Mike Reed’s People Places & Things

Clean on the Corner
482 Music 482-1081

By Ken Waxman

One of Chicago drummer Mike Reed’s many identities is as a passionate booster of his home town’s music – present, past and future. This fourth CD with the People Places & Things combo is a milestone in that regard. He establishes the long-time sophistication of Second City jazz by blending original lines with ‘50s and ‘60s classics by saxophonists John Jenkins and Roscoe Mitchell. The band consists of some of Chicago’s top-rated players: alto saxophonist Greg Ward, tenor saxophonist Tim Haldeman and bassist Jason Roebke; with cornetist Josh Berman and pianist Craig Taborn each added on two different tracks.

Jenkins (1931-1993), recorded with heavyweight like tenor saxophonist Clifford Jordan in the mid-1950s then vanished. His “Sharon” is the prototypical hard bop line that echoes “Hot House” and includes gritty reed bites from the saxes, suggesting Jordan’s and Jenkins’ work together. Taking on pianist Sonny Clark’s role, Taborn interpolates a thoroughly modern conception into solos that are both chromatic and pulsing. A pre-Art Ensemble composition, Mitchell’s “Old” encompasses a blues sensibility and harmonized vamping from both saxophonists that climaxes in a finale of smears and snarls. Affiliated with as many Chicago bands as Reed, Roebke’s thick pulses and sturdy flow recall the late bassist Malachi Favors. His rhythmic sense is such that he brings balance to kinetic tunes like Reed’s moderato-paced “The Lady Has a Bomb”, that could have easily fit into the book of the AEC or Charles Mingus. Much of its bent-note power comes from Haldeman’s flutter-tongued obbligato abutting Ward’s shrieks and cries.

Berman’s contribution is palpable when his buttery flutter-tonguing at the beginning and end of “House of Three Smiles” removes any hint of experimentation from the exercise, which is a line re-composed and expanded by Reed from a solo by vibist Jason Adasiewicz, another Chicago associate. Berman’s muted horn is also the only soloist on the final “Warming Down”, a relaxed theme that composer Reed utilizes as set closer for an improvisational series he curates in a local club.

As entrepreneurial as any AACMer and with enough compositional and performing chops to put his playing and that of his associates in appropriate settings, Reed’s work is another demonstration why Chicago musicians still maintain the reputation for innovation advanced by earlier stylists like Jenkins, Jordan, Favors and Mitchell.

Tracks: The Lady Has a Bomb; Old; December?; Where the Story Ends; Sharon&; House of Three Smiles*; The Ephemeral Words of Ruth&; Warming Down*

Personnel: Josh Berman: cornet*; Greg Ward: alto saxophone; Tim Haldeman: tenor saxophone; Craig Taborn: piano&; Jason Roebke: bass; Mike Reed: drums

--For The New York City Jazz Record May 2013

May 8, 2013

Mike Reed’s People Places & Things

Clean on the Corner
482 Music 482-1081

Living By Lanterns

New Myth/Old Science

Cuneiform Records Rune 345

Drummer/bandleader Mike Reed has established himself as, among things, a deft interpreter of Chicago’s progressive music history. Nothing like a neo-con however, rather than imitation or emulation he and his People Places & Things create new variations of the city’s rich 1950s and 1960s Jazz heritage. On these exceptional sessions, he, and sidekicks, alto saxophonist Greg Ward – on both discs– and vibraphonist Jason Adasiewicz – on New Myth/Old Science – have taken the next step: integrated their own compositions with earlier ones.

Recorded a year apart, each session is completely unique. Clean on the Corner for instance integrates six Reed lines with tunes by saxophonists John Jenkins and Roscoe Mitchell and is played by the drummer and alto saxophonist plus tenor saxophonist Tim Haldeman and bassist Jason Roebke with cornetist Josh Berman and pianist Craig Taborn sitting in on two tracks each. Commissioned by Chicago’s Experimental Sound Studio, the seven tracks on the other CD were composed, arranged orchestrated the vibist and drummer from fragments extracted from a rehearsal tape marked “NY 1961” in the Sun Ra Audio Archive. Approaching the scope of Ra’s Arkestra, the co-leaders constructed pieces for a band made up of cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum, tenor saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock, guitarist Mary Halvorson, cellist Tomeka Reid, bassist Joshua Abrams, drummer Tomas Fujiwara and electronics manipulator Nick Butcher as well as themselves and Ward.

Cleverly integrating his own concepts with Bebop tropes, Reed’s compositions for People Places & Things are most clearly appreciated when examined next to Mitchell’s “Old” and Jenkins’ “Sharon”. A Bopper of the first magnitude, Jenkins (1931-1993), recorded with heavyweight like tenor saxophonist Clifford Jordan and guitarist Kenny Burrell in the mid-1950s then vanished from the scene. “Sharon” is the prototypical Bebop line that echoes “Hot House” and includes gritty reed bites from the saxes, and in the same way as the two reedists suggest Jordan and Jenkins, Taborn, in the Sonny Clark role, takes solos on the Jenkins’ tune that are both chromatic and pulsing. Closer to our time, “Old” has well-harmonized horn parts, a blues sensibility and, following a Malachi Favors-flavored bass solo, a finale of smears and snarls.

Close cousin to that piece and the early Art Ensemble is “The Lady Has a Bomb”, all bent notes and drum pops that balance on shrieks and cries from Ward’s and Haldeman’s flutter-tongued obbligatos. Roebke’s pumping bass line and an unaffected bounce from Reed characterize the slow-paced “Where the Story Ends,” as the altoist’s slurps and slides curve around the theme at the same time as he maintains a linear solo. Berman’s buttery flutter-tonguing at the beginning and end of “House of Three Smiles” adds as much to the performance as the vamping horns.

Confirming the consistency between the two discs, “House of Three Smiles” is a pseudo-contrafact Reed composed based on a solo Adasiewicz once took on one of the vibesman’s own tunes. Appropriately enough it’s the vibraphonist and Bynum’s cornet styling here which help distinguish these Sun Ra reconfigurations from more derivative salutes by other bands. A fast swinger, “2000 West Erie” provides a point of comparison with the other session. Bynum’s high-pitched triplets, Reed’s rugged drum beats and the metal-bar resonation from Adasiewicz, are only slightly distant from the concepts on the Jenkins’ line – 1961 was very close to 1957 after all – however the frenzied multiphonics played by Laubrock relate to free-form conceptions that relate more fully to the advances of saxophonists like Albert Ayler and the Arkestra’s John Gilmore.

Not only do Adasiewicz’s and Reed’s arrangements manage to give the nonet the breath and power of a big band – a quality inherited from Ra – but pointed licks from Mary Halvorson’s guitar, Reid’s string sweeps and the occasional electronic processing confirm historical links to 21st century experimenters. Cascading and agitated sequences outline these connections, but so does the swing sense which Reed and company inherited from Ra. Also demonstrated is instrumental juxtaposition that calls on the older bandleader’s flirtation with exotica. “Shadow Boxer’s Delight” is one instance. Throughout, the horns’ sinewy pitch-sliding abuts sweet cello slides, while vibe, bass and guitar chord harmonies bring forth mysterious tonal implications.

From that point on subsequent tunes appear to meld into one another with the players’ expressive solos and section work exposing as many altissimo and staccato patterns as those which are simple, linear and, in a way, impressionistic. Cross-timbres abound, but very little of the sort of free-for-all tone expansion that would be Ra’s and the Arkestra’s stock-in-trade later in the 1960s and throughout the 1970s and early 1980s. Stand-out work still shows up in the form of the guitarist’s colorful tremolo strumming, the cornetist’s low-key flutters, bassist Joshua Abrams’ connective and woody pacing and the cellist’s sul ponticello sweeps.

The 1961 time frame was a little early to fasten onto Ra’s latter quivering space chords or jocular space chants, but the high standard of playing and composing on New Myth/Old Science indicates that other experiments of this nature should be attempted. Not forgetting that Clean on the Corner is another high quality indication of these present-day Chicago musicians’ first-string talent.

--Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Clean: 1. The Lady Has a Bomb 2. Old 3. December? 4. Where the Story Ends 5. Sharon& 6. House of Three Smiles* 7. The Ephemeral Words of Ruth& 8. Warming Down*

Personnel: Clean: Josh Berman (cornet)*; Greg Ward (alto saxophone); Tim Haldeman (tenor saxophone); Craig Taborn (piano)&; Jason Roebke (bass) and Mike Reed (drums)

Track Listing: New: 1. New Myth^ 2. Think Tank 3. 2000 West Erie 4. Shadow Boxer’s Delight^ 5. Forget B 6. Grow Lights 7. Old Science

Personnel: New: Taylor Ho Bynum (cornet); Greg Ward (alto saxophone); Ingrid Laubrock (tenor saxophone); Jason Adasiewicz (vibraphone); Mary Halvorson (guitar); Tomeka Reid (cello); Joshua Abrams (bass); Tomas Fujiwara (drums); Mike Reed (drums and electronics) and Nick Butcher (electronics)^

March 15, 2013

Lotte Anker/Craig Taborn/Gerald Cleaver

Floating Islands
ILK 162 CD

Nicolas Caloia Quartet

Tilting

No # No label

Henry Threadgill Zooid

This Brings Us To Volume II

Pi Recording PI 36

William Parker & ICI Ensemble

Winter Sun Crying

Neos Jazz 41008

Something In The Air: Guelph Jazz Festival 2011

By Ken Waxman

--For Whole Note Vol. 17 #1

A highlight of the international calendar, the Guelph Jazz Festival (GJF), September 7 to 11, has maintained its appeal to both the adventurous and the curious over 18 years. It has done so mixing educational symposia with populist outdoor concerts, featuring performers ranging from established masters to experimenters from all over the world.

For example, American alto saxophonist/flautist Henry Threadgill appears at the River Run Centre on September 10 with his Zooid quintet. A frequent GJF visitor bassist William Paker is featured in at least four ensembles; twice with Toronto vocalist Christine Duncan’s Element Choir Project on September 9 at St. George’s Anglican Church and September 10 at the outdoor Jazz Tent; on September 11 as part of an all-star quartet in Cooperators Hall; and in the same spot on September 8, with pianist Paul Plimley and drummer Gerry Hemingway. Sharing the bill is Tilting, a quartet led by Montreal bassist Nicolas Caloia. Meanwhile Danish saxophonist Lotte Anker is part of an afternoon performance September 10 at Cooperators Hall with two Americans, pianist Craig Taborn and drummer Gerald Cleaver.

Supplely slinky, bouncingly rhythmic and unmistakable original, Zooid’s This Brings Us To Volume II Pi Recording PI 36 clearly delineates Threadgill’s compositional smarts expressed by the band. Many of the tracks depend on the contrasts engendered by mixing Liberty Ellman’s nylon-string guitar licks with the snorts from Jose Davila’s gutbucket trombone or surging tuba plus cross-sticking and rolls from drummer Elliot Humberto Kavee. The most characteristic track is “Polymorph”, with a sardonic melody that suggests Kurt Weill’s Berlin period. Here Threadgill’s astringent saxophone timbres are first framed by snapping frails from Ellman and latter arrive at contrasting double counterpoint with the thick pop of Stomu Takeishi’s bass guitar.

Floating Islands ILK 162 CD) demonstrates the cohesive skills of the Anker/Taborn/Cleaver group. Recorded at the Copenhagen Jazz Festival, the selections demonstrate the trio’s extrasensory perception. With Anker rotating among soprano, alto and tenor saxophones, the band divides according to the improvisation; sections are devoted to saxophone-piano, saxophone-drum or saxophone-drum interaction. Hard reed buzzes bring out cascading choruses from Taborn for instance, while the pianist’s unconventional key clicks are met by the saxophonist’s arching split tones and tongue flutters plus swirling cymbals and snare backbeats. Sometimes the narrative becomes a mass of chiaroscuro patterns from all, with the palpable tension finally breached by Anker’s chirping tones and Taborn’s glissandi. “Backwards River” is an extended example of this, as galloping runs from Taborn arrive after an exposition of gritty reed tones. Before the climax, involving Cleaver knitting rat-tat-tats and tom-tom rolls into a forceful solo, the sax and piano sounds surge from gentle swing to jagged altissimo intersections rife with polyphonic smears.

Combination spark plug and spiritual guide Parker’s gigs at GJF 2011 are with a vocal chorus and two instrumental groupings. Winter Sun Crying recorded with Munich’s nine-piece ICI Ensemble Neos Jazz Neos 41008 demonstrates the skills he brings to groups of any size or instrumentation. The CD captures a 15-part suite which waxes and wanes between legato and atonal contributions. Parker’s contributions on piccolo trumpet, double reeds, shakuhachi and bass are integrated within the composition. As band members move throughout from aleatoric solos to tutti and contrapuntal passages, he adds walking to keyboardist Martin Wolfrum’s precise chording as drummer Sunk Pöschl’s clatters and pops; or lets his pinched reed contrast with upturned harmonies from ICI’s three woodwinds and trombone. The ensemble never nestles in any style or genre. Roger Jannotta’s faux-baroque piccolo decorations are as germane to the performance as Markus Heinze’s guttural baritone sax snorts, while oscillated processes from Gunnar Geisse’s laptop or trombonist Christofer Varner’s sampler are responsible for the composition’s outer-space-like undertone. Meanwhile the downward shifting of Johanna Varner’s spiccato cello lines join with Wolfrum’s dynamic chording to propel the horns away from dissonance towards linearism. The finale, “Let’s Change the World”, not only refers back to the head, but weaves gradually diminishing string scrubs, piano key pummels and alternately breathy or splintering reed tones into an echoing statement.

