Jazz and Improvised

Toronto drummer Nick Fraser has a strong presence across the spectrum of modern jazz, but he’s particularly prominent in free jazz projects like the band Drumheller and the Lina Allemano Four. He’s taken an emphatic role as composer and bandleader as well as drummer on Towns and Villages (Barnyard Records BR0330 barnyardrecords.com), putting together a quartet with regular associates Rob Clutton on bass and Andrew Downing on cello along with tenor and soprano saxophonist Tony Malaby, one of New York’s most explosive musicians. The CD opens with a wall of overblown tenor and gritty bowed strings, but it’s a group with many levels and colours, from ballads with Malaby on soprano to intriguing circular compositions in which Fraser’s motifs are repeated by the saxophone and cello, synchrony gradually breaking down into echo. Everyone involved is clearly inspired by the meeting: it might be a band for a day, but it’s a great one.

Another Toronto drummer, veteran Barry Romberg, leads Random Access, a loose-knit band with a fluid personnel but a consistent ability to generate lively, interesting music. Part 12: Crab People (Romhog 123 barryromberg.com) is a 2-CD set devoted largely to Romberg’s compositions with shifting time signatures and largely modal underpinnings, giving everyone involved sufficient stimulation and adequate space to develop their ideas. The band changes from track to track, from three to six musicians, and the electric fusion quotient changes as well, depending on whether the bass is acoustic (Kieran Overs or Julian Anderson Bowes) or electric (Rich Brown), whether there’s one or two guitarists (Geoff Young and Ben Monder) present, or keyboards (Robi Botos) or tablas (Ravi Naimpally), but these sessions are at a consistently high level. Saxophonist Kelly Jefferson and trumpeter Kevin Turcotte contribute forcefully to the title track, while tenor saxophonist Kirk MacDonald distinguishes himself on End of an Era.

Quebecois saxophonist François Carrier travels and records frequently and he’s built up a discography that may be larger and more varied than any other Canadian musician playing free jazz. He and drummer Michel Lambert have wandered as far afield as Kathmandu while playing with a cavalcade of international musicians. Just the pianists include Paul Bley, Uri Caine, Bobo Stenson and the newly arrived Russian Alexey Lapin. Their latest adventure is Shores and Ditches (FMR CD CD340-0512 francoiscarrier.com), and while there’s no recording data, the sidemen suggest an English locale. On an unaccompanied track, Carrier emphasizes the sweetness of his keening alto sound, stretching notes to the point where it sounds like a free jazz version of Harlem Nocturne. Duets with Lambert emphasize the propulsive dialogue, while a long episodic trio improvisation with Guillaume Viltard is artfully enhanced by the bassist’s sustained and virtuosic mastery of both arco and pizzicato techniques. Viltard, guitarist Daniel Thompson and flutist Neil Metcalfe appear on a collective improvisation, an effectively sustained exploration highlighted by Metcalfe’s distinctive clarity of line.

David Occhipinti is a masterful guitarist, possessed of some of the fluid lyricism and harmonic subtlety of his former teacher Jim Hall, but he’s also serious about composition, as fascinated by the possibilities of chamber music as he is by improvisation. Camera (Occdav Music OM006 davidocchipinti.com) presents two long suites by two different ensembles and two stand-alone pieces, engaging multi-hued pieces that mix and match methods in the same spirit as Frank Zappa’s serious music, like The Perfect Stranger.

Demonstrating that accepted musical customs are often shibboleths — the equivalent of not wearing white after Labour Day — contemporary improvisers frequently express themselves unconventionally — even when it comes to instrumental choices. Take for example the fine duo sessions here. Unaccompanied by others, the players prove that there are enough textures available from nearly identical instruments to create full sound pictures. These sets show not only how much can be done with two guitars — a common combination — but also by two percussion sets, not to mention two saxophones of similar ranges and timbres.

