Vijay Iyer & Wadada Leo Smith - Defiant Life (ECM, 2025)

By Stef Gijssels

This album has been out for a while, and if one deserves our attention, it's this one. This is not the first time that luminaries Vijay Iyer - piano, Fender Rhodes, electronics and Wadada Leo Smith - trumpet - collaborated. They had their first duo release with "A Cosmic Rhythm With Each Stroke" (2016). Other collaborations include the trio with Jack DeJohnette on "A Love Sonnet For Billie Holiday", and Iyer was the pianist for quartet and large ensemble albums. 

If "A Cosmic Rhythm" was a tribute to musicians, "Defiant Life" honours the efforts by individuals to come up for their rights. This is a topic that we are familiar with in Smith's music: his defense of human rights and his craving for a world that is more human and just. 

In the liner notes, Vijay Iyer writes: "This recording session was conditioned by our ongoing sorrow and outrage over the past year’s cruelties, but also by our faith in human possibility". The outrage is hard to find musically, but the sorrow and the hope are omnipresent. It is sad, melancholy, emotional, bluesy, and meditative in its most neutral moments.

They worked two days on the album, some time last year in Switzerland, talking about the state of the world, and translated their feelings and ideas into the music. Their music is one of full openness to inspiration and follows the flow of the sound itself. 

Two of the tracks were notated, “Floating River Requiem” by Smith is dedicated to the first ever Congolese prime minister Patrice Lumumba, assassinated in 1961 after the independence from Belgium, and "Kite" by Iyer is dedicated to the Palestinian writer and poet Refaat Alareer, who was killed by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza in 2023. 

The first track, "Prelude: Survival", is a dark and ominous piece, setting the context for the future of humanity, with dark piano chords, altered by electronics and a sparse, struggling trumpet. "Sumud" is again driven by long tonal center on electronics, Iyer on his Fender piano, and Smith's trumpet soaring as can be expected. The approach is minimalist yet incredibly intense. 

"Elegy: The Pilgrimage" is the slowest track, very open-textured and bluesy, with Iyer's electronics creating a kind of washing sound from a distant ocean or the wind blowing.  

The role of the musician in all this, is also to participate in the political debate, to give a true expression of fearlessness and defiance, with strong moral codes and no boundaries for humanity: "Music has that quality, too" says Smith "both in terms of how inspiration works, and also how we think about ourselves in a space that has been limited by political boundaries. The expanse that art looks at is more akin to the deeper philosophical notion about being, you know, and also about this notion of comprehending why we are who we are."

Vijay Iyer writes in the liner notes: "I'm always struck by how our music simply appears. And I've wondered how you understand that particular quality that it has. It just unfolds ... which is different! I don't have many experiences like that." To have music "appear" and "unfold" in the way this album sounds, is quite exceptional. It requires two brilliant musicians and a mutual understanding on how to 'compose' in a live environment. 

The last track on the album illustrates this. It's simply majestic, as you can hear on the ECM promo video below.

It seems that my credit for giving five-star ratings to Wadada Leo Smith albums has depleted, but trust me, this album is again an absolute winner. Don't miss it!

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Kaja Draksler & Susana Santos Silva - Grow (Intakt, 2022)

By Stuart Broomer

Within the first minute of the opening “Moonrise”, Slovenian pianist Kaja Draksler and Portuguese trumpeter Susana Santos Silva have established themselves as the most compellingly weird improvising duo in contemporary music. Draksler is playing an erratic pattern on what sounds like a de-tuned toy piano. It’s somehow at once repetitious and varied with gong-like sounds interspersed. Santos Silva is creating a choked, quavering sound that seems less a trumpet than a strangling creature, possibly alien. Possibly alien? The first time I played this, things were suddenly going on and I was barely listening, not even half-listening, and I thought there was also a tape playing in the piece, a strangely alien, pitch-distorted tape of vocal music, some odd Asian opera accompanied by insistent quarter-tone keyboards, some interference pattern picked up from somewhere in the vast near-empty steppes available on globe-hopping internet radio (It used to work—today I’ve reached Nizhny Tagil, enthusiastic commercials in Russian and Fat Boy Slim’s “Rockefeller Skank” from Fifa99). Heard again, repeatedly, “Moonrise” was still mysterious, but it’s trumpet and piano, prepared and miked.

'Grow', a 41-minute performance from the 2021 Copenhagen Jazz Festival, creates its own sonic world. To describe it as a duo seems like a disservice. There’s nothing particularly conversational about it, no sense of piano accompaniment, no dividing line between composed and improvised. Rather, its four segments are stages in a dream voyage, one compound mind creating complex, unified music at an exalted level with constantly shifting timbres. That opening “Moonrise” will turn to limpidly beautiful lyric trumpet amid cascading chromatic piano; the next stage, “Close”, will have circular-breathing, Morse-code trumpet with a refracted sub-text, the piano eventually revealing itself in crystalline high pitches with electronic echo and suggestions of glockenspiel and drum, the trumpet becoming the sound of rhythmic air, with what sounds like someone walking cautiously on piano strings.

“Liquid Rock” demonstrates the trumpet’s simultaneously empathetic relationship with mining equipment and rock, assuming a great industrial roar with overblown multiphonics, eventually matched with rapid, sustained, keyboard knitwork. The concluding title track moves through various transformations, including a passage of Harmon-muted trumpet that suggests Miles Davis and which is set against e-bowed piano string tones that sound like Draksler is sometimes employing an oscillator, at other times rustling through the contents of a kitchen miscellany drawer after having first transferred them to the piano’s interior.

No description can do more than suggest the depth and complexity of this cumulative work, in which extended techniques are not effects but organic methodologies plumbing new regions of meaning and expression.

Listen and download from Bandcamp.

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Torben Snekkestad / Søren Kjærgaard - Another Way of the Heart (Trost, 2022)

By Eyal Hareuveni

A few rare albums fit perfectly into your emotional state of mind and capture the fragility of our impermanent lives so beautifully as Another Way of the Heart by Norwegian reeds and trumpet player Torben Snekkestad and Danish pianist Søren Kjærgaard. Both Snekkestad and Kjærgaard were associated with the Danish label-musicians cooperative Ilk Music but, unfortunately, their discographies, especially in recent years, don’t match their great creative potential.

Snekkestad and Kjærgaard collaborated before in the trio The Living Room with Norwegian drummer Thomas Strønen and in an ad-hoc quintet of Danish drummer Peter Bruun (Unintended Consequences, Ilk, 2013). Snekkestad is also known for his collaborations with Evan Parker, Nate Wooley, Lotte Anker as well as his ongoing work with Barry Guy, in a duo, trio with pianist Agustí Fernández and in Guy’s Blue Shroud Ensemble. Kjærgaard led a much-acclaimed trio with double bass player Ben Street and drummer Andrew Cyrille. He is also known for his experimental projects with Danish poet-musician Torben Ulrich (also a filmmaker, a former professional tennis player and the father of Metallica drummer, Lars Ulrich). The titles of the pieces of Another Way of the Heart are taken from the third and last collaboration of Kjærgaard with Ulrich, Meridiana: Lines Toward A Non-local Alchemy (Escho, 2014), which was inspired by the different meanings and usages of meridians in Eastern (Daoist-alchemical) and Western (geo-navigational) traditions.

