Earl Howard

Clepton
New World 80670-2

Making the most of a concert situation at Germany’s Donaueschingen Musiktage 2006, American composer Earl Howard uses real-time processing plus 10 multi-programs on his synthesizer to complement and amplify – metaphorically and literally – sounds created by Georg Graewe’s piano, Gerry Hemingway’s drums and Ernst Reijseger’s cello.

This non-hierarchal texture-manipulation removes the barrier between composer and performer as well as combining background and foreground. Throughout the performance, for example, the pianist’s galloping soundboard echoes are matched by shimmering and ramping synthesizer buzzes, while in other spots a stately low-frequency keyboard line can have its origin in Graewe’s or Howard’s instrument. Rhythmic granulation of the drummer’s irregular flams and cymbal top resolutions by electronics or exposing sequences of spiccato slides and sweeps that may come from either four-strings-and-polished-wood or circuitry extends this strategy.

Piano key clipping and supple melodies, abrasive cello runs and measured drum slaps and bangs also exist independently as the synthesizer’s compressed, vocalized drones form a backdrop to them all. But the piece’s true definition is apparent when it’s impossible to follow any sound to its initial origin – or definition.

“Clepton”, the CD’s more-than-39-minute tour-de-force is followed by a short improvisation among the composer, German pianist, Dutch cellist and American percussionist. But it appears to merely be “Clepton” writ small. Filling out the disc is a 1989 Howard-Hemingway duet. Despite flanged burbles and crackles on Howard’s part and near steel-drum patterns from Hemingway, its clicking and clunking suggest how much more would be attained by the two with advanced techniques and more sophisticated electronics more than a decade-and-a-half in the future.

-- Ken Waxman

-- MusicWorks Issue #103

March 23, 2009

Mauger

The Beautiful Enabler
Clean Feed CF 114 CD

Somewhat of a departure for bassist Mark Dresser and drummer Gerry Hemingway, this co-op band with alto saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa features probably some of the most straight-ahead playing they’ve recorded since before they teamed up as the rhythm section of the well-regarded Anthony Braxton Quartet in the mid-1980s.

One could suggest that the presence of Mahanthappa, whose past work with bands lead by bassist Hubert Dupont or pianist Vijay Iyer has been more oriented towards the contemporary mainstream players created this situation. But one shouldn’t forget that Hemingway has done his share of straight-ahead work with the likes of pianists Fred Hersch and Michel Wintsch among others, as has Dresser. Gigs in drummer Greg Bendian’s bands, work with flautist Jane Ira Bloom and other less-than-experimental gigs are part of the bassist’s c.v.

Paradoxically as well here, Mahanthappa’s own composition “I’ll See You When I Get There,” brings out some of the most non-traditional phrasing from all three men, including quick-tongued, fluttering lines from the saxophonist. Taking the CD as a whole, the suggestion is that it has been released in the sequence in which the tunes were recorded. Listening to it this way, it appears that the three loosened up and began experimenting during the session as their confidence in one another’s interactive abilities grew. Thus by the time Hemingway’s “Meddle Music” comes around at the end of the program, you find that expectations set up by the foot-tapping rhythm and tonality of “Acuppa” that begins the disc, are realized without the program slipping into rote sameness.

“I’ll See You When I Get There,” for instance sets off Dresser’s scraped and striated string intonation against descending note clusters which characterize the saxophonist’s solo. As lower-pitched harmonics from the bass join with Hemingway’s pops and rolls, Mahanthappa augments his pitches upwards into multiphonics. Soon accented and emphasized note flurries are unleashes, with the reed interlude given additional resonance from Dresser’s broken-octave arco lines and the drummer’s hectic bonding beats.

Additionally if the initial trio interface sounds as if the three are ready to slip into “Bag’s Groove”, conventional grooves are stretched than dispensed with entirely by the time the tile track and “Meddle Music” come around. Mahanthappa’s exposed intervals are particularly wide on the former composition as reed cries meet Dresser’s brushed string stops which amplify as well as accompany. Angling his runs only slightly away from the melody, the saxophonist’s note clusters swell to super-sized at the climax, foreshadowing bravura techniques on the subsequent tune.

Each man operates at the height of his powers during the CD’s final tune. Dresser with wide-ranging sweeps and stropping stops; Hemingway with pounding back beats and cradled reflective tones; and Mahanthappa with flutter-tonguing, foreshortened breaths and expanded smears. Not only is his output spiky, but his unexpected texture liberation confirms a push towards the unconventional.

A CD that marks disparate players’ output gelling into a group sound, The Beautiful Enabler’s climatic re-ordering of the trio’s musical priorities, indicates that a more memorable outing could be in the offing.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Acuppa 2. Bearings 3. Flac 4. Intone 5. The Beautiful Enabler 6. I’ll See You When I Get There 7. Meddle Music

Personnel: Rudresh Mahanthappa (alto saxophone); Mark Dresser (bass) and Gerry Hemingway (drums)

November 30, 2008

Maybe Monday

Unsquare
Intakt CD 132

Expanding the long-running Maybe Monday (MM) trio to seven musicians – most of whom manipulate electronics as well as acoustic instruments – adds an additional layer of polyphony to the proceedings, creating distinct and unique dimensions. Still, the five instant compositions here are only memorably realized because the septet members are canny enough to place waveform pulsation into an already established context.

Anchor for these tracks is the initial trio, which has been together since 1997. Voltage expression was organically introduced to MM before this CD, due to the electric guitar adaptations from Fred Frith plus the electronics linked to Miya Masaoka’s 25-string koto. Although sopranino and tenor saxophonist Larry Ochs is the only acoustic hold-out, he has demonstrated his familiarity with electronic interface in his past orchestral works and often as a veteran member of the ROVA saxophone quartet.

Recorded in New York, since MM member Masaoka now lives there – Frith and Ochs are still in the Bay area – Unsquare’s guests impart a mixed East-West sensibility to their improvisations. Transplanted westerner fiddler Carla Kihlstedt, at points replicates the role cellist Joan Jeanrenaud filled in an earlier MM session – adding traditional string harmonies when her instrument is paired with the guitar and koto. Elsewhere however wave-form add-ons create the sort of spiccato runs and multiphonics that associate her instrument’s subsequent output with the pitch mutation and careening tones that are emanating from New Yorker Zeena Parkins’ electric harp and electronics.

Concentrating on her laptop and samples, fellow Manhattanite Ikue Mori – who fulfills equivalent roles in bands led by saxophonist John Zorn and pianist Sylvie Courvoisier – is firmly wedded to the transformative impulses created by her machines. It’s a compliment to the others’ instrumental versatility however that her electronic triggered flutters and drones often can’t be distinguished from the mutated electro-acoustic timbres of the other players.

Completing the bi-coastal interaction, is another easterner, percussionist Gerry Hemingway, whose comfort level with patches and signals has been expressed in other sessions involving synthesizer players such as Earl Howard and Thomas Lehn. Irregular thumps and splattering ruffs peeping through the humming and clicking drones on this session sporadically announce the percussionist’s presence. Eschewing time keeping and flashy solos, Hemingway busies himself with moving the proceedings forward using contrasting pulses or moderated rhythmic suggestions.

Layered and focused intonation appears most intricately and extensively on “Unturned”, which initially seems to cluster every electronic whoosh and flanged oscillation into one extended piercing chord. Luckily, soon afterwards, the miasma dispels enough to expose diaphragm-vibrating reed timbres and chromatic slack-key guitar runs, plus abraded tones that sound as if they’re produced by scuffling a collection of scrub brushes against the massed strings.

As the triggered pulsations retreat, Ochs introduces high-pitched split tones, Frith trebly, single-string snaps and Masaoka gentling runs. Cat-gut heft is added to the guitar-koto duet when Kihlstedt appends flowing fiddle harmonies. Meantime, Masaoka’s attempts to replicate the violinist’s single-string action is detoured by strident canine-like splutters from the electronics, with tuning static and just-out-of-earshot radio voices further interjecting unexpected timbres. Shoring up the koto’s output, Hemingway adds ruffs, bounces and pops from his kit, that are then checked-mated by triggered circuitry that eventually strips out their human-created textures and transforming them into further percussive impulses. Plugged in as well, one of the string players – perhaps Masaoka – bonds these signals with watery echoes that mirror similar timbres on “G”, the introductory track. A concluding postlude reintroduces fluttering electronic wave forms. But these oscillator-like hums soon take on the properties of low-frequency electric piano-like pulsations, music-box-like tinkling and machine-driven splutters.

Other tracks emphasize reed multiphonics, pressured guitar frails, plus fungible contrapuntal textures among the strings. For the duration of the CD, particular resonances lock into appropriate places in the performances. Overall however, the shifting spatial arrangement necessitated by the introduction of more instrumental sound patches suggests an uncompleted gelling process, and that MM’s definite sound is still in flux.

Still an expanded MM is an interesting departure for the group. Metaphorically as well, this CD demonstrates how varied note clusters and pulses from three established and four newly introduced players can merged in such a way that the result is more than un-square – more like a hip circle. Or as the saxophonist phrases it: “way cool music”.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. G 2. Nitrogen 3. Saptharishi Mandalam 4. Septentrion 5.Unturned

Personnel: Larry Ochs (tenor and sopranino saxophones); Fred Frith (guitar); Miya Masaoka (25-string koto and electronics); Carla Kihlstedt (electric and acoustic violins); Zeena Parkins (electric harp and electronics); Gerry Hemingway (drums, percussion and voice) and Ikue Mori (electronics)

September 13, 2008

GERRY HEMINGWAY QUARTET

The Whimbler
Clean Feed CF 040CD

GERRY HEMINGWAY QUINTET
Double Blues Crossing
Between The Lines BTLCHR 71202

Americana roots music has been around a lot longer than when the music business decided to give it a name about a decade ago. In reality you could probably stick into that category just about any sincere jazz, blues or country music made over the past 90 years.

Thus it shouldn’t be a surprise to realize that on parts of DOUBLE BLUES CROSSING – especially the opening six-part suite that gives the CD its name – percussionist Gerry Hemingway has written a piece that’s as rootsy as anything performed by country music pioneers the Carter Family or bluesman Sleepy John Estes. In performance it’s an updating of mountain music string band sounds – or close as you get when three-fifths of the band are Europeans.

