Jazz and Improvised

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I’ve Got Just About Everything - Laura Anglade

I’ve Got Just About Everything
Laura Anglade
Justin Time JTR 8619-2 (justin-time.com)

With her sparkling debut release, talented, Montreal-based jazz vocalist and composer, Laura Anglade, fearlessly plunges headlong into a wide range of top-notch material, drawn from both the Broadway stage as well as the Great American Songbook, stretching from a Depression-era hit by Tin Pan Alley’s Harry Ruby to the late 50s/early 60s witticism-noir of the brilliant Fran Landesman. Anglade (who also contributes a solid original tune) and her ensemble, featuring Jonathan Chapman on bass, Sam Kirmayer on guitar and Valérie Lacombe on drums, also act as producers here; stirring tenorist Masashi Usui completes this exceptional musical and creative unit.

First up is an up-tempo, clever arrangement of Gus Kahn and Julie Styne’s A Beautiful Friendship. This lovely classic features an irresistible bass/vocal intro, in perfect symbiosis with Anglade’s natural, jazz-oriented vocal style. Her deadly perfect intonation and immaculate control of her vibrato result in long, impactful tones, reminiscent of the late Keely Smith; and Kirmayer’s fluid guitar solo and Usui’s warm, mellifluous sax sound are the perfect complements to Anglade’s assured vocal scat section.

Incomparable American tunesmith, Bob Dorough, is the author of the title track, and Anglade deftly swings it, with this witty, snappy offering. Other superb tracks include 1959’s Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most, with lyrics by Fran Landesman and music by Tommy Wolf. Arranged in a slightly perky tempo, Anglade wrings out the maximum irony from Landesman’s inspired poetry. I’m Glad There is You (Jimmy Dorsey’s uber-romantic ballad) is another gem. The sumptuous, legato, arco-bass-infused intro by Chapman sits at the perfect tempo for maximum effect, and the superbly intimate work from the instrumental ensemble, complements the nuanced vocals of Anglade.

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Phare - Yves Léveillé

Phare
Yves Léveillé
Effendi Records FND155 (effendirecords.com)

Befitting a rhythmically flashing beacon evocative of the meaning of this album title (Lighthouse), or perhaps arising out of it, the repertoire of Phare flashes in gentle pulses beamed into the mind’s senses and led by the refined pianism of its creator, Yves Léveillé. This is music that is by turns grand and spacious; spare and angular. The short, sharp phrases and interjections between the trumpet of Jacques Kuba Séguin and the saxophones of Yannick Rieu come stammering over Léviellé’s expansive piano while all three musicians bounce ideas off an edifice of rhythm erected by contrabassist Guy Boisvert and drummer Kevin Warren.

The result is a dreamy set of songs where melody, harmony and rhythm are intricately woven together in a diaphanous fabric of sound. The gentle pulsations of the title track kick things off with its spacious phrases and liquid runs by the pianist and his accompanying musicians, who parley with the familiarity of old friends. Their playing always retains that sense of grace and nobility associated with a chamber orchestra. Yet nothing is forced, exaggerated or overly mannered; tempos, ensemble, solos and balance – all seem effortlessly and intuitively right.

The horn sound is lucid – especially on Sang-Froid – and the piano and bass add warmth to the rhythmic architecture, chiselled into shape by delicate percussion. The result is poised, faultless music written and arranged by Léveillé which sheds fresh light on the relationship between composition and improvisation.

Wonderland - Gentiane MG Trio

Wonderland
Gentiane MG Trio
Effendi Records FND 154 (effendirecords.com)

Gentiane Michaud-Gagnon (MG) is a composer and jazz piano player who studied at the Quebec Conservatory in Saguenay and then majored in Jazz Performance at McGill University. She has played with many jazz artists around Canada and also toured in China and Mexico. The Gentiane MG Trio’s first album, Eternal Cycle (2017), was named by CBC Music as one of the ten best jazz recordings of that year. Wonderland’s liner notes describe it as “a place of endless possibilities. A place where things can be different.” Indeed, the works are all inventive but never clichéd. The harmonies are complex and most pieces start from one idea or theme and work their way through different thoughts and images more organically than simply melodies and solos.