Another Way of the Heart was recorded in August 2021 at Ocean Sound Recording, Giske, Norway, a studio describing itself as located at “the end of the world, on the edge of the sea with a clearness provided by the open horizon”. This isolated studio with lodging services is a perfect place for reflection, meditation and subtle and intimate experiments with acoustic sounds. Snekkestad plays on tenor and soprano saxes, clarinet and trumpet and Kjærgaard on a grand piano.

The poetic and enigmatic titles of the 12 concise pieces, all credited to Snekkestad and Kjærgaard, capture faithfully the reserved, patient and calm dynamics of Snekkestad and Kjærgaard. They need no more than a few delicate and minimalist strokes to cement a profound and evocative emotional territory, always in an organic-intuitive flow but never subscribing to a familiar course. Snekkestad’s whispering tone on the saxes, close in spirit to the Japanese Shakuhachi flute (an instrument traditionally associated with Zen Buddhism), alongside the less-is-more approach of Kjærgaard, intensify the spiritual-contemplative of the album (check the three parts of “Wind and Floating Lines” or “The always acting Nothing” and “Into Particles of Light”) and suggest elusive, kōan-like poetic textures, in a way that corresponds with the texts and poetry of Torben Ulrich. The sparse multiphonics and bird calls of Snekkestad with the precise, resonant touches of the piano strings and keys of Kjærgaard on the mysterious “Radiant recomposed” and “Holding Mountain, Holding Movement” further highlight the unique voices of Snekkestad and Kjærgaard and the immersive, healing effect of this majestic album. This music is definitely a healing force on our planet.

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Steph Richards & Joshua White - Zephyr (Relative Pitch, 2021) ****½

 By Stef Gijssels

It is such a pleasure to hear how some musicians take their sound a step further with each album, taking risks and shifting perspectives. This is clearly the case with Canadian trumpeter - and Professor at the University of California San Diego - Steph Richards. What doesn't change, is her approach to select one single topic of inspiration for her albums. If "Fullmoon" was inspired by night landscapes, "Take The Neon Lights" by poetry, "Supersense" by the scents that surround us. "Zephyr" is inspired by her 6 months pregnancy at the time of recording in 2019. Her daughter Anza was born on November 2019. It is an intimate, delicate and at the same time exploratory album that tries to express "the idea of breathing one breath for two bodies, moving through the world with two distinct pulses happening at the same time". 

Her musical partner on the album is Joshua White on piano, prepared piano and percussion. We problably know him best from his collaborations with Mark Dresser. White's understanding of where Richards wants to go with her music and sound is exceptional, including his skill at moving forward with the same level of abstraction of her music and the sensitivity of the moment. 

The album is structured in three suites, with the themes of "Sacred Sea" (five treacks), "Sequoia" (3 tracks) and "Northern Lights" (4 tracks). 

On "Sacred Sea", Richards plays her trumpet in water throughout, even if this is not so immediately obvious to the listener, except in the last part of the suite. She's been doing this since 2008 - and she's not the only trumpeter of course who does this (Rob Mazurek also for instance) -, refining her technique over the years. In 2011 she created the WaterCOLOR project, "a multi-media performance installation featuring musicians submerged in shallow pools of water performing multi-movement experimental works centered upon the unpredictable properties of water".

For Richards this now gets new meaning, considering the idea "that her in utero child was, in a sense, breathing underwater" (which we hope it did not). 

The mood of the relatively short pieces vary a lot. "Amphitrite" is eery and short, "Nixie" wild and wayward, "Sequoia" is dynamic and intense, "Sacred Sea" is solemn and sensitive, "Heyyookkee" is playful and upbeat, "Aurora IV" is vibrant and jubilant. Within this variation Richards explores an incredible variety of timbral inventions on her horn, from whispers to spectacular clear tones, with everything in between, including gliding microtones (as a result of submerging the bell into the water I assume). 

The album is short, clocking around 38 minutes, but having listened to it a few dozen times now, there is a wonderful sense of completion. What else could she have added to this? The overall concept, tone and musical vision of each piece seem to have been clear to both musicians and perfected in their minds, before the music was actually performed. 

There is a sense of "finished perfection" with the underlying thought ... how else could this sound? Or put differently, there is no other way this feeling or that feeling could be expressed. It is musical poetry, concise, fluent, precise, smartly organised for esthetic value and emotional power. This power is nothing forceful, or loud, but rather the power of precision, of necessity, of inevitability. Despite the obvious improvised aspect of the music, the pieces sound complete, sophisticated and refined. And despite the variation of the album, it is balanced in structure and coherent as a whole. 

Despite the timbral innovations and the abstract levels of the compositions, the music is open and welcoming. The interaction between both musicians is stellar. 

Richards suprised us with all her albums so far. It is really a treat that she keeps pushing the boundaries of her art, demonstrating incredible skills on her horn that are equalled by her creativity and sense of perfection. 

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Dancing in Times of Plague (IV)

 By Stef Gijssels

Japanese pianist Satoko Fujii and trumpeter Natsuki Tamura are both very eclectic musicians, aggregators of existing genres and creators of new ones. They play in a dozen or even more self-created ensembles releasing prolifically and performing on more than 100 albums so far.  

As husband and wife, their most special format is the piano and trumpet duo. The current corona crisis forced them into lockdown in Japan, and resulted in a few more duo releases this year, the first ones since "Kisaragi" in 2017. Luckily for fans they also recorded several confinement concerts in their music room at home, available for viewing on Facebook (including a fun moment when they change instruments ... and luckily only for ten seconds). 

Both also released solo albums. More on those later. 

Satoko Fujii & Natsuki Tamura - Pentas: Tribute to Eric and Chris Stern (Not Two, 2020) *****

But let's start with the duo album that was actually recorded before the pandemic, on November 19, 2019 at the DTS Studio in Kraków. This is their second album on the Polish Not Two label, and we reviewed the first one shortly after the creation of this blog in 2007, by coincidence also called "In Krakow In November". 

Both Fujii and Tamura alternate as the composers of the short duets they perform here. It is fascinating to hear them play: this is not jazz, this is not classical music, or modern contemporary ... it is their own brand. Clear tones, bright music. They focus a lot on the compositional structure of the pieces and the challenge of the interplay. The first track "Not Together", shows how playful and smart that can be, with the trumpet playing staccato notes either on the beat or deliberately just missing it, resulting in unisono and discordant moments, with the central part only piano - hesitant, then confident - inviting the trumpet back in for the last minute. The second track, "Pentas", is more emotional, led by Tamura, wonderfully developing some heartfelt theme into a darker and somber territory and back. 

Both musicians like contrasts between dramatic effects in the development of compositions versus the carefully crafted and more light-hearted moments. "Rising" is slow and dark, "Renovation" more playful while "Circle" is more expansive. Even if some moments are composed and the structures planned, there is still room for improvisation, and the incredible interaction of two artists who trust each other's skills and anticipate changes is remarkable. 

