Outside the Rain Has Stopped
Ig Henneman
Stichting Wig Wig 32 (abbaarsighennemanwig.bandcamp.com/album/outside-the-rain-has-stopped)

Canadians who only know Dutch violist Ig Henneman from her collaboration with the local Queen Mab duo, might not realize that in recognition of her lifetime in improvised and composed music The Netherlands made her a Knight of the Order of Oranje-Nassau in 2021. This CD presents many aspects of the 76-year-old’s extensive career in many idioms. 

The soundscape Bow Valley, which blends improv with Alberta’s Rocky Mountain area field recordings is one standout. While Anne La Berge’s flute flutters and Ab Baars’ shakuhachi trills are intertwined with rural sounds, the bucolic texture is repeatedly interrupted by passing freight train whistles and radios blaring rock music. Meanwhile Galina U, inspired by Russian composer Galina Ustvolskaya, posits a contrapuntal challenge between Ansgar Wallenhorst’s foghorn-like organ drones and dynamic crescendos with structured colouration from La Berge’s flute, Baars’ clarinet and Henneman’s own viola. 

Other compositions for pressurized solo organ, spirited solo cello and poem or sound poem embellishments and improvisations are included. But the most impressive demonstration of Henneman’s compositional aptitude is the title tune. Here, dynamic interaction among violins, viola and cello with jagged arco slices, sul tasto pushes and whistling glissandi, shatter the form then reach an energetic crescendo that approaches Cecil Taylor’s dynamic pianism. 

Obviously, Ig Henneman is a name that should be more recognized by sophisticated listeners on both sides of the musical improvisation-notation divide.

In a Summer Dream
Hannah Barstow; Mike Murley; Jim Vivian
Cornerstone Records (cornerstonerecordsinc.com)

There can be no question that the creative pairing of pianist, vocalist and composer Hannah Barstow with saxophonist/composer Mike Murley is beyond inspired… and the addition of eminent jazz bassist Jim Vivian is not only the perfect complement to Barstow and Murley, but also to the superb, eclectic selection of rarely performed tunes and the two original compositions here. Barstow and Murley serve as producers, innovatively arranging works from such diverse artists as Johnny Mandel, Nat Adderley, Johnny Mercer and Michel Legrand. 

The program kicks off with Mandel’s Don’t Look Back – which features a haunting, delicate melodic line as well as masterful playing from Barstow who has put her own swinging stamp on this Broadway tune. Her pitch-perfect, rhythmic jazz vocal style adds another dimension to the meaningful lyric, while Murley and Vivian eminently support Barstow throughout. Barstow’s intonation, tone, lyrical interpretation and respect for the melody is worthy of a vocal master class – and the sooner the better! 

Who Are You comes from iconic trumpeter/composer Kenny Wheeler. The tenor solo opening gently segues into Barstow’s stunning vocal line. Murley sings through his tenor, effortlessly creating an aura of musical intimacy, and Vivian’s skilled and moving bass solo takes us deeper on the trip. From the inspired minds of Legrand and Mercer, comes Once Upon a Summertime, replete with a sumptuous solo from Murley. Of special note is Barstow’s original title track, which calls to mind the vocal style and musicality of the great Norma Winstone. By any musical criteria, this is one of the finest jazz recordings of the year. 

A Little Louder Now
Lauren Falls; David French; Trevor Giancola; Todd Pentney; Trevor Falls
Independent (laurenfallsmusic.com)

With her second dynamic salvo, gifted and accomplished bassist and composer Lauren Falls has fired off a fine recording comprised almost entirely of original tunes. Joining her is a superb ensemble, including Todd Pentney on piano, Trevor Giancola on guitar, David French on tenor saxophone and Trevor Falls on drums. First up is New View – a languid, sensual trip, grounded by Pentney’s perfectly insistent chordal movement and Giancola’s incredible touch and taste on guitar – which brings to mind the great Jim Hall or Mundell Lowe. French’s warm, substantial sound perfectly parenthesises the almost hypnotic tonal modalities of the composition.

