Spirit of the American Range
Oregon Symphony; Carlos Kalmar
Pentatone PTC 5186 481

The “American Range” moniker of this album is a tad disingenuous as the three composers represented here all honed their craft in Paris in the 1920s and hailed from the East Coast of America. Boston-based Walter Piston (1894-1976) was an esteemed figure in mid-20th century American music who taught a generation of composers as a professor at Harvard. His most popular work, the masterful and highly entertaining suite from his 1938 ballet The Incredible Flutist opens this fine recording with panache.

George Antheil (1900-1959), the self-described “bad boy of modern music,” was born in Trenton, New Jersey. His 1927 composition, A Jazz Symphony, was first performed at Carnegie Hall by the African-American Harlem Symphonietta directed by W.C. Handy. The orchestra responds to this swaggering score with great gusto, with notable contributions from a very tight brass section.

Brooklyn-born composer Aaron Copland (1900-1990) stressed in his program note for the 1946 Boston premiere of his Third Symphony under Koussevitsky that his work contained “no folk or popular material,” hallmarks of his previous highly successful series of ballet scores. Nevertheless, the triumphalism of this, his most ambitious and extended composition, mirrored the optimism of the Postwar Era and the work was swiftly hailed as the epitome of the longed-for “Great American Symphony.” Kalmar’s interpretation eschews the tub-thumping often brought to this symphony with a highly sensitive and fluid reading which illuminates the complex thematic relationships between the four movements of this mighty work.

Pristinely captured in vivid sonics, these are live performances unmarred by any extraneous noises. This is a recording you’ll surely enjoy listening to repeatedly.

John Korsrud – Crush
John Korsrud’s Hard Rubber Orchestra
rubhard 04 (hardrubber.com)

From note one, it’s clear that composer and bandleader John Korsud studied at the Burning Man school of jazz, forging his wide-ranging musical inspirations into a bubbling hot electric Kool-Aid. Crush is all about oppositions: between big band and chamber music instrumentations; in the mash-up of musical genres; as competing strands within individual textures, and among the pieces, interpolating between the rabid (Crush, Lowest Tide, Slice, Wise Up) and the pensive (Peace for Ross, Mist 1 & 2). While the longer, heavier works symbolize a hydraulic press squeezing divergent energies out the seams, their shorter counterparts are the compacted, focused units at the end of the process.

On first hearing some of the pieces may sound discombobulated, but further listening reveals that even the most frenetic surfaces are unified with careful constraint. In Crush, surrounding the flailing wildness of drummer Dave Robbins, percussionist Jack Duncan and trumpet soloist Brad Turner, Korsrud displays near-tantric restraint with a slow, sustained low-register chorale, generating the tension that defines the piece. For Lowest Tide, among visceral clouds of fast and wiry ascending figures reminiscent of mid-period Ligeti, a Phil Dwyer solo scorches the Earth, Wind & Fire-inspired groove, punctuated with metallic horn shots that turn into a buzzing sax section pulp. In Come to the Dark Side, a serpentine trumpet lead (played by Korsrud) is pitted against a consistently pneumatic, stuttering accompaniment loosely recalling John Adams’ Short Ride in a Fast Machine. Industrial-strength Mahavishnu Orchestra-styled ostinati churn their repetitions alongside guttural baritone saxophone exhortations and Ron Samworth’s warped guitar playing in the final piece, Wise Up. If it seems like an implausible assemblage of ideas and sources, Korsrud and crew’s deft handling will flatten any doubt like a Jumping Jack Tamper™ on the sands of the playa.

Ziggurat
Neal Bennett; Brian Nesselroad
Redshift Records TK433
(redshiftmusic.org)

Matching personality to instruments in the brass section, trumpets are the alphas, French horns are quietly confident team players of generally modest demeanour; near the bottom you find the seeking souls who play trombone. Sensitive by nature, they mask this trait with tough-guy attitudes, fooling nobody. (The tuba runs the show, but nobody wants that to get out).

The last half-century has seen a surprising number of highly gifted sackbut virtuosi, players who turn their unwieldy horns on various dimes to produce striking results. Taking his place among them is Canadian Neal Bennett. His recent release, Ziggurat, offers works for solo trombone as well as a variety of choir sizes. Best known to local fans of new music will be Jocelyn Morlock, who contributed Sequoia for an ensemble of eight trombones and percussion and After the Rain, a solo piece. Scott Good’s Liquid Metal for ten (!) trombones, is a mighty enjoyable evocation of the foundry scene from Terminator 2.

Most of the composers are based in B.C., and his lone collaborator is percussionist Brian Nesselroad. Yes, instead of herding all available and capable practitioners for the multi-bone works (four of the seven tracks), Bennett worked all 34 (THIRTY-FOUR) parts up himself, layering overdub upon overdub. Sink that putt, I ask you.

