American Romantics
Gowanus Arts Ensemble; Reuben Blundell
New Focus Recordings FCR 166

American Romantics III
Lansdowne Symphony Orchestra; Reuben Blundell
New Focus Recordings FCR166C (newfocusrecordings.com)

Lovely melodies and evocative tone-painting fill the first and third volumes of the American Romantics series created by conductor Reuben Blundell. Together these two CDs present first recordings of 19 pieces by 14 mostly forgotten late-19th- and early-20th-century composers born or active in the U.S.

In the first volume, Blundell leads the Gowanus Arts Ensemble, ten string players who also perform on American Romantics II, reviewed in The WholeNote this past February. In the latest release, Blundell appears as music director of the Lansdowne Symphony Orchestra, a professional-sounding community orchestra in Philadelphia.

Two composers, Ludwig Bonvin and Carl Busch, are featured in both discs under review. Swiss-born Bonvin (1850-1939) emigrated to Buffalo, where he served as music director of Canisius College. He’s represented by the hymn-like Christmas Night’s Dream for strings and the very Wagnerian Festival Procession for orchestra. Busch (1864-1943), from Denmark, settled in Kansas City, finding inspiration in North American Indigenous melodies. Volume I contains two movements from his Indian Tribal Melodies: Four North American Legends; Volume III includes two richly coloured, dramatic tone poems, Minnehaha’s Vision and The Song of Chibiabos, both based on Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha.

Another composer who wrote many works on First Nations subjects was Charles Wakefield Cadman (1881-1946), one of the few recognizable names in the American Romantics series. His five-movement Thunderbird Suite, said to incorporate Blackfoot melodies, is, at 21 minutes, by far the longest work on these two discs. The highly cinematic Suite dates from 1918, well before sound arrived in Hollywood, but it’s not surprising that, in later years, Cadman moved to Los Angeles where he would indeed go on to compose music for films.

Gena Branscombe (1881-1977), the only woman and only Canadian on these discs, was born in Picton, Ontario (not PEI, as the notes state) but left for the U.S. as a teenager to pursue her musical studies. There, she composed prolifically in all genres, founded and conducted the Branscombe Chorale, and commissioned and performed works by many other women composers. Her brief, bittersweet waltz, A Memory, a miniature Valse Triste, was originally for violin and piano; it’s heard in an arrangement for harp and strings.

Like A Memory, all of the predominantly short pieces on these two CDs are well worth hearing, though they tend to fall into the Easy Listening category. This series is obviously a labour of love for conductor Blundell and I hope he continues his pattern of one release per year. I look forward, however, to hearing more extended, substantial yet unfairly forgotten works by these unfairly mostly forgotten composers.

Srul Irving Glick – Suites Hébraïques
James Campbell; Angela Park; Elissa Lee; Sharon Wei; Cameron Crozman; Barry Shiffman; Wallace Halladay; Susan Hoeppner
Centrediscs CMCCD 24817 (musiccentre.ca)

Srul Irving Glick (1934-2002) composed six Suites Hébraïques between 1961 and 1984, each a multi-movement work ranging between ten and 20 minutes in length. Three are written for solo instrument with piano accompaniment, and three for a variety of chamber ensembles. This release is the first to compile them all under one cover, and features some of Canada’s finest instrumental performers.

Modest in means and range, the pieces are nonetheless pure expressions of the composer’s love for Jewish traditional melodies, harmonies and forms. Not one movement exceeds six minutes, while most are much shorter. Glick didn’t write them to claim a place atop Parnassus, but rather to celebrate the music he heard and loved growing up the son of a cantor, singing in his father’s choir and at home. For that reason, pay particular note to Suite No.4, for saxophone and piano, played (sung) by Wallace Halladay with Angela Park on piano. Also on the second disc is the final suite, played by violinist Barry Shiffman with Park again at the piano. Both soloists perfectly express the singing quality called for in Glick’s music. Park took on the lion’s share of playing on this recording. She performs beautifully in four of the six suites.

