Jazz and Improvised

Seldom in the Well - Chris Monson

Seldom in the Well
Chris Monson
Independent (chrismonson.bandcamp.com)

Chris Monson’s debut album, Seldom in the Well, showcases his original jazz compositions while maintaining the stylish 60s feel. At times it is reminiscent of Blue Note records from that period, with a subtle rhythmic drive and touch of sultriness. It also features a stellar sextet – Monson on guitar, Kelly Jefferson on tenor saxophone, Kevin Turcotte on trumpet/flugelhorn, Anthony Panacci on piano, Artie Roth on acoustic bass and Tom Rasky on drums. Monson’s early roots in progressive rock are not necessarily obvious here; rather, his arrangements are an intricate map of sounds and stories.

The album opens with the rich-sounding Where the Leaf Has Been, a sonic hint of what is to come. That hint is revealed perfectly in my favourite tune on the album, Distant. Solid. Figures. As I was listening to it with my headphones, I was immersed in the sounds constantly moving from the left to the right in some sections – it was incredibly intimate and engaging. The Passing Through finally showcases Monson’s funky guitar grooves and his taste for understated melodies. Although he often takes a backseat, allowing each of his fellow musicians to shine, Monson maintains constant rhythmic conversations with the piano. As a matter of fact, many of the subtle rhythm hooks are this album’s gems. If We Dreamed of Soaring features another jewel – the bowed bass solo, so unexpected and so beautiful that it makes this music come full circle.

Seldom in the Well has a combination of aural density and airiness that appeals to both seasoned jazz listeners and novices in the genre. Recommended.

Kinship - John Pittman; Shirantha Beddage; Jeff McLeod; Mike Downes; Curtis Nowosad

Kinship
John Pittman; Shirantha Beddage; Jeff McLeod; Mike Downes; Curtis Nowosad
Slammin Media SMO001 (pittmanmusic.com)

Released on August 24 through the Toronto-based company Slammin’ Media, Kinship is the debut solo release from trumpeter/composer John Pittman. Pittman is a veteran member of the Heavyweights Brass Band – probably Toronto’s best-known New Orleans-style horn ensemble – and he has been a mainstay on the local scene for some time, performing with a wide range of musical artists. Pittman is joined on this outing by baritone saxophonist Shirantha Beddage, pianist Jeff McLeod, bassist Mike Downes and drummer Curtis Nowosad, all of whom share some degree of personal history with Pittman; the concept of kinship, as Pittman writes in his liner notes, is “at the heart of this album.”

Kinship starts with the up-tempo Ties That Bind, an exciting piece that sets the tone for the rest of the album, both musically and thematically. For Siobhan – written by Pittman for his wife – is a bouncy, backbeat-driven affair, with solid rhythm section playing, and Homio-stasis, a satisfying, swinging song, is as close to a standard as Kinship gets, featuring a blistering muted solo from Pittman and an articulate, lyrical contribution from Downes. Of the album’s eight songs, only two are covers: As, the Stevie Wonder classic, and Where Is The Love?, from the catalogue of the Black Eyed Peas. Throughout Kinship, Pittman’s trumpet is strong, athletic and mature, and – much like his arrangements – displays a winning combination of hard bop, New Orleans and modern jazz influences.

When Day Slips Into Night - University of Toronto 12TET / Explosion - Cory Weeds Little Big Band

When Day Slips Into Night
University of Toronto 12TET
UofT Jazz (uoftjazz.ca)

Explosion
Cory Weeds Little Big Band
Cellar Live CL111317 (cellarlive.com)

Jazz comes in many sizes including solo, trio, quartet and big band; Cory Weed’s Little Big Band’s Explosion, and the University of Toronto 12tet’s When Day Slips Into Night, are newly released examples of the “small big band” format. This size allows a large sonic palette while having a more flexible group to work with (a famous example is the Miles Davis Nonet that played on Birth of the Cool). Explosion is the work of professional musicians from Vancouver, Edmonton and New York. When Day Slips Into Night is the product of the University of Toronto’s jazz performance program and contains a mix of undergraduate and graduate performers and arrangers.

