William Parker

Centering: Unreleased Early Recordings 1976–1987
NoBusiness NBCD 42-47

Something In the Air: Discovering Long Hidden Advanced Jazz

By Ken Waxman

When New York’s now justly famous, Vision Festival first took place in 1996 committed jazz fans greeted the event as if they were witnessing a full-fledged musical resurrection. So many advanced players of unbridled free form and experimental sounds were involved that the annual festival soon became a crowded week-long summer happening. Ironically – which was one reason for the Fest’s popularity – these probing sounds and its players were supposed to have vanished after the revolutionary 1960s, superseded first by Jazz-Rock pounders’ simple melodies and then jazz’s Young Lions who aped the sounds and sartorial choices of the 1950s – both of which had major record label support. Still bassist/composer/bandleader William Parker’s Centering: Unreleased Early Recordings 1976–1987 NoBusiness NBCD 42-47 aptly demonstrates, experimental sounds never vanished; they just went underground. As the 24 often lengthy tracks that make up this 6-CD set of hitherto unreleased material substantiates in its breadth of performances, sonically questing players were improvising and composing during those so-called lost years. But it took the founding of the Vision Festival by Parker and his wife, dancer/choreographer Patricia Nicholson, to provide the proper medium for this work. Major stylists such as saxophonists Charles Gayle and David S. Ware, vocalist Ellen Christi and trumpeter Roy Campbell, all of whom are represented in the set, would go on to mentor a multiplying groundswell of younger rule stretchers and future Vision Fest participants. Also, despite being professionally recorded, the conservative climate of the times, plus the cost of producing and distributing LPs, left the tapes used for these CDs stacked in performers’ apartments. Now the belated release of Centering fills in a blank in jazz history, equivalent to what coming across a cache of unreleased John Cage or Morton Feldman recordings would do. Included in the package is an attractively designed 66-page paperback book with vintage photos, posters and sketches along with essays discussing the background of the sessions, the musicians’ experiences and the New York scene.

From a historical perspective the most valuable artifacts are those which feature Parker playing alongside saxophonists who are now major influences in the international avant garde. From 1980 the bassist and alto saxophonist Daniel Carter are involved in musical discussions which make up for their lack of nuance with brilliant and mercurial playing, eviscerating every timbre and tone that could be sourced from their instruments. As Parker’s chunky rhythms hold the bottom while simultaneously rubbing and stopping strings to produce unique interjections, Carter ranges all over his horn. On “Thulin”, for instance, multiphonic split tones, triple tonguing, barks and bites are just the beginning of the saxophonist’s agitated interface. Working his solo into a fever pitch of altissimo cries and freak notes, he often sounds as if he’s playing two reed instruments. Eventually Parker’s juddering percussiveness grounds the track; angling the two towards a finale, but not before an extended a capella passage by the bassist, where his multi-string sinewy strokes expose timbres that could be created by a string quartet. Contrast that with the beefy pedal point Parker uses on the two 1987 tracks with tenor saxophonist Gayle. After the reedist’s almost continuous overblowing exposes snarling altissimo or nephritic guttural tones, Parker asserts himself on “Entrusted Spirit” with tremolo strums and slaps which echo sympathetically alongside Gayle’s expansive multiphonics. Finally the saxman’s pressurized snarls and mercurial split tones are muted to an affiliated moderato tone by smooth pizzicato lines from Parker, bringing wood tapping and top-of-range angling into the mix.

Equally instructive, tenor saxophone Ware and Parker, who would become one-half of Ware’s celebrated quartet in the 1990s, recorded with drummer Denis Charles in 1980 as the Centering Dance Music Ensemble. Unlike earlier Parker compositions on this set performed by string or vocal-based ensembles to back-up Nicholson’s choreography that seem overly notated and more distant, the Ware-Parker-Charles creations are vibrant free jazz that may have caused repetitive strain injuries among dance company members. Highpoint is the inclusive and contrapuntal Tapestry. Here the saxophonist’s juddering smears and expansive reed vibrations, Parker’s focused slaps and Charles’ bass drum thumps are individually showcased then smartly combined into a tremolo vamp that descends into satisfying cohesion. Edifyingly demonstrating that the so-called avant-gardists celebrated the tradition is One Day Understanding. With a dirge-like middle section where Ware directly quotes an Albert Ayler head, the exposition and conclusion allow the saxman full range for glossolalia, spinning split tones and fervid overblowing effectively honoring saxophone titans like John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman by inference. Parker’s sputtering spiccato slices relate to Henry Grimes’ and Jimmy Garrison’s liberation of the bass role; while Charles, whose military-style rebounds and hard backbeat helped define free jazz in the late 1950s, just plays himself.

Even more germane to contemporary experimenters who frequently amalgamate into large-scale improvisational ensembles are two other Parker-led groups. Both 1979’s eight- member Big Moon Ensemble and 1984’s 13-person Centering Big Band are links between Coleman’s Double Quartet and Coltrane’s Ascension band and today. Vaulting between inchoate and inspired, the Big Moon tracks are polyrhythmic, polytonal and polyharmonic with the instrumental tessitura stretched to make room for thundering solos from the likes of Carter and Campbell plus trumpeter Arthur Williams and altoist Jameel Moondoc. On tunes such as “Hiroshima Part Two” and “Dedication to Kenneth Patchen” the cumulative effect of the multi-colored free-form cascading is intensified by aboriginal war whoops and unbalanced screams from the band members as they play. Tremolo triplets from Campbell meet Williams’ capillary flutter tonguing on “… Patchen”, as Moondoc’s juddering split tones contrast with Carter’s leaping glossolalia. With Charles and Rashid Bakr both thrashing percussion, Parker and fellow bassist Jay Oliver stroke manfully to finally downshift the collective cascading, only to have it revive with increased ferocity on “Hiroshima”. Stacked horn parts encompassing stop-time screaming and pressurized vibratos are strung out during this nearly 50-minute piece as each musician seems to be trying to outdo the others in ferocity. Instructively the bassist’s later experiments with World music improv are adumbrated in a protracted sequence when his string strumming and the percussion work sound as if they’re emanating from a koto and a taiko drum.

There’s no mistaking the jazz inflections on the five big band selections however. But their modernity is apparent in the resourceful balance among intense riffs from the five saxophones, Parker’s time-keeping plus percussionist Zen Matsura’s cymbal clanks and press rolls as well as stacked and cascading vocal interchange from Christi and fellow vocalist Lisa Sokolov. Intense, heraldic triplets from trumpeters Campbell and Raphe Malik add to the churning excitement of tunes like “Munyaovi”, as first the snorting reeds then the brass section’s triplet expansion match the vocalists in staccato invention. The overall effect isn’t unlike Count Basie’s band at full force playing a swing riff. Space is furthermore made throughout for comforting trombone slurs, twanging rhythmic sequences from Parker and, on Tototo, an alluring balladic line from Moondoc. That piece climaxes with a polyphonic entanglement of the drummer’s harsh ruffs and flams, screaming penny whistle-style brass shrills and guttural baritone sax honks, completed by a slithery sax line that coalesces with harmonized voices.

The big band selections were taped at the 1984 Kool Jazz Festival, one of Parker’s rare high-profile gigs. It may have taken another dozen years to organize the Vision Festival and find the multiplicity of gigs and recordings Parker and his associates now participate in, but this momentous box set confirms that all along experimental music’s foundation was being cultivated slightly out of the public eye.

--Ken Waxman

-- For Whole Note Vol. 18 #2

October 12, 2012

Carter/de Brunner/Zlabinger/Silverman

Macroscopia
Metier Jazz mj 0403

ElectroAcousticSilence

Flatime

Amirani AMNR 025

Integrating the hyper-distinctive timbres of a bassoon within an improvised setting can be difficult as these ensembles – one Italian and one American – demonstrate. That there are many interesting moments on both discs is a tribute the skills of the players involved in the sessions. However despite similar instrumentation, ElectroAcousticSilence has the edge. With the rhythm section more prominent plus then originality of Taketo Gohara’s sound design, necessary contrasts are more noticeable among the group interaction.

Not that the other CD’s participants aren’t versatile. Daniel Carter for one, who seems to be on half the sessions recorded in downtown New York, is equally proficient on trumpet and tenor saxophone. Someone who has also worked with trumpeter Roy Campbell, Ken Silverman moves among oud, hand percussion and guitar; and bassist Tom Zlabinger, who teaches at York College, CUNY is a fine time-keeper. Bassoonist of Claire de Brunner even studied improvisation with Lee Konitz and Connie Crothers.

The drawback is that the gentle chamber-like essence the four create on the seven selections is often too sonically monochrome and precious. Frequently the contrapuntal set up between Carter’s fleet trumpet obbligatos and the guffaws and burbles from de Brunner’s bassoon produces a kind of freeze-dried linearism. With many of the highs and lows cut off, the pieces are sturdy and legato without many pitch or rhythmic differences among them.

Zlabinger does contribute some bass string slaps throughout; and Silverman’s clanking guitar strums and distinctive oud-string splatters do their bit to break-up the chiaroscuro textures. Yet as one tune meanders into the next, it appears that even the bassist’s throbs are too distant, and the string-player’s asides too brief to perk up the interaction. Tightened guffaws and stutters from de Brunner plus narrowed whines from Carter’s brass or breathy reed slurs suggest unrealized potential that could have been extended. But any climax, let alones stimulation seems to have leaked out of the date. Carter definitely, and most likely the others, sound better in different situations.

Contrary to its title, vitality is exhibited on Flatime’s nine tracks, without eschewing chromatic grace. It isn’t just because of the drones and flutters resulting from Gohara’s signal processing, more up-front drum clatter from Andrea Melani or Filippo Pedol’s sometimes showy electric-bass pops. It’s that in their broken-octave match-ups – paralleling those between de Brunner and Carter – bassoonist Pisani and trumpeter Cosottini exhibit more gusto and punch.

Genova-born Pisani, who experience encompasses orchestral gigs as well as founding GRIM (Musical Improvisation Research Group) with Cosottini and others, utilizes his instrument’s walrus-like snorts and pressures lyrically, rhythmically and comically. On “moreavvio” for instance his tongue flutters keep the proceedings grounded.

Besides GRIM, Florence-based Cosottini, has played with a variety of musicians including alto saxophonist Claudio Lugo and guitarist Elliott Sharp. With all the compositions written by him and the bassoonist, he uses the tunes as vehicles for chameleon-like self-expression. Lyrical obbligatos from Pisani matched with grace note flutters from the brassman may characterize many of the tracks, but on a piece like “letter” – postal or alphabet reference unexplained – Cosottini’s low-key triplets are mated with electronics encompassing wave-form gurgles and sink- draining slurps. On the other hand, the horn harmonies on “respiro” seem formally European: unaccented and processional. As the bassoon and trumpet phlegmatically shade notes and pitches between them, the bass and drums sound martial beats, while electronics color the proceedings with flanges and squeaks.

Consciously or not, “corpo blanco” relates to the Blues, tweaked by Northern Italian sensibilities of course. Irregular drum clatters and thumps, throbbing electronic pulses and wide-bore bassoon honks soon give way to a brass lead, with the climax a variant of trading fours. Pisani’s horn snorts and slurs like a baritone sax and Cosottini spits out heraldic brassiness, as the drummer follows both with backbeats.

On its session, ElectroAcousticSilence validates the hypothesis that a bassoon can make important contributions to improvised music settings. Perhaps the players on Macroscopia – especially de Brunner – can do the same next time out.

--Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Flatime: 1. blue 2. corpo blanco 3. ero uno 4. vox 5. letter 6. moretimex 7. ming’s attempt 8. respiro 9. moreavvio

Personnel: Flatime: Mirio Cosottini (trumpet and flugelhorn); Alessio Pisani (bassoon and contra-bassoon); Filippo Pedol (bass and electric bass); Andrea Melani (drums) and Taketo Gohara (sound design)

Track Listing: Macrscopia: 1. Opening 2. Mysterious Breath 3. Dumbo Twilight 4. Riff Tide 5.

