Jazz and Improvised

Sympathetic dynamics and mutual compatibility are attributes ascribed to notable musical groupings. That’s why so many are made up of players from the same country or even the same region: think of the Budapest String Quartet, Liverpool’s The Beatles or the New York Jazz Quartet. But as music becomes more global this nationalism is increasingly rare. Here are CDs whose direction has been changed – or not – by adding a foreign player to an existing local combo, by creating a new entity with one expatriate element, or when players from various national backgrounds root themselves in one place.

Judging from the results on Ghost Lights (Songlines 1621-2 songlines.com), French pianist Benoît Delbecq joining the Vancouver-based trio of clarinetist François Houle, guitar and oud player Gordon Grdina and percussionist Kenton Loewen was more like mixing two complementary compounds than introducing an unstable element to a scientific formula. That’s because the Houle/Grdina/Loewen trio has been together since 2014, while the clarinetist and keyboardist have worked as a duo since 1996. Delbecq’s familiarity with non-Western scales coupled with Loewen’s skill on the Arabic lute give pieces such as Ley Land and especially Soft Shadows an Eastern cast. Ley Land’s moody and crepuscule feel is further advanced by slurred string fingering and Houle’s chalumeau slurps. Meantime Soft Shadows’ Eurasian tinge is intertwined with minimalist tones as organ-like drones from processed loops create a continuum. Placing a wispy reed narrative atop sharp guitar lines, percussion shuffles and restrained pianism as on Ghost Lights only works for so long. Like a dainty tiara perched on a massive head of hair the wrong movement can upset the balance. Luckily equilibrium is maintained due to contralto clarinet cries matched with modulated piano tones. The CD’s most jazz-like piece is Gold Spheres which evolves into a suite of multicoloured, almost Africanized tinctures. Ghostly and atmospheric via reed snarls and plucked inner piano strings, the wavering theme is both percussive and succoring. Underlying harshness is relieved with slurred guitar fingering while the quartet demonstrates perfect control of the material, since neither this timbral softening nor the preceding firmness prevents the tune from attaining a notable finale.

A distinct variation of this add-a-foreign-player appears on Live in Moscow (Leo Records CD LR 781 leorecords.com) where the 15-year-old Berlin-based Clarinet Trio – consisting of Jurgen Kupke (clarinet), Michael Thieke (clarinet, alto clarinet) and Gebhard Ullmann (bass clarinet) was joined by Russian alto saxophonist Alexey Kruglov. Recorded in real time, the CD initially showcases four instances of the trio’s near-telepathic interactions as the members build a collection of layered sonic edifices. In low- or high-frequency elaborations, the sense of perpetual discovery is obvious with Kupke’s bugle-call timbre-stretching, Thieke decorating the themes with jagged glissandi and Ullmann puffing along freight-train-like preserving the bottom. Adding the saxophonist turns the interface more dissonant, but without losing the connective thread. Collective No.9 (Part 1-4) intensifies the reveille-like yaps, squeaking bent notes and foghorn-pitched smears from the clarinets with the saxophonist contributing tongue slaps, reed bites, then builds to a cacophonous crescendo where all four explore the deepest regions of their horns. Yet not only do the four on Kleine Figuren No.2 immediately unite high-pitched glissandi to create peppy, yet comforting harmonies that are almost as tonal as a Christmas carol, the preceding sounds are prelude to the concluding 14-minute-plus News? No News! Perfectly harmonized as a Baroque chamber ensemble, but with finger-snapping energy, they take turns propelling the theme, taking it apart and reconstituting it. Furry slurs from linked alto and bass clarinets suggest a Romantic tone poem, while Kruglov’s jagged and jiggling split tones describe an alternate sound portrait. Finally, a melancholy crescendo of crackling tones is attained and regularized by Ullmann’s rhino-like snorts. The four’s interlaid harmonies end the piece without schism and without sacrificing its cutting edge.

Kruglov’s potential disruptive forces were actually melodiously linked to the Trio’s longtime sound strategy. But an additional element can also push an already dissonant game plan to a strident peak. Consider Conversations About Not Eating Meat (Border of Silence BOS 001 borderofsilence.com). Here the Basel-based Defibrillator trio, made up of Polish brothers Sebastian Smolyn on electronically processed trombone and Artur Smolyn on electronics, plus Berlin-based drummer Oliver Steidle, invite powerful German multi-reedist Peter Brötzmann to record with them. The result could be likened to an aural record of North Korea’s nuclear tests. While a true defibrillator uses electrical shocks to help control arrhythmias, and although Brötzmann’s reed blasts have usually been linked to power from the guts, it’s mostly the trio’s electronic boosts which pump out a blitzkrieg of themes so that obbligatos from the saxophonist sound almost moderato. This aural landscape of industrial noise also gains traction from the trombonist’s extended plunger forays. With the processed oscillations arriving as unexpected as a prolonged power outage in a city’s downtown core, on pieces such as The Man with One Ball and Fuckir Brötzmann’s doggedly straightforward improvising, trombone siren calls and drum bumps cut a path through the swooshing wave forms like a bowling ball scattering pins. Asserting the primacy of human lung power through a combination of multiphonic growls and altissimo screams is further proof of the saxophonist’s skill. In fact, by the climactic Cellulite Guru finale, many of the underlying drones and signal-processed timbral distortions have become so regularized and dampened that Brötzmann’s usual overwrought reed narratives seem as mellow as Sonny Rollins elaborating a tune backed by a conventional rhythm section.

