Matthew Shipp - Nu Bop Live (RAI, 2009) ****½

The quality of an authentic artist is the relentless search for new forms of expression, something that will say more, or different things, and which cannot be said with the current tools of the trade. This includes taking risks, risks of alienating audiences, but also the opportunity to open new horizons for musicians and listeners alike.

Matthew Shipp is such an authentic artist, even as a solo performer on piano, but even more so with his various bands, with traditional and less traditional line-ups. His "Nu Bop" band is somewhere in the middle, merging free jazz with electronics, lyricism with dissonance, composition with free improvisation. The band is one of the best around, with Daniel Carter on sax, William Parker on bass, and Guillermo E. Brown on drums and electronics. Three of the six tracks on this live album also appeared on the studio version dating from 2004: "Nu Bop", "Rocket Shipp", and "Nu Abstract", with the latter taking up half the performance, but the compositions get a totally different approach and delivery, more direct and less "manipulated" than the studio album.

The album starts with "Nu Bop",with an expressionist piano intro. When Carter joins, he seems to be playing in a different piece, against the rhythm and the composition's feel, slow and detached against the powerful drive of the rhythm section. But then he almost literally gets sucked up in their maelstrom, blowing fully integrated and in sync, just to detach himself again later. "From The Otherside Of Anywhere" is an eight minute long drum improvisation by Brown, and although I'm not a fan of drum solos, this one is worth listening to attentively.

The pièce-de-résistance is of course "Nu Abstract", which gives Shipp himself ample space to improvise and show his talent on the piano. It starts eery and impressionistic, only supported by Brown's percussion and electronics. Parker joins on arco, to add shade and depth, and after a while Carter enters too, but still on the background, increasing the intensity, equally abstract and without form, until Shipp takes the band with some low pounding chords into the same momentum, driving them forward hard, then releasing the tension until only fragile vulnerability remains. This shift between power and sensitivity, between density and lightness of texture repeats itself a few times, varying in delivery between harmonic and dissonant, with Carter absolutely stunning toward the end of the piece.

The last piece, "Virgin Complex", earlier to be heard on "Harmony & Abyss", again shows Shipp's lyricism at his best: a hypnotic theme forms the basis for an arco improvisation by Parker, over which Carter weaves a beautiful solo, functionally supported by Brown, together slowing down and phasing out. 

An excellent album.

Listen to an excerpt from Virgin Complex



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Two nights with Sabir Mateen

Saxophonist Sabir Mateen is one of those musicians who have been playing free jazz since the seventies, playing with all the icons of the genre such as Cecil Taylor, William Parker, Daniel Carter, Steve Swell and Frode Gjerstad, to name just a few. With the latter two he recorded a new album on Not Two, and a solo album on RogueArt. He is a frequent player in the free jazz mini big bands, like the Little Huey Orchestra, Gjerstad's Circulasione Totale, and Earth People.

Sabir Mateen & Frode Gjerstad - Sound Gathering (Not Two, 2010) ***

On this album, Sabire Mateen is co-leader with Norwegian saxophonist Frode Gjerstad, and with Steve Swell on trombone, Clif Jackson on bass and David Gould on drums. On the long first track, Swell's trombone is one of the strongest voice, both in volume and presence, wailing in all emotional registers, from distress to sadness, with the two saxes adding appropriate background support, but the piece becomes strongest when the saxes do their solo-thing. Otherwise there are lots of dialogues and trialogues, and as the title of the album indicates, this is more about sound that about lyricism. That changes with the second piece, when Mateen picks up his flute for a hesitant, almost fragile slowly moving forward tune. With the third piece we're back in high intensity territory, a kind of jubilant blowing fest. You get the gist: wild interaction reigns, lots of dense interplay, but in my opinion a little lacking in focus and real musical vision.


Sabir Mateen - URDLA XXX (RogueArt, 2010) ****

Recorded live on October 11, 2008 at URDLA in Vileurbanne, France, Mateen brings this wonderful solo album. To my knowledge this is his first, but I may be wrong. After listening to "Sound Gathering", this album is absolutely refreshing : it is sober, calm, yet captivating. He begins with some African (?) chants, entering from the dark depths of the stage, approaching the mikes, an incantation that sets the scene for two alto clarinet pieces. "Music is Sound" is a hard to understand poem, accompanied by rattling bells, but the key message is "life is music, music is life, everything is music, music is nothing but sound", a call to action for the alto saxophone, urgent, full of distress and squeezed notes. "One For The Road" is a bluesy piece, in contrast to the previous "Sekasso Blues". "More Than A Hammer" is quite melodic and rhythmic, and increasingly so the last piece "Blessing To You". A nice and welcome solo album, showing a different side of the musician, but one of equal value.