Life Rattle 6. To Move as a Shadow7. Totem Dance

Personnel: Macrscopia: Daniel Carter (tenor saxophone, clarinet and trumpet), Claire de Brunner (bassoon); Ken Silverman (oud, guitar and hand percussion) and Tom Zlabinger (bass)

August 31, 2011

Matthew Shipp

Nu Bop Live
Rai Trade RTPJ 0015

The Frame Quartet

35 MM

Okka Disk OD 12078

Rempis/Rosaly

Cyrillic

482 Music 482-1064

Connie Crothers-Michel Bisio

Sessions at 475 Kent

Mutable 17537-2

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

By Ken Waxman

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

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

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

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

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

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

-- For Whole Note Vol. 15 #9

June 1, 2010

Jeffrey Hayden Shurdut

The Digital Box 200 Series
Overview Notes by Ken Waxman

If any one musician arguably epitomizes cooperative total improvisation in the 21st Century, then it’s New York-based guitarist and keyboardist Jeffrey Hayden Shurdut. As this set of CDs demonstrates, the 40-year-old Long Island-native is totally enveloped by music, and each session here is one variant in his long-standing attempt to capture the sound of his city… and the cosmos.

\x09“Community is the most important thing about this entire exchange,” Shurdut says about his performances, “and anyone who has played with me knows they’re welcome to bring friends.” More than 70 improvisers have recorded with the multi-instrumentalist over the years, ranging from neophytes to veteran free jazzers such as reedman and trumpeter Daniel Carter, who often plays with bassist William Parker; saxophonist Blaise Siwula; and former Cecil Taylor drummer Marc Edwards.

\x09Fully conversant with the “by any means necessary” ethos which characterizes many New York musicians, performances by Shurdut and associates take place in nightclubs and coffee houses in Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens plus, as he recalls “on top of buildings, out on terraces, in churches, old movie theaters, and in off the street in some of New York’s music stores.”

\x09At the same time, while the go-for-broke group improvisations that characterize the recorded instant compositions here may superficially relate to 1960s-1970s Energy Music, there are no retreads in hearing range. Instead the reverberations reflected are those of the city itself. An autodidact, who as a child took “half of a piano lesson” and one year of guitar lessons until he stopped because “I obsessed over writing my own notation”; Shurdut sets out to capture the “vibration, sound, and light” of his existence. “There has been no bigger influence on me than living on Third Avenue, right across from the mirror and glass store that has nightly pick ups at 4 a.m. and being kept awake all night by the sounds of New York City,” he states.

\x09One feature of Shurdut’s playing which sets him apart is his concept of guitar “etuning”. Developed around 2002, following some time spent living in Scandinavia and Continental Europe, it haunted him throughout his thirties. “Like broken images of a television that receives a clear picture for a brief moment, I vividly remember dreams, sounds and smells that leaked in while I was doing other things,” he muses “Finally everything became revealed in an all-out storm of the world communicating through me as its receptor.”

\x09He also returned to Manhattan “opened my window, and there it was.” Today, he adds, his guitar reflects the sonic of everyday life: “the shower, the shower head, heater, wind howling underneath my door and more. I tune my guitar to those sounds around me. If you look carefully you would see that there are very inspirational things waiting in the ordinary.”

\x09Furthermore, Shurdut is always listed as playing both the guitar and the guitar amp, which is deliberate. “The electric guitar is somewhat dependent on its amplification. And while we are all in the community of sound, including the instruments, I think the amplifier deserves its own credit,” he explains.

\x09A similar strategy exists with the piano, since he plays not only the keys but “pedal” as well. “At times I don't touch the piano keys at all, rather I pump and release the pedals as a means of vibration and letting the piano play itself,” he elucidates. “As with the guitar, there are moments when you need to just let the guitar be a guitar. And it will play itself to the vibration of the world.”

\x09Instrumentation, individual musicianship and notated composition are secondary to community, Shurdut elaborates. “Written music doesn’t mean anything unless it is played. Playing is about communication. Communication is about listening and responding. And there can’t be any of that if you are playing to a page.”

\x09Instead, what’s most germane to him is building an association of totally communicating musicians who could ideally play in a location where everyone is inspired 24 hours a day. “None of us could exist without interdependence,” he avers “Our culture has misguided us into believing that the greatest reward is being celebrated as an individual. Rather, as Einstein said, it’s through the community where the individual gains greatest strength.”

\x09This series of downloadable-only CDs – that can be also collected into a digital box – is designed to aurally illustrate this sense of community involvement and cooperation, expressed in the exceptional music created by Shurdut’s different ensembles. Since he and his friends are continuously immersed in total improvisation, each CD is a valuable document of his – and their – evolving sound and vision. “To experience art, just leave yourself open,” the guitarist/pianist insists.

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Ken Waxman www.jazzword.com Toronto January 2008

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Jeffrey Hayden Shurdut

This Is The Music Of Life Vol. 2, Live at Zebulon

aylDB-200/001

An octet of accomplished improvisers help guitarist Jeffrey Hayden Shurdut reflect “the effects of city living” on this CD, a brief, yet heartfelt example of New York Free Jazz. Recorded in a Brooklyn club in 2005, the single improvisation is partially shaped around the snaking FreeBop cry of veteran alto saxophonist Sonny Simmons, who would recall this sort of absolute music session from the mid-1960s. At the same time the hocketing, polyphonic explosion heard epitomizes today’s Big Apple. It includes pinpointed contributions from the trumpet rasps, alto saxophone slurs and clarinet slithers of Daniel Carter – who is as satisfied busking as recording, provided he can play his own way – plus the concentrated overblowing of tenor saxophonist Blaise Siwula, who organizes the weekly COMA jam sessions. Also added to the mix are rubato asides from younger players, such as the double-stopping and sul ponticello lines of fiddler Robyn Siwula and bassist Adam Lane, with the entire performance grounded by a nucleus of thick beats and cymbal slaps from drummer Mike Fortune. Reflecting on the sound, Shurdut, who displays his characteristic ringing guitar riffs here, says: “If you look carefully you would see that there are very inspirational things waiting in the ordinary.” Surviving in the big city may be ordinary but the sounds produced by the ordeal are extraordinary.

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Ken Waxman www.jazzword.com Toronto January 2008

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Jeffrey Hayden Shurdut

The Emergency Broadcast System

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Times of challenge and crises depend on an emergency broadcast system to convey unfiltered information to the population, and that’s exactly what this quartet of accomplished improvisers provides on this CD. With the United States continually lurching from challenge to crisis, this CD, recorded in a Brooklyn coffee house in 2005, demonstrates musically the end product of mutual cooperation – an aural emergency broadcast system. “None of us could exist without interdependence,” says guitarist Jeffrey Hayden Shurdut, who organized the session, “I think we’re all really helping each other in the music.” Building up to a dense mass of multi-hued tones, the creation bubbles and shifts according to no logic but its own, driven and expanded by the glossolalia of the two saxophonist: the cavernous staccato tones of tenorist Ras Moshe, fully committed to the free-form; and the cries and squeals of altoist Blaise Siwula, who organizes the weekly COMA jam sessions. With the electronic pulsations from Shurdut’s guitar and guitar amp – “I think the amplifier deserves its own credit,” he insists –providing the thread that holds the entity together, the tune reaches its climax with the spectacular double thumping, cross sticking and distinctive press rolls of drummer Marc Edwards, a former associate of pianist Cecil Taylor.

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Ken Waxman www.jazzword.com Toronto January 2008

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Jeffrey Hayden Shurdut

Trance Jazz

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Put aside any trendy associations with “trance” when hearing this music. For rather than aping fashion, this interactive mix of vibrating strings, horns and percussion is more personal and enduring. It captures an improvisation taking place on New York’s Lower East Side one Sunday night in 2006, part of a series organized by alto saxophonist Blaise Siwula. Not only does the intense, multi-faceted session preserve Free Jazz’s true underground sounds, but it also showcases veteran and neophyte improvisers, together committed more to experimentation than instrumentation. Case in point is Jeffrey Hayden Shurdut, who is actually a guitarist, but who contributes connective keyboard clusters here (“There was a piano there, so I played it,” he explains); Brian Osborne, usually a drummer, who on this gig “plays” contact mics; and Andrew Barker, normally the Gold Sparkle Band’s drummer, whose cello work joins the sawing spiccato from the string section. “I’m glad we got him out that day to play cello,” says Shurdut. “I say to everyone that first they’re artists then they’re musicians.” But accomplished musicians are here, and the thick, dense and vocalized sound is propelled by Siwula’s expansive vibrato squeals; the taunt, anvil-hard pounding of veteran drummer Marc Edwards, plus the contrapuntal jagged and pulsed string thrusts that also involve cellist Chris Welcome, violinist Robyn Siwula and bassist Shayna Dulberger, who is part of saxophonist Ras Moshe’s band. While only an occasional tinkle from Shurdut peeps from among the opaque dissonance that characterizes the piece, ironically when the strings play pizzicato, the results actually resemble his unique guitar etuning.

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Ken Waxman www.jazzword.com Toronto January 2008

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Jeffrey Hayden Shurdut

Ayler Records Celebration

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An anomaly among Jeffrey Hayden Shurdut’s CDs in this collection, this nearly 70-minute session, recorded in New York’s now-defunct Tonic club in 2006, is distinctive in many respects. For a start, the idiosyncratic guitarist doesn’t play his usual instrument, but turns out high-frequency, irregularly shaped piano lines. The CD also features Ed Chang on computer, though whatever wave-form pulsations the instrument emits are obscured by the continuous, multi-layered energy of the six other musicians’ playing. Even rarer, despite lacking a bass player, the performance takes place within a neo- Bebop atmosphere, with raunchy alto saxophonist Luther Thomas not only rapping about Charlie Parker’s legacy, but also frequently instrumentally riffing some of Bird’s classic lines. The CD innovates as well as celebrates however, with the other hornmen, including long-standing Shurdut associates alto saxophonist Blaise Siwula and tenor saxophonist Ras Moshe, squealing and squawking; baritone saxophonist Nick Gianni snorting in response; while veteran drummer Marc Edwards produces flams, ruffs, bounces and bangs that meld the tradition of Free Jazz with a martial beat fillip. Eventually as the layers of foghorn swells, altissimo screams and reed vocalization pile on top of one another, the polyphonic phenomenon of many separate and jagged melodies expelled simultaneously is exposed, and the surface vibrates exponentially. Expanding and mutating from the Parker celebration, the septet members follow Shurdut’s dictate: “We can all be free and make things work together.”

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Ken Waxman www.jazzword.com Toronto January 2008

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Jeffrey Hayden Shurdut

Etuning

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Guitarist Jeffrey Hayden Shurdut defines his idiosyncratic style of etuning both laconically as “awareness” and poetically as “an all-out storm of the world communicating through me as its receptor”. Listening to these 2007 Brooklyn sessions clarifies the concept. Encompassing interactions with items as familiar as a shower head or as abstract as “the wind underneath my door”, this series of cameos is as notable musically as it is instructive, as he tunes “my guitar to those sounds around me.” Adding his rhythmic input on seven of the eight tracks is Brian Osborne, who studied with drum master Milford Graves. “…Shower Head”, for instance features Osborne’s percussive pops matching open-handed string patting and vamping from the guitarist, while alto saxophonist Blaise Siwula chirps and trills. In contrast, “Wood Rattling Against the Heater”, with ingenious tenor saxophonist Daniel Carter and Osborne, could be a miniature John Coltrane session. Masticating slurs, narrowed reed pitches and moaning onomatopoeia blends into a unique homage that involve Carter’s saxophone from bell to ligature. Meantime Carter’s exposition is balanced by the drummer’s blunt ruffs and struts and Shurdut outputting thick Jimmy Garrison-like plucks from his bass strings. Community-minded above all, the guitarist angles his dissonant frailing and slurred fingering to also showcase the undulating lines and metallic squeaks of alto saxophonists Enrico Oliva and Mario Rechtern on the properly watery sounding “…From the Bathroom Tub”. Careful listening to this CD demonstrates how the other players, including Bonnie Kane on tenor saxophone, flute and live electronics, react and fit their improvisations to Shurdut’s ideas.

