Jazz and Improvised

Standard Elegance
Bill Coon
Cellar Music CMF121225 (billcoon.bandcamp.com/album/standard-elegance)

Bill Coon is a Vancouver based jazz guitarist and composer with an over 30-year history playing with many well-known jazz artists including Jimmy Heath, Sheila Jordan, Bucky Pizzarelli and Hugh Fraser. He has also performed on more than 50 recordings and has won “Guitarist of the Year” from the National Jazz Awards. Coon has written works for orchestras from the National Arts Centre, Vancouver, Norwegian Radio and Jill Townsend, as well as big bands and small jazz ensembles. 

Coon’s multifaceted activities serve in contrast to Standard Elegance, an exquisite album of jazz classics played on solo guitar. These 13 standards are treated warmly and introspectively by Coon on electric archtop and nylon string guitars. All the Things You Are shows off Coon’s beautiful chord melody skills and he also throws in some contrapuntal lines to contrast with the melody. The Nearness of You begins with some harmonics and sparingly harmonized melody and then slowly progresses through some beautifully arpeggiated chords before ending with the same harmonics. Here’s That Rainy Day has some delightful combinations of arpeggiated chords with just a hint of some bossa nova rhythms. 

Standard Elegance is both relaxing and engaging. It is a pleasure to listen to a fine musician displaying his craft.

Northbound to Finch
Maria Kaushansky; Paul Gill; Anthony Pinciotti
flat 6th records FS-1001 (mariakaushansky.com)

This is New York City-based jazz pianist Maria Kaushansky’s debut album. She was born in Russia, and her family emigrated to Israel. In the early 1990s they moved to Toronto when she was a young girl, where she grew up and went to university. All compositions are by Kaushansky here with nine main tracks and six alternate takes, each being her musical reflection and tribute to growing up in Toronto. She is joined by New Yorkers Paul Gill on bass, and the late Anthony Pinciotti on drums.

Opening title track Northbound to Finch is inspired by the Toronto Transit Commission’s Finch subway station, which was Kaushansky’s home stop. An opening loud repeated piano melody is supported by bass and drums. Happy ”almost home” jazz flavoured piano lines followed by louder sounds from the rhythm section. Sudden soft and slow tight playing is followed by solo piano to silence, like the station stop. Windchill -30, Kaushansky’s music about Toronto winters is so interesting. The solo “low temperature” bass start, then faster with drums, descending bass line like falling down, and piano “shivering” trills express Toronto’s extreme winter temperatures. 

Tight trio performances and beautiful creative playing paint a sonic portrait of Toronto. Each listener will have their own story based on listening to the tracks, whether or not you are from or live in Toronto. 

Kaushansky has also released a companion album, Northbound to Finch: Music for Ballet Class which has the compositions here adapted for ballet exercises.

Listen to 'Northbound to Finch' Now in the Listening Room

hORs TempS
Geraldine Eguiluz; Michel F. Côté
ambiences magnetiques am284 (actuellecd.com/fr/album/6813-hors-temps)

Reversed tape loops, strummed micro gestures and percussive elements sourced from increasingly esoteric places encircle something less akin to a pulse than some greater subtextual unifying logic. The source of these seemingly endless subtle sonic events – be it primary or found – does not grab you as much as the question of their seamless coexistence. 

This is music that journeyed quite a ways to get here; somehow all that you are hearing is born from the early 1990s when Géraldine Eguiluz was in Paris, and recorded some sounds on cassettes. Returning to one’s work after a prolonged span of time can perhaps come with an inherent freshness  and Eguiluz warped, molded, deconstructed, recontextualized and eroded the sounds on these tapes through collage which is another category of introspective creation. Take Territoires perdus #3 for instance, where from a handful of vocal tracks stem harmonies that feel like they are only attained through this medium, as sustained breathy backgrounds envelop heavily edited streams of gibberish, creating a unique atmosphere of uncanniness and one of the many inscrutably hyper specific feelings achieved throughout this project. 

Adding Michel F. Côté ostensibly adds an entire additional process to the creative mix, as he is another universe in himself with all the audial information he is able to generate through countless means. Around track five, the “how” becomes less enthralling than the “what.”

Listen to 'hORs TempS' Now in the Listening Room

Music is Life
Joe Bowden
Independent (theurbanyoda.com)

Delightfully infectious fusion outing from Joe Bowden’s ludicrously stacked band, every track demands repeated listening, just by virtue of how catchy the grooves are, how expertly mixed the elements are, and how every solo is a standout. An incredible midpoint has been found between dazzlingly complex metrical wizardry and fundamentally bouncy accessible songcraft, a breath of fresh air to say the least. This is music that works in the foreground, works in the background (the blissful Spacing Out is aptly named), works at work and works when one is feeling overanalytical. 

It could be said the band operates in two different capacities throughout the album: one being the Rich Brown iteration and one being the Mike Downes iteration. This is a little reductive, as other variables are not beholden to which bass player is present, but there is a welcome shift in sonic identity every time one swaps in for the other. Bowden’s drums are always driving and propelling proceedings forth, but how the elements of the kit synergize with Brown’s electric and Downes’ acoustic playing is a subtle difference that makes a world of difference when it comes to the expressive depth of this project. Not so coincidentally, both bassists have absolutely showstopping solos at various points. Other key members include Warren Wolf (vibraphone) and Manuel Valera (piano). Overall, this is a band that allows the nuances in the music to speak the loudest. Plenty of rewinding, head-shaking and exclamations of “how did they…” will ensue.