The material is uneven. I’m nuts about Rob McKenzie’s blues-based Indigo but I feel Roydon Tse’s Continual Awakening, riffing on short-term memory impairment, is more interesting in idea than execution. Theatrics fail to work on a disc as they might on stage in Swedish composer Folke Rabe’s Basta, though the piece serves to highlight Bennett’s virtuosity. Finally there’s Ziggurat, by Farshid Samandari, a gorgeous dialogue with background voices and drums; it evokes the grand structure suggested by the title. A chattering coda ends the disc with a bang.

PEP: Piano and Ehru Project
Nicole Ge Li; Corey Hamm
Redshift Records TK437
(redshiftmusic.org)

The Vancouver duo Piano and Erhu Project (PEP), founded in 2011, is by its very nature a cross-cultural enterprise. It represents the ongoing artistic partnership between pianist and UBC music professor Corey Hamm, a champion of avant-garde music, and the erhu player Nicole Ge Li, the concertmaster of the B.C. Chinese Music Ensemble. She is a virtuoso on that Chinese two-stringed fiddle, the most popular of the huqin family. Moreover, as eloquently evidenced on this album, Li is as much at home in recent Western musical idioms as in Chinese ones.

While the combination of erhu and piano may be novel to most Canadian listeners, it isn’t news in China. There the practice of a pianist accompanying an erhu soloist reaches back into the last century. The compositions which form the backbone of Li and Hamm’s project however, exemplify a more fluid interplay between these two instruments, each an icon of its respective culture. Rather than an inter-cultural vanity project, their collective music-making focuses on polished, musically engaged readings of recently commissioned scores. It’s also a reflection of Vancouver’s rich, ever-evolving, pan-Pacific music scene.

The repertoire on the album all dates from within the last few years. It explores a wide stylistic range, from the alternately sassy, sizzling Blues ’n Grooves (2014) composed by University of Toronto composition student Roydon Tse, to Edward Top’s mysterious, modernist Lamentation (2014), a feast for Li’s expressive mastery in the erhu’s upper range. Top was a recent composer-in-residence with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra.

A word about the composers; of the ten featured here most are Canadian, including Jocelyn Morlock, John Oliver, Laurie Radford and Mark Armanini. The polished scores they have produced for PEP are all performed with care and élan, and bear repeated listening. With a treasury of over 40 commissioned works by both Canadian and Chinese composers played to high standards, I’m not surprised that Volume 2 of PEP has already been announced.

P.S. I Love You
Monica Chapman; William Sperandei
LME Records 6 79444 20020 0 (monicachapman.net)

With P.S. I Love You, talented vocalist Monica Chapman presents an engaging collection of material that is both nostalgic and romantic, but with a discernably sensual and torrid blues sensibility. She has surrounded herself with intuitive musical collaborators, including JUNO-winning producer/pianist Bill King, whose innovative arrangements (as well as his piano work) really define this well-conceived project. Other first-call musicians include Dave Young on bass, Nathan Hiltz on guitar, Mark Kelso on drums and featured guest, William Sperandei on trumpet.

First up is Irving Berlin’s Tin Pan Alley hit, I Love a Piano, which sets the stylistic tone and is sung with the rarely performed verse, which then segues into a funky chitlin’ circuit jam, replete with a burning hot trumpet solo from Sperandei. The title track is the rarely performed Gordon Jenkins/Johnny Mercer ballad, which was most notably recorded by the incomparable Billie Holiday. In Chapman’s interpretation she has captured an appropriately ironic, bittersweet subtext while clinging to the beauty of the melodic line and lyrical intent.

Of special note is another Berlin tune, Shaking the Blues Away, which is perhaps most recognized as the four-alarm number performed by Ann Miller in MGM’s classic movie musical Easter Parade – cleverly delivered here with a spicy Louisiana roadhouse feel and lusciously languid vocals. A real treat (and slightly forward in the timeline) is Lionel Bart’s theme from the 1963 James Bond flick, From Russia with Love, which is perfectly arranged for Chapman’s luscious voice in a pure, classic jazz mode. This CD is a stunner, and a wonderful follow up to Chapman’s 2014 debut CD.

Concert Note: Monica Chapman launches P.S. I Love You at Lulu Lounge on April 24. Dinner reservations recommended.

New Vocabulary
Ornette Coleman
System Dialing SDR #009 (systemdialingrecords.com)

Maverick as he has been throughout his career, alto saxophonist Ornette Coleman, who personifies experimental jazz and won the Pulitzer Prize for music in 2007, has released a new disc with little fanfare. Recorded in 2009, Coleman’s first CD since 2006, and first studio session since 1996, New Vocabulary doesn’t feature the acoustic two-basses-and-drums quartet with which the reedist has been touring for a decade. Instead Coleman improvises alongside trumpeter and electronic manipulator Jordan McLean, drummer Amir Ziv, and, on three of the 12 tracks, pianist Adam Holzman. Although his name is neither on the cover nor attributed on the un-credited songs, the idiosyncratic titles are classic Coleman-speak.

