIntyre’s music evinces ample charms through its idiosyncrasies. He’s an original and always has been. This new cache of music is as undiluted as anything he’s done previous and well worth hearing on those grounds alone.

[Originally published 4/22/08 @ Bagatellen]

John McNeil – East Coast Cool (Omnitone)

2010-07-28T12:51:00.000-07:00

Temperature tags have long since fallen out of fashion as codifiers for coastal jazz differences. But damn if trumpeter John McNeil hasn’t struck pay dirt, intended incongruities aside, with East Coast Cool, his third outing for Omnitone. The primary source of inspiration for the project lies in the corpus of the classic pianoless Gerry Mulligan and Chet Baker quartet. McNeil’s resume even includes an early career stint in Mulligan’s employ along with apprenticeships with Horace Silver and the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra. Another, slightly later, sans-piano influence also colors the music, as strains of Ornette’s bands with Don Cherry percolate quietly throughout the program’s 12 tracks. Spanning the space between the two epochal groups while still retaining his own voice, McNeil ensures that his freer interests and those of his colleagues also hold strong purchase in the music.

Allan Chase’s versatile baritone serves as a perceptive counterpart to McNeil’s loose personification of Chet in the frontline. He mimics Mulligan’s polish but also plumbs the horn’s lower regions in a Pepper Adams mode when the situation requires, as on the propulsive “Internal Hurdles” and the solemn ballad “Wanwood.” Bassist John Hebert and drummer Matt Wilson, playing the parts of Bob Whitlock and Chico Hamilton or Henry Grimes and Dave Bailey, depending on your preferred point of reference, make for an inspired casting choice as rhythm team. The tunes, all but three written by McNeil, delight in subtle and mischievous upendings of expectation. But it’s all done with a close attention to tunefulness and it often takes a careful ear to fully discern just how subversive the band’s being with both its arrangements and improvisations. This is the sort of disc to audition for the Doubting Thomas jazzbos who cling doggedly to their hardbop albums and sneer openly at post-modal developments in the music. Pieces like the sprinter’s reading of the Mulligan favorite “Bernie’s Tune,” juiced up with guillotine tempo shifts and free falls, and aptly titled “Delusions,” which runs on a deceptively morphing melody and Wilson’s dynamically-charged drumming, are near certain bets at cleaning such sets of calcified ears without leaving them bruised or ringing.

McNeil muses candidly in the notes on the ’50s West Coast predisposition for writing brazenly happy compositions. The band hides some razor blades in the proverbial mincemeat with the original “A Time to Go.” Playing it relatively straight and sweet at first and sailing through a jaunty head with joint aplomb, the four switch palettes and paint in more pensive and darker pigments that give the piece an underscoring edge, oceanside sun girded by a penumbra of furrowed gray clouds. McNeil leaves few possibilities untouched and even traffics in tone rows with his terse adaptation of “Schoenberg’s Piano Concerto.” I’ve spun this album at least a dozen times in full or part and have yet to weary of it. Repertoire by rote it most certainly is not. McNeil accomplishes a feat fewer of his colleagues seem willing to attempt- that of recycling old bottles as worthy receptacles for new grappa.

[Originally published 1/3/06 @ Dusted Magazine]

ROW: Edip Akbayram (Shadoks Music)

2010-07-28T12:50:00.000-07:00

Edip Akbayram rose to stardom in the rubble of the first wave of Turkish rock music influenced by Western progenitors like Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin. This German collection is scant on annotative particulars but the two dozen tracks appear to be pulled from his first two albums and a handful of singles all cut in the early Seventies. That paucity is balanced by a scrapbook of period promo photos featuring Akbayram and his band Dostlar oozing charisma in various iterations of psychedelic super-group attire. Fuzz guitar, fatback bass and Farfisa organ collide with traditional Turkish instruments including oud, kanun, tanbur and dumbek. The grounding riffs on the first four numbers starting with the deceptively-titled “Little Snowflakes Falling” approach Sabbath levels of heaviness. Other pieces leaven the rock focus in favor of stronger pop flavors. Akbayram’s songs reflect his lifelong travails with the after effects of polio affliction and are commensurately brooding in their topicality. My favorite cut, “Don’t Touch My Sad Soul” fuses the disparate elements perfectly with gravitas-powered vocals soaring across monolithic groove of wah-wah-lathered frets, trampoline bass, and pounding drums. Another song sums up his worldview with the simple expectation of “Sorrow and More Sorrow”. Some of the title translations come with unintentional humor attached, the best examples being “Because of Your Black Eyebrows”, “The Mountains Made Me Sad”, and “It Burns” (the last a lamentation on the outcome of an ill-advised groupie encounter?). Akbayram was serious about his art though and it shows in the audible passion he brings to the performances.

[Originally published 1/24/09 @ Bagatellen]

Scott Fields Freetet – Bitter Love Songs (Clean Feed)

2010-07-27T12:52:00.000-07:00

Mordant wit and caustic self-deprecation have always been reliable elements in Scott Fields’ creative expression. From the pithy brickbats of semi-fictional critic Hugh Jarrid to the admirable, if puzzling, practice of publishing pans right alongside praises on his website, the guitarist has never shied away presenting the whole package of his persona, prickly pear portions and all. Even by Fields’ archly candid standards this new Clean Feed outing stands out. His liners read as a suite-like screed, pillorying a succession of unnamed assailants to his temper and patience. He saves the strongest recriminations for last, directing black roses and dead rat vitriol at those who have wronged him in love. Track titles wryly embellish on the conceit, my personal favorite being “Your parents must be ecstatic now”. Despite the dour and potentially distracting emotional context, the set stays sharply on point throughout, though it’s hard to tell exactly how much of the acrimony is genuine and how much is amplified for show.

The music curiously recalls the early Nineties work of Joe Morris in its preference for pared down frills-free interplay. Jagged single note runs race regularly atop undulating bass and drums rhythms. Think Flip and Spike, and more specifically “Itan” and “Mombaccus”, and your close to the aural mark. Fields’ tone is often a bit rounder and cleaner than JoMo’s and that may be a function of the recording, but there’s a comparable frequency of densely knotted note clusters, spit out at staccato intervals. Bassist Sebastian Gramss and drummer João Lobo traffic in comparable agitation and irascibility, shading in the cracks around Fields’ chattery plectrum pings while still keeping the pieces intentionally off-kilter. It’s a dynamic intended to ape the disquieting feeling just prior to when one’s heart goes under the knife of betrayal and scorn. The pieces follow similar schemas until “I was good enough for you until your friends butted in” when the seething clouds break a bit into more spacious variation of melancholy. This is easily Fields most jazz-oriented album in many moons and a welcome fang-fringed spin on familiar forms.

[Originally published 2/29/08 @ Bagatellen]

Trio X – AIR: Above and Beyond (CIMPoL)

2010-07-26T12:50:00.000-07:00

The “X” can now do double duty as a Roman numeral in reflecting this improvising trio’s decade together as a unit. On this latest offering, they cop a page from the Vandermark playbook: Four out of the seven pieces carry dedications to fellow musicians. The extended opener “Fried Grapefruit” celebrates Henry Threadgill, starting as a porous chamber music dialogue between drums and bass. The mood turns heated with the entry of McPhee’s tenor (fitted with a bass clarinet reed), but eventually scales back again with another turn into somber balladry. The closing minutes settle on a sliding funk groove as underpinning for honking and bleating tenor, several facets of Hemphill’s irrepressible personality translated into sound. “Jump Spring” for William Parker, sketches a similarly apt aural portrait, pivoting on Duval and building from the sort of soulful ostinato so often the province of the bassist honoree. “2128 ½ Indiana”, commemorates an address that perceptive jazz fans will recognize as the former digs of the Velvet Lounge. Fred Anderson is the figure of adulation at that storied establishment and McPhee pays homage with a wooly extemporization that is as melodically astute as it is rhythmic on the tail of Rosen drum preface that mixes similarly compatible properties.

A Trio X outing wouldn’t be complete without at least one spiritual. “Close Up” covers that base in the combination of Duval’s grainy arco and McPhee’s raspy tenor. Rosen holds silent, eventually returning with restrained brushwork to bracket McPhee’s Ayler-informed musings. The drummer also sidelines himself for “Here’s that Rainy Day” and the ensuing tenor and bass duo points to the remaining pair’s concert the previous day (also released as a CIMPoL set). Ellington is the recipient of the last aural encomium with the powerful “Give Us This Day”. McPhee bites hard on his reed to create another spate of sustained gravely cries that periodically venture over into vocalized polyphonics. His colleagues cobble a comparably impassioned context around him. “A Valentine in the Fog of War” finds McPhee in oratory mode, his words muffled, but his ensuing tenor line speaking with audible force before tapering into a melancholic interpolation of “My Funny Valentine”, another Trio X staple.

The last track illustrates a deviation from past albums in their catalog in the session particulars. Engineer Marc Rusch adapts the CIMP aesthetic of minimal inference to concert settings for the newly christened CIMPoL imprint. Expanding his recording field to the world writ large will offer him a renewable resource in terms of liner comments (after several hundred essays on the relatively static environment of the Spirit Room, the space yields few new surprises), but it also presents a new slate of ever-changing challenges. From a listener standpoint, application of ear goggles might be a good bet as the dynamic range requires a bit of concentration on the quieter end. All in all, it’s memorable set and a fitting precursor to an even more momentous offering rumored for release later this year.

[Originally published 2/10/08 @ Bagatellen]

Phil Minton – No Doughnuts in Hand (Emanem)

2010-07-23T12:49:00.000-07:00

Phil Minton’s music practically mandates first person response. Burying the “I” in a review is a hard thing to do from the onset. Reaction to his work is frequently polemical with one person’s vocal abuses occupying the same aural space as another’s expansions. Minton doesn’t appear to be especially bothered either way by potential controversy. His laconic liner notes on this third entry in his solo series endearingly lay out his up-to-the-minute reasoning: “I know things aren’t getting better, but I hope this cheers you up a bit.”

As with the earlier volumes, Minton leaves laryngeal censors and shackles at the figurative door. Thirty-seven “songs” zip by in just over fifty minutes, though their relative brevity doesn’t necessarily lead to easy consumption. The collected sounds on many of the pieces superficially resemble a taxonomy of ethnic caricatures and speech impediments. The closer Minton comes to coherent speech, the less convincing and startling his creations. My favorite aspect is the array of imaginative imagery engendered by the sounds. The opener sounds like a prayer circle of asthmatic Gyuto monks. Title pieces “5” and “7” resemble the mush-mouthed mumblings of the Swedish Chef capped by Ricola-worthy yodels. “Para five” makes me think of Donald Duck’s nephews Huey, Dewey and Louie, if throttled by piano wire. Self-inflicted strangulation factors into several other pieces.

Pure sound ventures are relatively few. The whirring drone on title piece “6” resembles wind gusting steadily through a ventilation pipe while “22” consists mainly of avuncular hums. “8” assembles a string of tea kettle whistles and screams. Minton’s irrepressible humor bleeds through even on the more controlled pieces where he’ll occasionally punctuate a concluding stretch of silence with one final gasp or sputter. “Vo be dayish” presents a Minton improvisation based on a Veryan Weston transcription of a Minton improvisation and curiously ends up the most conventionally “song-like” in structure. Weston also handles recording chores. The last piece, an improvised collection of strained sighs and eructation, layers in barbed political commentary with the admonition “i have given this much more thought than blair did when he decided to invade iraq.”

Most of the tracks are ones I probably won’t put in regular rotation, but my admiration for Minton’s art remains steadfast. Many of his oral expulsions require extraordinary muscular and respiratory control. Last year’s Blur is an easier sell as it features Minton’s voice mixed with other instruments. This disc is for the truly brave souls able to embrace his improvisations sans such collaborative filters. One question though: what happened to those doughnuts?

[Originally published 5/28/08 @ Bagatellen]

Byard Lancaster – Personal Testimony (Porter)

2010-07-22T12:48:00.000-07:00

Originally circulated on Byard Lancaster’s Concert Artists label in an extremely finite pressing, this 1979 solo manifesto is among the rarer Philly ‘free jazz’ artifacts. Filing it under that loose genre heading feels slightly suspect as jazz is only one of the stylistic kegs tapped in its creation. Lancaster folds in African, Asian and Native American elements as well as healthy of blues and soul. The Porter records reissue adds six tracks to the original vinyl nine, the new pieces having been cut in 2007 and sitting well with their antecedents. Lancaster hedges a bit on the album’s solo credentials, regularly employing overdubbing to couple and layer instruments from his arsenal. The plaintive “Miss Nikki” sounds more like a Terry Callier song with its cascading piano chords and soulfully sung entreaties. “In Lovingkindness” and “Dogtown” are the first of several flute numbers, the former piece adopting a meditative cast through twining trills while the latter aims for velocity and vigor via aerial acrobatics nearly on par with those of Rashaan Roland Kirk.

Accentuating the personal parameters of the project, each piece carries a postscript providing brief clues to its import and origins. “Brotherman” blends breathy bass clarinets. “Hoodoo” for alto and “What Friend We Have in Jesus” for soprano draw immediate comparisons to Joe McPhee in their spiritual mellifluousness. The two reeds voice in tandem on the lush ballad “Marianne and Alicia” while “Mind Exercise” pares back down to alto in a barrage of harsh upper register shrieks. Fast forwarding nearly two decades, the ’07 pieces find Lancaster expanding his palette and engaging in a curious avuncular commentary. “Prayer Cry” and “Tribalize Lancaster” play to the directives of their titles, mixing playful vocal effects, chanting and piquant flute with what Lancaster terms “percussion spiriting”. The first even weaves in sampled African tribal field recordings to explicate its case.

“Afro-Ville” and “Free Mumia” bring the afrocentric funk through further convergences of jousting flutes and recitations. Keyboard explorations power “Global Key” and “Loving You”, the former moving from modest beginnings to a full-scale piano and percussion avalanche while the latter threads in pliant flute. Heard as a chapbook of snapshots and musings, the disc delivers a great deal of listening pleasure. Lancaster isn’t preoccupied with chops and instead directs his energies toward sketching aural moods and pictures with digressions intact. Through the conveyance of such intensely personal cartography the veracity of the project’s title holds fast.

[Originally published 6/9/08 @ Bagatellen]

ROW: Trainreck - Train Keeps a’ Rollin (self-released)

2010-07-21T12:47:00.001-07:00

Easily “the discovery” for me at the 2009 Deep Blues Festival, KM Williams has been doing his thing longer than most of the 70-odd other acts on the schedule. His repertoire ropes in a fair chunk of the idiom’s history from Blind Willie Johnson, Son House and Fred McDowell to originals influenced by deceased Hill Country doyens like R.L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough. His partner for the past seven years and change is one Washboard Jackson. They couldn’t be more different in appearance or stage demeanor: Williams dressed in a crisply-pressed Sunday suit, Stetson and spats; Jackson opting for a frizzy, receding mullet, hockey jersey and cargo shorts. The latter often pockets his sticks, preferring to attack his cymbals, snare and tom with fingers and palms in a wild man, almost-Simian frenzy. Williams builds a complementary intensity through more measured means, playing lo-fi slide on either three-string cigar box or arch-top guitar and singing in a resonant near-baritone. Together, they turn the well-trampled territory of two-man juke blues into freshly-tilled soil, sounding somewhat akin to Satan and Adam, but with even less polish. This disc is just one of a dozen or so that Williams carries with him for sale from a suitcase and a fair representation of what I heard. Fortunately, it looks like most of that catalog (much of it on CDRs) is available through CdBaby where audio samples can also be found. I strongly advise all interested parties to check them out. [Originally published 7/20/09]

Von Freeman – Vonski Speaks (Nessa)

2010-07-21T12:47:00.000-07:00

“Did you have your Wheaties?” So inquires tenor saxophonist Von Freeman of his drummer Michael Raynor in the playful spoken preamble to the concert on Vonski Speaks. Freeman’s been figuratively eating that Breakfast of Champions for years, erasing any adverse assumptions about his octogenarian age with an improvisational acumen and stamina that’s indicates only minimal signs of erosion. The music on this set dates from around the same time he signed on with the Chicago-based Premonition label, an association that yielded a string of strong albums over the previous decade. His playing here is arguably even better, finding him in splendid form in front of a fortunate audience at the Jazzfest Berlin in the fall of 2002.

Freeman’s rhythm section, the same that’s accompanied him on weekly gigs at Chicago’s New Apartment Lounge, provides the kind of proactive support that comes from a longstanding relationship on the bandstand. The disc’s title piece evinces that rapport at the onset and speeds along for 10-plus minutes. Raynor and bassist Jack Zara sustain a sprinting tempo for Freeman to glide and gambol across in his inimitable way. Guitarist Mike Allemana inserts nimble ornamental chording, but sounds a bit reticent in the performance’s initial minutes when faced with the voracious swing of his comrades. When Freeman finally lays out four and a half minutes in, Allemana finds his footing in a fast-picked solo that restores the faith. Zara and Raynor get in heavy licks of their own before Freeman ties it all up in a bow through a breakneck succession of exchanges with the previously embattled guitarist. The captured acoustics, which are warm and veracious, warrant a word here, too, as they give the music an even greater depth and vitality.

The disc is notable as a reunion between Freeman and producer Chuck Nessa, an old, unflagging ally who stewarded two of the saxophonist’s finest sessions of the 1970s on his eponymous label. Vonski’s wry humor is prevalent, both in his banter with the audience and in his reliably iconoclastic approach to thematic improvisation. He dedicates “Darn That Dream” to “all my darlings all over the world” noting that “all the ladies belong to Vonski” and delivering the peach of a punch line that he “dreams a lot” to friendly audience laugher. What follows is 13 minutes of balladic bliss all but guaranteed to seduce even the most jaded jazz listener into rekindled ardor. As sublime as it and the closing foray through Freeman’s own “Blues for Sunnyland,” the show-crowning centerpiece comes in an epic, episodic rendering of “Summertime,” a threadbare Gershwin garment that seems custom-fitted for re-tailoring under Freeman’s baroque adornments. It’s an easy pick for one of the top releases of last year; those who sleep on this sterling set do so at their supreme folly.

[Originally published 1/11/10 @ Dusted Magazine]

Lin Halliday – Where or When (Delmark)

2010-07-20T12:46:00.000-07:00

Here’s an old favorite that I didn’t even realize was in need of re-pressing prior to receiving the promo. Saxophonist Lin Halliday is in certain senses the Herbert Huncke of jazz, a hard luck magnet and itinerant who could bring sporadic savant-like genius to his art. Numerous are the tales of Halliday’s self-sabotaging ways, his brushes with fame, and his dogged dedication to jazz. This date comes from the middle of his Delmark renaissance when a shot at 11th hour acclaim appeared not just possible, but probable. Alas, it wasn’t to be and despite a handful of records Halliday passed away within a few years in virtually the same state he started. The other major draws of the disc are the presence of Ira Sullivan as Halliday’s front line foil and the blue-chip Chicago rhythm section of Jodie Christian, Larry Gray and Robert Barry as support.

The song list is nothing special, basically mothballed bop blowing vehicles and ballads, practically second nature to the participants. But it’s those sorts of tunes at which Halliday excelled, filtering them through his insular improvisational methodology to create discursive extrapolations in a manner owing much to a certain Mr. Rollins. Sullivan, switching between tenor and trumpet, is very often the straight man by comparison. Ditto Christian and Gray, though Barry brings some irregularities to his rhythms that serve as reminders of his youthful sojourn as Sun Ra’s stickman. Halliday is a bit of an acquired taste and there’s something to the skeptics’ claims that his playing peculiarities were byproducts of his lifestyle rather than intentional. Those who dig their bop spiced with pinches of salt and cumin would do well to check this and his other Delmark sides out.

[Originally published 5/12/09 @ Bagatellen]

Halvorson/ Radding/ Wooley – Crackleknob (hatOLOGY)

2010-07-19T12:45:00.000-07:00

In Brooklyn, as with Chicago, improvising ensembles are comparable in number to tadpoles teeming in a pond. It’s a condition of the creative explosion that continues to sustain both communities. Nate Wooley, Reuben Radding and Mary Halvorson are poster people for the idea that diversification staves off artistic stasis. A thick chunk of the liners to their self-titled Hat debut covers the tangled taxonomic tree of projects and associations shared by the three. There’s no point summarizing it here as readers are no doubt familiar with the names and activities of many of the branches. These three players are in the midst of hectic careers with listeners continuing to take notice in growing droves.

Crackleknob’s success stems in large part from the balance of group concept and contrastive individual expression. All three members live and breathe their instruments –trumpet, bass and guitar– inside and out. Each has a strong and colorful personality to channel and the fluency to ensure that nothing is lost in translation. Halvorson handles her huge custom arch-top with a surety at odds with its size and her small frame. Her command of dynamics, in particular, suggests a master class, slipping from ceiling-clinging harmonics that approximate the sound of boots crunching broken light bulb glass to hard bass register picking that rivals Radding’s reach. Cleanly eliding single note runs suggest a ghost print of Joe Morris, a mentor, but she’s long since escaped any semblance of imitation assuming there ever their was one. Radding ranges all over his fingerboard, stacking plump bobbing notes against razor-wire bow play. One moment he’s politely keeping out of Halvorson’s way, the next, wrestling with her in a crisscross of bent strings. Wooley brings his complete bag of acoustic tricks too, setting up rustling drones that sound like interstitial static between radio stations one second and dialing in on Cool-toned jazz lyricism the next.

All ten pieces are collectively improvised, showing off symmetry of execution that immediately conjures the illusion of composition. Titles borrow from Adorno’s critical theory text Minima Moralia, and carry the boiled down wit of chapter headings. The associative music is similarly succinct with most tracks occupying close to pop song length and sounding not the least bit worse off for their economy. “Chamber improv” is a tempting adjectival tag for the sort of sounds these three traffic in, particularly given their combination of instruments and the tinder-dry music they devise. It’s also a hopelessly inadequate summation; one pointing to how Crackleknob and the host of other ensembles these three players are involved are rewriting the book on improvisatory jazz and gradually earning a bestseller listenership in the bargain.