Recorded less than 15 months later with completely different personnel except for the drummer, THE WHIMBLER shows off another aspect of Hemingway’s talent. Each of the nine compositions – the other CD has eight – is a purpose-built theme, self-sufficient in itself, yet translucent enough for interpretation and improvisation.

Those qualities are much in evident among Hemingway’s seven associates, the majority of whom have a long playing history with him. In the quartet, bassist Mark Helias has been working with the drummer for 30-odd years; and, when he isn’t in Europe, trumpeter Herb Robertson often takes the brass chair in Hemingway’s bands. A leader of his own band like the other two, tenor saxophonist Ellery Eskelin was part of Helias’ trio and has played in Hemingway’s quartet since 1998.

Surprisingly enough on some tracks here Helias, known for his acoustic prowess, uses the electric bass. Kermit Driscoll plays both on DOUBLE BLUES CROSSING as well, though he’s most closely identified for his work on the electric axe in guitarist Bill Frisell’s trio.

Both multifaceted trombonist Wolter Wierbos from the Netherlands and German reedist Frank Gratkowski have worked with Hemingway in many other instances – when they can take time from other projects, which in Wierbos’ case includes membership in Holland’s ICP Orchestra, and in Gratkowski’s bands with Dutch pianist Michiel Braam, some of which include Robertson. New quintet member is Swedish cellist Amit Sen, who has also worked with an impressive cross-section of his local improvisers from keyboardist Sten Sandell to percussionist Kjell Nordeson.

Standing out with its elegiac, suite-like qualities, the five-part “Double Blues Crossing” expands from fiddle band lines sampled from vinyl into hearty bass work, hocketing horn riffs, sonorous triple-stopping sul tasto cello lines and focused rim tapping from Hemingway. With his sweet pitches displayed on one hand and sul ponticello near brush strokes elsewhere, Sen is an appropriate replacement for Ernst Reijseger, who played in Hemingway’s quintet for years. The Swede can harmonize with Driscoll when need be, or like the bass guitarist approximate guitar fills.

As the parts of the suite progress the horn men show their mettle. Well-traveled Gratkowski is equally adapt on clarinet, bass clarinet and alto saxophone, though most distinctive on the last. Over a cowboy music-like wobble from the bass, his rasp mixes with Wierbos’ vocalized plunger tones and the occasional percussion pings and pops. Faster and more programmatic, “It Ain’t Slippery, But It’s Wet” brings out swelling chalumeau color from the reedman as well as contrapuntal, hand-muted wah wahs from the boneman.

Earlier, the drones of bubbling trombone notes mix with trilling blue jay-like peeps from the saxophonist; his contralto slurs back Hemingway’s drum surface slaps and resonation or ringing marimba jingles. By the finale, the crescendo of double counterpoint from ethereal clarinet and blaring valve work are replaced by Wierbos’ chromatic reverberations, slurs from Gratkowski and continuous double snorting form both, as the bass and cello reintroduce the main theme and cyclic ringing on the marimba’s wooden slabs takes it out.

The percussionist’s other lines are equally impressive. Aided by such techniques as contrapuntal double stops from Sen, milk-bottle-like clattering from the marimba and showy triplets and brassy stratosphere excursions from Wierbos, they take different forms. One is a jolly stop-time composition is the tradition of those Misha Mengelberg writes for the ICP. Another evolves from almost 12-tone minimalism to Tchaikovsky-like Ur-romanticism, where funky bass finger pops, twittering clarinet trills and spherical resonation that could come from wooden temple blocks get equal time.

Finally, “Joe Cracklin Left This Before The River Got Him” is as lyrical and sweet as a cabaletta at the same time modern impulses from near-bop drumming, clarinet mouth pops and plunger trombone notes push it into modern dissonance.

Equal to DOUBLE BLUES CROSSING but with more of an improvised underpinning, THE WHIMBLER showcases four musicians at home in any needed style pre-, post- and plain-modern.

Some of the numbers find the drummer reflecting Chick Webb at one instance and Art Blakey at the next. “Kimkwella”, with Helias double stopping on electric bass, includes Township Jive call-and-response from the horns. Yet the slap bass Helias extends along “Waitin” to meet Robertson’s rubato grace notes and pitch-sliding squealing could easily have come from Pops Foster. Here and elsewhere, Hemingway’s command of blunt and perfectly targeted rebounds, flams and other excitement raisers is sure, yet so subtle that the piece is fully launched before you realize how quickly he’s ratcheted up the beat and curved into spontaneous swing.

The Blakey reference isn’t fanciful either, since there are times in the shout choruses the trumpeter and saxophonist exhibit on composition such as the title tune, that the duo comes off like an updated Lee Morgan and Wayne Shorter. Melodic layering allows for 21st Century counterpoint however, and the Jazz Messengers never had a bass player like Helias who could get so much from finger taps on the strings.

Even the atmospheric, 11½ minute “Curlycue” (sic), which develops in thematic statements, is not quite contemporary and not quite nostalgic. Maybe timeless is a better description. Featuring ruffled runs from Eskelin, ululating trumpet slurs and a general folksy reflection, the theme’s stolid delicacy makes common cause with Robertson’s snickering plunger expansion, irregular vibrations from Eskelin’s snorting tenor, triple-stopping slides and taps from Helias and bangs and snaps from Hemingway.

With both CDs at such high standards, the only choice for some between them may be a predilection for certain instrumentation.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Whimbler: 1. Waitin 2. Rallier 3. The Current Underneath 4. Pumbum 5. The Whimbler 6. Spektiv 7. Curlycue 8. In The Distance 9. Kimkwella

Personnel: Whimbler: Herb Robertson (trumpet); Ellery Eskelin (tenor saxophone); Mark Helias (bass and electric bass); Gerry Hemingway (drums and marimba)

Track Listing: Double: 1. a. Buddy Luckett’s Dream By The Dry Grass Pt. 1 b. Where There Never Was Blues 2. Buddy Luckett’s Dream By The Dry Grass Pt. 2 3. Don’t Melt Away Pt. 1 & 2 4. It Ain’t Slippery But It’s Wet 5. Joe Cracklin Left This Before The River Got Him 6. Rallier 7. Night Town/Tent 8. Slowly Rising

Personnel: Double: Wolter Wierbos (trombone); Frank Gratkowski (clarinet, bass clarinet and alto saxophone); Amit Sen (cello); Kermit Driscoll (bass and electric bass); Gerry Hemingway (drums, marimba and sampler)

December 26, 2005

FRANK GRATKOWSKI

Facio
Leo Records CD LR 398

Quietly and with little fanfare German multi-reedist Frank Gratkowski has become one of the go-to guys if leaders need to add animation to their bands. Now the Cologne-based musician who has enlivened bands led by British drummer Tony Oxley, Dutch pianist Michiel Braam and America drummer Gerry Hemingway -- who returns the favor here -- has put together a quartet to play nine of his own compositions.

On this impressive, more than 65½-minute outing, all hands are on deck. That means besides Hemingway and Gratkowski, who plays alto saxophone, clarinet, bass clarinet and contrabass clarinet here, the band is filled out by inventive Dutch trombonist

Wolter Wierbos and bassist Dieter Manderscheid. Manderscheid, like Gratkowski, from Cologne, also plays with the likes of drummer Martin Blume and trombonist Johannes Bauer

While not described as a suite, many of the tracks on FACIO run into one another, alternating atmospheric, atonal tunes that distribute pitches and melodies among different instruments, with ones that utilize polyphonic harmonies for modernistic swing and rhythm.

The best example of this may be the trio of pieces that begin with the more than 11½-minute “Part 5[rush]”. Together they manage to tie each of those sometimes-contradictory compositional tropes into a unified whole.

Starting off in near bebop tempo with trombone blasts, hocketing clarinet trills, a strummed bass line and bouncing cymbals and press rolls from the drummer, each man fits his part so well that the result could be stylized Dixieland. Then Wierbos takes off, adding a burr to his double tongued output, blowing bubbly grace notes that are met by polyphonic counterlines from Gratkowski’s alto sax. As Hemingway on cymbals and Manderscheid walking keep up the bop resemblance on the bottom, the reedist shreds his solo into tiny split tones as Wierbos slurs on top of it. Finally a descending bass line pushes the piece into a showcase for nearly soundless single string strokes, as both horns twitter understated tones.

This strategy runs the tune right into “Part 6 [interference]”, where buzzing metallic ‘bone tones and chalumeau clarinet blurts and tongue slaps combine and build up to irregular vibrations. Hemingway subtlety varies the rhythm as the front line tosses mini phrases back and forth. Shouting around his reed, Gratkowski’s quirky timbres makes a fine companion to Wierbos’ plunger trombone work, whose drone finally dissolving into watery bluster.

This sodden motif serves as the connective tissue to the next track, where low-pitched harmonies from the double bass and contrabass clarinet become almost indistinguishable. As the other three instruments smear their parts in unison, Hemingway exposes a polyrhythmic counter line that evolves into a spectacular display of nerve beats mixed with timed pressure on the snare, tom and bass drums.

In contrast, some of the tracks gallop along at jolly, Braxtonian march tempo, complete with arching clarinet trills. Still others confine themselves to moderato atonalism like “Part 2 [moving shades]”. Built on pantonality, the tune features sluicing string spiccato, beanbag-like shakes from the drummer and slinky unison horn smears. Fading into sound particles, then silence, it’s up to the next track to slice the connective tissue and pick up the tempo.

Exhilaration wins out in the end, as you hear on “Part 9 [celebration]”, the album’s finale. Featuring twittering clarinet, chromatic plunger acceleration from the trombonist, and near Native Indian ceremonial hand drumming from Hemingway, the broken chords eventually resolve themselves into a pulsating beat. As the shards coagulate, the tune offers two false turnarounds of the basic riff separated by seconds of silence, before the session ends.