The music is smart, inventive, compelling and a wonderful treat in these sour times. Chamber music at its best, regardless of genre or even century. 

This is their seventh album as a duo. The album is dedicated to Eric and Chris Stern. Eric was a music fan, a person who made connections between foreign artists and the New York scene, who passed away after Fujii's and Tamura's concert in New York. Eric was also a contributor to this blog. We are grateful to Fujii and Tamura for this wonderful tribute to him and his wife. 

Natsuki Tamura & Satoko Fujii - Midsummer (Self, 2020) ****

Then comes the lockdown. They are literally locked up together at home in Japan. They perform on Facebook. They improvise. "Midsummer" is the result of such an improvisation. We get nine tracks with an obviously much more open structure and room for development. No need for anchor points to fall back on as with composed pieces. Despite this, both artists manage to create interesting storylines for each piece, with its own inherent logic and narrative. 

For instance, the second track "Kata Kata" could be the soundtrack of a horror movie, with Tamura's trumpet sounds creating a haunting atmosphere. 

The music is nervous and intense raw, fierce, less complicated because of its free improvisation, with distorted trumpet sounds without clarity - Tamura is a master at creating suppressed multiphonics in stark contrast to the clarity of his tone at other moments, and sometimes wild piano excursions including some activity on the inside of the piano - a rarity for Fujii - but fascinating to hear it evolve and change. This is the music of turmoil, full of internal dynamics that shift and change without structure, full of energy and agitation. 

Despite these moments of distress, they don't lose their sense of humour (as in "Morse Code" which starts like single note piano tones played at different lengths). 

A lockdown album. Many of us will recognise the emotion. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

Natsuki Tamura & Satoko Fujii - Keshin (Self, 2020) ****

The duo describe this album as such: "This is real DIY recording, recorded by ourselves at our small music room and mixed by ourselves". The album was recorded on November 1 and 2, so at the beginning of this month and released on the 6th. 

In contrast to "Midsummer", this album is clearly composed, resulting in the known but still stellar interplay between two musical soulmates whose art is as usual almost cinematic in nature. The first track "Busy Day" makes you see a whole bunch of nervous activity, running around and multitasking. The fact that it has been delivered without any post production increases the freshness and the spontaneity of the work, and even increases the admiration for their technical skills. But as usual they balance between playfulness and more solemn pieces like "Drop", which moves deeper into emotional territory, and even more meditative with the slow "Dreamer". "Three Scenes" again accentuates the almost visual aspect of their art, a little capsule of story-telling with a plot unfolding before your ears, with a calm environment turning into intensity before finding its resolution. "Sparrow Dance" ends the album, offering again a more lively and playful piece, that bookends an album that is otherwise more contained and sensitive. 

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Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

It is nice to hear that two artists like Fujii and Tamura whose sound is recognizable from a distance, can still be so creative as to release three albums within the limited confines of two instruments (and one room) that are still distinctive in terms of stylistic approach, with an almost fully composed and carefully crafted album, an improvised second one that is more exploratory and anguished, to be followed by a calmer and more meditative album. 

Well, I can recommend all three of them. Would we have received these great albums without the lockdown? The first one for sure, the two other ones possibly not. Some good still comes out of the pandemic. 

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Bill Dixon & Cecil Taylor - Duets 1992 (Triple Point Records, 2019) *****

By Stef

Without a doubt, this is one of the albums of the year, and this for several reasons, even apart from the quality of the performance itself, which is very high. First, it is a rare meeting of two masters who both shaped modern free music to what it is today. They have inspired creative artists and they have been mentors to many. Second, it is amazing that these duets dating from 1992 are now finally released, and available for music lovers around the world, if it was not for the fact that - third - discussions will rise about the high price of 94$ for a limited print edition of 665 copies. I can already anticipate the comments and the Facebook discussions.

For those of you who have followed the two artists' music over the years, this album is not comparable to the trio album with Tony Oxley released in 2002. The absence of the drums makes the music even more singular. And amazingly enough, the only other album on which both men collaborated was Taylor's "Conquistador" from 1966.

The music on this album is driven by a desire for abstraction, a desire to rise above the descriptive, figurative, foundational patterns. They want to break through conventions and because of that also create something higher, more valuable, more universal. Both artists hated the narrowness of definitions, including concepts such as 'blues' and 'jazz'. Once you define things, you put a frame around them, you box them in. Both men went in the other direction, and nothing can be more free and challenging and rewarding than a duo improvisation. That's why the pieces have no titles either. Naming them would mean to restrict them with words, to label them with existing linguistic categories or imagery.

The A-side starts with spacious and slow trumpet sounds, enhanced with reverb and resonating in empty space, supported by precise, almost impressionistic piano playing by Taylor. Both are very attentive to each other, on the edge of listening, deep in the music they create, which turns darker and more dramatic as the improvisation evolves, and the original calm becomes an agitated nervousness of speedy interactions, only to move into more experimental territory where bare sounds and silence dominate the dialogue, and the piece ends open-ended, hesitating between welcoming stretched phrases and unpredictable sonic bites.

On the B-side some of the most remarkable moments of virtuosity can be heard when both musicians challenge each other in rapid-fire interaction, enjoying the game, enjoying the music they produce which even pushes Taylor into some classical music, inserting a playful minuet in the middle of a dark storm. Their music is austere in a sense, not only because of the duet configuration, but because both musicians try to reach some kind of musical essence, unburdened by flourishes and embellishments and superfluous technical prowess or even cultural baggage. They keep this single voice throughout the album. This is their unique music, and there is actually nothing like, anywhere else. There are no digressions from this well-kept level of musical abstraction. At the same time, and paradoxically maybe because of this austerity, the music is incredibly rich, with both artists demonstrating the depth of their art, full of unexpected changes, with deep emotions and constantly evolving and shifting roles between clarity and darkness. This is full co-creation. There are no moments when one instrument is supportive of the other. There is no concept of soloing over chords here, there is not one real moment of soloing as such: just a continuous stream of interaction between both instruments and both artists.

There is also some anger in the music, especially on Side C, when Dixon's trumpet bursts turn aggressive and violent, accentuated by dark and percussive rumblings on the piano. There has always been anger in the attitudes of both Dixon and Taylor with regard to society and the establishment, its prejudices and injustice. But here they don't dwell on it. They deal with it and create something above the din of normal life, something that is in entirely different space, one of technical competence supporting inventive creativity and disciplined freedom. The music is in a realm of its own, open-ended, open-textured, free.

All this results in an album of a rare beauty. It's aesthetic is austere, and it will require a lot of listening to really appreciate its full power.

Bill Dixon passed away in 2009, and Cecil Taylor last year. It is wonderful to have both masters back with us, even if only musically, and together, for a phenomenal collaboration that demonstrates their value and what they have contributed to free music.