[Originally published 7/7/09 @ Bagatellen]

Die Enttäuschung - Die Enttäuschung (Intakt)

2010-07-16T12:28:00.000-07:00

Despite a name that translates from the German as “The Disappointment,” Die Enttäuschung’s music is neither sad-sack nor defeatist in design. Fifteen years is a long time to shoulder a self-inflicted pejorative if the sentiment behind it isn’t tongue-in-cheek. Over that span, the band has cemented a durable songbook and performance dynamic that reliably contradicts their dour title. Recent years have found them straying from the repertory-minded music typified by their Monk’s Casino collaboration with pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach (also on Intakt) to a more personalized slant that references the composer in spirit rather than letter. As with their last self-titled Intakt release, this latest emphasizes kinetic, improv-weighted tunes that cater to the strong personalities in the ensemble.

Rudi Mahall has managed, somewhat miraculously, to sidestep the looming shadow of Eric Dolphy on his bass clarinet. His fleet and quirky voicings favor the middle register often sounding like a hollowed-out alto, though sputtering intervallic leaps also come as frequent punctuations. Axel Dörner’s trumpet completes a natural dyad in the front line, his brassy slurs and collar-ruffling phrasing keeping things delightfully off-center. Bassist Jan Roder and drummer Uli Jennessen don’t profit directly from the pole-positioning of their colleagues, but both are just as active and essential in sustaining the split-second variability and rigorous forward momentum of the group.

All four players share in the seeding of the quartet’s songbook. Mahall’s “Rocket in the Pocket” reels out in a stuttering convergence of jumping-bean horn lines and carbonated rhythmic accompaniment. His tightly-circumscriptive “Weiner Schnitzel” spills out in choppy squiggles and loops like so many sausage links. Jennessen’s five tunes run from the angular balladry of “Uotenniw” to “For Quarts Only,” a curious conflation of Lacy and Coltrane that contains a ghostly watermark of “A Love Supreme” in its sing-song theme. Ornette is another obvious anchor, evident in the freewheeling relays that occur between the players on Roder’s “Salty Dog.”

Track for track, it’s a thrilling album, one that merges daredevil aural acrobatics with an underlying professionalism that all but eliminates the likelihood of anyone cracking their skulls open on the big-top floor. The single affirmation of that ill-fitting band name arrives with the realization that the entertaining spectacle is only an hour long.

[Originally published 10/8/09 @ Dusted Magazine]

Liebman/ Eskelin/ Marino/ Black – Renewal (hatOLOGY)

2010-07-15T12:27:00.000-07:00

In appraising latter-day tenor tandems, reviewers (this one included) tend to heavily reference the past as context. Each saxophone pair gets compared to a string of predecessors: Player X is the Ammons to Player Y’s Stitt while Player A is Pres to Player Z’s Herschel Evans, and so on. Such shorthand name-checking makes for colorful copy, but it rarely leaves an accurate or lasting impression on the music described. Dave Liebman and Ellery Eskelin face plenty of precedent with their team-up. That they manage to at once embrace and supplant historical potential referents is a chief reason why this second outing hits on every cylinder for nearly the entire duration.

Granted, the game is stacked in their favor from the start given the rhythm section on hand, the sensible amalgam of one colleague apiece from each man’s working band. It’s also no coincidence that bassist Tony Marino and drummer Jim Black occupy positions on the marquee. Reason number one hits like a pallet of bricks on the opener “Cha”, a high energy groove number scripted by the drummer that sounds vaguely Masada-ish. Liebman doesn’t even pause for a theme, flipping the vertical launch switch in a rocket fuel solo that has Marino and Black working overtime beneath him. The duo have their revenge in the tune’s pipeline-riding coda, accelerating full speed into punk Surfaris territory with snapping slap bass and precision pummeling drums and leading to the natural listener affirmation- Kowabunga, dude!

So many times the facing off of like instruments, especially saxophones, leads to a simplification of strategy and emphasis. Outright combat, in the case of the aforementioned Ammons and Stitt, or dapper congeniality as was the frequent repartee of Zoot Sims and Al Cohn are the usual options. In either scenario heads often become disposable obstacles to solos. Eskelin and Liebman sense this skew and go out of their way to ensure the music maintains high standards of intrigue no matter what. Two takes of Dolphy’s “Out There” delve deep into the tune’s bop roots and revolve around a string of incendiary breaks. Again, Marino and Black personify that rare sort of rhythm section, one that risks ruin repeatedly by constantly inviting implosion and ratcheting the adrenaline output as a result. It’s not all fireworks, as the title piece tacks into chamber territory in its investigation of overlapping horn textures and commensurate rhythmic ambiguity. The nine pieces race by, engendering an immediate desire to repeat the trip. Listeners with a sweet tooth for top-tier tenor shouldn’t hesitate in taking this one home.

[Originally published 6/10/08 @ Bagatellen]

Digital Primitives – Hum Crackle & Pop (Hopscotch)

2010-07-14T12:26:00.000-07:00

A potent counterpunch to the strangely-resilient “jazz is dead or dying” meme, the Digital Primitives also hone in on a core reason why the beleaguered idiom survives. Bandmates Cooper-Moore, Assif Tsahar and Chad Taylor aren’t much for stylistic fences or formula. Nearly anything their ears encounter is fair game for integration into a music rooted in jazz, but receptive to a large number of ingredients. Recorded in July of 2007 and April of 2009, Hum Crackle & Pop is their second (third, counting a debut with Hamid Drake in place of Taylor) album, and this time judicious overdubbing and post-production play active roles in sound construction. The specific identities of some of Cooper-Moore’s handmade instruments can be a bit tricky to peg under the obfuscating patina of amplification, but I’ll give it the college try.

“Walkabout” establishes the new direction at the outset in a hypnotic convergence of crisp looping drums, warbling mouthbow, tinkling mbira and humming bass clarinet. Rubber band funk bubbles up during “Crackle & Pop” with Cooper-Moore laying down a febrile bass line on diddley bow and Tsahar blowing hot tenor on top through a heavy filter of vibrato and echo. “Love Truth” and “Hum” find the saxophonist shaping loose and soulful Gene Ammons-style blues lines, Cooper-Moore switching to his homemade twinger for a crunchy electric guitar sound, and Taylor laying down a porous backbeat.

As with their past collaborations, politics and personal freedom play prominent parts in the trio’s music. Cooper-Moore gets his Gil Scott-Heron on for “The People,” voicing a declarative rap of populist empowerment over a funky rhythm and threaded-in flute. Jazz tradition gets respect with a revitalizing rundown of the formaldehyde-scented standard “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” C-M’s sawing and rumbling diddley bow dances with Taylor’s brushed drums as Tsahar glides delicately through variants on the theme. The three veer over into Mississippi Hill Country mannerisms in the chugging percussion, gutbucket tenor and gritty one-chord banjo play of “No Holiday.” The collective improvisation guiding “Herenowhere” wears a bit thin and wobbly, but a well-paced and considered nod to Chicago jazz patriarch Fred Anderson ferries the set out in spirited fashion.

Digital Primitives are touring in support of the album, and bracing as their music is on disc, they’re even better experienced in person where the theatrical facets of their sound-cobbling can garner equal attention.

[Originally published 9/22/09 @ Dusted Magazine]

ROW: Porter Wagoner – The Rubber Room (Omni)

2010-07-14T12:25:00.000-07:00

A countrified, pompadoured progenitor of Tom Waits, Porter Wagoner was also a true American original. He built a personal music empire in the shadow of the Grand Ole Opry and did it by mining some of the rawest and weirdest emotional ore in the history of music. This Omni compilation taps liberally from that particular topical vein with songs recounting madness, murder, alcoholism, sexual abuse, and worse in a manner that neither wallows nor makes light of the sins. There are also healthy helpings of kitsch with female back-up choirs, top Nashville session men and production values, and most prominently, Wagoner’s winsome, deadpan delivery. The whole persona, dubbed “psychotronic” by his PR posse, reflected in his purple, sequin-encrusted “Nudie” suit replete with stylized wagon wheels and cacti (reportedly just one of sixty in his wardrobe). His lyrics are often near poetry, but it’s his measured sung to spoken voice that makes them genius. He beat to his own drum, embracing disco and championing James Brown when his peers could only look askance. The accompanying booklet runs down the basics, but best of all contains full-color jacket facsimiles of a dozen LPs with Wagoner done up in greasepaint, silver hair dye and ragged duds to personify a handful of “down and out” guises. This stuff really just has to be heard to be appreciated and believed.

Henry Grimes – The Call (ESP)

2010-07-13T12:25:00.000-07:00

Career rebirths usually serve as manna for the receptive jazz press. Few, if any, are as remarkable as that achieved by bassist Henry Grimes: More than three decades spent in anonymity practically erased by a prodigal return. This ESP reissue gives a composite idea of how he originally went out, on the top of his game and poised to take the logical step to influential leader status. Sadly, that career trajectory wasn’t in the cards. Despite a number of auspicious sideman appearances in the following year Grimes eventually succumbed to personal demons and an ensuing life off the grid.

Perry Robinson practically deserves credit as co-leader on the date. The pair had previously appeared together on the clarinetist’s Funk Dumpling session for Savoy in 1962 and their creative rapport is even stronger in this free-leaning setting from late ‘65. Nods to the earlier meeting include the Grimes tune “Son of Alfalfa”. Robinson brings a battery of extended techniques previously largely the province of the saxophone, from chirrups and hiccups to split tones and judiciously deployed shrieks. These tactics lack artifice and instead feel wholly integrated into the music, something not easily said of certain other contemporaneous albums by peers. “Walk On” and “Saturday Night What Th’” promote the trio’s freebop interests with Robinson and Grimes engaging in some bracing exchanges and the bassist’s scuttling spider legs strums particularly memorable.

As the bluntest point of the triangle, drummer Tom Price is a bit heavy-handed, particularly on snare, and not quite on par with his colleagues. He builds up quite a vertical barrage on “Fish Story”, but there’s little in the way of horizontal movement in the resulting cascade. The suite-like “For Django” asks more from his sticks and he manages to respond with enhanced color and nuance around Robinson’s chalumeau explorations. Grimes is brilliant throughout, his bone dry sawing on the opening of the first piece contrasting with richer harmonic shades in the final minutes of the second. Robust pizzicato patterns shoot forth like gossamer webs and the newly scrubbed sound aids in discerning their complexities. The stereo mix parcels him cleanly into the left channel leaving Robinson and Price plenty of space in the right. Grimes appears busier than ever these days though debate about his abilities lingers. This set harkens to a time when the contingent of doubters was substantially slimmer and as such seems a slice of required listening.

[Originally published 6/24/08 @ Bagatellen]

Peter Brötzmann – Lost & Found (FMP)

2010-07-12T12:23:00.000-07:00

Not a year passes that at least a handful of new Peter Brötzmann records don’t make it into the marketplace. The German reedist is consistent in getting his work into the hands of fans. Despite that reliable fecundity, solo statements are comparatively few and far between. The last was Right as Rain, a pathos-rich tribute to his deceased colleague Werner Ludi, from 2001. All to date are on the FMP, the Berlin-based label where a sizeable chunk of his discography also resides.

While Brötzmann has always been absent of artistic artifice and uncompromising in his insistence on emotive expression, his solo projects have opened avenues to experiment in more oblique areas, whether wielding his Brötzophone in breathless tribute to Oscar Wilde or soliloquizing in minimalist fashion on mouthpiece sans horn. Lost & Found returns focus to the sort of hard-nosed blowing he does best while still leaving space for several “out-of-character” surprises.

Recorded at the Nickelsdorf Konfrontationen in the summer of 2006, the record hearkens back to his 1876 solo effort in keeping the action within the confines of an LP. Five improvisations ranging in length from a quarter-hour to just over three minutes serve as fertile vehicles for four of his horns. Nearly half the program is dominated by his alto, a horn that often plays backseat to his tenor in other contexts, and it’s an invigorating change in focus. “Internal Rotation” covers the respectable gamut of what he can do on the smaller reed, opening with sharp linear bursts of clarion intensity before moving into coarser cascades of vibrato-heavy blowing and onward.

Brötzmann’s keen pitch control in the clarinet-governed title piece points to skills far beyond the typical reed-shrieking he’s typecast for. His tarogato work on “Universal Madness” is similarly revealing. It’s arguably the most unforgiving member of his arsenal and one where a propensity for piercing ululation can often grate rather than enamor. Here, he opens the Hungarian horn up and puts to tape a startling, if brief, segment that could almost pass for an Evan Parker soprano solo in its split-tone clarity and complexity.

“Got a Hole in It,” the lone tenor track, also defies expectations and features Brötzmann’s most melodic playing of the date. The knotty improvisation moves from stratosphere-scraping multiphonics in the opening minutes to purring growls that land comfortably close to the vernacular of vintage Archie Shepp. Near the end, he unexpectedly slips in a dog-eared sliver of Monk’s “Crepuscule With Nellie.” That sort of winking at the jazz canon isn’t unprecedented in his oeuvre (cf. the boiled-down baritone rendering of Ornette’s “Lonely Woman” that opens 14 Love Poems from 1984) but it’s certainly rare. “Turmoil,” a terse and excoriating alto sortie, takes the set out and immediately primes the listener for a repeat trip.

[Originally published 10/29/09 @ Dusted Magazine]

Baby Dodds – Talking and Drum Solos (Unheard Music Series)

2010-07-09T12:23:00.000-07:00

Certain musicologists contend that it all goes back to the drum. Cured skin stretched tautly across wooden frame, struck with palms, fingers or whatever implements handy. In jazz drumming, it’s possible to argue that it all goes back to Baby Dodds. Talking & Drum Solos, a Folkways recording recently reissued by the erudite chaps at Atavistic’s Unheard Music enclave, certainly makes a convincing case. Dodds was practically present for the birth of jazz and his traps powered some of the music’s earliest and most influential ensembles including those led by Louis Armstrong, King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton and Sidney Bechet. Added to the original vinyl material are field recordings of two brass bands: The Lanesville-Johnson Union Brass Band and The Lapsey Band. Not a perfect fit stylistically, but far from a superficial exercise in fleshing out running time.

While Dodds’ sides are the obvious draw here, they do carry something of an academic archival ambience. The ‘talking’ portions of the program consist of the drummer explicating his various techniques. ‘Drum’ segments follow them up with visceral representations of the lessons. What’s surprising is how forward thinking and incisively creative these tracks sound. His rhythms are still rooted in traditional New Orleans breaks and patterns, but elements of African and Caribbean styles and even hints of free improvisation arise in the various flurries of sticks.

Two “Spooky Drums” pieces find him jumping from surface to surface, punctuating a percolating beat on cowbells with floor tom and bass drum accents to create a propulsive and highly textured sortie. His earlier and contemporaneous sideman work employs similar building blocks, but usually with but a fraction of the clarity and immediacy of the solo pieces represented here. Examples of this sort of ensemble play come to the fore on the montage piece “Drums in the Twenties.”

The brass band music ends up being just as absorbing and enlightening. Hymns and traditional folk tunes form the basis of their repertoires. Delivery and cohesion is often quite roughshod and ramshackle. A basic beat pounded out by a single drummer sets the foundation, across which the various horns slide and shimmy collectively in out-of-tune sallies. The instruments sound as if they’ve seen better days, the numerous dents, scuffs and deformities almost discernable in the mind’s eye. Slightly more complex rhythms form the basis for The Lapsey Band’s tunes along with cleaner fidelity and a better command of their songbook, but the rural informality remains.

Twenty-five tracks all told transpire in just under an hour. The sleeve notes list three more, but they’re strangely absent from the disc. Audible hisses and crackles lace all of the music, though they end up hardly noticeable in the context of their surroundings. Extra insight comes in the form of Kevin Whitehead’s voluminous notes. Dodds and the brass bands are indicative of traditions largely lost to the fickle sonances of time, but their obsolescence does little to detract from their importance or influence.

[Originally published 1/13/04 @ Dusted Magazine]

Odean Pope – Serenity (CIMPoL)

2010-07-08T12:22:00.000-07:00

An alternate title for this new Odean Pope project could be “The Umbrellas of Redwood”. And while the lovely Catherine Deneuve isn’t even an afterthought, there’s still plenty of beauty to be found. The actual title is apposite enough, reflecting both Pope’s demeanor and the probable effects of the music on listener. The inspiration for the date came from a quartet session a month earlier when producer Bob Rusch discovered Pope communing in the company of birds in the pre-dawn twilight. That naturalistic impulse governs the saxophonist’s approach here as well.

The “oL” in the new CIMP label offshoot stands for “on Location”, basically modifying the much discussed Spirit Room aesthetic to remote settings. For his part, Pope roamed around the Cadence/North Country grounds playing his tenor, a small contingent of parasols following his perambulations to shield him from the rain. The program is comprised almost completely of spirituals, among them a thirteen-and-a-half minute exposition on Ellington’s “Come Sunday”. The black sheep is a brief and partly atonal rendering of “The Star-Spangled Banner”, though an argument could easily be made for that tune’s inclusion in the “spiritual” category as well.

Pope takes his time with the pieces, paying close attention to tone and phrasing and opening with an affecting invocation of “The Lord’s Prayer”. Engineer Marc Rusch’s mobile mics capture everything, even the sounds of passing cars on a roadway some distance away and the light patter of precipitation. Pope seems at once rapt and calmly convivial and that alloy creates a meditative air in the music. He reminds me a bit of Joe McPhee in his ability to communicate deep soul with an almost Brahmin-like temperance. The affinity for “Come Sunday” makes for another obvious commonality. “Where We’ll Never Grow Old” spools out in plush ribbons of melody that reflect both optimism and playfulness. A second incarnation of the song increases intensity via a shouted sermon snippet, but burns out after just over a minute. “Go Down Moses” also receives two treatments, each one parsing the familiar motif with bluesy purposefulness.

Some may find the absence of sidemen as sounding boards a little off-putting, but Pope uses his surroundings for those purposes. He ekes audible inspiration from the environment. No pressures of by-the-hour studio rates or opinionated production teams to intrude or trammel, just those domes of stretched nylon doing their best to keep him dry.

[Originally published 1/18/08 @ Bagatellen]

Art Ensemble of Chicago – Tribute to Lester (ECM)

2010-07-07T12:10:00.000-07:00

When Lester Bowie died, the impact was a bit like the death of John Lennon, at least in the jazz world. Bowie was a member of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, one of the most enduring and influential group’s in the post-1965 history of the music. Before any Beatle-philes go crying foul, let me just say that equating the AEC with the Fab Four isn’t as lame brained as it might seem. Both had a lasting effect on 20th Century music, drawing in facets of other cultures and championing an experimental spirit that routinely undermined existing musical conventions.

Over the span of three decades Bowie served as the AEC’s chief tone scientist, injecting liberal elements of funk and humor, and playing his part to the hilt by garbing himself in the trappings of a mad professor at the group’s countless concerts. With his passing, many wondered if the Ensemble would continue, filling the chasm-sized hole with a new voice, or soldiering on as a four-piece. Joseph Jarman’s departure soon after seemed to signal the death-knell and the remaining members focused on solo projects for several years.

Tribute to Lester comes as encomium to their fallen comrade and a reinvigoration of the AEoC esthetic. Bowie’s life and spirit are the subject and reedsmith Roscoe Mitchell, bassist Malachi Favors and drum-doyen Famoudou Don Moye are on hand to make it happen. Joseph Jarman is still absent at this juncture, though he would rejoin at the dawn of 2003, helping the Ensemble complete a project for the Pi label that has recently seen release as The Meeting. For this ECM date each man doubles on a customary cache of ‘little instruments’ including an array of whistles, gongs, bells, chimes and other percussion devices. Mitchell’s bulging satchel of reeds runs a wide register spectrum from flittering sopranino to lugubrious bass saxophone.

The opening “Sangaredi” coalesces out of a somewhat typical percussion panoply into a roiling vehicle for Mitchell’s bottom riffing bass sax atop a rigorous wash of gongs and chimes. On the temporally brief “Suite for Lester” the trio cycles from floating sopranino flanked by arco bass and hand drums into a chamber-style showcase for Mitchell’s sweetly gliding flute, rounding finally into groove-guided tenor, bass, drum romp that has more in common with the current crop of post-bop purveyors. Each section is touched on all too briefly and begs for further elaboration; the disc’s running time would have allowed it. Mitchell plants his feet for harder tenor during the “Zero/Alternate Line” medley, but it’s really Moye’s show as the drummer builds off a variety of tempi to create a colorful rhythmic slideshow projected against Favor’s stanchion sturdy bass lines.

Favors’ “Tutankhamun,” a signature piece dating back to at least the band’s early ’70s heyday, weds tumescent bass sax to a sparse shuffle beat of rotund bass, rolling snare and textured cymbals. Completing the program, the album’s lengthiest cuts, “As Clear as the Sun” and “Speaks to Me Often in Dreams” fly by. The former tailspins a bit from a prolix sortie by Mitchell’s soprano, but the atmospheric latter sets a course for the far-flung locales of the chimerical percussion islands as all three players make a beeline for their respective stashes of ‘little instruments.’ Suddenly the trip’s over and we’re back at the starting gate, all the more reason to cue up another tour. It’s hopelessly cliché, I know, but this really is the sort of disc that demands repeated listening.

The living chapter on Bowie’s contributions to the Art Ensemble might be closed in a pragmatic sense, but his legacy and influence will continue to flourish in the rich body of music he left behind. As evidenced by the loving homage here, his surviving comrades are still feeling and acting on it. I can almost picture the man in his white lab coat and spectacles, smiling from on high.

[Originally published 9/5/03 @ Dusted Magazine]

ROW: Alemu Aga - Ethiopiques 11: The Harp of King David (Buda Musique)

2010-07-07T12:09:00.000-07:00

One of the more esoteric titles in the grand Ethiopiques omnibus, at least in terms of relative Western influence, this volume is also one of the most memorable. The “Harp of King David”, also known as the beguena, is a 10-string lyre similar to the Indian tampura in fundamental design, but possessed of its own engrossing sound. In the hands of a master such as Alemu Aga it takes on a soothing sentience, producing a series of sympathetic drones that circle and accentuate spoken word scripture and poetry. Though arguably the oldest of Ethiopian instruments, its history is a checkered one, having fallen out favor during the country’s Stalinist years because of its religious connotations and only recouping marginally in the aftermath. Aga is one of its few contemporary practitioners and his performances on the disc illustrate the immediate importance of keeping the traditions alive. Song titles point to his preoccupations among them, “About the Creation” and “The Second Coming of the Lord”. The booklet, typical of the series attention to detail, contains complete transcriptions of the topical lyrics. Even in the absence of such an aid, Aga’s voice has an effect comparable to his vibrato-radiating strings in eradicating anxiety and instilling a sense of contemplative calm.

