Jazz and Improvised

Kris Davis
Capricorn Climber
Clean Feed CF 266 CD
www.cleanfeed-records.com

Creating a cohesive program that moves from experimentation to straight-ahead swing and lush inventions — often on the same track — pianist Kris Davis outlines a series of moods on this program of her own compositions. Calgary-born Davis has made a reputation for herself as an arranger as well as a soloist and each of her compositions displays her sidefolk — some of New York’s most accomplished players — to their collective best advantage.

Take for instance Pass the Magic Hat, which starts off as a swirling and spiralling exposition for her piano plus the bass of Trevor Dunn and the drums of Tom Rainey, but soon evolves to a contrapuntal duel between her metronomic comping and Ingrid Laubrock’s pulsating tenor saxophone. A spikier secondary theme developed by violist Mat Maneri arrives, eventually to be harmonized with piano and reed slurs. On the other hand, Bottom of a Well is a cohesive recital-styled track with low-pitched piano clunks underscoring the chromatic string sets. Before a legato finale, Dunn vibrates a solo in the cello range while the violist harshly rubs his strings. With Davis’ narrative literally more low-key and impressionistic, Pi is Irrational balances Maneri’s tremolo stridency with Rainey’s rugged ruffs and taps, until Laubrock’s gentle arpeggios presage a brief, rhythmically sophisticated bass solo.

Davis who studied at Banff and Toronto defines her program enough to give her soloists the freedom to interpolate everything from strident reed bites and fiddle scratches to extended cymbal vibrations into the nine tracks. But she reins them in enough with strategies ranging from inner piano string plucks to keyboard jabs and cohesive chording to maintain the integrity of her compositional vision.

Upstairs
Matt Herskowitz
Justin Time JUST 249-2
www.justin-time.com

This CD was recorded before an audience at the Upstairs Jazz Bar & Grill in Montreal where Matt Herskowitz has made his home since 2000 and the first thing that struck me was the phenomenal technique possessed by this Albany-born pianist.

The varied program begins with a long — over 13 minutes — interpretation of the Dave Brubeck composition, Dziekuje which means “thank you” in Polish, and was modelled on Chopin’s Prelude in E Minor. He also includes Cantabile by Michel Petrucciani, Traumerei by Robert Schumann, music by J.S. Bach, two originals, Waltz In Moscow and Bella’s Lament plus a couple of Gershwin songs for good measure — But Not For Me and I’ve Got Rhythm.

Herskowitz’ classical training permeates the music, sometimes at the expense of “jazz feeling” but then there are also passages of delicate beauty as shown in Bella’s Lament and Traumerei.

To make a comparison between visual art and music, Herskowitz is like, say, a Dali rather than a Mondrian.

I have a non-musical complaint on behalf of all of us with less than perfect eyesight. The liner notes are in deep blue against a black background, making them all but impossible to read. I, and a few others I have spoken with, find it extremely frustrating. Designers of CD sleeves please take note.

Guitarist Reg Schwager has worked with some of the most famous performers in jazz, including Diana Krall, George Shearing and Peter Appleyard. In addition to being a distinguished sideman, though, he’s also genuinely adventurous. Schwager has just released two contrasting CDs that testify to the range and quality of his work.

His duet with pianist David Restivo, Arctic Passage (Rant 1346), presents two musicians gifted in the myriad permutations of melody and harmony, etching work of glittering lyricism. Most of the compositions are Schwager’s own, themes worthy of further exploration, but there are also distinctive accounts of Poor Butterfly and Alexander’s Ragtime Band, each enlivened by thoughtful chordal extensions that are bound to surprise. The dialogue is inevitably reminiscent of the perfect duos recorded by Bill Evans and Jim Hall in the 1960s.

Schwager and drummer Michel Lambert, one of Quebec’s finest free improvisers, make Schwager’s outer limits more apparent on Trio Improvisations (Rant 1245). It’s a special trio, with three different musicians occupying the third spot. The recordings come from sessions during a six-month period between 2001 and 2002 and include the powerful Coltrane-influenced Toronto saxophonist Michael Stuart, Amsterdam’s anarchic and brilliant pianist Misha Mengelberg (an early influence on the Dutch-born Schwager) and trumpeter Kenny Wheeler, perhaps Canada’s greatest contribution to international jazz. The music is all free improvisation, though in this case that means harmonic and rhythmic structures arise and dissolve with frequency and ease. What makes the set most remarkable is that it’s anything but pastiche. While many CDs from different sessions sound like patchwork quilts, this one sounds like a suite, with a consistent approach that expands outward from Schwager and Lambert and embraces their various guests.

