The Frame Quartet

35 MM
Okka Disk OD 12078

Rempis/Rosaly

Cyrillic

482 Music 482-1064

Matthew Shipp

Nu Bop Live

Rai Trade RTPJ 0015

Connie Crothers-Michel Bisio

Sessions at 475 Kent

Mutable 17537-2

Extended Play: Combos: Ad Hoc and Long Constituted in Toronto

By Ken Waxman

Long-established jazz groups have become as common as pop hits based on Mozart melodies topping the charts – they sometimes exist. But with accomplished improvisers tempted by side projects, bands often reconstitute and sidemen regularly have their own gigs. In most cases, though, this doesn’t affect the music’s quality.

Two bands confirm these realities. Ken Vandermark’s Vandermark5 (V5), which is at SPK (Polish Combatants Hall) June 17, has been together with only one personnel change for almost 15 years. Yet even Chicago-based Vandermark is involved in multiple side projects, as The Frame Quartet 35 mm Okka Disk OD 12078 demonstrates. V5 members, cellist and electronics-player Fred Lonberg-Holm and drummer Tim Daisy are represented as well. Meanwhile saxophonist Dave Rempis, a V5 fixture for 10 years, shines on Cyrillic 482 Music 482-1064, a duo with drummer Frank Rosaly. New York pianist Matthew Shipp, whose trio plays June13 at Gallery 345 on Sorauren Ave. is similarly part of numberless formations. Nu Bop Live Rai Trade RTPJ 0015) involves some of his cohorts, who won’t be Toronto. For an idea of what piano/bass communication sounds like involving Michel Bisio, the bassist who is in Shipp’s Toronto trio, there’s Sessions at 475 Kent Mutable 17537-2 with Connie Crothers.

The Non-V5er on “35mm” is Nate McBride, whose thick acoustic bass lines, electric bass thumps and manipulated wave forms distinguish this disc. Strident friction from Lonberg-Holm additionally gives the CD’s five long selection a rough-hewn quality, enhanced by Daisy’s reverberating and pinpointed cymbal slaps, not to mention Vandermark’s soloing which encompasses straight-ahead licks or tongue slaps on tenor saxophone and feathery clarinet trills. This is especially notable on Theatre Piece (for Jimmy Lyons) which links decisive sawing from the cellist, restrained plucks from the bassist and clatters, pops and rim shots from the drummer as Vandermark sound ranges from tremolo pitch-sliding on the clarinet to tongue-moistured saxophone flattement, flutters and split tones. Mid-way through, the tempo halves to allegro to expose faux romantic cello sequences that gradually shatters into sul ponticello lines mated with harsh, low-pitched saxophone rasps, balanced on crackling and buzzing electronics. Eventually the piece ends with an exposition of disconnected timbre-shredding from Vandermark and a conclusive string slap from the cellist.

Halve the number of players and double the performance intensity for “Cyrillic”. Completely improvised, the selections include those with cymbal-chiming funk grooves, replete with honking reed patterns plus others featuring smeared double-tonguing from Rempis, where he never seems to stop for breath, matched with rim shots and side spanks from Rosaly. Most impressive are In Plain Sight and How to Cross When Bridges are Out. The former, which could be a deconstructed classic R&B line, gains its rhythmic impetus from Rempis’ guttural baritone saxophone snorts. The later is like a face off between never-ending ratcheting, rolls and ruffs from Rosaly’s Energizer Bunny-like drumming and Rempis’ Eric Dolphyish-alto saxophone with its broken-octave staccato runs and wide split tones. Changing the the agitato tempo to andante, the tune slips into uncharted aleatory territory, echoing with excitement and abandon.

Both those adjectives are also on show on Shipp’s CD, especially on the 26-minute Nu Abstract suite. Putting aside the many-fingered staccato patterning on other tunes, the pianist initially restricts himself to occasional plinks, as drummer Guillermo Brown use electronics to unload crackling signal processing and hissing voice patches. After the pianist constructs a many-layered impressionistic response, he joins with William Parker’s fluid bass line and saxophonist Daniel Carter’s tightened reed snarls, in multi counterpoint. The performance swells to shrieking horn glossolalia, stretched and scattered bass-string movements and the pianist’s cascading note patterns. Climaxing alongside Brown’s explosions of drags and bounces, Shipp’s raw, exposed notes layer the interface alongside Carter’s strident altissimo cries and Parker’s triple-stopping.

Sophisticated piano-bass double contrapuntal interaction get an even better showcase on “Session at 475 Kent” as every tune is a culmination of Crothers’ thickly voiced, chromatic chords working out a challenge or response to Bisio’s chiming, slapping string reverberations. Chamber interludes, the CD’s four lengthy tracks evolve similarly to Resonance, the CD’s climatic finale. With Bisio double-stopping and pulling his strings fortissimo, Crothers’ glissandi and metronomic pumping, gradually give the sympathetic dynamic a novel undercurrent of unrelieved tension – embellished by the pianist’s strumming syncopation and the bassist’s woody string-stopping. Lightening her touch with freer harmonies, Bisio follows and shifts downwards into diminished pulses until the notes from both directions merge into a satisfying, protoplasmic whole.

-- For Whole Note Vol. 15 #9

June 1, 2010

Ken Vandermark/Barry Guy/Mark Sanders

Fox Fire
Maya MCD 0901

Testimony to the infinite adaptability of first-class improvisers is this two-CD live set. It captures the first-ever recorded meeting among veteran British Free Music bassist Barry Guy, peripatetic American multi-reedist Kern Vandermark and in-demand English drummer Mark Sanders, who mid-wifed the session.

Throughout the contours of 10 instant compositions from Birmingham and Leeds concerts in the United Kingdom, the three mate extended techniques, split-second timing, pitch and timbre augmentation plus subtle dips into the tradition. The result lodged firmly within the collegial spirit of Free Music, is also a wholly original variant.

Each improviser can call on musical history within the genre. Leader of large ensembles like his New Orchestra, Guy has for decades been one-third of saxophonist Evan Parker’s similarly constituted trio with drummer Paul Lytton. Adaptable in situations ranging from solo to big band work with Americans and Europeans, Vandermark – who here plays clarinet and tenor saxophone – has probably recorded more sessions in the past two decades as Guy has in his 40-year career. Meanwhile Sanders has partnered a clutch of saxophonists, including Parker, Tony Bevan and Paul Dunmall, plus bassists such as John Edwards and Simon H Fell.

The Leeds concert in particular features nods to the tradition in Vandermark’s fruity saxophone tone on “Fuggle” which he uses when he’s not exposing elongated burbles and reed bites. As his shrills spiral upwards into over-blowing and tongue mulching, Guy matches him with scrubbed or string-splintering textures. When the saxman blows across the reed exposing moist, staccato pecks, the bassist alternates between sul tasto slices and methodically picked chromatic patterns. Backing them both, Sanders confines himself to hand patterning and cymbal pings. Furthermore, when Vandermark switches to clarinet, he ensures that every partial and timbre is exposed staccatissimo and stop-time, with the vector reaching broken octave harmonies.

Thick sputtering waves of free-form multiphonics which Vandermark exposes on “Challenger” confirms Parker’s influence on him, and this resemblance is intensified by the drags, flams and ruffs of Sanders – who been part of some Parker formations – and Guy’s familiar thumps and strokes. Turning the piece into a bass-drum showcase for a time, the bassist’s knife-sharp movements encompass squeaks, slices and quivers on many strings simultaneously as the drummer reveals a constant hand-foot/smack-smash/roll-paradiddle percussion landscape. Although the tenorist’s return with grainy, textures then touches manages to suggest both “The William Tell Overture” and the bossa nova. Sanders’ rebounds manage to be both agitato and balladic, introducing a conclusive bass string snap.

Comparable in-the-moment communication takes place on the Birmingham-recorded tracks as well. The more-than 22½ -minute “Kwingyaw” for instance boasts stellar work from each. Beginning with a drum solo that includes cross pulses, rolls, backbeat strokes and bass drum whacks, the piece evolves intuitively as Guy’s beneath-the-bridge rasguedo takes on erhu-like echoes; and as Vandermark’s multi-directional note smears manage to be both fortissimo and staccato, oscillating between rasping abrasions and glottal punctuation. Speech-like inflections from all encompass inchoate reed squeals, pealing cymbal expression and spiccato triple-stopping. Expressing himself in a cornucopia of tongue slaps, fog-horn blats and extensive glossolalia, Vandermark’s sprint to low-pitched bites signal the piece’s conclusion as do speedy drum strokes and chromatic string strums. On other tracks, affiliated skitters, scatters and shakes from the drummer on skin, wood and metal, ensure that no matter how many floating altissimo squeals Vandermark packs into his circular breathing a foundation is maintained.

Fox Fire provides a classic example of a first-class, one-off trio formation. Plus the sounds captured on the disc guarantee that this combo will be fondly remembered even if the three never record together again.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: CD1: 1. Katsina 2. Up North 3. Kwingyaw (For T. D-E) 4. Revontulet 5. Northern Lights CD2: 1. Fuggle 2. Aquila 3. Challenger 4. Omega 5. Nugget

Personnel: Ken Vandermark (tenor saxophone and clarinet); Barry Guy (bass) and Mark Sanders (percussion)

February 11, 2010

Atomic School Days

Distil
Okka Disk OD 12073

Ab Baars Trio & Ken Vandermark

Goofy June Bug

Wig 15

Without trying to make him sound celestial and selfless, Ken Vandermark is one of those rare musicians who is as comfortable in an ensemble as fronting one. Despite recording so often as leader, the Chicago-based multi-reedist is just as apt to show up on disc as an addition to an existing band or as part of a generically titled ensemble. That was happens on these two CDs.

Over the years, collaborations with Europeans have also proven to be particularly fruitful for the saxophonist and clarinetist’s musical growth. This is confirmed on Goofy June Bug and Distill with each offering a divergent – and equally notable – take on improvised and composed music.

Recorded live in Chicago, Distil showcases an octet comprised of the Norwegian Atomic band: trumpeter Magnus Broo, reedist Fredrik Ljungkvist, pianist Håvard Wiik bassist Ingebrigt Håker-Flaten and drummer Paal Nilssen-Love; plus those members of School Days – made up of Vandermark, Håker-Flaten, Nilssen-Love and Chicago-trombonist Jeb Bishop – who aren’t in Atomic, as well as Norwegian vibist Kjell Nordeson. Nine long tracks on this two-CD set, composed by different band members, offers everyone a proper showcase.

Goofy June Bug on the other hand adds Vandermark to the established Dutch trio of fellow clarinetist Ab Baars, which also includes drummer Martin Van Duynhoven and bassist Wilbert De Joode. Except for one brief group improv, the compositions are mostly by Baars with Vandermark contributing three.

Perhaps it’s the freshness factor, but two of these tunes are among the CD’s stand outs. “Waltz Four Monk”, for example, salutes Thelonious without implicitly aping the pianist’s style. With De Joode walking and Van Duynhoven leaning hard and heavy on his kit, the polyphony from Baars’ tenor saxophone and Vandermark’s clarinet bonds, then divides as the later flutters into squeak territory and Baars double tongues and masticates the kind of robust split tones that could have frightened Charlie Rouse.

“Memory Moves Forward” is a different matter. During its slightly more than nine minutes, Baars’ lucent and wispy shakuhachi timbres intersect with Vandermark’s equally high-pitched clarinet lines supported by col legno bass runs and mallet-driven clangs from the drummer. Later on the clarinet dips into chalumeau territory, while Baars’ Orientalized wheezing create a wholly different mood, especially when Van Duynhoven accompaniment sounds as if the drummer is manipulating a taiko drum.

Not that Baars’ writing isn’t distinctive as well, especially when all four musicians all involved in those themes. “Then He Whirled About”, “Honest John” – saluting long-time Sun Ra tenor saxophone soloist John Gilmore – and the title track postulate POMO tough tenor roles. Yet with the drummer also gliding from Boppy cymbal-clanging to free form rat-tat-tats, the harmonic interchange between the saxophones doesn’t resemble that found in standard two-tenor combos like Johnny Griffin and Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis or Al Cohn and Zoot Sims.

Contrapuntal riffs, squeezed split tones and stressed cries owe more to the younger Archie Shepp and Pharoah Sanders at their fieriest, with both Baars and Vandermark scaling the heights of glossolalia, layering rubato honking, low-pitched slithers and, on the title tune, some resemblance to bagpipes into their blowing. Even at their wildest the two manage to rein in enough to allow heads to be recapped on most tunes. Elsewhere Baars’ clarinet work is feathery and impressionistic enough to be completely distinct from his sax solos.

Distinctiveness is the order of the day on Distil as well, with the octet members gobbling up whole swathes of jazz history as they play and spewing them out in reconfigured and characteristic forms.

Broo’s “Ghosts and Spirits”, with its offhand reference to Albert Ayler’s tune, manages to feature most of the band members, but in a form that owes as much to Count Basie-like effortless swing as Ayler. Here, as elsewhere on the set, Bishop’s gutbucket smears are prominent as is Wilk’s key-clipping and Nordeson’s contrapuntal asides. Encompassing brassy tongue sprays from the composer and high-frequency organic runs, overall the track belongs to the pianist. Moving from recital-like arpeggios to slashing and splashing comping he circles the others with allegro, kinetic patterns, spraying disconnect timbres that easily meld with the horn sections’ call-and-response vamps.

Meanwhile on a tune like Bishop’s “Deadline”, Ljungkvist provides a demonstration of how he may be the only Texas tenor who was born in Norway, honking his way into multiphonics, matched by Vandermark’s R&B baritone sax whoops. Nordeson’s vibe underpinning could come from Bobby Hutcherson’s work behind Gracan Moncur III, with Bishop in the later role. Over the stop-time theme, the trombonist twists grace notes, blows tremolo clusters and works out a series of slide flourishes extended with hand-muted intensity. Building up to piston-like syncopation, Nilssen-Love’s concluding solo seems linked more to Jo Jones or Gene Krupa than the expected John Stevens or Milford Graves echoes.

Other anomalies such as Håker-Flaten’s pumping bass line and harmonized reed polyphony share particular spaces; so does the cross-pollination of elongated altissimo clarinet shrills, virile trombone snorts and sprays, plus gamelan-like tuned gong resonations from the drummer. Together they spotlight the ensemble’s versatility. At times as well, pedal-point baritone saxophone riffs and choked valve brass lines combine in double counterpoint only to be subdued by roistering drum beats and key-clipping piano for further thematic definition.

Impressively, the distillation of Atomic School Days doesn’t only register on the agitato and fortissimo scale however. The bassist’s “Irrational Ceremony” is a quieter and more impressionistic piece that unrolls unhurriedly and smoothly. Well-recorded like the rest of the set, the scene-setting results from clave-like concussion from Nilssen-Love, descriptive low-frequency chording from Wilk, spraying vibraharp pulses and harmonically vibrated horns interaction.

Another Bishop paradigm, his solo here sluices upwards to double-tonguing from moderato flutter tonguing and throat growling, as beneath him the rhythm section gradually time-shifts to a faster tempo. As Wilk fans his keys, the piece then opens up enough so that Broo can express chromatic coloration with a series of concentrated triplets and tongue curving inflections. Eventually the final variation manages to mix murky trumpet smears and discordant backbeat rhythms, Free Jazz and Swing Jazz simultaneously.

Vandermark is the link between the sessions, but it’s the contributions of all the players which make the discs memorable. Ironically, Vandermark’s activities as a talent spotter and catalyst may ultimately prove more fruitful than his forceful soloing and writing.

