Jazz and Improvised

MAPLE LEAF JAZZ

By Geoff Chapman

Canadian guitarist Jake Langley fought his way through the ranks to long-term sideman in Joey DeFrancesco’s organ trio. Now he bosses his own threesome with American Sam Yahel doing the grunt work on ancient Hammond B3 (plus Fender Rhodes) and Vancouver transplant drummer Ian Froman, now of the Big Apple. It’s clear on Here And Now (Tonepoet TPCD2012 www.jakelangley.com) that Jake’s in charge, his Gibson guitars setting the menu for nine tracks, five by him plus a Mingus, classics by McCoy Tyner and Michel Legrand plus Gordon Lightfoot’s mega-hit If You Could Read My Mind. The music swings hard without grating pyrotechnics, even with blues, rock and funk dominating themes. Yahel’s vigorous bass lines groove as the Langley guitars lay out forceful ideas, particularly strong on modal cuts Singularity and 2012. There’s a short, daring take with seriously dark passages on Goodbye Pork Pie Hat showing how the trio knows when to caress, when to drop out and when to get tough. The Langley unit displays finely developed harmonic sense, creates a light jazz anthem of the Lightfoot and underscores the leader’s unfailing imagination.

Triodes comprises the co-chiefs of big band NOJO, guitarist Michael Occhipinti and keyboardist Paul Neufeld, joined by resonant bassist Roberto Occhipinti and drummer Doan Pham with a gaggle of guests. On Chunked (Modica Music MM0110 www.triodes.ca) there are three pieces each from the leaders in an eclectic, easy-on-the-ear selection of vintage soul and R&B, designed to conjure memories of The Meters yet allowing players licence to blunder into Desmond Dekker’s Israelites. Catchy cuts like Occhipinti’s Big Belly gets additional fire from Jeff Coffin’s sax, Black Disciples features woolly trombone and a rapper ruins Blue Pepper but the popping pulse, clean notes, witty notions and upbeat atmosphere carry the day. The strutting Funky Miracle and old school wailing on The Kick are distinct bonuses.

Blasting trumpeter Alexis Baro likes funk as well as swirling Cuban rhythms and is in take-no-prisoners mode on From The Other Side (www.g-threejazz.com). There’s polyrhythmic mayhem early on with Robi Botos, Jeff King and Larnell Lewis prominent conspirators in a mix of high power bathed in funky blasts and whirling percussion. Baro shows off some awesome technique as well as lapses of concentration, which actually gives the album – his second – live jam appeal with African Escape a thriller. Baro then steers his large troupe through some ordinary light bop before plunging into whiplash funk that exploits searing guitar from KCRoberts. You can hear the potential in Baro’s laid-back moments, where technique is not everything, instead supplanted by tone control and emotional appeal. Wake up Call before it boils over is proof. His second album, with 10 of his tunes, bodes well for the future.

Hank Jones is 91, Oliver Jones a mere 75. These storied veterans, brought up on melodic jazz, the will to swing and the example of Oscar Peterson, deliver a lovely, relaxed disc that should suit every occasion and trounce age stereotyping. The 11 tunes on Pleased To Meet You (Justin Time Just 2326-2 www.justin-time.com) provide no barrier to the fecund jazz minds of these elder statesmen who employ on three cuts two rising stars – bassist Brandi Disterheft and drummer Jim Doxas - they don’t really need. Jones and Jones, who hadn’t recorded together before, do sound pleased to meet each other, comfortable in five duets that include a pair of Peterson chestnuts, Cakewalk and Big Scotia, while Oliver contributes his own I Remember OP. Hank offers solo ruminations Monk’s Mood and Ornette Coleman’s Lonely Woman in a warm, welcoming session executed to perfection.

When two Toronto vets get together it’s more than a cutting session – much more here with flugelhornist Chase Sanborn and pianist Mark Eisenman going at it on a disc subtitled “Always Swinging”. Swing it does on a dozen tunes they stack with vigour and creative acumen you’d expect from expert practitioners. Double Double (Samo Media MFA 18249 www.chasesanborn.com) opens with a jointly-composed tune and shows how the challenges of democratic duet playing are answered, as two musicians at the top of their game breeze through tunes with sure-handed panache. Each contributes a brace of songs – Sanborn Great Gait and Call It and Eisenman Benny’s Ballad and N.O.O.N. and they round out the performance with standards, classics and originals. The dynamic duo deftly exchanges ideas, quotes freely and offers up some groundbreaking passion with a celebratory tone. The ‘contest’ is especially appealing on Benny Golson’s Stablemates and Hoagy’s The Nearness Of You, impeccably done.

John Adams - Nixon in China

Robert Orth; Maria Kanyova; Thomas Hammons; Marc Heller; Tracy Dahl; Chen-Ye Yuan; Opera Colorado Chorus; Colorado Symphony Orchestra; Marin Alsop

Naxos 8.669022-24

Watching modern operas become a part of the standard repertoire is like watching the children grow up. Some of the precocious ones (the ones by Philip Glass) sometimes become rather dull adults, others are still gawky teenagers (works by Corigliano), while others reach their full, stunning potential. The seminal work by Adams, Nixon in China, belongs to that last category.

Just over 25 years old, the opera has had numerous productions in North America and Europe, initially overshadowed by the premiere Peter Sellars production and sacrosanct casting of voices (Maddalena, Sylvan, and Craney). Its one and only recoding, an excellent rendition on Nonensuch Records with The Orchestra of St. Luke’s under Edo de Waart became the de-facto reference recording… But some 5 years ago, the tide started changing. When I saw in 2006 an early version of the current production, here recorded live in Denver, it was a fresh and fascinating experience. The excellent Naxos CD recording conveys this freshness and Alsop brilliantly reveals the lyrical, almost romantic side of Adams’ music. That lyricism, often buried under the trappings of minimalism, emerges victoriously.

