Rhapsody's 2011 Jazz Critics' Poll

Individual Ballot
From Ken Waxman

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

2) Ken Waxman

Jazz Word (www.jazzword.com )

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

1. World Saxophone Quartet Yes We Can Jazzwerkstatt JW 098

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

3. Hubbub Whobub Matchless MRCD 80

4. John Butcher & Gino Robair Apophenia Rastascan BRD 065

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

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

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

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

9. Schlippenbach Trio Bauhaus Dessau Intakt CD 183

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

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

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

2) Steve Lacy School Days Emanem 5016

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

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

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

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

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

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

Agustí Fernández & Joan Saura Vents psi 11.01

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

January 20, 2012

Ivo Perelman Quartet

The Hour of the Star
Leo Records CD LR 605

Eastern Boundary Quartet

Icicles

Konnex KCD 5258

Carlo De Rosa’s Cross-Fade

Brain Dance

Cuneiform Rune 317

Of all the formations that have characterized improvisation at least since the Bop era, the most common has been that of one reed player along with piano, bass and drums. Just because it’s unexceptional doesn’t mean every session has to be identical however, especially if the meeting ground is original compositions. As these quartet discs demonstrate, plenty of variations are available, even if the form prods participants towards a mainstream orientation.

Least committed to that concept is Brazilian tenor saxophonist Ivo Perelman, who is also most closely aligned to what could be called Energy Music. His all-star American quartet includes guitarist-turned-bassist Joe Morris, sought-after and sympathetic drummer Gerald Cleaver, and, on four of the six tunes, celebrated pianist Matthew Shipp. Shipp’s presence is crucial here. For while nowhere does he entertain thoughts of running the changes, the pianist helps create a conventional rhythm section, which steadies the often-abrasive playing of Perelman.

If The Hour of the Star is the most avant-garde session, then Brain Dance is the most conventional. That’s conventional as in normal, not predictable however. Leader/bassist Carlo De Rosa, who has worked with everyone from drummer Jack DeJohnette to Jazz-World Music trumpeter Amir El Saffer, has composed seven high quality tunes, and his Cross-Fade band is made up of top New York players. Vijay Iyer who plays Fender Rhodes and piano here is one of the most celebrated younger keyboardists, mixing Asian inflected concepts with Jazz. Kingston, Jamaica-born tenor saxophonist Mark Shim has worked with the Mingus Big Band and trumpeter Terrence Blanchard; while young drummer Justin Brown’s credits include gigs with Cuban pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba.

With its music somewhere in between these two previous discs, and with an inside-outside quality, is the aptly named Eastern Boundary Quartet, a working unit since 2007. Two of its members are American veterans and long-time playing partners: bassist Joe Fonda and pianist Michael Jefry Stevens, who together or alone work regularly with players such as German reedman Gerald Ullman. Their lesser-known – in the West – compadres are Hungarian. Mihály Borbély plays alto saxophone and tarogato and Balázs Bágyi is on drums. Borbély teaches at both the Béla Bartók Conservatory and the Ferenc Liszt Music Academy, and has worked with musicians as different as the ROVA Saxophone Quartet and flautist Herbie Mann. Someone who also works in theatre music and takes Jazz gigs, Bágyi is a mamber of the Magyarvista Social Club, a 31-member Hungarian World Music orchestra.

Working with different line-ups over the years, right now Cross-Fade’s weakest links seem to be in the drum and saxophone chairs, but for different reasons. Brown is an incredibly busy drummer and appears committed to hammering rhythms and licks onto every track –whether they’re called for or not. Shim on the other hand has developed a distinctive, robust tenor sound. Unfortunately it’s nearly unchanging on most tracks, making those few instances where he alters his playing strategy stand out. Additionally, while De Rosa’s centred bass lines holds many of the pieces together, cleverly winnowing or double-timing distinctive solos or accompaniment, Iyer’s touch, so masterful and clear-cut on acoustic piano loses its individuality when he switches to electric.

That’s why the CD’s stand-out tunes are “Headbanger’s Bawl” and “Terrane/A Phrase”. The latter, the nearly 13½-minute lengthiest track, feature a straightforward up-and-down bass line, a similarly unadorned swinging backbeat from Brown, with enough breathing space left for both Shim and Iyer. As Brown moves among wooden clatters, drags and ruffs, the pianist exposes a series of tension-building chords and the saxophonist equally intense snorts plus controlled flutter tonguing. Iyer’s cascades circle around the reedist’s multiphonic expansion, until De Rosa’s atonal string vibrations move all concerned to cross tones and connections. Rhythm on “Headbanger’s Bawl” is properly opaque and Rock-like, with De Rosa adding a bulky pulse, and Brown later breaking up the time with paradiddles and cymbal clanks. Shim’s stuttering tenor line soon escalates to slurs and tongue stops, while the pianist constructs his brooding, multi-fingered sequence out of glissandi and flashing tremolo runs.

Stevens is another commanding piano soloist with the experience that makes him an equally sensitive accompanist. On Icicles he effortlessly slides from the gentle impressionism of his self-composed title tune to tougher syncopation on more blues-oriented material. Furthermore he can offhandedly use slinky tremolos for effect in the piano’s mid-section, without letting the rhythm lag. Fonda too is assured. He quotes Oscar Pettiford’s “Blues in the Closet” in his rhythmic introduction to the band’s treatment of Atilla Zoller’s “Hungarian Jazz Rhapsody”; and on his own “Fish Soup” uses solid thumps and echoing lines to set up Borbély’s double puffing and extended flutter tonguing. Borbély’s reed lines throughout are distinctive, sticking to the alto saxophone’s highest register – or perhaps actually playing soprano saxophone – for melodic interludes. Meanwhile he uses narrowed tarogato tones and frenetic triple-tonguing to keep the momentum going on Balázs’ “Soft BalkanWinds”, which actually is blown along via the drummer’s primitivist beats.

“Borders”, again composed by Borbély is the most fully realized performance. In part it’s a Fonda showcase with the bassist’s runs scurrying from super-speedy to walking to strained strums, as well as exposing additional tones and partials. Still ample room is available for the composer and pianist. Stevens’ muscular patterns, cascading chords and repetitive key clipping pave the way for Borbély’s slithering split tones, as the reed man elaborates a melody which almost sounds Scottish.

Someone whose melodies definitely lack a Scottish – and usually a tonal – tinge is tenor saxophonist Perelman, although after more than 20 years of recording and times changing, his textures sound more tempered than in the past. Not that the Brazilian’s improvisational allegiance is any less to late-period Coltrane. It’s just that in the nearly 50 years since Trane’s death, these concepts are part of many saxophonists’ lingua franca.

Interestingly enough, there’s a portion of “As For the Future” where Perelman’s tenor tone seems to be condensing to approximate that of a tarogato. His tone is just as strident; his pitch is as altissimo, but is that a quote from “Secret Love” that sneaks into his solo? Atop Morris’ ostinato plucks and Cleaver’s restrained rolls and rim shots, Perelman chews on the exposition like a pooch with a meaty bone, using snorts, bites, growls and tongue motions to extract every ounce of protein from the material. Finally he slows the piece down to a Hard Boppish, almost mellow ending.

