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Reviews that mention Charles Gayle

Charles Gayle Trio

Forgiveness
NotTwo MW 805-2

Odean Pope

Plant Life

Porter Records PRCD-4017

Superficially similar, each of these dates is lead by a veteran American saxophonist on either side of 70, adds the contributions of a bassist and a drummer, and consists of a program of mostly originals plus a different famous composition by John Coltrane. Although neither reaches the top rank, certain cohesive warmth and looseness in performance makes alto saxophonist Charles Gayle’s Forgiveness more enticing than tenor saxophonist Odean Pope’s Plant Life.

What’s actually most surprising is why Pope’s session is so remote and wearying. Best-known for work with his own Saxophone Choir, jazz-funk fusion band Catalyst, and a 30-year association with master drummer Max Roach, North Carolina-born, Philadelphia-based Pope is the epitome of the journeyman jazzman who can be relied upon to produce consistent, swinging work no matter the circumstances. Plus his sideman here include Sunny Murray, one of Free Jazz’s pioneering inventive percussionist; plus lesser-known bassist Lee Smith. In contrast, Buffalo-born, New York-based Gayle has only worked regularly since the late 1980s – about 30 years after Pope established himself – and following a period living on the streets now numbers established players like drummer Rashied Ali – who helped liberate percussion along with Murray in the 1960s – among his cohorts. This live gig from Lodz, Poland, however, features German drummer Klaus Kugel and another steady but unheralded bassist, Hillard Greene.

Recorded in a Philly studio, Pope’s nine tracks seem to suffer from both coldness and literalism. Murray, who has a habit of disassociating himself from a situation for no apparent reason, appears particularly disconnected here. Certainly his half-hearted rolls and rim-shots, substandard flams and drags plus distant cymbal cadences don’t add much rhythmic impetus. When he rouses himself though, he pumps out a respectful and languid beat, relating overall to the Latin and Bop conventions that he actually helped to push aside in the 1960s.

With Murray nearly hors de combat, it’s left to Shaw to keep the bottom solid, and he does a yeoman job throughout, with tough walking pulses, sul tasto resonations and double stopping. “I Want to Talk about You” – closely identified with Coltrane after he recorded it in the 1960s – even brings out near C&W twanging from his bull fiddle.

Pope’s melodious soloing is most assured on that track – at more then nine minutes the CD’s lengthiest as well – but his inspiration merely underlines the isolation elsewhere. Respectful and low-key, he exhibits double-and triple-tonguing here and in other spots but evidentially has trouble connecting with the other players. Sheets of sound, reed-biting obbligatos, warbling vibrato and accented flutter tonguing are tremendous exhibits of reed power and inventiveness; but cohesion would have been just as welcome.

Perhaps enlivened by a club audience on the other hand, members of the Gayle trio are more unified and superficially exciting than the Pope crew. If anything, their run-through of “Giant Steps” may be the least memorable track, since so many jazz musicians have played it so frequently. Still Greene’s bass pulse is as solid as Paul Chambers’ on the original; Kugel’s slaps and stomps speed by more quickly faster than Art Taylor or Elvin Jones ever did; and Gayle’s theme-shredding coupled with shrieks and cries at least moves the head from Trane to Gayle territory.

Additionally, despite the audience’s enthusiasm, the trio’s performance of Gayle’s ecclesiastically titled tunes is a pretty standard Free Jazz trope. The sax man repeatedly piles glossolalia, jagged vibrato screams and squirming piles of notes on top of the drummer’s insistent cross-sticking, rat-tat-tats, cymbal slides and bass drum thumps, while the bassist pumps, thumps and practically directs traffic to keep the staccato motifs from careening off the sonic road. Jagged, ragged and emotional, it still resembles a peacock tail of colors when compared to the near-chiaroscuro tail feathers of Pope and company.

Curiously, one of Plant Life’s rather standard tracks is entitled “Multiphonic”. Yet the undulating resonation of a typical Forgiveness piece such as the nearly 17-minute “Holy Birth” includes more obvious and un-named multiphonics than the entire other CD. Moving from military stop-time – courtesy of Kugel’s drum strokes – to balladic properties – when Greene’s thick string pops reign in the others – Gayle’s meanwhile studs his solo with split tones. Harsh passing tones, altissimo octave screams, buzzing triple-tonguing and a capella curves are his most common recourse. Ending with pitch-sliding slides, extended passages are distended with klaxon-like honks and cries.

Frankly, any one who has followed Gayle’s career over the years will admit he has done better, more focused work. Still this CD is nothing for which to seek forgiveness. In comparison, while steady as say, a Hank Mobley or a Charlie Rouse-led date would have appeared 50 years ago compared to a Coltrane set, Plant Life is also a respectable effort. But its appeal will be more for Pope followers than for those seeking sonic revelations.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Plant: 1. Two Dreams Part 1 2. Happiness Tears 3. Plant Life 4. I Want to Talk about You 5. Scorpio Twins 6. Thoughts 7.Multiphonic 8. Two Dreams Part 2

Personnel: Plant: Odean Pope (tenor saxophone); Lee Smith (bass) and Sunny Murray (drums)

Track Listing: Forgiveness: 1. Living Waters 2. Glory, Glory, Glory 3. Holy Birth

4. Confess 5. Song To Thee 6. Giant Steps 7. Forgiveness

Personnel: Forgiveness: Charles Gayle (alto saxophone); Hillard Greene (bass) and

Klaus Kugel (drums)

April 23, 2009

Odean Pope

Plant Life
Porter Records PRCD-4017

Charles Gayle Trio

Forgiveness

NotTwo MW 805-2

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Plant: 1. Two Dreams Part 1 2. Happiness Tears 3. Plant Life 4. I Want to Talk about You 5. Scorpio Twins 6. Thoughts 7.Multiphonic 8. Two Dreams Part 2

Personnel: Plant: Odean Pope (tenor saxophone); Lee Smith (bass) and Sunny Murray (drums)

Track Listing: Forgiveness: 1. Living Waters 2. Glory, Glory, Glory 3. Holy Birth

4. Confess 5. Song To Thee 6. Giant Steps 7. Forgiveness

Personnel: Forgiveness: Charles Gayle (alto saxophone); Hillard Greene (bass) and

Klaus Kugel (drums)

April 23, 2009

By Any Means

Live at Crescendo
Ayler Records aylCD- 077/078

Charles Gayle, William Parker & Rashied Ali

Touchin’ On Trane

Jazzwerkstatt JW024

Almost 16 years to the day separate these two live sessions, yet not one member of this trio of veteran players appears to have lost his edge or gusto.

Dispelling once again the old shibboleth that jazz is a young man’s game, saxophonist Charles Gayle, 68, drummer Rashied Ali, 73, and bassist William Parker, 56, create enough fire and commitment – mixed with experience – on both sets to enliven any program of improvised music.

