Weekend Round Up: Bobrytskyy, Old Time Musketry, Ambrosio et al.

By Paul Acquaro

Stanislav Bobrytskyy & Mikhail Paramzin - Draft Communication (self released, 2012) ****

Keyboardist Stanislav Bobrytskyy, whom we first covered back in Spring, is back, and this time with guitarist Mikhail Paramzin. Like last time, the duo format seems to fit Bobrytskyy well, his playing is intimate and he is a supportive listener unafraid to state his own musical opinions. It is not without some self awareness that the album is entitled Draft Communication.

Listening to the track 'Kitchen Talk', you hear the two electric instruments engaged in a dark dialog, the guitar sticks to single note lines and some light extended techniques, while the keyboard weaves sinuously around the somewhat amorphous foundations. 'Beyond C. E. Shannon's Tablecloth' presents a much different sound. Still steeped in deep listening, the two converse in a more tunefully lush manner, the guitar tone still sharp but providing more tonal clusters to contrast with the keyboards.

Check it out, like his previous recording, he has it at Bandcamp page for listening and free download. 

Old Time Musketry - Different Times (SteepleChase/LookOut, 2012) ***½

Different Times is a well thought out album. It contains a nice mix of old-time jazz and folksy themes, while the tight group interplay provides a thoroughly modern jazz sound. Songs like 'Star Insignia' and 'Hope for Something More' begin with reserved melodies and build slowly with stately tension. The ensemble's playing is strong, compositions are often catchy, and the album has a sort of overall laid back vibe -- that is until 'Undewater Volcano' comes along, a rhythmically throbbing post-hard-bop-modern-jazz-like composition with the just the right touch of the shimmering electric piano.

The group is drummer Max Goldman, pianist, accordionist and composer JP Schlegelmilch, Bassist Phil Rowman and sax and clarinetist Adam Schneit, all currently located in the bustling borough of Brooklyn.

Check out 'Underwater Volcano' live.

Dave Ambrosio / Jacob Garchik / Jacob Sacks / Vinnie Sperrazza - 40Twenty (Yeah Yeah Records, 2012) ****

While we're on to modern jazz, this is a new group well worth talking about. Comprised of trombonist Jacob Garchik, keyboardist Jacob Sacks, bassist David Ambrosio, and drummer Vinnie Sperazza, 40Twenty is a nice document, a studio effort after a several week residency at Ibeam in Brooklyn last January. The resulting album is a fine mix of modern jazz mixed with a subtle reverence of the past and an irresistible energy moving it forward.

The blending is readily apparent in the opening notes of the kick off tune 'Jan 20'. The irregular rhythm is neatly offset by the trombone's jaunty melody, which itself is an instrument that can sound simultaneously nostalgic and avant-garde. And throughout, the playing is engaging and melodic. While sticking with the more established roles of the rhythm section, harmonic development and song structure, the group employs thoroughly updated techniques and musical devices to make this a real joy to hear, like Garchik's solo and the groups interplay on 'Soon Enough' and the abstract-isms on 'One Five'. Beautiful album.

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A Windy Season – Tidal (Amirani, 2012) ***½

By Dan Sorrells

The latest from Italian saxophonist Gianni Mimmo’s Amirani label is an unusual “wind quartet,” featuring Mimmo’s soprano sax along with trombone, trumpet, bassoon, and a handful of other breath-activated instruments. Though wind may get things off the ground, Tidal sticks pretty closely to its restless ocean theme, the music reflecting the tug and pull of the tides. The group is essentially unmoored, an inflowing and outflowing of horns with no rhythm section to keep them safely anchored.

Tidal is entirely improvised, but unlike a lot of recent free improvisation, there’s not much by way of extended technique here. And refreshingly, it’s not needed; the group creates immersive soundscapes through carefully selected notes, expert layering of distinct timbres, and a great use of the natural reverb in the Fondazione Remotti museum. “Humpback Song” eerily captures the feeling of whale song materializing from somewhere in deep sea darkness, while “Line and Its Fragility” jostles a mournful trumpet in increasingly rough waters. Alessio Pisani’s contra-bassoon (which positively thunders in “Amphidromic” and “Rogue Wave”) is an awesome inclusion, its substantial tone evoking the immense expanse of the ocean, or at times, even the weighty pull of gravity itself.