Just as the alto saxophonist defined free jazz in the late 1950s and jazz-funk fusion in the 1980s, he easily adapts to the centrality of processed wave forms plus chunky percussion beats. Significantly, his barbed but effervescent reed tone is as individual, staccato and pointed as ever. Accordingly, tunes such as H2O and The Idea Has No Destiny clearly demonstrate how cymbal cracks and fierce wide smacks plus disintegrating brass oscillations can lock in with reed brays. The result leads to elaborate spherical timbres that reach pressurized summits then coalesce joyously. With calculated chording, Holzman’s harmonies add another dimension. That means a track such as Value and Knowledge reaches a luminous climax that folds trumpet splats, drum corps rat-tat-tats and rubato piano lines into an infectious near dance beat. Finally, Gold is God’s Sex, the CD’s climactic last track, demonstrates how feverish keyboard tolling plus revved-up reed bites can tame washes of menacing electronics.

Since Coleman’s playing is oblique but decisively melodic, New Vocabulary is a disc that’s convivial as well as challenging. Plus it shows that Coleman’s authentic ideas can convincingly adapt to and be adopted by any number of undogmatic musicians.

Something In The Air | Unusual Formats for New Music - March 2015

“Everything old is new again” doesn’t go quite far enough in describing formats now available for disseminating music. Not only are downloads and streaming becoming preferred options, but CDs are still being pressed at the same time as musicians experiment with DVDs, vinyl variants and even tape cassettes. Happily the significance of the musical messages outweighs the media multiplicity.

If there’s one instance of a musician having it all, then consider Swedish saxophonist Mats Gustafsson’s boxed set Hidros 6 – Knockin’ (Not Two MW 915 nottwo.com). Recorded during a five-day gig in Krakow, by a specially constituted 12-member NU Ensemble,it highlights the group’s performance of the title track plus different musicians’ solo work. In total the Hidros box contains five CDs, two LPs, one DVD plus a 22-page LP-sized booklet. An addendum, the hour-plus DVD, includes a filmic record of different-sized ensembles improvising, rehearsing or performing the Knockin’ score plus interviews with many of the principals. All four sides of the LPs are given over to the large ensemble performance, which celebrates the transgressive sounds which Little Richard Penniman brought to pop music in the 1950s. Not rock ’n’ roll by any stretch of the imagination, Gustafsson’s graphic score combines the free jazz methodology of the players with samples of Little Richard’s works propelled by turntablist Dieb13, plus high-pitched repetition of certain phrases from his hits by vocalist Stine Janvind Motland. Climaxing with a call-and-response manifest the four sides of Knockin’ shove the vocal freedom engendered by Penniman into the instrumental realm. Solo and in sections, the players use extended instrumental procedures to fragment themes into in-your-face abstractions. Lyric soprano Motland has the hardest task since repeatedly vocalizing Little Richard lyrics such as “Hmm, I don’t need a show/Gimmie gimmie gimmie gimmie gimmie” or “Bama lama bama loo/Go, go, have a time” calls for intense concentration plus a sense of humour. She and the other players are better showcased on the three group CDs. Accompanied by only Dieb13 and drummer Paal Nilssen-Love, Motland eschews words for bird-like falsetto titters and warbles which elongate enough to make common cause with the slashes of sound and LP tracking rumbles sourced by Dieb13. At the same time her staccato pacing and wails connect on a visceral level with Nilssen-Love’s undulating and unvarying patterning. Elsewhere, the drummer demonstrates his malleability laying down an unobtrusive beat for Nybyggarland one of the vintage Scandinavian bop classics the band Swedish Azz plays. That quintet, filled out by Per Åke Holmlander’s tuba, Gustafsson on baritone sax, Dieb13 and Kjell Nordeson on vibes and drums creates a tune that’s engaging and swinging at the same time, with Nordeson’s vibes providing the sparkling melody as the low-pitched horns push out balanced blasts. Nordeson is also an exceptional drummer, with the evidence on the more-than 29-minute duet with pianist Agustí Fernández. Aggressively acoustic, the two produce a memorable savage, free-form intensity, as does a medley of New Thing classics performed on a later disc at warp-speed velocity by The Thing – Gustafsson, Nilssen-Love, bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten – plus additional tenor saxophonist Joe McPhee. With Fernández smacking the side of his instrument and forcefully plucking piano strings with fish-hook sharpness, it’s sometimes hard to determine where the drummer’s dynamic clunks and metal rustles end and his begin. Crucially this blunt-beat colouration reaches an exultant climax following the pianist’s highly volatile keyboard cascades and the percussionist’s introduction of clacking metal bar abrasions from his vibes. More memorable matchups include Fernández and Gustafsson joining trumpeter Peter Evans or McPhee with bass clarinetist Christer Bothén. On the first, the pianist’s rappelling forward at player-piano velocity challenges as well as accompanies the horn men. The result is staccato and dyspeptic timbres from both: in Evans’ case moving beyond the limits of his horn to elevate notes past triplets; and in Gustafsson’s blasting honks and slurs upwards. McPhee and Bothén create a gentler duet, each man defining the American or Swedish abstractions’ elaboration, with McPhee supplying human-like cries from his horn as Bothén appears to be digging into his own stomach lining for raw expression. With so much music to choose from however, it’s likely the listener will find much to enjoy in this box of wonders.

