04 Film in MusicTell Tale
Film in Music
Drip Audio DA01207 (dripaudio.com)

Led by cellist Peggy Lee, Film in Music is an octet formed in 2009 that includes many of Vancouver’s most creative improvisers. Originally inspired by the HBO series Deadwood, the project develops a strong sense of mood and narrative through Lee’s compositions for the full ensemble with their structured solos, while interludes of individual and small group improvisation create contrast.

String textures predominate in a mix of Lee’s cello, Jesse Zubot’s violin and Torsten Muller’s acoustic bass along with Ron Samworth’s electric guitar and André Lachance’s electric bass adding gravity. Combining these with the additional colours of Kevin Elaschuk’s trumpet, Dylan van der Schyff’s drums and Chris Gestrin’s keyboards lends an almost orchestral depth. The compositions are strongly tonal, even tuneful, and there’s a kind of drifting feeling that suggests the Old West touched by a certain dissonant grit, the combination strongly suggestive of Bill Frisell’s off-kilter Western themes, most notably the opening A Turn of Events and the keening Epilogue to Part 1.

The improvised episodes are marked by extended techniques and free dissociation, like Muller’s Gruesome Goo, an exploration of the bass’ more exotic timbres, and the evanescent Nagging Doubts by the duo of Lee and Gestrin. Eventually ensemble composition and free improvisation intersect in the concluding Finale: God’s Laughter and a Parade, looming, intense writing that’s overlaid with skittering free improvisations, most notably from Gestrin and Samworth.

05 Cherry TchicaiMusical Monsters
Don Cherry; John Tchicai; Irène Schweizer; Léon Francioli; Pierre Favre
Intakt Records CD 269 (intaktrec.ch)

This previously unreleased concert recording from 1980 presents a special confluence in the development of free jazz as a wholly international language, with trumpeter Don Cherry and his personal evolution at the centre of the music.

Cherry was one of the key architects of free jazz, first as frontline partner to Ornette Coleman in the latter’s 1958-60 quartets, perfecting a spiky, splintering harrowing line that served as foil in great bands that followed (Sonny Rollins, Albert Ayler) as well as his own groups. By 1980, Cherry was working toward his “Multikulti” concept: modal, polyrhythmic, ostinato-driven music that incorporated elements from Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Setting down here at Jazz Festival Willisau in Switzerland, Cherry is joined by the Danish-African alto saxophonist John Tchicai, an associate since the early 60s, whose lines are tight coils, explosive and laconic in turn. They’re supported by the potent rhythm section of pianist Irène Schweizer, bassist Léon Francioli and drummer Pierre Favre, early converts to Cherry’s inclusivist and liberated language.

The themes were composed by Tchicai and Danish guitarist Pierre Dørge, but they serve essentially as brief launching points for long, loose forays. Musical Monsters 1 begins as a joyous traffic jam, trumpet and saxophone sounding like car horns; 2 covers tremendous ground, moving in and out of free time and layered ostinatos that inspire literal chanting from Tchicai. Whether it’s coiling sinuously or exploring raw, unfettered sound, this is music from the vaults that breathes and pulses with fresh life.

06 Kenny Barron Trio Book of Intuition ArtBook of Intuition
Kenny Barron Trio
Impulse! 4777802

Review

Pianist Kenny Barron is one of the grand masters of modern jazz. At 73, he can look back on a distinguished career that had him recording with Dizzy Gillespie and James Moody before he was 20. The incarnation of a great tradition, he combines invention, energy and lyricism, drawing on the work of Bud Powell and Art Tatum. He’s also a probing interpreter of the compositions of Thelonious Monk.