In such fast, yet encouraging company some of the tenseness that has characterized the tenor saxophonist’s improvising in the past has dissipated. His lines are still harsh, especially when pushed along by Shipp’s metronomic chording. Yet framed among irregular drum beats and adhered bass thumping, even as glossolalia and guttural tones exit his horn, his playing is more focused. Juddering counterpoint from the pianist, mixed with repeated renal cries and sudden descents into the horn’s nether regions from Perelman, create an altogether original take on the material.

One climax occurs on “Singing the Blues”, where the saxman’s approximation of late-period Trane slurs, shakes, snort and timbre-shredding meets Shipp’s expressive kinetic runs until the palpable ferocity is almost visible. Accelerating to fortissimo and seemingly emptying the horn of all its air with diaphragm pressure and note stretching, the addition of Cleaver’s backbeat helps wrap things up so that the saxophonist’s agitated growls find their proper place among the pianist’s downwards punctuation.

No matter the nationality of members of the formations – and no matter how advanced and far-out the improvising may be – these sessions prove that the sax-plus-rhythm- section format is still as viable as it ever has been,

--Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Icicles: 1. Fish Soup 2. Icicles) 3. Soft Balkan Wind 4. Borders 5. China 6. Hungarian Jazz Rhapsody 7. Transylvania Blues

Personnel: Icicles: Mihály Borbély (alto saxophone and tarogato); Michael Jefry Stevens (piano); Joe Fonda (bass) and Bágyi Balázs (drums)

Track Listing: Brain: 1. Circular Woes 2. For Otto 3. Maja 4. Headbanger’s Bawl 5. Brain Dance 6. Terrane/A Phrase 7. Route 17

Personnel: Brain: Mark Shim (tenor saxophone); Vijay Iyer (piano and Fender Rhodes); Carlo De Rosa (bass) and Marcus Gilmore (drums)

Track Listing: Hour: 1. A Tearful Tale 2. Singing the Blues 3. The Hour of the Star 4. The Right to Protest 5. As For the Future 6. Whistling in the Dark Wind

Personnel: Hour: Ivo Perelman (tenor saxophone); Matthew Shipp (piano [except 2, 5]); Joe Morris (bass) and Gerald Cleaver (drums)

January 10, 2012

Pascal Niggenkemper

Upcoming Hurricane
No Business NBCD 34

By Ken Waxman

Spontaneity is enhanced by inspiration. That’s what bassist Pascal Niggenkemper proves with this CD, an original take on the classic jazz piano trio, recorded in one session in Cologne. The symmetry maintained between linear harmony and fanciful abstractions demonstrated on the seven tracks is also a result of to the equilibrium maintained among the French-German bassist who now lives in New York, and his associates – sidemen isn’t the word – who singly and together have been on hundreds of records.

Inventive percussionist, Detroit-born Gerald Cleaver usually works with sound explorers such as saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell and bassist William Parker, although his past experience includes gigging with mainstream piano masters such as Tommy Flanagan. No slouch on the keyboard himself, Russian-born, Cologne-based Simon Nabatov is a mercurial pianist, whose extended 10-year New York stint means he’s as likely to work regularly with Americans like drummer Tom Rainey as Europeans like saxophonist Frank Gratkowski. Niggenkemper is a member of interlocking Manhattan combos with unconventional instrumentation, so it’s instructive to note how his tough Mingus-styled string pops and scrubbed multiphonics fit in this traditional setting.

Very well it turns out, since Niggenkemper gives free reign to everyone’s inventions; especially the pianist’s. Nabatov’s strategy for “Fighting the Mill”, for instance, involves tremolo rumbles plus strummed inner strings that mesh with the bassist’s woody rubs and the drummer’s off-handed syncopation. With all three playing continuously, Nabatov manages to create a lyrical narrative at the same time as skittering dynamics that could give Cecil Taylor pause.

An equivalent muscularity is apparent on the title track, as Nabatov’s animated, polyrhythms moves from stentorian and fortissimo to suggest linear ballads. His touch is even more vigorously percussive than Cleaver’s understated clunks and pops. Overall though, it’s Niggenkemper’s unvarying walking that holds the piece together

On other tracks the drummer’s kinetic ruffs and raps are given brief showcases as are the bassist’s acerbic sul tasto lines extensions. While Nabatov may take the bulk of the solos – as is common in this format – never does the performance seem unbalanced in his favor.

With everyone contributing this Upcoming Hurricane is one which listeners can weather with pleasure.

Tracks: Pusteblume; Upcoming Hurricane; Arbol de Piedra; Aeolus; Fighting the Mill; Rahonavis; Mongolfière

Personnel: Simon Nabatov; piano; Pascal Niggenkemper: bass; Gerald Cleaver: drums

--For New York City Jazz Record January 2012

January 5, 2012

Ellery Eskelin

Trio New York
Prime Source CD 6010

Ellery Eskelin/Andrea Parkins/Jim Black

One Great Night ... Live

hatOLOGY 683

These two sides of Brooklyn-based tenor saxophonist Ellery Eskelin’s trio sounds aren’t as disparate as they appear on the surface. While Eskelin is identified with the experimental side of improvised music, typified by his trio with keyboardist Andrea Parkins and drummer Jim Black plus sideman gigs with the likes of drummer Gerry Hemingway, the results are only far-out when measured against the most rigidly conservative Jazz.

That why the disc recorded with Hammond B3 organist Gary Versace and drummer Gerald Cleaver, with a playlist of only standards, isn’t so much a reorientation of his work, as a confirmation of his roots. Growing up with a mother who played organ professionally, he was exposed to that sort of sound early on. Trio New York demonstrates how non-idiomatic treatments of musical war horses can be as exciting as the atonal explorations of original themes that the other trio showcases on One Great Night ... Live, recorded three years and three months earlier.

Eskelin’s nightclub organ-trio roots still emanate from the seven originals on One Great Night, even though sonic coloration depends on Black’s brisk, Rock-styled drumming and Parkins’ command of accordion, laptop and sampler. Recorded in Eskelin’s Baltimore hometown, many of the riffs Parkins plays on organ and piano plus the saxophonist’s style of fluttering and honking are variants of traditional organ-trio narratives elaborated on the other CD. Similarly Versace and Cleaver aren’t typically Funk-Jazz beat makers. The drummer, who is also a first-class composer and arranger, has worked with advanced stylists such as saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell, while the organist has gigged with cerebral players ranging from saxophonist Lee Konitz to drummer John Hollenbeck.

With his fluttery, Gene Ammons-influenced tone on show as early as the hoary “Memories of You”, the saxophonist comes up with slippery and sluicing variants on the theme as Cleaver claps and slaps and Versace quivers cross textures. Swiftly enough the saxophonist`s smooth melody reading moves the tune into classic swing form, aided by the drummer’s bomb dropping plus broken-chord shimmies and quivers from the organist. As each man slowly extends the lines contrapuntally, the piece climaxes with mid-range variations from Eskelin and a conclusive return to breathy reed tones.