-- Ken Waxman

Track list: Distil: CD1: 1. Deadline 2. Irrational Ceremony 3. Visitors 4. Dark Easter CD2: 1. Andersonville 2. Fort Funston 3. Closing Stages 4. Ghosts and Spirits 5. Buñuel at the Coctail Party

Personnel: Distil: Magnus Broo (trumpet); Jeb Bishop (trombone); Fredrik Ljungkvist (tenor saxophone and Bb clarinet); Ken Vandermark (baritone saxophone Bb and bass clarinets); Håvard Wiik (piano); Kjell Nordeson (vibraphone); Ingebrigt Håker-Flaten (bass) and Paal Nilssen-Love (drums)

Track list: Goofy: 1. Straws 2. Honest John 3. Losing Ground 4. Waltz Four Monk 5. Prince of Venosa 6. Then He Whirled About 7. Memory Moves Forward 8. Munmyo 9. Return 10. Goofy June Bug 11. Lunch Poem

Personnel: Goofy: Ab Baars (tenor saxophone, shakuhachi and clarinet); Ken Vandermark (tenor saxophone and clarinet); Wilbert De Joode (bass) and Martin Van Duynhoven (drums)

November 9, 2008

Ab Baars Trio & Ken Vandermark

Goofy June Bug
Wig 15

Atomic School Days

Distil

Okka Disk OD 12073

Without trying to make him sound celestial and selfless, Ken Vandermark is one of those rare musicians who is as comfortable in an ensemble as fronting one. Despite recording so often as leader, the Chicago-based multi-reedist is just as apt to show up on disc as an addition to an existing band or as part of a generically titled ensemble. That was happens on these two CDs.

Over the years, collaborations with Europeans have also proven to be particularly fruitful for the saxophonist and clarinetist’s musical growth. This is confirmed on Goofy June Bug and Distill with each offering a divergent – and equally notable – take on improvised and composed music.

Recorded live in Chicago, Distil showcases an octet comprised of the Norwegian Atomic band: trumpeter Magnus Broo, reedist Fredrik Ljungkvist, pianist Håvard Wiik bassist Ingebrigt Håker-Flaten and drummer Paal Nilssen-Love; plus those members of School Days – made up of Vandermark, Håker-Flaten, Nilssen-Love and Chicago-trombonist Jeb Bishop – who aren’t in Atomic, as well as Norwegian vibist Kjell Nordeson. Nine long tracks on this two-CD set, composed by different band members, offers everyone a proper showcase.

Goofy June Bug on the other hand adds Vandermark to the established Dutch trio of fellow clarinetist Ab Baars, which also includes drummer Martin Van Duynhoven and bassist Wilbert De Joode. Except for one brief group improv, the compositions are mostly by Baars with Vandermark contributing three.

Perhaps it’s the freshness factor, but two of these tunes are among the CD’s stand outs. “Waltz Four Monk”, for example, salutes Thelonious without implicitly aping the pianist’s style. With De Joode walking and Van Duynhoven leaning hard and heavy on his kit, the polyphony from Baars’ tenor saxophone and Vandermark’s clarinet bonds, then divides as the later flutters into squeak territory and Baars double tongues and masticates the kind of robust split tones that could have frightened Charlie Rouse.

“Memory Moves Forward” is a different matter. During its slightly more than nine minutes, Baars’ lucent and wispy shakuhachi timbres intersect with Vandermark’s equally high-pitched clarinet lines supported by col legno bass runs and mallet-driven clangs from the drummer. Later on the clarinet dips into chalumeau territory, while Baars’ Orientalized wheezing create a wholly different mood, especially when Van Duynhoven accompaniment sounds as if the drummer is manipulating a taiko drum.

Not that Baars’ writing isn’t distinctive as well, especially when all four musicians all involved in those themes. “Then He Whirled About”, “Honest John” – saluting long-time Sun Ra tenor saxophone soloist John Gilmore – and the title track postulate POMO tough tenor roles. Yet with the drummer also gliding from Boppy cymbal-clanging to free form rat-tat-tats, the harmonic interchange between the saxophones doesn’t resemble that found in standard two-tenor combos like Johnny Griffin and Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis or Al Cohn and Zoot Sims.

Contrapuntal riffs, squeezed split tones and stressed cries owe more to the younger Archie Shepp and Pharoah Sanders at their fieriest, with both Baars and Vandermark scaling the heights of glossolalia, layering rubato honking, low-pitched slithers and, on the title tune, some resemblance to bagpipes into their blowing. Even at their wildest the two manage to rein in enough to allow heads to be recapped on most tunes. Elsewhere Baars’ clarinet work is feathery and impressionistic enough to be completely distinct from his sax solos.

Distinctiveness is the order of the day on Distil as well, with the octet members gobbling up whole swathes of jazz history as they play and spewing them out in reconfigured and characteristic forms.

Broo’s “Ghosts and Spirits”, with its offhand reference to Albert Ayler’s tune, manages to feature most of the band members, but in a form that owes as much to Count Basie-like effortless swing as Ayler. Here, as elsewhere on the set, Bishop’s gutbucket smears are prominent as is Wilk’s key-clipping and Nordeson’s contrapuntal asides. Encompassing brassy tongue sprays from the composer and high-frequency organic runs, overall the track belongs to the pianist. Moving from recital-like arpeggios to slashing and splashing comping he circles the others with allegro, kinetic patterns, spraying disconnect timbres that easily meld with the horn sections’ call-and-response vamps.

Meanwhile on a tune like Bishop’s “Deadline”, Ljungkvist provides a demonstration of how he may be the only Texas tenor who was born in Norway, honking his way into multiphonics, matched by Vandermark’s R&B baritone sax whoops. Nordeson’s vibe underpinning could come from Bobby Hutcherson’s work behind Gracan Moncur III, with Bishop in the later role. Over the stop-time theme, the trombonist twists grace notes, blows tremolo clusters and works out a series of slide flourishes extended with hand-muted intensity. Building up to piston-like syncopation, Nilssen-Love’s concluding solo seems linked more to Jo Jones or Gene Krupa than the expected John Stevens or Milford Graves echoes.

Other anomalies such as Håker-Flaten’s pumping bass line and harmonized reed polyphony share particular spaces; so does the cross-pollination of elongated altissimo clarinet shrills, virile trombone snorts and sprays, plus gamelan-like tuned gong resonations from the drummer. Together they spotlight the ensemble’s versatility. At times as well, pedal-point baritone saxophone riffs and choked valve brass lines combine in double counterpoint only to be subdued by roistering drum beats and key-clipping piano for further thematic definition.

Impressively, the distillation of Atomic School Days doesn’t only register on the agitato and fortissimo scale however. The bassist’s “Irrational Ceremony” is a quieter and more impressionistic piece that unrolls unhurriedly and smoothly. Well-recorded like the rest of the set, the scene-setting results from clave-like concussion from Nilssen-Love, descriptive low-frequency chording from Wilk, spraying vibraharp pulses and harmonically vibrated horns interaction.

Another Bishop paradigm, his solo here sluices upwards to double-tonguing from moderato flutter tonguing and throat growling, as beneath him the rhythm section gradually time-shifts to a faster tempo. As Wilk fans his keys, the piece then opens up enough so that Broo can express chromatic coloration with a series of concentrated triplets and tongue curving inflections. Eventually the final variation manages to mix murky trumpet smears and discordant backbeat rhythms, Free Jazz and Swing Jazz simultaneously.

Vandermark is the link between the sessions, but it’s the contributions of all the players which make the discs memorable. Ironically, Vandermark’s activities as a talent spotter and catalyst may ultimately prove more fruitful than his forceful soloing and writing.

-- Ken Waxman

Track list: Distil: CD1: 1. Deadline 2. Irrational Ceremony 3. Visitors 4. Dark Easter CD2: 1. Andersonville 2. Fort Funston 3. Closing Stages 4. Ghosts and Spirits 5. Buñuel at the Coctail Party

Personnel: Distil: Magnus Broo (trumpet); Jeb Bishop (trombone); Fredrik Ljungkvist (tenor saxophone and Bb clarinet); Ken Vandermark (baritone saxophone Bb and bass clarinets); Håvard Wiik (piano); Kjell Nordeson (vibraphone); Ingebrigt Håker-Flaten (bass) and Paal Nilssen-Love (drums)

Track list: Goofy: 1. Straws 2. Honest John 3. Losing Ground 4. Waltz Four Monk 5. Prince of Venosa 6. Then He Whirled About 7. Memory Moves Forward 8. Munmyo 9. Return 10. Goofy June Bug 11. Lunch Poem

Personnel: Goofy: Ab Baars (tenor saxophone, shakuhachi and clarinet); Ken Vandermark (tenor saxophone and clarinet); Wilbert De Joode (bass) and Martin Van Duynhoven (drums)

November 9, 2008

Bridge 61

Journal
Atavistic ALP172CD

Raucous and other-focused Journal is yet another entry in Chicago saxophonist Ken Vandermark’s ever lengthening discography. Largely concentrated on low pitches, the instrumentation on this notable 72-minute, eight-track CD is completed by Jason Stein’s voluminous bass clarinet timbres, Nate McBride’s resonating acoustic and electric bass fills and Tim Daisy’s chunky percussion strokes.

Playing tenor and baritone saxophones, Vandermark’s most common strategy consists of arduous snorts and vamps– one part glottal R&B honks, the other altissimo Free Jazz shrills. The other players respond, expand or moderate the attack. Thick strums and funky thumb pops from the bassist define the groove on more rhythmic numbers, while acoustically McBride outputs woody bass slaps. Spectacular in his drum displays, Daisy references vigorous backbeat ruffs and rolls along with subtle shuffles, rim shots and kettle drum approximations – doubling or halving the tempo at will. When not gurgling basement split tone runs, Stein often uses pitch-sliding trills for melodic double counterpoint with Vandermark’s saxophones or clarinet.

Defining composition is Daisy’s episodic, 11-minute “Dark Blue, Bright Red”. Putting aside unsubtle pedal-point textures, and playing straight clarinet Vandermark’s deep sighing breaths and split-tone obbligatos unite for polyphonic episodes with sawing spiccato strings and patterned drum thumps. Propelled to a crescendo by the composer’s nerve beat stick work and wood block patterns, the tune eventually downshifts into a finale of gentling reed harmonies.

--Ken Waxman

For Whole Note Vol. 12 #4

December 6, 2006

GUILLERMO GREGORIO

Coplanar
New World Records NW 80639-2

Truthfully a New music session, the eight notated compositions by Argentinean-American composer/reedist Guillermo Gregorio owe their overall careful implementation and shape to more than the Chicago-based saxophonist and clarinetist’s theoretical basis for writing. Nearly all of the members of Gregorio’s Madi ensemble and featured guests have experience with improvised music, including the leader himself. Additionally he has such respect for the spontaneous impulse that space was left in the final track for an improvisation by bass clarinetist Ken Vandermark.

Some of the scores also allow the players to make decision about the direction in which to connect with thorough-composed parts. The spatial arrangement of the material, including notated silences, relates to a theory developed among Argentinean visual artists during Gregorio’s youth stating that all shapes, even when separated by empty spaces, belong to the same plane. To those unfamiliar with such arguments however, it’s obvious that COPLANAR has definite antecedents in both 20th Century so-called serious music and jazz-improv.

Briefly, ensemble member Jim Baker, who plays piano and synthesizer, often works with AACM tenor saxophonist Fred Anderson; oboist and accordionist Kyle Bruckmann, who recently relocated to the Bay area, is featured in the all improv EKG duo; guitarist John Corbett is a writer/producer responsible for Atavistic Records’ Unheard Music series; and cellist Fred Lonberg-Hom seems to be on every second CD in Chicago and has just joined the Vandermark5. Other players have a more so-called classical background. Guest clarinetist Aram Shelton is in at least two bands made up of younger improvisers; and Swiss tubaist Marc Unternährer is a member of the aptly named Chicago-Luzern Exchange; and even Irish composer Jennifer Walshe, who sounds like a cut-rate Maggie Nichols on the one track in which she is featured, also performs as an improvising vocalist. Vandermark, of course plays with numerous improvisers throughout North America and Europe.

Actually except that his multiphonic interpretation is a little more upfront, the nearly 14 minutes of “Coplanar 5” that features Vandermark don’t sound that much different from the other tracks. Completely improvised or not, his primitivist split tones and smeared growls mesh almost faultlessly with the circling tremolo strings and layered horn pulsations. Before a coda of disconnected piano chords wraps up everything, the reedist’s squeaking has melted into near-silent tongue slaps.

Other pieces, such as the nearly 16½-minute “Coplanar 1 + 2” and “White Coplanar” confirm this. The later track, designed for Warren Po’s cracklebox, or early miniature simple synthesizer, as well as Jen Clare Paulson’s viola and Gregorio’s clarinet, builds tension by playing up the disparity between the jittering toy-like qualities of Po’s instrument and the smooth glissandi of the others’. Cracklebox sizzling and fluttering almost rough up the clarinet’s near legit tone.

As for “Coplanar 1 + 2”, the layered rubato scrapes and slides from those experienced in improv in other contexts such as Corbett, Baker and Lonberg-Holm, bring a certain fissure to massed andante chords from the rest of the ensemble. As Baker’s synthesizer triggers flanged snorts, burps and gurgles, the cross modulations from the others toughens as well. Scraped guitar lines interact with the thump of arco bass as ratcheting percussive timbres appear. Created in broken octaves, the irregular vibrations of Bruckmann’s oboe contrast with Gregorio’s pinched clarinet tone.

Adding Unternährer’s tuba and Bruckmann playing accordion as well as oboe, “Construction with Coplanar” brings the composer’s ideas into boldest relief. Polyphonically biting off jagged timbres, the duo’s parts stand out from the more legato string and horn accompaniment. After tuba honks and spiccato runs from the cellist, the composer’s resolutely straight clarinet playing almost stands by itself.

Perhaps the lesson here, which Gregorio may agree with, is that with COPLANAR, he has reached full maturity as a composer. Yet negotiation of his compositions’ intricacies entails the involvement of musicians more versatile than he. Perhaps, one could say, it demands those who are more familiar with the improv experience.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: One: 1. Coplanar 1 + 2 2. Coplanar 4 (for oboe, clarinet, tuba and cello)* 3. Coplanar 3 (for piano and strings) 3# 4. White Coplanar (for clarinet, viola and cracklebox)% 5. Construction with Coplanar (for oboe/accordion, clarinet/alto saxophone, tuba, and cello)* 6. Madi Piece (for guitar and strings) 7. Swiss Coplanar (for voice, tuba, and piano)*^ 8. Coplanar 5 (for bass clarinet, clarinets, strings and piano)+

Personnel: Marc Unternährer (tuba)*; Guillermo Gregorio (clarinet and alto saxophone); Kyle Bruckmann (oboe or accordion); Aram Shelton (E-flat clarinet)+; Ken Vandermark (bass clarinet)+; Jim Baker (piano or ARP synthesizer); Steffen Schleiermacher (piano)#; Jen Clare Paulson (viola); Fred Lonberg-Holm (cello); John Corbett (guitar); Michael Cameron (bass); Warren Po (cracklebox)%; Jennifer Walshe (voice)^

April 10, 2006

Impromptu

Impromptu
Digitalis Purpùrea

Rutherford/Vandermark/Müller/van der Schyff
Hoxha
Spool/Line

By Ken Waxman
February 13, 2006

CDs recorded practically two continents apart, these session show how veteran avant trombonists of roughly the same vintage can adapt and collaborate with younger musicians. Each chooses to do so in a different, but very characteristic, fashion.

Giancarlo Schiaffini – born in 1942 – is someone whose reinterpretation of the trombone’s role goes back to the birth of Italian improv with the Gruppo Romano Free Jazz in 1966. He’s an autodidact, who shifts effortlessly between the improv and the notated world. A member of the Italian Instabile Orchestra, he has also involving himself in many jazz situations over the years. Simultaneously he has collaborated with the likes of John Cage, Luigi Nono and Giacinto Scelsi, with specific solo works written for him by Scelsi, Nono and other so-called serious composers.

Thus it’s no surprise to see him as a member of Impromptu, a Sardinia-based “improvisation and composition group”, whose members have background in jazz, improv, orchestral and theatrical music. Its unusual line-up adds Schiaffini’s trombone to violin – played by Adele Madu– plus piano, bass and drums. Cagliari-based pianist Silvia Corda and bassist Adriano Orrù not only teach at the local conservatory but recorded a well-received trio CD under Corda’s name a couple of years ago. Drummer and percussionist Roberto Pellegrindi splits his time between hard core improv and conservatory instruction.

