FRED HERSCH

Fred Hersch Trio + 2
Palmetto Records PM 2099

Back in 1977, as a change of pace, pianist Bill Evans added saxophonists Lee Konitz and Warne Marsh to his trio of the time for CROSSCURRENTS, a Fantasy LP that amplified and enhanced his usual sounds.

Fred Hersch, who is arguably Evans’ heir in subtle inventiveness, does almost the same thing on this CD. The results are outstanding, giving an added robustness to the pianist’s compositions, which have a tendency to be overly fragile and prosaically mainstream in other situations.

Hersch, who has played with everyone from Stan Getz to Gary Burton, taught jazz at several schools and received honors from organizations such as the French Academie du Jazz and the National Endowment for the Arts, doesn’t change his style in any way here. Yet he doesn’t prevent brassman Ralph Alessi, who has done lots of work with pianist Uri Caine and saxist Tony Malaby, who works in bassist Mark Helias’ trio, from adding the sort of smears and bent notes they would play in other circumstances. Backing all this is his longtime rhythm section of bassist Drew Gress and drummer Nasheet Waits.

The pieces that are most impressive are those which aren’t Trio + 2, but definite quintet conceptions, with the zenith probably reached with “Miss B.” and “Lee’s Dream”. The latter -- dedicated to Konitz, incidentally -- is based on the chord changes of “You Stepped Out of a Dream”, with Malaby’s tenor taking on light, breathy almost alto-like tones. The resulting timbres sound midway between Konitz’s alto and Marsh’s tenor with a spiky, POMO fillip. For his part, Hersch strums and pumps piano lines that finally resolve themselves into bouncy, accented chording.

Wriggling with energy, the former tune contrasts chromatic tones from Alessi and buzzing slurs from Malaby with right-handed piano chording that turn into a dance of descending arpeggios and double-timed metronomic timekeeping. The tenorist then adds some smears and double tonguing, the trumpeter held notes and high register squeals, and the piece ends with a hearty thwack from Waits’ drumstick.

If Hersch has become more open over the years, his friend and dedicatee of “Down Home”, guitarist Bill Frisell, appears to have gone in the opposite director. In truth the stride piano and honky-tonk echoes the pianist adds to his solo here sound a lot more “down home” then the countrypolitan licks Frisell displays on his more recent CDs. With Waits’ cross stocking out a shuffle beat, Malaby honking and Alessi sounding high-pitched triplets, this turns the piece into a light finger snapper. Incredibly enough as well, Hersch appears to be sounding out completely different lines with either hand. Eventually he impels the tune back to a stroll and ends it with in tinkling crescendo.

Other tracks lack these high standards, though not one is any less than professional and technically immaculate. Along the way, Malaby proves that he can be play as coolly as any 1950s West Cost saxist; Gress walks with aplomb; Waits amazes with his percussion restraint; and on the gentle but gloomy “A Lark” -- dedicated to Kenny Wheeler -- Alessi proves that low-key flugelhorn can perfectly replicate the sound of that British resident, Canadian brassman.

Hersch’s collection of awards and reputation as a straightahead master player shouldn’t drive away more adventurous listeners. This CD proves that in the right circumstances and with the right input, he can loosen up and cook.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. A Riddle Song 2. And I Love Her 3. Miss B. 4. Black Dog Pays A Visit 5. A Lark 6. Down Home 7. Rain Waltz 8. Marshall’s Plan 9. Lee’s Dream 10. The Chase

Personnel: Ralph Alessi (trumpet and flugelhorn); Tony Malaby (tenor saxophone); Fred Hersch (piano); Drew Gress (bass); Nasheet Waits (drums)

June 7, 2004

JANE IRA BLOOM

Chasing Paint
Arabesque AJ0158

ÉTIENNE BRUNET
White Light
al dante No #

Jackson Pollock was a fan of Dixieland Jazz. Moldy Figs may be aghast to hear that when they consider the swirls, whorls and astringent shapes of his paintings, but oddly enough the rule-breaking abstract expressionist was listening to Classic Jazz and Swing Music when he created his distinctive art works.