Throughout arrangements are conventional enough to allow room for solos from all the participants; but not one is a showcase for the sake of showiness. Notably, as well, a pop tune such as “Lover Come Back to Me” and Thelonious Monk’s “Off Minor” are approached in a similar fashion, with variations before the theme. The former features diaphragm-pushed upturned cadences from the reedist before Cleaver’s brush work sets up the melody. The latter highlights the organist’s quirky rococo pumping before Eskelin’s honks move backwards into a thematic groove. Later it’s the saxophonist who double tongues the theme as the keyboardist adds Monk-like accents, key fanning and cadenza pumping.

“Lover” on the other hand soon becomes a hard swinger, with emotional reed slurs, tone extension and split-second quotes from other standards part of Eskelin’s solo. Meanwhile Versace keeps up a ground bass ostinato that mixes with Cleaver’s pops and flams and eventually leads to Eskelin’s extended reading of the head that audaciously and unaccompanied undulates to near-motionless legato, punctuated with a final dissonant cry.

Dissonance and extended techniques are prevalent on One Great Night. But so are part-boudoir, part boisterous tenor sax tones Eskelin inherited from 1950s stylists and, at points, Parkins’ pumping organ cadenzas that could without disruption be substituted for the organ work on the other CD. This is most obvious on “Instant Counterpoint” and the concluding “Half A Chance”.

On the second tune her dual-keyboard repetitions take on almost church-like inferences – talk about Soul Jazz – while the narrative elaboration dips into a similar call-and-response. Black’s eventual backbeat adds to the Funk emulation, although Eskelin’s squeezed tongue flutterings are more abstract than R&B-oriented. True to its title, “Instant Counterpoint” manages to keep triple lines moving even as Parkins slides between harsh accordion pulses and jerky organ slurs. Black’s ruffs and ratamacues are a point of demarcation though, while the saxophonist’s linear extension is fragmented rather than thematic. After a notable reed cadenza, Eskelin busies himself with multiphonic roars and smears, cramming as many dissonant timbres as he can into his lines.

Conversely, a track such as “For No Good Reason” is in the realm of post-modernism, with clinking and clattering piano chords, electronic buzzes and minimalist samples that cascade like Christmas bells. Eskelin narrows his tone with unstable and ghostly obbligatos that are as obtuse as the keyboardist’s voicing is thick and forceful. Piano cadenzas unroll methodically as the saxophonist’s timbres slither and spew.

Part of this transition is obvious on the lead-off track, which like all the others was composed by Esklein. While it has a title that could have been used on a Lee Morgan Blue Note session, it actually matches elements of experimentation with traditionalism. Although the reedist spins out breathy, Ammons-like textures from his horn at the top, the pumping accompaniment is from quivering accordion bellows, and it’s only when Black introduces a backbeat that swaggering organ stops enter the mix. With the drummer in-your-face, the concentrated narrative moves forward with off-centre timbres from the saxophonist and key shuddering from the keyboardist in lockstep. Eventually the accordion buzzes put into boldest relief Eskelin’s balladic inferences.

Post-modern or Old School, it appears that the saxophonist has found notable improvisatory strategies for both of his trios.

--Ken Waxman

Track Listing: One: 1. The Decider 2. For No Good Reason 3. Coordinated Universal Time 4. Split The Difference 5. Instant Counterpoint 6. I Should Have Known 7. Half A Chance

Personnel: One: Ellery Eskelin (tenor saxophone); Andrea Parkins (piano, electric piano, organ, accordion, laptop and sampler) and Jim Black (drums and percussion)

Track Listing: Trio: 1. Memories of You 2. Off Minor 3. Witchcraft 4. Lover Come Back to Me 5. How Deep is the Ocean

Personnel: Trio: Ellery Eskelin (tenor saxophone); Gary Versace (Hammond B3 organ) and Gerald Cleaver (drums)

September 30, 2011

Frank Carlberg

Tivoli Trio
Red Piano Records rpr 14599-4403-2

Stevens, Siegel & Ferguson

Six

Konnex KCD 5243

Fully-functioning Jazz piano trios involve a meeting of equals, so that all nuances of the performance are communicated. Nonetheless its very name attests that, intentionally or not, the keyboardist usually becomes first among equals, a situation that sometimes unbalances the performance.

Helsinki native Frank Carlberg dominates Tivoli Trio in that manner. Now domiciled in New York, the keyboardist composed all 13 of the tracks here and even co-owns the record company. But Carlberg, who is also on the faculty of the New England Conservatory and Berklee College and has played with among others saxophonist Steve Lacy and trumpeter Kenny Wheeler, has enough experience with different bands to ensure his so-called sidemen can not only deal with the demanding themes, but challenge him when necessary. Gerald Cleaver is one of the most versatile drummers in New York, working with, among others, saxophonists Tim Berne and Roscoe Mitchell. Bassist John Hébert follows a similar path, playing with trombonist Joe Fielder and trumpeter Taylor Ho Bynum to name two.

More democratic, the sixth CD since 1999 by the co-op trio of pianist Michael Jefrey Stevens, bassist Tim Ferguson and drummer Jeff “Siege” Sigel finds the three in a program that’s half standards and half originals composed by trio member. Although some of the new tunes impress, the band’s real skill is apparent when it rethinks and reshapes such hoary standards as “It Never Entered My Mind”, Thelonious Monk’s “Straight No Chaser”, and the country classic “Tennessee Waltz”.

Such freedom with familiar fare should be expected, considering the band’s collective musical experience. Someone who teaches Jazz drumming at the State University of New York at New Paltz and Western Connecticut State University, Siegel was a member of mainstream pianist Sir Roland Hanna’s trio from 1994-1999 and has worked with players ranging from tenor saxophonist Benny Golson to brass man Wadada Leo Smith. Besides authoring books on playing Jazz bass and teaching, Ferguson has played music for TV and films, been in Broadway pit orchestras and in ensembles as different as The Vanguard Jazz Orchestra and pianist Don Friedman’s groups. Best-known for his decades-long partnership with bassist Joe Fonda, Stevens, now based in Asheville, N.C., unites with German reedist Gebhard Ullman and Fonda in Conference Call and has recorded a clutch of CDs as leader.

You can glimpse Stevens, Siegel & Ferguson’s particular skill by noting how they handle “Tennessee Waltz”. Subtly rhythmic and banishing any thought of Patti Page, theme development is often communicated through the bassist. “My Baby Don’t Care for Me” gets a similar treatment, with initial stops and thumps from Ferguson presaging Stevens’ swinging runs which build up to a crescendo, elaborated still further by the bassist and some bouncing flams from Siege and ends with a multiphonic key explosion by all. Treating the Monk tune in a distinctive non-Monkish fashion, Stevens scatters and skitters lines with a multi-fingered attack that’s made even more energetic by Ferguson’s string popping. When the theme is recapped it comes out even speedier.