Perhaps it’s because none has ever given in to the blandishments of more commercial music, but continues to follow a self-defined path, no matter the consequences. Senior statesman Ali is still best-known for his 1960s collaborations with John Coltrane, but he has participated in a variety of exploratory sessions since then. A fearless proselytizer and organizer for Free Jazz, Parker’s ensembles range from duos to big bands, yet he still finds time to help organize New York’s annual Vision Festival. Most mystifying of the three is Gayle, who seemed to suddenly materialize in New York in his forties, fully formed and ready to extend unadulterated Free Jazz into the 21st Century. Since then he has also revealed a quirky piano style. However – and this appears to be the trio’s only concession to advancing years – his characteristic screaming timbres are now the product of the alto saxophone’s upper reaches, rather than that of the tenor saxophone he formerly favoured

Recorded in Berlin in 1991, Touchin’ On Trane is the touchstone for this trio: an announcement of how well the hitherto unconnected three improvised together. Parker rhythmically walks through most of the five tunes; Ali’s strategy is low-key, encompassing vibrating rim shots, hi-hat slashing and press rolls, while Gayle’s trills, squeaks and reed bites extend Sonny Rollins’ work of the mid-1960s – rather then that of Trane. Listening to this CD in retrospect however, reveals just how much “in the tradition” the three were – and are – despite the neo-con mainstream rhetoric that was its nosiest at that time.

Parker’s sul ponticello sweeps mixed with slaps push Gayle to an even higher plane on “Part C” as the saxophonist’s whinnying and double-tonguing escalates from gritty growls to ejaculating juicy, splayed split tones – as if the suddenly released emotion had been saved up for years – as perhaps it had been. Following an episode of clattering pops and emphasized ruffs from Ali, the spotlight shifts back to Gayle who responds with screeching, squealing sopranino-pitched cries.

All and all however, the CD’s defining track is “Part D” which packs nearly every permutation of reed-bass-drums interface that can be imagined into slightly-less-than-28 minutes. Following the drummer’s quasi-parade-ground intro and Parker’s stolid walking Gayle’s exposition includes hocketing pauses, emphasized note clusters and repeated snorts. Lab scientist-like, he seems to be evaluating every centimetre of his instrument and testing every sound that can be forced from it. At the same time he moves from cerebral to pure expressiveness, exposing lengthy passages in altissimo as well as paint-varnish-stripping-styled keening.

Beside him Parker also works up from spiccato sweeps to double and triple stops, finding original spots below the tuning pegs or beneath the bridge to emphasize as he plays. Initially Ali sticks to blunt stroke and paradiddles. Multiplying his strokes so they become more complex however, he eventually creates a drum solo that is both a confirmation of the tune and a connection to the others’ popping runs.

Eventually Gayle reaches a crescendo of otherworldly glossolalia, replicating in curt passages a bugle cry, an infant’s wail and a wounded animal’s bay. Answering himself with low-pitched, vibrato notes, he doesn’t so much overblow, but stretch these splintered tones and wails to their maximum elasticity so that they are distended but never broken.

Despite turning to the smaller horn, and more than 15 years of existence, the saxophonist continues with this prescription on the two CDs of Live at Crescendo. On tracks such as “Hearts Joy”, his own composition and Parker’s “Eternal Voice”, polite musicians’ self-restraint and self-editing never enter into his solo construction.

On the later tune, Gayle begins his solo at the uppermost pitch at which the bassist has just concluded a bowed solo of swelling pulsations, and then the saxophonist moves the resulting notes higher into the stratosphere. Growling and vibrating, with spittle-encrusted split tones and skeletal abstractions, he toys with the lines, pitches and tessitura ‘way past the expected time period until it appears as if he can go no further. Then miraculously he downshifts to a warmer tone and begins playing in tandem with Parker.

On “Hearts Joy” committed to an altissimo output, Gayle begins piling notes upon notes, timbres upon timbres and runs upon runs. Operating agitato and staccato, the reed exposition is carved up into shorter and more fortissimo shards, climbing ever higher in pitch and becoming more dissonant. Avoiding solipsism, despite an inner-directed sound blurring, the jagged double-tonguing and grating guttural intonation eventually rights itself into complementary split-tones and ghosts notes as the tune decelerates with Ali’s cross-pulsed, restrained cymbal and wood-block thwacks and Parker’s measured slap coloring.

At points Gayle verbally exhorts the others. But, another change from the past, these asides are garbled enough so that you can’t hear whether they’re musical or ecclesiastical. Additionally, over the course of 11 tracks – the shortest of which clocks in at slight less than 6½ minutes – the three continue to prove that time hasn’t diminished their skills or original thought processes. Trane-like with wiggling split tones and cries, at one point, there’s a section in Parker’s “Zero Blues” where Gayle’s solo construction is so down-home that it makes him a sonic ringer for R&B altoist Tab Smith. Parker negotiates thick chording to flying spicatto with equal ease – sometimes on the same tune, sometimes within seconds of one another. Likewise Ali belies his septuagenarian status by advancing the date’s rhythmic component not only with reverberating cymbals and thumping bass drums but with unique permutations of cross-bounding beats, echoing flams and rifle shot-like snare raps.

Accepting Free Jazz innovations means that despite the time line, the only choice between these two exceptional sessions is whether you want the end-product in single or double-pocket form.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Touchin’: 1. Part A 2. Part B 3. Part C 4. Part D 5. Part E

Personnel: Touchin’: Charles Gayle (tenor saxophone); William Parker (bass) and

Rashied Ali (drums)

Track Listing: Live: Disc 1: 1. Introduction 2. Zero Blues 3. Hearts Joy 4. We Three 5. Different Stuff 6. Love One Another 7. Straight Ahead Steps Disc 2: 1. Peace Inside 2. Machu Picchu 3. Cry Nu 4. Eternal Voice 5. No Sorrow

Personnel: Live: Charles Gayle (alto saxophone); William Parker (bass) and Rashied Ali (drums)

August 15, 2008

Charles Gayle, William Parker & Rashied Ali

Touchin’ On Trane
Jazzwerkstatt JW024

By Any Means

Live at Crescendo

Ayler Records aylCD- 077/078

Almost 16 years to the day separate these two live sessions, yet not one member of this trio of veteran players appears to have lost his edge or gusto.

Accepting Free Jazz innovations means that despite the time line, the only choice between these two exceptional sessions is whether you want the end-product in single or double-pocket form.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Touchin’: 1. Part A 2. Part B 3. Part C 4. Part D 5. Part E

Personnel: Touchin’: Charles Gayle (tenor saxophone); William Parker (bass) and

Rashied Ali (drums)

Personnel: Live: Charles Gayle (alto saxophone); William Parker (bass) and Rashied Ali (drums)

August 15, 2008

Jazz à Mulhouse gives a loving French kiss to Improvised music

By Ken Waxman
For CODA Issue 337

Impressive saxophone and reed displays were the focus of the 24th Edition of Jazz à Mulhouse in France in late August. Overall however, most of the 19 performances maintained a constant high quality. This may have something to do with the fact that unlike larger, flashier and more commercial festivals, Jazz à Mulhouse (JAM) is an almost folksy showcase for improvisation.

Located less than 20 minutes away by train from Basel, Switzerland, Mulhouse is a mid-sized city of 150,000 in eastern France long known as an industrial textile centre. Low-key, JAM is rather like the Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville (FIMAV), with better restaurants.

Except for an opening concert by French guitarist Noël Akchoté, which this year was in a crowded downtown club that looks as if its standard fare is pop chansonniers, all other shows take place in two wildly dissimilar venues. The mid-day solo piano series is showcased in the acoustically austere Chapelle St. Jean. Located in mid-town, it’s a 12th Century stone church with vaulted ceilings, bas-reliefs at eye level and two gigantic sun dials, high up on opposite walls facing the stage.

