Jazz and Improvised

Several Toronto musicians have recently released projects that play creatively with genre expectations. Bassist Michael Herring and guitarist Don Scott formed Peripheral Vision in 2008 as a vehicle for their compositions and a contemporary fusion style that incorporates jazz elements with sometimes rock-derived rhythms and a full complement of guitar pedals. They’re joined on Sheer Tyranny of Will (peripheralvisionmusic.com) by tenor saxophonist Trevor Hogg and drummer Nick Fraser. The interest in composition is real and the concentration on the music’s total effect extends to the judicious use of studio resources: both Herring’s “Wiretap” and the title tune develop complex moods through contrasting segments and Scott’s overdubbed guitar parts. Peripheral Vision may be at its best, though, on simpler material: “Charleston Heston” has a tremendous buoyancy, with Scott and Hogg floating aloft on the rhythmic verve that Herring and Fraser can generate.

Since emerging in the group Chelsea Bridge two decades ago, Nova Scotia-born singer Tena Palmer has not just welcomed new challenges and repertoire but sought them out, whether it’s an expedition into free improvisation, an evening of bossa nova or her own blends of jazz and Celtic music. Holy Heart of Me (TLP 002 tenapalmer.net) is a collection of original songs recorded in Iceland with a band called T.I.N.T., or There Is No Them. It would be difficult to corral it into any single genre, whether some subset of folk, rock, pop or jazz, but it’s all imbued with an expressive intensity in which the sensuous and spiritual blur into one another. The frameworks, created largely by guitarist Hilmar Jensson and percussionist Matthias Hemstock, tend towards almost hypnotic, minimalist electronica, spare fields that set Palmer and her songs in stark relief. While Palmer and Jensson might easily carry it all, there are some wonderful guest appearances, among them New Brunswick cornetist Roland Bourgeois on “Golden Rod” and Icelander Omar Gudjonsson playing burbling sousaphone on the title track.

Named a “trumpeter of the future” by DownBeat magazine a few years ago, Lina Allemano has touched many of the usual bases, from playing with big bands like NOJO to a host of small bands. Her best vehicle has undoubtedly been her own quartet Four, releasing five CDs of increasingly distinguished and distinctive free-bop over the past decade. While that band continues – joyously so – Allemano is also taking other paths, exploring free improvisation in Europe and studying extended trumpet techniques like multiphonics and circular breathing. The fruits of those explorations are apparent in the first release by her new group Titanium Riot. On Kiss the Brain (Lumo Records LM 2014-6 linaallemano.com), Allemano is a central organizing intelligence set free in imaginative soundscapes created by the bleeps and whistles of Ryan Driver’s analogue synthesizer, Rob Clutton’s churning bass and Nick Fraser’s randomizing percussion. She emerges as a trumpeter of the future more clearly than ever before, a probing, thoughtful improviser who can create form with a few well-placed blasts. The music is as surreal as the names of the pieces, the muddy antique organ tones of “Nose-Coloured Glasses” as oddly compelling as the piece’s title.

Meanwhile in Montreal, bassist Nicolas Caloia is responsible for one of the great institutions of current Canadian jazz, the Ratchet Orchestra, a sprawling ensemble of up to 30 musicians that for more than two decades has been defining its own identity while paying tribute to the exotic space music of Sun Ra. It’s hard to imagine Caloia’s vehicle reduced to an all-star quartet, but that’s precisely the case with Tilting in which the bassist is joined by Jean Derome on baritone and alto saxophones and bass flute, pianist Guillaume Dostaler and drummer Isaiah Ceccarelli. When guests arrive – bass clarinetist Lori Freedman and alto saxophonist Yves Charuest – they too are members of Ratchet Orchestra. On Holy Seven (Barnyard Records BR0336 barnyardrecords.com), Tilting approaches jazz from an oblique angle, from its devotion to low frequency horns, insistent ascending patterns, moderate tempos and lumpy rhythms, all highlighted and exaggerated by Dostaler’s piano which seems to present every chord as equal part speculation and dare. The music is filled with rare emotion, whether it’s a haunted blues or a listing joy, testament to the band’s strong sense of communication and purpose as well as Derome’s singular power on baritone.

The Montreal mainstream is well represented by two very different pianist-composers’ new releases on the Effendi label. On Essences Des Bois (Effendi Records FND131 effendirecords.com), Yves Léveillé puts composition and orchestration solidly in the foreground, crafting strong melodies and moods for a septet that features a quartet of different winds, most of them high pitched. With Roberto Murray on soprano and alto saxophones, François Richard on flute and alto flute, Marjorie Tremblay on oboe and English horn and Simon Aldrich on clarinet and bass clarinet, Léveillé develops ensembles that are both light and distinctive. His work often has the character of chamber music (Les Six come to mind), enhancing its cool jazz dimension with more current modal harmonies. Each of the players is an accomplished soloist, evident here in individual features. While it’s often pleasant enough to drift toward the background, sudden inspired bursts keep a listener engaged.