Less than six months after the eight tracks on Impromptu were recorded in 2004, London-based trombonist Paul Rutherford – born in 1940 – was in Portland, Ore. as part of a free-form concert. His associates were German-born, Vancouver, B.C.-based bassist Torsten Müller, Vancouver-based percussionist Dylan van der Schyff – who has worked with everyone from British reedist John Butcher to American bassist Mark Helias – and Chicago-based tenor saxophonist and clarinetist Ken Vandermark, who in the past decade has probably performed with more different improvisers than anyone else on the scene.

Again, Rutherford’s participation in this an ad hoc ensemble is no shock, since from his beginnings in BritImprov, he was as likely to be found in free-form combos like Iskra 1903 with bassist Barry Guy as in such multi-person big bands as Mike Westbrook’s or the Globe Unity. He loves to play, whether it’s with jazz-style bands in the 1980s or, as he has recently, with two live computer processors.

Hoxha includes not a hint of electronics, something which has fascinated Schiaffini in other circumstances as well. There’s also no hierarchical suggestions or Old master - young apprentices separateness here, even though Müller, the next oldest musicians is almost a decade and a half younger than the British trombonist. Instead what’s most apparent is a sense of these improvisations being in the moment, which further distances them from Impromptu. That CD consciously specifies the formal strategies that go into individual creations – clearly labeled as written by one or another of the players – even if the end results are all-out improvisations.

Curiously, when timbre follows texture during these fully-rounded performances on Hoxha, Rutherford’s slide work and use of mutes at points takes on a gutbucket, traditional jazz coloration, not too distant from the solos of his older contemporary Free Jazzer Roswell Rudd. Trad Jazz was popular in the United Kingdom when Rutherford was coming up and while he, unlike Rudd, was likely never a recorded Dixielander, the fearless technique and casual joy of those older bonemen could influence anyone, even if by osmosis.

Harmonizing Rutherford’s sweeps, swoops and echoing timbres with Vandermark’s flutter-tongued tenor saxophone rumbles, backed by only bass and drums, also bring up memories of Rudd’s 1960s strategies with equally strong saxmen like John Tchicai and Archie Shepp. Müller’s string-scraping applications, sudden col lengo thrusts and spiccato patterning are the extreme opposite of the steady bassists Rudd worked with in these bands, however. As for van der Schyff, in this situation his thought process is focused more on Free Music than Free Jazz. He’d never be confused with Milford Graves or Beaver Harris. Just listen to the resonation of his cymbal lines, the snaps and rolls on his snares and toms, his slap on unlathed cymbal surface, and the all-encompassing rattles, nerve beats and sand dances he produces from his drum tops. Vandermark’s clarinet is another point of demarcation here, since his pinched and nasal trills and woody resonation serves as unmistakable counterpoint to the trombonist’s echoing purrs and low-pitched elongated slurs.

All this bravura technique surrounding it functions as the prelude and postlude to “Baragon”, Hoxha’s touch-over-21-minutes showpiece. The drummer’s rattles and raps plus the reedist’s high-pitched trilling give way to an ample demonstration of the mature Rutherford style as he slides around the slide brace, bell and mouthpiece, crying and shouting through the tube, slithering from harsh note mastication to full-fledged braying and blubbering. During the course of the tune Vandermark plays many roles, at one point creating a sibilant but flowing counter line, broken up with sudden squeaks and shattering tones, and at others – on tenor saxophone– creating a tongue-slapping ostinato. Plunger comments and back-of-the-throat squeals are the trombonist’s response as van der Schyff shifts to rock-like bounces and the bassist wraps things up with an inclusive bass thump.

Impressive for what it is, Hoxha may have benefited from more formalism, something Impromptu, the album, has in spades. But what Impromptu, the band lacks, is a prevailing counterforce to Schiaffani with as powerful an instrument as Vandermark’s. As well as she functions, Madu’s gentler approach to the fiddle is sometimes unintentionally blown away by the Big Bad Wolfness of the trombone’s power. Conversant with a variety of styles and techniques, pianist Corda mounts a challenge at certain points, but as referee between the front line and the rhythm section, she has to function on both teams.

Often that means the response to brass sound excursions from il dottore Schiaffini is to introduce sparse, isolated timbres. With downwards spiccato slices from the violinist, col legno patterning from Orrù and cascades of passing tones from the piano covering curving plunger tremolos from the trombonist, the end result on a piece like Madau’s 11-minute “Kaoscasokausa” sounds exceedingly solemn and loggy.

Harmonized formalism affects other tunes as well. On Corda’s “Di poche parole”, not only does Pellegrindi appear to be using techniques more appropriate for symphonic kettledrum and bell players than improvisers, but as his sounds expand it seems as if he’s valiantly holding himself back from replicating the percussion rumbles from the “1812 Overture”. The composer herself falls into near-stereotypical classical chording. Heading for a crescendo of unrelieved tension, the rigidity threatens to throttle the piece. Luckily, a release section of scraped chromatic violin lines and circular stops plus bass string clicks lighten the performance as do jazzy spits and slurs from the trombonist.

Short – less than five minutes – and light-hearted, Schiaffini’s “Mercoledi 17” rejuvenates the proceedings as do valve slurs, cross patterning piano chords, plucked violin strings and a walking bass line from the players. Following a cymbal resonation that could easily come from pressure on a metal garbage can lid, the tune’s extro features tailgate slurs from the composer and swinging slide action from Madau.

Even more exceptional is the final “Comme se fosse autunno”, evidently a burlesque contrafact of “Autumn Leaves”. Beginning with double-stopping tremolos from Madau and exaggerated chording that would make Roger Williams proud from Corda, the tune soon develops into a stroll, complete with double-timed, cascading note patterns from the fiddler and a strummed bass lines from Orrù. Following a last minute recapitulation of the theme, the proceedings screech to a sudden halt.

While accomplished, Impromptu the CD, implies that Impromptu, the band, still needs to put more thought into how best to balance its disparate parts. Hoxha, as a one-off improv, misses top rank as well. Still both prove the adage that old trombonists – unlike dogs – can learn new tricks – and get along well enough with musical puppies to pass on their own capers.

February 13, 2006

PETER BRÖTZMANN CHICAGO TENTET

Be Music, Night
OkkaDisk OD 12059

This CD may ruin saxophonist Peter Brötzmann’s long-held reputation as the ferocious, hard-hearted wild man of Free Jazz.

For the entire hour-plus CD by the German reedman’s mostly Chicago-based band is designed as homage to American poet Kenneth Patchen (1911-1972). Additionally, the longest – more than 42 minutes – of the three tracks features mellifluous-voiced Welsh poet Mike Pearson integrated into the ensemble reading selections from Patchen’s work that are, for all intents and purposes, love poems.

Patchen, an Ohio-born versifier who lived all over the United States, was a Beat fellow traveler, with a musical quality in some of his poetry. Even before similar experiments by Jack Kerouac, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Alan Ginsberg, in the late 1950s he recorded LPs reading his verse accompanied by improvising jazz combos. In a way this CD is an extension of those experiments.

Framed by an all-instrumental prelude and even shorter postlude, BE MUSIC, NIGHT unfurls like a tone poem for chamber orchestra. Of course with the massed talent on display – three reeds, two brasses, two strings and two percussionists – the layering provide more than interludes. Mixing brass slurs and pedal tones, expressive reed continuo and stop-time percussion forays, the framing instrumental passages manage to be both lyrical and polyphonic.

Furthermore, to put to rest another Free Jazz myth, the German reedist’s playing has never been as coarse as his detractors insist. As long ago as 1984 he recorded a solo CD, since reissued as 14 LOVE POEMS PLUS 10 MORE (FMP CD 125), which featured improvisations inspired by Patchen’s “14 Love Poems”.

Multiplying the interpretations of the poet’s lyrics nine-fold here, much of the instrumental elucidation depends on tutti passages or impetuous and unexpected fortissimo ejaculations. Besides the horn brays and slurs, cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm is particularly effective in transforming his four strings into an electric guitar spraying discordant effects pedal timbres.

Almost deliberately old-fashioned at times, as if Pearson was reading Elizabethan sonnets, the verse is mixed with tender nocturne-like pitches that are almost as honeyed as the poet/actor’s near whispered tones. But romantic language doesn’t have to bring forth banal responses. Among the textures advanced by the saxophonists – most obviously Brötzmann, though Mats Gustafsson and Ken Vandermark clarinet passages are noticeable as well – are tongue slaps, vibrating key clicks and pops and slurred cries. Also especially effective are the grace notes buzzed by trombonist Jeb Bishop, whose valve-and-bell expansion often partners Pearson’s recitation.

An unexpected pleasure all around, BE MUSIC, NIGHT should appeal to those interested in dramatically recited poetry, those fascinated by the admixture of words and music, and those whose understanding of emotionalism encompasses sound and silences as well as lyrics.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Be Music, Night Part 1 2. Be Music, Night Part 2 3. Be Music, Night Part 3

Personnel: Joe McPhee (trumpet and alto saxophone); Jeb Bishop (trombone); Peter Brötzmann (alto and saxophones, bass clarinet and b-flat clarinet); Mats Gustafsson (baritone saxophone and bass clarinet); Ken Vandermark (baritone saxophone and b-flat-clarinet); Fred Lonberg-Holm (cello); Kent Kessler (bass); Paal Nilssen-Love and Michael Zerang (drums); Mike Pearson (voice)

January 2, 2006

GOLD SPARKLE TRIO WITH KEN VANDERMARK

Brooklyn Cantos
Squealer Music SQLR 039

Proof – if any more was needed – of the Apple’s attraction for creative musicians – is articulated on the Gold Sparkle Trio (GST)’s new CD, which celebrates the band’s adopted hometown. Still, as the title indicates, the boroughs are as welcoming to as many players as Manhattan itself.

Furthermore, as 21st Century urban areas turn away from the American melting pot stereotype towards a Canadian-modeled multicultural stance, regional differences are being celebrated. One listen to the album’s seven tracks proves that the Southern soul of the Atlanta immigrants in the GST – reedist Charles Waters, bassist Adam Roberts and drummer Andrew Barker – hasn’t been muted in the city, nor has the experimentation and the woodwind brawn of its guest, Chicago-based reedist Ken Vandermark.

Vandermark’s exceptional contributions to BROOKLYN CANTOS provide interesting sidebars themselves. Despite his massive discography, there are points here and on other sessions where the saxophonist and clarinetist appears to be more relaxed as band member, sideman or special guest. With bandleader worries elsewhere, all he has to do is blow.

Blow he does, whether it’s with volcanic, New Thing-like screeches or moderated, harmonic tones. Not that Waters has to stand back for anyone. Moving among his alto saxophone, Bb and Eb clarinets he contributes as many skewed notes and/or unison counterpoint as his frontline partner

Playing tenor saxophone, Bb or bass clarinet, the visitor adds woodwind heft and color when needed. He and Waters can combine with double counterpoint from his tongue-slapping bass clarinet and the other’s peeping, buoyant clarinet on a melodically rhythmic piece like Barker’s “Marcella Variations #1”, then break out into close-voiced freebop on the subsequent Waters’ composition, “Game Over”.

Here the adopted Brooklynite involves himself in unpolished and exaggerated tongue stops and reed biting, while Vandermark intentionally squeaks out whistling coloratura trills. As the variations circle back onto the theme, Roberts walks his bass and Baker’s solo features bass drum foot pressure and ratamacues on the other skins.

Baker’s output is more spectacular on his own “Carpet Quarterbagger”, one of the three compositions, along with “People’s Republic” and “Architexture #12 (718)” that meld GST’s past and future.

Related to a Southern Second Line march, “Carpet Quarterbagger”, finds Roberts resonating a steady, low-pitch as if he was finessing a one-string washtub bass, while the drummer bounces and rebounds on the rhythmically challenging tune. Coming across like the Meters’ Ziggy Modeliste his foot-tapping patterns and counter patterns provide the perfect backdrop to the variation developments during vamping call-and-response struts and screams from the horns.

Historical, “People’s Republic” was written by bassist Sirone in the 1970s. Berlin-based, but an Atlanta native, the Revolutionary Ensemble member met and approved of the GST’s group ethos. This version includes portions that highlight chamber-like, harmonic reed interplay and woody slap bass on one hand, and others where retching clarinet timbres and snarky overblown riffs from a quacking second horn explode into raunchy screams with full Fire Music abandon.

A Northern variation of Waters’ tune that has been in GST’s book for many years, the 13¾-minute “Architexture #12 (718)” morphs from stately reed harmony to spraying semitones and glottal stops from Vandermark’s bass clarinet to buzzy, metallic rooster crowing from Waters. Improvising side by side, Vandermark explores his horn’s lowest register, interrupted by tongue slaps, while Waters wheedles twisted arpeggios from his clarinets. Before it ends with the reedists squealing and slurring watery tone at one another, Baker opens up the tune to showcase his full press strokes and drags on the ride cymbals, crash cymbals and hi-hat.

BROOKLYN CANTOS proves that you can’t take his birthplace “out of” someone even if he changes locations. But at least GST -- and friend -- shows that you can often bring along the best parts of your musical past.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. People’s Republic 2. ‘Burg Girl 3. Marcella Variations #1 4. Game Over 5. Architexture #12 (718) 6. Autumn Ever 7. Carpet Quarterbagger

Personnel: Charles Waters (alto saxophone, Bb and Eb clarinets); Ken Vandermark (tenor saxophone, Bb and bass clarinet); Adam Roberts (bass); Andrew Barker (drums)

April 25, 2005

ATOMIC/SCHOOL DAYS

ATOMIC/SCHOOL DAYS Nuclear Assembly Hall
Okkadisk OD 12049

More of an internationalist than most American musicians, Chicago-based reedist Ken Vandermark has made a point of forming concordances with European musicians. Not only is he one of the key constituents of saxist Peter Brötzmann’s Chicago Tentet, but he often works in half-European/half American bands like the AALY trio, the Territory Band and the group featured here.

As its name makes clear, the octet combines the School Days band -- Vandermark, trombonist Jeb Bishop, vibist Kjell Nordeson, bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten and drummer Paal Nilssen-Love -- with trumpeter Magnus Broo, reedist Fredrik Ljungkvist and pianist Håvard Wiik who with Håker Flaten and Nilssen-Love make up the Scandinavian quintet Atomic. The results spread over two CD sides are dazzlingly spectacular.

Probably because all the players have a musical history with one another, the octet seems as well integrated as any fulltime group. No imperialist furthermore, the Chicago reedman spreads the compositional chores around, with every member contributing a tune -- and Ljungkvist supplying two. A study in contrasts, his “W Meets A” is a straightahead swinger built on high frequency piano arpeggios plus ruffs and bounces from the drummer, while “Kerosene” is more complex.

Beginning with a light toned mixture of slurred sax and brass lines, Ljungkvist moves the tune forward in a moody Gerry Mulligan-like fashion on baritone while Wilk comps quietly and Nilssen-Love restricts himself to brushes. Taking his place upfront, Nordeson offers up some sparkling mallet turnarounds, then Bishop contributes double-tongued chromatic slide action. More rough Kid Ory than smooth Lawrence Brown, the ‘bone man develops a blossoming stop-time section, that mixes with the clean mellow clarinet lines of Vandermark. Meanwhile, polyphonically, the baritone, vibes and rhythm section mesh to repeat the theme.

Memorable on their own, the vibist and bassist skip from tractable, smooth lines on Håker Flaten’s “Green Wood” -- which also features some Bill Evans-like piano chording and a thin screechy tone from a clarinetist -- to forceful thrusting motion elsewhere such as on Bishop’s “Conjugations”.

A martial-like piece filled with chipping brass tones and unison coloratura timbres from both reedists on clarinets, “Conjugations” soon opens up with a walking bass line and quick clip-clops from the drums. As hocketing horns riff in the background, Broo promulgates slurred, muted grace notes to introduce a Håker Flaten-Nordeson duet. Resonating metal bars and strummed strings continue to play ring-around-a-rosy until plunger tones from the composer veers the tempo down to a blues-like march.

Vandermark’s almost 19½-minute “Bulletin”, which ends the set, also seems to be a compendium of all the eight can do. Following a calm, foreshortened piano intro, every horn explodes into an orgy of flutter tonguing and freak effects. Nordeson is simultaneously smoothly liquid and percussively resounding as first plunger trombone, than the other horns pass the theme back-and-forth. Bishop’s chromatic runs soon turn to broken chords, until Vandermark, on baritone, takes the lead. Pecking, snorting and tongue slapping, he propels the piece upwards until it reaches a polyrhythmic crescendo of recoiling horn textures that displace the tonal centre and only stop when the piece does as well.

