Jazz and Improvised

Abeng - Rich Brown

Abeng
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.

Fulfillment - Michael Blake

Fulfillment
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.

Songs and Dances from The Muted Note - The Disguises

Songs 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.

The World Is Alright - Aimée Butcher

The 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.

OUTgoing - François Carrier; Steve Beresford; John Edwards; Michel Lambert

OUTgoing
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.

Wrong Is Right - Noisy Minority; NYC Five - Angelica Niescier, Florian Weber; In Motion - Richard Poole, Marilyn Crispell, Gary Peacock

Wrong Is Right
Noisy Minority
Intakt Records CD 262

NYC Five
Angelika Niescier; Florian Weber
Intakt Records CD 263

In Motion
Richard Poole; Marilyn Crispell; Gary Peacock
Intakt Records CD 264

At the very end of music’s spectrum, almost like planetary rumblings from outside the Milky Way, free improvisations imbue today’s music with a glorious sheen. Instrumental movements that one is accustomed to hearing are turned on their head enabling us to hear, with unabashed fascination, the explosive whimsy captured by some of the finest musicians alive today. Taking a leaf from Berg and Webern, Stravinsky and Stockhausen as much as from Anthony Braxton and Muhal Richard Abrams, Roscoe Mitchell and Lester Bowie, musicians – some who have been playing pretty conventional swing – have been blazing new trails, birthing, in every sense, a new avant-garde. This trend in Europe is vastly different from the one in America, which is rooted as much in the blues as it is in the music of Europe. Across the pond the “New Thing” dives daringly into triumphantly free improvisation that is almost completely bereft of the blues, although it might sometimes dig into jazz for idiomatic inspiration. Here are three wonderful discs from the Swiss label Intakt (intaktrec.ch) that exemplify everything that is bold and beautiful about European free improvisation.

Wrong Is Right is a performance that provides a burst of acclamation with loud triumphant chords fittingly made by musicians who are the epitome of the triumph of musicianship. Saxophonist Omri Ziegele is also a voice artist and leads the power quartet that includes one of the finest trombonists in the business. Ray Anderson has been celebrated for his brilliant tone colours and impeccable use of timbre, all embodied in the highest form of artistry. The repertoire on this disc has music that is arranged in a suite-like manner. Everything – especially the brilliant Decimal System and Wrong Is Right – celebrates the unexplored nooks and crannies of the instruments’ vast repertoire.

NYC Five is a beautifully constructed album of songs by one of the most extroverted saxophonists in Europe. Angelika Niescier might not be a name many are familiar with but the Cologne-based alto saxophonist inhabits many worlds seemingly at once. The music that is improvised is strikingly majestic and the written work – especially the ballad, Invaded – is likely to tear your heart out for its deep emotion and exquisite showers of notes by the pianist Florian Weber. The ubiquitous American drummer Tyshawn Sorey makes an electrifying appearance wherever he goes and this record is no exception. Watch out for the lightness and bounce of Ralph Alessi’s trumpet – the other American of repute on the album.

“Cats with nine lives” is how tempting it is to describe pianist Marilyn Crispell, drummer Richard Poole and most definitely the monumental bassist, Gary Peacock, on In Motion. These leading exponents of their instruments almost intuitively bring dramatic, fresh tones and textures to notes and chords that you have heard hundreds of times before. The almost vocal styles of Crispell and Peacock have endeared them to generations of free-thinking musicians and here they show why. Their explosive whimsy is captured on Backseat of the Galaxy, In Motion and Isle of Nowhere. The rest of the repertoire is no less wondrous and is full of joyous evocation and revels in the über-virtuosity of all three musicians whose brilliance has no limits.

A New One - Ulrich Gumpert Quartet

A New One
Ulrich Gumpert Quartet
Intakt Records 257 (intaktrec.ch)

East Germany’s most prominent jazz composer/pianist, Ulrich Gumpert, 70, shows that he has lost none of his Teutonic-Thelonious acuity in the quarter century since the destruction of the Berlin Wall. With band members several years his junior, including Germans, bassist Jan Roder and drummer Michael Griener, plus Swiss saxophonist Jürg Wickihalder, the quartet moves through 11 mostly Gumpert-composed tunes that could equally impress in a West Berlin club with aficionados familiar with the sounds of Monk and bop, as well as an East Berlin theatre audience more attuned to Socialist Realist anthems and folkloric marches.

One instance of this is Iffie, initially a balladic theme the pianist developed years ago for a performance with a poet, resolved with a snorting Wickihalder solo into 100 percent contemporary jazz. Recitativo Secco, is a plaintive Germanic recitation for full band that too is transformed into a jokey promenade with cymbal sizzles and reed smears. There’s also the Griener-composed Süshotz, a simple rustic tune that balances Mozartian rococo with a charming alto saxophone lead. With Wickihalder playing tenor saxophone, Number Nine and the give-away titled The Bop & The Hard Be are more overtly Monkish, with the pianist replicating Monk’s hesitant yet spiky chording on the second, as Roder walks and the saxophonist channels Johnny Griffin’s bite and speed. Expanding and contracting time as it develops, Number Nine shuffles as much as it swings with Gumpert introducing ragtime and boogie-woogie motifs that lock in with Wickihalder reed outbursts that are as hard and thick as titanium.

Like a pseudo-military march the penultimate Scrollin’ is driven by a tough drum solo, moderated by elegant string reverberations from Roder, ending in a formation that finds each musician hopscotching and circling around the others as he solos. Confirming that sardonic humour wasn’t stifled in the German Democratic Republic (GDR), the CD ends with a 55-second reprise of Iffie called Iffie’s Saloon, with appropriate barroom-like plinking from Gumpert and nasal soprano saxophone passages from Wickihalder. In spite of its misdeeds, the GDR allowed talents like Gumpert to flourish; luckily A New One gives us in the West a new way to experience it.