Jazz and Improvised

Pianist/composer Kris Davis has followed a musical path from her native Vancouver to Calgary to the University of Toronto and on to Brooklyn, where she’s a key member of one of the world’s most creative jazz scenes, playing solo, leading her own ensembles and working in a number of bands and ad hoc ensembles with other notable musicians like saxophonists Ingrid Laubrock and Tony Malaby and guitarist Mary Halvorson.

A recent highlight is Waiting for You to Grow (Clean Feed CF292 cleanfeed-records.com) by her trio with bassist John Hébert and drummer Tom Rainey. Recorded in May 2013 after the group had just completed a European tour, the CD demonstrates both developed empathy and a keen familiarity with the nuances and possibilities of Davis’ compositions. At times, Davis and her partners seem to be redefining the piano trio in percussive terms that see instruments playing essentially rhythmic patterns, often elaborating dense polyrhythms. If that suggests an exploration of the roots of jazz in African music, it’s also aligned here with the early percussion music of John Cage. The sonic explorations of another experimental composer are referenced directly in Berio, a complex, analytical work that suggests the compound methodologies of late serialism as much as the free play of sonic particles.

Those references to modern concert music take even greater prominence with Massive Threads (Thirsty Ear THI57208-2 thirstyear.com), Davis’ second CD of solo piano music. It’s somber and playful, spontaneous and inevitable, an outstanding CD in any genre to which it might be assigned. The title track moves from ponderous bass clusters in alternating hands, eventually progressing upward in pitch, becoming quieter all the time, until it disappears. Many of the pieces are built around similar ideas of transformation. In the remarkable Ten Exorcists for prepared piano, Davis initially creates complex rhythmic dialogue around a single pitch. Dancing Marlins is playfully pointillist in the extreme, its random Morse code eventually turning into phrases that would be at home in the blues. Thelonious Monk’s Evidence reveals itself in evanescent bits, finally emerging as a continuous two-handed improvisation in multiple meters. 

Davis’ position at the forefront of current jazz is further apparent in her membership in tenor saxophonist Matt Bauder’s Day in Pictures on Nightshades (Clean Feed CF289). The idiom is post-bop, with roots in the mid-60s Blue Note school of Sam Rivers and Andrew Hill, but it’s also informed by a further 50 years of improvised music, with both traditions firmly in place, whether in the foreground or lurking in the shadows. Davis’ lines are at once limpid and precise on Bauder’s Starr Wykoff, a ballad that might have been penned by Thelonious Monk in 1958. Apparently named for the Brooklyn coffee shop called Wykoff Starr, it might even be a Monk title. Elsewhere sudden random runs from Davis and explosions of multiphonics from Bauder and trumpeter Nate Wooley (the two Americans are also the frontline in expatriate drummer Harris Eisenstadt’s Canada Day) confirm this is insistently current music.

Cory Weeds’ policy of bringing in guest artists to perform at Vancouver’s Cellar Jazz club has created some memorable collaborations. David “Fathead” Newman & the Tilden Webb Trio’s Cellar Groove (Cellar Live CL090113 cellarlive.com) is definitely one of them. Newman, who died in 2009, was already 71 when this was recorded in 2004. Best known for his work with Ray Charles, Newman was an adept saxophonist and flutist who could hold his own with hard bop masters like Lee Morgan when the opportunity arose. Here he tours the terrain of bop (Dizzy Gillespie’s A Night in Tunisia), hard bop (Hank Mobley’s This I Dig of You) and modal jazz (pianist Webb’s Roundabout), clearly enjoying the superb accompaniment of Webb’s trio with bassist Jodi Proznick and drummer Jesse Cahill, a band in itself that propels Newman and his enthusiasm alike.

Another Vancouver band that shows the positive effects of working regularly is the Mike Allen Quartet with pianist Miles Black, bassist Adam Thomas and drummer Julian MacDonough. Embracing a broad modernism, the group has hosted the official jam sessions of the Vancouver Festival for years and they’re also the jazz ensemble-in-residence at Western Washington University where saxophonist Allen directs the jazz program. On Panorama (Cellar Live CCL121013), trombonist Hugh Fraser, whose suave bluster has long graced Vancouver jazz, is the featured guest. Allen has his own sound, at once forceful and muffled, and it gives his work immediate dimension, but every musician here contributes to a consistent sense of substance. The opening Get Back may be playful jazz funk, but Allen’s Let Go Rise Atone and Black’s San Miguel are imbued with luminous depths.