Cellist Kye Marshall has a broad musical background ranging from extensive studies in jazz composition and positions as principal cellist with Toronto’s New Chamber Orchestra and assistant principal cellist with the National Ballet Orchestra. She’s worked extensively both in jazz and improvised music, and she brings all of those skills and inclinations to her Jazz Quartet’s Pencil Blues (Zephyr/Westwind Productions www.kyemarshall.com). It’s lively, infectious work and Marshall has thoughtfully constructed a string band around her still rather unusual jazz cello, with Don Thompson on bass, Andrew Scott on guitar and Ethan Ardelli on drums. When the group expands for textural reasons, she adds violist Kent Teeple and percussionist Mark Duggan to the ensembles. The feeling’s not unlike the Hot Club of France, and the clear star is Thompson, whose bass playing should be declared a national treasure.

Pianist Steve Koven is a crisp modern stylist, an ebullient musician who can move handily from infectious Latin jazz to probing ballads and complex three-way dialogues with the members of his long-standing trio. In fact that’s what has given Koven’s work its greatest dimension, something celebrated on SK3 20 (Bungalow Records SK 009 3), commemorating the 20th anniversary of the group with bassist Rob Clutton and drummer Anthony Michelli. It would be remarkable enough if Koven had held together a band that long with anybody, but he’s done so with two of the most creative musicians that the Toronto scene could provide, evident in the playful funk groove of Lolaland. The CD also comes with a bonus DVD of the group in performance.

Curtis Nowosad is a 24-year-old drummer who recently graduated from the University of Manitoba’s Jazz Studies Program. Clearly Nowosad enjoys many kinds of music, and there’s plenty of pop repertoire to go with the hard bop on his debut, The Skeptic & the Cynic (Know-a-sad Music KSM-001 www.curtisnowosad.com), with songs made famous by Michael Jackson, Bob Marley, Pink Floyd, Joni Mitchell and 2Pac Shakur. Nowosad’s band is made up largely of University of Manitoba faculty, with trumpeter Derrick Gardner, saxophonist Jimmy Greene, bassist Steve Kirby and Will Bonness on keyboards (covering piano, Fender Rhodes and Hammond B3) lending tremendous lustre to the proceedings. Clearly Nowosad has been an outstanding student, sounding right at home in this band of veterans, who for their part seem to be enjoying playing signature hard bop on tunes as unlikely as The Way You Make Me Feel and Three Little Birds.

Another musician employing distinguished talent is saxophonist Cameron Wallis. Calling Dexter (www.cameronwallismusic.com) features pianist André White, bassist Alec Walkington and drummer Dave Laing, who have functioned as the André White Trio for the past 25 years. Wallis is a skilful traditionalist, smoothly negotiating chord changes and swinging with aplomb. If anything, he’s a little too respectful, from the title dedication to Dexter Gordon to liner note invocations of Don Byas and “my two favourite Sonnys.” One of them is definitely Stitt, but Rollins seems too aggressively modern even in his 1950 form to qualify as the other. Wallis demonstrates more flexibility than identity by playing soprano, alto, tenor, baritone and even C melody saxophone, making it hard for a listener to get a sense of a distinctive voice.  

Of all the instruments that needed the advances of free music in the 20th century to show off its true character, it has been the double bass which benefitted most from this situation. Relegated to decorative, scene setting or mere rhythmic functions in conventional classical and jazz performances, it was only when bassists were able to express themselves without restraint that their role grew. By the 21st century in fact, solo bass recitals became as commonplace as those by other instrumentalists. The reason, as these CDs demonstrate, is the arrival of performers who can extract a multiplicity of novel tones, timbres and textures from four tautly wound strings.

Take Paris-based Joëlle Léandre for instance. Early in her career she played pieces composed specifically for her by the likes of John Cage and Giacinto Scelsi; now she’s fully committed to free expression. Wols circus: 12 compositions pour contrebasse d’après 12 gravures de Wols (Galerie Hus HUS 112 joelle-leandre.com) is particularly fascinating. Using only a bow, the strings, her instrument’s body and her own vocal inflections, Léandre interprets musically engravings by Surrealist artist Otto Wols (1913–1951). Created from 1942–1945, when the Berlin-born Wols was interned as an “enemy foreigner” in France, where he lived from 1932 until his death, the images are as abstract as they are affecting. Making no attempt to literally replicate the drawings in music, Léandre’s sound interpretations move from stentorian to muted, with indistinct, spiccato scrubs as common as Jew’s harp-like twangs. Especially noteworthy is the build-up and release reflected on the successive Topographie, Drei Vingnetten auf einem Blatt and Keiner Fleck. With each sequence three minutes, first abrasive then mellow string sawing fades into occasional arco slides and sul tasto pops with the air vibrated by the bow audible as well. The climax occurs as unison basso string strokes and Léandre’s vocal growls give way to a contrapuntal duet between sharp instrumental lines. Throughout, the bull fiddler provides personalized a view of Wols’ sketches with additional string inventions ranging from squeeze-toy peeps to tremolo bass slaps. Nonetheless the defining performance occurs with Dunkle Stadt, when with intensifying torque she moves from miniscule below-the-bridge plucks to staccato string chirps contrapuntally layered with vocalized faux lyric soprano accents. 

