Thanks...
Linton Garner
Cellar Live CL062402 (cellarlive.com)

The late, great pianist Linton Garner spent the last 30 years of his life as a beloved and respected member of the Vancouver jazz scene. Garner relished his younger brother Erroll’s success, but focused his own musical career on orchestral, ensemble and small venue performance work – often sharing the stage with jazz luminaries, including Billy Eckstein, Nancy Wilson, Lester Young, Dizzie Gillespie and Miles Davis – all the while acting as a treasured teacher and mentor to several generations of Vancouver-centric jazz musicians.

This superb project is the brainchild of Don Fraser, who acts as producer here. Fraser enjoyed a long professional and personal relationship with Garner and was the drummer in his trio for more than six years. Thanks…is a labour of love for Fraser, and as Garner would have wanted – all proceeds from the project are earmarked for the Linton Garner Scholarship Fund at Capilano University in North Vancouver.

The album itself is comprised of remastered CBC recordings, from 1993 through 2002 (featuring Fraser on drums, Stewart Loseby on sax and bassist Peter Trill) as well as live tracks from a memorable B.C. concert performance (I Never Said Goodbye) dedicated to Garner’s late brother, Erroll.

Highlights of this fine recording and tribute include the gospel-infused piano solo Pittsburgh Blue; the evocative I Never Said Goodbye and the elegant trio tune Won’t You Come Dance With Me. The final track on the CD is saxophonist Loseby’s deeply moving Lament for Mr. G, which features Miles Black on piano and was recorded following Garner’s passing in 2004.

The Bell
Ches Smith; Craig Taborn; Mat Maneri
ECM 2474

One Night in Indy
Wes Montgomery
Resonance HCD-2018 (resonancerecords.org)

In October 1959, Wes Montgomery recorded his debut LP, The Wes Montgomery Trio, for Riverside Records. It would rapidly make him the most eminent guitarist in jazz, famed for his sheer invention and drive as well as his unorthodox thumb-picking and improvised lines in unison octaves. The previous January, when this was recorded, Montgomery was a 35-year-old Indianapolis factory worker who regularly played in local bars and astonished visiting stars. Documenting a performance in an unnamed venue put on by the Indianapolis Jazz Club, a loose association of fans, One Night in Indy presents the Chicago-based trio of pianist Eddie Higgins with Montgomery as a special local guest.

Passed down by members of the club until it reached Resonance Records (even the name of the bass player is unknown), the tape documents a great set of club jazz from a year when the modern mainstream was in full flower. It’s a joyous meeting of musicians who speak the same idiom with fluency and imagination, no doubt with spirits raised by the sheer surprise of Montgomery’s creative energy and distinctive approach, complete with runs executed in chords. The program begins and ends with standards – Give Me the Simple Life, You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To – and relies on classic jazz anthems in between, delivering liquid beauty to Ellington’s Prelude to a Kiss and plenty of momentum to Stompin’ at the Savoy and the Basie hit Li’l Darlin’.

It’s all carried forward by the masterful drumming of Walter Perkins and that solid, anonymous bassist, with Higgins and Montgomery matching one another in swing, invention and sheer elan. One of the most special moments comes on Thelonious Monk’s subtly dissonant ballad Ruby, My Dear, with Higgins supplying an abstract, bell-like introduction.

The Fictive Five
Larry Ochs
Tzadik TZ 4012 (rova.org)

Clues to saxophonist Larry Ochs’ expansive cinematic approach to composition are that three of four lengthy tracks here salute filmmakers Wim Wenders, Kelly Reichardt and William Kentridge. Just as those cineastes advanced diverse takes on the language of film, so Ochs references the free music breakthroughs of John Coltrane and Albert Ayler. More crucially though, in the same way that none of these filmmaker’s work replicates earlier productions – or each other’s ideas – so too is The Fictive Five project a step beyond the visions of Ayler and Trane. Plus like filmmaking this project is a group effort, the concepts of Ochs as writer-director are interpreted by a cast of Nate Wooley’s truculent trumpet sneers, drummer Harris Eisenstadt’s irregular splashes and snare splatters, the dynamo-like pressure that emanates from dual bassists Ken Filiano and Pascal Niggenkemper, and like auteurs such as Orson Welles or John Cassavetes, a role for jagged abrasions that make up Ochs’ outlay on tenor and sopranino saxophone on the CD.

Take By Any Other Name, the appropriately animated salute to South African artist and animator Kentridge, for instance. Here the bassists reveal their Internet-era adaptation of experimental music, judiciously tinging the thumping interchange with virtuosic strumming and twanging amplified by preparations and effects. As excitement is intensified via crying reed split tones, rim-shot pitter-patter and bugle call-like brassiness from Wooley, the bass lines eventually divide, with one bassist ruggedly advancing the theme while the other comments on it with an archer’s bow-like vibrations.

