11 OpenCollectiveDerengés/Dawn
Grenscó Open Collective
SLAM CD 565/Hunnia Records HR CD 1508 (slamproductions.net)

Arguably Hungary’s most unique composer of the post-war era, pianist György Szabados (1939-2011) had difficulty performing his admixture of free jazz-new music and folkloric sounds in communist times. Even after liberalization, during his sole Canadian appearance at 2006’s Guelph Jazz Festival, his duo with percussionist Vladimir Tarasov was the equivalent of reading a Reader’s Digest version of a novel – textures were lacking. Budapest-based reedist István Grenscó, who was a frequent member of the composer’s ensembles from 1984 to 2007, rectifies the situation with this two-CD set of six Szabados compositions. Grenscó, who plays soprano and alto saxophones and bass clarinet here, creates the equivalent of a Technicolor film from the scores by adapting them to the varied tones produced by his own band – pianist Máté Pozsár, bassist Róbert Benkö and percussionist Szilveszter Miklós – plus, on three tracks, the viola of Szilárd Mezei, who may be Szabados’ heir as a composer; trumpeter Ádám Meggtes on two; as well as two additional woodwind voices to give a breezy vaudeville-like strut to the concluding Regölés/Minstrelsky.

Meggtes’ atonal blasts add the requisite free jazz tinctures to Adyton. But otherwise that tune, like Azesküvö/The Wedding and Fohsáz/Supplication is chiefly animated by carefree currents of Roma-like dances via Mezei’s fiddle, stacked up against the alternately dark ecclesiastical (deepened by bell-like resounds from the cymbals) or evocatively romantic, melody-making from Pozsár. Torquing the pace via nasal soprano bites or mocking the profundity of the slower faux-rustic tunes with sardonic alto saxophone cries, Grenscó still shepherds the ensemble back to the head at each composition’s completion. Halott-Táncoltatás/Dance of Reanimation is the multiphonic masterstroke here. The original quartet members precisely figure out the exact percentage of light and dark tones and fast and slow rhythms needed to animate the composition, with the skill of medics gauging the proper amount of vaccine in a hypodermic needle. Pozsár uses pedal pressure to dig notes from the instrument’s nether regions in tandem with thumping string bass slaps as a way to bolster the theme propelled on unruffled saxophone cries and then bass clarinet reverb. Meanwhile these instances of solo reed elation constantly trade places with successive theme motifs that encompass rustic dance-like cadences and a final military-like crescendo. The aura emanating from this CD demonstrates both the quality of Szabados’ compositions and the pliant talents of his devoted interpreters.

Matching Electronic And Acoustic Improvisation

At least since 1948, when French theorist Pierre Schaeffer coined the term musique concrète as serious composers and performers began experimenting with technology to create music, the possibilities available from the use of electronics became accepted. Today electronically advanced sounds are as common and expected as outlandish tonsorial choices for pop stars. Electronic processing has also been adapted to create more variables in improvised music. Although some purists renounce non-electronic sources completely, in the main those players that create a nourishing musical meal by pairing electronic and acoustic impulses appear to end up with the most interesting programs.

01 MadetoBreakMade to Break for instance is a quartet consisting of Americans Ken Vandermark on saxophones and clarinet, and drummer Tim Daisy, plus Dutch electric bassist Jasper Stadhouders and Austrian Christof Kurzmann playing the lloopp, interactive MaxMSP software for an Apple Mac. The key to the three tracks on Before the Code (Trost TR 141 trost.at) is how well Kurzmann’s apparatus links with the others’ free-form improvising. Never suggested is the image of an improvising trio playing in one area and a lab-coated sound scientist wriggling his machine’s dials in the other. Whether it’s swifter, extended fare like Dial the Number or Window Breaking Hammer or the mellow interlude that is Off-Picture No.119, the lloopp’s distinctive undertow complements the acoustic playing like fine plating for a meal in a gourmet restaurant. The last track is particularly enhanced as accordion-like tremolos from Kurzmann help slide Vandermark’s hurtling saxophone honks into a form that’s both chipper and clanging. On the faster tracks Stadhouders’ resonating thumb pops and Daisy’s backbeats join with lloopp tones to create a continuum. But considering that Kurzmann’s interface can at points resemble teletype keys code or an electric kazoo, those effects are unique. Crucially, the concluding Window Breaking Hammer defines the latitude available. Following a dispassionate hand-drum display and wafting clarinet warbles, near moderato is traded in for near-metal with Vandermark’s baritone saxophone blasting away and Daisy beat crunching. Coupled with Kurzmann loops, this makes the climax distinctive as well as dramatic.

