May Song
Itamar Erez Independent
Independent (itamarerez.bandcamp.com/album/may-song) 

Itamar Erez’s 2019 “pre-pandemic” CD, Mi Alegria (Spanish for “my joy”) was, indeed, a purely joyous, musical celebration. Now, with May Song, conceived and recorded amid the incessant COVID-19 lockdowns, and released in October 2022, we have Erez’s reflective response to those uncertain and unpredictable pandemic times (not that the virus is done with us, just yet). Erez characterizes the project as “emerging from darkness and doubt into lightness and joy.”

May Song is unique among Erez’s recordings, in that unlike his five previous releases, Erez, an Israeli-Canadian, world-class (and globetrotting) guitarist, pianist and composer based in Vancouver, is heard only at the piano. In addition to Erez’s focus on the keyboard, which has evolved over the last three to four years, a more improvisational approach to his music-making is also evident throughout May Song, and immediately apparent on the haunting, improvised intro of the first track, Chant. And thus begins this musical journey out of darkness.

Hourglass is pulsing and polyrhythmic, with a dynamic dialogue between piano and clarinet. Catch Me If You Can feels jaunty, expansive, optimistic, edging towards the light. You and Me, evocative and yearning, maintains a steady, forward-moving momentum with taught piano/bass/drum interplay. The deeply emotional title track is the penultimate stop, offering hopeful resolution.

Outstanding collaborators on this journey are clarinettist François Houle, bassist Jeff Gammon, Kevin Romain on drums and Chris Gestrin guesting on synths. Like Erez himself, May Song is inspired and original.

Show Yourself
Jacob Wutzke; Lucas Dubovic; Gentiane MG; Levi Dover; Caity Gyorgy
Independent (jacobwutzke.com) 

Show Yourself is an exciting new release from Montreal/Toronto-based drummer Jacob Wutzke. This is Wutzke’s first full-length album as a leader, and it encapsulates all the obligatory energy and excitement of a debut album in a mature and thoughtful package. 

In many ways this recording avoids the traps of being a “drummer album,” but when it does enter that realm its ample exciting musicianship will keep listeners of all persuasions entertained. Another potential snare that this album manages to circumvent is that of lengthiness. There are a mighty 11 tracks on Show Yourself, the longest being over seven minutes in duration, but the overall feeling I have after a complete listen-through is one of pleasant variety rather than longwindedness.  

Right from the starting track How do You Mean?, listeners are treated to music that is straight-ahead without hanging onto overly traditional aesthetics. This lovely contrast is reflected in Wutzke’s personnel choices for the album too, with core band members Lucas Dubovik, Gentiane MG and Levi Dover all finding common ground as a unit. Vocalist Caity Gyorgy makes an appearance on the album’s final track, a contemporary yet swinging version of the jazz standard My Shining Hour. Gyorgy also produced the album, which is a testament to the powerhouse musical and personal relationship she shares with Wutzke. 

To return to my previous “drummer comments,” this album sounds the way many drummers aspire to play: precise, yet organic. Surgical exactitude needs not sacrifice expressiveness, and Show Yourself is a perfect reminder of this. 

Pipe Dream
Lina Allemano Four
Lumo Records LM 2023-14 (linaallemano.bandcamp.com) 

Lina Allemano’s quartet has had the same personnel since 2005 when her musical direction moved to freer climes, with Brodie West on alto saxophone. Since then, it’s served as a vehicle for Allemano’s development as both improviser and composer, revealing a gift for counterpoint and orchestration that makes creative use of bassist Andrew Downing and drummer Nick Fraser beyond typical rhythm section roles. The opening Banana Canon, the first of three independent compositions, is a minimalist theme, at once playful and slightly querulous, that immediately establishes the group’s distinctive personality. 