When the ultimate sounds are a two-second attempt by the horns to rev up again, FACIO is confirmed as a go-to session for well-played, moving, modern music.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Part 1 [evocation] 2. Part 2 [moving shades] 3. Part 3 [mix up] 4. Part 4 [seek] 5. Part 5 [rush] 6. Part 6 [interference] 7. Part 7 [low] 8. Part 8 [outburst 9. Part 9 [celebration]

Personnel: Wolter Wierbos (trombone); Frank Gratkowski (alto saxophone, clarinet, bass clarinet, contrabass clarinet); Dieter Manderscheid (bass); Gerry Hemingway (drums)

November 15, 2004

TETHERED MOON

Experiencing Tosca
Winter & Winter 910 093-2

WHO TRIO
The Current Underneath
Leo CD LR 379

Two approaches to the standard jazz piano trio end up with vastly different results with only one making a major statement.

On THE CURRENT UNDERNEATH, Swiss pianist Michel Wintsch puts aside the sentimental streak that undermined earlier efforts with his Euro-American WHO Trio to create nine slices of thoughtful improvised music. Japanese pianist Masabumi Kikuchi and his two famous American sidemen in Tethered Moon, seems to have picked up all the indolent romanticism cast aside by Wintsch however, making EXPERIENCING TOSCA, a torpid and somewhat lugubrious exercise, more notable for lockstep methodology and top-flight recording sound than a range of emotions.

Kikuchi insists that he doesn’t like opera, because the visual aspect undermines his imagination. But the melodramatic details of Giacomo Puccini’s tale of the painter Cavaradossi, awaiting execution, thinking of his beloved Tosca are so established in Western musical thought that the mere act of homage to the composer provides a syrupy undertone to the eight improvisations.

Intentionally or not this back story isn’t helped by the fact that the pianist is a musical chameleon. He has dabbled in everything from contemporary jazz with trumpeter Terumasa Hino and as part of drummer Elvin Jones’ combo to funk with his All-Night All-Right Off-White Boogie Band. Tethered Moon, formed in 1990, has released earlier tribute CDs to singer Edith Piaf and composer Kurt Weill. It also happens to be completed by veteran bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Paul Motian, both of whom put in time in the bands of two of jazz’s Ur-romantic pianists: Bill Evans and Keith Jarrett.

That means that almost every tune here is taken adagio or andante with the odd blues change or outright swinging section making its incongruent appearance like a hand-made clay bowl in the midst of a room full of fine crystal. Not that there’s too much of that either. One tune is even labeled a blues, but it’s not the sort of blues Bobby Timmons or even Oscar Peterson would recognize. Motian may highlight powerful cross sticking and Peacock a thumping beat, but the pianist’s standard changes, characterized by a single, flashy glissando, don’t re-imagine the form, the way someone like Uri Caine has down with lieder.

It’s the same story for most of the other numbers, low frequency ballads for the most part, filled with vibrated fantasia. In “Part II” for instance, the output is so subdued and tasteful that it almost sounds as if Kikuchi is referencing “It Came Upon A Midnight Clear”. Should you want to hear a link to Jarrett or Peterson, however, that comes via the piano man’s over-recorded vocalisms. Grunts, retches and groans punctuate the daintiest etudes.

As all this is going on Peacock, whose ability to fit in with any situation has allowed him to work with folks as disparate as ethereal guitarist Ralph Towner and New Thing sax pioneer Albert Ayler, sticks to the pianist like seaweed on rice. Every time Kikuchi makes a particularly salient point, it’s echoed by the perfect tone from the bassist -- arco or pizzicato. Additionally, when Kikuchi rouses himself from ravishing impressionistic harmonies to showcase swinging left-handed pressure or tremolo voicings, Motian’s right there, adding a wasabi of knife-sharp cymbal slaps or spherical ratamacues.

Anything but skyward bound, the performances on the CD are actually tethered to the ground, rather than the moon.

Together for a shorter period, The Who Trio has fused into an exceptional performance unit. Peripatetic American drummer Gerry Hemingway, who is occupied with numerous bands on both sides of the Atlantic, adds pinpoint percussion accents exactly where needed, and Swiss bassist Bänz Oester is the consummate accompanist. Chief composer Wintsch, who as a rule sounds less-than-comfortable in freer situations like his CD with guitarist Fred Frith and vocalist Franziska Baumann, may have found the perfect setting for his ideas.

This is made most clear on “Seduna in Wallis” parts1 and 2, which combined are 14¼-minutes of definite EuroJazz, designated that way because the two draw on both the jazz and classical traditions without straining. A sensible swinger that begins with flashing octaves and key pats from Wintsch, it’s extended by Hemingway’s steady snare and cymbal beats plus prickly bent notes from Oester.

Moving into part 2, the tune is decorated with anthem-like harmonies and two handed, two tempo piano notes arriving from different places to intersect. Soon hard-handed touch and pedal extensions ratchet up the tautness and excitement level, as one of Wintsch’s hands appears to be reaching out across the keyboard to stroke different patterns, augmented with forearm force. Speedy arpeggios roll back and forth with contrasting patterns in either hand, with the pianist generating a dramatic waterfall of slinky, bent notes. Rocketing up the impetus, the drummer contributes rim and cymbal shots and a military tattoo on snare, riding nearly every part of the kit with double flams, bounces and rebounds. Finally the tension dissipates after ponticello shuffle bowing from Oester and what seems to be Wintsch playing the opening strain from Ornette Coleman’s “Focus On Sanity”.

European chansonnier-linked ballads make their appearance here as they did on earlier WHO CDs. Yet this time the pianist overcomes their innate mawkishness, using

key clips, pedal pumps and other pragmatic strategies to strip them down to the musical core. Thus a piece like “Ma p’tite chanson”, aided by Oester’s thwacks and string-stretching evolves from tinkly piano fluff to a polyrhythmic exercise in tempo changing abstraction. Would that Kikuchi had done the same on his disc.

Other compositions -- by Wintsch, other pop tunesmiths or jointly from the trio --benefit from other surprises. Clacking railway track sounds from the drummer and strummed octaves and cross-handed exercises from pianist livens them up. Meanwhile, the bassist’s invention is characterized by slapping bow wood against the bull fiddle’s wood for effect or riding the strings pizzicato like a skateboarder on an incline.

Trombonist Ray Anderson adds his slurring plunger work to the final tune with Wintsch introducing echoing electric piano tones. Yet with WHO members functioning on the same high level as before, “J’irai” is more a conformation of their talents than a change of pace.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Current: 1. Quartier Lointain 2. Swantra 3. Jerusalem 4. Seduna in Wallis, part 1 5. Seduna in Wallis, part 2 6. Ma p’tite chanson 7. Rabin's cat 8. Mir mag halt niemert öppis günnee 9. J’irai*

Personnel: Current: Ray Anderson (trombone)*; Michel Wintsch (piano, electric piano*); Bänz Oester (bass); Gerry Hemingway (drums)

Track Listing: Tosca: 1. Prologue 2. Part I 3. Part II 4. Part III 5. Homage to Puccini 6. Ballad 7. Blues for Tosca 8. Part IV

Personnel: Tosca: Masabumi Kikuchi (piano); Gary Peacock (bass); Paul Motian (drums)

July 12, 2004

IVO PERELMAN DOUBLE TRIO

Suite for Helen F.
Boxholder BXH 038/039

Strength, stamina and chutzpah are the first three adjectives that come to mind when analyzing saxophonist Ivo Perelman’s performance on this two CD set.

Coming on like a contestant in one of those extreme sports competitions the Brazilian tenor man not only faces off against one bassist and drummer, but also another set at the same time. Similarly his version of a double trio doesn’t involve any slackers. Individually and together, bassists Dominic Duval and Mark Dresser and percussionists Gerry Hemingway and Jay Rosen have worked with nearly every experimental reedist of repute, including Anthony Braxton, John Butcher, Mark Whitecage, Joe McPhee, Oliver Lake and Frank Gratkowski -- to name just a few. Besides Duval, Hemingway and Rosen have recorded with the saxman before.

During the course of the seven part suite here, named for pioneering abstract expressionist Helen Frankenthaler, Perelman produces as many dense shapes, jagged lines, circular improv, frottage and irregular brush strokes as you can see in seven examples of his paintings which illustrate the booklet. Don’t try to draw too many parallels between the Perelman works in acrylic or mixed media and his reed explosions, though. This isn’t program music, but an aural expression of Perelman’s talents.

In that way he may have attempted to create on too broad a musical canvas by expressing himself over two CDs. Like many gallery collections of a painter’s oeuvre, only some of the note paintings are truly exceptional. Others are more exhausting than exhaustive, though time is on his side. The four compositions on Disc 2 are more varied and more memorable than the three on Disc 1.

Quirkily enough, “Part 4”, the session’s stand-out track, is sketched on the broadest canvas -- it’s almost 21 minutes of seething improvisation. Perelman’s initial reed thrust involves piercing slurs that meet dual bass ponticello. Soon the double bowing turns spiccato, to face the saxman’s upper partials of irregular and fluttering vibrations and split tones. With Hemingway and Rosen accelerating from shuffle rhythms to battering ram strength, Perelman moves his growls into a more comfortable mid-range, that in this context almost sounds like Classic Jazz -- Classic Free Jazz that is. Except for the odd mouthpiece cheep, Perelman begins sluicing out a balladic-type melody, adding various note partials, vibrations and bent notes.

Meanwhile it’s likely Duval who is racing up and down his strings with iron fingers as Rosen manipulates tubular bells and unselected cymbals for carillon-like tones. Perelman suddenly jumps down to the bow of his body tube to spew out growling Ben Webster-like tones that alternate with tiny, altissimo mouse squeaks for a while, then which mould themselves into a new theme for a few minutes, backed only by the bell tree. The saxman’s reed command is such that his shrill screeches can be subdivided into different timbres and with “Part 4” he does the same with abrasive, mulching mumbling grating growling undertones.

Eventually, before the piece fades out with a few bass string strums, the reedist has taken his playing beyond bar lines and compositional inferences into the realm of pure emotion, almost reaching the primitivism of someone like Arthur Doyle. Perelman’s scalpel sharp reed incisions are more deliberate though, a quality he shows on this tune and elsewhere.

Part 7”, for instance, which begins with a renal squeak soon transmogrifies into the saxman sounding out jaunty melodies to the accompaniment of the sort of chinga- chinga cymbal work Hemingway or Rosen would play behind any bopper. Expelling a lone reed fart before he smears burst tremolos all over the tune, Perelman ends it with more mouse-like squeaks as if as if struggling to expel the last bit of sound from his mouthpiece.