Because they are based in the traditional forms, there is a repetitiveness to the titles: Circle Dance occurs in five and Cantorial Chant in four of the six suites; other titles, such as Nigun and Hora, variously find their way into several of them. It’s not a stretch to compare this to the work of Baroque composers, who also explored forms repeatedly in dance suites. However, nowhere does the music repeat itself. In fact, Glick seems to have been one of those composers for whom there was little effort in devising new material. In the jacket note Dorothy Sandler-Glick is quoted thus: “The melodies came easily as if they were waiting for him to lift them out of his soul.” So they sound.

Apogee – Music of Farshid Samandari
Mark Takeshi McGregor; Ariel Barnes; Brian Nesselroad; Marcus Takizawa; Joy Yeh
Redshift Records TK453 (redshiftrecords.org)

Vancouver-based composer Farshid Samandari (b. Tehran 1971) arrived in Vancouver in 2001. He quickly embedded himself in the regional contemporary concert music scene, serving in 2013 as composer-in-residence of the Vancouver Inter-Cultural Orchestra. That position has helped him build bridges with global musicians resident in the culturally diverse hub of the greater Vancouver area.

Apogee features Samandari’s works for conventional Western instrumentation stylishly played by Onyx Trio’s Mark Takeshi McGregor (flute), Marcus Takizawa (viola), and Joy Yeh (harp), plus Brian Nesselroad (percussion). His compositions primarily reflect his interest in contemporary Western musical vocabulary, spectral analysis, as well as extended instrumental techniques. But Apogee also provides a window into subjects that inform his work, including modal Persian classical music and literature.

Another key ingredient is referred to in the liner notes: the autobiographical nature of the compositions played here. Exile and the search for a home are recurring narratives. And it’s the orchestral flute which takes centre stage in many of the five works here, serving as the composer’s voice. The flute is also the listener’s guide through Samandari’s life journey, connecting his old and new worlds. My favourite moments on the album are in the lonely, expressive and virtuoso flute solos of Apogee (2005) and the very substantial 16-minute Nuclide (2014), both sparkling played by Takeshi McGregor. These works belong in the Canadian flute solo playbook.

Samandari’s moto is “Unity in Diversity.” We get a sense of his personal peregrinations from Iran to Canada’s west coast in Apogee.

Listen to 'Apogee – Music of Farshid Samandari' Now in the Listening Room

Curio Box – Berio; Hindemith; Underhill
Ariel Barnes; Fides Krucker; Turning Point Ensemble; Owen Underhill
Orlando Records OR 0037 (orlando-records.com)

This disc is a standout, with terrific performances and a compelling program of works, all confronting the relationship between the past and the present.

In Kammermusik No.3 from 1925, German composer Paul Hindemith looks back to the Baroque, especially to Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos. The Vancouver-based Turning Point Ensemble, under Owen Underhill’s direction, handles the inventive contrapuntal textures with stylish buoyancy, while Canadian cellist Ariel Barnes brings out Hindemith’s lyrical side. Barnes’ restraint with vibrato and Romantic phrasing is especially appropriate to Hindemith, an accomplished violist who was deeply involved in historical performance practices.

At the same time that avant-garde Italian composer Luciano Berio was creating his pioneering experimental works like Sinfonia, he was working on arrangements – and rearrangements – of music of the past, from Monteverdi to Puccini. In Folk Songs, from 1964, he creates altogether new accompaniments for traditional folk tunes (plus a few composed songs) from around the world. The result is an extraordinary mélange of styles and harmonic languages. Canadian vocalist Fides Krucker’s blazing theatricality and playful brilliance put her in the same league as the fabulous American singer Cathy Berberian, who premiered this work.

Canadian composer and conductor Underhill’s own Cello Concerto from 2016 takes us through the fragmentation and reassembling of memories of the past, triggered by a Chinese curio box full of precious objects. The virtuosic, responsive Turning Point Ensemble under Underhill’s precise direction creates evocative, colourful interplay with Barnes’ adventurous and dramatic cello playing.