Recorded at the Vancouver International Jazz Festival, Stones (Rue Grammofon RCD 2136 CD runegrammofon.com) matches the tenor and baritone saxophone of Swede Mats Gustafsson with the alto and bass saxophones of Montreal’s Colin Stetson. Although the strength and power available from lower-pitched woodwinds gives the two licence for frequent displays of sternum-shaking and bone-rattling overblowing, the four selections highlight more than just quivering throaty growls. Scattered throughout the dense and nearly opaque duets are mellow connective sequences and some that are created with panache. True, the elegance of tracks such as Stones that Need Not is predicated on acceptance of a climax of slowly melding textures, evolving from one saxman outputting linear tongue smacks and reed sucks, while the other decorates the sequence with chromatic split tones and quivering buzzes. Still, the reed variations are never overly bulky, but instead deconstruct the exposition with crying stutters and emotional in-throat vocalizing. Another strategy, as on Stones that Can Only Be, involves one player concentrating on a pedal-point ostinato with glottal punctuation and finger vibrations, while the second’s altissimo timbres of intense buzzing and slap tonguing decorate the narrative. Such unusual reed techniques may be expected from Gustafsson, whose outstanding free improvisations are on display in many jazz ensembles. However those who only know Stetson from his day job with the pop band Arcade Fire may be shocked and/or impressed.

If Gustafsson and Stetson utilize as well as overcome the elephantine qualities of their mammoth saxes, then London’s Lol Coxhill and Vienna’s Max Nagl transcend the perceived delicacy of their soprano saxophones’ timbres. Replacing the other saxophonists’ necessary gravitas with playfulness, the two skip through 16 tracks of solos and duos. Entitled In Memory of Lol Coxhill (Rude Noises 021 www.maxnagl.at), the CD celebrates instances where the experiences of Coxhill (1932-2012) as busker and pop sideman, as well as revered improviser, dovetailed with the skills Nagl, 28 years his junior, had amassed composing theatre and film music. Together the two produce profound improvisations that offer levity without a hint of condescension. Probably the best example of this is Charangalia where the saxophonists’ balanced and affiliated tones circle one another, swaying to a near oomph-pah-pah beat. You can almost imagine the players dressed in matching lederhosen, waltzing around the floor as they flutter-tongue their reeds. On his own, Nagl has a predisposition for calypso themes and breaks up the proceedings with brief asides on harpsichord and guitar; meanwhile Coxhill recounts a shaggy dog story in a plummy accent. Still the sonic fun never takes second place to instrumental excellence. On a track such as zweites Stockwerk, for instance, the two create an entire colour palate from a contrapuntal collection of slide-whistle-like trills, reed-biting squeaks and pronounced slurs plus a mellow, single-note interface. Eventually as the bent note distortions meet, a dual narrative emerges that is both multiphonic and moving.

Polyrhythms are the order of the day on Etudes (SoLyd SLR 0414 www.solyd-records.ru), where San Francisco’s Garth Powell and Vilnius resident Vladimir Tarasov share the same extended percussion kit to do a lot more than drum banging. Composers as well as skin beaters, Tarasov and Powell cast these etudes as part faux tutorials and part virtuosic displays. With the American providing brief tongue-in-cheek commentary they proceed to extract beats and vibrations which are often as diaphanous as they are driving. Multiphonic as well as multi-rhythmic, a track like After All suggests the sounds that could arise from a wind machine; while crisp slaps on suspended gongs are matched with friction resulting from violin bows rubbed on cymbals during Strung Up On Your Bow. Picture View Postcards confirms that the correct drum stick sizzle on percussion tops can replicate a dancer’s soft-shoe routine; while the thundering bounces, timely rattles, cascading press rolls and splashing cymbals of No Compensation put aside any doubts as to the drummers’ time-keeping ability, as they swing as effortlessly as Buddy Rich or Max Roach. Despite those skills a track such as My Old Wings is the best example of why they continue to experiment. Spatially organized rather than concentrated, Tarasov and Powell make their triple flams and ratamacues plus mineshaft-deep bass drum reverb reflect the recording space, so that a feeling of powerful motion is present without either having to raise the volume of the performance.

