Rhapsody’s 2012 Jazz Critics' Poll

Individual Ballot
From Ken Waxman

• Your name and primary affiliation(s) (no more than two, please)

Ken Waxman

Jazz Word (www.jazzword.com); The New York City Jazz Record

• Your choices for 2012's ten best new releases listed in descending order one-through-ten.

1. François Houle Genera Songlines SGL 1595-2

2. Fred Ho/Quincy Saul The Music of Cal Massey: A Tribute Mutable/Big Red Media 004

3. William Parker Centering: Unreleased Early Recordings 1976–1987 NoBusiness Records NBCD 42-47

4. Grutronic & Evan Parker Together in Zero Space psi 11.09

5. Frank Wright Blues for Albert Ayler ESP-Disk ESP-4068

6. Michel Doneda/Nils Ostendorf Cristallisation absinth Records 023

7. Josh Berman & His Gang There Now Delmark DE 2016

8. The Fish Moon Fish Clean Feed CF 254 CD

9. MMM Quartet Live at the Metz Arsenal Leo Records CD LR 631

10. Michael Bates Acrobat: Music For, and By, Dmitri Shostakovich Sunnyside SSC 1291

• Your top-three reissues, again listed in descending order

1. Graham Collier Relook: A Memorial 75th Birthday Celebration Jazz Continuum No #

2. Steve Lacy The Sun (1967-73) Emanem 5022

3. Mazette Watts & Company ESP-Disk 1044

• Your choice for the year's best vocal album

None

• Your choice for the year's best debut CD

1. Yoni Kretzmer Overlook OutNow Records ONR 002

• Your choice for the year’s best Latin jazz CD

1. El Ombligio Canción Psicotrópica Y Jaleo Festina Lente Discos FLD 015

January 11, 2013

Steve Lacy Quintet

Estilhaços
Clean Feed CF 247 CD

Steve Lacy

The Sun (1967-73)

Emanem 5022

Comfortable in his status as an expatriate musician, by the late 1960s soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy (1934-2004) was ensconced in Europe experimenting with different configurations. When he finally settled on his unique version of the quintet format, he maintained it on-and-off for the next quarter century. These valuable reissues of tracks from 1967, 1968, 1972 and 1973 not only itemize his early combo experiments, but also demonstrate the subtle shifts in Lacy’s playing at that time that would characterize his work from then on.

The Sun includes sessions from Rome and New York where Lacy, plus his partner, cellist-vocalist Irene Aebi, and MEV associate Richard Teitelbaum on synthesizer were preoccupied creating sounds to reflect the so-called Peace and anti-Viet Nam War movements. Previously un-issued tracks from around that time also find Lacy with his final European quintet, filled out by German vibist Karl Berger, and Italians, drummer Aldo Romano and trumpeter Enrico Rava, plus Lacy’s American Jazz Composer's Orchestra confrere, bassist Kent Carter who would continue to play with the soprano saxist for many years. Tellingly, the last four tracks from 1973, featuring Lacy, Carter, and Aebi in a new quintet formation adding alto saxophonist Steve Potts and drummer Oliver Johnson, more American expats. A year previously, Estilhaços, translated into English as “shrapnel”, captures another set by almost the same quintet, except with Jamaican-American Noel McGhie, whose tenure with Lacy was under-recorded, behind the drum kit in place of Johnson. Extra-musically this Lisbon date is significant because it was probably the first time an all-out Free Jazz group played in Portugal. Plus its presence was a harbinger of the revolution which would sweep away the country’s long-entrenched fascist government in 1974.

Overall, what’s most noticeable about Lacy’s work at this time is how much of a hard-line Free Jazz player he still was. Everything he, Rava and Potts play for instance is agitato, fortissimo, hard and heavy. Even the 1968 tracks from Rome featuring flanged polytones, jet-engine-like whooshes, gravelly voltage outlays and crossed-wire crackles arising from Teitelbaum’s programming, are met with screeching glissandi plus sharpened and narrowed reed bites from Lacy.

Also notable on those tracks – “Chinese Food” from New York and even “Stations” from Lisbon – was how wedded Lacy and company were at that time to a primitive version of musique concrète. Besides a hippie-mystical ethos, usually expressed in Aebi’s vocalizing and verbalizing of the lyrics, which may actually benefit from her imperfect command of English, mechanized dial-twisting and machine-like crunches predominate. On the earliest tracks, Aebi sometimes double tracked, and other voices (Lacy’s?Teitelbaum’s?) appear to be mumbling in non-European tongues. Additionally, the first Lisbon track is divided between staccato interjections of radio sounds including orchestral music and vocals plus Bop-like tandem honking from Lacy and Potts. Even “The Wave” from 1973 includes cassette recordings of gunfire and other battle noises that share aural space with pure instrumentalism. Arguably playing in the most radical fashion of his career, Rava’s outer-breathed triplets and broken-octave flutter tonguing fit appropriately and sometimes contrapuntally with Lacy’s whistling and whinny altissimo notes, as vibraphone bars ring with pressured mallet strokes, double bass strings sluice powerfully, and the drummer smacks, rolls and rebounds.

Epitomizing Energy Music in his contributions, McGhie, who has since played in a variety of styles, finally returning to Free Jazz on gigs with French pianist François Tusques a couple of years ago, keeps the polyrhythms and military-styled pardiddles rolling throughout Estilhaços. Aebi and Carter often unite into spiccato swipes and mercurial pitch-sliding, while the two saxophonists spar, shrill, strain and scream, while maintaining a vocabulary angled towards glossolalia, tongue slaps and reed sucking. At the same time there are important contrasts in their playing, with the more Bop-oriented Potts coming across as an Eric Dolphy to Lacy’s Ornette Coleman.

Making no compromises for an audience that at first seems tentative in its applause before turning enthusiastic by the end, Lacy duck-quacks and peeps, backed by tremolo glissandi from the strings, while Potts honks and crests to altissimo squeals. The most characteristic of the McGhie band tracks is “The High Way”. Built on mercurial pitch slides and sul tasto sawing from Carter, intense rebounds from the drummer, plus Abei’s discordant harmonica squeals, the performance becomes more staccato and tension-ridden as it develops. Lacy and Potts circle around one another with squeaks and, split tones, eventually joining McGhie’s rat-tat-tats and Carter’s triple-stopped bounces for a smeared rhythmic tone that lingers past the selection’s end.

Although he too drifted more towards the mainstream playing with the likes of saxophonist Johnny Griffin before his death in 2002, Johnson was a regular part of Lacy’s ensembles up until 1989. On this, some of his earliest recorded work with the saxophonist, the drummer sticks pretty much to drum rolls and cymbal smashes. On “The Wage” for instance, it’s Carter’s thumps and spiccato sweeps down the bass neck that are more percussive than cymbal jangles and drum head rubs. Plus Lacy’s and Potts’ splayed multiphonics and tongue-slapped reed tones seem more attuned to the sampled war sounds than any military-styled pacing from Johnson.

It’s a different story on the climatic “The Wane” however, with hints of Lacy’s more mercurial strategy gradually being revealed. Carter’s sul tasto pumps again serve as the bottom, as the two saxophonists work out lockstep timbres. Here it’s Potts who exposes squeezed and shredded lines while Lacy’s slim obbligato slides complement them. By the end the reed harmonies suggest that musicians can be advanced improvisers without being completely discordant.

Taken together the CDs provide a fascinating look at the soprano saxophonist’s constant evolution. It would continue and encompass very little rote material until his death three decades later.

--Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Sun: 1. The Sun*+& 2. The Gap*+& 3. The Way (introduction)+; 4. The Way (take 5?)# 5. Improvisation (Numero Uno)# 6. The Way (take 6)# 7. Improvisation (Numero Due)# 8. Chinese Food (Cantata Polemica)# 9. The Woe: The Wax^~& 10. The Wage^ ~&11. The Wane^~&12. The Wake&~

Personnel: Sun: Enrico Rava (trumpet)*; Steve Lacy (soprano saxophone [except 3]); Steve Potts (alto saxophone)~; Richard Teitelbaum (synthesizer)#; Karl Berger (vibraphone)+; Irene Aebi (voice [1, 4, 6, 8, 12 ] and cello^); Kent Carter (bass)&; Aldo Romano* or Oliver Johnson~ (drums)

Track Listing: Estilhaços: 1. Presentation 2. Stations 3. Chips/Moon/Dreams 4. No Baby 5. The High Way

Personnel: Estilhaços: Steve Lacy (soprano saxophone); Steve Potts (alto saxophone); Irene Aebi (cello, transistor radio and harmonica); Kent Carter (bass) and Noel McGhie (drums and percussion)

August 16, 2012

Steve Lacy

The Sun (1967-73)
Emanem 5022

Steve Lacy Quintet

Estilhaços

Clean Feed CF 247 CD

Comfortable in his status as an expatriate musician, by the late 1960s soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy (1934-2004) was ensconced in Europe experimenting with different configurations. When he finally settled on his unique version of the quintet format, he maintained it on-and-off for the next quarter century. These valuable reissues of tracks from 1967, 1968, 1972 and 1973 not only itemize his early combo experiments, but also demonstrate the subtle shifts in Lacy’s playing at that time that would characterize his work from then on.

The Sun includes sessions from Rome and New York where Lacy, plus his partner, cellist-vocalist Irene Aebi, and MEV associate Richard Teitelbaum on synthesizer were preoccupied creating sounds to reflect the so-called Peace and anti-Viet Nam War movements. Previously un-issued tracks from around that time also find Lacy with his final European quintet, filled out by German vibist Karl Berger, and Italians, drummer Aldo Romano and trumpeter Enrico Rava, plus Lacy’s American Jazz Composer's Orchestra confrere, bassist Kent Carter who would continue to play with the soprano saxist for many years. Tellingly, the last four tracks from 1973, featuring Lacy, Carter, and Aebi in a new quintet formation adding alto saxophonist Steve Potts and drummer Oliver Johnson, more American expats. A year previously, Estilhaços, translated into English as “shrapnel”, captures another set by almost the same quintet, except with Jamaican-American Noel McGhie, whose tenure with Lacy was under-recorded, behind the drum kit in place of Johnson. Extra-musically this Lisbon date is significant because it was probably the first time an all-out Free Jazz group played in Portugal. Plus its presence was a harbinger of the revolution which would sweep away the country’s long-entrenched fascist government in 1974.

Overall, what’s most noticeable about Lacy’s work at this time is how much of a hard-line Free Jazz player he still was. Everything he, Rava and Potts play for instance is agitato, fortissimo, hard and heavy. Even the 1968 tracks from Rome featuring flanged polytones, jet-engine-like whooshes, gravelly voltage outlays and crossed-wire crackles arising from Teitelbaum’s programming, are met with screeching glissandi plus sharpened and narrowed reed bites from Lacy.

Also notable on those tracks – “Chinese Food” from New York and even “Stations” from Lisbon – was how wedded Lacy and company were at that time to a primitive version of musique concrète. Besides a hippie-mystical ethos, usually expressed in Aebi’s vocalizing and verbalizing of the lyrics, which may actually benefit from her imperfect command of English, mechanized dial-twisting and machine-like crunches predominate. On the earliest tracks, Aebi sometimes double tracked, and other voices (Lacy’s?Teitelbaum’s?) appear to be mumbling in non-European tongues. Additionally, the first Lisbon track is divided between staccato interjections of radio sounds including orchestral music and vocals plus Bop-like tandem honking from Lacy and Potts. Even “The Wave” from 1973 includes cassette recordings of gunfire and other battle noises that share aural space with pure instrumentalism. Arguably playing in the most radical fashion of his career, Rava’s outer-breathed triplets and broken-octave flutter tonguing fit appropriately and sometimes contrapuntally with Lacy’s whistling and whinny altissimo notes, as vibraphone bars ring with pressured mallet strokes, double bass strings sluice powerfully, and the drummer smacks, rolls and rebounds.

Epitomizing Energy Music in his contributions, McGhie, who has since played in a variety of styles, finally returning to Free Jazz on gigs with French pianist François Tusques a couple of years ago, keeps the polyrhythms and military-styled pardiddles rolling throughout Estilhaços. Aebi and Carter often unite into spiccato swipes and mercurial pitch-sliding, while the two saxophonists spar, shrill, strain and scream, while maintaining a vocabulary angled towards glossolalia, tongue slaps and reed sucking. At the same time there are important contrasts in their playing, with the more Bop-oriented Potts coming across as an Eric Dolphy to Lacy’s Ornette Coleman.

Making no compromises for an audience that at first seems tentative in its applause before turning enthusiastic by the end, Lacy duck-quacks and peeps, backed by tremolo glissandi from the strings, while Potts honks and crests to altissimo squeals. The most characteristic of the McGhie band tracks is “The High Way”. Built on mercurial pitch slides and sul tasto sawing from Carter, intense rebounds from the drummer, plus Abei’s discordant harmonica squeals, the performance becomes more staccato and tension-ridden as it develops. Lacy and Potts circle around one another with squeaks and, split tones, eventually joining McGhie’s rat-tat-tats and Carter’s triple-stopped bounces for a smeared rhythmic tone that lingers past the selection’s end.

Although he too drifted more towards the mainstream playing with the likes of saxophonist Johnny Griffin before his death in 2002, Johnson was a regular part of Lacy’s ensembles up until 1989. On this, some of his earliest recorded work with the saxophonist, the drummer sticks pretty much to drum rolls and cymbal smashes. On “The Wage” for instance, it’s Carter’s thumps and spiccato sweeps down the bass neck that are more percussive than cymbal jangles and drum head rubs. Plus Lacy’s and Potts’ splayed multiphonics and tongue-slapped reed tones seem more attuned to the sampled war sounds than any military-styled pacing from Johnson.

It’s a different story on the climatic “The Wane” however, with hints of Lacy’s more mercurial strategy gradually being revealed. Carter’s sul tasto pumps again serve as the bottom, as the two saxophonists work out lockstep timbres. Here it’s Potts who exposes squeezed and shredded lines while Lacy’s slim obbligato slides complement them. By the end the reed harmonies suggest that musicians can be advanced improvisers without being completely discordant.

Taken together the CDs provide a fascinating look at the soprano saxophonist’s constant evolution. It would continue and encompass very little rote material until his death three decades later.

--Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Sun: 1. The Sun*+& 2. The Gap*+& 3. The Way (introduction)+; 4. The Way (take 5?)# 5. Improvisation (Numero Uno)# 6. The Way (take 6)# 7. Improvisation (Numero Due)# 8. Chinese Food (Cantata Polemica)# 9. The Woe: The Wax^~& 10. The Wage^ ~&11. The Wane^~&12. The Wake&~

Personnel: Sun: Enrico Rava (trumpet)*; Steve Lacy (soprano saxophone [except 3]); Steve Potts (alto saxophone)~; Richard Teitelbaum (synthesizer)#; Karl Berger (vibraphone)+; Irene Aebi (voice [1, 4, 6, 8, 12 ] and cello^); Kent Carter (bass)&; Aldo Romano* or Oliver Johnson~ (drums)

Track Listing: Estilhaços: 1. Presentation 2. Stations 3. Chips/Moon/Dreams 4. No Baby 5. The High Way

Personnel: Estilhaços: Steve Lacy (soprano saxophone); Steve Potts (alto saxophone); Irene Aebi (cello, transistor radio and harmonica); Kent Carter (bass) and Noel McGhie (drums and percussion)

August 16, 2012

Label Spotlight

SLAM Productions
By Ken Waxman

Serendipity not strategy led to the birth of the British label SLAM 23 years ago, which since that time, from its base in Abingdon, six miles south of Oxford, has grown to a catalogue of almost 160 releases from European, South and North American improvisers.

SLAM simply came about when journeyman multi-reedist George Haslam, who at 50 had played with everyone from ‘30s dance band trumpeter Nat Gonella to free music trombonist Paul Rutherford decided he wanted to release a disc of solo baritone saxophone improvisations. “I made a couple of LPs on Spotlite with my group, but I wanted to make a solo improvised recording and I knew this would not fit with Spotlite whose beginnings had been with Charlie Parker,” he recalls. “I spoke to Eddie Prevost [who runs the Matchless label] and others, coming to the conclusion that the best way to do this and have complete control, was to do it myself. Eddie advised me to do a CD, not an LP – which, in 1989, was excellent advice. In the event I recorded an album of solos and duos with Paul Rutherford called 1989 - and all that”.

The only idea was preserving his own work, he adds. “I had no intention of creating a new CD label. I played a concert in Oxford with [soprano saxophonist] Lol Coxhill, Paul Rutherford and [pianist] Howard Riley; Michael Gerzon made a beautiful recording and so I made the CD The Holywell Concert [1990]. Sometime later, Howard [Riley] approached me with a great recording by the quartet he co-led with [alto saxophonist] Elton Dean, asking if I would like to put it out ‘on your label’. I agreed and that was when the label was established.”

A one-man outfit, with Haslam preferring the title “sole proprietor”, SLAM soon grew exponentially as other musicians began offering him sessions to release. Not liking the clichéd “001”, his first CD was numbered “301” with a different numbering system needed for other release. UK musicians’ discs come out on the 200 series; the 400 series is for compilations; and 500 for non-UK artists. “One or two have slipped in the wrong series, purely by mistake,” he jokes.

Certainly there have been many CDs to deal with in nearly a quarter-century, during which Haslam has “built great working relations with studios, design artists, photographers, pressing and printing plants and legal advisors”. SLAM’s first non-British releases date from 1992 when Haslam was arranging a jazz festival in Oxford. Admiring the work soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy, with whom he had previously played, had done with pianist Mal Waldron, he invited them to the festival. The recorded concert became Let’s Call This … Estee. Interestingly enough this was Haslam’s first meeting with Waldron, with whom he would record Waldron-Haslam in 1994, which remains one of the label’s best-selling discs.

Always a world traveler –Haslam often plays in Eastern Europe and South America, in the mid-‘90s SLAM gradually began putting out discs featuring the saxman with local players.

“Since around 2005, he elaborates, “I’ve been contacted by musicians from many different countries – always unsolicited and quite out of the blue. Where appropriate I have tried to present their music. I guess they see SLAM as active in the same area of music as themselves.”

One improviser who does is Swiss trombonist Samuel Blaser, whose Solo Bone CD appeared on SLAM in 2008 and who is to record a new solo trombone album for the label at the end 2012. “Solo Bone was actually my very first solo concert I gave in Switzerland. It was recorded by Swiss radio and the results turned out so well that I decided to release it. I started shopping it around, but few labels were interested.One reason was due to the difficulties to sell such a challenging product. Unfortunately few people have an interest in listening to a trombone by itself. However, George automatically showed interest and asked me to send the recording. I heard back from him a couple of weeks after that telling me he loved it and that he wanted to put it out. I am really thankful George decided to release Solo Bone and even more happy to work with him on the following one. I guess George takes some risks to release this music. It’s challenging to put out free jazz music in today's market. Fortunately we still have people like George who continuously support our community.”

All discs that appear on SLAM in what Haslam calls a “joint venture” arrangement. Although he self-finances he own releases, other avenues such as recording grants available from the Arts Council of England were discontinued years ago. “Musicians need to find a level of funding which I put towards the costs of printing, pressing, licensing etc. The musicians’ financial input is expected to be returned through gig sales and royalties. I see SLAM sitting somewhere between a ‘self release’ and a signed up contracted operation. The musicians have complete control over the music, artwork etc., but hopefully benefit from being on an established label.”

Besides Haslam, who has appeared on about 40 of the imprint’s releases, SLAM’s the musician who has appeared on the most SLAM CDS is tenor saxophonist Paul Dunmall. “I knew George in the late ‘70s early ‘80s before he set up SLAM records when I played every Sunday night at the old fire station in Oxford,” recalls Dunmall. “George said he was going to start a label and when I recorded the double CD in 1993 that became Quartet, Sextet and Trio

I asked if he would be interested in releasing it. He agreed, and basically we have had a very good working relationship since then. Now sometimes I have a recording and think it would be perfect on SLAM. I don't remember him ever turning anything down that I have offered him. He does a very thorough job and really makes a lot of effort to get releases known in the press etc. Also he makes the business side of things very clear and he is a very honest man. He has a very open policy with his ideas of the music that will work on his label. It's not just improvised music, there's a huge variety of styles although of course it is jazz based somewhere along the line. SLAM really has had a huge impact on the improvised/jazz music scene especially here in the UK. You only have to look at his vast catalogue to see what a great job he has done.”

Dunmall, who started his CDR-only DUNS Limited label in 2000, says he did so to have discs to sell at gigs. “To release a CD back then was quite expensive, so I could probably just do one CD for SLAM a year if I was lucky, but with DUNS I could put out one CDR a month. But I think it was also important to have music released on established labels like SLAM. I hope the label keeps going for years to come. It will be tough, but George is a determined guy.”

Overall SLAM releases about six or seven CDs a year, with sales ranging from those which don’t reach three figures to those which sell about 1,000 copies or so. Besides Waldron- Haslam, the label’s other best sellers are Explorations … to the Mth Degree, a duet by drummer Max Roach and Waldron; and The Vortex Tapes, recorded at that London club by Dean in group featuring among others, bassist Paul Rogers, drummer Tony Levin and trombonist Rutherford.

Due to Prévost’s prescient advice there were never any SLAM LPs issued, although there were cassettes. “Last year I looked at producing an LP”, he reveals. “But the costs were quite high. I’d like to do it, apart from anything else the scope for artwork on a 12-inch sleeve is appealing,” he says. Digital downloads of 11 out-of-stock CDs can be ordered through iTunes, Amazon.co.uk and eMusic. As well, The Middle Half by the Esmond Selwyn Hammond Organ Trio is only for sale digitally. “Esmond’s first SLAM CD, Take That, sold out completely; his second The Axe, a collection of jazz standards on solo guitar, sold very few, in spite of rave reviews around the world. Esmond sells them by the dozen on his gigs,” te saxophonist explains. “When he came along with The Middle Half I discussed this with him. He wanted to stay with the label so we went for the digital release with limited quantity pressed for promotion and gig sales. It’s an experiment, but it’s too early to judge results, sales figures take months to trickle through.”

Among the sessions scheduled for release is what Haslam calls “a great new CD by Paul Dunmall playing Coltrane compositions. We sometimes take the masters too much for granted and it is good to be reminded of their contribution to the music.”

He adds: “When a recording is offered to me for release on SLAM, I listen to it and consider is SLAM the right place for it? I don’t have a style template to which the music must fit. There is a wide range of music on the label and the SLAM slogan has always been Freedom of Music. I remember many years ago playing a concert with Lol Coxhill; at one point he was asked to play a solo piece, He said he was going to play ‘Autumn Leaves’. ‘But this is a ‘free’ gig, Lol’ someone said. ‘So,’ said Lol ‘Am I free to play what I want?’ What ties the catalogue together, I hope, is the objective of a) preserving music which may otherwise be lost and b) making this music available to a listening public. To try to ‘educate’ or lead a public would be counterproductive but the music is there to be discovered.”

--For New York City Jazz Record August 2012

August 6, 2012

Label Spotlight

Potlatch Records
By Ken Waxman

Performing music’s loss is recorded music’s gain since Paris-based Jacques Oger abandoned his gig as a saxophonist with the free music trio Axolotl in the mid-1980s. Turning to market research, communication and translations, by 1997 he had saved enough to found Potlatch which to date has released 35 high-quality CDs. Oger spent 10 years with Axolotl, during which the band recorded two LPs and gigged frequently. He stopped playing, he admits “because I thought I was not creative enough to keep on in that area of music.” He was creative enough though when he translated his love for experimental music into a record label.

“My kids were older, so I had more time left to do something else,” Oger adds, describing the birth of Potlatch, which takes its name from the wealth redistribution system practiced by North American Indians. “I thought that a label was needed to promote musicians that I enjoyed and who weren’t known enough. Above all, there was the Internet starting and growing very fast. Suddenly it was very easy to have contacts with musicians, distributors and consumers all over the world via mailing lists, mail order and websites.” Another a plus was his experience as an itinerant musician. Asked how he corralled well known musicians such as Evan Parker and Joëlle Léandre to record for Potlatch, Oger replies: “I knew them personally. I explained that they could rely on me because I knew how to address the ‘market’; I had contacts with distributors, I knew journalists and reviewers in France and abroad.”

Early on output was divided between sessions specifically created for Potlatch and previously recorded material. As Potlatch’s sole owner and only employee, Oger uses different sound engineers and artists/designers on a project basis. “We often recorded at Les Instants Chavirés the main venue for improvised music in Paris, or sometimes at great festivals such as Meteo in Mulhouse.” One early CD, Outcome by Derek Bailey and Lacy stands out because it was recorded 16 years before it was released. Engineer/computer musician Jean-Marc Foussat, who recorded the majority of Potlatch’s early CDs, had the master on hand. “It made sense because Steve Lacy was living in Paris. Since I had attended his master class, I knew him,” remembers Oger. “Afterwards, I decided to give up on older material. I have to release material focused on the present. Music is changing, so labels must reflect new tendencies and trends.”

That has certainly happened as Potlatch has become one of the primary outlets for reductionist sounds. “There was a turning point with a new generation of musicians with other ideas of how to play. From 2002 on, my choices were orientated towards realms focusing on more spacious forms of music with new textures, slower pace, the presence of silence, a preference for collective sound rather than chatty ping-pong playing based on energy and spontaneity.”

Since Oger can’t afford to put out more than two or three CDs each year, selecting the right musicians and sessions to release is “the main job when you run a label, maybe the only one,” he asserts. “It’s hard even when you believe that you have some experience. I need to know what’s happening everywhere. I attend a lot of concerts; I listen to a lot of recordings. When I’m convinced by the quality of a musician or group of musicians, I ask if we can do something together. It can be a live recording, and we can make several before choosing the best, or it can be studio sessions.”

One player who benefitted from this due diligence is tenor saxophonist Bertrand Denzler, who has had four CDs on the label: two with Trio Sowari; another with a saxophone quartet; and a solo saxophone disc.

“In the late ‘90s and early ‘00s, other labels published my CDs. Working with them was a good experience, so I wasn’t thinking about recording for Potlatch,” he recalls. “I saw Jacques at many concerts though and we had interesting discussions about music. Then in 2004 Trio Sowari had its first concerts in France plus a two-day studio residency. Jacques came to one of those concerts in a tiny studio and enjoyed our music. He told me he would be interested in publishing a recording. I told him I would send him something. He immediately decided to release it.

“Two years later, Trio Sowari did a new CD and I asked Jacques to publish it. But he needs time before he can sell enough copies to finance the next one. Two years later, he put it out. With Propagations, Jacques heard our saxophone quartet in concert, but after we recorded, either we or he thought the results weren’t good enough until we finally came up with something in 2007. I recorded the solo CD one day in Paris and gave it to Jacques before other labels. I didn't expect him to release it. But he liked it enough to put it out.

“Jacques listens to the recording several times, until he knows exactly what he thinks. If he thinks something could be done to improve the disc, like editing and/or mastering or changing the order of the pieces, he asks the musicians what they think. But he respects the musicians’ choice. He does the same with the title of the CD and the graphic design.”

Denzler’s story is typical. Oger says he frequently receives unsolicited proposals, but rarely agrees to these sessions. He supports musicians obsessed with detail though. “Originality and quality are often hidden in very small details”, he avers. “Listen to the first minutes of Denzler’s Tenor. There are some amazing tiny things only detectable with headphones.” Finally he admits: “As a former musician, I give priority to my beloved instrument the saxophone.”

Christine Abdelnour is an alto saxophonist who benefitted from this when Potlatch released Ichnites featuring her duo with percussionist Pascal Battus. Asked why she recorded for Potlatch, Abdelnour, who has put out CDs with other companies, says: “Because it's a great label. The process was all about exchanging ideas. Jacques paid for the recording session and then we had a listening session where he said what he liked or didn’t. Then Pascal did the mixing. For the cover, Jacques brought our idea to his graphic designer who proposed several choices then Pascal and I decided on the titles. Finally he gave us 20 copies that we could sell at concerts.”

Declaring that “in our area of music, selling 500 copies today worldwide is great”, after Oger pays for pressing, printing and promotion, compensation for musicians varies. “Of course I always give them a good bunch of CDs they can sell at their concerts,” he declares. Furthermore, although the entire stock of discs such as The Contest of Pleasures has sold out, he admits that it’s too expensive to press new copies.

What he won’t do is press Potlatch LPs. “Never”, he insists. “LPs are too expensive to make and too hard to ship.” He’s also unsure about downloads. “Musicians can sell their music by download to everyone on the planet. If they can reach a large audience and earn some money, it’s great. But if a musician isn’t well known, he needs credibility and a label can bring him this needed credibility. It worked that way when I released [soprano saxophonist] Stéphane Rives’ solo CD Fibres; he gained recognition. Would it be possible if it was only sold by download? I’m not sure. [Percussionist] Lê Quan Ninh told me that over the past two years he only sold six copies of an out-of-print album on iTunes – and he’s well-known. For the near future I hope Potlatch can keep on bringing this credibility to musicians facing new challenges who deserve wider recognition.”