Note: A last comment on the price: 665 vinyl copies at a price of 94$ plus shipping costs may seem excessive. I do not think it is. Compared to many other value-less things we buy and use only once (food, drinks, ...), this is an album to have and to cherish. You will listen to it a lot. Think of the cost per time you listen to it, and then how you enjoy the music. How much is that worth? Music is not a commodity. If labels and musicians want music to be considered valuable, they should treat it themselves as if it was very precious. Don't let the price discussion cloud the value of this album.

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Bill Dixon & Cecil Taylor ‎– Duets 1992 (Triple Point Records, 2019) ****(*)

By Colin Green

Trumpet player Bill Dixon and pianist Cecil Taylor had been close friends since they hung out at the same clubs in the early 1950s. “I have known him for a hell of a long time,” said Dixon in 2009, “and I am probably the only person who doesn’t ask him for anything, doesn’t bullshit him, and if he does something I don’t like, I let him know immediately.” Few others dared.

Surprisingly, over the years they made very little music together. One of those rare occasions was when the pair were invited to play at the 1992 Verona Jazz Festival in Italy with a further date arranged for the Vienne Festival in France the following week. Appreciating the importance the meetings might have, Dixon booked the duo studio time in advance for the two days immediately after their second concert, a short distance away at La Masterbox, L’École Nationale de Musique in Villeurbanne, just outside Lyon. These would be their first joint public performances since the Jazz Composer’s Guild evening in February 1964 at the Take 3 Coffee House in Greenwich Village which featured Taylor, Dixon, Roswell Rudd, Jimmy Lyons, Albert Ayler, Carla and Paul Bley, Gary Peacock and Sunny Murray (one of those historic dates lost for posterity) and their first recording session since Dixon’s appearance on Taylor’s Conquistador! (Blue Note, 1966), an album whose stature seems to increase with age due in no small part to Dixon’s contribution.

Back in the U.S. and with much enthusiasm, Dixon compiled and sequenced material from the two days of studio recordings for a proposed deluxe CD edition, to include a folio of Taylor’s poetry and his own art. He wrote of the music, “some of it is exquisitely beautiful; ALL of it is POWERFUL”. Taylor suggested the title “Forty”, commemorating their earlier meeting, to which Dixon added the Italian “Quaranta”. The project faltered, however and languished in rumour for a quarter of a century until taken up by Triple Point Records at the initiative of the Bill Dixon Trust, and with approval from Taylor in his final years. Now, the eleven piece collection has finally been released, spread over two LPs in a handsome gatefold sleeve of heavy card which reproduces Dixon’s sketches and directions for his imagined box set, and with an essay by jazz critic Ben Young, author of Dixonia: a Bio-discography of Bill Dixon (Greenwood, 1998). Dixon was an accomplished artist and the album cover features his lithograph For Cecil Taylor (1994) fittingly, also produced in Villeurbanne while he was working in the medium for the first time at the invitation of URDLA - Le Centre International de l’Estampe et du Livre.

For whatever reason, there was little sense of musical empathy at the Vienne concert the day before the recording session began. It sounds as if Dixon is hovering in the wings during one of Taylor’s piano recitals looking for space in which to work. Perhaps Dixon spoke frankly, maybe it was the less pressured and more intimate studio environment, but the dynamics of the session are very different. It’s probably no coincidence that the tracks selected came from the whole of the second day of recording along with the best from the first. Although there was no discussion about what to play and the music is improvised throughout, it can take time for even seasoned players to become reacquainted and achieve a symbiosis, particularly two musicians whose vocabulary and temperaments at this stage of their lives might appear to be at opposite poles: Taylor’s ceaseless, mercurial invention versus Dixon’s tiered layers and somnambulant, tapering lines broken by long silences. Dixon later said of the session that Taylor was allowed to reflect and make music and as noted by Young, on the evidence of the final selection, “he came to play duets with Bill Dixon, rather than – as often seems to be the case – to annex a collaboration into his own dense gravitational field.”
 
There is indeed a sense of both musicians floating free in a spacious musical topography. Taylor is recognisably himself but plays more quietly with a deliciously light touch, exploring refined shadings rather than billowing chroma, matching the vibrational sensitivity of Dixon’s pastel sprays and gritty groans. Unlike the live performance, there’s little of what Dixon referred to as “Taylorisms”, such as his titanic locked hands figurations or the ubiquitous rippling motif that acted as a springboard for multiple elaboration. Instead, there’s an attention to fine calibrations with a focus on closely spaced intervals set within measured periods, complementing not masking Dixon’s way of giving intervallic ideas a linear construction.

Taylor frequently employs rapidly repeated notes, circulating lines and blurred phrasing leaving chords suspended in the air, mirroring at a different level the resonant sphere surrounding Dixon’s trumpet created using analogue reverberation and delay effects. Dixon said these techniques took the dryness out of the trumpet’s tone, revealing the higher harmonics, allowing him to make what is almost inaudible to the ear, audible, and able to respond to the emotional weight of timbres as they form in real time. “There is a feeling tone that has propulsion and the ambience of an enclosure that permits being inside the enclosure or riding the crest of it,” he said, “One has to listen and try to get inside of the sound.”

The duo’s respective thoughts have a definite beginning and end yet notwithstanding occasional points of contact, they rarely occur in the same place. We hear a series of relationships in interdependent time frames, revolving and evolving like the motions of a suspended mobile, shapes and textures whose fluid configurations are changing at varying rates – the piano’s staccato stabs set against Dixon’s ghostly haze; undulating modulations on trumpet floating across Taylor’s characteristic, though more restrained, spasms of compression and release.

The pieces last from slightly over 2 minutes to just under 21, covering the epigrammatic to the elusively poetic. Dixon’s technical mastery allows his cloudy smears to spread out, ascending into microtones, sometimes extending down to trombone registers. In the third and longest piece, possibly the most remarkable on the album, Taylor executes jewel-like clusters, diaphanous arpeggios and liquid glissandi with the control and precision one hears in the piano music of Ravel while Dixon unfolds his fragile lines at a stately pace, in a tone by turns evanescent and vulnerable. On the sixth, the integration of his trumpet and effects produces an expanding envelope that dissolves into vapour, confirming his observation that one moment can be an entire universe in sound.

The excellent recording brings out the full weight and colour of the instruments in a persuasive acoustic, though as mentioned in the liner notes there are occasions when Taylor made contact with microphones while plucking, scraping and muting the piano strings, something he’d otherwise abandoned after the 1960s, and there are places where Dixon deliberately exploits the overload margins of his equipment to generate a crunchy distortion. He was not keen on engineers fooling with his sound when it went into the red.

This is an absorbing encounter which would be continued in the same spirit at Victoriaville ten years later with the addition of Tony Oxley’s percussion: Cecil Taylor/Bill Dixon/Tony Oxley (Les Disques Victo, 2002). The trio also toured Europe in 2004 and there are off-air recordings of the first and last dates from Donaueschingen (partial) and London.

By any reckoning, at $94.00 plus shipping (and import duty outside the U.S.) this is an expensive album. I understand the price is attributable to Triple Point having paid what it considered to be a proper fee for the tapes, the expense of production – including vinyl plate mastering at Sterling Sound – and the need to recoup the costs with a limited production run of 665 numbered copies. Certainly, the 180g LPs pressed at the Quality Record Pressing plant in Kansas are whisper quiet with a dynamic range and textural fidelity that does justice to the fascinating creations of these two free jazz legends.