“Two for Tea” – a contrafact of the beginners’ piano exercise “Tea for Two” – is the only semi-standard on Tivoli Trio. Most of the carefully composed themes are rather musical reconstituting of the performers and performances at carnivals and circuses Carlberg thrilled to during his Finnish childhood. He exhibits a different skill on “Tea for Two” however. Like Bud Powell and other Bop pianists sometimes did with chestnuts, Carlberg makes the song outline low-frequency and bouncy, with bassist and drummer pulsating alongside. Then when the (overly) familiar theme finally appears, the pianist demonstrates that he’s mastered the art of swinging at a very slow tempo.

Composing program music is an acquired art, and despite samples of midway sounds and excited young voices, plus allusions to organ grinders and calliopes, the other suite’s compositions don’t really distinguish themselves until the half-way point. Perhaps related to a ringmaster’s towering chapeau, “Bill’s Hat” is a standout, with dynamic voicing that encompasses tripartite contributions, spread over an unforced slithery line, enlivened by Cleaver’s semi-military beat and Hébert’s focused slaps.

“Potholes” with its walking bass line from Hébert and the drummer’s steady ruffs and paradiddles, is another highpoint, with some classic trading of fours at the finale and earlier an inference that it too may be a Monk contrafact Evolving in sections “Spit (the Game)” is a double-timed romp, where Carlberg’s intense cross-handed pumps and key fanning could define the piece as an etude. A heavily rhythmic ending that includes repetitive and interchangeable note clusters, calls for complementary rolls and pops from the drummer.

Finally “Harlequin” wraps up the suite – except for less-than one minute of extraneous carnival noise on the last track – with a descriptive narrative, as left-handed accompaniment slides into rubato mid-tempo and answers the original theme statement at the CD’s beginning. Throughout the track, the bass and drums stay in the background.

Completely opposite – and unlike more overtly serious tunes Stevens for one has composed elsewhere – Six’s originals are very much what one would expect from a conventional piano trio. The pianist’s “Song for Rio” for example, is a calm bossa nova featuring Siegel smacking rim shots and the composer moving from exposed arpeggios to strumming chords and key clicks. Designed to show off its composer’s muscular double-stopping and sul tasto slides, Ferguson’s “Green Room” has a melody that sounds instantly familiar. Intriguingly inventive here, Stevens evolves a low-frequency fantasia as he spins out theme variation upon theme variation and ends with a dramatic denouncement.

Meanwhile the drummer’s “Remembering Shirley”, the CD’s final track, is a prototypical set-closer. A semi-blues it leads Stevens to staccato syncopation, Ferguson to steadying pumps and Siegel to expressive drum pops. Still there are enough slithering blues notes and quivering slides from the pianist to suggest parodic exaggeration.

Clean in execution, and notable in its second half, the Tivoli Trio’s CD is a Jazz suite that is musically sophisticated as well as descriptive. A highly professional take on the classic piano trio, Stevens, Siegel & Ferguson’s disc will satisfy anyone interested in that genre, while gently challenging them as well.

--Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Tivoli 1. Fanfare 2. Tricks 3. The Chase 4. Rumble Mumble 5. One Moment, Please 6. Bill's Hat 7. Two For Tea 8. Highwire 9. Potholes 10. Spit (The Game) 11. Tumbles 12. Harlequin 13. ... Into The Night ....

Personnel: Tivoli: Frank Carlberg (piano); John Hébert (bass) and Gerald Cleaver (drums)

Track Listing: Six: 1. It Never Entered My Mind 2. It’s Only a Paper Moon 3. Straight No Chaser 4. Tennessee Waltz 5. The Fire 6. Song for Rio 7. Green Room 8. My Baby Don’t Care for Me 9. Shifting Sands 10. Remembering Shirley

Personnel: Six: Michael Jefrey Stevens (piano); Tim Ferguson (bass) and Jeff “Siege” Siegel (drums)

September 30, 2011

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

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

Taylor Ho Bynum/John Hébert/Gerald Cleaver

Book of Three
RogueArt Rog-0029

Joe Hertenstein/Pascal Niggenkemper/Thomas Heberer

HNH

Clean Feed CF 205 CD

Unusual in composition, an improvising trio made up of double bass, drums and a brass instrument usually has a harder time balancing its sonics than when the third instrument is piano, say, or saxophone. It’s a tribute to each of these formations that the end results are of such high-quality, although the Book of Three CD is low-key and atmospheric, while HNH is bright and lively.

While both bands are New York-based, HNH is 100 per cent German, while Bynum, Hébert and Cleaver are Americans. In fact, while veteran trumpeter Thomas Heberer, who regularly works with the Berlin Contemporary Jazz and the ICP orchestras, was a member of the Köln-based James Chance Orchestra with drummer Joe Hertenstein, the triple-initial combo didn’t jell until the two hooked up again in Manhattan and added a third expat, bassist Pascal Niggenkemper, who plays in another band with drummer Tyshawn Sorey. Almost all the compositions are from one or the other H however.

Meanwhile Taylor Ho Bynum – who plays cornet, flugelhorn, bass trumpet and trumpbone here – bassist John Hébert and drummer Gerald Cleaver are some of the busiest musicians on the New York scene, working with the likes of reedman Anthony Braxton and bassist William Parker as well as leading their own bands. This trio configuration apparently impressed them for particular reasons. Judging from the voicing, it appears that an opportunity to avoid the stentorian was one attraction. The drummer does manage to get in some backbeat whacks and the bassist does his share of walking, but pulsing ruffs and echoes from Clever plus Hébert’s string stretching and fondling predominate.

The wild card here, Bynum maintains the understated chromatic interface, but breaks up his lyrical runs and muted grace notes with a variety of extended techniques. At one point he matches the bassist’s double-stopping emphasis with affiliated plunger tones and half-swallowed tongue fluttering. On the other hand, on “How Low” the cornetist’s part evolves to repeated whiny slurs, buzzes and tremolo back-of-throat cries, as Hébert alternates col legno and sul tasto strokes and the drummer spends more time dabbing, stroking and shaking parts of his kit than whacking any of them.

Most tunes are group (instant) compositions, with a couple sporting punning titles mockingly converse to the members’ actual playing efforts – “Digging for Clams”, for instance or “Meat Cleaver”. “Air Bear”, another group effort, is more illustrative of the trio’s inside/outside conceptions however. Indolently paced, with Cleaver’s cymbal smacks and time-keeping ruffs and rattles, the form is subverted by the bassist’s discordant low-pitched scrubs and Bynum’s extended mouthpiece oscillations that suggest dog whistles. The ending is equal parts shuffles and hand bounces from the drummer; higher-pitched bass string plucks and brass tones that are simultaneously rough and rococo.

If the measured pacing of Book of Three sometimes threatens to tumble from languid to lethargic, then there’s no trace of listlessness on the other CD. Straight-ahead aggression and swing are evident throughout. This is apparent whether the composition is “Tolliver Toll”, Heberer’s rhythmically appropriate tune honoring Freebop trumpeter Charles Tolliver, or craftily expressive like the moderato lows from Heberer’s quarter-tone trumpet on Hertenstein’s suggestive “Screw the Pendulum”.