The rest of the CD is devoted to a suite called Plague Diaries, composed by Allemano in Toronto during the first months of the COVID-19 lockdown. Each of the four movements is introduced by a stark unaccompanied solo, emphasizing the sense of isolation. If studies with Axel Dörner have contributed to Allemano’s development as a keen explorer of the trumpet’s secret sonic resources, her Berlin residencies may have also offered a compositional resource for the suite. Part III: Hunger and Murder, starting with a gritty arco solo from Downing, suggests the grim, desiccated 1930s work of composer Hanns Eisler. Further, the concluding Doom and Doomer, propelled by Fraser’s willfully chaotic drum solo, develops a rapid, circulating pattern against which Allemano improvises brilliantly, her solo suggesting one trapped in a labyrinth. 

There’s a consistent, collective creativity here, at once urgent and coherent, that marks this as one of the year’s most significant jazz recordings.

Septology – The Black Forest Session
Canadian Jazz Collective
HGBS Blue Records HGBSBLUE20217 (canadianjazzcollective.com) 

Canada’s improvised music scene frequently occupies a limbo between the government supported arts scenes of Europe, and the large commercial entertainment markets of the United States. That phenomenon is one of several reasons why it’s exciting to see the Canadian Jazz Collective gather success representing our fair nation locally and abroad.

Kirk MacDonald, Derrick Gardner and Virginia MacDonald are the lead voices of this formidable septet, with guitarist Lorne Lofsky contributing to both the melodic and harmonic sides of the ensemble. In the liner notes to Septology, The Black Forest Session, Lofsky mentions a 40-year history with several members of the group, namely bassist Neil Swainson and pianist Brian Dickinson, who round out the rhythm section alongside Austrian drummer Bernd Reiter. 

Septology’s eight original tracks are penned by Gardner, Lofsky and MacDonald respectively, and feature a beautiful blend of individualism and group interplay. Dig That! is a hard swinging opening track that prepares the listener for what’s to come: a steadfast commitment to the roots of this music, approached in a manner that eschews any notion of traditionalism or conservatism. 

The Time Being is a contemplative piece penned by Lofsky. This writer knows the guitarist’s other two offerings Waltz You Needn’t and Highway 9 from his 1992 self-titled album, and they’re cleverly reworked here for septet. Kirk MacDonald contributes two originals to the recording that fit the collective’s aesthetic beautifully, notably his arrangement of Shadows that keeps the rhythm section on their toes under contrapuntal horn lines. 

Alongside exploring this album at home, I have encountered it several times on local Toronto radio. Septology is receiving ample well-deserved attention, and with a second European tour approaching, this is definitely not the last you’ll be hearing of the Canadian Jazz Collective!

Hush
Le Boeuf Brothers
Soundspore Records (leboeufbrothers.com) 

Pascal and Remy Le Boeuf are identical twin brothers who have worked individually and together to produce innovative music which is mainly composed, but also includes many spaces for improvisation. HUSH is a quieter and more intimate work than many of their previous albums and uses a quintet with Remy on alto saxophone, Pascal on piano, Dayna Stephens on tenor saxophone, Linda May Han Oh on upright bass and Christian Euman on drums. This is a true collaboration as 12 tracks are written by Pascal and eight are by Remy. 

Most works are shorter and are specific to the brothers’ interests. For example, Wedding Planning was composed by Pascal to display their excitement over both brothers’ marriage celebrations. Oblique Two-Step by Remy begins with a simple piano melody with bass and drums that evolves into a dialogue between the two saxophones. The liner notes describe Soot as “a chorale ... searching for something that has been burned away” and Pascal’s gorgeous alto sax makes it one of the most beautiful songs on the album. HUSH is a quiet and graceful work full of variety and nuance.

Listen to 'Hush' Now in the Listening Room

Tines of Change
Mark Dresser
Pyroclastic Records PR 25 (store.pyroclasticrecords.com) 

Art isn’t static, and by virtue it cannot exist in a vacuum. Just as a previously unnoticed detail in a painting can irrevocably alter the beholder’s perspective of it, knowledge of the context music is made in can change the listening experience entirely. I happened to come across Mark Dresser’s Tines of Change relatively versed in his musical output, experientially familiar with the inner workings of an upright bass and having superficially researched the intricacies of the custom bass used on this album. I cannot speak to how a first listen without this context would diverge from my own experience, but the beauty of improvised music of this unbridled nature is that nobody’s perspective holds more value than another’s. 