Brief excerpts from the album can be found on Triple Point’s website.

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Vijay Iyer & Wadada Leo Smith - a cosmic rhythm with each stroke (ECM, 2016) *****

By Lee Rice Epstein

Let’s get this out of the way: I know the star-rating is the backbone of album reviewing, and this blog in particular has had a nearly unbroken run of awarding 5 stars to Wadada Leo Smith. In a way, I think that blocks a reviewer (in this case, me) from getting to the heart of what Smith has accomplished in his career that elevates him to this nearly flawless level. In part, it’s his approach to both composition and improvisation, and the evolution of his nearly 50-year-old musical language, Ankhrasmation and his concept of the rhythm unit, where an audible sound is followed by its equivalent in silence. Similarly, Vijay Iyer has combined jazz piano with his background in physics with sonic influences of his Indian heritage. He creates these spaces where his collaborators are equal partners and space and time are constantly in flux. And so I think the challenge in reviewing this album is, how do you rate two masters? If Divine Love, perhaps one of the greatest albums ever, was released tomorrow, how do you rate it on a scale of 5 stars? Is this album equal to Divine Love? No, it isn’t. Few albums in Smith’s own discography are its equal. And regarding Iyer’s discography, his trio has released three gorgeously postmodern masterpieces. So it comes down to the music itself, to this particular record. And my takeaway is, it’s really, really great. I’ve listened to it about half a dozen times already, and I really have only one complaint, which I’ll get to later.

As Troy explained in his Mutations review, the notated passages foreshortened the material somewhat, restricting Iyer’s typically fluid approach. So, it’s refreshing to start up “Passage,” the opener of the album, which begins on a foundational cyclical figure from Iyer, as Smith blows free, languid phrases overtop. At two minutes in, when a signature Smith trumpet blast pierces through, it’s less the dramatic moment it might be on other Smith albums, than a high tide in the waves of sound that define this piece.

The suite that fills 50 minutes of the album and gives it its title, “A cosmic rhythm with each stroke (for Nasreen Mohamedi),” is dedicated to the artist Nasreen Mohamedi (the suite’s titles all come from her diary entries). “All becomes alive” builds slowly, with Smith starting unaccompanied, and Iyer layering in electronic textural details. Towards the end, as the playing crystallizes, Iyer’s piano moves to the forefront, and he finishes the movement with a gentle solo outro. “Labyrinths,” a later movement, is complex and driving, highlighting some brilliant dual improvisation. Smith is muted at the opening of “Uncut emeralds,” while Iyer peppers short, mysterious runs that take full advantage of the piano’s broad range. Sounding almost nothing like Cecil Taylor, I was yet reminded of Taylor’s fine duets, his prompting of both partner and listener.

The final track, “Marian Anderson,” is credited to Smith, but the piano solo near the end is one more reminder of how vital collaboration is to his music. The piece would remain half-finished without Iyer’s contribution, though I’d love to hear a solo recording. It’s been years since Smith has recorded a solo album, and the one thing lacking on this album, if anything, is the range of instruments he brought to Kulture Jazz. Iyer layers electronic elements and switches from piano to Fender Rhodes, but I do miss the extremely broad palette Smith has to paint with.

I’m going to guess the dominant metaphors “master and apprentice” or “teacher and student” will drive responses to this album. Or else a dichotomous “heart and head” or “left/right brain.” Resist these interpretations. With Smith and Iyer’s complementary approaches to collaborative improvisation, there is a real spiritual synergy.

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The various faces of Susana Santos Silva (Day 2)

By Stef

Susana Santos Silva - Impermanence (Bandcamp, 2015) ****

"Impermanence" is a hard to categorise album. It brings composed pieces, with strong themes and arrangements, yet it also deliberately colors outside the lines, disorienting listeners who thought they were on an easy ride, and obviously also offering a lot of space for improvisation.

The first track, "Many Worlds" is a good example of this, the angular theme is soon disrupted by electronic sounds, and then the whole carefully organised edifice collapses for some undefined music, with a moaning trumpet leading the way into this wonderful universe of strong contrasts, because before you know, you're listening to some post-boppish rhythmic band interaction, only to end with electronic high-pitched tones. "Many Worlds" indeed, and it also give a good idea of the album's title "Impermanence", the common ground of shifting sounds, changing ideas and life that floats through multiple forms, from solid tangible ground to ephemeral abstractions and everything in between, never repeating itself, always re-inventing itself, and so is this music.

The band are Susana Santos Silva on trumpet and flugelhorn, João Pedro Brandão on alto and flute, Hugo Raro on piano, Torbjörn Zetterberg on double bass, Marcos Cavaleiro on drums, and Malle Colbert offers field recordings for two tracks.

"Obvlivious Trees" starts with a very intense and in-your-face dialogue between muted trumpet and arco bass, as if both are arguing or quarreling or even fighting each other, yet then the plucked bass takes the lead position, guiding us into more boppish territory with a flute solo, supported by percussive piano chords, then again shifting into a disciplined drums solo to end the piece.

"Imaginary Life" is playful, starting with unison horns supported by light piano arpeggios and sophisticated percussion and when the band stops, Santos Silva's trumpet takes over for a unaccompanied solo that is full of contrasts between ferocity and gentleness.

In contrast, "Geringonça" is wild and energetic, starting like mayhem, yet gradually the band folds into patterns and even quietens down a bit as if collecting their thoughts for the unison theme that only emerges in the last seconds.

One more track that really stands out is "Sound Of Thought", a piece that starts with what could be an impression of my own thought processes, full of chaos, darkness and opacity, yet halfway these various conflicting and contrasting sounds coalesce into one, resulting in a lightly boppish song, in which the alto plays a beautiful solo, before being joined by the trumpet, and all's well that ends well.

In short, the most accessible of the albums reviewed here, with often beautiful themes and heart-rending solos, even if the band does not shy away from adventurous moments and even daring conceptual ideas.


Susana Santos Silva & Kaja Draksler - This Love (Clean Feed, 2015) ****½

This is by all means a recommended album, if only because we have a wonderful duo by two of Europe's most promising female musicians, Susana Santos Silva from Portugal on trumpet and Kaja Draksler from Slovenia on piano. The album is quite balanced in terms of compositions : two tracks by Draksler, two by Santos Silva and two joint compositions, organised in a circular way on the album, bookended by the improvisations and with Santos Silva's composition at the centre.

The opening track, "Laurie", is playful and fresh in the beginning, opened by the trumpet, with a strong entry by Draksler with some fast right hand runs, suggesting it as a kind of theme full of suprise and wonder, echoed immediately by the trumpet, then the intensity increases, driving the discovered material into denser and more hectic territory, without losing the playfulness, taking it to quieter moments with the occasional pause, then up again moving it into darker realms, with growling multiphonics and dramatic piano-playing.