I enjoyed the anecdotal liner notes and bios, but I do wish there were texts for the songs – with translations.

Shostakovich – Symphonies Nos. 4 & 11 “The Year 1905”
Boston Symphony Orchestra; Andris Nelsons
Deutsche Grammophon 80028595-02 (deutschegrammophon.com)

It says here there was no greater symphonist of the 20th century than Shostakovich. Don’t @ me, as they say on Twitter. This DG recording of the Boston Symphony, led by Andris Nelsons, is part of their ongoing project to record the complete cycle by the beleaguered Russian artist.

The story behind his Symphony No.4 is relevant to any reading of the piece, although much too involved to fully recount here. Suffice it to say he fell into sudden disfavour with Stalin while working on it, and finally chose to withdraw the work before its premiere. The move, while an illustration of how little freedom an artist had during the era, likely saved the composer from exile to the Gulag. (An excellent fuller version of the story is available here: michaellewanski.com/blog/2014/10/8/shostakovich-symphony-no-4-in-c-minor-op-43).

Too many adjectives can attach to the puzzling work: at turns horrifying, melodramatic, sarcastic, madcap, maudlin, macabre, morose. Shostakovich might have been passing a note to his compatriot colleagues like Alfred Schnittke and Edison Denisov: “Here is as far as you can go, and not in any safety.”

Nelsons wrings a full accounting of the hair-raising piece, all 65 minutes of it, from the redoubtable BSO musicians. I defy anyone to listen to James Somerville’s horn playing here without feeling simultaneously uplifted and devastated.

The second half of the two-disc release makes a curious pairing. Symphony No.11 was composed more than two decades later in 1957, followed an overt “program” in depicting the events of the brutally quashed 1905 Russian workers’ uprising, and was written to satisfy a government-mandated (“suggested”) recognition of the 40th anniversary of the 1917 revolution. Perhaps the idea is to contrast the work of a brash young idealist, an artist who believed he was free, to the more mature output of one who knew he never would be. Clearly in his music he felt the humanity of those starving workers, murdered a half-century earlier by a despot. There are subtexts to all of his music, and the question remains about whether this symphony reflected the composer’s views about more recent crimes.

Programmatically structured to the point of pedantry, it is nonetheless brilliantly played. Hearing these excellent players gives the heart ease.

Trio Clavio
Trio Clavio
ArcoDiva UP 0204 (arcodiva.cz)

Established with the help of Polish clarinetist/conductor Jakub Bokun in 2013, this Czech trio has been performing as Trio Clavio since its successful debut at Wrocław, Poland’s Clarimania Festival. The three talented members – pianist Lucie Soutorová Valčová, violinist Lucia Fulka Kopsová and clarinetist Jana Černohouzová – are each superstar soloists and chamber musicians. In their debut self-titled two-CD release, they demonstrate solid technique, musicality, ensemble playing, personal musical risk-taking, integrity, and the joy of performing music.

CD One has these younger-generation musicians playing music by three 20th-century composers. Highlights from Stravinsky’s trio suite from L’Histoire du soldat include colourful low and high pitches, clear articulation of individual notes, and mood-making intense playing, especially at the almost spooky Danse du Diable closing. Bartók’s three-movement Contrasts features a tighter full-orchestra sound, with classic Bartók dramatic musical conversations between the instruments. Paul Schoenfield’s Trio for Clarinet, Violin & Piano is a four-movement, Jewish-based work. The opening Freylakh has a nice klezmer feel, especially in the held violin and clarinet notes. March opens with exciting low-pitched mysterious piano notes and ascending and descending glissandos, leading to subsequent virtuosic trio performance. Nigun is a fugal klezmer piece and the final Kozatske is an exciting fast klezmer-flavoured movement.