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Ken Waxman www.jazzword.com Toronto January 2008

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Jeffrey Hayden Shurdut

Humanity

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“I’ve always had an open door policy; anyone who has played with me knows they’re welcome to bring friends,” explains idiosyncratic keyboardist Jeffrey Hayden Shurdut about the genesis of kinetic live dates like this one. “I try my best so that everyone has something to be a part of. Whoever wants to play, plays.” Welcoming all comers means that the players represented here goes beyond the expected improvisers. Latino/reggae drummer Boppa “King” Carre adds conga-like concussion to the tune, that also floats on the scraped and rattling string loosening or tautness from cellist Chris Welcome and bassist Shayna Dulberger, who often play together when the bassist’s isn’t part of saxophonist Ras Moshe’s groups. Undulating above this string thumping are cries and screams from three saxophones improvising at top strength and volume. United in yelping intensity or operating in congruent counterpoint are Munich-native alto saxophonist Welf Dorr and New York baritone saxophonist Nick Gianni, who together make up the Underground Horns, plus veteran Berlin-born reedist/artist Mario Rechtern – whose philosophical experiments with open harmonies that here include wooden mouthpiece slurs and Orientalized timbres – initially took place in the 1980s with groups like Reform Art Unit. Bridging the spurting, staccato contributions are Shurdut’s unique keyboard and pedal tinctures and runs that finally guide the entire ensemble into a crashing, polyphonic Ascension-like climax.

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Ken Waxman www.jazzword.com Toronto January 2008

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Jeffrey Hayden Shurdut

New Text

aylDB-200/008

Unexpected and diverse aspects of the music of Jeffrey Hayden Shurdut are exposed through this set of download-only releases, characterized by his concept of etuning that informs the sonic strategies of his bands. Although completely improvised the three “new texts” performed here vibrate and pulse with the attributes of repetitive minimalism guided by the ostinato chords of Shurdut’s piano. Yet true to his non-hierarchical musical policy, this nearly 76½-minute session recorded at a Queens, N.Y. nightclub, also contains players echoing Freebop, Afro-Cuban rhythm and even comb-and-tissue paper-like buzzing. Coloring their responses to Shurdut’s prodding is their mixed musical experience. Multi-instrumentalist Daniel Carter, who produces unabashed jazzy obbligatos from his muted trumpet or jagged riffs from his saxes, busks outdoors as frequently as he plays with avant-garde avatars like bassist William Parker; Underground Horns member Nick Gianni snorts out rumbling, punky baritone saxophone runs; while alto saxophonist Enrico Olivia, who studied with David Murray, adds vibrated split tones to two tracks and a march-tempo – on drums [!] – to the third. In contrast Boppa “King” Carre’s slinky, concussive percussion maintains a Latin mood, and, when he isn’t rhythmically cross-pounding his strings, Shurdut himself introduces a sprightly waterfall of spidery treble notes. By the time the theme is resolved through super-quick clanging and tingling piano runs and bifurcated horn vamps in triple counterpoint, the “new text” mutates into a climax that may not be New music, but is definitely New York.

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Ken Waxman www.jazzword.com Toronto January 2008

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Jeffrey Hayden Shurdut

City Living

aylDB-200/012

Similarities and differences involving the performance and the performers are both unclear and obvious on the three slices of city living recorded by this edition of Jeffrey Hayden Shurdut’s ensemble at a Brooklyn club in 2007. Since he maintains that “my music is your music is everybody's music is all music” his sessions welcome old friends as well as newbies, so this CD is the only chapter of the digital box which features ruffs and rolls from Jesse Wallace, who usually plays in rock bands; and adjusts the sound for the serpentine, Middle Eastern-styled trills of soprano saxophonist, Briton Marcus Cummins, who spent almost a decade in Trevor Watts’ Celebration Band. It’s also the CD where Shurdut’s idiosyncratic etuning is adapted to the chugging pulsation of electric piano. “City Living was actually supposed to be titled Tuning In,” he admits. But the cacophonous palindromes heard here more appropriately fit the present title since the city is New York. Similarities arise as the performance expands with unison polyphony, rippling vamps and the hints of bagpipe chanter burr from tenor saxophonists Blaise Siwula and Ras Moshe, plus alto saxophonist Enrico Oliva, who studied with David Murray. Siwula, who often works with Shurdut, and Moshe both run similar all-encompassing Free Music sessions elsewhere. Mixing the drummer’s fortissimo rumbles, pops and bangs together with squeaky altissimo cries, scatter-shot split tones and reed bites from the horns and widely spaced, throbbing piano comping, the CD encompasses just about every electronically vibrated sound and emotion that can be musically replicated by top-flight, Big Apple improvisers.

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Ken Waxman www.jazzword.com Toronto January 2008

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February 29, 2008

Hamid Drake & Bindu

Bindu
RogueArt ROG-0001

With the ensemble and the CD entitled Bindu, an Indian concept that signifies action as in worship or prayer, you know that this almost 75-minute, eight-track CD is not going to be a standard blowing session.

A further look at the personnel confirms this. Leader Hamid Drake plays drums, percussion and tabla, while the other participants are four saxophonists – Daniel Carter and Sabir Mateen from New York; and Greg Ward and Ernest Dawkins from Chicago –

plus Windy City flautist Nicole Mitchell. The reason why the CD is not wholly satisfying however is that the date is segmented: harder, fast-paced riff pieces featuring the reed players and two devotional pieces, the lengthiest of the set.

Moving among his extended percussion kit, which ranges from J. Arthur Rank-like gongs to regular snares, cymbals and floor toms and on to sound makers that resemble congas, bongos, djembes and batás, Drake manipulates and maneuvers them to confirm why his rhythmic aptitude is in demand literally throughout the world. Yet the result may be more inspirational for those who worship at the alters of Paiste and Sonar etc. than those seeking a group identity from Bindu. There’s also a short prelude to this display of spiritual percussion placed midway on the disc.

Similarly, in fact, the lead off track finds Mitchell at variance with the other players. Sticking to complementary hand and palm modulated rhythms, with African echoes, the percussionist only allows the flutist full range for her improvisations. Moving between mostly legit-sounding trills and sometimes raggedy duple-toned timbres, Mitchell proves that her traverse mastery is on the level of Drake’s percussion chops. Together the two oscillate space filling tones that speed up and slow down as she showcases Pan-flute like reverberations, piccolo-shrill double tones and harsh, almost electronically altered overblowing with the same facility.

Regrettably those instrumental stunners seem to be designed for a different CD than the five tracks with Carter, Mateen, Ward and Dawkins. Honoring some of Drake’s heroes such as tenor saxophonist Fred Anderson and drummer Ed Blackwell most of the action takes place with distinctive, vamping call-and-response trills plus outward sounding vibrations from all the horns as the drummer pitter patters on conga and other diminutive parts of his kit.

Most memorable is the consecutive “Bindu #1 for Ed Blackwell” and “Bindu #1 for Ed Blackwell, from Bindu to Ojas”. Despite the mystical trappings of the title, both contain the sort of funky, pared-to-the-bone riffing that wouldn’t have been unfamiliar to Count Basie’s or any other Southwestern territory band reed section. Off-kilter foot-tappers, they highlight irregular vibrated split tones and glottal punctuates from one altoist, double tongued, overblown honks from one of the tenorists and intense ornamentation from a clarinetist as Drake supplies triple-metered Africanized beats.

Unhappily none of the soloists are identified, which is a drawback when four of the horn men play alto saxophone, three tenor and two clarinet. Only Matten stands out because of his guttural chanting screaming and yodeling on the second tune.

Drake’s major devotional and rhythmic statement has many fine moments scattered among the eight tracks here. But those who prefer the music a bit more chordal and cerebral associations will have to live with disappointments.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Remembering Rituals* 2. Bindu #1 for Baba Fred Anderson+ 3. A Prayer for the Bardo, for Baba Mechack Silas+ 4. Meeting and Parting+ 5. Born Upon a Lotus 6 Bindu #1 for Ed Blackwell+ 7. Bindu #1 for Ed Blackwell, from Bindu to Ojas+ 8. Do Khyentse’s Journey, 139 Years and More

Personnel: Daniel Carter (tenor and alto saxophone and clarinet)+; Greg Ward (alto saxophone and clarinet)+; Ernest Dawkins (tenor and alto saxophone and percussion) +; Sabir Mateen (tenor and alto saxophone, clarinet and bass clarinet and voice); Nicole Mitchell (flute)*; Hamid Drake (drums, percussion, tabla and voice)

November 10, 2006

DANIEL CARTER/RAVI PADMANABHA

Nivesana
Epoch Music No #

By Ken Waxman

Uniquely linking timbres adopted from Carnatic classical music with jazz-improv, ambient and electronics, percussionist Ravi Padmanabha creates a sound that more properly described as worldy than World. NIVESANA is particularly memorable since on this session, he hooks up with New York multi-instrumentalist Daniel Carter, who improvises on alto and tenor saxophones, clarinet, trumpet and flute.

Like his frequent associates bassist William Parker and trumpeter Roy Campbell, Carter is also open to non-American idiomatic sounds. This means the interaction on the seven tracks of this CD is not the parallelism of one man playing Free Jazz and the other World Music, but of the two intertwined.

Padmanabha, now New York-based, may play traditional South Indian instruments such as cymbals, percussion, moorsing, voice and tabla, but during his years in Buffalo, N.Y. before that – which included obtaining a dental surgery DDS from the university there – he played in as many experimental and improv groups as ethnic ones. An accomplished drummer and adapter of live loops, the percussionist has also performed with players ranging from Buffalo baritone saxophonist Steve Baczkowski to bassist Parker.

Unifying factor on many of the compositions is the connective tissues of Indian drones, which serves as ostinatos. Distinctively, the jangling twang of the moorsing or Carnatic jaw harp, adds a unique percussive impetus to some tracks as well. Most of the time, however, these overly ethnic influences are tempered with Padmanabha’s playing on the regular traps kit and cymbals, imparting more familiar beats and anchoring the tunes to American improv.

Although a combination of Carter’s reductionist and languorous clarinet and flute lines or muted trumpet swells and the pitter-patter of Padmanabha’s unattached cymbals or contrapuntal tabla reverberations may suggest either devotional or New Age sounds, neither man is inclined that way. Instead these interludes – one of which clocks in 14 minutes plus – highlight dual self-expression.

Similarly, while the nearly 21-minute “Maha Supreme/TaKaDinNaTaKa” and “Story Out of Print” feature the reedist on tenor saxophone and the percussionist on traps set, engaged in frenetic – in one case – and temperate – in the other – improvisations, it doesn’t link these tracks to, for example, John Coltrane’s later works with Elvin Jones or Rashied Ali. Padmanabha escapes the comparison more easily, since his cross pulsed flams and rebounds share space with tabla pulsations, hand clapping, tambourine shakes, moorsing twanging and repetitive South Indian chants. Carter’s separation is a bit more tenuous. That’s because during the course of his solos, squealing split tones and undulations gutturally growl and stretch into tongue-stopping, intensity – and at one point he quotes a snatch of “A Love Supreme”

None of this makes NIVESANA ecstatic Free Jazz, any more than the moorsing and tabla make it Raga-Jazz. More original than that, you can easily ascertain this by listening to the disc.

Track Listing: 1. Nivesana 2. Vasana 3. Vine Stem to Flowers 4. Maha Supreme/TaKaDinNaTaKa 5. The Jewel is in the Lotus 6. Remembrance 7. Story Out of Print

Personnel: Daniel Carter (alto and tenor saxophones, clarinet, trumpet and flute) Ravi Padmanabha (drums, cymbals, percussion, moorsing, voice, tabla and live loops)

September 25, 2006

DANIEL CARTER/STEVE SWELL/FEDERICO UGHI

Concrete Science
577 Records #5

MATT LAVELLE
Making Eye Contact with God
Utech Records UR 007

Notes from the underground – New York’s Free Jazz underground to be more precise – these CDs demonstrate that the spirit of constant experimentation is still potent on both sides of the Brooklyn Bridge.

Perhaps confirming that Manhattan is now cozier for stock brokers than musicians, both these trio CDs were recorded in Brooklyn, CONCRET SCIENCE in a studio, MAKING EYE CONTACT WITH GOD at two different clubs. Privation economics also come into play with the recordings. CONCRET SCIENCE is on drummer Federico Ughi’s own small label, MAKING EYE CONTACT WITH GOD is released by a boutique label in an initial pressing of 50.

Noting the titles, it would be tempting to hear the discs as respectively representing faith and science. But, except for fundamentalist right wingers, more sophisticated listeners ascribe a closer, non-adversary relationship between the two disciplines. In short the CD by trumpeter/bass clarinetist Matt Lavelle with bassist Matt Heyner and drummer Ryan Sawyer is no more ecstatic than the other CD. And the five pieces performed by Ughi plus trombonist Steve Swell and multi-instrumentalist Daniel Carter are no more technically fluent than the four on Lavelle’s

Chief points of congruence pinpoint limitations, though. Both discs suffer from a lack of pacing, with too many pieces allowed to go on at too great length in similar pitches and tempos. Ughi and associates can be faulted more here, since they recorded in studio. Live, the three players on Lavelle’s CD can say that improvisational heat carried then past their boundaries.