At the album’s core are Wonderland (Part 1: Comeback), Wonderland (Part 2: Shadows) and Wonderland (Part 3: Unbearable). Comeback begins with an ostinato from the piano, then Louis-Vincent Hamel on drums introduces a complex lilting samba pattern and the piece continues to expand on those ideas with repeated ostinatos and exchanges with the drums. Shadows has many pensive chords over which Levi Dover plays a thoughtful bass solo. Unbearable opens with tense chords and a simple pattern punctuated by rhythmic and inventive drum fills. Eventually the piano becomes more contrapuntal and the bass joins the exchange as well. Michaud-Gagnon’s piano style is cerebral with hints of Bach, Lennie Tristano, Bill Evans and occasional Monk-ish riffs. The trio plays off each other in subtle shades as they work through Michaud-Gagnon’s compositions. Wonderland is like visiting a safe, thoughtful and meditative world.

Listen to 'Wonderland' Now in the Listening Room

Genius Loci Mixtape - Jeannette Lambert

Genius Loci Mixtape
Jeannette Lambert
Jazz from Rant rant 1953 (jazzfromrant.com)

A distinctive and creative singer, Jeannette Lambert presents an imaginative and intimate travelogue in music here, interacting spontaneously with numerous musicians in different locales. Sometimes she sings other writers’ lyrics, sometimes her own; whether playfully or wistfully, she sings with a poet’s diction, making every song a model of clarity.

The most frequent collaborators are her musical family: her husband, Montreal drummer Michel Lambert, plays on all 11 tracks; her brother, Toronto guitarist Reg Schwager, on four. His appearances include two recordings from a Barcelona apartment: the opening Keys explores a stark text about trust among lovers by Catalan poet Clementina Arderiu; the final vision is Gaudi, a celebration of the architect’s crowning achievement, the city’s Sagrada Familia, now a century in the making. Lambert artfully conveys the complex emotion of her lyric about “something that was created for the sake of creating.”

In between are other evocations of the spirit of place. Two tracks from Puget-Ville, France, have Lambert improvising melody with a rambunctious quintet that includes the great veteran bassist Barre Phillips. Sometimes poem and site create compound spaces: the welling emotion of Anne Brontë’s A Windy Day was realized with pianist Greg Burk in Ostia, Italy, while Spanish poet Federico García Lorca’s Gypsy Nun was recorded in Montreal with harpsichordist Alexandre Grogg. The most joyous music here comes from furthest afield, the virtuosic Coyote, recorded at a festival in Sulawesi, Indonesia with Schwager and bassist Fendy Rizk.

Double on the Brim - Leblanc; Gibson; Vicente; Mira; Ferreira Lopes

Double on the Brim
Leblanc; Gibson; Vicente; Mira; Ferreira Lopes
Atrito-Afeito 011 (atrito-afeito.com)

Pianist Karoline Leblanc and drummer Paulo J Ferreira Lopes have a developing relationship with Lisbon, a warmer complement to their Montreal base. Lisbon is a burgeoning centre for free jazz and improvised music, with numerous performance spaces, these genres’ most active record labels (Clean Feed and Creative Source have produced over 600 CDs each since 2001) and a growing list of well-known improvisers taking up residence. Leblanc and Ferreira Lopes recorded A Square Meal there in 2016, and Leblanc recently recorded Autoschediasm in Montreal with Lisboan violist Ernesto Rodrigues. Double on the Brim, recorded in Lisbon this year, develops the connection further.