--For New York City Jazz Record June 2012

June 5, 2012

Andrea Centazzo

The New York City Jazz Record Interview
By Ken Waxman

Founder in the late ‘70s of ICTUS, one of the first European artist-run labels that recorded free music, Italian-American percussionist, composer and multi-media artist Andrea Centazzo is celebrating the label 35th anniversary at The Stone this month. The festival showcases the many genres of experimental music Udine, Italy-born Centazzo, 64, has been involved with over the years. On hand will be many of his collaborators from the US and Italy. Centazzo’s musical scope is so large that some of his other musical ventures, such as composing for film, theatre and large non-jazz ensembles, could barely be mentioned in the conversation below.

The New York City Jazz Record: Since ICTUS was based for many years in Italy, then re-located to Long Beach CA when you moved there in 2006, why celebrate its 35th anniversary in New York?

Andrea Centazzo: In 2010 I had a successful duo reunion concert with John Zorn at The Stone and he invited me to bring the ICTUS celebration to New York. Besides the Stone concerts, the festival will also take place this year in Italy and LA but with different programs and at a smaller scale. From 1978 to 1980 I had a [platonic] ‘love affair’ with Zorn, playing and recording with him as part of the rising Downtown Music Scene. He was also featured in my first composition for ensemble Environment for Sextet [1978, reissued as The New York Tapes]. We didn’t see each for over 30 years due to my change of direction. But in 2009 I was invited to conduct a John Cage Concerto for piano and orchestra in New York, the same night John was performing with his group. We met and we decided to revive the collaboration. As matter of fact on April 15 we’ll play again together [with others as part of The Stone’s Marathon Improv Benefit] and more is to come.

TNYCJR: A while ago you said you preferred to be described as ‘a composer who plays percussion … but it could be a film maker composing, or as a percussionist conducting an orchestra’. Have you since settled on a definition?

AC: Professionally I was born as percussionist, actually a drummer, but I always considered myself a composer playing percussion more than a drummer/percussionist. Probably this started with my fascination for solo percussion, presenting a complete musical expression, but I had to carefully plan, structure and compose the program. Now 35 years later I still love to perform but mostly my own compositions and improvisations. Except for collective improvisation I’m not interested in playing somebody else’s music.

I have to say that the experience that changed my life was the summer jazz clinic in Wengen [Switzerland] in 1970. It’s not that I learned much in 10 days, but drummers Pierre Favre, Peter Giger and Stu Martin “discovered” me and pushed me to turn professional. I was attending the The University of Trieste and had been playing for five years but straightahead jazz with combos and big bands or in rock bands. In Wengen I had the chance to listen live to some of the most prominent jazz players of that time, I even jammed with Johnny Griffin – I was just shaking – and make friends. It was there I understood that I was born not to be an attorney like my father and grandfather but a musician. Later I studied with Pierre, who I still adore for his immense talent and originality.

When I started to compose I could barely read orchestral music but I had the urge to express myself in an organized form so I started to seriously study composition by myself. Later a couple of great Italian composers, Bussotti and Gentilucci, taught me fundamentals, but I always composed as if I was in a trance. I remember in 1982 when I got the commission for my Andrea Centazzo Mitteleuropa Orchestra for a concert celebrating 1,000 years of Udine. I started to write and I finished it without any problem with the music flooding the pages. Composing is what I like the best along with filming. I think that everything in my life depends on Karma. I didn’t plan anything, but just followed the flow of the life events. Working with video came about in the same way. In 1984 out of the blue I decided to shoot my first video, Tiara, a journey to chilhood places. Yet the video won major awards at festivals around the world and I started to do that professionally.

I moved to Los Angles in 1990 and ever since the situation has never changed. I came with an exclusive agreement as composer with Warner Chappell, but my personality, a bit of misfortune and personal problems never gave me the opportunity to score for major movies. I did small independent movies.

Wengen was the beginning of the discovery. But that was still kind of traditional jazz environment. In 1972 I started listening to more advanced jazz and improvised music recordings and quickly made the transition. At the same time I was avidly listening to Balinese and contemporary classic music. That formed my peculiar musical personality. Transitions for me were easy, but unfortunately critics and audience didn’t follow and didn’t understand, so it has been really hard making a living being an improviser one day and the next day a composer, especially when I composed operas; or one day being a video maker and the next a multi-media artist.

TNYCJR: Back in Italy in the 1970s, how did you start playing with non-Italian musicians like Evan Parker, Gunter Hampel etc.? Was it a conscious decision? And outside of Americans – or musicians living in the US – do you still play with ‘foreigners’ today?

A.C.: Music is a universal language and has nothing to do in our era with nationality. I never considered Hampel a German or Parker an Englishman, just musicians with their treasures of experiences. I’ve lived in the US for 22 years and been an American citizen for 15 years, so what kind of ‘foreigners’ I wonder? I guess that the answer is yes, I still play with ‘foreigners’ today, but in this case Italians.

TNYCJR: During the ICTUS Records festival there are going to be three tribute nights, to Derek Bailey April 6; to Colin McPhee April 10; and to Steve Lacy April 13. Can you describe what influence each had on you?

A.C.: In 1976 after having spent three yeaars playing leftish political concerts in factories, in psychiatric hospitals, in public squares with pianist Giorgio Gaslini’s quartet I went to Paris and met Steve Lacy. I consider that encounter the beginning of my second life. We did a duo tour immediately after and the year later another with the addition of bassist Kent Carter. I remember vividly the first time we had an afternoon rehearsal. Working with Gaslini, I was used to follow rigidly the rules of the sideman and read a score. So to start, since we had no scores, or knew what we were going to play, I timidly asked, ‘Steve what you want me to do?’ He looked at me and placidly said: ‘Play what you feel.’ I’ll never forgot that moment in all my career. There was when the improvising percussionist was born. From that experience I have three great ICTUS albums (121,123,131), now re-mastered. Still fresh and interesting, since Lacy music is always exciting.

Derek Bailey was also very important but the collaboration was much shorter, resulting in the Drops CD. The tribute to Derek is geared toward the fact that after him I played and recorded with the best guitar player of improvised music such as Henry Kaiser, Eugne Chadbourne, Elliott Saharp, Fred Frith, Davey Williams ... you name it, And the idea to have some of them at the Stone was appealing since improvised guitar music wouldn’t be possible today without Derek’s work.

[Canadian composer and musicologist] Colin McPhee [(1900-1964)] was the man who brought Balinese music to the West and wrote compositions inspired by it. He was also the first to transcribe complex Balinese music. Since the beginning I have been attracted by Balinese minimalism and the sound of gongs and metallophones. Of course I was not the only one, Glass, Reiley, Reich and all the so-called minimal music school came from that music. When in 2002 I had the chance to do my Sacred Shadows [a multimedia project for gamelon ensemble and video images] with Balinese musicians I was in heaven. Finally I had the opportunity to write music for the originators of my artistic musical experience. I still consider that experience one of the best of my life.

TNYCJR: How and why did you found ICTUS in 1976, and why did it cease operation in 1984? How you were able to resuscitate the label in 2006?

TNYCJR: In 1976 my-then wife Carla Lugli and I started the label to free my music from the major labels that at that time were the only ones making records. It was a crazy but exciting experience. We were, together with Incus in Great Britain, FMP in Germany and ICP in Holland, one of the first avant-garde labels owned and operated by musicians. With ICTUS I had the chance, and especially the freedom, to record with the best musicians of that genre and experiment with all kind of crazy combinations from solo to orchestra. Due to financial reasons and also to the divorce from Carla, who ran the administrative side of the label, ICTUS collapsed in 1984. Then in 2006, thanks to Cezary Lerski of Polishjazz.com who was interested in a partnership, I had the chance to get the operation running again. The new catalogue is quite impressive since I have incorporated all my recording in it in the hope of having an logical archive of all my work. Cezary left two years ago and now I’m the only one doing everything. It’s kind of difficult again But with new technologies and the Internet, it’s certainly easier than it was in the ‘80s.

TNYCJR: Does ICTUS mean anything in particular, by the way?

A.C.: It means ‘downbeat’ in Latin

TNYCJR: Will any of your notated compositions, which are represented in the ICTUS catalogue be performed at the Stone? How did you get involved with composing by the way?

A.C.: Some will be presented during my sets on April 1, 10 and 12, and the string quartet of violinists Jessica Pavone and Concetta Abate, violist Liz Meredith and cellist Janel Leppin will play more of my compositions on April 4. The involvement in composing came out of my insatiable curiosity and open mind. I never cease to try something new. For me it could be deadly boring still sitting behind the drums and playing like 45 years ago.

TNYCJR: On April 7 you’ll present two sets by the 12-piece Italian Invasion Orchestra made up of top American and Italian players. Is this ad-hoc group a hommage to your Mitteleuropa Orchestra, which existed from 1980 to 1984?

A.C.: The Italian Invasion Orchestra is evidently an homage to my Andrea Centazzo Mitteleuropa Orchestra, but I doubt that we’ll have time to rehearse many of my compositions due to the Stone’s structure and program. But I’ll certainly pull out some easy pieces I played with the first band and we’ll improvise around them. I founded the orchestra in 1980 when the 15-piece ensemble was commissioned by the Cultural Affairs department of the city of Bologna to give a series of concerts. It lived four years, playing all over Italy and Austria. It was the first Italian ensemble of that kind and together with the Globe Unity Orchestra the only ones in Europe playing that kind of music. Great international improvisers along with young musicians were involved in it, including musicians who later became famous in Italy, such as saxophonists Roberto Ottaviano, Carlo Actis Dato, Gianlugi Trovesi and trumpeter Guido Mazzon as well as European and US players like violinist Carlos Zingaro, trumpeter Franz Koglmann, trombonist Radu Malfatti, bassist Mark Dresser etc. I love this definition of Mitteleuropa: ‘... Sort of like Braxton meets Xenakis meets Zappa’.

TNYCJR: Many of ICTUS’ newest CDs have you playing with experimental musicians such as Joe Giardullo [at the Stone April 1 and 14], Dave Ballou [at the Stone April 7 and 14] and Nobu Stowe, with whom you hadn’t worked with before. How did these associations come about and will they continue?

A.C.: In 2006 I had a call from pianist Nobu Stowe, a fan of my music, asking for collaboration. He organized a small East Coast tour with Perry Robinson and that was the occasion for my return to the improvised music scene. I’m really grateful to Nobu since he was the one who again started my career in this music. When that happened people started to say ‘Wow this guy isn’t dead. He’s still around. Well, let’s see if he can still hold his mallets…’ And all came along again.

TNYCJR: What about your experiments with so-called ethnic and especially so-called New Age music? How do you feel about being classified as a pioneering ‘New Age’ musician?

A.C.: I never asked for that label. But I still don’t know how to classify my music. I’ve made so many changes over the years, but I think that I still retain my own personality in all my experiments. I suspect that the Cetacea Project in 1990, a concert for ensemble and video images designed to sensitize people about the potential extinction of marine mammals in the Mediterranean, may be the origin for that ‘New Age’ label. But the music is certainly not ‘incense New Age’ background music. Actually Actis Dato has a couple of solos blowing like crazy on it.

TNYCJR: You also do multi-media work using video etc. It would appear that the Stone’s small space precludes any similar undertaking. Does that disappoint you?

A.C.: In the Tribute to Colin McPhee I have in the program Mandala, inspired by the Buddhist Universe, a solo multimedia work that combines percussion, digital percussion and computer sequencing with videos. Most of the solo concerts I’m playing now are based on a digital percussion Keyboard Kat mallet connected to an Apple Mac and I do looping and live playing. It seems that the Stone has a screen, but I’m still looking for a projector. If I find it I’ll probably perform the show. Certainly it’s not the perfect environment for such a project.

TNYCJR: Finally, as someone with a PhD in Ancient Music from the University of Bologna who has done educational work over the years, have you ever yearned to do more teaching?

A.C.: Actually at one point I was looking for an academic position. But it seems that in the US nobody really cares for me doing that, even with a PhD. I never had a fixed teaching job, but I always did it randomly in seminars, workshops and lectures. I still do so when somebody asks. Recently though the University of Bologna, which is the oldest in the world, instituted a Fondo Centazzo as a section of the performing arts library dedicated to me, where all my works, books, articles, media and my consistent collection of musical books are organically preserved for student studies. So yes, it’s kind of funny that I have no academic position

--For New York City Jazz Record April 2012

April 6, 2012

Rhapsody's 2011 Jazz Critics' Poll

Individual Ballot
From Ken Waxman

1) Your name and primary affiliation(s) (no more than two, please)

2) Ken Waxman

Jazz Word (www.jazzword.com )

3) Your choices for 2011's ten best new releases (albums released between Thanksgiving 2010 and Thanksgiving 2011, give or take), listed in descending order one-through-ten.

1. World Saxophone Quartet Yes We Can Jazzwerkstatt JW 098

2. Gerald Cleaver Uncle June Be It As I See It Fresh Sound New Talent FSNT-375

3. Hubbub Whobub Matchless MRCD 80

4. John Butcher & Gino Robair Apophenia Rastascan BRD 065

5. Daunik Lazro/Benjamin Duboc/Didier Lasserre Pourtant Les Cimes des Arbres Dark Tree DT 01

6. Marc Ducret Tower Vol. 2 Ayler Records AYLCD 119

7. Mural Live at the Rothko Chapel Rothko Chapel Publications No #

8. Connie Crothers/Bill Payne The Stone Set/Conversations New Artists NA 1044 CD

9. Schlippenbach Trio Bauhaus Dessau Intakt CD 183

10. Jamaaladeen Tacuma/Ornette Coleman For the Love of Ornette JazzWerkstatt JW 090

4) Your top-three reissues, again listed in descending order

1) FMP In Rückblick In Retrospect 1969-2010 FMP CD 137 - FMP CD 148

2) Steve Lacy School Days Emanem 5016

3) Sun Ra College Tour Vol. 1 The Complete Nothing Is… ESP Disk4060

5) Your choice for the year's best vocal album

There is none – 99% of so-called vocal jazz is no more than often superior pop music, if that.

6) Your choice for the year's best debut CD

Jaruzelski’s Dream-debut Jazz Gawronski Clean Feed CF 211CD

7) Your choice for the year’s best Latin jazz CD

Agustí Fernández & Joan Saura Vents psi 11.01

N.B.: Why is there a Latin-Jazz category if there isn’t a category for other hyphenated jazz music such as Klezmer-Jazz, Pop-Jazz, Classical-Jazz etc.? An exceptional so-called Latin-Jazz CD should be a good Jazz CD overall. Therefore I have chosen the best 2011 improvised CD played by two Latins – that is residents of Spain.