Ironically, the almost 20-minute“Sweat Lodge Dance” contains some of the most exciting playing on the disc. Midway through after Lavelle on trumpet has blasted out a set of triplets that would have made Roy Eldridge proud, he continues with a spectacular display of brass technique encompassing long tremolos and short punchy valve effects. This is followed by a powerful solo from Heyner where he seems to be rubbing raw wire onto his strings, backed by legato bass clarinet cadences and rattling hi-hat. Earlier the drummer scrapes echoed tones from his snares and toms, then. Hitting the drums with robotic precision Sawyer ends the piece backed by arco squeaks from the bassist and pedal point from Lavelle. Impressive enough, the track would have been even more so at three-quarters its length.

Elsewhere Lavelle demonstrates his doubling talent. On trumpet he can explode into an orgy of brassy triple tonguing à la Freddie Hubbard and as easily suggest the wistful, barely-there lyricism of a Don Cherry, with cross purpose smears. On bass clarinet, his lines are grainier, dissonant and more obtuse than most jazzers who utilize the clarinet’s larger brother. Often rising to altissimo in his solos, he’s still able to fall into mine-shift deep pitches for effect.

Both these talents are put to good use on “Ace of Cups” that lasts more than 27½ minutes. Gritty, half-valve work, braying, open-horned slurs and bugle-like cadences characterize Lavelle’s trumpeting. On bass clarinet, extending a firm sound to snorting squeals, he works out double counterpoint with Heyner’s spiccato bass runs. Often strumming, the bassist shifts up and down his strings, sometimes arco, other times pizzicato. That way he links with tremolos from either of Lavelle’s horns or the press rolls, rim shots and shivering cymbal tolls from Sawyer. The trumpeter’s final underscored breath may provide a perfect finale, but more internal editing from all three could have produced something even more spectacular.

Besides working in Lavelle’s band, Sawyer has recorded with guitarist Bruce Eisenbeil, while Heyner is both in the No Neck Blues Band and TEST with Carter. Meanwhile Lavelle has played with Swell in The Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra and in smaller groups. Somewhat apart is Ughi, a New York native since 2000, but who spent the late 1990s in London, where he co-led the After Breakfast quartet and played European venues.

Continental sensibility may be why the majority of tunes on CONCRET SCIENCE are a bit draggy, and like those on the Lavelle disc, most are a touch too long. Carter, who has worked with nearly everyone in New York over the past two decades, contributes to the somewhat despondent tempos as well, especially when his resonances of choice are gentle flute lines or moderato clarinet echoes. Trading in tougher timbres, Swell’s improvisations are the liveliest part of the CD, but after a while even he gets trapped within the desultory, drawn-out tunes.

His best outing occurs in the slightly more than seven-minute “Our Own Fingerprints”, where his fat plunger tone develops in triplets, bringing forth buzzy, accentuated runs from Carter’s clarinet and a thrusting cross rhythm from Ughi.

There’s no lack of talent of technique or talent on the disc, but when “Now and Ever Resistance” clocks in at more than 17 minutes and “Middleclass Madness”, at a touch over 18, something seems amiss. You need real patience to properly distinguish between these two instant compositions in nearly duplicate tempo and meandering pitch. At points here as well, the three appear to be improving separately in the same room.

On “Middleclass Madness”, Swell contribute slide barks and buzzing burrs and Ughi produces hollow reverberations, pinpointed cymbals bounces and blunt snare strokes, but intersection is lacking. On the former, the trombonist snorts and smears, while moving among his reed arsenal, beeping, overblowing or reed-biting, Carter could be a group of horn players himself. Meantime the drummer circles around both, rumbling his snares and double clapping his cymbals. At full steam the three take on the timbres of the similarly constituted New York Art Quartet sans bassist. But except in snatches that illusion too is overcome by drawn-out sameness.

Constantly experimenting players such as the six on these CDs are expected to be a little rough around the edges, with pieces often raw and unfinished. That why they aren’t stuck in the too-perfect morass of neo-con playing. In truth, Swell, Carter, Lavelle and Hayner have been heard to better effect elsewhere. Still both discs are worth investigating as a snapshot of what’s happening right now just below the surface on the Apple’s improv scene.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: God: 1. Ace of Cups 2. Eye Contact with God 3. Mars in the Fourth House 4. Sweat Lodge Dance

Personnel: God: Matt Lavelle (trumpet and bass clarinet); Matt Heyner (bass); Ryan Sawyer (drums)

Track Listing: Science: 1. Now and Ever Resistance 2. Soul’s Underwood Tunnels 3. Middleclass Madness 4. Our Own Fingerprints 5. Concrete Science

Personnel: Science: Steve Swell (trombone); Daniel Carter (alto and tenor saxophones, flue and clarinet); Federico Ughi (drums)

August 29, 2005

FREEDOMLAND

Yia Yia’s Song
rent control records rcrcd 012

STEVE SWELL
Slammin’ the Infinite
Cadence Jazz Records CJR 1175

Notes from New York’s Lower East Side underground, these two fine sessions show that the spirit of experimentation still shines brightly whether the sounds are called avant garde, the New Thing or Ecstatic Jazz.

What the nine improvisers are playing here is really noting less than intense modern music, but these sounds are often labeled unconventional since the neo-cons have perverted the idea of modern mainstream.

No matter, featured on SLAMMIN’ THE INFINITE and YIA YIA’S SONG is a literal who’s who of top-flight players. A co-op band, Freedomland is one of the myriad groups that feature bassist William Parker and reedist/trumpeter Daniel Carter. Other members are alto and baritone saxophonist Dave Sewelson and bass saxophonist David Hofstra -- who splits and tuba duty with Parker here – also are in Parker’s Little Huey Creative Orchestra (LHCO). Band drummer, Ex-Bush Tetra Dee Pop plays with a variety of other improvisers. Two other LHCO members, trombonist Steve Swell and reedist Sabir Mateen, are featured on SLAMMIN’ THE INFINITE. Matt Heyner, bassist on that date is in the band TEST with Carter and Mateen. Only German-born drums Klaus Kugel isn’t a regular downtowner. In Europe however he has longtime associations with other progressive Continental musicians such as trumpeter Markus Stockhausen and saxophonist Michel Pilz.

Heir to the avant tailgate style of Roswell Rudd, trombonist Swell, who wrote all the tunes on SLAMMIN’ THE INFINITE, is his own man, adding bop articulation and speed to classic smears and shouts in his solos. Broken counterpoint involving his horn and Mateen’s helps focus, “For Frank Lowe”, a hushed threnody for the recently departed first generation New Thinger. It also shows that these musical explorers know the tradition as well as the neo-cons that claim a monopoly on it.

“Box Set”, a stop-and-go piece, confirms this. Built on a freebop theme from both horns, walking bass and the Kugel’s press rolls, it could have been played by the New York Art Quartet in 1966. As it is, the episodic theme recapitulations give plenty of room for Mateen and Swell to open up. The later offers a double-tongued set of rubato slurs, while the later is in irregularly vibrated Aylerian tenor mode with upper-pitched squeaks. The title track is more of the same, although it features legato blowing from Swell. Also notable are Heyner’s long, loping lines at the beginning and his slurred focused bowing that plucks out individual notes, amplified with a burst of spiccato at the end.

“Dresden Art Maneuvers”, at a second less than 18 minutes, is the set’s tour-de-force. Commencing with a throbbing ostinato bass line plus hunt-and-peck martial drum action, it eventually redefines itself into a series of orchestral miniatures. A cappella, Matten twists out obtuse clarinet timbres, Swell slides out muted and open-horn blats, growls and plunges; Kugel contributes door-knocking raps and a double-quick rush over elevated toms; and Heyner creates a resonating tuning peg-scraping bass line.

A little farther on, the bassist’s grating tone almost push his higher strings into erhu territory – a tone that’s joined by harmonic interjections from rattled bells and shaken cymbals, a wavering tenor sax and bisected by a chromatic trombone line. For a climax, the elliptical trombone exhalation is matched by mirroring movements from the bass.

If the CD does have a modest downside, it’s when Kugel gets overexcited -- or the mix is unbalanced -- and he threatens to mask one or another of the others’ work.

When everything is taken into consideration, though, the CD is a fine example of how four in-tune musicians can accompany and complement one another. It’s another stellar achievement for Swell and company.

The same could be said for YIA YIA’S SONG, though here the kudos have to be divided five not four ways. Or maybe that number should be a dozen, since that’s the collective count of instruments the five use. Only Pop sticks to the singular traps set --though the odd percussion fillip can be heard. On the other hand, Carter is the most versatile, turning in beatific work on alto and tenor saxophones, clarinet, flute and trumpet. The prototypical modest sideman -- which is probably why he’s so busy in New York -- he can contribute a flute tone as rarefied as those created by a legit symphony section player, or blast a plunger line from his trumpet as hot and unrefined as a Dixielander – often on the same piece.

You can hear that on the title tune, which also allows the others to show off their quick-change identities. Undulating flute carries the main theme, which is complemented by a rugged bass ostinato, stuttering cross harmonies from alto saxophonist Sewelson and simian-like ritualistic cries from all concerned. Pop, who could be auditioning for Papa Wemba, sounds as if he’s resonating bugarabu or djembe drums as well as mythic Africanized little instruments.

Hofstra’s bass saxophone tone is restrained here to harmonize with the lead alto line, but on the almost 16½-minute “One Blue Eye”, he gets to stretch and speechify from the farthest reaches of his sax, adding to the harmonic Donnybrook of the others. With the other saxophones whinnying, irregularly pitched and jutting across the bar lines, his reed monster billows, buckles and snorts. Finger cymbal cracks and double stopping bass lines presage pedal point bass sax action with broken horn harmonies vamping behind. Carter adds musette-like writhing counterpoint from his clarinet and Parker, elephant-like trumpeting from his tuba,. Meanwhile, Sewelson, unperturbed, plays a fairly legato alto line.

However elsewhere, in some of his solo spots on baritone, Sewelson confirms his fellowship with Freedomland’s other members of by skronking Pat Patrick-like pitch vibrations with the same facility he brings to mellow Gerry Mulligan-like moderato expositions elsewhere.

If you can’t afford the time and expense to hang out in Manhattan’s East Village or Lower East Side, these two CDs will give you an authentic picture of the freeform music thriving there.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Yia: 1. Don’t Throw Out The Sky 2. Yia Yia’s Song 3. One Green Eye 4. Moonbeams in a Jar 5. One Blue Eye

Personnel: Yia: Daniel Carter (alto and tenor saxophones, clarinet, flute and trumpet); Dave Sewelson (alto and baritone saxophones); David Hofstra (tuba and bass saxophone); William Parker (bass and tuba); Dee Pop (drums)

Track Listing: Slammin’: 1. With the Morning Hope 2. East Village Meet and Greet 3. Box Set 4. Dresden Art Maneuvers 5. Slammin’ the Infinite 6. Voices from the Asphalt 7. For Frank Lowe

Personnel: Slammin’: Steve Swell (trombone), Sabir Mateen (alto and tenor saxophones, clarinet, alto clarinet and flute); Matt Heyner (bass); Klaus Kugel (drums)

March 28, 2005

DANIEL CARTER/SHANIR EZRA BLUMENKRANZ/KEVIN ZUBEK

Chinatown
NotTwo MW 753-2

Native Chinese have no need of Chinatowns; they’re only necessary for Chinese in foreign lands. So any band naming its CD after that unique urban area must come to terms with exile, rapprochement and social mobility

By the same token each of the musicians featured here brings his background to bear on the 11 tracks on this session. Although all three are American, the strands of sound that they intermingle are removed enough for homogenized popular music that the endproduct needs a separate forum, like the unaffected area around New York’s Chinatown, in which to flourish.

The band’s two younger members, string player Shanir Ezra Blumenkranz and percussionist Kevin Zubek bring Hebraic, Middle Eastern and world-rock sensibilities to the mix, having performed with such Jewish-inflected experimental units as The Lemon Juice Quartet and the trio Satlah. Blumenkranz, who plays bass and oud here, has, in the past, backed up such experimental reedists as Sabir Mateen, Anthony Braxton and Sonny Simmons, so finding common ground with the group’s veteran soloist is no stretch. One of Free Jazz’s most accomplished players, multi-instrumentalist Daniel Carter has spent nearly 30 years trading ideas with the cream of outside players from all over, including trumpeter Roy Campbell, bassists Peter Kowald and William Parker and drummer Hamid Drake.

