Jazz and Improvised

True Stories - Mike Field

True Stories
Mike Field
Independent MFJCD 1801 (mikefieldjazz.com)

Following three previous award-winning CDs, trumpeter/composer/vocalist Mike Field presents a heady blend of his actual diverse, peripatetic road experiences expertly merged with compelling bits of pure fantasy. Field serves as composer here, as well as co-producer/co-arranger with noted guitarist Dominic Mancuso. In order to bring his eclectic concept into reality, Field has assembled a cast of fine musicians, including Mark Camilleri on piano/organ, Russ Boswell and George Koller on bass, Davide Direnzo on drums, Rosendo “Chendy” León on percussion, Mancuso and Tony Zorzi on guitar and Jerry Caringi on accordion.

The project kicks off with Mechanic, a hard-rocking anthem, replete with burning horns, face-melting guitar and impassioned vocals by Field that tell the story of a lonely, travelling space mechanic. Following immediately is another standout, The Hotel by the Mansion, which features a klezmer-like arrangement about a very peculiar circus act, starring a woman with fire in her hair (the kind of act that you can only do once!) Field soars on Tu vuo’ fa’ l’americano – a lusty reworking of Carosone and Salerno’s Neapolitan classic, most recently heard in the film, The Talented Mr. Ripley, replete with a bombastic accordion solo from Caringi.

Also of note are Magnolia, a swinging, jazz-like tune that features not only a fine vocal by Field, but also a dynamic trumpet solo, and the lyrical closer, Autumn Lovesong, which is a tender reflection on love, life, family, the turning of the seasons and the inevitable passage of time. Field sings deeply and emotionally, in symbiosis with gorgeous piano work by Camilleri.

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No Codes - Benjamin Deschamp

No Codes
Benjamin Deschamps
Independent (benjamindeschamps.com)

Put these four gentlemen together in the warmth of an acoustically perfect room and you instantly have a heavyweight quartet bursting forth from bar one, then continuing to carve out a niche for itself. No Codes suggests allegiance to no single style within the realm of jazz but there is certainly a reference to the rippling boppish groove that soon unfolds into music with tantalizing angular melodies couched in complex tempi and abruptly changing rhythms.

Alto saxophonist Benjamin Deschamps, playing his heart out, shows that he can hold his own with his veteran colleague tenor saxophonist Frank Lozano. Bassist Sébastien Pellerin and drummer Louis-Vincent Hamel frame the broodingly percussive rhythm section but every now and then they come forth from playing in the pocket to ring in the changes in mood, structure and tempo. All of this makes for a highly interesting program, from the blistering bop runs of Rules of Compression that lift the lid on this pressure-cooker atmosphere around the band to the loose and funky swagger of Cool Cats and the tart, party-time thrills and spills of Double Meaning and My Steps.

There is a considerable degree of balance and integration of melody, harmony and rhythm from this piano-less quartet. This is touching and toe-tapping music in equal measure. Again, composition and improvisation, exploration, individuality and tradition are all impressively maintained throughout, which makes No Codes a disc to absolutely die for.

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Wander Wonder - Allison Au Quartet

Wander Wonder
Allison Au Quartet
Independent AA-18 (allisonau.com)

The Allison Au Quartet has been together since 2009 and their first album, The Sky Was Pale Blue, Then Grey (2013) was nominated for a JUNO. The second album, Forest Grove, won a JUNO in 2016 for Best Jazz Album of the Year: Group. Wander Wonder is their third release and is a thoughtful and subtle work with each musician contributing their technique and inspiration to Au’s complex and layered compositions. For example, the group’s casual precision is demonstrated during the drum solo which ends Force Majeure: Fabio Ragnelli plays with abandon while Todd Pentney (piano) and Jon Maharaj (bass) lay down an understated and contrasting, repeating chordal vamp. Throughout the album, Au’s alto saxophone is light but intense and reminds me a little of Paul Desmond but leaner; it fits well with her writing where solos are interspersed with ensemble sections and melodic fragments.

Highlights include Looking Up which begins with Ragnelli’s subtle drum intro. Then Au plays a beautiful looping melody over clever rhythmic punctuation, an ostinato bass pattern interrupts before the melody returns and leads into an elegant piano solo. Red Herring begins with a syncopated minor melody over funky and jagged beats. As the piece progresses, Pentney’s Prophet Rev2 adds an ominous texture for some additional tension. The piece winds its way down a number of genre alleys (as its title suggests) and is ultimately satisfying and not at all misleading. Wander Wonder is an exquisite album that balances introspection with some terrific solos.

Autoschediasm - Karoline Leblanc; Ernesto Rodrigues; Nicolas Caloia

Autoschediasm
Karoline Leblanc; Ernesto Rodrigues; Nicolas Caloia
Atrito-Afeito 010 (atrito-afeito.com)

Autoschediasm (the term indicates something improvised, offhand or casual) presents a three-segment collective improvisation created by Montreal-based pianist Karoline Leblanc and bassist Nicolas Caloia and Portuguese violist Ernesto Rodrigues. All are accomplished improvisers, but each brings different threads: Leblanc’s background stresses the classical avant-garde; Caloia’s career emphasizes free jazz; Rodrigues, who leads several distinct improvising orchestras in Lisbon, has championed free improvisation for over 30 years, appearing on scores of CDs.

While the title suggests something casual, the music sounds appropriate to its Conservatoire de Musique de Montréal setting, the trio bringing a high modernist discipline and precision to the work. The opening movement flows with an energy that is dense and light. Sparked initially by LeBlanc’s imaginative keyboard flights, in its later stages it settles into a churning rhythmic pattern that ignites Rodrigues’ radical virtuosity, resulting in a flurry of microtonal lines that sometimes create their own counterpart. Offhand? Casual? The only thing that distinguishes it from composed music is the challenge of writing it down.