CD Two showcases diverse works by living composers. Love Czech Lukáš Hurník’s witty work, Alphabet. After a short introduction, each capital letter of the alphabet is given a musical score resulting in a piece packed with diverse ideas and sounds. E is a fugue with three instruments emulating its three horizontal lines; D is all played on the violin D string; G is brought to sound life with a florid piano line. Czech Martin Brunner composed his self-described childishly playful Like Children while thinking of trio-member Valčová’s son. The three movements delight with touches of lullaby, reflection and running-around sounds. Trio Clavio commission “Chiaroscuro” Trio by Slovak Juraj Filas is a single-movement, tonal, expressive, Romantic-flavoured sonata reminiscent of film music, including subtle and sudden dramatic musical shifts from loud rhythms to slower reflective sections, high pitches and lengthy held notes. Closing is Czech Sylvie Bodorová’s Vallja e malit “Dancing Mountain,” a folk-music rooted work with a tight Ballata opening, and a faster, closing, toe-tapping, intense, rapid line-filled Danza movement.

Trio Clavio is musically wonderful, unique and breathtaking in all they play!

Clips
Brodie West Quintet
Independent LORNA/011 (brodiewest.com)

In the world of scientific laboratories, an experiment is defined as “a procedure carried out to support, refute, or validate a hypothesis.” Experiments provide insight into cause and effect by demonstrating what outcome occurs when a particular factor is manipulated. Experiments vary greatly in goal and scale, but always rely on repeatable procedure and logical analysis of the results. However, in music the word experimentation ought not to exist, as no scientifically repeatable procedure can be used to support, refute, or validate its hypotheses.

The music of the Brodie West Quintet validates its constructs with magic and mystery, both becoming the quintessence of their improvisational musical world. Truth be told, when it comes to West and his music – particularly on Clips – mystery and magic all collide in one unscientifically glorious big bang, producing art that always defies and blurs any categories. The alto saxophonist continues to destroy the proverbial artificial walls erected in music.

Goal and scale are tossed into the unknown with the wickedly intense scope of the music on Clips. The fractured rhythms of the radiantly irreverent Prel and Fug are an exemplary experience of the sparkling wit and ingenuity of West’s yammering melodic and harmonic conceptions. The saxophonist also draws into this musical web pianist Tania Gill, bassist Josh Cole and the drummers Nick Fraser and Evan Cartwright. Together they penetrate West’s riddle-filled music at a deeper level, creating art that’s radically fresh and intuitive, and plucked as if from ether.

Seldom in the Well
Chris Monson
Independent (chrismonson.bandcamp.com)

Chris Monson’s debut album, Seldom in the Well, showcases his original jazz compositions while maintaining the stylish 60s feel. At times it is reminiscent of Blue Note records from that period, with a subtle rhythmic drive and touch of sultriness. It also features a stellar sextet – Monson on guitar, Kelly Jefferson on tenor saxophone, Kevin Turcotte on trumpet/flugelhorn, Anthony Panacci on piano, Artie Roth on acoustic bass and Tom Rasky on drums. Monson’s early roots in progressive rock are not necessarily obvious here; rather, his arrangements are an intricate map of sounds and stories.

The album opens with the rich-sounding Where the Leaf Has Been, a sonic hint of what is to come. That hint is revealed perfectly in my favourite tune on the album, Distant. Solid. Figures. As I was listening to it with my headphones, I was immersed in the sounds constantly moving from the left to the right in some sections – it was incredibly intimate and engaging. The Passing Through finally showcases Monson’s funky guitar grooves and his taste for understated melodies. Although he often takes a backseat, allowing each of his fellow musicians to shine, Monson maintains constant rhythmic conversations with the piano. As a matter of fact, many of the subtle rhythm hooks are this album’s gems. If We Dreamed of Soaring features another jewel – the bowed bass solo, so unexpected and so beautiful that it makes this music come full circle.

Seldom in the Well has a combination of aural density and airiness that appeals to both seasoned jazz listeners and novices in the genre. Recommended.