02 MyHorseDoesIn-your-face mockery shares space with musicianship on My Horse Doesn’t Give a Shit (Unit Records UTR 4609 unitrecords.com) as the German Knu! trio uses Achim Zepezauer’s electronics, Florian Walter’s baritone saxophone synthesizer and Simon Camatta’s drums to create the improvised music equivalent of punk rock. Over the course of 14 tracks, some with semi-scatological titles, rawness is the outstanding leitmotif. Walter’s glottal blasts often evolve in direct counterpoint to the electronic processing, while shaded drumbeats underline that contest. In a way it’s the equivalent of a 1950s film on juvenile gangs, with Zepezauer and Walter facing off for a rumble and Camatta’s recurrent beats setting up the confrontation. Although Zepezauer’s programs can create unattributable textures, he’s more interested in chameleon-like reverses. He replicates roller-ring organ tones on Mit Dir Am Hafen, spelled by back beat drums and reed tones that seem to be filtered through a sieve; matches cymbal scrapes and sax tongue stops with signal-processed buzzes on Austritt; plus the connected Brotwar Quadrata and Fifty Shades of I Don’t Give a Fuck. Lyricon-like whooshing produces a seemingly endless disco-dance-like rhythm cannily burlesqued by reed overblowing on some tracks. Zepezauer also layers the tracks with programming tropes. Recordings of German and English voices are introduced to many tracks, subsequently cut off, slowed down or sped up so they resemble cartoon chipmunk chatter. Flanged interruptions sound like magnetic tape running backwards, which on Den Hooran challenges Camatta’s stick whumps and cymbal clanks and Walter’s intermittent processed buzzes. The brief Thank You Mom melds pre-recorded marching band echoes with live beats pumping from the others. Insisting like a punk band that the CD be played loud, there’s enough distance and detail expressed here to distinguish Knu! from rock primitives.

03 GranularitiesFrom the opposite side of the equation is Scenes From A Trialogue (Amirani Records AMRN 045 amiranirecords.com) by Granularities consisting of soprano saxophonist Gianni Mimmo; valve and alphorn player Martin Mayes, both of whom are Italy-based, and Lawrence Casserley’s signal-processing instrument. One of the first students of electronic music at London’s Royal College of Music in the 1960s, Casserley subsequently taught at RCM while adapting software to transform the sound of his collaborators including Evan Parker. Although the tracks on Scenes From A Trialogue have subtitles like Overture, Entr’actes and Acts/Scenes it’s no academic treatise. Instead the CD shows how an undercurrent of warm machine-sourced oscillations provides an appropriate frame – with auxiliary decorations if needed – for a sound canvas illustrated with painterly dabs of reed tone bursts and lonesome French horn echoes. Since Casserley’s granular synthesis layers timbres at varied speeds, volumes and densities, on Open Space for instance he regurgitates reed and brass sounds like those played by the horns, as additional staccato jabs upset the interface. In the same fashion, wind-like textures drone in the background of Entracte 1 as a solo valve horn exposition expands with polyphonic glissandi. Opaque drones create a sense of stoic inevitability, like ocean tides advancing and retreating, on the disc’s penultimate and concluding tracks. Concentrated granulation from Casserley’s machine cunningly joins Mayes’ muted slurs and Mimmo’s contralto trills, so that the sonic wedges unite with the logic of a baroque chamber piece. Earlier the connected Sacred Site – Procession and Sacred Site – Dark Ritual reveal an analogous concordance but with sharper edges, like a dagger compared to a butter knife. It’s the electronics which splinter the horns’ near-impressionistic mellowness with a mallet-like scrape across unyielding surfaces and dynamic whooshes. Ultimately Mayes’ mahogany-tinged tones and Mimmo’s wheezy reed trills unite with Casserley’s burbling densities for a harmonized climax.