On the latter tune, the brass man’s specially constructed instrument allows him to smear slippery textures as if he was playing a reed instrument. He asserts the horn’s brassiness when he buzzes and razzes in the piece’s final variant, while throughout the drummer rolls and shuffles and the bassist strokes his strings with powerful motions. On the Tolliver salute, the trumpeter’s braying and speech-inflected tones are appropriately agitated, while Hertenstein showcases a stick-popping solo filled with press rolls, and Niggenkemper’s distended pulse is reminiscent of Jimmy Garrison playing “A Love Supreme”. A winnowing descending tongue slur that completes “Paul’s Age”, which Hertenstein based on the fragment of a Hindemith melody, follows the trumpeter’s reconstitution of the theme. With Heberer’s interpretation encompassing peaks and valleys that go from shrill and staccato to this side of mellow, the narrative fits tongue-and-groove alongside the bassist’s arpeggios and the drummer’s rolls, pops and clatters.

More generic to the trio’s narrative is Heberer’s “Doin’ the Do”. Both tonic and discordant the piece allows the trumpeter to run through strategies that alternately reflect either approach. Raucous triplets following pressurized air forced through the horn’s body tube is one variant, linked to plucked guitar-like chords and sul tasto slides from Niggenkemper. Elsewhere, half-valve effects slurring to multiphonics precedes a return to the main, smoothly paced theme, with equivalent steadying pulses arriving from the bassist, matched with the drummer’s drags, bounces and rebounds.

If you want stimulation obvious and in-your-face than the pulsating swing of HNH is the preferred disc. If you’ll settle for an enervated approach which may mask more musical profundity, then Book of Three investigation may be in order. Both trios appear to have efficiently overcome the perceived weaknesses supposedly associated with brass-bass-drum trio sessions.

--Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Book: 1. White Birch 2. Digging for Clams 3. Death Star 4. Sevens First Edition 5. Meat Cleaver 6. Binumbed 7. Air Bear 8. Sevens Second Edition 9. How Low

Personnel: Book: Taylor Ho Bynum (cornet, flugelhorn, bass trumpet and trumpbone); John Hébert (bass) and Gerald Cleaver (drums and percussion)

Track Listing: HNH: 1. Screw the Pendulum 2. Glulan 3. Paul’s Age 4. Doin’ the Do 5. Prelude and Tomorrow’s Problem 6. Lucretia’s Legacy/Do I Remember Wrong 7. The Tolliver Toll

Personnel: HNH: Thomas Heberer (quarter-tone trumpet); Pascal Niggenkemper (bass) and Joe Hertenstein (drums)

May 31, 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

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

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

Gebhard Ullmann

New Basement Research
Soul Note 121491-2

More appropriately described as demonstrated results than research, this first-class presentation of low-end polyphony not only celebrates Berlin reedist Gebhard Ullmann’s 50th birthday, but also gives him a chance to reinterpret older compositions in new surroundings.

Regularly gigging in both Europe and North America, the tenor saxophonist and bass clarinetist’s sidemen reflect his trans-Atlantic contacts. British soprano and baritone saxophonist Julian Argülles traded licks with Ullmann on a continental big band recording, while the other players are all New Yorkers. Trombonist Steve Swell co-leads a quartet with the Berliner, while bassist John Hebert and drummer Gerald Cleaver, functioning for the first time as the reedist’s rhythm team, aptly demonstrate why they’re among the busiest individuals in the city.

Ullmann, whose projects range from restrained chamber jazz to energetic Freebop (see CODA 335) recasts his compositions to reflect the quintet’s rip-snorting capabilities. Case in point is “Seven 9-8”. Driven by Cleaver’s backbeat ruffs and Hebert’s woody slap-bass, there’s plenty of support for baritone sax snorts, sloppy, slurry trombone blurts and tongue-stopping squeals from the tenor saxophone. Precision isn’t neglected either with the head recapped with a flourish of a capella horn harmonies.

“D. Nee No” started life as a tango, but under the powerful ministrations of New Orleans-born Hebert and backbeat parade drumming from Cleaver, it now leans towards Second Line strut. Contrapuntally explored by pedal point blasts from Swell – who plays more in a tailgate style elsewhere – the piece is undeniably kept modern by Ullmann’s mid-range clarinet reed-biting.

Supple and sensitive, the seven-track CD is an appropriate gift for both the leader and listeners.

-- Ken Waxman

-- For CODA Issue 338

March 15, 2008

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

CHARLES GAYLE TRIO

Shout
Clean Feed CF 033CD

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-- Ken Waxman

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

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

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

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

October 31, 2005

MARIO PAVONE AND HIS NU TRIO/QUINTET

Orange
Playscape PSR#J061803

CONDITIONS
A Bright Nowhere
Matchless MRCD 55

Turning on its head the old NRA slogan of “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” and actually that way making a modicum of sense out of its twisted message, these bands show that instruments don’t make the music, people do.

For both these quintets consist of improvisers playing the exact same instruments and ones which make up the prototypical hard bop quintet. Yet the advanced music played by Mario Pavone’s quintet -- and trio -- is anything but typical boppish fare. Meantime the Conditions twist the sounds arising from trumpet, tenor saxophone, piano, bass and drums into original fare that owes more to extended free improvisation than freebop.

As further points of congruence, each of these bands features a veteran as a defining figure -- shades of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers -- and several younger players. Conditions, a collective in all areas, including compositions, has on board percussionist Eddie Prévost, one third of the anti-individualist BritImprov mainstay AMM. Although he may dispute it, this CD like many of Prévost’s non-AMM projects is closely allied to jazz, the sounds which first attracted the drummer to improvisation. Around the same age as Prévost, bassist Mario Pavone has been firmly in the jazz tradition for three decades, working with musicians such as multi-reedist Anthony Braxton and the late Thomas Chapin. Building on the advances of the 1970s and 1980s, what he passes on to younger musicians should be defined as modern mainstream, if you ignore the neo-con retreading of the 1990s.

Pavone is enough of an individualist to record a CD made up of all his own compositions, although he offers arrangement credits and plenty of solo space to his colleagues. Collectively a bit older -- and better known -- than the Conditions, they include trumpeter Steve Bernstein, whose own Sex Mob band mixes good times and musical sophistication; tenor man Tony Malaby, a member of bassist Mark Helias’ trio; pianist Peter Madsen, who has recorded his own solo sets; and drummer Gerald Cleaver, who has backed up nearly every New York downtowner. The entire quintet plays on five selections; the rhythm section alone on four.

Thoroughly committed to the BritImprov ideal that negates such concepts as rhythm section and front line, all the Conditions are seemingly present on the CD’s six selections. However the creations are sometimes so low-key that musicians may be unheard for long periods. Best known of the band is bassist John Edwards, who has seconded sax innovators such John Butcher over the past few years. The other three players are part of a group concentrated around Prévost's weekly improvisation workshop and also play in a nonet that grew from that. Trumpeter Jamie Coleman and pianist Alex James are also members of the London-based improv-electronica Cinematic Orchestra, while tenor saxophonist Nathaniel Catchpole, a British graduate of Berklee College, has worked with other BritImprov veterans like trombonist Paul Rutherford and bassist Simon H. Fell.