The third track on this album is titled Harmonity, and even the context I had going into it couldn’t save me from its all-consuming grasp. One would be hard pressed to find a solo bass recording that sends as many unit structures of sound barrelling toward the listener at once as this one does. The individual specialized pickups beyond the instrument’s bridge coalesce into the startling fidelity of Dresser’s feathery touch underneath it, rendering attempts to pinpoint sources of vibration a futile exercise. The detailed tonal warmth engineer Alexandria Smith gets out of the beautiful vessel luthier Kent McLagan fashioned for a marksman seasoned as Dresser allows them to form an invisible trio, disguised as a single organism. Let this music move you.

Ingrid Laubrock – The Last Quiet Place
Ingrid Laubrock; Mazz Swift; Tomeka Reid; Brandon Seabrook; Michael Formanek; Tom Rainey
Pyroclastic Records PR 24 (store.pyroclasticrecords.com) 

Space is the proverbial place on this new Ingrid Laubrock album; its fullness lies in its many pauses. Laubrock herself is in charge of the most overt sonic elements, such as shouldering the entire production and compositional loads, along with her reed work resonating strongly throughout the holistic auditory experience. She leads a six-piece band that consists of two-thirds stringed instruments, which allows for a unique textural and dynamic palette. The group makes the most of this range, and are selective in how they layer musical elements, which leads to an unpredictable aspect that complements the complexity of Laubrock’s melodic phrasings. 

The composition Afterglow wouldn’t have the same arresting air of mystery about it if the entire ensemble was ever playing at once; the decision to centre the piece around a string trio of Tomeka Reid, Mazz Swift and Michael Formanek lends it its structural intrigue. In this sense the music is never afraid to interrupt itself, because rather than the more traditional slow build from the swelling bowed passages, the guitar, saxophone and drums take turns interjecting. This creates an effect of dialogue or commentary, and this interactivity between interlocutors paints a setting of controlled disarray. Contrast can be equally engaging as uniformity, and it’s the ability to seamlessly phase between these two states that makes this such a refreshing group.

Dance Of The Mystic Bliss
Michael Blake’s Chroma Nova
P&M Records P&M-CD001 (pandmrecords.com) 

This is different story of Two Michaels, in a much happier context. All tracks here were composed and performed by Vancouverite-in-New York saxophonist/flutist Michael Blake to meld his distinctive Jazz lines with input from a three-person Brazilian percussion section. The tunes also feature a four-person string section, including fellow Canadian expat bassist Michael Bates.

Consciously avoiding exoticism for its own sake, despite the use of such ethnic instruments as cajón, pandeiro, zabumba drum and berimbau, the music is anchored by a fluid rhythmic emphasis including Bates’ steadying pumps. Sometimes the strings are harmonized with the inflated percussion crunches. At other times, guitarist Guilherme Monteiro projects buzzing rock-like flanges; violinist Skye Steele or cellist Chris Hoffman produces sweeping blues emphasis or Europeanized lyricism; and Blake pivots from double-tongued saxophone stops and slurs to horizontal flute peeps that are in turn, pointed, polished and powerful. 

Because of the repeated drum thumps and staccato string shake, tracks like Sagra suggest a South American hoedown. But segmented reed stops and scoops retain a sophisticated improvisational emphasis. Others, such as Little Demons mate mid-point arching guitar frails with penetrating saxophone split tones and staccato string section shakes for stop-time variations.

Conceived as an homage to his late mother, who was both a dancer and a gardener, Blake’s Dance of the Mystic Bliss appropriately presents musical textures that have elements of both sprouting and syncopation.

