The Resonance Ensemble

What Country is This?
NotTwo MW 885-2

Fire! Orchestra

Exit!

Rune Grammofon RDCD 2138

Lean Left

Live at Café Oto

Unsounds 32U

Double Tandem

Cement

PNL Records PNL 013

Something in The Air: Modern Rhythms and New Jazz

By Ken Waxman

As the rhythmic base of jazz has changed over the past half century, adding emphases besides pure swing to improvisation, the role of the percussionist has changed as well. No longer just a time keeper the modern drummer must be conversant with varied beats from many genres of music. This familiarity with other cultures is also why many non-Americans have become prominent. Case in point is Norwegian percussionist Paal Nilssen-Love, who plays with the Euro-American band Lean Left band at the Tranzac on June 15. Nilssen-Love, whose associates range from the most committed electronics dial-twister to free-form veterans is equally proficient laying down a hard rock-like beat as he is trading accents with experimental timbre-shatters. The two extended tracks on Live at Café Oto Unsounds 32U demonstrate not only Nilssen-Love’s cohesive skills amplifying the improvisations of Chicago-based tenor saxophonist/clarinetist Ken Vandermark as he does in many other contexts, but shows how both react to the power chords and violent string distortions which characterize the style of guitarists Andy Moor and Terrie Ex from Dutch punk band The Ex, who complete this quartet. In spite of Vandermark’s consistent overblowing which encompasses pumping altissimo honks and frenetic slurs; plus the guitarists’ constant crunches, smashes and frails, the drumming never degenerate into monotonous rock music-like banging. Instead, while the backbeat isn’t neglected, auxiliary clips, ruffs, ratamacues and smacks are used by Nilssen-Love to break up the rhythm, with carefully measured pulsations. This strategy is most obvious during the climatic sections of the more-than-37 minute Drevel. With all four Lean Lefters improvising in broken octaves, the narratives shakes to and fro between Vandermark’s collection of emphasized freak notes and dyspeptic stridency and the dual guitarists’ slurred fingering that leads to staccato twangs and jangling strums. Not only is the climax attained with a crescendo of volume and excitement, but the final theme variations are in contrast as stark and minimalist as the earlier ones are noisy. As guitars methodically clank as if reading a post-modern composition, and the clarinet lines emphasize atonal reed bites, intermittent stick strokes and toe-pedal pressure from the drummer concentrates the sound shards into the track’s calm finale.

An extension of this calm also eventually occurs on Double Tandem Cement PNL Records PNL 013 where Nilssen-Love’s and Vandermark’s only companion is Amsterdam’s Ab Baars, playing tenor saxophone, clarinet and shakuhachi. Although the drummer trots out ruffs, smacks and bounces when both saxophonists blare at top volume, the most distinctive track here is the nearly 30½-minute “Shale”. Dividing interaction into duos or trios, as he faces each reedist’s experiments in hushed atonality the percussionist limits himself to microtonal popping and ratcheting as if he was playing Native American drum patterns. When one tenor saxophonist expels Sonny Rollins-like sharp and brittle slurs and honks, Nilssen-Love concentrates his responses to cymbal swishes and snare splatters. Elsewhere, glockenspiel-like pings plus cross-handed ratamacues back lip-bubbling, mid-range clarinet growls. As eloquently precise as he is focused in his percussive responses, the drummer later limits himself to offside rim clattering and cymbal rubbing as his associates rappel through reed challenges. When Vandermark circular breathes strident clarinet tones, Baars’ shakuhachi puffs judder sympathetically. When one saxophonist explores the limits of altissimo bent notes, the other revels in penny-whistle-pitched chirps and squeaks. Eventually the apotheosis of pummeling split tones and forced glossolalia that the two attain subsides into tonal interaction confirming Nilssen-Love’s discreet accents throughout.

Vandermark confirms his far-reaching rhythmic sophistication and welcoming of world-wide improvisers on The Resonance Ensemble’s What Country is This? NotTwo MW 885-2. This is a program which balances his baritone saxophone and clarinet style plus the input from six additional horn players with the synergic percussion skills of two Chicago-based drummers, Tim Daisy and Michael Zerang. Veterans of many bands with Vandermark and others, both know exactly how to both lead and accompany an ensemble of American and Northern European players, including three more saxophonists, three brass players and one bassist. Tracks such as “Fabric” include rapidly changing pitch and speed sequences where, for instance, salient drum rolls from one percussionist and clattering rim shots from the other underline the inchoate power essayed by Vandermark’s baritone sax and Dave Rempis’ tenor saxophone, underlined by pedal-point blasts from Per Åke Holmlander’s tuba. By the finale shimmering cymbal and drum plops lessen the density and solidify a now well-balanced melody, leaving ample subsequent space for Devin Hoff’s walking bass solo, Magnus Broo’s plunger trumpet lines and mid-range clarinet sluices from Waclaw Zimpel. Stop-and-start rather than stop-time, the distinctive “Acoustic Fence” likewise mixes unique forms of expression from Swing-Era-styled saxophone section riffing to a hearty tenor sax solo by Mikolaj Trzaska, that’s just this side of rock music. Still the sinewy arrangement calls for the former to be accompanied by perfectly timed percussion slaps and clattering cymbals and the latter by tough shuffles and opposite sticking from the drummers that would be equally appropriate on a soul music session. Eventually extended blustery trombone brays by Steve Swell prefigure the session’s only protracted percussion solos as rolls, rumbles and ruffs open up unto a restrained yet powerful display of thrusting textures and pinpointed smacks, with the narrative ricocheting from one drummer to the other.

If that CD underlined the expressive power of two inventive percussionists than Fire! Orchestra Exit! Rune Grammofon RDCD 2138 ups the ante with four drummers contributing. Exit is a two-part multiphonic showcase for this massive band featuring 27 of Scandinavia’s top improvisers, including Holmlander and Broo; plus one ex-pat Canadian, bassist Joe Williamson. The ensemble is directed by tenor saxophonist Mats Gustafsson, a frequent associate of both Vandermark and Nilssen-Love, who played Toronto in May. Although part of the performance is devoted to wordless or unconnected phrase-making vocals from three singers – most prominently Sofia Jenberg – they’re part of the improving process, as their vocal cries, yodels and rasps intersect or soar over the often dense instrumental cacophony. While there’s never any doubt about the beat emanating in hearty unison from percussionists Raymond Strid, Andreas Werlin, Thomas Gartz and Johan Holmegard, like Nilssen-Love on Live at Café Oto, there’s sensitivity in their accompaniment. Designated space is also available for soloists who include Sten Sandell’s piano-pumping glissandi in addition to frenetic split tones and broken octave jumps from saxophonists Gustafsson and Frederick Ljungkvist. The percussionists shatter the finale of “Exit! Part One” with their collection of miscellaneous instruments of ratchets, rattles, gongs, bell trees and wood blocks. Then, if anything the CD’s second track is more intense and powerful than the first. It features string-shredding reverb from three guitarists, massed cadences from the vocalists, deep-pitched tuba burbling and a vamping reed section. Only as the piece reaches a fortissimo crescendo is it clear that the entire band has been steadily motivated by the drum quartet’s nearly inaudible clanks, clicks and drags, which has been present throughout. Eventually the harmonized percussionists’ conclusive thundering, echoing and booming make it clear the sonic miasma has been breached for the finale.

Hearty demonstrations of new percussionists’ taste as well as power, plus the ascendency of European musicians, these discs also suggest names to watch for when they next gig in Toronto.

-- For Whole Note Vol. 18 #9

June 18, 2013

Kyle Bruckmann

On Procedural Grounds
New World Records 80725-2

Kyle Bruckmann’s Wrack

Cracked Refraction

Porter Records PRCD 4061

As improvised music’s pre-eminent – well let’s face it probably only – oboe and English horn specialist, Oakland, Calif.-based Kyle Bruckmann has been flexing his organizational muscles as a band leader and composer during the past few years. These recent CDs showcase these talents admirably along, of course, with his distinctive soloing.

Gigging with New music ensembles, the Stockton Symphony and many area regional orchestras plus a smattering of Rock and electronic music bands is how Bruckmann makes his living, but it’s with his own Wrack quintet that he expresses his own ideas. Mostly consisting of Chicago musicians with whom Bruckmann played before relocating to the Bay area in 2003, the band is filled out by one player, violist Jen Clare Paulson, who is mostly involved in notated music ensembles, plus three others – bass clarinetist Jason Stein, bassist Anton Hatwich and percussionist Tim Daisy – who usually work the Improv/Jazz side of the equation, with associates such as saxophonists Ken Vandermark and Dave Rempis.

Wrack’s strength is that nowhere does the band sound like it’s playing a Third Stream pastiche, alternating between so-called classical and Jazz licks. Instead inferences from both of these musical streams as well as some Rock rhythms, courtesy of Daisy’s frequent backbeat and Hatwich’s unstoppable time keeping, result in a distinct Wrack sound. If anything the tunes could be divided between fast and slow rather than in any other ways.

On the later Paulson’s legato playing seems to predominate. The concluding “NJBC” for instance is moderated and linear with underplayed, almost Early Music-like harmonies from the two strings and two other reeds, with additional melancholy tones added from Bruckmann. Yet when it comes time for her solo, the violist manages to be both impressionistic and spiky. Plus the tune is built around Daisy’s marimba pops.

Meantime speedy showpieces like “Ratchetforms” and “The Dishevelator” concentrate on reed glissandi and twittering, double bass walking plus rolls and ruffs from the drummer. Stop-time and staccato, the latter piece includes a barnburner of a solo from Stein that’s all reed bites and agitated lines spurred on by some hand-banging percussion from Daisy. The former includes some neo-classical lyrical passages all swallowed notes and pinched timbres; although there’s enough reed kisses, wah-wah effects and whistles to keep things from getting too sentient.

Notwithstanding, “Notwithstanding” may be the best example of Bruckmann’s mature writing style. With a formal exposition that’s echoed in the piece’s final strains, the tune allows for multiple variations that take the shape of everything from processional harmonies from the viola and horns contrasted with double-pumping bass and the drummer’s press rolls; to Bruckmann and Stein intertwining to create strange traffic horn-like peeps and twitters.

In a way Wrack writ large figures in the extended composition which gives Bruckmann’s other disc its title and longest performance. “On Procedural Grounds” is a recasting of a piece composed for a Chicago Sound Map Project, now featuring the five Wrackers plus the ROVA saxophone quartet as well as Tim Perkis and Gino Robair playing live electronics. For almost 29½-minutes the 11-piece ensemble slithers its way through an invention that adds the jittering, time-shifting output of Wracks’s front line to swinging interpolations from the rhythm section, spinning riffs from ROVA and crackling oscillations and flanges from the two dial twisters. With ROVA’s Larry Ochs interpolating a vamping tenor saxophone solo with slap-tongue insouciance to the proceedings, the composition’s reaches its first climax as yakety sax licks meet Daisy’s doubled ruff and cowbell emphasis. Intervals of watery electronics presage a steadying pulse as the slurping snorts from Jon Raskin’s baritone saxophone turn into altissimo smears giving way to a bass clarinet intermezzo that match up with bubbling and signal processed electronic impulses. From that point until a finale of processed electronic delays, bowed strings and cumulative reed glissandi, the theme bounces from one instrumental group to the next, encompassing reed bites, tongue slaps, spetrofluctuation, lumbering string strokes plus horn harmony which references the head.

Besides examples of Bruckmann’s solo and duo work, the other major track on the CD is “Tarpit” featuring the oboist with a different Bay area ensemble, including reeds, strings, electronics and percussion sections plus Robair on prepared piano. An accomplished percussionist, Robair uses staccato plucks, quivering string undertow and concussion smacks and strokes to create the leitmotif of the composition. Added to this are Kjell Nordesen’s drum top rubs and drags, tambourine shakes and signal processed drones which contrast with the violin, viola and cello’s legato harmonized lines. Eventually these polytonal and polyharmonic sound undulations reach a crescendo of concurrent expression until timbral reed flutters and granulation punctuate the mass process for a distinctive conclusion.

Curiously, On Procedural Grounds is labeled “file under Classical/Contemporary…” although most of Bruckmann’s music is as aleatoric as it is notated. Perhaps some people are still leery of the J word. Whatever it’s labeled the music from oboist/English hornist/bandleader/composer results in two superlative CDS.

--Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Cracked: 1. Exacerbator 2. Notwithstanding 3. Ratchetforms 4. Fair to Middling 5. The Dishevelator 6. A Shambles 7. NJBC

Personnel: Cracked: Kyle Bruckmann (oboe and English horn); Jason Stein (bass clarinet); Jen Clare Paulson (viola); Anton Hatwich (bass) and Tim Daisy (percussion)

Track Listing: Procedural: 1. Cell Structure* 2. On Procedural Grounds+ 3. Orgone Accelerator 4. Tarpit

Personnel: Procedural: Kyle Bruckmann (oboe, English horn and, electronics) with Matt Ingalls (clarinet with electronics); Wrack [Jason Stein (bass clarinet); Jen Clare Paulson (viola); Anton Hatwich (bass); Tim Daisy (percussion) and ROVA Saxophone Quartet [Bruce Ackley (soprano saxophone); Steve Adams (alto saxophone); Larry Ochs (tenor saxophone); Jon Raskin (baritone saxophone); plus Tim Perkis and Gino Robair (live electronics)+ or SFSOUND [Matt Ingalls (clarinet, bass clarinet); John Ingle (alto saxophone); Gino Robair (prepared piano); Benjamin Kreith (violin); Tara Flandreau (viola); Monica Scott (cello); Kjell Nordesen (percussion with electronics)

September 21, 2012

Kyle Bruckmann’s Wrack

Cracked Refraction
Porter Records PRCD 4061

Kyle Bruckmann

On Procedural Grounds

New World Records 80725-2

As improvised music’s pre-eminent – well let’s face it probably only – oboe and English horn specialist, Oakland, Calif.-based Kyle Bruckmann has been flexing his organizational muscles as a band leader and composer during the past few years. These recent CDs showcase these talents admirably along, of course, with his distinctive soloing.

Gigging with New music ensembles, the Stockton Symphony and many area regional orchestras plus a smattering of Rock and electronic music bands is how Bruckmann makes his living, but it’s with his own Wrack quintet that he expresses his own ideas. Mostly consisting of Chicago musicians with whom Bruckmann played before relocating to the Bay area in 2003, the band is filled out by one player, violist Jen Clare Paulson, who is mostly involved in notated music ensembles, plus three others – bass clarinetist Jason Stein, bassist Anton Hatwich and percussionist Tim Daisy – who usually work the Improv/Jazz side of the equation, with associates such as saxophonists Ken Vandermark and Dave Rempis.

Wrack’s strength is that nowhere does the band sound like it’s playing a Third Stream pastiche, alternating between so-called classical and Jazz licks. Instead inferences from both of these musical streams as well as some Rock rhythms, courtesy of Daisy’s frequent backbeat and Hatwich’s unstoppable time keeping, result in a distinct Wrack sound. If anything the tunes could be divided between fast and slow rather than in any other ways.

On the later Paulson’s legato playing seems to predominate. The concluding “NJBC” for instance is moderated and linear with underplayed, almost Early Music-like harmonies from the two strings and two other reeds, with additional melancholy tones added from Bruckmann. Yet when it comes time for her solo, the violist manages to be both impressionistic and spiky. Plus the tune is built around Daisy’s marimba pops.

Meantime speedy showpieces like “Ratchetforms” and “The Dishevelator” concentrate on reed glissandi and twittering, double bass walking plus rolls and ruffs from the drummer. Stop-time and staccato, the latter piece includes a barnburner of a solo from Stein that’s all reed bites and agitated lines spurred on by some hand-banging percussion from Daisy. The former includes some neo-classical lyrical passages all swallowed notes and pinched timbres; although there’s enough reed kisses, wah-wah effects and whistles to keep things from getting too sentient.

Notwithstanding, “Notwithstanding” may be the best example of Bruckmann’s mature writing style. With a formal exposition that’s echoed in the piece’s final strains, the tune allows for multiple variations that take the shape of everything from processional harmonies from the viola and horns contrasted with double-pumping bass and the drummer’s press rolls; to Bruckmann and Stein intertwining to create strange traffic horn-like peeps and twitters.

In a way Wrack writ large figures in the extended composition which gives Bruckmann’s other disc its title and longest performance. “On Procedural Grounds” is a recasting of a piece composed for a Chicago Sound Map Project, now featuring the five Wrackers plus the ROVA saxophone quartet as well as Tim Perkis and Gino Robair playing live electronics. For almost 29½-minutes the 11-piece ensemble slithers its way through an invention that adds the jittering, time-shifting output of Wracks’s front line to swinging interpolations from the rhythm section, spinning riffs from ROVA and crackling oscillations and flanges from the two dial twisters. With ROVA’s Larry Ochs interpolating a vamping tenor saxophone solo with slap-tongue insouciance to the proceedings, the composition’s reaches its first climax as yakety sax licks meet Daisy’s doubled ruff and cowbell emphasis. Intervals of watery electronics presage a steadying pulse as the slurping snorts from Jon Raskin’s baritone saxophone turn into altissimo smears giving way to a bass clarinet intermezzo that match up with bubbling and signal processed electronic impulses. From that point until a finale of processed electronic delays, bowed strings and cumulative reed glissandi, the theme bounces from one instrumental group to the next, encompassing reed bites, tongue slaps, spetrofluctuation, lumbering string strokes plus horn harmony which references the head.

Besides examples of Bruckmann’s solo and duo work, the other major track on the CD is “Tarpit” featuring the oboist with a different Bay area ensemble, including reeds, strings, electronics and percussion sections plus Robair on prepared piano. An accomplished percussionist, Robair uses staccato plucks, quivering string undertow and concussion smacks and strokes to create the leitmotif of the composition. Added to this are Kjell Nordesen’s drum top rubs and drags, tambourine shakes and signal processed drones which contrast with the violin, viola and cello’s legato harmonized lines. Eventually these polytonal and polyharmonic sound undulations reach a crescendo of concurrent expression until timbral reed flutters and granulation punctuate the mass process for a distinctive conclusion.

Curiously, On Procedural Grounds is labeled “file under Classical/Contemporary…” although most of Bruckmann’s music is as aleatoric as it is notated. Perhaps some people are still leery of the J word. Whatever it’s labeled the music from oboist/English hornist/bandleader/composer results in two superlative CDS.

--Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Cracked: 1. Exacerbator 2. Notwithstanding 3. Ratchetforms 4. Fair to Middling 5. The Dishevelator 6. A Shambles 7. NJBC

Personnel: Cracked: Kyle Bruckmann (oboe and English horn); Jason Stein (bass clarinet); Jen Clare Paulson (viola); Anton Hatwich (bass) and Tim Daisy (percussion)

Track Listing: Procedural: 1. Cell Structure* 2. On Procedural Grounds+ 3. Orgone Accelerator 4. Tarpit

Personnel: Procedural: Kyle Bruckmann (oboe, English horn and, electronics) with Matt Ingalls (clarinet with electronics);* Wrack [Jason Stein (bass clarinet); Jen Clare Paulson (viola); Anton Hatwich (bass); Tim Daisy (percussion) and ROVA Saxophone Quartet [Bruce Ackley (soprano saxophone); Steve Adams (alto saxophone); Larry Ochs (tenor saxophone); Jon Raskin (baritone saxophone); plus Tim Perkis and Gino Robair (live electronics)+ or SFSOUND [Matt Ingalls (clarinet, bass clarinet); John Ingle (alto saxophone); Gino Robair (prepared piano); Benjamin Kreith (violin); Tara Flandreau (viola); Monica Scott (cello); Kjell Nordesen (percussion with electronics)

September 21, 2012

Festival Report:

Ulrichsberger Kaleidophon
By Ken Waxman

London saxophonist John Butcher and Chicago percussionist Tim Daisy were the MVPs during the Ulrichsberger Kaleidophon at the end of April. To stretch the metaphor further, Butcher was doubly valuable, since as a pinch hitter he replaced Una Casa/Observatorio’s third member when that saxophonist was unable to perform with Buenos Aires-based trumpeter Leonel Kaplan and Viennese computer manipulator Christof Kurzmann. If Butcher’s playing was sympathetically creative with that trio, his improvising was equally spectacular with The Apophonics, a new group, otherwise consisting of British bassist John Edwards and Bay-area percussionist Gino Robair. Meanwhile the cap-sporting Daisy subtly pacing Wrack, the chamber-styled string-and-horn quintet; as well as added rhythmic heft to saxophonist Dave Rempis’ Percussion 4Tet, whose raucous free jazz closed the festival to enthusiastic audience cheers.

These were just four of the memorable performances that took place during the 27th edition of the Kaleidophon, which annually animates this alpine village of fewer than 3,000 people, located in Upper Austria, about 200 kilometres west of Vienna. What’s equally remarkable is how artistic director Alois Fischer not only attracts high-quality players from Europe, Japan and the US to the Jazz Atelier, a 16th century former pig barn, during the fest, but also programs innovative improvised music throughout the year. It’s a European phenomenon that can make outsiders envious.

Built around extrasensory sonic perception, The Apophonics’ strategy advanced amoeba-like. Continuously melding and breaking apart timbres in different configurations and with varied possibilities, Edwards’ super-speedy wood and string smacking was sometimes appropriately violent; Butcher’s output jumped from sonorous glissandi to staccato reed bites; while Robair’s holistic approach sometimes seemed child-like as he smacked his mallets on the stage floor, rubbed a violin bow on drum rims and literally blew on the drum skin. The saxophonist’s lines could be sonorously wispy or could consist of reed finger-tapping or using foot-pedal-controlled electronics to pick up the feedback generated as he moved his tenor in different arcs without blowing into it.

This technical versatility and familiarity with electronics also served as entrée to Una Casa/Observatorio’s game plan. As quivering, synthesized static produced by Kurzmann’s ppooll interface underlined the performance Butcher used key percussion, gurgles and expelled unaccented air to make common cause with Kaplan’s multiphonic wheezes. The trumpeter not only inflated his cheeks à la Dizzy Gillespie to force air out of his horn, but at points held his horn horizontally to blow into individual valves. Key to the interaction was a buzzing timbral exchange that occurred between the horn men.

Another instance of electronic interface came from the No Business for Dogs trio which used graphic scores plus processing to link Juun’s piano harp with the unison pressure from the drums of Bernhard Breuer and Steven Hess. Although excitement was engendered by lockstep cymbal clacks and bass drum smacks from the percussionists, temple-bell-like or marimba-approximating inferences from the piano strings ensured there was an overlay of delicacy as well. More chamber music-like were a series of miniatures performed by Munich-based soprano saxophonist/bass clarinetist Udo Schindler, cellist Margarita Holzbauer and table-top guitarist Harald Lillmeyer. Low-key and elegant, concerned with subtle tonal shifts as well as extended techniques there were points at which pauses were too elongated and solos too minimalist.

On the other hand Wrack’s tactics uniquely mingled the qualities of so-called classical music, jazz improv and, of course, Daisy’s bounces, pops and smacks. Oboist/English hornist Kyle Bruckmann and violist Jen Clare Paulson provided the airy sonority – somewhat leavened when Bruckmann wrenched his straight horns’ tone into narrowed shrillness – while pumping double bass lines from Anton Hatwich and Daisy maintained jazz rhythms. Meanwhile the slurs, cries and honks masticated from bass clarinetist Jason Stein’s reed created the taut friction that epitomized free-form improv.

Rempis’ Percussion 4Tet also offered an updated variant of energy music with the leader’s alto and tenor saxophone lines often coming across as if played by a combination of Charles Gayle and Big Jay McNeely; Ingebrigt Haker Flaten rigidly pulling and thickly stroking his bass strings; as Daisy and Frank Rosaly pummeled ruffs, claps and bangs from dual drum kits. Surprisingly, when not wedded to the backbeat, both percussionists produced subtle rhythms as well: Rosaly with graceful tap-dance-like strokes and Daisy with clean pops.

Taking Rempis’ go-for-broke brutality one step further, trombonist Matthias Müller, guitarist Olaf Rupp and drummer Rudi Fischerlehner – all Berlin-based –reconfigured a heavy metal trio, with Müller and Rupp as the two lead voices. Often cradling his instrument vertically, Rupp’s distorted fingering or single-line picking united with Fischerlehner’s hard smacks and press rolls to drive the tunes forward. Meanwhile the substitution of Müller’s horn for a rock band’s electric bass added taste to the trio’s forceful interpretations. The trombonist’s facility with a plunger, hand mutes and slide positions means that his tongue jujitsu and staccato braying brought passion as well as power to the forefront

With other sets showcasing everything from a solo violin recital of contemporary notated music, to a site-specific happening that encompassing schuhplatten, drone guitars, action painting and free samples of luncheon meat, the Kaleidophon truly lived up to its designation as an international Festival for all types of advanced music.