Kinship
John Pittman; Shirantha Beddage; Jeff McLeod; Mike Downes; Curtis Nowosad
Slammin Media SMO001 (pittmanmusic.com)

Released on August 24 through the Toronto-based company Slammin’ Media, Kinship is the debut solo release from trumpeter/composer John Pittman. Pittman is a veteran member of the Heavyweights Brass Band – probably Toronto’s best-known New Orleans-style horn ensemble – and he has been a mainstay on the local scene for some time, performing with a wide range of musical artists. Pittman is joined on this outing by baritone saxophonist Shirantha Beddage, pianist Jeff McLeod, bassist Mike Downes and drummer Curtis Nowosad, all of whom share some degree of personal history with Pittman; the concept of kinship, as Pittman writes in his liner notes, is “at the heart of this album.”

Kinship starts with the up-tempo Ties That Bind, an exciting piece that sets the tone for the rest of the album, both musically and thematically. For Siobhan – written by Pittman for his wife – is a bouncy, backbeat-driven affair, with solid rhythm section playing, and Homio-stasis, a satisfying, swinging song, is as close to a standard as Kinship gets, featuring a blistering muted solo from Pittman and an articulate, lyrical contribution from Downes. Of the album’s eight songs, only two are covers: As, the Stevie Wonder classic, and Where Is The Love?, from the catalogue of the Black Eyed Peas. Throughout Kinship, Pittman’s trumpet is strong, athletic and mature, and – much like his arrangements – displays a winning combination of hard bop, New Orleans and modern jazz influences.

When Day Slips Into Night
University of Toronto 12TET
UofT Jazz (uoftjazz.ca)

Explosion
Cory Weeds Little Big Band
Cellar Live CL111317 (cellarlive.com)

Jazz comes in many sizes including solo, trio, quartet and big band; Cory Weed’s Little Big Band’s Explosion, and the University of Toronto 12tet’s When Day Slips Into Night, are newly released examples of the “small big band” format. This size allows a large sonic palette while having a more flexible group to work with (a famous example is the Miles Davis Nonet that played on Birth of the Cool). Explosion is the work of professional musicians from Vancouver, Edmonton and New York. When Day Slips Into Night is the product of the University of Toronto’s jazz performance program and contains a mix of undergraduate and graduate performers and arrangers.

Explosion is full of great music and performances, and the comprehensive liner notes by Chris Wong provide context to the album’s development and its individual tracks. Longtime Vancouver saxophonist (and former jazz club owner) Cory Weeds organized the group and commissioned Jill Townsend and Bill Coon to write the arrangements of the songs he chose. All the performances are precise, energetic and just plain swing. Weeds’ tenor sax solos are inventive and assured; he can play solid bop lines and then pause and interject some assured lyricism. East of the Village shows the band easily changing from an opening contrapuntal bossa beat that moves to straight swing and back again. Canadian Sunset starts out with its signature loping cowboy rhythm employing Gary Smulyan’s baritone sax to good effect and then moves into a swinging section. The final piece, Ready and Able, is reminiscent of Four Brothers as it highlights the saxophone section (Weeds and Smulyan with PJ Perry on alto and Steve Kaldestad on tenor), beginning with tight ensemble playing and then opening up to multiple solos, which transition from full choruses to exchanging two-bar phrases, before building to an energetic conclusion.

When Day Slips Into Night features the work of student arrangers, though it begins with Extra Time written by Mike Murley and arranged by Terry Promane, who also leads the band. Bolivia is a solid swinging song which begins with some great piano work by Noah Franche-Nolan, then uses the brass and saxes to good effect, where Brandon Tse plays some great scampering alto sax solo lines. One of the more interesting arrangements, and an example of the album’s intriguing choice of material, is (Ocean) Bloom, originally a collaboration between Radiohead and film composer Hans Zimmer for the BBC’s Blue Planet II. I find this arrangement by Michael Henley, with vocals by Brooklyn Bohach, to be more stirring than the original: the band is highly effective when it builds to the crescendos and then recedes into the performers producing semi-muted whale and ocean sounds.