The members of the David Rubel Quartet are all at the outset of their careers. Products of Jazz Studies at the University of Toronto, tenor saxophonist Rubel, pianist Winston Matsushita, bassist Malcolm Connor and drummer Robin Claxton range in age from the early to mid-20s. On Into the Dark (davidrubelmusic.com), Rubel’s current emphases are a strong melodic focus and repeated modal figures, delivered with a rich tenor sound over infectious rhythms, including 5/4 and 7/4. It’s engaging, well-played music with a strong sense of mood, though at this stage that very consistency threatens at times to turn it into background music. The highlight is Matthew, with Rubel adding sudden, fluting, upper register swirls to vary his approach.

The Big Picture
David Krakauer
Table Pounding TDR 002 davidkrakauer.com

Anti-Semitism or approval is behind the oft-repeated canard that “Jews run Hollywood,“ but certainly no one can deny the influence producers, directors, writers and composers of Jewish background have had on the history of cinema. Clarinetist David Krakauer pays tribute to Hollywood’s Semitic tinge on The Big Picture performing a dozen songs from films whose actors, director, composer or themes reflect Jewish topics. Considering that the movies range from Sophie’s Choice to The Producers it’s fortunate that Krakauer’s equally varied musical affiliations have encompassed John Zorn, the Klezmatics, Itzhak Perlman and symphony orchestras.

Krakauer’s usual strategy is to retain the jaunty theme to songs like “Tradition“ from Fiddler on the Roof, as slippery clarinet trills; Jenny Scheinman’s see-sawing violin strings and pedal reverb from Adam Rogers’ guitars contrast a parallel musical identity for the tune. These novel arrangments work whether the psychedelic guitar excess on “Honeycomb“ from Lenny is over-emphasized, or whether on “Si Tu Vois Ma Mére“ used in Midnight in Paris, Krakauer subverts the rote two-beat Dixieland from Jim Black’s drums with roadhouse boogie bumps from bass and rhythm guitar as well as disco-era sound loops. At the same time while skittering fiddle modulations, accordion slurs and strumming guitar lines may give a piece like “Love Theme“ from Sophie’s Choice an interface that sounds more Palm Springs than Poland, Krakauer’s own tone, complete with heartfelt trills and spectro-fluctuation never mocks the music’s underlying melancholy.

More to the point Krakauer’s reed skill is such that he makes you hear some songs in new ways. Playing bass clarinet on Funny Girl’s middle-of-road staple “People“ for instance, his intense vibrato joined with cascading piano chords and violin runs strengthens the melody’s poignancy without letting it fall into sentimentality. Overall The Big Picture is an outstanding salute to movies, music and movie music, whatever their origins.

Since jazz’s beginnings, the measure of a musician’s talent has not only been how well the person improvises, but also how he or she interprets standards. In the 21st century a standard song has evolved past its Tin Pan Alley origins, plus distinctive purely jazz compositions have entered the canon. But while more conservative players treat standards as immutable, the CDs here are noteworthy because their creators distinctively re-imagine standards.

In an exercise that’s breathtakingly difficult, drummer Tom Rainey and his quintet take a collection of hyper-familiar tunes and upend them in such a way that it sounds as if they’re being played for the first time. Rainey, plus Canadian pianist Kris Davis, bassist Drew Gress, trumpeter Ralph Alessi and saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock, turn Obbligato (Intakt Records CD 227 intaktrec.ch) into a showcase for new ideas. Starting with the hoary Just in Time, the five cannily layer dissonant variations onto the basic theme before conjuring up the head. These restructurings take in songs by Duke Ellington, Dave Brubeck, Jerome Kern and Jule Styne among others. Secret Love, for example is given a sharpened, stop-time treatment, with an extended octave-jumping solo from Laubrock, decorated with smeared triplets from Alessi. Meanwhile whinnying brass and cymbal swishes back up steady vamping on You Don’t Know What Love Is until the pressurized torque explodes into the muted melody. With sophisticated timing, Davis shows her skills by plucking the recognizable melody of Reflections, while the saxophonist is constructing a related buoyant theme out of pinpointed smears and rests. Most extraordinarily, before the trumpeter creates a quivering impressionistic variant of Prelude to a Kiss, Rainey validates his percussion refinement, with one of his few solos. Putting in motion many parts of his kit, he moves the narrative forward without turning to bombast.