Using all the colors available from Zubek’s drums and percussion and Blumenkranz’s stringed instruments, the two mesh easily with lead lines ejaculating from Carter’s alto and tenor saxophones, trumpet, flute and clarinet. Together they make a powerful statement and if they aren’t yet as together as some of Carter’s other groups such as Other Dimensions In Music, it isn’t for lack of trying new things. As a matter of fact, the CD’s only real weakness is its number of tracks. Fewer, longer numbers may have been a better strategy.

At almost eight minutes, for instance, “Guo Zhi Han” gives the three enough space in which to show off how Zubek’s pumped up cymbal evocations meld with Blumenkranz’s thumping pizzicato line and Carter’s chesty tenor saxophone tones. It also provides a showcase for the bassist to sound out some wiggling arco slurs, as Blumenkranz strums and finger picks his bull fiddle as if it was a large guitar. Earlier, his ponticello vibrations almost move his output into violin territory and cause Carter to mirror that sound with his split tone screeches.

On the 12-minute-and-change first track, “Hak Zhou”, Carter’s shows off not only his swaying, triple tonguing Trane-like alto work, but also his clarinet tones which, squeak, sneak and circle around the theme before introducing reed kisses. The percussionist contributes sounds that could come from a bata drum and unselected cymbals, while the bassist applies enough torque to his strings to multi stop before moving into legato plucks to hold everything together.

Legit ethnic sounds make their appearance on “Sun Dou” and “Sun Mei”, as Blumenkranz, who studied music in Israel as well as the U.S. displays his oud prowess. Plucking away on the five pairs of strings with a guitarist’s facility, on the first, he builds to a crescendo of smeared fingering, which is soon matched by a breathy, tender tone from the tenor sax. When Carter begins double tonguing a snaking timbre that resembles an ancient Middle Eastern flute, Blumenkranz picks away emphasizing -- no surprise -- the drone from the oud’s lowest and thickest string known as the bamteli.

Somehow Carter adapts the texture of a cross-blown Arabic flute to the second piece, with the oudist pecking a definitely non-Western melody. Zubek’s isolated cymbal thwacks and wooden nerve beats add to the atmosphere and help amplify Blumenkranz’s string snaps and slurred fingering.

As for the other tunes, they certainly allow the three to exhibits all sorts of Free Music extended techniques. These include bluesy, clarion-calls, multiphonic lines, muted Milesean trumpet licks, speaking-in-tongues screeches and simultaneously blowing and mumbling through his mouthpiece from Carter. Then there’s Zubek lashing his cymbals, bouncing and rebounding his snares and toms, exercises his claves and ringing his cowbell as if he was a ranch cook. Meanwhile, Blumenkranz displays expansive, dense bowed licks, screeching supple tremolo ponticello lines and even a tincture of Classic Jazz slap bass.

On the evidence here, the trio members have made CHINATOWN a place you’d like to visit.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Hak Zhou 2. Tai Hong Lau 3. Sun Dou 4. Zhong Guo 5. Xiao Zhi An 6. Shun Da 7. Jing Jing Lok 8. Sun Mei 9. Xian Shi 10. Teng Fei 11. Guo Zhi Han

Personnel: Daniel Carter (alto and tenor saxophones, trumpet, flute, clarinet); Shanir Ezra Blumenkranz (bass and oud); Kevin Zubek (drums and percussion)

June 21, 2004

WILLIAM PARKER

Fractured Dimensions
FMP CD 122

COLLECTIVE 4TET
Synopsis
Leo LR 380

Change one man and you change the music, is an old -- and pre-feminist -- Free Music axiom. The converse is true as well, of course. Maintain a consistent combo line up and the sounds become that much more profound, since each player knows exactly what he can count on from the others.

Validating both sides of the equation are the quartets on these two CDs, each coincidentally featuring bassist William Parker. FRACTURED DIMENSIONS, whose title might reflect the recording circumstances, shows what happens when three members of a regularly constituted band -- Other Dimensions in Music (ODM) -- are forced by circumstance to play with someone else at the last minute. More than 78 minutes of music resulted from Alan Silva’s piano and synthesizer tones being grafted onto the sounds perfected by Parker, brassman Roy Campbell and multi-instrumentalist Daniel Carter in a Berlin concert in 1998 when ODM’s drummer was a no show.

More than four years later Parker joined with the other members of the Collective 4tet to record its first CD after a five year hiatus. Luckily, the creative concordance was still flowing among the bassman, fellow Americans trombonist Jeff Hoyer and pianist Mark Hennen plus Swiss percussionist Heinz Geisser. Geisser, who usually works in bands with fellow Swiss pianist Guerino Mazzola, conceived of this co-op group in the early 1990s and its personnel has remained constant since then. Besides Parker, whose list of collaborators at this point probably outnumbers the membership of the United Nations, the other players have certified downtown New York credentials. Hoyer has played with Cecil Taylor and in Bill Dixon’s Vision Festival Orchestra that included Campbell. Hennen has played in large aggregations led by drummer William Hooker and Silva, and in a combo featuring Carter and another Parker associate reedist Sabir Mateen.

Because of this shared background, the Collective 4tet lives up to its name, never coming across as if it was a William Parker quartet with three sidemen. The bassist does add his distinctive rock-solid time keeping to the mix, but SYNOPSIS is as much Geisser’s or Hennen’s or Hoyer’s session as it is Parker’s.

Especially impressive in this context, Hoyer, like Gary Valente in most of Carla Bley’s bands, has a complete command of old time tailgate techniques, screwed onto modernistic impulses. So, on something like the title track, not only can he create protracted plunger tones, but he can also bend and expand them in short chromatic bursts.

Constantly pushing the air forward with his valves, mouthpiece and bell more than with slide positions, he offers fragments of rubato trills. Meantime Hennen contributes low frequency, right-handed syncopation, Parker buzzing, bowed bass notes, and Geisser the spatter and drip of near liquid cymbal timbres. Overall, the sonic compression becomes so viscous that at points it seems as if you’d be unable to cut it with a blade -- not to mention a trombone slide, a cymbal edge or a double bass bow. As the pianist showcases high and low-pitched contrasting tremolos, the piece ends with a protracted trombone exhalation

Other tunes can be just as intense. “Jig”, for instance, begins with National steel guitar-like plucks from Parker, with purposely heavy-handed tremolos and glisses from Hennen, who is intent on curlicue decorations, flashing octave digressions and a cascading waterfall of notes. Eventually the thunder of drum rolls and undulating ‘bone slurs give way to two minutes of complete silence, ultimately shattered by another 50 seconds of prolonged trombone lines, sparking piano glisses, powerful bass plunks and multi-directional percussion.

Although Hennen’s vehement chording and contrasting dynamics and Geisser’s consistent clips, bangs and bops encourage chromatic blats and purrs, the trombonist doesn’t always have to appear musically as if he’s a senile old man -- constantly talking to himself. On “Left Turn”, the appropriately titled, most outside number here, his response to the pianist and drummer is to bury notes in the bell like a small animal digging in the ground, and blow raspberries of almost “treated” colored noises. Geisser drags his drumstick the full length of a metallic resonating cymbal and Hennen first sounds the bottom frame and escapement then drones the string action on the piano’s inside speaking length for their bits.

Conventional piano sounds do make their appearance on FRACTURED DIMENSIONS, but Silva, who first made his reputation as a bassist with Cecil Taylor, Sun Ra and Albert Ayler, usually emphasizes the orchestral colors of his synthesizer. While restraint has never been a watchword in Free Jazz, during the course of this continuous performance, the other musicians play forcefully enough to mute his tendency to come across fortissimo, spewing crescendos like E. Power Biggs playing a massive cathedral organ.

Most of the CD appears to be a prelude and postscript to “Acrosses Rain”, the almost 34-minute climatic track. Showcasing Carter on flute, his unsegmented airy tones meet the pluck and scrape of Parker’s lacerated bass attack and Campbell’s trumpeted grace notes. Somehow here, Silva seems to be able to produce octave jumps and chordal asides along with what sounds like metallic marimba beats and symphonic orchestral textures.

Later, as Silva exposes some Taylor-like repeated syncopated phrases, Campbell begins a melancholy Harmon-muted tone exposition, with burbling, repeated shakes à la Miles Davis. Parker’s swollen swatches of double-stopping arco bass get more abrasive as the trumpeter trills higher and higher notes, seemingly picking up some grit in his tone along the way. Suddenly you realize that the almost Milesean trope has been mixed with some Bubber Miley-style wah wahs with Carter adding slightly more dissonant timbres from his trumpet as well. As Silva enters with a swelling keyboard concord, Campbell pitches his output higher and Carter explores his horn’s limits, at times evidently wallowing in tonal flatness.

Arco, Parker begins mountain climbing with his G-string as his pickaxe, hitting more elevated pitches as he ascends. Soon Campbell reasserts himself, with portamento-smeared tones and higher-pitched extended grace notes, more like Dizzy Gillespie than Davis. Eventually he’s in stratospheric Cat Anderson-territory, moving upwards in octaves as Carter outlines his emotional articulation below.

A valuable figure in any band, that includes TEST and different projects involving Parker and pianist Matthew Shipp, Carter’s chameleon-like character makes him MVP in many situations. Here he can match Campbell’s brassy trumpet flourishes with boppish, razor-sharp alto saxophone trills at one point, then a few minutes later transform the same instrument into a cauldron of cascading dynamics, squealing out hunks of pitchsliding staccatissimo split tones. All this takes place on top of the vibrating surface of Silva’s sythn, as the keyboardist introduces polytones and polyrhythms, intermittently pierced by Parker’s bass tones.

Other times, as on “Eternal Flower”, the saxman vibrates a bury tone for maximum sensual effect, producing the sort of boudoir fireplace warmth from his axe that you would expect from Gene Ammons or Hank Crawford. Behind him, Silva creates an undercurrent of shifting tones. Later Carter masticates the reed for maximum split-tone effects and Campbell barks himself into piccolo trumpet range.

Then there’s “Sonnet For Armstrong”, which may or may not be about Louis A. Carter, smearing out a long-lined tone from the chalumeau register of the clarinet, may have impressed Armstrong, as may have the repeated pattern Parker bows over and over again throughout. But Satchmo may have had trouble warming up to Campbell, muted and high-pitched, going his own way with chromatic double-tonguing and resonating grace notes. And he probably wouldn’t have known what to do when Silva turns on the string part of his synthesizer to birth what appears to be the shriek of a thousand tiny bats that have migrated from a horror flick soundtrack.

While you wonder whether the penultimate plunger-muted trumpet notes are from Campbell or Carter, it’s likely that the quiet, smudged grace notes that combine with a dimineundo of low frequency descending piano chords ending the piece -- and the CD -- are Campbell products.

Altering the band personnel or keeping it constant are the illustrated strategies here. Each CD shows how well each of those concepts can operate in practice.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Fractured: 1. Figures standing in the door 2. Eternal flower 3. End Of famina 4. Vermeer 5. Acrosses rain 6. Sonnet for Armstrong

Personnel: Fractured: Roy Campbell (trumpet, flugelhorn); Daniel Carter (alto saxophone, flute, clarinet and trumpet); Alan Silva (piano, synthesizer); William Parker (bass)

Track Listing: 1. Convergence 2. Going ahead 3. Synopsis 4. Left turn 5. Jig

Personnel: Jeff Hoyer (trombone); Mark Hennen (piano); William Parker (bass); Heinz Geisser (percussion)

January 12, 2004

DANIEL CARTER + REUBEN RADDING

Luminescence
AUM Fidelity AUM 025

Often the knock against multi-instrumentalists is like the stricture against studio musicians: the person has developed proficiency on a whole bunch of devices because he’s not particularly proficient on any one of them.

Like every other convention that may be true for some players, but someone coming up against say, Eric Dolphy, Ira Sullivan or Rahsaan Roland Kirk on any one of their horns would testify to the opposite. As this unique CD proves, it’s also the same for New York-based Daniel Carter.