Another bassist/composer is Caloia, whose Quartet CD Tilting No # No label, is a microcosm of Montreal’s scene. Completed by saxophone/flutist Jean Derome, pianist Guillaume Dostaler and percussionist Isaiah Ceccarelli, the disc highlights the bassist’s approach. While Caloia’s connective ostinato is felt throughout, this high-energy showcase gives everyone space. Impressive on each of his horns, Derome’s bass flute adds appropriately breathy tones, evolving contrapuntally with Dostaler’s comping on “Stare”. Meanwhile the husky textures Derome propels from baritone saxophone make “Locked” a stop-time swinger, especially when Ceccarelli’s solo folds flams, shuffles and ratamacues together. Derome’s singsong alto phrasing is all over the other two pieces, both of which feature brief but attentive solos from Caloia, whose string slaps and thumps concentrate the action. The pianist’s languid note cascades are showcased spectacularly on “Safety” where he interrupts Derome’s forays into false registers with an interlude of harmonized chording and rubato key fanning.

As this group of sound explorers join many other of similar quality during the annual GJF, it’s not surprising that this little festival has reached satisfying maturity without the compromises that impinge on many larger celebrations.

September 5, 2011

Sclavis/Taborn/Rainey

Eldorado Trio
Clean Feed CF 193 CD

New Old Luten Trio

White Power Blues

Euphorium EUPH 025

Taking as a starting point the trio instrumentation used superbly by piano experimenters such as Cecil Taylor and Alexander von Schippenbach, these CDs demonstrate improvisational concepts plus a balance between older and younger players. Skillful improvisations, the results produced are completely divergent, if equally significant.

Both recorded live, each session differs from the get-go. A Leipzig meeting, White Power Blues – an apt if somewhat politically incorrect title – celebrates a meeting between 75-year-old reedist Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky and two improvisers at least 40 years his junior: pianist Elan Pauer and percussionist Christian Lillinger. Petrowsky, along with trombonist Conrad Bauer, pianist Ulrich Gumpert and percussionist Günter Baby Sommer created noteworthy advanced Jazz in the former East Germany. A Sommer- protégé, Berlin-based Lillinger with his own Hyperactive Kid trio and backing players such as saxophonist Henrik Walsdorf, has become a lively, energetic drummer. Meanwhile Pauer ranges over the keyboard while touching on a multiplicity of sonic impulses. In short, the two extended tracks are no-holds-barred Free Jazz.

Twenty years’ Petrowsky’s junior, French soprano saxophonist and bass clarinetist Louis Sclavis was formally trained and over the years has flirted with melodic sounds related to folk music, both real and imaginary. His partners here, both Americans – keyboardist Craig Taborn and drummer Tom Rainey – are long-time associates of innovative players including saxophonist Tim Berne and bassist William Parker. Although the alchemist gold references in the trio’s name may be a fantasy, the musical balance among the three is a certainty. Overall the CD’s eight tracks are mid-length, more formalist and poised than those created with sometimes over-exuberant playing of the New Old Luten Trio.

Superficially the main difference between the German trio’s improvisations is length, with the second almost twice as long as the first. Equally high-powered, agitato and staccato, the shorter “Vitalistic Hymn” is both a prelude to the title track and a mantra for self-determinism. Petrowsky for one doesn’t let the strictures applied by politics, geography or aging shape his playing. Moving among alto saxophone, clarinet, flute and quarter-flute, his flutter-tonguing, a capella twittering, sturdy split tones and whistles migrate with him. Of course there are more pressurized spits and tongue bubbles from the clarinet, reed-biting and circular-breathed squeaks from the sax, and fog-horn-like vibrations and basso-like breaths from the flute. Rattling and clipping the keys, stroking and stopping the piano’s inner strings and occasionally pummeling its woody frame, Pauer demonstrates his skills here. For his part, Lillinger’s strategy encompasses rugged whacks, steady clip-clop and tinting his beats with quivering gongs and clattering cymbals.

Rigid drum top smacks and cymbal skimming with drumsticks keeps the more-than 36½ minute “White Power Blues” percolating. With thematic shifts from the exposition, variants and the finale also reflecting the reedist’s horn-switching, glottal punctuation in the form of side-slipping lines and split tones share space with duck-like quacks and continuous screeches. Unexpected legato patches show up as well.

At one juncture Petrowsky sounds as if he’s improvising on “Perdido”, other times snatches of Bebop heads pop up, then as quickly are swallowed by the swirling and layered Klangfarbenmelodie. Dynamic feints and an assembly line-like collection of percussive tones come from Pauer; who marks tune transitions with aleatory keyboard pumps. Additionally Pauer’s surging glissandi sometimes alternate with the prodding and strumming of the piano’s internal strings. By the final variations, the saxophonist lets loose with a reed-shredding fortissimo cry. The pianist plays what could be termed Zombie boogie-woogie, with multiple note piling, but without walking-bass rhythms; while the drummer smacks and pounds kinetically.

It’s worth noting that in person, with his hair-flying and body moving every which way, Lillinger is an energetic and almost overwhelming player. Such is the cumulative vitality of this trio nonetheless, that at times his playing is almost submerged by the sheer staccato muscle of the three improvising together.

Moving from White Power to Eldorado, Rainey doesn’t overpower Taborn or Sclavis with his equipment either. His motivation is seamless adherence to what the others are creating, and to help the results without drawing attention to himself. From the very beginning Rainey’s rim shots, press rolls and other movements are perfectly timed, and as spectacular in their execution as Lillinger’s are in theirs. But the American’s playing is more in-the-pocket, easily connecting with, but also muting, Taborn’s frequently staccato chording and Sclavis’ timbres which run from squeaks to snorts.

Eldorado Trio also exposes a wider variety of moods than those on the other CD. “To Steve Lacy”, for instance, with Sclavis appropriately playing soprano sax, is a lament built on a moderato line stretched to near breaking-point, until succeeded by reed bites. Taborn’s comping brings in languid urbanity while Rainey’s drags and rolls are suitably unforced. Similarly, “Lucioles” is a chamber-like fantasia with Taborn creating dancing pianissimo lines so consonant, that the outcome is nearly equal temperament. The clarinetist’s continuously breathed tongue flutters are similarly crepuscule, as the drummer equals the stylized playing of his partners with hand pumps and brushes on drum tops. Although contrasting dynamics, splintered cross tones and protracted glissandi show up on the CD, no matter how atonal and contrapuntal the construction appears, the linear nature of the tune is never sacrificed.

To stretch a metaphor perhaps, it’s true that love making can be either hard and fast or slow and sensual, without either being correct. So too is the interaction of a double-bass-less trio. As with intimacy, some may prefer the aggressive style of the German band, others the more mannered style of the Franco-American aggregation. Adventurous types may be inclined to try both.

--Ken Waxman

Track Listing: White: 1. Vitalistic Hymn 2. White Power Blues

Personnel: White: Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky (alto saxophone, clarinet, flute and quarter-flute); Elan Pauer (piano and percussion) and Christian Lillinger (drums and percussion)

Track Listing: Eldorado: 1. Let It Drop 2. To Steve Lacy 3. Up Down Up 4. La Visite 5. Summer Worlds 6. Lucioles 7. Possibilities 8. Eldorado

Personnel: Eldorado: Louis Sclavis (soprano saxophone and bass clarinet); Craig Taborn (piano and electric piano) and Tom Rainey (drums)

June 20, 2011

Gerald Cleaver Uncle June

Be It As I See It
Fresh Sound New Talent FSNT-375

Program music that avoids the expected, drummer Gerald Cleaver’s Be It As I See It is a finely formed meditation that makes purely musical points. Although based on the Great Migration of American Blacks from the South to the North from the 1920s onwards, Detroit-born, New York-based Cleaver, whose immediate family was involved in the journey, has created a magisterial chamber work which carefully avoids clichés. There are no allusions to south-of-the Mason-Dixon agrarian nostalgia or attempts to musically recreate the gritty urban north.

Along the way, Cleaver, already known for his rhythmic sophistication playing with everyone from mainstream pianists Barry Harris and Ray Bryant to more exploratory musicians such as reedist Roscoe Mitchell and bassist William Parker, confirms his mastery as an arranger and composer. That doesn’t mean that his percussion smarts are overshadowed though. Ultimately, each of the one dozen Cleaver compositions which make up the CD-length suite, benefits from his sophisticated rhythm control which drives the narratives without ever seeming to push.

He’s also aided by top-flight accompanists. Reed duties are split between Andrew Bishop, Cleaver’s long-time Michigan associate and New York’s Tony Malaby, with key sequences illuminated by strategies from keyboardist Craig Taborn, bassist Drew Gress and violist Mat Maneri, all of whom regularly play with top New Yorkers ranging from saxophonist Tim Berne to pianist Cecil Taylor. String players Ryan Macstaller and Andy Taub are also featured, while paralando vocals and commentary arrives through words from the drummer himself, his wife Jean Carla Rodea, and his father John Cleaver, the Uncle June celebrated in the title.

Impressionistically descriptive, not literal, the drummer’s compositional strategies range from chamber-music-like textural slides, centred around the legato sophistication of Maneri’s double-stopping arco lines and Gress’s stop-time rhythmic pulses, to aleatoric themes which take their shape from idiosyncratic splutters and washes from Taborn’s electric keyboards. Spoken-word collages share space with other variations, which recall earlier Motown tropes. With string and percussion tonal shimmers coupled with lyrical soprano saxophone trills appear, it’s almost as if Norman Whitfield had some production input.

Results attain musical values much different than those on Temptations or Marvin Gaye records however. On “Ruby Ritchie/Well” for instance, iterating tenor saxophone smears coordinate with steady percussion ruffs. Both lines are framed within likely double-tracked strings decorations, which abruptly open up to key clicks and later cascading notes from the pianist, alongside measured drum dynamics and well-modulated chromatic reed bursts. Gress’s most notable contribution appears on “Gremmy”, where his walking line creates a contrapuntal challenge to Cleaver’s pace-setting nerve beats and Taborn’s pumping piano arpeggios. The resulting tempo changing presages the piano and strings subsequently defining the expansive, formalist melody.

“From A Life of the Same Name”, the final track, is a project summation, but without formulistic theme reiteration or allusions. Instead guitar strokes, double bass thumps and sympathetic piano chords confirm the track’s linear character as Bishop’s bass clarinet and Malaby’s soprano saxophone define the languid theme without being cloying. Descriptive emotionalism, which resonates to the finale, arrives via Maneri’s squeezed blues notes and Bishop’s slurred flutter-tonguing.

A first-class percussionist, Cleaver confirms with this CD that he’s a top composer and conceptualist as well.

--Ken Waxman

Track listing: 1. To Love 2. Charles Street Sunrise 3. Alluvia 4. The Lights 5. Lee/Mae 6. Statues/UmbRa 7. Ruby Ritchie/Well 8. He Said 9. Gremmy 10. Charles Street Quotidian

11. 22 Minutes (The Wedding Song) 12. From A Life of the Same Name

Personnel: Tony Malaby (soprano and tenor saxophones); Andrew Bishop (soprano and tenor saxophones, bass clarinet and flute); Craig Taborn (piano and keyboards); Mat Maneri (viola); Ryan MacStaller (guitar); Andy Taub (banjo); Drew Gress (bass); Gerald Cleaver (drums, percussion and voice) and Jean Carla Rodea, John Cleaver (voices)

June 15, 2011

Michael Formanek

The Rub And Spare Change
ECM 2167

Hugo Carvalhais

Nebulosa

Clean Feed CF 201 CD

Leadership’s loss is a sideman’s gain as these quartet sessions demonstrate. That’s because alto saxophonist Tim Berne, who hasn’t made a CD under his own name for about half a decade, instead adds his skills to these bassist-led quartet sessions. Instructively as well, while one combo is completed by Americans with whom Berne has often played in the past, the other is made up of younger Portuguese Jazzers who recently toured with the American reedist.

Nebulosa – and its five-part title suite –is designed to show off the composing and improvising skills of bassist Hugo Carvalhais, who along with pianist Gabriel Pinto, often backs singer Maria João Mendes. Carvalhais also plays electronics on this CD and Pinto synthesizer; drummer Mário Costa the fourth man.

The Rub And Spare Change on the other hand is a completely acoustic showcase for six compositions and the magisterial bass playing of Michael Formanek, whose role leading the Jazz orchestra at Baltimore`s Peabody Conservatory of Music leaves him little time for extracurricular activities. Working on-and-off with Berne since the early 1990s, after having backed everyone from saxophonist Stan Getz to trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, this is the first CD Formanek has lead since 1998. The other players aren’t exactly neophytes either. Drummer Gerald Cleaver has worked with saxophonists as different as Lotte Anker and Roscoe Mitchell, while he and pianist Craig Taborn have both been part of Berne’s and Mitchell’s regular working bands.

Familiar with each others’ technical skills the four players on The Rub And Spare Change are able to move from Funk to Impressionism and back again seemingly without breaking a sweat. This is most noticeable on the CD’s most extensive track, the 17-minute plus “Tonal Suite”. In truth as atonal as it is tonal, the piece encompasses several movements beginning with an exposition of walking bass and drum backbeats accompanying Berne’s irregularly voiced split tones as they and Taborn’s piano plucks weave around one another. While Berne keeps reed biting, the pianist’s next variant includes key clipping and hard-paced arpeggios, which while advancing chromatically also motivate the saxophonist’s intervallic lines into downward-slurring split tones. Well paced drum beats and understated bull fiddle plucks contribute their own percussive variations, so that with the backing taken care of, the saxophonist and pianist can harmonize moving lines from agitato to moderato and from staccato to legato. A final variant with a teasing false ending, features extended cadenzas from Taborn. Then a traditional recap of the head precedes a trebly piano coda.