The album closes with the subtly sinister “Westerlies Tale,” a long, dark gale that funnels down into a beautiful solo spot by Mimmo before things are swept to their conclusion. Tidal is an impressive slab of music, and I look forward to more from these Italian musicians. The liner notes briefly touch on amphidromes—“mathematically” still points in the ocean where tides do not exist—and the cotidal lines that radiate in all directions from these points of stillness, of “silence.” Perhaps I’ll close on that interesting image: the idea of some silent, equalized point and then—suddenly—noise, ebbing and flowing, sound emanating, being pulled like fine threads by some great force compelling and unseen, but also familiar, reassuring.

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Vox Arcana - Soft Focus (Relay, 2012) ****

By Philip Coombs

There are some songs that have the ability to give my ears complete satisfaction. I say ears because, for me, they are the impartial average between my head's reaction to music and my gut's. These tracks give a completeness if you will. Never longing for them to be longer or shorter. They keep my attention throughout their duration and they never let me down the more I listen to them. Most of the time they are the sounds that give the truest representation of that particular gathering of musicians in a room; a band defining moment.

'De Grote Olifant' is one of them. This is what Vox Arcana is. Simply put, Tim Daisy (drums and composition), Fred Lonberg-Holm (cello) and James Falzone (clarinet), but this is anything but simple. This opening track is a mash up of energy wrapped in a ball of free jazz which segues into a vast melodic landscape before diving head first into one of the best drum solos of the year. A must hear for sure.

Track two, 'Soft Focus', is another one. This is what Vox Arcana is. Simply put, Daisy (marimba), Lonberg-Holm (electronics) and Falzone (clarinet). Yes that's right, this is Vox Arcana as well. The marimba steals the show on this one early. Daisy brings the same power, energy and confidence to this instrument as he does the drum kit. He provides such a high caliber solo that this and the one mentioned earlier demand multiple listens. They literally had me on the edge of my bus seat smiling from ear to ear.

Both Lonberg-Holm and Falzone  are very in tune with Daisy's vision and perform on a very profound level where nothing is wasted and their narratives are crystal clear, for example, the feeling they draw from 'White Numbers'.

There are some real heady, mathematical moments on this recording, with amazing technical ability as well as some real emotional ones, with amazing heart. Falzone and Lonberg-Holm excel on this album when they wring out each note until it is exposed and vunerable. When you hear one side of the band, you almost can't wait for the opposite and vice versa, as the two different sides of the band are equally compelling. Simply put, Vox Arcana is Vox Arcana.

They pack a lot into a recording that is less than 37 minutes in length. With this, comes the challenge of being decisive and succinct in order to get the vision across and leave the listener's ears very happy, which is what they manage to do with authority on Soft Focus.

Can be acquired through Instant Jazz.

An example of head and heart from a couple of years back.

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Peter Brötzmann’s Chicago Tentet+1: Walk, Love, Sleep (Smalltown Superjazz, 2012) *****

By Martin Schray

I was early on March, 22nd, 2012. I wanted to have a good seat, like the one I had the day before. I put my jacket on a chair in the first row and went outside to have a drink. The weather was really nice, the days were getting longer and the people were enjoying springtime. The musicians were having fun as well, they seemed to be really relaxed, they were hanging around in a separate but visible open air backstage area, talking. Peter Brötzmann was smoking one of his small cigars, Johannes Bauer was enjoying a cigarette. Kent Kessler and Michael Zerang were laughing, Fred Lonberg-Holm was having a beer. Some aficionados were talking shop, Mats Gustafsson was selling rare vinyl to a dealer from Belgium. Everything was almost too flawless for this extraordinary event when Wuppertal was celebrating the 70th birthday of one of the city’s most famous sons with a three day concert at Café Ada. The stage was on the second floor of the café, usually used as some kind of dance hall, you could really imagine tango dancers floating over a patina soaked wooden floor. As a location for a free jazz concert it seemed somehow strange but it turned out to be perfect. These three days were something special – you could feel it, see it, hear it, you could even smell it. Everybody came to celebrate Peter Brötzmann. There were people from Russia, from Scandinavia, from the Benelux states, from all over Germany. Jost Gebers, Brötzmann’s long time FMP companion, came to record some sessions, film teams were there for documentaries and there was an exhibition of Brötzmann’s paintings and woodcarvings in a local gallery. I know it sounds like a cliché, but it was like a big family.