The well-conceived title track absolutely grooves with intent and prominently displays the artistry of each musician. Falls is rock solid, and her superb bass work not only permeates the musical landscape, but it deftly leads her group through this evocative tone poem. Drummer Falls not only embodies seamless, perfect dynamics, but additionally manifests the ideal diaphanous support of his sister’s gorgeous solo. Disagree to Disagree is an outstanding effort, rife with emotional content, exploring both longing and resolution. French weaves his tenor in and out of the composition, with clever improvisations that underscore the contrapuntal aspects of the tune.  

Another standout is Take Me. This track lilts along with pure joy, and the duet sequences between tenor and guitar are almost breathtakingly beautiful, as is Pentney’s piano solo. The closer, Vincent Youmans’ venerable Tin Pan Alley classic, I Want to Be Happy is presented here with a fresh, contemporary twist, featuring some interesting non-standard chord changes that perfectly illustrate the cognitive dissonance of the search for personal happiness in a seemingly cold, rigid, unforgiving world – just as it was in the Great Depression. 

HOME.S.
Esbjörn Svensson
ACT 9053-2 (actmusic.com)

During the 28 years when he was active, pianist Esbjörn Svensson (1964-2008) was all the rage. The music that he created with his trio e.s.t. had an elegant and wry minimalist feel, which made it altogether memorable. When Svensson died in a scuba-diving accident his legion of fans was aggrieved. And now, with the music of Home.S, it’s time to raise his indomitable spirit once again. 

This music, says his wife who produced this disc, was composed and recorded on his home computer in the spring of 2008. Eva Svensson reminds us that her husband had an all-consuming passion for astronomy and reminded us about his 1998 From Gagarin’s Point of View with e.s.t.. Svensson was also a classicist and, in homage to him, his wife decided to name each of the nine tracks after the Greek alphabet. And she did right by her husband.   

All the music on Home.S is played – and hummed, and harmonized – slightly off key. Somehow this adds to the music’s haunting appeal. It makes you feel as if Svensson is omnipresent in the nine fluttering charts from Alpha to Iota not only in body, but not unsurprisingly, as a memorably blithe spirit. Some tracks – Alpha and Gamma – end abruptly, as if Svensson’s train of thought was interrupted. However, the eloquent music does coalesce around Baroque ideas that spring from dense contrapuntal gestures, as if Bach’s Goldberg Variations was on Svensson’s febrile mind.

Amber
Lori Freedman; Scott Thomson
Clean Feed CF606CD (cleanfeed-records.com)

In a mundane word, amber is just a fossilised tree resin with a prescient glow. However, in the hands, tongues and lips of clarinetist Lori Freedman and trombonist Scott Thomson Amber is a many-splendoured metaphor redolent of golden colours and tones that define more than merely their duelling instruments. With the repertoire on this album, the music of Amber evokes a kind of Romance language with which to connect with the very heart of the music continuum. 

From start to finish both clarinetist and trombonist create a high-spirited and lyrical palimpsest featuring some truly beautiful writing and daring improvisation. With each variation the two musicians penetrate aspects of amber with strength, precision and charming, idiosyncratic virtuosity.

You’ll be made to forget that works like Sesquiterpenoids, Glessite, Succinite and Labdanoid have anything at all to do with nature, aglow with resins and hydrocarbons that have formed over centuries since the before the Neolithic Age. Instead you will be dazzled by each piece; an idiomatic meditation suggestive of a proverbial melody imbued in amber. 

Listening to Freedman’s and Thomson’s performances you would not stop marvelling at how two artists use their musicianship – albeit uncommonly ingenious – to reflect the vitality and many-layered originality of this music. And how bellowing B-flat and bass clarinets and growling trombone can turn the artists’ metaphor into music with a sensuousness and voluptuous beauty all its own. Bravo to both for this visionary music.