If NUCLEAR ASSEMBLY HALL has a weakness, it’s that both Ljungkvist and Vandermark are listed in the personnel on “reeds”. Considering both play most members of the saxophone and clarinet family, you can’t unmistakably ascribe any singular solo to one or the other.

Wouldn’t it be ironic if despite all the recognition he has received as a composer and player -- including a MacArthur grant -- that years from now people decide that Vandermark’s main achievements was integrating American and European improvisation and improvisers?

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: CD1: 1. W Meets A 2. Transparent Taylor 3. Green Wood 4. Ink Worm 5. Kerosene CD2: 1. Conjugations 2. Dogdays 3. Light Compulsion 4. Bulletin

Personnel: Magnus Broo (trumpet); Jeb Bishop (trombone); Fredrik Ljungkvist (soprano. tenor and baritone saxophones, clarinet); Ken Vandermark (tenor and baritone saxophones, clarinet); Håvard Wiik (piano); Kjell Nordeson (vibraphone); Ingebrigt Håker Flaten (bass); Paal Nilssen-Love (drums and percussion)

August 23, 2004

FREE FALL

Furnace
Wobbly Rail 013

JIMMY GIUFFRE/PAUL BLEY/STEVE SWALLOW
Fly Away Little Bird
Sunnyside/Owl SSC 3504

Named for the LP that presented the fullest realization of clarinetist Jimmy Giuffre’s chamber-avant garde in 1962, the band Free Fall shows how the structured freedom of the trio can be adapted to the 21st Century.

Yet FURNACE succeeds on its own terms because the musicians involved -- American reedist Ken Vandermark and Norwegians, pianist Håvard Wiik and bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten -- haven’t gone the neo-con route of recreation. Instead nine new compositions have been recorded, with the performance of the three as influenced by the subsequent 40 years plus of improv experimentation as the original Giuffre trio’s sound.

Fascinatingly enough the final (1992) reunion CD of the original Giuffre FREE FALL trio -- pianist Paul Bley and now electric bassist Steve Swallow join Giuffre -- doesn’t much sound like what the three recorded in 1962 either. Although it has interesting sections of its own, FLY AWAY LITTLE BIRD doesn’t match up to FURNACE, nor does it reach the standards set on others discs by the trio 30 years previously. Giuffre appears to be less than low-key -- he may be showing the first signs of Parkinson’s disease that now prevents him from playing -- Swallow’s electric bass obliterates the nuances he was capable of with his acoustic. And Bley seems to feel he has to try to knit together the unraveling strands with overt, almost overbearing pianisms.

On FURNACE, Vandermark, whose eagerness to record means that he sometimes overextends himself, has linked up with two schooled Europeans to express his vision. Both veterans of Vandermark’s School Days project and large Territory band, Håker Flaten has worked with everyone from Finnish electric jazz guitarist Raoul Björkenheim to the all-star freebop Electrics group with German trumpeter Axel Dörner and Swedish drummer Raymond Strid -- both of whom have also played with Vandermark. Håker Flaten and Wiik are also two-fifths of Atomic, a popular Norwegian jazz combo that modernizes Cool Jazz concepts.

Before FREE FALL Giuffre practically invented Cool Jazz with his “Four Brothers” chart for the Woody Herman Herd. But Vandermark’s focus here is on 1960s icons, with tunes dedicated to Bley, reedist Eric Dolphy and most impressively, poet Frank O’Hara and pianist Bill Evans.

The O’Hara tribute and title tune is more abrasively experimental than anything attempted by the original Giuffre three. Built around Håker Flaten’s heavy bass lines, you can actually hear the strings’ finish being scraped as he pulls and pushes, double and triple stopping this side of slap bass territory. Wiik responds with a sped up tremolo section and a split-second glissando, as Vandermark honks, growls and slurs his reed into freak altissimo tones. By the end, all three are speedily sluicing on all four cylinders.

Surprisingly enough for a piece dedicated to Evans, “Half Past Soon” is a steady swinger based on passing piano chords plus false fingering and flattement from Vandermark’s clarinet. Then again Evans did have a long association with clarinetist Tony Scott, who was an unabashed bebopper. Perhaps Wiik’s harmonic polyphony mixed with Impressionistic arpeggios and Vandermark’s double timed reprising of the theme is a sort of homage to that earlier partnership.

Vandermark also shows off his skill as a bass clarinetist on “Hopscotch” and other tunes. On “Hopscotch”, as the pianist introduces subtle contrasting dynamics, the reedist puts a bit of torque onto his warmer, low-pitched register, smearing his lines until he joins with Wiik for a unison exit.

More puzzling, while it does indeed vanish “Into The Air” as the title has it, the slow moving, dissonant harmonies of that tune seem a lot closer to the work of the honored Giuffre trio than anything played by dedicatee Eric Dolphy. Especially since when the piece moves to mid-range, its cascading piano chords and resonating strummed bass line cement that impression.

As a writer, Wiik’s “Emergency” is a fast, snaky line made up of double timed, flashing keyboard syncopation, powerful walking bass and liquid, almost Swing Era slurs from the clarinet. Two-thirds of the way through it speeds up even more, introducing dancing piano octaves and clarinet squeaks.

Moving from energy to possible exhaustion and from FURNACE to the progenitors on FREE FALL, the Giuffre reunion CD compounds a desultory delivery with a time of more than 76½ minutes. Removing some band takes on over-familiar standards and some shorter solo features could have tightened up a session that already seems a little distracted.

Even when the three men reunite for another run through of Gordon Jenkins’ “Goodbye” which they recorded both in studio and live in 1962, the effect is this side of melancholy. With Giuffre sounding merely wistful and Swallow’s lines too upfront, Bley

produces a series of single note tremolos and low frequency, cushioning harmonies. The same thing happens on the title tune, as Giuffre’s moderate Bel Canto tone and Bley’s impressionistic fingering in quiet quadrants greatly contrast with Swallow’s now resonating, guitar-like tone.

On his own, the pianist, who is honored with a song dedication on FURNACE, uses his space to confirm his solo prowess. On “Qualude” he explores the darker possibilities of the duplex scale. With theme snatches suggesting “Somewhere” and “Jesus Christ Superstar”, his steady left hand trickles out some blues-like notes as the right produces tremolo cadenzas. By the end boogie-woogie inflected double timing has given the smooth balladic melody some unexpected spikiness. All this succinctly sums up Bley’s iconoclasm.

Boogie-woogie stylings even seeps into “Possibilities”, the next tune. Bley splashes octave runs, Swallow’s spews a constant rhythmic thrust and Giuffre mewls the melody from the soprano saxophone. Whether Swallow’s buzzing accompaniment helps or hinders matters, the reedist makes it clear with his double tonguing that he’s no John Coltrane or Steve Lacy. He’s also older than either one.

“Tumbleweed”, the reedman’s solo feature, finds him alternately sing-shouting and playing. While it may be Giuffre’s most distinctively avant-garde showcase, the vocalized mixture of Spanish and gibberish could probably have been dispensed with -- it adds very little to the date. He shows his control of the licorice stick through, first squealing out notes in tip top pitch then blowing them out slowly in chalumeau register until the theme is reconstructed out of strained tongue stops and trilled split tones.

At almost 11½ minute, the album’s showcase, “Bats in the Belfry”, a sonorous rondo seems to be an instant composition. Giuffre breaths out the theme in familiar fashion followed by single note fills from Bley. Light-fingered piano arpeggios spur the reedman to elongate his smears, then Swallow’s repeated undertow allows the other two to project breezy lines on top. With Giuffre in mellow, mid-range, Bley starts dampening the key action for more percussive sounds that join with strums and slaps from Swallow. Building up a combination of constricted string action and the occasional keyboard accent, Bley leads Giuffre to end the track -- and the session -- with a flutter-tongued trill.

Giuffre’s trio should be honored for its pioneering avant-chamber work that is wanly reflected on certain tunes of this CD. But, if it wasn’t for the Giuffre trio, the fine disc that FURNACE is wouldn’t have come into existence.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Furnace: 1. Inside Out (for Paul Bley) 2. The Spell of Introspection 3. Hopscotch (for Merce Cunningham) 4. Furnace (for Frank O’Hara) 5. Into The Air (for Eric Dolphy) 6. Half Past Soon (for Bill Evans) 7. Momento 8. Halfway 9. Emergency

Personnel: Furnace: Ken Vandermark (Bb and bass clarinets); Håvard Wiik (piano); Ingebrigt Håker Flaten (bass)

Track Listing: Fly: 1. Fly Away Little Bird 2. Fits 3. I Can’t Get Started 4. Qualude 5. Possibilities 6. Tumbleweed 7. All The Things You Are 8. Starts 9. Goodbye 10. Just Dropped By 11. Lover Man 12. Sweet and Lovely 13. Bats in the Belfry

Personnel: Fly: Jimmy Giuffre (clarinet and soprano saxophone, vocal); Paul Bley (piano); Steve Swallow (electric bass)

April 26, 2004

KEN VANDERMARK

Furniture Music
Okka Disk OD 12046

ALESSANDRO BOSETTI/GREGOR HOTZ/KAI FAGASCHINKSI/RUDI MAHALL
Berlin Reeds
Absinth Records 001

EVAN PARKER/GEORGE HASLAM /JOHN EDWARDS
Parker - Haslam - Edwards
SLAM CD314

BERTRAND DENZLER/HANS KOCH
Asymétries
Ambiance Magnétiques AM 112 CD

Woodwind players galore in solo or duo settings are featured on these CDs, which not only replicate the stratagems reedists evolve to cope with such concentrated playing, but confirm the divisions between Continental and Anglo-Saxon interpreters.

On show are seven reed blowers: one American, one Italian, two Britons, two Germans and three Swiss. The horns used include almost all the members of the saxophone family: soprano, alto, tenor baritone and bass; plus clarinet, bass clarinet and Hungarian tarogato. Oh, and on two tracks, a British bassist makes an appearance.

Taken together, the results seem to show that the English speakers, no matter how experimental, are still trying for a consistent musical statement, while the continental Europeans are moving into the realm of pure sound.

You can’t chalk this difference up to age either. Chicago’s Ken Vandermark, whose almost-66½ minute, 18-track solo session using four different horns is the most audacious disc, is around the same age as a couple of the players on BERLIN REEDS and younger than the others on that CD and ASYMÉTRIES, whose playing is ostensibly further-out than his. Moreover British saxophonist Evan Parker, whose solo experiments began around the time some of the junior woodwind players here had their lips on a pacifier, rather than a reed, creates one of the most concordant extended solos of all.

FURNITURE MUSIC is the first solo CD from Vandermark, who has already successfully forged a group identity with his own bands, and been praised for his contributions in groups ranging from Peter Brötzmann’s Chicago Tenet to duos with saxmen such as Joe McPhee and Mars Williams. Here he solos on clarinet, bass clarinet, tenor saxophone and baritone saxophone, and that may be part of the difficulty. Very few musicians are inventive on four different horns, and exposing himself alone magnifies Vandermark’s shortcomings on each. Even someone like Sonny Stitt, who was an exceptional blower on alto, tenor and baritone saxophone never attempted solo work on any of his axes.

On tenor, his most familiar horn, Vandermark has his elliptical sounds down pat, but seems to do little more than chirp altissimo multiphonics and push out swollen notes in pedal point from deep within his horn’s body. Even his version of the country blues is cut off before it reaches critical mass.

He’s a bit better off on clarinet and bass clarinet, the other reeds that have been in his arsenal for a while. On clarinet, his most impressive moments come on “Melodica” and “Leaves”. The former, dedicated to McPhee, finds him reverberating whole notes in the unruffled contralto register. Melodic enough, it could probably celebrate the other reedist more appropriately, though, if the resulting sound was faster and livelier.

The later tune, honoring filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni, claims to be crosscutting images and sounds from two of the Italian director’s films. Here nose breaths, chirping split tones, tongue pressure and the hiss of colored air are what Vandermark hears as approximations of cinematic techniques. Yet rather than reflecting Antonioni’s hyper realism, the end result is more like that of a Hollywood-oriented American Indie flick, at least when compared to the outright radical aural cinema of Kai Fagaschinski on the BERLIN REEDS set.

Reverberations within the body tube and tongue slapping percussion characterize Vandermark’s work on bass clarinet. On “Indeterminate Action”, for instance -- tellingly dedicated to composer John Cage -- he appears to be applying any extended techniques he may have neglected on other tracks, including altissimo screeches, semi-snorts, irregular vibratos, internal growls in false registers and propelled ghost notes.

His most impressive achievement -- coincidentally the longest track on the CD -- is “Color Fields to Darkness”. Here he manages to produce a ghostly doppelgänger reedist, with one producing strident squeals and the other a foghorn tone that deepens and elongates as he plays. All this is followed by tongue slaps and twittering vibratos.

These two pieces are more exploratory than the first two tracks on BERLIN REEDS by Rudi Mahall. The Nürnberg, Germany-born bass clarinetist, who has worked with musicians such as trumpeter Axel Dörner and pianist Aki Takase, performs what could be termed standard EuroImprov on these tracks dedicated to his guinea pig [!]. Unruffled and legato, the first piece is mostly concerned with circular trills and bass echoes, not expanding until the very end into freak high-pitched squeaks, reed buzzes and a few microscopically examined wild-boar snorts. With echoing tone and reverberating bass tones the second is more of the same.

Back in Chicago, Vandermark seems most comfortable with the baritone, his newest horn. On the bouncy “Lines”, it’s almost as if he’s one-quarter of the Four Brothers, creating a chugging, foot-tapping melodic sound, almost like 1950s Jimmy Giuffre. Other tunes show off arching split tones, glissandos that give him sympathetic echoes within horn’s body tube and phrases held so long that they break apart into reed tweets and low-pitched tongue slaps. Built around unvarying lower level multiphonics, “(brüllt)”, again manages to push more than one timbre from his bell, and these join and split apart amoebae-like before turning to unrelentless honks.

He’s honorable in his efforts. But by dedicating all his improvisation, Vandermark has set himself up for sometimes unflattering comparisons to other woodwind players. Furthermore, by packing 18 tunes into 73 minutes, he may have bitten off more than he can chew, which can be quite painful with a reed instrument.

The Chicagoan’s shortcomings are put into bolder relief when compared to the solo and duo creations of Britons Parker on soprano and tenor saxophones and George Haslam on baritone saxophone and tarogato -- a sort of Hungarian wooden soprano saxophone -- on PARKER-EDWARDS-HASLAM. Bassist John Edwards is the odd man out here.

Largely self-taught, Haslam has worked extensively in Eastern Europe and South America and in many different types of music. He brings a melodious tinge to his solo playing. On baritone his dynamic sense is paramount with the lines mostly smooth and legato. Coming across like a hipper Gerry Mulligan, his rhythm always swings on an even keel. Of course, Mulligan may have been shocked by Haslam’s sometimes irregular vibrato, rhythmic tongue slaps and an ending which moves up from traditional baritone bottom-feeding tones to a bit of overblowing, side slipping and split tones.

Uniquely Magyar, the tarogato has an elastic tone that seems to add a resonant buzz to every note played, More experimental with it than his larger horn, Haslam applies spetrofluctuation, circular breathing and double timing to shake loose new avenues for his improvisations.

Wooden soprano and Vandermark’s clarinet output has to bow to the solo methodology developed and perfected by Parker and exhibited on the CD, however. Here overblowing and circular breathing allow him to slur out two very different tones, one in mid-range and the other high-pitched. Soon, with glissandos, he’s producing continuous squeak and sympathetic overtones, then smearing out a bagpipe-style irregular vibratos with high-pitched chirps on top. Like a conveyer belt of notes, he plays on and on, appearing to be triple tonguing so that there are echoing vibrations for every previous echoing vibration, and ending with a coda of one long smeared tone. At more than three times the length of any Vandermark track, his solo is also more synchronous, pointed and in context, easily related to the ongoing improv tradition.