It’s this sort of intuitive communication that characterizes the rest of the CD as well. But expressiveness doesn’t have to mean stringent discordance. Translucent for example, dedicated to Reichardt, begins with Eisenstadt’s metal garbage-can lid approximating commotion intersecting with slobbering puffs and smears from the horns as the bassists put a choke hold on their instruments’ necks for more percussive pummelling. But by its climax – and the CD’s completion – tongue slaps and snarls turn to gnarly harmonies aided by banjo-like rhythmic plinks from the bassists.

Like the themes engendered in a well-made film, the sounds here highlight affinity, as well as agitation, for proper dramatic effects.

Live at Literaturhaus
The Living Room; Barry Guy
Ilk 239 CD (ilkmusic.com)

Demonstrating the distinction between fission and fusion, veteran British bassist Barry Guy partners the Danish Living Room trio in a timbre-suturing-like program that sounds like three improvisations from an integrated quartet rather than from a trio plus one. Sophisticated in the use of multifold string techniques, Guy has spent a half century intersecting with improv visionaries, so the challenges advanced by reedist Torben Snekkestad, keyboardist Søren Kjærgaard and drummer Thomas Strønen don’t faze him.

However Live at Literaturhaus doesn’t become a Guy quartet session. Strønen’s cross-cut cymbal scratches and percussive buzzing; Kjærgaard’s high-frequency piano chording and judicious electric keyboard interjections; plus Snekkestad’s timbres from soprano and tenor saxophones and reed trumpet which often seem to be aggressively forced through a stainless steel strainer, are just as prominent. These pared guttural blows alongside the telephone static-like crackling from the other two Living Roomers in Part 1 bring out staccato stops from Guy, that alternate between lowing and squeaking. Before the 51-minute performance wraps up with an evocative yet muscular finale at the completion of Part 3, it’s only one strategy advanced by the four. Midway through Part 2, for instance, Snekkestad’s tenor timbres turns boudoir-like sensuous with equivalent hedonistic splashes from Kjærgaard’s piano. While Part 3 eventually locks together winnowing reed draughts, bass string pounding and drum ruffs, the first part of the last selection is as belligerent as a declaration of war. Triple-stopping sul ponticello strokes from the bassist, crowded, circularly breathed pitch alternations bubbling from Snekkestad’s horns and swelling dynamics from the keyboard(s), and descending accents and pauses from the drummer, lead to a narrative that slowly disappears, leaving echoes of peace and power.

From the Attic of My Mind
Sam Most
Xanadu Master Edition 906074 (elemental-music.com)

Herbie Mann may have been the most prolific; Pail Horn the most mystical; and Moe Koffman the one who composed the tune most closely identified with the instrument, but the musician who assuredly created a niche for the flute in modern jazz was Sam Most. Most (1930-2013) was an unprepossessing journeyman who spent most of his career in Hollywood studios and Las Vegas show bands. But by the early 1950s, his rhythmic overblowing and expanded colour palette fully confirmed the flute’s improvisationary dexterity. Backed matchlessly by pianist Kenny Barron, bassist George Mraz, drummer Walter Bolden and percussionist Warren Smith, the reissued 1978 session, From the Attic of My Mind, is doubly valuable since it’s the only CD made up completely of Most’s compositions.

With an economy of phrasing and an extravagance of taste, Barron amplifies Most’s tonal strategies, whether it’s moderato low-pitched sonority on the bossa nova-like Breath of Love or the funky boogaloo of Keep Moving. In the latter, the flutist’s Rahsaan Roland Kirk-like note popping coupled with unison throat vocalizing is given extra impetus by Smith’s swiveling pulses and ratcheting pressures. Most also demonstrates his flexibility by transforming a romantic introduction that evolves from Mraz’s bowed bass lines into a jumping romp on Child of the Forest, and performing a similar feat with You Are Always the One that expands from a backwards turning ballad to a finger snapper with a solo that encompasses a quote from Manhattan, ornamental cadenzas and peeping beats. But it’s the simplicity of the blues that best showcase Most’s balance of passion and precision. His low-pitched rhythmic stutters intensify the earthy mood that a groove engendered by locked double bass and piano chording on Blue Hue begins; while Out of Sight in Mind contrasts his muscular flute lines with Barron’s most delicate pianism.

Like an author whose freshness of style grew out of his initial ingenuity, and is recognized only after it has been put in the context of others’ prose that this CD confirms Most’s historical importance as a pioneering flutist while also preserving high-quality sounds.

Blackout
Worst Pop Band Ever
Independent (wpbe.bandcamp.com/album/blackout)

The satirically named Worst Pop Band Ever (WPBE) has been crafting its eclectic blend of jazz, pop, funk, dance, soundtrack music and humour for a decade. Blackout is a fresh and successful take on a genre-hopping approach to music making that has seen a growing number of exponents in recent years. The two-keyboard mix of Dafydd Hughes and Adrean Farrugia combine with DJ LEO37’s turntables to create varied and unique textures over the rhythm section of Tim Shia and Drew Birston on drums and bass. Saxophonist Chris Gale is a powerful voice and the de facto singer in a group that doesn’t have one but certainly could.