Zaid Nasser – Off Minor (Smalls)

2010-07-06T12:09:00.000-07:00

From title to back-story, altoist Zaid Nasser’s Smalls debut communicated a situation indicative of the jazz life, that of the colossal talent constrained by the circumstances of public indifference. This second act feels more hopeful and, by proxy, more relaxed. Nasser’s still scuffling for gigs along with his peers, but he’s been visited by a few strokes of fortune as well. Foremost among these was a spot on a three-week government-sponsored tour of Europe and Central Asia. According to saxophonist Chris Byars, the gig as musical ambassador suited Nasser’s natural temperament and led to a new sobriquet, “The King” (available now that Benny Carter’s no longer with us).

The sidemen are the same as on Nasser’s earlier outing, but that’s hardly a recipe for redundancy given their stature as Smalls’ informal in-house rhythm section. Bassist Ari Roland evinces his usual arco preference in solos, reserving a bulbous pizzicato thrum for the ensemble passages. His bow plies dry friction like fingers rubbing across balloon rubber, bringing to mind a sour-pussed Paul Chambers in overall effect. It’s a novel sound fashioned by a precision touch, but still one that sometimes gives me pause in its stringency. Drummer Phil Stewart keeps an easy cymbal-dominant clip, flanking pianist Sascha Perry’s bop-limned progressions and rolling out frothy breaks at just the right junctures. Nasser’s sudden sprints into corkscrew trills are but one device designed to summon listener surprise. His tractable way with a line rarely adheres to premeditation either, stretching and contracting in a voice that obliquely taps Gene Quill tartness and couples it with pervasive warmth.

While the chosen tunes are nothing revelatory — a rack of fusty old bottles capped by a closing original blues — Nasser and his colleagues wring streams of nectar from them anyway. Their reanimation of Cole Porter’s “You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To” is one of several impressive feats and packed with vivacious ensemble conversation, particularly between Roland and Stewart. Dialing down to ballad tempo for a luxuriant stroll through “You’ve Changed”, the four are no less expressive or on point. Nasser’s big break remains elusive, but he hardly seems stymied by the wait. Based on what he and the others bring to the date, music-making is evidently often reason and reward enough.

[Originally published 2/4/09 @ Bagatellen]

Fred Anderson – Black Horn Long Gone (Katalyst)

2010-07-05T12:08:00.000-07:00

Jazz added another octogenarian to its ranks this past summer when Chicago saxophonist Fred Anderson celebrated another birthday by way of a historic series of performances at the Velvet Lounge. Eighty years on the planet equates to countless gigs and the resulting rich life experience is etched deeply in Anderson’s tenor vernacular. Black Horn Long Gone dates from 16 years prior, to a provenance when his renown was still largely limited to that of a local luminary and he had yet to begin his prolific recording pace in earnest. It’s a studio session originally recorded for the now dormant Southport label and recently distributed by the Chicago jazz stewards at Katalyst. The title commemorates Anderson’s ebony-lacquered Selmer, a staple of his early ’90s arsenal swapped some time ago in favor of the bronzed cousin he uses today.

The well-sequenced set unfolds like something of a proxy “greatest hits” package, touching on a number of Anderson’s compositional milestones and rife with the signature corkscrew blues patterns that populate his often circular phrasing. Art Ensemble of Chicago anchor Malachi Favors, Fred’s senior by 19 months, handles bass and it’s a dream come true to hear the two doyens turning the pages of the Anderson songbook in tandem. The enigmatic Ajaramu completes the trio, bringing a vibrant dynamic range to the drum kit through the deployment of Chicago and New Orleans-influenced jazz rhythms. His second line syncopations on “Malachi’s Tune” give the leader’s snaking lines even greater bounce and bite. Engineer Joanie Pallatto captures everybody in sharp close-up and the recording fidelity is uncommonly nuanced and clean.

Several of the cuts have a bit of an outtake feel about them with abrupt ending on “Three On Two” and the slight intonation problems on the part of Favors’ strings during “Saxoon” being two examples. Most strike squarely on the mark, though. The disc concludes with “Ode to Clifford Jordan,” a surprising solo improvisation dedicated to the then-recently deceased saxophonist that is really an extemporaneous collection of melodic and rhythmic riffs from Anderson’s other tunes. Recycled and reconfigured without accompaniment, even these familiar parcels make for satisfying listening and pique interest for an Anderson solo outing.

The riffs, as well as the other performances on the disc, underscore a criticism lodged at some of Anderson’s releases over the past decade: the tendency to revisit the same dog-eared material to diminishing returns and accompanying conjecture that age might understandably be catching up with him. Anderson’s recent Delmark release documenting the aforementioned birthday bash goes a long way toward putting those allegations to rest. Phrased another way that storied ebony horn may be long gone, but the man who played it is still going strong.

[Originally published 11/18/09 @ Dusted Magazine]

Lenny Popkin - 317 East 32nd (Choice)

2010-07-02T12:56:00.000-07:00

The title on this one is a telltale wink as to the stylistic roots of its principal: Lenny Popkin was and remains a Tristanoite at heart. Like many in the blind pianist’s orbit, the tenorist’s recording opportunities have been unduly sparse over the decades. This album, recorded by pianist Connie Crothers in front of a New York City audience in the fall of 1979, was Popkin’s first as a leader and it’s an instantly endearing monument to his improvisational powers. Sound is a shade dodgy and distanced in places, but never less than listenable and the crowd(s) on hand offer up applause and appreciation that often tips over into the ebullient.

The presence of Bill Evans’ bassist Eddie Gomez accords immediate credence to the leader’s credentials and though a sideman he still gets in his share of good pizzicato licks. Drummer Peter Scattaretico suggests no similar proof of Popkin’s esteem, but he holds his own in delivering tip-toeing rhythms and crisp cymbal accents. The set list is an assortment of standards and contrafacts that follow the Tristano custom of grafting new melodies to evergreen chord changes. Popkin’s lithe versatility with a line and aerated tone trace swift kinship with those most famous of teacher’s former pupil’s, Konitz and Marsh, but there’s more going on as well in the tart keen that sometimes crops up in his clever coining of a melodic phrase.

Popkin pulls a direct page from Marsh in his near-verbatim recreation of Lester Young’s solo to “When You’re Smiling” and still manages to put his signature on it. Similar outcomes arise out of brief but busy sortie through “Body and Soul”. Another number, “You’re Irreplaceable”, nods to Roy Eldridge, balancing swing bounce with a cool-minded equilibrium in construction. On the closing “Anthropology” he brings to mind obscure West Coast saxophonist Steve White through a playful scat vocal. The White comparison actually jibes reasonbly well on his horn work too in the way both men carry audible Lestorian influences.

Popkin’s recorded periodically over the years though nearly all of those efforts are hard to come by these days. Easier to locate are his handful of documents as a participant in Crothers’ projects though even those require a diligent search. Here’s hoping the reissue of this set leads to a return of easy access to what’s come prior and a renewed lease on new work from this little known standard-bearer of the Tristano sound.

Sun Ra Arkestra - Sunrise in Different Dimensions (hatOLOGY)

2010-07-01T04:27:00.000-07:00

The solitary entry by the Saturnian in the Swiss label’s catalog, this set earns its third pressing on compact disc with this newly-minted hatOLOGY edition. It’s singular in several other senses as well. Culled by producer Werner X. Uehlinger from the band’s first night stand at Willisau in the winter of 1980, the track list skews toward the standards that were a regular part of the band’s repertoire, but infrequent inclusions on record. Space chants and Ra originals commonly took precedence, but here they largely give way to classics by Horace Henderson, Noble Sissle, Jelly Roll Morton and the Strayhorn/Ellington team. All are appropriately Arkestral-ized with bumptious charts that sacrifice polish for unmitigated panache and the old adage “ancient to the future” is in apposite effect.

Also of note is the pared down roster, a not uncommon condition at the start of tours as it sometimes took several days for all the Arkestra members to report for active duty. Bass and trombones are absent, but drummers Chris Henderson and Eric Walker help shore up the bottom end. Reeds dominate the remainder of the ensemble with regulars John Gilmore, Marshall Allen joined by second tier soloists Nöel Scott, Danny Thompson and Kenneth Williams. Trumpeter Michael Ray is a brass section of one and his puckish, kinetic playing does well in tandem with the phalanx of saxophones and flutes. A “get-in-and-get-out” philosophy pervades, particularly on the canonical pieces and the forward momentum of the band rarely flags.

Last, but light-years from least there is Ra, keeping his armada of keyboards boxed in favor leading by acoustic piano. This decision is perhaps the biggest draw of the set. Absent bass places even more onus on his ensemble input. His solos are frequent starting with the opening original “Light From a Hidden Sun”, a bruising and boisterous collision of block chords and deft right hand soliloquies that dizzyingly juggle dissonance and delicacy. Allen and Gilmore speak in pealing stratosphere-register tongues on the controlled chaos of “Silhouettes of the Shadow World” while shorter standard pieces like “Cocktails for Two” and “’Round Midnight” feature them independently. Later program offerings like “Limehouse Blues” and “Lightnin’” strike just as fierce. Outfitted with a fresh 2010 remastering and a stark shot of the Space Needle underbelly as cover, this set sounds and looks better than ever.

Jason Roebke - In the Interval (self-released)

2010-06-30T16:26:00.000-07:00

Bassist Jason Roebke is an enviably busy musician. Projects and gigs are deservedly plentiful these days, often in the company of Chicago and New York-based colleagues like Mike Reed, Keefe Jackson and Nate Wooley. In light of the flurry of activity of the past few years it’s easy to forget that he’s been plying his craft for well over a decade. Most of his current docket aligns with jazz-related contexts. As an outlet for his interests somewhat removed from those realms comes this solo studio recital, a difference noted in the disc’s title. It’s actually his second in the format, the first having garnered initial circulation on the Family Vineyard imprint, though now apparently available only via iTunes.

Comprising two pieces that combine to modest EP length, this set is a markedly different affair from its predecessor. The first track clocks to just over a third of an hour opening and closing with a single resounding string pluck. Between those stark temporal markers, Roebke reveals a second meaning behind the disc’s title by inserting lengthy intervals of rest on his instrument that decrease and increase incrementally in duration as the piece progresses. The first pause lasts nearly half a minute, but feels much longer and the effect at first resembles Cage’s “4’33”” as acoustic aspects of the studio space in relation to Roebke’s bass become audible in the near-silence. These frequent segments of relative stasis add both gravitas and definition to the moments where tones and patterns are sounded. The buzz and bustle the second piece serves as welcome contrast.

Roebke’s percussive preparations to the body and strings of his bass further vary the sound menagerie. Creaking, tapping and rubbing ornamentations scuttle around the edges of fully-rendered pizzicato progressions. Both pieces makes canny use of these ulterior elements and there’s even a section in the first where the squelchy textures of what sound like muted electronics accompany Roebke’s quiet string manipulations though they very well may be the product of acoustic sources. In sum it’s a musical experience that actually improves through repeated encounters as the frustrations of expectations fall away in favor of the logic and cohesion of Roebke’s elaborate and spacious designs. The rewards may not be as immediate and easily-won as his jazz-centered playing, but they’re every bit as manifest to the perceptive listener willing to make the aural trek.

ROW: Tony Allen - Jealousy/Progress (Evolver)

2010-06-30T04:30:00.000-07:00

Tony Allen’s tenures at the wheel of Africa ’70 were fleeting compared those of its founder Fela Kuti, but the drummer made the most of the periodic role reversals with his employer. The single-word titles of the two albums from ’75 and ‘77 reissued on this UK disc cut to the topical chase in much the same manner as his propulsive and polyrhythmic kit style. Similarities to contemporaneous Fela-led sets like Expensive Shit and No Agreement are sizeable. But there are differences too, most notably in the amount of solo space accorded Allen and the resulting dynamic more in line with the jazz quartet that marked the beginnings of their collaboration in 1964. Head-bobbing grooves are rampant, as are the respectively hard riffing horn charts and idiosyncratic saxophone solos from Fela, the latter sections making up in charming brio and muscle when they give up in errant reed squeaks and occasionally roughshod phrasing. The rest of the band is on point across the pair of A-side title pieces and the B-side instrumentals (particularly the smoldering shanty funk of “Hustler”) and the set weighs in at an economical LP-length all told. Allen’s years with Africa ’70 were numbered and as the set’s notes contend his eventual departure would signal a shift in Fela’s sound from which he would never fully recoup. That sentiment, subjective as it might be, gains substantial traction on the aural evidence of these formerly rare sides.

Foltz/ Turner/ Carrothers – To the Moon (Ayler)

2010-06-29T17:52:00.000-07:00

Music has long been a useful implement in the evocation of place. That hoary relationship registers at the forefront of this set, recorded at the height of winter in icebound Minneapolis in 2008. Clarinetist Jean-Marc Foltz mentions the “lovely, freezing cold day” that precipitated the completely spontaneous sounds. Cellist Matt Turner, an unsung improviser and native of the region has such climatic corollaries in his blood. Pianist Bill Carrothers is comparably attuned and all three men build austere and pristine assemblages that wouldn’t be out of place on the ECM or Nuscope labels. The music is testament to the Ayler label’s resistance to reductive pigeon-holing when it comes to the pedigrees of chosen projects.

Chamber jazz is a wide brush summary for what happens here, but closer listening reveals a bevy of detail in the players’ improvised exchanges. Carrothers goes under the hood on the aptly-titled “Knitting Needles”, plucking his strings in brittle harpsichord fashion in a manner that brings to mind some of Paul Bley’s constructions in the company of Jimmy Giuffre. Turner’s saws high swirling harmonics on cello as Foltz blows fog horn bass clarinet. The Giuffre effect is even more prominent on “Moondrunk” as Carrothers and Foltz piece together an twining progression shot through with enveloping space that pleasantly echoes the mix of mystery and revelry intimated by the title. On “Crosses”, it’s Foltz’s turn with rafter-scraping harmonics as he etches controlled reed chirrups against a lyrical repeating motif spun by Carrothers and Turner.

Turner’s classical chops and precision command of pitch match those of Foltz on the verdantly textured “Gallows Song”. Carrothers provides staggered commentary to his colleagues’ acrobatic counterpoint and once again the three players demonstrate and uncommonly close communication. The waltzing calliope patterns of “Old Pantomimes” are enhanced by Carrother’s preparations which create a gauzy percussive effect in tandem with his tamper-free keys. “To Columbine” centers on Foltz’s liquid clarinet in its opening minute, Turner’s cello soon joining with starkly drawn strokes and Carrothers completing the melancholy mood with minimal clusters from his corner. These three players take a trio of common chamber instruments and successfully construct new settings for their application. It’s no small feat and one that motivates an immediate repeat of the program in entirety.

Loren Stillman - Winter Fruits (Pirouet)

2010-06-28T17:48:00.000-07:00

Oranges in February? Not a likely find outside the confines of the local supermarket. Rare too are the jazz ensembles containing an organ that opt to work largely outside the ingrained soul jazz traditions of the instrument. Altoist Loren Stillman hits the challenge head-on, though it’s not exactly a new avenue of expression in his discography. The instrumentation also has origins in The Brother’s Breakfast, a Stillman disc for Steeplechase that also marked his first collaboration with organist Gary Versace on record.

Stillman’s been something of an accolade magnet over the last decade, scoring an impressive array of encomiums from critics and colleagues through a regular gig calendar and a steady stream of releases, most recently on Pirouet. His name headlines the disc, but it’s more accurately described as a collaborative affair. The quartet operates under the band name Bad Touch, having self-released an EP back in 2008. This set is different still though the core relationship between the two holds as a key creative pivot. Stillman’s feathery, Konitz-tinted tone and lithe, snaking phraseology immediately set him apart the bulk of the saxophone lineage commonly associated with organ sessions.

Versace is just as singular and versatile, with a sharp command of stops and settings and layered oblique way with shaping solos and support that immediately turns the mental page to Larry Young. There are segments where he goes for a churchy sort of sound, but not that of a fiery Baptist chapel, but instead the sort of slithery, insinuating cast more common to meditative liturgical mass. His proficiency at shadowing and buttressing Stillman’s spooling phrases parallels that of guitarist Nate Radley who also goes for a liquid, lubricious tone when working his frets. Drummer Ted Poor parses complex, tension-wound beats from a position erring on restraint and he seems just as amenable to laying out as the situation dictates.

Stillman’s writing (all of the compositions save the opening “Muted Dreams” and the title track come from his quill) is ripe with mood-laden detours and eliding asides. The sense of tonal compatibility remains strong with alto, guitar and organ overlapping and at times almost indistinguishable in an airtight, but supple weave. It’s an obvious product of mutual respect coupled with fertile rehearsals and performance. Season to crop alignments like the one described in the project title may be scant but the quartet here makes a convincing case for successful application of organ outside its customary contexts.

Farewell, Fred

2010-06-25T13:34:00.000-07:00

A previous post harboring hope now has as a sobering finality to it… Fred Anderson is gone. Details are widely available regarding the particulars of his passing so I won’t dwell on them here. Despite best laid plans, I wasn’t able to immerse myself in Fred’s recorded work to the degree that I had planned. That disparity between intent and outcome got me thinking about cause and effect relationships and more specifically the death of a musician signaling a flurry of homage-minded listening on the part of fans. The practice is widespread, though it’s one that ultimately means little beyond the symbolic and cathartic gestures at its core. It also only touches on one facet of his legacy, the legions of listeners he mentored and the physical edifice of the Velvet Lounge as performance space oasis being two others among a multitude.

Fred was regular part of my listening diet whether via recent releases like the excellent Black Horn Long Gone and 21st Century Chase or classics like Chicago Chamber Music and The Missing Link. He left a lot behind and the tape trove from the Velvet (both old and new) promises a reservoir of riches for years to come if those holding the keys find the resources and wherewithal to make it so. My fingers remain crossed, but in the meantime another mantra-like missive comes to mind at times variously credited to Jackie McLean and others: “Give them their flowers while they’re here.”

Fred had his share of encomiums in his twilight years with people all over the world rightfully singing his praises and offering continual thanks for his artistry and humanity. Plenty of others who take up the calling aren’t so lucky. While Fred’s good fortune is something to treasure, the decades he spent in relative obscurity are also a healthy reminder that this business of music can be an unrelentingly harsh mistress. As Fred was wont to wisely say, the rewards don’t come from the recognition anyway, but rather from those who are touched and in turn decide themselves to touch others through musical means. He certainly made that relationship manifest in his own work, stewarding countless students in the music while continually following his own muse. On my peripheral end, all I can do reliably is listen (and comment) and it’s something I’ll continue to do by Fred’s lasting example. Thanks for the music & memories, Wise One.

Liebman/ Parker/ Bianco - Relevance (Red Toucan)

2010-06-24T19:05:00.000-07:00

By practically any educated estimation, Dave Liebman and Evan Parker are saxophone icons. Each man has advanced the post-Coltrane lexicon on the instrument in deeply personal and divergent directions. Liebman’s preference is jazz-based. Parker retains analogous roots, but his reed explorations have also encompassed European free and electro-acoustic improvisation as well as modern classical forms. Those disparities in no way nullify the amount of common ground shared by the men. This date, prompted at Liebman’s behest and recorded in concert at London’s Vortex, an old stomping grounds of Parker’s, proves their parallel mindsets from the opening salvo onward.

Drummer Tony Bianco serves as the percussive trampoline atop which the two saxophonists freely bounce and cavort, no easy assignment considering the magnitude of saxophone ordinance on hand. He’s also an occasionally frustrating aspect of the trio, giving over to lengthy sections where tumbling snare and tom-tom tattoos set up a lock-step backdrop that seems to rub off on the horns through increased repetition and pockets of stasis. Neither Parker nor Liebman is the sort of improviser to be contained, but in light of Bianco’s choices it’s also hard not to pine for a drummer like Paul Lovens or Paal-Nilssen Love who might’ve brought more versatility and nuance to the kit. In the drummer’s defense, there’s never any question that it’s the saxophonists’ show and he dutifully cedes them the ground required for their respective pyrotechnic displays.

The two sets documented, each broken down into lengthy first parts followed by shorter seconds, explore every possible combination of players with the co-leaders starting out on jousting tenors and moving on to keening sopranos as well independent sections with Bianco. Parker reins in his circular breathing virtuosity on the straight horn, voicing instead on occasion in a more overtly melodic vernacular, particularly in the second set. Liebman switches up too, tapping the late-Coltrane side of his personality and leaving any decorous theme-based jazz-speak backstage. The effect is like two lodestones lining into magnetic synch with each other, the aforementioned common ground getting a thorough tilling in the bargain. While the wish for greater variety and cohesion could certainly be levied, the chance to hear these two giants in tandem easily outweighs any minuses set into play by the evening’s sometimes skewed dynamic.

Kenny Burrell - Be Yourself (High Note)

2010-06-23T17:49:00.000-07:00

Advancing age has a disquieting habit of eroding jazz relevancy. Stars of the hardbop era alive today have to wrestle with bodies of work that can easily become millstones attached to their creativity. The old specter of diminishing returns isn’t some harmless haint. Still performing and recording in his 78th year, guitarist Kenny Burrell knows these potential dangers firsthand. His playing from the mid-Fifties onward set a standard for bop-based fretwork, but six decades on it’s a style that’s arguably been done to death. On this live date, recorded at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, the small club venue inside Jazz at Lincoln Center, in the fall of 2008, Burrell hedges his bets with some astute preparations.

First there’s the band of comparative young bloods in his employ. Tenorist Tivon Pennicott pulls from a Sonny Rollins bag while still plying his own sound and also doubles on feather-dusting flute on “Listen to the Dawn” and that shows a Lew Tabackin influence. Pianist Benny Green and bassist Peter Washington are seasoned session pros and each injects healthy doses of testosterone into the readings of the charts. Rounding out the band is drummer Clayton Cameron, who works equally well on galloping sticks or pattering brushes. The guitarist sounds inspired by their company for the opening takedown of “Tin Tin Deo”, an old favorite of his set lists dating back to the classic Five Spot date for Blue Note in ’56.