--For New York City Jazz Record July 2012

July 6, 2012

Daniel Levin & Tim Daisy

The Flower And The Bear
Relay Records 003

Challenging themselves with one of the most unusual duo structures, Brooklyn cellist Daniel Levin and Chicago drummer Tim Daisy improvise here with no additional musicians, electronic processing or studio overdubbing. The results while by definition sparse successfully expose a program of unparalleled rhythmic smarts and descriptive textures. Saving grace is that a skilful cellist like Levin can use his instrument both for soloing and back-up – often within seconds of one another – while the magnitude of Daisy’s percussion collection includes different sorts of noise makers and rhythmic amenders.

Seasoned players, Daisy leads his own band besides simultaneously proving the drum muscle for Winy City aggregations like the Vandermark 5, The Rempis Percussion Quartet, and The Engines while Burlington, Vt.-born Levin has developed log-term playing partnerships with unique stylists such as guitarist Joe Morris and trumpeter Nate Wooley.

Levin’s own guitar-like facility comes in handy on pieces such as “Paseo Boricua” and the title track. The former is completed by spectacular glissandi which run upwards until narrowing into bottleneck-like twangs. Earlier his jagged, sul ponticello stops suggest the sounds of two cellos as Daisy ripostes with bell pealing, snare rolls and hollow wood block reverberations. “The Flower And The Bear” mates jagged, stick-driven percussion that at times resembles Gamelan tones with Levin`s sul ponticello strokes that splinter into higher pitched slices until both instruments are perfectly positioned.

Probably the most spectacular display occurs in the concluding “Fairfield” however as polyrhythms from Daisy are introduced by wooden and metallic-sounding slaps and pumps. Levin’s alternating of juddering spiccato and lyrical glissandi incline the drummer’s hoof-beat-like rhythms towards a more restrained display until the cellist’s walking bass line completes the piece with decisive sound confluence.

Bass-drum teams ranging from Charles Mingus and Danny Richmond to Dominic Duval and Jay Rosen have demonstrated the viability of string-percussion duos. Levin and Daisy here demonstrate a profound subtlety to a similar notable meeting.

Tracks: Graystone; Paseo Boricua; The Flower and The Bear; Steel Flags; Fairfield

Personnel: Daniel Levin: cello; Tim Daisy: drums

--For New York City Jazz Record April 2012

April 6, 2012

Tim Daisy Vox Arcana

Aerial Age
Allos Documents 004

Jean-Marc Foltz

To The Moon

Ayler Records AYLCD-112

Daniel Levin Quartet

Bacalhau

Clean Freed CF 195 CD

Kathryn Ladano

Open

No Label

Extended Play: Chamber Improvisations

By Ken Waxman

Derided in the past as effete or derivative, chamber-style improvising has fascinated musicians at least since the 1920s, both on the jazz (Benny Goodman, Red Norvo) and classical (George Gershwin, Ferde Grofé) sides. However, as this group of CDs demonstrates, with contemporary musicians conversant with both strains of sound, the transitional awkwardness of the past has been replaced by inspired flexibility

Take for instance, Jean-Marc Foltz’s To The Moon Ayler Records AYLCD-112 Although at first it seems as if the 10 sparkling miniatures performed by the French clarinetist and his American sidemen pianist Bill Carrothers and cellist Matt Turner, are high-gloss examples of composed music, careful investigation reveals just the opposite. All of these instant compositions were improvised by the trio in one studio session. Inspiration came partially from the tale that inspired Schönberg’s “Pierrot Lunaire” plus the wintery moonlight of the studio setting. The result is atmospheric and elegiac in equal doses. Often showcased are the chalumeau textures of Foltz’s bass clarinet which soar and buzz as they contrapuntally meet up with doleful cello slides and strummed metronomic passages from the piano. As improvisers, the three expose a subversive post-modernity as well. “Crosses”, for instance begins with Carrothers recital-styled harmonies melding with vibrated slides from Turner. Yet while the broken octave-style theme is played by an unperturbed pianist, Foltz constantly interrupts with twittering atonal chirps from the highest regions of his clarinet. The pianist’s reflective thumps which shake his instrument’s capotes and speaking length perform a similar function on “Knitting Needles”. Elsewhere the cello’s quivering vibrations and low frequency organic patterning from the piano are often only there to sooth Foltz’s more intense flutter tonguing.

Comfortably probing this third stream is Vox Arcana Aerial Age Allos Documents 004, a similarly constituted trio with Tim Daisy’s percussion and marimba, clarinetist James Falzone and Fred Lonberg-Holm’s cello and electronics. Daisy’s eight compositions equally reference minimalism, the so-called New York school as well as the improvisation which permeates the music of the trio’s home town Chicago. Throughout, the instrumental tones often hocket and undulate in triple or double counterpoint. Perfectly illustrating this cohesion is “Falling”. After the tutti exposition splinters into episodes of reed-biting intensity, driven by the drummer’s pumps and rebounds, Lonberg-Holm lets loose. Doubled sul ponticello runs are extended almost infinitely without breaking the glissandi, and only gradually superseded by single-note reed twitters. Reverberating kettle-drum-like pops set up a final variant of plucked cello and melodic mid-range clarinet whistles. Another example of this skill occurs on “Chi Harp Call in E”. While no one could mistake Falzone’s coloratura trills or Daisy’s popping marimba rolls for the harmonica-led blues the tune salutes, the cellist’s scraping his strings into an agitated polyphonic mass easily equals timbres produced by blues guitarists. Still, the roiling marimba strokes and liquid clarinet asides link the melody to the ongoing European sound tradition.

Strings and percussion – with vibraphone played by Matt Moran – are also featured on cellist Daniel Levin Quartet’s Bacalhau Clean Freed CF 195 CD But Peter Bitenc’s bass is added and the horn is Nate Wooley’s trumpet. Paradoxically a full-time bassist makes this the most “jazzy” of these sessions. It also means that on a piece such as “Bronx #3”, when agitato bass lines combine with the trumpet’s sputtering triplets, the subsequent contrapuntal framing gives Levin a staccato forum to practically duet with himself. More impressive still is the epic “Soul Retrieval”, which evolves in several distinct sections. Initially a mid-tempo mix of brassy trumpet and mournful cello, a mid-section expansion of sul tasto bass work and downward string slides moves the trumpeter towards an interlude of tongue-stopping intensity. Chiming vibraphone pulses then collide with intense, discordant bowing from both string players, only to have the theme re-developed with broken-octave concordance by the end.

Not all this chamber improv comes from jazzers however, as bass clarinetist Kathryn Ladano demonstrates with Open. Classically trained and co-founder of the Kitchener-Waterloo Improvisers Collective, Ladano mixes solo and group pieces; notated music with improv. Her swelling glissandi, harsh flutter tonguing and aleatoric trills give her work a definite identity. While an episode of broken chord variants that matches her breathy echoes with ringing vibraphone tones is particularly noteworthy, elsewhere her repetitive trills, which confirm impressive reed control, are needed to modulate feverish interface from some of the other players. Overall, multiphonic inventions on composed material may be her strongest attribute.

Singly and together, the CDs confirm that persuasive improvisation can result without being fortissimo or frantic.

-- For Whole Note Vol. 16 #3

November 1, 2010

The Frame Quartet

35 MM
Okka Disk OD 12078

Rempis/Rosaly

Cyrillic

482 Music 482-1064

Matthew Shipp

Nu Bop Live

Rai Trade RTPJ 0015

Connie Crothers-Michel Bisio

Sessions at 475 Kent

Mutable 17537-2

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

By Ken Waxman

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

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

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

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

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

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

-- For Whole Note Vol. 15 #9

June 1, 2010

Fred Anderson Trio

Birthday Live 2000
Asian Improv AIR “Official Bootleg”

Fred Anderson Quartet

Live at the Velvet Lounge Volume III

Asian Improv AIR 0074

Fred Anderson

Staying in the Game

Engine e029

Fred Anderson

21st Century Chase

Delmark DE 589

Consistency of expression is what has characterized the playing of Chicago tenor saxophonist Fred Anderson over the years. Furthermore, unlike many other musicians, there hasn’t been a subsequent lessening of his powers as he ages. As a matter of fact, now that he’s reached the venerable age of 80, his improvisational skills are at an exalted peak. Listen to these CDs for proof. They were recorded not only at Anderson’s 80th Birthday Bash, but when he was a comparative youngster of 79, 78 and even 71.

A founding member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, who recorded sparingly between the late 1960s and mid-1990s, Anderson has nurtured some of Chicago’s younger talents both by gigging with them, as well as giving them a place to play in his now legendary Velvet Lounge. Those years out of the limelight also created an idiosyncratic soloist, who – like Sonny Rollins and Eric Dolphy before him – now possesses an unmistaken reed texture whose sharp split tones carve a unique niche in every tune. Not only does the sax man put a lie to the cliché that “jazz is a young man’s art”, but he also proves that when they age jazzman don’t have to be cuddly and comfortable like Doc Cheatham or Eubie Blake. Additionally, as he demonstrates in four contexts here, stamina, innovation and sonic color aren’t the preserve of any generation. His playing can be threatening to saxophonists of any age.

Over the years Anderson has developed a tight coterie of associates, with many turning up on these discs. The oldest session, Birthday Live 2000, is a trio CD with bassist Tatsu Aoki and drummer Chad Taylor. Seven years later, with Live at the Velvet Lounge Volume III, Taylor and Aoki are still on board and tenor saxophonist Francis Wong joins the trio. Staying in the Game – an understatement if there ever was one when Anderson is concerned – from 2008, features him with bassist Harrison Bankhead and drummer Tim Daisy. Finally 21st Century Chase from 2009, retains Bankhead, brings back Taylor and adds guitarist Jeff Parker and tenor saxophonist Kidd Jordan – the later five years Anderson’s junior – whose tenure on the New Orleans scene is roughly analogous to Anderson’s in Chicago.

Anderson’s mature style is much in evidence as early as the first track on Birthday Live 2000. Both incendiary and knife-sharp, his carved-up timbres partition still further as he churns out double-and-triple tongued trills plus jagged Woody Woodpecker-like bites. Rappelling from just below the ligature down through the bow to the bell of his horn and back up again, the saxophonist’s glissandi radiate every which way. His explorations are backed by slapping bass strings plus opposite sticking and cross pulsing from Taylor.

Indefatigable and seemingly never at a lack for ideas – or breath, Anderson brings the same toughness to the third tune, which for all intents and purposes resembles a blues-flecked ballad. After an a capella intro from the tenorist, Aoki’s vibrating and quavering bass line moulds itself around Anderson’s rasping notes as the narrative is lengthened with emphasized phraseology and half-recognizable quotes from other tunes.

Flash forward eight years, and while Anderson has maintained his form, his playing is mellower. Bankhead’s supple walking now explores additional peaks and valleys in his accompaniment, while Daisy’s rolls, pops and bass drum kicks are as sturdy as Anderson’s solos. With the sidemen proficient players on other instruments as well as their own, intimations of other textures – if not the instruments themselves – show up on several tracks.

You could swear for instance that kalimba plucks are pressed into service on “Wandering”, or that Bankhead – who plays the six-string – has added guitar licks to his backing as well. Still the saxophone lines are moderato and unstrained, languid enough to indulge in an interlude of parlando, seconded by Bankhead’s unforced bass strokes. Similarly Daisy’s mallet-driven pulses on “Changes and Bodies and Tones” border on marimba textures as the bassist’s sul ponticello squeaks are moderated mid-range. Summing up the situation, Anderson builds his solo with pointillism, elongating and expanding note dabs and smears into a cohesive whole.

Mellow, yet still tough in his outings, the saxophonist manages to stretch tones almost to the breaking point, without ever severing the thematic thread. If he overblows while vibrating his horn’s metal, as he does on “60 Degrees in November”, the supplementary intervals and vibrations are perfectly balanced as they’re masticated with bites and tongue slaps. Chromatic improvisations from all hold everything together.

This relaxed, yet bellicose command is maintained when facing off against another tenor man, as Anderson does on the last two discs. No one plays for almost 70 years without devising strategies for different situations. Recorded at 2007’s Chicago Asian Jazz Festival, Live at the Velvet Lounge Volume III, for instance, allows the veteran tenor saxophonist to maintain his parameters throughout.