January 20, 2012

Steve Lacy

School Days
Emanem 5016

By Ken Waxman

Nearly 50 years later it seems unbelievable, but this all-star quartet broke up after a couple of years of almost no work because few wanted to support a band that exclusively played what was then thought of as far-out music by pianist/composer Thelonious Monk. Yet, on the basis of the material recorded here in 1963, with Henry Grimes stentorian walking bass timbres and Dennis Charles’ free-flowing drum beats on side, soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy and trombonist Roswell Rudd were already so familiar with the Monk cannon that they were able to create their own swinging variations on such now-familiar Monk fare as Monk’s Dream and Brilliant Corners.

The seven spiky and unconventional songs, recorded in a New York coffee house by the late Toronto poet Paul Haines, then resident in Manhattan, demonstrate how Lacy’s gritty, yet lyrical tones imposingly blended with the modern gutbucket styling of Rudd. These treatments of Monk’s inimitable compositions also suggest the distinctive concepts that would help Lacy (1934-2004) develop into a major improviser and admired composer during the rest of his life.

As an added bonus this reissue contains two bootleg sound quality tracks – not recorded by Haines – from a 1960 jazz festival appearance with Lacy as a member of a Monk combo of heavyweights, the pianist, drummer Roy Haynes, bassist John Ore and tenor saxophonist Charlie Rouse. Historically matchless, the versions of Ba-lue Bolivar Ba-Lues-Are and Skippy provide insight, showing how Lacy’s tart, taut tone created a sonic role for itself within the tight-knit group’s performances.

-- For Whole Note Vol. 17 #4

December 10, 2011

FMP In Rückblick

In Retrospect 1969-2010
FMP CD 137 - FMP CD 148

Something in the Air: FMP`s 40th Anniversary

By Ken Waxman

Throughout jazz history, independent labels have typified sounds of the time. In the Swing era it was Commodore; Modern jazz was prominent on Blue Note and Prestige; and with Improvised Music, FMP is one of the longest lasting imprints. Celebrating its 40th anniversary, the Berlin-based label has given listeners a spectacular birthday present with FMP In Rückblick – In Retrospect 1969-2010,12 [!] CDs representing FMP’s past and future – the oldest from 1975, the newest, by American cellist Tristan Honsinger and German guitarist Olaf Rupp from 2010, half previously unissued – plus an LP-sized, 218-page book, lavishly illustrated with contemporary photographs, posters, album covers and a discography.

FMP’s musical scope was overwhelming. In this box, for instance, are discs by an early Pan-European ensemble, the Globe Unity Orchestra (GUO); solo sessions by Belgian pianist Fred Van Hove, German bassist Peter Kowald and others; outstanding combo dates including British saxophonist Evan Parker and Swiss pianist Irène Schweizer; and instances of minimalism from German string-player Hans Reichel and Austrian trombonist Radu Malfatti. Ferocious German saxophonist Peter Brötzmann, who almost single-handedly formulated Free Music in Germany and helped create FMP, is represented on three CDs. No exercise in nostalgia, the book outlines in unsentimental details how the revolutionary climate of the late 1960s sustained the growth of tough, experimental, music modeled on American-influenced Free Jazz. FMP’s value was that by 1971 it was recording distinctively European Free Music, blending layers of contemporary notated and electro-acoustic music, Fluxus art ideas plus folk-based material onto the American base. Triumphs such as FMP’s documentation of American pianist Cecil Taylor and its wide dissemination of essential American, European and created-in-East-Germany discs are also noted.

Broadminded, FMP never asserted European musical superiority however. For example, Steve Lacy Solo 1975 & Quintett 1977 In Berlin CD 02 (FMP CD 138), is a reissue by Americans Lacy on soprano saxophone; alto saxophonist Steve Potts; bassist Kent Carter and drummer Oliver Johnson plus Swiss cellist Irène Aebi. The band’s super-fast harmonies plus the contrast between Potts staccato and linear style and Lacy’s bugle-like moderato blowing atop Carter and Johnson’s Freebop backbeat, demonstrate why the quintet was admired. Most of the CD consists of some of Lacy’s earliest solos, including The Duck. Characteristically that thrilling improvisation is built from a collection of kazoo-like reed bites, split-tone yelps, hissing and rasping growls and muffled mid-range retorts. Lacy defines free music.

Another way to mark the evolution of FMP and European Free Music is by following the thread from Schweizer/Carl/Moholo 1975/77 Messer und… CD 03 (FMP CD 139) to MANUELA+ Live In Berlin 1999 CD 10 (FMP CD 146). Almost 25 years later Rüdiger Carl’s mercurial and atonal saxophone squeals sprayed out in never-ending blasts alongside Louis Moholo’s paced drumming and Schweizer’s percussive pianism with a hint of Stride, has mutated into contradictory but equally aleatory inventions. Now Carl, in the company of Carlos Zingaro’s spiccato violin buzzes, Jin Hi Kim’s throbbing komungo strings, and Reichel’s thumping daxophone rhythms layer the interlude with distinctive colors from his new instruments of choice – light-toned clarinet and pumping accordion glissandi. Without lessening his commitment to improvised sounds the former leather-lunged saxman, now operates in a more placid area, as his quivering intonation toughens the other strings’ tremolo jetes while the daxophone’s strident whines provide comic relief.

Demarcation of a unique style – which suggested a different path than all-out Free Jazz characterized by discs such as Baden-Baden ’75 CD 01 (FMP CD 137), with five previously unissued performances by the 16-piece GUO providing plenty of space for genre-defining reed-splintering solos from Parker and Brötzmann; the soaring triplets of trumpeter Manfred Schoof; plus high-energy piano dynamics from GU leader Alexander von Schlippenbach – was germinated by another of this collection’s reissued CDs. In 1977, trombonist Malfatti’s and guitarist Stephan Wittwer’s UND? ... plus CD 06 (FMP CD 142) conclusively proved that interactive pointillism and polyphony as reductionist chamber improv was another option. Sometimes this strategy involves Wittwer’s kinetic rasgueado seemingly filling all the sonic space, before Malfatti’s puffs, mouthpiece osculation or leaking discordant tones move to the forefront. Despite this, connections are always linear with tracks like Cotpotok (still valid) exhibiting a broken octave coda of koto-like picks from the guitarist plus lower-case slurs and growls from the brass man.

Underlining the sparks he still generates and his importance to FMP, as player, designer and talent scout – the book’s first and final images are of Brötzmann in quartet formation and in frantic performance with Taylor. Similarly besides his GUO affiliation, two other CDs demonstrate the saxophonist’s prowess. Close Up/Die Like A Dog 1994 CD 08 (FMP CD 144), is a hitherto unreleased concert date with one of his most powerful formations: Japanese trumpeter and electronics manipulator Toshinori Kondo, Americans William Parker on bass and Hamid Drake on drums and tablas, plus Brötzmann playing saxophones, tarogato and clarinets; and Wolke in Hosen/Brötzmann Solo 1976 CD 05 (FMP CD 141), the reedist’s first solo disc. On it he shows the breath of his skills, from surprisingly mellow, yet atonally-tinged alto saxophone vibrations on Two Birds is a Feather to the elongated and contrasting contralto and altissimo obbligatos on Piece for Two Clarinets; to how he uses tuba-like blasts and slurs plus heavy flutter tonguing to turn Humpty Dumpty, a showcase for his bass sax, into a jaunty march. Characteristically Close Up demonstrates not only high-quality Free Music, but also other musical currents welcomed by FMP. On the 46-minute Close Up/Man, Kondo’s flutter tongued runs and plunger tones are further fragmented by electronic wave forms, while Drake’s rhythmic tabla pulses suggest World Music. Meantime Brötzmann progressively masticates and splinters dissident ostinatos from tenor saxophone or bass clarinet, using the nephritic friction for call-and-response with the trumpeter’s rubato strategies, and sometimes stopping for speedy spicatto friction from Parker, all backed by the percussionist’s ruffs and pops.

Brötzmann is still going strong 16 years later, as are many improvisers recorded by FMP from its beginning. Nonetheless, as Stretto CD 12 (FMP CD 148) demonstrates, new music still comes from the label. Spiced with aviary field recordings, the eight tracks blend the timbres from cellist Honsinger’s sardonic verbal humor, col legno smacks or enhanced legato quivers with Rupp’s chromatic frails plus spidery finger picking. With new generations to record, perhaps FMP can last for another 40 years.

-- For Whole Note Vol. 16 #7

April 8, 2011

Steve Lacy

November
Intakt CD 171

Urs Leimgruber

Chicago Solo

Leo Records CD LR 570

Evan Parker

Whitstable Solo

psi 10.01

At this late date there’s nothing particularly startling about solo saxophone sessions. What is remarkable about the reed essays here is how differently master improvisers approach the challenge.

American Steve Lacy (1934-2004), who arguably perfected the concept in the early 1970s, was wedded to the song form, as he demonstrates on November, one of his final solo recording. Briton Evan Parker, 65, who shortly after Lacy’s experiments brought the saxophone further into the realm of abstractions, multiphonics and tonal coloration, optimizes the spatial and resonate qualities of an older church on Whitstable Solo. Meanwhile Swiss Urs Leimgruber, 58, who studied with Lacy and has recorded with Parker, has likewise evolved his own variation on this reed investigation; more abstract than Lacy’s design, but less concerned with extended circular breathing than Parker’s initiative.

If there’s one track more poignant than the rest on Lacy’s CD, then it’s “Tina’s Tune”. Composed for a fellow musician who died of cancer, it was frequently performed by Lacy during his final year as he too succumbed to the disease. Besides the mid-range accelerations and pressurized licks from his horn, his defiant recitation of the phrase, “If I must die, let it be autumn when the dew is dry” confirms that the master musician had resolved to operate at the top of his form until the end.

And he did, as further pieces like “The Rent” and “Moms” demonstrate. The former, with its buffo, off-kilter swing, sounds like a composition of Thelonious Monk, one of the saxophonist’s major influences, and is played with a broken-octave forward motion in multiple theme variations. The latter tune’s theme variations are feathery and moderato on the other hand, mixing upwards split tones and downwards slurs and achieving a bugle-call-like tattoo at the end.

Serious about his art, Lacy also never abandoned the idea that improvisation could also be entertaining. “The Hoot”, a supple salute to tenor saxophonist John Gilmore, for instance, includes a freylach-like riff plus lyrical reprises; while “The Door” along with bell-muting and the intervallic long tones he plays, finds the saxophonist knocking twice – at the tune’s exposition and its finale – on the wood of a nearby piano.

His justifiably famous fowl salute, here called “The New Duck” encompasses subterranean growls dragged from the horn’s body tube and rappelling and rasping split tones. At the same time Lacy produces reed quacks here and ensures that the ending resembles “East St. Louis Toddle-O”, an early composition by his other acknowledged influence, Duke Ellington.

There are those who may figure that quantum physics or aleatory asides may have more to do with Parker’s saxophone strategies than Monk or Ellington. But the British reedist has never negated his ties to Jazz and certainly played and plays with Energy Music enthusiasm in orchestral projects like the Brotherhood of Breath and Globe Unity. However over the years Parker has never stopped innovating. Committed to absolute music, he’s always trying out new configurations and facing new challenges. He does so here when he determines how the architectural qualities of a large church affect his mercurial style.

The most obvious consequence is the spatial set up, which creates a multiplicity of echoes and reverberations when he unleashes the circular-breathed reed polyphony for which he’s best known. As the bravura measures of pressurized chirps, broken octave microtones and reflected timbres enter the sanctified space, repercussions multiply. Ricocheting back at and inside the saxophone bell, an aural picture of a regiment of hard-blowing Parkers emerges, with each arpeggio or glissandi contributing to the whole, even while forging an individual path.

Close listening reveals that creating never-ending vibratos and trills isn’t Parker’s only game plan. On “Whitstable Solo 3”, for instance, some of the variations moderate from andante to allegro without altering the grain and false register cries are replaced by moderated, lyrical, almost rococo passages. Surprisingly, passages in “Whitstable Solo 5” sound almost mainstream before they build up to double and triple flutter-tonguing. However the ultimate chorus is altogether reflective, following a pause for dramatic and melodic effect.

Interestingly enough, the most characteristic Parker intonation appears on the final extended track, which was actually recorded before the others. Stretching past false registers, the saxophonist reveals swelling abstract microtones that appear to pulse amoeba-like while becoming gradually more strident and inchoate. Creating an acoustic version of signal-processed delay with extensive lip, tongue and breath work, the textures continue undulating and spinning, revealing otherwise masked ghost notes and partials. The same legion of saxophonist exerts itself by the finale which eventually diminishes with an extended fluttery trill.

Trills, shrills, whistles and whoops are also sounded by Leimgruber in a Chicago studio during the course of two maximized improvisation and a less than 4½-minute coda that make up Chicago Solo. From the beginning, there’s an inexorable feeling of forward motion as cursive concentrated trills, muted reed bites and discolored whistles format and reformat themselves into oozing squirts of intense textures and endlessly replicating split tones.

Exposing partials, nodes and reed coloration, the range depicted has more to do with distinctive saxophone properties than melodic niceties. While the alternations are among resonating, back-of-throat growls, flute-pitched hisses and strident squeaks, that often, like Parker, suggest multiple saxophonists improvising, the tonal centre holds. It may appear that the reed man is playing sonic hide-and-seek with saxophone timbres, yet by the end not only does the atomized interface begin to concentrate, but Leimgruber also introduce a fresh variant as mouse-like peeps seem to ricochet off the sides of the saxophone to re-enter the bell.

Overall the second variation is more aggressive, with tongue slaps sporadically trading places with squeaking pressures and altissimo cries punctuating the narrative. Following a chromatic exposition where these techniques enliven the line like the sighting of small hills on a flat prairie landscape, Leimgruber makes room for a concentrated interlude of quivering body tube rumbles, finger-tip key rattling and percussive tongue slaps. Disassembling his instrument to sound its different parts, the saxophonist eventually concentrates on forcing pressurized air through the horn’s body tube so that it reflects the metal finish as well as the horn’s insides. Nearly soundless puffs mark the diminuendo ending.

Experimentation mixed with expertise is what you hear on these CDs. Each of these extended essays in improvisation is valuable in its own right.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Chicago: 1. Chicago Solo One 2. Chicago Solo Two 3. Chicago Solo Three

Personnel: Chicago: Urs Leimgruber (soprano saxophone)

Track Listing: Whitstable: 1. Whitstable Solo 1 2. Whitstable Solo 2 3. Whitstable Solo 3 4. Whitstable Solo 4 5. Whitstable Solo 5 6. Whitstable Solo 6 7. Whitstable Solo 7 8. Whitstable Solo a-w

Personnel: Whitstable: Evan Parker (soprano saxophone)

Track Listing: November: 1. The Crust 2. Moms 3. Tina’s Tune 4. The Door 5. Blues for Aida 6. The Hoot 7. The New Duck 8. The Rent 9. The Whammies 10. Reflections

Personnel: November: Steve Lacy (soprano saxophone)

November 29, 2010

Sound Commitments Avant-Garde Music and the Sixties

Edited by Robert Adlington
Oxford University Press

“If you remember the Sixties, it means you weren’t there” is a cliché with a kernel of truth in it – especially the insistence that rock sounds subsumed other music then. Yet the Sixties also saw mass acceptance of New and electronic music, while jazz’s most radical sounds divorced it from its role as entertainment.