Second in Burrell’s favor are the acoustics of the venue and their savvy capture by an engineer identified only under the enigmatic cipher JediMaster. The recording exhibits an excellent spatial presence with the clink of glass and plate ware clearly audible but hardly intrusive. The audience is an experienced one, keeping their applause and conversations to the appropriate moments and giving the music full attention. Even on up-tempo numbers, like an inspired rendering of the Kenny Dorham chestnut “Blue Bossa” that works as an edifying feature of Cameron’s percussive prowess, the instruments retain their independence and presence. Burrell’s picking is still sharp as a tack shifting from felt-tipped chords to ballpoint single notes without missing a beat. No tired retreads here. The satisfying session leaves off with a simple certainty intimated by its title: Being Kenny Burrell is still enough.

ROW: Sonny Treadway - "Jesus Will Fix It!" (Arhoolie)

2010-06-23T07:22:00.000-07:00

Sonny Treadway was my gateway into the renewing wonders of Sacred Steel. His opening selections on a late-Nineties Arhoolie compilation immediately piqued my interest for more of the idiom that applies lap steel virtuosity to the context of gospel hymns. Treadway stands apart from some of the more spirited and raucous of his peers like the Campbell Brothers with a fretting style that is frequently more laidback and jazz-inflected. This collection of a dozen studio instrumentals comes on like sweet iced tea spiked with the sporadic lime zing compared to the tangy lemonade of other live sets on the label. Treadway’s twangy lines and carefully inserted effects bob and float atop a rhythm supplied by just Ronnie Mozee’s crunchy guitar and the steady chugging clip-clop of Derrick Glen’s drums. It’s like Honky Tonk played from a Pentacostal pulpit with no lyrics to get in the way of strictly secular appreciation either and a reliable aural tonic when the stresses of the day cause the faculties to fray.

Evan Parker - Whitstable Solo (Psi)

2010-06-22T07:02:00.000-07:00

Nearly four decades deep into the Evan Parker solo performance precedence and despite what some critics might contend the saxophonist is still finding fresh things to say on both straight horn and curved. A confluence of new recording space (St. Peter’s Church, Whitstable), trusted engineer (Adam Skeaping) and extra-disciplinary collaborators (artist Polly Read and film-maker Neil Henderson) help make this set recorded in the summer of 2008 special. Parker states a preference for the pristine acoustics of the space in his succinct notes and it’s impossible to argue with the assessment. A photo shows him facing the nave, the vaulted ceilings of the building forming an inviting echo chamber for his intricate improvisations.

First recorded is actually last in sequence, exerting a temporal bait-and-switch that has Parker’s pre-performance musings bookended at the close. The concert starts with Parker conjuring a binary stream of multiphonics sustained with circular breath. Each layer seems to operate independently in a lubricious opposition that creates the illusion of forward and retreating momentum. It’s a trick Parker’s plied to audiences past, but here in the lucid acoustics of the church each coiling line gains even greater detail and incisiveness. The two converge in the closing seconds into a single ceiling-pitched cry. Parker keeps any urges toward loquaciousness in check. The concert’s closer tracks a similar tack in more blended fashion and nearly all of the pieces clock to comparatively modest durations. That economy enhances the program’s accessibility along with a general skew towards the mellifluous and rhythmic.

Several other sections directly mine the language of Lacy with an improbable admixture of feathery and abrasive tones voicing by turns clipped and measured phrasings and the occasional Bechet-sized burst. The fourth and fifth sections even quote a couple of the departed saxophonist’s tunes though my Lacy lexicon isn’t up to snuff enough to successfully tag them and bag them. It’s all perfect fodder for sneaky Blindfold Test sleight-of-hand. Hearing Parker play the semblance of song structures makes those plentiful stretches where he plies the usual meticulous barrage of extended techniques all the more palatable. His postscript promises more projects recorded in the St. Peter’s space, a promising prospect indeed.

Jack Walwrath - Heavy Mirth (Steeplechase)

2010-06-21T07:15:00.000-07:00

The pleasures of a working band in action are profusely accessible on this latest session under the leadership of trumpet player Jack Walrath. Bassist Boris Kozlov and drummer Jonathan Blake are the only holdovers from his last Steeplechase effort, the ballad peppered Ballroom, but the band was several tours steeped by the time they hit the studio together. Pianist Orrin Evans and tenorist Abraham Burton sound like natural fits in their respective roles take to the nine originals with nary a hesitation.

In Walrath’s own words it “was a no sweat date”. That’s not to suggest that there isn’t any heat or calories expended. To the contrary, Walrath and colleagues hit the tunes hard with little room leavened for niceties. The leader’s signature brand of hardbop originates out of a Mingus assemblage of roots, but his many projects over the years have also pulled from rock, funk and most pervasively the blues. The band is also populated by members past and present of the Mingus Big Band, a shambolic aggregate that also counts Walrath as an alumnus.

“Bassballs” is the first of a number of pieces that pinpoint Walrath’s laconic brand of humor in their titles. It and “Dark Star” are brisk and moody bop numbers that wouldn’t sound foreign on a classic Blue Note platter from Lee Morgan or Wayne Shorter. Walrath plugs a mute in his bell for the latter, sounding like a two-martini deep Miles in his essay of the theme. Burton’s tightly knotted solo offers Coltrane-quality contrast and Evans’ dusky robust comping also helps immeasurably in establishing a constructively combative mood. “It Must Be a Holiday, So Why Do I Have the Blues” channels the long-windedness of its title into a juxtaposition of tenderness and temerity with Burton once again standing out.

“A Long, Slow, Agonizing Descent into the Depth of Despair” signals the arrival of enigmatic T.C. II on guest vocals with a string of blues-fermented verses that were apparently improvised on the spot, proof once again that conformity to conventionality isn’t wired to Walrath’s character. A Mingusian mettle to buck and tweak the system pervades these pieces even as they adhere to the argot that’s served jazzmen for nearly half a century. Bottom line, Walrath’s chops and imagination are still intact. The dues-paying he’s done over the years only assures that date’s like this one will reliably come in well under par.

[Steeplechase titles are available direct through Stateside AT prodigy DOT net]

Michael Jaeger Kerouac - Outdoors (Intakt)

2010-06-18T04:20:00.000-07:00

Michael Jaeger’s ensemble makes explicit reference to one of the founding fathers of Beat poetry, but the Swiss tenorist is also careful to note that his actual inspiration source rests in the Dizzy Gillespie’s composition of the same title. Now five years on since their inception the foursome is well-oiled improvisation machine. Pianist Vincent Membrez, bassist Luca Sisera and drummer Norbert Pfammatter don’t answer well to the summary of sidemen. Jaeger’s name adorns the case spine, but the session is very much a group effort.

Tight shifts in meter and seamless ensemble interaction exemplify several of the eight pieces in the program. The opening “Tanz” threads in African rhythmic elements with a pliant vamp that harkens back to classic Blue Notes in its mix of bop momentum and township attitude. Jaeger’s breathy tenor blows a cool breeze against the percolating beat as guitarist Philipp Schaufelberger, the session’s other guest who contributes to all but two cuts, keeps easy pace with his compatriots. Shadowing Jaeger with ringing tones on the lovely “Flexible” he contrasts cannily with the clattering tumble from the Pfammatter and Sisera that brackets Membrez’s pedal-weighted commentary.

Altoist Greg Osby is an obvious influence on Jaeger’s methods of composition and as such makes for a natural and copasetic conscript on half of the tracks starting with the lilting postbop balladry of “Goldfaden”. Their stacked unisons and harmonies maximize the group’s lyrical tendencies pivoting nimbly off the tension rooted in Pfammatter’s fluid stick play and Membrez’s swirling chordal anchors. “Daha” expands from sharply wound dissonance of dampened and bent strings in its opening minutes, an assemblage that sounds sharply like the early work of Joe Morris, into another fertile playground for the horns in tandem and solo.

“Schwarzes Eis” and “Frein Fünf” suggest another side of the group’s ethos as texture-saturated pieces that avoid any sort of constricting meter or scripted symmetry. They don’t register quite as memorably as their brethren, but folded into the whole add appreciably to the date’s diversity. “Kluss” and the suite-structured title piece take the set out with a double shot of scintillating, sextet-rendered postbop and more Jaeger/Osby creativity congruity.

Orlando Le Fleming - From Brooklyn with Love (19/8)

2010-06-17T04:35:00.000-07:00

Bassist Orlando Le Fleming doesn’t score many points for creativity when it comes to the title of this live disc. Fortunately, what’s absent in left-field thinking is made up for through audible work ethic and dedication to craft. Culled from two dates at Freddy’s Backroom in the titular borough, the disc’s six cuts find the bassist’s quartet ranging by turns leisurely and aggressively through a songbook of conventionally-structured originals outfitted with generous improvisational space.

Le Fleming seems to accept the rhythm section roots of his instrument and repeatedly confers principal soloists’ status to altoist Will Vinson and guitarist Lage Lund. Drummer Antonio Sanchez also gets a share in spotlight though mainly through breaks and exchanges as on the opening loping interplay of “False Dilemma”. The opening minutes of the title piece flip the dynamic with Le Fleming solitary for a gradually-paced preface that folds into an ensemble statement and ensuing solos from his colleagues. Vinson and Lund assert themselves through solos and Sanchez makes a comparable impression with a higher degree of difficulty through his support capacity.

Theirs is a style of jazz that appears to be quite common these days, one that’s internalized the past while sustaining fealty to the present. Subsequently, the set can’t quite completely escape a paint-by-numbers schema. The track title “Rummaging for Significance” hits home here as a writ large encapsulation of the band’s place in the larger jazz community of which they are a part. A former professional cricket player in his native England, Le Fleming’s always got a second career to fall back on. The consistency of his playing and leadership here suggests that he’s still got a fair bit of slack before such a move might prove necessary.

Bill and Fred

2010-06-16T14:28:00.001-07:00

Bill Dixon is gone. Fred Anderson is ailing. This week has been one of the worst in recent memory for creative improvised music. Reason enough to interrupt the relatively rigid format under these rafters for a salvo of positive thoughts beaming out to the families and loved ones of both men.

I haven’t been as in tune with Bill’s recent work, but an out-of-the-blue email from him seven years ago is an event I still treasure. Prompted by a piece of mine on Berlin Abbozzi (FMP), he wrote to inquire whether I’d be interested in reviewing Odyssey and Dixonia, the box set and bio-discography. Tabling self-doubts of doing both justice, I jumped at the chance and about a week later copies of both showed up in my mailbox. Both pieces published at One Final Note and Bill’s feedback was warmly and reassuringly positive. Our correspondence after that was at best sporadic, but he thoughtfully sent me Xmas cards for the next several years. I never once experienced any veracity to the recurring charges of rampant ego and withering ire that certain critics lodged at him. I’m going to miss him.

Fred is still with us and is hopefully on the mend. My history with him goes back to the late-90s and my tenure in Madison. Semi-monthly trips to the Velvet Lounge are some of my fondest memories from that period of my life. Fred behind the bar, spinning Charlie Parker (the Carnegie Hall set w/ Diz released by Blue Note was a favorite) and serving tap beers. Him hanging up his bar rag & shuffling to the stage to sit-in with the night’s acts, the gloriously garish wallpaper that now serves as this site’s banner serving as a most apposite backdrop. His signature knees-bent hunch and the prescription lens behind which the kindest eyes smiled out. Years later seeing and speaking with him at the Vision Festival. Witnessing the adoration and esteem expressed in equal measure by those who knew him and those who didn’t. I had hoped to bring my wife to see him in Chicago this summer and still hope to. Here’s to a swift and seamless recovery and an eventual return to music-making on his own sweet time.

ROW: Prince Niko Mbarga - "Aki Special" (Rounder)

2010-06-16T04:04:00.000-07:00

Evincing cherry-picked elements of the stylistic diaspora that characterized Nigerian music in the Seventies, this influential album was also one of the most popular of its day. “Sweet Mother” was a certified hit and considered by many both within his native country and without as Africa’s unofficial anthem. Mbarga devised a personal variant on Congolese guitar playing and grafted it to Highlife polyrhythms to create an infectious and dance-friendly sound. The hybrid sits apart from many of its contemporaries by the comparatively modest instrumentation. Nico plays shimmering lead with Jean Chachua on rhythm guitar and the enigmatic Morris on bass. Drummer Ashagashu joins conguero Franco Okolo to complete the core band operating on under the colorful moniker Rocafil Jazz. Seven songs glide by in just over an hour, regularly belying their lengths with engaging cyclical riffs and laconic lyrics spun largely from traditional proverbs and topic themes like “Free Education in Nigeria”. The weave of amplified strings is clean and consistently scintillating with insistent but unobtrusive beats augmenting a flexible percolating groove. This reliably satisfying set is a regular in my summer rotation.

Rich Corpolongo Trio - Get Happy (Delmark)

2010-06-15T18:29:00.000-07:00

Tenor, bass and drums projects will probably forever be name checked against Sonny Rollins’ pioneering parables with the form. In the case of Rich Corpolongo the connection fits. As one of the younger “old reliables” of Delmark’s current tenor stable, his latest release is a long overdue showcase for his talents sans piano. Along for the ride, but also willing to take the wheel when tapped are bassist Dan Shapera and drummer Rusty Jones, Chicago-based session men who fill their respective instrumental roles with journeyman skill and the goal of making their employer look good.

The program is ripe with blowing vehicles in the guise of standards, from a pair of bookending Bird tunes to the lesser picked standard “Mangoes”. Corpolongo and his colleagues indulge in each one in earnest. Applecart-upsetting surprises are few, but there’s no faulting the caliber of tenor play brought to the party. Corpolongo counts Coleman, Bird and Coltrane as his principal points of influence and each man is apparent in his philosophy toward improvising if not explicitly audible in the personalized manner with which he phrases a line. A relaxed sally through “Body and Soul”, largely unaccompanied, has the tenor choruses spooling out at length and the leader reveling in his own brand of “spontaneous composition”.

The notes make complimentary mention of the “old school” recording techniques used to capture to the music. Curiously, the sound quality is the only slight sticking point with the session to these ears. A bit boxy and flat, a two-mic in theater space set-up doesn’t seem to do the players any favors, particularly in the case of Jones who comes across as discouragingly diluted in conversation with Corpolongo on the otherwise amiable and invigorating “Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams”. Still, this is a minor quibble and one easily eclipsed by the sustained élan and swagger of Corpolongo and crew. Fans of Chicago tenors classic and contemporary would do well to give this date a considered shot.

Domenic Landolf - New Brighton (Pirouet)

2010-06-14T09:34:00.000-07:00

The cover shot to Swiss-born saxophonist Domenic Landolf’s Pirouet debut offers a clever visual analogue to his music with a stark sepia tone view of Coney Island’s Hell Hole attraction, now defunct some 15 years. Landolf’s overarching concept on the date is an intriguing variant on chamber jazz past and present. Bassist Patrice Moret and drummer Dejan Terzic come at the thirteen pieces from comparable trajectories of introspection and restraint without slipping into the maudlin or moribund. There’s a mood of mystery about many of them, one that parallels the present state of the peninsula’s decaying amusements while also echoing the history of better times gone by.

Horn vamps and bass ostinatos undergird ambling intervals on several of the pieces and an economy of expression ensures that the program progresses in lubricious succession. Terzic uses glockenspiel and an assortment of chimes alongside his kit to create an array of quiet accents and textures. Moret’s strings vibrate and thrum sans invasive amplification and bring a dry brittleness to the ensemble passages that tighten the tension while keeping the action comparatively low-key. Both players take to Landolf’s supple and deceptively layered compositions like naturals, offering both support and subtle challenges to the leader and sticking their necks out well beyond usual sideman deference and deportment.

Landolf uses the fluid backdrops and foregrounds to best advantage, cycling between tenor, bass clarinet and alto flute and conveying a calmly singular sound through each. It’s the first horn that holds the most interest much of the time. His by turns grainy and feathery tone recalls Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre. Delicate melodic whorls and spirals are regular patterns in his phrasing, even in comparatively up-tempo numbers like the curiously titled “The Beatles Go East”. That piece also serves as a workout for his colleagues, Terzic in particular, as another vamp gets the business end of the trio’s collective creativity. This session may be as gradual to gel with listener pleasure receptors as it was with mine, but once it does the bonds become tenaciously strong.

AIR - Air Raid (Why Not)

2010-06-11T21:35:00.000-07:00

Cue the bugles and bata drums: We’re in the midst of a full blown Henry Threadgill renaissance thanks to a recent compiling of the multi-reedist/composer’s Black Saint/Soul Note albums and another from Mosaic gathering his work for Arista, RCA and Columbia slated for the immediate horizon. Add to that copious bounty the reissue by Candid of a pair of AIR dates on the Japanese Why Not label and nearly all of the man’s major works magically return to print, at least for the time being. An AIR extravaganza (thankfully not a name chosen for an album during their tenure) is in full swing while Threadgill’s current creativity continues to find a consistent conduit via the Pi imprint.

As with the new edition of Air Song from last year, this set is a no frills affair in terms of packaging and annotation. It’s just a straight reissue of the album’s four tracks, two per LP side in the original 1976 pressing. Threadgill fields Chinese musette and alto on the title opener, using the first instrument to intone shrill sustained siren effect over a thick bed of arco bass and sharply-fizzing cymbals. Bassist Fred Hopkins’ gains a rubbery bounce through amplification, but the crux of his deep earthy sound doesn’t hinge on that crutch. His massive harmonically-rich patterns echo the counterintuitive corpulence and agility of Wilbur Ware and apply strenuous percussive force to his instrument.

“Midnight Sun” gives over to more alto, its opening minutes working off a surprisingly “inside”-sounding vamp. “Release”, the album’s lengthiest piece, finds Threadgill on flute and the hubkaphone, the second a percussion instrument hand-cobbled from hubcaps that sounds like a junkyard gamelan variant. McCall’s cymbal-centered textures swirl and eddy, but the piece loses keen focus in a few places despite several spates of mercurial melodic improvisation by Threadgill and another arresting solo from Hopkins’ that pitches a perfect balance between burrish bow strokes and febrile finger plucks. “Through a Keyhole Darkly” downshifts to a closing vehicle for grayscale tenor and shuffle boil rhythm highlighted by another stellar statement from Hopkins.

The original line-up in AIR had a relatively truncated tenure and that transience makes all of their albums worth owning. This classic set registers among the best thanks mainly the shared acuity of concept and execution.

Chris Massey's "Nue Jazz Project" - Vibrainium (self-relased)

2010-06-10T11:33:00.000-07:00

Saxophonist Wayne Shorter is one of the few jazz icons on record as a self-admitted comic book fan. The fantastic four-color mythologies of both Marvel and D.C. imprints have at least indirectly inspired several of his compositions over the decades, most conspicuously with the classic “Kryptonite”. Drummer Chris Massey appears in possession of a similar admiration as the title of this self-released album makes clear. Vibrainium is a pun on Vibranium, one of a host of rarified fictional metals perhaps most famous as material constituting Captain America’s shield. It’s also one of the principal natural resources of Wakanda, the African nation home to Black Panther, the first black superhero in American mainstream comics and a cultural connection that no doubt resonates strongly with Massey.

Musically, Massey’s influences reside firmly in the advanced hardbop of the Blue Note Sixties, another common ground with Shorter. His “Nue Jazz Project”, a quintet comprising the horns of Donald Malloy and Benjamin Drazen and a rhythm section completed by pianist Evgeny Lebedev and bassist David Ostrem. The cerebral connotation in the title and another commonality with Shorter comes through in Massey’s clever compositions and arrangements. Borrowing its title from the world-eating celestial villain of the same name, “Galactus” joins the title piece in directly referencing elements from comics. Both run close to twice the length of the other cuts and open up ample modal space for the players to solo and interact.

Drazen’s alto owns the burning rendering of Joe Henderson’s “Inner Urge”. Name-checking the Yoruban god of thunder, “Chango” gives Massey brief space to flex his sticks in a solo setting while Chick Corea’s “Windows” naturally shifts the focus to Lebedev’s keys and gives both Malloy and Drazen a breather. Massey keeps a brisk and variable selection of rhythms cycling around and beneath his sidemen and the album zooms by. Drazen’s “Mr. Twilight”, a superhero moniker ready-made, closes the album out in much the manner it began with a propulsive vamp from Lebedev and darting horn unisons and a steady frothing beat. Spinning these effervescent sounds, it’s not hard to come up with an early Kirby-Lee collaboration as convenient visual analogue.

Tom Rainey Trio - Pool School (Clean Feed)

2010-06-09T17:47:00.000-07:00

A much-belated case of “giving the drummer some”, Tom Rainey’s debut as a leader is long-overdue formal recognition of his substantial talents. Leave it to the relentlessly prolific Clean Feed label to recognize and rectify the lapse. Rainey’s appeared on a number of the imprint’s releases over the years and his gig docket remains reliably full via projects with Tim Berne and a host of others. Typical to form and true to the press blurb on the CF website, this set “sounds nothing like anything recorded by Rainey as a sideman.”

Equally crucial to the music’s singularity are Rainey’s chosen colleagues. Guitarist Mary Halvorson handles her Guild hollow-body with an ear closely-aligned toward eclectic sound production. Plugging-in through a trusty Peavey amp, her contributions have oblique reference points in the work of Joe Morris (a mentor) and Derek Bailey in the canny use of distortion detonations between spidery arpeggios and fills. Halvorson regularly invents melodic helixes on the fly, her intricate patterns spun in gossamer, near-acoustic filigrees or boldly crunching riffs. Add to that an uncanny and instantly-endearing ability to acrobatically twist notes like cherry-stems between teeth.

Saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock, a new name to me, evinces a similarly broad-minded tack toward tone and phrasing. Post-Ayler squeals and sputters are a part of her playbook, but so are the dryly aerated breath sounds and reed pops that fall more under the common rubric of European improvisers like John Butcher. She’s also adept at straight melodic blowing that limns surprisingly close to postbop norms. Rainey revels in the strong support, his stick play often skirting strict meters in favor of a loose, but still carefully structured patter to clatter that keeps the program moving at a reliable clip.