Case in point is a tune such as “Beyond the Bridge”. The head is sounded by Anderson’s harsh, irregular vibrato, then echoed with similar – but more accommodating – tones from Wong’s sax. Gritty, with reed bites and tongue stops, the two aurally march in unison with Taylor’s sticks flying into ruffs and rebounds and Aoki stop-start bass thumps. At times Wong, whose timbre is thinner than Anderson’s, could be playing “Hickory, Dickory Dock” as he operates in double counterpoint to the older saxophonist. That is until the drummer’s double-timed ratamacues and the bassist’s vibrating strings push Anderson to unleash his idiosyncratic stabbing pitches which are then answered by jagged, staccato octaves from the younger saxophonist.

An equivalent tart interface occurs on “Positive Changes”. However the impetus for Anderson and Wong combining for a series of tongue flutters and split tones which modulate up the scale with rubato intonation is some impressive bass work from Aoki. Moving beyond sul ponticello to a strained, near-vocalized pitch, the bassist descends the scale while sounding every string simultaneously.

The scene had been set with “Andersonville”, where each player stakes out his individual musical turf. Aoki’s thumps and pumps, Taylor’s whapping snares and cymbal vibrations plus the lockstep reed-biting and sonic curves from the saxophonists kick in almost as soon as Anderson sounds his signature ferocious cry. From then on Anderson appears to pushing and prodding every musical tone he can find in as many varied angles as he can – and Wong does the same. Steaming ahead, the two build up a polyphonic head of steam, double and triple-tonguing, appending connective arpeggios and sluicing vamps. Crumbling the lines to fine musical powder, the simultaneous staccato spewing never completely obliterates the piece’s musical shape.

Two years later Anderson’s 80th birthday bash at the new Velvet Lounge, not far from the old location, and featuring 75-year-old Jordan as well, was no exercise in nostalgia. The only bow to the past is that the two-part title tune reflects comparable tough tenor battles of the 1940s and 1950s. Adherents of the style were Sonny Stitt and Gene Ammons and most pointedly Dexter Gordon and Wardell Gray “The Chase”. However sharp ears will notice that by the end of the almost hour long improv here, both John Colrane and Johnny Griffin have been nodded to as well.

No exercise in neo-con nostalgia, this “Chase” announces its modernity from the top: a capella squeaks and squeals in altissimo variants played by Jordan with vocal exhortations and hard air expelling. Anderson counters with a “Pop Goes the Weasel” theme, Taylor and Bankhead hit, Parker twangs – and the chase is on. Jordan, a horse-raising aficionado, uses smears, clipped notes and effective glossolalia to take the lead as Anderson canters besides him with lower-pitched contrapuntal runs. Neck and neck, Jordan’s tone is more splintered and almost in the alto range while Anderson’s growls are practically moderato in comparison. Taylor’s ruffs and flams plus Bankhead’s walking stay back on the track, while Parker’s knob-twisting licks and abrasive twanging provide the equivalent of a spur to a horse’s flanks.

Eventually as diaphragm-vibrated timbres, elastic tonal interpolations and ragged split tones rend the air, both tenor men reach an extended rapprochement. Agitato and staccatissimo, neither can best the other – if that ever was the intention – and each maintains his distinctive identity. Getting to the point where each finishes each other’s phrases, a coda includes Jordan’s nod to Griffin via a quote from “Wade in the Water” and Anderson to Coltrane with a snatch of “A Love Supreme”. The finale showcases perfect parlando double counterpoint.

Bankhead’s sul ponticello introduction of the second part spectacularly exposes both the root notes and their fundamentals, but this pacific interlude soon gives way to more reed flaunting, taken chromatically or in broken octaves. Here and throughout the rest of the CD, the heavily vibrated multiphonic reed runs shares space with the guitarist’s curvaceous strums plus an occasional clank and click from the drummer. With Trane’s “Cousin Mary” and “Giant Steps” alluded to, the two wrap up the exciting essay in impov by honoring their direct influence as well as their tenor forefathers.

An equivalent chase in the future from others would undoubtedly have to touch on the saxophone advances of Anderson himself. From the originator, however, most of are exhibited in multi-faceted examples on these four discs.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 21st: 1. 21st Century Chase Part I 2. 21st Century Chase Part II 3. Ode to Alvin Fielder

Personnel: 21st: Fred Anderson and Kidd Jordan (tenor saxophones); Jeff Parker (guitar); Harrison Bankhead (bass) and Chad Taylor (drums)

Track Listing: Birthday: 1. 22:40 2. 13:14 3. 14:24

Personnel: Birthday: Fred Anderson (tenor saxophone; Tatsu Aoki (bass) and Chad Taylor (drums)

Track Listing: Staying: 1. Sunday Afternoon 2. The Elephant and the Bee 3. 60 Degrees in November 4. Wandering 5. Springing Winter 6. Changes and Bodies and Tones

Personnel: Staying: Fred Anderson (tenor saxophone; Harrison Bankhead (bass) and Tin Daisy (drums)

Track Listing: Live: 1. Andersonville 2. Acceleration 3. Beyond the Bridge 4. Positive Changes 5. Best Time of Life 6. Discreet Identifier

Personnel: Live: Fred Anderson and Francis Wong (tenor saxophones); Tatsu Aoki (bass) and Chad Taylor (drums)

December 17, 2009

Fred Anderson

Staying in the Game
Engine e029

Fred Anderson Quartet

Live at the Velvet Lounge Volume III

Asian Improv AIR 0074

Fred Anderson Trio

Birthday Live 2000

Asian Improv AIR “Official Bootleg”

Fred Anderson

21st Century Chase

Delmark DE 589

Consistency of expression is what has characterized the playing of Chicago tenor saxophonist Fred Anderson over the years. Furthermore, unlike many other musicians, there hasn’t been a subsequent lessening of his powers as he ages. As a matter of fact, now that he’s reached the venerable age of 80, his improvisational skills are at an exalted peak. Listen to these CDs for proof. They were recorded not only at Anderson’s 80th Birthday Bash, but when he was a comparative youngster of 79, 78 and even 71.

A founding member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, who recorded sparingly between the late 1960s and mid-1990s, Anderson has nurtured some of Chicago’s younger talents both by gigging with them, as well as giving them a place to play in his now legendary Velvet Lounge. Those years out of the limelight also created an idiosyncratic soloist, who – like Sonny Rollins and Eric Dolphy before him – now possesses an unmistaken reed texture whose sharp split tones carve a unique niche in every tune. Not only does the sax man put a lie to the cliché that “jazz is a young man’s art”, but he also proves that when they age jazzman don’t have to be cuddly and comfortable like Doc Cheatham or Eubie Blake. Additionally, as he demonstrates in four contexts here, stamina, innovation and sonic color aren’t the preserve of any generation. His playing can be threatening to saxophonists of any age.

Over the years Anderson has developed a tight coterie of associates, with many turning up on these discs. The oldest session, Birthday Live 2000, is a trio CD with bassist Tatsu Aoki and drummer Chad Taylor. Seven years later, with Live at the Velvet Lounge Volume III, Taylor and Aoki are still on board and tenor saxophonist Francis Wong joins the trio. Staying in the Game – an understatement if there ever was one when Anderson is concerned – from 2008, features him with bassist Harrison Bankhead and drummer Tim Daisy. Finally 21st Century Chase from 2009, retains Bankhead, brings back Taylor and adds guitarist Jeff Parker and tenor saxophonist Kidd Jordan – the later five years Anderson’s junior – whose tenure on the New Orleans scene is roughly analogous to Anderson’s in Chicago.

Anderson’s mature style is much in evidence as early as the first track on Birthday Live 2000. Both incendiary and knife-sharp, his carved-up timbres partition still further as he churns out double-and-triple tongued trills plus jagged Woody Woodpecker-like bites. Rappelling from just below the ligature down through the bow to the bell of his horn and back up again, the saxophonist’s glissandi radiate every which way. His explorations are backed by slapping bass strings plus opposite sticking and cross pulsing from Taylor.

Indefatigable and seemingly never at a lack for ideas – or breath, Anderson brings the same toughness to the third tune, which for all intents and purposes resembles a blues-flecked ballad. After an a capella intro from the tenorist, Aoki’s vibrating and quavering bass line moulds itself around Anderson’s rasping notes as the narrative is lengthened with emphasized phraseology and half-recognizable quotes from other tunes.

Flash forward eight years, and while Anderson has maintained his form, his playing is mellower. Bankhead’s supple walking now explores additional peaks and valleys in his accompaniment, while Daisy’s rolls, pops and bass drum kicks are as sturdy as Anderson’s solos. With the sidemen proficient players on other instruments as well as their own, intimations of other textures – if not the instruments themselves – show up on several tracks.

You could swear for instance that kalimba plucks are pressed into service on “Wandering”, or that Bankhead – who plays the six-string – has added guitar licks to his backing as well. Still the saxophone lines are moderato and unstrained, languid enough to indulge in an interlude of parlando, seconded by Bankhead’s unforced bass strokes. Similarly Daisy’s mallet-driven pulses on “Changes and Bodies and Tones” border on marimba textures as the bassist’s sul ponticello squeaks are moderated mid-range. Summing up the situation, Anderson builds his solo with pointillism, elongating and expanding note dabs and smears into a cohesive whole.

Mellow, yet still tough in his outings, the saxophonist manages to stretch tones almost to the breaking point, without ever severing the thematic thread. If he overblows while vibrating his horn’s metal, as he does on “60 Degrees in November”, the supplementary intervals and vibrations are perfectly balanced as they’re masticated with bites and tongue slaps. Chromatic improvisations from all hold everything together.

This relaxed, yet bellicose command is maintained when facing off against another tenor man, as Anderson does on the last two discs. No one plays for almost 70 years without devising strategies for different situations. Recorded at 2007’s Chicago Asian Jazz Festival, Live at the Velvet Lounge Volume III, for instance, allows the veteran tenor saxophonist to maintain his parameters throughout.

Case in point is a tune such as “Beyond the Bridge”. The head is sounded by Anderson’s harsh, irregular vibrato, then echoed with similar – but more accommodating – tones from Wong’s sax. Gritty, with reed bites and tongue stops, the two aurally march in unison with Taylor’s sticks flying into ruffs and rebounds and Aoki stop-start bass thumps. At times Wong, whose timbre is thinner than Anderson’s, could be playing “Hickory, Dickory Dock” as he operates in double counterpoint to the older saxophonist. That is until the drummer’s double-timed ratamacues and the bassist’s vibrating strings push Anderson to unleash his idiosyncratic stabbing pitches which are then answered by jagged, staccato octaves from the younger saxophonist.

An equivalent tart interface occurs on “Positive Changes”. However the impetus for Anderson and Wong combining for a series of tongue flutters and split tones which modulate up the scale with rubato intonation is some impressive bass work from Aoki. Moving beyond sul ponticello to a strained, near-vocalized pitch, the bassist descends the scale while sounding every string simultaneously.

The scene had been set with “Andersonville”, where each player stakes out his individual musical turf. Aoki’s thumps and pumps, Taylor’s whapping snares and cymbal vibrations plus the lockstep reed-biting and sonic curves from the saxophonists kick in almost as soon as Anderson sounds his signature ferocious cry. From then on Anderson appears to pushing and prodding every musical tone he can find in as many varied angles as he can – and Wong does the same. Steaming ahead, the two build up a polyphonic head of steam, double and triple-tonguing, appending connective arpeggios and sluicing vamps. Crumbling the lines to fine musical powder, the simultaneous staccato spewing never completely obliterates the piece’s musical shape.

Two years later Anderson’s 80th birthday bash at the new Velvet Lounge, not far from the old location, and featuring 75-year-old Jordan as well, was no exercise in nostalgia. The only bow to the past is that the two-part title tune reflects comparable tough tenor battles of the 1940s and 1950s. Adherents of the style were Sonny Stitt and Gene Ammons and most pointedly Dexter Gordon and Wardell Gray “The Chase”. However sharp ears will notice that by the end of the almost hour long improv here, both John Colrane and Johnny Griffin have been nodded to as well.

No exercise in neo-con nostalgia, this “Chase” announces its modernity from the top: a capella squeaks and squeals in altissimo variants played by Jordan with vocal exhortations and hard air expelling. Anderson counters with a “Pop Goes the Weasel” theme, Taylor and Bankhead hit, Parker twangs – and the chase is on. Jordan, a horse-raising aficionado, uses smears, clipped notes and effective glossolalia to take the lead as Anderson canters besides him with lower-pitched contrapuntal runs. Neck and neck, Jordan’s tone is more splintered and almost in the alto range while Anderson’s growls are practically moderato in comparison. Taylor’s ruffs and flams plus Bankhead’s walking stay back on the track, while Parker’s knob-twisting licks and abrasive twanging provide the equivalent of a spur to a horse’s flanks.