In late afternoon, a JAM-organized free shuttle bus takes the audience out to the suburbs near the streetcar terminus for evening shows at the Noumatrouff, an expansive, hanger-like space that is usually a rock club, complete with grungy washrooms and a beer tent. With a two-hour gap between early-and-late performances, audience members mix, mingle, chat, chow down on their own food or what’s available from a couple of vendors, and sample the local beer.

What follows is a selection of most of the festivals highlights, with mention of a few less-than-stellar performances.

Disappointedly in fact, Akchoté opened the festivities with a nearly listless solo set that skirted shoe-gazing pop jazz. The Swiss Lucien Dubois trio which preceded him, featured a break-dancing drummer, a bass guitarist warbling lachrymose ballads and was only notable for the leader’s reed prowess..

In the piano series, Belgium’s Fred Van Hove and Switzerland’s Irène Schweizer represent the first generation of Euro improvisers and France’s Frédéric Blondy and Sophie Agnel the contemporary ones. With his waves of long white hair Van Hover, 70, resembles a caricature of a 19th Century classical virtuoso and his playing seemed to reflect this. Concentrating on easy-flowing glissandi and heavy-handed echoing timbres he created a waterfall of upwards pitched timbres with dense centres that were then smoothed down into sharp individual notes. Without using the pedals he exposed low frequency percussive rhythms that literally made audience members jump, then concluded with a calmer theme variation.

Harder and faster in execution, Schweizer’s recital exposed a cyclone of sharp note-twisting vamps that slithered between very low and very high pitches with references to classical music appearing and vanishing in seconds, plus slapped keys and subterranean pitches reminiscent of Herbie Nichols. Schweizer’s heightened rhythmic sense came through even when she used mallets to poke at the piano’s innards. With a continuous ostinato, her solo was more jazz-like than Van Hove’s, quoting “Blue Monk” and what sounded like “Prelude to a Kiss”. Despite her 10-finger flourishes, she telescoped variations so that the piece’s head was recapped before the end.

After a vigorous late-night concert the day before with fellow Gallic improvisers cellist Martine Altenburger and saxophonist Bertrand Gauguet, Blondy spent the first part of his recital exploring the nooks and crannies of his piano. With a mallet, a small cymbal and other implements he yanked buzzes, squeaks, pings and whistles from the strings. On the keys, he sometimes sounded like a combination of David Tudor and Knuckles O’Toole; on one hand creating high-frequency glissandi and suspended tones, and on the other alluding to “Flight of the Bumblebee”. Mumbling to himself and pulling faces while he played, Blondy’s frenzied key slashes, flying fingers and full forearm smacks led to an encore where his body language seemed to suggest that by nearly smothering the keyboard he could impale himself onto the sharp notes created.

A day earlier Angel, who along with Akchoté and British saxophonist Evan Parker, spent the week guiding and rehearsing separate student ensembles, was calmer than Blondy. More stately and sombre in her presentation than the other three pianists, much of her improvising focused on bottoming ostinatos and ricocheting timbres, as well as voicings that involved the piano’s wood as well as its keys. Paper clips, hard rubber balls and other objects were adhered to the piano strings before she began. During the course of her performance she would pluck a key then immediately stop it with a tool; create a series of lyrical patterns on top of vibrating drones, or wet her fingers with her tongue and apply those fingers to the piano strings. Climatic passages used the pressure of both hands to create throbbing, buzzing notes which worked their way into additional furtive arpeggios.

Masterful saxophone stylists were as well represented as keyboardists. Notable sets included one from British soprano saxophonist Tom Chant – with two unheralded but masterful French Free Jazz practitioners: bassist Benjamin Duboc and sensitive percussionist Didier Lasserre – who could be termed the discovery of the festival for a North American; Swiss soprano saxophonist Urs Leimgruber, whose sparse adaptive unity with French pianist Jacques Demierre and long-time American expatriate in France bassist Barre Philips set a high standard for chamber improv; alto and soprano saxophonist Gauguet; and an utterly time-suspending set from Parker’s long-time British trio of drummer Paul Lytton and bassist Barry Guy augmented by Catalan pianist Augustí Fernández.

With Blondy in full Jerry Lee Lewis-like pounding form and Gauguet, a breath-machine using every variety of extended reed techniques plus altering his sound by pressing his bell against a pant leg or swaddling it in tin foil, it was Altenburger who provided lyrical, yet perfectly in-synch connective passages. More admirable than congenial, the overall impression the trio’s set left was that some levity would improve this impressive chops showcase.

Chant’s pant leg was also put to good use during a few of his bubbling, note-stretching solos as well. But his output of small gestures and concise tones plus the powerful thwacks and plucks of Duboc’s tuning-peg-to-spike and sensitive double-bow exhibitions were subtly overshadowed by Lasserre’s bravura percussion skills. Missing no necessary sonic despite using a miniature kit of one bass drum, one snare and one cymbal, Lasserre unveiled squeaks, pats and silences with his bare hands and a variety of mallets and sticks for a cross section of discordant yet complementary tones. Other praiseworthy percussionists were the expected – Lytton with Parker and long-time Free Jazzer German Paul Lovens in his two appearances – and the unexpected: Japan’s Makoto Sato, with his soft mallets and Butoh dancer cool. Unfortunately Sato was part of the Marteau Rouge trio, whose guitarist and synthesizer player’s droning jams and amp sludge were more appropriate for ProgRock freak-outs circa 1967 then a 2007 jazz festival.

Polyphonically connective, the Leimgruber/Demierre/Phillips set was probably the festival’s most unpremeditatedly visual. It featured the saxophonist slowly disassembling his tenor saxophone and methodically twisting and blowing through different parts; Phillips sawing on his bass’ shoulder with his bow and playing so passionately that the bow’s horsehair streamed; and Demierre’s jack-in-the-box leaps and elbow-on-the keys emphasis. Additionally, the pianist pumped out stubby contrapuntal lines and buzzy soundboard textures, perfect accompaniment for the saxophonist’s pseudo duck calls and animated circular breathing.

Climax of the festival was literally its finale, an intense, nearly 90-minute set by Parker, Guy, Lytton and Fernández. An exercise in controlled brutality, the surges of sound unified during three extended improvisations, which despite the breadth of technique on display found the four operating like a well-coordinated assembly line, with motifs and themes passed from one to another.

This was in sharp contrast to the Charles Gayle trio set that preceded it. Now exclusively playing alto saxophone, Gayle still overblows his characteristic squalls, squeaks and screams, alternately altissimo and with fog-horn-like echoes. But despite excursions to the piano where he seemed to delight in producing dissonant Monkish runs, and donning the slouch hat and clown’s red nose of his “Streets” character as he tried out Stride riffs, something was lacking. Perhaps it was because British drummer Mark Sanders was in the rhythm section along with Gayle’s regular bassist Gerald Benson. The disparity between the bassist’s low-key swipes and the drummer’s harder and thicker tones was obvious. Obviously uncomfortable Gayle’s attempted to solder this disconnect by animatedly barking out command and counting out “Giant Steps” with foot stomps before trading fours with the drummer.

Back to the Parker crew: whether it was the unseasonable heat in the auditorium, the late hour, or the privilege of watching master stylists at work, but most audience members stayed hushed – nearly mesmerized – during the proceeding. Aloof, Lytton busied himself displaying and manipulating various parts of his stripped-down kit; banging small hard objects on top of his cymbals when the mood struck; resonating woody tones other times, and massaging rhythmic surfaces with his palms and a variety of implements. Athletic and limber, Guy appears to have the ability to produce sounds from both the front and back of his bass, no matter where the strings are located. Not only did he slip, strike and slide along his strings, but he also shook the instrument itself, gathered its strings together for massive plucks and multiplied the available textures with two bows vibrating among the strings, plus thwacking on the string set with what appeared to be a drum stick.