The group grafts wide-ranging musical elements onto each other that serve to subtly or not so subtly transform the source materials. Peachy Keen features modern jazz piano comping over a reggae feel that creates a surprisingly ideal setting for Chris Gale’s soulful saxophone solo. The abrupt switch to a full-out rock groove with electronica for the tune’s ending somehow seems completely appropriate.

Satie-like chords float in from the crowd noise of Group Scene. The evocative piano melody gives way to Drew Birston’s melodic bass solo and synth textures heighten the atmosphere. Electric piano and Hammond B3 provide a classic backdrop for Adrean Farrugia’s funky Gospel. Farrugia and Gale solo exuberantly in the spirit of the tune. WPBE veers between being ironic and overt but it always wears its pop influences proudly.

Some Fun Out of Life
Rebecca Binnendyk
Alma Records RBM63052 (almarecords.com)

Rock Bach
Double-Double Duo
Independent (doubledoubleduo.com)

Think and listen before you make any assumptions about the musical combination of accordion and clarinet. Double-Double Duo is more than a sweet sugary sound. The imaginative musical mastery, unorthodox arrangements/transcriptions and tight ensemble playing of accordionist/pianist Michael Bridge and clarinettist/pianist Kornel Wolak stretches boundaries in both the acoustic and electronic realms in this release featuring works from their live concert repertoire.

The Brahms Rondo alla Zingarese is a more traditional transcription and exciting performance. In contrast, the four Scarlatti keyboard sonatas are given an eclectic transcription with the clarinet leading the contrapuntal lines and the free bass accordion offering harmonic and contrapuntal support. The title track Rock Bach is a musical stretch as J.S. Bach’s baroque style is shoved into modern-day sound machinations, complete with drum-kit crashes from the Roland electronic accordion. One may wonder what happened to the accordion in Petit Fleur (Bechet) and Flying Home (Goodman), as a flip of a switch and press of a button have Bridge’s Roland accordion emulate guitars, drums, keyboards etc. while Wolak wails through his clarinet leads. A traditional Bulgarian piece and Vivaldi’s Summer complete the package.

Kudos for taking risks with listener favourites – one may not like the sound but there is so much care, energy, compassion and knowledge of divergent styles that their ideas must be respected. Detailed liner notes and more than the 35 minutes of music included here would be appreciated though. Looking forward to the next “refill” release!

Petal
Avataar
InSound Records IS003 (sundarmusic.com)

Ethno-Charango
Surkalén
Independent (surkalen.ca)

Kalo-Yele
Aly Keïta; Jan Galega Brönnimann; Lucas Niggli
Intakt CD 261 (intaktrec.ch)

This record marks a kind of homecoming for the Swiss drummer Lucas Niggli and reed player Jan Galega Brönnimann. The two became childhood friends in Cameroon and later played together in numerous bands in Switzerland and France during their teenage years. In the 30 years since, Niggli has focused on free jazz and composition while Brönnimann has played electronic jazz and world music. Presented with an opportunity to work with Aly Keïta, Côte d’Ivoire master of the balafon, a marimba-like instrument with calabash resonators, Niggli invited his old friend to make this a trio.

The musical results are consistently remarkable. Niggli is at once one of the world’s most precise percussionists and one of the most creative, exploring a host of sounds from drums, cymbals and gongs while layering complex patterns and interacting with his partners. Aly Keïta has transformed the traditional balafon, crafting a chromatic version of the hyper-resonant instrument. Emphasizing his bass and contrabass clarinets, Brönnimann is as apt to play rhythmic patterns as traditional melodies. The parts all course together into a series of highly distinctive pieces, from the jazz-like beats of Niggli’s Bean Bag, to the piquant sweetness of Brönnimann’s wriggling soprano saxophone on Keïta’s joyously complex Abidjan Serenade, which gains layer upon layer of rhythm. Other fine moments include the sudden contrast of scraped cymbals and gritty contrabass clarinet on Brönnimann’s Bafut and the explosive riffing of Keïta’s Adjamé Street that concludes the CD.

The music resounds with the discovery of a new world, an Africa of the imagination that has coalesced in a Bern recording studio.

Young Blood Still Pumps in Jazz

Child prodigies really don’t exist in improvised music. Occasionally there may be some youngster known for jazz playing. But unlike other musics which depend on a performer having a cute image or being able to copy what’s on the score paper, improvising demands full exposure of an inner self. Lacking maturity, the majority of these tyros soon disappear. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t young improvising musicians. But to create notable works, like the skills of exceptional actors or visual artists, true musical talent is almost always refined during the player’s 20s or 30s.