Explosion is full of great music and performances, and the comprehensive liner notes by Chris Wong provide context to the album’s development and its individual tracks. Longtime Vancouver saxophonist (and former jazz club owner) Cory Weeds organized the group and commissioned Jill Townsend and Bill Coon to write the arrangements of the songs he chose. All the performances are precise, energetic and just plain swing. Weeds’ tenor sax solos are inventive and assured; he can play solid bop lines and then pause and interject some assured lyricism. East of the Village shows the band easily changing from an opening contrapuntal bossa beat that moves to straight swing and back again. Canadian Sunset starts out with its signature loping cowboy rhythm employing Gary Smulyan’s baritone sax to good effect and then moves into a swinging section. The final piece, Ready and Able, is reminiscent of Four Brothers as it highlights the saxophone section (Weeds and Smulyan with PJ Perry on alto and Steve Kaldestad on tenor), beginning with tight ensemble playing and then opening up to multiple solos, which transition from full choruses to exchanging two-bar phrases, before building to an energetic conclusion.

When Day Slips Into Night features the work of student arrangers, though it begins with Extra Time written by Mike Murley and arranged by Terry Promane, who also leads the band. Bolivia is a solid swinging song which begins with some great piano work by Noah Franche-Nolan, then uses the brass and saxes to good effect, where Brandon Tse plays some great scampering alto sax solo lines. One of the more interesting arrangements, and an example of the album’s intriguing choice of material, is (Ocean) Bloom, originally a collaboration between Radiohead and film composer Hans Zimmer for the BBC’s Blue Planet II. I find this arrangement by Michael Henley, with vocals by Brooklyn Bohach, to be more stirring than the original: the band is highly effective when it builds to the crescendos and then recedes into the performers producing semi-muted whale and ocean sounds.

Explosion is the work of veteran performers and When Day Slips Into Night features students, but the latter album has solid production and performances. Some of Explosion’s arrangements are more complex and the solos are more individualized, showcasing each musician’s personal creativity and musical development. Both albums are worth repeated listening.

Spellbound - Joel Sheridan

Spellbound
Joel Sheridan
Independent JHS201801 (joelsheridan.com)

The distinctive vocal qualities of jazz vocalist Joel Sheridan keep the listener attentive to his unique sound in his appropriately titled debut release, Spellbound. His decade-long, varied artistic career (with stints in Stratford and other musical theatres billed as Joel Hartt), a 12-year, career-counsellor gig, and his 2006 return to music have undoubtedly influenced his honest take on jazz singing. His goal was a storytelling concept album about the many sides of love, yet his controlled emotional performances of 12 covers and three of his own compositions are never over the top. All are performed with class and style by Sheridan, and his band – Mark Kieswetter (piano), Maxwell Roach (drums), and Jordan O’Connor (bass) with Reg Schwager (guitar) on five tracks.

Fanny Brice’s vaudevillian Cooking Breakfast for the One I Love is given a novelty upbeat rendition. The Kay Ballard tune, Lazy Afternoon, features a slow atmospheric moment with mood-setting bass opening, piano chords, cymbal splashes and high vocal pitches. More clear vocal storytelling and piano backdrop are evident in Nat King Cole’s breakup tune, I Keep Going Back to Joe’s. Highlight is Sheridan’s You Were My First Love, a personal song of his two great loves, with a stellar piano, melodic lines, climactic dynamic buildup and quietly touching close. The danceable Antônio Carlos Jobim song No More Blues ends the disc with hope and happiness, like all great love stories. And all great releases like Spellbound!

Murals - Solon McDade

Murals
Solon McDade
Independent 19192476591 (solonmcdade.com)

Released in April of this year, Murals is the debut solo album from the Edmonton-born bassist Solon McDade, a veteran of the Canadian music scene, active in both the jazz and folk worlds. (McDade constitutes one third of the JUNO Award-winning band the McDades, along with his sister, Shannon Johnson, and brother, Jeremiah McDade.) Murals also features Jeremiah on tenor saxophone, as well as Donny Kennedy on alto sax, Paul Shrofel on piano, and Rich Irwin on drums, with Solon McDade handling the bass duties. (He is also the sole composer of the album’s nine songs.)