Explosion is the work of veteran performers and When Day Slips Into Night features students, but the latter album has solid production and performances. Some of Explosion’s arrangements are more complex and the solos are more individualized, showcasing each musician’s personal creativity and musical development. Both albums are worth repeated listening.

Spellbound
Joel Sheridan
Independent JHS201801 (joelsheridan.com)

The distinctive vocal qualities of jazz vocalist Joel Sheridan keep the listener attentive to his unique sound in his appropriately titled debut release, Spellbound. His decade-long, varied artistic career (with stints in Stratford and other musical theatres billed as Joel Hartt), a 12-year, career-counsellor gig, and his 2006 return to music have undoubtedly influenced his honest take on jazz singing. His goal was a storytelling concept album about the many sides of love, yet his controlled emotional performances of 12 covers and three of his own compositions are never over the top. All are performed with class and style by Sheridan, and his band – Mark Kieswetter (piano), Maxwell Roach (drums), and Jordan O’Connor (bass) with Reg Schwager (guitar) on five tracks.

Fanny Brice’s vaudevillian Cooking Breakfast for the One I Love is given a novelty upbeat rendition. The Kay Ballard tune, Lazy Afternoon, features a slow atmospheric moment with mood-setting bass opening, piano chords, cymbal splashes and high vocal pitches. More clear vocal storytelling and piano backdrop are evident in Nat King Cole’s breakup tune, I Keep Going Back to Joe’s. Highlight is Sheridan’s You Were My First Love, a personal song of his two great loves, with a stellar piano, melodic lines, climactic dynamic buildup and quietly touching close. The danceable Antônio Carlos Jobim song No More Blues ends the disc with hope and happiness, like all great love stories. And all great releases like Spellbound!

Murals
Solon McDade
Independent 19192476591 (solonmcdade.com)

Released in April of this year, Murals is the debut solo album from the Edmonton-born bassist Solon McDade, a veteran of the Canadian music scene, active in both the jazz and folk worlds. (McDade constitutes one third of the JUNO Award-winning band the McDades, along with his sister, Shannon Johnson, and brother, Jeremiah McDade.) Murals also features Jeremiah on tenor saxophone, as well as Donny Kennedy on alto sax, Paul Shrofel on piano, and Rich Irwin on drums, with Solon McDade handling the bass duties. (He is also the sole composer of the album’s nine songs.)

Murals starts with He’s a Problem In The Locker Room, a medium, hard-swinging song, with elements of Monk and mid-60s Miles, and is followed by Buy The Tractor, a driving, minor-key tune that begins with a beautiful trio introduction from both the McDades and Kennedy. (It should also be noted that most of the song titles on Murals are evocative and wryly funny; a welcome surprise in the world of modern instrumental jazz, in which naming conventions tend towards the painfully self-serious.) Off The Bed, Rose, a medium-up minor blues, is a definite highlight, with strong, creative solos from Kennedy, Shrofel, Jeremiah McDade and Irwin, with exceptionally supportive rhythm section playing throughout. Another highlight: the album’s final track, A Shorter Thing, a groovy, Poinciana-esque song on which Solon McDade takes a succinct, lyrical solo. Murals is an accomplished, confident album from a first-class band; highly recommended.

Ejdeha
Gordon Grdina’s The Marrow
Songlines SGL2409-2 (songlines.com)

Gordon Grdina has a compound musical identity, as both free-jazz guitarist and devoted advocate of the middle-Eastern oud, the forebearer of many western plectrum instruments (“lute” is a corruption of “el oud”). In Grdina’s practice, however, the two overlap, the improvisatory traditions and subtle pitch distinctions of Arabic and Persian music clearly feeding into the kind of jazz he favours. The Marrow’s balance is perfect: he and fellow Vancouver-based percussionist Hamin Honari are matched with New York jazz mainstays, cellist Hank Roberts and bassist Mark Helias.