And Brötzmann wanted to pop the corks with his Chicago Tentet + 1, the greatest, awe-inspiring, mind-blowing, ass-kicking large ensemble in free jazz, at the moment consisting of Brötzmann, Ken Vandermark, and Mats Gustafsson on saxes, Johannes Bauer and Jeb Bishop on trombones, Fred Lonberg-Holm on cello, Kent Kessler on bass, Per-Åke Holmlander on tuba, Michael Zerang and Paal Nilssen-Love on drums and Joe McPhee on pocket trumpet and sax. If they are in top form they can do things you will never forget. The second day at Café Ada was such an event, Brötzmann decided to give the audience the full monty, two sets of the complete orchestra.

However, if you see the Chicago Tentet, you hardly see them play tutti. It is rather a combination of different combos being rearranged constantly, as if the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Cream and Led Zeppelin were simultaneously on stage.  The first of the three untitled tracks starts with Sonoré (which is Brötzmann, Vandermark, Gustafsson) before they are all of a sudden displaced by a quintet of Zerang, Nilssen-Love, Lonberg-Holm, Holmlander and McPhee  – it is like listening to the start of a landslide. This quintet is joined by Bauer and Brötzmann, later by Bishop and Gustafsson. This was the strategy the band followed that evening: starting with solos, duos, or trios, accelerating by adding more instruments, then reducing again – in absolute perfection, as if there were no transitions. Jonah must have felt like that when he was inside the whale, it is like watching a huge organism, with the rhythm section as the heart, incredibly strong, pumping, keeping the whole animal going, the other instruments as the organs working together in absolute harmony.

As to the music there were several magical moments. You could see that in Johannes Bauer’s face. When he was not playing, he was looking to his left and to his right, laughing, swinging, shaking his head in disbelief, smiling in admiration, being not only a member of the band but also a spectator who has the best place in the audience. When he joined in, his head had the colour of a red balloon. The final act of the first part of the evening was pure rapture. It started when Bauer, Bishop, Brötzmann,  Lonberg-Holm and Gustafsson ended their quintet with a heavy metal break and Lonberg-Holm started anew. One after the other Nilssen-Love, Gustafsson, Zerang, Vandermark, Kessler, Holmlander and Brötzmann (on tarogato) joined in. Then the brew was reduced to Sonoré and the drummers, Lonberg-Holm on electronics drops in, then the bass and the tuba, finally the trombones and the trumpet. Only here the whole band is in action but it is not loud and iconoclastic as you would expect, it is intimate, even mournful and tender.

The second set starts completely different. This actually is the perfect thunderstorm, fifteen minutes of sheer power and brute force on the one hand, pure vitality and joy on the other – all of it meandering from larger formations to smaller ones again. When Zerang and Nilssen-Love – the heart of the whale - start with a hellride duo on the drums and almost the whole group joins in this is one of the greatest moments of the album. After 15 minutes the group splits up to quintets and sextets and trios, Peter Brötzmann mostly watching from the side, some strange god contemplating what he has created. The first part of the set ends after 23 minutes (the tracks on the second CD have a strange arrangement which does not fit with the actual one that evening). The third piece of the evening was dominated by the brass section, Sonoré, Mc Phee and the trombone choir supported by a highly sensitive Nilssen-Love and a empathetic Lonberg-Holm on electronics – to die for.


After another infernal 14-minute-track and a short encore the crowd left Café Ada, you could see that they just had a divine experience. Outside I sat down on a bench, taking a breath, I looked up, between some clouds a clear spring sky opened up. Most of the people were to come back the next and final day.

You can watch the concert here:

Part 1



Part 2



But buy the album, really, the sound blows you away.

What was the most unbelievable thing about this event? Believe it or not: the third day was even better. Just watch the last ten minutes.