A dozen pieces shuffle by in just under an hour, the resulting ratio keeping individual selections terse and to-the-point. The trio’s humor manifests in the title puns, “Om on the Range” and “Clean Feat”, the latter an obvious nod to their benefactors. From the spooky intervals of “Calico Road” and the fractured, hair-pulling funk of “Three Bag Mary” through the set closing shadow play of “Pacification” that finds Laubrock switching to what sounds like mouthpiece sans sax each piece has its own earmarks, but all hang together cogently as an album-organized statement. Rainey may be a late-bloomer on the leader front, but the wait was definitely worth it.

ROW: Warne Marsh - Warne Out (Interplay)

2010-06-09T04:38:00.001-07:00

An inventory of Warne Marsh’s discography immediately reveals a heavy skew toward the Seventies. Decades prior weren’t nearly as kind toward the documenting of the tenorist’s art. This set remains rarity even within the context of the comparative bounty of offerings that accompany his later years. Recorded over three days in the spring of 1977 in drummer Nick Ceroli’s home studio, it’s a bit of a mixed affair in regards to audio fidelity. The extended opportunity to hear Marsh extol his personal philosophy toward melodic improvisation and interpolation sans a traditional chordal instrument immediately compensates. Ceroli doesn’t stray far from the typical Tristano School decorum of securing a steady beat for his colleagues, though there are sporadic segments where he does loosen the self-imposed straight jacket. Bassist Jim Hughart has more latitude and his period-amplified lines create a springy weave for Warne’s flights, especially on the lovely “Ballad”. There’s no ambiguity about it being Marsh’s show though and the familiar chord changes rigged with fresh melodic ornamentations cycle by with little pause or posturing. Post-performance production comes into play through some judicious overdubbing on both Marsh and Hughart’s parts, which yields several stimulating examples of Warne jousting with himself. Not easy to find, this set is still well worth seeking out.

Geri Allen & Timeline - Live (Motema)

2010-06-08T17:44:00.000-07:00

Pianist Geri Allen is in the midst of an artistic and creative roll. Recorded at Oberlin Conservatory, this densely-packed and highly satisfying performance follows the release of a solo recital, also on Motéma and carries forward in a similar vein with some marked departures. Chief among them is her crew of assembled accompanists. Bassist Kenny Davis competes a bit with the cavernous acoustics of the concert hall and there are moments during the more stentorian ensemble passages where his strings endure compromised audibility though fortunately his solo passages suffer no such hindrances. Conversely, drummer Kassa Overall has no problem being heard, his aggressive percussive patterns regularly matching Allen’s in terms of momentum and volume.

The inspired ensemble wildcard is tap dancer Maurice Chestnut, conscripted in part to contribute and embody the project’s focus on honoring African American dance traditions as well as those of the music realm. Allen name checks a good dozen luminaries in either artistic arena as sources of inspiration among them the likes of “Bojangles” Robinson, Ornette Coleman, Gregory Hines and Betty Carter. None explicitly manifest in the music, but Allen makes other referents abundantly clear in her set list choices. A lengthy contrafact of her “The Western Wall” and Mal Waldron’s “Soul Eyes” spools out over nearly a third of an hour. Later it’s a suturing of Gershwin’s “Embraceable You” and Billie Holiday’s signature “Loverman”, each filtered through Allen’s grandly rhapsodic lens.

“Philly Joe” echoes its namesake in the opening snare shot from Overall. Much of the piece’s second half gives over to a dialogue between the drummer and the clickety-clacking tap play of Chestnut and the pair very nearly wears out their welcome. The two paired-tune medleys follow broken by the shorter interstitial pieces “Four By Five” by McCoy Tyner and the original “LWB’s House”. On both Chestnut once again asserts himself, his steel-heeled syncopations blending nimbly with Overall’s stampeding kit constructions. Like Davis, there are moments where he has step lively to compete with the pounding surf generated by the drums, but more often than not ably holds his own.

Allen directs the action like a matriarch at an extended family picnic, marshalling each piece and each of her sidemen for maximum potential. It’s a by turns exhilarating and exhausting journey, but audience rewards far outweigh expenditures in the final tally. Passionate and magnanimous in her musical explorations, Allen wouldn’t have it any other way.

James Blood Ulmer - In and Out (In & Out)

2010-06-07T13:20:00.000-07:00

A rare case of record title matching record label, James Blood Ulmer’s latest carries that parity over to the music by not tinkering much with the successful strategy of past outings. Fronting a trio session, Ulmer’s guitar positions up front with athletic support from bassist Mark Peterson and drummer Aubrey Dayle in close proximity. Peterson plucks both electric and acoustic instruments and his corpulent lines on the former are a sturdy undercarriage to Ulmer’s snaking, seething blues leads and dart-tipped arpeggios. Dayle keeps the backbeat tight and responsive, bubbling and frothing around and beneath the strings.

Lyrics and vocals have long occupied a position peripheral to Ulmer’s stinging plectrum and that guiding dynamic is no different here. “No Man’s Land” muses on geopolitical turf wars while the slow shambolic shuffle “Maya” tells a tale of the titular muse through an economy of words. Neither is a case of superlative verse, but both get the job done. “A Thing for Joe” revolves on a constrictive groove, Ulmer ramping up and reeling down the tension before a tumbling drum break from Dayle and an unexpected return by the leader on flute that’s more than proficient. Peterson, on upright, tugs out a short chugging solo before a full circle ensemble finish.

“Fat Mama” recycles another flexible riff from the Ulmer fake book, spooling out in prickly tendrils coated in brittle amplification. An about-face into hard-edged funk built on snare suspensions and a killer percolating bass groove compensate for another round of suspect shout-sung vocals. “Eviction”, “High Yellow” and “Backbiter” unfold as loose-limbed bebop-rooted shuffles that prove Ulmer’s undiminished prowess in personalizing the idiom while “Baby Talk” and “My Woman” amble agreeably along on quotidian blues changes. Peterson’s bass closely shadows Ulmer in each context while Dayle lays down potent and punchy snare and crash cymbal-dominant rhythms.

The packaging trades up explanatory prose for colorful visuals with close-up shots of the band taking the place of liner notes or other annotations. Ulmer looks sharp in a mustard-colored suit that mirrors that of Mayfield on the cover of Curtis and his alligator boots give further indication of his fastidious fashion sense. At this stage of his long-storied career, he knows what works and what doesn’t and the adage that starts with “if ain’t broke…” is as good a playbook page to work from as any to give the people what they want.

Konitz/ Cheek/ Furic Leibovici - Jugendstil II (ESP)

2010-06-04T06:24:00.000-07:00

How to improve on an already winsome formula? Such was a question facing producer Jim Black and bassist/composer Stephane Furic Leibovici in the wake of their first chamber jazz project for ESP. The answer came in an unexpected and inspired conscription, altoist Lee Konitz. Konitz has been influential party to these types of projects for well over a half-century as a melodic improviser nonpareil. His presence in the company of Leibovici and saxophonist Chris Cheek, here sticking solely to tenor, raises an already high bar several notches higher.

Leibovici’s spacious though spare compositions afford the players plenty of latitude for personal expression. The first several focus on the three with Konitz and Cheek evenly parsed into stereo channels, but often employing for a similarly gauzy tonality in their improvisations. Leibovici holds the center with skeletal walking notes placed like floating buoys of commentary between the saxophones twining and eliding lines. The resulting music is austere without being antiseptic, introspective without being hermetic and obliquely recalls the kind of aerated weave of melody and harmony that Konitz used to specialize in with Warne Marsh.

“A L’ile de Freesanges (…Nuit D’Été…)” signals a considerable change in the ensemble with the addition of a handful of support players. Black comes off the sidelines and sounds off on glockenspiel, fielding vibes and chimes at other junctures. Joy Plaisted on harp and Margja Garcia on celesta insert additional tonal colors. Dan Dorrance and Chris Speed join the horns on flutes and clarinet respectively, bolstering the leads and guiding the pieces for brief stretches as well as with Dorrance’s turn on “Phongsaly”. The mixture harkens back to Konitz’s 1958 atmospheric collaboration with strings, An Image in its assemblage of dulcet chamber elements and calmative but responsive chamber components. Black summarizes the set as “over-all-too-soon”, an observation that resonates perfectly with my own reaction.

Bill Carrothers – Joy Spring (Pirouet)

2010-06-03T13:17:00.000-07:00

June 26, 1956- a day that will forever register in the ledger of jazz tragedy. Pianist Bill Carrothers pays tribute to the two jazz icons lost on that faithful date, Clifford Brown and Richie Powell, on this consistently engaging trio session. Carrothers covers the major bases of the Brown and Powell songbook, also pulling in tunes by other composers that they favored on albums and concert sets. Regular collaborators bassist Drew Gress and Bill Stewart jibe perfectly with his designs while bringing a slew of their own ideas to the studio.

Carrothers doesn’t get saddled or sidetracked with radical reworkings or slavish repertory copies. Each of the pieces benefits from sharp arranger’s touch and abiding sense of ensemble economy. Subtle surprises abound, but they’re always in the service of the tunes. Gress and Stewart are near perfect in their accompaniment and equally stimulating in their solo statements. They’re each experts at framing Carrothers’ leads and just as adeptly taking the wheel in an organic fashion that doesn’t feel contrived or forced. Carrothers seems to appreciate the freedom that level of shared prowess affords him and the three men regularly engage in chases and interpolations secure in the shared knoweldge that the basics are always buttoned up.

Picking highlights in the program is a challenge since all twelve pieces sustain such high standards. The light to dark lyricism of Powell’s “Gertrude’s Bounce” is an ideal vehicle for Carrother’s closely colluding hands and the muscular finesse of the Gress/Stewart bass/drums tandem. The one-two punch of Duke Jordan’s “Jordu” and Brown’s “Daahoud” is perhaps the most inspired instance of sequencing. The first scrolls out like martial march, Stewart dropping snare rolls beneath Carrother’s staggered suspensions and Gress’ robust bass thrum. The second gets a dosing of funk in the Horace Silver-sense with a brisk tempo reading that has the leader’s hands working a dizzying clip.

Carrothers and his crew succeed in a format favored by so many others by preserving what makes it timeless and summarily jettisoning any baggage that might weight it down. The effect, especially on this program of familiar hardbop vehicles, is one that joins the best aspects of tradition with a fluid injection of personal expression. No coincidence then that it’s the same tactic taken in the past by the very subjects of their tribute on the horns plus rhythm quintet.

Steve Lacy - November (Intakt)

2010-06-02T10:55:00.000-07:00

As catalysts to a host of conflicting emotions, final recordings commonly carry more baggage than those that come prior. Sometimes the results are heartbreakingly catastrophic, as with the case with Lester Young’s last foray in front of microphones in Paris. Other swan songs reflect still triumphal talents cut abruptly short. Steve Lacy’s last solo concert falls far closer to the latter summation than the former. A disheartening diagnosis of liver cancer earlier in the year left him increasingly prone to fatigue, but hardly daunted. Instead, he took it as a lemons-to-lemonade sign to redouble his efforts in teaching, recording and performance.

Recorded at the Unerhört-Festival, Switzerland late in the titular month of 2003, Lacy runs through a program of tunes common to his concert repertoire of the time. Bill Shoemaker explores a prevailing element of Lacy’s coming to terms with his impending mortality in his accompanying essay. It’s not a leap in logic given the topical underpinnings of several tunes and the reflective nature of their renditions. Lacy takes a cue from his life partner Irene Aebi by speak-singing a few lines on “Tina’s Tune” that tellingly nod again to the relative frailty of This Mortal Coil and the pregnant pauses that pepper the piece thumb presciently in this direction as well.

Recurring moments arise where Lacy sounds slightly winded and the soaring, diving flights of earlier years aren’t much in evidence. Even so, there are also startling moments of technical and creative acumen as through the abrasive trills that pepper “The Door” and “The New Duck”. Lacy’s wry humor is intact as well with the wood-knock punctuations that crop up in the first piece. On the second, his hoarse reed exhortations, puckered pops and curling harmonics make it abundantly clear that even an ailing Lacy still has sturdy sea legs for improvisation. A curious mild echo on “Blues for Aida” only adds to its poignancy and cyclical sing-song simplicity of “The Rent” gives off its usual array of Monk-refracted charms. Lacy culminates the set with a direct hat tip to Mr. Hat and Beard with “Reflections” delivering it with a playful plangency that lingers long after the last cursive note sounds.

ROW: Quarteto Novo (Odeon/EMI)

2010-06-02T05:47:00.000-07:00

Decked out in crisply-pressed suits and ties, the foursome on this influential album has the look and exterior demeanor of a stuffy chamber quartet. Their vibrant and variable music speaks a completely different story. Fusing indigenous Northeastern Brazilian rhythms to a bop-grounded conception of melody and harmony, guitarists Theo de Barros and Heraldo do Monte joined percussionist Airto Moriera and multi-instrumentalist Hermeto Pascoal in divining something new. Bossa Nova is a close cousin, but this music has its own distinct pedigree. Pascoal’s boisterous dancing flute spices up tunes like “O vo” and “Fica mal Com Deus” as Moriera bangs out bracingly dissonant rhythms and coarse textures in striking contrast to the steady calming strum of the twining guitars. Later tracks have a more prevalent jazz feel, distantly echoing the earlier collaborations between Bola Sete and Vince Guaraldi but with an added punch relayed through Moriera’s dynamic drumming. The album catapulted he and Pascoal into the vanguard of Brazilian popular music, eventually garnering the notice of Miles who co-opted them both into his early 70s electric bands. Brief at little more than EP length, this set is undeniably sweet and an excellent soundtrack for properly ringing in summer.

Oberg/ Thewes/ Griener - Lacy Pool (hatOLOGY)

2010-06-01T19:42:00.000-07:00

One measure of a composition’s longevity is its relative receptiveness to reinterpretation. Steve Lacy’s songbook was largely neglected during his lifetime, but the dearth of interpreters was more a function of a paucity of transcriptions than any reflection on rigidity or recalcitrance in his tunes. The German trio Lacy Pool proves conclusively the malleable properties of their namesake’s folio on this live set taped at Loft in Cologne. The band name has a delicious double meaning encompassing the kinetic geometries of billiards reflected in their angular and inventive approaches to Lacy’s tunes as well as the deep reservoir of pieces from which they draw.

Repertory bands operating under a Lacy-centric rubric are promisingly on the rise. Ideal Bread out of New York and The Rent from Toronto have each turned in valuable albums. Pianist Uwe Oberg, trombonist Christof Thewes and drummer Michael Griener are arguably even more radical in their explorations. Part of that distinction derives from their instrumentation, which immediately pulls the pieces out of the familiar frameworks originally forwarded by their composer’s straight horn.

The band has something of a chamber dynamic in collective sound and temperament. Each man is an expert at injecting texture and color, Thewes through a number of plunger and embouchure modifications, Griener through a studied touch on brushes, cymbals and peripheral percussive devices. Oberg is a bit constrained by the tempered nature of keys, but he still succeeds in subverting their stricter tonalities with an array of interior and pedal dampening moves. Thewes gurgling nasalized growls on “Flakes” offer one of the more extreme examples, burbling over a cyclic rhythm from Grenier on what sounds like Gamelan gongs. The dour legato tones, gossamer brush play and piano string scrapes of the Eastern-tinged “Retreat” represent another.

“Stamps” is full of playful elbow-bruising, head-butting collisions while “The Crust” rolls out like a delicate tone poem, Griener’s fluttering brushes bracketing a slow coalescing of the theme. “Blinks” builds from bright effervescence and incremental stair-stepping progressions. Thewes drops out on a section of “The Dumps”, leaving Oberg and Griener to stride-inflected dialogue that echoes trad jazz hi-jinks of Art Hodes and Cie Frazer before a communal rhapsodic finale. “Raps” gallops along like a roughsod boogaloo dirge, Griener thwacking a sturdy backbeat over which Oberg and Thewes twirl. It’s not hard to conjecture Lacy beaming with pleasure had he lived to hear these at once faithful and fertile sounds.

Ideal Bread - Transmit (Cuneiform)

2010-05-31T04:36:00.000-07:00

Steve Lacy was a student of Monk for much of his lengthy musical career. Ellington and Herbie Nichols offered other areas for avid study. Lacy was a prolific composer in his own right, but he never lost sight in of the worth in investigating and interpreting the work of his elders. That philosophy of inclusiveness passed directly on to his pupils and fans. Six years since his passing a number of bands are following suit by turning to his songbook for repertoire and inspiration. Operating under the nominal leadership of baritonist Josh Sinton, a former student of Lacy’s, Ideal Bread is one of the best and brightest in that number.

This professionally produced and recorded Cuneiform set represents the ensemble’s second release. Their self-titled first released on KMB, pressed as a limited edition CDR, swiftly fell out of print despite garnering a smattering of encomiums among critics. The quartet picks up right where it left off, tackling seven Lacy tunes of varying vintage and origin in a fashion that relies evenly on all four participants. Sinton is in a somewhat unique position given the years he spent under Lacy’s tutelage and as his copyist. Transcribing tunes en mass after Lacy’s passing he amassed a formidable songbook on which to draw. The pieces balance Lacy’s often arch, cyclic writing with roomy passages for personal and collective improvisation. Bassist Reuben Radding’s richly rendered solo preface to “Clichés”, which narrows into a thrumming ostinato in the ensuing ensemble entry, is but one notable instance among many of Lacy seeds giving rise to original individualized tendrils.

“As Usual” opens the program and the foursome devours it with vigor. Sinton is especially forceful in his solo, bringing the full brunt of his big horn to bear on the shuffle theme but falling short of bombastic parody. Radding and drummer Tomas Fujiwara balance tension and swing in a swaying hammock rhythm. “The Dumps” trucks in humor too, the band pausing for raucous Robert Altman-worthy recitation of the title as mantra before leaping collectively into the corkscrew melody. There’s a section of “The Breath” where the Stinton and trumpeter Kirk Knuffke forgo their usual timbral territories and climb into high perch so often occupied by Lacy’s straight horn. Puckered expulsions contrast with Radding’s steady bass throb and the trickling textures of Fujiwara’s mallets. It’s a fleeting stretch, but one that conveys both esteem and independence within its span. “Papa’s Midnite Hop” flips back to Lacy’s 1976 quartet with Roswell Rudd and even further to the pair’s roots in progressive Dixieland, a fitting full circle closer for a band well-steeped in the vibrant continuum of its inspiration.

Pete Robbins - Silent Z Live (Hate Laugh Music)

2010-05-28T04:33:00.000-07:00

Concert versus studio. That enduring dichotomy of setting is a driving factor in altoist Pete Robbins’ fourth release. His third was a studio affair; one that while deemed an overall success by the altoist didn’t quite muster the intensity of his live work. This set, pulled from a pair of dates at Brooklyn venues, has intensity to spare thanks in no small part to the colleagues convened for the occasions. The other obvious determinant is Robbins’ songbook, an eclectic assemblage of compositions influenced in part by Tim Berne’s work, particularly in the context of Bloodcount. Robbins’ puzzle board pieces a similar metric complexity, highly malleable harmony and an embrace of prog-rock and fusion elements. These are compositions that resolutely avoid stasis and rarely cede an often exhilarating and occasionally dizzying forward momentum.

Of Robbins’ band mates, Tyshawn Sorey is arguably the most integral as a drummer whose rhythmic versatility and perspicacity is seemingly impossible to surpass. His constantly active and pan-directional stick play hardly falls under rubric of subordinate accompaniment, Rubik’s Cube beats coming fast and furious from his kit. Cornetist Jesse Neuman and guitarist Mike Gamble each make ample use of electronic effects with varying degrees of success. Neuman’s horn almost sounds like a chromatic harmonica on the opening “edit/revise”, expanding into Milesean watercolors for his solo. Gamble’s florid rock-inflected runs are sometimes spill over into excessive distraction, but there’s no denying the precision he applies with plectrum and pedals. His rippling melancholic chords in the opening minutes of “his life, for all its waywardness” feature him at his best and the entrance of the others almost feels like an intrusion.

Bassist Thomas Morgan isn’t often a foreground presence, but his contributions are just as essential as his more gregarious partners. The rubber band ostinato snapping gently between Sorey’s chattering syncopations on the flowing “some southern anthem” and the oleaginous unaccompanied introduction to “Bugle Call” are just two example of his sturdy pizzicato placement. The latter is the first of four final pieces that trade Neuman for pianist Cory Smythe and the added ‘acoustic’ presence subtly alters the ensemble dynamic without undercutting its guiding characteristics. Intricate meter investigations and free-spooling melody are still prominent preoccupations, Sorey lighting brushfires beneath Robbins’ and Gamble with his sticks even in the closing tightly-wound collective improvisation. This one took me some time to warm to, but once it clicked the rewards were ongoing.

Bryan & the Haggards - Pretend It's the End of the World (Hot Cup)

2010-05-27T04:37:00.000-07:00

Country and jazz have rarely been congenial bedfellows. Sure, there’s the heyday of western swing to consider and much more recent cross-pollinations like the Blue Note-backed collaboration between Wynton and Willie, but more often the genres reflect and oil and water dynamic. Cue Bryan and the Haggards, a hardcore honky-tonk freebop collective who aims to mend any flattened fences while simultaneously removing any need for them in the first place. A swift survey of the roster reveals how well the players are suited to the task. Altoist Jon Irabagon and bassist Matthew “Moppa” Elliott are two fourths of Mostly Other People Do the Killing, a sister ensemble that makes it its business to eradicate similarly ironclad genre distinctions. Tenorist Bryan Murray, guitarist Jon Lundbom and drummer Danny Fischer are new names to me but based on what’s on hand here they’re now radar fixtures.

Regular Hot Cup provocateur Leonardo Featherweight supplies the edifying liners, which not only run down key elements of Hag’s history, but more germane to the project several serendipitous path crossings with bassist Charlie Haden. The ensuing punch line, Merle Haggard’s influence on the music that came to be known as “free jazz” is unquestionable and the purpose of The Haggards, to explore the complementary nature of the “New Thing” and the “Bakersfield Sound”. All of this may naturally seem like a taffy-like stretching of the historical record, but sounds themselves are anything but suspect. Tailoring seven Strangers-era standards to free-jazz friendly interpretations isn’t a cake walk, but neither is it reinventing the wheel and harmelodic Haggard ends up not as far out as first imagined.