"This Love" is a quiet ballad, lead by the piano, gentle and mysterious, reinforced by the warm tones of the flugelhorn, deepening the emotional power of the piece, that is at the same time open-ended and determined, a strange kind of paradox that gives the music a special quality, as if certainty and uncertainty are both at play.

"Hymn To The Unknown" is dark and brooding, a typical Santos Silva composition, on which the eery trumpet tones are supported by deep rumbling in the piano's interior, a piece that keeps evolving in tone and nature, with open spaces, small percussion by Draksler on the strings, evolving into lightness and quiet beauty.

"Foolish Little Something" is a playful unison high tempo piece with rhythmical complexities thrown in to increase the fun, with an atonal chaotic middle part, a nice collision of ideas, and quieting down towards the end.

"Forgotten Lands" I would call a typical Draksler composition, clever and disciplined and fresh, built around arpeggio chords for the left hand, and post-boppish phrases with the right, sweet and somewhat nostalgic, and again the trumpet's deep tones add a wonderful addition to the composition, making the piece both jubilant and solemn.

"You Persevere" ends the album with again an open duo improvisation, one which uses more extended techniques on both instruments, more adventurous in nature, and really strong, with Santos Silva demonstrating her incredible sonic skills on the trumpet, not to show off, but to create an uncanny and eery soundscape, supported by a piano that produces apparently endless sustained notes and percussive scraping.

I would suggest you listen for yourself. Both young artists have produced an album worth looking for, with music that is on the one hand balanced and controlled, and at the same time adventurous and exploring, and in doing so creating strong musical and emotional contrasts, often within the same composition of improvisation, taking the listener by surprise, but then surprises of the pleasant kind.

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Karl Berger & Kirk Knuffke - Moon (Double Review)

Karl Berger & Kirk Knuffke - Moon (NoBusiness, 2015) ***

By Stefan Wood

Karl Berger and Kirk Knuffke's collaborative double CD effort, Moon, is a contemplative album of moody and thoughtful duets, trumpet and vibes (or on occasion, piano), mostly low key, using silence as their third partner in making the music. It is a result of a newly made friendship, formed while working in different groups for a tribute concert for Ed Blackwell.

The music has the trumpet and vibes at times in close pairing, Knuffke's trumpet in a muted medium register while the vibes occupies a natural high tone. At other moments they play off of one another, quietly sketching intricate textures, almost abstract ballads. While this may seem intriguing, that there are two discs of this mode of playing may test some listener's patience. There is a sameness to many of the tracks, especially on the first disc. What breaks it, thankfully, is a wonderfully upbeat and boppish "This is What We're Thinking," a duet of trumpet and harmonica, and the final track on the first disc, "Travel East," which has a Thelonious Monk like devilishness to it, a wicked theme that is created, then broken down and extrapolated by each instrument. The second disc has Berger playing more piano than vibes, which changes the playing dynamics slightly, as Knuffke stretches out a little more in his improvisations while Berger maintains a percussive grounding. It also intensifies the dreaminess to the sound, as in the excellent "Terrace and Trees." 

Make no mistake -- Moon is a very low key album, but full of calm, sonic flavors that engage an attentive listener. While I think the album would have been better as just a single disc, Moon showcases the talents of two artists from different generations in an intelligent and very creative musical discussion.

Karl Berger & Kirk Knuffke - Moon (NoBusiness, 2015) ****

By Paul Acquaro

I agree with my colleague Stefan's review, Moon is an intelligent and creative musical discussion, however, for me it is the quietness of the album that I find absolutely absorbing.

Maybe it is my state of mind, I am sitting here at my computer, close to midnight, finishing up some projects, I've had a glass of wine, and somehow, despite the din of the day and damage it wreaks, I am calm, and this recording has been playing in my iTunes for a while now ... its sumptuous space acting like a cradle for the thoughts that have leaked from my head.

Throughout the recording Knuffke's tone is spot on, his cornet has an edge to it that provides an excellent contrast to the softness. Berger, whether on piano or vibes, provides splashes of sound, hints of chords, fragments of melodies to give the cornet somewhere to go. Neither musician overtly leads, perhaps somehow they are both following, reaching a destination that they both eventually had in mind. I am not sure how much is composed and how much is free improvisation, but it hardly matters. The fluidity and confidence of these players, secure in their abilities and open in their communication, create a quiet delight on Moon.

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Wadada Leo Smith & John Tilbury - Bishopsgate Concert (Treader, 2014) ****½

[b]By Stef[/b]

It's a late review for an excellent album. No need to introduce the two protagonists, two men who come from totally different musical horizons, with John Tilbury on piano, classically trained, adept of Morton Feldman, and one of the founders of electro-acoustic music with AMM and Keith Rowe, and the other musician is Wadada Leo Smith, trained in jazz and gradually moving into free improvisation and even modern classical music. So you could say that both musicians will meet each other halfway between modern classical and free improv, and it is and it is not exactly.

First, John Tilbury plays a solo piece on two pianos, one prepared and the other not, in the typical minimalist style that you can expect from him, with precise and carefully delivered notes creating fascinating music around silence. Beautiful.

Second, we get three solo trumpet pieces by Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith, with a sound that is both rawer, louder and more expansive than the piano. His first improvisation oscillates between meditative spiritual moments with moments of wrestling and inner torment, followed by a more bluesy muted piece, offering more silence to work as the backdrop for his beautiful tone, which is shattered by the third improvisation, which starts by the piercing tones of the Middle Eastern zurna, switched into a clear-voiced trumpet again, and it becomes the most moving piece of the solo trumpet moments.

Third, both artists join forces, in the half-hour long title track, and then the real beauty starts, or at least the album that you would have expected based on the title. To the credit of both musicians, they find a new sound, one which is more nervous, more agitated than their solo pieces, with more attack and energetic interaction, with larger intervals, but luckily they let silence creep in again, as a third element, leading to more calm and intimate moments, followed by more adventure and extended techniques, and much more, yet without loosing the coherence of the piece. It remains interesting and captivating if only because of the variation on the core idea, because of the shifts in emotions and intensity, between darkness and playfulness (including Tilbury's bird whistle), between sadness and surprise.

Music can be so great in the hands of top creative musicians.

Available from Instantjazz. 

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Fortuna & Dys - Maciejewski Variations (DUX Recording Producers, 2014) ****

By Stef
Do we care about genres? No. Do we care about fashion? No, of course we don't. We care about quality, vision, authenticity, emotional power ... things like that. Last year we were already very positive about the collaboration of Maciej Fortuna on trumpet and Krzysztof Dys on piano for their album "Tropy".

The music on this album is inspired by the Polish classical composer Roman Maciejewski, whose brother Wojciech assisted Fortuna and Dys with original manuscripts to bring this project to a good end. Yet this is not classical music. They take Maciejewski's material and change it, improvise on it, like any jazz musician would do. Like on their previous album this leads to great results, sometimes rhythmic and jazzy, often more abstract and lyrical.

Fortuna's trumpet tone is of a phenomenal clarity and purity, while Dys's piano playing is exceptional, frivolous and precise, effortlessly improvising on even the most classical-sounding pieces. But probably the most important thing is that they seem to enjoy the music, dragging the listener with them in their world of controlled beauty.