Alive at the Village Vanguard
Fred Hersch; esperanza spalding
Palmetto PM2208CD (orcd.co/aliveatthevillagevanguard)

If you knew that you were going to a concert that paired Fred Hersch with esperanza spalding, you’d be fairly sure that sparks were going to fly on stage. Throughout his career Hersch has been one of the most imaginative musicians whose pianism bristles with almost insolent virtuosity. Spalding, better known as a virtuoso contrabassist, has also begun to dazzle listeners with her puckish voice which she has wielded to seduce and dazzle audiences in a manner that combines musicality and ingenuity far beyond her young years.

Together the two musicians become a formidable duo that explores music on Alive at the Village Vanguard with virtuosity, refreshing charm and borderless scope. If you find yourself believing that Sheila Jordan and Steve Kuhn created a seemingly unreachable standard when it comes to the piano-voice duet you will surely be in for a wonderful surprise. Hersch and spalding have not simply reached, but cleared the proverbial bar with space to spare.

Spalding may not tell jazz stories about Charlie Parker with the kind of veracity of Jordan, but she (spalding) makes up for everything with her airborne delivery. She effortlessly propels song lyrics into airy parabolic trajectories infusing them with luminous tone textures along the way. A case in point is the epic version of Parker’s Little Suede Shoes. Meanwhile with Girl Talk, she seems to have the audience eating out of her hands as she weaves a marvellous yarn. Hersch is agile and brilliant throughout.

No Hugs
PJ Perry; Bob Tildesley; Chris Andrew; Paul Johnston; Dave Laing
Cellar Music CM062022 (cellarlive.com)

While new waves and variants of COVID-19 give the pandemic a feeling of endlessness, one positive thing to come out of this prolonged period of chaos is an abundance of lockdown art. While the world was standing still, and even the most career-focused individuals were suddenly baking sourdough in their pajamas, many musicians opted to spend their extra free time practising and composing. This is what stalwart saxophonist PJ Perry was doing, and the eight pieces he composed with collaborator Neil Swainson now form his latest album No Hugs. 

Perry has a unique musical vocabulary that can function in a wide range of settings, from smooth to intense and cerebral to soulful. This is reflected in the entirety of No Hugs, which manages to sound current and old school at the same time. After repeated listening, I noticed that many of the tracks are comparable medium tempos, but in yet another display of balance there manages to be ample contrast and variety between songs. 

Too Soon Gone is a rousing opening track that sets a swinging post-bop tone for the rest of the album. March of the Covidians gives listeners a dramatically different groove and energy, before the album’s beautiful ballad title track. No Hugs features a short but sensitive piano intro from Chris Andrew, and beautiful improvised solos. The tempo picks up again on The Kestrel, and the remainder of the album concludes in such a manner that you’ll be ready for another listen.

The Ostara Project
Amanda Tosoff; Jodi Proznick; Allison Au; Rachel Therrien; Joanna Majoko; Sanah Kadoura; Jocelyn Gould
Cellar Music CM021422 (cellarlive.com)

I listened to this album in its entirety several times before reading Lisa Buck’s eloquent liner notes, and I think I may make a habit of this order of events moving forward. Groups that are formed as “collectives” or “projects” can often struggle to program a cohesive set of music or an album’s worth of material, but not The Ostara Project. From the track titles to the songs themselves, and even the album’s design and artwork, there is an uplifting theme to the seven original tracks and one arrangement we are presented with. This is not an uncommon feeling among debut recordings, but it manages to feel more poignant when expressed during the turbulent times we are in globally. 

Delta Sky starts the album off with a catchy groove and excellent interactions between soloists and the rhythm section. Bassist Jodi Proznick and drummer Sanah Kadoura are the core of this rhythm section, with pianist Amanda Tosoff and guitarist Jocelyn Gould alternating harmonic duties throughout the recording. Delta Sky is saxophonist Allison Au’s only composition credit on the album, but she contributes beautifully phrased melodies and sophisticated motivic solos to the remaining tracks too. 

