Jazz and Improvised

Our First Set

John McLeod's Rex Hotel Jazz Orchestra

http://www.johnsjazz.ca/

In my column last month I suggested that there are three ingredients to look for in jazz - swing, melodic content and a knowledge of the roots. You don't have to look any farther than this excellent CD. John MacLeod is one of the most committed and complete musicians I am privileged to know and his dedication and musical philosophy are stamped on this programme of originals and great standards. Four of the originals are by John with additional contributions from Gord Sheard and Mike Murley. Add three superior standards, one of them arranged by Rick Wilkins, and you have one of the most rewarding albums I have heard this year. It also serves to underscore just how many great players we have in this city. Featured soloists include Andy Ballentine, Joey Goldstein, Terry Promane, David Braid, Perry White, Jon Challoner, Brian O'Kane, Alastair Kay, John Johnson and Mike Murley. The rhythm section is rounded out with Jim Vivian and Ted Warren giving a great foundation for this star-studded musical organisation.

I can't choose favourite pieces from the album. There are so many gems.

This is not a recording you will listen to once and put on the shelf. It deserves repeated playing and will give pleasure many times over.

Perhaps it belongs on television’s Antiques Roadshow. It’s a valuable slice of Canadian jazz history – a treasure trove in fact. Thirty-seven years ago saxophonist Jim Galloway played with American trombonist Vic Dickenson at a long-gone Toronto venue, Daniels. The show was recorded by Hogtown’s voice of jazz Ted O’Reilly, who stored the tapes – and now they’ve been transcribed. The result is Vic Dickenson Jim Galloway - Live In Toronto (Castor Records 11 001 www.jimgalloway.ca), which is pure delight, Galloway on his straight soprano for once (and occasionally baritone sax) matching wits with the king of growls, smears and all-around soft-toned, fluent wit. Backed by warhorses Ron Sorley (piano), Danny Mastri (bass) and George Reed (drums), the session is relaxed, yet swinging, from the first notes of Sonny Boy to the last of Just You, Just Me. It’s fabulous mainstream jazz, with journalist-drummer Paul Rimstead in for three of the dozen tracks. Happily Galloway sounds today much like he did then but everyone who heard Dickenson live misses his earthy playing with its immediately recognizable sound. The leaders both understand the blue notes and tasteful lyricism, and each gets his own stylish feature, Dickenson singing with his horn on Manha de Carnaval and Zing went the Strings of my Heart and Galloway, wry and charming as ever on baritone with Solitude. This great record shows how the wisdom of age trumps the pretentious audacity of much jazz youth.

Trumpeter Lina Allemano is at the forefront of free jazz innovation and glides appealingly on Lina Allemano Four - Jargon (Lumo Records LM 2010-4 www.linaallemano.com) with regular colleagues Brodie West (also sax), Andrew Downing (bass) and Nick Fraser (drums). The leader composed all seven songs, the opening Cannonball Adderley Tattoo not soulful but surging over churning bass and stimulating rat-a-tat drums. The quartet treats time like a toy, sampling all possible permutations. West’s tart tone and distanced viewpoint suits Wayne’s Shorts a nod to Shorter’s mysterious writing and playing while Sling Slang is almost hard bop, textures colouring a sparse theme with uninhibited horns scrambling over an undulating rhythmic landscape. Water is wistful fragments, the title tune channels another altoist (Ornette Coleman) before sliding into dissonance and feverish feeling, while fresh emotional tempests and pungent probing conclude the session which, unfortunately, is far too short – just 40 minutes.

Drummer Nick Fraser is also hard at work with new band Peripheral Vision, co-led by bassist Michael Herring and guitarist Don Scott, whose debut album is the self-titled Peripheral Vision (Step3 Step3-001 www.peripheralvisionmusic.com). This outfit produces jazz for this century, often fiendishly challenging musical structures, intricate forms that might seem relatively simple but in fact are a dense thicket of tricky harmonies, demanding melodies and punishing rhythms. However, along with tenorman Trevor Hogg, the band shapes interesting paths along the divide between inside and outside playing. All the tunes are by the leaders, whose influences are catholic – pop, rock, classical and more. Treehouse exploits fascinating motifs, Lot offers eerie moments over walking strings, and all the material has something to say, propelled with elegant momentum and hearty rations of dynamic interplay despite constantly shifting moods. Alongside the contemplative melody making there’s passages that crackle with intellectual energy, Herring anchoring the tapestry and pulsating where it counts and Scott all serpentine fluidity. Concert Note: Peripheral Vision is officially released Dec. 2 at Trane Studio after a 14-venue tour.