Earlier on, a few human throat cries join false registers, gravelly honks and rappelling tones as he works out and expels intense vibrations. Sometimes the result will be a polyphonic melody between the dual basses and the reed man, with them meeting his scream shards with their own dual thumps and double stops.

Most of the first CD pushes the bassists into the background, however, with Perelman honking entire passages altissimo and the drummers making like Rashied Ali and Elvin Jones with Coltrane. More cooperation is exhibited between these two than that ill-matched duo however. Most of the time they divide their parts up equitably, with Hemingway expressing himself in ratamacues, rim shots and press rolls and Rosen finessing clangs and chings out of his bells, cymbals and other percussive little instruments.

Generally the parts of the suite work better if the rhythm section doesn’t have to operate at full force. Give it time to regroup and exhibit say, flat picking, strumming or arco sweeps from the basses or nerve beat emphasis or ruffs from the drummers, then additional, less stark colors are added to the palate from which Perelman is painting.

This is shown in the starkest contrast on “Part 5” where the blizzards of screeching, aviary notes almost make it seem as if the reedist is bending his sax’s goose neck to produce them. Yet the truest sound arrives in the form of human skin hitting the wound steel of bass strings, and which seems to encourages the saxman to exit in a descending arc of reed harmonies.

Although Perelman proves that he can peck notes like John Coltrane, produce Woody Woodpecker-like cries, and move close to ballad territory at various times, this excess of extended techniques isn’t needed any more than excess brush strokes on a canvas. When all the artists exhibit their stylings into a group project as they do on the second disc things are most monumental.

Many times in the past Perelman has recorded his versions of exceptional aural canvases, while outlining an identifiable style. While there is much to like about SUITE FOR HELEN F., there’s also a bit of excess. A smaller canvas would have served his purposes better. Taking this to heart, next time out, he could paint his masterpiece.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Disc 1: 1. Part 1 2. Part 2 3. Part 3 Disc 2: 4. Part 4 5. Part 5 6. Part 1 Part 1 6 7. Part 7

Personnel: Ivo Perelman (tenor saxophone); Dominc Duval and Mark Dresser (basses) Gerry Hemingway (drums); Jay Rosen (drums and percussion)

May 31, 2004

LISA SOKOLOV

Presence
Laughing Horse Records Lhr 1011

Lisa Sokolov has her nerve.

The New York-based singer, teacher and music therapist proves on this exceptional CD that’s she’s unafraid to tackle nearly any song. Backed by a crack rhythm team she runs through a dozen selections ranging from the most obscure originals to the most commonplace standards. In the majority of cases, she manages to create singular versions that stand on their own as improv art songs.

Almost as much an actor as a vocalist, Sokolov uses her expressive voice and mannerisms to make over such hackneyed and overdone standards as “For All We Know” and “Oh, What A Beautiful Morning”, exposing their inner workings. Taken heart-breakingly slow, backed by John DiMartino busy piano playing she emphasizes the underlying sentiments of the former more than its familiar lyrics. Then with her own spare piano accompaniment, she transforms the later into a deadly serious cry of triumph, helped immeasurably by scrupulously accented syllables and vocal melisma.

Classically trained as a pianist and vocalist, Sokolov adopted improvised music after hearing John Coltrane, and later studied at Vermont’s Bennington College with Coltrane’s bassist Jimmy Garrison and drummer Milford Graves. Director of The Institute for Embodied VoiceWork, Sokolov’s day job is training postgraduate music therapists. She has been collaborating with bassist William Parker since she arrived in New York in 1977 -- her overdubbed, a cappella performance of his “Hopefully” balances its gospel and work song origins here -- and has performed to great acclaim with Cecil Taylor’s orchestra and interpreting the songs of drummer Gerry Hemingway.

One of the most versatile percussionists in music, Hemingway repays the favor here. The other musicians on side are Cameron Brown -- who knows a thing or two about vocal accompaniment, having worked with Shelia Jordan -- and DiMartino, who was music director for vocalists Jon Hendricks and Billy Eckstine and has played straightahead and Latin Jazz with such masters as guitarist Kenny Burrell.

Brown’s sensitivity is given a workout on “You Do Something To Me”. Treated as a finger-snapping rhythm tune, Sokolov uses the turnaround to quicken the tempo even more, making her point through held notes and unselfconscious scat.

She isn’t a retro re-creator, imprisoned within the Great American Songbook like some more popular and younger vocalists, though. Built on fragmented bass lines, high intensity piano and irregular drum rolls, her own “Hard being Human”, recorded live at Parker’s Vision Festival, is rife with passion and excitement. Sometimes slipping into a female baritone range, elsewhere exhibiting Annie Ross-like throat warbling, her theatrical sense invests the repetitive words and descending theme statement with unwavering theatrics. DiMartino’s right-handed beats and Hemingway’s subtle rolls and flams add to the mood.

Even more triumphantly she makes her own two songs wedded to icons of the 1960s: Aretha Franklin’s “Chain of Fools” and Laura Nyro’s “And When I Die”. With only her own highly syncopated piano accompaniment on the later, she vocally testifies, transfiguring the Blood, Sweat & Tears hit into near gospel. With keyboard work emphasizing cascading arpeggios, she adds her own lyrics to Nyro’s, in the process turning the tune into a hymn to childbirth, emphasizing its innate religiosity.

Powerful glossolalia, scatted rhythmic vocalese and near-breathless emotionalism help to reassemble the Queen of Soul’s anthem. Snapping off word variations backed by powerful stopping from Brown, the clink of Hemingway’s cymbals and key clipping from DiMartino, she builds up to an intense stop-time section. Phrasing like an instrumentalist, Sokolov repeats, stretches and accentuates different words in the “Fools” verse to re-imagine the familiar tune.

PRESENCE isn’t completely perfect however. When she imputes overly theatrical interpretations to musical poetry on a couple of tracks and produces a breathy reading of Jacques Brel’s anti-war waltz “Sons Of”, the effect is off-putting. Why bother recreating art songs, when her rhythmic improvisations are art enough in themselves?

Because of her nerve, Sokolov has produced a noteworthy session, and one that deserves to be heard by all fans of jazz singing, most especially those disappointed with the present-day, so-called divas.

Sokolov is no jazz diva -- just an exceptional improviser.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Presence 2. Hopefully 3. Oh, What A Beautiful Morning 4. You Do Something To Me 5. Chain of Fools 6. Hard being Human 7. Sons Of 8. Water Lillies 9. And When I Die 10. As It Is 11. For All We Know 12. Home On The Range

Personnel: Lisa Sokolov (vocals and piano); John DiMartino (piano); Cameron Brown (bass); Gerry Hemingway (drums)

April 19, 2004

EARL HOWARD

Strong Force
Mutable Music 17511-2

STRONG FORCE is a true American mongrel.

A through-composed piece, written by someone very much on the New music side of things, it’s still given a distinct sense of spontaneity through the contributions of improvisers, whose sympathies usually lie on the jazz side of the fence. Commissioned by The Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard University, much of the music bubbles along thanks to the individual players’ skills, as well as its creation by Sunnyside, N.Y.-based composer Earl Howard who sits in on synthesizer. In fact, STRONG FORCE’s main weakness is definitely extra-musical, with some contributions distant or muffled because of the live recording situation at New York’s Merkin Hall.

Born in 1951, Howard now concentrates on creating pieces for live electronics and electronic tape, as well as those that add live improvisation to orchestrated sounds created by electronics. Also an alto saxophonist, Howard has written and performed pieces for solo saxophone, for saxophone and tape and recorded improvisations with hyperpiano specialist Denman Maroney.

Two of the musicians here -- who collectively make up the Parabola Arts Ensemble for which this composition was shaped -- have recorded other Howard works individually. Pianist and academic Anthony Davis, best known for his operas X and TANIA, and his work with trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith, has recorded two of Howard’s compositions for piano and tape. Gerry Hemingway, associate of exploratory musicians ranging from composer Anthony Braxton to saxophonist John Butcher, has recorded a Howard piece for solo percussion. Dutch cellist Ernst Reijseger’s reputation comes from his work in Hemingway’s quintet and the ICP orchestra; while harpist Anne LeBaron, a contemporary composer, has also performed in improv situations with pianist Muhal Richard Abrams and Braxton. Within this composition, Howard has evidentially created particular solo passages for each.

Often, for instance, LeBaron’s silvery harp glissandos and Reijseger’s arco lines meld, approximating an even larger stringed instrument. On his own, though, the cellist seems to prefer abrasive scratching and rumbling bow slices than conventional string lines. There is a point in the final section, however, where with more torque added, he strums and flat picks different sections, creating complementary vibrations that may or may not be in the score.

Cello pummeling and LeBaron’s contrasting descending runs frame Hemingway’s solo section in Part 2. Trading vigorous drum strokes with Davis’ arpeggio-rich continuum and Reijseger’s string slides, he then turns to kettle drum and crash cymbals to color the performance. Although the piece appears to reach a climax here, the live sound muddies some of the composer’s multi-layered conceptions.

The same sort of thing happens in the next section, where thunderous strokes and bell-tree shakes from the percussionist give way to an extended passage where he seems to be emphasizing the beat with his bass drum pedal, rolling his sticks upon the drum heads and whacking the sides of his snares and toms. You may have to leap up and turn your playback system down though, since the thunderous results becomes almost as unbearably loud as the introductory sections of a couple of other tracks are inaudible. STRONG FORCE’s final seconds also appear to fade to silence following focused harp plucks. Hopefully the fade was the decision of Howard, not the hall’s acoustics.

Prominent on the keys as soon as the percussion interlude subsides, Davis -- who earlier on indulges in internal string strumming -- plays an extended, semi-classical fantasia of splayed notes and underlying harmonies, with left handed harmonic interjections using sympathetic voicing to create a capacious soundscape. Occasionally too, you hear synthesizer whorls that ascend from underneath the other sounds then vanish.

That sort of restrain characterizes Howard’s other electronic interjections here. Usually he’ll provide an underlying ostinato, a split-second note commentary or create oscillating overtones, leaving the fireworks to others, most notably the percussionist. Howard is obviously satisfied that his composition is receiving a first class reading.