Book of Intuition is the first recording by Barron’s working trio with bassist Kiyoshi Kitagawa and drummer Johnathan Blake, a group that has acquired a hand-in-glove familiarity during more than a decade together. It’s apparent from the Brazilian-tinged élan of the opening Magic Dance to the elegiac grace that the group brings to the late bassist Charlie Haden’s Nightfall. Along the way, the trio reveals its deft handling on some of Barron’s touchstones. The rhythm section feeds Barron’s own fierce drive on Bud-Like, the pianist’s tribute to Powell achieving something of its subject’s own creative urgency. There are also two Thelonious Monk compositions: the trio brings inventive buoyancy to Shuffle Boil, with Blake demonstrating wittily melodic phrasing; Barron plays Light Blue solo, emphasizing Monk’s own sources in the Harlem stride pianists and Art Tatum.

Barron’s own compositions here possess a consistent lyricism, with Kitagawa lending a solid foundation and Blake supplying bright, shifting accents, whether it’s to the Latin-infused Cook’s Bay and Dreams or Barron’s ballads, like the aptly titled Prayer. For traditional jazz trios, this is state of the art.

07 Alexis BaroSugar Rush
Alexis Baro & Pueblo Nuevo Jazz Project
G-Three GT0009 (alexisbaro.com)

Without question, trumpeter/flugelhornist Alexis Baro is a propelling and innovative force in the contemporary jazz/Latin jazz scene. His warm, round, energy-infused sound is immediately recognizable, and with the release of his new CD, Baro has clearly come into his own as both a consummate musician and as a composer. All of the material on Sugar Rush has been written and arranged by Baro, who not only freely taps into sacred earth rhythms, but fully utilizes the terrific musicality of his ensemble. The muy picante septet includes goosebump-raising musicians Adrean Farrugia on acoustic piano, Jeremy Ledbetter on keyboards, Yoser Rodriguez and Roberto Riveron on bass, Amhed Mitchel on drums, Jeff King on tenor sax and Jorge Luis “Papiosco” Torres on percussion.

Standouts include: Sigueme (Follow Me) – relentless pumpitude, burning horn lines and high octane piano and bass work define this track. King’s sax is simultaneously rhythmic and fluid, and Baro easily soars into the sonic stratosphere, while still remaining umbilically attached to the heartbeat of Mother Earth. La Guarida (The Lair) is a bop-ish exploration of ultimate coolness, with Baro’s purity of tone, off-the-hook chops and informed harmonic choices resounding throughout – almost reminiscent of a young Freddy Hubbard – and Farrugia’s piano solo is a sonic cascade of beauty and power. Also, Sugar Rush (the aptly named title track) envelops the listener with an onslaught of percussive and irresistible musical sweetness. Drummer Mitchel and percussionist “Papiosco” work in symmetry, mercilessly driving the band down the camino with the most relentless Latin grooves.

This well-conceived, well-recorded project is a masterful mélange of superb contemporary jazz and indigenous Latin sensibilities, and is arguably one of the most important Canadian jazz recordings of the year.

08 Shirantha BeddageMomentum
Shirantha Beddage
Independent SB 001
(shiranthabeddage.com)

With the release of his latest superb, well-recorded CD, British-born multi-instrumentalist and composer Shirantha Beddage explores the theme of his lifelong fascination with the physical sciences and the cosmic forces that propel us, inhibit us and also flood our lives with powerful waves of attraction and repulsion. All of the tunes here have been composed and arranged by Beddage, who also acts as producer; he performs masterfully on a variety of woodwinds (including clarinet, bass clarinet, alto sax, flute and particularly baritone saxophone) as well as keyboards. The fine lineup of Beddage’s musical collaborators include Dave Restivo on piano and keyboards, Mike Downes on acoustic bass, Rich Brown on electric bass and Mark Kelso and Will Kennedy (of Yellowjackets fame) on drums.