A pair of Toronto veterans show how duo recordings should be executed and presented on Brian Dickinson Ted Quinlan - Around The Bend (Addo Recordings AJR004 www.briandickinson.ca). Pianist Dickinson and guitarist Quinlan are a classy double act who clearly think about every minuscule detail of their craft, delivering superior jazz and an extraordinary rapport that’s never undermined by abrasive competition – almost one body, four hands. Eight of the 10 cuts are originals, plus there’s Monk’s classic Monk’s Dream and a spin through the love scene theme from the movie Spartacus. The protagonists say (in the liner notes) that playing in twos is scary but liberating, with unique challenges. It’s like an extended conversation between two friends and that a duo session is like getting to know someone personally and musically. Amen to that. Such professed togetherness is illuminated here to telling effect, with labyrinthine ideas tossed back and forth whatever the context. It’s a faultless performance, highlights including the opening title piece, the bright ballad Pastiche, the chirpy Rockin’ At The Hillside and Limbo.

Montreal-based Matt Herskowitz is an imaginative artist whose tastes spill over conventional boundaries, as Andre Previn and Dave Brubeck have demonstrated. His Jerusalem Trilogy (Justin Time JUST 239-2 www.justin-time.com) hauls world music, particularly that of the Middle East, into the jazz orbit. The leader calls it 21^st century chamber jazz. It’s a risky notion, but the Herskowitz trio plus violinist Lara St. John and cellist Mike Block, lesser guests and a string quartet on one track (with some through-composed music) make the idea work. Main mealtime item is the three-part Jerusalem Suite with fine use of flowing runs and counterpoint while tunes like the klezmer-styled Gottingen and the note-heavy Prokofiev’s Revenge celebrate the fusion of differing styles and cultures. Only preference for electric rather than acoustic bass jars proceedings.

Three other Canadian discs caught my ear this month. Canefire’s Pandemonium (www.canefire.ca) is splendid Caribbean jazz featuring steel pans, The Jive Bombers Jump (www.thejivebombers.ca) has a gaggle of Toronto stars blasting their way through jump blues and more and Montreal electric bassist Alain Caron is at his funkiest on the nine quartet tracks of Sep7entrion (www.alaincaron.com).

Boxed sets of recorded music have long been a holiday gift favourite. But sophisticated music fans won’t settle for slapped together “best of” collections. However, well-organized boxes of improvised music which collect multiple CDs for specific reasons, should impress any aware music listener.

Anthony Braxton/Gerry Hemingway’s Old Dogs (Mode Avant 9/12 www.moderecords.com) for instance is another instalment in the ongoing recorded history of multi-reedman Braxton. The four CDs feature him and percussionist Hemingway, an integral part of the reedist’s bands from 1983 to 1994, but who has rarely played with him since that time. Each 60-minute inventive Invention was recorded in real time without edits or alternate takes. Extrasensory cooperation is demonstrated as Braxton moves among seven saxophones and Hemingway a percussion collection. Should Braxton’s soprano saxophone obbligato turn staccato and superfast, Hemingway responds with centred vibraphone pings plus affiliated marimba pops. If subterranean contrabass saxophone tongue stops and watery glottal punctuation raucously sound, then abrasive ruffs on ride cymbals and drum rims produce nearly identical timbres. Hemingway’s percussion command is such that in a heartbeat he can produced a tone midway between that of a dumbeck and a set of tin cans to contrast with the reedist’s irregular tonguing; then as swiftly bring his entire kit into play using press rolls and ruffs to replicate foot-tapping swing that complements Braxton’s rare forays into masterful, story-telling runs on tenor saxophone.