There’s no sense of conflict. It’s territory that’s been an element of jazz since Ahmed Abdul Malik (Jonathan Tim, Jr.) and Yusef Lateef (William Huddleston) first began crossing into this terrain some 60 years ago. Today Roberts and Helias navigate microtonal modes and compound rhythms as fluently as Grdina and Honari, and the result is a very special kind of music.

Grdina’s subtle pitch inflections are apparent in the rapid, detailed lines of his rubato introduction to the title track, while Roberts exhibits comparable rhythmic detail in his bowed solo on Idiolect. The two pass from the largely middle-Eastern orbit to something equal-parts European in their opening reflection to Bordeaux Bender. Wayward is emblematic of the sheer rhythmic élan that Honari brings to the project, while Helias throughout moves fluidly from ostinatos to counterpoint to a lead voice.

In all, it’s a celebration of improvisation’s ability to cross frontiers and create new identities.

The Koven Collective
Steve Koven
Bungalow Records SK 010 5 (stevekoven.com)

There is really no shortage of piano-driven ensembles, including those embellished by strings, vocals and inputs from other musicians, but the effervescence of each of the ten pieces performed by the Koven Collective must be applauded. The core group comprises pianist and songwriter Steve Koven, bassist Peter Eratostene and drummer Sarah Thawer, who is one of the most prodigiously gifted drummers in Canada today (the other being Larnell Lewis).

On a first encounter, the nonchalant, playful charm of Koven’s music can mask the challenges and the undercurrent of often complex profundity. Koven frames this musical excursion with two relatively well-known pieces from his repertoire. The first is Eleuthera, a piece that unravels like a cheeky vignette with an effervescent, tumbling percussive groove. The other is the more reflective (if simply titled) ballad Thinking of You. Preceding the first work and in between the others named here is spirited and insouciantly seductive repertoire that is illuminated not only by the core trio but also by saxophone, guitar, cello, banjo, vocals and very effectively employed electronic instruments.

All of this strategically employed instrumentation makes for a refreshing experience of music, informed by a variety of tone colours and rhythmic excellence together with a harmonic boldness and astringency that throws all of the pieces more vividly into relief. Koven, who shepherds the trio and others involved in this music, is a songwriter who has proved once again that his music is licensed to thrill.

Uncharted Territories
Dave Holland; Evan Parker; Craig Taborn; Ches Smith
Dare2 Records Dare 2-010 (daveholland.com)

Negating the generation gap, Britons, bassist Dave Holland, 71, and saxophonist Evan Parker, 73, join forces with younger Americans, keyboardist Craig Taborn, 48, and percussionist Ches Smith, 44, for an incandescent, two-CD set that nimbly cruises past any differences in age, nationality and orientation. Although playing together for the first time, the four easily negotiate improvised duos, trios and quartets which commingle Parker’s exploratory leanings with Holland’s solid time sense.

What that means is that when, for example, on tracks such as QW2 or Tenor-Piano-Bass T2, Parker splatters split tones or unleashes chesty timbral variations, the continuum is maintained by double bass rumbles including perfectly rounded and arrayed notes, usually seconded by brief keyboard inserts and relaxed drum patterns.

Together or separately, Taborn and Smith’s bravura skill is displayed, especially on Piano-Bass-Percussion T2 where a series of dynamic keyboard arpeggios expressively meld with double bass rhythms, or on Q&A where ambulatory vibraphone clips redefine the tempo alongside reed flutter-tonguing. But the CD`s apogee is in tracks from the Holland-Parker duo. Enough multi-string variables sound from Holland’s strings to personify a string quartet on Tenor-Bass-W2 for instance, making space for Parker`s instantly-identifiable multiphonic honks – with the ambulatory audacity of the track intensified by bent-string injections among brief bursts of characteristic saxophone circular breathing.

Comfortable in Uncharted Territories, this quartet deserves an encore. Instead of 23 tracks such as those here, however, the four should consider developing an un-segmented suite of major proportions.