Oddara
Jane Bunnett and Maqueque
Linus Entertainment 270244 (linusent.ca)

Award-winning soprano saxophonist/flutist Jane Bunnett has a knack for putting together great bands. In fact, she has been doing so since before the release of her first recording, In Dew Time (1987), through to the acclaimed Spirits of Havana band, which celebrated their 25th anniversary this year (see Andrew Timar’s review in the September 2016 issue of The WholeNote).

Her latest outing showcases the all-female band, Maqueque (meaning “the energy of a young girl’s spirit”), formed five years ago. This group follows in the Bunnett tradition of ensembles featuring not only phenomenally talented players, but also great chemistry amongst the musicians. This chemistry is evident throughout Oddara, Maqueque’s follow-up to their 2014 self-titled debut CD.

Accordingly, core band members Dánae Olano (piano, vocals), Celia Jiménez (bass, vocals), Magdelys Savigne (percussion, vocals), Yissy Garcia (drums) and Elizabeth Rodriguez (violin, vocals) all turn in great, inspired performances. However, it is the group dynamic, deep listening, empathy and superb communication that come to the fore on each track.

Highlights include the Melvis Santa composition, Power of Two (Ibeyi). Based on a traditional Afro-Cuban chant, the song opens with a call-and-response section, before seguing into a beautiful pentatonic vocal and flute melody. On Dream, the ensemble showcases their versatility as they navigate a variety of textures and turns in this multi-layered arrangement. Bunnett’s distinctive sound and impeccable musicianship shine throughout. This is music brimming with joy, mastery, beauty and passion.

All My Treasures
Lauren Bush
Independent (laurenbushjazz.com)

Currently based in the UK, Canadian jazz vocalist Lauren Bush showcases her diverse musical abilities as she sings and scats a selection of her favourite tunes with energy and a distinctive vocal colour while being supported by her superb band comprised of Liam Dunachie (piano/arranger), Andrew Robb (acoustic bass) and David Ingamells (drums),

The opening I’ve Got Just About Everything I Need is a fast-paced jazz tune arranged by Canadian musician Don Thompson. Bush sings the challenging plethora of words set at a higher pitch with conviction and clarity. The addition of a horn section provides a welcome New Orleans-flavoured sound for instrumental solos and for Bush to sing a bouncy version of Sweet Georgia Brown. But it is the slower tunes where Bush performs the best. Her sultry vocal opening in the Latin tune Dindi leads to varied vocal stylings with a great horn solo. The Mancini/Mercer song Charade suits her voice perfectly, allowing her to lay back and expand her subtle vocal lyrical qualities while listening closely to the band to set her phrases. Likewise the kid’s show classic, A, You’re Adorable is given an accented vocal performance against more legato sections, a rousing piano solo and touches of Fender Rhodes chimes.

Kudos to Bush for choosing songs that are both well suited to her voice, and also those more musically challenging. Excellent performances by both Bush and her band set the stage for an exciting musical future.

Otterville
Andrew Downing
Independent AD00105
(andrewdowning.com)

JUNO Award-winning bassist, cellist and composer Andrew Downing’s new double CD (and his tenth release) takes its name from a diminutive burg located in Ontario’s tobacco country, the family seat of the Downings throughout the 20th century. The beautifully composed, recorded and performed project is a laconic, nostalgic journey through small-town Canadiana, where linear time is only a concept and the hard-working lives of generations are imbued in the land itself.

The thoughtful and complex Otterville is comprised of 15 original pieces (primarily by Downing) some of which embrace elements and snippets of familiar themes from the Great American Songbook, cleverly re-constructed on a framework of highly intriguing instrumentation, and taking inspiration from diverse tunesmiths Billy Strayhorn, Kurt Weill and Ry Cooder. The fine musicians include (producer) Downing on cello, Tara Davidson on alto saxophone, Christine Bougie on lap steel guitar, Michael Davidson on vibraphone, Paul Mathew on bass, Nick Fraser on drums and special guests Rebecca Hennessy on trumpet and William Carn on trombone.

The opening track, This Year’s Fancies, could be considered a loose structural homage to Johnny Mercer and Jerome Kern’s standard I’m Old Fashioned, re-invented with a modern, multi-instrumental cacophony of both melodic lines and harmonic dissonance. A standout is Family Portrait, composed by the uber-talented Tara Davidson. Linear sax lines and the heartwarming juxtaposition of strings and reeds make this one of the most appealing and accessible songs on the project. Additionally, Downing’s haunting take of Strayhorn’s Take the A Train is nothing short of genius and his composition, Leaving Me With a Memory overflows with emotion and sweet reverie, and defines the mise-en-scène of this potent project.

