Ari Ambrose & Stephen Riley - Tenor Treats Two (Steeplechase)

Resuming right where its companion volume left off, this disc delivers another stimulating hour-plus colloquy between its co-leaders. Tenorist Ari Ambrose gets top billing on the tray card, but it’s very much an affair of equals, onset to finish. Stephen Riley is the more overtly mercurial and idiosyncratic of the two frontline partners. His lushly-conceived tone and phrasing are instantly recognizable, a post-millennial alloy of Lester Young disciples running from Don Byas through Teo Macero to Warne Marsh an on to Wayne Shorter and beyond. That hollowed-out huskiness frequently contrasts swimmingly with Ambrose’s often more straightforwardly athletic sound.

On the previous volume, Ambrose playfully aped his partner at several junctures, adopting a grainy timbre and fluttery doppelganger inflection when voicing a line. He keeps that mimicry to a minimum here. This set also stands apart in the greater degree on interplay between the horns. Several of their spiraling chases recall the sort of near-telepathic harmonic congruity between the aforementioned Marsh and Lee Konitz. Solos are still the frequent conveyance for forward momentum, but the heightened willingness on the part of the principals to engage each other directly gives this volume a distinctive and definitive edge. There numerous are moments where their overlapping lines become an organized tangle of free-flowing counterpoint.

Bassist Jay Anderson and drummer Matt Wilson aren’t simply window-dressing. Both men actively feed and respond to the tenors with shifting backdrops and move to the foreground for improvisations when situation permits. The tunes don’t offer much in the way of surface surprises, though it is a treat to see Jimmy Rowles “502 Blues” amongst the other bop and earlier familiars. It along with El Gaucho, Riley’s just-released quartet record (also on Steeplechase) are oblique hints to the saxophonist’s abiding affection for Shorter’s Adam’s Apple. A 13+ minute foray through Jobim’s “Wave” departs from the predictable through the tenors’ close dissection of the dog-eared bossa theme, itself a melody seemingly custom tailored to Riley’s romance-ready vernacular. Listeners with a yen for tandem tenor that treads reliably off the beaten track are strongly advised to check this and the earlier volume out without compunction.

The Ullmann/Swell 4 - News? No News! (Jazzwerkstatt)

Finding chemistry in a frontline partner, let alone a band writ-large, is no easy task. German reedist/flautist Gebhard Ullmann has an uncanny knack for doing just that. His rewarding association with trombonist Steve Swell dates back over half a decade to a fateful quartet session for CIMP. Bassist Hilliard Greene and drummer Barry Altschul were the other members on that date and they bring a comparable acuity to this new studio outing. As a finely-tuned foursome they have a clear understanding of each other’s capabilities and a shared determination to make the most of them in collaborative fashion. The kinetic cover painting by Music Witness Jeff Schlanger is a fitting visual analogue to their collective sound.

Ullmann and Swell divide composerly duties on eight of the album’s ten tracks. The two others in the program, tagged with the titles “GPS #1” and “GPS #2”, unfold as group improvisations. Several distinctive traits separate the music and its execution from standard issue stack-blowing so common to ensembles of comparable instrumentation. Scripted heads are starting points on several pieces, but neither Ullmann nor Swell is content to sally the safe route of predictable loud-to-soft passages. Switchbacks and detours are frequent. The rhythm section even drops out completely on and “Berlin 9:35” leaving the horns to dance and dive in a free-associative dialogue.

Greene is an unflagging pillar on bass and works well with Altschul in keeping canvas from going static. Altschul, a pioneer in blending dynamic polyrhythms with textured free pulse at the cusp of the Sixties in the company of Braxton and Corea, is still going strong half a century later as his at once voluble and inventive solos that close out “Planet Hopping on a Thursday Afternoon” and “Airtight” assert. Swell wears his Roswell Rudd reminiscent-ruddiness proudly through frequent improvisations that rely as much on braying and whinnying timbres as they do on thematic development. Ullmann’s flute is nowhere to be found, but there’s plenty of tasty tenor and bass clarinet play to dine on in its stead. To risk a cliché, this is a quartet that stops to smell the roses, so to speak. Energy abounds in their conversations, but it’s never of the unfettered abrasive sort. That unerring fealty to musicality leads to eminent listenability and an immediate impulse for repeat exposure.

ROW: Patato y Totico (Verve)

Much like conguero Sabu Martinez’s self-titled album for Blue Note released over a decade earlier, this 1968 slice of authentic Afro-Cuban street music stands distinctively apart from the remainder of its label’s catalog. Verve was home to various popular purveyors of Cuban jazz including bandleader/composers like Chico O’Farrill, Willie Bobo and Machito. Principals Carlos “Patato” Valdez and Eugenio “Totico” Arango were pundits of progenitor rhythms, players enamored of the Yoruba-derived rituals of the island-indigenous Lucumi. Coupled with that guiding appreciation, they possessed the keen insight to conscript living legends of the idiom to help bring the music to contemporary audiences. Chief among the cast of chosen ringers were tres-master Arsenio Rodriguez (who also held court on the aforementioned Sabu outing) and pioneering son-bassist Cachao. Conguero Patato fronts a modest-sized percussion section. Totico directs a small cadre of vocalists. The songs are the equivalent of street music standards and highly infectious due to pervasive polyrhythms and stinging strums from the aging Rodriguez’s whose wizened digits still carry an impressive deftness. Now that the great thaw has officially commenced around these formerly-frigid parts, this platter makes a welcome return to my regular rotation. It’s an apposite aural accompaniment to a snifter of Sailor Jerry’s and a backyard strung hammock.