Longtime outcat Carter plays trumpet, clarinet, bass clarinet, flute, alto and tenor saxophone in most situations. Part of many bands going back three decades, he’s probably best known for his membership in the cooperatives TEST and Other Dimensions in Music. He’s also played with folks as different as avant-rock band Yo La Tengo and pianist Cecil Taylor. Here, however, he confines himself to alto saxophone and comes up with a magnificent outpouring from it.

Necessity is the mother of invention, and in a way the events of 9/11 were responsible for this change in his modus operandi. Bassist Reuben Radding, who spent a decade in New York working in so-called downtown bands with Carter, guitarist Marc Ribot and composer John Zorn among others, then relocated to Seattle. In October 2001, he invited Carter to fly west for a series of duo concerts. But the airlines couldn’t guarantee the hornman’s axes would all be allowed on the plane.

Arriving with only his alto, Carter and Radding performed a series of duo concerts and recorded these seven poetic instant compositions at the same time. Free of the hurly burly of the Manhattan scene, the closest antecedent to these pieces would be the euphonious duets Ornette Coleman recorded on alto saxophone with bassist Charlie Haden in the mid-1970s.

Without detracting from his own skills, Carter’s playing does have a Coleman-like lilt here. At times, in fact, you can hear allusions to such Coleman’s Atlantic era tunes such as “Lonely Woman” and “Focus on Sanity”. This is especially true on the four in-concert selections that start the CD.

Here, the alto man’s appears to be no less than serene, smooth and straight even when he begins double tonguing. At mid-range he drawls out his arpeggios in such a way that you could swear he’s reiterating the verse from some long-forgotten Tin Pan Alley classic. On “ Blessing The Rice”, for example, he trills so voluminously in both upper and lower pitches that he produces tenor as well as alto saxophone tones. With Radding’s double and triple stops intersecting his solos, it’s almost as if you’re listening to double sax-and-bass trio, not a duo.

Elsewhere, when strumming and sliding around on his strings, or engendering his ringing bass rhythms to morph from legato to andante, the bassist matches Carter’s tart clipped phrases to such an extent that they set up their own rhythms. Triple stopping both arco and pizzicato, Radding offers up the canvas on which Carter can inscribe more abstract sounds. On the final piece, for instance, he and the reedist head into squeaking rodent territory, accompanying and playing off against one another. Slightly vibrating his pitch and embouchure, Carter produces a lower, wider tone which complements Radding’s low register bowing.

An adroit meeting of two sonic explorers, LUMINESCENCE even promises something for the future. With Radding back in Manhattan, the possibility of further duets looms.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. You And I Are Disappearing 2. Ancestral Voyage-Mystery Succeed 3. Refracted Light and Grace 4. Blessing The Ride 5. Vignettes 6. Qualcosa Verso Azzurro 7. Occurrences, Places, Entities and The Sea

Personnel: Daniel Carter (alto saxophone); Reuben Radding (bass)

April 28, 2003

CARTER/COOK/KOWALD/LAMASTER

Principle Hope
Sublingual SLR012

Given added poignancy by the sudden death of German bassist Peter Kowald in late September PRINCIPLE HOPE shouldn’t be heard as a celebratory memorial. Rather this CD, recorded a year-and-half before the bassist’s fatal heart attack is notable as a once in a lifetime meeting between a quartet of simpatico improvisers separated only by accidents of age, race and citizenship.

Kowald, who had been one of the most important German free improvisers ever since he first recorded with tenor saxophonist Peter Brötzmann in the late 1960s, also had long time associations with other Continental musicians like Swiss drummer Pierre Favre, British saxophonist Evan Parker and membership in pianist Alexander Von Schlippenbach’s Globe Unity Orchestra. A frequent visitor to the United States his Yank playing partners ranged from veteran saxophonist Fred Anderson and trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith to young fellow bassist Damon Smith.

It’s probably appropriate then that one of his associates here is young Boston-based violinist Jonathan LaMaster. Guiding force behind the Saturnalia String Trio, LaMaster has written for film and dance groups, recorded with multi-instrumentalist Daniel Carter among others and even backed up former Can vocalist Damo Suzuki on tour. Carter, one of New York’s free jazz heroes, seems to be equally proficient on trumpet, flute and most woodwinds. He’s also part of co-op bands like TEST with saxophonist Sabir Mateen and Other Dimensions in Music with bassist William Parker. Undeservedly the least known member of this quartet, Boston drummer Laurence Cook is a late first-generation free improviser. In the 1960s and 1970s he recorded with primary New Thingers like bassist Alan Silva, pianists Paul Bley and trumpeter Bill Dixon. More recently he’s played with saxophonists like Mateen and Jameel Moondoc.

Despite the free improv lineage, there’s no nostalgia for an earlier time on this disc. In fact, the final track is a concert recording where the quartet’s sound is processed in real time by Keith Fullerton Whitman. Plus the CD also includes Windows or Apple readable biographical information and a concert video.

Futurism mixes with shamanstic traditionalism here, as on “A Prayer in the Universal Language”. An invocative drone piece with a flute underpinning, it features Kowald powerfully stroking the nether regions of his bass while gutturally muttering into the instrument itself bringing a Native Indian sound to the program. Cook contributes hand drumming that also approximates Aboriginal rhythms, while LaMaster pushes forward arco violin portamento.

Seemingly preferring brushes to other noise makers, Cook allows the balladic “M.S. Darling” to proceed at its proper pace and volume, exhibited through LaMaster’s higher strings and Kowald’s lower ones, often doubled or tripled, sometimes matched with Carter’s alto. This same meshing of strings and horns appears on “The Many and the Few”, though here it includes immediately-identifiable strum, pluck and buzzing from Kowald, this side of out-of-tuneness from LaMaster pizzicato and a delicate Harmon muted trumpet solo of Carter’s.

Not that everything is all seriousness, though. The violinist sometimes saws away like a combination of Billy Bang and Jean-Luc Ponty -- 1960s jazz improviser Ponty that is -- while despite its French title “Danse de la Liberté” bassist and fiddler make the tune sound like Western swing not a French cabaret ditty. Carter lets loose on that piece after a while, producing a double-tonguing screeching tenor sax line.

The reedist’s flexibility is highlighted even more on “Schöne Töne” where his clarinet duets with the bass. Starting in the coloratura register, his timbre ascends, often producing some near-legit resonance as Kowald’s sweeping arco concocts tones and overtones from his steady line.

LaMaster and Cook have their do-see-do on “Atlantis by Sine Wave”, which appears to use electronics and an electric violin. Underlying the mixture of futurism and primitivism that illuminates the disc, the shimmering string wah wahs resemble extraterrestrial radio signals, while the uniform cymbal timbre is eventually succeeded by Cook banging a cowbell so that it sounds like the signal at a railroad grade crossing.

Honor Kowald and appreciate the fine work of all four men on this disc.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Awakening 2. Spirit Of Hope 3. New Flakes on Dirty Snow 4. M.S. Darling 5. Danse de la Liberté 6. Schöne Töne 7. The Many and the Few 8. Atlantis by Sine Wave 9. Weight of the World 10. A Prayer in the Universal Language 11.Live at the Tremont Theatre (Edit)*

Personnel: Daniel Carter (alto and tenor saxophone, clarinet, trumpet, flute); Jonathan LaMaster (violin, electric 6-string violin); Peter Kowald (bass); Laurence Cook (drums, electronic percussion; Keith Fullerton Whitman (real-time audio processing*); [track 6: Carter/Kowald only]; track 8: LaMaster/Cook only]

November 11, 2002

CARTER/CORIO/STARK/BAILEY

Don’t Get Me Started
Rent Control Records rcrcd 005

FREEDOMLAND
Amusement Park
Rent Control Records rcrcd 006

Veteran followers of the Manhattan sub section the of free jazz scene may be surprised by the comparison of the music on these two discs -- or perhaps they won’t. For the exciting sounds of DON’T GET ME STARTED are as interesting and accomplished as those on FREEDOMLAND.

Yet the quintet represented on DON’T includes only one veteran free jazz master -- multi-instrumentalist Daniel Carter. However included among the five musicians on AMUSEMENT are not only veterans Carter and composer/bassist William Parker, but also three others whose tenure in the Lower East Side jazz gestalt goes back to the early 1990s.

Measuring the work of soprano saxophonist Jeremy Stark, bassist Elias Bailey and drummer Paul Corio, against that the musicians on AMUSEMENT confirms that another new generation of free players has arrived on the scene. Considering that this sort of non-figurative music was written off by conservatives as noise 40 years ago and still regarded as the equivalent of skunk odor by the rapidly aging Young Lions, its resilience is confirmed here.

The most recent CDs from Rent Control, Corio’s burn-it-yourself label, AMUSEMENT is a warts-and-all record of a gig earlier this year by a bottom-heavy quartet. With Dave Hofstra, who has been in such varied associations as Metropolitan Klezmer, New York Composers Orchestra and Parker’s Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra (LHCMO) switching between tuba and bass saxophone; Parker making himself heard on tuba or bass, and Dave Sewelson, a former member of the legendary 1980s band, the Microscopic Septet and a LHCMO veteran, sometimes on alto, but mostly on baritone, it’s the rehearsal room of instruments played by Carter, whose experience encompasses membership in such groundbreaking ensembles as TEST and Other Dimensions In Music that provides the contrast. Plus, with the disc made up of only two improvisations, clocking in at almost 28 minutes and almost 35 (!) minutes each, everyone’s technique is nakedly displayed.

In truth, of the two tunes, “New Brass Miasma” seems to fare better, though, considering the CD was recorded live at -- of all places -- CBGB’s as part of a series curated by Freedomland member and former drummer for No Wave pioneers The Bush Tetras, Dee Pop, there are still some murky and muffled passages.

Enlivened by traffic jam horn sounds and undersurface exchanges between the tuba and baritone that resemble a territorial squabble between a hippo and a rhino, the composition ends up being reminiscent of Charles Mingus’ “A Foggy Day (in San Francisco)” as well as straightforward 1960s Energy music. Using only a bit of hyperbole, Parker is Mingus’ direct heir as a composer, bassist and organizer, and his substantial pizzicato lope is what keeps the cacophonous lines contributed by the others from swerving off into atonal incomprehension.

If the tubas, baritone and bass saxophones are the equivalents of thick-skinned mammals, then Carter’s darting alto saxophone is the cavorting crow that elaborates countermelodies when the head is taken up by one of the lumbering beasts. At one point he adds a phrase very reminiscent of “Get Happy” to break up the blended and extended subterranean horn sounds and moves the melody along more quickly.

Ranging between his nearly vibrato-less flute tone and his hard bop-inflected trumpet blasts, Carter also gooses up the slow beginning of “Community Meeting at the Chicken Shack”. Hofstra is then able to manipulate the foghorn tone of his tuba with the facility of a bass trombone, combining it with the steady pumping of a baritone to produce a feeling of almost motionless weight. Entwined trumpet and alto saxophone lines add some musical flexibility, as does the bass (finally) heard going mano-a-mano with the tuba. Speeding up the tempo to a sort of freeform boogaloo, means that the alto can dance on top of the beat, and that Pop’s shuffle rhythm on toms and snare, impels the bass and baritone to honk like a James Brown horn section. Finally the melody resolves itself with a spray of high and low brass notes.

Stark and Corio acceptance as full-fledged members of the improv community arrives on DON’T. Though the disc too is a testament to the modesty of Carter, who although he was part of the free-form Music Ensemble with violinist Billy Bang and Parker as long ago as 1974, is unassuming enough to ally himself with this band of tyros who only began investigating pure improv in the late 1990s, after meeting at a jazz workshop.

On this CD the studio sonics clearly pick up the mewling sonorities of Carter’s saxophones that often mix with the almost Middle Eastern tone of Stark’s soprano, until they snake around one another in a symbiotic auditory dance. If one heads into bird-whistle territory the other will follow. However, should the tenor man produce a deep, honky-tonk barroom swagger, then the soprano saxophonist snaps off brief slap-tongued missals. Occasionally, too, both will converge to produce a sound that approximates that of a reedy harmonium.

Bailey, who has toured with vocalist Renee Marie, maintains an unvarying bass ostinato, while New Yorker Corio, who began his musical explorations after uniting with Seattle-born Stark, uses bass effects, flams and press rolls plus some relaxed brush work to give the proceedings a particular hue. The drummer concentrates on stick upon stick timbres on “Bastinado”, which may have received its odd title from the definition of a blow with a stick on the soles of the feet. Did the band define this track as a torture because the traditionalists couldn’t tap their feet to it?