This sort of relaxed intensity also permeates Hogwild Manifesto (Jungulous 003 www.andersnilssonguitar.com), but the jagged electric guitar lines of the duo called Hot and Cold is closer to hearing two Jimi Hendrixes rather than the sedate picking of Chet Atkins and Les Paul or Herb Ellis and Barney Kessel. American Aaron Dugan and Swede Anders Nilsson are sophisticated enough in so-called post-rock and post-jazz styles that they are easily able to work up a track like For Albert which is both thorny and tuneful, wrapping single note finger-picking with arpeggiated climaxes. Elsewhere, one clunks chords and clicks out a slapping ostinato while the other probes the stratosphere with flanged reverb. They subsequently switch roles then cut off the sound in a split second. Like the other duos here they show they’re also capable of subtle swing. For example they approximate an Ellis-Kessel foot-tapping groove on Night Juice Agenda, than quickly splinter it into fuzz-tone reverb and staccato crunches. Tossing ideas back and forth they touch on Middle Eastern-styled licks and highly legato slurred fingering, contrasting buzzing intensity with an overlay of fingerpicking. Before summing up the meeting with exquisite cascades, innate lyricism is on show as much as heavily processed outer space twangs.

With the inventiveness implicit in free improvisation, contrasting textures can be sourced from instruments supposedly identical in tones and timbres. These duos confirm the thesis.

Le Cauchemar d’Hector
La Marmite Infernale
ARFI 2012 AM052 (www.arfi.org)

French Romantic composer Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) declared in 1859 that “music is free” so what better group to put a new spin on some of Berlioz’s compositions than Lyon-based free music ensemble La Marmite Infernale?

Asked by the Festival Berlioz, that takes place annually in the composer’s birthplace, to re-imagine works by France’s most iconoclastic 19th century composer, the 18-piece band treated Berlioz’s compositions as it does strains from the folk tradition, preserving the melodies, but appending solos and passages relating to improvisational jazz’s freedom, punk-rock’s unyielding beat and advances in electro-acoustic programming. Probably the most radical reworking occurs on La fantastique nain de Sophie where sampler player Xavier Garcia mixes extracts from the composer’s Symphonie fantastique with the live group playing its version of the work in arrangements midway between those for symphony orchestra and for jazz band.

Less radical, but more affecting, Marche funèbre, based on Berlioz’s Grande Symphonie Funèbre et Triomphale which was composed for a 200-strong wind band, removes the original piece’s nationalistic militarism but retains its melodic strength, substituting strained grace notes from trombonist Alain Gibert and trumpeter Guillaume Grenard plus splintery buzzes from saxophonist Eric Vagnon sparked by Christian Rollet’s rattling percussion. The climactic and close-knit result validates the composition not the jingoism. Then there’s Scène aux champs which confirms Berlioz’s bucolic interpretation of a pastoral scene, while simultaneously burlesquing it, by having the piece played by 12 guitars in unison.

Although classical purists may blanch at the liberties taken with the compositions here, it’s possible that Berlioz, with his sympathy for free expression, may have been impressed and honoured. For the adventurous listener of any stripe though, taken as a whole the CD is no cauchemar or “nightmare” of Hector, but rather a satisfying rêve or “dream.”

The Long and the Short of It

Ken Aldcroft; Joel LeBlanc
Trio Records TRP-D502-016

Notes on the Miasms
Andy Haas; Ken Aldcroft
Resonant Music 010

Toronto guitarist Ken Aldcroft displays his formidable guitar technique and improvising acumen in two new “free improv” releases.

The long and the short of it features him with fellow guitarist Joel LeBlanc in two contrasting short and long works. Each “short” is a concise tidbit of colour and rhythm which sets up a lengthier (over 20 minutes) set. The Long (I) is a mellow soundscape which seems to emulate the soothing environment of the wilderness. The minimalistic patterns and atonal guitar effects are precisely placed in the relaxing soundscape. In contrast, The Long (II) is a wall of sound, giant stadium extended rock guitar extravaganza. It sounds like one giant guitar – riffs, extended solos and in-your-face sound bolts, combined with humour and wit in a stunning example of superb music.

Notes on the miasms features Aldcroft improvising with Andy Haas on sax and electronics. The music is more atonal than the above release making it perhaps a bit more of a difficult listening exercise for those not accustomed to this type of music. Haas’ rapid saxophone lines against Aldcroft’s guitar colours are brilliant in their textures, phrasing and energy. The occasional reference to traditional jazz and blues is a welcome musical commentary.

These two releases are fine examples of the flourishing creative music scene in Toronto. The improvisation skills, talent and dedication of musicians such as Ken Aldcroft guarantee a vibrant improvising future for players and listeners alike.