Jazz and Improvised

But Beautiful
Monica Chapman
Independent
monicachapman.net

With the release of her latest recording, refreshing, Romanian-born vocalist Monica Chapman displays a superb vocal instrument with impeccable intonation, as well as a tasty menu of elegant jazz “standards” framed by the skilled arrangements and inspired, rhythmic and zesty piano work of producer Bill King. The tight ensemble of first-call players includes Duncan Hopkins on bass, Mark Kelso on drums, Reg Schwager on guitar, Luis Jorge Papiosco on percussion, William Sperendei on trumpet and Anne Lindsay on violin (whose sensitive and evocative work enhances the entire project).

With an extensive background in opera, theatre and classic cabaret, Chapman moves effortlessly between styles and eras, as well as seamlessly embodying both the French and English lyrics. Her highly trained vocal instrument is a rich, precise, alto that easily transmits the emotional intent of the material, whether interpreting a melodic post-war ballad such as the Van Heusen/Burke title track, or a depression-era Rodgers and Hart favourite such as Ten Cents a Dance, or the heart-rending ballad L’amour Le Vrais.

In addition to her innate musicality, Chapman is defined by her strong theatrical sensibility and holds her own on the Ellington/Strayhorn opus, Lush Life and also swings Ella-style on Someone Like You. A true standout is the rarely performed Johnny Mercer tune This is Always, which was a 1950s hit for another gorgeous alto, the late, great Irene Kral. Chapman’s version is a total delight and features a moving and harmonically thrilling piano solo from Bill King.

Concert Note:Monica Chapman launches
But Beautiful at the Pero Lounge, 812 Bloor St. W. on October 4 at 8pm.

June 16th
Hübsch/Martel/Zoubek
Schraum 17
schraum.de

Having adopted the venerable viola da gamba as his main instrument, Montreal-based former double bassist Pierre-Yves Martel is also adapting it to unusual sonic situations. On this notable release named for the day on which it was recorded, Martel, who directs a different ensemble October 11 at the Music Gallery, mainly uses the timbres of his bowed viol as a sound source, the better to intersect with the equally extended techniques of his German bandmates: tubaist Carl Ludwig Hübsch and pianist Philip Zoubek. Although the results are at a far distance from the consort and sacred compositions from the height of the instrument’s popularity before the turn of the 18th century, they suggest a beguiling future for pre-modern instruments.

Hübsch and Zoubek, who have worked with some of the continent’s most advanced musicians, specialize in subverting expected sounds as well. Throughout the five tracks here for instance, Zoubek frequently buzzes harsh cadenzas by plucking, stopping or strumming the piano’s strings. Additionally, when the keys are put to use the resonating clangs produced are marimba-like. For his part the tubaist shuns the instrument’s familiar guttural lows. Instead, using a variety of mutes, valve-twisting and embouchure refinements, he expels whistles and clicks and vibrates unaccented air from his horn. Harshly scraping the tuba body with other objects, the resulting scuffs onomatopoeically integrate with Martel’s agitated spiccato pumps and Zoubek’s rubbed strings and semi-depressed key patterns.

On Top, the appropriately titled, most spectacular and longest track, the polyphonic texture-layerings duplicate these and other sounds, including flute-like peeps and organ-resembling swells. Overall, the key to this track and the fascination of the entire disc’s production is how ancillary tropes such as the viola da gamba’s string sweeps and the piano’s single-note examinations calm staccato interjections to create a still spiky but compelling narrative. Plus it proves that traditional instruments, appropriately used, can generate a thoroughly modern tonal experience.

Montreal pianist Marianne Trudel assembles her music from a spectrum of elements, mixing jazz, folk, pop, classical and world music into a compelling original mix. She’s performed in a number of contexts, including a septet, but few of her ensembles have possessed the immediate allure of the trio Trifolia with bassist Étienne Lafrance and percussionist Patrick Graham heard on the group’s debut Le Refuge (TRUD 20131, mariannetrudel.com). Part of the trio’s charm is its sheer stylistic and sonic breadth, including Trudel’s willingness to overdub different keyboards, Lafrance’s sheer virtuosity and Graham’s expanded drum kit. Steppes has the feeling of a French music hall, with Trudel playing accordion and adding a wordless vocal while Lafrance adds embellishments in his extreme upper register. As Possibilités et Limitations grows in intensity, Graham adds sparkling accents with tiny cymbals. It’s amiable, unusually tuneful music that just keeps surprising.

Montreal guitarist Gary Schwartz has put together an 11-piece band for the CD Lettingo Live: The Music and Influence of Ornette Coleman (thejazzbox.ca/gary-schwartz-lettingo-live), drawing on key members of the Montreal free jazz community like saxophonists Alex Côté and Frank Lozano, violinist Josh Zubot and bassist Nicolas Caloia. The result is a thorough re-thinking of some of Coleman’s more familiar works, an orchestral view of pieces originally conceived for piano-less quartets that adds shifting textures, a certain brassiness, electric guitar and keyboards, and an expanded harmonic palette. Alexandre St. Onge’s arrangement of Coleman’s signature Lonely Woman reveals a knack for unusual voicings, while the band’s power and Schwartz’s guitar come to the fore on Law Years.