Murals starts with He’s a Problem In The Locker Room, a medium, hard-swinging song, with elements of Monk and mid-60s Miles, and is followed by Buy The Tractor, a driving, minor-key tune that begins with a beautiful trio introduction from both the McDades and Kennedy. (It should also be noted that most of the song titles on Murals are evocative and wryly funny; a welcome surprise in the world of modern instrumental jazz, in which naming conventions tend towards the painfully self-serious.) Off The Bed, Rose, a medium-up minor blues, is a definite highlight, with strong, creative solos from Kennedy, Shrofel, Jeremiah McDade and Irwin, with exceptionally supportive rhythm section playing throughout. Another highlight: the album’s final track, A Shorter Thing, a groovy, Poinciana-esque song on which Solon McDade takes a succinct, lyrical solo. Murals is an accomplished, confident album from a first-class band; highly recommended.

Ejdeha - Gordon Grdina’s The Marrow

Ejdeha
Gordon Grdina’s The Marrow
Songlines SGL2409-2 (songlines.com)

Gordon Grdina has a compound musical identity, as both free-jazz guitarist and devoted advocate of the middle-Eastern oud, the forebearer of many western plectrum instruments (“lute” is a corruption of “el oud”). In Grdina’s practice, however, the two overlap, the improvisatory traditions and subtle pitch distinctions of Arabic and Persian music clearly feeding into the kind of jazz he favours. The Marrow’s balance is perfect: he and fellow Vancouver-based percussionist Hamin Honari are matched with New York jazz mainstays, cellist Hank Roberts and bassist Mark Helias.

There’s no sense of conflict. It’s territory that’s been an element of jazz since Ahmed Abdul Malik (Jonathan Tim, Jr.) and Yusef Lateef (William Huddleston) first began crossing into this terrain some 60 years ago. Today Roberts and Helias navigate microtonal modes and compound rhythms as fluently as Grdina and Honari, and the result is a very special kind of music.

Grdina’s subtle pitch inflections are apparent in the rapid, detailed lines of his rubato introduction to the title track, while Roberts exhibits comparable rhythmic detail in his bowed solo on Idiolect. The two pass from the largely middle-Eastern orbit to something equal-parts European in their opening reflection to Bordeaux Bender. Wayward is emblematic of the sheer rhythmic élan that Honari brings to the project, while Helias throughout moves fluidly from ostinatos to counterpoint to a lead voice.

In all, it’s a celebration of improvisation’s ability to cross frontiers and create new identities.

The Koven Collective - Steve Koven

The Koven Collective
Steve Koven
Bungalow Records SK 010 5 (stevekoven.com)

There is really no shortage of piano-driven ensembles, including those embellished by strings, vocals and inputs from other musicians, but the effervescence of each of the ten pieces performed by the Koven Collective must be applauded. The core group comprises pianist and songwriter Steve Koven, bassist Peter Eratostene and drummer Sarah Thawer, who is one of the most prodigiously gifted drummers in Canada today (the other being Larnell Lewis).

On a first encounter, the nonchalant, playful charm of Koven’s music can mask the challenges and the undercurrent of often complex profundity. Koven frames this musical excursion with two relatively well-known pieces from his repertoire. The first is Eleuthera, a piece that unravels like a cheeky vignette with an effervescent, tumbling percussive groove. The other is the more reflective (if simply titled) ballad Thinking of You. Preceding the first work and in between the others named here is spirited and insouciantly seductive repertoire that is illuminated not only by the core trio but also by saxophone, guitar, cello, banjo, vocals and very effectively employed electronic instruments.

All of this strategically employed instrumentation makes for a refreshing experience of music, informed by a variety of tone colours and rhythmic excellence together with a harmonic boldness and astringency that throws all of the pieces more vividly into relief. Koven, who shepherds the trio and others involved in this music, is a songwriter who has proved once again that his music is licensed to thrill.