Take German percussionist Christian Lillinger, 31, for instance. An in-demand sideman and leader of smaller bands for the past few years, the septet he assembles on Grund (Pirouet PIT 3086 pirouet.com) allows him to craft interlocking arrangements for the 11 tunes he composed. Except for his singular incisive drum beats which underline or put into bold face the cumulative sound, Grund is an exercise in parallelism. There are two saxophonists, Pierre Borel and Tobias Delius; two double bassists, Jonas Westergaard and Robert Landfermann; while Christopher Dell’s vibraphone and Achim Kaufmann’s piano are the chordal instruments. Like a well-drilled military unit this is a group effort. Lean and taut, each of the drummer’s tunes is directed from behind via stick-slapping nerve beats, cymbal taps or positioned rolls, allowing Kaufmann’s piano or tongue-slapping reeds to create the declarative theme statement, with Dell’s vibes scattering reflective tone colours like new paint glittering on a surface. Most reflective of the moods the seven engender are the adjoining Blumer and Malm. The latter is pitched so that it sounds like a Jazz Messengers LP played at 45 rpm with Delius’ sharp clarinet tones adding atonality, while the vibes lighten the mood. When barroom piano-styled pumps and dual horn flutter tonguing threaten to derail the narrative, regular drum thwacks push the theme back on track. In contrast Blumer is organized like a gentle chamber piece with first vibes, then piano and finally swaying horns voicing the melody. What could be jejune is transformed as the low-energy narrative is agitated by a clip-clop drum beat. Buzzing dual bass lines, rolling piano chords or atonal sax explorations are prominent elsewhere. But whether the results are balladic or bombastic, the spackle-like fills from Lillinger’s percussion patterns consistently and distinctively glue the parts together.

French alto saxophonist Pierre Borel, 28, is also one of the voices in the Berlin-based quartet Die Hochstapler, along with fellow Gaul, trumpeter Louis Laurain, 31; Italian bassist Antonio Borghini, 38; and German drummer Hannes Lingens 35. Dedicated to aleatoric strategies that mix notation and improvisation, Die Hochstapler’s The Music of Alvin R. Buckley (Umlaut ub007 umlautrecords.com) is inspired by the probability theory of researcher and musician Buckley (1929-1964) who apparently abandoned music after an encounter with Karlheinz Stockhausen. Never particularly jazzy, although the concluding Playing Cards easily fits into that idiom with walking bass and parry-and-thrust movement from the horns as if participants in a speed-chess match, the CD’s five tunes are instead concerned with how many unexpected strategies can be teased out of an initial theme statement. Lingens’ rhythm accents are placed with clocklike regularity or expressed in free metre to intensify the steaming emotionalism from Laurain and Borel. A further trope slyly combines martial-like beats with oblique exaggerations related to modern chamber recitals. Layered horn tones are particularly evident on…ce que le ver est a la pomme as phrasing ranges from those replicating wind-shaking trees to fortissimo porcine snorts. Elaborating the tune as they deconstruct it, the saxophonist’s squeaks, runs and the drummer’s press rolls move in and out of bop emulation before torrid trumpet toots thrust the piece back to swing underpinnings. Other performances include players lobbing divergent sequences until a melody connects as if plopping pieces in winning order in a game of Chinese checkers. Dribbling reed vibrations, smoothly bowed bass strings and focused paradiddles suggest calming cool jazz swing on every bird must be catalogued; or an unexpected foot-tapping melody can arise after bellicose brass plunger tones and body tube sax growls are regularized into an upbeat theme on le musician est au son.

Another musician who has created his own sound is French violinist/violist Théo Ceccaldi, 29, whose quartet on Petit Moutarde (ONJazz JP-001 onj.org), performs music he composed inspired by French director René Clair’s 1924 Dadaist short film Entr’acte. The CD is twice the length of the movie, but its initial tracks are crafted organically enough to accompany the film. (Try it yourself with a muted Internet version of Entr’acte). But Petit Moutarde is much more than that. Balancing his superior training in notated music with the jazz sophistication of Alexandra Grimal, 35, who plays tenor, soprano and sopranino saxophones plus vocalizes wordlessly here, the music isn’t some hybrid jazz/classical soundtrack but a melange that stands on its own. With drummer Florian Satche both time-keeping and layering the tracks with cymbal scratches and other unconventional percussion techniques plus bassist Ivan Gélugne alternating between string slaps and rubbing arco concordance with Ceccaldi or Grimal, visuals aren’t necessary. Although some portions of the tracks are purposefully as herky-jerky as the movements in Clair’s film, overall blistering modernism overcomes bal musette-like nostalgia. Bowed bass strings make a proper backing for the fiddler’s Paganini-like display on Petit Wasabi for instance, as curbed and cantilevered swipes fly with upwards enthusiasm. Double counterpoint from violin and saxophone complement one another like steak and frites on Petit Chipotle, as Grimal’s fragile stutters are reflected by Ceccaldi’s delicate stops. Swing can also be displayed at breakneck speed as on Petit Harissa, when tenor saxophone tonal squirts and fused staccato rubbing from double bass and violin strings join focused press rolls to produce limitless excitement.