Sound Commitments aims to redefine that momentous decade in a dozen essays about advanced sonic experimentation that tried to negotiate the currents between political movements and individual expression. On the evidence, triumph of the later over the former created the longest lasting sounds.

Some essays are more insightful than others. Most notable are Benjamin Piekut’s piece on leftist composer Henry Flynt; Amy Beal’s history of the pioneering improvising/electronic group Musica Elettronica Viva (MEV); plus Yayoi Everett’s take on Japanese avant-garde music; and Peter Schmeltz’s tale of how one Moscow studio was a centre of pre-Glasnost sonic adventures.

Others may be only of specialist interest. Beate Kutsche’s elaboration of the socio-political debate involving Süddeutscher Runfunk’s music producer refusing to premiere Nikolaus Huber’s Harakiri, after it was commissioned, retells a brouhaha in beer stein. Similarly Sumanth Gopinath’s parsing of Steve Reich’s 1966 tape-loop piece, Come Out, which the composer says is open to many interpretations, attempts to politicize by inference. Insisting, for instance, that Reich’s tape manipulation “doing violence” to the source is comparable to the police violence done to the subject is far-fetched.

Somewhere in the middle is Bernard Gendron’s examination of how the 1964 October Revolution concerts and formation of the Jazz Composers Guild, led to acceptance of so-called Second Wave avant-garde jazz musicians. Crucially, the one essay dealing exclusively with jazz, examines economic necessities and artistic exploitation rather than the art music grants system at a time when “the artificial borders between classical and jazz experimentalism were still being strongly policed by high culture”. Unfortunately Gendron’s evidence for the canonization of the Second Wave, based on specialist magazine coverage is somewhat spurious, considering that eventually he writes “economics trump[ed] aesthetics” as rock music gained massive popularity.

Subverting so-called popular sounds to fit composed music is a book-long theme. A member of the hard-line Workers World Party, Flynt extended his criticism of “European white ruling class art” not only by demonstrating against a Karlheinz Stockhausen concert, but also by insisting that “Negro vernacular music” must be the only sounds for Marxist-Leninists. He also attempted to translate Ornette Coleman’s innovations to violin when recording agit-prop songs with his rock-blues band.

Similarly the members of Rome-based MEV, an improvising group consisting of composers, operated as a “tribe” that “believed we could transform the world,” recalls Alvin Curran. Other notable MEVers were Frederic Rzewski, Richard Teitlelbaum and Steve Lacy. Utilizing a portable synthesizer, MEV staged loft performances with audience participation plus illegal outdoor shows using radios and contact microphones. Encouraged by the climate for New music in Italy – and supported by American foundation funding – that version of MEV splintered following conflicts between those with conservatory background and the self-taught. {FIX]

Elsewhere, performances given at Tokyo’s privately funded Sôgetsu Centre, evolved from those involving a blend of traditional Japanese and advanced music – including a John Cage showcase – to Happenings such as Yoko Ono’s “Cut Piece” dealing with voyeurism and violence. “Themes of social alienation and individual autonomy … attempt [ed] to transcend the norms and hierarchies of traditional Japanese society”, notes Everett.

Analogous, but unique, the concert series utilizing the ANS synthesizer at Moscow’s Scriabin Museum – named for composer Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin – functioned in the Vnye border in-and-outside of officialdom because of inventor Yevgeniy Murzin’s high-level party contacts. Although the technology-loving Soviets couldn’t afford to mass produce the ANS, the existing one “officially disappeared” into the museum. Thus experimental music involving trance, jazz, dance, improv, Happenings, costumes and puppets flourished at the Scriabin. Murzin’s 1970 death meant that rock bands such as Boomerang literally took centre stage. Although the museum’s experiments meant that jazz and rock were judged by the same criteria as so-called “academic, intellectual” music, the Scriabin was “dissolved” in 1975 and the ANS transferred to Moscow State University.

Recounting little-known tales like these confirms Sound Commitments value, in tracing avant-garde sounds’ movement from the academy to the streets. More volumes of its quality about those times would be welcome.

-- Ken Waxman

-- For MusicWorks Issue #106

March 8, 2010

Musica Elettronica Viva

MEV 40
New World Records 80675-2

Consisting of a nucleus of academically trained composers who promoted free improvisation and group interaction, Musica Elettronica Viva (MEV) was the sort of musical aggregation that could only have been born in the 1960s.

Yet as this absorbing four-CD set of MEV performances – from its beginning in 1967, to its 40th anniversary – proves, the group’s triumphs are musically sophisticated as well as sociologically notable. Willingly subsuming the vaulted tradition of a single composer into group interaction, MEV’s most notable pieces added the smarts of jazz improvisers and the sonic versatility of increasingly complex electronic instruments to the compositional stew. Furthermore, the group has survived all these years because it never allowed electronics to submerge its initial humanistic and populist approach.

Founded in Rome by three American composers studying in that city: Alvin Curran (b. 1938), Frederic Rzewski (b. 1938) and Richard Teitelbaum (b. 1939), MEV members were at that time some of the few so-called serious musicians performing for young hippies and politicos in that city’s coffee houses, universities, factories and open- air plazas. Audience participation in these free-form extravaganzas was a norm, although the first-class tracks on this set showcase only professionals.

For more than 30 years, probably the most important MEV fellow traveler was expatiate American soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy (1934-2004). Paris-based Lacy’s experience in first Dixieland and then Free Jazz not only added a lyrical construct to the group’s performances but replaced a reliance on electronics with masterful acoustic techniques. Another valuable associate was trombonist Garrett List (b. 1943). An American though Belgium-based, List is more affiliated with theatre pieces and New music than jazz, but his erudite instrumental control strengthens the performances still further on the pieces on which he’s featured.

Ironically, “Stop The War”, recorded in 1972 without Lacy but with percussionist Gregory Reeves and Karl Berger on marimba as well as List, Curran, Rzewski and Teitelbaum, is the most jazz-like – as well as the most programmatic – track. Commenting on the Viet Nam war, the output from the synthesizers used by Curran and Teitelbaum is almost visually descriptive. There are fortissimo allusions to explosions, jagged beeps, watery whooshes and short-wave-like static. Meanwhile List honks and slurs, Berger whaps his wooden keys to produce full-force reverberation, Reeves taps out an intermittent marital beat and Curran’s piccolo trumpet asides add to the contrapuntal timbres that underlie the performance. Among the broken octaves and split tones, Rzewski provides his own commentary with metronomic piano chording. Among the recognizable melodies he plays are a sardonic “When Johnny Comes Marching Home” and a concluding “Taps”.

Lacy, who appears on tracks recorded in 1982, 1989 and 2002, gives even more focus to the proceedings. By that point the core trio had graduated from using such jerry-built instruments as home-made synthesizer, a thumb piano attached to motor oil can and an amplified glass plate with springs to using poly Moogs, modular synthesizers and microcomputers. Yet during a more-than 87-minute performance from 1982, stretched over the first tracks on two discs, the soprano saxophonist’s straightforward acoustic exposition encourages everyone to substitute shape for self-indulgence

Tentatively and authoritatively affiliated staccato timbres from saxophone and trombone (List) not only provide obbligato reflections of one another, but are captured and processed by the electronics. Added to this is Rzewski’s processional prepared-piano chording. Eventually the aggressive thumps, clanks and pulsated textures from the blurry synthesized flutters are pushed to one side. Eventually the trombonist’s braying plunger work and the saxophonist’s concentrated split tones join Curran’s raucous piccolo trumpet for a definite, raucous finale.

Even more breath-taking is Lacy’s final recorded appearance with MEV in 2002. By this time samplers and Max/MSP real-time digital manipulating programs were the norm for Curran and Teitelbaum. Yet the shimmering wave forms still don’t dominate. The acoustic side, which includes Lacy’s soprano, List’s trombone and Rzewski’s piano is further strengthened by the addition of George Lewis (b. 1952), equally proficient on trombone and computer. Meanwhile the other two use the electronic interface and programmed applications to create unique sampled and reprocessed sounds. At one point, dexterously harmonized horn parts share space with sampled snatches of cantorial chants and a loop of vernacular street phrases.

Meanwhile Lacy’s discursive reed outlines the double-stopped theme as Rzewski kinetically vibrates cadenzas with sympathetic soundboard echoes. As the electronics shimmer in wave-modulated bursts, the pianist’s burlesque arpeggios turns serious, backing up interaction among Curran braying shofar tones, chirping soprano saxophone trills and arching trombone slurs. By the time the head is recapped at a slightly slower tempo, List has even movingly growled the lyrics of “You Are My Sunshine.”

Completing the set are a quiet, almost completely electronic track by the core trio from 2007 and a 30-minute free-for-all from 1967 that added a vocalist and tenor saxophonist. Every track balances anarchy and formalism to create something more then improvised, electronic or so-called serious music. MEV performs sui generis modern music period.

-- Ken Waxman

-- For Whole Note Vol. 14 #10

July 3, 2009

Steve Lacy-Roswell Rudd Quartet

Early and Late
Cuneiform Records Rune 250/251

Slightly deceptively titled this memorable two-CD set celebrates the four-decades-long collaboration between trombonist Roswell Rudd and soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy. The title is ambiguous because while four tracks are by the legendary 1962 Lacy-Rudd quartet, the remaining nine showcase the reconstituted partnership late (1999) and very late (2002) in its tenure – Lacy died in 2004.

Overall the quartet – featuring bassist Bob Cunningham and drummer Dennis Charles in 1962 and bassist Jean- Jacques Avenel and drummer John Betsch later on – performs the timeless repertoire that characterized Lacy-Rudd meetings in the intervening years: single lines by Cecil Taylor, Herbie Nichols and Rudd plus five originals by Lacy and a large helping of Thelonious Monk’s music, which the two championed years before its adoption by the repertory movement.

Perhaps the most noticeable difference between 1962 and afterwards, is the bright, neo-Dixie textures of both soloists. Young Lacy could be playing clarinet and young Rudd’s tailgate slurs are obvious. Combining inverted sticking and press rolls, Charles’ playing is unique as well, although the bassist is merely a walker.

Skip forward and the horns’ pitches have darkened, but each man’s attack is more supple and distinctive. Avenel’s strumming pulses and double-stopping is at a similar high level, as are Betsch’s rolls and rebounds. The result is a bittersweet concoction emphasizing Rudd’s gruff smears and Lacy’s pinched trills. Lacy’s “Blinks” becomes a slippery tone poem with the soprano’s peeping split tones buoyant, while the trombonist’s low-pitched snorts and rhythmic breaths encompass nods to Kid Ory and “Chattanooga Choo Choo”.

This intermingling of sweet and sour is most evident on Rudd’s “Bamako”, given a Latinesque bounce by Betsch. Lacy’s unrestrained note-holding open up into legato phrasing, while Rudd, referencing “Take the A Train” and “Darktown Strutters’ Ball” chromatically builds a solo out of bitten-off notes and elongated smears, concluding with gutbucket growls.

Sadly this duo will never play again.

-- Ken Waxman

In MusicWorks Issue #101

July 2, 2008

Steve Lacy/John Heward

Recessional (for Oliver Johnson)
Mode Avant 04

Culmination of a 20-year friendship, Montreal drummer John Heward’s and American soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy’s first – and last – duo concert is preserved on this CD. A less-than-39-minute bagatelle, Recessional gains added poignancy due to Lacy’s death from cancer a year later.

It’s fitting that the live show honored Oliver Johnson, long-time drummer in the saxophonist’s Paris-based sextet. For Heward, a renowned Canadian painter and sculptor, has recently evolved into an avocational percussionist, proficient enough to play with improv masters like multi-instrumentalist Joe McPhee and violinist Malcolm Goldstein

Sensitive yet sturdy, Heward’s duple meter rumbles, cymbal slaps, press rolls and drum-top pitter patter provide the perfect backdrop for Lacy’s improvisations, which after all are the main draw here. Unobtrusive, he fluidly marks tempo and timbre changes along with the saxophonist.

Lyrical and polyphonic with a suggestion of both “Taps” and tap dancing, the main theme is the finale of the concert. Repetitive, melancholy and celebratory, it culminates in an emphasized, echoing split tone from Lacy.

Earlier, the saxophonist, who first defined the soprano’s role in modern jazz, displays his matchless technique. He produces a wide, almost Dixieland-like vibrato at times, and straight, sharp clipped tones elsewhere. Flutter tonguing, double-tonguing and reverberating his body tube, his collection of quacks, snarls and growls is second to none. Yet never do these narrowed, nasal pitches or spit-encrusted obbligatos fail to communicate. Jittery reed-biting textures plus rubato tongue-stopping surround concise story-telling phrases. Meanwhile, the drummer uses bell ringing, kalimba scrapes and press rolls to underline and extend the multiphonic interface.

Never to be repeated, the CD faithfully captures a moment in time.

-- Ken Waxman

-- For CODA Issue 330

January 1, 2007

JOËLLE LÉANDRE/INDIA COOKE

Firedance
Red Toucan # RT 9327

STEVE LACY/JOËLLE LÉANDRE
One More Time
Leo Records CD LR 422

Partnerships new and old, each of these fine CDs feature French bassist Joëlle Léandre bonding musically with an American. Both prove that the versatile Paris-based low-pitched string player can adapt and amplify unique timbres produced by other players who have little in common besides birthplace.

Fittingly each was recorded outside the United States. On ONE MORE TIME, her main man is the late soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy, with the CD recorded in Brussels during one of the longtime expatriate’s farewell to Europe concerts before he relocated to Boston. FIREDANCE finds the bull fiddler at the Guelph (Ontario) Jazz Festival matching licks with Bay-area violinist India Cooke. Léandre’s longtime experience with outside string slingers like Lisbon’s Carlos Zingaro makes her the perfect foil for Cooke, who has played with advanced bassists like Canadian Lisle Ellis. Both also worked with trombonist George Lewis.

Poignant, especially after you hear Lacy’s complimentary telephone message to Léandre that is its final track, the CD is doubly valuable because it’s one of the saxman’s final documents before his death in 2004. But after a half-century as an improviser Lacy was no sentimentalist. He praises the duo work because he knows how good it is.