The Long Slog
Snaggle
Browntasauras Records NCC-1701G (snagglemusic.com)

Many young musicians today put out records that feature a wide range of playing styles. It’s a healthy trend, especially when the program makes intrinsic musical sense from start to finish. However, not many musicians make their records sound as elegant and sophisticated as Snaggle. The record in question is The Long Slog and it comes courtesy of the well-known Toronto musician, Brownman Ali. Snaggle is a quintet comprising six young Torontonians and the smoky syntax of their keyboards, guitar, tenor saxophone, trumpet, bass and drums is quite unique.

Each of the instrumentalists brilliantly addresses keyboardist Nick Maclean’s compositions, bringing the music’s intense rhythmic interplay and extended lyrical passages to life. Each of Maclean’s charts is superlative although Theorum and Lagaan, which feature the electric trumpet of Brownman Ali, are especially riveting. Bassist Doug Moore does contribute Nonuhno, which features not only a tongue-twisting title, but also a tantalizing pulse.

While the relentless swirling down into the furthest reaches of their instruments’ capabilities might be the first aspect of this record to captivate the listener, one is soon drawn into the music’s inner machinations – the sensuous inner rhythm, vivid harmonic colours and the overall wonders and mysteries of the music. The wonder of the musicians’ playing is how engagingly, articulately, flowingly and creatively they pour themselves into the songs, adding further lustre to this recording, which is stylish, responsive and richly atmospheric.

Safe Travels
Sharon Minemoto
Pagetown Records PTCD007 (sharonminemoto.com)

Pianist Sharon Minemoto – soulmate of the late, ineffable Ross Taggart – celebrates Taggart’s life and genius with this rather special, heartfelt homage: Safe Travels. Bidding farewell especially in rather bittersweet circumstances is never easy at the best of times. Musically the temptation to let sentimentality take over is all too real. Minemoto eschews that with a program of music that is informed by nuanced, poetic rumination that manages to also be refreshingly uplifting as well. Eight of the nine songs are based on funny and bittersweet memories of when Minemoto and Taggart were partners. The Vancouver-based pianist emerges from this recital with great credit – imaginative and lyrical as a composer, with pianistic technique in spades.

This recording will not only be remembered for its elegiac reconstruction of the larger-than-life personality that Taggart was, especially among Canada’s West Coast musical community. Rather it will also draw accolades for its gorgeous, cinematic quality. Song after song brings to life the interplay between the two characters – Taggart and Minemoto. And if the listener reads the notes along with the music, moving pictures almost come to life before the eyes. The wittily chipper 15 for 2 depicts a charming episode between the characters at play. Safe Travels is a wistful rhapsody. Perhaps the best aspect of the music is that it suggests characters enjoying themselves, playing at life. All credit to performances by Minemoto and saxophonist Jon Bentley, bassist Adam Thomas and drummer Bernie Arai for making this come alive.

Time/Life
Charlie Haden Liberation Music Orchestra
Impulse 4798480

Deep Memory
Barry Guy; Marilyn Crispell; Paul Lytton
Intakt Records CD273 (www.intaktrec.ch)

The trio of bassist Barry Guy, pianist Marilyn Crispell and percussionist Paul Lytton has a longstanding history. Assembled to interpret Guy’s compositions, the group recorded Odyssey in 1999, Ithaca in 2003 and Phases of the Night in 2007. Clearly there’s a continuing theme apparent in the first two releases, and the group’s latest CD seems to reference it with a piece called Return of Ulysses. Guy may be one of the great free improvisers, but his work is often inspired by other arts and both mythic and modernist themes. Here the titles come from paintings by Hughie O’Donoghue – whose dreamlike works fuse representation and fields of welling colour – both trigger and analogue to this richly diverse work.

The group intuition here is at an exalted level, as the three take the conventional jazz piano trio into new terrain. It’s sometimes hard to distinguish where Guy’s compositions end and the collective improvisation begins, motifs sounding elastic in their first appearance. The opening Scent hints at flamenco sources, with Crispell and Guy vying to assume the guitar part. Fallen Angel juxtaposes tumultuous descending figures with a gently determined lyric rise, while Sleeper is at once minimalist melody and profound reverie.