“Silver Wings” hits an early wrong note with Lundbom’s overly rockish and overbearing guitar, a move he repeats on the closing conflagratory “Trouble in Mind”, though the horns strike on just the right anthemic “tears in beer” sweep. Lundbom rights things on “Swinging Doors”, going for twang and shimmer instead of craggy feedback. Fischer hits the proper four-square backbeat on brushes in tandem with Elliott’s clip-clopping strings and the solos practically bleed rye-soaked sawdust. “Working Man Blues” ups the tempo with some sharp jousting by the horns and knife-edged fret play from Lundbom that sounds like Jimmy Bryant on a lysergic bender. Ballad time arrives with the beauteous stroll through “Miss the Mississippi and You” and a lovely lengthy dialogue between Murray and Irabagon. Purposefully fractured and hobbled, the bent take on “Lonesome Fugitive” signals the homestretch with more jocular song deconstruction and reed-perforating blowing and “All of Me Belongs to Me” debuts Elliott’s pie-in-the-face Bakersfield-meets-scat vocals. I just have one question though; it being a Hag homage, where exactly in the hell is the pedal steel?

Ross Bolleter - Night Kitchen (2002-2009) (Emanem)

2010-05-26T22:23:00.000-07:00

Like Roland Kirk and his panoply of horns, Russ Bolleter faces the charge of gimmickry each time he holds forth on his instruments. Bolleter’s province is ruined pianos, the specifics for which are delineated in his own book on the subject, The Well Weathered Piano (3rd edition). “Ruined” is an important adjectival designation, distinct from “neglected” or “devastated” with a key requirement residing in the condition that no single note sounds like one attainable from an even-tempered upright piano.

This is Bolleter’s second collection of music on Emanem and his tenth since 2000. As with the first, it finds him making music on instruments that would seem upon cursory visual inspection as being unworthy of such attention. Bolleter recognizes the inherent humor and quixotic nature of his enterprise, but he’s also very serious about his investigations. He improvises his pieces and in the case of this particular program, plays nearly all purposefully at night or near dawn with specific sources of inspiration in mind.

Because of their dilapidated anatomies, multiple ruined pianos are often necessary to approximate the musical capacities of their more fortunate and well-cared for cousins. Bolleter commonly employs four or five, situated about his kitchen in such away as to accomplish easy simultaneous access to all. They range wildly in provenance and age with one, a Carl Bernstein, having the distinctly dubious honor of being home to a hive of bees.

The uncertainty built into the instruments by the entropy of nature and circumstance is a key component of the resulting music. Bolleter counts on the unexpected sounds that arise out of their compromised componentry, what he refers to as “dongs, clicks, dedoomps, doks and tonks”. “Goya’s Dog” sounds like a collection of chimes and gongs colluding with clattering typewriter keys and struck bicycle spokes. “Kiss Kiss” changes locations to a dry dam on Bolleter’s property and employs three different instruments than those in his kitchen.

Bolleter’s music broaches clever meta questions about instrumentalist and instrument, but more importantly works on purely musical terms as well. Some of the pieces have a rambling, meandering feel about them, but as Bolleter astutely notes, “the notes that don’t work are at least as interesting as those that do.”

ROW: Benton Flippen - "Old Time, New Times" (Rounder)

2010-05-26T21:56:00.000-07:00

In a ratio approximate to saxophonists in Manhattan, fiddlers practically grew on trees in the North Carolina of the early to mid-past century. Benton Flippen was one of a number operating out of the town of Airy and family taught in his craft. Thanks in part to being blessed with large mitts, Flippen perfected a singular approach to both fiddle and banjo. A recent centenarian, he’s still with us and still performing. This invaluable Rounder set offers an extensive aural aperture into his art. The limitations of time and space erase as cuts from his salad days with the Green Valley Boys at the cusp of the 1950s juxtapose with more recent performances from the 1970s, 80s and 90s in the company of The Smokey Valley Boys. Flippen’s style and sound remains remarkably consistent whatever the vintage and the collection’s 27 tracks hit many of the major milestones of the American Old Timey songbook from “More Pretty Girls Than One” on down through “Fishers Hornpipe” and “Lost Indian”. A detailed essay and various snapshots across decades complete the portrait of a musician who shelved his passion when life’s responsibilities held sway but never fully forgot its pleasures in times both prosperous and lean.

Ethan Mann - It's All About a Groove (Petunia)

2010-05-25T14:51:00.000-07:00

Truth in titular advertising definitely applies to this trio date. Groove and feel are paramount to guitarist Ethan Mann’s musical philosophy. Keyboardist Chip Crawford and drummer Greg Bandy are of a shared music-making consciousness. All three men have been gigging since their teens in a multitude of setting. Bandy had the distinction of working New York City clubs during the Seventies and good fortune to curry favor with profile band leaders like Pharoah Sanders and Gary Bartz. Mann and Crawford never hit it quite that big on their cabaret cards, but both have stayed busy over the decades as well.

Mann designs the program as a reflection of a typical club set for the trio and the player’s formative Seventies-selves play palpable roles. Once again that titular mantra is at the forefront of their interplay and execution from the opening “Foxy” onward with blues and funk as recurring undercurrents. Popular song serves as another wellspring for the band songbook starting with Michel Legrand’s Latinized easy listening favorite “What are You Doing the Rest of Your Life.” Mann handles the leads with aplomb and Crawford lays down populous support with his instrument zeroed in on organ and Rhodes settings. Bandy’s often the glue, his rhythms tying each piece together without constraining his colleagues in their own contributions.

Mann offers mild surprises in a three-song shout out The Stylistics starting with “Betcha By Golly Wow”, outfitted with a pleasant if slightly schmaltzy lounge groove built on a rubbery electronic bass line from Crawford. “People Make the World Go Round” fares better with a harder rhythm and a stronger melody as the trio convincingly sets the studio calendar back to 1972. The piece also allows Bandy to breakdown his bonafides as a funky drummer through a string of killer break beats. Obligatory Coltrane comes out in Mann’s thin contrafact “Minor Steps” and there’s even room for a vocal by the guitarist on the near-parody talking blues number “Woman Please”. A pleasant enough session, this set is far from essential, but that’s also an appraisal these convivial players would no doubt agree on.

Sarah Manning - Dandelion Clock (Positone)

2010-05-24T14:54:00.000-07:00

A few seconds with Sarah Manning’s cutting and passionate alto and it comes as no surprise that one of her key early mentors was none other than Jackie McLean. Manning also studied with Yusef Lateef on one leg of a cross-coastal odyssey that eventually ended in New York City. This quartet set, her debut for Positone, displays the logical benefits of those peregrinations. Manning officiates a program comprised of originals save for Jimmy Rowles’ “The Peacocks” and Michel Legrand’s “The Windmills of Your Mind.” Her fluent parlance is vibrant post-bop and her wailing, sailing and soaring horn has plenty to say over the course of the program’s nine variable but consistently swinging pieces.

Pianist Art Hirahara fronts a rhythm section well suited to Manning’s specifications. Bassist Linda Oh and drummer Kyle Struve are likewise in tune and all three players join the leader in leaving little room for lulls or rests. The aforementioned Rowles tune starts the set in fine fashion with Manning wringing the melody dry of its lyrical moisture. Manning’s “Marble” mixes dissonance and thematic integrity in a manner that harkens back to McLean’s classic Blue Note sides. “Habersham Street” trucks in delicate ballad freight with Struve switching to brushes and Hirahara comping gilded patterns in time with Oh’s careful fills. Manning accords her colleagues equal opportunity and they make the most of it with a tempo count that resists rigidity and predictability, but her cadenza of gorgeous unaccompanied choruses makes it clear who holds the tiller.

The rest of the set sustains a similarly high quality caliber. “I Tell Time By the Dandelion Clock” weaves a plangent vibrato lead with a dusky processional that flirts with free-time. The shifting signatures at the tune’s core necessitate a bit of balancing act, but one in which the players never mire. Struve and Hirahara are particularly adept in this regard, their muscular synchronicity giving Oh a serious run for the figurative money, a favor she returns with the sprinting bass lines that undergird the harmonic obstacle course that is “Crossing, Waiting”. At less than half the span, “Through the Keyhole” is no less ambitious thanks to a turn toward spirited collective improvisation. The idyllic cover shot of Manning reclining in a bed of fallen leaves may imply a sedentary session, but a subjective correlation doesn’t come close to passing muster once the music hits.

Eric Felten - Seize the Night (Melotone)

2010-05-21T14:53:00.000-07:00

A doubler on voice and trombone, Eric Felten shares a page in common with the Jack Teagarden playbook. His methods on both bespeak a more recent vintage, but there’s still something classic in tone about this laidback set. Felten’s lubricious phrasing brings to mind J.J. Johnson and is largely free of grit or growl. No tailgate or gutbucket exclamations here, just a smoothly urbane vocabulary whether he’s phrasing a lead line or a lyric. A Harvard alum, he built his chops gigging with classmen like Joshua Redman and Don Braden, the latter of who handles tenor duties on the set.

Another indictation of Felten’s credentials comes through in the crack rhythm team assembled for the date. Pianist Kenny Barron and drummer Jimmy Cobb are certifiable legends, each with prospective dance cards that are perpetually full. That both agreed to take part in Felten’s project speaks immediately to the clout at his disposal. Bassist Dennis Irwin isn’t far behind on that score and the date carries a bittersweet flavor given it was to be one of his last recording sessions before succumbing to spinal cancer.

Felten recognizes his good fortune in the assembled band and makes the most of the talent. Split almost evenly between standards and originals the program ambles along at a relaxed clip. His pieces jibe knowingly with the smoky after hours renderings from the swing to bop songbook. His lyrics balance vintage and modern topicality, musing on the virtues of amorous spontaneity on the title piece and the advantages of technology in finding a suitable romantic companion on the playful “I’ve Got News For You”. It’s not all Pall Malls and highballs. “Damas de Blanco” balances Cuban and tango elements in a paean to the spouses of political prisoners.

Sinatra is another obvious influence on the vocal front, but Felten heads off any naysayers at the pass by cannily noting: “For a guy singer, almost any song worth singing, Sinatra has already done better than anybody’s going to do it.” The simple and not so simple solution, write your own. It’s a tactic he turns to good practice on this enjoyable date.

Various - Lagos Disco Inferno (Academy)

2010-05-20T03:52:00.000-07:00

After a steadily snowballing start, African music reissues are now a full-fledged niche industry. Labels like Syllart, Soundway, Strut and African Analog continue to narrow the gap between collectors and casual consumers with a slew of edifying collections. With this disc crate-digging guru Frank Gossner aka DJ Voodoo Funk goes in the opposite direction. The first several releases on Academy were straight reissues of LPs. This compilation culls from a dozen platters to create a listening experience similar to one of Gossner’s club sets.

The title isn’t a case of false advertising. Beats and bass lines are prominent on all of the cuts. African elements often take a backseat to Western funk and dance forms. Lyrics are simple and sung in English, sometimes through heavily-inflected accents. Fortunately, the disco on hand isn’t of the homogenized, strings-heavy Saturday Night Fever. Kitsch and camp are minimal, though many of the tunes do sound strongly derivative of their American and European influences. Rare as these sides might be the music feels much more a product of creative appropriation than indigenous innovation.

Doris Ebong’s “Boogie Trip” bounces along on a Kool and the Gang copped stew of pogo bass, swirling keyboards chicken scratch guitar. Kool’s reach also encompasses a number of other selections including Asiko Rock Group’s “Everybody Get Down”, which soon sounds suspiciously like broken record in its repeating chorus loop. At 8+ minutes in length it’s about five minutes too long. Pogo Ltd. steals the central horn riff from Isaac Hayes’ “Truck Turner” and folds it into a vamp-happy groove on “Don’t Put Me Down”. “Boogie Train” and “Dancing Machine” translate their party-friendly titles into musical currency with more febrile bass, cowbell and sweaty horn breaks, the latter upping the ante with some funky fluttering flute play. BLO’s “Root” accomplishes a similar feat through similar means.

MFB’s “Boredom Pain” is one of the few to track a lyrical course outside a quotidian party sentiment atop a sliding Caribbean-influenced groove and it’s the better for it. Christy Essien’s “Take Life Easy” brings the vibe back to cohesive topicality in a swirl of amplified strings, keys and syncopated drums. Nana Love’s “Hang On” stretches to nearly a quarter hour and once again the somewhat disheartening realization is that African disco artists weren’t all that independent of their Western brethren attends the sounds. Rescued from moldering storage rooms and impromptu landfills through the diligent efforts of Gossner and others, these sounds still sparkle more like baubles than bullion.

Carlos Barretto Lokomotiv - Labirintos (Clean Feed)

2010-05-19T07:11:00.000-07:00

Something of a musical chameleon, bassist Carlos Barretto is also a Clean Feed staple. This set marks his ninth outing for the Portuguese label as either leader or sideman. Guitarist Mario Delgado and drummer Jose Salgueiro are regular colleagues who rejoin him here. The music is typically eclectic, pulling in sturdy threads of rock, funk, folk and admixtures of three with jazz improvisation. The principal snag to my enjoyment of the set lies in the contributions of Delgado, a plectrist of considerable prowess who repeatedly flirts with prog-grounded indulgence. His heavily amplified solos on several pieces land somewhere in an uneasy No Man’s Land between Hendrix and Steve Vai and end up deflating under the weight. Flaccid funk and overblown arpeggios are too frequently a part of his attack.

More measured numbers like the opening “Salada 2” work better in pulling together the trio’s cross-idiomatic elements. Dark arco lines alternate and overlap with plump pizzicato ones. Delgado shifts from clean shimmering picking to taffy-stretching tone swathes and Salgueiro keeps a fluid beat. “Nao Sei Porque” works in like fashion, balancing segments of light and dark and playing cannily with tempo and placement. The title piece is a prime example of the aforementioned penchant for excess. Delgado gesticulates over a turgid lurching beat that’s curiously reminiscent of Jimmy Castor’s “Bertha Butt Boogie” and the yield is arena-ready fusion of dubious quality despite the solid musicianship brought to bear.

“Asterion 5” rights the vessel with a circular bowed statement by the leader that bleeds vibrant overtones and “Tutti Per Capita” demonstrates his skill with a corpulent sprinting line as Delgado picks a parallel commentary and Salgueiro sustains a bustling beat. The metric obstacle course of “Makambira” starts strong, but detours into another longwinded seminar for Delgado’s effects pedals. The final cut “Terra de Ninguem” trades studio for concert stage without sacrificing sound clarity and gives the guitarist a final opportunity at florid rock-tinged expressiveness. Barretto and his partners lose the forest for the trees a bit on this disc, but listeners with a yen for classic work by fusion stalwarts like Pat Metheny and Larry Coryell will probably find the foliage to their liking.

ROW: Bud Isaacs - Bud's Bounce (Bear Family)

2010-05-19T04:24:00.001-07:00

Pedal steel guitar pretty much starts with Bud Isaacs. A busy session man in Nashville studios and on the Opry Stage/tours under the employ of icon Red Foley and others, Isaacs tinkered with his instrument and came up with gold in the guise of “Slowly”. The single charted as a certified hit for Foley and also signaled a sea change for lap steel players on a national scale. This invaluable Bear Family collection gathers all of Isaacs’ instrumentals for RCA cut over the span of seven sessions stretching from early 1954 through the fall of 1956. None other than Nashville studio ace Chet Atkins serves as chief foil on electric guitar for five of them and the pairing is an inspired one from the get-go. Isaacs isn’t as overtly eccentric as Speedy West or even Buddy Emmons, but his pedal patterns have parity and precision that instantly places him in a league apart. Liquid timbral shifts and nimble melodic interpolations are regular facets of his clean-shaven attack as on “Hot Mockin’ Bird” where chirruping arpeggios prance with Atkins’ smooth-picking tandem. Most of the dates keep backing to a germane minimum of bass, drums and rhythm guitar so the spotlight shines squarely on Issacs’ ingenuity and agility. Even syrupy ballads like “Indian Love Call” and “Waltz of the Ozarks” are loaded with prime fretwork.

Dawn of Midi - First (Accretions)

2010-05-18T04:43:00.000-07:00

Acoustic instruments operating under a band name implying electronic elements. Unconventionality existing within a context implying convention. These are just two of the intriguing contradictions that accompany this multi-national piano trio. The packaging of their aptly-titled debut is short on descriptive information- just track titles, personnel, website, and a few other bits and pieces of detail. Pakistani percussionist Qasim Naqvi, Indian bassist Aakaash Israni and Moroccan pianist Amino Belyamani are apparent equals in the endeavor and the music reflects the same dynamic, ebbing and expanding in a manner that resists regular melody, harmony and rhythm, but retains an organic structure and internal logic of composition.

Israni carries the copyright on the titles, but all of them sound largely if not totally improvised. He often employs his bass like a second percussion device in tandem with Naqvi who usually tables metered beats in favor of textured scrapes and staggered stick patter. The drummer’s disassembled patterns alternately lurch and slither, occasionally accompanied by the peripheral sounds of assorted “toys” for color. Belyamani weaves snatches of impressionistic melody, relying on repetition and pedal manipulation to create an odd amalgam of transparency and density. Those contradictions are far more than a hat trick however and for a music so frequently built on juxtapositions it’s a remarkably cohesive design.

All three players make liberal preparations to their instruments, dampening keys, strings and drum heads to constrict and warp the timbral properties of their instruments. There’s an abrasiveness to the results, but oddly enough the three also retain an overarching lyricism in their interplay much of the time. It’s as if the Bill Evans Trio was transmogrified into that of Veryan Weston’s or by some temporal trick Erik Satie joined forces with Kent Carter and Roger Turner. All of this name-dropping aside, the trio sounds wholly like itself. Austere, but still inviting, these three players have hatched upon yet another fresh trajectory of expression for that old gray workhorse of improvisation, the piano trio.

John Skillman's Barb City Stompers - Dekalb Blues (Delmark)

2010-05-17T04:30:00.000-07:00

Based in DeKalb, Illinois, the birth-place of barbed wire, John Skillman’s jazz quintet operates just a figurative hop, skip and jump from Delmark HQ That geographical proximity explains, in part, producer Bob Koester’s close affinity for their efforts. The other, even more immediate, explanation rests in the ensemble’s populist blend of Hot, Trad and Swing jazz styles. Clarinetist John Skillman, the leader of the crew, takes his instrumental cues directly from Crescent City doyens like Edmund Hall and Johnny Dodds. There’s Benny and Artie blended in there too, but band’s roughshod brand of playing is far closer to curbside than concert hall.

Pianoless by design, the group does just fine with the rhythm section of guitarist Larry Rutan, bassist Robert Hintzche and drummer Aaron Puckett. Trombonist Roy Rubinstein registers the last in the roll call and his prevalent plunger punctuations draw a bead right back to tailgate aces like Kid Ory and Jim Robinson. All but Puckett have day jobs outside of music ranging from Physicist to Quality Assurance Manager and the drummer holds a post as high school percussion teacher. The upshot is that virtuosity isn’t to be found on this band’s particular stand captured here at the local House Café. Such an absence is hardly a concern though since this sort of music isn’t about flawless prowess anyway. As Wingy Manone was wont to say, where’s the joy in that?

Skillman pilots the ship in a manner worthy of his surname, blowing equally hot on the ensembles and solo breaks and scripting in a fair share of cursive trills as accents. Rubinstein wrings an abrasive corrugated sound out of his bell with derby mute that contrasts charcoal to the leader’s No. 2 graphite. Rutan and his colleagues chug away around and beneath the horns keeping the beat good and syncopated. The playbook is predictably weighted toward ringers starting with plangent percolating take on “Milenberg Joys” that wends and winds a bit too long. The band seems cognizant of their long-windedness and subsequent pieces clock to more modest spans. “Hindustan”, “Sweet Sue” and “Satck O Lee” are standouts, each receiving the spicy Barb-ecue treatment (sorry, a pun too pungent to resist) and wearing any charred edges proudly.

To the unaccustomed ear, trad jazz can sound monolithic in scope. Skillman and his sidemen show that such reductions are not only wrong-headed but easily refuted. The best part is that they make any necessary schooling on the subject an exercise in fun rather than a chore.

John Zorn George Lewis Bill Frisell - More News for Lulu (hatOLOGY)

2010-05-14T04:26:00.000-07:00

Altoist John Zorn still takes it on the chin from certain critics when it comes to his cavalier claims of minimal practice on his instrument. Fortunately, he’s got something an iron jaw and comparable chops to contradict any charges of dilettantism or rampant drollery. This set and its earlier companion still serve as figurative bandoliers of ammo when a defensive position is required. Zorn plays more than convincing hardbop saxophone over the course of fifteen tracks pulled from a pair of concerts in Paris and Basel in 1989. True it’s often the sort of maniacal blowing punctuated by his bombastic and comical squeals and sputters, but his vocabulary is also Gatlin gun quick and mostly structurally faithful to the songbook under scrutiny. Misha Mengelberg’s “Gare Guillemins” and John Patton’s “Minor Swing” point to a more recent group muses, but their tightly wound bop-inflected arrangements fit right in with the rest of the program.

Zorn’s partners, trombonist George Lewis and guitarist Bill Frisell are on the same page completely and digesting this insouciant music it’s quickly apparent how and why the trio made such strides in such short a span. Tunes by hardbop stalwarts Kenny Dorham, Hank Mobley, Freddie Redd and Sonny Clark are the springboards for improv-riddled interpretations that at once celebrate and reconstitute the earlier jazz canon in fast and loose fashion. Lewis plays without electronics and it’s a pleasure to hear his range of timbral effects independent of such enhancements. Frisell swings in the opposite direction, bringing an array of electronic equipment to bear on his strings and expanding the group’s sound palette significantly as a result.

Zorn and Lewis engage repeatedly in active free association starting with the lead-in to Clark’s “Blue Minor”, but the corkscrew root themes of the pieces are just as important to their interplay as the variously humorous deconstructions. Counterpoint factors frequently between the three and only rarely does the individual derring-do end up out-of-step. Engineer Peter Pfister’s new 2010 master of the material is several shades cleaner than the set’s previous long-out-of-print incarnation. Infrequent junctures arise where Zorn is off mic, but these are hardly a detriment to the performances. Presaging the work of current ensembles like Mostly Other People Do the Killing and Cargo Cult, this trio wasn’t about immolating their idols and sowing new seeds in scorched earth. Rather, the thrust rested on investigating compatibility of the work canonical composers left behind with newer approaches to improvisation. The sterling results here and on the trio’s companion collection preserve a potent admixture of their experiments while simultaneously priming expectations for a reunion.