Another masterful saxophonist is German tenorist Peter Brötzmann. He never does anything by halves and Chicago Tentet +1’s 3 Nights in Oslo (Smalltown Superjazz STSJ197CD www.smalltownsuperjazz.com) consists of five CDs. No essay in self-aggrandizement, three of the discs feature band subsets. The two CDs featuring the ensemble are filled with the palpable excitement from 11 players collectively honking, fluttering and snorting. There’s space for all, with saxophonists Brötzmann and Mats Gustafsson creating reed gymnastics that encompass fortissimo runs, nephritic split tones and glottal punctuation. Contrapuntal brass layering melds Per Åke Holmlander’s elephantine tuba snorts, gut-bucket slurs from trombonists Jeb Bishop and Johannes Bauer, as drummers Paal Nilssen-Love’s and Michael Zerang’s flams and cymbal pressure chug underneath. Although it may seem that harmonies created by yapping horn blasts and polyrhythmic string friction from bassist Kent Kessler and cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm are opaque, the band has such control that the climax isn’t blood vessel bursting flashiness, but contrapuntal divisions exposing every texture. Two smaller groupings stand out. The tenor saxophone battle between Ken Vandermark and Joe McPhee allows undulating trills to bring needed balance to the duo’s initial ghostly shrieks and altissimo split tones. Elsewhere, Bishop, Bauer, Holmlander and McPhee on pocket trumpet, meld such extended techniques as metal buzzes, pedal-point burbles and peeping lip trills without losing chromatic mooring.

Similarly the three CDs which make up Rivière Composers’ Pool - Summer Works 2009 (Emanem 5301 www.emanemdiscs.com) are divided among sessions by a quartet of Americans, bassist Kent Carter and woodwind player Etienne Rolin, and Germans, violist Albercht Maurer and clarinettist Theo Jörgensmann, plus trio and duo interaction. What’s instructive is how the musicians’ smaller meetings suggest ideas that eventually coalesce into the title suite. On the successive Music for a Ghost Story and Dance to This, Jörgensmann/Carter/Maurer build up wide-ranging modulations into a capriccio-like showcase including Jörgensmann’s flying glissandi, Carter’s string slaps and Maurer’s portamento runs. These movements are put to good use during the CD-length suite. From the exposition, where Rolin’s broken-octave basset horn extensions, chanter-like respiration from Jörgensmann’s clarinet, high-energy viola lines and sul tasto bass runs expand the theme, the variations cycle through quartet, trio, duo and solo episodes. If the clarinet outputs altissimo screeches, it’s calmed by Carter’s sul tasto stops; while speedy violin glissandi set the stage for mid-range reed licks. Putting aside bel canto or dissonant timbres, the climax downshifts to clarinet glissandi which push all into a gentling, diminuendo finale.

The wild card in this group is Sun Ra’s three-CD set of The Heliocentric Worlds (ESP-Disk 4062 www.espdisk.com). It confirms the composer/pianist’s legacy as an avant-garde Duke Ellington. Key players, such as saxophonists Marshall Allen and John Gilmore, plus Ra himself on pioneering electronic keyboards, solo impressively. Not only does the re-mastered 1965 set contain a recently discovered third disc, but each CD includes bonus material: a documentary film, a photo archive and contemporary writing. Like Ellington, Ra’s intricately shaded and organized arrangements create symphonic timbres with only 13 musicians. Phantasmagoric and polyphonic, extended tone poems like The Sun Myth are shaped by full-band expressions plus harmonies which contrast tuned bongos and sul ponticello bass thumps, or elsewhere contrapuntal saxophone vibrations and boogie-woogie piano runs. While The Cosmos takes its shape from call-and-response horn work, on other tunes Ra’s musical alchemy encompasses formalist piano tones, chalumeau bass clarinet smears and frenetic trumpet triplets.

Each of these attractively packaged boxed sets demonstrates how expansive musical quality can be presented in an intelligent fashion. And each – or all – would make a fine addition to your CD collection.

Foxy

Jon Irabagon

Hot Cup 102 (www.joniribagon.com)

This is a thrilling album. It made the hairs stand up on my neck, with accompanying shivers. Despite listening to jazz as a regular pastime, this reaction is not common. Saxophonist Jon Irabagon, who won the 2008 Thelonious Monk competition and is clearly inspired by recordings of Sonny Rollins trios (remember Way Out West? ), leads a powerful threesome through what’s basically a 78-minute solo whose 11 “tune” titles merely indicate different approaches taken by his tenor horn to the standard 16-bar form. It starts with a roar and charges relentlessly from there, backed by furious drum assaults courtesy of Barry Altschul and muscular bass from Peter Brendler. It’s a swaggering, avant-garde outing that doesn’t rely on honks and squeals but could recall full bore Dexter Gordon or Johnny Griffin. This unflagging, exuberant long form improv is all high energy, suggesting origins in hard bop, swing and the blues. Irabagon, who plays differently and delightfully outside this studio context, isn’t breaking new ground save in solo magnitude, but he has certainly created an astonishing tour de force that underscores the spontaneity that’s at the heart of jazz. It’s exhausting to hear but it’s also exhilarating. Experiencing it deserves an accompanying T-shirt!