Those who wonder where reed exploration can go post-Parker, are directed to BERLIN REEDS, made up of four, 3-inch CDs packaged in an oversized cardboard sleeve. In terms of higher-pitched woodwinds, Italian Alessandro Bosetti on soprano saxophone and feedback and German clarinetist Fagaschinski may have definite answers to that question.

Bosetti, 30, who has worked with fellow soprano saxophone excavators like France’s Michel Doneda and Boston’s Bhob Rainey, and been part of the band Phosphor with aural explorers like trumpeter Dörner and inside piano specialist Andrea Neumann, states that he’s “developed an instrumental language that incorporates extended techniques, noises, and a strong influence from electronic music”. There are times on his more than 18-minute solo track here, in fact, that the electro-acoustic suggestions seem to involve more than feedback.

Beginning with the rotating injection of pure air moving through the horn’s body tube, skids and stops then imply electronic static. Almost continuous, his tone soon gets noticeably thinner and more diffuse, taking on the oscillation of an electric guitar. With lips formed into a Bronx cheer and watery spit tones predominating, his metallic timbre almost reaches dog whistle territory. Interrupted only for the odd breath, you can hear undulating wind sounds and the clinks of keys being depressed. Soon even these give way to reed hisses, reed kisses and growling breaths amplified by key manipulation. It’s a performance that sounds more like more sibilant larynx than sax licks.

Fagaschinski, 29, a German clarinetist who has also played with Dörner and in a duo with computer manipulator Christof Kurzmann, is as radical in his presentation as his politics. On “I’m afraid of Americans too”, he’s the most reductionist of any of the extant soloists, and ironically, one whose work is reminiscent of American Rainey’s. He’s also someone who will send you scrambling for your headphones, since his almost 15½-minute solo alternates up-to-60-second pauses with tiny breaths and tongue noises plus echoing whistles. Most of the time he appears to be wheezing colored air through the instrument’s body, with even that oxygen sometimes dissolving into stillness. Fascinating in his audacity, in comparison, it’s as if he and Vandermark are playing two completely different woodwinds, rather than the same instrument.

Almost the same thing could be said about “Weggebracht!”, bass clarinetist Mahall’s final solo piece. Firmly placing himself in the ranks of Teutonic body tube travelers he screeches out extended, mountain-top high, resonating tones that then liquefy into singular, tart note spits and gritty, reed-biting double tones. All this takes place in the altissimo range and ends with a final high-pitched honk.

Zürich-born, Berlin-resident Gregor Hotz is an organizer in that city’s music scene as well as a bass saxophonist. Someone who has also played with Dörner, Mahall, Neumann and fellow Swiss reedist Hans Koch, his sax sound on “Friendly Fire” is as far removed from the mainstream and semi-mainstream conceptions of Vandermark and Haslam as their sax conception is from the 1920s and 1930s work of jazz’s first -- and for a time only -- bass saxophonist, Adrian Rollini.

Offering up a chamber music recital of prolonged exhalation, Hotz’s strategy is to start from a certain point and suspire until no more air can be expelled. He keeps repeating that trope as his vibrato gets more intense. Inserting respiratory pauses of up to 60 seconds, at times he sounds out deep-sea tones that resemble tuba blats. Avoiding that traditional low tone most of the time, though, he also bests the Anglo Saxons by frequently creating echoing, dissonant timbres and multi-tones. Coda is a heavy, snorting vibrato of few notes that transforms the sax into a percussive drone machine.

Doubling the pleasure and fun, ASYMÉTRIES joins tenor saxophonist and bass clarinetist Koch with Swiss countryman Bertrand Denzler on tenor saxophone for a four track, less-than-38-minute, reed recital. Koch who is best known for his ongoing trio with cellist Martin Schütz and drummer Fredy Studer, and Denzler, who is part of the otherwise all-French HUBBUB band, have been working as a duo since 1999.

EuroImprovisers par excellence, between their squeaks, whistles, warbles, small animal peeps, flattement, reed-biting, rumbles, irregular vibrations and Bronx cheer approximations, the two are often able to create three -- or more -- distinct sounds from only two horns.

Most descriptive of their talents, the almost 17-minute first track finds them off-handedly -- or perhaps just using the thumb rest -- showcasing reed prestidigitation without Anglo-Saxon braggadocio. Building on percussive key pops, understated tongue slaps and shakes, they create sounds that aurally mirror ghostly wind whistles, radio signals, the shuffling of cards and oscillating sine waves. Individual instrument identification is put aside, although among the tiny nursing piglet squeals, it seems that one man is expelling a watery underlying tone, while the other builds up multiple breaths that reconstitute themselves into percussion-like licks. Only on a couple of other tracks can you distinguish the woody tone of the bass clarinet, its identity is more subsumed than in Mahall’s or Vandermark’s improvisations.

Elsewhere, bassist John Edwards, who has also duetted with reedists like Paul Dunmall and John Butcher, is on hand to second Haslam on baritone and Parker on both soprano and tenor on their sax face off on the Slam disc. Unlike the Swiss, the Englishmen limit themselves to straight staccato lines with irregular vibrations, tossing phrases and notes back-and-forth. Chirping, Parker flaunts his circular breathing as Haslam’s baritone pedal point provides the undercurrent. At the same time the soprano saxist makes sure that he relates as much to Edwards’ string tugging as the baritone’s gritty slurs. Later on, the baritonist slides out some idiosyncratic constructions and Parker providing the pepping ostinato that reflects them. With Edwards’ bass bottom suggesting a third saxophone, the two real reedists turn to flutter tonguing and slurs, with Haslam more ornamental in his exhalation. Finally the two confront one another for a robust miasma of pliant reed timbres, circling around and uniting for a medley of honks, in congruent but contrasted high pitches. Unlike Koch and Denzler there’s never any doubt as to which sax is playing or who is playing it.

Every one of these sessions is valuable for reed fanciers, although some experiments are more accomplished than others. The duos confirm their talents, the Berlin collection highlights new reed researchers and Vandermark once he learns to edit himself, shows on his first effort that he can probably soon expose more elevated solo work.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Furniture: 1. Resistance [for Evan Parker]* 2. Horizontal Weight [for Peter Brötzmann]# 3. So Is This [for Michael Snow]+ 4. Lines [for Lennie Tristano]& 5. Immediate Action [for Jackson Pollock]& 6. Panels [for Piet Mondrian and Erik Satie]*7. Color Fields to Darkness [for Mark Rothko]+ 8. Would a Proud Man Rather Break Than Bend [for Mississippi Fred MacDowell]& 9. Beck and Fall [for Samuel Beckett and Morton Feldman]# 10. Melodica [for Joe McPhee]*11. Indeterminate Action [for John Cage]+ 12. Leaves [for Michelangelo Antonioni]*13. (brüllt) after Jaap Blonk # Live: 14. Panels [live]15. Immediate Action [live]16. Horizontal Weight [live]17. Color Fields to Darkness [live]18. Would a Proud Man Rather Break Than Bend [live]

Personnel: Furniture: Ken Vandermark (clarinet*, bass clarinet+, tenor saxophone&, baritone saxophone#)

Track Listing: Berlin: CD 1: 1. Unplayed saxophone CD 2: 1. Friendly fire CD 3: 1. I’m afraid of Americans too 2. No body can leave its skin CD 4: 1. Mein meerschweinchen kann das nicht 2. Mein meerschweinchen will das nicht 3. Weggebracht!

Personnel: Berlin: CD 1: Alessandro Bosetti (soprano saxophone, feedback); CD 2: Gregor Hotz (bass saxophone); CD 3: Kai Fagaschinski (clarinet); CD 4: Rudi Mahall (bass clarinet)

Track Listing: Parker: 1. Solo for baritone saxophone 2. Solo for tarogato 3. Solo for soprano saxophone 4. Solo for double bass 5. Duet for saxophone and bass 6. Trio for two saxophones and bass

Personnel: Parker: Evan Parker (soprano and tenor saxophones); George Haslam (baritone saxophone, tarogato); John Edwards (bass)

Track Listing: Asymétries: 1. Asymétries 1 2. Asymétries 2 3. Asymétries 3 4. Asymétries 4

Personnel: Asymétries: Bertrand Denzler (tenor saxophone); Hans Koch (soprano saxophone, bass clarinet)

October 20, 2003

VANDERMARK/STRID/SANDELL/STACKENÄS/NORDESON

Two Days in December
Wobbly Rail 012

THE VANDERMARK 5 Free Jazz Classics Vols. 1 & 2
Atavistic ALP1372CD

TERRITORY BAND-2 Atlas
Okka Disk 12050

Ken Vandermark seems to put out more discs in a year than some earlier jazzmen did in a career. But if he keeps turning out fine sessions like this single CD (ATLAS) and two double CDs, then there's little reason to complain.

Like other improvising musicians before him, the multi-reedman realizes that the best way to keep things fresh is to consistently change playing situations. On these five discs the circumstances range from a series of duos with four different Swedish improvisers (TWO DAYS); 13 recreations of 1960s-1970s advanced jazz standards with his regular quintet (FREE JAZZ); and a speedy romp through four original compositions as part of a 12-piece mixed American/European band (ATLAS).

The most challenging music is also the newest, recorded in December 2001, when the reedman was in Stockholm for two days. Disc One pairs him with saxophonist Mats Gustaffson’s playing partners in the band Gush: pianist Sten Sandell and drummer Raymond Strid. Disc Two features Vandermark duetting with guitarist David Stackenäs, also part of cooperative Scandinavian band Tri-Dim with Norwegian reedman Håkon Kornstad and percussionist Ingar Zach; or with vibist/ percussionist Kjell Nordeson, a member of the AALY trio with Gustaffson and Vandermark.

Unfortunately Stackenäs, who has done excellent work in the past on his own and matching licks with folks like British bassist Barry Guy, doesn’t really seem to connect with Vandermark. Even though the Chicagoan showed up with both of his clarinets and both of his saxophones, the seven tunes often become a ritualistic display of extended techniques rather than a mind meeting. Should the reedman output tongue slaps, key pops and mouth percussion, then the guitarist turns from acoustic flat picking to behind-the-bridge scratching. If Vandermark wheezes on his bass clarinet, then Stackenäs produces constant cadenzas. Squalling baritone saxophone lines encourage speedy strumming, while mid-range clarinet musings presage folksy accompaniment.

By these standards, “Upptornande stackmoln” has to be judged a success. Finally the polyrhythms conjoin, as off-kilter tenor saxophone chirps and slurs blend with multi-rhythmic National steel guitar-type sounds. Somehow, Vandermark’s straining, droning lines build on Stackenäs’ hedgehog scratches.

It could be increased understanding, or that unlike young Stackenäs pianist Sandell is a veteran with many cooperative sessions under his fingers. But his eight duets with Vandermark proclaim that here are two musicians in step with one another. Throughout, the Swede quietly demonstrates his piano mastery, playing what could be honky-tonk rhythms one minute, then diving into the deepest Cagean dissonance the next.

Take “Reeds and hammers VIII”, for instance. Beginning with full fledged saxophone blats and rolling high frequency piano arpeggios that roam all over the keyboard, wiggling honking slurs soon appear from Vandermark’s horn as Sandell splays out what could almost be player piano chording. Plowing rolling octaves means that you can imagine the pianist’s fingers blurring on top of the keys as he moves outside, successfully countering Vandermark’s honks and forays into dog whistle territory.

Multi-directed Sandell is as likely to go pure New music and reach inside the frame, producing metallic plinks, as he is to sculpt single sharp notes with minimal vibration and almost no tremolo. He works his way down to the very bottom of the keyboard, sustaining the rumble with his pedals on “Reeds and hammers I”, forcing the reedman to go south as well, just after the piano man has spent the beginning of the piece proving he’s a two-handed stylist with a faint suggestion of “I Got Rhythm”.

Vandermark uses false fingering and produces elongated single tones elsewhere or constructs a solo from the hiss of air forced through the horn. Then on “Reeds and hammers IV”, he spawns double-tongued blasts, one andante, the other staccato as Sandell’s pitch turns celeste-like and speedy. It almost sounds as if a trio is in the studio rather than a duo.

The remaining duos fall somewhat between these two extremes. Strid, who is part of Guy’s New Orchestra, along with tubaist Per Åke Holmlander and drummer Paul Lyton, who also plays in Vandermark’s Territory band, is another veteran improviser. Unlike many reed-percussion duos that appear to be stuck in a Trane-Ali INTERSTELLAR SPACE screech mode, this one is different. Strid aids Vandermark in that style in places, but also uses his percussion collection, which seems to include a glockenspiel, cow bell, wind chimes and guiro to move most of the tracks closer to a more spacious EuroImprov sound. With the clarinet in chalumeau register as on “Knapp” for instance, when Strid does use his kit he manages to merely touch individual parts at one time. Other times he’ll move the saxman into a Dexter Gordon-style emulation from wiggling dissonant tones, as he comments with straight rolls and paradiddles that could be produced with palms rather than sticks.

Nordeson, who is in the American/Swedish School Days band with Vandermark and Chicago trombonist Jeb Bishop, also shows off his percussion skills on what sound like unselected cymbals, here as well. “Always” is the most pertinent showcase, where, when he turns away from his bass drum pedal and tiny cymbal peals, he come across as a Scandinavian Candido -- a Latin jazz percussion section all by himself -- while Vandermark reveals a quick darting tenor tone. Many of the other tracks, however, feature a mixture of clarinet and vibes that will never be mistaken for Benny Goodman and Lionel Hampton or even Buddy DeFranco and Terry Gibbs.

On the better tracks like “Where We Are” mallets seem to dance and glide over the metal bars, causing the clarinetist to abandon the comfortable chalumeau register for higher, more atonal pitches. Resonating metal swing is somehow replaced by harsh wooden-sounding awkwardness other places though. This makes Vandermark’s formerly euphonic clarinet or baritone improvisations appear excessively earthbound.

FREE JAZZ CLASSICS VOLS. 1 & 2 is another matter entirely. Initially each CD was designed as a limited edition bonus disk for two earlier Vandermark 5 CDs, but audience demand necessitated their standalone release. Although these live Chicago club sessions offer protracted sound pictures of the reedist’s working band of the time -- including saxist Dave Rempis, bassist Kent Kessler and drummer Tim Mulvenna, as well as Bishop and Vandermark -- the question remains of whether new versions of 1960s Free Jazz standards are really needed.

Well yes … and no. Vandermark et. al prove their mettle when they recast the tunes so that they reflect their input as well as that of the composers, who includes such heavy hitters as Sun Ra, Carla Bley and Julius Hemphill. The band wouldn’t want to be slavish re-creators of earlier sounds as happen on many of the albums by the so-called Young Lions.

Not everything works however. Too many of the numbers written by musicians as dissimilar as Ornette Coleman and Anthony Braxton, take on the same sort of freebop cast. Kessler’s rock-bottom bass sound and Mulvenna’s cymbal timing and snare shuffle are invaluable, anchoring the tunes to a solid swing beat. But often the rough edges and nonpareil melodies that defined the compositions vanish into the mainstream as well. It’s possible that Coleman never imagined that “Happy House” could be done with a Latinesque beat or that Cecil Taylor heard “Conquistador Part 2” with a bass part so unvarying that it could come from an electric instrument.

Furthermore, there also appears to be some role-playing going on. When it comes time to reconstitute something like Eric Dolphy’s “Gazzelloni”, Rempis’ alto saxophone solo appears to be a clone of those distinctive Dolphy runs. On Archie Shepp’s “Wherever Junebugs Go”, the tenor saxophonist -- most likely Vandermark -- mimics the older man’s abrasive, gritty tone to a T. Bishop fares much better. Since most of these compositions originally lacked a ‘bone part, he’s free to bring his particular vision to them. Thus Coleman’s line and Frank Wright’s “The Earth/Jerry” gain fat, wiggly plunger mute work, with allusions to Tricky Sam Nanton or Quentin “Butter” Jackson as much as 1960s -- and present day -- model Roswell Rudd.