Another compositional highlight is the contrasting and conversational Lluviona by trumpeter Rachel Therrien. There are some moments of collective improvisation here, contrasting the groovy preceding numbers and subsequent ballad Tides are Turning. Joanna Majoko does a superb job bringing life to the lyrics heard on The Ostara Project and she penned a rhythmically intriguing arrangement of the standard Bye Bye Blackbird. 

There is plenty more to say about the musicianship brimming from this album, but I encourage you to listen for yourself.

Lush Life
Heather Ferguson; Miguelito Valdes; Barrie Sorensen; Tony Genge; Jan Stirling; Joey Smith
Independent (heatherferguson.ca)

I had the pleasure of meeting Heather Ferguson at Toronto’s El Mocambo in May 2022; we were both at Ori Dagan’s Click Right Here album launch. I remember thinking how rich and warm her speaking voice was, and wasn’t surprised when she told me that she, like Dagan, was a jazz vocalist.

Lush Life is the Victoria-based artist’s smashing debut album. And while it may be her first full-length CD, Ferguson has been honing her singing chops for years. This is not a beginner’s voice. This is the voice of an experienced student and lover of jazz who has been paying close attention over a lifetime to the best interpreters of the 20th century’s classics and standards. You can hear it in her beautiful phrasing and in her engaging, confident, generous, insightful and passionate performance. She is a consummate storyteller who keeps things interesting and inviting.

Ferguson treats us to ten tracks, with help from some of Victoria’s finest, including Miguelito Valdes on trumpet, Barrie Sorensen on saxophones, drummer Damian Graham, keyboardist Tony Genge and guitarist Joey Smith, whose stellar arrangements add another layer of excellence to the project.

From the expressive and lovely title track, the truly soulful Body & Soul and the sultry (and cheeky at the end) At Last, to a deeply evocative Cry Me A River and darn right gorgeous Round Midnight, Ferguson’s Lush Life is a celebration of a musically infused life well lived!

Listen to 'Lush Life' Now in the Listening Room

Cory Smythe – Smoke Gets In Your Eyes
Sofia Jernberg; Large Ensemble; Cory Smythe
Pyroclastic Records PR 23 (store.pyroclasticrecords.com)

Composer and pianist Cory Smythe has worked with several of contemporary music’s most creative figures, among them Anthony Braxton, Tyshawn Sorey and Nate Wooley, but it would be difficult to name a more inventive conceptualist, engaging historical musical and social forms to generate challenging contemporary dialogues, reinventing the jazz practice of creative variations on standard repertoire. His Circulate Susanna investigated Stephen Foster’s famous genocidal ditty (see the original lyric of 1848); Accelerate Every Voice, was a choral piece about rising water levels. Now Smoke Gets in Your Eyes approaches Jerome Kern and Otto Harbach‘s ancient pop tune to address a world on fire. Smythe’s probing, highly creative liner booklet is illustrated with images of the song’s celebrated performers, including Louis Armstrong, Judy Garland, Fred Astaire and Bryan Ferry. 

The work comes in two distinct parts. The first four pieces, originally developed with the Trondheim Jazz Orchestra, are performed by a stellar 11-member ensemble (saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock and cellist Tomeka Reid are prominent), playing four pieces. Liquiform 1 comes as close as might be possible to creating liquid sound, while Combustion 1 has trumpeter Peter Evans invoking fire with blistering, incendiary flurries. Combustion 2 has singer Sofia Jernberg reducing the original song to snippets. The second and longer part consists of Smythe’s seven solo explorations of the song, playing a piano with computer augmentation altering pitch and timbre. The original song is often wholly fragmented, appearing in glimpses through Smythe’s abstract, shifting improvisations as if etched in smoked glass.  