Working in a more conventional quintet format on Tome 3: Errances (Effendi Records FND132), Vincent Gagnon brings great energy, drive and spontaneity to his work, whether exploring extended ballads or dense up-tempos, often with a Middle Eastern tinge. He has a powerful rhythm section in bassist Guillaume Bouchard and drummer Michel Lambert and a fine saxophonist in the smooth-toned Alain Boies, but it’s really tenor saxophonist Michel Côté who draws the most attention other than the pianist. Côté has a distinctive sound, a rough gauze-like quality that’s especially effective on Gagnon ballads like “Ce qu’il reste de la nuit” and “Parfois l’aube.” Gagnon uses repeated phrases in his solos, building tension and a cumulative energy that presses this music forward. It’s particularly effective on “Baltique Karma. ”

Clarity – Music of Clare Fischer
Roseanna Vitro
Random Acts Records RAR1016CD (randomactrecords.com)

With the passing of gifted Los Angeles-based composer/arranger/keyboardist Clare Fischer, not only did El Lay lose one of its top creative innovators, but the international music community also lost an artist who, since his 1962 LP Bossa Nova Jazz Samba with the late Bud Shank, had consecrated himself to the genres of Afro-Carribbean, Brazilian and a wide variety of Centro/Sul American Musics – notably represented in his 1981 GRAMMY-winning Clare Fischer and Salsa Picante Present 2 + 2.

With the release of her latest recording, NYC jazz vocalist/educator/composer/arranger Roseanna Vitro (along with producer Paul Wickliffe) has not only framed a gorgeous tribute to the work of Fischer, but has successfully expanded the jazz canon by deftly mining the exquisite, harmonically complex music that is Clare Fischer’s legacy. The CD includes six of Fischer’s never previously sung compositions (some with new original lyrics), and is also the first and only vocal book developed by a solo singer of his music.

Accompanying Vitro on this remarkable journey are her longtime collaborators, including pianist/arranger Mark Soskin as well as Weather Report percussionist Mino Cinelu. Standout tracks include a fresh, percussive, scat-filled take on “Morning” and also “Life’s Journey,” which features a complex, rhythmic arrangement and dynamic work by violinist Sara Caswell and pianist Soskin. One track stands alone in its perfection – the deeply moving ballad “Sleep My Child,” a flawless musical diamond around which Vitro wraps her rich, luxurious contralto.

Vitro is not only a consumate jazz vocalist, but through the auspices of this important artistic project, she has also emerged as a true conservateur and curator of jazz.

Overheard Conversations
Glen Hall; Bernie Koenig
Slam Productions CD 552 (slamproductions.net)

A reflective and comfortable musical conversation between reeds and percussion, the dozen brief duets by Toronto saxophonist/flutist Glen Hall and drummer/vibraphonist Bernie Koenig from London, Ontario have all the hallmarks of overheard dialogue. Some interjections are predictably of paramount interest to those involved; others, which stretch the capacities of the instruments and musicians, are as insightful as discussions from more formally organized sessions. Seemingly recorded in real time, luckily the discourse intensifies as it evolves.

While Hall gradually defines his parameters with tenor and soprano saxophone slurs and smears via John Coltrane’s influence, Koenig’s drum pulses are a bit more rigid, not really coming into strong focus until – and perhaps because of – “Time for a Stiff Drink.” Mixing martial-like ruffs with supple rolls, he meets Hall’s mellow elaborations head on and effectively. From then on sound snatches capture a wide-ranging conversation. Snaky bass flute timbres countered by off-centre plops suggest Arabic music on Trust Me, while rugged reed split tones attain screaming heights on “Things Are Looking Up” though the drummer’s carefully paced beats keep the theme chromatic. Additionally the whap of sticks on Mylar and wood during “Look at Her!” insinuate two percussionists at work as Hall’s altissimo snarls create a fanciful verbalization of overbearing Buddy Rich strokes backing “Caravan” played by Albert Ayler.

Like old friends winding down their conversation before they part, the reedist and percussionist save their excursions into chamber jazz for the last few duets. With Koenig’s sparkling vibraphone strokes attaining sonorous swing, the unique multi-colours Hall sources from his flute on tunes such as “I Understand Why You Are So Melancholy” reflect the skills of these sophisticated communicators who can comfortably express emotions instrumentally.

Concert Note: Glen Hall’s Rub out the Word: A William S. Burroughs Centennial Event is at The Music Gallery November 7.

Offering: Live at Temple University
John Coltrane
Impulse! B0019632-02

No musician in jazz has created the stylistic transformations of John Coltrane, moving in little more than a decade through the harmony-rooted “sheets of sound” of the late 1950s and the modal period typified by his hit My Favorite Things in the early 1960s, ultimately to embrace and extend the most intense form of free jazz, “energy music,” in the two years prior to his death in 1967. This 2CD set presents a relatively well-recorded concert in Philadelphia just eight months before his death.

Coltrane’s last band was characterized by the rapid fluttering scales of pianist Alice Coltrane, the dense percussive fields generated by drummer Rashied Ali and, exceeding Coltrane himself in turbulent fury, saxophonist Pharoah Sanders, generating mad wails and honks that somehow erupted into polyphony. On this occasion, the band was augmented by a complement of four hand drummers and two young saxophonists sitting in.

The repertoire was already classic Coltrane – Naima, Crescent, My Favorite Things – but the treatment rarely is. This is jazz eschatology, religious and revolutionary, a vision of heaven and hell in which sounds may writhe in ecstasy or torment. Coltrane’s own sound is transformed by a tight vibrato and when he has taken his horn to its expressive limit he turns to chanting, pounding his chest for vibrato, in a performance that is as much rite as concert. This music has divided jazz audiences for half a century and still demands to be heard.