Eventually as diaphragm-vibrated timbres, elastic tonal interpolations and ragged split tones rend the air, both tenor men reach an extended rapprochement. Agitato and staccatissimo, neither can best the other – if that ever was the intention – and each maintains his distinctive identity. Getting to the point where each finishes each other’s phrases, a coda includes Jordan’s nod to Griffin via a quote from “Wade in the Water” and Anderson to Coltrane with a snatch of “A Love Supreme”. The finale showcases perfect parlando double counterpoint.

Bankhead’s sul ponticello introduction of the second part spectacularly exposes both the root notes and their fundamentals, but this pacific interlude soon gives way to more reed flaunting, taken chromatically or in broken octaves. Here and throughout the rest of the CD, the heavily vibrated multiphonic reed runs shares space with the guitarist’s curvaceous strums plus an occasional clank and click from the drummer. With Trane’s “Cousin Mary” and “Giant Steps” alluded to, the two wrap up the exciting essay in impov by honoring their direct influence as well as their tenor forefathers.

An equivalent chase in the future from others would undoubtedly have to touch on the saxophone advances of Anderson himself. From the originator, however, most of are exhibited in multi-faceted examples on these four discs.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 21st: 1. 21st Century Chase Part I 2. 21st Century Chase Part II 3. Ode to Alvin Fielder

Personnel: 21st: Fred Anderson and Kidd Jordan (tenor saxophones); Jeff Parker (guitar); Harrison Bankhead (bass) and Chad Taylor (drums)

Track Listing: Birthday: 1. 22:40 2. 13:14 3. 14:24

Personnel: Birthday: Fred Anderson (tenor saxophone; Tatsu Aoki (bass) and Chad Taylor (drums)

Track Listing: Staying: 1. Sunday Afternoon 2. The Elephant and the Bee 3. 60 Degrees in November 4. Wandering 5. Springing Winter 6. Changes and Bodies and Tones

Personnel: Staying: Fred Anderson (tenor saxophone; Harrison Bankhead (bass) and Tin Daisy (drums)

Track Listing: Live: 1. Andersonville 2. Acceleration 3. Beyond the Bridge 4. Positive Changes 5. Best Time of Life 6. Discreet Identifier

Personnel: Live: Fred Anderson and Francis Wong (tenor saxophones); Tatsu Aoki (bass) and Chad Taylor (drums)

December 17, 2009

Fred Anderson

21st Century Chase
Delmark DE 589

Fred Anderson Quartet

Live at the Velvet Lounge Volume III

Asian Improv AIR 0074

Fred Anderson

Staying in the Game

Engine e029

Fred Anderson Trio

Birthday Live 2000

Asian Improv AIR “Official Bootleg”

Consistency of expression is what has characterized the playing of Chicago tenor saxophonist Fred Anderson over the years. Furthermore, unlike many other musicians, there hasn’t been a subsequent lessening of his powers as he ages. As a matter of fact, now that he’s reached the venerable age of 80, his improvisational skills are at an exalted peak. Listen to these CDs for proof. They were recorded not only at Anderson’s 80th Birthday Bash, but when he was a comparative youngster of 79, 78 and even 71.

A founding member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, who recorded sparingly between the late 1960s and mid-1990s, Anderson has nurtured some of Chicago’s younger talents both by gigging with them, as well as giving them a place to play in his now legendary Velvet Lounge. Those years out of the limelight also created an idiosyncratic soloist, who – like Sonny Rollins and Eric Dolphy before him – now possesses an unmistaken reed texture whose sharp split tones carve a unique niche in every tune. Not only does the sax man put a lie to the cliché that “jazz is a young man’s art”, but he also proves that when they age jazzman don’t have to be cuddly and comfortable like Doc Cheatham or Eubie Blake. Additionally, as he demonstrates in four contexts here, stamina, innovation and sonic color aren’t the preserve of any generation. His playing can be threatening to saxophonists of any age.

Over the years Anderson has developed a tight coterie of associates, with many turning up on these discs. The oldest session, Birthday Live 2000, is a trio CD with bassist Tatsu Aoki and drummer Chad Taylor. Seven years later, with Live at the Velvet Lounge Volume III, Taylor and Aoki are still on board and tenor saxophonist Francis Wong joins the trio. Staying in the Game – an understatement if there ever was one when Anderson is concerned – from 2008, features him with bassist Harrison Bankhead and drummer Tim Daisy. Finally 21st Century Chase from 2009, retains Bankhead, brings back Taylor and adds guitarist Jeff Parker and tenor saxophonist Kidd Jordan – the later five years Anderson’s junior – whose tenure on the New Orleans scene is roughly analogous to Anderson’s in Chicago.

Anderson’s mature style is much in evidence as early as the first track on Birthday Live 2000. Both incendiary and knife-sharp, his carved-up timbres partition still further as he churns out double-and-triple tongued trills plus jagged Woody Woodpecker-like bites. Rappelling from just below the ligature down through the bow to the bell of his horn and back up again, the saxophonist’s glissandi radiate every which way. His explorations are backed by slapping bass strings plus opposite sticking and cross pulsing from Taylor.

Indefatigable and seemingly never at a lack for ideas – or breath, Anderson brings the same toughness to the third tune, which for all intents and purposes resembles a blues-flecked ballad. After an a capella intro from the tenorist, Aoki’s vibrating and quavering bass line moulds itself around Anderson’s rasping notes as the narrative is lengthened with emphasized phraseology and half-recognizable quotes from other tunes.

Flash forward eight years, and while Anderson has maintained his form, his playing is mellower. Bankhead’s supple walking now explores additional peaks and valleys in his accompaniment, while Daisy’s rolls, pops and bass drum kicks are as sturdy as Anderson’s solos. With the sidemen proficient players on other instruments as well as their own, intimations of other textures – if not the instruments themselves – show up on several tracks.

You could swear for instance that kalimba plucks are pressed into service on “Wandering”, or that Bankhead – who plays the six-string – has added guitar licks to his backing as well. Still the saxophone lines are moderato and unstrained, languid enough to indulge in an interlude of parlando, seconded by Bankhead’s unforced bass strokes. Similarly Daisy’s mallet-driven pulses on “Changes and Bodies and Tones” border on marimba textures as the bassist’s sul ponticello squeaks are moderated mid-range. Summing up the situation, Anderson builds his solo with pointillism, elongating and expanding note dabs and smears into a cohesive whole.

Mellow, yet still tough in his outings, the saxophonist manages to stretch tones almost to the breaking point, without ever severing the thematic thread. If he overblows while vibrating his horn’s metal, as he does on “60 Degrees in November”, the supplementary intervals and vibrations are perfectly balanced as they’re masticated with bites and tongue slaps. Chromatic improvisations from all hold everything together.

This relaxed, yet bellicose command is maintained when facing off against another tenor man, as Anderson does on the last two discs. No one plays for almost 70 years without devising strategies for different situations. Recorded at 2007’s Chicago Asian Jazz Festival, Live at the Velvet Lounge Volume III, for instance, allows the veteran tenor saxophonist to maintain his parameters throughout.

Case in point is a tune such as “Beyond the Bridge”. The head is sounded by Anderson’s harsh, irregular vibrato, then echoed with similar – but more accommodating – tones from Wong’s sax. Gritty, with reed bites and tongue stops, the two aurally march in unison with Taylor’s sticks flying into ruffs and rebounds and Aoki stop-start bass thumps. At times Wong, whose timbre is thinner than Anderson’s, could be playing “Hickory, Dickory Dock” as he operates in double counterpoint to the older saxophonist. That is until the drummer’s double-timed ratamacues and the bassist’s vibrating strings push Anderson to unleash his idiosyncratic stabbing pitches which are then answered by jagged, staccato octaves from the younger saxophonist.

An equivalent tart interface occurs on “Positive Changes”. However the impetus for Anderson and Wong combining for a series of tongue flutters and split tones which modulate up the scale with rubato intonation is some impressive bass work from Aoki. Moving beyond sul ponticello to a strained, near-vocalized pitch, the bassist descends the scale while sounding every string simultaneously.

The scene had been set with “Andersonville”, where each player stakes out his individual musical turf. Aoki’s thumps and pumps, Taylor’s whapping snares and cymbal vibrations plus the lockstep reed-biting and sonic curves from the saxophonists kick in almost as soon as Anderson sounds his signature ferocious cry. From then on Anderson appears to pushing and prodding every musical tone he can find in as many varied angles as he can – and Wong does the same. Steaming ahead, the two build up a polyphonic head of steam, double and triple-tonguing, appending connective arpeggios and sluicing vamps. Crumbling the lines to fine musical powder, the simultaneous staccato spewing never completely obliterates the piece’s musical shape.

Two years later Anderson’s 80th birthday bash at the new Velvet Lounge, not far from the old location, and featuring 75-year-old Jordan as well, was no exercise in nostalgia. The only bow to the past is that the two-part title tune reflects comparable tough tenor battles of the 1940s and 1950s. Adherents of the style were Sonny Stitt and Gene Ammons and most pointedly Dexter Gordon and Wardell Gray “The Chase”. However sharp ears will notice that by the end of the almost hour long improv here, both John Colrane and Johnny Griffin have been nodded to as well.

No exercise in neo-con nostalgia, this “Chase” announces its modernity from the top: a capella squeaks and squeals in altissimo variants played by Jordan with vocal exhortations and hard air expelling. Anderson counters with a “Pop Goes the Weasel” theme, Taylor and Bankhead hit, Parker twangs – and the chase is on. Jordan, a horse-raising aficionado, uses smears, clipped notes and effective glossolalia to take the lead as Anderson canters besides him with lower-pitched contrapuntal runs. Neck and neck, Jordan’s tone is more splintered and almost in the alto range while Anderson’s growls are practically moderato in comparison. Taylor’s ruffs and flams plus Bankhead’s walking stay back on the track, while Parker’s knob-twisting licks and abrasive twanging provide the equivalent of a spur to a horse’s flanks.

Eventually as diaphragm-vibrated timbres, elastic tonal interpolations and ragged split tones rend the air, both tenor men reach an extended rapprochement. Agitato and staccatissimo, neither can best the other – if that ever was the intention – and each maintains his distinctive identity. Getting to the point where each finishes each other’s phrases, a coda includes Jordan’s nod to Griffin via a quote from “Wade in the Water” and Anderson to Coltrane with a snatch of “A Love Supreme”. The finale showcases perfect parlando double counterpoint.

Bankhead’s sul ponticello introduction of the second part spectacularly exposes both the root notes and their fundamentals, but this pacific interlude soon gives way to more reed flaunting, taken chromatically or in broken octaves. Here and throughout the rest of the CD, the heavily vibrated multiphonic reed runs shares space with the guitarist’s curvaceous strums plus an occasional clank and click from the drummer. With Trane’s “Cousin Mary” and “Giant Steps” alluded to, the two wrap up the exciting essay in impov by honoring their direct influence as well as their tenor forefathers.

An equivalent chase in the future from others would undoubtedly have to touch on the saxophone advances of Anderson himself. From the originator, however, most of are exhibited in multi-faceted examples on these four discs.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 21st: 1. 21st Century Chase Part I 2. 21st Century Chase Part II 3. Ode to Alvin Fielder

Personnel: 21st: Fred Anderson and Kidd Jordan (tenor saxophones); Jeff Parker (guitar); Harrison Bankhead (bass) and Chad Taylor (drums)

Track Listing: Birthday: 1. 22:40 2. 13:14 3. 14:24

Personnel: Birthday: Fred Anderson (tenor saxophone; Tatsu Aoki (bass) and Chad Taylor (drums)

Track Listing: Staying: 1. Sunday Afternoon 2. The Elephant and the Bee 3. 60 Degrees in November 4. Wandering 5. Springing Winter 6. Changes and Bodies and Tones

Personnel: Staying: Fred Anderson (tenor saxophone; Harrison Bankhead (bass) and Tin Daisy (drums)

Track Listing: Live: 1. Andersonville 2. Acceleration 3. Beyond the Bridge 4. Positive Changes 5. Best Time of Life 6. Discreet Identifier

Personnel: Live: Fred Anderson and Francis Wong (tenor saxophones); Tatsu Aoki (bass) and Chad Taylor (drums)

December 17, 2009

Fred Anderson Quartet

Live at the Velvet Lounge Volume III
Asian Improv AIR 0074

Fred Anderson

Staying in the Game

Engine e029

Fred Anderson Trio

Birthday Live 2000

Asian Improv AIR “Official Bootleg”

Fred Anderson

21st Century Chase

Delmark DE 589

Consistency of expression is what has characterized the playing of Chicago tenor saxophonist Fred Anderson over the years. Furthermore, unlike many other musicians, there hasn’t been a subsequent lessening of his powers as he ages. As a matter of fact, now that he’s reached the venerable age of 80, his improvisational skills are at an exalted peak. Listen to these CDs for proof. They were recorded not only at Anderson’s 80th Birthday Bash, but when he was a comparative youngster of 79, 78 and even 71.