Truth is one thing, but when it comes to improvised music, Pollock’s work has always been identified with the most adventurous parts of modern jazz. Nowhere was this made clearer than in 1960, when his painting entitled “White Light” was used on the cover of FREE JAZZ, Ornette Coleman’s groundbreaking collective improvisation for double quartet.

In this vein, New York soprano saxophonist Jane Ira Bloom has tuned out a post-bop, chamber music session subtitled “meets Jackson Pollock” that expresses her passion for his work. In nine tunes, all but one of which she wrote, she uses the hues available from her instrument’s palate and the color supplied by her sidefolk to sketch an unhurried modern mainstream interpretation of the iconoclastic artist. Her final tune is even entitled “White Light”

Serendipitously, Parisian saxophonist/sampler player Étienne Brunet has named his CD that reinterprets the art of six contemporary visual artists, WHITE LIGHT as well. Yet the seven idiosyncratic pieces on the disc -- the last is a homage to influential American soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy -- definitely won’t be mistaken for Bloom’s.

Commemorating the spontaneity unleashed by Coleman’s conception as much as Pollock’s, these pieces mix found sounds, musique concrète, slabs of rock-blues, reconstituted vocals and machine created nonsense into a unique aural brew à la français.

Bloom, the first musician ever commissioned by the NASA Art Program and someone who has an asteroid named in her honor by the International Astronomical Union, is a composer whose work is fully informed by classic standards and changes. You can tell that by her honeyed solo rendition of “The Sweetest Sounds”, by Richard Rodgers, who was likely no fan of Pollock’s.

Keeping the proceedings from being too earthbound is her challenge on the other selections, considering that except for some live electronics triggered by her horn, the combo works in the standard soloist and rhythm section format. Luckily, the band which has played together since 1996, includes virtuoso bassist Mark Dresser, whose associations range from drummer Gerry Hemingway to saxist Anthony Braxton; and drummer Bobby Previte who leads his own bands with the likes of reedist Marty Ehrlich on board. Attached as well, she says to “motion-inspired melodic lines for improvisation”, gives scope to pianist Fred Hersch, who brings Bill Evans-like lyricism to his playing.

With the keyboardist’s musings melded with her airy soprano saxophone, many of the pieces are a bit too fragile; they sound as if the band is celebrating Claude Monet’s relaxing impressionism, not Pollock’s abstractions. Weakest is “Many Wonders” with its clichéd, groan-inducing title. Hersch’s classically influenced, proper touch and perfect form, and his crystalline output makes every note sing, but not swing. With a definite beginning, middle and end, the piece almost dissolves into syrup.

Slightly better is the nearly nine-minute first track, “Unexpected Light”, where Bloom’s legato tone and Hersch’s low intensity approach finally work up to some finger-snapping swing. Throughout, however, the pianist always seems as if he’s going to burst into “Someday My Prince Will Come”. Thankfully bowed bass work and brushes sweeping the cymbals keep the end result more outside.

Then there’s the title track, which appears to be a rondo with both saxophone and piano playing circular tones, then literally “chasing” one another. Bloom begins sliding out arpeggios as Hersch and Dresser stay low-key in the background while it’s up to Previte to subtly emphasize countermotifs with asymmetrical cymbal and snare bounces and drags.

More appropriate, considering the subject, is “Jackson Pollock”, which like the man’s paintings evolve from conventional sounds to experimentation. Powerful plucks from the bass and variegated drum patterns encourage Bloom to vary her formerly linear soprano line by attaching the electronic gizmo. Soon, not only is there a Bloom doppelganger, but Dresser is bowing and screeching in violin-range. Still the tune is less than three minutes long, and Hersch seems to be AWOL.

He’s certainly present on the composition that shares its title with Brunet’s CD. On this andante swinger, his oh-so proper form and touch advancing in lockstep with Bloom’s pure tone seem to transpire in a different atelier than the one where Previte’s rolling pulses and Dresser’s scratching abrasions are aiming to meet the mood head on. The saxist does relax enough to finish with haunting electronic drones though.