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Watch nice video with Sabir Mateen

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Sax and electronics?

Jean-Marc Foussat & Sylvain Guérineau - Aliquid (Leo, 2010) ***½

Most albums with electronics have the tendency to work on my nerves more than anything else. So does this albums at moments, but you (I) need some courage to go beyond these first prejudices and to keep listening, because it leads to some rewarding moments.Yes, I was irritated at times by the a-musical sound of the analog synthesizer, by its industrial hardness, or its cheap 70s sci-fi television series imitation. But once you go beyond this layer, the end result is often quite powerful, and to a large extent the result of Guérineau's creativity and emotional power on tenor, driven forward by the electronics and forced to go beyond its natural language. So do the live electronics, building on the sax sounds, replaying them, altered, in loops, darkened, lowered, distorted, .... creating sonic nightmares, often in the background, sometimes agonizingly piercing its way to the forefront. It is weird stuff, not always easy to categorise, not easy to fathom either, but nonetheless, adventurous in a world I would not naturally go myself. Thanks for bringing me out there. It was worth the journey.

Tasos Stamou & Ilan Manouach (Absurd Records, 2009) ****

In a more minimalistic setting, Greek musicians Tasos Stamou on a variety of objects and electronics, and Ilan Manouach on soprano and sopranino sax, bring music of a weird beauty. The sounds of the objects create a repetitive pattern as the slow and almost inobtrusive background, over which the sax blows sound ripples, repetitive and moving outward. The whole thing becomes quite hypnotic, drone-like, but it has an inherent musicality that is usually lacking in the genre. The soprano does come across quite discernably, and it sings beautifully, often as a shining light in a dark electronic universe. At other times it conjures up images of endless agony from which there is no escape possible. Either way, it won't leave you indifferent ... and the album ends with some shamanistic flute-playing. Intriguing.

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Barre Phillips - Portraits (Kadima, 2010) ****

For his 75th birthday, Barre Phillips revisits his own concept of the solo bass album, which started in 1968 with Journal Violone. The album brings five disciplined, controlled and careful improvisations. Phillips is not noisy, he is not atonal, he does not use extended techniques, he is not about muscularity. He is all about tonal timbre, about focused freedom, about discovery and expansion of ideas in new forms, yet developed within a coherent set of possibilities.On the second piece, "The Dream", his powerful bowed intro is subtle and restrained, evolving into a hypnotic rhythmic pattern of bowed and plucked strings, but it's on "Up And Out", that the lyricism becomes more explicit, combining light-footedness in combination with the instrument's deep sense of drama, and his skills are such that he can do that simultaneously : impressive. The last, and the most accessible piece, is full of warmth and soul, full of gentleness and optimism, an adequate ending of a heartfelt performance.

The concert was recorded in 2001 in Graz, Austria, in front of an enthusiastic and listening audience.

Listen and buy from CDBaby

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Fred Anderson Trio - A Night At The Velvet Lounge/Live In Chicago 2007 (Estrada Poznańska, 2009) ****

I know it's my fourth Fred Anderson review in a couple of months time, but his 80th birthday resulted in some additional releases. So for the completists and the fans: here is another excellent Fred Anderson album, recorded live on Nov. 17, 2007 in Poznań, Poland, at the Made In Chicago festival, and just released on the Polish label Estrada Poznańska, and we can only thank them for that. Anderson is accompanied by Harrison Bankhead on bass, and Dushun Mosley on drums. There are no real surprises, apart from the fact that the album brings no less than seven tracks, ranging between nine to sixteen minutes long, so you get a lot of music, played in his typical free bop style full of rhythmical and lyrical soloing, once in a while interspersed with some slower spiritual moments. You can not but admire the man. His love of music is truly contagious. Impossible to listen to this without enjoying it too!

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Scott Fields Ensemble - Fugu ( Clean Feed, 2010) ****½

 Guitarist Scott Fields fits in his own musical category, trying to reconcile new music with jazz elements, inventive with musical structures and patterns, yet with an end result that is often very (too) cerebral and abstract. This album uses the same complexities, with odd meters and changing time signatures, and somehow it all seems to fit and work perfectly well. It was originally written for the dance ensemble of Li Chiao-Ping, and already released in 1995. From what I understand from the somewhat tiring liner notes is that the piece was never performed, and you can understand why, when listening to it.