Overall, lesser-known fare like the Wright piece and those by Jimmy Giuffre and Hemphill fare better than those by certified jazz icons. Bringing his reed arsenal upfront, Vandermark can pour out blusey clarinet arpeggios on one tune and pure bar-walking tenor saxophone squeals on others. He and Bishop often work in tandem, chewing up and regurgitating lines so that they assume a unique shape -- if that metaphor isn’t too stomach churning. Lester Bowie’s sombre “New York is Full of Lonely People” allows Kessler to unveil his own solid arco tone, making the theme his own.

Arrangements, which meld the three horns into a powerful little big band section, are an impressive Vandermark achievement as well. This skill is brought into even starker relief on ATLAS’ four numbers, which range from a little over 12 minutes to almost 18½ minutes. Here his arranger’s modeling clay includes parts for Fred Lonberg-Holm’s cello, Holmlander’s tuba and Kevin Drumm’s electronics as well as more standard jazz band, reeds, brass and rhythm.

Consider, for instance, “Neiger”, which begins and ends with the grating dentist drill-like buzzing of Drumm’s electronics. In between bursts of the writhing, harsh tones you hear burbling tuba asides, ascending trombone lines and standard jazz piano chords from Jim Baker, all of which are soon superseded by an extended Sun Ra-like unison space chord explosion from the squawking horns. Axel Dörner’s quicksilver, buoyant trumpet tones vie for aural space with Kessler’s arco slides, until rolling drum pardiddles from Mulvenna and British improv veteran Lytton introduce Drumm’s intermittent drone.

“Catalog” written as an unconventional concerto for Chicagoan Lonberg-Holm finds the main soloist sliding from EuroImprov rasps and grinds to expressive legato lines plus some effects pedal electronics that have more to do with Jimi Herndrix’s guitar than anyone’s cello playing. As he solos, electronics crackle, a clarinet reed whistles, the percussionists produce miniscule chain rustles and triangle pings and the piano’s consonant voicing and a gently swinging horn choir cushion the soloist. The piece ends in a crescendo of horns, piano and electronics in different tempi, plus a decisive shotgun blast drum beat.

Elsewhere the usually meta-experimental Dörner soars on his open horn like Maynard Ferguson, Bishop unveils some rapid bebop-style riffs that prove he’s more than a wah-wah specialist and someone -- Vandermark or Swedish saxophonist Fredrik Ljungkvist -- creates some bottom-of-the-rain-barrel baritone sounds. Finally “Now”, the longest track, mates nightclub jazz piano with someone -- Rempis, perhaps? -- stretching a creamy Benny Carter-style alto saxophone solo with a shaking vibrato into New Thing altissimo squeals. Further back in the ballroom, the horns gradually get louder as they come up with a swaying Andy Kirk’s-Clouds-Of-Joy-via-Sun-Ra’s-Arkestra undercurrent chording. When the orchestral passages turn tutti, choral sounds discharge in all directions, with squealing brass, honking saxes and the diabolic drum duo bringing forth the power of another 1960s representation, the Jazz Composers Orchestra.

Scorecard: ATLAS is the best overall session and should be sought out first. TWO DAYS has good and bad points, as does FREE JAZZ CLASSICS. While not as outstanding, both two-CDs set have much to recommend them, especially for Vandermark fanciers, Free Jazz fans or EuroImprov followers.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Days: Disc 1: 1. Tuting 2. Rackarbajsare 3. Knapp 4. Dragnagel 5. Hutt 6. Parla 7. Reeds and hammers I 2. Reeds and hammers II 3.Reeds and hammers III 4.Reeds and hammers IV 5. Reeds and hammers V 6.Reeds and hammers VI 7. Reeds and hammers VII 8.Reeds and hammers VIII 9. Reeds and hammers IX Disc 2: 1. Tofsformade boljemoln 2. Fjadermoln med krokar 3. Slojmoln med halo 4. Boljemoln 5. Bymoln 6. Skiktmoln 7. Upptornande stackmoln 8. Pathways 9.Where we are 10. Doorways 11. Morning of Stagnelius 12. Always 13. Common prints 14. Sideways 15. Evening in Ashland

Personnel: Days: Ken Vandermark (tenor saxophone, clarinet, bass clarinet); Sten Sandell (piano [Disc 1, 7-15]); David Stackenäs (guitar [Disc 2, 1-7]); Kjell Nordeson (vibes, percussion [Disc 2, 8-15]); Raymond Strid (drums [Disc 1, 1-6])

Track Listing: Free: Disc 1: 1. Happy House 2. 69L 3. Conquistador Part 2 4. Goodbye Tom B. 5. Saturn 6. Gazzelloni 7. New York is Full of Lonely People Disc two: 1. Wherever Junebugs Go 2. King Korn 3. The Earth/Jerry 4. Scootin’ About 5. C.M.E./G Song 6. There Is The Bomb

Personnel: Free: Jeb Bishop (trombone); Dave Rempis (alto and tenor saxophones); Ken Vandermark (tenor saxophone, clarinet and bass clarinet); Kent Kessler (bass); Tim Mulvenna (drums)

Track Listing: Atlas: 1. Add and Subtract 2. Neiger [for Michael Snow] 3. Catalog [for Fred Lonberg-Holm] 4. Now [for Samuel Beckett]

Personnel: Atlas: Axel Dörner (trumpet); Jeb Bishop (trombone); Per Åke Holmlander (tuba); Dave Rempis (alto and tenor saxophones); Ken Vandermark (tenor and baritone saxophones, clarinet and bass clarinet); Fredrik Ljungkvist (soprano, tenor and baritone saxophones, bass clarinet); Jim Baker (piano); Fred Lonberg-Holm (cello); Kent Kessler (bass); Paul Lytton (drums); Tim Mulvenna (percussion); Kevin Drumm (electronics)

March 17, 2003

AALY TRIO/DKV TRIO

Double or Nothing
Okka Disc OD 12035

SCHOOL DAYS
In Our Time
Okka Disc OD 12041

SPACEWAYS INCORPORATED
Version Soul
Atavistic ALP 130 CD

Eventually Ken Vandermark is going to have to stop wearing his emotions --and influences -- on his sleeve and CD booklet.

Now that the Chicago-based reedman has established himself nationally and internationally as an extender and interpreter of free music, aren’t the dedications he appends to each of his original compositions getting to be a bit redundant?

He was honored with the so-called “genius” grant from the MacArthur Foundation a couple of years ago, has proved himself a valuable contributor to musical situations ranging from duos to big bands and constantly records with his own or cooperative groups. So isn’t it about time to acknowledge that audiences can now be as interested in his tunes for what they sound like rather than whom they honor.

Perhaps this need to link himself to “the tradition” is a sign of modesty or even self-abasement. The former is a more attractive emotion than the later, but neither is necessary. Vandermark’s various bands haven’t yet produced one masterwork, but despite some inconsistencies, are still creating a shelf of memorable work.

Take the discs at hand for instance. Two involve him with Europeans; the last is an all-American product.

DOUBLE OR NOTHING was recorded in 1999 as a match up between his Chicago-based SKV trio -- Vandermark, bassist Kent Kessler and drummer Hamid Drake -- and the Swedish AALY trio -- saxist Mats Gustaffson, bassist Ingebrigt Håker-Flaten and drummer Kjell Nordeson, a band which has frequented toured with Vandermark as a guest. The idea seemed to mix and match twinned instrumentalists sort of like Ornette Coleman’s FREE JAZZ or the recordings by the late Glenn Spearman’s double trio.

The only other time Vandermark tried a similar experiment was in 1986 with UTILITY HITTER, where he matched the members of his Boston trio, including bassist Nate McBride, with Chicagoans. But while that session broke down into duo and trio showcases DOUBLE OR NOTHING -- an apt title -- is a group effort. In fact, with only three tunes examined in nearly 52 minutes, the similarities among the six improvisers are on view much more than their differences.

Strangely enough, the bass duo get to show off, not on the first tune, dedicated to bassist Henry Grimes, but at the beginning of the medley of the final two, written respectively by Albert Ayler and Don Cherry, both of whom employed Grimes on important 1960s LPs. Spending almost the first five minutes with one arco bass playing in a high register, and the other bowing at an even more elevated pitch, reverberating, woody thrusts finally elaborate the theme.

Before both drummers redefine themselves with the combination of snare bashing and a sound that resembles door knocking, a characteristic of Ayler’s drummers like Sunny Murray, both hornmen have unleashed a symphony of glossolalia, producing as much spit as overtones. Vandermark rumbles contentedly and straightforwardly on bass clarinet while Gustaffson uses growls, smears and lingual tones to produce what could be the first off-side variations on “God Save The Queen” or is it “A Love Supreme”?

Fitting the front line like a plug in an electrical socket, the Cherry tune recalls the time he was part of Ayler’s band. Here, as Gustaffson elaborates the head at half tempo, Vandermark on tenor showcases some flutter tonguing and vibrato overflow, backed by the buzzing of bowed basses. These hoards subside for a time as Nordeson uses snares, toms and cymbal to attach his soloing to Elvin Jones’s lineage.

If Nordeson, who made his reputation in Sweden with pianist Per-Henrik Wallin and the Low Dynamic Orchestra, channels Jones on the first disc, which was recorded in Chicago, he was in full Bobby Hutcherson-Gary Burton mode as a vibist on the second. A live session from Oslo’s Blå club done late in 2001, it matches Vandermark and Håker-Flaten with the two other members of the School Days group -- American trombonist Jeb Bishop and Norwegian drummer Paal Nilssen-Love -- plus the vibraharpist.

Because of the novelty of his instrument -- at least in this context -- Nordeson ends up front and centre most of the time, while the configuration is strongly reminiscent of those Archie Shepp bands that featured Hutcherson plus Roswell Rudd or Grachan Moncur III on trombone.

In a program featuring one Bill Evans tune, a different Cherry line, one by Bishop and four Vandermark originals -- all with dedications -- this is definitely a jazz record with a lot of theme-solo-solo-theme work. Also, in a club space, the five fare best on the faster tunes, with the slower ones dragging a bit. As a matter of fact, tunes like “Off The Top” dedicated to organist Larry Young, really end up resembling the sort of hummable soul jazz that coexisted with The New Thing in the 1960s. Bishop may be double-tonguing like Moncur, but Vandermark ends up rearing back and honking like Stanley Turrentine or one of the other boss tenors of that era.

Constant vibe accents, probably played with four mallets, enliven “What About”, which is even dedicated to Hutcherson. More of his own man, though, Nordeson brings a hefty marimba-like tone to his solos that extend on top of tasty Nilssen-Love brushwork. Then at the end, the theme, which initially pinponged between Bishop’s comfortable middle register and Vandermark’s horn, resolves itself into something that could be a mid-1960s Blue Note records boogaloo.

Closer to the Shepp-Hutcherson-Moncur aggregations, Bishop’s “Octopus” is almost sabotaged by under-recording -- at least you have to strain to hear the fleet mallet work. The composer himself lets loose with some growling shout choruses, goosed by the speedily vibrating metal bars. Soon the long-limbed trombone spit and polish is joined by Vandermark on tenor, trilling, double timing, and flutter tonguing. Powerhouse drumming pushes the saxman still further into lingual multiphonics until the entire aggregation brings back the head.

IN OUR TIMES’ music that slithers from cloistered to on the corner and back again, with the emphasis on party time, also has its parallel in VERSION SOUL, recorded two months earlier in Chicago. Credited to School Days, this trio has Vandermark on clarinet, bass clarinet, tenor and baritone saxophones, Drake on drums and guesting from Boston, McBride on bass and electric bass.

It’s the last instrument that distinguishes this session from the others. In spite of claims made for its suppleness when played by so-called fusion masters, the electric bass like the electric keyboard can’t produce the same individual touch that an acoustic instrument can. So while rhythmic input goes up exponentially on those tracks on which it’s featured, one potential solo instrument is removed from the mix.

What's more, during the course of the nine foot-tappers that make up the disc, Vandermark seems to have put himself on the horns of a dilemma -- pun intended. Boasting dedications encompassing artists as different as Reggae forefather, keyboardist Jackie Mittoo, abstract painter Mark Rothko and Larry Graham, bassist for Graham Central Station and Sly and the Family Stone, Vandermark seems to be struggling for his individuality here. Should he concentrate on being an out-and-out raucous player like the usually anonymous saxists who provided instrumental breaks in funk and reggae singles; or should he be a highbrow improviser. He tries both identities on for size here with mixed results.

“Back of a Cab”, for instance, which tries for a prototypical ska or rock steady rhythm courtesy of Drake’s woodblock percussion, doesn’t really follow through when it comes to Vandermark’s sax lines. His squeaks and gentleness seem out of place and when he uses fewer notes than usual it sounds as if he’s holding himself back. Much more impressive is “Clocked”, where the drummer’s heavy, but not overbearing effects suggests both the Crescent City and JA. With McBride thumb tapping on his electric bass, making like The Meters’ George Porter, the reedist adopts a tone that’s midway between reggae and 1950s’ New Orleans R&B, where Lee Allen’s baritone sax reigned supreme.

Probably the most impressive performance comes on “She Just Got Here” though. A McBride line with no attached musical baggage or dedication, it slips along on a Drake created reggae backbeat and some in-your-face fuzztone courtesy of the composer’s electrical outlet. Mixing his rock and his reggae, Vandermark seems perfectly content to honk away.

This overblowing is put to a more cerebral use on “Force at a Distance”, a salute to New Thing honker tenor saxophonist Frank Wright -- who, incidentally, also recorded with Henry Grimes. Apparently comfortable emulating the style of a man who always mixed gospel and blues with his Energy music, Vandermark sounds more sure of himself, indulging in extended harmonics and holding notes for an inordinate length of time. Meantime Drake glides all over his kit with the strength and imagination Wright should have got from his percussionists, and alternately plucking and bowing his acoustic upright, McBride holds everything together with strength unparalleled elsewhere.

Odd number out here, “Rothko Sideways” the CD’s longest track, is muted and melancholy, with Vandermark on clarinet relating more to Jimmy Giuffre’s early 1960s work that was as far away from pop music as British crumpets are from West Indian patties. A slow-moving, low-key recital, Vandermark’s reedy output is shadowed step-by-baby-step by McBride’s talents on the acoustic, with Drake contributing little more than the occasional cymbal splash or -- appropriately -- brush stroke.

Here are three more, wildly different, contributions to the Vandermark discography, which will probably be sought out by the reedist’s many fans. Each has something to recommend it, though overall it seems that Vandermark’s chameleon personality often needs another strong horn player to provide contrast. That’s why IN OUR TIMES is probably the most interesting of the three.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Double: 1. Left to Right 2a. Angels 2b. Awake Nu

Personnel: Double: Mats Gustafsson (alto and tenor saxophones); Ken Vandermark (clarinet, bass clarinet, tenor saxophone); Kent Kessler and Ingebrigt Håker-Flaten (bass);

Kjell Nordeson and Hamid Drake (drums)

Track Listing: In: 1. Another Double 2. Off the Top 3. What About 4. Shift 5. Octopus 6. Loose Blues 7. Elephantasy

Personnel: In: Jeb Bishop (trombone); Ken Vandermark (clarinet, bass clarinet, tenor saxophone); Kjell Nordeson (vibraphone); Ingebrigt Håker-Flaten (bass); Paal Nilssen-Love (drums)

Track Listing: Version: 1. Back of a Cab 2. Reasonable Hour 3. Size Large 4. Journeyman 5. She Just Got Here 6. Clocked 7. Rothko Sideways 8. Force at a Distance 9. All Frequencies

Personnel: Version: Ken Vandermark (clarinet, bass clarinet, tenor and baritone saxophones); Nate McBride (bass and electric bass); Hamid Drake (drums)

September 2, 2002

CARLO ACTIS DATO

USA Tour/April 2001/Live Splasc (H) CDH 520.2

Someone once said that Benny Goodman didn’t smile that much; it was just his embouchure. In Carlos Actis Dato’s case it’s not his embouchure. As a matter of fact, if all woodwind players had as much fun improvising as he seems to have, then most sitcoms would have wacky saxophonists as next door neighbors.

Although he brings a goofy sense of fun to the proceedings, be aware that Actis Dato is no Louis Prima or Jack Sheldon who treats the music as secondary to his singing and comedy routine. He may get high spirited enough to sing at certain points of these 13 live performances, but he never debases the music in any way. Like Charles Mingus or Rahsaan Roland Kirk, vocalizing is just his way of showing how well things are going.