Finally there’s “Alchemy” that through some magic [sic] finds everyone drawing in the same sketchbook. Dresser begins with literal finger picking as Bloom’s sharp trills mix it up with the highest tones from Hersch’s Steinway. Suddenly, even the piano man becomes incautious as he explores some near-modern classical non equal temperament harmony. Bloom uses her electronics for some out-of-body squeals and the bassist appears to be scraping away the finish on his strings. Previte deliberately fractures the beat making no pretense of time keeping, as the electrically-goosed sax alternately drones and shoots out smears of sound.

There’s no problems finding smears -- or any other visual art associated verb -- of sound on Brunet’s painterly disc. Writing at one point in the booklet that “like a painter I use accidents and the unexpected for creative ends”, the tracks here were shaped in his home studio. Using an 18-track computer workstation, he stirs together a melange of sampled, real, and pre-recorded sounds and alters the result for a unique end product.

Much different from his last disc, which featured his soprano and alto saxophone improvisations mixed with Belgian Fred Van Hove’s on grand church organs, on this celebration of visual artists, he still manages to reference jazz, funk/rock, French pop and Eastern European ethnic musics. Like Pollock, he’s one of a group of artist forging a new way of defining art; unlike the American painter who finally discovered a distinctive style, Brunet is still refining his methods.

Most of the tracks use the human voice in some way. This may present a problem to those Anglos who are uncomfortable with another language than their own, even though some of the time French used is only as a sampled sound source.

On “Marie-Jo Pilet”, for instance, Brunet recorded the artist reading aloud from love letters, with the result soon played back in reverse. Concurrently he improvises on alto saxophone on top of a real time, sampled electronic drone, with this sound modified by a Moog phaser and a ring modulator. Eventually the calm voice reading the excerpts vanishes into a flux of undulating effects in higher tempos and pitches. Similarly “Julian Blaine” superimposes the voices of four people, including Brunet, reading 15 chapters of Blaine’s “Du sorcier de V. au magicien de M.” layered one on top of the other. Eventually the cadence of the words is transmuted into pure rhythmic effects.

Slightly different is “Ilya Kabakov”, which was inspired by a museum installation dealing with Soviet style and society in the 1950s. Here, as an associate vocalizes the details in six site specific postcards, Brunet intermingles the sound of instrumental Romanian folklore LPs at sharp and almost painful volume, with break beats purloined from a tape recorded by drummer Steve Arguelles.

Two different discs of Thelonious Monk’s rhythmic compositions pass in-and-out of aural focus on “Claude Closky”, along with samples of children singing and discussing everyday activities. Then Jam, a local acid jazz singer, creates a song from “Les mots songe”, the title of Closky’s text.

Even more elaborate is the almost 12-minute “Joschen Gerz”, affiliated in some way with a sound and light extravaganza performed at Paris’s Notre Dame cathedral. (Intentionally?) poorly recorded crowd actualities eventually trade places with a punk rock band, complete with fuzztone guitar, bass and drum, recorded live. After the introduction of what appears to be programmed elctro-acoustic beats, the band singer elaborates the lyrics using a voice that is half chanson and half comatose. Coda is the pop rock song performed by the entire band.

The one track that definitely doesn’t work is “Otto Muelh” that features the artist singing in amateur music hall style and playing what appears to be an out-of-tune upright. Meanwhile his female companion gargles out lyrics that make her sound like a demented Edith Piaf. When Brunet says he superimposed bebop interpretations on top of this to make a sort of Free Jazz, it’s insulting to the genre itself.

If he thinks that is Free Jazz how then does he classify the final and most superior track, a version of Lacy’s “Art” ? Initially recorded by Brunet on soprano saxophone, he then re-recorded it playing bass clarinet on top of the primary version. Ending up with a mechanized drone, at times his inventions and drummer Erick Borelva’s cross sticking provide a shape and features to the melody skeleton by the track’s final two minutes.

Whether WHITE LIGHT is an oh-so-French gimmick or a breakthrough you’ll have to decide for yourself. What it isn’t is the sort of well-played modern mainstream sounds Bloom & Co have produced. It’s experimentation for the sake of experimentation and in this way it may be closer to Pollock’s ideals than the other CD.

-Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Chasing: 1. Unexpected Light 2. Chasing Paint 3. The Sweetest Sounds 4. On Seeing JP 5. Many Wonders 6. Jackson Pollock 7. Alchemy 8. Reflections of the Big Dipper 9. White Light

Personnel: Jane Ira Bloom (soprano saxophone, live electronics); Fred Hersch (piano); Mark Dresser (bass); Bobby Previte (drums)

Track Listing: White: 1.Claude Closky+ 2. Joschen Gerz*^ 3. Julian Blaine 4. Ilya Kabakov% 5. Marie-Jo Pilet@ 6. Otto Muelh# 7. Art (Steve Lacy)&

Personnel: White: Étienne Brunet (soprano and alto@ saxophones, bass clarinet, harmonica* electronics, sampling, voice^, programming and mixing); Otto Muelh (voice and piano)#; Benjamin Ritter (vocals^, guitar)*; Laurent Borelva (guitar, electric bass)*; Erick Borelva (drums)*&; Jam (vocals)+; Emiko Otta (voice)+; Julien Blaine (voice)^; Elisabeth Mazev (voice)^; Pierre Barouh (voice)%; Marie-Jo Pillet (voice)@; Violaine Hirtz (vocals)#; Bertrand Blais (mixing)+; Patrick Muller (sound and mixing)*

May 26, 2003

FRED HERSCH

Live at the Village Vanguard
Palmetto PM 2088

GUIDO MANUSARDI TRIO
Sienna Concert
Splasc (H) CD H 519.2

Two takes on the contemporary jazz piano trio recorded in concert provide an object lesson in how early participants and younger re-inventors approach this genre of music, and what they do to make it their own.

Surprisingly, after listening to these discs it would appear that the old-timer has a slight edge. Working with a couple of other veterans, Italian pianist Guido Manusardi who was around for the modern style’s first flowering, brings a swinging liveliness to his program of standards and highlights from his longtime repertoire.

Manusardi, who was born in Chiavenna in 1935, has worked all over Europe with local and American expatriate musicians, especially bassist Red Mitchell, with whom he recorded five CDs. His nearly seven-year sojourn in Rumania during the 1970s resulted in the first jazz pieces based on that country’s music. Despite this experimentation, he remains a swing/bop pianist, showing in this set, recorded at Sienna Jazz festival in Italy, that his playing is firmly rooted in the tradition of Red Garland, Wynton Kelley and Tommy Flanagan.

Twenty years younger, Cincinnati-born Fred Hersch has both Grammy nominations and extensive teaching experience in Boston and Manhattan to his credit. A stylist, whose personal pantheon obviously exalts Bill Evans, he’s performed with everyone from saxophone icons Joe Henderson and Stan Getz to boundary stretchers woodwind player Michael Moore and percussionist Gerry Hemingway, not to mention the New York String Quartet.

For some reason -- perhaps it was being on the site of some of Evans’ most famous LPs -- Hersch’s set, recorded last year at New York’s Village Vanguard seems to predominately made up of dreamy, introspection, at times almost leaden standards and originals. Paradoxically, his stylistic originality appears to work against him as well. Unlike Manusardi, who is an unabashed swinging mainstreamer, Hersch has to filter every tune through his original concept of pulse and attack. What results though sometimes robs familiar pieces of their originality. Thelonious Monk’s “Bemsha Swing” and Wayne Shorter’s “Miyako/Black Nile” end up with a sound and feel little different than Cahn and Styne’s “Some Other Time” and the old Frank Sinatra/Bing Crosby warhorse “I’ll be seeing you”. LIVE is only nine minutes longer than SIENNA, but unrolls at such a languid pace that it easily seems twice the length.

There are highpoints of course. Hersch’s “ Swamp Thang” is uncharacteristically slinky, with a theme that references Louisiana rather than New York. As he goes through it the piano man indulges in some multi note embellishment, using his right hand to extend the off kilter beats, creating some menacing chords with his left hand and introducing bluesy riffs.

Following right afterwards is “Stuttering”, a loping andante piece which at times resembles the speech patterns of a stutterer. A foot tapper, it features the pianist emphasizing the melody where he wants to, sometimes appearing to be advancing different versions of the theme in either hand. As bassist Drew Gress and drummer Nasheet Waits seem to be moving along parallel lines, Hersch throws in a brisk, slip-sliding reprise of the theme at the end.