Another variation on this theme is interpreting another musician’s compositions while seamlessly adding your own themes in a similar style. That’s what American trumpeter Dave Douglas and Montreal reedist Chet Doxas do on Riverside (Greenleaf Music GLM 1036 greenleafmusic.com). A salute to the music of influential clarinetist Jimmy Giuffre, the quartet, filled out by electric bassist Steve Swallow and drummer Jim Doxas, Chet’s brother, performs tracks from this CD at The Rex on April 19. Although New Englander Douglas and Quebecer Doxas come from dissimilar backgrounds than Texas-born Giuffre, their originals reflect the same sort of Southwestern spaciousness in which the clarinetist’s trios specialized. Their sophisticated transformations are substantiated by slotting Douglas and Doxas tunes near Giuffre’s. Maintaining a loping swing throughout, the quartet also redefines a Giuffre standard like The Train and the River by carving out parts for drums and trumpet, unlike the original. Making the melody speedier and hard hitting doesn’t destroy its fragile beauty though. Cantering along via the drummer’s clip-clops and Swallow’s guitar-like plucks, Douglas’ Front Yard attains the same easy swing in which Giuffre specialized, harmonizing his muted trumpet and Doxas’ chalumeau clarinet. Doxas’ extended Sing on the Mountain/Northern Miner reflects his command of the moderato idiom as well, as contrapuntal trumpet tones and leisurely tenor sax slurs intertwine. Nonetheless, the quartet’s originality is confirmed with Douglas’ Backyard, a vamping blues line. While Douglas’ brassy tongue slurps and the drummer’s rapping backbeat create a tune much weightier than anything by Giuffre, its contrapuntal call-and-response organization maintains the mood.

Formulating a variation of this concept is Dutch pianist Michiel Braam, whose arrangements for his Flex Bent Braam septet on Lucebert (BBBCD 16 michielbraam.com) re-energizes jazz and pop standards while linking them with eight originals based on epigrams by an innovative poet whose nom-de-plume was Lucebert. Don’t fear the highbrow trappings however; during the CD`s almost 80 minutes the pianist stitches together a sincerely jaunty program of his own shrewd compositions plus tunes by Thelonious Monk, Cole Porter and Dizzy Gillespie among others. Mocking and celebrating the standards in equal measure, the band finds unexpected echoes in many of the often-played themes. Get out of Town for instance could be the product of a small swing-era combo with slick piano glissandi and Joost Lijbaart’s drums swaying like a metronome. Straight No Chaser is set off with a treatment confirming its dance-like undercurrent via smacked cymbals and snorting work from altoist Bart van der Putten and baritonist Oleg Hollmann. The concept is enhanced when Braam’s compositions are examined alongside the standards. Gentle and ornamental with brassy expressiveness, his Drift-Urge is architecturally organized the same way as I May Be Wrong/So What? which follows it. Trombonist Wolter Wierbos’ slurs plus Angelo Verploegen’s whinnying trumpet create a distinctive overlay as the heaving reeds and pounding piano keys attach Braam’s initial melody to the familiar tune structures, while Tony Overwater’s bass playing confirms the rhythmic suture. Plunger trombone smears, high-pitched trumpet triplets and sharp alto sax bites are exciting in themselves during Zorg-Care; yet they remind the ear of Let’s Cool One which precedes it. All in all, swing plus significance is applied to every number.