Geri Allen - Flying Toward the Sound (Motema)

As with Mary Lou Williams before her, Geri Allen is a pianist unencumbered by extrinsic stylistic boundaries. Williams’ influential music ran a gamut from pre-swing to free, pulling in blues, gospel and folk facets to form a compositional language resolutely of her cast. Allen occupies a comparable space in her philosophy toward the ivories. This latest disc, a solo recital funded through a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship, presents her broad creative spectrum undiluted by extraneous collaborators. Even so, it’s a program guided by an abiding dedicatory focus. Allen touches upon three specific influences in the eight-part suite that dominates the set. A final closing composition, “Your Pure Self (Mother to Son)”, written in honor of her son, is the only piece marred slightly by a somewhat anticlimactic end.

The title piece, reprised at suite’s terminus, evokes the musical mien of McCoy Tyner in its vibrant melodicism and propulsive lyricism. Sun Ra’s spirit also sounds alive in the tinkling descending flourishes that punctuate Allen’s runs and are reminiscent of the Saturnian’s work on such solo reveries as “Advice for Medics” and “Space Towers”. Herbie Hancock receives an extended nod on “Red Velvet in Winter”, a densely-organized piece imbued with a verdant rolling left-hand groove. “Dancing Mystic Poets at Midnight” tips its honoree Cecil Taylor in the colorful verbiage of its title as well as the percussive collisions of its construction. Allen’s active interpolations of Taylor are closer in construction to the iconoclastic pianist’s Fifties experiments than the more unbounded structures of his European-influenced later work. The set’s centerpiece is the 16-minute “God’s Ancient Sky” structured much like a mini-suite in itself and ripe with improvisatory detours.

Allen’s prodigious technique figures prominently throughout the set though it never feels as if she’s merely showing off at the expense of the larger themes imbedded in the work. The congruity between her hands borders on the preternatural as her left-hand figures frequently match those of her right in terms of complexity and speed. The effect is like a thrilling relay race, her scuttling digits tandem trajectories that and leaving trails of resonant notes. Her pedal work is exemplary as well. On the lush reprise of the title piece robust right hand patterns tumble expressively against an undercurrent of swelling left hand fills. This is a gorgeous and emotion-rich record, one that bonds its overarching beauty to rich pianistic history as seen through the prism of Allen’s ever-evolving art.

Thomas Ulrich's Cargo Cult - Lonely House (Covers) (CIMP)

Covers seem natural grist for the creative music mill that is cellist Thomas Ulrich’s Cargo Cult. The cleverly-coined chamber ensemble evinces a flexibility of form and function that invites investigation of a myriad of compositional sources. Ulrich and his bandmates, guitarist Rolf Sturm and bassist Michael Bisio, are voracious musical consumers. Combine that collective appetite with comparably broad commands of their instruments and the result is a reliable recipe for far-ranging songbook interpretation.

This set, their third for the Cadence family of labels and the first in a slated pair of releases, centers on just that, the songs of others. Jazz standards vie with eclectic tunes from other styles and eras. “Una Furtiva Lagrima”, a lush romanza pulled from the Italian opera L'elisir d'amore, wends along on a plump Bisio ostinato and Sturm’s shimmery chording. The trio’s take on Monk’s “Let’s Cool One” comes from a completely different corner of the stylistic compass, coupling old school swing to passages of languid free improvisation. The laidback sum captures the original in spirit if not complete letter and is curiously reminiscent of the sort of chamber jazz interplay common to the vintage Red Norvo Trio with Jimmy Raney and Red Mitchell.

The reading of Stevie Wonder’s “’Cause We’ve Ended as Lovers” by way of a Jeff Beck’s(!) cover of same is even more lateral in its thinking. Sturm adopts a warm, aqueous amplification as Ulrich wrings the arcing swathes of pathos from his strings, dipping deliriously close to melodrama in the bargain. It’s a tack he approximates on a late program foray through Ahbez’s “Nature Boy”. A more subdued variant on that abiding sentimentality informs later renderings of the standards “September Song” and “Lonely House”. “Night and Day” and “Days of Wine and Roses”, serve as the set’s other two dyed-in-wool standards, the former laced with lilting island flavor while the latter pivots on callus-abrading counterpoint. Sturm abstains from amplification in both cases, favoring instead an acoustic picking style akin to Howard Alden or Charlie Byrd where he occasionally strikes harp-like overtones in his strums.