 

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Reinhard Gagel & Mirio Cosottini - Pieces Without Memory (IRC, 2014) ****½

By Stef 

For some albums it is impossible to find information. This one is a great example. You find no information about it on the website of pianist Reinhard Gagel, and you find no information about it on the website of trumpet-player Mirio Cosottini (except for a first review in Italian). The website for the label is also impossible to find, if it has one.

So what's the point of reviewing the album if the chances to find it are pretty slim? Still, for the courageous ones, it is worth looking for it.

We've reviewed several albums with Mirio Cosottini before, of which two five-star albums. Reinhard Gagel was unfortunately unknown to me. Both artists are explorers of music, both in theory and practice, and educators, and their approaches merge here for the first time, as the result of three years of practice in the cities of Vienna,  Cologne, Arezzo and Berlin.

Their music is highly inventive, improvised on the spot, playing with pitch, duration, pitch and dynamics, leading to a very intimate cocreation of sound, with lots of quietness and silence to listen, to capture, to interact.

Gagel has his theory of "emergence", the systemic process which "due to interdependence and self-organisation of various factors, results in unforeseeable creative processes and structures". The interaction creates the structure, and the other musician is invited in. Cosottini's approach is one of "invariance" as he calls it. It could be described as the "nature of a quantity or property or function that remains unchanged when a give transformation is applied to it". So it can be with sound or even with the character of sound, which may remain unchanged even if it is altered.

Their music is hard to pigeon-hole in a genre, chamber music, abstract, classical, jazz, improv ... but lightfooted and creative, with often suprising sounds and wonderful interactions. They never fill the space, but leave much room to silence or to the other instrument, which makes the listening more intently, by both musicians and audience. The result is a beautiful economy of notes, delivered with precision and focus, never too much, yet also not minimal.

Intelligent emotions.

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François Tusques & Don Cherry - La Maison Fille Du Soleil (Cacophonic, 2014)

By Stef

A 7" single with a total of seven minutes of a piano and a trumpet improvising on a basic composition : 25£. Worth your money? Absolutely. With handmade sleeves, limited edition. The improvisers are pianist François Tusques and trumpeter Don Cherry. Too bad. It's out of stock! But the good news is : there's also a download version. On the second track Beb Guérin joins on bass. The music is sweet, beautiful, intimate, expansive ... and far too short.

But don't hesitate a second : you can listen to it and buy it too : here! ... and read more interesting stuff too.

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Trumpet and piano

By Stef

I like many ensemble formats, and depending on the mood of the day, some get preference over another. When you're in an atmosphere of quiet introspection, or calm availability, or intellectual sensitivity, the trumpet piano duet is often my preferred listening companion. Often, the technical quality is good, the chamber-like sounds do not force you too much out of your comfort zone, but you're still open for inventive ear-candy.

If you feel the same from time to time, I can recommend the following three albums, which also - in sequence - bring us from tradition to avant-garde, from jazz over neo-classical to music beyond conventions, and in my opinion, increasing the value of the outcome, from sublime entertaintment, over brilliant aesthetics to real art.


Dave Douglas & Uri Caine - Present Joys (Greenleaf, 2014) ***½

Of course we all know Dave Douglas and Uri Caine, no need to tell who they are. Douglas is jazz personified, and Uri Caine has been the tormentor of classical music into his own fusion idiom, and much more. Both of course have their references with klezmer too, as part of John Zorn's environment.

Here they bring us their own "present joys", a very jazzy album in the most traditional sense, with more rounded and finished compositions, based on the "Sacred Harp" tradition, choral music from the south of the United States, which they use as the spring board for own compositions, or for further explorations of the sacred with the very profane bar jazz, and they switch as easily from one to the other, presenting both in a very respectful, playful and sometimes melancholy manner.

Even more, both musicians dive really deep into jazz origins, bluesy, boppish, with walking bass lines, conjuring up the very foundations of why we all like jazz so much, then adding some more contemporary sounds and figures, embedded in the traditional song harmonies.


Maciej Fortuna & Krzysztof Dys - Tropy (ForTune, 2013) ****

The Polish duo of Maciej Fortuna on trumpet and Krzysztof Dys on piano is a real treat. Both are classically trained, and the latter we already mentioned as part of Waclaw Zimpel's band on "Stone Fog". The technical quality of their playing is absolutely superb, with Fortuna having an incredible purity of tone, and Dys having the versatility to tackle many challenges and offer subtle beauty. As they say themselves "it's too classical to be called jazz, and too jazzy to be called classical", and indeed, they merge both genres as if there was no distinction, shifting in and out of structure, in and out of harmony and rhythm, free to roam where it pleases them.

They offer us a very nice and coherent album, with moments of joy, of intimate melancholy, of playful fun and more exalted jubilations, yet always interesting, always engaging, offering a delicate solidity.

Does Tomasz Stanko come to mind at times? Yes, he does. But to the duo's credit, they manage to create their own sound, their own space, which is so inviting and welcoming, that no references are needed.


Peter Evans & Raleigh Dailey - Measure From Zero (Llama Records, 2014) ****½

This album was already reviewed earlier by Paul Acquaro, but why not review it twice? It can only offer more insights to the interested reader.

Of the three albums presented here, Peter Evans and Raleigh Dailey offer the most abstract, the most explorarotary outing, and there is no comparison with what Dave Douglas and Uri Caine do, except then for the feelings. Again, there are moments of pure aesthetic beauty, many moments even, deep expressions of melancholy or joy or distress or rage or even beyond those.

Evans gives a great demonstration of modern trumpet playing, using the broad scale of techniques to produce different sounds, unheard sounds while keeping his ears very close to the emotional content of his expressivity, including the overall sound of the interplay, that shifts between moments of intensity to quiet and contemplative phases. Evans whispers and wails and cries (listen how he even imitates the human voice, howling on "An Ax For The Frozen Sea"), and Dailey creates the context for that voice, sometimes eery, sometimes thundering, always subtle and precise.

Some of the tracks are triggered by pieces of literature, such as "What The Bird With The Human Head Knew" (by Anne Sexton), "The Third Invention" (by Leonard Cohen?), and the others I couldn't place, although the reference to "End, Middle, Beginning" (also by Anne Sexton), reverses the sequence of story-telling, which this music is all about.

"An Ax For The Frozen Sea" is in any case a quote from Kafka (also used by your servant as the title for his literature blog), which actually means that a book, or a piece of art by extension, should act like an ax to break the frozen sea in ourselves, and that art is pointless if it does not bring the reader or listener to deep emotions, however shocking or disturbing or revelatory or intimate or liberating. No wonder then that Evans and Dailey go deep, really deep, much further than conventions of this kind of chamber ensemble, without totally alienating the listener, quite to the contrary, they keep the listener glued to the music, exactly because it manages to connect at a deeper level than the pure musical form.


So, all albums can be recommended to fans of contemporary trumpet and piano, all three break the mould, and even if you have no open ears, I can still recommend the Evans/Dailey duo too, because I think it offers a great entry ticket into the real value and power of free music, demonstrating how improvised music can offer the strongest outcome.