Another standards’ challenge crucially met on The Whammies: Play the Music of Steve Lacy Volume 2 (Driff Records CD 1303 driffrecords.com) is remaining individual during a complete program of one composer’s tunes. With soprano saxophonist Lacy, one of jazz’s idiosyncratic stylists whose his compositions are enduringly linked to his performances, The Whammies’ interpretations are simultaneously novel and deferential. It helps that alto saxophonist Jorrit Dijkstra studied with Lacy; drummer Han Bennink played with Lacy; and pianist Pandelis Karayorgis has an intuitive command of Monk’s work, which influenced Lacy’s writing. You can measure this by comparing how The Whammies handle Monk’s Shuffle Boil and Lacy’s Monk-dedication, Hanky-Panky. Balancing supple lyricism and whinnying trombone cries plus Karayorgis’ runs on the first, the band expresses source fealty. Whereas by emphasizing violinist Mary Oliver’s arpeggiated sweeps and trombonist Jeb Bishop’s low-pitched smears Hanky-Panky becomes the next step away from Monk’s music. A comparable neat trick turns up on Somebody Special which Lacy composed for Duke Ellington’s vocalist Ivie Anderson. As Bennink’s rolls and rim shots reference swing band rhythms, Oliver’s spiccato suggests both Anderson’s light-paced singing plus Ray Nance’s fiddle tricks with Ellington, while Bishop’s deep-dish slurs relate back to Tricky Sam Nanton. Not that every track is a mirror of a mirror of a mirror however. Feline becomes a near chamber music salute to Marilyn Monroe; while the wide-ranging polyphony and polyrhythms that characterize Threads, dedicated to Albert Einstein, connect some musical threads that include drum whumps, spidery piano licks and a contrapuntal showdown between Bishop’s plunger tone and the calliope-like squirms from Dijkstra’s lyricon. The lyricon’s moog-like tones plus bass string strops from Nate McBride and irregular piano key clips are just some of the contributions to the note pileup that is Lumps. Yet Bennink slaps and clatters his cymbals enough to maintain the tune’s absurdist nursery-rhyme pulse.

Setting out even more difficult sleights of hand is the French-German Die Hochstapler band, whose The Braxtornette Project (Umlaut Records ub004 umlautrecords.com) interprets compositions by Ornette Coleman and Anthony Braxton. To make this two-CD set more novel different groupings, most with trumpeter Louis Laurain, alto saxophonist Pierre Borel, bassist Antonio Borghini and drummer Hannes Lingens in common, mash up compositions by both men into extended medleys. The players’ skills are such that the commonality between Coleman’s blues-based lines and Braxton’s austere theses becomes obvious. With additional players making up a double quartet Die Hochstapler audaciously recalibrates Coleman’s Free Jazz composition as Part IV by bookending it with two variants on Braxton’s 348. Making the former tune more atonal and minimalist plus soothing what was originally played in a stentorian manner, tremolo jazziness is added to 348. More generic are Part II and Part III played only by the quartet. Stringing together an almost equal number of Braxton and Coleman tunes in each, the first medley emphasizes the music’s historical jazz motifs while the latter’s admixture plays out the compositional resemblances, mulching improvisation and atonality. Although the horns jump and judder throughout the ten tune-fragments that make up Part II, Lingens’ rugged drumming and Borghini’s sweeping thwacks regularize the underlying pulse to such an extent that staccato trumpet peeps and reed squeals indulge in satisfying vamps. Plus the bass and drum team shepherd the medley so that individual compositions’ tensile strength is apparent alongside the more obvious musical japes. Part III not only exposes a hitherto unknown eastern influence in Braxton lines such as 53 and 69D, but also moves the connected narrative through numerous variations. At times a theme is taken apart with horn peeps and bites; elsewhere unrelated shards are harmonized. Considering that Coleman tunes like Joy of a Toy, Deedee and W.R.U. are included, no matter how rapid or agitated the performance sounds, transitions include bonded swinging.

Standards are defined that way because of their universality. Yet these bands demonstrate how familiarity can be excitedly mixed with new interpretations.

Vancouver-based guitarist/composer Bill Coon has spent quite a bit of time working with singers like Denzal Sinclaire and Kate Hammett-Vaughan. They clearly hear Coon’s rare ability to provide optimum framing for a melody. His lyrical gift is much in evidence on Scudder’s Groove (Pagetown 006, billcoon.com), a magically tuneful set in which standards and Coon compositions alike seem to bubble up through the warm, glassy sound of his guitar. His trio rendering of My Funny Valentine is a model of jazz ballad playing. Coon gets solid support from bassist Darren Radtke and drummer Dave Robbins, while the late Ross Taggart on tenor saxophone is a perfect partner. Taggart swings magnificently on the opening version of Lady Be Good and Coon’s Thelonious Monk-inspired But I’m Glad You Did, while his playing on Ballad for Someone and the title track resonates with the same depth of feeling that Coon brings to them.