Unlike Léandre, whose 12 acoustic selections were recorded at one live concert, French-Israeli bassist JC Jones’ Citations: Solo Bass (Kadima Collective KCR 36 kadimacollective.com) is made up of 17 untitled compositions and improvisations from 2008 to 2012 using acoustic bass or electro-acoustic bass with live electronics. To be honest the computer processes aren’t that prominent; but are mostly used to provide a constant pizzicato undercurrent, while Jones’ arco buzzes add multiphonic sweeps or balladic decorations to the selections. More individual are the improvisations, which sometimes had been created to accompany dancers. On the 11th track for instance, rosin seems to be sliding off the bass strings as Jones slaps them agitato and tremolo so that soundboard thumps resonate throughout the instrument’s body. Buzzing spiccato action with banjo-like plucks from below the bridge succeed spanked string rhythms on the 15th track; while on the fifth Jones manages to sound as if he’s manipulating two basses at once without overdubbing. Here he plucks and shakes the strings in the instrument’s top range while ruggedly double- and triple-stopping from the bottom, resulting in snaps, knocks and pops ricocheting back onto one another. Moreover a track such as 17 sums up all the preceding strategies as Jones manages to isolate three separate theme variations. Not only are stentorian thumps and undulating bow motions heard, but so too is a third tremolo impulse harmonized alongside the first two.

If Jones’ electronic interface is limited, Montreal-based Alexandre St-Onge and Norwegian-in-Austin Ingebrigt Håker Flaten draw more textures to their finger tips by utilizing amplified electric basses on their solos sessions. A member of bands such as Klaxon Gueule, as well as studying for his PhD in art, St-Onge describes himself as a sound performer and the six selections on Ailleurs (&records ET18 etrecords.net) are studded as much with signal-processed drones and splutters as reflective string modulations. Layering the sequences with loops that replicate sounds ranging from ring-modulator whooshes to bell ringing and distorted flanges, the basic double bass-like rhythmic qualities of the instrument are muted. Only on the fifth track does the tremolo, dial-twisting exposition pull back enough for a semi-acoustic interlude. Here juddering bass-string plucks can be heard contrapuntally advancing the narrative, which is still decorated with additional droning lines and wiggling voltage-affiliated cries. The achievement of Ailleurs is that by mutating its intonation and freeing the bass from its limitations as a purely rhythmic instrument a new interface appears. The reverberating result is of an expansive formula that evocatively builds on expected bull fiddle timbres the way a realistic photograph could be the basis for a surrealistic art

As abstract in execution as St-Onge and as familiar with as many electronic extensions, on the six tracks which make up Birds – Solo Electric (Tektite Records ingebrigtflaten.com), Ingebrigt Håker Flaten at least follows the convention of titling his tracks. Known for his membership in bands such as The Thing and Atomic, he’s able to play the electric bass in such a way to suggest multiple instruments. The most breathtaking instance of this occurs on Chicago. Pulsating the top string of his highly amplified bass with spiccato pressure, Flaten produces timbres that could as easily have come from a bagpipe chanter or a piccolo trumpet. At the same time modulated feedback decorates the exposition, while a legato theme is heard from the top guitar-like strings. Eventually this broken-octave display fades into measured stops. Mercurial and rubato, many of the other tones in his improvisations sound as if they are extended by an e-bow. Take a track like Lucia. Here string slaps alternate with flanges that could come from backward running tapes, until a vigourous melody surmounts those sounds. Whistles, whooshes, crackles and other amplified flutters predominate throughout, but when Flaten strikes or scrapes the strings with firecracker-like resonation, he confirms the true instrumental origin of the performances.

With the creativity on display on any one of these CDs so obvious, hearing the bass used merely for decorative or rhythmic functions in the future will likely be disappointing for many.