Although he takes no extended solos, Formanek, emphasizes his compositions here. And well he should, for their range is wide. “Too Big To Fail” is another exercise in multiple, multiphonics, while the title track is a convincing Freebop piece, built around soulful tension and release. As Cleaver rhythmically locks down an elastic shuffle beat, Berne vibrates the head with chirps and side-slipping tones while Taborn’s low-frequency strummed chords expand to define the piece as a skipping etude.

As sardonically played as its title suggests, “Too Big To Fail” mixes bass string pops, drum press rolls and rasping piano cadenzas as the saxophonist elaborates the theme in the tenor register. Before the tune is conclusively redefined contrapuntally, the pianist’s contrasting dynamics and repeated chord clusters plus Berne’s alternating of altissimo squeals and moderato split tones suggest a narrative almost as harsh and dyspeptic as what the American investment industry faced a couple of years ago.

With Nebulosa serendipitously recorded in same month as the other session, Carvalhais’ core combo is given added impetus by hired gun Berne. Although the title composition is a six-part suite of sorts, the CD’s introductory track and others – most played solely by the trio– surrounding the suite. Berne however doesn’t really start experimenting with split tones until “Part III” of the suite, before that contenting himself with paced twitters and splutters plus irregularly pitched obbligatos in his solos.

For his part, Pinto distinguishes himself by splitting his exposition between atmospheric synthesizer wave forms – matched by ululating werewolf whistles and signal-processed quivers from Carvalhais’ electronics – to more studied impressionistic piano chording. From a groove-oriented beginning, the suite affiliates itself with modulated Bop-stylings in its second section, only to have Berne’s snorting split tones and altissimo runs redefine the third part.

By the time “Nebulosa Part IV” makes its appearance, Berne’s chromatic mastication is joined by hearty double bass stops, thumps and jumps from Carvalhais, plus Costa’s flams, drags and distinctive cow bell whacks. Eventually the multi-part composition is taken out by the trio alone, as airy piano arpeggios and supple floating bass lines give way to tougher, double-stopped, but definitely un-funky rhythm, squeaky wiggling electronic pulses and concluding stops from the bassist.

Other than the suite, the most noteworthy outing is Pinto’s “North”, whose syncopation meanders into “Maiden Voyage” territory. Despite this thematic suggestion the composition is still an original statement that harmonizes triple counterpoint among airy, dynamic glissandi from the piano, pinched, intense vibrato from the saxophonist and unforced, but relentless rhythms from the bassist and drummer.

With Berne the connecting factor between them, both CDs have much to offer. The Rub And Spare Change features him in the company of familiar players, while Nebulosa links him with younger players who will help shape Jazz in the future. As good as his playing his here, one would hope nonetheless that recording as the leader of a session is still part of his game plan.

--Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Nebulosa: 1. Intro 2. Nebulosa Part I 3. 3. Nebulosa Part II 4. Impala* 5. Nebulosa Part III 6. Nebulosa Part IV 7. Cobalto* 8. North 9. Nebulosa* Part V 10. Redemption*

Personnel: Nebulosa: Tim Berne (alto saxophone [except*]); Gabriel Pinto (piano and synthesizer); Hugo Carvalhais (bass and electronics) and Mário Costa (drums)

Track Listing: Rub: 1. Twenty Three Neo 2. The Rub And Spare Change 3. Inside The Box 4. Jack's Last Call 5. Tonal Suite 6. Too Big To Fail

Personnel: Rub: Tim Berne (alto saxophone); Craig Taborn (piano); Michael Formanek (bass) and Gerald Cleaver (drums)

March 24, 2011

Evan Parker Transatlantic Art Ensemble

Boustrophedon
ECM 1873

A rare – and exceptional – foray into partially scored and conducted music for British saxophonist Evan Parker, this eight-part work for a 14-piece ensemble realizes its lofty goals because the composed sections are cleverly counterbalanced by the improvisations.

Boustrophedon – an ancient word describing a method of writing one line from left to right, the subsequent one from right to left and so on – reflects the CD’s parallel methodology as well. While Parker directs a seven-piece group of experienced European improvisers, American saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell does the same with seven, equally proficient, Americans. Much of the boustrophedon movement involves comparable exposure from matched instrumentalists such as the two bassists, two percussionists and two fiddlers. Meanwhile singular soloists like pianist Craig Taborn, cellist Marcio Mattos or flutist Neil Metcalfe cleanly negotiate the fissure between Eurocentric and American-inflected Free Music. Taborn, for instance, adds styled glissandi, tinkling portamento story-telling and formalistic note clusters to “Furrow 2”, but metronomic rhythmic chording to “Furrow 4”.

That same track exposes parallel counterpoint involving liquid contralto trilling from John Rangecroft’s clarinet and the sibilant rasping of Corey Wilkes’ trumpet pitched high enough to resemble a piccolo trumpet. Reposing on cymbal clashes from Tani Tabbal and Paul Lytton, this calming interlude contrasts with the previous “Furrow 3”, which reached a rushed crescendo of piano clinks, tongue-stopped vamps from the reeds and blunt drags and rebounds from the percussionists. A similar episode of intersected tones from members of the ensemble characterizes the suite’s climax. Its defining cacophony shatters into sound shards that include dual piano syncopation, opposite sticking percussion ratamacues and splayed cello interjections.

Again emphasizing parallelism, the concluding track is more of a postlude than a finale, as solos, encompassing among other techniques, double-tongued, pastoral flute, kinetic keyboard arpeggios and thematic alto saxophone variations, alternate with tutti orchestral passages.

Overall this CD is a unique but a memorably rousing addition to Parker’s discography.

-- Ken Waxman

-- MusicWorks Issue #104

August 8, 2009

Lotte Anker/Sylvie Courvoisier/Ikue Mori

Alien Huddle
Intakt CD 144

Lotte Anker/Craig Taborn/Gerald Cleaver

Live at the Loft

ILK 148 CD

Germinating notable improvised music is more a function of intellect and emotion than gender, race or geography – as these sessions led by Danish reedist Lotte Anker demonstrate. Live at the Loft, recorded in Köln, finds her playing with pianist Craig Taborn and drummer Gerald Cleaver, both American and male. Alien Huddle on the other hand, was recorded in New York, and features the Dane in the company of two other non-Americans or aliens: Swiss-born pianist Sylvie Courvoisier and Japanese-born electronics-manipulator Ikue Mori, both of whom, like Anker, are female.

Itemizing these differences adds up to approximately nothing, since each of these stimulating dates takes a different path to notoriety. Unfolding through 11 shorter improvisations – the lengthiest is a shade over 5½ minutes – the three women trace, stroke and caress the multiple textures that results from the properties of each instrument. Sonic exposure is more varied as well, since Anker plays her soprano, alto and tenor saxophones; Mori relies on a panoply of electronic settings, loops and add-ons; and Courvoisier’s hands are as often inside her piano as playing on it.

Meanwhile Live at the Loft is a Free Jazz session which pinpoints the cohesive talents of the trio members, who have been playing together as a group on-and-off since 2003. Individually, each of the tracks is longer than any on the other CD, with the two most impressive clocking in at slightly longer than 20 and more than 26½ minutes respectively.

The later, “Magic Carpet” aptly demonstrates this long-standing aggregation’s sonic sensitivity. There’s no lead instrument, musical narrative is developed by each player in turn, but full cohesion is the result of interaction. Early on Anker’s barely-there adagio tones are strengthened by low-frequency runs and soundboard echoes from Taborn plus minimalist drum rumbles from Cleaver. When the reedist finally unleashes long-lined andante trills, the pianist – whose playing throughout is more upfront than Courvoisier’s on Alien Huddle – turns his wobbly comping to steady, two-handed chording, decorating with a rolling carpet of chromatic notes Anker’s bravura breaths and theme restatements. Summing up with what in other circumstances would be the shout chorus, the pianist octave jumps into near-honky-tonk runs and the drummer concludes with spectacular rolls, rim shots and ratamacues.

Switching from the alto of the former track to tenor saxophone on “Real Solid”, Anker’s strategy emphasizes circles of guttural notes and glottal punctuation. Broad, fortissimo split tones from the saxophonist meld with galloping, repetitive note clusters from pianist, sometimes emphasizing similar tremolo note patterns simultaneously in either hand. While Cleaver’s sensitive pops, rebounds and flams echo in the background, Anker and Taborn concentrate on adding tension into the performance, which only dissipates when her solipsistic tongue pressures are subsumed by a cross-sticking summation from the drummer.

Meandering – in a contradictory though positive fashion – the sounds on Alien Huddle ripple, wiggle and slither, when compared to Live at the Loft’s direct exposition. Discordant at points, the only time the three reach full cry is on the appropriately titled “Ostrich War”. On tenor, Anker overblows as if she was in rehearsal for a revival of the Machine Gun session, embellishing her solos with guttural honks, double-tongued runs and animalistic cries. Meantime Courvoisier plinks and plunks on her piano strings and Mori, who began her musical career in the1970s as drummer of the No Wave band DNA, directs her instrument’s buzzing oscillations and blurry signal processing towards a percussive space. With shaking cymbals vibrating on the piano’s internal strings for additional opaqueness, the piece’s climax involving echoing Woody Woodpecker-like cries from the saxophonist.

Despite that uncharacteristic noise detonation, most of the rest of the CD revolves around low-frequency keyboard fantasia, choked sighs and peeps from the saxophones and crackles, growls, pulses and loops from the electronics.

Among the knob-twisting and patching on a track like “Robins Quarrel” – a fowl battle that’s definitely more restrained than the ostriches’ conflict – irregular vibrations from Mori’s watery signal processing face off with rumbles and what appears to be a discordant reorganization of “Tea for Two” from the pianist. “Woodpecker Peeps” on the other hand doesn’t directly relate to the rat-tat-tats of that bird, but instead suggest quacking discord pulled from Mori’s programs.

Anker gets her chance to exhibit fortissimo multiphonics on “Dancing Rooster Comp” – continuing the aviary references – as she modulates from coloratura vibrato up to altissimo screams. All the while the other two use stopped and strummed piano innards or modulated flanged whooshes to provide the rhythmic bottom.

If one track provides summation of the trio’s interaction, it’s “Blackbird” which alternates quiet and noise. The former encompasses slapped piano keys, narrowed reed timbres and ring modulator-like whooshes and clangs. Spluttering and whistling electronic timbres, heavy syncopated piano chords and strident soprano sax squeals characterize the opposite mood.

Although it may merely be a woman’s prerogative to change her mind, anyone confronted by the talents of Anker and company on both discs can be forgiven for being indecisive as to which to choose.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Alien: 1. Morning Dove 2. Woodpecker Peeks 3. Sparkling Sparrows 4. Night Owl 5. Robins Quarrel 6. Dancing Rooster Comp 7. Whistling Swan 8. Crow and Raven 9. Blackbird 10. Ostrich War 11.Great White Heron

Personnel: Alien: Lotte Anker (soprano, alto and tenor saxophones); Sylvie Courvoisier (piano) and Ikue Mori (electronics)

Track Listing: Live: 1. Magic Carpet 2. Real Solid 3. Berber

Personnel: Live: Lotte Anker (alto and tenor saxophones); Craig Taborn (piano) and Gerald Cleaver (drums)

May 20, 2009

Lotte Anker/Craig Taborn/Gerald Cleaver

Live at the Loft
ILK 148 CD

Lotte Anker/Sylvie Courvoisier/Ikue MoriV

Alien Huddle

Intakt CD 144

Germinating notable improvised music is more a function of intellect and emotion than gender, race or geography – as these sessions led by Danish reedist Lotte Anker demonstrate. Live at the Loft, recorded in Köln, finds her playing with pianist Craig Taborn and drummer Gerald Cleaver, both American and male. Alien Huddle on the other hand, was recorded in New York, and features the Dane in the company of two other non-Americans or aliens: Swiss-born pianist Sylvie Courvoisier and Japanese-born electronics-manipulator Ikue Mori, both of whom, like Anker, are female.

Itemizing these differences adds up to approximately nothing, since each of these stimulating dates takes a different path to notoriety. Unfolding through 11 shorter improvisations – the lengthiest is a shade over 5½ minutes – the three women trace, stroke and caress the multiple textures that results from the properties of each instrument. Sonic exposure is more varied as well, since Anker plays her soprano, alto and tenor saxophones; Mori relies on a panoply of electronic settings, loops and add-ons; and Courvoisier’s hands are as often inside her piano as playing on it.

Meanwhile Live at the Loft is a Free Jazz session which pinpoints the cohesive talents of the trio members, who have been playing together as a group on-and-off since 2003. Individually, each of the tracks is longer than any on the other CD, with the two most impressive clocking in at slightly longer than 20 and more than 26½ minutes respectively.

The later, “Magic Carpet” aptly demonstrates this long-standing aggregation’s sonic sensitivity. There’s no lead instrument, musical narrative is developed by each player in turn, but full cohesion is the result of interaction. Early on Anker’s barely-there adagio tones are strengthened by low-frequency runs and soundboard echoes from Taborn plus minimalist drum rumbles from Cleaver. When the reedist finally unleashes long-lined andante trills, the pianist – whose playing throughout is more upfront than Courvoisier’s on Alien Huddle – turns his wobbly comping to steady, two-handed chording, decorating with a rolling carpet of chromatic notes Anker’s bravura breaths and theme restatements. Summing up with what in other circumstances would be the shout chorus, the pianist octave jumps into near-honky-tonk runs and the drummer concludes with spectacular rolls, rim shots and ratamacues.