More excitement is apparent on Green Light (MultiKulti MPTO 12 multikulti.com), where Poles, clarinetists Wacław Zimpel, 32, and percussionist Hubert Zemler 35, play on equal terms with well-known American new music improvisers, clarinetist Evan Ziporyn and guitarist Gyan Riley. Beginning as if the tracks present a sonic slide show of someone’s recent travels, tambura, frame drum and bell-like echoes intermingle with Western chamber music tropes including delicate guitar plinks and reed tone layering. The CD reaches an early climax with the instant composition Chemical Wood, as Ziporyn pecks out spangled bent notes through the harsh continuum created by Zimpel blowing both melody and drone from an alghoza or Punjabi woodwind. Since the idea of Green Light is cooperative not solipsistic, the American clarinetist joins in congruent improvisation with his Polish counterpart on tunes like Melismantra. Backed by hard strokes from Riley’s guitar, reed tones are tensely intermingled, with Ziporyn’s clear tones puffing out lines in unison with Zimpel’s rugged altissimo gulps. Even more cross-culturally cooperative is Gupta Gamini, the Zimpel-composed final track. Processional, with echoes of Polish as well as subcontinent folk music, the narrative is kept in motion by tremolo layering from the two horns. Using electric guitar, Riley’s corrosive licks reverberate like torn electrical wires adding a barbed interface. After a pause, the theme finally relaxes into a coda that is a dual showpiece for the reeds’ spectacular upward flutter tonguing.

There’s only one reedist, tenor saxophonist John Dikeman, 32, on Live at La Resistenza (El Negocito Records eNR041 elnegocitorecords.com), but the American-in-Amsterdam forces out enough pure energy to keep up with one of American jazz’s most accomplished and longstanding rhythm sections: bassist William Parker and drummer Hamid Drake. Recorded at a Ghent concert, the two long improvisations on Live appear as inevitable as forces of nature. With cyclone-like ferocity Dikeman splays, smears and sputters bent notes and irregular vibrations into the mix, with a see-saw efficacy, reminiscent of mid-1960s Sonny Rollins. Digging taut snorts from the darkest parts of his horn with the same facility as altissimo glissandi are sourced, his solos are as powerful and cerebral as a military tactician. Parker’s pulsating beat is as precise as items placed in both weighing pans of a balanced scale, with a small portion of Invocation given over to his solo showcase. Otherwise Parker’s string stability appropriately moors the saxophonist’s frequent triple tonguing and vibrated shrieks. When WY Funk, the final track, reaches a climax, Drake’s polyrhythmic cymbal explorations are replaced by a steady backbeat which weds timed swing with timbral striving. Intensity and relief arrive in equal measure by the finale. Overall, with younger players like these on the scene, the future of improvised music appears secure.

• Review
• Listen
• Buy

Review

The Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal was known as the best French orchestra outside France, thanks to their conductor, Charles Dutoit and Decca Records. With the death of Ernest Ansermet in 1969 Decca had lost their man-about-French-repertoire and were very concerned about having no long-term exclusive replacement. Ray Minshull, a producer for Decca was visiting an artist in Montreal in February 1980 and, fortuitously, attended a rehearsal with the Montreal Symphony. “Immediately” he writes, “it was apparent that our search was over and that I had stumbled upon the solution to our problem. Within two days an exclusive contract was agreed and the following July we recorded the OSM in a CD of violin concertos with Kyung-Wha Chung, another of Rodrigo’s guitar concertos and Ravel’s complete Daphnis and Chloe. When the new recordings were launched, the reception from both critics and public was so enthusiastic…especially in France and Great Britain that we knew that, at last, we had found what we had missed for so long.” Decca has issued a boxed set of their recordings, simply titled Dutoit Montreal (4789466) comprised of 35 CDs in replicas of the original cover art, an 83-page booklet with recording details, two essays by Ray Minshull and an appreciation by Andrew Stewart.

Decca proceeded with its original intention, recording the orchestra playing mainly works by French composers while leaving the German repertoire to others in their stable. In this really impressive collection, therefore, there is no Bach, Beethoven or Brahms although there are four Mendelssohn overtures from 1986 and a 1983 reading of Orff’s Carmina Burana.

The discs are arranged by date of recording and here are but some of the highlights. The complete Daphnis et Chloé (1980); Boléro, Rapsodie Espagnole and La Valse (1981); The Three-Cornered Hat and El Amor Brujo (1981); Saint-Saëns Symphony No.3 (1982) and Chausson Symphony in B-Flat Op.20 (1995); the two Ravel Piano Concertos with Pascal Rogé (1982); Respighi Pines of Rome, Fountains of Rome and Roman Festivals (1982); Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade (1983); Gaîté Parisienne (1983); Le Sacre du Printemps [1921 version], The Firebird, etc. (1984) and Petrouchka (1986); the Fauré Requiem with Kiri Te Kanawa and Sherrill Milnes (1987); The Planets (1986); Bartók Concerto for Orchestra and Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta (1987); Debussy Images and Nocturnes (1988); Franck Symphony in D Minor and D’Indy Symphony on a French Mountain Air with Jean-Yves Thibaudet (1989); two Tchaikovsky complete ballets, Swan Lake (1991) and The Nutcracker (1992); Piazzolla Tangazo (2000), etc.

