Jazz and Improvised

This Song Is New
Lorne Lofsky
Modica Music (modicamusic.com)

The late Ed Bickert set the model: Toronto’s most distinguished jazz guitarists tend to be self-effacing, blending in, enhancing the music of which they’re a part, rarely assuming the foreground. It’s certainly true of Lorne Lofsky (and Reg Schwager, for another). Lofsky spent eight years co-leading a quartet with Bickert and a few years in Oscar Peterson’s quartet, but his last recording under his own name was Bill, Please, released in 1994, before his term with Peterson. 

This Song Is New presents Lofsky in a quartet with longtime associates playing five of his compositions, as well as two modern jazz standards that establish his frame of reference. The opening Seven Steps to Heaven, associated with its co-composer Miles Davis, suggests Lofsky’s biases: his strongest associations are with the subtle explorations, harmonic and melodic, of musicians like Bill Evans and Jim Hall, articulated with a beautifully even, glassy electric guitar sound. It’s even more pointed on his own compositions, like the ballad The Time Being, on which tenor saxophonist Kirk MacDonald finds a lightly metallic sound that perfectly embraces the melody. The bouncy Live from the Apollo has an extended trio segment in which Lofsky, bassist Kieran Overs and drummer Barry Romberg develop an intimate three-way dialogue, while the title track encapsulates the delicately nuanced nocturne of which Lofsky is a master.       

At its best, it’s music to savour. One hopes Lofsky doesn’t wait 27 years to release another recording.

Wrongs
Dan Pitt Quintet
Dan Pitt Music DP003 (dan-pitt.com)

The tracks on Wrongs, from the Dan Pitt Quintet, are moody and textured as they move forward through shifting soundscapes that are intense and intriguing. Pitt, a guitarist/composer living in Toronto, has put together a cohesive and talented group including bassist Alex Fournier and drummer Nick Fraser from his trio. The addition of Naomi McCarroll-Butler on alto sax and bass clarinet, and Patrick Smith on tenor and soprano saxophones, creates some fabulous textures. For example, on Shadows Loom, the bass clarinet and tenor sax combine organically for a nice mid-range opening harmony; then we have a nuanced bass clarinet solo followed by Smith’s wailing tenor with a few multiphonics thrown in. The piece ends with a blistering and over-driven guitar solo by Pitt.

Wrongs’ tracks evolve from one mood and collection of sounds to another which makes the listening experience a series of discoveries. Hunter’s Dream begins with a long, bowed bass intro, What Is opens with a whimsical guitar solo. Wrongs starts with a funky and off-kilter guitar and closed hi-hat/snare rhythm which persists under a bowed bass and sax/clarinet riff. Soon Pitt has changed to an ostinato pattern, Fraser is propulsively swirling through his entire kit and Smith is tearing through another terrific and intense solo. And then sudden quiet and introspection, before building towards its kinetic, yet tight ending. Pitt’s seven compositions are inventive and subtle; they, along with the quintet’s superb musicianship, make Wrongs so very right!

Night Cravings
Matty Stecks & Persiflage
(persiflage.bandcamp.com)

It was Thelonious Monk who once said “a genius is the one most like himself.” In my eyes, that’s the goal: to acquire a distinct sound. Playing with technical prowess is impressive on its own, but knowing all the notes is only half the battle. It’s what you do with said notes that defines your artistry. 

Saxophonist Matt Steckler and his quintet Persiflage certainly exhibit an immense command of their sound on this latest effort. As he often does, Matty Stecks beautifully showcases the sheer range and breadth of his compositional talents. Not only are his melodies ingenious and wonderfully complex, but the way he manipulates form in each composition makes for a consistently exhilarating listen. There seems to be a curve ball thrown around every corner. I find myself particularly blown away by my initial listen of Agriturismo. The tune kicks off with a slightly disconcerting march, reminiscent of Henry Threadgill. Once a natural climax is reached, they hastily dissolve into a guitar/drum duet, which transitions seamlessly into an open trombone/bass improvisation and saxophone solo. 

The textures accomplished on this album are something else, which can be largely attributed both to the group’s general attentiveness and specifically the Herculean efforts of percussionist Satoshi Takeishi. Persiflage is simply an astounding band, and the results on this recording speak for themselves.

Facets
Hafez Modirzadeh
Pi Recordings (pirecordings.com)

Hafez Modirzadeh, an American composer and saxophonist, has a musical vision he calls “chromodal” merging modal Persian music and the harmonic language of jazz as embodied in the work of John Coltrane and Thelonious Monk. Here he’s created a series of pieces, Facets, combining his own and others’ works, in which eight of the piano’s keys have been lowered in specific pitch values, creating an available series of microtones and radically altering the piano’s resonance.

The 18 pieces heard here have been divided equally among three pianists who readily blur composed and improvised musics: Kris Davis, Tyshawn Sorey and Craig Taborn. Modirzadeh joins in on tenor saxophone on ten pieces. No description can account for the numerous variations in approach or the strangely playful eeriness and structured refractions that arise. Facet 33 Tides achieves a strange, limpid and previously unknown, watery beauty. Facet 34 Defracted has Davis improvising on two Monk compositions, Ask Me Now and Pannonica, each performed later by the duo of Modirzadeh and Taborn. Facet 39 Mato Paho is a superb reverie by Modirzadeh and Sorey in which the strange colouring of pitches transforms the initial mood, while Davis makes Facet 31 Woke an epic of transforming approaches. In Facet 32 Black Pearl, Modirzadeh creates a variation on Bach’s Goldberg Variation No.25.

As novel as this wedding of cultures might seem, there’s real substance here, combining rich and related inheritances in ways that underline distinctions and highlight concordances.