04 DouVientGoing mano-a-mano, French clarinetist/saxophonist Jean-Luc Petit and electronics manipulator Jean-Marc Foussat create a self-contained sound world on …D’où Vient La Lumière! (Fou Records FR-CD 13 fourecords.com). Oddly enough the program is initially more rustic than urban with buzzing bee oscillations and ring-modulator created aviary chirps heard on the first track, plus rooster-like crowing and cicada-suggesting chirrups which emanate from the electronics on the second and title track. At points, Petit fishes out deeply embedded notes from within his bass clarinet as if they were tadpoles caught in murky algae. A climax is reached on the penultimate Premières curiosités as Foussat’s multi-channel wave forms become louder and more clamorous until they form an impermeable mass. In response, Petit’s quick yelps and circular breathing confirm the acoustic qualities of his sopranino saxophone. Although each player’s timbres are initially isolated like pinpointed colour on an otherwise all-white painting, the textures eventually blend to such an extent that at points it’s impossible to distinguish a specific source. Intensifying his attack to atonal echoes and kazoo-like squeezes as he shifts to alto saxophone on Un animal qui me plaît, Petit presages the perfect finale. With reed multiphonics splayed in front of undulating drones, the ending is as spiritually appropriate as if reflecting a soloist testifying in front of a mass choir.

05 SharedUnlike Foussat and Petit, whose approach is based on unifying impulses from unique instruments, the Uliben Duo’s CD Shared Memory (Creative Sources CS 327 CD creativesourcesrec.com) more accurately describes the performance of French bassist Benoit Cancoin facing the live processing of German Ulrich Phillipp. In other circumstances Phillipp also plays bass, so his electronic impulses are informed by that knowledge. Throughout he stretches the processing function so that it not only accompanies, but also enhances the double bass’ tonal qualities. More than replicating Cancoin’s initial sounds, Phillipp’s often tandem, frequently wriggling, textures extend the bull fiddle’s range, directing acoustically sourced sounds to unforeseen places. While there are instances of skyrocketing sound eruptions and multiplied string drones on the tracks surrounding Joint Repository, this over-40-minute improv gives the players ample space to define and perfect their hook-up. Like stars floating in a night sky that illuminate at junctures, different sequences are prominent in stages. Languidly expressed, bowed resonations and bottle-top-like pops from the higher-pitched strings solidify into an electric shaver-like buzz via Phillipp’s electronics, with Cancoin interjecting sporadic mandolin-like plucks. By mid-point however, a euphonious bassoon-tempered tone predominates, until split into separate streams of sprawling, spiccato thrusts from the bass and an assembly line of crackles and drones from the electronics. Before individual improvisations dribble away into irreconcilable solipsism, the program speeds up to sound like two double basses, courtesy of Phillipp’s machine-processed memory. As brief interludes where graininess reveals one tone’s electronic origins and Cancoin’s acoustic pulls, the “humanness” of the other strands finally unite. The finale finds the two fading into a single sonic source like the fused profiles at the climaxes of the film Persona. Used judiciously with respect from both sides of the acoustic-electric divide, processing can create memorable discs of unanticipated sophistication like these sets.