That being said, the music is beautiful. Scott Fields plays nylon-string guitar, Matt Turner cello, Geoff Brady percussion, John Padden double bass and Robert Stright vibraphone. The shifting meters and the chamber-like ensemble perform with precision and clarity, keeping the music open-textured and thematically relatively free, despite the structure, that, implicit though it is to the listener, creates a sense of release when the puzzle pieces falls into place.The improvisations are excellent, and it's a pleasure to hear Fields playing guitar in a relatively straight-forward way, especially on "The Plagiarist", a very nervous and uptempo piece. The rest of the band is absolutely great, with the sound combination between the cello and the vibes working extremely well. On the long "A Carrott Is Not A Carrott", the interaction between Turner's cello and Fields' guitar is full of sad melancholy, the interplay between cello and walking bass on "Fugu" a pleasure, as is the careful precision play between vibes and percussion.

A real treat, and an excellent idea to make this music available again.

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Enterout Trio - Pink Ivory (Multikulti, 2010) ****

When the Cracow Klezmer Band stopped playing, I was sad, because I liked their combination of traditional music with jazz and classical, of the dark menace behind the joyful themes, the combination of melancholy and aesthetic beauty, combining entertainment with virtuosity. Now, the Enterout Trio, equally Polish, is here with the same ingredients, but making a different stew out of it, more jazz, rawer, more adventurous. No klezmer this time, but rhythmic, melodic and lyrical improvisations full of gloom and foreboding.

Piotr Mełech plays clarinet and bass clarinet, Adam Wróblewski plays cello, and Sebastian Grzesiak drums. With just the three of them, they alternate composed with fully improvised pieces. The first track, "Terminus", combines it all: a somewhat abstract intro evolves into a forward driven rhythm, with the cello's supportive drone setting the ideal backdrop for the clarinet's joyful theme followed by free improvisation, and when the rhythm slows down again, the drums goes and the clarinet and bowed cello converse in a modern classical way, then the cello goes forth on its own, full of vulnerable hesitancy and clear of tone, tearing the composition out of its pattern and pushing it deep into uncharted territory, yet without losing its inherent lyricism, and when the clarinet and drums return, they rejoin the - now mournful - theme. The improvised pieces vary between free improv and melodious creativity. The longest piece, "Księżycowy" ("Lunar"), is a gem, but then one of terror and madness, with a dark unison theme that develops into nightmarish improvisations and volumes of sound you wouldn't expect from a trio. A great album: excellent musicians and the coherence of their creative vision is even more impressive if you know that this is only their debut.

There are some clips to be found on Youtube, but the sound quality is so bad, that I don't share it.

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Paul Dunmall and friends

Saxophonist and bagpipe player Paul Dunmall is quite prolific. A rough calculation brings me to 160 records, which is quite a feat. On the other hand, Dunmall is this great live performer and improvisor, so his art is his unique performance on that place with these specific other musicians, nothing more and nothing less. His records are just the meagre testimony of his gigs, his real art and work. It is hence no surprise that quite a substantial part of his CDs are recorded live.

Paul Dunmall & Chris Corsano - Identical Sunsets (ESP, 2010) ***½

The first in the row is excellent, with American Chris Corsano on drums, best known from his recordings with that other bearded sax-player, Paul Flaherty. Dunmall starts the performance on "border pipe", a kind of bagpipe, and although I can appreciate Dunmall's use of this instrument in a free improv environment, it is not the sound I like most. But the track lasts only five minutes. The rest of the album, with Dunmall on sax is more to my liking. Both musicians play extremely strong, not necessarily powerful, but strong: using their skills, using varying levels of intensity to give the limited line-up loads of perspective and change, from highly voluminous percussive moments to slow and close to silent meditations, as on "Living Proof". Corsano is at his best in the more energetic parts, as on "Better Get Another Lighthouse", which starts with a long drum solo, after which Dunmall picks up the energy and literally plays up the storm. The last piece, "Out Of Sight", is less jazzy, more free improv, with unusual tones coming from both the drums and the sax, conjuring up strange sound imagery, but when the speed and power pick up again, Dunmall returns to longer phrasing, increasing the accessibility and the enthusiasm of the attentive audience.