Winnipegger Tracy Dahl is every director’s dream of Madame Mao, both vocally and visually, especially in her triumphant coloratura “I am the wife of Mao Tse-Tung”. Robert Orth brings us a strangely sympathetic, pre–“I am not a crook!”–Nixon; just listen to his opening aria “News has a kind of mystery”. Overall, this is my first must-have recording of the new decade!

Robert Tomas

EXTENDED PLAY: VERSATILE CANADIAN GUITARISTS SCORE

By Ken Waxman

Arguably more responsible than any other instrument over the past century for famous and infamous music, the electric guitar is a harsh taskmaster, especially for musicians creating innovative sounds. Luckily the six-string’s versatility can be adapted to a variety of sonic situations. Mixing original concepts with sympathetic musical partners make each of these discs notable.

Toronto’s Ken Aldcroft takes an organic approach on Our Hospitality

(Trio Records TRP-010 www.kenaldcroft.ca), situating his axe within his top-flight Convergence Ensemble filled out by trumpeter Nicole Rampersaud, trombonist Scott Thomson, alto saxophonist Evan Shaw, bassist Wes Neal and drummer Joe Sorbara. Long-time colleagues, this relationship means that Aldcroft’s eight compositions are extended with instant arrangements and sympathetic improvisations throughout. Just a Hint and Dialoguing illuminate this. On the former, Sorbara’s paradiddles set up each soloist’s understated parallel lines while discursive guitar plucks maintain spectral separation. Eventually Rampersaud’s fluttering grace notes provide connective sinew as she ascends the scale. A group improv, Dialoguing matches the trumpeter’s flutter-tonguing with moderato and legato trills from Shaw. All the while Thomson’s trombone is slurring and shuffling on its own tangent, as is Aldcroft’s circular, finger-styled pacing. When the plectrumist introduces below-the-bridge hammering plus metallic crunches, it’s Neal’s bass line that steadies the narrative from below.

Transforming much different source material is Vancouver’s Tony Wilson’s The People Look Like Flowers (Last Drip Audio DA 00482 www.dripaudio.com), whose centrepiece is an improvisational re-imagining of Benjamin Britten’s Lachrymae. The 11-movement suite is made new not only by mutating and mixing melodies with improvisations and other musical tropes, but by interpreting the chamber work composed for viola and piano with Wilson’s guitar, Peggy Lee’s cello, Paul Blaney’s bass, Dylan van der Schyff’s drums, Dave Say’s saxophones and Kevin Elaschuk’s trumpet. Proving the theme’s adaptability, the sextet takes it straight in sections, adds to its lyricism elsewhere, distorts it abrasively in other spots and alludes to folk songs at points. The last is most apparent on Movement #4 Variation as Wilson’s linear development is given added impetus by Lee’s sul tasto sweeps as well as wavering trumpet lines. Movement #2 on the other hand includes sul ponticello scratches from the strings, plus the drummer’s martial flams and rim shots that only occasionally let portions of the melody peek through. Elaschuk’s contrapuntal trumpet lines and Wilson’s slurred fingering help turn Movement #11 into a sectional swinger with the others riffing until the guitarist’s distorted licks give way to theme recapitulation.

Another Vancouver guitarist, Gordon Grdina follows a similar route on The Breathing of Statues (Songlines SGL-SA 1572-2 www.songlines.com). Except all the compositions are his, and the East Van Strings which accompanies are violinist Jesse Zubot, violist Eyvind Kang and again cellist Peggy Lee. Combining Grdina’s fascination with Middle Eastern music – he also plays oud here – the second Viennese school and improvisation, the CD ensures that disparate influences converge without conflict. A detour into double-timed Arabic progressions is most apparent on the title track, when following a strummed drone from the oud, the other strings’ initial gypsy-like romantic colouration takes on the tonal characteristics of kamanchas or three-string spiked fiddles. This allegro stridency ceases though, when Lee’s adagio slides move the piece towards western lyricism. More attuned to atonality are Silence of Paintings and Origin. On the latter, after lively string curves illuminate the theme, Grdina counters with spidery runs and antiphonal slurred fingering. Pitch-sliding and flying spiccato from Kang lead the narrative towards stop-time until guitar strokes and romantic harmonies level the tempo. On the former, heavily rhythmic, vibrating cadenzas from Grdina sharply drive the theme chromatically as the strings’ layered pulsations scrape and scatter.

Tauter three-part dialogue characterizes Gordon Grdina’s other session while confirming both the guitar’s versatility and his own. If Accident Will (Plunge Records PR00628 www.plungrecords.com), with his combo filled out by bassist Tommy Babin and drummer Kenton Loewen, furrows the classic fusion power trio groove. However the originality and finesse exhibited on his other CD also appear here, albeit in a brawnier fashion. Tracks such as Yellow Spot into the Sun illustrate this, as the drummer’s measured march time is decorated with drags and flams as well as thick double bass thumps. Thanks to Grdina’s chromatic sound sprays the disguised ballad still retains its form despite Loewen’s hard pummelling. Arabic influences and the oud aren’t neglected either. Cobble Hill/Renunciation brings out a double-strung ecstatic pitch from Grdina, elastic chording from Babin and beats that could arise from a dumbek or North African goblet-shaped drum.