Switching from the alto of the former track to tenor saxophone on “Real Solid”, Anker’s strategy emphasizes circles of guttural notes and glottal punctuation. Broad, fortissimo split tones from the saxophonist meld with galloping, repetitive note clusters from pianist, sometimes emphasizing similar tremolo note patterns simultaneously in either hand. While Cleaver’s sensitive pops, rebounds and flams echo in the background, Anker and Taborn concentrate on adding tension into the performance, which only dissipates when her solipsistic tongue pressures are subsumed by a cross-sticking summation from the drummer.

Meandering – in a contradictory though positive fashion – the sounds on Alien Huddle ripple, wiggle and slither, when compared to Live at the Loft’s direct exposition. Discordant at points, the only time the three reach full cry is on the appropriately titled “Ostrich War”. On tenor, Anker overblows as if she was in rehearsal for a revival of the Machine Gun session, embellishing her solos with guttural honks, double-tongued runs and animalistic cries. Meantime Courvoisier plinks and plunks on her piano strings and Mori, who began her musical career in the1970s as drummer of the No Wave band DNA, directs her instrument’s buzzing oscillations and blurry signal processing towards a percussive space. With shaking cymbals vibrating on the piano’s internal strings for additional opaqueness, the piece’s climax involving echoing Woody Woodpecker-like cries from the saxophonist.

Despite that uncharacteristic noise detonation, most of the rest of the CD revolves around low-frequency keyboard fantasia, choked sighs and peeps from the saxophones and crackles, growls, pulses and loops from the electronics.

Among the knob-twisting and patching on a track like “Robins Quarrel” – a fowl battle that’s definitely more restrained than the ostriches’ conflict – irregular vibrations from Mori’s watery signal processing face off with rumbles and what appears to be a discordant reorganization of “Tea for Two” from the pianist. “Woodpecker Peeps” on the other hand doesn’t directly relate to the rat-tat-tats of that bird, but instead suggest quacking discord pulled from Mori’s programs.

Anker gets her chance to exhibit fortissimo multiphonics on “Dancing Rooster Comp” – continuing the aviary references – as she modulates from coloratura vibrato up to altissimo screams. All the while the other two use stopped and strummed piano innards or modulated flanged whooshes to provide the rhythmic bottom.

If one track provides summation of the trio’s interaction, it’s “Blackbird” which alternates quiet and noise. The former encompasses slapped piano keys, narrowed reed timbres and ring modulator-like whooshes and clangs. Spluttering and whistling electronic timbres, heavy syncopated piano chords and strident soprano sax squeals characterize the opposite mood.

Although it may merely be a woman’s prerogative to change her mind, anyone confronted by the talents of Anker and company on both discs can be forgiven for being indecisive as to which to choose.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Alien: 1. Morning Dove 2. Woodpecker Peeks 3. Sparkling Sparrows 4. Night Owl 5. Robins Quarrel 6. Dancing Rooster Comp 7. Whistling Swan 8. Crow and Raven 9. Blackbird 10. Ostrich War 11.Great White Heron

Personnel: Alien: Lotte Anker (soprano, alto and tenor saxophones); Sylvie Courvoisier (piano) and Ikue Mori (electronics)

Track Listing: Live: 1. Magic Carpet 2. Real Solid 3. Berber

Personnel: Live: Lotte Anker (alto and tenor saxophones); Craig Taborn (piano) and Gerald Cleaver (drums)

May 20, 2009

ROSCOE MITCHELL QUINTET

Turn
Rogue Art ROG 0003

By Ken Waxman

Forty-plus years on in his recording career, Roscoe Mitchell, arguably the most versatile members of the Art Ensemble of Chicago (AEC), continues to surprise.

This CD, featuring the multi-reedman’s most recent working quintet, two of whom – trumpeter Corey Wilkes and bassist Jaribu Shahid – who now fill chairs in the AEC, offers a glimpse at his panoply of talents. With the combo filled out by pianist Craig Taborn and percussionist Tani Tabbal – both of whom recorded as part of Mitchell’s nonet as long ago as 1997 – the five men are able to convey the range and flexibility of a larger band on 14 Mitchell compositions.

It’s a good thing that each one plays more than one instrument and is comfortable in many styles. For the twists and turns on TURN involve sounds that vary from those that nearly replicate hard South Side blues and Free-Form Energy Music to near-Baroque-style recitals and Freebop rambles. Plus there a couple of tracks where everyone seems to have climbed inside Mitchell’s massive percussion cage and rhythmically whales away on claxons, wood blocks, cymbals, marimbas, maracas, claves, rattles, and a ringing school bell.

Holding sway over all this is Mitchell, whose musical personality also changes depending on the horn he’s holding. “Take One” for instance, features his alto playing, which during the course of the nearly nine-minute piece, includes smudgy split tone pitch vibrations, snorts and honks and slurry multiphonics. For his part Wilkes contributes multi-directional brassy triplets, flashy chromatic trills and whinny plunger work, while the soloists balance on the polyrhythmic beat from the rhythm section.

“Quintet Nine”, with Mitchell on flute, is a sophisticated bop line that floats on Shahid’s tough walking bass and low-pitched sawing as well as Tabbal’s pinpointed cymbal splashes. “March 2004”, on the other hand is exactly what it says it is, with Mitchell on bass sax in unison with trumpet peeps and the proper ambulatory beat from Tabbal. Eventually Wilkes adds some jazz funk with a slurry rubato solo while the saxophonist comments contrapuntally.

“Page Two A” could be New music, with a vibrated theme conveyed with ghostly piano clusters and the occasional cymbal ping, until two-thirds of the way through it downshifts into solid reed expansion, bowed legato bass and Tabbal’s gentling marimba-like swats. This composition and the rococo “In Six” could be played for non-jazzers without ruffling their sensibilities. Of course they may miss the toughness hiding beneath the simple syncopation advanced by Taborn’s close voicing and the blend of flute and muted trumpet.

More than the front line gets to express itself here as well. Shahid’s bowed bass is a foil for Mitchell’s tenor saxophone on one number, and his electric axe adds the proper pulse to another. Tabbal’s back beat propels that finger-snapper as do wah-wah trumpet lines and honking sax figures.

TURN confirms that there’s no let up in Mitchell’s creativity, whether it’s as part of the AEC or on his own.

Track Listing: 1. Quintet One 2. For Cynthia 3. Quintet Nine 4. For Now 5. Horner Mac 6. Rhine Ridge 7. Page Two A 8. March 2004 9. In Six 10. Turn 11. Take One 12.Page One 13. That’s Finished 14. After

Personnel: Corey Wilkes (trumpet, flugelhorn and small percussion); Roscoe Mitchell (soprano, alto, tenor and bass saxophones, flute, piccolo and percussion); Craig Taborn (piano); Jaribu Shahid (bass, electric bass and small percussion); Tani Tabbal (drums and percussion)

August 14, 2006

Lotte Anker/Craig Taborn/Gerald Cleaver

Triptych
Leo

ICTUS
Live
ILK

By Ken Waxman
January 1, 2006

Known – if at all – in North America for her contributions to Tim Berne’s recording of the open, coma saxophone suite, and her trio appearances with pianist Marilyn Crispell, Danish reedist Lotte Anker has a much higher profile elsewhere.

Moving among free improv, contemporary classical music and a combination of the two, the tenor and soprano saxophonist has composed theatre music and worked in Danish percussionist Marilyn Mazur’s ensembles and American Maria Schneider’s big band.

However there are few so-called classical inflections or the sort of mainstream jazz rhythms that Schneider prefers on these CDs. Anker, joined by two completely different casts of characters, works firmly in the Free Music mold.

An outgrowth of her trio with Crispell, Triptych could be termed the saxophonist’s “American” CD. It connects Anker with two New Yorkers, drummer Gerald Cleaver, a carryover from the Crispell trio, and pianist Craig Taborn. Both men worked together in bands led by reedist Roscoe Mitchell and violist Matt Maneri, while Taborn has played with Berne and reedist James Carter among others, and Cleaver with pianist Matthew Shipp and saxophonist Charles Gayle to name two.

Conversely, Live unites three generations of Danish avant-gardists – collectively called ICTUS – with French guitarist Marc Ducret, who coincidentally has toured and recorded with Berne. With Anker representing the middle generation, ICTUS consists of the slightly older Peter Friis Nielsen, who plays electric bass and preparations here, and young drummer Stefan Pasborg. Pasborg, who leads a band with Lithuanian saxophonist Liudas Mockunas, has played with innovators such as saxophonist John Tchicai and American trombonist Ray Anderson. Friis Nielsen has been in many bands with drummer Peter Ole Jørgensen and German reedman Peter Brötzmann.

Not that you would confuse Anker’s improvising with anything created by other saxophonists. During the course of Live’s five instant compositions, she clicks, twitters, smears and rasps, concentrating on wiggling split tones and glottal punctuation, the better to interact with Ducret. His radical string abrasions meander from guitar-hero-like pulsating fuzz tones to intricate, angled microtonal musings. Alongside then both, Friis Nielsen pointedly maintains the bass line’s rhythmic functions while Pasborg shakes and rattles polyrhythmic percussion implements for auxiliary textures.

Tunes like “Ping Pånk/Orbituary” involve shredded drum beats and tapped bass-guitar rumbles that set up slinky smears and flutter tonguing from Anker plus shuffling, scraped guitar lines from Ducret. As the layered improvisation opens up in volume, the bassist’s quivering sequences serve as the anchor between flanged and distorted UFO-like sounds from the guitarist and repetitive reed vibrations from the soprano saxophonist.

Other tunes feature the guitarist turning to slurred fingering for angled microtonal effects, piling fuzz-tone pulses on top of one another as Anker responds with polyphonic trills, and spacey blocked multiphonics from both front-liners. Meanwhile Pasborg showcases compressed cymbal battering, rolls and rumbles.

Centrepiece of all this is the nearly-16-minute “The Sky Below/Restoration” which supplies equal time for all concerned. Beginning with modulated, echoing bass guitar runs that eventually assumes an assembly line-like continuo underneath the others, the tune opens up for reverberating licks from Ducret with surprising country & western inferences, as the drummer pops his gong and cymbals and Anker contributing funky vibrations. Pioneering a technique that sounds as if he’s scraping steel wool across his strings, the guitarist downshifts to pinpointed chording as Pasborg displays scatter-shot shakes and inflatable balloon-like abrasions. With Friis Nielsen still shaping the tune’s undercurrent, Anker’s flutter-tonguing dissolves into reed peeps until whammy bar movement and knob-turning action from the guitarist rouse her. Countering his rubato slaps with curvature snorts and arpeggio runs from the lower part of her instrument’s body tube, she forces him to reconfigure his down strokes into seemingly random scrapes.

Less theatrically confrontational, Triptych, like its namesake, is more balanced. Almost from the first, it seems that the pianist and drummer are intent on expressing with rhythms and chords what the saxophonist does with vibrations and blowing. Take “Cumulus” for example.

Here Taborn lightly voices his keys and Cleaver barely taps and rattles his percussion, both leaving space for a series of trembling peeps from Anker. Soon however, the soprano saxophonist reverts to trilling, swelled notes, creating her own horn fantasia among the pianist’s deliberately metronomic chord pattern and the drummer’s polyrhythmic fills. Three-quarters of the way through, Anker’s pinched split tones divide into vibrated nodes as Taborn’s double counterpoint becomes stronger and more focused. By degrees, the sounds fade away to echoing resonation from the drummer’s kit.

Cleaver’s self-effacing rhythmic calm allows other pieces such as “The Hierophant” to progressively fade, like an old photograph left too long under a bright light. The polar opposite of the bombastic drummer, his contributions here occasionally involve almost literally wiping – not beating – his snares, cymbals and floor toms as Taborn resonates wide, high frequency, harmonics in the bass clef and Anker pitchslides an irregular vibrato sideways into overblown harshness. When the pianist’s walking fills and the drummer’s beats eventually stop the piece climaxes with saxist’s sturdy echoing overtones.

In this collective mind meld, Taborn intermittently strums guitar-like arpeggios, and Anker’s low-key soprano obbligato sporadically takes on (Paul) Desmond-like sweetness, But the notable factor linking these seven improvisations is how nonchalantly the staccato coexists with the legato, speed with languidness and silence with clamor.

Comparing the lines output by the trio members to ever-spiraling concentric circles, you can hear organic interaction on the more-than-13½-minute title track. Here Taborn taps not just notes but their voicing and vibrations from his keys; Cleaver scratches his ride cymbal with a drum stick more often than he hits it; and Anker’s waveforms rebound from false register altissimo slurring to rotating grace notes, without upsetting the pool of group improvisations.

Taken together, Triptych and Live should provide a triple function. They should make Anker’s talents more obvious to North Americans; introduce uninformed jazz fans to other Danish – and one French – improvisers; and solidify the reputation of a couple of self-possessed, maturing American sound makers.

January 1, 2006

ASSIF TSAHAR/MAT MANERI/JIM BLACK

JAM
Hopscotch 21

CRAIG TABORN
Junk Magic
Thirsty Ear THI 57144.2

Ever since he first appeared on disc as part of his father, reedist Joe Maneri’s, Boston-based microtonal trio, violist Matt Maneri has been turning heads with his playing. Versatile enough to move effortlessly from the harshest excesses of loud, so-called ecstatic jazz to the supplest examples of understated chamber improv, he’s created a legitimate role for the bloated fiddle in exploratory situations.