Indeed STRONG FORCE is played as well as can be expected from the humans. But be aware of reproduction weaknesses when investigating this CD.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Strong Force 1 2. Strong Force 2 3. Strong Force 3 4. Strong Force 4 5. Strong Force 5

Personnel: Parabola Arts Ensemble: Anthony Davis (piano); Earl Howard (synthesizer); Anne LeBaron (harp); Ernst Reijseger (cello); Gerry Hemingway (percussion)

November 17, 2003

FRANK GRATKOWSKI QUARTET

Spectral Reflections
Leo Records LR 374

Straddling the fine line between what used to be called the avant garde and so-called mainstream music, German reedist Frank Gratkowski lets his quartet shine on six of his own compositions.

Multifaceted, there are enough changes in mood, tempo and time here to satisfy most fanciers of the experimental, yet enough of a swinging pulse (cf. Wynton Marsalis rules) to satisfy the most hidebound neo-con.

Many know Gratkowski, for his work in German pianist Georg

Gräwe’s different groupings and for his membership in American drummer Gerry Hemingway’s new quintet -- Hemingway returns the favor here. Also at home in many formal and ad hoc situations, the alto saxophonist and clarinetist put together his own quartet to put a personal stamp on the music -- and he’s certainly done so on this outing.

Consider “Homage”, for instance. Possibly meant as a tribute to the history of improvisation, it includes inferences from pre-and-post-modern jazz and eventually a beat to which Marsalis might even groove.

Commencing initially with a sweet sounding coloratura clarinet line, Gratkowski’s translucent phrasing is soon interrupted by chortling plunger work from Dutch trombonist Wolter Wierbos, another Hemingway associate and linchpin of Holland’s ICP Orchestra. Eventually the fluid undertow courtesy of the bass of Dieter Manderscheid, who has worked with the reedman since the early 1990s, joins with the pulsing drums to shift the piece into modified swing time. As the clarinetist bites on his reed to extend his range the screeching tones that result relate more to Louis Armstrong associate Johnny Dodds than modern technicians likes Buddy DeFranco. In sympathy, Wierbos’ gravelly snorts retrogress, blending J.J. Johnson-like machinegun slide rapidity with slurred, rubato changes that recall Dickie Wells or Vic Dickenson. Coda features grace notes from Gratkowski soaring over straight time played by the rhythm duo.

Contrast this with the title and longest tune, which confirm the reedist’s membership in the avant garde. Fricative contrabass clarinet efforts push nephritic growls from subterranean surfaces until they’re squeezed as through a sausage maker into piercing tones. Meanwhile, uninterrupted timbres arise from the trombone, as if individual, electronica-like patterns are being tongued through its mouthpiece. Hemingway contributes an intermittent snare pitter patter and drumstick abrasions on the ride cymbal, while Manderscheid produces menacing, low-pitched horror movie-like tone swabs. As Gratkowski double tongues further down the scale, Wierbos’ counterlines are all tongue tension.

Between these two extremes on the CD, the foursome shows off a variety of styles and techniques, ranging from -- on the horn players’ part -- blowing colored air through their body tubes, and in Gratkowski’s case from both sax and clarinet -- trilling whistles and tongue slaps as well as legato tones. Wierbos contributes intermittent bell blasts, spittle-accelerated Bronx cheers, chromatic plunger work, and, at the conclusion of one composition, what could be a military bugle call. Manderscheid quietly bows when needed and scrapes double stops at other times; while Hemingway’s intermittent drum pressure from straight time to widely offbeat -- in both senses of the word -- plus cymbal crackles and sizzles, shows why he’s in demand as a leader and sideman in both North America and Europe.

Gratkowski is in a similar situation. Nevertheless the achievements on this CD prove that he must find time for a leadership role more often.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Blonk 2. Homage 3. Loom 4. Fenster 5. Annäherungen III 6. Spectral Reflections

Personnel: Wolter Wierbos (trombone); Frank Gratkowski (alto saxophone, clarinet and contrabass clarinet); Dieter Manderscheid (bass); Gerry Hemingway (drums)

November 3, 2003

TELETU

Quartetos
Clean Feed CF006 CD

As with any empirical formula, changing one part of a musical equation can result in a completely different outcome. Compare John Coltrane’s quartet with McCoy Tyner on piano to the one with Alice Coltrane on piano for instance. Or think of how different the Modern Jazz Quartet sounded with Connie Kay instead of Kenny Clarke on drums.

Portuguese total improv ensemble, Telectu, has done something like that on this three-CD set. Together for more than 20 years Telectu’s guiding duo -- pianist Jorge Lima Barreto and guitarist Vìtor Rua -- have over the years adapted variation of electronica, minimalism, musique concrète, art rock and lounge jazz to its improv foundation, collaborating with musicians such as experimental American guitarist Elliott Sharp and French clarinetist Louis Sclavis. Recently, despite side projects in theatre works and poetry, the band has become more acoustic, especially when Rua’s self-designed 18-string guitar is put into play. British soprano saxophonist Tom Chant has been the third Telectuan since 1990.

However, the idea behind the live concerts on QUARTETOS seemed to be to “make it new” by changing the drummer each time out. Thus venerable American New Thing drummer Sunny Murray is one disc one, British improv pioneer, percussionist Eddie Prévost is on disc two, and American drummer Gerry Hemingway is on disc three. Happily, although each offers an astute rhythmic variation to the proceedings, Telectu’s group identity is strong enough so that the results aren’t that dissimilar from disc to disc.

Although it’s instructive to compare each performance to one another, don’t try listening to the set all at once. Almost three hours of music is more than anyone can take in a single sitting. Instead relish each singly.

Interesting enough, it’s Hemingway who seems to get the three Telectu members thinking along different lines. During the course of that 56-minute performance Barreto suddenly appears to be working in straight lines, adapting a variation of 20th century classical piano music to his output, while Chant’s bird-like soprano cackles are sometimes met with the keyboardist’s expressive left hand decorations as well as delicate brush work on the toms, cymbal and snare. Harp-like glissandos issue from Rua’s 18-string contraption, which is also where some unclassifiable tones arise as well. Finally, novel textures and exaggerated densities are introduced to the sound picture by Rua’s judicious use of electronics.

Issuing wild fowl quacks, tongue slaps, rolling chirps and reverberated tones from within his horn, Chant is partnered by the drummer’s percussion scraping, Afro-Cuban intimations and a point where it seems objects are rolling on the snare and toms. Three-quarters of the way through Rua’s waterfall-like string patterns the intensity rises as he begins pulling on his strings with bodybuilder’s strength. Barreto works his way around the piano keyboard, probably investigating the timbres created by forearm pressure, and brings the sustain pedal into play. Bass drum resonance issues from Hemingway, while Chant varies his lines with obtuse, unconnected reed abstractions. Eventually, after it seems as if the drummer has unleashed a suitcase full of whirring mechanized objects, the pianist, whose playing has been understated before this begins creating modified, Iberian boogie woogie-like walking basses. Soon the soprano sax hits its high-pitched false register, and, as Chant slurs out accents, Hemingway exercises his hi-hat and sizzle cymbals and Rua provides lacerated comments from both his instruments.

Bonded to his loose-limbed style of 40 years, Murray is the most extruding of the drummers. During the nearly 61 minutes that make up his Portuguese connection, he takes more solos than the other two percussionists combined, including one right at the top of the piece. Although 21st century modernity is present in miscellaneous electronic crackles, guitarharp glissandos and some bubbling chirps from Chant’s soprano, Murray, unimpressed, sticks to his own drum-and-dab style. At times, in fact, it appears as if he’s trying to put Barreto and Chant into the Cecil Taylor and Jimmy Lyons roles that he was familiar with from his tenure with that pianist’s band.

One-third of the way through, Chant’s soft peeping tones, Barreto’s high-intensity piano chords plus accelerated yanks on Rua’s 18 strings at last push Murray’s rumbling drum beats in the same direction as the others. Operating on all cylinders, the drummer sounds out rolls, roughs and drags, Barreto hits the keyboard with more force and Chant creates some trilling, penny whistle tones.

Eventually the program become more impassioned, as the pianist formulates a fantasia of tremolo runs; somehow Rua replicates what could be an electric bass part; and the saxist tries speedy tongue slaps, rolling split tones and circular breathing exercises. Somehow Murray is pushed into a more restrained, almost EuroImprov state of mind and execution.

Not that there’s much comparison between his Murray’s style and that of Prévost, one of the creators of the EuroImprov genre. Prévost, in whose trio Chant also plays, initially finesses his oversized snare and undersized cymbals in such a way that Barreto begins taking on the understated persona of pianist John Tilbury the drummer’s AMM playing partner. Keyboard expression then slackens, and Rua appears to be affected by the same creeping malaise, underscoring his output to such an extent that he starts to sound like an enervated Harpo Marx.

Luckily, before all individuality is lost, Prévost’s distinctively scraping chains on his drumheads awaken the others to their individual roles. Chant’s output starts to mix what sounds like balloon inflation with squeaks and wiggles; Barreto trifles with straight jazz time; and Rua -- plus electronics -- comes up with the subtle voicing of oddball sonics. As the reedist turns from multiphonics to a concentrated line that arches over the other sounds, the drummer bisects all this with anvil-like hits on his kit. The pianist turns to circular sound patterns and Prévost responds with scrapes, scratches and rolling tidal wave like movements. Adagio, the 52-minute performance wraps up with guitar-like plucks from Rua; a harder and more stressed pitch from Barreto; whistling reed tones from Chant and a single, clear cymbal touch from the drummer.

Like a proper Iberian meal, each course of this set should be savored for its sensations and flavor before going on to the next. That way QUARTETOS will provide a nourishing and succulent musical repast.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: CD1: 1. With Sunny Murray CD2: 1. With Eddie Prévost CD3: 1. With Gerry Hemingway

Personnel: Tom Chant (soprano saxophone) Jorge Lima Barreto (piano, prepared piano); Vìtor Rua (18-string guitar, electronics); Sunny Murray~ or Eddie Prévost* or Gerry Hemingway+ (drums)

July 14, 2003

RICHARD TEITELBAUM

Blends
New Albion NA 118

QUARTET NATTO
Headlands
482 Music 482-1018

Adapting the sounds of traditional Japanese music to Western sensibilities has occupied Occidental musicians from the time contact was first made in the mid-19th century. Mixing electronics, computers and acoustic instruments has been another leitmotif of the mid-20th century.