If Gustafsson’s package is the apex of modern sound dissemination then a couple of Montreal free improvisers go in the opposite direction with their release La Passe (Small Scale Music smallscalemusic.wordpress.com) is available only on cassette tape – though it does include a download code – which is how alto saxophonist Yves Charuest and trumpeter Ellwood Epps document their near telepathic interaction. With startlingly clear sound the five tracks capture relaxed improvisations that are often melodic and linear without ever losing a spiky edge. Merely brushing against one another as they follow parallel courses, one creates the defining narrative(s) which the other garnishes with deconstructed vamps. On Deuxième Passe for instance, tongue slaps plus bagpipe-like strains from the saxophonist foreshadow a plunger response from Epps, ensuring that the climax is polyphonic and pleasant. Similarly intersecting strategies on Quartième Passe reveal lip bubbling plus percussive bumps until separating into harsh buzzes (Charuest) and bird-like peeps (Epps). Finally as the trumpet’s airy loops bring out complementary reed timbres, the finale suggest waves lapping against a tranquil shore. A session where the message is more important than the medium, the accomplished duo deserves wider exposure in many formats.

Following up on the new vinyl emphasis, another Montreal-based duo, Pierre-Yves Martel, who plays viola da gamba, objects and feedback, and soprano saxophonist/bass clarinetist Philippe Lauzier, have released an LP of Sainct Laurens Volume 2 (E-tron Records ETRC 019 e-tron.bandcamp.com), even though Volume 1 was on CD. The choice is somewhat ironic since the textures the duo creates on these eight tracks relates more closely to computerized miniaturization than direct-to-disc mechanism. For a start, Martel’s treatment of the viola da gamba is that of a hammered dulcimer, using percussive resonation to clip and clank discursive blows even as they define the themes. Lauzier’s common strategy is to pull strident, almost vibrato-less horizontal tones from his horns, creating parallel responses to Martel’s expositions. Emphasizing his instruments’ wood, metal and reed properties, Lauzier’s tone ranges from pan flute-like airiness to violent glissandi. Additionally, triggered wave forms comment below the surface, creating more sonic surfaces to explore. Volga is one instance where Martel’s steel pan-like echoes meet equally bellicose bell-like gongs that are revealed as tongue slaps. As the buzzing timbres separate into reed blowing and sul ponticello string extensions, exhilarating timbres reach a crescendo, yet are craftily and abruptly cut off. This split-second timing plus startling tone integration and partition continues throughout the disc, making the pause between LP sides off-putting, but not insurmountable.

Another profoundly in-the-moment musician who has chosen an old-school format is British bassist Barry Guy. Referring by inference to experimental as well as advanced instant compositions, Five Fizzles for Samuel Beckett (NoBusiness Records NBEP 2 nobusinessrecords.com) is available as a 10-inch vinyl EP. Solo and only 14-minutes long, the program is as spacious and brutal as any of the Irish writer’s creations. Double stopping while pumping and pummeling his string set, Guy has created an autonomous salute where his single double bass creates more emotional resonance than exists in the author’s laconic works. Rappelling up and down his four strings at supersonic speeds, the bassist uses rasgueado and spiccato intensification in his playing, creating more resonance by vibrating a stick placed horizontally behind his strings. Besides attractive cross tones, belfry-like bell echoes and what sounds like wood rendered splinter by splinter, are heard. Finally on Fizzle V the concluding strategies reflect back on earlier tactics. Scrubbing every part of the bass, the climax combines pressure, pain and pleasure, with the coda a series of col legno whacks. Guy honors Beckett by expressing his own (musical) language.

This is also a variant on what each of the musicians here has done: producing memorable sounds preserved on individually chosen formats.

Imaginary Cities
Chris Potter Underground Orchestra
ECM 2387

Saxophonist Chris Potter first garnered attention as a sideman to senior masters, from 1994 figuring prominently in the bands of the late drummer Paul Motian and the bassists Dave Holland and Steve Swallow. In the past decade, he’s emerged as a leading figure in the contemporary mainstream, combining emotional power and an expansive creativity. He’s previously written for a ten-piece ensemble (Song for Anyone, 2007) and his last CD, The Sirens, was an extended suite inspired by Homer’s Odyssey. On Imaginary Cities he’s augmented his usual Underground quartet to an 11-member orchestra, adding vibraphone, two basses and a string quartet.

In the four-part, 36-minute title suite and four unconnected pieces, Potter constructs strong themes, synthesizing elements of jazz and classical music and matching them with rhythmic patterns sourced from as far afield as funk and Balinese gamelan to create complex grounds that both stimulate and merge with the improvised solos. Potter’s strengths are apparent from the opening Lament. His sound is flexible and expressive, hard, bright and capable of great nuance. On faster tempos, there’s a whiplash suddenness to his phrasing, while an ingrained nobility of line enhances the elegiac work.