01 Rich BrownAbeng
Rich Brown
Independent RDB03 (rinsethealgorithm.bandcamp.com/album/abeng)

Review

Rich Brown, one of Canada’s and the world’s preeminent bassists, has produced an impassioned reaction to, and path forward from, some of the darkest forces of human nature, specifically racism and divisiveness. He has chosen the abeng, an instrument originally fashioned by escaped Jamaican slaves, as a metaphor for a call to unity. This message comes at a perilous time in world affairs. He has assembled a cast of some of Canada’s top musicians to interpret Abeng’s compositions and the result is great depth and complexity. The rhythm section team of Brown and drummer Larnell Lewis establishes a broad, open canvas on which everything seems possible.

Mahishmatish opens the recording with a melody that incorporates a long held note, perhaps the sound of the abeng. Saxophonists Luis Deniz on alto and Kelly Jefferson on tenor trade phrases that rise in intensity with the incredible feel and interplay provided by Brown and Lewis. Pianist Robi Botos solos effortlessly over Window Seat’s across-the-bar-lines groove. Chant of the Exiled (Abeng) is a perfect miniature, featuring trumpeter Kevin Turcotte and percussionist Rosendo Chendy Leon in its mournful exploration. Brown holds off until track four, Promessa, before treating us to his remarkably lyrical bass soloing. Chris Donnelly, who shares keyboard duties with Botos, plays a beautifully evocative intro to This Lotus Ascension and continues on to improvise over the doubled bass/alto sax melody. Abeng is a masterful recording that confirms Rich Brown’s position as one of our country’s most important musicians.

Concert Note: Rich Brown and the Abeng Quintet open for the Ernie Watts Quintet on May 21 at the George Weston Recital Hall.

02 Michael BlakeFulfillment
Michael Blake
Songlines SGL1615-2 (songlines.com)

Michael Blake is among New York’s most esteemed saxophonists, but he frequently returns to Vancouver where he works with some key members of the city’s jazz community. Fulfillment is a very special Vancouver project that uses up to ten musicians in an extended suite devoted to a dark episode in the city’s history: in 1914 several hundred Sikh immigrants on board the Komagata Maru were refused entry to Canada by means of laws designed specifically to exclude Asians. In subsequent events, advocates for the passengers were murdered in Vancouver and 19 were killed in an altercation with British officials on their return to India.

Blake’s suite abounds in complex emotions and original textures, gradually developing a cumulative impact. The theme of the opening Sea Shanty intertwines his soprano saxophone with Emma Postl’s voice to create an effect that’s at once dissonant and ethereal; there’s a coiling improvised duet between Blake’s soprano and Chris Gestrin’s synthesizer on Perimeters in which the two instruments are almost indistinguishable; a series of duets among the string players on Arrivals is highlighted by the unlikely combination of Peggy Lee’s cello and Ron Samworth’s banjo. Exaltation is an extended jam that adds Neelamjit Dhillon’s tabla drums to the densely textured rhythms created by drummer Dylan van der Schyff, bassist André Lachance and the rest of the group.

At the core of Blake’s music there’s the consistent legacy of modern jazz, from the extended use of blues structure and compositional inspirations from Ornette Coleman, Charles Mingus and Oliver Nelson to the overarching expressive power of his tenor saxophone, best embodied here on the evocative Battle at Baj Baj, directly inspired by John Coltrane’s elegiac Alabama.

03 The DisguisesSongs and Dances from The Muted Note
The Disguises
Ambiences Magnetiques AM 227 (actuellecd.com)

Trombonist/composer Scott Thomson crafted this series of song settings for poems by the late British Columbian poet P.K. Page in 2012-2013, first recording them in a series of spare and artful duets with the singer Susanna Hood (The Muted Note, & Records, ET20). The project later expanded to include Hood’s choreography for four dancers and a quintet called The Disguises, adding alto saxophonist Yves Charuest, bassist Nicolas Caloia and drummer Pierre Tanguay to the original duo. The result is remarkable, sacrificing some intimacy but gaining greater resilience and highlighting the strength of Thomson’s melodies, like the vibrant Picking Daffodils.