These two discs add luster to the achievements of this now New York-based string-slinger. But, to be honest, he sounds more commanding on the nine free improvisations recorded with reedist Assif Tsahar and percussionist Jim Black then in the more tightly controlled atmosphere of keyboardist Craig Taborn’s date.

JAM’s advantage is that it spreads responsibility for the creations among the three participants. Except for the fact that he has to perform at a more restrained volume because of his instrument, there’s never any indication, for instance, that Black is merely the accompanist to the improvising duo.

That said, some of the most impressive work comes from Maneri on the final track. Described as playing an electric 5-string violin, he’s the antithesis of the fiddling fusion speed demon. On “Part 9”, for instance, his pace is slow, but still creates double-stopped, angled multiphonics. Only when Tsahar’s meandering trilling turns sibilant alto-like timbres to more intense overblowing, does Maneri’s multi-string pulsation get louder. Black contributes irregular pulses that conclude with clip-clop, ambulatory expressions, after which the saxist and violinist emulate an imaginary meeting between Albert Ayler and Leroy Jenkins.

In contrast, “Part 6” finds Tsahar weaving tweaks and trills into low-pitched output from his bass clarinet. Amazingly Maneri’s deliberate hesitation and wiggling note placement move from Eastern European single-string patterns to an accordion-like squeezed tone. Black’s pitter-pattering flams and rolls and Tsahar’s near-inaudible exposition means that the torque put on the tempo by the fiddler spins out a fleet counter theme which polyphonically redefines the piece.

Tongue slaps, intense reed biting and a cornucopia of fog horn effects give the reedman plenty of irreverent inflections he can contribute to musical expositions, as do Maneri’s bow lifting ponticello, arco beats and snaky, pizzicato fills. When the percussionist adds subtle cymbal pressure, irregular snare pulses and what seem to be tambourine shakes, sideslipping tones not only resolves themselves into new melodies, but also make the trio sound like a larger group.

JUNK MAGIC features a quintet, as opposed to JAM’s trio. With Taborn, who is best known as a member of altoist Tim Berne’s groups, programming as well as playing different keyboards, the textures available outpace those from three acoustic instruments. But a little bit of electronica can go a long way. There are times during the seven tracks that the result sounds like playtime at the cloning lab, with that human touch lacking.

Adding to this robotic disconnect is the drumming of David King, who also plays with acid-jazz band the Bad Plus. While many tunes here are more rhythmically powerful than those on the JAM CD, the beats themselves are often overly mechanized. King’s favored lick -- or what Taborn asks him to play -- is the backbeat and that vamp is as omnipresent here as on any techno date.

Furthermore, tenor saxophonist Aaron Stewart may have worked with Anthony Braxton and Steve Coleman. But on the evidence here, his solos exhibit more smooth or fusion tones than you would hear on either man’s CDs. “Primatica”, for instance, finds the saxman slurring tones in a limited arc, to join claves, off-beats and cymbal slices from the drummer. Maybe this is modified Detroit techno backbeat?

“Mystero” may be a little more abstract, as sine waves meet off-kilter snare and bass drum beats. But the semi-sweet tenor line sounds as if it’s been electronically altered, perhaps with an EWI. The drumbeats seem programmed as well, with only Maneri’s spiky, dissonant playing adding some humanity to the proceedings.

It’s the same story on “Bodies at Rest and in Motion”, where Taborn’s acoustic piano pitter-patters and King’s drum thumping only gain mettle when they meet fiddle arpeggios. Maneri sawing away on all strings adds some additional tough -- and humanoid -- input. On his own, the pianist’s conventional soloing and the backup loops are as strident and mechanized as what you’d hear on a video game soundtrack.

Then on “The Golden Age” [!], at 11-plus minutes, the CD’s longest track, Maneri’s legato, double stopped classical overlay lasts only until ululating, calliope-style crescendos and dive-bombing buzzes are exposed from the keyboardist and percussionist respectively. As the backbeat kicks in and an electronic ambience settles over the soundfield, the fiddle timbre doubles as well. Soon squeaky string ponticello and whirling electronic squeals end the piece.

Some may regard this CD as magic, others as junk. It’s actually somewhere in between. Taborn is trying to introduce new concepts to expand the simple rhythms and melodies that characterize techno, electronica and breakbeats. But he doesn’t appear to have given himself enough leeway to whole-heartedly hook into free music.

Definitely someone to watch as he evolves an original style, Taborn’s efforts here come out second best when compared to the acoustic professionalism on the JAM disc. But Manner proves his versatility on each session.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Jam: 1. Part 1 2. Part 2 3. Part 3 4. Part 4 5. Part 5 6. Part 6 7. Part 7 8. Part 8 9. Part 9

Personnel: Jam: Assif Tsahar (tenor saxophone and bass clarinet); Mat Maneri (electric 5-string violin); Jim Black (drums and percussion)

Track Listing: Junk: 1. Junk Magic 2. Mystero 3. Shining Through 4. Primatica 5. Bodies at Rest and in Motion 6. Stalgmite 7. The Golden Age

Personnel: Junk: Aaron Stewart (tenor saxophone); Craig Taborn (piano, keyboard, programming); Mat Maneri (violas); David King (drums)

May 17, 2004

TIM BERNE

The sublime and. Sciencefrictionlive
Thirsty Ear RHI 57139.2

MARC DUCRET
Qui parle?
Sketch SKE 333038

Leaving well enough alone has never had particular appeal to those involved in creating electrified jazz/rock fusion music. Why keep the volume control knob turned to nine when it can reach 10? And why play for a few minutes when a half-hour or so is available?

Alto saxophonist/composer Tim Berne -- who has proven his talents in many situations ranging from working in standard-size jazz combos to writing for a classical sax quartet -- flirts with excess on this two-CD set, recorded live in Switzerland. While he and drummer Tom Rainey stick to acoustic instruments, the allure of showing off the textures available from Marc Ducret’s guitar(s) and effects and Craig Taborn’s electric piano, laptop computer and virtual organ evidentially prove too seductive. Although in total the Science Friction band session clocks in at 109 minutes, it includes three tunes in the 20-minute range and one that rocks on for more than 30.

Sure the guitarist, keyboardist and saxist are impressive soloists in many contexts, but the acres of aural space seem to encourage combative immoderation, Because of this, Rainey, who is the most understated percussionist in other groups led by Berne or bassist Mark Helias, comes off best here. While his beat is as unflagging as it is inventive, he keeps his kit action under control, wallowing for only split seconds in the sort of jarring John Bonhamism that seem to be stock-in-trade for authentic fusion drummers.

Rainey may avoid Bonham comparisons, but there are points here that with his distortion phasers and flangers turned on full blast that Ducret appears to be trying to trump not only Bonham’s Led Zepplin partner Jimmy Page, but the effects master Page replaced in the Yardbirds: Jeff Beck.

The situation is slightly more balanced on the guitarist’s solo disc, QUI PARLE? But as hinted at by the title, there are often times you wonder just who is speaking ... or improvising. Featuring more than a dozen additional musicians in various combinations working with Ducret and his usual rhythm section of bassist Bruno Chevillon and percussionist Éric Échampard, the guitarist seems intent on existing as musical fish, fowl and most mammals in between somewhere on the 10 tracks. There are plenty of examples of the rock-jazzer who loves Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin, but more impressively there are also bouncy gigues, flirtations with electronica and musique concrète, plus voices weaving in and out of several tracks as sound sources or reading excerpts from French literature.

On THE SUBLIME, Ducret restraint means that “Jalapeño Diplomacy/Traction” comes across as the best selection. Even at 20 minutes plus, he fittingly restricts himself to merely showcasing his effects rather than trumpeting the wretched excess of which his axe is very capable. A groove tune with a freer tempo, it features a guitar showcase that include reverb lines morphing into duple picking in both treble and bass registers, steady flat picking in an almost Country music style and Ducret flailing away on portions of the strings below the bridge. Here, Berne, who earlier plays at the top of his range, then takes off on a stop time display of slurred reed biting, split tones and irregular vibrato, with only Rainey’s pounding behind him. When he introduces brassy spetrofluctuation and textures seemingly pushed out of the sax bow, these mix with Taborn’s flashing octaves and are given an organ vamp from his electronics and nerve beats from the drummer. Finally the tempo slows to chiming chord patterns with a rolling backbeat shading Berne’s almost endlessly repeated lines.

On the other hand, at more than 30 minutes alone -- the length of some single LPs -- “Mrs. Subliminal/Clownfinger” unrolls at an excessive length and is literally exhausting. Maybe live the vibe was more exciting. On disc though, the tune starts off slowly with chirruped a cappella sax notes, then as the tempo gradually picks up, keyboard continuum and double time rattles and cymbal reverberations appear. Soon Ducret takes over, introducing loud, pulsing sequencer delays that turn to resonating, Sputnik-type signals. Sounding out abrasive, bottleneck tones, the guitarist seems to be using a phaser to double and triple his feedback. Taborn wedges in fleet, but fleshy electric piano timbres and Berne sounds out a repeated 15-note pattern, that is given added weight by Ducret’s flanging. Rainey tries to move the piece away from onanism by playing a broken rhythm tattoo on his rims, which encourages more assured and abstract smeared tones from Berne. But with Ducret reentering with the volume and protrusion of a jet plane landing, the guitarist’s arching feedback and quivering wah-pedal distortion encourages more sax squeaks and surmounted keyboard electronic impulses. Soon the droning pulses and lead guitar shimmies coalesce into a mass of chunky strums and pinched reed trills.

“Stuckon U” -- semi-balladic, but “not the Elvis version”, according to Berne -- at least gives Taborn some space for faint organ-like tremolos, some outer-spacey oscillating distortions from the electronic parts of the keyboard and some high-pitched celeste-like sounds. But again his two hands, Rainey’s tick-tock drumming and Berne’s rounded tones are no match for Ducret’s reverb or fuzztones that seem to have migrated over from a Yardbirds’ session.

“The Shell Game” at a tich below 24 minutes, is more of the same, with Taborn’s harpsichord approximations and Berne’s relaxed chirps and breezy lines intermittently audible among Ducret’s chiming, echoing riffs. In response to an irregular drumbeat, at the point when Berne introduces rough reed-biting tones and doits, Ducret turns up his volume knob and almost doubles the tempo. Riffs flash through the amplifiers as if the guitarist was channeling Alvin Lee’s speedy performance at the Woodstock Festival, and Taborn vamps organ-like chords. Even Rainey begins hitting parts of his kit individually, working out on the rims for a time, pounding the bass drum at another and coming up with what sounds like a whirl drum at another juncture. Heavy as a metal band’s output, the sounds reach a crescendo than fade away without resolution.

On his own Ducret has created a 75-minute CD that gets progressively more impressive as it goes along. Yet the convincing experimentation of the disc’s second half may not be enough to negate the self-indulgence that mars first few tunes.

Starting form the top, “Double Entendre” is nearly 12½ minutes of bouncy syncopation along the lines of what you’d expect from Continental little big bands. With both Échampard and second percussionist François Verly laying down what could be two-beat Dixieland drumming, the guitar licks and electric piano vamps from Benoît Delbecq and Allie Delfau float along on a continuum provided by Chevillon’s slap bass and Michel Massot’s huffing tuba. Then, while the snaking tempo speeds up, trumpeter Alain Vankenhove waves his plunger mute and bends his notes. Soon as the oral instruments unite in the approximation of a 19th century brass choir, the pianos stay in the 21st, creating off-centre, high frequency glisses and slides. Above all, with percussion ratcheting behind him, Ducret buzzes out some distorted lead guitar riffs.

Also impressive are the two time-traveling versions of “Emportez-moi”, which clock in at more than 11 minutes each. The first features Chevillon’s low-tone arco inventions that are amplified with cello-like legato lines from second bassist Hélène Labarrière. With simple drum and cymbal patterns in the background, Ducret picks out a simple folkloric melody made up of finger patterns and near blues tones on his acoustic. The pre-suicide correspondence of Henriette Vogel and Heinrich von Kleists from 1811 is read in French by Leslie Sévenier and Philippe Agaël to the melancholy, pedal point accompaniment of Thierry Madiot’s bass trombone, ending the piece with a brass respiration and a bass pluck.

In contrast, the composition’s second run through is definitely POMO. Beginning with Anne Magouët singing the poem of Henri Michaux (1899-1984), a Belgian-born, experimental painter, journalist, and poet, dual acoustic pianos spin out accompaniment potentially designed for plainsong. Then the piece opens up to showcase contorted electronic guitar riffs. As a secondary theme is sounded by bass trombone, double-stopping bass and shaded electric piano ostinato, a dramatic male voice reads an existential passage from Dans la labyrinthe, Alain Robbe-Grillet’s nouveau roman.

Somehow linked to buzzing rhythm box textures courtesy of Verly, mirrored electric piano tone and a cowbell emphasized montuno rhythm, another labyrinthe passage appears on “Ce sont les noms des mots”. But what it has to do with buzzing, sampler sine waves, pinpointed flat-picking from Ducret and a harsh syncopated melody is anyone’s guess.

Then there’s “Double, Simple”, where Ducret, playing simple rhythm guitar licks and Dominique Pifarély playing highly amplified, near-operatic violin glissandos prove that amplification and good ideas don’t make them Django Reinhardt and Stéphane Grapelli. Plus there’s “L’Annexe (rural)”, which simply proves that Ducret can produce a bottleneck blues solo.