Separating one instant composition from another on A BRIGHT NOWHERE is often as difficult as ascribing distinct tones to individual instruments, especially where the horn players are concerned. Both rely on slurs and trills, with Coleman sometimes exhibiting a brittle, muted line in a Booker Little-like fashion, lip-sucking drones or Jungle band plunger tones. Elsewhere, he comes up with something that could be a quivering, hunting horn tone mixed with a child’s cry. For his part, Catchpole squeezes out solid breathes of colored air at certain points, whistle through his reed as if his sax was made of plastic, tongue slap or violently strain foghorn timbres or force split tones from his horn’s bodytube.

Lower key -- no pun intended -- than any of the rest, James often seems to be AWOL on certain tracks. Since he isn’t comping or spinning piano fills however, the typical keyboard commenting of a jazz pianist isn’t needed. Notwithstanding that, when he does play, his contributions seem to centre on isolated right-handed pecking, or low-frequency pressure point fantasias from either hand. Habitually these appear to be further stopped by mutes applied to the piano’s innards. Similarly, when unidentified resonating pitches move back and forth, you wonder if they result from stoppers inserted between soundboard strings or from percussion.

Although straight ratamacues, flams, ruffs and rolls can be utilized by Prévost on a tune like “Digging” -- 1950s hard bop reference anyone? -- his more common response to reed screeches and bent brass notes is rumbling percussion feints and slashing cymbal lines. Sometimes he’ll rely on the rattle of unselected cymbals, tom toms or a bell tree plus the temperate strokes of brushes on his drumhead. At points his sound resembles that of a small dog skittering over a newly waxed floor.

Edwards moves from intimations of walking bass lines to full-fledged, so-called insect music scuffs and scrapes, though there are times with sound pieces going every which way that whole sections seem to lack a tonal centre. There’s also a point on “Unutterable” where the piece moves along as if it’s a solid mass of oscillating sine waves: The band creates electronic sounds with acoustic instruments.

Putting the title’s inference aside, the CD reaches a climax of sorts on “Cuckoo cloud” where whole trumpet notes, buzzing sax obbligatos and regular drumbeats suggest a dissonant Swing era melody. Coleman exhibits some stratospheric trills that turn to moans, Catchpole tries out non-1930s-like multiphonics, James offers a singular, low frequency piano fill and the bassist and drummer press on imperturbably.

Embracing the very jazz conditions which Conditions try to avoid, Pavone’s men always swing -- whatever that means -- but come out best when round-robin soling and the conventional head-solo-solo-head format is put to one side. Most impressive are two of the quintet tracks, “Burnt Sweet Orange” and “Goorootoo”.

With everyone snapping out different tones, perhaps the title of the later is meant to suggest the collective sound the band makes. Madsen produces some high frequency clip clops, while Bernstein buzzes out grace note with abandon and holds one tone for an extended period, finally releasing it as a slurred descending blur. This seems to encourage Malaby to turn from mid-range lines to guttural tones, freer, extended echoing honks and renal screams. Following a few bars of rumble from the bass drum and cymbals, out-of-tempo unison horns take the piece out.

The trumpeter is even more expressive on “Burnt Sweet Orange”, producing muted plunger tones like a modern day Bubber Miley. Pavone accompanies with some guitar-like, single-stopping and Cleaver not only displays rim shots but what Baby Dodds called “nerve beats” or rattling the sticks in one hand. As Madsen adds some tinkling, right-handed piano pressure, the trumpeter’s note placement become practically pre-War. Taken together the music causes you to flash on a Black and Tan show band, pleasing the customers, while pleasuring itself by playing its own music.

Pavone’s quintet is like that as well, with first call honors divided between the pianist and the trumpeter. “Sky Tango” -- the longest track at nearly 11½ minutes -- may give Bernstein an edge as the arranger, since the composition features a spiraling, multi-part melody, based around muted Ellingtonia-like horn riffing behind an adagio thematic exposition. Madsen asserts himself later on with his fingers barely touch the keys, as they slide out high-frequency cadenza and glissandos. Building in intensity and using both hands, you can tell that this proto-freebopper is no restrained Bill Evans type. Before the theme is reprised for a third and final time, Malaby has exposed some glottal honks and out-of-tempo high and low-pitched trills.

Unsurprisingly Pavone and Madsen assert themselves more on the trio pieces -- and definitely more than James and Edwards do on the other CD. The bassman gets to tug on his strings with abandon to pinpoint the rhythm, while the pianist has the freedom to pile up chord sequences or limn semi-classical impressionistic fantasias on top of bass and drum beats. Tight and communicative, the pianist, bassist and drummer make most of the tunes by passing lines by-and-forth among themselves. Still without the horns, the end product moves down to B+ instead of A.

Not that this should keep you away from this CD, or the other. Each in its own way proves how far you can range with standard jazz instrumentation.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Bright: 1. Never, Never 2. Digging 3. Sky pie 4. Cuckoo cloud 5. Unutterable 6. A bright nowhere

Personnel: Bright: Jamie Coleman (trumpet); Nathaniel Catchpole (tenor saxophone); Alex James (piano); John Edwards (bass); Eddie Prévost, drums

Track Listing: Orange: 1. Blue Rex* 2. Triple Diamond 3. Sky Tango* 4. Drop Op* 5. Rebass 6. Burnt Sweet Orange* 7. Goorootoo* 8. Box In Orange 9. Language

Personnel: Orange: Steve Bernstein (trumpet)*; Tony Malaby (tenor saxophone)*; Peter Madsen (piano); Mario Pavone (bass); Gerald Cleaver (drums)

January 19, 2004

JAMEEL MOONDOC ALL-STARS

Live in Paris
Cadence Jazz Records CJR 1151

JAMEEL MOONDOC TENTET Live at the Vision Festival
Ayler aylCD-047

One of the most recognizable members of New York’s third generation Free Jazz players from the early 1970s to the mid-1980s, alto saxophonist Jameel Moondoc, along with associates like bassist William Parker and trumpeter Roy Campbell, was everywhere during that epoch, usually leading his own band.

Like other non-commercial players though, he seemed to vanish -- some said into architecture -- shortly afterwards. But he’s been front-and-centre and recording again since the mid-1990s. These two live CDs, made up of his composition and arrangements, show that he still surrounds himself with notable sidemen and plays firmly in the Free Jazz tradition. They also may offer hints for his hiatus.

While both are powerful, swinging freebop sessions, the reason they’re not better -- and better organized -- can only be attributed to the leader. Furthermore, in each another soloist overshadows Moondoc’s playing -- Campbell on LIVE IN PARIS, and, peculiarly enough, guitarist Bern Nix on the other CD.