That the musicians on these CDs attempt to meld both of these concepts is noteworthy enough; that they add a dollop of free improvisation to the other ingredients ratchets up the interest factor.

Each session features the shakuhachi or bamboo flute plus electronics. Prominent among those forging contemporary shakuhachi music, Japanese sensei Katsuya Yokoyama is featured on BLENDS, playing music composed by Richard Teitelbaum, who also plays a variety of computers and synthesizers here. The two compositions were recorded 12 years apart with different musical partners. The title track adds the percussion of Indian-born Trilok Gurtu, while “Kyotaku/Denshi” adds jazzers, bassist Mark Dresser and drummer Gerry Hemingway.

Teitelbaum, who first studied shakuhachi with Yokoyama in 1976, has always been interested in forms beyond common so-called serious music. Besides membership in the live electronic group MEV, he also played with a wide variety of musicians including the bassist’s and drummer’s associate Anthony Braxton, Steve Lacy and George Lewis.

Natto Quartet ups the ante on both sides of the equation. On the Eastern side is shakuhachi, played by Philip Gelb, who has studied the ancient Japanese flute since 1988, and usually works in improvised music, alongside folks like British saxophonist John Butcher. Also featured is kotoist Shoko Hikage, who studied Japanese classical techniques on her many stringed instrument.

Representing Occidental sounds are Tim Perkis, founding member of the interactive computer ensemble The Hub, who uses electronics-based, customized software and hardware, and Chris Brown, another Huber and an electronic musician and teacher who brought his prepared piano to improv bands with the late tenorman Glenn Spearman among others.

Definite program music, “Blends” (the composition), recorded in 1983, plays on the differences between Yokoyama’s winsome traditional shakuchachi sound and the slow moving electronic pulses created by Teitelbaum. His synthesizers perform a dual function, approximating the sound of gagaku court music with emulations of the shakuhachi and sho, while inventing shimmering electronic wiggles, swelling organ pulses and string section suggestions. More meditative and gentle than the other disc, the trance-like sounds produced by the blend of shakuhachi and electronics is only interrupted occasionally by Western percussion or tabla pulses from Gurtu.

Subdivided into four sections with an equivalent back-story, “Kyotaku/Denshi”, which was recorded 18 years later, finds the two main soloists even more accomplished on their chosen instruments. Related to the mythology surrounding his instrument, the flute sensei replicates the sound of small bell at one point and at others pushes out those jagged, ghostly whirlwind bass tones we’re familiar with from samurai films involving menacing spirits.

With his PowerBook creating sounds as disparate as European-based, romantic keyboard pulses and harsh sampled percussion, Teitelbaum’s bi-tonal melange resembles traditional Chinese as much as Japanese music. Then when the irregular rhythmic throb provided by Hemingway and Dresser is finally obvious -- they seem a tad unutilized on the CD -- some of the sounds seem to resemble those created by Italian film composer

Ennio Morricone. Teitelbaum adds yet another lick to the blend as the suite ends, with Yokoyama, playing his shakuhachi as traditionally as he can, solos over keyboard samples of Western-influenced Japanese pop music called Enka.

Nothing can be linked to pop music on HEADLANDS, with each of the seven tracks a quartet-created instant composition. On “Yuba”, for instance, Gelb first sounds as if he’s blowing into an elongated plastic tube, then creates his own rendition of those ghostly samurai tones, while facing down crackles and accentuated metallic hints from Perkins. Brown’s mobile preparations turn to high intensity chording, as the occasional pluck from Hikage’s koto gathers speed as she begins strumming away on it as if she had a table top steel guitar.

Utilizing many of the positions from her instrument’s ji or moveable bridges, the kotoist reconfigures her sound on “Kukicha” as half gagaku and half Appalachian finger picking. Meanwhile, the bamboo flute is soloing with such unforced airiness that you could confuse that pure tone for one coming from a human soprano. While he trills, Brown works his inside-the-piano prepared technique, as drones and percussion suggestions arise from Perkins’ electronics.

Elsewhere, knuckle-dusters on the side of and inside the piano create more percussive intimations. The electronics let out Bronx cheers or create electro-acoustic shrills as the shakuhachi purrs out single tones. Overall, the stroked plinks and plucks possibly arise from the 21-string koto. Gelb can match stylists like Butcher or Evan Parker for circular breathing, or hack out abrasive, rubato tones, while at times Brown produces fingertip legerdemain from his felt pads and other preparations, delineating microtonal fantasias using note patterns that are as unique as they are unexpected..

Happily, none of the groups represented here have subjugated Oriental sounds to Occidental ones nor used Japanese scales and clusters for mere exoticism. By trying -- and for the most part succeeding -- in blending at least four different musical traditions, they’ve created CDs that can be investigated by both confident traditionalists and followers of the new.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Blends: 1. Blends+ Kyotaku/Denshi*: 2. Kyorei (False Bell)/Imperial Procession 3. Kikichu’s Dream 4. Samurai Combat 5. Ronin’s Lament/The Coming of the West

Personnel: Blends: Katsuya Yokoyama (shakuhachi); Richard Teitelbaum (micromoog and polymoog synthesizers, Kurzweil K200 sampler and Macintosh PowerBook); Mark Dresser (bass)*; Gerry Hemingway (drums)*; Trilok Gurtu (tabla and percussion)+

Track Listing: Headlands: 1. Miso 2. Soba 3. Yiba 4. Nuka 5. Kukicha 6. Sake 7. Mochi

Personnel: Headlands: Philip Gelb (shakuhachi); Shoko Hikage (koto); Chris Brown (piano); Tim Perkis (computer)

June 16, 2003

WINTSCH/HEMINGWAY/OESTER

Open Songs
Altrisuoni AS 108

WINTSCH/FRITH/BAUMANN/TRONTIN
Whisperings
RecRec Music CD 75 EFA 05179

Swiss pianist Michel Wintsch posses a streak of romanticism that’s a mile wide and just as deep. How else would you explain the inclusion on his trio session of tunes by chansonniers Jacques Brel, Gilbert Bécaud and other Continental sentimentalists?

Sure by the time he’s finished with a tune like Bécaud’s “Et Maintenant” -- which English-speakers know as “What Now My Love” -- he’s deconstructed it into a potent improv exercise. But many times at the beginning or middle of standards or his own lush compositions, he appears to be reigning in his emotions just before he stumbles into André Gagnon or Roger Williams territory.

Luckily, the Geneva-based pianist’s choice of playing partners here, American drummer Gerry Hemingway, and bassist Bänz Oester from Bern, who it must be admitted does do pop and chanson gigs, are solid enough to act like musical Viagara. Their presence stiffens up the performances before they dive into mawkishness. That’s what makes OPEN SONGS a memorable disc.

WHISPERINGS is notable for another reason. With the other musicians from a definite non-jazz background -- British guitarist Fred Frith is an improv/art rocker; experimental Swiss vocalist Franziska Baumann a specialist in electronically processed sound; and drummer Bernard Trontin is a member of Swiss sampling pioneers The Young Gods -- it’s usually up to the keyboardist to try to move the sound away from rock’s version of sentimentality. Unfortunately he doesn’t succeed as often as he should.

To deal with OPEN SONGS first, the trio’s nearly 16-minute version of the Bécaud tune provides an example of how the three treat the material here. Commencing with a simple, pianistic run-through of the melody, by the five-minute mark Wintsch is creating fleet-fingered variations, jockeying with the chords, pitch and tempos, slowing down and speeding up. Soon, as he begins exploring the left side of the keyboard with a weightlifters touch and massaging the pedals -- and before Hemingway bears down on his toms, snare and cymbals at a steam engine pace -- Oester has a short, understated solo. Soon you can hear Wintsch jabbing more sharply and more fiercely at the chords as the bassist produces some forceful flamenco-style strumming. Finally, at the bull fiddle’s highest pitch, Oester sounds out the theme.

A similar transformation occurs with Angel Cabral and Enrique Dizeo’s “La Foule”. Although it too is a slice of Euro-romanticism, the pianist’s playing is laser sharp so that the notes are separated enough to not allow the tune to fall into a mawkish, nightclub ambiance. After some two-handed variations on the theme, with the occasional locked hand accent, Wintsch indulges in some rococo double timing, rousing to applause the audience at the Swiss jazz festival where the track was recorded.

Conversely, the instant compositions such as “Isablue” recall some of the less histrionic improvisations of pianist Keith Jarrett’s Standards trio. As the pianist circles around the melody, the bassist tugs out a counter melody of his own, producing some bluesy asides as the drummer tries for a wavering shuffle beat. Other pieces include the sort of swing that most folks would designate as so-called “real” jazz. However, the brief “2 pm”, rife with inside-the-piano rumbles and clink of bass strings, as if Wintsch and Oester were performing in a New music recital.

If there is a weakness here it relates to the soppy melancholy which is as generic to the chanson as profanity is to rap. Playing some of the melodies a little too straight sometimes leaves the listener with the feeling that he may have wandered into an all-instrumental concert made up of Barry Manilow’s or Peter Allen’s greatest hits.

No singer is present on OPEN SONGS, but most of the 11 murmurings on WHISPERINGS include vocalized interpolations from Baumann. Bern-based and someone who claims to have developed her so-called acoustic scenery through projects spanning several media, she has also recorded with other experimenters like violinist Charlotte Hug and drummer Fritz Hauser. Here though, the vocal product sounds like a weird amalgam of the styles of No waver Lydia Lunch, New Thing vocalist Patty Waters, disco diva Donna Summer and the Teutonic recitations of early Velvet Underground chanteuse, Nico.

On “Purple line”, for instance, her falsetto cries and reverberating screeches are straight from No Wave territory, as is her speaking in tongues. Someone -- Frith? -- seems to be creating pile driver, bandsaw-like, heavy metal guitar runs, which appear to bring forward a dance-like rhythm from Wintsch on electric keyboards. Similarly, despite his pedigree, drummer Trontin, apparently can produce nothing more than standard rock beats. Things are even less coherent on “Reversed Bridges” with the percussionist sounding as if he’s replicating the drum machine from Herbie Hancock’s “Rockit”, the pianist producing lazy electric piano washes, the guitar chirping like a cricket and the vocalist’s yodeling joined by French-accented mumbling from a male voice.