The second movement takes a contrasting approach, developing little sounds, arising discreetly, sometimes pointillist, at times muffled, at others percussive, a gently humming underbrush alive with detail. The final segment moves from delicate sonic events to a turbulent, vibrant world that recalls the opening, a formal motion that exaggerates a pattern evident since the early classical era. It’s an act of “autoschediasm” rich in taut attention to nuance and form.

Pressing Clouds Passing Crowds - Kim Myhr; Quatuor Bozzini; Caroline Bergvall; Ingar Zach

Pressing Clouds Passing Crowds
Kim Myhr; Quatuor Bozzini; Caroline Bergvall; Ingar Zach
Hubro HUBRO CD 2612 (hubromusic.com)

Initially commissioned and performed at FIMAV in Victoriaville, Quebec, Pressing Clouds Passing Crowds is a musical rumination on immutable nature and human disruption, composed by Kim Myhr, the Norwegian guitarist whose strums underscore the narrative that ululates through this six-track suite.

Accompanied by Norwegian percussionist Ingar Zach and framed by the harmonies of Montreal string ensemble Quatuor Bozzini (QB), the music shares space with the idiosyncratic recitation by French-Norwegian poet Caroline Bergvall. Her distinctive phrasing helps set up a rhythmically charged program where her vocal narrative adds as much to individual sequences as the QB’s intermittently buzzing glissandi, the percussionist’s hand pops and vibrations, plus the guitarist’s string strokes and spanks on 12-string acoustic, which constantly move the theme forward. Moving efficiently through word images that range among simple instances of nature appreciation, chimerical retelling of dreamlike surprises, and astute allusions to political events involving refugees and dangerous water crossings, Bergvall sets up hypnotic sequences whose resolution depends as much on the feints and fancies of instrumental virtuosity as the players’ strategies depend on her verbal concoctions.

With its echoes of folksay, impressionism, stark improvisation and poetics, Pressing Clouds Passing Crowds is a distinctive creation which can be experienced more than once – which is precisely what can be done by listening to this CD.

Linger - Benoît Delbecq; Jorrit Dijkstra; John Hollenbeck

Linger
Benoît Delbecq; Jorrit Dijkstra; John Hollenbeck
Driff Records CD 1801 (driffrecords.com)

Reshaping improvisational parameters, Dutch alto saxophonist Jorrit Dijkstra and French pianist Benoît Delbecq add flexible oscillations to the ten performances here by also improvising on, respectively, Lyricon and preparations for synthesizer, aided by the flexible percussion patterning of Montreal-based John Hollenbeck.

With instrumental additions that can process tones as they’re created, the Europeans’ secondary voices multiply interactions past standard trio voicings to suggest enhanced melodic lyricism and rhythmic vigour, often simultaneously. On Stir for instance, reed smears and outer-space-like oral currents vie for supremacy challenged by wave-form squibs and measured keyboard chording. Unfazed by timbre multiplicity, the drummer not only keeps a backbeat going, most powerfully on Push, but also bluntly asserts his agenda with individualistic rolls and ruffs plus cymbal splashes there and throughout the CD.

Dijkstra and Delbecq don’t just depend on texture supplements as they aptly demonstrate on Dwell, where irregular saxophone trills and split tones confront a flowing keyboard narrative plus inner piano string stops; or on Stalk, where modulated piano clusters create an impressionistic theme that complements inchoate Lyricon echoes as well as cursive beats plus drum-rim rubbing from Hollenbeck.

Contrapuntal yet communicative, the textural sound-melding throughout the disc suggests that Dijkstra and Delbecq, who first met at the Banff Jazz Workshop in 1990, should collaborate more often. As it is, the two, plus Hollenback’s fluid and inventive patterning, have created a session over which one can beneficially linger.

Eric Dolphy: Musical Prophet - Eric Dolphy

Eric Dolphy – Musical Prophet
Eric Dolphy
Resonance Records HCD-2035 (resonancerecords.org)

When Eric Dolphy died in a diabetic coma in 1964 at 36, he represented a special loss to jazz: a master of three distinct woodwinds (alto saxophone, bass clarinet and flute) whose exalted technical acumen and creative intensity contributed immeasurably to great recordings by John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Charles Mingus, George Russell and Oliver Nelson, among many others.

Musical Prophet is a 3CD set that expands the 1963 sessions that produced the LPs Conversations and Iron Man. Ranging from unaccompanied saxophone solos (Love Me is an expressionist masterpiece heard here in three versions) to a tentet, from jazz standards like Fats Waller’s Jitterbug Waltz (on flute) to Dolphy’s own dense, swarming Burning Spear, it’s the finest portrait of the breadth of Dolphy’s genius available. There are no finer examples of the “third stream” impulse than Dolphy’s duets with bassist Richard Davis, abstract weavings that press Ellington’s Come Sunday and the standard Alone Together into classics of improvised chamber music. On Music Matador, his bass clarinet roars with celebratory abandon.

Dolphy’s breadth is as apparent in his range of collaborators, from bassoonist Garvin Bushell, who recorded with Mamie Smith in 1922, to 18-year-old trumpeter Woody Shaw, here making his recording debut. Along with the expansive and illuminating alternate takes, the set includes a remarkable bonus, A Personal Statement, with an extended musical dialogue that includes pianist Bob James (yes, that Bob James) and countertenor David Schwartz.