A founding member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, who recorded sparingly between the late 1960s and mid-1990s, Anderson has nurtured some of Chicago’s younger talents both by gigging with them, as well as giving them a place to play in his now legendary Velvet Lounge. Those years out of the limelight also created an idiosyncratic soloist, who – like Sonny Rollins and Eric Dolphy before him – now possesses an unmistaken reed texture whose sharp split tones carve a unique niche in every tune. Not only does the sax man put a lie to the cliché that “jazz is a young man’s art”, but he also proves that when they age jazzman don’t have to be cuddly and comfortable like Doc Cheatham or Eubie Blake. Additionally, as he demonstrates in four contexts here, stamina, innovation and sonic color aren’t the preserve of any generation. His playing can be threatening to saxophonists of any age.

Over the years Anderson has developed a tight coterie of associates, with many turning up on these discs. The oldest session, Birthday Live 2000, is a trio CD with bassist Tatsu Aoki and drummer Chad Taylor. Seven years later, with Live at the Velvet Lounge Volume III, Taylor and Aoki are still on board and tenor saxophonist Francis Wong joins the trio. Staying in the Game – an understatement if there ever was one when Anderson is concerned – from 2008, features him with bassist Harrison Bankhead and drummer Tim Daisy. Finally 21st Century Chase from 2009, retains Bankhead, brings back Taylor and adds guitarist Jeff Parker and tenor saxophonist Kidd Jordan – the later five years Anderson’s junior – whose tenure on the New Orleans scene is roughly analogous to Anderson’s in Chicago.

Anderson’s mature style is much in evidence as early as the first track on Birthday Live 2000. Both incendiary and knife-sharp, his carved-up timbres partition still further as he churns out double-and-triple tongued trills plus jagged Woody Woodpecker-like bites. Rappelling from just below the ligature down through the bow to the bell of his horn and back up again, the saxophonist’s glissandi radiate every which way. His explorations are backed by slapping bass strings plus opposite sticking and cross pulsing from Taylor.

Indefatigable and seemingly never at a lack for ideas – or breath, Anderson brings the same toughness to the third tune, which for all intents and purposes resembles a blues-flecked ballad. After an a capella intro from the tenorist, Aoki’s vibrating and quavering bass line moulds itself around Anderson’s rasping notes as the narrative is lengthened with emphasized phraseology and half-recognizable quotes from other tunes.

Flash forward eight years, and while Anderson has maintained his form, his playing is mellower. Bankhead’s supple walking now explores additional peaks and valleys in his accompaniment, while Daisy’s rolls, pops and bass drum kicks are as sturdy as Anderson’s solos. With the sidemen proficient players on other instruments as well as their own, intimations of other textures – if not the instruments themselves – show up on several tracks.

You could swear for instance that kalimba plucks are pressed into service on “Wandering”, or that Bankhead – who plays the six-string – has added guitar licks to his backing as well. Still the saxophone lines are moderato and unstrained, languid enough to indulge in an interlude of parlando, seconded by Bankhead’s unforced bass strokes. Similarly Daisy’s mallet-driven pulses on “Changes and Bodies and Tones” border on marimba textures as the bassist’s sul ponticello squeaks are moderated mid-range. Summing up the situation, Anderson builds his solo with pointillism, elongating and expanding note dabs and smears into a cohesive whole.

Mellow, yet still tough in his outings, the saxophonist manages to stretch tones almost to the breaking point, without ever severing the thematic thread. If he overblows while vibrating his horn’s metal, as he does on “60 Degrees in November”, the supplementary intervals and vibrations are perfectly balanced as they’re masticated with bites and tongue slaps. Chromatic improvisations from all hold everything together.

This relaxed, yet bellicose command is maintained when facing off against another tenor man, as Anderson does on the last two discs. No one plays for almost 70 years without devising strategies for different situations. Recorded at 2007’s Chicago Asian Jazz Festival, Live at the Velvet Lounge Volume III, for instance, allows the veteran tenor saxophonist to maintain his parameters throughout.

Case in point is a tune such as “Beyond the Bridge”. The head is sounded by Anderson’s harsh, irregular vibrato, then echoed with similar – but more accommodating – tones from Wong’s sax. Gritty, with reed bites and tongue stops, the two aurally march in unison with Taylor’s sticks flying into ruffs and rebounds and Aoki stop-start bass thumps. At times Wong, whose timbre is thinner than Anderson’s, could be playing “Hickory, Dickory Dock” as he operates in double counterpoint to the older saxophonist. That is until the drummer’s double-timed ratamacues and the bassist’s vibrating strings push Anderson to unleash his idiosyncratic stabbing pitches which are then answered by jagged, staccato octaves from the younger saxophonist.

An equivalent tart interface occurs on “Positive Changes”. However the impetus for Anderson and Wong combining for a series of tongue flutters and split tones which modulate up the scale with rubato intonation is some impressive bass work from Aoki. Moving beyond sul ponticello to a strained, near-vocalized pitch, the bassist descends the scale while sounding every string simultaneously.

The scene had been set with “Andersonville”, where each player stakes out his individual musical turf. Aoki’s thumps and pumps, Taylor’s whapping snares and cymbal vibrations plus the lockstep reed-biting and sonic curves from the saxophonists kick in almost as soon as Anderson sounds his signature ferocious cry. From then on Anderson appears to pushing and prodding every musical tone he can find in as many varied angles as he can – and Wong does the same. Steaming ahead, the two build up a polyphonic head of steam, double and triple-tonguing, appending connective arpeggios and sluicing vamps. Crumbling the lines to fine musical powder, the simultaneous staccato spewing never completely obliterates the piece’s musical shape.

Two years later Anderson’s 80th birthday bash at the new Velvet Lounge, not far from the old location, and featuring 75-year-old Jordan as well, was no exercise in nostalgia. The only bow to the past is that the two-part title tune reflects comparable tough tenor battles of the 1940s and 1950s. Adherents of the style were Sonny Stitt and Gene Ammons and most pointedly Dexter Gordon and Wardell Gray “The Chase”. However sharp ears will notice that by the end of the almost hour long improv here, both John Colrane and Johnny Griffin have been nodded to as well.

No exercise in neo-con nostalgia, this “Chase” announces its modernity from the top: a capella squeaks and squeals in altissimo variants played by Jordan with vocal exhortations and hard air expelling. Anderson counters with a “Pop Goes the Weasel” theme, Taylor and Bankhead hit, Parker twangs – and the chase is on. Jordan, a horse-raising aficionado, uses smears, clipped notes and effective glossolalia to take the lead as Anderson canters besides him with lower-pitched contrapuntal runs. Neck and neck, Jordan’s tone is more splintered and almost in the alto range while Anderson’s growls are practically moderato in comparison. Taylor’s ruffs and flams plus Bankhead’s walking stay back on the track, while Parker’s knob-twisting licks and abrasive twanging provide the equivalent of a spur to a horse’s flanks.

Eventually as diaphragm-vibrated timbres, elastic tonal interpolations and ragged split tones rend the air, both tenor men reach an extended rapprochement. Agitato and staccatissimo, neither can best the other – if that ever was the intention – and each maintains his distinctive identity. Getting to the point where each finishes each other’s phrases, a coda includes Jordan’s nod to Griffin via a quote from “Wade in the Water” and Anderson to Coltrane with a snatch of “A Love Supreme”. The finale showcases perfect parlando double counterpoint.

Bankhead’s sul ponticello introduction of the second part spectacularly exposes both the root notes and their fundamentals, but this pacific interlude soon gives way to more reed flaunting, taken chromatically or in broken octaves. Here and throughout the rest of the CD, the heavily vibrated multiphonic reed runs shares space with the guitarist’s curvaceous strums plus an occasional clank and click from the drummer. With Trane’s “Cousin Mary” and “Giant Steps” alluded to, the two wrap up the exciting essay in impov by honoring their direct influence as well as their tenor forefathers.

An equivalent chase in the future from others would undoubtedly have to touch on the saxophone advances of Anderson himself. From the originator, however, most of are exhibited in multi-faceted examples on these four discs.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 21st: 1. 21st Century Chase Part I 2. 21st Century Chase Part II 3. Ode to Alvin Fielder

Personnel: 21st: Fred Anderson and Kidd Jordan (tenor saxophones); Jeff Parker (guitar); Harrison Bankhead (bass) and Chad Taylor (drums)

Track Listing: Birthday: 1. 22:40 2. 13:14 3. 14:24

Personnel: Birthday: Fred Anderson (tenor saxophone; Tatsu Aoki (bass) and Chad Taylor (drums)

Track Listing: Staying: 1. Sunday Afternoon 2. The Elephant and the Bee 3. 60 Degrees in November 4. Wandering 5. Springing Winter 6. Changes and Bodies and Tones

Personnel: Staying: Fred Anderson (tenor saxophone; Harrison Bankhead (bass) and Tin Daisy (drums)

Track Listing: Live: 1. Andersonville 2. Acceleration 3. Beyond the Bridge 4. Positive Changes 5. Best Time of Life 6. Discreet Identifier

Personnel: Live: Fred Anderson and Francis Wong (tenor saxophones); Tatsu Aoki (bass) and Chad Taylor (drums)

December 17, 2009

Bridge 61

Journal
Atavistic ALP172CD

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

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

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

--Ken Waxman

For Whole Note Vol. 12 #4

December 6, 2006

STICKS & STONES

Shed Grace
Thrill Jockey thrill 140

DRAGONS 1976
On Cortez
Locust Music 40

Real Jazz has always been a music of apprenticeship. Unlike so-called classical or pop music where younger players can make a reputation and a living by reinterpreting and/or copying the work of their elders, jazz revolves around what you as a player can bring to the band stand.

That’s why SHED GRACE is a major step forward for the Sticks & Stones trio, while ON CORTEZ is very much an apprentice effort. Saxophonist Aram Shelton, bassist Jason Ajemian and drummer Tim Daisy, who gave their band its unique name because all were born in 1976, are gathering the experience in Chicago to put them in the sophomore class of players. Reedist Matana Roberts, drummer Chad Taylor -- both of whom spend much of their time in New York -- and bassist Josh Abrams, on the other hand, are already in the senior class. Individually, and collectively as a trio, they’ve developed distinct identities and appear ready to trade the promising for the established designation.

Each of the Dragons has already racked up an impressive c.v. Shelton is also in bassist Jason Roebke’s trio and recorded in larger ensembles led by reedists Scott Rosenberg and Matt Bauder. Daisy is a member of saxist Ken Vandermark’s quintet and Ajemian has worked in one of Vandermark’s larger bands and in a trio with guitarist Jeff Parker. Still, while each of the seven tunes here is technically impressive, there’s a little too much familiarity about nearly all of them.

Seemingly leaving the best for last, “Humboldt” and “Star Night” the final two pieces, are the most impressive and most original. The first, which in its intensity suggests some mid-period John Coltrane lines such as “Alabama”, finds the saxist showing off a moist, wide vibrato and some Eastern inflected trills. Ajemian contributes tremolo shuffle bowing and Daisy rumbling ratamacues and press rolls. Daisy then relies on his mallets to give the saxman a foundation on which to play out his harder lines.

Mallet work is on display on “Star Night”, which is taken at a leisurely, almost largo, pace. Arco, the bassist exhibits double stopping vibrato, the drummer rumbles away on his kit and Shelton’s slurs and passing tones are upfront. The interpretation is why the young Dragons will eventually have a bright future; leaning how to play expressively at a slow tempo is what separates the mature professionals from the also-rans.

Unfortunately the rest of the album doesn’t live up to these two tunes. Cymbal snaps, walking bass lines and offbeat reed trills show that collectively they can handle blues, Latin rhythms and near-hard bop. But while many of the tunes are foot tappers, a patina of originality is missing. No matter how many times Ajemian thumps his bass, Daisy plays a shuffle or Shelton chirps and double times, there are many other bands -- even on Chicago’s North Side -- that can do the same.