That’s not the least of the downhill turns. Abrasive guitar chording, artillery battalion drumming and slushy keyboard fill that role on other tracks, often appearing as if they migrated in from a 1970s Herbie Hancock session. Longest piece, “L’Annexe” evidentially tries to squeeze almost every influence together at once; the result is similar to trying to shove an elephant through a meat grinder. Africanized hand percussion, rock-style drumming, thumping bas guitar and riffing Stax-Volt horns make their appearance, with the guitar so abusing the pulsating delay effects and extended fuzztones that he almost drowns out everyone else. When the counter theme twists itself into a boogaloo, the brass and reed players contort themselves into retching out fowl (sic) cries and monkey gibbering. The end finds Ducret abusing his delay pedal to outline some cavernous, echoing solid state color.

Excess may succeed in limited situations like live concerts or truncated single releases. But, while no one is disputing their talent, technique or leadership, both Berne and Ducret could have stripped away surplus sounds and notes to produce more satisfying outings instead of the results here.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: sublime: CD1: 1. Van Gundy’s Retreat 2. The Shell Game 3. Mrs. Subliminal/Clownfinger CD 2 1. Smallfry 2. Jalapeño Diplomacy/Traction 3. Stuckon U (for Sarah)

Personnel: sublime: Tim Berne (alto saxophone); Marc Ducret (guitar); Craig Taborn (electric piano, laptop computer and virtual organ); Tom Rainey (drums)

Track Listing: Qui: 1. On new peut pas dancer, là-dessus*+ #& 2. Le menteur*+ 3. L’Annexe (rural) 4. L’Annexe*+ 5. Qui parle?~ 6. Emportez-moi*#&^~$ 7. Double Entendre*+#& 8. Ce sont les noms des mots*#^$ 9. Double Simple 10. Emportez-moi#&^$

Personnel: Qui: Alain Vankenhove (trumpet, bugle)*; Yves Robert (trombone track1); Michel Massot (tuba, serpent, trombone)+; Thierry Madiot (bass trombone [tracks 6 ands 8]); Julien Lourau (tenor saxophone [tracks 1 and 7]); Christophe Monniot (alto and baritone saxophones [tracks 1 and 4]); Marc Ducret (six and 12-string electric, fretless, soprano, baritone and acoustic guitars); Dominique Pifarély (violin [track 9]); Benoît Delbecq#; Allie Delfau& (piano, electric piano, sampler)&; Hélène Labarrière (bass)^; Bruno Chevillon (bass and electric bass [all tracks but 3, 5, 9 and 10]); Éric Échampard (drums and percussion [all tracks but 3, 5, 9 and 10]);); François Verly (percussion and rhythm box [track 8]); Anne Magouët (vocals [track 10]); Leslie Sévenier~, Philippe Agaël$, Laurence Blasco [track 1] (voices)

January 26, 2004

MARTY EHRLICH

Line on Love
Palmetto PM 2095

Don’t be put off by the title of this fine CD. Despite similar curly hair and use of saxophone, multi-reedman Marty Ehrlich hasn’t suddenly turned into Kenny G.

Instead he uses the almost 54 minutes of the session to prove that you can perform understated, mellifluous music without insulting anyone’s intelligence. The eight selections score because he and his rhythm section bring the same guts and techniques they would to an out-and-out free blow or technical experiment as they do to these more restrained ditties.

Known for his work with pianist Myra Melford, pianist Andrew Hill’s sextet, drummer Bobby Previte’s Bump and his own groups, Ehrlich has always been the melodist among outside musicians. Able to hold his own in avant company, he has never rejected euphony just to be fashionable. LINE ON LOVE, as a matter of fact is a follow up of sorts to 2001’s SONG CD. On that disc he covered tunes by singer/songwriters Robin Holcomb and Bob Dylan and pianist Jaki Byard. Here, though, while as song-like, the tunes are all his own.

On this disc, altoist Tim Berne’s associate Michael Formanek returns on bass, as does drummer Billy Drummond who often works with pianist Renee Rosnes. There’s a change at the piano bench though. Instead of Uri Caine, Craig Taborn, often heard with Berne and as a part of Roscoe Mitchell’s band, plays a restrained acoustic piano. Ehrlich mostly plays alto saxophone, as well as bass clarinet on “Solance” and “The Git Go”.

While embracing mellifluence, Ehrlich still subtly reinforces a harder output, so that the grace notes that spread from his reed like jelly on bread often add a bit of avant-garde pepper to the currant veneer of the tunes. This include irregular vibrations and dips into false registers. For instance, “Like I Said”, an overly boppish line includes double-timed slurs from the reedist and straightforward cymbal work from Drummond. Jaunty “Julian’s Theme” named for Ehrlich’s son, not altoist Julian “Cannonball” Adderley, has him overblowing ever so slightly and extending the timbres. Screeches even find their way into the fading termination of his solo on “Solance”.

Blues inflections from both the alto and piano, coupled with a hearty shuffle rhythm from Drummond, surface on “St. Louis Summer”. Still the saxman’s intensity vibrato and trilling cries show that he can recreate the soul of his boyhood city if he wishes. Trained classically and someone who has performed contemporary classical music, his bass clarinet sound is a bit too “legit”. Aside from the odd run on “The Git Go”, his playing on the swollen licorice stick features none of the dissonance that has characterized jazzers on the instrument since the days of Eric Dolphy.

Taborn’s two-handed, arpeggio rich impressionism helps define the title tune, though as well as the definitely secular “Hymn”. Meanwhile his understated swing on pieces like “Julian’s Theme” and “Solance also reveal more of the straightforward melodic sense that he has kept under wraps since his earliest days in Young Lion saxophonist James Carter’s first quartet. Eschewing showiness, Formanek maintains the underlying pulse with solid, woody resonance. His one solo showcase on “Turn Circle and Spin” barely departs from the rhythmic function.

No avant-garde statement, but no smooth backgrounder either, LINE ON LOVE is the sort of modern, mainstream CD that wins listeners over with its sound without boxing their ears with its abrasiveness.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Hymn 2. Like I Said 3. Line on Love 4. Julian’s Theme 5. Turn Circle and Spin 6. Solance 7. St. Louis Summer 8. The Git Go

Personnel: Marty Ehrlich (alto saxophone, bass clarinet); Craig Taborn (piano); Michael Formanek (bass); Billy Drummond (drums)

December 22, 2003

ASSIF TSHAR and the ZOANTHROPIC ORCHESTRA

Embracing the Void
Hopscotch 9

ASSIF TSHAR and the NEW YORK UNDERGROUND ORCHESTRA
The Labyrinth
Hopscotch 12

Different as free jazz and New music, on show here are two distinct manifestations of the composing and arranging skills for larger groups by tenor saxophonist Assif Tsahar. Both are engrossing, remarkably mature, compositional works for someone best known for his impassioned blowing with the likes of bassist William Parker and drummer Hamid Drake.

EMBRACING THE VOID has a slight edge however. That’s because all 14 members of the Zoanthropic Orchestra appear better able to personalize the emotional cauldron of Tsahar avant jazz pieces than the 19 musicians of the New York Underground Orchestra can contour THE LABYTINTH into a more original form.

VOID’s clearest antecedent seems to be The Jazz Composer’s Orchestra (JCO)’s 1968 COMMUNICATIONS LP. Designed by Mike Mantler to showcase New Thing soloists such as cornetist Don Cherry, tenor saxophonist Pharoah Sanders and pianist Cecil Taylor, it proved that heartfelt experimental music wasn’t confined to small groups.

Tsahar, who was born in Israel the year after that JCO session was taped, and arrived in New York in 1990, has the same idea, but his 10-part, personalized suite is much more democratic. Nearly every one of the musicians gets a chance to solo here. More to the point, all of the music written by Tsahar appears to be intricately arranged so that each part meshes with the next.

Framed by squealing, post-Ayler solos by the tenor man in the first and -- in altissimo -or even sopranino pitch -- the final number, the almost 56-minute composition balances elements of jazz and other traditions with expressive atonality. Sometimes, as on “Part 3”, the music will contain Balkan and Klezmer components, mixed with some high frequency piano chording from pianist Craig Taborn, whinnying trumpet from Matt Lavelle and cellar deep blasts from Reut Regev’s trombone.

With the other ‘bone chairs filled by Curtis Hasselbring and Steve Swell, the Zoanthropic has a section reminiscent of Duke Ellington’s famed group, with any of the three able to express the restrained elegance of Lawrence Brown as well as more so-called primitive tones. Swell, a fixture in advanced Manhattan bands, is especially able to slide through a variety of plunger-affixed positions, creating a 1920s “Jungle” sound like a Internet age Tricky Sam Nanton.

Later on, a section with Mingus-like Holiness church boogie rhythm finds Swell and another Israeli-born downtowner, alto saxophonist Ori Kaplan, trading licks after the saxman has finished a screeching, triple tonguing solo, and as the band builds to a crescendo behind him. The piece also gives bassist Tom Abbs, Jump Arts mainman, enough breadth to individually sound out stinging arco notes.

When he wants to, Taborn, who has earned his spurs with reedist Roscoe Mitchell and altoist Tim Berne, can speed skate over the keys like a young Cecil Taylor. Other times he can be overtly bluesy, as on “Part 9” when he sets up tenor saxophonist Aaron Stewart’s floating mid-period John Coltranish solo. Stewart, part of the Fieldwork trio and sideman of choice for veteran pianist Andrew Hill, enlivens his outing with mid-range honks and extended techniques, centred on hissing air through his horn.

Elsewhere on the reed front, baritone saxophonist Alex Harding, a sometime Arkestra member gets to exhibit his dual identities on “Part 4”. At one point his tone is as mellow and well-modulated as Gerry Mulligan in his West Coast days, a few bars later he’s digging up the building’s foundations with his reed, spewing out multiphonics as he smears his notes, nearly duking it out with the brass section.

As the band meanders from Basie to Boulez and back again, often you’ll note meticulously arranged unison passages playing off against a moving bass line, or hear the entire band creeping along behind the soloist. Gold Sparkle Band drummer Andrew Barker creates Sunny Murray-like polyrhythms one minute and produces varsity football half-time marching tempos -- complete with rim shots -- a few tracks later. POMO eclecticism is on tap as well on “Part 5”, which features Oscar Noriega, who has worked with pianist Satoko Fujii producing tongue-slapping Eric Dolphy emulations from his bass clarinet. Meanwhile, Anthony Braxton-associate cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum cuts across the band’s massed stop time tutti with a screeching Cat Anderson-like tone.

Distressingly, a year later when Tsahar relocated from Manhattan to Brooklyn to conduct the New York Underground Orchestra through his sprawling, nearly 72½-minute “The Labyrinth”, it seems that some of these players weren’t available. In addition, three violinists, two violists, two cellists and three bassists joined the band, with the woodwinds confined to flutes and clarinets. The result seems more self-consciously philharmonic than, say jazz-classical. Plus many of the additional tones are muffled in the recording or the mix.

Not that there isn’t impressive work here as well. Early on, trombonist Regev who on the earlier CD seems to be an adherent of the gritty Al Grey school creates some elegant muted passages in front of pulsating strings and horns. This symphonic backing don’t prevent Noriega’s bass clarinet to indulge in enough multiphonics to twist the strings echoing aviary tones. Later on, Charles Waters, another Gold Sparkle Band member, uses the string section sawing in the background to cushion a clean, clear clarinet solo that comes out half-Benny Goodman and half-Ornette Coleman (if the later ever played the licorice stick). And trumpeter Nate Wooley, although surrounded by a larger string section than in some of Stan Kenton’s more bloated orchestras, manages to at least push the orchestra into some conventional swinging passages.

Deficiency doesn’t rest with the soloists. It’s the orchestral passages, that with this string-heavy configuration, seems to meander from Debussy-like preciousness to New music bleakness to near-static minimalism. Tsahar’s conduction and writing on “The 5th Path” tries to work out of this conundrum. Muted -- or is it muffled? -- trumpet passages from Lavelle initially displayed on top of unvarying pizzicato pluck from the strings, are soon joined by Wooley for a dramatic fanfare which encompasses rooster crows and plunger work. As the strings move from diminuendo to crescendo and back, both brassmen create a stop time pulse as Tatsuya Nakatani showcases vibes, wood block and other unconventional percussion sounds.

Another time sweet violin and cello lines follow a brass choir intro that gives way to pealing percussion and the odd bass clarinet accent. Yet the andante motion seems merely movement for its own sake. On the last track are Jonah Sacks’ mournful cello presages, Impressionistic strings, twittering flutes and a clarinet and bass clarinet that seem to be trading fours oblivious of what’s unrolling around them. Finally, an exaggerated, extended pianissimo chord is grasped by the reeds and horns until it fades away.

While re-creators -- read copyists -- like Wynton Marsalis, receive awards for using orchestral resources to calcify the tradition, innovators like Tsahar are trying to do something more with larger ensembles. Obviously he doesn’t succeed every time. Plus there is some inexcusable sloppiness on the first disc’s booklet, where performers’ names are spelled incorrectly. They’re correct below.

However, without trying to be hyperbolic, from the evidence here it would seem that one Tsahar almost-failure could be worth a few Marsalis so-called successes. Despite it’s weaknesses, THE LABYRINTH offers some thought-provoking music and EMBRACING THE VOID is a definite triumph. What more could a musically questing composer want?