Elsewhere, some of the menacing electronic music with an overactive distortion pedal and echoing keyboard wooshes must have reminded Frith of his time with John Zorn’s avant-metal Naked City band. Considering the pure volume and density of some of the sounds, it would seem that overdubbing was used as well. Baumann tries some vaguely Arabic sounding vocalese at one point, then there’s a section of “Lunatic Fringe” (sic), where the lyrics appear to be “ga ga ga”. Her buzz-like flute screeds also add little to the general conception, while the drummer often seems as likely to turn the beat around as to create constant repetitive hammering. Overall, it would seem that trying to transcend jazz-inflected improvised music has resulted in a conception of maudlin banality with overwhelming amplification and rhythms.

Perhaps if your preference is for rock-influenced, so-called experimentation, WHISPERINGS may rank higher on your hit parade. For the average improv fan, though, OPEN SONGS is the preferred disc here.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Open: 1. 1. Offret 2. La Plat Pays 3. Isablue 4. Ne Me Quittes Pas 5. Path of Rain 6. La Foule (Que nadie sepa mi sufrir) 7. Walking In 8. Et Maintenant 9. 2 pm

Personnel: Open: Michel Wintsch (piano); Bänz Oester (bass); Gerry Hemingway (drums)

Track Listing: Whisperings: 1. Sleeping in a Dream 2. Lunatic Fringe 3. Candles Ahead 4. Reversed Bridges 5. Sirènes 6. Curé’s omelette 7. Operatic tchaess 8. Purple line 9. Curious grass 10. Nice giant 11. Two stars (instead of one)

Personnel: Whisperings: Franziska Baumann (voice, flute, electronics); Fred Frith (guitars); Michel Wintsch (piano, electronics, samples); Bernard Trontin (drums, percussion)

September 16, 2002

TOM & GERRY

Fire Works
Umbrella 028

IGNAZ SCHICK/ANDREA NEUMANN Petit pale
Zarek 05

IGNAZ SCHICK Tabit
Zarek 02

FREDY STUDER/DJ M. SINGE Duos 14 -20
For 4 Ears CD 1242

Electro-acoustic instruments have massively modified the improv world over the past half-decade. While some musicians have stayed clear of synthesizers, turntables, PowerBooks and other sorts of electronic manipulation, others -- especially in Europe -- have adopted these gizmos wholeheartedly. We’re now at a point where with what and how an individual creates is becoming less important than the end result.

Much more fascinating is that finally -- like there are with acoustic instruments -- different styles and techniques have been developed to create with electronics. The four discs here, for instance, all have an electronic component. But like comparing the tenor saxophone playing of Lester Young and Coleman Hawkins, it would be difficult to confuse the electronic-acoustic imagination of any one of these musicians with any other.

One-half of Tom & Gerry, with American drummer Gerry Hemingway, Cologne, Germany-based synthesizer player Thomas Lehn was originally an improvising pianist and he brings that keyboard touch and sense of dynamics to this duo, which has been together since 1997. Lehn, who is also involved with a circuit board full of other combos, including Konk Pack with British master percussionist Roger Turner, certainly knows how to interact with a drummer. In this duo situation he simply takes the role of all the other instruments and lets Hemingway supply the percussive undertones.

Most impressive when they have the space and momentum to create, the two turn “Titanium Salute” into a virtual-reality-big-band salute for the 21st century. With Hemingway coming across like a Space Age Chick Webb in his intro, Lehn uses his instrument to riff like a horn section in response then resonates pseudo guitar and bass string sonics. Ray gun and rocket ship fire out of his synth, melding with the drummer’s laser beam rhythms, reifying the link between Sun Ra’s electronics and Webb’s orchestral precision.

More outwardly electric, “Girandola”, a 13½-minute sound exploitation, moves from a hushed snare and floor tom concoction to a high-pitched ballet of electronic beats and drum echoes. The tune twists, turns and wriggles, with outer space-like whooshes, quasi-sax squalls, prolonged buzzes, and what could be someone’s footsteps vying for supremacy with the subtle click of crossed drum sticks, snare palm spanks and a discharge of sharp sounds from Hemingway. Later surf music suggestions bubble up from Lehn’s fingers as the drummer hammers out a steady tattoo.

Quicker tempos allow the two to expand the palate even further as the synthesizer player produces sounds that could be a Martian ray gun, the circularly breathed notes of a saxophone, stretched rubber bands and falsetto hunting horn quivers. Lehn can even morph into Keith Emerson circa 1971, firing portable synthesizer bullets into an arena crowd. Meantime movement and excitement is intensified as Hemingway does everything from softly sounding a triangle to sprinting sticks along the shells, rims and skins of his kit, or slowly scraping the cymbal tops. Near-soundless hisses characterize slower tunes like “Walking into Sky”, the final number, which attempt to decelerate the duo’s sounds and fade into nullity, only be halted by a final synth buzz.

That ultimate sound pinpoints the difference between Tom & Gerry’s excitable hullabaloo and the collaboration between German synthesizer player Ignaz Schick and inside-piano stylist Andrea Neumann. An electronics fundamentalist, Schick works in other electro-acoustic configurations like Perlonex, as well in Phosphor with Newman, a former classical pianist, who excels on prepared and electronically treated piano. This duo CD appears to be an attempt to create as near soundless an aural field as possible.

Suggesting tones rather than playing them, Neumann often appears to be performing a near-noiseless autopsy on the guts of the piano. Only rarely can you discern her sounding a couple of keys, running her hand over the strings, or plucking one. Similarly, Schick seems to prefer an aural concept that resembles sine wave flatlining. Rumbles, static, whooshes, whines, plinks and clicks are also prominent, or at least as prominent as anything designed to be noiseless can appear.

Seemingly operating on top of a sonic groundcover continuously decorated with electronic whooshes, repeated keyboard notes and what sounds like a toy xylophone being hit or the air being let out of a balloon occasionally surface.

Interaction finally foregrounds on “Petit VI”, the final track, with radio tuning static giving way to musically-oriented up and down movements, which accelerates from slow near soundlessness to speedy white noise characterized by crackles, buzzes and electronic rumbles.

Recording TABIT on his own six months previously, Schick sounds livelier. Cautioning in a sleeve note against “prolonged or repeated listening” due to “extreme frequencies”, this seemed to mean that he’s added sampled radio broadcasts and a more constant sound field to his explorations.

Again moving between buzzes, rumbles, squishes, static and loops, the high frequencies means that the sounds are at times earsplitting, but altogether more audible than what came out of his duet with Neumann. With the crinkle of electronic static a constant leitmotif, he produces what could be likened to a jackhammer in steady use, a car driving off, rocket ship exploration of the cosmos and even a dentist’s drill. Radio programming can also be perceived, but it’s sometimes so indistinct that you may be tempted to try to fine-tune the station.

Like Hemingway, a percussionist open to many musical situations, Swiss drummer Fredy Studer is probably best known for the so-called Hardcore Chamber Music he plays with the long-running Koch, Schütz and Studer trio. The three recorded with two American turntablists -- one of whom was DJ M. Singe -- for a middling session a couple of years ago, and this CD can be heard as a continuation of that experiment.

A more palatable disc than the former, since Singe -- real name Beth Coleman -- shows up with electronics as well as her turntable and Studer uses a larger collection of percussion implements, it will still probably appeal more to specialists.

Again the weakness appears to be in its sameness, simplicity and standardization, with the almost 51 minutes of the CD appearing to be much, much longer. Based on constant electronic loops and buzzes, it’s rare that the drummer manages to create anything more than standard beats. For instance the simple rock music-like press rolls linked to a French chanson sample on “Duo 15” don’t seem to do much more than decorate that record as it’s manipulated backwards and forward by the DJ.

In even more extended form, as on “Duo 19”, the electronic effects merely appear to reflect clean-up day at the computer lab. Soon the odd clinks and electronic hums are interrupted by a cheesy recording of a string section, as if the cleaner had suddenly bumped into a revolving turntable upsetting an already playing LP. When the addition of what seems to be the sound of the mixing board being pulled across the floor is succeeded by drum beats and vibes intonations, the tiny recorded voices are massaged back and forth so they accelerate and start to resemble barking dogs. As sped up and slowed down percussion interruptions to the buzzing electronic loops sometimes vie with pre-recorded dialogue or singing, the end product really never really makes it past pastiche.

These sessions prove without a doubt that adapting electro-acoustics to improvisation brings with it a variety of sometimes insurmountable challenges, especially if when trying to deal with traditional instruments.

--- Ken Waxman

Fire: Track Listing: 1.Pot’s a feu 2. Coconut Pistil 3. Floating Leaves 4. Dragon Eggs 5. Girandola 6. Fishes & Whistles 7. Ripple to Red Wave 8. Titanium Salute 9. Walking into Sky

Fire: Personnel: Thomas Lehn (analog synthesizer); Gerry Hemingway (drums, percussion, voice)

Petit: Track Listing: 1. Petit I 2. Petit II 3. Petit III 4. Petit IV 5. Petit V 6. Petit VI

Petit: Personnel: Ignaz Schick (live electronics); Andrea Neumann (inside-piano)

Tabit: Track Listing: 1. Radox 2. Tabit 3. Rem 4. Astat

Tabit: Personnel: Ignaz Schick (live electronics)

Duo: Track Listing: 1. Duo 14 2. Duo 15 3. Duo 16 4. Duo 17 5. Duo 18 6. Duo 19 7. Remix Native Land (death mix) 8. Remix Native Land (electro) 9. Remix crash 10. Duo 20

Duo: Personnel: Fredy Studer (drums, percussion, gongs, metal, water); DJ M. Singe (turntables, electronics)

January 15, 2002

MARK DRESSER/GERRY HEMINGWAY/DAVID MOTT

Reunion Live
Intrepid Ear IE 002

Nearly 15 years after drummer Gerry Hemingway and baritone saxophonist David Mott recorded Outerbridge Crossing, one of the percussionist's most notable early quintet sessions, the two were reunited for a concert at the 1999 Guelph (Ontario) Jazz Festival. On hand was longtime Hemingway associate bassist Mark Dresser and together the three turned out this notable disc.