“Goodnight Irene” and “Come On in My Kitchen” collectively scratch two sides of the folk blues coin with plectrum, fingers and bow. On the first, the mood and delivery is rural and wistful, a back porch lullaby. For the second, Bisio sits out leaving Sturm to sound off on brittle slide-inflected banjo as Ulrich to runs down raw-fingered pizzicato abstractions on the Robert Johnson-appropriated theme. “Cortez the Killer” is similarly left-field in its presence and design. Sturm pays tribute to the grandfather of emotionally-employed amplifier reverb while Ulrich bows the mournful theme in a surprisingly effective distillation of the Neil Young classic. Theirs is a stripe of chamber jazz that resolutely refuses the pinions of the phrase. The set’s eventually-to-be-released companion piece, Discovers, promises more fire, this time lit with compositional tinder from within.

Jeremiah Cymerman - "Under a Blue Grey Sky" (Porter)

Clarinetist Jeremiah Cymerman caps his licorice stick in favor of composer’s quill on his latest disc. The album-length titular piece comprises six acts and an interlude for string quartet. Cymerman’s hand is also active in the electronic “treatments” he adds to the strings players’ interactions. His picks for participants prove inspired choices with Jessica Pavone and Olivia De Prato handling viola and violin, Christopher Hoffman hoisting cello and Tom Blancarte fielding the bottom register on double bass. Each member is intimately-familiar with both conventional play and the avenues of expression available through extended techniques.

The initial minutes of the opening act almost sound like a classic John Carpenter score in the convergence of synth-saturated swells and tension-building string drones. In the second act, Cymerman simulates the soft crackle of a dry brush fire beneath the by turns heated and pensive communication of the strings. His careful manipulations complement rather than contradict, adding industrial overtones to the already dynamic arco layers and heightening the gravitas. John Zorn registers in the Old World inflected theme that drives the third act on the back of Blancarte’s bulbous ostinato and the flanking swirl of violin and viola. Cymerman’s presence here is minimal and the dusky beauty of the commingled strings needs no enhancement.

On subsequent pieces the composer’s involvement is more invasive. Whirring sustains and amplified creaks create a haunted atmosphere on “Act IV” with the strings flirting with full-fledged conflagration amidst interludes of humming confluence that carry over into the following track. A penultimate interlude sounds almost completely electronic as fragments of fluttering static scurry by above a grounding oscillating buzz. Hoffman’s cello opens the final act with an ominous plucked ostinato to which the other instruments respond to in gradual melancholic succession. Cymerman’s presence is again minimal at first, leaving the rich sonorities of the overlapping strings to their conversation until a wash of echoing electronics arrives to enhance the drama. As with the rest of the program, it’s an uncommonly astute merger of acoustic and electronic elements and an affecting performance by all involved.

David Binney - Aliso (Criss Cross)

Over the past decade, altoist David Binney has accrued accolades as one of the most in-demand saxophonists operating out of New York City. His dance card is often enviably full with projects of various stripes and persuasions under his own leadership and those of his many peers. Criss Cross is a regular conduit for some of these vehicles of expression. As Binney recounts the relationship, “It keeps me doing things that have been part of my life since I was a kid.”

That level of near-autonomy accorded to artist on the part of label is a relative rarity and a boon that Binney doesn’t take for granted. He describes the session as old school in that rehearsals were minimal with the band convened during an opportune convergence of breaks in touring schedules. The tunes reflect an overriding informality with four Binney-scripted blowing numbers complementing five jazz carbuncles that the players could easily play blindfolded. Two Blue Note-vintage Wayne Shorter pieces, “Toy Tune” and “Teru” speak to the subtle obliquities in Binney’s phraseology while remaining true their source incarnations. Binney also wins immediate points for his arrangement of the Sam Rivers far-too-rarely referenced chestnut “Fuchsia Swing Song”. A 14-minute explosive explication of Coltrane’s modal workout “Africa” signs the set off.

Binney’s sidemen are all regular associates well attuned to his Named by Binney as one of his favorite musicians, guitarist Wayne Krantz is also an occasionally distracting force on the date, particularly when he pulls from a derivative fusion bag. Despite some tight unison-play on the head, his rock-inflected solo on title piece devolves into near-wankery, coming across as Larry Coryell-lite and only serving to emphasize the piece’s leaden backbeat underpinning. Chunky wah-wah effects in the closing minutes of “A Day in Music” and shimmering atmospherics on “Strata”, accomplish similarly hobbling outcomes. Fortunately, these questionable sections occur sparingly and Binney’s incisive alto lines in concert with the expert rhythm section contributions repeatedly counterweight the scales back into welcome ensemble balance. Several of his pieces are riddled with metric suspensions and staggered beat constructions, all of which drummer Dan Weiss revels in bringing to life. No new ground broken, but rather familiar fertile soil tilled, this session sustains Binney’s positioning as one of the more accomplished stylists of his generation.