© stef

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Paradoxical Frog - Union (Clean Feed, 2012)

It's been a bit since we've done this, but Paolo and Paul both could not help bursting into spontaneous prose on this new release from Paradoxical Frog...

Paradoxical Frog - Union (Clean Feed, 2012) ****½

By Paolo Casertano

What a fascinating album! If you have the chance, as I did, to listen to it in a rainy day and with a pair of comfortable headphones you will be immediately catapulted and wrapped in a warm hug of long notes and dilated atmospheres, highly lyrical and dramatic, but never melancholic.

Every musician takes his time to distil few powerful notes. It’s just as if the three of them are there thinking a lot, waiting, feeling the right moment, searching the right approach to say something really important to their companions. And they succeed in doing this for the whole work. Kris Davis on piano chooses short, meaningful phrases. Ingrid Laubrock has a magnetic tone, whispered and mesmerizing. I’d say feminine, even not knowing she’s a woman.

Tyshawn Sorey impresses me. You perceive his monolithic presence. He can be silent for minutes and when his drumming arrives it is rhythm made flesh. Feel it in 'Second Strike'.

There are of course some more speedy episodes, as 'Fear the Fairy Dust', but the result is never frantic.
This is, among the trio releases I’ve been lately listening to, maybe the closest to a spoken conversation. I have no other words to describe it. They would.

If I am allowed to do that, I will steal two ways of saying from our Stef. 'Higly recommended' and 'this is jazz'!


Paradoxical Frog - Union (Clean Feed, 2012) ****½

By Paul Acquaro

Not so long ago at the MOMA in NYC there was a featured exhibition called "Stop, Repair, Prepare: Variations on “Ode to Joy” for a Prepared Piano." It was in a large open space of the museum, with stark white walls and high ceilings. In the middle of this space, there was a piano with a hole cut out of it just right for a human. At certain intervals a person would indeed emerge from inside the piano, reach forward and begin playing the keyboard while moving through the gallery.

When I first put on Paradoxical Frog's Union, this is pretty much what I imagined was happening. From a panoply of tones that you have to listen hard to attribute to their source, the playing begins from within the instruments, slowly reaching out and interacting with the space it's in.

Paradoxical Frog, in musical terms, is Kris Davis on piano, Ingrid Laubrock on tenor sax and Tyshawn Sorey on drums. Each brings a wonderful sense of tone, technical skills and compositions to the ensemble and this, their second release, is just fantastic. From the early formative sounds to the song snippets that emerge and dispel in their own time and space, the trio excels at creating music that is fresh and exciting while being warm and inviting -- if not also a bit challenging. Slower songs like 'Second Strike', a dark hued free-form melody stretching over washes of percussion and abstract comping contrasts beautifully with more upbeat and determined tunes like 'Union'. The combination of tempos and touch on 'Masterisk' makes for an exciting listen too.

Never unduly harsh, never overtly obviously, the songs unfold in their own lovely ways. The tones of Laubrock's sax, the splash of Sorey's cymbals and Davis' original and melodic playing come together so nicely here.


Take a look and listen:




You can buy the album from instantjazz.com.  

© stef

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Dave Brubeck (1920 – 2012)

Once Jazz was a black and white affair, as you can see from such images from TV ... keys on the piano, people playing and listening ...

But the music of the great pianist and composer David Brubeck has been always been made of many colors. The yellow of the introductory drumming, the blue of the involving piano patterns, the green of the easy and friendly bass lines, through the red of the sax theme.

Or any color you perceive in this kaleidoscope of love for the Music.

Because we are sure you’re right at this moment rhythmically beating your foots under the desk, or whistling, or snapping your fingers, or just feeling lighter, we know you will miss him as we do. 

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Joe McPhee's Po Music - The Loneliest Woman (Corbett vs Dempsey, 2012) ***

 By Stef

With its thirteen minutes and twenty seconds, this is a short album, with only one track, Ornette Coleman's super "Lonely Woman". The band is Joe McPhee with the "fine fleur" and "crème de la crème" of Alpine free jazz in the early eighties, Andre Jaume on tenor saxophone, Daniel Bourquin on baritone saxophone, Michael Overhage on cello, Radu Malfatti on trombone, Raymond Boni on guitar, Irene Schweizer on piano, Francois Mechali on bass, Pierre Favre on percussion, and Tamia Valmont on vocals. 