Included in the eight engaging original tracks are standouts Pork Chop – a funky, cool, baritone-driven exploration with an agile and percussive piano solo by Restivo as well as plenty of sonic and rhythmic surprises; the multi-textured blues – Drag and Drop which features Beddage on bass clarinet, moving seamlessly from legato passages to intensely powerful choruses and back again; and the impressive title track, which is aptly dedicated to the Oscar-winning film composer Bernard Herrmann. This composition is non-linear in its approach and seems to musically plumb the depths of human desire and also evoke misty, cinematic images. On the tender closing track, The Long Goodbye, Beddage wrings every last ounce of emotion out of each eloquent phrase.

This thoroughly satisfying recording honours classic jazz motifs and also fearlessly explores contemporary, uncharted waters, instrumentation and compositional possibilities, ensuring that jazz is alive, healthy and in fine hands.

09 Martel EstintoEstinto
Pierre-Yves Martel
e-tron records ETR C025 (pymartel.com)

Postmodern to the tip of his orchestral bow, Montreal-based Pierre-Yves Martel has created a single track, 54-minute CD dedicated to estinto or extinguished timbres, that is, ones sounded briefly and barely audibly. Yet he’s created this futuristic equivalent of a visual artist’s sparse canvas using primordial and Baroque-era instruments – harmonica and soprano viola da gamba respectively – often played synchronously if not in harmony.

Interlaced among these textures, which at points can suggest ratcheting percussion or harmonium-like euphony, are protracted silences. Their frequent but intermittent presence becomes as much a part of the album’s soundtrack as the tones which sometimes swell northwards of pianissimo. Overall, many of his narrative tones seem as fine as micron wire. Eventually though, the peeping wheezes and single-string sweeps attain polyphonic crosstalk encompassing varied tempi and pitches. Likely using non-standard tuning to extend his viola da gamba’s range and techniques during certain passages, Martel produces electronic-reminiscent tones acoustically. With the track’s concluding minutes enlivened by a brief harmonic upsurge of bell-like peals before subsiding, the unique program continues to makes its haunting presence felt as much through cerebral memory as aurally.

Darche PacificPacific
Alban Darche
Pépin & Plume P&P 004
(pepinetplume.com)

As serene and amicable as the word it describes, this session by French alto saxophonist Alban Darche is his salute to the polyphonic West Coast jazz of the 1950s. But like dramatists who recast an oft-told story in a new setting to point out the universality of the art, Darche’s Cool Jazz doesn’t copy the concepts advanced by the likes of Gil Evans, Lee Konitz and Paul Desmond.

Instead of re-recording some Cool Jazz classics, the CD consists of ten Darche compositions played by a quintet consisting of some of Europe’s most accomplished young veterans: trumpeter Geoffroy Tamisier, trombonist Samuel Blaser, Jozef Dumoulin on piano and Fender Rhodes and drummer Steve Argüelles. Dumoulin’s electric keyboard is particularly important: like an iPhone plugged into a stereo outlet, its distinctive shimmers are prototypically contemporary, not mid-20th century. This is especially obvious when a snatch of the original California-style music is quoted on the sardonically titled Birth of the Coocool and when other Cool School motifs are especially obvious on Pacific 2, Fugue nº3.

Pre-eminently a group effort, frequently balancing on the bucolic harmonies available via unison horn buffering, Darche leaves enough space for brief solos. His own work updates Desmond and Konitz with enough steel glimpsed through the silkiness to mix it up with feathery piano chording on Pacific 3 or advance in concordance with trombone slides on Kenny. On the same tune, Swiss-native Blaser, whose low notes add definition to the horn’s musical shape elsewhere, is involved in hide-and-seek with Dumoulin’s piano. More defining still is the fissure resulting when Blaser’s muted mellifluousness is contrasted with lead guitar-like ringing strokes from the pianist on Pacific 2, Fugue nº3. Usually muted, Tamisier confirms that standout improvising can also be self-effacing; while Argüelles is so tasteful he’s felt rather than heard. If Pacific has a drawback it’s that, like its antecedents, too often the band whispers and noodles instead of shouts. But if the reverse took place, wouldn’t it upset the delicate balance here?

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