Coon’s special contribution to Canadian jazz singing is immediately apparent on Laura Crema’s Fotografia (lauracrema.com), as the Vancouver singer opens her fourth CD with just Coon’s guitar momentarily embracing her voice. That initial lack of adornment is emblematic of Crema’s work: she favours substance over decoration, eschewing both affectation and surface perfection in favour of direct, emotional renderings of her disparate and imaginative material, including Ellington’s Azure, a duet with Coon; John Lennon’s Beautiful Boy, a vocal duet with bassist Adam Thomas; a compelling Wild Is the Wind with pianist Sharon Minemoto; three songs by Antonio Carlos Jobim; and two originals by Crema and Minemoto. Somehow Crema ties them together, along with a concluding version of Kurt Weill and Maxwell Anderson’s Lost in the Stars that leaves the best possible impression, its dreamlike ambience shot through with emotional grit. 

Composer/trombonist Jeff Presslaff left his native New York City for Manitoba in 1997, but he’s found an intriguing way to merge the two locales in The Complete Rebirth of the Cool (Cellar Live CL071113 cellarlive.com). In 1949 Miles Davis was at the centre of a group developing fresh concepts in jazz orchestration, among them Gil Evans, Gerry Mulligan and John Lewis. The result was Davis’ Nonet, a group that included French horn and tuba, as well as likelier jazz instruments. Collected on an LP in 1957, the group’s 78s were dubbed The Birth of the Cool. Presslaff has assembled a group in Manitoba with identical instrumentation and commissioned compositions inspired by the original Nonet’s works. It’s generally true to the subtle textures and harmonies of the originals, though at times it turns ponderous. Trumpeter Dean McNeill provides the livelier What Fourth, while Jon Stevens’ brooding November Night explores more contemporary sonics.

That early Miles Davis project was also a meeting ground for some of the key figures in the third stream movement that would seek to fuse elements of jazz and classical music, including Evans, Lewis and Gunther Schuller, the Nonet’s French horn player. “Third stream” may only be cited as an historical category these days, but it’s a pervasive methodology for many musicians. Greg de Denus is a young Toronto pianist whose background includes studies with such distinguished musicians as Don Thompson, Fred Hersch and Dave Douglas. The quality of the instruction is more apparent than specific influences in Solo Piano, Live at Gallery 345 (Pet Mantis Records PMR009 petmantisrecords.com), which has de Denus working through a program in which composition and improvisation are often indistinguishable. There’s a rhapsodic sweep to much of this music, de Denus’ pyrotechnics often tending toward chromatic fantasia on pieces like Pocket Jacks. It even touches Steve Swallow’s Falling Grace and Thelonious Monk’s In Walked Bud, which has as much Rachmaninov as Bud Powell. De Denus is true to the tradition of French Impressionism in jazz, summoning up the spirit of Duke Ellington in Alter Ego. When de Denus slows down, he produces the elusive Folksing, a study in sonority that’s as beautiful as it is original.

The influence of classical models is also apparent in much of the work of clarinetist/saxophonist Peter Van Huffel, the Kingston, Ontario native whose recent residences include New York and Berlin (Van Huffel also has a duo with Greg de Denus). The group House of Mirrors continues Van Huffel’s partnership with singer Sophie Tassignon, with pianist Julie Sassoon and bassist Miles Perkin (originally from Winnipeg) completing the group on Act One (Wismart W 105 wismart.de). The piece is a long suite with both composed and improvised materials, summoning up everything from medieval song to jazz, School of Vienna abstraction and European free improvisation. It’s held together by sheer virtuosity and the focal point of Tassignon’s mercurial voice.

Saxophonist/clarinetist Anna Webber is another Canadian expatriate with similar musical breadth and co-ordinates: originally from British Columbia, she has resided successively in Berlin and Brooklyn. She has an absolute gem as a memento of her Berlin stay, Percussive Mechanics (Pirouet PIT 3069, pirouet.com). Webber leads aseptet ofmostly German percussionists in a suite of her compositions that seems to simultaneously connect to African music, New York minimalism and the late serialism of Boulez’ Le marteau sans maître. There’s real power here, with a sense of mystery and essential coherence arising from the evolving rhythmic language and its ability to absorb certain kinds of almost-random fractures. Webber the tenor soloist comes to the fore on the title track, rising over the underlying patterns with expansive detailed runs delivered with machine-gun precision.