Although Spanish, Fernández often applied body English to his arpeggios and chords and moved his arms crab-like across the keyboard. At one point he bounded from the piano bench to trap high-frequency tinkles at the top of the soundboard, then manually manipulated the string’ speaking length. At times he seems to be karate-chopping the keys into submission. This physicality was usually complemented by Guy smacking and tapping his strings at his bass’s southern portion beneath the bridge and Lytton creating a cluster of cymbal reverb.

Initially tongue-slapping and twittering long sweeping lines so that his soprano saxophone sounded like a piccolo, Parker filled his solos with circular breathing, verbalized honks and shouts. Always in control, his nearly endless streams of intense vibrated notes didn’t vary as he remained rooted on one spot while playing.

Other groups that made impressions earlier on, ranged from the gargantuan to the diminutive. In the first category was the 22-piece Lille (France)-based La Pieuvre band, the members of which were lead in a conduction by Oliver Benoit. The many-armed group, (“Octopus” in English) smeared and rappelled through accelerating crescendos, dark, dramatic pauses and a fog of buzzing and blowing. With blustering brass solos and a collective improvisation for its saxophone section, at time the Octopus seemed to suck all oxygen from the room.

Also notable were two duos: Kiff Kiff from Lyon, France and Germans Lehn/Lovens. Trombonist Alain Gibert and his son, bass clarinetist Clément, who are Kiff Kiff, played for the most part airy, “folkloric” tunes – sometimes with words – that brought to mind the original Jimmy Giuffre3. Nevertheless there was nothing effete about the improvisations, since when he wanted to, the older Gibert produced a roistering gutbucket tone, and the younger paid homage to Eric Dolphy in many of his solos. Still among five days of more-or-less “out” music, Kiff Kiff’s lightly rhythmic melodies probably sounded more Mainstream then they are.

No one could confuse the agitated improvising of drummer Paul Lovens and analogue synthesizer player Thomas Lehn with the Mainstream. A former pianist, Lehn uses his electronic instrument like a keyboard and lunges, swivels and sways as he plays. Divorced from too-clean electronic signals, his old-fashioned synth quacked like Donald Duck, expelled trumpet-like spetrofluctuation, buzzed, clinked and clanked.

Meantime Lovens – who the day before had a busier interaction with French bassist Joëlle Léandre and Anerican-born, German-resident vocalist Lauren Newton in a set that didn’t seem to gel – appeared more relaxed with Lehn and his playing more commanding. A photo of Lehn with his white shirt and narrow black tie, was prominently featured on the JAM program and posters and he wore this nearly traded-marked outfit each time he was on stage. With Lehn, whose input-output interface and triggered pulses were warm and humanistic, Lovens used a combination of single strokes and connective rhythms to cement moods..

The percussionist rubbed his snare top as Lehn plucked chords from his sythn, and hit his attached cymbals vertically and horizontally while sometimes spinning smaller, unattached others. A common trope was scraping a vertical drum stick on the ride cymbal creating a tone as constant as, but less irritating than, chalk on a blackboard. Textures from Lovens’ wood block were often exposed as were thumps from his bass drum. Overall, this unshowy exhibition of sensitive percussion styling was a festival trait he shared with Lytton, Lasserre and Sato.

A focus on music-making, not crowd pandering is what sets apart Jazz à Mulhouse from more commercial festivals Still, there was enough high quality audience-pleasing music to explain the respect it engenders.

January 9, 2008

Charles Gayle

Live at Glenn Miller Café
Ayler aylCD-015

Playing alto saxophone rather than his usual tenor, this live set encapsulates New York-based Charles Gayle’s art bruit. Often described as a throwback to the no-holds-barred Energy Music of the 1960s, the reedist invests his performances with enough verve and perspicacity that it’s as if that exploratory decade never ended.

Demonstrative as well as discordant, his strident runs and choked vibrato allow him to practically recompose tunes such as “Giant Steps” and “Cherokee”. Meanwhile his glossolalia coupled with the strident rhythms of drummer Michael Wimberley and bassist Gerald Benson give standards like “What’s New” and “Softly As In A Morning Sunrise” an inchoate dissonance similar to the interface exhibited on shrieking and dissonant Gayle originals.

Often playing altissimo, the saxophonist masticates phrases and timbres, then spits them out double-tongued and with a wide vibrato. The most characteristic work is on two extended tracks. “Chasing/Praising The Lord”, for instance, arches upwards from Gayle’s crying split tones and flattement to the trio members alternating strident, resonating instrumental timbres with guttural speaking-in-tongues, evocations of divine mercy and God’s name.

Wimberly’s tympani rolls and Benson’s legato arco swells bounce and ripple behind the saxophonist’s yodeling broken tones on “Holy Redemption”. When he extends the track with Albert Ayler’s “Ghosts” tremolo bugle-call-like variations meld with sul tasto bass work and blunt percussion attacks to toughen the familiar theme and make it more abstract.

Live is a characteristic, reflection of Gayle’s alternately secular and scared art.

-- Ken Waxman

For Whole Note Vol. 12 #3

November 1, 2006

CHARLES GAYLE

Time Zones
Tompkins Square Records TSQ 2839-2

DAVE BURRELL
Margy Pargy
Splasc (H) CDH 874.2

Melody men above all, seem to be strange descriptions of avant-garde avatars Dave Burrell and especially Charles Gayle. But each singly lives up to the definition on these solo piano sessions.

Philadelphia-based Burrell, 66, who once composed a solo-piano opera, has always had a foothold in the pre-bebop tradition, despite his 1960s recording for ESP-Disk and his long association with Freebop saxophonists Archie Shepp and David Murray. More unexpected is New Yorker Gayle, 67, who is celebrated – or is it reviled – for his blow-torch tone on alto and tenor saxophones and bass clarinet. In 2000 however the saxophonist revealed jaw-dropping adroitness as a solo pianist on a collection of jazz standards.

TIME ZONES, made of all originals, is his half-decade later follow up to that disc. Organically it complements Burrell’s MARGY PARGY since both men have the stylistic dexterity that characterize Swing-Era-and-earlier pianists such as Earl Hines, James P. Johnson and Art Tatum. Simultaneously contemporary and traditional, like – in wildly different ways – Thelonious Monk, Jaki Byard and Ray Bryant are and were, the irony about these notable releases is that the pianism exhibited pre-dates the mature style of Cecil Taylor, who is a decade older than either of the men.

Something that could be characterized as a free-association parlor session, Gayle’s CD is as ornamental as his reed style is sparse and as consonant as his saxophone playing is dissonant. None of his seven originals are atonal. If anything the rent-party heft of boogie-woogie specialists like Jimmy Yancy and the decorative, continuous note-layering of Tatum are always present. While Gayle is nowhere as well-educated musically as Burrell, who attended Berklee College, the Boston Conservatory and the University of Hawaii, he’s also no naïf.