Well past any traditional concept of the big band, Potter’s pieces for orchestra create a complex web of materials that feed his partners’ spontaneous impulses as well as his own. His regular band members – pianist Craig Taborn, guitarist Adam Rogers and drummer Nate Smith – all stand out, as do vibraphonist Steve Nelson and violinist Mark Feldman.

Prehistoric Jazz – Volume 1: The Rite of Spring
Eric Hofbauer Quintet
Creative Nation Music CNM 025

Prehistoric Jazz – Volume 2: Quintet for the End of Time
Eric Hofbauer Quintet
Creative Nation Music CNM 026 (erichofbauer.com)

For most people “prehistoric jazz” means W.C. Handy or Buddy Bolden, yet Boston-based Eric Hofbauer puts a post-modern spin on the concept. Recognizing that advanced improvisation takes as much from the so-called classical tradition as jazz, he reworks two 20th-century musical milestones into separate programs for trumpeter Jerry Sabatini, clarinetist Todd Brunel, cellist Junko Fujiwara and drummer Curt Newton plus his own guitar. Each is handled differently.

The studied primitivism of Igor Stravinsky’s symphonic The Rite of Spring is miniaturized with each player standing in for a different orchestral section. The result is as rousing and romantic as the original score, but with openings for distinctive solos that rhythmically extend the composer’s ur-modernism. Originally composed for a chamber ensemble, Olivier Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du temps is implemented with as much joyous ecstasy as the composer intended, but stripped of its overt Christian mysticism.

In essence Hofbauer finds the link between Quatuor and the gospel music that fed into the birth of jazz. That means that, for example, Louange à l’éternité de Jésus is given a swing-Dixieland treatment that includes a harshly passionate intermezzo from Fujiwara’s cello that still cossets the theme. While Messiaen’s more overtly pastoral sequences remain intact, transforming solo passages into contrapuntal duets between string strums and bass clarinet glissandi in one instance or another matching graceful trumpet lines to the metallic clank of guitar preparations, enhances the narrative. As well the supple rhythm output by Newton and picked up by the others adds festive swing to the proceedings. With one section titled danse de la fueur… contrasting dynamics played by the five wrap up into novel expressions as song-like as the original.

The Rite of Spring presents another strategy. With sequences such as the augurs of spring rife with motion, Hofbauer adapts the locomotive-style theme so that call-and-response strums, slaps, slurs and squeaks add up to linear movement. Fujiwara often uses a walking bass line, and extended plunger trumpet tones and extended drum ruffs are frequently heard, but this doesn’t prevent the narrative from jumping from swing to smooth and back again. This melodiousness extends to a motif-like mystic circle of the young girls where a clarinet/guitar duo adds a clean blues sensibility to the line.

By the final section with its evocation and ritual action leading to the sacrificial dance, Stravinsky’s Slavic roughness gives way to buzzing reed vibrations plus trumpet obbligatos that add a jazz sensibility to the score. Melding improvised music’s rugged tunefulness with Stravinsky’s mercurial vision, the climax is more buoyant yet just as rhythmically sophisticated as the original.

The Blues Violin
Lenny Solomon
Independent #301 (thebluesviolin.com)

After the international success of his show Bowfire, Lenny Solomon is returning to his roots with his newest release The Blues Violin. This JUNO Award-winning Toronto musician has built a solid reputation as a jazz violinist, though he has a lengthy classical and pop background. The music on this album journeys through different blues styles but that is not all – Lenny Solomon adds jazz, funk and rock elements with the craftsmanship of a mature artist. The rhythm section (Marc Ganetakos, guitar; Shelly Berger, bass; Mark Lalama, keyboards; Steve Heathcote, drums and percussion) provides a wonderful landscape for the savvy violin solos and shines in solos of their own. Greg Kolchinsky, who recorded and mixed this album, did a fine job bringing out the variety of electric violin sounds.

The recording opens and closes with lively jazz numbers - Jumpy gives a nod to the Jump Jive sound and features fluent violin solos and buoyant horns while Jojo, in addition to the impressive violin improvisations, offers the spotlight to the rhythm section. In between are mellow compositions such as Winter Tears and Slow Side into Blues (this one evocative of Stephane Grappelli’s style) and more animated ones – Half Full Blue, with its majestic opening and a rock beat, and Spooky Blues, with clear violin lines over funk guitar. Edgar’s Blues stands out for its wah-wah violin effects – the violin sound is stimulated with electronics and controlled by the movement of the player’s foot, creating an expressive tone that mimics the human voice.

Highly recommended for escaping the winter blues.

My Day in the Sun
Shirley Eikhard
Independent SEM2014 (shirleyeikhard.ca)

Shirley Eikhard is one of the most significant, contemporary singer/songwriter/composers that Canada has ever produced. She has created hit songs for a variety of international artists – blurring the lines between musical genres and embracing elements of country, blues, pop and soul. Eikhard’s Grammy-winning song Something to Talk About became a megahit for the incomparable Bonnie Raitt and she has also penned material for such diverse artists as Rita Coolidge, Anne Murray, Emmylou Harris, Cher and Chet Atkins. Eikhard’s latest project, My Day in the Sun, is rife with her trademark lyrical and melodic skill. Each track is an original Eikhard composition, and a synesthetic treat – in other words, a satisfying delight for the head, heart, eyes, ears and spirit.