Funk Poems for “Bird”
Timuçin Şahin’s Flow State
Panoramic Recordings pan27 (newfocusrecordings.com/catalogue/timucin-sahins-flow-state-funk-poems-for-bird)

Timuçin Şahin is a Turkish guitarist currently teaching at New York University; his Funk Poems for Bird is a series of pieces dedicated to the musical spirit of Charlie Parker. This in itself is not unusual, but in 2022, forays into jazz history can grow increasingly exploratory. This is one of them. Şahin’s Flow State, meanwhile, is an ideal complement. Bassist Reggie Washington and drummer Sean Rickman are a masterful rhythm section adept at numerous jazz sub-genres. Here they provide coolly abstracted versions of funk grooves, while pianist Cory Smythe adds his own edgy vision.

Şahin pushes Parker’s thematic material further than most, both backwards into its modernist classical associations (Schoenberg and Varèse) and forward into the work of Parker’s most brilliant successor, John Coltrane. Şahin’s vision is built into his instrument and his approach. Here he plays a double-neck guitar, one a conventional fretted six-string, the other a fretless seven-string, the latter facilitating sudden shifts into quarter tones. Further, Şahin rarely plays anything resembling a conventional line, instead favouring swarms of notes, polyvocal lines that coil and slither amongst themselves, whether swimming amidst Washington and Rickman’s cool backbeats or matching Smythe’s explosive playing, here in a voice somewhere between Bud Powell and Cecil Taylor. 

The time-travelling Bird Watchers has it all, from its roots in Parker’s Ornithology to Şahin’s back-and-forth movement between fretted and fretless necks to Smythe’s technologically altered piano pitch, knit together with a slightly wobbly funk beat.

Listen to 'Funk Poems for 'Bird'' Now in the Listening Room

The Off-Off Broadway Guide to Synergism
Tyshawn Sorey Trio +1 with Greg Osby
Pi Recordings P196 (pirecordings.com)

On his preceding recording, Mesmerism, drummer/ composer Tyshawn Sorey turned from his more esoteric composing practice to stress jazz performance traditions, a conventional instrumental grouping exploring a standard, but expandable, repertoire. Here that notion has grown from a single studio session and a piano trio to nearly four hours with brilliant saxophonist Greg Osby joining Sorey, pianist Andrew Diehl (the star of Mesmerism) and bassist Russell Hall, recorded over three nights at New York’s Jazz Gallery. 

It’s a mode that’s rarely heard on record (where composer royalties are an issue), though it’s the lifeblood of the jazz club, a concentrated dialogue around a common repertoire, though here broader than usual. Its thematic bases include American Songbook titles (Cole Porter’s Night and Day, Van Heusen and Burke’s It Could Happen to You) to earlier jazz forms (Fats Waller’s Jitterbug Waltz, Billy Strayhorn’s Chelsea Bridge) to bop and free jazz (Thelonious Monk’s Ask Me Now to Andrew Hill’s Ashes and Ornette Coleman’s Mob Job), several heard in different forms from different nights.   

The performances brim with life. Osby is central here, whether broadly lyrical or pressing toward expressionist intensity, generating continuous lines that accommodate themselves to the varied material but have a life of their own. This celebrates the core jazz experience, a small group exploring the melodic and harmonic possibilities, the expressive resonances and collective meanings of a song at length (20 minutes in the case of Three Little Words). It’s a contemporary embodiment of a great tradition.

Hyaku, One Hundred Dreams
Satoko Fujii
Libra Records 209-071 (librarecords.com)

Hyaku, One Hundred Dreams is pianist/composer Satoko Fujii’s 100th CD as leader and a fitting celebration of her remarkable career, launched in 1996 with duets with Paul Bley. Among images of her first 99 works, South Wind, the fourth, leaps out, its title track figuring significantly for me during 20 years of teaching jazz history. Based on an Okinawan mode, it combines dramatic energy and pacific beauty, embodying what jazz has increasingly become, an inclusivist art alive to local dialects and the possibility of global values. 