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Void: 1. Embracing the Void Part 1 2. Embracing the Void Part 2 3. Embracing the Void Part 3. 4. Embracing the Void Part 4 5. Embracing the Void Part 5 6. Embracing the Void Part 6 7. Embracing the Void Part 7 8. Embracing the Void Part 8 9. Embracing the Void Part 9 10. Embracing the Void Part 10

Personnel: Void: Taylor Ho Bynum, Matt Lavelle, Antoine Brye (trumpets); Curtis Hasselbring, Steve Swell and Reut Regev (trombones); Ori Kaplan (alto saxophone); Aaron Stewart, Assif Tsahar (tenor saxophones); Alex Harding (baritone saxophone); Oscar Noriega (bass clarinet and alto saxophone); Craig Taborn (piano); Tom Abbs (bass); Andrew Barker (drums)

Track Listing: Labyrinth: 1. The lst Path 2. The 2nd Path 3. The 3rd Path 4. The 4th Path 5. The 5th Path 6. The 6th Path 7. The 7th Path 8. The 8th Path 9. The 9th Path 10. The 10th Path

Personnel: Labyrinth: Matt Lavelle, Nate Wooley, Marianne Giosa (trumpets); Reut Regev (trombone); Charles Waters (clarinet); Oscar Noriega (bass clarinet); Sabine Arnaud, Muriel Vergnaud (flutes); Melinda Rice, Jean Cook, Katie Pawluk (violins); Stephanie Griffin, Jessica Pavone (violas); Okkyung Lee, Jonah Sacks (cellos); Terrence Murren, Byrne Klay, Todd Nicholson (basses); Tatsuya Nakatani (percussion); Assif Tsahar (conduction)

May 5, 2003

XMARSX

XMARSX
Atavistic ALP138CD

TIM BERNE
Science Friction
Screwgun Screwu 013

Just because many -- most? -- of the advances transmitted by jazz-rock fusion had been ground into formula by the early 1980s, doesn’t means that there isn’t scope for exploration with that mixture of highly amplified instruments and improvisation.

Fusion doesn’t have to be what it has become -- bass guitar grandstanding, drummers using more equipment than finesse, and onanistic lead guitar indulgences -- as these two CDs set out to prove. Still its conventions are so strong that you can almost literally hear the musicians struggling to stretch the formula. Whether they prevail is open to interpretation and may depend on your history on the jazz or rock side of the fence.

Interestingly enough, while New York-based alto saxophonist Tim Berne’s crew and Chicago located XMARSX led by tenor saxophonist Mars Williams tackle the conundrum in divergent ways, neither has room for a bass guitar. Jaco Pastorius’ rapid, empty posturing may have retarded the instrument’s growth for many years. Sure Williams has help from Kent Kessler, whose timekeeping would be familiar to the saxophonist from their mutual activity in the NRG Ensemble, Peter Brötzmann’s Chicago Tentet and the Vandermark 5. But that bassman merely amplifies his acoustic bass in order to make himself heard, with a band filled out by improv cellist Fred Longberg-Holm and three rockers, most notably charismatic ex-MC5 guitarist Wayne Kramer, plus guitarist Greg Suran and drummer Dave Suycott of Slam.

Williams has worked both sides of the fence himself. Besides his improv experience, which also included Cinghiale, a reed duo with Vandermark, he was a sidemen with the Psychedelic Furs, Ministry and the Waitresses and now leads the jazz-funk band Liquid Soul.

Berne is firmly identified with jazz and improv, having over the years worked with the likes of saxophonists Julius Hemphill and John Zorn plus ROVA’s Figure 8, guitarist Bill Frisell and drummer Joey Baron. Drummer Tom Rainey has been part of many bands with Berne and bassist Mark Helias; while keyboardist Craig Taborn has worked with saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell and Berne’s trio. French guitarist Marc Ducret has been associated with Berne for more than a decade, as well as gigging with countrymen like drummer Daniel Humair; and manipulator/processor/guitarist David Torn has been behind the console for Berne’s last few CDs.

Starting in the Midwest, XMARSX’s almost 15 minute “Ultraman vs. Alienmetron” seems to sum up how the rock and jazz impulses vie for primacy. One of the few times when it sounds as if Kessler is playing acoustic bass with an electric pick-up, the piece begins with the bassist and cellist bowing in unison with Williams. Suddenly, the tune explodes into a “Bitches Brew”-style bombast with everyone playing at top speed and volume. Williams’ pitch heads skyward, both plectrumists exhibit some Sonny Sharrock-style chops with heavy electronica overtones and a hint of Third-World exotica. Soon guitar feedback and altissimo screeches combine to become a claxon as one guitarist -- Kramer? -- picks out something closely resembling “Purple Haze”. For a time, it seems as if the 1960s have returned as both fretmen create a classic guitar freakout, with the saxist reprising the theme for the coda. Finally, a full minute of silence is brought to an end by telephone signal bleeps and the reintroduction of the thematic vamp played even louder then before. Anyone got a doobie?

In contrast, “Unstuck” -- one of two Suran compositions -- “Punch the Monkey” and “Ratbastard” stay in rock-jazz --as opposed to jazz-rock territory. Before the guitarist exercises his wah wah pedal, the first piece resembles the sort of instrumental heavy metallers would use to break up a set; the next features screaming guitar feedback and frenzied chording duking it out with sax lines. Most impressively, however, the third manages to incorporate country and avant influences into its basic rock structure. Beginning with a stuttering country guitar feel, fuzztones and off kilter drumming are soon added to the mix. Neither Williams’ chorus of reed kisses nor the integration of constantly intersecting guitar lines make it anyway MTV friendly, though.

Alternately, “The Finger” -- written like all the rest of the material by Williams --sonically offers up the sort of riffs the saxophonist and bassist could play with Vandermark. Horn and cello team with a smoky jazz club feel, as Williams’ vocalized vamps recall Windy City funky saxist Gene Ammons. All the while Kessler is strumming a constant pattern and Suycott banging out a shuffle rhythm. In the end, reed tongue slaps meet guitar feedback, the way trace of psychedelica informed soul-jazz LPs of the 1970s.

Another Chicago reedman who was the epitome of soul jazz was tenor saxophonist Eddie Harris. He’s honored here on a piece bearing his name. Highlighting a slinky rhythm that moves the drummer’s flams to the foreground and the guitars to the back, the tune is given added heft by powerful bass intonation. Employing Harris’ favorite trick of constant theme repetition, Williams’ honks as if it was still 1969, while the ending takes another leaf from the EH songbook by reprising the head in double time.

If part of XMARSX references fusion halcyon days, then SCIENCE FRICTION, true to a variation of its title, tries to interpose even more influences into the genre. Traces of Byrds and Fairport Convention-style folk rock suggest themselves -- though Ducret would never be mistaken for a folkie -- and besides Torn’s electronica and cut-and-paste sound manipulation, Ornette Coleman’s Prime Time and Henry Threadgill’s Very, Very Circus bands join BITCHES BREW as an influence, as does so-called World Music.

The clearest indication of this is on the almost 12½-minute “Manatee Woman” -- an Ornette allusion? Starting off with what sound like electrified percussion, it then encompasses rhythmic guitar licks, speedy hand drumming and Berne in a trilling R&B mode. Imposing here as he is elsewhere on the disc -- Ducret sashays from a strict tempo rock vamp to simple flat picking -- reminiscent of The Byrds’ Roger McGuinn -- to an understated amp buzzing. Simultaneously Rainey is slackening and speeding up the theme and Taborn’s contribution varies from electrified keyboard splashes to dancing near acoustic-sounding piano glissandos.

“Sigh Fry” has the same sort of electric piano sprinkles mixed with diminutive trills from the alto saxophone. In this slow moving tune Rainey produces a straightforward rock band texture mixed with Cuban guiro-like scraping, while the droning electric guitar provides the countermelody.

Conversely, “Mikromaus” and “The Mallomar Maneuvre” appear to be as much Torn’s as Berne’s solo statements. On the first the reedman’s high-pitched lines seem to be filtered through processes so that shimmering clouds of sine waves intersect with a whistling flute-like sound. On the later, ethereal saxophone split tones and smears are distilled through stuttering phase-shifting.

Finally there’s “Clown Finger”, which as you can tell from the sardonic title is one of the tunes Berne wrote or co-wrote. It’s an allegro theme based on splayed electric piano notes and a twisting drum beat, often expressed on rims not heads. Soon all that is pushed aside by Berne and Ducret. With the lowest pitches of the saxophone getting a workout, the guitarist constructs light-fingered electric filigree with suggestions of a Neapolitan mandolin. Although Taborn is at his most melodic, his sustained low notes are hemisected by knife-sharp guitar chords.

There you have it, two attempts to reform fusion, give it a more outside character and bring it into the 21st century. Thought-provoking considering the sources, the CDs deserve to be weighed and considered along with both leaders’ acoustic works.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: XMARSX: 1. The Worm 2. The Finger* 3. Unstuck 4. Eddie Harris* 5. Punch the Monkey* 6. Ratbastard* 7. Floaty 8. Nothin’ Butnet 9. Ultraman vs. Alienmetron*

Personnel: XMARSX: Mars Williams (tenor saxophone); Greg Suran and Wayne Kramer* (guitars); Fred Longberg-Holm (cello)*; Kent Kessler (bass); Dave Suycott (drums, effects, loops)

Track Listing: Science: 1. Huevos 2. IHornet 3. Sigh Fry 4. Manatee Woman 5. Mikromaus 6. Jalapeño Diplomacy 7. The Mallomar Maneuvre 8. Clown Finger

Personnel: Science: Tim Berne (alto saxophone); Marc Ducret (electric and acoustic guitars); Craig Taborn (electric keyboards); Tom Rainey (drums); David Torn (processing and manipulation)

February 10, 2003

MANERI ENSEMBLE

Going To Church
AUM Fidelity AUM 024

MAT MANERI
Sustain
Thirsty Ear THI 57122.2

Substantial slices of Maneri music, these two new CDs prove that while violist Mat Manner has internalized the quirky cogitation and execution of his father, reedist Joe Maneri, he’s not adverse to testing out some ideas of his own in different contexts.

Father-son improvisers are nothing new on the jazz scene and have ranged from boogie-woogie pianist Albert Ammons and his funky tenor saxophonist son Gene Ammons to mainstream pianist Ellis Marsalis and his progeny. But few offspring are as inculcated in his father’s music, as Mat -- born in 1969 -- who began playing music with his father when he was only seven. It’s hardly necessary to point out that Joe -- born in 1927 -- was no mainstream Marsalis. A jobbing musician for years with an interest in ethnic, microtonal and 12-tone composition as well as jazz improvisation, his talent finally got him a gig teaching theory and composition at Boston’s New England Conservatory in 1970. But his single-mindedness left him unrecorded until his belated emergence in the mid-1990s.

Initially, and probably still, a member of most of his father’s Massachusetts-centred bands, Mat moved to New York by the late 1990s and deepened his relationship with likes of pianist Mathew Shipp, bassist William Parker and guitarist Joe Morris among others.

Here, although the two CDs initially sound similar, the differences are apparent on close listening. CHURCH is almost classical in its instrumentation and orientation, while the use of electric keyboards and a domineering bassist and drummer makes SUSTAIN more tonally dense.

Secularists shouldn’t be frightened by the title on the Maneri Ensemble’s CD, by the way. No one sings any hymns or passes the collection plate. Some improvisers have said that “jazz is my religion”, and the house of worship here is a similar structure to the devotional space players like Frank Wright, John Coltrane and Albert Ayler aspired to and often inhabited.

Unlike those frenzied, ecstatic players, however, the elder Maneri’s worship is done in the context of restrained chamber improv, with even the drummer’s contribution -- from longtime Maneri associate Randy Peterson -- characterized by irregular pulses, unobtrusive rhythms and a quill-like gliding touch.

At more than 31½ minutes, “Blood and Body”, the first track, is obviously the central offering at this free jazz altar. Chief priest Joe Maneri directs the liturgy with his collection of sacred objects -- the clarinet, alto and tenor saxophone. Omitting pious solemnity, the reedist elaborates the theme at different times, keeping the congregation in the same place in the hymnbook with off-centre, elongated trills and guttural smears. At points he begins his sermons in the chalumeau register than, as he feels the spirit, raises his voice ‘way past coloratura and into squeaks, screeches and begins almost speaking in tongues.

Moving from half-valve notes to the top of his horn’s range, trumpeter Roy Campbell sometime exhibits his plunger tone as the best way to illuminate a counter motif parable. The percussionist provides some ride cymbal and ratamacue accompaniment. Meanwhile bassist Barre Phillips, a habituated true believer from his days 40 years ago with clarinetist Jimmy Giuffre up to his recent collaboration with saxist Evan Parker, sometimes allows himself the suggestion of walking bass. More frequently, though, his benediction involves guitar-like strums from the top of his strings or genuflecting arco devotion. Since the stately procession is andante most of the time, pianist Mathew Shipp’s right hand is often raised from tinkling his keys, when he isn’t suggesting a spinet’s tone or producing heartfelt ecclesiastical chords.

As for the son, his interaction with his father occurs most often with multiple forays from his five or six-string violas. His arco innovations encompass triple stopping and portamento, though at times, father and son become one as his tone merges with serpentine alto saxophone split tones. These appear to inhabit the atmosphere midway between the creations of Eric Dolphy and a viola’s singular tone.

Both remaining tunes build on the scripture articulated on “Blood and Body”. There are more Gabriel-like brass blasts from Campbell, sacramental funeral march note displays from Shipp, multiple string exposure from Phillips and the younger Maneri and pure-toned hisses and dissonant colored noises from Maneri senior, as his smearing vibrato gathers the musical supplicants together for devotion.

If two figures from the blessed Trinity are present on GOING TO CHURCH, then SUSTAIN may be said to introduce the third, the Holy Ghost, in the person of soprano saxophonist Joe McPhee.