The quintet here includes Brazilian-born saxophonist Yedo Gibson, trumpeter Luís Vicente (returning from A Square Meal) and cellist Miguel Mira. There are six episodes, ranging in length from four to 16 minutes. The longest of them, Anthropic Jungle and the title track, are intense collective improvisations that pulse with vitality, moving tapestries in which instruments tumble over one another. The relatively brief Singra Alegria, almost dirge-like, foregoes the usual density, with Leblanc’s looming bass clusters creating an ominous mood in which Vicente’s subdued lyricism comes to the fore. Jaggy Glide is the most tightly focused, with Gibson’s alto spiralling through the dense rhythmic field created by Leblanc, Ferreira Lopes, and the versatile Mira, who can also provide convincing bass lines when required.

Sometimes instrumental identities will blur, but Leblanc’s brilliant articulation and Ferreira Lopes’ multidirectional drumming shine.

Tunes in a Hotel - Quinn Bachand’s Brishen

Tunes in a Hotel
Quinn Bachand’s Brishen
Independent CP104 (brishenmusic.com)

When I first listened to Cheyenne (Quit Your Talkin’) from Brishen’s second album, Blue Verdun, I assumed it was a cover of a jazz/pop song from the 1930s. It was surprising to discover this clever and engaging song was written and sung by Quinn Bachand, a young musical prodigy from Victoria. He was studying at the Berklee College of Music (on a full scholarship) and recorded that album in his apartment in Verdun, Quebec while on a semester leave. It is a remarkable trip into a past style creatively re-imagined in the present.

Brishen, Romany for “bringer of the storm,” has released a third album, Tunes in a Hotel, which is an idiosyncratic re-imagining of several Django Reinhardt tunes (including Odette, It Had to Be You and Pennies from Heaven). The backstory is dramatic with Bachand’s Berklee residence involved in a fire which left his instruments safe, but smelling of smoke. He and other students were relocated to the Boston Sheraton where he recorded this album in room 737! The ensemble sounds tight and feisty with Bachand (at points) playing a borrowed Gibson ES 125 through an “amazingly crunchy 50s tube amp.” One striking aspect of these pieces is their crisp economy: with an average length of less than three minutes, the melodies and solos seem compressed and melodically inventive with Eric Vanderbilt-Mathews (clarinet) and Christiaan van Hemert (violin) contributing several excellent improvisations. Bachand’s guitar playing is both an homage to Reinhardt and an expression of his own eclectic originality. I highly recommend this retro, low-fi, yet modern revisiting of Reinhardt’s catalogue. And I look forward to the surprises of a fourth Brishen album, possibly even recorded in a studio!

Jaelem Bhate: On the Edge - Various artists

Jaelem Bhate – On the Edge
Various artists
Independent (jaelembhate.com)

Jaelem Bhate’s website contains listings for what seem to be two or three different people: conducting competitions in Italy and Romania, an inaugural concert as musical director of Symphony 21 in Vancouver and other symphony conducting gigs. Then a catalogue of classical orchestral, chamber and solo works and, finally, a jazz section where On the Edge is listed as his debut album. Bhate is a very busy person with a range of musical interests.

On the Edge is an ambitious album with a 20-piece band of excellent musicians from the Vancouver area. In his liner notes Bhate says every work “represents some edge in my life, as does the whole album.” The title could also represent Vancouver on the “edge” of the ocean and the country. The core of the CD is the magnificent Pacific Suite with four programmatic movements: Straights and Narrows, Weeping Skies, Uninhabitation and Sea of Glass. Straights and Narrows contains slower and faster sections with a few drum solos that could reference the movement of water through narrow straights and onto the beaches, Weeping Skies begins with an elegant pizzicato bass solo which sounds like individual drops building into the steady rain we expect on the West Coast. Sea of Glass opens with an up-tempo piano and bass duet that could be a soundtrack for a floatplane gliding low over a pristine and still harbour. The plane lands when the horns enter and the beat switches to a punchier swing feel with a jaunty melody.

On the Edge is well produced with a great band and excellent solos by several musicians including Steve Kaldestad on a soulful tenor saxophone. We can only hope Bhate adds to his résumé with more jazz projects in the future.