“Blues in Mississippi”, for instance doesn’t have the kind of elemental progression a true primitive like Little Brother Montgomery would have played. Instead Gayle sounds like both Albert Ammons and Pete Johnson, constructing a tremolo blues, with cross patterns from both hands, emphasizing the walking interweaving blues progression in every note – sort of like a free form Bryant. His left hand always emphasizes the walking bass line, as his left hand decorates almost every cadence with some light-finger twirls. For a coda he lets loose with an exaggerated crescendo of blues notes.

Burrell’s “DB Blues” is less complex harmonically yet more sophisticated than Gayle’s outpouring, which has a certain sloppiness as well as ornamentation. While Burrell sounds the full theme metronome-like and completes his thoughts with a sprinkling of right-handed cadenzas. Gayle’s single-note ending is as swift and final as any of Count Basie’s.

Monk – who evolved out of James P. Johnson – is another influence on Gayle as he proves on “Rhythm Twins”, that may be a contrafact of “Rhythm-a-Ning” as well as “I Got Rhythm.” Flashier than Monk, here Gayle spools broken octaves with one hand and uses pedal pressure to produced a solid swagger. By the finale, however, he has reverted to Stride, balancing the upbeat with a downbeat from his left hand

Tinkling and chiming on the keys with high frequency dynamics and double-voiced arpeggios, not to mention sliding from mid-range moderato to the bowels of the soundboard, his phrasing tries to approximate Tatum’s. However, he’s more comfortable with nursery rhymes than the older pianist’s graduate-level layering. Through his rapid arpeggios and sudden tempo and voicing changes the implication is that half-remembered home songs lie just below the surface. It seems as if Gayle never plays one arpeggio when two will do or one chord when he can sound one dozen. Fascinating in his time shifting, turning almost every statement into a high frequency cadenza with boogie-woogie echoes define him as a parlor player par excellence.

Seventy years ago if Gayle would have been happiest playing on an upright in his parlor, then Burrell could have had a gig as the intermission pianist at a hot spot like Café Society. MARGY PARGY is a mixture of his originals and standards from the likes of Billy Strayhorn and Cole Porter. And, unlike Gayle’s meanderings, which appear as if they could start and stop anywhere, every one of Burrell’s tracks has a form.

Powerful in his voicing as a Hines, and capable of bravura polytonal variations, Burrell is note perfect in his dynamics and manages to use the properties of the Steinway piano’s wood, strings and pedals as much as the keys. He alludes to other tunes through mere vibrations and uses the full sustain of the pedals to make his notes ring. Capable of hand-clapping rhythm as well as cerebral delicacy, he is also like Hines in that he can use both hands to keep two complete melody lines going at once.

On a ballad like “My Foolish Heart” his breath-taking variations buff up the standard, but the melody is always there like an embossed title on high-class stationary. Gauge his professional versatility by comparing his treatment of the title tune, his best-known composition and Strayhorn’s “Lush Life”.

Drama implicit in the lyrics of “Lush Life” is emphasized as Burrell showily states the head, then produces logical variations on it. Adding an undertow of walking bass to counter with a rhythmic base the tune’s effete overtones, he quotes “Skip to My Lou” as he reduce the melody to its essence. Just as subtly the main theme slips out in proper cadence and voicing before the conclusion, decorated with dampened pedal movements.

When first recorded in the late 1960s, “Margy Pargy” proved that so-called avant-garde jazz could have a rhythmic function as heavy as R&B and still reference the tradition. This spectacular run-through emphasizes both pressured voicing and buoyant arpeggios that complement the hand-clapping rhythm. Without slurring any of the perfectly proportioned notes of the theme, Burrell manages to speed up the performance to frantic player-piano tremolo, down again to a moderato beats per second, and finally to an ending that echoes the chords of both theme and variations.

These are two satisfying piano CDs for anyone interested in the proper manipulation of the mini-orchestra.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Time: 1. Time Zones 2. Rush to Sunrise 3. Delight 4. Blues in Mississippi 5. Rhythm Twins 6. Inner Edges 8. That Memory

Personnel: Time: Charles Gayle (piano)

Track Listing: Margy: 1. I Only Have Eyes for You 2. Expansion 3. DB Blues 4. Prelude to Crucificado 5. Crucificado 6. Margy Pargy 7. My Foolish Heart 8. So In Love

Personnel: Margy: Dave Burrell (piano)

July 10, 2006

Charles Gayle

Time Zones
Tompkins Square TSQ 2839-2

One unexpected description of Charles Gayle would be melodic. But he lives up to the definition on this solo piano session. Known for his blow-torch reed tone, Gayle first revealed adroitness as a solo pianist on a CD of standards in 2000. Time Zones is his all-originals follow-up.

Unlike his primitivist reed playing, on keyboard Gayle seems to possess the dexterity that characterized earlier stylists such as James P. Johnson and Earl Hines. Simultaneously contemporary and traditional, the irony about this CD is that the pianism pre-dates the mature style of Cecil Taylor, who is a decade older. Gayle’s disc is as ornamental as his reed style is sparse and as consonant as his saxophone playing is dissonant. The rent-party heft of boogie-woogie and decorative, continuous note-layering are always present.

“Blues in Mississippi”, for instance, doesn’t have the kind of elemental progression an upright piano-pounder like Little Brother Montgomery would have exhibited. Instead Gayle constructs a tremolo blues, with cross patterns from both hands, emphasizing the interweaving blues progression. His left hand plays walking bass, as his right hand decorates with light-finger twirls. For a coda he lets loose with a crescendo of blues notes. Monk – who evolved from stride – is another influence, as Gayle proves on “Rhythm Twins” a possible contrafact of “Rhythm-a-Ning” and/or “I Got Rhythm.” Flashier than Monk, he spools broken octaves with one hand as pedal pressure produces a solid swagger. By the finale, he balances the upbeat with a downbeat from his left hand

Here and elsewhere, Gayle’s rapid arpeggios and sudden voicing changes suggest that half-remembered ballads lie just below the surface. On this free-association parlor session, Gayle extends the tradition of the piano as mini-orchestra.

-- Ken Waxman

May 12, 2006

CHARLES GAYLE TRIO

Shout
Clean Feed CF 033CD

PAUL FLAHERTY & MARC EDWARDS
Kaivalya Volume 1
Cadence Jazz Records CJR 1177

Unbridled emotionalism has always been somewhat suspect among formally trained musicians – even some jazz players who should know better. Forgetting yourself momentarily while emphasizing the contours of a romantic ballad or the pace of a rhythm tune is OK, they sniff condescendingly. But, they warn, forgetting yourself this way too often leads to sloppy intonation and wrong notes.

Two veteran saxophonists who probably think about wrong notes and sloppy intonation about as often as they do about five star restaurant meals – that is never – aren’t bothered by the niceties of intonation and tone. As Charles Gayle and Paul Flaherty demonstrate on these distinctive CDs, intertwining passion and invention trounces note-perfect formalism every time.

Moreover they do this with a healthy regard for the tradition, albeit the Free Jazz tradition. New York-based Gayle, whose notoriety radiates as much from his former life as a street person as his overriding commitment to improvisation, exhibits his passion even with the three standards featured on the aptly named SHOUT! One is a solo piano outing done in an ornamental style similar to the individualized numbers on his all-piano CD of 2000. The other familiar melodies are turned inside out and reconstituted exactly the same way he treats the religious-titled originals here.