Canadian jazz composers are more apt to celebrate expansive prairies, mountain vistas or maritime shorelines than Sudbury, the Northern Ontario city best known for standing in as the moon in NASA equipment tests. But the city has produced a small cadre of gifted musicians, amply demonstrated by the Quatuor Philip May Quartet’s Sudbury (Romhog 122, philipmay.ca). Drummer May has assembled former Sudbury associates guitarist Reg Schwager and trumpeter Kevin Turcotte along with bassist Clark Johnston and special guest Jeannette Lambert, Schwager’s sister and another former Sudbury resident. Tunes like Schwager’s Pick-up Trucks and Hockey Pucks and Turcotte’s Theme for Tony’s Basement are evidently fuelled by reminiscence, achieving the lyrical sublime on Schwager’s Sudbury Sunday Morning. Lambert makes notable contributions with André Paiement’s Dimanche après-midi and two takes of Stompin’ Tom Connors’ unlikely Sudbury Saturday Night, adding a jazz touch to Connors’ trenchant homespun observations.

Toronto drummer/composer Barry Elmes opts for a relaxed, ebullient swing on his new Quartet’s Happy Hour (Cornerstone CRST CD 142, cornerstonerecordsinc.com). The band’s sound is largely set by Hammond organist Vanessa Rodrigues, whose smooth, bubbling sound creates a gentle, continuous swing. The band’s featured soloists are guitarist Reg Schwager (again: he may be Canada’s most frequently recorded jazz musician — if he’s not, he should be), contributing thoughtful, luminous solos and tenor saxophonist Perry White, who brings a special intensity to every occasion, even one as laid back as this. The repertoire is largely familiar standards, and each one shines, from the sinuous Comes Love to the charmingly antique When You’re Smiling. Schwager’s finest moment comes on Jerome Kern’s Yesterdays, while White brings a harder edge to Softly as in a Morning Sunrise. The mood may be low-key, but these are masters at work, creating one of the year’s more memorable recordings.

Vancouver drummer Jesse Cahill leads another organ combo, The Nightcrawlers, on Volume 3 (Cellar Live CL030913, cellarlive.com). The style is strongly shaped by 60s soul jazz with elements of blues, funk and gospel, whether the tunes are fresh offerings by guitarist Dave Sikula and Hammond organist Chris Gestrin or covers of compositions by the idiom’s original masters, like Brother Jack McDuff or Big John Patton. Everything about the band’s vibe resonates with the 60s Blue Note and Prestige recordings: it’s hard-driving, soulful music with tenor saxophonist Steve Kaldestad summoning up some of Stanley Turrentine’s tight vibrato and Cory Weeds, playing alto for the occasion, blending equal parts bop and blues. Cahill sounds born to the style, animating the proceedings with patterns that are at once tight and loose. The Latin funk groove of Patton’s Latona is especially good.

Expatriate Toronto drummer/composer Harris Eisenstadt has different bands for different occasions: his September Trio may be reserved for his most concentrated and pensive work, as evidenced by its second CD, The Destructive Element (Clean Feed CF276 CD, cleanfeed-records.com), which takes its title and epigram from Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim, significantly a work driven by multiple narrative perspectives. There’s something similar going on in this music. Completed by New York-based tenor saxophonist Ellery Eskelin and pianist Angelica Sanchez, the group creates textures of extraordinary density, as in Back and Forth, in which composed and spontaneously generated patterns seem to wrestle in time in a piece that at times suggests an attenuated blues. That complexity is a key value here, with the musicians achieving a kind of continuous interdependence and isolation of voices, as if everything both fits and doesn’t fit, whether it’s the sun-and-cloud play of harmony on the title track or Eskelin’s frequently cheery brushwork. It’s challenging work that rewards close and repeated listening. 

Standardization is a thing of the past when it comes to recorded music and listeners who get too far ahead of, or behind, the curve are likely to miss interesting sounds. Just as the production of movies didn’t cease with the acceptance of television, so the manufacture of LPs continued even as the CD became the format of the moment. As artisans continue to craft fine furniture despite the availability of mass-produced items, so too LPs are being created in limited quantities. This situation appears tailor-made for experimental sounds. Similarly since advanced players are often as impecunious as they are inventive, the ubiquity of the Internet means that some music is only sold digitally through the Web. The option of not having to create a physical product is a boon for non-mainstream performers.