In contrast, Sticks & Stones has graduated to a higher plane after more than five years of apprenticeship. Perhaps it relates to the trio members more extensive working experience. Roberts has played with stylists as different as saxophonist Fred Anderson and Anthony Braxton, guitarist Eugene Chadbourne and Jeff Parker and is part of the jazz-rock-funk-hiphop collective Burnt Sugar. Taylor takes part in brassman Rob Mazurek’s Chicago Underground projects, works with veteran altoist Jemeel Moondoc, and is in Triptych Myth with bassist Tom Abbs and pianist Cooper-Moore. Instructively, Abrams’ gigs are as likely to include fellow Chicago Undergrounder guitarist Parker as avant-garde chamber player, reedist Guillermo Gregorio.

SHED GRACE takes its inspiration from all over. On “The Refusal” for instance, as well as regular sounds from his kit, Taylor produces textures that appear to come from log drums and a kalimba. For her part Roberts adds a reedy coloratura that then mixes it up with double stopping emphasis from bass and splash cymbals. When Abrams gets the spotlight for obtuse ponticello bowing, the reedist moves to a lower pitch adding the occasional altissimo squeaks for effect. Finally this Europe-meets-Africa extravaganza ends with Roberts floating the legato melody on top of hand drumming and cymbal noises.

Pieces like “Veatrice”, “So Very Cold” and “Colonial Mentality” swing, but Taylor’s off beats and counter rhythms are often such that it’s likely that the hip-hop samplers will be investigating his beat tapestry. At times alternating pizzicato and arco lines, Abrams shows that he can carry the rhythm for subtle foot patting when need be, and at different times Roberts shows off double tonguing and warbling bird-like lines or farm yard animal like slurs that vibrate in various pitches.

On the other hand, the altoist manages to inject enough of her personality into the unfolding beauty of Billy Strayhorn”s “Isfahan” -- misspelled on the label, by the way -- to have her performance stack up against others who have handled the tune. Staring with double timed variations on the theme, she elaborates it with a loose, relaxed swing feel. Avoiding excessive sweetness, she cuts the sugar with the equivalent of cayenne pepper, adding a more pronounced vibrato and flutter tonguing to her reading. Following some fat bass fingerings from Abrams, she reprises the melody straight, then speeds it up for a coda.

About the only misstep the three take here is in their version of Thelonious Monk’s “Skippy”. Doing it much slower than usual, with bowed bass and shaking cymbal beats makes the tune more dramatic, but this theatricality also removes its distinctiveness.

Still that’s really the only drawback. And it’s no reason not to make SHED GRACE a valuable listen to seek out. As for Dragons 1976’s 40-minute debut, it shows the same sort of derivative disappointments mixed with remarkable promise that Sticks & Stones first CD had on its release.

Maybe second time around, those three can create something as exceptional as SHED GRACE.

--Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Cortez: 1. Canopy 2. Felt 3. Upstairs Downstairs 4. Heater 5. The Way It Is 6. Humboldt 7. Star Night

Personnel: Cortez: Aram Shelton (alto saxophone); Jason Ajemian (bass); Tim Daisy (drums)

Track Listing: Grace: 1. Shed Grace 2. The Refusal 3. Wordful 4. Skippy 5. Veatrice 6. So Very Cold 7. Colonial Mentality 8. Wonder Twins 9. Isfahan 10. 4:30

Personnel: Grace: Matana Roberts (alto saxophone); Josh Abrams (bass); Chad Taylor (drums and percussion)

June 7, 2004

KYLE BRUCKMANN

Wrack
Red Toucan # RT 9323

PAGO LIBRE
Phoenix
Leo Records LR 377

Classically trained players as familiar with improvised as notated music are no longer a novelty in the 21st Century, mostly in Europe and latterly in North America.

However what’s most notable about this, as these two CDs show, is not whether musicians know the idioms but to what end they put that understanding.

WRACK is striking, as woodwind player Kyle Bruckmann steers a quintet of Chicago-based stylists to a color field that takes from both jazz and so-called European Art Music. PHOENIX isn’t as remarkable because the dramatic sound clashes Bruckmann has programmed into his music are replaced by gentler concordance from the cooperative band of one Russian, one Italian, one Austrian and an Irish-born Swiss resident. The four attempt to mesh not only so-called jazz and classical influences, but also site-specific ethnic ones as well.

Besides Bruckmann, an oboist and English hornist who has played in chamber groups as well with improvisers like guitarist Scott Fields and used electronics in the EKG duo, the other two players who help propel WRACK’s seven compositions have a jazz background. Trombonist Jeb Bishop and percussionist Tim Daisy work in various groups with reedist Ken Vandermark among others.

Here, there doesn’t seem to be a track that doesn’t befit from Daisy’s pointed, often broken rhythms that move from marching band cadences to chilly Webernian implications. Bishop too makes the most of the mutes, mouthpiece buzzes and slide positions that jazzmen introduced to the musical gestalt.

On “Gearshifts & Parenthericals”, for instance, his output glides from sonorous, vocalizing noise-making to mid-range grace notes, with a polyphonic sweep created when he, the oboist and violist Jen Clare Paulson sound the same notes in different timbres. Meanwhile, the percussionist supplies pots-and-pans style rattles and some drum stick nerve beats, while bassist Kurt Johnson first appears to using his bow to bang the front of his strings, then chops out counterlines.

Johnson and Daisy function more like a traditional rhythm section behind the main theme on “Extenuating Circumstances”, after which Bruckmann’s ney-like sound outlines a slinky, shimmering secondary theme. As the tempo slows, Paulson showcases glissandi that overlay elongated horn and ‘bone grace notes. Finally, angular percussion work that suggest Xenakis’ writing, and a bass continuum give Bishop the base on which to emphasize different slide positions for maximum color variations.

“Elegy for a Boiled Frog” combines many musical strands. It has an oboe part that appears to have migrated from a Tchaikovsky score, pointed sawing from the strings, buzzy, gutbucket trombone lines that could easily make it in a Classic Jazz context, and a concise rat tat tat from the drummer reminiscent of rock.

Not everything works perfectly however. At 13 plus minutes, mitigating factors make the dissonant, dispirited harmonies of “Mitigating Factors” sound less like a Stravinsky tone poem and more like a mood shift. Clip-clop percussion, string bounces and nearly inaudible horn murmurs don’t help either. Finally Ornette Coleman’s over-recorded “Lonely Woman” is given an inordinately romantic reading that appears to have no improvised part and where the oboe part unfortunately resembles Mitch Miller’s saccharine contribution to BIRD WITH STRINGS.

At least Bruckmann has attempted many out-of-the-ordinary conceptions. Although too many of the compositions have overly apologetic titles, he really should express no regrets. Except for a couple of missteps, WRACK is notable modern music that does precisely what it sets out to do: bridge the gap between written and free sounds.

The situation is somewhat different on the live shows captured on PHOENIX. Perhaps because they were playing for audiences at festivals in Salzburg, Austria and Zürich, Switzerland, the four members of Pago Libre apparently took more of their music’s movement from so-called classical and ethnic sources than improv. As advanced folklore, the sounds are foot tapping and pleasant, but considering the band’s collective pedigrees it seems as if a more impressive fusion could have been attempted.

Dublin-born, Lucerne-based keyboardist John Wolf Brennan is an innovative improviser who is also a member of a Swiss composer’s group and has won awards for his notated creations. Salzburg-born, Vienna resident Tscho Theissing is principal second violinist of the Volksoper Orchestra and member of Roland Neuwirth’s Extremschrammeln. Moscow-born hornist Arkady Shilkloper was featured with the Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra and the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra, as well as improvising in a band led by Italian reedist Stefano Maltese. Bassist Daniele Patumi, born in Umbria, Italy has been a member of some of his country’s most advanced improv ensembles: Nexus and trumpeter Pino Minafra’s Sud Ensemble.

One particular frustration is Shilkloper’s four-part “Alpine Trail”. Performed mostly a cappella with throaty rubato pedal tones, despite the descriptive titles, too much of it seems to be showing off the Russian’s technical prowess rather than telling a story.

“Archaeopteryx” and “Turcana”, which also hover in the two-to-three minute mark, are similarly disappointing. The first seems merely to be a demonstration of how the basement timbres of an alperidoo -- or European version of a didjeridoo -- contrast with bird-like squeals from a violin. The later proves that a strummed bass can indeed sound like a 12-string guitar suffused with Impressionistic lines. The onomatopoeia titled “Tikkettitakkitakk” is little more than double tonguing horn lines, bass slaps, hard syncopation from the piano and some very Euro-sounding scat singing.

Even Wolf Brennan’s “Suonatina” with its dreamy, Bill Evans-style piano harmonies is too tame. It swings politely, but the meshed harmonies from slightly altered violin tones and horn resonation aren’t much more than pretty.

Shilkloper’s “Folk Song” is little more than that. A real foot tapper that molds quick tongued French horn articulation and overlaid piano polyphony into a speedy czardas-type dance, it features Theissing sliding away at the top of his range as if he’d just escaped from a Slavic wedding party. Only at the very end, though, when Patumi creates a bass line so thick that it sounds as if he’s playing an electric instrument and the fiddler plays sloppier and fast enough to vamp, does the tune transcend its origins.

Similarly when Theissing’s “Falsche faehrten” avoids musical melodrama, there are some interesting sounds on display. Somehow the introductory structured horn part morphs in cadences that resemble a whole brass band. After low frequency piano notes --, sometimes in celeste range -- alternate with feather-light horn and fiddle timbres, looser tones predominate. The syncopation is such that the band could be playing a freylach.

Fine as well is Wolf Brennan’s “Synopsis”. It subverts romantic piano accompaniment with high-intensity tremolo lines, ringing, strummed bass, sliding fiddle lines and the hornist spiting out notes so quickly that he could be playing a sprightly cornet.

“Phoenix: rising”, the (nearly) title tune, shows how various musical timbres could have been woven elsewhere on the disc. With grating alperidoo lines first displayed on top of bass thumps and prepared piano lines, the piece then opens up. A Spanish tinge from the keys meets biwa-simulating finger picks either from the bassist or violinist, as Shilkloper, now on French horn, blusters out Alpine mountain color. Soon, even the piano takes on koto-like textures, Theissing splays Balkan-like fiddle notes and the piece ends with dampened action string percussive and a few harp-like glissandos.

Had the rest of the CD showed this same interest in combing forms, PHOENIX could have been as good as WRACK. As it is, though, it will probably be of interest to followers of any of these musicians.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Wrack: Rather Dour 2. Elegy for a Boiled Frog 3. Extenuating Circumstances 4. Sins of Omission 5. Mitigating Factors 6. Gearshifts & Parenthericals 7. Lonely Woman

Personnel: Wrack: Jeb Bishop (trombone); Kyle Bruckmann (oboe, English horn); Jen Clare Paulson (viola); Kurt Johnson (bass); Tim Daisy (percussion)

Track Listing: Wrack: Phoenix: 1. Folk song 2. Karelian kink 3. Archaeopteryx 4. Turcana 5. Synopsis 6. Phoenix: rising 7. Falsche faehrten Alpine trail: 8. Calling 9. Walking 10. Dreaming 11. Dancing 12. Suonatina 13. Tikkettitakkitakk

Personnel: Phoenix: Arkady Shilkloper (flugelhorn, French horn, alphorn, alperidoo, voice); Tscho Theissing (violin, voice); John Wolf Brennan (piano, arcopiano, prepared piano, voice); Daniele Patumi (bass, voice)

March 1, 2004

TRIAGE

Twenty Minute Cliff
Okka Disk OD12045

JASON ROEBKE
Rapid Croche
482 Music 1016

Every three decades or so Chicago improvisers become the focus of the music world -- or perhaps the rest of the planet merely catches up with what’s been happening in the Windy City all along.

This first took place in the late 1920s when Young Lions such as Louis Armstrong and Earl Hines revolutionized jazz music with a solo-oriented approach. Then in the mid-1960s, the Association for the Advancement of Creative Music (AACM) appeared with explorers like Roscoe Mitchell and Muhal Richard Abrams who showed that Free Music could be complex and meticulous as well as blues-based and emotional. Fast forward to the 21st century, and everyone from Austrian laptopers to German ecstatic soloists appears to be working with a new wave of Chicago-based players.

Fulcrum on which this all rests is multi-reedist Ken Vandermark, whose numberless groups, endless promotion and MacArthur “genius” grant status help spread the word. In truth, the essence of the new Chicago Sound isn’t that much different from what perspicuous improvisers are doing elsewhere: adding their own spin to ideas and influences from everywhere.