The unifying factor of all three albums is that the six musicians demonstrate that with superb mastery of their instruments, and of musical form, and of interaction, real freedom of musical expression can be generated.

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Duos

By Paul Acquaro

Paul Flaherty and Randall Colbourne - Ironic Havoc (Relative Pitch, 2014) ****

Paul Flaherty and Randall Colbourne's Ironic Havoc represents quite well the forward thinking recordings being released by the Relative Pitch label. Like the Jack and Ben Wright album released earlier this year, this saxophone duo works the limits of their instruments to great effect, delivering an album that is both engaging and provocative.

Building from an energetic and splintered melody, the opening track 'Jumping Spiders' features Flaherty's uncompromising and thoroughly captivating approach. Colbourne's percussion serves as a wonderful foil to the sometimes explosive, and other times serene, work of the saxophonist. Colbourne's introduction to 'Bstry' is sets the stage for Flaherty's intense spiraling lines, it's a real highlight. This is not an album that you can put on in the background. It demands that you listen, hear, think and be absorbed.

Ben Bennett and Jack Wright - Tangle (Public Eyesore, 2014) ****

Public Eyesore is another adventurous and unpredictable label --two adjectives that also fit Tangle from Jack Wright and Ben Bennett. This saxophone and percussion duo has been working together for many years and their rapport shows. Wright, without reservation, explores the totality of the saxophone and pushes, and only sometime pulls it back, from the edge. Bennet is a sympathetic partner, providing atmosphere and support. The opening track finds Wright employing the more breathy and percussive side of the saxophone while Bennett gives the track texture and clarity. As the piece proceeds, Wright’s playing grows stronger and stronger building up excitement.

Like Ironic Havoc, this album too require multiple listening sessions. As a listener, you become more acquainted with the pair's ideas and how they they present them, and soon what at first may be uncomfortable, becomes more logical and sensible to the ear.

Peter Evans & Raleigh Dailey - Measures from Zero (Llama, 2014) ****

Changing up the instrumentation to trumpet and piano, we have the second offering from Llama records with the Peter Evans and Raleigh Daily duo. Measure from Zero is a another intimate and rewarding duo recording. Like the others reviewed so far, Evans is not shy about exploring the breadth and tonalities of his instrument.

The energetic trumpet lines are matched with equally measured responses from the piano. Track one, “spiffle”, grows into a fast-paced game of chase with the two musicians engaged in rapid fire dialogue. The pulsating tracks breathes with inventive melodies and the easier going quieter moments are interspersed perfectly with more outside and dramatic moments (like on the terrifying track ‘what the bird with the human head knew’). This blog has covered many of Evans' other projects, and it’s safe to say that we're hooked. On the other hand, Dailey is a new name (at least to me) and his approach to the piano is quite engaging. At over an hour of music, this is a long set that sustains musical interest throughout.

Brandon Ross & Stomu Takeishi - Revealing Essence (Sunnyside, 2014) ***½

Revealing Essence, on Sunnyside, is the work of guitarist Brandon Ross and bass guitarist Stomu Takeishi, and it is a big switch in approach from the duos mentioned so far. Besides the lack of a wind instrument, a difference is felt right away in the big round deliberate sound of Stomu's acoustic bass guitar lines and the clean angular melodies of Ross' acoustic guitar playing. Space is a strong element here, as is the slightly 'eastern' sounding modality, both lending the album a generous amount of breathing room.

The recording particularly exemplifies the sounds and contrasts of the instruments. Besides the acoustic guitar, Ross also brings in the soprano guitar and banjo to the mix. The character of these instruments are paramount, for example, Ross does not play the banjo like a “banjo” (traditional claw hammer or three finger style), rather he pulls the sounds out the brittle metallic and percussive sounds that come naturally to the instrument.  This is a quiet album, it draws you in as you listen closely to hear the sounds, the sparse melodic lines, and the pulse of the bass.

Bogan Ghost - Zerfall (Relative Ptich, 2014) **** 

I want to wrap up the set of reviews with possibly the most challenging recording of this set. Zerfall is an album that will cause you to re-think any previous notions you ever had about the possibilities of the electrified cello and trumpet. Comprised of Anthea Caddy on cello and Liz Allbee on trumpet, this electro-acoustic duo explores the extremes of their instruments’ sonic possibilities in a set of succinct tracks.

Using a combination of amplification, regular and extended techniques, the musical space they occupy is big. At the same time, the duo is not afraid of silence, in fact the first track is but a whisper building up to a noise laden extreme. Like the soundtrack to a psychological thriller, the music plays off emotions and works in a certain darkness. This is a stimulating album to get through, it's edgy and tough, and it will really open up your ears. Thank you!

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Angelica Sanchez & Wadada Leo Smith - Twine Forest (Clean Feed, 2013) *****

By Stef 

Beautiful albums do not need many words. Pianist and composer Angelica Sanchez has invited Wadada Leo Smith to join her for a duo album, recorded in April of last year. Sanchez is a member of the trumpeter's "Organic" Ensemble, whose "Heart's Reflections" also received a 5-star rating on this blog. Smith made one trumpet-piano duo album before, "Interludes Of Breath & Substance" with Matthew Goodheart, which was good, but this one is truly excellent. 

The great thing about the album is that both musicians are absolutely fabulous. And Sanchez doubly so, first for her compositions, which are inventive, abstract and open-ended, confident and sensitive at the same time, full of careful touches, very modern without going overboard. Second, her playing, is fabulous too. Disciplined and accurate and lyrical and fluid. She goes back to tradition, and in pieces like "Veinular Rub" - one of my favorites,  you can hear the blues as much as the modern cinematic composition, full of dark drama and sentiment. And of course the quality of Smith's playing no longer needs substantiation. 

"Retinal Sand" is one of my favorite pieces, because of its sustained tension, starting with some playing inside the piano supporting trumpet blasts by Smith, yet then everything goes quiet, but not quite, when cautious, almost hesitant chords force the muted trumpet to increase the volume, and the speed and the sad tone blossoms, opening like a flower, into clarity and playfulness. 

But my favorite track is also "Echolocation", with its beautiful middle section of single notes on the piano as a tonal center for the muted trumpet to circle around, minimal yet so rich, so rich. 

I will not review all eight of my favorite tracks on this album, but each one of them has its own story to tell, its own intimate conversation, full of warmth, openness and beauty. The stories are sensitive, sometimes with drama, and are human, about you and me, and other people, about sadness and joy, and everything in between, delivered with nuance and subtlety and depth. 

In the madness of our world, with all its violence, its anger, its noise and loudness, its shallow feelings and lack of time to listen to people or music - and I mean really listen to them - this album comes like an oasis in the desert, like a moment of silence in the chaos, a moment of calm in the mayhem. 

It will not only provide the listener with the joy of listening and getting enthusiastic about musical beauty, but the album is also guaranteed to have strong therapeutic effects, putting the rest of the world at rest, putting things in perspective and offer soothing solace. 


Available at Instantjazz.com.

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