Probably the most spectacular recent example of vinyl-only releases is Just Not Cricket: Three Days of Improvised Music in Berlin (Ni-Vu-Ni-Connu nvnc lp001/004, ni-vu-ni-connu.net). A four-LP set pressed on 180-gram virgin vinyl, the box set also includes a copy of the festival’s lavishly illustrated full-colour program plus a 20-page, LP-sized booklet featuring black and white photographs from the event, an essay about Free Music, plus a transcribed conversation with the 16 British artists who participated. As much an artifact as a musical keepsake, Just Not Cricket showcases many of BritImprov’s most important players. With a cast of characters ranging from Free Music pioneers such as saxophonist Trevor Watts and percussionist Eddie Prévost to younger stylists including trumpeter Tom Arthurs and saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings, plus representation of the so-called Second Wave such as pianist Steve Beresford and harpist Rhodri Davies, the selection is all-embracing as well as varied. There’s high-quality music represented by all three groups. Prévost’s duet with saxophonist Lol Coxhill, for instance, demonstrates that by maintaining the proper pulse, an atonal reed and percussion duet can suggest Benny Goodman and Gene Krupa while still outputting kazoo-like blats and scattered drum pumps. Energetic and atonal, a blow-out featuring players such as Arthurs, Hutchings, guitarist Alex Ward, bassist John Edwards and drummer Mark Sanders, is invested with Free Jazz energy. Yet among the freak brassy triplets, saxophone honks and near slack-key guitar lines, Ward’s comping, Edwards’ robust bowing and Sanders perfectly timed accents turn bluster into satisfying sonic alliances. There are also elements of humour, most apparent the moment Beresford’s slick keyboard glissandi turn to kinetic smacks and splashes replicating both bebop and lounge piano playing, as Edwards’ pumps and trombonist Gail Brand’s wide snorts and flutters add a layer of laughing euphoria to this trio interaction. Other highlights include bass saxophonist Tony Bevan using his widening cavernous resonations to create perfect counterpoint to the rhythms from dual bassists Edwards and Dominic Lash; while on another track, Watts’ splintering alto saxophone intensity is brought to a higher level as horizontal sticks vibrations among Davies’ harp strings and Orphy Robinson’s ringing vibraphone licks produce more polyrhythms than would be found in an orchestra’s percussion section.

A quintet of Scandinavian musicians, Erik Carlsson & All Stars use an even more venerable configuration for their recreation of so called Swedish [j]azz of the 1950s and 1960s: the 10-inch LP. The appeal of these one-track-per-side performances on this 2-LP set is how the players stay true to the pieces, pop-bop origins while retrofitting (post)modern sequences. A tune such as the folksy Du Glädjerika Skona is propelled by subtle emphasis from Kjell Nordeson’s vibes plus snorting flutters from Mats Gustafsson’s baritone saxophone and vibrating puffs of Per-Åke Holmander’s tuba until near tactile clatters and scratches sourced from Dieb13’s turntables roguishly interrupts the proceedings. Similarly a treatment of Umepolskan & Nybyggarland links the variable speeds of Nordeson’s motor-driven instrument with Dieb13’s sampled aviary squawks and trills until basso saxophone burps introduce a waltz-like turnaround played straight with supple mallet clicks and rat-tat-tat drumming from Carlsson. Finally the tune exits as a contest between Gustafsson’s barking reed lines and the initial theme propelled by vibes and tuba.

Moving ahead a half century to the second decade of the 21st, and preserved on a far different medium, are concerts recorded at a music festival in Rimouski, Quebec, only available for download. The slyly titled Invisible (Tour de Bras DL #1, tourdebras.com) captures an intense interaction among German analog synthesiser player Thomas Lehn, Montreal percussionist Michel F. Côté and local electric bassist, Éric Normand. Lehn is also present on Sources (Tour de Bras DL #2), but here his playing partner is Montreal-based, American violinist Malcolm Goldstein. Most of Invisible’s 36 minutes is concerned with understated crackles, cackles and clacks, with none of the players outputting expected timbres. Still, a climax of sorts is reached at mid-point, after a klaxon-like blat, likely from Côté noisemakers, cuts through the waves of tripartite soundscapes, presaging emphasized percussion thumps, distorted bass flanges and sweeping oscillations from the synthesizer. Following a prolonged silence, the single track’s latter half is more distant and melancholy with intermittent milk bottle-like pops and door-stopper-like quivers, bass string sluices and jittery synthesizer pulsations fading to obtuse squeaks.

With Goldstein’s so-called classical techniques on show, Sources is a stimulating sashay between two masterful improvisers as the fiddler’s staccato and strident scrubs and stops bring out the humanness of Lehn’s machinery. With bubbling hoedown-like slides, flying spiccato plus multiple jetées sounding concurrently, Goldstein coaxes lightening quick responses from Lehn, which take the form of thick tremolo modulations and grinding processed vamps. Flamboyant enough to intimate a passionate middle sequence studded with stops and strums, the violinist’s exposition eventually blends with the synthesizer player’s processed drones and ring-modular-like flanges to create a conclusion enlivened by Lehn’s unexpected piano-like keyboard expression and staccato string stops.

Turning on its head McLuhan’s dictum that the medium is the message, these projects prove that exceptional messages can appear in any medium.