Jazz and Improvised

#Cuban American
Martin Berjerano
Figgland Records FR-003 (martinbejerano.com)

Cuban American is how I would describe many aspects of Miami, and South Florida in general. A true melting pot deeply influenced by Cuban culture, due to Florida’s proximity to the island and the waves of immigration that have occurred from the 1980s onwards. Pianist Martin Bejerano has been a staple on the Miami music scene for decades now – born and raised in the Magic City – possessing an impressive résumé from a career that has taken him across the US and abroad. 

Bejerano’s fourth album #CubanAmerican is an eclectic yet unified collection of compositions and sounds. I was shocked to read that the veteran musician “insists he is not a great Latin piano player.” But this statement may come from a combo of modesty and a desire for authenticity. Jazz and improvised music tend to be broad umbrella terms, and much of the “Latin jazz” one hears on the radio would sound foreign to someone who inhabits the lands this music borrows rhythmic content from. After listening to #CubanAmerican, it seems Bejerano has chosen a very wise path by collecting ample influences and creating something original. The results are exciting!  

The group performs Cuban rhythmic material at a level that is surgically accurate, without losing their sense of heart or vulnerability. Improvised solos are all on par with the cutting edge of modern jazz music, and the album is recorded beautifully at North Miami’s Criteria Studios. #CubanAmerican offers something for everyone, whether your tastes are rooted in traditional jazz, fusion or Latin-based music.

In Common III
Walter Smith III; Kris Davis; Dave Holland; Terri Lyne Carrington
Whirlwind Recordings WR4783 (waltersmith3.com)

Guitarist Matthew Stevens and saxophonist Walter Smith III have been collaborating for some time now, first documenting themselves on the 2018 release In Common. That recording featured a who’s who rhythm section of New York greats, which became a theme with In Common II and this most recent release In Common III.  

Approaching a group this way has many benefits. It showcases Smith and Stevens, since they’re the common denominator on all three albums. It also manages to bring together some less-common pairings of musicians, which keeps the music fresh and creative. 

Pianist Kris Davis sounds quite comfortable providing subtle triadic accompaniment on the album’s first full band track, Loping. A testament to her versatility and deliberate creative wisdom, Davis sounds equally at home showing off chops and avant-garde ideas in an energetic solo on Hornets. 

The bass and drum positions are occupied by stalwarts Dave Holland and Terri Lyne Carrington. In Common III’s liner notes mention a “formula” of one-page songs, and the way Holland and Carrington are able to approach this music gives the listener no doubts as to why the two are some of the most in-demand accompanists in the improvised music world today. 

While the sheet music may consist of one-page songs, the music heard on this album is far from simplistic. Stevens and Smith’s musicality provides the glue to bringing each tune together, and their rhythm section orchestrates the entire album brilliantly. What these 15 tracks have “in common” is ample musicality and professionalism. 

At One Time
John Oswald; Henry Kaiser; Paul Plimley
Independent (henrykaiser.bandcamp.com/album/at-one-time)

This recording is an intriguing experiment in free improvisation created under COVID conditions, advancing a radical notion of the score. The music is developed on the work of an absentee guest: Cecil Taylor, the late pianist and composer who did as much as anyone to shape free jazz and improvised music over the past 65 years. 

Californian guitarist Henry Kaiser, Toronto saxophonist John Oswald and Vancouver vibraphonist (usually pianist) Paul Plimley all worked with Taylor and were closely involved with his methods of building music. Here they have developed the novel idea of each improvising separately with a series of Taylor recordings, heard on headphones, then combining the results. The result is a series of pieces in which we listen to three or four musicians (Scott Amendola plays drums on one track, Tracy Silverman six-string fiddle on another) all responding to the same inflexible duo partner, in effect an insistent composition in which each improviser is impervious to the other “performers” that we are hearing.

The music has a special coherence, based in part on the loyalty to the unheard Taylor, creating empathetic and coherent results. The most remarkable track is also the longest, the 27-minute Oceans Felons Salad with Silverman, the group achieving remarkable levels of illusory interaction through their collective fidelity to a missing inspiration. The quality of the music, as well as the imagination of its methodology, makes this one of the year’s most significant events in improvised music. Unusual as it may be, it’s somehow a great band.

Moves
Eucalyptus
Independent (eucalyptusjazz.bandcamp.com)

There’s a long history of jazz embracing popular culture, another of it pursuing experimentation. Sometimes the impulses converge, creating some very interesting moments. Toronto alto saxophonist/ composer Brodie West embraces both traditions with Eucalyptus, an octet with three percussionists that’s devoted to complex moods, 1950s Martin Denny exoticism and occasional free jazz expressionism, suggesting both Don Cherry’s forays into World Music and, more specifically, Sun Ra’s creation of dream states suggesting mid-century lounges suspended in space. 

The miracle of Moves, available as LP or download, is that Eucalyptus compresses such dreams into pieces less than six minutes in length. The opening Infinity Bananas has a drum pattern that is at once repeated and internally erratic, holding the angular shards emitted by West and trumpeter Nicole Rampersaud tightly in place. It’s in a Move resembles a film noir nightclub scene, West and Rampersaud weaving wobbly melodic leads through an underbrush of Kurt Newman’s trebly guitar, Ryan Driver’s clavinet and a languid Latin conga drum. Dust in the Wind is very lush, its repeating melodic pattern lapping over itself like waves on a beach. Rose Manor, more languid still and with a burnished brass trumpet solo, ends with a mysterious upward glissando, like an ascending sci-fi spacecraft. The concluding Lookie suggests a band lost in time and space at the end of New Year’s festivities, poised between the lachrymose and the parodic.  

At times an ironic flirtation with background music, Moves is always more than entertaining, never less than art.