JAZZ
WORD
Faking Your Way into Jazz
March 8, 2010 - As if improvised music didn’t have to put up with enough wanna-bes and poseurs, Pam Becker of The Chicago Tribune provides instructions as to how not to be “intimidated” by the music when faced with jazz --probably in a club situation. Aimed for the neophyte more comfortable and familiar with the Black Eyed Peas than John Coltrane or who listens to Miley Cyrus rather than Thelonious Monk, the five recommendations passed on by Howard Reich, Tribune Newspapers jazz critic, suggest viewing the music as abstract art, talking to other nearby fans – probably during the bass solo like the others – and discovering jazz culture – including drug use – through films like 1994’s A Great Day in Harlem, 1986’s ‘Round Midnight and …1950’s Young Man with a Horn [!] READ
Pop Goes the Weasel? Weasel Walter moves to New York
March 1, 2010 - Probably the most articulate drummer to simultaneously operate in the extreme rock and Free Music spheres, Weasel Walter explains his deconstructionist philosophy in the Village Voice now that he’s moved east. Although writer Brad Cohan appears to take at face value the Chicagoan-turned-Oakland, Californian- turned-Brooklynite's assertion that he isn’t a jazz drummer, it’s mentioned that Walter has played and recorded with such Free Jazz-Free Music types as drummer Marc Edwards, alto saxophonist Marshall Allen, trumpeter Peter Evans and guitarist Mary Halvorson, along with a series of metal, no-wave and punk bands. Considering Walter’s Chicago band. The Flying Luttenbachers took its unusual second name from the real moniker of NRG Ensemble legend Hal Russell, and that his Oakland bands include committed improvisers such as bassist Damon Smith, Walter’s jazz-improv bone fides seem secure, no matter what those whose only knowledge is of rock might think. READ
Bass Clarinet Crusader: Jason Stein
February 22, 2010 - While most bass clarinetists on the improvised music scene double on that woodwind as a secondary horn, Chicago’s Jason Stein has dedicated himself to that instrument. In this brief interview with Rui Eduardo Paes on the latter’s Entrada Web site, he explains how he adopted the bass clarinet after a time as a rock and blues guitarist. Stein has gained acclaim for his two-reed groups with either Ken Vandermark or Kyle Bruckmann plus his own trio. He points out that although he comes from a jazz background and studied the music with teachers like saxophonist Charles Gayle, his sound is as influenced by contemporary classical music composed by Milton Babbit, Pauline Oliveros and others as the music of fellow jazz bass clarinetists such as Rudi Mahall and David Murray. (Click on “interviews” on the site’s first screen; then find Stein’s name and picture among the interviewees on the left hand side of the linked page). READ
An Exhaustive Look at the real Thelonious Monk
February 15, 2010 - In a sympathetic, if somewhat condescending review of D.G. Kelley’s book, Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original,in The Nation, David Yaffe, a Syracuse University English professor, does pass on the basic information about Thelonious Monk’s life and career, situating his particular genius within a post-Second World War United States that had time for upper-class eccentrics like poet Robert Lowell, but not for quirky jazz musicians such as Monk and Charles Mingus. Most importantly he does dispute some of the hoary clichés perpetuated by Ken Burns’s Jazz TV series that Bop was big happy family; and more importantly isolates the truism that “since 1987 the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz has given awards to promising musicians with chops far smoother than those of its namesake”. Like their aim with tenor saxophonist John Coltrane, it would seem that Jazz’s present-day myth-makers still want to shove Monk into the neo-bop establishment bag and to ascribe different attitudes to the pianist than he would have accepted. READ
Is Peter Evans the Future of the Trumpet?
February 8, 2010 - For someone who has only been on the scene for a short time, Queens. N.Y. York-based Peter Evans has quickly become one the most talked about and praised trumpeters on the progressive scene since arriving in New York six years ago with a classical performance degree from Oberlin Conservatory. Composer/keyboardist Eric Wubbels raves about the trumpeter’s solo double-CD in New Music Box, going into great detail about Evans’ technical prowess, comparing his command of solo technique to that of saxophonist Evan Parker and situating him firmly within the New music tradition. However Evans is more versatile than that. He’s also a charter member of bassist Moppa Elliott's so-called terrorist bebop band Mostly Other People Do the Killing, along with alto saxophonist Jon Irabagon and drummer Kevin Shea; performs Baroque music on piccolo trumpet; and is part of the improvising duo Sparks with bassist Tom Blancarte, and another one with fellow trumpeter Nate Wooley. READ

KEN WAXMAN'S
REVIEW OF THE MOMENT
Read reviews of over 1,800 musicians

Alban Darche

Trumpet Kingdom
BMC CD 136

The MacroQuarktet

Each Part a Whole

Ruby Flowers RF06CD

Brass improvisation in duo or trio forms characterize these two sessions. Both take advantage of trumpet and other horns’ timbres. However the American MacroQuarktet is engrossed in sound patterns available from sonic interaction, while the Hungarian-Belgian-French octet led by Gallic tenor saxophonist Alban Darche is cast in the more familiar form of a modern jazz showcase.

Darche, who composed all the tunes save one here, designed the CD to exhibit how he and follow French musicians – bassist Sébastien Boisseau, drummer Emmanuel Birault, woodwind player Sylvain Rifflet – plus Pécs-born guitarist Gábor Gadó, now based in France, react to the input of different trumpet soloists. While the results are impressive, if not outstanding, the irony is, that except in a matter of degrees, none of the prize-winning trumpeters – Eric Vloeimans from the Netherlands, Belgian Laurent Blondiau and Geoffroy Tamisier from France – sound that different from one another.