Ellen Rowe Quartet - Wishing Well (PKO)

2010-05-13T05:50:00.000-07:00

Despite a surfeit of originals and uniformly strong musicianship, pianist Ellen Rowe’s latest offering exudes a disconcerting air of familiarity. Postbop is a signifier applied to a wide swathe of new-millennial jazz. Rowe’s music fits easily within the broad framework, but to my ears it’s also emblematic of the term. The opening track, featuring guest flugelhornist Ingrid Jensen who also sits in on “Longing” later in the set, unfolds in lush dream-like fashion. Jensen sounds akin to Kenny Wheeler in her soft cerulean phrasing and the piece itself wouldn’t be incongruous on a mid-90s ECM project by the Canadian brass man. “Lewisburg Bluesy-oo” swaps styles to an earlier and jauntier hardbop sound, the title an inspiration a contrafact of small-town Pennsylvania and Ducal roots. Rowe’s more animated playing in this context recalls the lithe syncopations of Horace Silver and it’s a sun-dappled blues through and through with a competent set of drum exchanges at the close.

Rowe’s other partners are fine players as well. Saxophonist Andrew Bishop doubles on tenor and soprano and has a grasp of his instruments’ history and possibilities on par with peer Eric Alexander. Bassist Kurt Krahnke and drummer Pete Siers fulfill their roles swimmingly at Rowe’s flanks. Saddled with a brow-arching pun, “Sanity Clause” traffics in light cocktail funk, Bishop gliding the changes against a steady backbeat by Siers that almost slips into the overly static as the piece starts to wear through its welcome. “Seven Steps to My Yard” trades in campy punnery as well, combining Miles’ Spanish tinge with bop components from Bird’s “Yardbird Suite” for a case of not-quite-complementary bedfellows. Still, the piece works better than its title and proves a challenge for Siers in the area of supple rhythmic juxtaposition

Tenorist Andy Haefner is the other guest on the session, lending his horn to the dedicatory piece “For Donald” scripted in honor of his and Bishop’s teacher, recently deceased. The two tenors trade and twine on the balladic theme with Rowe threading gilded comping between, but there’s a distracting production sheen to the piece, the aural equivalent of a Vaseline-smeared lens. Sier and Krahnke are strictly background, but once again they ply their parts with precision. “Alone Together”, the lone standard, caps the set with a supple display of counterpoint between the leader and Bishop. Rowe’s music may form-fit to prevailing tastes and customs, but it’s still for the most part a finely crafted and far from anonymous exemplar of the so-called “mainstream” idiom.

Sonny Simmons - Staying on the Watch (ESP)

2010-05-12T16:43:00.000-07:00

Themes of urgency and vigilance embedded in the title to Sonny Simmons’ ESP debut would dictate his music up through the present day. Simmons isn’t one to suffer fools lightly and that intolerance for incompetence and hypocrisy cost him dearly at various times in his career. This auspicious set harkens to a stage prior to most of those setbacks when he was fronting a working group of like-minded peers and garnering praise as a member of the music’s New Thing movement. With his wife Barbara Donald on trumpet, Simmons engineered a compact frontline steeped in power and immediacy. His own post-Dolphy alto also embraces the precedence of Ornette, but the pedigree of super-heated multiphonics that often bubbles up in his delivery sounds wholly his own.

Pianist John Hicks joins the quartet on the A and B-side lead tracks. “Metamorphosis” almost sounds like an outtake from a Jackie McLean mid-60s Blue Note platter, Simmons’ blasting in shrill tandem with Donald before ebulliently extemporizing against a churning piano-led rhythm. Simmons and bassist Teddy Smith are the sole operators on “A Distant Voice”, a piece that finds Smith closely shadowing the leader’s alto with textured arco for much the duration. Side B opener “City of David” builds from another surging unison salvo before taking a surprising decelerating turn into pizzicato Smith solo. Simmons shows deference to Donald as well before holding forth with his own blowtorch statement. Seething improvisations by Pattillo and Hicks consume much of the remainder of the piece and as vintage Fire Music goes this track is pretty much textbook brilliance.

“Interplanetary Travelers” works off the pianoless template that is standard protocol for freebop and Hicks is hardly missed in the ensuing tumult. Simmons and Donald blast away in close proximity, leaving the majority of the piece’s second half to Smith and Pattillo, solo and in a bridging dialogue that combines burning arco with cascading snare and tom tom tattoos. An abrasive collective culmination suggests that cold showers were in order for the band after such a strenuous, sweat-inducing relay. The appearance of this single disc, no frills reissue is something of a surprise given that an earlier “Complete” set containing both of Simmons albums for the label along with interview segments still appears available. Budget-priced and recast in a sharply-designed slim-line digipack, it’s still well worth owning if one is coming to the material fresh.

ROW: Zoot Sims - Warm Tenor (Pablo)

2010-05-12T04:32:00.001-07:00

Age is an unavoidable agent of decline for many musicians. Not so with saxophonist Zoot Sims. Advancing years only added to his artistry, making what was already great even greater. His Pablo period arguably garners less notice than the earlier stages of his career as a member of Woody Herman’s Herd and pianoless Gerry Mulligan ensembles large and larger. But by my reckoning it’s every bit as good, if not better. This set and its predecessor, If I’m Lucky, are the picks of that stellar run, not to mention lasting paragons of tenor-plus-rhythm jazz of any era. And what a rhythm section it is with the Encyclopedia Brown of standards Jimmy Rowles occupying the piano stool. Bassist George Mraz forgoes the corpulent amplification that was standard issue on Pablo sets of Seventies, opting instead for an acoustic elasticity. Drummer Mousey Alexander personifies his sobriquet, inserting scuttling sprightly rhythms, mainly on brushes, and clinking away on the downbeat via a slightly squeaky hi-hat. Zoot is all velvet voicing and limber phrasings on an inspired clutch of Rowles-tailored tunes starting with a cigarettes-and-cognac rendering of “Dream Dancing”. Sims and Mraz take “Blues for Louise” sans the other sidemen, the bassist’s strutting line setting up a pliant pillar for the tenorist’s serpentine improvisations to wind around. Rowles and Alexander get congenial revenge on “Comes Love” virtually stealing the show through their shared rhythmic antics. It’s a clichéd encomium without question, but this session really, truly does belong in every jazz collection.

Peter Brötzmann & Paal Nilssen-Love - Woodcuts (Smalltown Superjazz)

2010-05-11T07:12:00.000-07:00

Among the many drummers to join Brötzmann on the bandstand, Paal Nilssen-Love remains one of the most compatible and galvanizing. His mix of muscle and agility continually serves the German well whether it be in a large assemblage like the Chicago Tentet or mano y mano encounter like this set, the second such set documented by the Scandinavian Smalltown Superjazz imprint. The earlier date, parceled as part of the Maijazz Festival in Norway in the spring of 2006, centered on mammoth slab of improv bracketed by several shorter pieces. This concert, recorded at another Norwegian club 15 months later, breaks the menu up a bit into six discrete segments.

Brötzmann follows his customary tack of hoisting one reed per piece. The opening title number uncaps alto, ratcheting into a renal scream early with Nilssen-Love whipping up a frothing sea of rhythms behind him. The energy is high, but the dynamics feel a shade static even with the drummer hinting at a stunted groove late in the piece and Brötz flirting with one his tenebrous themes before an unexpectedly equivocal close. “Glasglow Kiss” starts melodic but swiftly finds him forcefully wringing his clarinet’s neck and riding another roiling, froth-flecked accompaniment. Bass clarinet holds the crowd in thrall on “Strong and Thin” backed by pounding brushes, an admittedly oxymoronic phrase that actually rings valid when the context is Nilssen-Love at the kit.

At nearly 20-minutes, “Rode Hard and Put Up Wet” becomes an extended exercise in Brötzmann’s tongue-in-bearded-cheek crassness, his shaggy tenor honks and vein-bulging vibrato bypassing past parody and arriving at pure catharsis. Nilssen-Love annexes a chunk for a torrential solo that allows him to embrace his inner-Blakey with a barrage of faultless press rolls. The piece carries on into a passage aping a swaying Aylerian march, decelerating loud to soft as if the duo was the target of slow acting sedative darts shot by blowgun from the venue rafters.

With a return to alto on “Ye Gods and Little Fishes” all traces of tranquilizer disappear and it’s easily the best of this litter. Brötzmann engages his partner’s thumping brush patterns in a start-stop succession of rhythmic bursts before a switch to hummingbird sticks. Soon after he tosses a scrap of vintage Ornette into the air and skeet shoots it into shattering shards before coarsening into a grainy vibrato sans Nilssen-Love. The terse “Knucklin’ sounds like a case for uncredited tarogato, trip hammer brushes nipping at Brötzmann’s heels before a close that’s whisper rather than roar. If ducats are few and a choice forced, the duo’s earlier Sweetsweat is the better bet, but this one still has its share of grin-inducing moments.

Chris Byars - Bop-ography (Steeplechase)

2010-05-10T04:48:00.000-07:00

On the occasion of his second Steeplechase outing Chris Byars cannily continues in a musical rich vein tapped on his first. Gigi Gryce counts as a current healthy obsession of the saxophonist and three of the composers’ pieces grace the program. Another of Byars abiding interests concerns the work and legacy of vibraphonist Teddy Charles, a relatively recent recruit to his circle of collaborators thanks to a long-overdue return to active playing. Charles guests on just three pieces, but his presence is invaluable to the proceedings, particularly the closing title centerpiece. Byars’ father James, on oboe and English horn, is the other guest, overlapping with Charles on just one track.

Byars acumen as an arranger is apparent from the open reading of George Wallington’s “Festival”. After a brisk unison theme and solos by the horns Schatz switches to brushes for Roland’s sawdust-generating bowed solo as Byars and Mosca sketch skeletal distillations of the theme in descending counterpoint. Back on sticks for a closing break, Schatz kicks up the momentum and carries the piece out. Gryce’s “Straight Ahead” and “Lost Love” follow in short succession with the hard-swinging “Minority” arriving later. Roland digs into the blues of the first with audible relish, his tone plush and spongy against the sliding shimmy beat from Schatz. Charles works the cracks after a horn-handled head arrangement, inserting pedal swells and floating clusters and adding his own spectral moan on top. Mosca’s the star on the second, his smoothly enunciated solo riding a loping rhythm of brushes and bobbing bass.

Two more pieces draw from Byars’ series inspired by a Himalayan Art exhibition and the focus of an earlier album for Smalls. After an expansive vertical opening “Himalayan Sunrise” flips perspectives into lush horizontal landscape for intimate overlapping horn lines, Byars’ warm tenor annexing the most space. “Indra” finds Schatz trading kit for kanjira, a resonating tabla-like hand drum. Roland’s arco play doesn’t quite carry enough heft in the context and he’s somewhat eclipsed by the horns until he trades horse hair for calluses. “Nature Boy” time travels back to Charles’ classic Fifties rendering of the tune in the company of Miles and Mingus and is practically overflowing with cerulean atmospherics thanks to his luminous malletry and free-floating coda.

The title track balances bold ambition and grand execution within the accommodating suite-like span of a third of an hour. Built on a suspect Charlie Parker axiom that all jazz is built on the changes to “I Got Rhythm”, “Cherokee” and the blues, the piece nonetheless forms a durable Gestalt on the strengths of participant contributions. Charles nods at the late great Walt Dickerson in his texture-rich and spatially-conscious contributions and with the ensemble at full sextet strength it’s easily the finest outing of the set. By plumbing rather than plundering the past Byars ensures that it will quite some time before he or his colleagues run dry of creative tributaries to tap.

[Steeplechase titles are available direct through Stateside AT prodigy DOT net]

Odean Pope - Odean's List (In + Out)

2010-05-07T07:13:00.000-07:00

Simple economics and logistics are long-standing enemies to Odean Pope’s influential Saxophone Choir. The viability of his smaller group projects is less susceptible to such concerns and that difference plays out in his discography of the past decade. Only a single album, Locked and Loaded, chalks in the Choir column of his catalog compared to the dozen or so representative of more modest-sized formats. The tenorist splits something of the difference on this latest disc, convening an octet of colleagues to interpret a program of choice charts largely culled from earlier stages of his career. Even with familiar tunes as fodder the possibilities prove their potency in Pope’s full contact approach. Bruises and strained muscles are a necessary risk as is the occasional stumble.

Pope plays with the possible ensemble permutations on the pieces, using the horns en mass for fanfare flourishes and sweeping theme statements. “Phrygian Love Theme” suggests immediate kinship with minor-vamp classics like Mingus’ “Ysabel’s Table Dance” and Joe Henderson’s “El Barrio”. Comparably bold in its canonical roots, the dark velvet theme to Eddie Green’s “Little Miss Lady” has strong ties to “Sketches of Spain” and is the only non-Pope piece of the set. Tenorist Walter Blanding largely contents himself with section work, a single solo early in the set list showing him a worthy recruit. James Carter, fielding baritone and tenor, takes double that number, his brand of burly extroversion into Pope’s robust arrangements. Carter may have a questionable penchant for bombast, but in this context his hard-charging horn play works like a charm. A brass section of two, trumpeters David Weiss and Terell Stafford work in close concert with the reeds, Stafford breaking with the pack more often for punchy declamatory statements on three pieces.

The rhythm section isn’t just window dressing. Pianist George Burton factors prominently into the arrangement of “To the Roach”. The lengthy “Say It Over And Over Again” is basically a balladic duet between Pope and stout-fingered bassist Lee Smith while outside of sandwiching collective theme statements, the title piece pares principals down to just the leader and Watts in a volcanic dialogue. “Blues For Eight” finds Pope parceling out his accompaniment into bass and drums and generating a huge head of intervallic steam. Peer Archie Shepp runs down some edifying Pope history in the liners (A Miles-bound Coltrane recommended the Philly tenor as his replacement in Jimmy Smith’s band) and conveys his admiration by naming him as one of his favorite tenors. Pope occupies a similar place in my subjective hierarchy. The power and panache of these performances as a whole point prominently as to why.

Nate Wooley & Paul Lytton - Creak Above 33 (Psi)

2010-05-06T07:15:00.000-07:00

A truism easily lost in the primacy of pedagogy, but some of the best musical moments occur when the getting from Point A to Point B remains a mystery. Trumpeter Nate Wooley comes to this conclusion in his brief, but fascinating notes to this release. His conclaves with British percussionist/electronicist Paul Lytton initiated a fundamental reassessment in his philosophy toward music-making. Lytton presaged this sea change through the formulation of what Wooley refers to as a “mind map”, a hand-drawn schematic attempting to parse all the possible sources, connections and permutations of their common backgrounds in jazz and improv. Reproduced on the cardboard cd sleeve, it looks akin to a Braxtonian flow chart gone wild, roping in everything from Maynard Ferguson to the cowbell on Lytton's kit. Wooley’s own attempt at a map yielded a significantly simplified diagram though the relationships described remain the same.

The upshot of all this pre- and post-cogitating was the simultaneously sobering and liberating realization on Wooley’s part that he hadn’t much of a clue what he was doing. As Derek Bailey might say, therein lays the key to successful improvisation- a freedom from premeditation and stylistic circumscription. The duo’s interplay certainly sounds spontaneous and even random in spots. Four pieces, each amounting to around or under a quarter of an hour unfold in the pristine confines of stereo sound. Wooley employs an amplifier on his bell and Lytton engages an array of live electronics and acoustic complements to his customary drum array.

“The Mbala Effect” encompasses a microcosm of the sound-making possibilities at their disposal. Brittle metallics, industrial construction sounds, brassy blats and sputters, incremental patterns of puckered breath expulsion, scraping cymbals, ping-ponging blips and blaps that almost sound like a busted calliope, gurgling Doppler streaks and several passes at protean melody. Cataloging these moments and components doesn’t even come close to capturing their aural effect. “The Gentle Sturgeon” feels more texture-based, the electronic elements outweighing the acoustic ones by a much wider margin. “Filtering the Fogweed” and “The Lonely Fisherman” swing the balance in the other direction, Wooley loosing eructative whooshs and smears and again picking through snatches and scraps of near-melody while Lytton crafts a canvas of pointillist clatter and patter beside him. Calling it all a challenging listening experience is both stating the obvious and potentially obfuscating the larger attribute of creative emancipation at its heart.

William Hooker Trio - Yearn for Certainty (Engine)

2010-05-05T12:50:00.000-07:00

An admirable eclecticism and open-mindedness underscores William Hooker’s career as a drummer. He’s reliably followed his muse even when the ideas advancing his numerous projects have suffered under suspect application. This concert at Roulette is an apposite example of that phenomenon. On cardboard tray card it brims with potential intrigue. String bender David Soldier and reedist Sabir Mateen are two stalwart Downtown heroes with infrequent intersections between them. Hooker’s decision to enlist them both is inspired. Holding the occasion in front of a receptive audience, free from studio constraints and pressures also seems like a good move. Sadly, a number of attributes of the performance conspire to undermine these positives.

“Ingratiated Beam – Leroy” starts the set off on a slightly wobbly note by wedding amplified classically-tinged mandolin to a freely-associative recitation by Hooker covering a wide range of topics from personal empowerment to organic food. Hooker speaks in an inviting cadence, but a lot of his imagery emphasizes the esoteric and introspective at the expense of the intelligible. “Century’s Soles” switches gears rather drastically, Hooker liming a layered metronomic assemblage of beats at his kit as Soldier adds a jangly hill country drone on amplified banjo and Mateen laces vibrato-dipped tenor intervals in-between. The result brings to mind the outcome of a possible Otis Taylor and Albert Ayler amalgam.

Segue into “Commonplace Travel” transpires without a glitch and Hooker expands his rhythms to encompass more of his kit as Mateen grows increasingly heated. The sound is oddly, though no doubt intentionally, washed out here and Soldier’s incendiary scribbles become a textured mass of over-amplification. “Magistrait” offers a crosshatch of textured drones as well, tenor joining violin and malleted skins in a grainy admixture that rises and recedes in undulating waves. Soldier and Mateen arrive at some gorgeous timbral congruencies and the patter of Hooker’s minimalist brushes and cymbal washes equates to another plus, but the piecemeal structure of the track ultimately compromises its dozen-plus minute length with cavernous audio another obstacle.

The set culminates with the title piece’s densely packed convergence of constituents. Soldier’s wah-wah inflected strings ride out a torrential downpour from Hooker’s corner of the stage, shouts audible amidst the din. Mateen sits silent for the first few minutes before hoisting tenor again and sounding as if he’s voicing overblown Aylerian distress signals the echo chamber bottom of a cistern. Hooker’s subsequent statement is high on tension, but lacking in resolution. Mateen’s bird song flute enters on an emotive high note before more of the leader’s loose verbiage and a predictably conflagrational finish. All three of these players are accomplished improvisers. In this particular context Hooker’s indulgences end up as hindrances and the subsequent sum registers as forgettable.

ROW: Gaspard/ Lachney/ J. Bertrand - Early American Cajun Music (Yazoo)

2010-05-05T04:44:00.000-07:00

As with its younger cousin zydeco, Cajun music isn’t normally known for introspection and restraint. Raucous house parties and rural picnics have long been customary settings for raw and unbridled expressions of the idiom. Ballads occupy an important part of the songbook, but passionate, heart-on-sleeve delivery routinely trumps turns toward a softer touch. This Yazoo compilation shines an edifying light on an atypical niche in the music through the rarified works of three early purveyors from Avoyelles Parish, Louisiana. Blind Uncle Gaspard, the most overtly haunting of the three, sings songs with a nasalized croon in his native Acadian French, accompanying himself on acoustic guitar and occasionally interjecting whistling refrains. Tracks like “Sur Le Borde De L’Eau" (“On the Water’s Edge”) and “Assi Dans La Fenetre De Ma Chambre" (Sitting In the Window of My Room”) exude gravitas comparable to the best of Pre-War Delta blues and are just as memorable. Gaspard was a colleague of fiddler Delma Lachney and he plays rhythm guitar on the Lachney selections. Accomplished accordionist John Bertrand, the last in the highlighted trio, traveled in similar circles though his own partnership with guitarist Milton Pitre was cut tragically short by the latter man’s senseless murder. Sadness and melancholy are recurring moods with songs like “Miserable” and “La Delaisser” (“The Abandonment”) relating tales of woe. Many of the tunes are sparer in cast than most contemporaneous Cajun fare, unfolding at loping tempos that underscore their folk origins. Stacked against the work of certifiable legends like Joe Falcon and Leo Soileau the music makes for a satisfyingly contrastive listening experience.

Manuel Mengis Gruppe 6 - Dulcet Crush (hatOLOGY)

2010-05-04T05:45:00.000-07:00

Swiss mountain guide by day, trumpeter by calling, Manuel Mengis is a model of the new millennial musician. His highly personal jazz is a polyglot of influences, mixing in rock, funk, pop and even the occasional bit of pap. Gruppe 6, his working band, represents a similarly deep wellspring of musical resources. Saxophonists Reto Suhner and Roland von Flüe can play cocktail balladry with the same facility as Aylerian scrawls. Lionel Friedli’s percussion philosophy fractures into a prismatic array of beat possibilities. Bassist Marcel Stalder forwards ideas an electric instrument, the better to match wits and licks with energetic guitarist Flo Stoffner, a plectrist who wears his prog and arena rock proclivities proudly. Mengis gathers these disparate talents together for their third album for Hat and regrettably the results don’t quite scale the heights of the band’s previous two entries.

Mengis anticipates such a potential appraisal in the interview snippets the season the disc’s liners. In his own words, life changes and fresh extra-musical obligations necessitated a simplification of process. Where previous efforts reveled in galvanizing long-form explorations, the pieces here are more modest in size but remain ambitious in scope. Mengis still taps diverse sources -“The Opposite of Spring” contains a cell phone ring tone capture of the bell collars on a herd of goats he encountered during an alpine hike- and patterns but their application does carry quite the same galvanizing punch. The telegraphing of intent is also a bit more obvious this time around. Presaging the action on “End Of A Record Breaker” and “Bling Bling Cowboy” and erupting in even more florid fashion on the fist-pumping “Sustain the Gain”, Stoffner’s frenzied fret play ends up feeling overwrought more often than not. Friedli’s interlocking rhythms also stray dangerously close to constrictively metronomic in places.