One of the reasons the French bassist with the classical background and the dyed-in-the-wool American Free Jazzman worked so well together was a shared understanding of performance and links to their respective instruments. Part of “One More Time 3”, for instance, features Léandre’s skewed bass licks introduced by a bit of music hall-like scat singing. The fit is perfect as is Lacy’s half-sung/half-spoken exhortation for “one more time” at the beginning of the tune. More vaudeville than concert hall, its very cadences mirror his distinctive gravelly horn chirps when he finally concentrates on the saxophone.

Someone who never lost sight of the song form, as benefits a discipline of Thelonious Monk, there are points in this recital that you swear there’s a show tune lurking somewhere inside Lacy’s improvisation. This tendency and so much more is displayed on the more-than-32-minute first track.

Ricocheting between broken octaves and double counterpoint, the two musicians finesse a collection of repeated notes, slurs, squirming vibrations, trills and slides. When he modulates towards coloratura, she stands her ground with staccato sweeps. Should he sideslip and flutter-tongue, she retorts with sul tasto patterning and by striking the bass’s ribs and belly. Following a few duck-like quacks he fades into the background at midpoint, allowing her to use tremolo multiphonics to involve all her strings in steady architectural motions. Returning to the fray, tooting and triple-tonguing, the reedist’s tongue stops and trills are backed with sul tasto bowing that creates extra textural graininess. Eventually his falsetto cries bring forth sul ponticello stopping from her lowest strings, as the two finally resolve the piece with a simultaneous climax.

If despite the gaps, ONE MORE TIME seems all of a part, then FIREDANCE is definitely divided into seven sections. Also despite the early hour – the concert began at 10:30 a.m.– and unlike the bittersweet Lacy meeting, the Cooke- Léandre get-together was so celebratory, that the fiddler was emboldened to try tap dancing on the polished wooden floor at the beginning of track five.

More evenly matched than the bassist and saxophonist, the two players not only produce every sort of string permutations, but are moved to verbalization every so often. Cooke’s vocal expressions at one point resemble shamanistic speaking-in-tongues, while Léandre’s could be cattle drive wrangler whoops.

Individually, their techniques run from bumble bee-like spiccato chording from the violinist to sonorous, wide-ranging sweeps and plucks from the double bassist. Together the expansions can move from staccato runs to basso construction that appears to involve the instruments’ tail pieces as much as the lower-pitched strings. Comfortable with one another, often both apply enough torque to their strings so that the resulting timbres concentrate into dense polyharmony. Additionally, when Léandre vibrates her instrument’s highest points and Cooke’s her axe’s lowest, distinguishing one from the other is nearly impossible.

Remaining a European, the bassist, who always insists that she’s never played “jazz” is linked to Continental New music when she stops her upper partials to create multiphonics. Conversely, when the fiddler implies different textures, they’re definitely American – her pizzicato strums are as deliberate as are those from a Bluegrass banjo picker. Similarly, when lyrical arco cadenzas slide down the scale to become bravura blues runs, the styling of jug-band fiddlers like Butch Cage comes to mind.

Since their initial Guelph encounter Cooke and Léandre have had several more musical meetings, with this CD severing as a high-class calling card. Although Léandre will never play with Lacy again, at least we have the other CD to remember their classy teamwork.

--Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Firedance: 1. Firedance 1 2. Firedance 2 3.Firedance 3 4. Firedance 5. Firedance 6. Firedance 6 7. Firedance 7

Personnel: Firedance: India Cooke (violin); Joëlle Léandre (bass)

Track Listing: One: 1. One More Time 1 2. One More Time 2 3. One More Time 3 4. Phone message

Personnel: One: Steve Lacy (soprano saxophone); Joëlle Léandre (bass)

November 7, 2005

STEVE LACY

The Beat Suite
Sunnyside/Enja SSC 3012

DEEP LISTENING BAND/JOE MCPHEE QUARTET
Unquenchable Fire
Deep Listening DL 19-2003

Blending music and texts -- either poetry or prose -- has never been a particularly easy task, especially when the music involved is improvised. Yet for the past 50 years at least, variations of the concept have been tried with various degrees of success.

Among his other sonic inquiries, soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy has turned his hand to text-based material for many years; he has been able to utilize the voice of his partner Irene Aebi as his speaker/vocalist since the late 1960s. THE BEAT SUITE is his most recent grapple with the concept -- and one that is particularly apt. The words, which intermingle with the music here, were written by 10 of the most accomplished Beat versifiers. All had or have an affinity for improvised music and most were known personally by either Lacy or Abei.

Iconoclastic Pauline Oliveros is another all-out experimenter, but from the so-called classical aide of the divide. Justly celebrated for her early experiments with microtonalism and electroacoustics, she has in recent years concentrated on her unique theory of Deep Listening, embracing structured improvisation, and begun regularly collaborating with non-academic improvisers such as bassist Barre Phillips, percussionist Susie Ibarra, and on this CD, multi-instrumentalist Joe McPhee.

Basically, the three members of Oliveros’ Deep Listening band and the members of McPhee’s quartet singly and together take turns musically commenting on the images suggested by Rachel Pollack’s prize-winning speculative fiction novel, Unquenchable Fire. During the course of the five tracks, Pollack herself reads excerpts from the book. These are amplified by sounds from Stuart Dempster’s trombone and didjeridu, David Gamper’s flutes, keyboard and electronics plus Oliveros on accordion. McPhee on soprano saxophone, alto clarinet and Casio digital horn, his longtime associate Joe Giardullo on flute, bass clarinet plus cellist Monica Wilson on cello and drummer Karen Jurgens are featured as well.

Musically the results are striking; vocally a little less so. While the imagery of Pollack’s utopian feminist fable is imposing, her curiously flat, sometimes stumbling delivery suggests that perhaps a trained actor or singer would better have expressed her thoughts. Luckily the suppositional notions are enough to launch nonpareil improvisations.

The 3rd Movement, for instance, purports to be a true history of the city of Poughkeepsie, N.Y., coincidentally McPhee’s hometown. Pollock’s tale involves the town’s creation by 12-foot giants who changed colors according to the seasons and, after a catastrophe, shrunk the inhabitants who were visited by travelers from a multi-tiered UFO who landed and helped the townsfolk build homes and set up a government. The fable encourage the woodwind players to introduce discordant Albert Ayler-style type multiphonics, which are soon battling for space with legit, legato cello line.

Soon the squeals fade into a one solid quivering mass as McPhee and Giardullo begin vocalizing from within their horns’ body tubes. Joined by plunger tones from Dempster’s trombone, the Casio-inflected Bronx cheers, shorter squeaks from the other reed and irregular drum beats, begins to resemble an approximation of a conversation between mechanized dwarfs and outer space denizens. Adding to this combination of rustic Americana and otherworldliness are irregular, double-quick, Silent Movie house electronic keyboard chords, where high-frequency vibrations echo other vibrations, and what could result from slowing down a scratched LP of circus music. As McPhee’s Aylerian soprano moves centre stage, wildly offbeat drumming and cartoon-like mouse peeps erupt around him.

An earlier movement that references birds, ashes and children’s fingers, which turn to sticks to beat away time, is amplified with didjeridu pitches which appear to be moving through a cistern. As their textures become more craggy and distant, wiccan-like accordion key frights mix it up with growling animalistic tones and vocalized syllables being electronically swabbed through the Aboriginal horn and flute. Soon these tiny segments of chirping flute and accordion pitches reconstitute themselves into a solid, oscillating, single sound mass, midway between the experiments of Tony Conrad and AMM.

Other interconnections are less obtuse. A revolution predicting horse who tells his tale to two women from Cleveland -- Ayler’s hometown, by the way -- calls forth straightforward whinnying from the soprano sax, then bass clarinet curls that follow the sax lines like colts chase after one another in a field, and is amplified by woodblock clip-clops. Later, when Pollack’s description of a subway ride turns to a voyage of visionary content, the emotion is amplified by a single crimped flute line that melds with bowed cello lines and expanded accordion keyboard colors. By the time a caramel-smooth clarinet line succeeds this, the sound is almost too romantically pastoral.

More manifestly the verbalization of the title in the 4th Movement brings forth an undulating massed sonic outpouring from horns and keyboards closely akin to what Sun Ra called a space chord. Supplanted by s a romantic cello interlude and a trilling soprano sax line, outlined by distant cymbal pops and board smashing crashes, tiny, nervous Balkan-sounding squeeze box tones enter the sound field along with what could be the parody of a keyboard exercise. As the tone shards accumulate into a dense, resonating line, low frequency piano glissandos and Casio-created slide whistle bird chirps flit-in-and-around the solid tone as outer space-like whooshes end the piece.

Much more down to earth, even when personalizing idiosyncratic symbolism is turned into an art song-like display, THE BEAT SUITE also has its drawbacks related to its non-instrumental portions. Lacy warns from the top that “This is highfalutin’ material. It’s not for everybody.” Yet the 10 interpretations sometimes seem to further muddy characteristic prose.

Abei has the not completely enviable task of “singing” free verse, sometimes with phrases or entire poems repeated for emphasis, and with her voice usually in concert with Lacy’s improvisations. The end result frequently fails to adequately demarcate poems that are serious and those that are humorous. Too many of the tracks sound too similar, while Abei’s British-accented, high-pitched readings can remove the meanings of the words.

This is especially unfortunate on “In the Pocket”, since Anne Waldman and Andrew Shelling’s words are rife with jazz references from song titles to the namechecking of saxophonist Art Pepper. Happily Abei makes no attempt at jazzy scat singing, nor do the horns start quoting jazz riffs, but the steady walking bass line from Jacques Avenel and characteristic boppish bomb dropping from drummer John Betsch cry out for a clearer verbal acknowledgement of the theme.

When it comes to personalizing “Jack’s Blues”, a poem by Robert Creeley, who has had empathy with jazz -- and jazz musicians -- for decades, the quartet gets together to play a real blues behind Abei. This comes complete with horn riffs, a curt shuffle from the drummer and pizzicato picks from the bassist.

Lacy’s tart tone and trombonist George Lewis’ higher pitched, lustrous plunger work can’t really bring enough life to Bob Kaufman’s “Private Sadness”, the longest and slowest moving of the poems And Abei’s non-American accent really does her in here.

Much more palatable are the tunes when you can ignore the lyrics and hear her voice as merely a third part of the front line. This is particularly effective on Lew Welch’s “A Ring of Bone”, where her accented rolling “r”s create musical onomatopoeia. Of course the real show is the Lewis and Lacy act. Here, for instance, the trombonist first slides down to mid-tempo notes then squeezed up to soprano range to introduce Lacy.

Much more emphatic is the ‘boneman’s plunger work on William S. Burroughs’ “Naked Lunch”, where his sweet tone underlines Burroughs’ brutal images. Soon his protological plunger tones, reminiscent of Quentin Jackson’s, push Lacy to buzz his reed and Betsch to emphasize press rolls and cymbal pressure. When the wah-wah timbres appear a second time they give Abei’s singing of “Who are you?” at the end an Alice in Wonderland fillip.

All and all though, Gregory Corso’s “The Mad Yak” is most transparent vocally, since the New York poet was most close to everyday speech in his writing. It’s also probably the only track that doesn’t demand the listener read the words as lyrics are being vocalized. Here, as well, Lewis shows off some hand-muted, arching tonal effects while Lacy supplies reed snorts, spetrofluctuation and mouth noises

Although the Oliveros-McPhee experiment with prose usually come across better than the Lacy-Abei poetry recreation both discs are still notable. Both should interest

those whose ardor encompasses literature as well as improvised music.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Beat: 1. Wave Lover 2. Song 3. Naked Lunch 4. Private Sadness 5. A Ring of Bone 6. The Mad Yak 7. Jack’s Blues 8. Agenda 9. In the Pocket 10. Mother Goose

Personnel: Beat: George Lewis (trombone); Steve Lacy (soprano saxophone);, Jean-Jacques Avenel (bass); John Betsch (drums); Irene Aebi (vocals)

Track Listing: Unquenchable: 1. Intro 2. 1st Movement 3. 2nd Movement 4. 3rd Movement 5. 4th Movement

Personnel: Unquenchable: Deep Listening Band: Stuart Dempster (trombone, didjeridu); David Gamper (flutes, keyboard, electronics); Pauline Oliveros (accordion); Joe McPhee Quartet: Joe McPhee (soprano saxophone, alto clarinet, Casio digital horn); Joe Giardullo (flute, bass clarinet); Monica Wilson (cello); Karen Jurgens (drums); Rachel Pollack (reading)

January 19, 2004

STEVE LACY

The Holy la
Sunnyside SSC 1120

Definitely not a misprint for the common expression “the Holy Land”, this fine trio CD takes its name from something held even more sacred by musicians: “la”, the pitch to which all instruments are almost always tuned.

During the course of these nine tracks, soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy and his associates also prove that they can do just anything they want with any variations of “la” and the other degrees of the scale most famously celebrated by Rodgers and Hammerstein in the song “Do-Re-Mi”.

During a career that stretches back more than 50 years, Lacy no doubt played many of Richard Rodgers’ tunes, but as someone who early on helped define so-called Free Jazz, for years his sonic references have long gone past common rhythm and show tunes. Indications of this on THE HOLY LA include the poetry of Robert Creeley, Mark Rothko’s paintings, African and reggae inflections, plus the music of Alban Berg and, of course, Thelonious Monk.

Proponent of Monk’s music long before it was fashionable, here his trio runs through a characteristically jaunty version of “Shuffle Boil” as it often does in live shows. Like Monk’s quartet aggregations, this version of Lacy’s band is almost perfectly aligned -- both French bassist Jean-Jacques Avenel and American drummer John Betsch have played with the saxophonist since the mid-1980s.

Also present on two tracks is Lacy’s wife, vocalist Irene Aebi. Although often treated by Lacy’s fans as a Yoko Ono to his John Lennon, she’s more of a distinctive stylist and her voice meshes with Lacy’s horn much appropriately than Ono’s voice ever did with Lennon. However Aebi’s curious intonation and delivery seems never to alter a whit, whether she’s intoning a Creeley poem put to Lacy’s music on “Inside My Head” or singing in French on “Retreat”.

Avenel, whose steady time keeping is featured throughout, acquits himself admirably however, playing sanza or thumb piano and mixing it up with Betsch’s exotic, African influenced percussion on “Clichés”, a Lacy composition written for a deceased Guinean saxophonist. More appropriately, Avenel advances the line and shows off his double stopping skill and pizzicato slides on “Blue Jay”, a portrait of Lacy’s friend of the 1960s, French bassist Jean-François Jenny-Clark.

Consummately modern, Betsch is never showy or in the way, always creating what patterns are needed at the appropriate times and even making something musical out of simple knocking and rolling on “The Door”.

What’s left to say about Lacy’s playing after all these years? The man who gave the soprano saxophone a role in modern jazz, has grown along with appreciation for his instrument and shaped the sound to his requirements -- and to others that were probably never imagined until he took up the horn. Familiar with every acre of its real estate from its mellow mid-range to its screeching top notes, his mastery is such that it appears effortless.