Only on “Trumpet Kingdom 2”, listed as a feature for Tamisier, is there any indication of the three doing more than harmonize. Even backed by finger-styled distorted runs and fret-jumping from Gadó and Birault’s thick press rolls and pops, Tamisier’s open-horn emphasis is still mostly languid and moderato, especially when contrasted with saxophone snorts and the other trumpeters’ echoed obbligatos. Besides this, Blondiau attempts some theme deconstruction with unexpected brays and slurs on the brief – less than two minute – “B.E.P.”, but overall the track is taken up by him lobbing note clusters back and forth with Darche. Even when squeezing out muted grace notes on “Hypocoristique”, Blondiau is heraldic, romantic and legato, with the track gaining most of its heft from long-lined ringing licks from Gadó.

In similar fashion, Vloeimans, who won the Boy Edgar Prize, Holland’s most prestigious jazz award, earlier in the decade, is only briefly distinctive on “Joseph & Sa Maman”. A jolly tune that could provide the soundtrack for a Fellini film, it’s built on a slinky bass line from Boisseau. Throughout, Vloeimans’s valve squeaks and tightrope-walking triplets only briefly shatter the circus music-inflected melody. On the other hand “Novenus” does have Vloeimans outputting some unusual rubato bites and flutter-tongued cries, which play off resonating guitar licks. But overall this performance too relies on big-band-styled section work and individual showcases in its penultimate moments when each trumpeter fires off speedy triplets. In fact, Birault’s flashy drum solo is more reminiscent of Buddy Rich at his peak than anything more contemporary.

In contrast, post-modernism is the watchword on Each Part a Whole with its subtly descriptive title. Made up of three interconnected suites, the dramatis persona include bassist Drew Gress, who often works with stylists like pianist Uri Caine and alto saxophonist Tim Berne; drummer Tom Rainey, trapsman of choice for Berne and bassist Mark Helias among many others; Dave Ballou on trumpet, flugelhorn, piccolo trumpet, plastic hose and mutes, whose heavy mainstream credentials don’t preclude work with bassist Michael Formanek and drummer Kevin Norton; plus Herb Robertson on cornet, trumpet, electric megaphone, mutes and attachments, who has played with ensembles ranging from bassist Barry Guy’s London Jazz Composer Orchestra to the bands of Berne and pianist Michiel Braam.

Convention isn’t the aim of this CD, which unlike Trumpet Kingdom, deals not with songs, but with moods, sensations and textures. That said, despite an insistence on showcasing tones ranging from quark-sized to massive, the CD never tumbles into static microtonalism or unappealing abstraction. Gress and Rainey are too much of a cooperative rhythm team for that – although you’d never confuse them for Paul Chambers and Art Taylor – or Boisseau and Birault for that matter.

Take “Basal D. Ganglia”, for instance. Among the interlocking parts, separated by pauses and silences, Gress presses thick thumps and Raney drags, rattles, clangs and clatters. Meanwhile Ballou and Robertson are involved in a broken-octave duet, defined through tremolo yelps and squeaks from one horn and wavering rubato slurs from the other. Eventually all of the brass air spaces are filled, as two whinnying lines, one pitched just slightly higher than the other, gallop to the finish line.

With each brassman employing a suitcase full of extensions and add-ons, it’s difficult to ascribe solos to one or the other. Certainly one exhibits livelier plunger tones, splats and squeaks, usually coupled with hand drumming from Rainey and either arco or pizzicato double bass runs. Another – or perhaps it’s the same person – is more reflective, evidentially sucking air backwards into his horn’s bell as the drummer strikes his stick together and offloads rim shots.

Moreover on “Neuroplasticity Part 3”, something – perhaps Robertson’s “attachments” – allows one brassman to sound licks that literally appear to come from a riffing electric guitar. The other then counters with rococo coloration and strident growls. After the first trumpet solos again, this part of the suite is given over to the two vaulting notes at one another, cumulatively building up tension, moving selectively to elevated pitches. Solos intertwine but never quite find one another.

The there’s part 6 of “Ducks and Geese …or Rabbits” where the mike-buzzing from one trumpet evolves into scrapping and cutting timbre, while Gress vibrates and pops his strings with non-Western patterns and Rainey’s distinctive drum beats could be coming from a tom-tom or a djembe. The satisfying summation involves a cappella snarls and pent-up colored air forced from each horn’s bell in turn.

Both of these discs prove that there are plenty of fine noises that can be created by two or three trumpets – with or without upfront reeds and strings. Trumpet Kingdom offers a variation of what multi-brass has sounded like in the past and does in the present, while Each Part a Whole outlines how brass convergence could sound in the future.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Each: Neuroplasticity: 1. Part 1 2. Part 2 3. Part 3 Ducks and Geese …or Rabbits: 4. Part 4 5. Part 5 6. Part 6 7. Part 7 Basal D. Ganglia: 8. Part 8 9. Part 9 10. Part 10

Personnel: Each: Herb Robertson (cornet, trumpet, electric megaphone, mutes and attachments); Dave Ballou (trumpet, flugelhorn, piccolo trumpet, plastic hose and mutes Drew Gress (bass and fan) and Tom Rainey (drums and cymbals)

Track Listing: 1. Latin Bruno^ 2. Joseph & Sa Maman*3. Trumpet Kingdom 2^ 4. B.E.P.+ 5 Trumpet Kingdom 3 6. Fanfare du jour 7. Hypocoristique+ 8. Novenus* 9. Alex

Personnel: Eric Vloeimans [solo*], Laurent Blondiau [solo+: 4, 7], Geoffroy Tamisier trumpet [solo^] (trumpet); Alban Darche (tenor saxophone); Sylvain Rifflet (tenor saxophone and bass clarinet); Gábor Gadó (guitar); Sébastien Boisseau (bass) and Emmanuel Birault (drums)

April 2, 2009