The Reggae/Ska-influenced opener Pray for Rain features clever multi-tracked vocals (as well as an appropriate Farfisa-like keyboard patch), and sets the stylistic tone for the entire CD on which Eikhard not only sings all the parts but also plays all the instruments. Her rich, warm, alto voice easily wraps itself around the soulful, rhythmic tracks and effortlessly imbues each song with her distinctive lyrical poetry and profound emotional content. The title track explores her very personal journey as a mature artist… a journey that has not only wended its way through a long and meaningful career, but a career that is as artistically relevant now as it has ever been. It is a joy to hear Eikhard singing in her own, authentic voice – with more than a little positivity, power and truth (elements often lacking in today’s simplistic pop tunes). Of particular note is What Could Have Been – an anthem about putting the past in perspective and moving ahead into a joyous future.

Though Kenny Wheeler emigrated to Britain in the 1950s, few made his ongoing contribution to jazz in Canada, from teaching at the Banff Centre and recording with the Maritime Jazz Orchestra to performing in between – and no Canadian jazz musician has been a greater stylistic influence around the world – from his distinctive leaping lines and subtly expressive pitch mutations to the spacious invention of his compositions. Wheeler passed away in September 2014 but was already in ill-health in December 2013 when he recorded Songs for Quintet (ECM 2388, ecmrecords.com). It’s typical Wheeler, here surrounded by his quintet of London regulars, the powerful tenor saxophonist Stan Sulzmann, the spare and glassy toned guitarist John Parricelli and the rhythm section of Chris Laurence and Martin France, so quietly buoyant as to be almost invisible. That’s one of the special qualities of a Wheeler performance, a kind of musical intimacy that suggests a man at home composing, playing the piano or flugelhorn, looking out the window, then suddenly illuminated by an epiphany, some confluence of memory, climate and mood, some revelation that transforms the quotidian. Wheeler’s breath and embouchure may be less secure than they once were, but that rare vision is intact throughout this CD, a final gem in a brilliant discography.

If classical music and jazz have intersected in a thousand different ways, the meeting has rarely been as comfortable as John Roney’s Preludes (Effendi FND138, effendirecords.com). In an hour-long program, the pianist blurs the lines between interpretation and improvisation, stretching the contours and harmonic vocabularies of a series of classical preludes by Bach, Gershwin, Debussy, Chopin and Scriabin, with Duke Ellington’s Prelude to a Kiss included to further the range. There’s a romantic sweep to much of the music, a passion for melody that will press a piece into another idiom. An opening prelude from Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier stretches to impressionism, a closing one to boogie-woogie. Debussy, Chopin and Scriabin have influenced the greatest jazz pianists (Art Tatum, Bud Powell, Bill Evans) to such an extent that it seems perfectly natural to hear them extended in such a fluid way.

It’s been two years since Tell, the debut of Myriad 3, and the trio of pianist Chris Donnelly, bassist Dan Fortin and drummer Ernesto Cervini continues to develop a distinctive style onThe Where (Alma ACD61742, almarecords.com), fusing classical and pop elements in a traditional piano trio. The band’s identity hinges on the shared composing strengths of its members, each of whom brings an almost orchestral palette to the trio. The group’s sonic breadth is further enhanced by the band’s prodigious doubling: both Donnelly and Fortin employ synthesizers, while Cervini overdubs four woodwinds on his own der Trockner. There’s a distinctive direction evident from Donnelly’s First Flight, propelled by a rhythmic force that suggests art rock bands like King Crimson, and it’s just as palpable at the CD’s conclusion with Fortin’s looming, brooding Don’t You Think.

Eric Dolphy was an essential catalyst in the free jazz revolution of the 1960s. A brilliant multi-reed player, he made vital contributions to the music of John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman and Charles Mingus, among others, helping to shape a generation. 2014 was the 50th anniversary of his death and among the commemorations is Tangent (for Eric Dolphy) by Ken Aldcroft’s Convergence Ensemble (Trio Records TRP-020, kenaldcroft.com/triorecords.asp). True to Dolphy’s innovative spirit, guitarist Aldcroft pursues his own course (only the theme of Section VI strongly suggests Dolphy’s compositions), supplying composed materials to his band who are free to initiate and combine them, extending the freedom of improvisation while developing specific ideas. The spirit of group creation is strong and the results are consistently engaging, with complex dialogues involving all concerned, including trombonist Scott Thomson, bassist Wes Neal, drummer Joe Sorbara and new arrival Karen Ng on alto saxophone. Her finest moments arise in the cool fire of Section V.