There’s a Romantic power and sweep at work here, each piece stretching at emotional constraint, whether it’s a subtle weave of melodies from Guy and Crispell, memories coming into view on the rise of Lytton’s drums, or an explosion of percussive energy and ricocheting shards, as in the startling rhythmic unison of piano and drums on Return of Ulysses.

Convallaria
Thumbscrew
Cuneiform Records Rune 415 (cuneiformrecords.com)

Probably improvised music’s most celebrated guitarist at present, Mary Halvorson has attained the position because of her individuality as well as her ability. Like an actor who moves effortlessly between comedy and drama, Halvorson is equally proficient playing solo or in large ensembles, but her best work is done in intimate circumstances. While her dynamic strokes often define a tune’s parameters, her styling is particularly notable during Convallaria’s 11 selections when her light-fingered invention is complemented by bassist Michael Formanek’s chunky thumps. She’s like a painter preparing a pencil sketch with the bassist there to add colour and depth. Drummer Tomas Fujiwara provides a backbeat when needed, but generally uses his rolls and cymbal clicks as if he were a high-class publicist: making the others look good without drawing attention to himself.

The key to the ripened interaction displayed here is how most tunes retain an undercurrent of cultured swing in any circumstance. This doesn’t make the session smooth jazz by any stretch of the imagination though. Since the CD is named for the scientific label of the sweetly scented but also poisonous woodland plant also known as Lily of the Valley, hidden – and sometimes not-so-hidden – prickliness galvanizes the date.

Although she uses the same six-string throughout, Halvorson can sound folksy and almost acoustic, as on Sampsonian Rhythms or spew out opaque chording and flanges on Screaming Piha, where her electronically enhanced judders are such that her pumped-up chords appear to be searching for a heavy-metal connection. Despite this and Fujiwara’s busy resounds, the bassist’s sophisticated downward string sluices move everyone’s output into overlapping interaction. Throughout, Formanek’s intertwining motions provide the perfect backdrop for the guitarist, with her timbres freely resembling those of a saxophone (on Tail of the Sad Dog) or a mandolin (as on Trigger). With composing credits divided almost equally among the three, it seems obvious that this Thumbscrew project warrants two thumbs up.

So Many Things
Anne Sofie von Otter
Naïve V5436

The eloquent and versatile Anne Sofie von Otter is much admired for her ability to cross over genres effortlessly in a manner far more hip than many of the classical persuasion. Teaming up with the equally fluid string quartet Brooklyn Rider, well-known for collaborations with artists in genres from jazz to world music, they explore on this recording an eclectic collection of repertoire from John Adams to Björk to Elvis Costello with great affinity and intelligent interpretation. As well as the performers’ favourite selections, there are pieces included that were created specifically for them: Nico Muhly’s So Many Things and For Sixty Cents, an amusing New York vignette by the quartet’s violinist Colin Jacobsen. Pulitzer Prize-winner Caroline Shaw offered her Cant voi l’aube, a modern reworking of a 12th-century trouvère song.

Songs of unconventional love affairs such as Kate Bush’s Pi and Sting’s Practical Arrangement are remedies to the common love song, providing the listener with another insightful glimpse into urban life. Ending with a nod to the fusion of opera and popular music, they perform Les feux d’artifice t’appellent, the closing aria from Rufus Wainwright’s debut opera, Prima Donna.

Silence On Joue Take 2
Angèle Dubeau & La Pietà
Analekta AN 2 8743-4

New Shoes
The Bombadils
Borealis Records BCD243 (borealisrecords.com)

While the roots music duo The Bombadils live in Montreal they do get around, recording this, their third album, New Shoes, in a Bowen Island, BC, studio. Canadian Maritimer Luke Fraser and self-described “prairie girl” Sarah Frank share an abiding affection for North American and Celtic folk songs, fiddle tunes as well as European classical music. The resonance of those traditions permeates the album.

Frank’s supple soft voice is featured on most tracks accompanied by her idiomatically expressive fiddle and claw-hammer banjo. Fraser sings and plays incisive guitar and mandolin. Not that long ago both studied classical music at Montreal’s McGill University, their various affiliations coming through clearly in the clever La fille aux cheveux de lin. It borrows its melody from Claude Debussy’s piano piece of the same title, neatly adapted by Frank and set to a French poem by Parnassian poet Charles Marie René Leconte de Lisle.