For all the praiseworthy work done throughout, respect for elders must sometimes be observed, most notably on “Ochlocracy”. During the penultimate section, Carter, on tenor saxophone and backed only by the bass, exposes his balladic heart in a vaporous solo worthy of 1950s Sonny Rollins or, surprisngly, traditional bopper Hank Mobley.

Carter has proven himself in many other contexts and it would be interesting some time in the future to hear all the band members work out on more focused tunes with tighter heads. Earlier efforts by the soprano saxophonist and drummer -- MARCH OF THE RED GUARD (Rent Control Records rcrcd 001), THE TESLA INVENTION (Rent Control Records rcrcd 002) and WHO KILLED THE PORK CHOPS? (Rent Control Records rcrcd 004) the last two of which also feature trumpeter Andrew Paulsen, do some of that. The brassman’s habit of mixing fanfares with dirty growls; Stark’s fluid tone that varies between an almost-legit, clarinet-like style and reed-biting that explodes into white noises; plus Corio’s cross-sticking and cymbal shimmers allows them to overcome the lack of a chordal instrument as do frequent call-and-response sections. But despite the focus of these collective improvisations, they’re still student studies that merely suggest the saxman and percussionist’s growing musical sophistication.

Since the most recent sessions on Rent Control present an unfettered aural glimpse at some veterans in an unstructured situation and a comparative CD of younger players’ rapidly ripening ideas, who knows what additional highlights, available by e-mailing www.rentcontrolrecords.com, will come out of he CD burner in the near future?

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Don’t: 1. Ochlocracy 2. Don’t Get Me Started 3. And Another Thing 4. Bastinado

Personnel: Don’t: Daniel Carter (trumpet, alto and tenor saxophones, clarinet, flute); Jeremy Stark (soprano saxophone); Elias Bailey (bass); Paul Corio (drums)

Track Listing: Freedomland: 1. Community Meeting at the Chicken Shack 2. New Brass Miasma

Personnel: Freedomland: Daniel Carter (trumpet, alto and tenor saxophones, clarinet, flute); Dave Sewelson (alto and baritone saxophones); Dave Hofstra (tuba, bass saxophone); William Parker (bass, tuba); Dee Pop (drums)

July 27, 2002

THE TRANSCENDENTALISTS

Vision
Jump Arts JA001

THE IMPLICATE ORDER
At Seixal
Clean Feed CF 001 CD

With little fanfare -- which probably reflects his playing style -- New York-based Steve Swell has become one of the most accomplished improvising trombonist. Someone whose experience encompasses stints in aggregations as varied as vibist Lionel Hampton’s swing band and drummer Joey Baron’s hard-hitting Barrondown, Swell has achieved what he has through hard work, not some major label publicity machine.

Swell gives his all in every situation as well; some of his best work has come in sidemen gigs with bassist William Parker’s Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra. That’s why it’s not surprising that two of his most recent CDs find him as part of different leaderless collectives. The Implicate Order is filled out by two other seasoned improviders -- drummer Lou Grassi and bassist Ken Filiano -- while The Transcendentalists mixes veterans Swell and multi-reedman/trumpeter Daniel Carter with two younger experimentators -- drummer David Brandt and bassist/tubaist Tom Abbs.

Both sessions offer impresive reports on the state of American outside jazz, paradoxically by showing different approaches to improvisation, only united by exceptional playing. VISION, record live at last year’s Vision Festival in Swell’s familiar Lower East Side stomping grounds, is a rough and tumble affair of screaming intensity reminiscent of the best ESP-Disks of the New York Art Quartet which had a similar line up. AT SEIXAL, recorded much more cleanly in a Portuguese concert hall a couple of months before that, shows exactly what can and can’t be done with a trio of improvisers.

Chief contributors to the fertile improvisational ferment in New York are Abbs and Carter, who, during the course of three long tracks seems to be able to switch instruments at the drop of a semidemisemiquaver note, operating with the timing of The Marx Brothers verbally sparing with an officious authority figure. Carter, whose picture could probably go in the dictionary next to the definition of an underrecognized musician, has been doing this sort of instrumental legerdemain for years. A member of TEST and Other Dimensions in Music, his playing experience goes back to the early days of the New Thing.

Here, you’ll just get used to him on tenor saxophone, engaging in a spritely doe-see-doe with Swell’s tailgate trombone, when the valve man’s sudden plunger mute tones makes Carter opt for delicate flute filigree. A little later on trumpet, Carter will be trading fours with the bassman, then switch to alto saxophone to produce the sort of echoing, wire-sharp line that hasn’t been heard since the heyday of Energy Music. Still later, on a slower tune, his arcing, high-pitched clarinet swells will take centrestage as bass and drum ostinatos follow him.

Traditional enough to parade the constant walking bass lines that provide the forward velocity for each of the tunes, and modern enough to creatie guitar-like strums in his solos, Seattle-born Abbs, who is also driving force behind the Jump Arts coalition, is no slouch on tuba either. Smearing the sound field with what could be the joyful bellows of a dancing rhino, his deep lines sometimes make an interesting contrast to Swell’s avant-jungle band plunger tones. Like Carter, too, there are sometimes places where you’d like to count Abbs’s arms, hands and fingers. While he may give the impression of doing so, surely he couldn’t be playing bass and tuba simultaneously.

Brandt, who is vice president of the Jump Arts coalition, is conservatory-trained, but doesn’t brings any academic habits to his playing. Someone who studied with percussion icons Milford Graves and Alan Dawson, he keeps the rhythm going powerfully, without pulverizizng his kit. His attack is such, in fact that at times he sounds like more than one drummer.

In the Sexial auditorium on the othert hand, Grassi didn’t resemble a bunch of percussionists: just one: himself . He’s someone who has evolved a personal style after years of work with everyone from the freest soloists to Dixielanders. During the more than 76 minutes of this session, he usually stays in the background, contributing where he’s needed, as the lead passes between the other players. With his unobtrusive snare and cymbal seasoning, Grassi’s work is impressive because he doesn’t have to continulaly remind you that he’s there.

A strong Mingusian with a forthright, woody tone, Filiano initially worked on the with West Coast with the likes of multi-reedman Vinny Golia and pianist Richard Grossman. Equally adept at a stuttering arco as well as a masterful pizzicato, and with an ability to speedily slide from one to another, you can often hear each digit’s place on the string when he plays. If there’s a string buzz, for instance, you know, it’s because he wants that sound. Sometimes he uses interjections like that to meld with Grassi’s reverberating little instruments or Swell’s muted smears and growls.

As the seven tunes runs right into the next, each of the three players asserts himself without worrying too much about a traditional front line. As a matter of fact, there’s one point where muted wah wahs from the trombone are used more as background than either of the sounds from the rhythm instruments.

Like his acknowledged model, Rosewell Rudd, Swell, on tunes like “Sunshine in Seixal” produces one of the those lazy, slippery tongued rambles at which Rudd excels, while the slide maintains constant accelerations and decelerations, arriving at the proper place just when the desired note is needed. If necessary, he can accelerate and cycle through a tune like a cybernetic bopper, but he never neglects the colors and vibratos available from exaggerated slide work.

Portuguese guests -- soprano and alto saxophonist Paulo Curado and baritone saxophonist Rodrigo Amado -- join the trio on the final two numbers, but, while they’re good players, threy conform a little too closely to convention to set speaks flying. Curado’s smooth, shaky soprano even causes Grassi to suggest a Latin beat on “Everything is Everything”, while the “Avant Fado Meeting” of Amado and Swell suggests a Gerry Mulligan and Bob Brookmeyer collusion more than anything “avant” or “fado”.

All in all, while both CDs offer a bouquet of good music, listening to them back-to-back sugegsts a dream scenerio. Mixing the players representing here could focus the Transcendentalists’ sloppy enthusiasm and loosen up the Implicate Order’s precise pointillism. Don’t worry about the double rhythm section either. Carter and Swell are in good enough shape to hold their own against a double dose of bass and drums.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Vision: 1.Collision 2. Forward Motion 3. Transient

Personnel: Vision: Steve Swell (trombone); Daniel Carter (trumpet, alto and tenor saxophone, flute); Tom Abbs (bass, tuba ); David Brandt (drums)

Track Listing: Seixal: 1. For When Tathagatas Walk The Earth 2. For José Saramago 3. Bohnm’s Ghost 4. Sunshine in Seixal 5. Dance of the Expatriates 6. Avant Fado Meeting 7. Everything Is Everything

Personnel: Seixal: Steve Swell (trombone); Paulo Curado (soprano and alto saxophones)*; Rodrigo Amado (baritone saxophone)*; Ken Filiano (bass); Lou Grassi (drums)

June 7, 2002

MATTHEW SHIPP

Nu Bop
Thirsty Ear THI 57114.2

NU BOP certainly gives pianist Matthew Shipp the forum with which to explore his inner Herbie Hancock. The question is why?

No one is saying that Shipp -- who has had to put up with enough unwarranted Cecil Taylor comparisons during his career as a free jazzer -- has to stick to a certain style. He’s certainly shown his versatility with standard bass-and-drums trio projects, string-centred groups and work with saxophonists like Rob Brown, Roscoe Mitchell and David S. Ware. Plus the music on this disc is more than standard jazz-tinged electronica.

But why suddenly have such distinctive stylists as monster bassist William Parker and multi-reedist Daniel Carter been shoved into groove-based tunes and subordinated to the synthesizers and programming of FLAM (Chris Flam)? Consciously or not, as well, the pianist appears to be limiting himself to a fixed number of notes and tones throughout. This session’s executive producer says observing the session was like “witnessing a 21st century Ramsey Lewis at work.” Does Shipp really yearn to be part of “The In Crowd”? Certainly the sound may be “nu bop”, but that’s the only kind of “bop” it is.

In truth, the only musician who seems most at ease on this session is drummer Guillermo E. Brown, who is part of Ware’s band with Shipp and Parker. Often though, his playing turns overbearing and takes on the professional gloss of a so-called urban music studio percussionist like Bill Summers or Ndugu. There are times, in fact, when Shipp introduces some lighter, more contemporary free jazz clusters that are nearly buried under the constant bang-bang-bang from Brown.

“ZX-1” and “X-Ray” appear to be the only respite from this relentless big beat collection of finger snappers and themes that seem to have escaped from Gen X cop shows. On the first, the pianist’s notes turn uncharacteristically angular and Monkish in this unhurried tune, which might upset the jam band types. An acoustic instrument is also definitely featured here unlike some other tracks where (over) amplification turns the acoustic piano into something that could be an electric harpsichord.

“X-Ray” is also a potential beats-per-minute turn off as Carter’s deep toned flute and Parker’s rock hard acoustic bass leisurely explore the tune -- or at least with the leisure they have in slightly less than 3½ minute.

Perhaps the most instructive track is the beat-heavy “Rocket Shipp,” which is also the longest. A real foot tapper, featuring more than six minutes of a repetitive bass pattern, simple percussion shuffles and recurring piano fills, the music finally dissolves at the end, and following an upfront bass run, there’s a snatch of dialogue from someone -- probably Parker. “Give me some more,” he says. “It took a minute for my brain to go dead, but once that happened I was in it”.

While the raucous laughter following the statement indicates that he was just joking around, it’s hard to imagine that statement on any other disc involving Parker, Carter or Shipp.

For a CD by groove-based, pop-oriented jam band jazz, NU BOP is a superior product and it would be rated even higher if it came from an unknown. But Shipp has proven in the past that he’s capable of so much more, that a patina of disappointment overlays the praise. Keep experimenting in other ways, Matthew. There’s still a lot more you can do.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Space Shipp 2. Nu Bop 3. ZX-1 4. D’s Choice 5. X-Ray 6. Rocket Shipp 7. Select Mode 1 8. Nu Abstract 9. Select Mode 2

Personnel: Daniel Carter (alto saxophone, flute); Matthew Shipp (piano); William Parker (bass); Guillermo E. Brown (drums); FLAM [Chris Flam] (synthesizers and programming)

March 1, 2002

THE MUSIC ENSEMBLE

The Music Ensemble
Roaratorio Roar 03

History, especially jazz history, is a set of shared anecdotes and popular assumptions usually organized years after the fact. This approach’s shortcomings are made clearest when conjecture is transformed into cant, as was demonstrated by Ken Burns’ JAZZ series. Musical history -- especially one as complex as improvised music -- can’t easily be reduced to a theory of great men and neat transitions. Pesky details on the margins mess up these neat concepts, just like an exceptional jazz solo plays with the criterion of a conventional melody.