ThirtyNine FiftyFive
C/W|N
Acheulian handaxe AHA 2202 (handaxe.org) 

Creatively exploring timbres extracted from instruments stretched to their expected limits during a playing time of almost 40 minutes (see title), the Köln-based C/W|N trio dynamically formulates a languid exposition with linear asides. Slovenian pianist Dušica Cajlan concentrates on pointillist keyboard strokes, intermittent silences and echoing throbs on tightly wound internal strings; Austrian Georg Wissel tongue-slaps and squeaks augmented and gurgling split tones from deep inside his alto saxophone’s body; and German Etienne Nillesen eschews a regularized pulse for pinpointed slaps, rubs and whirls from the top and sides of his single extended snare drum.

Although the potential for musical discombobulation seems maximized, individual tone exploration evolves as realized tonal investigation, not grandstanding. Each improviser is able to sense others’ procedures with near clairvoyance. That means no matter how many instances of keyboard comping, radical percussion cranks or strained reed overblowing are heard they never have a singular function. Instead, an equivalent intermittent and understated continuum is simultaneously generated by the others. Taken together each technical instrumental prod is eventually interlaced into a slow moving transformative sequence that also underlines quiet but robust ensemble work. While exposing unexpected variants of each instrument’s range C/W|N eventually creates a program of profound horizontal association.

The Way to You (violin jazz)
Sara Caswell
Anzic Records ANZ-0085-02 (saracaswell.com) 

Grammy-nominated violinist/composer Sara Caswell has had a fruitful performing career, but it took close to 17 years for her third solo album to emerge. The Way to You is a collection of original compositions, thoughtful arrangements and magnificent collaborations. Caswell has joined forces with her longtime musical collaborators – Jesse Lewis (guitar), Ike Sturm (bass), Jared Schonig (drums) and Chris Dingman (vibraphone) – creating a musical synergy that can only come from familiarity and deep connection. The album has a tranquil atmosphere and compositions are mostly within the realm of ballads, which puts light on the polished ensemble performance. Caswell is undoubtedly a queen of ballads. Her improvisations are poised, stylish and unhurried, her tone light, fluid, resonant. On this album she plays both violin and hardanger d’amore (5-string Norwegian fiddle), creating an array of beautiful colours.

Caswell is at her most powerful when improvising on the vocal lines – her ability to convey the emotions behind the lyrics is remarkable. This is most obvious in On My Way to You, an arrangement of Michel Legrand’s 1988 ballad. O Que Tinha De Ser, the quartet’s version of Antonio Carlos Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes’ composition, is dark and sultry and the longing hardanger’s melodies go straight to the heart. Caswell’s original collaborative compositions Warren’s Way, Last Call and Spinning, inspired by the things of life – nature, love and bicycles – are great additions to the classics.

Uptown on Mardi Gras Day
Delfeayo Marsalis Uptown Jazz Orchestra
Troubadour Jazz Records TJR02062023 (dmarsalis.com) 

The latest release by renowned American jazz trombonist Delfeayo Marsalis (grandson of Ellis Sr. and brother to Wynton, Branford and Jason) is a fun, tootin’ good time that will get every listener’s toes tapping and shoulders shaking. Born and raised in New Orleans, it’s no surprise that Marsalis has gone all out on this latest musical venture, focusing on the festivities and feelings gleaned from Mardi Gras Day. Featuring the all-star Uptown Jazz Orchestra providing fabulous backup on each tune, this makes for perfect accompaniment to the fresh spring days that are now upon us. The album features both iconic jazz classics with a renewed honky tonky flavour and new originals penned by Marsalis himself. 

The spirited nature of this record is positively contagious, filling the soul with joy and happiness right from the first track. Of special note is Carnival Time, starting off the album with a rhythmic “get up and go” feeling, featuring fantastic percussive work by Herlin Riley, Marvin “Smitty” Smith and Alexey Marti. What really makes this album is the remarkable brass talent that adds just that extra little touch to each piece. Punchy, tight horn riffs layered over soaring flute and sax solos along with an unmistakably funky bass line are what forms this musical journey into a perfect whole, rounding out the New Orleans sound yet also bringing in a bit of a new flavour and spark. For those jazz aficionados looking for an extra spring in their step, this record is a perfect addition to the collection.  