Paul Dunmall & Miles Levin - Miles Above (Duns, 2009) ***½

On this sax-percussion duet, the drummer is of a different style. Miles Levin, son of Tony Levin, has a softer and more subtle approach to his instrument than Corsano, which leads Dunmall to be a little more gentle himself. The album was also recorded live, at TL's Jazz Club in Birmingham, during three concerts between October '08 and April '09, with each track clocking at a little over twenty-two minutes. On the second piece, Dunmall switches to soprano.The music is strong and expressive,quite enjoyable throughout, but for those who already have lots of Dunmall records, it will not add much.

Paul Dunmall & Paul Rogers - Repercussions (FMR, 2009) ****

Probably the best in the series is Dunmall's duo with Paul Rogers on bass, and this for various reasons. Dunmall is more challenged into lyricism and melodic variation because of Rogers' creative changes, both on arco and plucked, but certainly also because of the great interaction between the two soloists. Dunmall surpasses himself at various moments on the album, be it on bagpipe, soprano or clarinet. This is about as intense as it gets, both light-footed and dark, spritually uplifting and desperate, meditative and powerful, moaning and singing, hypnotic and serene, in short the kind of musicial contradictions that create tension and hence the joy of listening. The performance was recorded on 24 February 2009 at Unitarian Chapel, Warwick.

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You Had Me At Hello

"You Had Me At Hello" is a phrase from the movie Jerry Maguire, with Tom Cruise and Renée Zellweger, it is also a new sax trio with Alexandra Grimal on tenor sax, Adrian Myhr on bass and Christian Skjødt on drums. This French-Norwegian-Danish trio met at the Banff Centre of Arts in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, and they connected musically on the spot, sold to each other from the first "hello". Their first recordings are out now, on two 7" vinyl singles, released in 500 copies only, a pretty unique concept.

I must say, Alexandra Grimal is a saxophonist to follow, whether with her own trio, or with this band, she comes up with new ideas and powerful playing.

You Had Me At Hello - Meet Oliver Lake (Tonometer, 2010) ****

The first single brings You Had Me At Hello with alto saxophonist Oliver Lake. Grimal comes in strongly from the very early notes, immediately followed by the rhythm section, in a strong free jazz vein, without apparent structure but soulful and intense, preparing the ground for Lake's floating and fluent alto phrases, a little bit in the distance but powerful.The other side is more melodic and lyrical, less powerful but more hypnotic, with Lake playing a more dominant role.

Listen to "Mountain Emergency"

You Had Me At Hello - Meet Ab Baars & Michael Moore (Tonometer, 2010) ****

The second single has Dutch clarinetist Ab Baars and American (but in the meantime half-Dutch) Michael Moore also on clarinet and alto sax. The music is equally open in its possibilities, but somewhat more abstract and eery. The fact that the sax and the two clarinets float and dance around each other makes it also an interesting play with layers of sound.

Both singles are easy to recommend, but possibly harder to get, and even less easy to play: who is still used to change the sides of a single after a couple of minutes?

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David S. Ware - Saturnian (AUM Fidelity, 2010) ****

No need to introduce David S. Ware, nor to re-emphasize my appreciation for his music and his skills. Recovered from a kidney transplant, this solo recording is part of his "thank you" to the people who made this possible, and an ode to life. "There's a voice inside each saxophone, expressing different orders of Being. When you listen, learn to open your third ear. Listen for the voice inside the music. It will expand who you think you are.", is what Ware tells us in the liner notes. The saxophones are saxello, on "Methone", stritch , on "Pallene", and tenor, on "Anthe": three instruments for three lengthy improvisations between twelve to fourteen minutes, evolving from the shrill high tones of the saxello down the tenor's lower register. Despite their length and abstract form, the three pieces remain quite focused, also rhythmically, each with its own sound quality and color. On "Methone", the saxello adds a sentiment of nervous intensity and urgency, especially toward the end of the piece. "Pallene" is full of implicit rhythm and drive, more bluesy and melodious. But it's on tenor that Ware gets his full power: "Anthe" is full of soul, full of warm depth and distressed wailing, with shades and contrasts that demonstrate the instruments incredible range and timbral possibilities, at least in the hands of a master.

The album does not reach the same high levels as some of his recent band recordings, but fans of Ware will be thrilled by this live performance. It comes with the subtitle "solo saxphones, volume 1", so I assume we can expect more to come ... and we look forward to it.

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