Jazz and Improvised

Meeting Place - Convergence
OVK3
Modica Music (modicamusic.bandcamp.com/album/meeting-point)

This album features an impeccable trio playing beautiful music where each musician shines individually, the air filled with distinctive sounds. Pianist-composer Manuel Valera contributes seven out of nine tunes here, each one being a piano trio’s dream. Left hand countermelodies and incredible rhythmic emphasis abundantly bring out the most dynamic of interactive tendencies within the group. OVK3’s sound embodies quietude, crispness and brightness in equal measure, skating briskly across the liberating open plane of Mark Kelso’s feathery ride cymbal, always in control, each hit bringing the picture into more life-like definition. 

IKelso’s rhythmic gestures are open air and Valera’s ideas are the feeling of sudden lucidity while Roberto Occhipinti’s lines are pure butter, in the midst of a constant phase change each note placed in the most tender of places with an impossibly fluid throughline. There is the feeling of comfy tension where the listener ingests a meal numerous morsels at a time. 

Occhipinti provides an original here, El Rey, and it is emblematic of something that never rests or ceases, and yet it leaves a firm, digestible imprint on the mind. The inclusion of Soul Eyes, track eight, made this Mal Waldron fan happy.

Tuesdays at La Rev
Peter Hill; Reg Schwager
Independent (peterhill.bandcamp.com/album/tuesdays-at-la-rev)

On Tuesdays at La Rev, pianist Peter Hill and guitarist Reg Schwager pay tribute to the late Indira Nanavati Cadena, who provided them with the opportunity to develop a musical partnership. As the owner-operator of La Rev, a Mexican restaurant and live music venue in Toronto’s Junction neighbourhood, Cadena was kind and generous to artists. She booked a weekly residency for Hill – best-known as an accompanist to countless Toronto singers – allowing him to stretch out with fellow instrumentalists. In genius guitarist Reg Schwager he found a kindred music spirit: both are men of few words, who know hundreds – if not thousands – of tunes, and who share an unwavering dedication to the jazz tradition. 

The eclectic program includes some very pleasant surprises. The first of these is a lilting, lyrical take on Mexican composer Manuel Ponce’s famous aria, Estrellita, likely a nod to Cadena who was born in Acapulco. Other highlights include a sentimental reading on Un Canadien Errant; a bright version of the oft-forgotten Alice Blue Gown where Hill’s jaunty piano playing truly shines; and a Latin take on Cole Porter’s I Love You, Samantha, which was far less interesting when Bing Crosby crooned it in the film High Society. 

This sophisticated and spirited recording will surely warrant repeated listening. On tunes such as Poor Butterfly, Oh, Lady Be Good and The Blue Room, words can hardly do justice to the tantalizing taste of these two Toronto treasures.

Listen to 'Tuesdays at La Rev' Now in the Listening Room

East Meets West: Connections - Jean-Nicolas Trottier and Fred Stone
Winnipeg Jazz Orchestra
Chronograph Records CR-115 (winnipegjazzorchestra.bandcamp.com/album/east-meets-west-connections)

Winnipeg has produced countless great musicians, many of whom leave the prairie metropolis for other parts of the continent. Those who remain have curated a vibrant musical community, taking advantage of a city that is simultaneously intimate enough to celebrate local talent, but large enough to provide artists with opportunities and exposure. 

The Winnipeg Jazz Orchestra marked their eighth release with East Meets West: Connections. The album commissioned composers Fred Stride and Jean-Nicholas Trottier, from the west and east of the country respectively, to pen a nine-movement suite that features the who’s who of Winnipeg jazz. I had the pleasure of reviewing the group’s penultimate release Tidal Currents, which I described as “short but sweet.” Connections offers listeners an album just shy of 50 minutes in duration. It flies by, but not without plenty of musical goodness to sink one’s teeth into. The suite flows organically, and eschews track numbers. 

Niall Cade plays the first improvised solo on the album, on Trottier’s Sounds of Joy. This was my first time hearing Cade, and I’m sure it won’t be my last. It is tough to feature everyone as an improviser when the ensemble is this large, but we are graced with solos from many unique artists, including pianist Will Bonness, trumpeter Jonathan Challoner, and a nylon string guitar solo on The Healing Song from Larry Roy. 

I haven’t named each individual soloist, or addressed each track of the suite, but a more chronological description wouldn’t do the album’s production arc justice. I recommend this recording to keen contemporary jazz fans, and suggest listening to it in its entirety. Each track can stand on its own, but the album truly flows when heard uninterrupted. 

Jacob Wutzke - You Better Bet
Jacob Wutzke; Rachel Therrien; Lucas Bubovic; Bryn Roberts; Ira Coleman
Cellar Music CM090224 (jacobwutzke.bandcamp.com/album/you-better-bet)

Tony Williams (1945-1997), not only made a spectacular impression as an innovative jazz drummer when he debuted with Miles Davis’ Second Great Quintet at the age of 17, but the songbook of sophisticated compositions that he left behind means that both his music, as well as his dynamic drumming, continues to be mined by subsequent generations of jazz players. On You Better Bet, Jacob Wutzke’s terrific second recording following 2022’s Show Yourself, the Montréal, now New York-based, drummer and composer, explores Williams’ creative legacy, not only in terms of his percussive approach, but his ensemble style and compositions.

Although it would be logical to think then that the catalyst for this recording would be Williams’ ongoing influence on the young Wutzke, the story does not end there. Instead, things crystallized when longtime Williams bassist Ira Coleman relocated to Montreal and took a teaching job at Wutzke’s alma mater  McGill University, from where he graduated with a Masters in 2022, and the two musicians began to collaborate. Using some of the original charts that Coleman had kept from his tenure with Williams, written in the late drummer’s hand no less, a group was formed, along with an idea to compose some additional stylistically synchronous music and record the proceedings. Enter the immensely talented Rachel Therrien, Lucas Dubovik and Bryn Roberts, on trumpet, tenor, and piano respectively, and this fine new hard-hitting recording is the result.