Listen to 'Uptown on Mardi Gras Day' Now in the Listening Room

The Harlem Suite
Jacques Schwarz-Bart
Ropeadope Records rad-699 (ropeadope.com) 

This album – The Harlem Suite – may suggest that Jacques Schwarz-Bart, and that fire-breathing dragon of his saxophone may have rolled up his Guadeloupean zouk and Gwo-ka music (at least for now). But a few bars into the opening chart Sun Salutation, you realize that you can never take the spellbinding rhythms of Guadeloupe out of the iconic Guadeloupean. Indeed, the melody, laced with the pulsating zouk-chiré rhythms, comes forth from Schwarz-Bart’s saxophone like tongues of fire. His music virtually “sings” as it grooves to jazz, the very echo and heartbeat of Harlem.

To anyone unfamiliar with the work of Schwarz-Bart, do not let the francophone name fool you. Behind it is an Antillean with an African soul, a Guadeloupean with spirits dancing in the flesh. This makes for a very potent mix in his music. His tribute to the jazz masters and the musical heritage of Harlem constantly inveigles; often elegiac – such as in the mystical impression of Herbie Hancock’s Butterfly, voiced by the wraith-like Malika Tirolien, while the moon seems to cast a carnival spirit on John Coltrane’s Equinox. 

Shadows and light dapple From Goré to Harlem. Everyone has a role to play everywhere, as Schwarz-Bart leads a proverbially fired-up beguine vidé carnival band. Each piece of music swings pendulously. The questing Dreaming of Freedom, voiced by Stephanie McKay, soars into its celestial dénouement.

Stage & Screen
John Pizzarelli
Palmetto Records JOPI01 (propermusic.com/label/p/palmetto-records.html) 

There can be no question that guitarist/vocalist John Pizzarrelli, as the son of the late, iconic guitarist Bucky, was born with special musical DNA… and for the past 40 years plus, Pizzarelli the younger has honed his craft and performed to sold-out concert halls and venues throughout the world. Joining him on a new project that pays tribute to a dozen compositions that have been presented on both stage and screen, are his intuitive collaborators Isaiah Thompson on piano and Michael Karn on bass.

The opening salvo, Too Close for Comfort is a jaunty, swinging take from the 1956 Broadway hit Mr. Wonderful that showcases Pizzarelli’s impossibly pure vocal instrument, as well as his gorgeous intonation. A snappy, sinuous piano solo from Thompson and a fine unison voice/guitar scat section are the icing on the proverbial cake. Another choice, up-tempo track is I Want to Be Happy, where prodigious 7-string guitar technique takes one’s breath away and Karn renders a facile “in the pocket” solo.

Bernstein’s Some Other Time from On the Town is performed as a pristine guitar solo that plucks our heart strings all-the-while weaving melodic and lyrical magic. Other delights include Pizzarelli’s percolating arrangement of Just in Time from Comden and Green’s Bells Are Ringing, and the Oklahoma Suite, which is the lovely synthesis of three tunes from the beloved American musical. Closing the set is a gleaming gem:  As Time Goes By, which is authentically performed with a fully restored verse. A stellar collection, lovingly drawn from our shared art forms of music, theatre and film.

For Jemeel – Fire from the Road
Steve Swell’s Fire Into Music
RogueArt ROG0126 (roguart.com) 

Emerging in the 1970s, Chicago-born alto saxophonist Jemeel Moondoc was a firebrand of free jazz, his work characterized by original phrasing, emotional immediacy and unwavering commitment to musical liberation. In 2004 the younger trombonist Steve Swell put together a New York dream band with Moondoc, bassist William Parker and drummer Hamid Drake (the latter two a definitive rhythm section for rugged extended improvisation) for a tour ranging from the U.S. Midwest to the West Coast and then through Canada. Moondoc died in 2020, after a lifetime plagued by sickle-cell anaemia, just as the group planned a reunion recording; in lieu of that, Swell assembled this three-CD, three-hour set from 2004-5 concerts. 