Other than that, Waits, who has recorded with pianist Andrew Hill among others, and Gress, who recorded a piano trio session with Italian keyboard man Luigi Martinale in 2001, seem under wraps.

Except for a late inning extended drum solo that is best not commented upon, Waits confines himself to the standard accompanist role of say, adding a Latin backbeat to Hersch’s slow moving “Endless Stars” and expected boppy cymbal accents. As for the bassist, whose experience includes outside work with reedmen like Marty Ehrlich, Tim Berne and Ellery Eskelin, he doesn’t seem to come up with anything Scott LaFaro wouldn’t have played on those famous Evans trio sessions of 1961. And is the pianist really quoting “Send in the Clowns” in the middle of his flowery “At the Close of the Day”?

When it comes the Monk piece, didn’t write like that, so adding a beginning that sounds like a baroque rondo, then after florid counterpoint and variations, finally introducing the theme sits strangely on the queasy ear. Self-consciously jazzy keyboard clips don’t really redeem matters either.

Certainly not the stylist or technician Hersch is, Manusardi also faced much poorer sound reproduction in Sienna in 2000. He also had to make allowances for drummer Gianni Cazzola. Although the stickman is five years younger than the pianist, who he first worked with in 1977, and played with advanced pianist Giorgio Gaslini’s band, as well as the expected boppers such as Chet Baker, Dexter Gordon and Johnny Griffin, Cazzola’s outpourings hint at the pre-modern. Given a chance on these tunes, he’ll introduce more bass drum pounding and cow bell accents than have been heard since the heyday of Gene Krupa. Unimpressive even on his solo on “Isola”, seasoned bassist Lucio Terzano, who has recorded with saxist Mauro Negri and pianist Luigi Bonafede pretty much stays out of the other musicians’ way.

Manusardi himself seems particularly enervated here though, even turning “Over The Rainbow” into a double-time, two-handed swinger, complete with shimmering glissandos and a touch of stride piano. Perhaps the reason for his animation was that he had recorded four of the eight tunes here a mere 12 days before in a Hollywood, Calif. nightspot with drummer Billy Higgins.

As it is, the 67-minute program is remarkably consistent, with only a tincture of exotic -- probably Rumanian -- spice peaking through the bop in the romantic “Tandarica”.

Every tune seems to be a finger snapper, with pile-driver chords spilling from the piano and the drummer doing his best to sound like Art Taylor circa 1960. On the pianist’s “The Woodpecker”, also recorded with Higgins, Manusardi comes on like mid-period Wynton Kelly, swinging and hammering the octaves; Terzano produces a chiming bass line; and Cazzola produces the sort of drum break you would have expected from Ed Thigpen with Oscar Peterson. “Blue Bag” is (no surprise), a powerful, rhythmic blues tune, which finds the keyboardist quoting “Miles Ahead” in the middle of his romp. While “Dany Tune”, the longest -- and final -- track at almost 11 minutes, is all tension and release. With the final few minutes given over to a brisk exchange of fours from the drummer and the pianist, Manusardi suggests Evans at the top of his form. But be aware that it’s the vital, swinging Evans of KIND OF BLUE.

Hersch’s legion of fans may find much more to like about his session. And it certainly defines his trio work as much as Evans’ Vanguard-recorded WALTZ FOR DEBBY characterized his. But the literal graybeards in Sienna have the handle on swinging excitement.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Live: 1. Bemsha Swing 2. At the Close of the Day 3. Phantom of the Bopera 4. Endless Stars 5. Swamp Thang 6. Stuttering 7. Some Other Time 8. Days Gone By 9. Miyako/Black Nile 10. I’ll be seeing you

Personnel: Live: Fred Hersch (piano); Drew Gress (bass); Nasheet Waits (drums)

Track Listing: Siena: 1. Snow Man 2. Country Dance 4. Tandarica 5. Over The Rainbow 6. Isola 7. Blue Bag 8. Dany Tune

Personnel: Siena: Guido Manusardi (piano); Lucio Terzano (bass); Gianni Cazzola (drums)

April 14, 2003