Karen Ng has rapidly become a significant presence at the creative edges of Toronto jazz. In 2014 she also joined See Through Trio, a project founded in 2004 that includes pianist Tania Gill and bassist Pete Johnston. Devoted to Johnston’s angular and elusive compositions, Parallel Lights (Woods and Waters Records WW008, seethroughtrio.bandcamp.com/album/parallel-lights) evokes the music of the Jimmy Giuffre 3 circa 1961, a kind of minimalist free jazz at chamber music dynamics that featured compositions by Carla Bley. In the same spirit, See Through Trio creates quietly involving, thoughtfully deliberated music. It’s a “hear through” trio, one in which every note of Ng’s light, Lee Konitz-like alto timbre and Gill and Johnston’s sparse, linear work is in sharp relief, even on the relatively animated Never the Right Angle.

Montreal’s Bronze Age Records is releasing new music on vinyl LPs, part of a widening movement convinced of the medium’s sonic superiority. One of its first releases further invokes the golden age of vinyl: En Direct du Suoni per Il Popolo (Bronze Age Records, bronzeagerecords.com) presents Nouveau Jazz Libre de Québec, a descendant of Quatuor Jazz Libre de Québec, the group that combined the liberating messages of free jazz and Quebec nationalism in the mid-60s. The original band’s sole survivor, drummer Guy Thouin, combines here with saxophonists Bryan Highbloom (tenor and soprano) and guest Raymon Torchinsky (alto) to create raw, energetic free jazz with all the emotional power that marked it in the 1960s. Thouin’s machine-gun snare and restless tom-toms drive the saxophones forward, whether it’s a distinctive take on Monk’s Bemsha Swing (here reconfigured as Bemsha Swingish) or the original Theme 25ieme Avenue. 

The treasured recordings of Renata Tebaldi that grace the collections of countless music lovers around the globe have been re-issued, all of them, in an omnibus edition in the now familiar cube issued by Decca (4781535, 66 CDs). These are not reissues from doubtful sources but from the archives of Decca itself, ensuring the very best sound of the original recordings.

53 of the CDs contain 27 complete operas: Mefistofele, La Wally, Adriana Lecouvreur, Andrea Chénier, Cavalleria Rusticana, La Gioconda, La Bohème (1951 & 1959), La Fanciulla del West, Madama Butterfly (1951 & 1958), Manon Lescaut, Tosca (1951 & 1959), Turandot, Il Trittico, Aida (1952 & 1959), Un Ballo in Maschera, Don Carlo, La Forza del Destino, Otello (1954 & 1961) La Traviata and Il Trovatore. Also the Verdi Requiem (1951).

Included in the casts are Carlo Bergonzi, Jussi Björling, Mario del Monaco, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, George London, Luciano Pavarotti, Caesare Siepi, Marilyn Horne, Nicolai Ghiaurov, Regina Resnik… and the list goes on. Conductors include Karajan, Solti, Bonynge, Serafin and many others.

Also included are albums of Songs, Folk Songs, Opera Arias, Opera Duets, a Christmas album and Rarities.

Tebaldi’s recording career began in 1951 and ended with her retirement in 1973. Some operas were recorded twice giving us the opportunity to do the thing collectors do and compare the first Tebaldi to Tebaldi seven years on. Or just to enjoy hearing Tebaldi again and again. Complete casts and recording data are included but no librettos and translations.

To make it possible to easily locate a particular recording I suggest that the first thing to do is clearly copy the disc number, 1 through 66, on the top right-hand corner of the paper sleeve.

Wilhelm Furtwängler’s final performance of the Beethoven Ninth was in Lucerne on August 22, 1954 with the Philharmonia Orchestra, the Lucerne Festival Chorus and soloists Elizabeth Schwarzkopf, Elsa Cavelti, Ernst Haefliger and Otto Edelmann. Based on the original analogue tapes from the broadcasting archives, audite has produced an exemplary re-mastering (SACD 92.641). The rather dry acoustic exposes a lot more than the relatively murky 1951 Bayreuth Festival recording from EMI. The Philharmoniafrom London is heard here in its glory days, the tempos are familiar to Furtwängler’s devotees and absolutely everything fits together to perfection. From the first bars the superior sound of this new disc unzips all the nuances and dovetailing of instrumental colour. Furtwängler’s elemental vision of the third movement is singular. The forces are so inspired and well-rehearsed that the staggering difficulty of the fourth movement finale is achieved without any sense of effort; not at all easy in a live performance. This is consistent with and a perfect document of Furtwängler’svision of the Ninth and is an essential addition to an appropriate collection. Incidentally, the Tahra SACD issued in 2008 sounds to have been based on a later generation copy.

Another new SACD re-mastering from Praga of legendary performances features David Oistrakh playing Beethoven’s Violin Concerto and the Triple Concerto both licensed from EMI (PRD/DSD 350082 SACD hybrid). Neither recording is the first time Oistrakh was showcased in this repertoire but this was the first time he had recorded them in stereo. The soloists in the 1958 Triple were not strangers, being members of the David Oistrakh Trio, pianist Lev Oborin and cellist Stanislav Knushevitzky accompanied by the Philharmonia Orchestra under EMI’s house conductor, Sir Malcolm Sargent.The Violin Concerto, also from 1958, was recorded in Paris with the ORF Orchestra directed by André Cluytens. David Oistrakh’s various recordings of Beethoven and just about anything else remain landmarks and their value undiminished. The sound on this new production is cleaner, more spacious and detailed than the original stereo discs.