Moondoc’s command is apparent on Space Cowboys, his style deeply rooted in essential bop and blues sources, but they are pressed into his own distinctive lines. Swell combines all the bends, smears and raw and celebratory bleats of generations of jazz trombonists. Junka Nu, from the 2005 Guelph Jazz Festival, moves with an Afro-Caribbean lilt, combining twisting, expressive lines with a dancing rhythm, creating a compound space that marks the special possibilities of free jazz. It’s a quality maintained here by Parker and Drake, whose compound rhythms are at once determined and celebratory. 

It’s rare to find documentation of this scale appearing for a band that wasn’t famous, but this is rare work with a consistent, incendiary power, a tribute to the band as well as to Moondoc. 

Treasures
Bill Evans
Elemental Music 5990444 (elemental-music.com) 

Blue Room
Chet Baker
Jazz Detective DDJD-008 (deepdigsmusic.com) 

Bill Evans and Chet Baker had much in common. Both born in 1929, they were great lyric talents. Both achieved tremendous acclaim, and both suffered the ravages of heroin addiction, contributing to Evans’ death in 1981, Baker’s in 1988. Baker had known stardom and decline before Evans emerged in 1958, and they were very different musicians, Evans a meticulous student of complex harmony, Baker a “natural” who could travel fluently through chord progressions without naming them. These boxsets, available on CD or LP, present aspects of their individual European careers, Evans a visitor, Baker a long-time resident.  

Treasures packs a few facets of Evans’ career into visits to Denmark. It initially presents him in 1965 in his favoured trio format, a conversational form here completed by the necessarily virtuosic bassist Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen and either Alan Dawson or Alex Riel on drums. The material ranges from standards to Evans’ own compositions, Time Remembered and Waltz for Debby. The rest of the disc, from 1969, has the trio with bassist Eddie Gomez and drummer Marty Morell joined by the combined forces of the Royal Danish Symphony Orchestra and the Danish Radio Big Band in a suite of mostly Evans’ compositions conducted by arranger/trumpeter Palle Mikkelborg, who manages the massed ensemble with apt taste.

There follows a 1965 solo set that ranges from a moody ‘Round Midnight to a rhapsodic My Funny Valentine, then continues with trio sets from 1966, with Gomez and Riel, and 1969, with Gomez and Morell. Evans’ could return repeatedly to the same material, trusting to his bandmates and his own invention to reignite the composition in hand. Here Miles Davis’ exotic Nardis appears in each trio’s playlist, explored at contrasting lengths, and there’s a joyous account of Johnny Mandel’s Emily, another favourite Evans vehicle.   

Last year’s release of Chet Baker’s Live in Paris: The Radio France Recordings 1983 -1984 (Elemental) presented some of Baker’s finest performances, expansive, consummately lyrical and enlivened by intense support. On Blue Room’s two 1979 sessions one gets both very good Baker and some lesser work. Mercifully, the first session contributes 70 minutes of music, the second only 25. Baker travelled to Hilversum, The Netherlands, in April with mostly American partners. Pianist Phil Markowitz, a regular, is empathetic, embellishing Baker’s brilliant minimalism, evident on Wayne Shorter’s Beautiful Black Eyes. Drummer Charles Rice and Belgian bassist Jean-Louis Rassinfosse contribute firm underpinnings as well, for both Baker’s hesitant but engaged vocals and his warmly muffled trumpet balladry. The brief session from November had Baker driving a long distance, forgetting his sheet music and playing with a local band he had just met. The results are sometimes positive, but the relaxed communication that Baker enjoyed with the previous group is absent, and his vocals sound tired. That April quartet session, however, shows Baker in excellent form.