The Disguises represent some of Montreal’s finest improvisers and Thomson has achieved a fine balance in the writing, creating arrangements that frame and expand Page’s luminous language without drowning it out, sometimes employing understated dissonance to suggest ambiguity. Thomson has studied with the veteran trombonist Roswell Rudd, and at times The Disguises strongly suggests the clarity and interplay of the New York Art Quartet, the brilliant band that Rudd co-led in the mid-60s: Charuest’s solo on The Understatement consists of brief elliptical phrases with shifting timbres, recalling the subtle work of NYAQ saxophonist John Tchicai.

While it’s the wedding of poem and sound that unites these works, moments of spontaneous musical creation abound, like the energy and precision that Caloia and Tanguay bring to The Disguises/The Masks, or the dovetailing lines of Hood and Charuest on Star-Gazer. Thomson’s accompaniment to Hood’s voice on The Metal and the Flower flirts with silence to suggest birds and tiny woodland creatures, while the brashly vocal, plunger-muted solo of The Mole conveys generations of jazz trombone playing.

04 Aimee ButcherThe World Is Alright
Aimée Butcher
Independent (aimeebutcher.com)

This debut album by singer/songwriter Aimée Butcher, recorded when she was only 22, demonstrates clearly her ability to compose, and deliver beautifully, melodies which are both substantially interesting and satisfyingly – almost frustratingly – catchy.

The band, a quintet featuring Butcher’s voice, Chris Pruden on piano and keyboards, Brandon Wall on guitar, Jeff Deegan on bass and Robin Claxton on drums, all of whom are recent graduates of U of T’s hailed music program, has several feet planted firmly in the contrasting, sometimes feuding, worlds of jazz and pop. Songs like Stay or Drive and The World Is Alright are where Butcher’s hooks really shine: these are on the one hand pop songs, melodies that would feel at home in the mouths of singers like Alanis Morisette or Michael Bublé; and on the other hand recordings that highlight delicious, distinctly jazzy improvisations, including a simple, brief scat solo by Butcher. Especially notable is Pruden’s piano solo on the title track. It builds and develops perfectly, organized yet exciting; I always find myself saying “yeah” at the end.

Butcher’s band also re-imagines songs by Joni Mitchell, Radiohead, and, delightfully, Jann Arden; the haunting duo of Butcher accompanied by Wall’s guitar on Arden’s It Looks Like Rain might be my favourite track. With a pulse only lightly suggested, on an ethereal bed of swelling chords, Butcher delivers Arden’s song as though it was her own.

05 Carrier OutgoingOUTgoing
François Carrier; Steve Beresford; John Edwards; Michel Lambert
FMR Records FMRCD400 (francoiscarrier.com)

As much as this performance is entirely improvised the musicians also offer finely gauged and beautifully regulated music. The benefits are immediately apparent in OUTgoing, which is not only audaciously spelled, but contains music that is also unflinchingly dynamic. The players – saxophonist François Carrier, pianist Steve Beresford, bassist John Edwards and drummer Michel Lambert – offer music that is impetuous, inventive and laced with paprika. In one episode after another on this empirically existential recording the players make music that is technically challenging and impeccably pointed. There is a miraculous balance between simplicity, depth and virtuosity, all in the service of expression.

Steve Beresford’s piano playing has an impish wit which, when pursued by the saxophone of Carrier, is pushed to address the saxophonist with an effect that borders on an almost “three-handed” playing, achieved by huge scales that sweep from top to bottom of the keyboard. Carrier’s own playing on saxophone as well as the exotic Chinese oboe, is informed by themes decorated with abandon, while Beresford passes the harmonics between himself and Carrier (especially on Kingsland Road) decorated with swirling arpeggios to once again give the illusion of there being three hands playing. The piece ends with passages of interlocking lines between saxophone and piano entwined with some impressive arco playing by bassist John Edwards. This is a sparkling disc which combines the talent of four astonishingly versatile musicians to create iridescent showers of notes cascading with echoing, scintillating exuberance.

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