Which brings us to the slice of musically important history that is this CD. Recorded in 1974 and 1975, when conventional narratives would tell us that nothing else was happening on the jazz scene but pop-jazz-fusion and bebop revivalism, here’s the sounds of a precisely integrated, so-called avant garde band playing as if it was 1965 or even 1995. Not only that, but of the six performers, three would be celebrated as standard-bearers of New York-centred ecstatic jazz by the late 1990s.

Billy Bang, long before he joined the String Trio of New York, demonstrates his unique approach to the violin. Daniel Cater, decades way from being a linchpin of TEST and other Manhattan bands is here playing different saxophones, flutes and percussion. Bassist William Parker, who even then had already recorded a notable session with tenor man Frank Lowe, was beginning a career that would make him the most ubiquitous musician and organizer of present day free music.

Drummer Peter Baird, who recorded the session, is now involved with other music. However bassist Herb Kahn --who is only on the first track -- and trumpeter Malik Baraka, who died soon afterwards due to a drug habit, are merely names.

Considering the sound was captured in two different New York area schools on a cassette recorder with a single stereo mike, except for some sections, it’s surprisingly clear and immediate. In fact, the only really negative aspect of this disc is that the improvisations on it have remained unreleased for more than a quarter of a century.

Made up of a core group of committed musicians, The Music Ensemble practiced regularly and intensively. It shows. At least the four joint tracks on this CD sound like compositions with definite themes, sections and codas, not as excuses to jam or grandstand.

Throughout Baraka, whose tone is thin technically, but expressive, sort of like Donald Ayler’s, blends impressively with others in the front line. Whether he’s wreathing in counterpoint around the surprisingly Bird-like alto lines of Carter on the nearly 32-minute “Stance Dance (Courage)”, creating a third meshed part with Bang and Parker’s strings or moving harshly and straightahead on “Arithmetical Mystic” he definitely has something to say. It’s a shame we’ll never know if his vocabulary would have developed further.

Even then Carter was versatility personified. Besides his outstanding saxophone work on the disc, his ethereal flute work on “Echoes Wind Transpire” is so close to Bang’s fiddling that it’s sometimes hard to distinguish one from another. Some of the massed percussion bottom favored by inside/outside performers of the time likely comes from his hands and wrists as well.

Bang can be romantic in sections as on “Echoes”, or slash away on the top of his range on “Stance”, as Parker’s bow scrapes the bottom lines. Responsible for keeping the forward motion of the tunes going despite the dense, buzzing concentration of the front line, Parker does so powerfully and memorably. Only rarely does he step forward, though, as he does on “Stance” where he delivers a lilting cello-like aside. Meanwhile unheralded Baird extends the percussive carpet with steady strokes from all over his expanded kit, sometime accenting the bass drum as on “Radiatory Fineness” or bringing out the tablas on “Stance” for contrast.

Don’t look for some of these musicians or the session to be noted in the next boilerplate jazz history or TV special. But do try to find this CD to get an insight into how --and when -- the music really evolved and changed.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Stance Dance (Courage)* 2. Arithmetical Mystic 3. Echoes Wind Transpire 4. Radiatory Fineness

Personnel: Malik Baraka (trumpet); Daniel Carter (alto and tenor saxophones, flutes, drums percussion); Billy Bang (violin, percussion); William Parker, Herb Kahn* (bass); Roger Baird (drums, percussion, tablas, flutes)

February 8, 2002

SATURNALIA STRING TRIO + DANIEL CARTER

Meditations on Unity
Sublingual Records SLR005

Ever since the days of BIRD WITH STRINGS, improvising jazzmen have had the compulsion to record fronting a multitude of violins and celli caressing a collection of standards. From Clifford Brown and Paul Desmond down to the likes of Terence Blanchard, these sessions have usually just skirted mood music and produced many musicians' least consequential playing.

Multi-hornman Daniel Carter isn't that type of player, the three members of Saturnalia aren't going to be mistaken for a "string section" and this CD has the same relationship to those sugarcoated sessions as the Catskills do to the Himalayas.

A selfless soloist who is also a member of two collective New York-based ensembles -- TEST and Other Dimensions In Music -- Carter's idea is to integrate his sounds into musical gestalt created by the Boston-based string trio. He succeeds to such an extent that there are times when you're not sure whether a particular passage originated from brass, woodwind or strings. Carter frequently jumps from instrument to instrument, sometimes in the course of one tune. At other times, as on "Aspirations", for instance, only a small repeated reed motif makes it clear that he's present at all.

With the selections mostly unrolling at mid tempo, you also get a chance to appreciate the subtle interaction of the string trio, which has the floor to itself on four shorter tracks. Rhythmically powerful, Bullock floats many a composition with a strong woody-sounding propulsion, while LaMaster and Rawlings work on insistent discordant ostinato and lightning quick pizzicato passages, when they're not shadowing Carter's solo work. "Juggernaut" and "Visions of Unity" -- the longest tracks at almost 18 and more than 13 minutes respectively -- offer the clearest example of this teamwork. At times, on the first, Carter's jagged, alto saxophone lines soar over ever ascending string passages, while the bass keeps a steady beat. On other occasions he plays hide and seek with the scratching arco strings, sneaking in and out of the soundpicture with an alternately smooth and piercing tone. Then there are the milliseconds when LaMaster's wire strands come into congruence with Carter's reed eruptions and quickly move away. Unlike ejaculatory tension release devices which composers like Charles Mingus used to great effect on "Better Get It In Your Soul" and other tunes, Carter and the Saturnalia Three prefer to let pieces slowly dribble down into silence. A variation on this strategy appears when second bassist Heyner makes the band a quintet on "Visions of Unity". While the top parts don't alter substantially, the stroked subterranean accompaniment sometimes suggests the double bass parts on John Coltrane's "Olé", with Carter versatile enough to take the tenor saxophone, alto saxophone, flute and trumpet parts.

In short, this disc certainly isn't the expected "with strings" session. It's something much more adventurous and distinct.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. What Kind of Jazz 2. 3 for One 3. Aspirations 4. Repose 5. Spontaneous Contagion 6. Reverie 7. Ekstasis 8. 3 for Two 9. Release 10. 3 for All 11. Juggernaut 12. Visions of Unity

Personnel: Daniel Carter (alto and tenor saxophones, clarinet, flute, trumpet) [except tracks 1, 2, 10]; Jonathan LaMaster (violin, electronics); Vic Rawlings (prepared cello, serangi, electronics); Mike Bullock (bass) [except track 11]; Matthew Heyner (bass) [tracks 11, 12]

March 5, 2001

MATTHEW SHIPP

Nu Bop
Thirsty Ear THI 57114.2

NU BOP certainly gives pianist Matthew Shipp the forum with which to explore his inner Herbie Hancock. The question is why?

No one is saying that Shipp -- who has had to put up with enough unwarranted Cecil Taylor comparisons during his career as a free jazzer -- has to stick to a certain style. He’s certainly shown his versatility with standard bass-and-drums trio projects, string-centred groups and work with saxophonists like Rob Brown, Roscoe Mitchell and David S. Ware. Plus the music on this disc is more than standard jazz-tinged electronica.

But why suddenly have such distinctive stylists as monster bassist William Parker and multi-reedist Daniel Carter been shoved into groove-based tunes and subordinated to the synthesizers and programming of FLAM (Chris Flam)? Consciously or not, as well, the pianist appears to be limiting himself to a fixed number of notes and tones throughout. This session’s executive producer says observing the session was like “witnessing a 21st century Ramsey Lewis at work.” Does Shipp really yearn to be part of “The In Crowd”? Certainly the sound may be “nu bop”, but that’s the only kind of “bop” it is.

In truth, the only musician who seems most at ease on this session is drummer Guillermo E. Brown, who is part of Ware’s band with Shipp and Parker. Often though, his playing turns overbearing and takes on the professional gloss of a so-called urban music studio percussionist like Bill Summers or Ndugu. There are times, in fact, when Shipp introduces some lighter, more contemporary free jazz clusters that are nearly buried under the constant bang-bang-bang from Brown.

“ZX-1” and “X-Ray” appear to be the only respite from this relentless big beat collection of finger snappers and themes that seem to have escaped from Gen X cop shows. On the first, the pianist’s notes turn uncharacteristically angular and Monkish in this unhurried tune, which might upset the jam band types. An acoustic instrument is also definitely featured here unlike some other tracks where (over) amplification turns the acoustic piano into something that could be an electric harpsichord.

“X-Ray” is also a potential beats-per-minute turn off as Carter’s deep toned flute and Parker’s rock hard acoustic bass leisurely explore the tune -- or at least with the leisure they have in slightly less than 3½ minute.

Perhaps the most instructive track is the beat-heavy “Rocket Shipp,” which is also the longest. A real foot tapper, featuring more than six minutes of a repetitive bass pattern, simple percussion shuffles and recurring piano fills, the music finally dissolves at the end, and following an upfront bass run, there’s a snatch of dialogue from someone -- probably Parker. “Give me some more,” he says. “It took a minute for my brain to go dead, but once that happened I was in it”.

While the raucous laughter following the statement indicates that he was just joking around, it’s hard to imagine that statement on any other disc involving Parker, Carter or Shipp.

For a CD by groove-based, pop-oriented jam band jazz, NU BOP is a superior product and it would be rated even higher if it came from an unknown. But Shipp has proven in the past that he’s capable of so much more, that a patina of disappointment overlays the praise. Keep experimenting in other ways, Matthew. There’s still a lot more you can do.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Space Shipp 2. Nu Bop 3. ZX-1 4. D’s Choice 5. X-Ray 6. Rocket Shipp 7. Select Mode 1 8. Nu Abstract 9. Select Mode 2

Personnel: Daniel Carter (alto saxophone, flute); Matthew Shipp (piano); William Parker (bass); Guillermo E. Brown (drums); FLAM [Chris Flam] (synthesizers and programming)

March 1, 2001

WILLIAM PARKER

Painter’s Spring
Thirsty Ear TH 57088.2

One penalty for musical eclecticism is that most listeners don’t realize how well a musician proficient on many instruments can play on each of his axes. The prime example of someone who suffered for his inventiveness was multi-instrumentalist Rahsaan Roland Kirk. He probably would have been recognized as a major tenor saxophone stylist if he had stuck to that horn, instead of the three he blew in tandem. Another unjustly obscure stylist is Daniel Carter. Manhattanite Carter, who is an impressive link in the cooperatives Other

Dimensions In Music and Test -- and who is the only hornman featured on this outstanding disc -- definitely suffers from the Kirk syndrome. Accomplished on tenor and alto saxophones, clarinet, flute and trumpet, it’s Carter’s curse to be seen more as a general utility player than a fine soloist.

Consider what he does here, though. Holding his own against Parker, who is probably the single most forceful four-string player around today and drummer Drake, who could power a locomotive if he had to, Cater doesn’t use his many horns for decoration but judiciously employs them where they best fit.

“Flash”, for instance, which begins as a showcase for Drake’s snares and cymbals, soon, thanks to Carter, evolves into a duet as he propels the melody through the upper registered of his post New Thing alto saxophone. “Foundation #1” and “Foundation #2” are straight-ahead tenor saxophone blowouts, with Carter unleashing double time stops and multiphonics. That doesn’t scare the others however, though it does give the listener a glimpse of how the promised, but aborted, Sonny Rollins-Charles Mingus-Max Roach trio session may have sounded.

Virtuosity is showcased on “Come Sunday” -- which doesn’t sound like the Duke Ellington classic it’s supposed to be -- as the hornman’s vaporous flute tones are succeeded by another persona in the form of durable, lower register clarinet lines. PAINTER’S SPRING is another exceptional showcase for Parker, who wrote all the tunes but two here. Like Charles Mingus, he’s at home with any size ensemble, while his compositional talents are matched only by his playing skills. For an instance of that, here the transformation of the old hymn, “There is a Balm in Gilead”, into a resonant, one-person tour-de-force.

--Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Foundation #1 2. Come Sunday 3. Blues for Percy 4. Flash 5. There is a Balm in Gilead 6. Foundation #4 7. Foundation #2 8. Trilog

Personnel: Daniel Carter (alto and tenor saxophones, flute, clarinet); Willam Parker (bass); Hamid Drake (drums)

August 4, 2000