In addition to the above, there are other major works and about 50 other pieces ranging from Hugo Alfrén’s Swedish Rhapsody No.1 to Ambroise Thomas’ once-popular Raymond Overture. A most desirable and attractive collection. Last year Decca signed a five-year contract with Kent Nagano and the OSM.

Listen

Listen on Spotify (Login required)

Buy

Buy on MusicVaultz.com

Emil Gilels (1916-1985) was one of the very greatest pianists of the 20th century. He was born in Odessa the legendary city that produced so many other extraordinarily gifted musicians. Arthur Rubinstein, after hearing the 16-year-old Gilels play in Odessa, proclaimed that “If that boy ever comes to America I might just as well pack my bags and go.” As the liner notes mention, Gilels did and Rubinstein didn’t. Gilels graduated from the Odessa Conservatory in 1935 and moved to the Moscow Conservatory where he studied with Heinrich Neuhaus and later became a teacher there. He won competitions galore and made his North American debut in 1955 when he played the Tchaikovsky B-Minor Concerto (surprise!) with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra. His debut in Britain was in 1959.

Acclaimed for his astonishing power and stupendous technique, the depth of his artistry and interpretive insights went unrecognized for a time. He made recordings in Russia and after taking the West by storm in 1955 his name appeared on many labels including EMI, RCA and Westminster (whose issues were of Soviet origin). However, his very best recordings were made with DG who consistently provided the best venues and associates and engineers. They are all in this boxed set, Emil Gilels, The Complete Recordings on Deutsche Grammophon (4794651) with 24 CDs and a 68 page booklet telling all.

The superiority of these mighty performances and the dynamics of the recordings immediately put these releases in a class by themselves and they happily remain so in these flawlessly engineered reissues. Here are some examples.

All but six of the Beethoven Piano Sonatas. The two Brahms Piano Concertos with Jochum and the BPO; Brahms’ First Piano Quartet with members of the Amadeus Quartet; Chopin, Sonata No.3 and three Polonaises; 20 Grieg Lyric Pieces; Mozart’s Piano Concerto No.27 and Concerto No.10 for two pianos with daughter Elena, both with Karl Böhm and the VPO; Schubert’s Trout Quintet with the Amadeus Quartet.

The last seven discs contain recordings derived from the Westminster copies of the Melodiya originals from which the highlight for me is a sparklingly articulate, Prokofiev Third Piano Concerto with Kondrashin and the USSR Radio Symphony Orchestra recorded in March 1955. As an aside, in 1946 the New York Philharmonic Symphony performed the Prokofiev Third under Artur Rodzinski with pianist Nadia Reisenberg who was the only one of the big name pianists prepared to do so. Other disc-mates include an Emperor Concerto with Kurt Sanderling from Leningrad and Kabalevsky’s Piano Concerto No.3 conducted by the composer. Also a wealth of encore-type solos, sonatas and trios with Leonid Kogan, Rostropovich and Rudolf Barshai.

Known for his poetic approach, pianist Dino Ciani remains a cult figure since his untimely death at the age of 32 in a car accident in Rome in 1974. Ciani’s recordings for DGG are available on CD and, as is usual with cult figures, his followers seek out releases of his live performances. Following Doremi’s Volume One which includes live performances of the Beethoven First and Third Piano Concertos, Volume Two features a newly discovered live performance in excellent stereo sound from the French radio archives of Chopin’s First Piano Concerto with Aldo Ceccato conducting the ORTF orchestra in the Salle Pleyel in 1971. The performance is very much his own, sensitive and communicating.

The rest of this edition (DHR-8044-6, 3 CDs) includes works by Chopin, Liszt, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Schubert, Tchaikovsky, Bartók and Beethoven…all new to CD. His performances of three Beethoven sonatas live from Verona in 1973 reveal Ciani to be an outstanding Beethoven performer.

The column this month has been, even more than usual, a personal journey for me. A week ago when I should have begun, I found myself wondering what there was to write about. I had assigned the discs that were of most interest to me to other writers for a full treatment rather than glossing over them here. Of particular note were the Dutilleux recordings, and I must say that Elliot Wright’s appreciation of them later in these pages confirms that to have been the right decision. But it left me nearly empty-handed and I warned publisher David Perlman at The WholeNote’s early January gathering that there might not be an Editor’s Corner this month. So much has happened since then that it is hard to imagine that just one week has passed.