Flaherty, from Hartford, Conn., who has been known to work as a housepainter or street musician when he can’t get a Free Jazz gig, is as uncompromising in his intense emotional output on both alto and tenor saxophones. Although recently he’s played with figures as disparate as microtonal trumpeter Greg Kelley and guitarist Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, on KAIVALYA VOL 1 he’s partnered by drummer Marc Edwards of Queens, N.Y., another Free Jazz veteran whose associations include stints in the bands of Cecil Taylor and Davis S. Ware.

Although it would seem that Edwards and Flaherty are psyching themselves up for the massive exposition that is “Mahabharasta”, the almost 23½-minute piece that concludes the CD, in truth their contrapuntal cooperation is just as intense from the first note of “Dark Desert”, the lead off track. Throughout, the mating of the drummer’s jagged rumble of paradiddles and flams plus ride cymbal socks, and the saxophonist’s molten honks, squeal and squeaks works magnificently. Although most of the time it appears as if the saxophonist is forcing overblown phrases though clenched teeth and constricted throat, he pauses at points for a smeary balalladic section of split tones, as the percussionist weaves, flaps, rolls and rebounds on his drums and cymbals.

Preludes to “Mahabharasta”, the improvisations on “Janagma” and “Pillows for Mummies” are particularly noteworthy. Built around a sort of Arabic lilt from Flaherty’s alto saxophone, his coiling musette-like pitch and flutter-tongue variations seem to push Edwards towards the outlands as well. The drummer’s resonance could come from an Inuit whale drum, but his subtle patterning has decidedly African precepts. Midway through, following the saxophonist’s winnowing timbre variations, Flaherty suddenly buries his notes deep within the horn’s body tube, first breathing distant themes than pushing out irregularly balanced note variations, until Edwards ends the track with a Native American tom-tom-like thump.

There’s more atmospheric travel on “Pillows for Mummies”, which rather than being billowy, finds Flaherty exposing a coarse, vibrated texture as if he was climbing the horn’s internal structure towards the reed and mouthpiece. Meanwhile Edwards hits the cymbals and hi-hat with redoubled ferocity, not only thickening the rhythm, but making it tougher and more abstract.

All these strategies and more are used with élan during “Mahabharasta”, as the two comfortably slash their way through the thickset of an extended composition that sporadically suggest earlier form investigators like Gato Barbieri and Pharoah Sanders. Although it’s the reedist’s flamboyant ejaculations that initially draw attention – he unspools phrase after phrase and variation after variation – the intuitive percussion work is soon as much an attraction.

Exhibiting resonated press rolls in an Art Blakey-like fashion, plus cross-rhythms and ride and hi-hat cymbal patterning à la Max Roach, Edwards confirms Free Jazz’s links to the pre-New Thing rhythm masters. Plus these deeply felt polyrhythms guide Flaherty’s alto from blunt-note violence into smeared, contrapuntal over-blowing, moving reed perforations from splintering textures to expansive sound block building. Soon, energetic syllables and phrases twist and curve into speech-inflected harmonies. With percussion scrapes, friction and concussions magnified, the saxman’s cries begin to resemble the altissimo screeches of a wounded or perhaps dying animal – he ascends tones so quickly that it sound as if he’s moved past the keys and is only playing the mouthpiece. Poly-harmonically, his foghorn tone and intricate screech complement Edwards’ rhythmic pres rolls and ride cymbal friction, to such an extent that you eagerly anticipate KAIVALYA VOL 2.

Rhythmic intricacy is the hallmark of Gayle’s accompanists as well. At least a decade younger than Edwards, Detroit-native Gerald Cleaver has finessed the drum parts behind such disparate leaders as multi-reedist Roscoe Mitchell and microtonal violist Matt Maneri. A grizzled fighter in the jazz trenches, bassist Sirone, was playing with the Revolutionary Ensemble in the earliest days of The New Thing and leads his own band from Berlin, where he now lives.

Dealing with standards such as “What’s New?” the three append so many variations upon the melody that you barely recognize the shape of the stripped and scrapped theme. During its presentation, determined arco wallops from Sirone and rattling drums from Cleaver presage Gayle piling double-tongued action around the theme, finally moving to passages rife with altissimo squeals. Coda involves the bassist deliberately constructing a line that ascends to meet the saxman’s wavering timbres.

Heavy foot on the sustain pedal and packed with flashing arpeggios and octave jumps, “I Can’t Get Started”, Gayle’s more than 11½-minute solo piano feature mutates the theme many times after the primary exposition. Absorbing herky-jerky Ragtime syncopation, development then becomes even more ornamental and speedy, as cross-handed, Monk-like plinks outline the highest notes. Oscillating between pseudo-Stride runs and high frequency right-handed trills, he advances the melody gingerly, sometime adding free-flowing romantic accents as well a quirky interpolations and excursions. Double timing with plenty of tremolo, he concludes by reprising the theme buried in as many rococo trills as you’d find in any cocktail lounge rendition.

As he ages, Gayle output seems more melodious – that is if you hear Sonny Rollins’ reed-masticating of the 1950s and 1960s as melodic – but even these asides are pierced by nephritic lamentations. And it’s the same whether Gayle is trilling grainy lines from his alto as he does on “Shout of Love” or burbling multiphonics from his more familiar tenor saxophone as on “Healing Souls”.

The difference is that by the time he reaches the end of the first tune, his snorting flutter-tonguing and overblowing subsides into an atonal version of trading fours, first with Cleaver’s rough-and-ready press rolls, flams and ruffs, then with Sirone’s reverberating double-stopping and low-pitched syncopation.

Much faster, the later tune features bell-muting and split tones, but rides on Gayle’s ability to spin out emphasized squealing and squeaking intense near-oonomatopoeia in trick registers. Sirone grabs blunt resonation from his bass strings and Cleaver beats down the rhythm with heavy flams and rebounds until the saxophonist climaxes with an Ornette Coleman-like march of repeated reed percussion.

Elsewhere renal reed shrieks make common cause with earth-shaking bass drum vibrations and pinpointed cymbal quivers, while at other points, the bassist’s thick pacing helps the saxophonist attain speaking-in-tongue emotionalism and almost double-reed resonance. Moreover, you can tell all are having a good time.

At the beginning of “Glory Dance”, Gayle quips: “Don’t tell nobody what we’re doing here, you understand,” which is followed by a belly laugh from Sirone.

Do just the opposite, tell everyone about the virtue of SHOUT and KAIVALYA.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Shout: 1. I Remember You 2. Glory Dance 3. What’s New? 4. Shout of Love 5. Unto Jesus Christ 6. I Can’t Get Started* 7. Independence Blues 8. Healing Souls

Personnel: Shout: Charles Gayle (tenor saxophone and piano*); Sirone (bass); Gerald Cleaver (drums)

Track Listing: Kaivalya: 1. Dark Desert 2. Small Doorway 3. Amrita (Soma) 4. Pillows for Mummies 5. Janagma 6. Mahaharasta

Personnel: Kaivalya: Paul Flaherty (alto and tenor saxophones); Marc Edwards (drums)

October 31, 2005

SIRONE BANG ENSEMBLE

Configuration
Silkheart SHCD 155

More a series of concertos for four instrumentalists than a relationship or arrangement, CONFIGURATION, recorded live in New York late last year, is a confirmation of the power of three veteran, so-called avant-garde players and the introduction of a talented tyro.