Sometimes, though, hubris gets in the way, as a comparison of these CDs by players from the Vandermark circle demonstrates. Bassist Jason Roebke’s Rapid Croche trio has created an almost wholly satisfying session of eight Roebke compositions. On the other hand, the CD by saxophonist Dave Rempis’ Triage trio, recorded only a month previous to RAPID CROCHE and with the same drummer, isn’t as stimulating. Clocking in at almost double the length of Roebke’s, TWENTY MINUTE CLIFF is laden with extraneous material.

Rempis, best-known as the second reedist in the Vandermark5, is an evolving saxophonist who seems anxious to try out different styles on the nine self-penned compositions that make up his disc. That means he’ll be exploring the microscopic intricacies of BritImprov-like insect music at one point or be rocking out on a near honky-tonk tenor sax groove elsewhere. But will the real Dave Rempis please stand up?

His partners here do the best they can under the circumstances., bringing their varied experience to the fore. Daisy, who is now also a member of the Vandermark5 and in some of that multi-reedist’s larger projects, is part another band featuring keyboardist Jim Baker, a longtime associate of AACM saxman Fred Anderson, Rempis and Roebke, while bassist Jason Ajemian has a duo with reedist Matt Bauder, and is part of Dragons 1976 with Daisy and woodwind player Aram Shelton, who is also in Rapid Croche. Starts to sound like the genealogy of the British Royal Family doesn’t it?

Ajemian’s buzzy walking bass and Daisy’s brush work fold into a serpentine, swinging beat on “Lamento” meeting up with Rempis’ sluicing flutter tonguing and squeaking reed tones. The piece has a memorable, irregular pulse, but like others here, it seems to end without making a summary statement. Additionally, guitar-like strumming characterize the bassist’s work on “Glass” as it and the drummer’s cross-sticking metronomic pulse complement the alto saxist splattering split-toned mewls and trills all over the tune. Happily, at 10 minutes on the nose, this composition has a definite shape, which can’t be said for the four [!] other pieces of about the same length.

Longest and most disappointing is “Portrait of the Stone Age”, which besides being pretentious seems to move at the pace of Ice Age glaciers receding. Beginning with ponderous bass and bass drum sounds plus reverberations that may be pressure on unselected cymbals, it picks up midway through with some African-sounding drum drags and ruffs and irregular vibrations from Rempis’ tenor. Again it seems just to end rather than come to a resolution.

That’s why “Mohandiseen”, a straightforward, Gene Ammons-style rhythm tune with a walking bass line and shuffle beat works so well. Rempis double tongues and peeps out the odd note and adds a few bottom-of-the-bow honks as well. Because the tune is relaxed as well as short, sharp and spiky, it appear that no one -- especially the composer -- is trying to prove anything -- and the endproduct is better for it.

Elsewhere Daisy produces sounds that could come from a talking drum or a gamelan and adds his cowbell and woodblocks -- not to mention moistened finger pressure on a drumhead -- to the proceedings where they’re needed.

This sort of versatility also comes in handy on RAPID CROCHE. Overall, though, Roebke, who wrote all the compositions as well, seems to have decided what and how to play, while Rempis is still trying on different styles.

Someone whose experience encompasses collaborations with Japanese musicians in that country, dance groups, membership in Tigersmilk with cornetist Rob Mazurek and drummer Dylan van der Schyff, plus sideman work with cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm’s Valentine Trio and Terminal 4, Roebke has made Rapid Croche his working trio for the past two years. It shows. While the bassist’s morose take on things compositionally could use with some livening up, each piece at least seems to reach the target at which it aims.

“It’s Enough” and “Like You Thought It Might Be”, for instance, are andante excursions informed by the type of jiggly rhythms Ornette Coleman introduced with his Prime Time band. With a reed tone here midway between Coleman’s and AACMer Henry Threadgill, who sometimes works the same territory, Shelton turns out a perky, shaded solo on the later tune, then growls out split tones from his body tube. On the former he reed bites, flutter tongues and changes the pitch as he plays, concentrating his sound into a claxon-like tone as Daisy drags and paradiddles. Shuffle rhythms predominate on the later with Roebke showcasing a four-to-the-bar beat on an elongated solo.

“Whatever You Think Is Beautiful”, guided by unison trilling clarinet and bowed bassline, moves forward in reedy lockstep as if Roebke was playing bass clarinet instead of the stringed kind. Daisy contributes mallet sounds on his drum heads and the tune ends with the undertow of Shelton’s constricted reed tone joining the bassist’s double-stopping arco line.

In other spots Roebke’s production ranges from powerful, near swinging string tugs and melancholy, bowed bass lines to spidery rubberband-like speed. Also, while Shelton may introduce a slow moving, but vibrated full clarinet tone, on faster tempos his fluid runs are as light as those played by Jimmy Noone when Hines was his sideman in the 1920s.

RAPID CROUCHE confirms the creative Chicago continuum that has lasted from the 1920s to the 21st century, and outlines what can be done with a concentrated trio effort. TWENTY MINUTE CLIFF is more iffy, though a good effort. Still if the amount of music described in the title would have been cut from the CD, Rempis and friends may too have created an exceptional 50-minute session.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Twenty: 1. Angles of 90° 2. Leo’s Leaving the Room 3. Sound Sound 4. Sun Dawgs 5. Lamento 6. Mohandiseen 7. Portrait of the Stone Age 8. River Rouge 9. Glass

Personnel: Twenty: Dave Rempis (alto and tenor saxophones); Jason Ajemian (bass); Tim Daisy (drums)

Track Listing: Rapid: 1. Please 2. Sensor 3. Any American 4. Whatever You Think Is Beautiful 5. It’s Enough 6. Like You Thought It Might Be 7. Just Before It Starts 8. Northern Cross

Personnel: Rapid: Aram Shelton (alto saxophone and clarinet); Jason Roebke (bass); Tim Daisy (drums)

November 10, 2003

SCOTT ROSENBERG

V: Solo Improvisations
Umbrella Records 026

SCOTT ROSENBERG’S RED
Owe
Cadence Jazz Records CJR 1135

Shortly before the sessions that produced his CD of saxophone duets with Anthony Braxton on his own Barely Auditable label, Chicago-based Scott Rosenberg went Braxton one better with these solo improvisations for contrabass clarinet, flute and sopranino saxophone.

Of course, Braxton’s FOR ALTO from 1968 still remains the benchmark against which all subsequent improv-based solo reed sessions have to be measured. He was first --or at least the first to be audacious about putting out an entire solo LP -- and he deserves all the subsequent fame or infamy.

Since then though, the floodgates have been opened and other solo sax techniques from Evan Parker’s circular breathing to John Butcher’s voiced multiphonics have been expressed, analysed, emulated and/or attacked. Rosenberg’s achievement is different however. While the accomplishments of Braxton and other solo sax pioneers were notable for what wasn’t there -- i.e. other musicians -- the conception is now so ingrained in improvised music at least, that it can be taken the next step forward.

Younger than that Braxton LP -- he’ll turn 30 in 2002 -- solo playing, like minimalism, electro-acoustics and rock music has something that has always existed for Rosenberg. Thus the 21 tracks here clocking in from 51 seconds to barely more than three minutes, illustrate how you play a solo instrument, not how you make up for the absence of others.

It would be pointless to try to individually itemize all the different techniques the reedman uses on his three instruments. Overblowing, cross-blowing, circular breathing, key pops, reed trills, lip vibrations, double and triple tonguing, pitch vibrato, smears, chirps and growls are just the beginning. There are times when he sounds like a maddened rhinoceros and others when he explodes with more aviary trills than can be found in a rain forest. He can produce plumbing noises, lengthy tunnel echoes, Klaxon cries, dialogue with his voice box and the saxophone body and almost pure white noise. Often you can’t tell which instrument is being used.

He’s refreshing human as well. You can detect him marshalling his breath for another reed assault several times, and he breaks off one track in a fit of coughing.

OWE is a completely different proposition, and not just because there are three other musicians present. Recorded a year after V, it illustrates Rosenberg’s most obvious rapprochement with the ongoing free jazz tradition. Taking a turn from pure improv and composition-based sounds, he wrote a special quartet book for the players featured here, all of whom contributed to the tunes’ final shape.

An even newer, younger assemblage of Chicago improvisers, each musician here brings something different to the recording. Active in the improvising scene, cornettist Todd Margasak (b-1968) studied with bopper Johnny Coles and Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM)’ mainman Ameen Muhammad. Bassist Kyle Hernandez (b-1972) studied with Richard Davis and was a member of he Chicago Civic Orchestra. Drummer Tim Daisy (b-1976) is part of the loose group of musicians around multi-reedman Ken Vandermark.

Taken as a whole, the CD resembles two sessions from the early 1960s, Ornette Coleman’s ORNETTE ON TENOR and John Coltrane’s THE AVANT GARDE, where Trane recorded Coleman tunes with Coleman sidemen. Some of the themes even sound like previously unknown Coleman heads.

With his quicksilver expositions and hesitant muted tone on cornet, Margasak work could be construed as a tribute to pocket trumpeter Don Cherry of Coleman’s group. Not that there’s outright imitation, it’s just the nature of the formation, especially when he wraps his higher pitches around Rosenberg’s saxophone forays.

That’s another point. Although the saxophonist is listed as playing tenor, there are times when the swooping sonorities he produces sound as if they’re coming from a baritone.

Taken together, the eight compositions bring to mind the AACM and Sun Ra as well. “Stolk”, for instance is a melancholy Ra-tinged ballad built on sensitive drumming, subdued bass playing and a slightly off pitch Rosenberg solo that transmutes from plushy tonal movements to multiphonic altissimo variations. “Jlv”, on the other hand is a hip Braxtonian march, where the saxophonist transforms a Coltranesque solo into some honking R&B. “Stataging” with its walking bass and cymbal sizzles from Daisy is a happy finger snapper that could have resulted if Gerry Mulligan had recorded with Ornette’s backup band. On this tune, particularly, with the patterns he’s creating, Rosenberg sounds as if he’s wielding the larger horn.

Hernandez has a showcase on “Spd Dbs” speedily alternating subterranean arco swoops and treble plucks. Daisy controls the piece’s seesaw rhythm, wiggling his cymbals, snares and leavening the pace with cow bell accents and rim shots. Vibrating his reed for wider, squeakier multiphonics, Roseneberg creates a quasi-jig near the end of the more than 12½-minute composition.

Call and response round robins from the horns combine the last two tunes into the sort of buoyant lines ICP leader Misha Mengelberg often writes for larger aggregations. Daisy has another short drum solo that doesn’t wear out its welcome, while the dual unison from the saxophonist and cornettist splinters into frenzied, reed biting altissimo on one side and Dizzy Gillespie-like stratospheric forays on the other.

Taken together, the two discs can double your pleasure or double your fun. Offering a new take on a solo session, V can be listened to for interest as well as instruction. Bringing his own interpretation of early free jazz to the fore with the other CD, Roseneberg extends a variation on the Coleman quartet legacy into the 21st Century.

One point about the titles of Rosenberg’s compositions, though. Whatever their merits, they aren’t user friendly. Musicians may be tired of squares coming up to them in a club and asking for versions of “Giant Steps” or “Freddie Freeloader”. But it’s very likely that no one will ever ask for a finger-snapping version of “hhbbhthbbbshhbh” or even “bdr”.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: V: 1. wrrrrtkkk 2. ccchorrrhhsssz 3. thrrrurntttt (grgrggrgr) 4. ntk 5. frrhnzzzpphh 6. schlvwwv flflff 7. pwyyyyrnnnyy 8. gnrbbssst 9. xxhllllrlr 10. vstprrppr 11. qkndrqrdn (for Glenn Spearman) 12. bbbrtttttynk 13. tsspbpbtskskts 14. knzznk ghlk lyllg 15. hhhhhbbhhth 16. bbrbbrtttybbyynk 17. hhbbhthbbbshhbh 18. slssss (knrcch) pb 19. yyyyyvspsp (for Chuck Ellis) 20. chhhhhrwww 21. djzrk pnyrrsp.

Personnel: V: Scott Rosenberg (contrabass clarinet, flute, sopranino saxophone)

Track Listing: Owe: 1. Jlv 2. Pro Marco 3. Stolk 4. 01/01/01 5. Spd Dbs 6. Stataging 7. Theen 8. bdr

Personnel: Owe: Todd Margasak (cornet); Scott Rosenberg (tenor saxophone); Kyle Hernandez (bass); Tim Daisy (drums)

February 22, 2002