While he continues to experiment with different sounds and timbres, as he shows on the pieces here, his music is always embedded in the lodestone that defines jazz and improvised music.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Shuffle Boil 2. The Holy La 3. Inside My Head* Steve 4. Blue Jay 5. Flakes 6. The Wane 7. Clichés+ 8. Retreat* 9. The Door

Personnel: Steve Lacy (soprano saxophone); Jean-Jacques Avenel (bass, sanza+); John Betsch (drums); Irene Aebi (voice)*

December 22, 2003

PAOLO SORGE

Trinkle Trio
Auand AU9003

STEVE LACY/GIL EVANS
Paris Blues
Sunnyside/Owl SSC 3505

Programming a CD of jazz classics can be a mug’s game, especially if the compositions have a familiar resonance for many people. Play them too close to the originals and they sounds like imitations; make them too different and they sound like parodies.

This brand-new CD by a Mediterranean trio and a reissued disc by two American jazz masters attempt to overcome the challenge in different fashions. Although impressive, neither is 100 pert cent satisfying.

POMO to the Nth extreme, TRINKLE TRIO is supposed to be an example of “minimalistic repetitive patterns” -- according to the booklet notes -- but instead appears to be a Heavy Metal take on the music of Thelonious Monk. No jazz composition is sacrosanct, yet, while the band lead by Sicilian guitarist Paolo Sorge understands Monk’s idiosyncrasies, the members often miss the craft that underlined even his more astringent compositions.

Soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy and pianist/arranger Gil Evans were POMO almost before there was a MO(dern) -- Evans was born in 1912 and Lacy in 1934. Ironically, for a saxist who has made a career of interpreting Monk’s music, this is one of few CDs that doesn’t feature any of that pianist’s tunes. On the other hand, he and Evans -- on one of the latter’s final recordings -- turn their talents to interpretations of three Charles Mingus compositions, one by Duke Ellington and originals. Sparse and bluesy, the performances’ weaknesses arise from the fact that Evans mostly plays electric piano and that in a duo the masterful orchestral colorist is limited to being a piano-player.

A touring unit, the Trinkle Trio laid down these 13 tracks -- prologue, epilogue and 11 Monk tunes -- in 2002. To some it may seem that the majority of pieces are played too uptempo and with too conventional rhythm. Nevertheless hard thought obviously went into the interpretations. It’s just that while the trio has come up with a solution on how to deal with familiar tunes, the solution is unfortunately almost the same for each one.

A ringer -- he’s French, the other two Italian -- tuba player Michel Godard has insight into these sort of projects, having restructured ancient and/or atmospheric music in period or POMO settings with the likes of French cellist Vincent Courtois and sympathetic Italians like trumpeter Pino Minafra and percussionist Tiziano Tononi.

Percussionist Francisco Cusa, who like leader Sorge was born in Catania, but now lives in Bologna, has worked with Sicilian avant players like saxist Gianni Gebbia and created a solo sound track for a Buster Keaton film. Yet here his rhythm sounds as if its inspiration is more from Alex Van Halen and Iron Maiden’s Clive Burr than Monk favorites Art Blakey and Art Taylor.

Part of the disconnect may come from Sorge, who teaches, plays jazz and works on TV, radio and film projects. During his schooling he took master classes from John Scofield, Joe Pass and Joe Diorio among others and throughout he seems to be trying to force the pieces into a guitar mold, rather than adopting his guitar playing to Monk’s vision.

As early as “I Mean You” -- with the theme carried by Godard’s tuba -- the tune seems to have mutated into a shuffle featuring Hawaiian guitar slides. Later, the tubaist’s digressions on the theme almost wilt beneath Sorge’s distorted reverb and effects pedal, so that the result is more “Telstar” than “Thelonious”.

This Hawaiian reverb reappears on “Monk’s Mood”, with its balladic tone heavy with delay from the guitar’s bass strings. Although it shows one of the few examples of his brushwork, Cusa treats the piece as exotic nightclub fodder, with punished woodblock thwacks, whirl drum expressions and Afro-Cuban percussion.

What could be African junkeroo percussion, chunka-chunka rhythm guitar beats and an extended tuba ostinato makes its appearance on “Bye-Ya” as well. As the drummer continues hitting his cowbell, Sorge involves himself in Hard Rock-style, razor-sharp flat picking and slurred staccato riffs extended with effects pedal distortion. It’s a glimpse into what would happen if Al DiMeola and Billy Cobham ever decide to play Monk.

Putting aside the overdone arena rock guitar rasping, tremolo distortions and the time the drummer seems to suture a reggae backbeat onto another tune, the only other real disappointment is “Crepuscule with Nellie”, a tender tune Monk wrote for his wife. Using a wah-wah pedal to project slurred feedback and repetitive tones, Sorge seems to encourage Cusa to thrash different parts of his extended kit, and symbolically goose Godard’s tuba line enough so that the Frenchman appears to be taking some undignified hops away from the melody. Reverb from the guitar seems to suggest that Nellie’s twilight is in the 1960s in Haight-Ashbury with Quicksilver Messenger Service, not the 1950s in San Juan Hill with Monk.

Some experiments are more memorable, though. “Friday the 13th” works as crackling, low-pitched thematic variation, bisected by slap tonguing issuing from Godard. Cusa adds speedy paradiddles and Sorge gives up chicken scratching and reverb distortion to double the tubaist’s thematic line. “Little Rootie Tootie” is looped with some tremolo knob effects that keep the melody spiky, although the vaudeville-style drumbeats could be been lost. “Evidence” gains an expansion of time and volume as Cusa plays half-step percussion, Sorge’s volume knob distorts the undertow, and Godard vaults to his top range to squeal out grace notes.

Distribution of timbres and interpretations is much less severe on PARIS BLUES, captured in that city by musicians who first recorded together in 1957, before any of the Trinklers were born. Still the two manage to make something of the most familiar material.

“Goodbye Pork Pie Hat”, for instance -- an overrecorded ballad like Monk’s “’Round Midnight” -- is almost transformed here. Done with a funky Dr. John/Ray Charles-style beat, it’s taken andante, not at the usual dirge-like tempo. Furthermore Lacy begins with a deconstructed version of the chorus, then get into the familiar verse. Evans’ accompaniment is all splayed electric piano chords, a reminder that he had already done his investigation of Jimi Hendrix’s work and collaborated with singer Sting.

Equally impressive is their version of Mingus’ “Orange Was The Color Of Her Dress Then Blue Silk”, though at almost 15 minutes it’s a bit drawn out. Lacy distinguishes himself by weaving quotes from other Mingus pieces into his solos, while the tune provides glimpses of Evans’ expansive (real) piano work. Starting with disconnected, high frequency syncopation, he eases out the perpetual rhythm of walking bass mixed with glissandos for a semi-boogie-woogie. With cascading timbres and pounding octave runs, there are times that he sounds as if he’s quoting “Rhapsody in Blue” or some Chopinesque piano exercises.

Strummed chords and the suggestion of honky-tonk piano characterize his playing on the first version of Lacy’s “Esteem”. Featuring low frequency swing, left-handed tremolo and some pretty respectable flashing lines, he’s still no Bill Evans, which for some might be praise. More abstract here, Lacy begins with a prolonged shriek that abates into mid range, then emphasized vibrations rocket into dog whistle territory until Evans halves the tempo to encourage unison work.

On the tune’s second version the pianist sticks to jaunty tremolo and pounding offbeat harmonies. Intriguingly, as he relaxes into the piece, his time sense starts to resemble that of Monk’s, though, incredibly, he was almost a decade older than the other pianist. Unfortunately, though, at the end of the tune, there seem to be several unfocused silences and pauses that suggest that Evans was starting to show his 75 years.

More emblematic is Evans work on his own “Jelly Roll”, which links cascading monochromic piano chords with lighter-than-air soprano tones. Strangely, on this salute to Jelly Roll Morton, jazz’s first arranger of note and thus Evans direct antecedent, the pianist seems to be locked into rollicking walking bass tones, more Meade Lux Lewis boogie than Morton’s blues. Following a unison elaboration of the head by both men, the piece ends with Lacy’s thematic variations and Evans’ almost impressionistic fills.

Other tunes are mellow and a bit lightweight, especially when the electric piano shoves the improvising out of the jazz club and into the cocktail lounge.

All in all though imperfect, the work of the two veterans on PARIS BLUES shows how strong personalities can give hoary jazz standards new life. Though unique, TRINKLE TRIO works less well, since at times reconstitution of the compositions seems to negate their original intent. With this lesson internalized and his obvious technique intact, perhaps Sorge will score more unequivocally another time out with less distinct source material.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Trinkle: 1. Prologo 2. I Mean You 3. Evidence 4. Bye-Ya 5. Crepuscule with Nellie 6. Trinkle Tinkle 7. Misterioso 8. Ask Me Now 9. Monk’s Mood 10. Friday the 13th 11. Locomotive 12. Little Rootie Tootie 13. Epilogo

Personnel: Trinkle: Michel Godard (tuba); Paolo Sorge (guitar and electronics); Francesco Cusa (drums and percussion)

Track Listing: Paris: 1. Reincarnation Of A Lovebird 2. Paris Blues 3. Esteem 4. Orange Was The Color Of Her Dress Then Blue Silk 5. Goodbye Pork Pie Hat 6. Jelly Roll 7. Esteem

Personnel: Paris: Steve Lacy (soprano saxophone); Gil Evans (piano, electric piano)

November 24, 2003

STEVE LACY/RICCARDO FASSI

Dummy
Splasc (h) CDH 843.2

RICCARDO FASSI TANKIO BAND
Il Principe
Splasc (h) CDH 180.2

One of Italy’s most accomplished jazz composers, Varese-born pianist/keyboardist Riccardo Fassi, 48, divides his time between teaching, composing film scores, small combo work and his own big band, the Tankio Band, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year.

Tugged every which way by commitments, he’s like certain of his North American counterparts who bring an admirable professionalism to many projects, but seem to lack a fervent commitment to music’s transcendent power. In the end a job is a job. This is apparent on these discs which features the pianist in different settings with committed American saxophonists.

Brand new, DUMMY, matches Fassi’s trio -- filled out by bassist Gianluca Renzi and drummer Ettore Fioravanti -- improvising alongside soprano saxophone master Steve Lacy. IL PRINCIPE, the reissue of a 1989 disc by the 10-piece Tankio Band plus guests, features tenor and soprano saxophonist Steve Grossman, an Italian favorite. But be warned, the session is very much of its time.

That time seems to be the dying days of jazz-rock fusion. Despite the album’s dedication to Neapolitan comedic improviser Totò, the emphasis appears to be on the larger projects of fusion pioneers like pianist Chick Corea and Grossman’s old boss Miles Davis, not to mention more traditional big jazz bands trying to lower their demographic appeal like Thad Jones -Mel Lewis’ and Maynard Ferguson’s.

Thus a few of the tunes are near throwaways, including “Rosso”, which sounds like it could have been written by Lalo Schifrin for a TV show, and comes complete with wiggy, disco-style percussion, a thumb-popping electric bass solo, endless conga drumming, synthesizer and electric piano immersions. Here Grossman sounds like he’s merely going through the motions, and guest flutist Riccardo Luppi’s attempts at a grittier tone are buried by the synthesizer and congas. Unexceptional too is “Aquamarina”, a low-energy bossa nova where the pleasant vocals of Joy Garrison merely add to the balladic fluffiness advanced by shaken bell tree, low frequency harp-like arpeggios from the piano and muted trumpet lines.

Grossman, whose checkered career has encompassed engagements with Davis, drummers Elvin Jones and Art Taylor and pianist Michel Petrucciani, as well as prolongued stints in Europe and South America, has never really rerouted the sophisticated musical heights of his one-time Davis and Jones sax partner Dave Liebman. Yet his soprano solo work on “Lu’s Illuminations” resembles Liebman’s more refined, legato curving lines. Although at times the band vamps like a merely competent studio group, his tenor solos on the same piece are exceptional, filled with slurs, honks and double-tonguing, and reaching a climax when he trades fours with drummer Massimo D’Agostino.

Even better is the rock-inflected first tune, a real foot tapper in the Jones-Lewis tradition that allows the tenor man to flaunt his harsh, powerful mid-period-Trane-influenced work. Fassi’s electric piano comping serves its purpose here, though the overactive electric bassist should have been reined in. Sadly longtime avant-gardist Gincarlo Schiffini’s bleats and rumbles from both tuba and trombone apparently exist in their own space on the title tune. At least Fassi’s ET-like synth colors, Sandro Satta’s squeaky Dave Sanborn-like alto work and someone’s imitation Ferguson stratospheric trumpeting don’t connect to what Schiffini is doing. Satta redeems himself with an unaccompanied cadenza in the final minutes, however, though the constantly moving orchestral backdrop can’t seem to settle on any one style.

Thelonious Monk’s “Skippy” is the bonus track added to the reissue. But while the band -- especially baritone man Torquato Sdrucia -- attack it with gusto, the Swing- style wah-wah brass and underrecording don’t help matters.

One of the world’s acknowledged Monk specialists -- Lacy -- gets the pianist and company onto the jazz track on the other disc as early as the first number, written by Fassi for the saxman. It’s stretched harmonies and bittersweet tone easily suggests Monk, especially when Lacy solos.

Divided among themes written by each band member and one group improvisation, this “dummy” appears more “princely” than the other session. But while the jazz bona fides can’t be questioned, the CD is still a little too much of a busman’s holiday for studio musicians. As good as they are, there’s really no reason outside of the guest’s politeness for each musician to solo on nearly every tune.

Highlights include “Together” the instant composition where Lacy’s tart, mewling tone gets into sopranino territory as he doubletongues and pitchslides into discordant sounds; and the title track, where Fassi’s inventiveness in the middle range provides solid strumming backing for the reedist’s bouncing, crooked time frame. The pianist’s final turnaround redefines the pieces, though Fioravanti, who also regularly plays with trumpeter Paolo Fresu and saxist Eugenio Colombo is a little too busy in response.

Still, the drummer’s finest moments come on his own “Mon Ami Attila”, a modern freebop theme that features Lacy slipsliding, followed every step of the way by walking bass and the pianist’s rolling octaves. Then there’s “Esteem”, Lacy’s tribute to Johnny Hodges, who sometimes played soprano saxophone as well as his more common alto in Duke Ellington’s band. Although Lacy produces an updated Rabbit punch, moving up the scale to a steady allegro homage after a few cadenzas, Fassi, though dramatic, doesn’t try to be the Duke, but merely keeps metronomic time with steady right handed swing. Fioravanti sticks to brushes and Renzi’s unspectacular bass solo passes before the theme is reintroduced.