Still vibrant, despite the desires of neo-cons to banish them from jazz history, violinist Billy Bang, 57, bassist Sirone, 64, and saxophonist Charles Gayle 65, are as inventive and technically adroit as they were when they first began making noise –sometimes literally – in the 1960s and 1970s. New kid on the block – who holds his own here – is New Jersey-based drummer Tyshawn Sorey, 22. Although not arranged in the bebop sense, the six pieces on this CD, recorded downstairs at CBGBs, offer a lot more than a customary string of round robin solos. Singularly, or in duos, the four not only exhibit instrumental prowess but link disparate sections without ever losing the compositional thread.

Especially noteworthy are the tunes written by Sirone, still closely identified with the Revolutionary Ensemble. Someone like Charles Mingus or Thelonious Monk, who prefers to constantly discover new tints in his compositional colors, two of his three were also recorded 18 months previously in his adopted hometown by the Berlin resident’s own quartet. His last piece – the title tune – is a typically good-humored, stop-and-go set ending blues with funky solos all around. But “We are not alone, but we are few” and “I Remember Albert” are more profound statements.

Dramatic and atmospheric, they, like most of the other tracks here, feature Gayle on alto sax instead of his customary tenor. Producing undulating timbres on top of quasi-ceremonial drum beats and bowed pedal point from the composer, Gayle’s textures get wider, louder, higher-pitched and more abstract as the piece unrolls. On his side Bang’s lines surge to join in double counterpoint with Sirone’s, at and points it appears as if each is sounding the same note – basso in the bassist’s case and treble in the violinist’s. As Gayle twists and turns out pitch vibrations, Sorey first accompanies him with funeral taps, then the oscillation of a drum stick scraped across the ride cymbal, and finally bass drum whaps and the odd snare flam. Before the morose theme is reprised, the saxman has worked himself into a frenzy of double tonguing.

Appropriately returning to tenor saxophone for “I Remember Albert”, Gayle produces quivering and gritty Albert Ayler-sounding output before working deeper into his body tube with a wide vibrato, irregular pitch and harsh overtones. Sorey exposes his inner Sunny Murray with simple, door-knocking beats as Sirone’s wide harmonic intervals fill up the few spaces left empty. Virtually channeling Ayler, Gayle’s buzzy, flutter tonguing is transformed to unmodified glossolalia. Wavering, buzzing and purring, his quick overblowing brings forth answering bumps and thumps from the bassist and jangled snares and rim tops from the drummer. Diverging from the reedist’s line, Bang’s pizzicato runs – triple and quadruple stopped – ring out with tremolo multiphonics. Following a splashy cymbal touch, the last section of the piece downshifts to a moderato, strumming bass solo, backed by carefully measured flams from the drummer, until the head is recapped for a final time.

The head-solo-head construction on “…Albert” isn’t recapitulated elsewhere, with most of the other compositions relying on audacious unaccompanied sections from each player. This is most elaborately expressed on Bang’s almost 16-minute “Jupiter’s Future”. At one point for instance, the composer produces spiccato harmonies at the top of the violin’s range, rippling, swirling and extending vibrating nodes to such an extent that it sounds like he’s shredding his strings, causing him to shout in elation or frustration. Buzzy alto saxophone lines from Gayle are enlivened by doits, squeaks, extreme multiphonics or pitch vibrations, with these extended techniques exhibited a cappella, or in duet with screechy fiddle or low-pitched bass wing. Sorey’s extravagant solo outing encompasses cymbal shuffles, nerve beats and tattoo on snares and toms until his rumbled cross pulses and accent turn to blunt triplets and rolls.

Whether you’re a longtime follower of any of the old hands or want to discover a new drummer, this CONFIGURATION is a CD worth investigating.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Jupiter’s Future 2. Freedom Flexibility 3. We Are Not Alone, But We Are Few 4. I Remember Albert 5. Notre Dame de la Garde 6. Configuration

Personnel: Charles Gayle (alto and tenor saxophones); Billy Bang (violin); Sirone (bass); Tyshawn Sorey (drums)

August 29, 2005

Hallwalls' New Home

For CODA

A unique arrangement between an American folk-punk singer-songwriter and a longtime bastion of experimental arts means that Western New York’s centre for creative music will have a new, architecturally impressive home in downtown Buffalo by October, 2005.

Hallwalls, a nonprofit arts organization, which for more than 30 years has been the place where innovative art, film and music – especially non-mainstream jazz – has been presented, moves into the expanded first-floor and basement-level facilities in a historically preserved church as a tenant of Righteous Babe Records (RBR). RBR is the folk-punk mini conglomerate that has grown out of the successful career of singer-songwriter Ani DiFranco, a Buffalo native, will have its offices on the second floor.

The new facility’s projected opening was pushed back for a few months last year when a combination of planning and political hassles, since resolved, caused work that began in July 2003, on the historic, formerly dilapidated Asbury Delaware church to be put on hold. Work steamed ahead again in late March of this year. However, Hallwalls vacated its former premises in mid-2004 and since then has presented programs in a variety of ad-hoc locations, which for jazz has included small clubs and larger art galleries.

But the wait will be worth it, says Edmund Cardoni, Hallwalls’ executive director. The almost $10 million (U.S.) RBR is pouring into the building adds state-of-the-art energy efficient facilities such as a geothermal heating and cooling system; underground power lines; and a custom-designed elevator lifted by hydraulic systems housed below the basement floor. A specially designed glass, steel, and copper stair-tower addition will be the main entrance for both Hallwalls and RBR’s offices. Care has also been taken so that these necessary improvements don’t disturb the restored façade of the building listed on the National Register of Historic Landmarks.

As an added bonus, three concert spaces of various sizes, including a venue with a maximum capacity of 1,200, will be available. “The seating will be flexible, not fixed,” explains Cardoni. “The floor will be open, for sitting in seats, standing, dancing, sitting at tables, whatever the event needs.” Over the years Hallwalls’ has drawn audiences of several hundreds to see bands ranging from Peter Brötzmann’s Tentet and the Sun Ra Arkestra, as well as smaller crowds for bands by multi-instrumentalist Joe McPhee and saxophonist Charles Gayle, to mention two. “We believe the sky's the limit at the church, with no dilution of quality or dulling of edge.” he adds. “We can expand the audience for the music we love to a degree not possible at the former location or by wandering around from space to space like gypsies.”

Hallwalls’ relocation costs of $425,000 (U.S.) are covered by a successful capital campaign, with 86% from individual and corporate donations plus local and national foundation grants. An addition 14% came from New York state, mostly in the form of a Capital Aid grant from the New York State Council on the Arts.

-- Ken Waxman

July 1, 2005

LANDING ON THE WRONG NOTE

By Ajay Heble
Routledge

The most recent schism inside the warring Baltic states that make up the landscape of much of present-day jazz, involves the neo-conservatives verses the experimenters.

Neo-cons, characterized by their champion, trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, insist that the music must follow a set of rules and regulations that includes a background in the blues and the necessity of swinging every time a musician plays. Experimenters, among which can be found some of the readers of this magazine, are less doctrinaire. Their playing and compositions welcome other influences, and they aren’t obsessed with producing the “correct” note every time.

As you can tell by his title, Ajay Heble, an associate professor at Ontario’s University of Guelph as well as the founder and artistic director of the highly praised annual Guelph Jazz Festival, falls on the later side of the equation. But the existence of his book pinpoints another conundrum that must be faced now that the music has finally been deemed legitimate by the populace at large. Academics have set their sights on jazz as a proper field of study, so much so that many volumes of theory and critical compendia are crowding jazz histories, biographies and musical analysis on library and bookstore shelves

In his book, Heble is conscious of some of the problems inherent in trying to graft highly complex academic theory onto what is essentially a non-linear, mostly non-verbal music, which is above all concerned with the expression of feelings and emotions. That he often succeeds in melding the two within this tome confirms his skill; that some of the points are submerged beneath the murky waters of specific academic jargon reveals the problems inherent in this approach.