In reality, USA TOUR is diary of some of the highlights of his American visit in 2001. Recorded at approximately half of his U.S. appearance that year, the tracks find him partnered with jazz-rockers, keyboardist Wayne Horvitz and bassist Rueben Radding in Seattle; freebopers, bassist Clyde Reed and drummer Dave Storrs in Portland, Ore.; and free players, bassist Damon Smith and drummer Gino Robair in Oakland, Calif. Ken Vandermark showed up with his tenor saxophone, clarinet and bass clarinet to duet in Chicago, while three outings are solo performances.

Usually wielding his largest horn -- the baritone sax -- Actis Dato excels at these match ups. Think of the colorfully costumed Italian as a lion tamer and his instrument as his feline, and you can hear how he easily puts the king of the reed family through its paces. Making it leap from its highest range down, down to its lowest, then putting it through the hoops of speedy pulsations, pseudo-nursery rhymes and jagged asides, like the best circus performer he does all this without abusing the animal and while communicating his sense of accomplishment.

Double your pleasure -- and fun -- when Vandermark shows up. Sticking to his bottom range and using tongue slaps to cement the rhythmic function, the visitor lets the homie use his higher-pitched axes to slip and slide around these instant compositions. Of course, Actis Dato is a credit to his bass (runs) when he shows that he can still come up with unexpected ways of leading from below. Sometimes, in fact. his tones push Vandermark’s to the side so that the American’s sound begins to dances to his reed ruminations.

Robair and Smith, who have experience interacting with adventurous reedists like Anthony Braxton, John Butcher and Wolfgang Fuchs, embroil Actis Dato’s bass clarinet in pure, non-stop improv. The reedist’s lower register lines are perfectly matched with Smith’s powerful strokes and Robair’s percussion. And the two are quick off the mark. When the reedman leads them into high-pitched, nonsense sounds, the drummer responds in kind -- vocally, with slide whistles, toys, shakers and miscellaneous percussion -- while Smith’s arco work keeps things on an even keel. Actis Dato is even inspired to bring out his tenor sax for a few pseudo Neapolitan operatic swells leading to several minutes of out and out swing.

Portland’s gig is just as interesting. Storrs and Reed are a seasoned bass and drums duo -- check out their trio work with fellow Northwesterner, tenor saxophonist Rich Halley -- and their exuberance clearly inspires Actis Dato. With all three of their numbers given a South American lilt, Actis Dato, on tenor producers a hearty tone midway between playful Sonny Rollins in his West Indian mode and early Gato Barbieri. Vancouver, B.C.-based Reed has played with his share of European explorers and keeps his sound powerful and unvarying, while Storrs shows that a bongo’s martillo torque and hard bop press rolls can equally be adapted to outside sounds.

Probably the weakest meeting is in Seattle, though. Horvitz’s shimmering dance- electronic synthesizer tones sounds more like Manchester (England) pop than committed improv. With Radding far in the background, it’s up to Actis Dato to inject the fortitude and soul into the proceedings, which he does. Imagine a few overdressed New Romantics being swept out of their wine bar as an R&B sax shouter clomps all over their table and you’ll get an idea of what the saxist does here. Sometimes, in fact, it appears as if he’s in a New Thing space all his own and his angry-sounding vocal interjects make be more than japes.

Although these live excursions suffer a bit from dodgy recording, too many fades in Portland and audible (!) audience cross talk on one Seattle piece, they’re a fine showcase of Actis Dato in full flight. In some cases you could say they’re the next best thing to being there.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Blue 2. Green 3. Brown 4. Poulet Fumé 5. Movin’ 6. Marina De Caribe 7. Old Time 8. Wonderful World 9. Clarbas 10. Bariten 11. Clabar 12. Witches 13. The Bay

Personnel: Carlo Actis Dato (tenor and baritone saxophones, bass clarinet); plus Ken Vandermark (tenor saxophone, clarinet, bass clarinet) [tracks 9-11]; Wayne Horvitz (keyboards) and Rueben Radding (bass) [tracks 1-3]; Clyde Reed (bass) and Dave Storrs (drums) [tracks 5-7]; Damon Smith (bass) and Gino Robair (drums) [track 13]

July 13, 2002

PETER BRÖTZMANN TENTET PLUS TWO

Short Visit To Nowhere
Okka Disk OD 12043

PETER BRÖTZMANN TENTET PLUS TWO
Broken English
Okka Disk OD 12044

Three years after it was first organized and a year after it first toured, Peter Brötzmann’s Chicago Tentet (Plus Two in this case) displays, in these 2000 recordings, that it has become an exemplary example of how to adopt free improv to large aggregations.

With a mixed cast of seven Chicagoans, three members from New York state, a Swede and Brötzmann, a German, it has all the firepower of a traditional big band with its eight horns. Plus, the three-man string section and two percussionists ensure that not only is its bottom covered -- so to speak -- but that the strings can alternately meld with the horns or shore up the rhythm section. Also, while the German reedman wrote two of the compositions, he’s democratic enough to make room for one piece each by Chicago multi-woodwind player Ken Vandermark, Swedish reedist Mats Gustafsson and Chicago cellist/violinist Fred Lonberg-Holm.

The brass section is made up of New York trumpeter/flugelhornist Roy Campbell, Chicago trombonist Jeb Bishop and Poughkeepsie, N.Y.’s Joe McPhee, who put his saxes aside to concentrate on trumpet and valve trombone. Vandermark’s closest associate Kent Kessler and Manhattanite William Parker, who has a long history with Brötzmann, combine on basses; while Michael Zerang on drums and Hamid Drake on drums, frame drum and voice --both from Chicago -- handle the percussion chores.

Experienced with many large European aggregations, most notably the pan-European Globe Unity Orchestra, Brötzmann appears to know how much freedom to give his posse of star soloists and when to rein them in. On both discs, for instance, you hear a lot more than you would in a conventional jazz big band where star soloists taking their turn at the mike while the remainder riff anonymously. Sure, there’s plenty of solo space available -- how could it be otherwise with the shortest tune more than 13 minutes and the longest almost 43 (!) -- but there are also definite group passages.

Take “Stonewater” on BROKEN ENGLISH, which expanded by another six minutes since it was first recorded in concert at the Festival International de Musique Actuelle in 1999. Intense, stratosphere blats from the massed horns serve as connective leitmotifs once the piece gets going. New is a six-minute intro that finds Drake chanting and playing hand drum. Then, after some tarogato puffs from Brötz, all hell breaks loose in such a way that it must have brought back fond memories of the in-your-face opening of the tenor man’s 1968 MACHINE GUN. As the succeeding soloists take centrestage, er… studio, the saxes provide their avant version of a Count Basie horn section, chugging away in the background.

As this piece -- and the others on the two CDs -- unrolls, however, the major criticism of the session is evident as well. With no identification of soloists, one can only make educated guesses as to who plays what. Before Kessler and Parker combine for some saw-toothed buzzing, the guttural sax tongue slapping you hear probably comes from Gustafsson, while the pastoral clarinet portion is likely Vandermark’s work. After a quasi-Dixieland interlude heavy on liquid clarinet lines and pointed trumpet, not to mention Gustafsson using his baritone to make like bass sax blaster Adrian Rollini, the speedy yet gravelly ‘bone lines probably come from McPhee’s valve.

Eras and styles blend as well. For example, when the walking basses and bomb dropping bass drum section make up one pulse, the massed sax section functions as stalwart, bar-walking R&B honkers. Finally one -- Brötz (?) -- breaks free from the pack for an extended a cappella stop time solo that goes from screaming altissimo split tones to gut-wrenching overblowing. Eventually scraped arco strings give way to a toboggan ride of brass slides and slurs, and the tune culminates in a Mingusian crescendo.

Or take Lonberg-Holm’s “Lightbox”. Beginning with a muted trumpet -- probably played by Campbell -- McPhee and Bishop soon come on like an up-to-date Jay & Kai, romping through slide and valve positions until pizzicato strings give way to the massed cacophony of many reeds. After that there’s a sax face off, with one exploring every extended aviary technique to build to a crescendo, while the other -- apparently Gustafsson -- produces a funk thump that could fit in the bands of James Brown or Ray Charles. Pseudo-human cries, courtesy of the reeds, and arcing orchestral brass sum up the tune, which after several false endings stops on a dime -- or maybe a Euro.

Strangely enough, Williams’ “Hold That Thought” on the same CD sounds more like a revved up Ellington band than the Gustafsson piece named for the Duke that follows it. Of course, with what is likely Vandermark’s Klezmer-like clarinet passages, it would be an Ellington who was as familiar with (old) Odessa as New Orleans and know Bialystok as well as Baltimore. There’s also a Latin influence, with sections where the horns seem to play “La Cucuracha”. Campbell’s notes sail on top of the charts the way trumpeter Cat Anderson’s did with Ellington, while Bishop’s double-time plunger work, calls forth answering chords from the band like Tricky Sam Nanton’s did from the Duke’s Jungle band. Call this mainstream with avant-flourishes

Mention should also be made of the arrangement for “Short Visit To Nowhere”, one CD’s more-than-25-minute title track. Although there are a good number of scratches from the strings, bleats from the saxes and smears from the brass, there’s still room for what sounds like an electric guitar working out of a Jimi Hendrix bag, which is probably Lonberg-Holm on fiddle. The German saxophonist’s writing allow different sections of the group to be emphasized at different times. For instance, stroked buzzes coalesce into the creation of avant string trio, modulating up and down the stops at one point; and a modern reed battle between what’s probably Williams’ squalling alto and Brötz or Vandermark’s unhurried clarinet lines erupt at another point.

One could go on and on. While it’s frightening to think how good the Brötzmann band of any size must sound now, with two more years together, it’s easy to praise both of these CDs. Although available singly, they’re actually one of a piece, the way the cover photo on each can be joined to make one consistent image.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Short: 1. Hold That Thought 2. Ellington 3. Short Visit To Nowhere 4. Lightbox

Track Listing: Broken: 1. Stonewater 2. Broken English

Personnel on both discs: Roy Campbell (trumpet, flugelhorn); Joe McPhee (trumpet, valve trombone); Jeb Bishop(trombone); Peter Brötzmann (tenor saxophone, clarinet, tarogato); Ken Vandermark (tenor saxophone, clarinet); Mars Williams (alto and tenor saxophone); Mats Gustafsson (tenor and baritone saxophones); Fred Lonberg-Holm (cello, violin); Kent Kesler (bass); William Parker (bass, log drum); Michael Zerang (drums); Hamid Drake (drums, frame-drum, voice)

June 7, 2002

DKV Trio

Trigonometry
Okka Disk 12042

There’s nothing like constant touring to make any ensemble tighter and its members more responsive to one another. That’s why established jazz combos of the 1950s and 1960s sounded so good. However at that time the often near miraculous timing, instant inspiration and embellishments that resulted from a well-received in-person engagement were often lost unless the band was lucky enough to be recorded on the road.

One of saxophonist Ken Vandermark’s many working units, the all-star DKV trio is a contemporary bands that recognizes the advantages of road work and on-the-spot recording. This exemplary two-CD set, recorded last year in Rochester, N.Y. and Kalamazoo, Mich., showcases how the three treat a mixture of original and classic free jazz material. Most instructive are how different versions of compositions by trumpeter Don Cherry sound in each city.

“Brown Rice” for instance, is introduced with a bass solo from longtime Vandermark associate Kent Kessler in Rochester, and is dispensed with in slightly more than 4½ minutes, after it’s probed through the kaleidoscope of Vandermak’s bass clarinet. Key pops and sonorous reverberations from the curved clarinet introduce the same piece in Kalamazoo, which stretches to 10½ minutes. Very soon it becomes a woodwind-string duet as Vandermark bears down on his horn and Kessler constructs circular patterns. When the forceful, steady beat of drummer Hamid Drake pushes the reedman to come up with one of the first recorded (literally) examples of honky-tonk bass clarinet, the tune is reconfigured as a straightforward romp.

On the other hand consider “The Thing”. In both upstate New York and Michigan, with Vandermark on riffing tenor, it becomes a highly rhythmic foot tapper that sounds as if it would be more comfortable under the fingers of tough Texas saxists like Cherry bandmates Dewey Redman or Ornette Coleman, then played by the holistic trumpeter. More exuberant and in-your-face in Rochester, Drake’s percussive pushing and prodding helps advance the piece, proving that his ongoing relationship with funk and world music is a plus for his improv work. About the same length as it is in Kalamazoo, where it’s used as a set closer, Rochester’s “Thing” gives Kessler enough space to show off his arco technique and lead the trio into “Brown Rice”.

Interestingly enough Vancermark’s tenor tones introduce “Awake Nu,” the third Cherry line, with glossolalia straight out of Albert Ayler’s “Ghosts”. Meanwhile the other two lay down a rock solid bass lines and powerful drum strokes to update Gary Peacock and Sunny Murray the way the saxist does Ayler’s legacy. At nearly 21 minutes the Rochester version gives the other two what Ayler’s sideman never had -- enough room to sound solo. Drake uses his space by introducing variegated cymbal and bass drum patterns and some well-placed rim shots, while apparently steel-fingered Kessler constructs a multi-string modulation that adds some equanimity to the proceedings. Why the reedist is double-timing an ascending line that sounds like an outside version of Shirley Ellis’s “The Name Game” immediately afterwards is a question to be pondered though.

Antithetically, strains of Duke Ellington’s “Take The Coltrane” are coupled with “Awake Nu” in less than 7½ minutes in Kalamazoo. Elaborating the medley in full altissimo mode, at first Vandermark seems to be mixing “I’ve Been Workin’ On the Railroad” with “Ghosts” while Drake hammers out an even speedier rhythm. This half free/half R&B treatment is the way Ayler, who did one memorable tour with Cherry, would also have played. And, if you get into it, in their own ways John Coltrane and Ellington also mixed and matched compositional and playing styles to fit their moods.

Occasionally, with his many projects and bands in North America and overseas, it appears as if Vandermark is spreading his talents a little too thin. Yet, as long as he has musically stalwart peers such as Drake and Kessler to keep him focused, he’ll continue to turn out fine discs like these.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Disc One: 1. Awake Nu 2. The Thing 3. Brown Rice 4. Good-Bye Tom B.

5. Lift Disc Two: 1. East Broadway Run Down 2. 3. Awake Nu/Take The Coltrane 4. Brown Rice 5. Red And Black 6. Love Cry 7. The Thing

Personnel: Ken Vandermark (tenor saxophone, clarinet, bass clarinet); Kent Kessler (bass); Hamid Drake (drums)

April 26, 2002

KARAYORGIS-MCBRIDE-VANDERMARK

No Such Thing
Boxholder BXH 018

Although he's only honored with one dedication on the final track of this disc, NO SUCH THING could be heard as a tribute to reedman/composer Jimmy Giuffre.

Consistently in the advance guard, Giuffre is probably the only man to have written a progressive jazz standard, "Four Brothers", for Woody Herman's late 1940s Second Herd's, and yet be considered a New Thing fellow traveler in the 1960s.

The now 80-year-old former teacher at Boston's New England Conservatory (NEC) influenced musicians throughout his career, but this band in conception and instrumentation harkens back to the drummer-less trio the reedist headed in 1961. Completed by pianist Paul Bley and a very young Steve Swallow on bass, the group created a new standard for understated improvisation. This admirable disc puts an individual and 21st century spin on those sounds.

Front and centre are Boston-based pianist Pandelis Karayorgis and bassist Nate McBride, coupled with former Bostonian, now Chicago resident Ken Vandermark, playing clarinet, bass clarinet and tenor saxophone and seemingly reveling in his sideman status.

Karayorgis, a NEC grad who has recorded with the likes of Chicago's multi-instrumentalist Guillermo Gregorio and another NEC avant woodwind icon, composer/performer Joe Maneri, wrote four of the tunes here. McBride, a Beantown stalwart, who is a member of such coop combos as Tripleplay and Konk contributed two tunes; while Vandermark weighed in with three.