Dreamsville
Cory Weeds & The Jeff Hamilton Trio
Cellar Live CL072216 (cellarlive.com)

Dreamsville, the latest recording from Vancouverite Cory Weeds, pairs the soulful saxophonist with drummer Jeff Hamilton’s trio for a set of fine jazz loosely framed around the work of the late American film composer, Henry Mancini. While Weeds and company (pianist Tamir Hendelman, bassist Christoph Luty and Hamilton) are all unique soloists and ensemble players with individualized approaches to the music, the overarching shared quartet values of infectious swing, purity of instrumental tone and good taste rudder this recording to a satisfying place that should find it included on many year-end “best of” lists. This, the second pairing of Weeds and the Hamilton trio, again demonstrates that there is much creativity to be mined from this classic jazz horn/rhythm section format, when master musicians coalesce to collectively elevate the music to a higher plane than can be achieved by one individual. Jazz is a social and participatory music and Weeds – as his impressive discography exhibits – is skilled at seeking outside musicians who share this attitude, choosing or writing music that encourages creative collaboration and setting up a relaxed environment for musical joy to flourish. Accordingly, Dreamsville bounces along with an effervescent pulse that showcases all parties in a most swinging and flattering light. This is a set of happy music (case in point: How Do You Like Them Apples?) and yet another accomplishment for Weeds, who as saxophonist, booking agent, label owner, composer and concert promoter, continues to be a going concern on the Canadian jazz scene.

Coldwater Stories
Florian Hoefner
Origin Records 82740 (originarts.com)

The songs of Coldwater Stories by pianist Florian Hoefner seem to run one into the other, and despite the sometimes pronounced silences which form part of the music, the sound is continuous. This is just like the icy waters of the Atlantic Sea off the coast of Newfoundland, “tumbling in harness,” as Dylan Thomas once said singing from the Welsh coast. Wearing his profoundly lyrical skin comfortably, Hoefner’s own poetry can also be chameleonic as he invents new harmonies and chords that are tantamount to reinventing tonality itself, as in Iceberg 1 and Iceberg 2.

There, as elsewhere on his Coldwater Stories, the pianist begins to explore a compositional/improvisational process that avoids conventional thematic development, instead moving its material through constantly-shifting harmonic backgrounds – impression seeming to matter more than direction. A great example of this celebrated vagueness is heard in the sophistication of The Way of Water. Meanwhile, Sunrise Bay is sublimely evocative music and is at times played at such perfect pianissimo that it comes closest to being hammerless piano.

But Hoefner never completely renounces traditional tonality and form, even as he cultivates an utterly contemporary pianistic persona. His songs – for they are such works – The Great Auk and Green Gardens are shimmering and seductive and come from the moment of reconciliation. Hoefner is in his element here, revelling in the opulence of new songs of the sea, performed on the piano in all of its orchestral sonorities.

Ajivtal
Janis Steprans Quintet
Effendi Records FND145
(effendirecords.com)

The album title, Ajivtal, is Latvija (Latvia) spelled backwards and is inspired not only by the music of Janis Steprans’ ancestors who came from there but also by Sonny Rollins’ Airegin, which is Nigeria spelled backwards. Steprans’ own sense of melodic sense, though, is more rooted in the lyrical leaping of Charlie Parker. You won’t find any of the 1.2 million Latvian texts or any of the 30,000 melodies that still survive in the Baltic state’s traditional music. However, in the high and lonesome melodic, almost mystical hum of Steprans’ soprano and alto saxophones, the low throaty rasp of his tenor and even the voluptuous, woody bleat of his clarinet there are indeed faint echoes of the lyrical dainas, the drone vocal styles, and even a hint of Baltic psaltery.

The textural and rhythmic tightness of Steprans’ writing and the intensity of his playing give the performance of this repertoire a compressed timbre, which, despite digital technology, makes it sound like something fulsome and almost analogue. Compositionally as well as in terms of performance – especially in group dynamics – there is a knitted pattern that emerges as the music unfolds its undulating melodies in the saxophone-guitar-piano contrapuntal progressions. Flowing rhythms inform the exquisite Ajivtal and Chambre No.5. Meanwhile, the pulsing bass throughout and the climbing reed and wind lines bloom in Suite de Thèmes Lettons, and in Un Autre Original there is a glorious headlong celebration of instrumental virtuosity.