In many ways, the writing in the book resembles the streets of Manhattan. Wander too far away from your beginning point on most New York streets or avenues and you’ll end up in a completely different neighborhood. It’s the same way with the prose here. For instance, a perfectly lucid -- for the layperson -- description of the talents or methods of a certain musician or a key recording will suddenly turn a metaphoric corner and become lost in a thicket of academic prose. Alternately, an obtuse statement or theory buttressed by a snowfall of dense, numbered references and specific conceptual words and phrases whose meaning is buried in the cement of research paper foundations, will unexpectedly appears transparent when a real life example is introduced.

From the beginning, Heble states that “(l)anding on the wrong note … can be a politically and culturally salient act for oppressed groups seeking alternative models of knowledge production and identity formation”. He works to implement his thesis in specific chapters dedicated to such important artists as the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Sun Ra, John Zorn and Charles Gayle, plus discusses the topics of women in jazz, understanding the autobiographies of several important jazz figures, and jazz’s interaction with popular, mainstream culture. Perhaps it’s too large a banquet to try to consume at one sitting.

Although he writes a couple of times that in retrospect he regrets not having personally interviewed different musicians while researching the book, his suppositions and conclusions rely on secondary sources. Additionally, he often attempts to have jazz and its practitioners conform to the philosophies of prominent academics such as Jacques Attali, Theodor Adorno and Edward Said, even if they never examined the music itself, or in Adorno’s case were openly hostile to it. Just as one performer’s musical parody can be taken as a heartfelt tribute by another, so some of Heble’s conclusions can occasionally be seen as too pat or certain.

When the prose can be deconstructed that is. Words such as “adumbrating”, “intentionalist, “fixity” and “situatedness” -- to take a few at random -- stud his writing the way flatted fifths define bebop solos. None of these words are part of the average non-academic’s vocabulary, and there are times when even having a standard collegiate dictionary by your elbow won’t illuminate some of the points or sentences. Heble also indulges in the academic affectation of referring to LPs and CDs as well as books and articles as “texts”.

That’s why the most illuminating parts of the book involve performers like Gayle, who Heble has seen play, or Heble’s experience in trying to balance popularity and innovation when booking acts for the Guelph Jazz Festival.

Bringing the experience from his day job as an English professor to this thesis, he’s most convincing -- if contentious -- when doing a textural analysis of the autobiographies of Charles Mingus, Billie Holiday and Duke Ellington. Insisting that “it would be foolish to simply take what [musicians] say at face value” he relates the so-called truth in fiction expressed in these biographies to improvisers “discovering rewarding sonic possibilities in what … might have been deemed ‘mistakes’ or ‘wrong notes’.”

However, when he posits that Ellington deliberately not mentioning social and racial problems in his autobiography is “best understood through an analysis of the text’s absences”, he seems to be deliberately ignoring the score in front of him. This interpretation of deliberate absence can be especially disputatious since all three cited volumes were either ghost written or heavily edited.

Moreover, wrenching incidents, performances and/or compositions from their historical contexts to make a point doesn’t make a theoretical supposition any more correct than an already accepted interpretation. For example, in dealing with a later, very accessible CD recorded by the Art Ensemble, he seems to tie himself into theoretical knots trying to see it as expressing political dissonance even as it while reaches out to a larger audience.

Another overall deficiency of the book is that despite his real life experience with the Guelph Jazz Festival, Heble has written a volume that deals with avant-jazz as it was, not as it is now. By relating most of his examples and theories to how atonal, improvised music grew out of, and was accepted or not by the African American community, he seems to have not taken into account the fact that 21st century jazz or improvised music is more universal.

Europeans and North Americans of all backgrounds now play a prominent role is so-called left-field jazz, a situation that his Festival has acknowledged in its bookings. Furthermore many neo-trad performers who today follow the lead of Marsalis are Black musicians proud of their background. This disconnects the link between Black consciousness and performers of “wrong notes” or avant-sounds, which appears to be taken for granted by many writers and in places within this book.

With the depth of scholarship and musical smarts Heble has displayed in Landing on the Wrong Note, the hope is that he will create another volume that will try to resolve some of these contradictions. When that happens, if, he doesn’t see it as a sell-out to the popularizers, perhaps he could also use a little more reader-friendly prose.

-- Ken Waxman

December 18, 2001

CHARLES GAYLE

Jazz Solo Piano
Knitting Factory Records KFW 288

This album is going to throw most jazz fans for a loop, whether they're devotees or detractors of Charles Gayle. That's because Gayle is featured here not creating gut wrenching tenor saxophone or bass clarinet improvisations, but as a pianist.

Moreover, the keyboard approach of 62-year-old Gayle can't be classified as so-called avant-garde jazz, but rather as only a half step away from what you'd probably hear in sophisticated jazz clubs any night of the week. In his piano persona, Gayle consecrates the greatest part of his program to standards, from "What's New" to "Afternoon in Paris". More notably, his approach is decidedly pre-modern, with these Stride-through-Swing creations referencing pre-1950 masters such as James P. Johnson, Art Tatum, Erroll Garner and Willie "The Lion" Smith.

Gayle who began his career as a pianist -- to add another factoid, he also plays trumpet -- began concentrating on tenor saxophone when he made the move from Buffalo, N.Y. to Manhattan a quarter century ago. A storied period as a homeless person/street musician obviously didn't lend itself to piano work either.

Still, he has a firm, though sometimes stuttering touch, which is decidedly two handed like the improvisations of most pre-modern keyboarded icons. When he approaches standards such as "All The Things You Are" or "Cherokee" he often decorates them with Tatumesque grace notes, plus slip in a different tempo, usually with a stride reference, in its centre. "I Remember April", which obviously has a particular resonance for him since he deals with it twice, moves a bit outside, especially in "II". There the stride section is preceded by opposite, complementary, out-of-temp lines.

Originals appear to be even more of a throwback to earlier times. "Chapter Green" is practically a ragtime piece, as is "1939". The blues lines elaborated on "Bucket Blues" would likely be more familiar to rent party denizens of the 1930s then any abstracted boppers or followers of the atonal Cool school.

Massive tweaking arrives with the most contemporary compositions. So many additional notes and chord substitutions appear in the opening of John Coltrane's "Countdown", for instance, that you wonder if the composer himself would have recognized it -- especially since the main theme doesn't appear until four-fifth of the way into the tune and is then subsumed by more decorations.

In future years this disc may be regarded as the ballad side of Charles Gayle. It's certainly one avenue reputation to approach his music for those who been frightened by his fire-breathing reputation. At the same time those who know his other work will probably be fascinated by this obverse look into the man's thought processes.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. 1939 2. I'll Remember April I 3.Round Midnite 4. Countdown 5.Bucket Blues 6. Nadoshe 7. Afternoon In Paris 8. All The Things You Are 9.Cherokee 10. What's New 11. Softly As In A Morning Sunrise 12. Body &Soul 13. I'll Remember April II 14.Chapter Green

Personnel: Charles Gayle (piano)

May 15, 2001