The contrasts, too, are dramatic, reflecting how much has changed. South Wind’s big band was conventional, with sections of trumpets, trombones, reeds and rhythm instruments, with Fujii the sole woman among 15 musicians; Hyaku is a nonet with individual emphases on both instruments and musicians, its ensemble almost evenly split between women and men. Further, Hyaku’s five-part suite blurs composed and improvised components. 

From its beginning, Hyaku introduces essential qualities in Fujii’s music, the subtly organic shape of her initial piano figures, the landscape-like incidental percussion, the dream-like flow state and an undercurrent of welling energy. Each movement will extend a continuum with what has gone before, theme statements, improvised solos and ensemble passages achieving rare homogeneity. Each member of a brilliant ensemble will appear in the foreground, from trumpeters Wadada Leo Smith and Natsuki Tamura through bassoonist Sara Schoenbeck, tenor saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock, electronic musician Ikue Mori and bassist Brandon Lopez to drummers Tom Rainey and Chris Corsano.

Unstuck in Time: The Kurt Vonnegut Suite
Jason Yeager Septet w/Miguel Zenón
Sunnyside Records SSC 1672 (sunnysiderecords.bandcamp.com/album/unstuck-in-time-the-kurt-vonnegut-suite)

Kurt Vonnegut was a satirist, science fiction writer and outsized personality who is still quoted and revered long after his death. The pianist and composer Jason Yeager has been a huge fan for years and had composed several jazz pieces inspired by Vonnegut’s writing. Unstuck in Time (named after Billy Pilgrim’s condition in Slaughterhouse-Five) is a compilation of these pieces released to honour the author’s 100th birthday. 

All the works are lively, build off Vonnegut’s idiosyncratic narratives and characters and utilize Yeager’s septet which, in addition to the rhythm section, contains combinations of saxophone, clarinet, trumpet, trombone and vibraphone. Blues for Billy Pilgrim has a wistful feeling, with a Thelonious Monk-like melody with a rowdy trumpet solo. Bokonon opens with a delightful hip-hop vibe and features a vivacious staccato alto sax performance by Miguel Zenón. Kilgore’s Creed begins with the band chanting (from the novel Timequake) “You were sick, but now you are well again and there’s work to do” before working into a jazz polka rhythm, overlaid with excellent ensemble playing and solos. 

Unstuck in Time is everything Vonnegut would have loved: eclectic and sensitive compositions and performances that show how jazz can have a lot of fun while paying homage to an artistic hero.

Heyday
RJ LeBlanc
MCM; Bent River Records; Diese Onze Records (rjleblanc.bandcamp.com)

The embodiment of smoothness, Heyday has the fluidity of a living organism, with nary a transition feeling contrived and a staggering level of sonic detail. Into The Sun is a composition that takes calculated risks while never coming across as arrogant. Each metre and tempo change is seamless, without clear delineations necessary in terms of solo sections versus premeditated grooves. In the track’s third and fourth minutes, the synth ostinato slows to a halt, but the momentum of the music isn’t compromised, as it either punctuates a backdrop of thunderous percussion or brings the song to a close. 

Montreal bassist RJ LeBlanc as a session leader is dazzlingly adept at precisely that: taking one simple musical element and finding a thousand different uses for it. In a less overt way, the way LeBlanc incorporates harmonics on his bass in the mesmerizing emotional core track Chanson pour Marguerite is quite fascinating. Extended passages employing harmonics are used in the beginning as a means of introducing the primary melodic figure, used as an interlude connecting sections, and then underneath the guitar (Nicolas Ferron) to create a climatically uplifting ambient soundscape. Meanwhile, this album perhaps shines brightest when LeBlanc brings along the entire ensemble, with Saturnales in particular being a dizzyingly dense achievement of married sound. The track, like the album itself, is an exploration of ingenuity and how invigorating it can be to have friends to realize your ideas.