The first event was a kitchen party at my friends Michael and Mary’s house, an annual affair to welcome in the New Year with a wealth of pickin’ and grinnin’. In addition to the usual plethora of guitars in various tunings, fiddles, mandolins and octave mandolins, there were hand drums, harmonicas, a keyboard, an accordion and more than a dozen voices lifted joyously in song. It was a magical evening, as so often these gatherings can be. I took particular delight in the opportunity to play with the accordionist, who was adding myriad colours and rhythms to the mix. As I was leaving – earlier than was my wont due to the tail end, or so I thought, of a lingering chest cold – I mentioned my pleasure to Mary who told me to hang on and went to grab me a copy of the accordionist’s new CD, “hot off the press.” It seems she was the graphic designer of the package (altdesign.ca) and had a box of discs on hand, and so I left the party knowing my journey had begun.

Leighton Life is a wonderfully eclectic recording that showcases the writing skills and musical dexterity (piano, synths, accordion, organ, jaw harp, whistle, trombone, percussion, bouzouki and bodhrán) of Tom Leighton (tomleighton.ca). Not content to rest on his own laurels (and the mixing skills of producer Paul Mills), Leighton surrounds himself with a marvellous array of musical friends too plentiful to name, to create horn sections, string arrangements, cello solos and string band accompaniments as required. The opening track All Thumbs is a playful Penguin Café Orchestra-style minimalist moto perpetuo with the ostinato provided by the ticking of a mechanical clock and a triangle (at least that’s my guess). A Summer Jig features the accordion in the lead role of a warm, lush instrumentation. A Letter Found is a haunting ballad with violin and cello in unison and harmony on the memorable melody over piano and accordion accompaniment. Hank Dances is a rhythmically propulsive swing tune with horns, extrapolated from music Leighton wrote for a production of Hank Williams, The Show He Never Gave by Maynard Collins. The 12 tracks included here – all instrumental – run the gamut from old timey, to R&B, Scottish traditional to The Hurdy-Gurdy which Leighton says was “written for the hurdy-gurdy … by a non-player. Alas, it doesn’t play well on a hurdy-gurdy but conjures my image of the player.” Quite convincingly I might add. The album comes with a “Warning! Listening to instrumental music activates emotional, motor and creative areas of the brain!” It also includes the notice that all compositions are available as sheet music from the composer, so as spontaneous as much of the music feels, it is obviously conceived in its entirety by this wonderful musician. I look forward to having the opportunity to play with him again.

The next steps on the journey began just a block from Michael and Mary’s house, at the Dufferin bus stop at Davenport. A few minutes after I arrived at the stop another man carrying a guitar case came to wait alongside me. I asked if he was going out to play, or like me, coming home from doing so. He said he was coming from a friend’s house where they had been playing bluegrass music all evening. Long time readers of this column will know that I am enamoured of the “new grass” band Joy Kills Sorrow that was active from 2005 to 2014. I asked this guitarist if he was familiar with the band and he said no, but that he knew “the song.” Not knowing the song myself, I said “Oh?” “Yes,” he said, “it’s a great song by Béla Fleck.” And so my next quest began. It turns out that When Joy Kills Sorrow appeared on the 1999 CD The Bluegrass Sessions: Tales From The Acoustic Planet, Volume 2 (Warner Bros. 9 47332-2), where Fleck’s cronies from the 1987 album Drive reunite and are joined by legends Earl Scruggs, Vassar Clements and John Hartford and contemporary stars Vince Gill, Tim O’Brien and Ricky Skaggs, for a number of Fleck originals and several traditional and classic tunes. Since this CD is old news and only new to me I won’t dwell on it other than to say it’s been in heavy rotation on my player since it arrived last Wednesday from Amazon (HMV couldn’t locate the one copy their superstore’s computer said they had). Highlights of the disc are the above-mentioned Joy Kills Sorrow, an old Flatt & Scruggs tune Polka on the Banjo and a two-banjo arrangement of the Clarinet Polka by Fleck and Hartford. Having grown up with the George Barnes solo guitar take on the latter as the theme to the Max Ferguson Show and now hearing this banjo version, I found myself wondering why I hadn’t ever heard it played on the clarinet. Hats off to YouTube, I didn’t have to look far ….

One disc that crossed my desk this month, an arrangement of Brian Eno’s Discreet Music performed by Toronto’s Contact ensemble, turned out to be a timely release, but not for the reasons one would hope. The news of David Bowie’s death last week brought many memories and realizations. Bowie’s chameleon-like career affected audiences and artists across the spectrum, me among them. I was not much aware of the glam rock era, but became drawn to Bowie at the time he started collaborating with Eno. Already a fan of Eno’s ambient approach to composition and sound, I was curious to see how he would interact with the “space oddity” that was Bowie.