Although there’s no way you wouldn’t have exceptional playing on any disc featuring Parker, Moondoc and Campbell plus tenor saxophonist Zane Massey and drummer Cody Moffett, the Paris quintet session, recorded in 1999 wears its influences on its sleeve -- or maybe CD booklet is more appropriate language.

Just look at the titles “Not Quite Ready for Prime Time”, relates to Ornette Coelman’s band of the 1980s, which incidentally employed Nix, while “One Down, One Up” recalls the John Coltrane composition of the same name. Add sounds influenced by Archie Shepp and Albert Ayler in the 1960s and 1970s and you almost know what the band is going to sound like before it plays. Additionally, with road robin solos on all of the four long pieces -- the shortest is almost 12 minutes -- you’re reminded of a jam session rather than a festival set.

Running more than 22½ minutes long, “Prime Time” has obviously been set up as a major statement and here, as elsewhere, Campbell takes charge. With the rhythm section operating on low burn in the back and the saxes alternately trilling (Moondoc) or honking (Massey), the trumpet builds up a chromatic solo filled with grace notes. Depressing his valves he uses rubato slurs and gritty buzzes to force his notes even higher, growling all the while, finally vocalizing his output in a bygone Jungle band style. With Moffett on brushes and Parker occasionally breaking up the rhythm with some bandsaw-like multi-string arco scratches, the altoist comes up with a sour-sounding output that allows him to vibrate his split tones inside his horn. That leads all the horns to combine for an adagio line that resembles one of Ayler’s nursery rhyme themes, with both reeds and the brassman sliding and slurring at the end.

“We Don’t” has the same sort of ending and a similar feeling as if Ayler’s ghost -- or maybe it’s “Ghosts” -- hangs over the proceedings. Reminiscent of those sessions the Ayler brothers did with tenor saxophonist Charles Tyler, Moondoc reverberates notes at his highest range, while the others operate as sort of a Greek chorus around him. Thing is, Campbell is a much more accomplished trumpeter than Don Ayler -- a primitive in the best sense of the word -- and his fluttering grace notes and half valve glissses add more than mere rhythm to the theme. After playing hide-and-seek with the alto man’s glossolalia, the front line ends up playing dirge-like in unison.

Massey, an on-again-off-again Campbell associate, recreates Shepp’s buzzsaw, slipping reed tone on the almost 15-minute One Down, One Up”, while Parker, a bit muffled in these live circumstances, walks the four-square beat as if he was the recently rediscovered Henry Grimes. Using triplets, Campbell again brings the most attention to himself, hitting high notes one after another, in the early Louis Armstrong if not Cat Anderson range. A foot tapper more than a New Thing screed, this one and the other tunes seem to mirror Shepp’s later days, when swing appeared to be more appealing than politics to Shepp. However on “HiRise”, Moondoc sounds like a weird combination of Charlie Parker and Coleman.

Appropriately subtitled the Jus Grew Orchestra, Moondoc’s Tentet features a rhythm section of Nix, Boston bassist John Voigt and Matthew Shipp/Tim Berne associate Gerald Cleaver on drums. Trombonist Steve Swell and Tyrone Hill, trumpeter Nathan Breedlove and baritone saxophonist Michael Marcus are on board along with Campbell and Massey.

A rough-and-ready band that sounds as if it could have use a couple more rehearsals, the versatile drummer, subtle guitarist and bottom-feeding baritone saxophone drive the performance towards the R&B heft of something like Ray Charles’ or James Brown’s early big bands.

“The Blue Dog - Blues for Earl Cross” -- named for the late New Thing trumpeter who worked with Shepp and altoist Noah Howard -- could easily have been played by a rocking large aggregation of the 1950s and 1960s. Impelled by a pedal point bottom from Voigt, who plucks with enough strength to make you think he’s playing an electric bass; a steady shuffle rhythm from Cleaver; and constant emphasis from the bari, Moondoc’s conduction here seems to take the form of vocal encouragement. Meanwhile Nix, who maintains a distinctive Freddie Green-like pulse throughout, finger picks like a jump band bluesman when he solos. His amp-buzzing chords call to mind T-Bone Walker, as elsewhere on the track one of the trombonists slurs and slides and the other double stops notes through his mute like a more restrained Quentin “Butter” Jackson. Core role is taken up by one of the trumpets -- probably Campbell -- whose growling grace notes slip up the scale and resolve themselves at times as “Rhapsody in Blue”, and other times as the sort of rubato trumpeting Marcus Belgrave would have done with the Charles band. With the brass section allayed against the reed section, you wonder if the hornmen are doing de rigeur fancy footwork as well.

“Variations of a Riff” features the entire band blowing over Marcus’ simple, repetitive vamp as one trumpeter (Campbell again?) explodes from its centre, caterwauling plunger tones as if he was Cootie Williams with his 1940s jump band. Furthermore, Massey’s solo seems to unite the honking R&B and more restrained Cool school side of Lester Young.

Running straight from its end into “Cosmic Tabernacle”, the last tune features dissonant sounding horns topped by Moondoc’s fruity alto back in Ayler’s spiritual territory again, with Cleaver’s accents suggestion African as well as African-American praise music. More sway than swing, the penultimate minutes of the piece are taken up by a cacophonous crescendo of horn licks as the rhythm section holds steady trying to pilot the ship back to A.

Moondoc’s obviously sincere efforts to find the link in between Sun Ra and James Brown is ultimately frustrated by a sloppy disconnect in the arrangements. Equally frustrating is the underutlization of Hill, a present day Arkestra sideman, and Swell, one of the most versatile ‘bone men extant. The Tentet may have “jus grew”, but organization is needed as much as expansion.

Appreciators of Moondoc’s gifts and those whose tastes run to the approachable side of Free Jazz will find much to like on these two sessions. Yet with the wealth of talents involved, it seems that so much more could have been attained.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Paris: 1. HiRise 2. Not Quite Ready for Prime Time 3. We Don’t 4.One Down, One Up

Personnel: Paris: Roy Campbell (trumpet); Jemeel Moondoc (alto saxophone); Zane Massey (tenor saxophone); William Parker (bass); Cody Moffett (drums)

Track Listing: Vision: 1. Opulent Continuum 2. The Blue Dog - Blues for Earl Cross 3. Variation of a Riff 4. Cosmic Tabernacle

Personnel: Vision: Roy Campbell, Nathan Breedlove (trumpets); Steve Swell, Tyrone Hill (trombones); Jemeel Moondoc (alto saxophone,); Zane Massey (tenor saxophone); Michael Marcus (baritone saxophone); Bern Nix (guitar); John Voigt (bass); Gerald Clever (drums)

June 3, 2003

MATTHEW SHIPP

Equilibrium
Thirsty Ear THI57127.2

MATTHEW SHIPP
Antipop Consortium Vs. Matthew Shipp
Thirsty Ear THI57120.2

When SONGS, his CD of standards came out about a year ago, it seemed that Matthew Shipp had decided to become Anthony Braxton and record his own interpretation of many traditional jazz compositions and standards.