They also pay respects to the late American singer-guitarist Doc Watson and Rosa Lee Watson’s classic Bluegrass song Lone [Long] Journey in a classically tinged arrangement enriched with cello, their two voices neatly paired.

Fraser and Frank’s own songs are marked by originality. Even their arrangements are not allowed to fall into banality, but are rather infused with an old-timey feel while given the tang of the new. It’s a winning combination that’s quite satisfying musically. Twelve guest musicians – including Canadian banjoist extraordinaire Jayme Stone, cellist Kaitlyn Raitz and the expressive jazzy flute of Anh Phung – lend the album additional texture and musical polish.

I find New Shoes a wistful, charming and musically sure-handed outing, and look to the further evolution of this abundantly talented duo.

Parallels…to South Asian music from around the world
Vandana Vishwas
Independent VV003
(vandanavishwas.com)

Sexsmith Swinghammer Songs
Lori Cullen
True North Records TRD618
(loricullen.com)

Contemporary jazz/pop vocalist Lori Cullen’s latest release is an appealing and innovative project that is the result of an inspired collaboration between Cullen herself and two noted musicians – composer/guitarist Kurt Swinghammer and composer/lyricist Ron Sexsmith. It was Sexsmith who first suggested to Swinghammer that they write an album together specifically tailored for Cullen. The 12 tracks on the CD all feature lyrics by Sexsmith and are rife with Swinghammer’s carefully placed stylistic elements of the artists who defined the fertile pop eras of the 1960s and 1970s, including tips of the hat to Burt Bacharach, Jimmy Webb and Antonio Carlos Jobim.

Produced by bassist Maury Lafoy (who appears on the project), the musicians also include drummer Mark Mariash, keyboardist Robbie Grunwald and Swinghammer on guitar. Although Fender Rhodes and guitar are central to the instrumentation, the compelling, acoustic arrangements by Swinghammer also involve an array of diverse instrumental contributions, including finely crafted enhancements on trumpet, trombone, oboe, clarinet, vibraphone, marimba, English horn, recorder and more.

Cullen’s angelic voice wraps itself around each sumptuous melodic line and every composition has been constructed to highlight her superb, crystalline vocal instrument and intuitive knack for delivering frank emotional content and a quirky lyric. Memorable tracks include the gently swinging and faintly ironic The Face of Emily, which features a lush vocal arrangement, and the groovy, lighter-than-air bossa nova, New Love. A true gem is the heartrending duet between Cullen and Sexsmith, Off Somewhere.

This thoroughly pleasing and unabashedly romantic recording is a triumph for all three of these gifted artists and a stunning example of creative, musical symbiosis.

DoVira
DoVira
Independent (doviraband.com)

One of the many great aspects of living as a musician in Toronto is being exposed to music from diverse cultures without ever really leaving home, and subsequently being influenced by it in one’s own music. Listening to DoVira’s music is proof of this. Eight of the 10 tracks are their arrangements of traditional Ukrainian material. The tunes’ melodies and lyrics are still Ukrainian, but the rest of the music world surfaces with a blast.

Opening track Yest’Na Sviti opens with a more traditional rendition by vocalist/keyboardist Stacey Yerofeyeva which builds to a bigger rhythmic sound. A stadium rock setting is established in Dyki Husy with a busy drum groove (Derek Gray), bass (Mark Rynkun), guitars (Patrick O’Reilly) and sopilka (Mike Romaniak). A slower brief interchange between Yerofeyeva’s wailing vocals and guest Ernie Tollar’s saxophone lyric riffs is followed by a fast sax solo and a big instrumental blast ending. Folk music meets the avant garde in Oy Zijdy Ziron’ko as guest accordionist Emilyn Stam matches the vocal line and holds notes against repetitive rhythms, space-age effects and washes, leading to melodic folk material. Kolo, the closing original tune, is a toe-tapping fast get-up-and-boogie tune featuring virtuosic sopilka (Ukrainian wooden flute) playing and guest vocalist harmonies.

All the performers are great, with special kudos to Yerofeyeva’s colourful, wide-ranging vocal stylings. An English translation of the titles would add to the listening experience. This is world fusion music at its best!

Shadow & Light – The Rumi Experience
duoJalal
Bridge Records 9469 (bridgerecords.com)