Fiendishly exciting in person, laser light exposes some weaknesses that were probably masked by live performance movements. Together and separately each man has moments of glory. But on "Deep Into The Unfathomable", the almost 42-minute tour de force that makes up much of the disc, there are a few dead spots, which mostly can be attributed to Dresser.

That's the agony and ecstasy of music improvised on the spot, and it's actually a compliment to the three that they sound so much like a working trio during most of the disc.

Of course that shouldn't really be a surprise considering their collective backgrounds. The drummer may be the most in-demand inside/outside percussionist ever. In any given month he's as apt to appear someplace in Europe powering a group otherwise made up of Germans, Dutchmen or Britons, as he is to be touring with his own combo in North America. Hemingway's first came to notice as a member of reedist Anthony Braxton's quartet, where the bass chair was held by Dresser. Since then Dresser, a Californian turned New Yorker, has worked in a head spinning variety of settings, from playing in the most outside groups to anchoring more mainstream sessions.

Least known of the three, Mott is a well-schooled academic and serious composer, who has been a professor of music at Toronto's York University since 1978. He hasn't abandoned playing though, and over the years in Toronto, he has worked and recorded with a variety of other musicians from pianist David Lopato to the 40 Fingers saxophone quartet. Despite lack of stateside fame, he more than holds up his side of the triangle on the disc.

Although his soloing is probably as conventional as anyone gets here, it doesn't mean that Mott neglects any part of the horn. Most of the time on "Deep Into" he plays a straight legato melody and with repeated notes elaborates what could be various textural themes throughout. In the tonic most of the time, he's creating an instant composition, not free improv or energy playing.

At times he will begin double timing and find his movements matched by ascending percussion flurries from Hemingway or the isolated metallic scratch of a drumstick on a cymbal. Drawing Dresser into the equation, you might hear echoes of hoary old "Harlem Nocturne".

Other times he will sluice into the tenor, then the alto and then the altissimo range of his axe, though, he doesn't spend any longer in protracted scream mode than he does creating basement rattling bass reverberations. Furthermore, at the end of the first tune he begins literally shouting and speaking through his horn with cries and micro syllables. Functioning as if there hadn't been a decade plus gap between their last playing situation, Hemingway responds in kind by rooting through different parts of his kit and at one point worrying the cymbals and at another beating the snare with his palms. Dresser rises to the occasion and produces a low, rhythmic tone that is as steady as that usually produced by master timekeeper Paul Chambers.

The bassist shines here and elsewhere when he doubles Mott's baritone phrasing with grace notes from the bottom of the bass so closely that you could be hearing two baris or two basses. Another time he compliments an extended Hemingway workout on toms, snare and cymbals with some elegantly bowed notes that sound almost Middle Eastern.

On his own though, with only static breaths from Mott as backup, he seems to lose himself in minute arco scratching in the bridge region. Despite some doubled notes he nearly curtails the tune, and it's up to Mott blasting out cushioning lines and Hemingway boiling away on he toms to ride to the rescue like The Lone Ranger and Tonto.

The encore, "Run like Hell Until You Stop", is a powerful sprint that almost lives up to its name and provides a digestive to the parts of the main course that went unswallowed. Hemingway knocks out protracted snare work, Dresser holds the pace and Mott leaps from mellow mid-range to continuous tongue slaps.

If only Dresser's energy level had reached the heights of the others throughout, this would have been an exceptional disc instead of just a very good one.

Those who follow the careers of the bassist and drummer will definitely be interested in finding this special CD and those who haven't yet been exposed to Mott's mastery -- or those who have -- will seek it out as well. Because it's put out by the Guelph Jazz Festival itself, probably the best source for it is www.guelphjazzfestival.com.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Introduction 2. Deep Into The Unfathomable 3. Run like Hell Until You Stop

Personnel: David Mott (baritone saxophone); Mark Dresser (bass); Gerry Hemingway (percussion)

October 8, 2001

JAMES EMERY

Luminous Cycles
Between the lines btl 015/EFA 10185-2

James Emery leads a valiant fight, but in the end he's done in by the acoustic guitar curse. Ever since jazzers switched over to the electric model following Charlie Christian's tenure with Benny Goodman's band in 1939-1941, the acoustic model has been little more than the electric's poor cousin. Sure, versatile soloists like Charlie Byrd and Laurindo Almeida may have concentrated on it for renditions of Brazilian music and standards, but this conservative approach was in retrospect only impressive when compared to lite-jazz, New Age or fusion followers who brandish the instrument to convey their so-called sensitive sides.

So what's James Emery, certified avant gardist and co-founder of jazz's most outside string group -- The String Trio of New York -- doing with an acoustic axe? Attempting to create interesting chamber jazz that's what. Whether he succeeds is another matter, however. For despite an all-star cast performing all original material, the tunes often appear to be almost too polite. The sidemen may be some of New York's most accomplished "downtowners", but overloading the session with such "softer" instruments as the acoustic guitar, flute and vibes pushes the session towards 1950s' jazz'n'satin excursions from the likes of George Shearing's quintet.

Luckily Emery has called upon one of the toughest accompaniment team -- bassist Drew Gress and drummer Gerry Hemingway to hold things together. But on a tune like "En Rapport" you get the feeling that the drummer is hitting much harder than usual just to keep the piece from being drowned in froth. Then on something like "Violet Into The Blue", with its modified tango beat, the clarinet harmony is cloying. Even when someone like Marty Ehrlich constructs an alto solo that contains the tougher elements of Art Pepper's early style, it's Emery's lighter guitar string attack that makes the tune earthbound. Elsewhere, Chris Speed may let loose on tenor saxophone and Ehrlich do the same on clarinet on the vaguely Latin "Across The Water", but by the time the melody is elaborated, you get the uneasy feeling that it's the continuation of another tune, not a standalone piece.

Cool/West Coast Jazz conceptions, with every note locked into place also seem to come to the fore on "Exit To Nowhere" and other pieces. There likely haven't been as many vibe runs or doubled flute echoes recorded since the heyday of Pacific Jazz in the early 1950s. Strangely enough Emery may have taken the title of 'Exit" to heart, for here he appears to strengthen his attack to cut through the woodwinds.

During earlier Jazz eras, musicians sometimes put out sessions where they "played pretty for the people" and LUMINOUS CYCLES could easily fit into that niche. The musicianship here is still top notch and the conception pleasant enough. If you're a rabid fan of any of the musicians involved you may have a higher opinion of this CD as well. But, overall, while pleasant enough, it seems to lack the go-for-broke spark that illuminates really memorable music.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Luminous Cycles 2. One red Thread 3. Beyond Words 4. En Rapport 5. Exit To Nowhere 6. Across The Water 7. Cardinal Points 8. Violet Into The Blue

Personnel: Marty Ehrlich (alto saxophone, soprano saxophone, clarinet, flute); Chris Speed (tenor saxophone, clarinet); James Emery (acoustic guitar); Drew Gress (bass); Gerry Hemingway (drums, glockenspiel); Kevin Norton (marimba, vibes, tympani, bowed tam-tam)

May 15, 2001

MICHEL WINTSCH

Road Movie (Between The Lines btl 002/EFA 10172-2)

Swiss composer/pianist Michel Wintsch writes for theatre, opera, radio and film as well as working as a jazzman. Thus it seems that this album -- which is a literal record of a performance in Berlin in 1998 -- owes as much to theatrical "program music" as it does to freer improvisation.

Commissioned by a German bank, this session, while certainly professional, and at times even affecting, often sounds more like the results of a grant application than a unified piece of music. Are the so-called "serious" flourishes in the string writing throughout and boffo rock-style finale there to show his backers just how much more versatile he is than the average jazz pianist, you wonder? Even the way the suite is structured shouts "showcase" rather than expression: There are 12 tunes here on a CD that runs less than 52 minutes, and eight of those are less than four minutes long. ROAD MOVIE is even described as "a movie soundtrack for 10 leading roles" in the notes, causing you to wonder about extra-musical considerations.

Not that there's anything particularly wrong with commissions -- any money that goes to creative musicians is a bonus. It's just that a certain bloodless "professionalism" appears to have affected this soundtrack. It becomes apparent as early as the second track, "Night Train", where the string section expectedly mimics the sound of an accelerating locomotive in the background.

Elsewhere you get a hint of repetitive trance music on "Italik Part 2"; some wordless vocalizing from Baumann on "Play Time" that morphs into throat shredding speaking-in-tongues on "Hiver part 2"; and some oh-so-cool jazz pianisms from the composer himself on "Natalia". Later Schütz does his usual heavy-metal-cello freak out routine on "Trash Road", complete with bombastic, arena-filling drumming from the usually restrained Hemingway -- unless it's Niggli.

The drummer sounds more like his inventive self on other tracks and for restraint, if nothing else, he and muted trumpeter Schärli are the most consistent members of the crew on this journey.

Judging from the rapturous audience applause that closes the disc, that group and the banker backers were well pleased by this particular road trip. However something that can appear unique in a live setting may, under laser scrutiny, reveal itself as a cut-and-paste job of pretty melodies.

All in all ROAD MOVIE makes for agreeable background sounds, perfect for a short road trip. But Wintsch should be capable of much more. Let him write a longer, more unified composition that doesn't have shorter melodies lobbed off it like so many cheese slices. Perhaps that road will be the right one for him.

-Ken Waxman

Tracks: 1. Postludique 2. Night Train 3. Re-Pyrrect 4. Play Time 5. Italik part 1 6. Italik part 2 7. Hiver part 1 8. Hiver part 2 9. Natalia 10. Chords 11. Trash Road 12. Le chien du héro*

Peter Schärli* (trumpet); Jean-Jacques Pendretti (trombone); Franziska Baumann (flute, vocals); Nathalie Saudan, Daniel Beltraminelli (violins); Michel Wintsch (piano); Jean-Philippe Zwahlen (guitar); Martin Schütz* (cello); Lucas Niggli, Gerry Hemingway (drums)

March 29, 2000