Strangely -- or perhaps appropriately -- the bassist replicates Slam Stewart’s humming and bowing octaves apart in his solo on Fassi’s “Replicate”, whereas the pianist moves from a double-timed Monkish stride to Keith Jarrett-like emphasized right handed runs and glissandos. Lacy is himself.

Perhaps this individuality is the clue to the weaknesses of these discs, as swinging and technically proficient as they may be. Anything Lacy is featured on is worth owning because he has spent years establishing a singular persona. But Fassi still has to make a major individual statement to move into that same league.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Dummy: 1. Dark Water 2. Replicate 3. Dummy 4. Voci Lontane 5. Day Out of This Time 6. This is It 7. Compassion 8. Together 9. Esteem 10. Mon Ami Attila

Personnel: Dummy: Steve Lacy (soprano saxophone); Riccardo Fassi (piano); Gianluca Renzi (bass); Ettore Fioravanti (drums)

Track Listing: Principe: 1. Sammy and Bahati (theme)/Shela development)/Sammy and Bahati (final) 2. Il Principe* 3. Aquamarina^ 4. Rosso* 5. Lu’s Illuminations 6. Migno 7. Skippy

Personnel: Principe: Claudio Corvini, Aldo Bassi (trumpet); Gincarlo Schiffini (trombone and tuba)*; Sandro Satta (alto saxophone); Michel Audisso (soprano and alto saxophones); Steve Grossman (soprano and tenor saxophones); Torquato Sdrucia (baritone saxophone); Riccardo Luppi (flute)*; Riccardo Fassi (piano, keyboards); Fabio Zeppetella (electric and acoustic bass, sinth-bass); Massimo D’Agostino (drums); Alfredo Minotti (percussion); Joy Garrison (voice)^

September 1, 2003

STEVE LACY/DANIEL HUMAIR/ANTHONY COX

Work
Sketch SKE 332028

Opposite to the average person who supposedly becomes more conservative as he or she ages, improvisers seem to go in a contrary direction. In earlier times Duke Ellington and Coleman Hawkins -- to take two examples -- were still experimenting with new methods in their sixties and seventies. Today, Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Derek Bailey and Steve Lacy, all of whom are on either side of 70, are as probing in their playing as they ever were.

Take WORK, American soprano saxophonist Lacy’s newest session recorded in France with 63-year-old Swiss drummer Daniel Humair and relative young’un -- American bassist Anthony Cox. With all musicians in perfect control of their instruments, it’s as satisfying a session as Lacy has made in his almost 50 year recording career.

Secret weapon is Humair, whose experience ranges from work with (pre-fusion) Jean-Luc Ponty and Ur-bopper tenorist Johnny Griffin to Gallic experimenters like saxophonist Michel Portal and bassist Henri Texier. Except for his solos, the essence of this drummer’s art lies not so much in what he does, but what he doesn’t do. A cymbal caresser and brushes-and-fingers man par excellence, Humair’s accompaniment is so abstruse that it often seems as if the rhythm is being produced by osmosis. Cox, whose associates include saxists like Marty Ehrlich and Joe Lovano, keeps his head down as well. In fact, except for some arco noise making on one track, his contribution may be a little too low-key.

Then again, that opens up that much more space for Lacy, who recently relocated to Boston -- and the New England Conservatory -- after nearly 40 years as an expatriate. Among the 10 tunes are three by the saxophonist and two by his old friends and mentors -- pianists Mal Waldron and Thelonious Monk.

Monk’s “In Walked Bud”, which the saxophonist likely played with the piano master, or in his Monk repertory combo with trombonist Roswell Rudd in the mid-1960s, is a fairly uncomplicated tune from that canon. He uses his bristly, slipsliding vibrato to take the lead and reconfigure it in distinct obbligatos.

Waldron, one of whose final CDs was recorded barely four months before this one, with Lacy guesting on a couple of tracks, collaborated with the saxist on-and-off throughout his career. Made up of high-pitched split tones and buzzing growls, it appears that Lacy’s solo on Waldron’s “Snake Out” is even more astringent than usual. Could its abrasive tone and Cox’s solo, which manage to approximate bell-ringing tones, be heard as being funereal? Lacy keens like an inconsolable mourner and Cox suggests tolling church bells?

Elsewhere, each of the saxman’s distinctive compositions unrolls in such a way that they sound newly unfamiliar. Floated on walking bass lines and simple cymbal accents, “Tina’s Tune” features someone -- Cox perhaps -- doubling Lacy’s gliding, tongue-twisting theme as the swinging piece moves in a comfortable fashion. “Resurection”[sic], on the other hand, is a pulsating freebop number. Chirping split tones arise from the saxophonist, Cox’s stately walking bass evolves into well-elaborated arco discord, and the drummer produces the perfect pulse to back up each of its sections, whether it’s the ping of cymbals or shuffle of brushes on snares. Old enough to appreciate song construction, this “Resurection” besides being misspelled doesn’t seem to be honoring someone’s life after death as much as celebrating a straightahead melody like “The Pink Panther Theme”.

Further to this, Lacy sounds uncharacteristically jazzy on French reedman Louis Sclavis’ “Maputo”, as his sweet-sour tone and subtle slurs mix it up with Cox’s wailing bass and Humair’s bop-inflected sizzle cymbal strokes.

“Sorcelery” [sic], the drummer’s one composition and the longest piece on the CD, is also his showcase. Employing belfry-resonant, unselected cymbal tones, single beats on his bass drum and floor tom, Humair sets up a main theme that is commented on by Lacy in duck-like, double tongued polyrythms. Using a phlegmatic tone, the saxman not only spits strangled notes all over the music, but their overtones as well. In response the drummer counters with cross sticking on his snare and toms.

An exceptional demonstration of jazz as an old man’s art, WORK can be enjoyed by any improv fan.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Bois d’arbe 2. Snake Out 3. Tina’s Tune 4. Oldenburg Bed 5. Resurection 6. Acrylic 7. Maputo 8. Sorcelery 9. The Crust 10. In Walked Bud

Personnel: Steve Lacy (soprano saxophone); Anthony Cox (bass); Daniel Humair (drums)

May 12, 2003

STEVE LACY

10 of Dukes + 6 Originals
Senators Records SEN-01

Approaching a mixed program of 10 familiar Duke Ellington compositions and six originals would be a provocative venture for any musician. Doing the whole thing on solo soprano saxophone should be even more daunting. But 68-year-old Steve Lacy has been going against the grain for almost half a century, so one more challenge doesn’t faze him.

Initially attracted to the soprano after hearing Sidney Bechet playing Ellington’s “The Mooche”, a variation of which is rhythmically deconstructed on this fine disc, Lacy soon moved from Dixieland to the avant garde in the company of pianist Cecil Taylor in the mid-1950s. Unclassifiable since then, Lacy who recently returned to the United States after three decades in France, has played in many countries of the world and with the equivalent of several symphony orchestras worth of musicians. He has been associated with musicians as different as jazzers Thelonious Monk and trumpeter Don Cherry, classical composer/pianist Frederic Rzewski and Euro improvisers, guitarist Derek Bailey and pianist Misha Mengelberg. He organized repertory bands before they were fashionable, was allied with the New Thing but never part of it, early on allied songs and spoken work with improvised music, and has lead a series of impressive French-based sextets and trios over the past 20 years.

Lacy was also a pioneer in giving solo concerts. This one, recorded at the Egg Farm concert space in Japan, is the most recent example of his mature musical preeminence.

By necessity the ducal material, which dates in the main, from Ellington’s developing oeuvre of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, retains the familiar melodies, but is somewhat recomposed using extended techniques like polytones, smears, kisses and extreme glissandi. “Koko”, for instance is all tongue slaps and guttural growls until Lacy begins limning the familiar theme rubato in a higher register. “Azure” seems to expand in the horn from a region just short of his large intestine, with a high-pitched recapitulation of the melody in the middle. “Cottontail” and “In A Mellow Tone”, on the other hand are treated straightforwardly enough with only a hint of torqued glissando, though intimations of other Ellington tones are suggested by the later.

Meanwhile his moderato trilling version of “Portrait of Bert Williams” seems to sum up the descriptive tune at almost the same length as the original Barney Bigard’s halting speech-like clarinet and the underlying pathos of Tricky Sam Nanton’s trombone did in the original.

The six originals are a different matter. Inspired by distinct personages including singer Stevie Wonder, novelist Herman Melville and philosopher Lazo-Tzu, the saxophonist reins in his variations here, relying in the main on mid-range, tasteful harmonies. “The Breath” for Tzu does engender repetition and extended trills, while surpassingly, “Art”, for Melville, suggests some lines that resemble French bal musette. Briefly Lacy introduces the final track, reciting Ryokan’s Zen epigrams that inspired him. The performance, built on soaring bird-like cadences, slides up and down the scale with differentiated tones to mark the shift from one section to another.

A vital addition to the expansive Lacy catalogue, this CD, which can only be obtained through the Internet at www.senatorsrecords.com, should be welcomed by fans of Lacy, the saxophone or just plain improvised music lovers.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. In a Mellow Tone 2. The Mooche 3. Morning Glory 4. Prelude to a kiss 5. Portrait of Bert Williams 6. Azure 7. Cottontail 8. In a Sentimental Mood 9. Koko 10. To the Bitter 11. Art 12. Gospel 13. On a Midnight Kick 14. Wave Lover 15. The Breath 16. Traces*

Personnel: Steve Lacy (soprano saxophone, recitation*)

November 11, 2002

BILL DIXON/FRANZ KOGLMANN/STEVE LACY

Opium
between the lines btl 011/EFA 10181-2

Recorded in 1973, 1975 and 1976, these early glimpses into the mind of Austrian brassman Franz Koglmann surprisingly show him still wedded to an American free jazz conception, though his own ideas are starting to come through as well.

Or perhaps it shouldn't be that astonishing, considering that American soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy is present on most tracks. Additionally, the more than 17 minute "For Franz", initially released in a limited edition of 500 with hand painted covers, features Koglmann's early influence, trumpeter Bill Dixon and two other Americans.

One of them, bassist Alan Silva is able to function like an entire string section by himself, soloing powerfully both arco and pizzicato, and easily able to make himself heard over the three horn line-up. The third, tenor saxophonist Steve Horenstein -- who has since moved to Israel -- offers up nervous reed asides to maintain his place between what is frequently unison work from both brassmen. Written by Dixon, the intense composition seems to function more as a summation the historical accomplishments of the Manhattan-based New Thing than a Eurocentric groundbreaker.

The earlier tunes featuring Lacy that surround "For Franz", find Koglmann in even more of an apprenticeship role. Pieces written by the flugelhornist like "Carmilla" and "Bowery 2", with their staccato walking bass lines, solo drum breaks, legato phrasing, theme and variation structure are unabashed modern swingers. If anything the front line strongly resembles the quartet with Don Cherry that Lacy recorded with in 1961.

Even those tunes featuring Gerd Geier's electronics seem to refer more to the 1950s Space Age modernistic sounds pioneered by the likes of George Russell and several West Coast composers. Not yet integrated into the structure of the compositions as they would in later European outings, the treatments call so much attention to themselves that you wonder if they escaped from Sun Ra and migrated over to this session.

Also on show is sound for sound sake, especially on Lacy's "Flaps" which contains some saxophone reed squeals, a few brass mouthpiece kisses, what sounds like a bicycle horn and a steady drum -- or is it electronics -- tapping at the end.

If you're looking for a new look at Koglmann -- and unjustly "lost" excellent work from two American masters -- head out to find OPIUM. It will only be addictive in that it will encourage you to find other sessions by these artists.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Der Vogel/Opium 2. Carmilla 3. For Franz 4. Flops 5. Bowery 1 6. Bowery 2. 7. Flaps

Personnel: Franz Koglmann (trumpet, flugelhorn); with [track 3] Bill Dixon (trumpet); Steve Horenstein (tenor saxophone); Alan Silva (bass); Walter Malli (percussion); [tracks 1,2] Steve Lacy (soprano saxophone); Josef Traindl (trombone); Cesarius Alvim Botelho (bass); Aldo Romano (drums); [tracks 4-7] Lacy; Toni Michlmayr (bass); Malli; Gerd Geier (electronics)

April 29, 2001

DEREK BAILEY/STEVE LACY

Outcome
Potlatch P299

If any two musicians can be said to be the "fathers" of the European free jazz/improv, then the two represented on this thought-provoking session could claim the title(s).

In actuality British guitarist Bailey and American saxophonist Lacy would likely opt for the inclusion of a gang of other Continental and British improvisers, but it's they who set the standard for non-idiomatic playing and have more-or-less stayed true to it ever since.

Lacy, jazz's first modern soprano saxist had already been a valuable addition to the ensembles of leaders as individualist as Thelonious Monk, Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor before a more sympathetic climate drew him to Europe in the mid-1960s. Since then, from his Paris base he has mixed and matched his talents with improvisers of every stripe, country and temperament, while never losing sight of his jazz roots. Along with such quirky experiments as creating settings for poetics and perfecting the solo saxophone recital, he's still managed to put out discs celebrating such giants as Monk, Ellington and Herbie Nichols.

Bailey, a former dance band and studio guitarist found his salvation first in so-called free jazz, then very quickly contributed to the gestalt that birthed the British branch of Euroimprov. An organizer of the Company, improv free-for-alls, Bailey will play with nearly any musician who walks through the door. And since the late 1960s that has included everyone from traditional American jazzers and "serious" composers to interpretive dancers and metallic noise bands.

Yet no matter what goes on around him, the playing of Bailey --who insists that every musical moment be improvised -- remains unequivocally the same. The non-idiomatic plinks plunks and single-note scratches he gets from his instrument aren't compromised whether his partner is Pat Metheny or DJ Soulslinger.

That's what makes this 1983 Paris session so valuable. For among the hundreds of discs Bailey and Lacy have collectively recorded, very few have been in one another's company. Be warned, though, this isn't a standard duet. Instead it's the creation of two simultaneous soloists whose conception is so convincing that the adventurous listener's ear can follow one or the other without disorientation.

Overall, the five listed tracks dissolve one into another. During OUTCOME's more than the more than 60 minutes, Lacy can be thorny, squeaky and sour for a time, then dulcet and breathy. Meanwhile Bailey's notes resonate as he alternately strums, picks and slides. Sometimes one or the other drops out for a section.

If bare bones improv is your passion, search high and low for this session. If you're less sure of that taste, but be would like to experience the work of uncompromising modern masters first hand give this CD a try as well. The outcome may be different from what you imagine.

-Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Input #1 2. Input #2 3. Input #3 4. Input #4 5. Input #5

Personnel: Derek Bailey (guitar); Steve Lacy (soprano saxophone)

April 22, 2000