Martha Argerich & Claudio Abbado – Complete Concerto Recordings (DG 4794155): The first collaboration between Abbado and Argerichto be recorded by DG was in 1967 with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestraplaying the Prokofiev Third Piano Concerto and the Ravel G Major. The last concerto in this inexpensive little 5CD box documents their last concert in March 2013 at the Lucerne Easter Festival playing the Mozart Piano Concertos No.20, K466 and No. 25, K503. In the intervening years DG recorded the Chopin Concerto No.1, the Liszt First Concerto and the Ravel G Major made during Abbado’s tenure with the London Symphony; the Tchaikovsky First with the Berliner and the Beethoven Second and Third Concertos with the Mahler Orchestra. In every case the performances are perfectly judged and persuasive, displaying both sensitivity and authority that serve the composers well.

The welcome series of the young Martha Argerich on Doremi has arrived at Volume Four (DHR-8036) containing items from the 1965 Seventh International Chopin Competition in Warsaw of which Argerich was the First Prize winner. By 1965 Argerich had already won the first prize at two other international competitions in Geneva and Bolzano. And she was already signed to a recording contract with DGG. These selections of award-clinching performances as recorded live from the Chopin Competition, presented in flawless sound, are valuable documents of the rising star. Works include the Third Sonata, a selection of Nocturnes, Etudes, Preludes, the Polonaise Op.53 and more. A bonus track is a very rare recording from Buenos Aires of the 14-year-old “lioness at the piano” playing the Etude, Op.10, No.1. 

Wagner – Parsifal
Royal Opera House; Antonio Pappano
Opus Arte OA 1158 D

The sacred forest of the Grail a sterile hospital ward... Parsifal’s bow a broken bicycle wheel… The symbol of the Holy Grail a bleeding innocent young boy... The Knights look like a bunch of football hooligans. These and more are some of the disturbing images of this latest incarnation of Parsifal from the Royal Opera House, conceived by British director Stephen Langridge and Britain’s sole contribution to Wagner’s 200th anniversary. A controversial new production aimed to shock and wake up a supposedly smug, complacent audience to realities of today’s world? Perhaps, but nevertheless Parsifal is still a Bühnenweihfestspiel (“A Festival Play for the Consecration of the Stage” – Wagner) that must transcend the mundane into an exalted domain, as certainly achieved recently by the Met. Whether achieved here visually I am not so certain although the hypermodern cubistic set (by designer Alison Chitty) does morph ingeniously into an impressive, luminous cathedral in the Transformation Scene of Act I. 

But if you are worried at all, please “Have no fear,” I heard Gerald Finley say, because this is indeed a glorious Parsifal thanks mainly to Antonio Pappano’s insightful, deeply felt and thoroughly understood musical direction. The faultless, mostly English-speaking cast has Simon O’Neill, a strong heldentenor from New Zealand (Parsifal), Sir Willard White, the formidable bass-baritone from Jamaica (Klingsor) and legendary English basso Robert Lloyd as Titurel. From Germany comes René Pape, today’s best Gurnemanz and the great singer-actress Angela Denoke whose radiant portrayal of Kundry is somewhat marred by her pronounced vibrato.

The biggest surprise and a great sensation, however, is Canadian baritone Gerald Finley creating a lasting impression as a newcomer to the incredibly difficult central role of the suffering sinner, Amfortas.

Handel’s Recorder: Recorder Sonatas; Musick for the Royal Fireworks
Ruth Wilkinson; Miriam Morris; John O’Donnell
Divine Art dda 25124
(divineartrecords.com)

Putting out a CD of Handel’s recorder sonatas might seem a slightly strange choice these days, as numerous versions are already available; but then, if musicians want to record music they’ve known and long enjoyed, who’s to argue? Featuring three Australians active as performers and teachers for over three decades, this disc opens with a twist: an intimate version of the Music for the Royal Fireworks, arranged in the 18th century (like much of Handel’s opera music) for treble instrument and basso continuo. It’s a pleasure to hear this piece in miniature, and quite entertaining if you’re familiar with the heartily orchestrated original!

The four recorder sonatas from Handel’s Opus 1, lovely pieces all, follow in their usual order, and there is much tasteful and cheery playing here. The perennial balance problems in the A minor sonata are solved by the removal of the bass viol from the mix, though that’s a bit of a pity because Handel’s bass lines are so robust, but that said, harpsichordist John O’Donnell whips through the feisty second movement with aplomb. The seasoned and well-knit ensemble playing of recorder player Ruth Wilkinson and her colleagues O’Donnell and gambist Miriam Morris is immediately evident, as is their affection for this music. The booklet notes are informative and the recorded sound is particularly beautiful; because of this, the session photo of the musicians with their tech team is a very nice touch.