Avoiding blasphemy, it should be noted that at 63 McPhee is old enough to have interacted with the high priests of Energy Music such as Coltrane, Ayler and Ornette Coleman. But over the years his improvising has gone from Old Testament fire-and-brimstone to the understated New Testament sound he exhibits here.

Featuring beside McPhee and the son an entirely new set of converts, this CD features four major tracks plus five tunes titled with some variation of “Alone” that are example of solo prayers. The soprano saxist, for instance, showcases forward moving legato lines that range between glottal interior horn sounds and circular breathing exercises. On his own, drummer Gerald Cleaver, whose past associates have included saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell and bassist Mark Helias, creates electronic sounding percussion sounds reminiscent of the early work of Brits Paul Lytton and Tony Oxley.

Secularism is represented here by the shimmering wah-wah keyboard excursions of Craig Taborn, who often plays with altoist Tim Berne. Avoiding Herbie Hancock-like, 1970s-style electric piano wiggles his refractive tones blend well with McPhee’s soprano. On acoustic piano though, his touch relates back to Thelonious Monk. However at one point on “Nerve”, someone, either Taborn or triple-stopping Maneri creates a constant, angled tone that seems to come straight from the mixing board, bringing with it early fusion memories of Mahavishnu’s Jerry Goodman or the Fourth Way’s Michael White. Cleaver’s polyrhythmic beat is many steps ahead of what those bands produced however, while McPhee’s pitch sliding and the frantic, nearly atonal skittering from Taborn’s keyboards proves that nothing here is an exercise in nostalgia.

Similarly no one would confuse William Parker’s deep-bottomed acoustic bass with that from a whiny electric model. Sometimes sounding as if he’s working in two clefs simultaneously, he uses his fingers to blend rhythmically with the drums and keyboards at times, or his bow to expand the string section with Maneri elsewhere.

Examined carefully, the CD is a polyphonic house of mirrors. It’s animated with sounds that encompass everything from what appears to be PVC pipe echoes, irregular drum shards, the rubbing and drone of the electric keyboard and massed strings. It’s also as much of a secular triumph for the younger Maneri as the other CD confirms the jubilant spirituality of his father.

-- Ken Waxman

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Track Listing: Going: 1. Blood and Body 2. Before the Sermon 3. Going To Church

Personnel: Going: Roy Campbell (trumpet); Joe Maneri (alto and tenor saxophones, clarinet); Mat Maneri (viola); Matthew Shipp (piano); Barre Phillips (bass); Randy Peterson (drums)

Track Listing: Sustain: 1. Alone (Origin) 2. In Peace 3. Alone (Construct) 4. Sustain 5. Alone (Unravel) 6. Nerve 7. Alone (Cleanse) 8. Divine 9. Alone (Mourn)

Personnel: Sustain: Joe McPhee (soprano saxophone); Mat Maneri (violas); Craig Taborn (keyboards); William Parker (bass); Gerald Cleaver (drums)

January 22, 2003

ROSCOE MITCHELL & THE NOTE FACTORY

Song for My Sister
PI Recordings 103

Avant garde jazz fans who remember the 1960s and 1970s have the tendency to come on like moldy figs when they compare the activities of many highly celebrated younger players with the accomplishments of their elders.

Case in point is this CD. For while a few youngsters have been over-praised for merely mastering the intricacies of a particular jazz style -- be it hard bop, modal or even a hip hop take on the New Thing -- reedist Roscoe Mitchell, 62, showcases a lot more.

Mitchell, who plays soprano, alto and tenor saxophones, flute, bass recorder, great bass recorder and percussion on this disc, has also written a set of unmistakably modern tunes that touch on playful R&B, precise swing, Third World anthems, jagged contemporary composition and even Early music. Assisted by eight young and veteran improvisers -- and four more for the “classical” piece -- Mitchell easily slides from one stance and style to another without ever losing his identity or resorting to tonal impersonation.

Pretty impressive for someone who was one of the founders of Chicago’s Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians in the mid-1960s and has been making impressive records on his own and as a members of the Art Ensemble of Chicago since that time.

Now a resident of Madison, Wisc., Mitchell has recorded with The Note Factory twice before, but only bassist Jaribu Shahid has been on all three discs. In the decade since the first CD, the band has grown from six to nine pieces, with new, impressive players joining. Especially prominent on his recording debut with this group, is Chicago trumpeter Corey Wilkes, whose contributions range from Harmon-muted whispers to brass band cadenzas.

New pianist Vijay Iyer leads his own bands around New York, while returning pianist Craig Taborn has gone from working with Young Lion James Carter to becoming a part of saxophonist Tim Berne’s electric trio. Bassist Leon Dorsey and drummer Vincent Davis have played and recorded with Mitchell in different configurations, while Shahid, guitarist Spencer Barefield and drummer Gerald Cleaver came out of Detroit subterraneous avant jazz scene.

Perhaps the best way to analyze a disc like this is to point to the two most unusual compositions. For a start there’s the almost 11½-minute “Wind Change”, a piece which evolved organically from a set of cards Mitchell developed to help beginning improvisers study. Switching between notated and improvised sections, and with the addition of Anders Svanoe on clarinet and bass clarinet, Willy Walter on bassoon, Janse H. Vincent on violin and Nels Buttmann on viola, the ensemble resembles a chamber orchestra. Except it’s a chamber ensemble where reverberations from Cleaver’s marimba, and bell shaking from Davis, make the more “legit” instrumentalists create sharp-angled sections, rife with the pizzicato string plucks. Meanwhile, Mitchell’s so-called classical sounding flute arches over the proceedings.

Equally unusual, “this”, recasts one of the composer’s chamber pieces written for a baritone vocalist, with Mitchell’s great bass recorder filling the singer’s role. Regarding Early music as yet another way to transmit his sound into another sphere, the saxophonist, a card-carrying member of the American Recorder Society, melds the canyon-wide, but limited range of the recorder with other sounds. In the end, the batter of marimba glissandos, muted trumpet lines, cello-like arco bass tones and shaken and stirred exotic percussion, end up with a product sounding like a Westernized version of gamelan orchestra music. Then there’s “The Megaplexian”, featuring Mitchell and the two percussionists improvising on instruments he invented for a special concert commission. Sounding like a combination of glockenspiel, vibes, wind chimes and bell tree, the megaplexians impart both an otherworldly and Third World feel to the composition. It also showcases the two pianists using a thicket of whole notes, bent notes and a few glisses.

On the other hand there are tunes like “Step One, Two, Three”, which comes across as half hard bop and half Middle Eastern court music. As the dual pianos sound out the infectious descending push-and-pull theme, Mitchell lets loose with some updated Swing tenor, so that you get an image of a college football half-time band marching through the narrow streets of the Casbah.

Not that more traditional music is neglected either. “Count-Off” is a rollicking, modern R&B type tune featuring a fruity Earl Bostic-style alto saxophone snaking through the music, with some Harmon muted tones from Wilkes, chordal guitar fills from Barefield and old-timey piano tinkles from one -- both? -- of the keyboardists. Then there’s the title tune, honoring Mitchell’s late sibling, but which comes across as bluesy rather than mournful. Displaying the saxophonist’s hard tenor tone, muted work from Wilkes, both basses walking and a waterfall of dual piano notes, it’s half modal and half freebop.

Age may have to withdraw for beauty sometimes. But in music the truly talented can produce beauty with intelligent content, because of their age and experience.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Song for My Sister 2. Sagitta 3. This 4. When the Whistle Blows 5. The Megaplexian 6. Step One, Two, Three 7. The Inside of the Star 8. Wind Change* 9. Count-Off

Personnel: Corey Wilkes (trumpet); Roscoe Mitchell (soprano, alto and tenor saxophones, flute, bass recorder, great bass recorder, percussion); Craig Taborn and Vijay Iyer (pianos); Spencer Barefield (guitar); Jaribu Shahid and Leon Dorsey (basses); Gerald Cleaver (marimba, percussion, drums); Vincent Davis (drums, percussion); plus on*: Anders Svanoe (clarinet and bass clarinet); Willy Walter (bassoon); Janse H. Vincent (violin); Nels Buttmann (viola)

September 9, 2002

CRAIG TABORN

Light Made Lighter
Thirsty Ear 57111

A long time coming, pianist Craig Taborn’s first American date as a leader has been expected since he started making his name as the pianist in saxophonist James Carter’s first quartet in the mid 1990s. Since then he has recorded with the likes of violinist Mat Maneri and avant elder statesman, multi-reedist Roscoe Mitchell and spent time live and on disc in a new electric configuration of altoist Tim Berne’s trio.

Although he sticks to the acoustic piano here, the result still seems diffuse, as if Taborn was in a men’s wear store, trying on different outfits for size in one of those three sectioned, wrap-around mirrors. Barely reflected in that mirror are his accompanists, drummer Gerald Cleaver, who has worked with pianist Mat Shipp and guitarist Joe Morris, and bassist Chris Lightcap, who has been in groups led by Morris and drummer Whit Dickey.

Overall, despite the echoes of Thelonious Monk and (surprisingly) Herbie Nichols in his playing and composing, Taborn is pretty much dressed in his mainstream piano togs here. A few tracks, most of the ballads and including the two versions of the title tune, appear a little too lightweight for the session. As a matter of fact, if Cleaver’s didn’t bring out the mallets and Taborn’s introduce rococo variations on “Light Made Lighter”’s trio version, it may have seemed that like the emperor’s new clothes, his covering was a little too transparent.

Luckily there are other garments on show. “St. Ranglehold”, for instance, features the most outside playing on the date, with Taborn scurrying up and down the keyboard and wedging Cecil Taylor-like clusters into his solo, while Lightcap produces a steady bass undertow and Cleaver lays down the steady beat. But the tune cuts off at 2:55.

With its blusey double timing “Whisky Warm” could probably be described as polite barrelhouse, while the trio appears to be recasting a standard -- even if it isn’t -- when it plays the highly decorative “American Landscape” with its walking bass line and

Monkish piano clusters at the end. Following a powerful drum intro, “Crocodile” begins with classical-arrayed sounds, then develops into an outright swinger, with Taborn audibly developing ideas and Cleaver hitting everything in sight. Even the one certified standard, “I Cover the Waterfront” is transformed with rim shots and keyboard variations so that it sounds more like a nursery rhyme than the familiar dirge.

In short, LIGHT MADE LIGHTER, which suspiciously has no recording date, resembles a closet lacking the requisite amount of substantial clothing. Part of the problem may arise because too many of the tracks are in the two to three minute range, with the disc itself barely over 40 minutes.

Since Taborn is still young enough to be growing as a person as well as a pianist, the best idea would probably to give him more room to grow into things when next he does a session.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Bodies We Came Out Of 2. St. Ride 3. I Cover The Waterfront 4. Crocodile 5. Light Made Lighter 6. Whisky Warm 7. Morning Creatures 8. St. Ranglehold 9. American Landscape 10. Light Made Lighter - piano 11. Bodies We Came Out Of part two

Personnel: Craig Taborn (piano); Chris Lightcap (bass); Gerald Cleaver (drums)

January 15, 2002

MAT MANERI

Blue Decco
Thirsty Ear TH 57092.2

Mat Maneri may be the savior of jazz violin. If not that, he's definitely it's future.

Long the music's stepchild, with 200 drummers or saxophonists for every Stuff Smith or Joe Venuti, jazz violin banged into the fusion brick wall about 30 years ago when nearly every fiddler tried to emulate Jean Luc Ponty's guitar-god-like string playing. For the past quarter century, though, even Ponty has produced little more than tired retreads of his earlier work.

At the same time the few musicians who found a role for violin in improv musics, were rapidly aging. Except for the work of the equally talented, and slightly older, Mark Feldman, it appeared that jazz violin evolution is linked to the fingers and strings of Maneri.

Still in his 30s, he's cast his lot in with experimenters such as freeform pianist Mathew Ship and bassist/organizer William Parker (featured here). Using such sound-extenders as a six-string electric violin, a baritone violin and a five-string viola, he's able to function like a reed player, switching between his different axes as the occasion demands. The horn comparison is further strengthened by the fact that he's working with a full rhythm section for the first time on disc, free of the need to take on any of their functions. Not that he has to, though.

Parker's strength as timekeeper and colorist are recognized, but the lesser-known pianist and drummer lockstep into the proceedings as well. Cleaver, who has worked with Roscoe Mitchell and Joe Morris, among others, sticks mainly to restrained timekeeping, while Taborn, who was buried in James Carter's earliest groups, is given a bit of solo space. On the title tune he ornaments modernist filigree onto its blues underpinnings, while on "Mute", he's anything but, spelling Maneri by tossing boiling note clusters on top of rhythmic backing.

The violinist operates on full power at all time, whether launching a quicksilver string run, stopping for a pizz interlude or playing so many strings at once that he sounds as if he's duetting with himself.

Don't be fooled by the number of standards here either. Maneri rightly looks on them as improvisationary launching pads, not the sacred texts of the neo-con movement. Thus a reharmonized "Hush Little Baby" can sound as abstract here as the cryptically titled "It #3".

BLUE DECCO is as approachable as any horn-and-rhythm date you can name, and a heck more fun. And it strengthens the position of the violin as an improvising vehicle.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Hush Little Baby 2. It #2 3. Blue Decco 4. The New Lord's Prayer 5. It #3 6. Mute 7. Blue Sun 8. I Got It Bad

Personnel: Mat Maneri (violin); Craig Taborn (piano); William Parker (bass); Gerald Cleaver (drums)

September 11, 2000