These tendencies were true of the band’s past entries as well and the arguable missteps don’t diminish the musicianship at their foundation. Mengis’ compositions are well-served from a technical standpoint. “Luscious Delirium” features an extended cool-toned trumpet solo by the leader and several other pieces involve mellifluous chamber counterpoint by Suhner and Flüe, most notably the closing “We Come in Peace”. The ungainly titled “How Mario Tut Tut Got Super Wow Wow” echoes its video game inspiration through hectic prog funk hurdles that the players clear convincingly as a team. Compared to Gruppe 6’s first two outings this third feels the weakest of the three, but it’s still a worthwhile listen for those on safari for up-to-the-minute post-fusion sounds.

Keefe Jackson Quartet - Seeing You See (Clean Feed)

2010-05-03T04:40:00.000-07:00

Likening the Chicago jazz scene anatomy to an onion might seem like a ridiculous exercise in reduction, but it’s also a way to symbolize the layered, intergenerational relationships that exist between the city’s players. Hailing originally from Arkansas, reedist Keefe Jackson resides on the younger end of that populous spectrum, his industrious track record representative of the prevailing collaborative ethos. Fast Citizens, co-led by colleague Aram Shelton, arguably remains his highest profile ensemble thanks to an ongoing Delmark association. Jackson’s ambitious 12-piece Project Project band also has a home there and he’s made a name for himself fronting various creative ensembles.

Making a logical label switch to Clean Feed, this quartet pulls in another contingent of Windy City cohorts. Trombonist Jeb Bishop isn’t just a foil; he’s a fully-responsive participant as are bassist Jason Roebke and drummer Noritaka Tanaka. All four musicians express original voices through their instruments, Bishop combining his breath and slide in a lubricious tandem that runs a gamut from oleaginous purrs to raucous tailgate slurs and seamlessly threads in polyphonics and diverse bell manipulations. Jackson’s tenor and bass clarinet trade from a similarly spacious tonal spectrum, his phrasing ranging from a breathy drawl to sharp staccato bursts. Tanaka’s percussive presence is active without being busy, avoiding aggressive sticking in favor of agile accents and colorations. Roebke tugs a customary deep rotund tone from his strings, conversing equally with pointillist bow strokes or room-filling pizzicato.

Jackson’s brand of freebop is punchy and porous, built on catchy propulsive themes, but also open to the integration of more texture-based, pulse-resistant expression. “Maker”, “If You Were” and “Put My Finger On It” build sturdily on such structures, the leader taking the second track by his lonesome to start before falling away for a Bishop solo riddled with garrulous, muted growls. The jaunty snap of Roebke’s strings on the third works as a springy launching pad for another blues-saturated statement by the leader. “How-a-Low”, “Since Then” and “Close” turn attention to Jackson’s bass clarinet, the latter two pieces rolling out at a snail’s crawl shot through with brooding space and tonal legerdemain. All four musicians occupy the Riverside Studio acoustics expertly and the disc benefits from a very immersive sound. Though a comparatively recent conscript to his adoptive city’s creative music community, Jackson has swiftly shown a versatility and consistency in common with that of his peers.

4 months, 100 posts...

2010-04-30T08:24:00.000-07:00

Just a quick note to celebrate a pair of modest milestones. Master of a Small House is now four months old and continues to serve as a welcome outlet for me to sound off on recordings. My original goal of publishing one review per weekday quickly proved more daunting than expected so I’ve resorted to “back-filling” when life gets in the way. Cheating? Guilty as charged, but a necessary evil sometimes. With spring here and summer nigh I’m hoping my schedule opens up a bit and the posts align better with real time.

Thank you to everyone who’s stopped by and especially to those who have commented. Please continue to do so. As always, feedback of any stripe is greatly appreciated!

Barrett Deems - Deemus (Delmark)

2010-04-29T04:37:00.000-07:00

Fame is an ephemeral condition, especially for sidemen in jazz. Drummer Barrett Deems spent a decade stretch with Louis Armstrong. He also served as the engine room for bands under the leadership of Joe Venuti, Jack Teagarden and Benny Goodman. Today, he’s barely a footnote outside his Chicago stomping grounds yet Delmark honcho Bob Koester doesn’t hesitate in likening his raw talent to the legendary surnames Dodds, Rich, Clarke and Roach. There’s not much immediate evidence supporting that stature on this debut, a small slice of vinyl released in the late-Seventies that reportedly sold out its pressing within a year, reissued with a pair of trio-only bonus tracks. Instead, it’s the congenial work of colleagues having a ball in the studio with songbook of swing-and-prior standards.

During his lengthy career, Deems also garnered rep as one of the fastest drummers around as well as an irrepressible comedian. Satchmo is reported as observing, “Deemus makes coffee nervous”, and his nickname apparently derives from Demuskrotis, a mythological drum god presumably of his own devising. Backing the septet heard here, those traits aren’t at the fore. Fills and accents flow readily from his kit, but flash-and-burn fireworks fall away in favor of fleet precision and nuance. The band sits a bit outside typical small group swing instrumentation as well with guitarists Bob Roberts and John Defauw joining the conventional rhythm section on in lead and rhythm roles respectively. Former Down Beat editor Don De Michael handles vibraphone and clarinetist Chuck Hedges, another Windy City doyen, serves as the sole horn.

Deems and his crew sweep cobwebs off the tunes with lively arrangements that cater creatively to their instrumentation. His dapper brushwork on “Deed I Do” and “Six Appeal” are just two instances of him selecting just the proper tool for the job. Hedges, Roberts, DeMichael and Behr settle into roles as principal soloists, but Deems doesn’t seem to mind a bit. His is the accompanist’s temperament through and through and the music’s all the better for that enduring deference. “New Orleans” flowers almost like a tone poem, Defauw’s Freddie Green-style strumming locking with bassist Wilson McKindra and the leader in a light, but luscious swing as the others solo gracefully and gregariously atop. Even up-tempo numbers like “Shine” and “After You’ve Gone” carry that gravitas-defying effervescence while also curtailing bombast or hyperventilating grandstanding. Any disappointment at not having the hype surrounding Deems’ storied attributes supported by his chosen demeanor here vanishes summarily under the sustained potency of music.

Jimmy Bennington Trio - Symbols Strings and Magic (CIMP)

2010-04-28T19:36:00.000-07:00

A decade’s worth of demos. Such was the gauntlet drummer Jimmy Bennington describes that led to his CIMP debut. Where others might cling to lingering frustration or ire in the wake of such a rigorous set of paces, Bennington’s sketch of the anecdote is almost matter-of-fact. Part of that might be because his patient persistence paid off, but there’s plenty of evidence that an even-keel attitude is simply indicative of his make-up. The last demo actually became a release on sister label to CIMP, Cadence Jazz and producer Bob Rusch tapped Bennington for this companion disc well before the street date for the first. Bennington’s sidemen on the date, clarinetist Perry Robinson and bassist Ed Schuller evince a comparable confidence in his capabilities. Both men are experts on their instruments and leaders in their own right, but each readily defers to his direction in this unadorned setting.

Bennington presents a set list rich in stylistic flavors. Freer leaning pieces like the opening title track and the Sunny Murray cover “EMOI” coexist with a fairly faithful rendering of the ironically wizened standard “What’s New”. Robinson and Schuller take to both contexts with enthusiasm to spare, responding to Bennington’s subtle kit cues while keeping him on his toes. The referential “Cadence Blues” pivots on both place and named idiom, Robinson at register-leaping best as the other two cobble a brisk-chugging groove. Two other tracks pull from Robinson’s father Earl’s songbook. “Now” contains brooding Klezmer overtones while “Side by Side” comes across as a congenial contrafact of the old spiritual “Down by the Riverside” with the three slipping easily into a New Orleans street band jocularity. Schuller’s resonant arco intro to Bennington’s ballad “Susanna” is almost a free-standing composition in itself.

Bennington’s dynamic reach behind the kit gets full service under the stark CIMP engineering aesthetic. His polyrhythmic approach tips off to the two-year stretch he spent as road manager for Elvin Jones’ Jazz Machine. Loose and responsive, his sturdy strokes vary from whisper soft caresses to bruising thwacks. Schuller’s eccentric tendency to hum and vocalize in tandem with his bass complements rather than compromises the deep elastic snap he coaxes from his strings. Well over half a century emoting on the licorice stick and Robinson’s command of his reed remains undiminished whether the moment calls for heated improvisation or mellow ensemble accent. Minor miscues and collisions are present in the risk-taking the three regularly engage in, but that’s part and parcel with the CIMP program and, when it boils down to it, what creative improvised music is truly all about.

ROW: Şükrü Tunar (Halan)

2010-04-28T04:45:00.002-07:00

The undisputed clarinet king of 20th century Turkish music, Şükrü Tunar came from incongruously modest beginnings. His first instrument as a child was the kaval (tin flute), though he switched to G-clarinet after pestering his parents to buy him one at the age of seven. At fourteen, Tunar’s father and uncles joined the army and he took up arduous work in the stove business, playing music in local ensembles on the side as time permitted. An auspicious audition for Istanbul Radio in 1928 led to a meteoric rise in his notoriety and the rest is history. I first got hip to his music through the 3-volume Masters of Turkish Music released on Rounder. The selections available there overlap somewhat with this collection, but fidelity is a bit cleaner here. Solo taksims (improvisations) alternate with more structured ensemble pieces of varying vintages (mainly the 1930s and 40s). It’s on the former pieces that Tunar’s genius truly abounds. He glides and soars through the Ottoman-grounded scales, voicing intricate microtones as easily as he might his native Turkish. The band pieces aren’t far behind and offer an encapsulation of the popular repertoire of his nightclub gigs with boisterous accompaniment by oud, violin, kanun and dumbek accentuating the rhythmic malleability in his technique. In a tragedy echoing that of Warne Marsh decades later, an aging Tunar was felled by an on-stage heart attack mid-taksim in 1962. These sterling sides live on and continue to serve as source of intense study for students of Turkish music the world over.

Brian Charette - Upside (Steeplechase)

2010-04-27T04:35:00.001-07:00

The hoary Hammond organ is an instrument oddly resistant to revolutionary application. A survey of its history in jazz yields only a comparative handful of players who have taken it to truly new places. Brian Charette isn’t among that select few, but he does have something valuable to say as evidenced by the pleasures and strengths indicative to this debut. It’s no coincidence that he counts Steeplechase label mate Gary Versace as a colleague. Both men take the lineage of Jimmy Smith through Larry Young as their starting points and build a personal voice from there. Johns Patterson and Patton are also prevalent progenitors in Charette’s approach through the audible affinity for modal forms and knotty harmonic contours that informs his eight originals, starting with the high protein swing of “Yolk”.

Guitarist Ben Monder and drummer Jochen Rückert are sidemen in a sense, but Charette involves the former in equal footing on most pieces. Monder employs a welcome versatility in timbre and attack. His thick, viscous amplification on Charette’s boppish burner “Public Transportation” echoes the sort of corrugated tone preferred by classic Smith confreres like Thornel Schwartz and Gene Edwards. Monder’s far more nimble with a plectrum than either man could ever claim. His switches from chordal and octave play to driving single note runs are often dizzyingly deft. A satisfying piece on several fronts, it’s also a rare chance for Rückert to slip outside his creative time-keeping role for a spate of blistering breaks. The alternately lithe and lilting “Look Elsewhere” shows off his adroitness with a bouncing bossa beat.

Charette nearly falls foul of the more sentimental side of the organ vernacular on “Silicone Doll”, but the other ballad features on the program keep an even keel. A solitary exploration of “You’ve Changed” demonstrates a Smith-degree of dexterity as he juggles bass pedal swells with converging counter melodies advanced by both hands. The trio navigates the romantic straights of Ellington’s “Prelude to a Kiss” with similar aplomb and attention paid to Rückert’s fluttery brushwork. “Furthering Adventures”, “Altered Waltz”, “Girls” and particularly the closing “Wish List” veritably ooze with late-Sixties postbop experimentalism. All benefit from a near even balance of solo space for organ and guitar and plenty of devious twists and turns. Charette’s arrangement of Strayhorn’s “Upper Manhattan Medical Group” swings nearly as hard. In the accompanying notes, he describes this set as slightly more traditional than the trio’s typical fare. Given the galvanizing level of adventurousness on hand, here’s hoping they opt to document that status quo on a second outing.

[Steeplechase titles are available direct through Stateside AT prodigy DOT net]

John Hicks & Frank Morgan - Twogether (High Note)

2010-04-26T08:55:00.000-07:00

The passing of pianist John Hicks and altoist Frank Morgan within a year of each other was a sad blow to the High Note roster and the jazz community writ large. Both men had enjoyed a late career renaissance via the label and Morgan, in particular, experienced an artistic renewal through a series of critically-acclaimed recordings capped by a three-volume document of a stand at The Jazz Standard. This set is something of a posthumous swan song for each player, coupling pieces from a duo performance at the Jazz Bakery in Los Angeles, November of 2005 with selections from a solo Hicks recital roughly a year later.

Pun-saddled titled aside, the program delivers tradition-savvy post-bop plied by experts of the form. The tracks unfold in an ear-pleasing sandwich sequence with solo cuts bracketing a pair of duo pieces on either side of the program. Hicks’ solo investigations, starting with a rollicking rococo investigation of Bud Powell’s “Parisian Thoroughfare”, accord him the freedom to range through themes and variations at an easygoing pace with plenty of space for loquacious elaboration. All of the pieces save the closing solo rendering of “Passion Flower” ring in near the eight-minute mark and that last still clocks generously just shy of seven. Sound on both dates is intimate and faithful in the capture of twosome’s toothsome conversations.

Compared with the introspective cast of Hicks’ solo ventures, the numbers with Morgan convey an even greater degree of urgency and complexity. “A Night in Tunisia” gives Hicks’ left hand a strenuous work out in the construction of romping chords, Morgan slipping and sliding through elisions on the familiar theme in aerated tone that approaches Paul Desmond territory. Hicks follows his partner’s extended statement with a delightful stride-inflected foray stamped with staggered switchbacks and a dizzying rhythmic pliability that primes the audience for the altoist’s lissome return and a handful more melodic permutations.

The choice of “’Round Midnight” would appear to pull the partnership even further into the realm of jazz orthodoxy, but instead they effectively underscore why it remains a perennial favorite for improvisers the world over through an elegant cerulean deconstruction. By contrast, Kenny Dorham’s bop-structured “N.Y. Theme” trades strictly in fun fisticuffs between the partners, Hicks’ hands building decorous layered chords as Morgan lets fly his inner-Bird with unabashed brio. The music of Hicks and Morgan is now a regrettably finite commodity, but their shared artistic import remains undiminished in this delightful meeting between justly-venerated musical souls.

Luther Gray – Lawnmower (Clean Feed)

2010-04-23T07:22:00.000-07:00

Drummer Luther Gray, an always reliable sideman in the ensembles of others, makes a welcome debut in the driver’s seat on this date for Clean Feed. The underlying significance behind the album’s title isn’t self-evident so Gray helpfully elucidates it in his succinct liners. The tandem of Walkman listening and mower pushing formed the primary conduit by which he digested music for years. The music is meant to limn the arc of his listening evolution over those inumerable solitary hours. It’s an instantly engaging concept and one that resonates in the singular instrumentation of he chooses for his ensemble.

Guitarists Geoff Farina and Dan Littleton divide down stereo channels, each wielding amplification in a precision painterly fashion. Altoist Jim Hobbs, who counts Gray as a regular colleague in a number of aggregations is the fourth participant in the quartet. Gray conceives of the pieces in a very organic fashion and they unfold. “One” and “Glass” sound like narcotized variants on Sonny Sharrock as the guitarists construct undulating coils of reverb-saturated texture that spool out and recede. The percussive bell-like tones that open the second piece come from guitar on drum kit, enveloping Hobbs’ raspy melodic lead in a lush, dreamy patina further bolstered by a muted tribal beat built painstakingly by Gray.

Gray is often remarkably understated, almost recessed in the mix, his churning rhythms guiding the forward momentum of the pieces, but also applying an odd vertical weight. Hobbs threads the middle, sounding melodic trills and legato swathes. The shared sense of atmosphere and mood evokes open desert vistas and the spacious canopy of a star-studded night sky. After the stark magnificence of these opening pieces, “Prayer of Death is something of a return to terra firma as Littleton shapes a folksy repeating Fahey-reminiscent line and the four move forward in an easy-loping unison. “Giant Squid” brings a sharper edge to the collective, both guitarists cranking the feedback for a craggier sound. Hobbs unleashes his inner-Ornette, darting and dovetailing between the amplified slabs and even openly quoting “European Echoes”.

The overly minimalist and ambient-minded “Dan” loses the forest for the trees a bit, but the foursome find their shared footing again on the delightfully somnambulistic “I Love”. Hobbs laces a velvety line through an eyelet of bowed and shimmering guitar strings as Gray keeps loose-limbed cymbal/snare time. “Two” sums the set beautifully through yet another inspired braiding of Americana-tinged guitar striations colored by Gray’s percussion and the tender lyricism of Hobbs’ horn. Playing reliably outside of the box, Gray gracefully subverts assumptions based in his past work with this one. It’s a pleasure joining him on the highly personalized journey, a trip that immediately engenders the question, what’s next?

Beat Kaestli – Invitation (Chesky)

2010-04-22T07:21:00.000-07:00

Swiss singer Beat Kaestli may seem a bit obvious, not to mention presumptuous in his sobriquet, but that’s no reason to be bothered by an implied affinity with hipper times. Formally trained in voice at a number of prestigious academic institutions, he also received an education gigging on the road for the better part of decade. Performance in pop and R&B settings naturally led to an abiding interest in jazz song. This Chesky debut delves voraciously into the Great American Songbook and demonstrates implicitly how Kaestli differs from his immediate peers. First there’s the definite Chet Baker influence that pervades the deliberately plaintive and delicate way he’ll voice a lyric. Baker’s subdued style of singing is an enduring wellspring of critical contention and Kaestli’s decision to build on it is a brave move.

The disc’s nine cuts clock to a modest three-quarters of an hour. Accompaniment is oft sparse, but supportive with a trio of guitarist Paul Meyers, bassist Jay Leonhart and drummer Billy Drummond constituting the core. The other ace in Kaestli’s deck is the Chesky signature sound that qualifies the music, a style of engineering that combines high end technology and methodological simplicity to yield stunning clear results. From the opening nylon-string strains of a bossa-inflected “Day in Day Out” the difference in fidelity from the typical jazz session is a striking one. A palpable sense of depth and crystalline clarity characterize Meyer’s lithe strums, the breezy pizzicato of Leonhart and the rain-on-corrugated-roof pattering of Drummond’s brushed snare. Trumpeter Kenny Rampton sidles up with a smoothly-phrased solo and Kaestli glides across it all with a relaxed and amiable flair.

Several other numbers starting with “It Could Happen to You” parse the particulars down Kaestli and Leonhart, plump bass strings percolating against the singer’s easygoing articulation. Meyers and Drummond enter and Kaestli steps back for concise and cogent solos from his colleagues. Saxophonist Joel Frahm, the other session guest, lends his sultry tenor to the title piece and two other numbers. Once again the fidelity does everyone involved strong favors and the prevailing feeling is that of being right in the recording space with the band. Kaestli’s clean and mannered approach to a song can be a shade cloying in a Harry Connick, Jr. sort of sense, but for the majority of the album all of the pieces at his disposal fall into place with near perfection. As a jazz vocals album for listeners not necessarily smitten with the more extroverted and flamboyant purveyors of the idiom, I’ve found myself coming back to it far more than expected.

Rosario Giuliani – Lennie’s Pennies (Dreyfus)

2010-04-21T15:19:00.000-07:00

Italian altoist Rosario Giuliani isn’t reticent about running down his influences. The title and lead track on his latest quartet disc sounds an appreciative salute to Lee Konitz. In the liners he checks off thanks to a handful of others including John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Joe Henderson and Sonny Rollins, though these seem influences more in spirit rather than letter. Conversely, Konitz comes across prominently in the agile glide of his phrasing and tart intonation. Pianist Pierre de Bethmann plays Rhodes on the twisting theme statement of the opening number, mimicking the timbre of a guitar before dropping out and leaving the leader to dance with bassist Daryl Hall and drummer Joe La Barbera, the latter keeping a percolating beat with brushes. An effervescent string of exchanges rounds the performance out with an emphasis on insouciant velocity, Giuliani capping the cut with a playfully coarse trill.

Ballad selections like the lovely “Love Letters” illustrate Giuliani’s abiding romantic bent. La Barbera demonstrates the mellow versatility he first honed under the employ of Bill Evans with subtle accompaniment that caresses the corners of Giulliani’s gossamer lead. Bethmann fields acoustics ivories here and his delicate right hand touch complements the lush mood of the piece alongside Hall’s understated pulse. “How Deep is the Ocean” ticks the tempo up a notch while keeping things low key. Hall sneaks in a concise solo early and the comping from Bethmann locks beautifully with La Barbera’s steady brush play. Giuliani’s left to improvise at will on the theme and to pleasing effect.

Joe Zawinul’s vamp-grounded “74 Miles Away” brings the band songbook decades forward in provenance with Giuliani hardening his tone and bringing the funk through a spate of rhythmic honks and flutters. Hall and La Barbera respond to the more open-ended structure in like fashion. A trio of originals follows, fitting right in with the rest of the program, starting with the plush ballad “Picchi” and Bethmann again on atmospheric Rhodes giving the piece a pleasant retro flavor. The quartet’s reading of the Jimmy Rowles classic “The Peacocks” captures the moody brilliance at the tune’s core, opening with Giuliani and Hall in isolation before La Barbera’s mallets enter with Bethmann’s skeletal comping. It’s a highlight of a program bolstered by strong performances nearly start to finish. Konitz may be a starting point for Giuliani, but the endgame on this date is wholly his own.