Emulative, not imitative, the music here merely honors Giuffre's 1961 combo. But with similar instrumentation there's no way the influence won't come through. On McBride's "Pending", for instance, Vandermark begins with a cellar to attic clarinet run that could easily have jumped off Giuffre's legendary FREE FALL session. Yet he goes on to construct his solo out of tiny breaths, which mesh perfectly with Krayorgis' wiry, floating notes. Positively Chopinesque or abstract in turn, with plenty of right hand fills, the pianist's solo seems to develop arpeggio by arpeggio. McBride's bowed bass solidifies the bottom, as he does throughout the session.

On "27 Valentine", the bassist's other composition though, Vandermark's clarinet phrasing recalls bop masters like Buddy DeFranco and Tony Scott, rather than Giuffre. The older men would never have turned out the kind of raucous saxophone skronk with which Vandermark opens the disc on his "Skid Into the Turn".

Dedicated to Lee Konitz, another pioneering woodwind iconoclast, "Let Me Know", finds Vandermark limiting himself to the upper register of to his tenor to approximate Konitz's cool alto sound. McBride provides the steady bottom favored by members of the Tristano school from its bassists, while wild card Karayorgis lets loose with some muscular atonality, which might suggest that Cecil Taylor rather than Tristano had wandered into the studio.

Introduction of the unanticipated is one of the ways in which Karayorgis asserts himself on this disc. Should Vandermark be biting the reed or overblowing on a tune like the pianist's own "Disambiguation", he answers with repeated speedy runs or sharp keyboard slurs. In contrast, on the dour and lethargic "Summer", after the initial theme statement he lets the arco bass and chalumeau-register clarinet take over while he practically disappear.

Dedication, demonstration or display, this disc is certainly worth investigation.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Skid Into the Turn 2. 27 valentine 3. Summer 4. Disambiguation 5. Let Me Know 6. Pending 7. SBL 8. Tripothetical 9. Taken

Personnel: Ken Vandermark (clarinet, bass clarinet, tenor saxophone); Pandelis Karayorgis (piano); Nate McBride (bass)

August 6, 2001

KEN VANDERMARK

Burn The Incline
Atavistic ALP 121 CD

Another day, another disk might well be the motto of Chicago multi-reedist Ken Vandermark. Only in his mid-30s, the saxophonist/clarinetist is so prolific in the recording studio, that at times it seems as if he's challenging Anthony Braxton, Steve Lacy and David Murray -- men in their 50s and 60s -- to see who can put out the greatest number of CDs in a year, or perhaps over the course of a career.

Luckily Vandermark tries to add something to the jazz cannon with each release and evolve separate personalities for each of his many groups. The Vandermark 5, for instance, his main compositional outlet, has steadily evolved to become the top showcase for youngish midwestern jazzers. In fact, BURN appears to be as much a showcase for Bishop or Kessler as for Vandermark.

It's Bishop's versatility that hits you first. One minute he's churning out arena style hard rock chords on guitar on tunes like "Distance", then he shifts into being an oh-so-cool J.J. Johnson acolyte on the aptly-named "The Cooler". Elsewhere he'll get down and dirty on the horn on "Accident Happening" or use his rhythm guitar skills to unspectacularly comp behind the soloists on "In Focus".

Kessler's art is much subtler. Upfront, when he ingeniously brings in the first track with a bass solo, you can be impressed by his power mixed with restraint. Other places, though, his sound barely pokes through the other instruments, guilefully controlling the rhythm with suggestion and gesture more than volume.

As for Vandermark, this session mostly allows him to exhibit his long-lined Dr. Jekyll-like clarinet playing and his rougher-edged saxophone sorties, reflecting the Mr. Hyde side of his playing. Despite his free jazz credentials on the later, his black stick improvisations may ultimately turn out to be more interesting. Since most modern clarinetists seem to be drawn towards very small groups and a 21st century version of the Third Stream, someone who can play with power in a larger group context is a valuable man to have around.

In short this is another fine glimpse into the mind of Ken Vandermark circa December 1999. With the talent amassed here, it will be interesting to see what he (and they) have in store for the new millennium.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Distance 2. The Cooler 3. Late Night Wait Around 4. Roulette 5. Accident Happening 6. In Focus 7. The Trouble Is 8. Ground

Personnel: Jeb Bishop (trombone, guitar); Dave Rempis (alto and tenor saxophone); Ken Vandermark (tenor saxophone, clarinet and bass clarinet); Kent Kessler (bass); Tim Mulvenna (drums)

August 24, 2000

WITCHES & DEVILS

At The Empty Bottle
Knitting Factory KFW-282

Thirty years after insurgent tenor saxophonist Albert Ayler jumped headfirst into New York's East River, admiring jazzers are still celebrating his achievements.

That's because Ayler's important work reinterpreted the music. The most "out" of "out" jazzers, his playing and composing was made up in equal parts of unbridled energy and recurrent, quasi-childlike ditties. Ayler's performances didn't "swing" -- as the neo-cons understand it -- but lurched along like an out-of-control crowd at a carnival, then abruptly stopped to dance around in juvenile joy. Concurrently Ayler music was the sound of uncharted space travel and of the most primitive marching band, communicated through pure emotion.

What sets apart well-thought out Ayler tributes like this one from those who merely use the melody of "Ghosts" -- his best-known composition -- as an excuse for ribaldry, is an understanding of the saxophonist's methods.

Like the six Chicagoans recorded on this live set, Ayler wasn't the know-nothing wild man his detractors made him out to be. He understood all music -- very definitely including standard jazz changes -- backwards and forwards. But like Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor he also heard something different that he had to play.

Similarly, saxophonist Mars Williams, leader of this session, has been through the music business mill. A charter member of Hal Russell's avant garde jazz NRG Ensemble in the 1980s, he also played with rockers The Waitresses and the Psychedelic Furs around that time. Today, he not only collaborates with Ken Vandermark in Windy City ensembles, but is also the guiding force behind acidjazzers Liquid Soul. Similar varied résumés characterize the other Witches (or is it Devils?)

Except for the alto saxophone and piano interlude, all the music here is Ayler's, so trying to pinpoint individual contributions to praise is like trying to pick out the third euphonium player in a marching band. Ayler music is preeminently group music.

There are imperfections here all right, with the piano at this club gig sounding a bit distant, if not a bit out of tune. Overall, though, the ferocious intensity and commitment the late saxophonist brought to his compositions is fittingly communicated by these six disciples.

If you like Ayler's work you'll probably be interested in hearing how these top-flight Midwesterners treat it. If you abhor Ayler, however, this won't bring you into the saxophonist's camp. But if you've never heard Ayler, this is as good place as any to start.

Liking what you hear, though, should create a thirst for the saxophonist's work that can only be quenched by the hard stuff of his own playing.

--Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Truth Is Marching In 2. Sax Duet/Piano Interlude 3. Angels 4. Bells

Personnel: Mars Williams (reeds); Ken Vandermark (tenor saxophone); Fred Lonberg-Holm (cello); Jim Baker (keyboards); Kent Kessler (bass); Steve Hunt (drums)

August 4, 2000

SPACEWAYS INCORPORATED

Thirteen Cosmic Standards
Atavistic ALP 120 CD

Asked once what he thought of Sun Ra's music, Funkadelic mainman George Clinton famously said: "He's out to lunch all right. The same place I eat at." Now for fanciers of these pioneer Black nationalist space travelers here's a tasty meal, courtesy of Spaceways Incorporated, that serves up several entrees from both men's oeuvre.

Now before anyone looking at the band's name fears that another Klaatu is on the scene, it should be pointed out that each member is identified on the disc. The trio is made up of two Chicagoans: multi-reedist Ken Vandermark, who seems to have as many side projects as McDonald's has hamburgers; and drummer Hamid Drake who has powered the ensembles of Peter Brötzmann and Fred Anderson among others; plus Boston-based acoustic/electric bassist Nate McBride.

Unlike jazz's neo-con crew who figure nothing can be a standard unless it was signed by Duke Ellington, plotted out by Jamey Aebersold or recorded by Miles Davis before 1965, this trio recognizes that the music is always growing and changing. As a composer on a similar level as Ellington and Charles Mingus, Ra definitely has a body of "standards" that deserves dissemination. As for Clinton, his tunes are as worthy to serve as improv springboards as anything created by Rogers & Hart or Lennon & McCartney.

In truth, it's the Ra compositions that have the edge here. Since despite its other virtues Clinton's is primarily vocal music, the Spaceways Three treat his tunes more or less the same way: as full throttle rockers, heavy on pounding, pile driver drum rhythms, electric bass backbeats and booting, this-side-of-Big-Jay-McNeeley tenor saxophone honks.

Ra's multi-faceted conceptions give the musicians more scope. Thus "Bassism" is recast as a rock-style groove tune, heavy on walking bass (what else?) and tenor saxophone runs; "Future" is enlivened with Evan Parker-like saxophone ejaculations; and Ra's biggest "hit" -- "We Travel The Spaceways" -- is given a mellow ballad feel with entwining clarinet and bass lines.

Now there are some who will blanch at the idea of a trio trying to replicate every nuance of the Arkestra and Funkadelic, but that's the whole point of this exercise. If jazz is to remain a living music any sort of inventive reinterpretation of its musical cannon is necessary and should be welcomed. Now if only more musicians would follow the lead of the three here.

--Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Tapestry From An Asteroid 2. Alice In My Fantasies/Cosmic Slop 3. Street Named Hell 4. Trash A Go Go 5. Bassism 6. Red Hot Mama/Super Stupid 7. El Is The Sound of Joy 8. Future 9. You And Your Folks, Me And My Folks/Hit It And Quit It 10. We Travel The Spaceways

Personnel: Ken Vandermark (tenor saxophone, clarinet, bass clarinet); Nate McBride (acoustic and electric bass); Hamid Drake (drums)

July 27, 2000

PETER BRÖTZMANN

Stone/Water
Okka Disk OD 12032

Peter Brötzmann is no stranger to bombast.

The German multi-reedist first goose-stepped his way into world jazz consciousness in 1968 with MACHINE GUN on FMP. From its first extended blats of pure noise emanating from a (very) mixed platoon of Dutch, Flemish, British and German improvisers, it gave lusty notice that Continental jazzers had to be judged on their own merits rather than in comparison to North American musicians.

Over the years, except for the odd one/off project, economic necessity has forced Brötzmann to work with smaller bands -- usually trios and quartets and some commentators have even posited that the wildman has mellowed.

As this fine session, attests, nothing could be further from the truth. It's just with a veteran's maturity, the saxophonist now knows exactly when to let 'er rip and when to keep things on a quieter level. Also, unlike some of his more dogmatic colleagues, he's never missed an opportunity to collaborate with many other musicians, be they Americans or Moroccans.

That's the genesis of this disc -- recorded at last year's Festival International de Musique International in Victoriaville, Que. A couple of years before this, Brötzmann, on tour in Chicago, organized a crew of like-minded improvisers from the simmering improv scene there -- first as an octet then a tentet. This band is a road show version of that aggregation which was captured on 1997's superb three-CD Okka disc set. Besides Brötzmann, the group now includes a Swede (Gustafson); a Japanese (Kondo); and a Manhattenite (Parker) as well six musicians from the Windy City.

While the gang of 10 seems to throw everything it can into the one, almost 39 minute, composition, its extreme length leads to an uneven outcome. Sure there's the unparalleled power of MACHINE GUN-style unison horn work -- especially right the beginning and end -- but there are time marking valleys as well as peaks. With nearly everyone allowed solo space, focus is sometimes lost. Kondo's muted trumpet and electronic washes, for instance, seem to go on a bit too long. And the ominous sub theme propelled by the cello may have been better on its own. Still, Bishop's half-gutbucket/half modern trombone proves convincing, as do the eight string acrobatics of Parker and Kessler.

However with the soloists not identified --and all reedists playing tenor saxophone and Brötzmann and Vandermark both playing clarinets -- it's hard to ascribe individual woodwind honors. One would suppose that the most ferocious blowing comes from the German, but whoever plays each part certainly knows his way around a mouthpiece.

Another complaint is that nowhere are the first names of the performers (listed blow) supplied. That may be OK for a Miles Davis session, but these less famous musicians deserve as much acknowledgement as possible. The last name of the cellist is also misspelled.

While STONE/WATER builds up to a multifaceted climax, all the parts don't add up to a masterwork like the three-CD THE CHICAGO OCTET/TENTET. Perhaps it was the live situation or the new personalities in the band.

Still if you liked the earlier session, you'll probably favor this one as well. And if you don't own the limited-edition three-CD set this can be an admirable substitute, especially if you follow the work of any of the horn men.

--Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Stone/Water

Personnel: Toshinoro Kondo (tbrumpet, electronics); Jeb Bishop (trombone); Peter Brötzmann (tenor saxophone, clarinet); Mats Gustafsson (tenor saxophone, flutophone); Ken Vandermark (tenor saxophone, clarinet, bass clarinet); Fred Lonberg-Holm (cello, violin); Kent Kessler, William Parker (basses); Hamid Drake, Michael Zerang (drums)

June 17, 2000

PAUL LYTTON/KEN VANDERMARK

English Suites
(Wobbly Rail WOBOO9)

Few were surprised last year when Chicago reedist Ken Vandermark became the youngest ever recipient of the so-called "genius" grant from the MacArthur Foundation. A seemingly tireless composer, arranger, saxophonist, clarinetist and organizer, Vandermark is known as "the hardest working man in free jazz". But he hasn't limited his ambitions to himself. Forging partnerships with older free jazzers as well as younger musicians, Vandermark has continuously documented his work in North America and Europe.

With this two-CD set though, he's set himself another challenge. Basically the 30-something Vandermark goes mano-a-mano with veteran British drummer Paul Lytton. Not only was Lytton one of the founders of Euroimprov 30 years ago, but his most consistent reed partner has been fellow Brit Evan Parker, who practically invented a new saxophone language all by himself.

So how does Vandermark fare? Quiet well, overall. But like a saxophonist duetting with Elvin Jones, trying to avoid the specter of John Coltrane, he has to feint, jab and musically jump to avoid becoming a phantom Parker.

Unlike Parker Vandermark has an arsenal of reed weapons to call upon; he uses what sounds like tenor saxophone, clarinet and bass clarinet on these performances. Moreover, except for some brief periods in the "Stage" section, he stays away from Parker's nearly patented style of endless circular breathing.

Two different circumstances supplied the improvisations here. The first disc resulted from a radio concert in Chicago in January 1999; the second from a Belgium Sound in Motion festival 10 months later. Each approach is different as well.

In Chicago Vandermark uses a harsher tone which suggests someone like Frank Lowe, while plumbing the depths of sound one can get from reed instruments. Lytton does the same from his drum kit. Overall, while the tracks are longer, the improvisations seem quieter and more tentative than they would be in November. Moreover, sometimes the pauses and pace become a bit overwhelming, as if lack of the visual means the audience is missing one part of the equation: a strange predicament for a radio broadcast. With so much of the session mirroring the scratch-and-tap school of BritImprov, the most memorable sound comes on "Radio 1" and "Radio 7", when the duo seems to throw caution to the winds and really let loose.

Freer sounds dominate the second disc. Perhaps it's increased familiarity between the two, or the fact that Lytton now has his electronic tools on hand, but things seem much smoother. On Film 4, for instance, Lytton balances some cymbal scrapes plus spacey electronics whirrs and bites with Vandermark's almost-"legit" clarinet timbre. Then on Stage 3 it almost sounds as if the percussionist was slowly working his way through a junk pile as Vandermark outputs consistent saxophone blats sounding just this side of Big Jay McNeely. And there are similar duets throughout.

In short, ENGLISH SUITES is a good, but not great session that will probably be appreciated by many improv followers. The sneaking suspicion exists, though, that were Vandermark less concerned with documenting absolutely everything he does, the performances here could have been boiled down to a dynamic single disc

--Ken Waxman

Track listing: Disc One; 1. Radio 1 2. Radio 2 3. Radio 3 4. Radio 4 5. Radio 5 6. Radio 6 7 Radio 7 Disc Two: 1. Film 1 2. Film 2 3. Film 3 4. Film 4 5. Film 5 6. Film 6 7. Film 7 8. Stage 1 9. Stage 2 10. Stage 3 11. Stage 4 12. Stage 5

Personnel: Ken Vandermark (reeds); Paul Lytton (drums, percussion, live electronics)

June 2, 2000