In Francis Whatley’s 2013 film David Bowie: Five Years, Eno says that Bowie was drawn to his “longest, slowest, quietest” work, Discreet Music, and that their projects grew out of this interest. This was at a time when Bowie was tired of the rock-star lifestyle that had brought him perilously close to death by overdose and misadventure in L.A. His subsequent move to Paris and then Berlin, where he undertook a Spartan low-profile existence, ultimately resulted in a trilogy of Bowie-Eno albums beginning with the 1977 Low (RCA LP CPL1-2030). In 1991 Rykodisc would reissue Low on compact disc (RCD 10142) with bonus tracks. Not being in the habit of replacing my vinyl collection with CDs, I was unaware of the extra material until I revisited the Low Symphony by Philip Glass (POINT Music 438 150-2), which was inspired by two tracks by Bowie and Eno and one by Bowie alone. I was confused when I was unable to find Some Are, one of the duo compositions, on my LP and eventually ended up downloading the missing title from iTunes last week …. Three music platforms later I now have the full picture!

But that picture was further enhanced by These Dreams of You (Europa Editions ISBN 978-1-60945-063-2), a 2012 novel by Steve Erickson, which I found myself reading for the third time over the past few days (which may have set a record for frequency of rereading for me). Erickson, whose eight previous novels number among my favourites – a shout out to Jowi Taylor for turning me on to Arc d’X all those years ago! – frequently incorporates pop culture, particularly music and film, into his novels. Although These Dreams of You is nominally speculative and surreal, as are most of his books, the narrative strands are fairly linear, albeit many layered. The protagonists are a family of four in contemporary L.A. in danger of losing their house as a result of the economic crisis and the nefarious machinations of the banks. The father, Zan, has recently been let go from his position as professor of literature at the local university and is the sole DJ on a low-wattage radio station broadcasting without a license from a local Mexican restaurant in the Valley. His wife, Viv, is a freelance photographer whose work is drying up and whose one claim to fame, stained glass butterfly art, has been co-opted by an infamous commercial artist. Their children are Parker, a 12-year-old whose namesake is Charlie Parker but whose musical interests favour gangsta rap, and Sheba, a precocious four-year-old orphan adopted from Ethiopia, who is seeming wired internally to a certain unnamed “red-headed British alien who wears dresses.” The not-so-veiled references to David Bowie continue as he permeates the story, in particular with tales of his time in Berlin with roommates The Professor (Eno?) and Jim (Iggy Pop?), which lead to the album Low. Erickson cleverly weaves his tales – another one including presidential hopeful Bobby Kennedy in the months leading up to his assassination, and a third, an aspiring 1970s author, who after being beaten and left for dead by German skinheads, wakes to find himself in 1919 Berlin with a paperback copy of a novel that will shape the literature of the coming century but won’t be published until 1922 – through three eras and three continents. The convolutions are eventually resolved, and although there are no particularly happy endings, it does make for a very compelling read. Part of the fun is identifying the myriad historical characters that are never actually named. A great read indeed, and a great tribute to David Bowie.

But back to Contact’s rendition of Discreet Music (Cantaloupe Music CA21114 cantaloupemusic.com). Eno’s original LP side was an electronic intertwining of some very simple melodic material according to some basic programming in Eno’s synthesizers. Four decades later Toronto percussionist and founding member of Contact Contemporary Music, Jerry Pergolesi, set out to make a live performance version of the iconic work. In the booklet notes he says: “In keeping with the spirit of the original, my ‘arrangement’ consists of seven mutually compatible melodies (the result of Eno’s original two melodies being occasionally altered) and instructions that render the band itself into the looping apparatus that Eno describes as the ‘score’ for the original. The ‘arrangement’ sets parameters for the musicians to follow, while giving them some leeway to make decisions with regard to what they play and when. Once the performance starts, however, the resulting sound is out of anyone’s hands.” The members of Contact – Mary-Katherine Finch, cello; Sarah Fraser Raff, violin; Wallace Halladay, soprano sax; Rob MacDonald, guitar; Peter Pavlovsky, bass; Jerry Pergolesi, vibraphone; Allison Wiebe Benstead, piano; complemented here by Emma Zoe Elkinson, flute and Dean Kurtis-Pomeroy, gongs – perform with real conviction – tone and intonation are warm and consistent – and they manage to hold our attention throughout the hour-long take in which “nothing happens.” I can’t imagine what it is like to take part in such a static performance, but congratulations are due to all concerned for realizing a viable live presentation of an electronic classic.

It has been a month of losses in the musical arts. Canadian-born jazz icon, Paul Bley, and French father of avant-garde concert music, Pierre Boulez, are honoured elsewhere in these pages, although their passing garnered little attention in Toronto’s mainstream media. In contrast, much has been said about the death of David Bowie across all media and all platforms – including 24 continuous hours of programming on Much Music as I write this column – so I will not say much more here. He was a unique artist who constantly reinvented himself and touched more lives than most. His final offering Blackstar (ISO Records 88875173862) was released on his 69th birthday, two days before his death, and once again we are presented with a new man, seemingly from beyond the grave. Indeed one of the songs and videos is called Lazarus. I was lucky enough to purchase a copy of Blackstar before they all disappeared from the shelves (and online catalogues) but it will take me some time before I’m able to assimilate it. It’s a journey I am convinced is worth undertaking.

David Olds, DISCoveries Editor
discoveries@thewholenote.com