Those presumptions have certainly gone out the window on evidence of these two CDs. One links Shipp and company with the synths and programming of FLAM; the other finds him collaborating with hip-hoppers Antipop Consortium. Judging by his simple, rhythmic playing on these sessions, however, the pianist may now be aiming to be the next Ramsey Lewis.

Although Shipp says that EQUILIBRIUM’s goal is to explore beat elements with modern jazz, yet, except for a couple of anomalies, the modern jazz referenced on these nine numbers seems to be the overproduced jazz-rock of CTI and Philly International. Of course, co-producers Shipp and FLAM, who also is in charge of synthesizers and programming on the disc, may have set a certain standard by procuring these overprocessed sounds from only three other musicians beside themselves. They are longtime Shipp associate bassist William Parker, Detroit drummer Gerald Cleaver and Philadelphia vibaharpist Khan Jamal.

Jamal, who has recorded with exploratory musicians like saxophonists Byard Lancaster and Charles Tyler, suffers the most from this wall-of-sound since he records so infrequently. His full-bodied, bar-ringing style extends the Milt Jackson-Bobby Hutcherson tradition. But here and, unfortunately even more so on ANTIPOP CONSORTIUM, his multi-shaded tone is squeezed into creating the sort of underdeveloped vamps Dave Samuels used with fuzak band Spyro Gyra.

For instance, “Cohesion”, the longest track here at a shade over 6½ minutes, is a groove tune in the lineage of “Pick Up the Pieces”. Built on a steady 4/4 pulse it only escapes from its foot tapping origins when Cleaver, who has played with altoist Tim Berne and bassist Mark Helias indulges himself in a vague Afro-Cuban beat, and Parker buzzes his bass strings in sympathy. The track fades as the bass solo begins, though. Khan is reduced to hitting his vibes in concert with a scratching, repetitive synth program. Meanwhile, after Shipp plays a descending melody line, the pianist concentrates on the same pattern, sounding like Lewis playing on his version of “Maiden Voyage”. There isn’t much need for release here, since there isn’t much tension in the performance. Furthermore, Shipp’s arpeggio-rich romantic treatment of “World of Blue Glass” reduces the bassist and drummer to mere accompaniment, with the vibist not even on the track.

Everyone fares a bit better on “The Key”. Parker’s powerful, dark lines sound out the theme; Cleaver breaks up the metronomic beat and Jamal varies the groove enough to shape out a ringing Jackson-shaded lead line. Later, his exciting, multi-mallet solo is extended with proper programming to resonate longer and louder, an example of how dial twiddling should work.

FLAM is likely also responsible for desert landscape imagery that morphs out of unidentified tones and textures from the piano on “Nu Matrix”. With keyboard strings seemingly plucked like a guitar’s and otherworldly cadenzas bubbling up from an oasis of sound, there’s even room for a few slices of vibes motion. Still the uneasy feeling exists that this and some other tunes were pieced together in the studio rather than played live. Tracks that are faded before they end add to the suspicion.

If EQUILIBRIUM sound like what would happen if a 21st Century Modern Jazz Quartet was programmed with James Brown samples, then ANTIPOP CONSORTIUM brings to mind those mid-1960s Phil Spector productions where major jazzmen trooped into the studio to back up anonymous singers.

The CD, which is also being released as a limited edition LP, may be set up as Antipop vs. Matthew Shipp, but the pianist and his associates do more accompanying than opposing. It’s also supposed to mix beats, hip-hop, free jazz and electronic music according to the promo bumf. Well three outa four ain’t bad, but no prizes for guessing which element is almost ignored.

Throughout, the Antipop duo are upfront with its mixture of programmed synths and raps. Vocalized by one and echoed by the other, the lyrics seem to concern themselves with a so-called urban take on love and life, lightly rhymed and stating the obvious. At least that happens when the words can be discerned.

There doesn’t appear to be much interaction with the instrumentalists either. At one point on “Slow Horn” for instance, the vocalist (sic) states: “Think there would be some angry listeners if we had some vocals over this, very powerful music here”. Then he proceeds to do just that. Naturally, like those lightweight pop songs which claim to celebrate rock music with lyrics like “long live rock’n’roll”, the words of this tune praise the very “powerful music” which the singer’s’ rap is blocking.

“Monstro City” sounds as if it migrated from a 1950s jazz’n’poetry session -- if the lyrical content could pass for poetry. Drummer Guillermo E. Brown, with Shipp and Parker a member of saxist David S. Ware’s quartet, provides the proper bongo-drum type of rhythms, Parker creates a scene-stealing, powerful walking bass section and Shipp provides the piano fills. The fake synthesizer strings are more modern though. Well, as up to date as studio sounds circa 1977, that is.

Stream-of-consciousness lyrics with high school (!) references figure in “Staph”, a real hand clapper which appears to allow Shipp to quote from “Hang on Sloppy”, another Ramsey Lewis hit. “All Blues” does figure in his solo on “A Knot In Your Bop”, perhaps as a nod to Miles Davis’ electric style that prefigured much of this pop-jazz mixing.

Between the synthesizer scratching and pounding drums, the odd bass exchange or vibes line can be heard. In truth, about the only time the “modern jazz” part of the equation comes to the fore is on (no surprise) the final track.

Here Shipp digs into the keyboard to provide some two-handed, swinging bop-

inflected notes, Brown’s sizzle cymbal and Parker’s solid time keeping centre the beat and Jamal’s metal bars fairly jump with a slashing, multi-mallet attacks. Multi-instrumentalist Daniel Carter makes his first -- at least first audible -- contribution as well playing trumpet, swimming out of the mix to shape some electric Miles-era brass flourishes. At the very end though, following some brisk drumbeats and the slash of synthesizer chords Carter smears out a very odd-sounding trumpet coda. Could that be a comment on the proceedings?

Should you be an Antipop Consortium fan or a Matthew Shipp completist you’ll probably want these discs. Others may be more wary. Maybe the mix the pianist is aiming for will bear more impressive fruit next time out.

At least when looking for soul-jazz pianists to emulate Shipp didn’t choose Les McCann. If he did, he’d likely be singing as well as playing by now. Perhaps that frightening aural image should be held until other discs in this series appear.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Equilibrium: 1. Equilibrium 2. Vamp to Vibe 3. Nebula Theory 4. Cohesion 5. World of Blue Glass 6. Portal 7. The Root 8. The Key 9. Nu Matrix

Personnel: Equilibrium: Matthew Shipp (piano); Khan Jamal (vibes); William Parker (bass); Gerald Cleaver (drums); Chris Flam (synthesizers and programming)

Track Listing: Antipop: 1. Places I’ve Never Been 2. Staph 3. Slow Horn 4. A Knot In Your Bop 5. SVP 6. Coda 7. Stream Light 8. Monstro City 9. Reel Is Surreal 10. Free Hop

Personnel: Antipop: Daniel Carter (trumpet); Matthew Shipp (piano); Khan Jamal (vibes); William Parker (bass); Guillermo E. Brown (drums); Antipop Consortium [Priest and Beans] (vocals, synthesizers and programming)

April 28, 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

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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