The track was recorded in Boswil, Switzerland on March 25th, 1981 and only now released. The eleven musicians make this a very rich listening experience, starting with the bass introducing the piece, followed by cello and guitar, who create a shimmering harplike background, then the horns set out for the grand theme full of sadness and hope. This then evolves into a chaotic moment of full dispair, with the piano giving some structure back, yet full of sentiments of hesitations and shifting emotions. Distress ensues, with McPhee's pocket trumpet soaring over the rest, pushing the band into near silence near minute ten, the moment for Tamia Valmont to start her vocal part, a wordless chant of sadness, rage and crushed expectations. The whole band picks up the theme again for the finale.

Certainly not the best performance of the song, yet a really nice one among the larger bands. The great thing is to hear it being played after thirty years. Fans should definitely try to get their copy.

And isn't this composition just miraculously beautiful?


You can buy the album from instantjazz.com.  

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Dark Poetry (Creative Sources, 2012) ****½

 By Stef

The title of the last - and fourteenth - track on this debut album is called "For Sale - Baby Shoes, Never Worn", and gives you an idea of the chilling darkness of "Dark Poetry", a trio consisting of Norwegians Dag-Filip Roaldsnes on prepared piano, Kim-Erik Pedersen on alto saxophone, and Tore Sandbakken on drums and percussion.

The approach is minimalistic, shimmering between normal and extended techniques, slow and ominous, restraint and intense, in the same category of Dans Les Arbres or Mural and other endeavours by fellow countrymen Christian Wallumrød, Kim Myhr and Ingar Zach. This younger generation is far removed from the expansive coldness of broad skies that Jan Garbarek or Terje Rypdal opened for us. They offer us intimate coldness instead, very close to you, very penetrating and moving, of things happening in your immediate reality, in your house, in your room, in your head ... disturbing, sad and bone-chilling.

It frightens at the same level as it attracts. It has a rare eery beauty, as discomforting as it is soothing. It creates environments as dark as night that invite further exploration, dragging you into the unknown with the expectation to understand more, to find meaning, yet the only thing you find is even more mystery, luring you even further into the dark.

And like with all good music, the listening journey is never over. You listen to it again and again, and it remains as mysterious and compelling as the first time.

Fabulous.



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Ron Miles - Quiver (Enja, 2012) ****½

By Stef  

Strangely enough trumpeter Ron Miles and guitarist Bill Frisell somehow fit nicely into the same category of musicians, and the fact that they have found each other is not a surprise. Both have a technical proficiency that many (most?) professional musicians envy, they share the same leaning for sentimentality coupled with a deep feeling of American musical roots and especially the blues. On top of all that, both are equally creative enough to transform tradition into modern form. Not free form, but one that is inventive and compelling.

The third voice on the trio is Brian Blade, a drummer of the same technical skills as his band-mates, and who miraculously adds the same feeling to the music as the other two artists.

If some of Ron Miles' previous albums were too mainstream to my taste, they still could be appreciated for the quality of the music and of the playing. His duo album with Frisell - Heaven - was also excellent, but too mellow at times for me to bear. Blade's contribution pushes the entire process into a more dynamic format.

Because of this, "Quiver", is now uplifted in an incredibly joyful and playful album with references to the entire blues and jazz history, starting with Jelly Roll Morton and ending with Ornette Coleman. As Miles says in an interview :  “And as much as anything, after a lifetime’s study, what this music has given me is a sense of the enormity of spirituality; of being American, of being African-American; of how privileged I am to walk that path and how much work I still have to do. There are so many people who’ve inhabited this music: living it, writing it, playing it, listening to it. So you just find a way to be you in it, to find your way in it. That’s what we’re trying to do on Quiver.”

He's too humble in fact. Three tracks come from the great jazz tradition, with tunes as wide apart as "There Ain't No Sweet Man That's Worth the Salt of My Tears" by Fred Fisher, "Doin' The Voom Voom" by Duke Ellington, and "Days Of Wine And Roses" by Henry Mancini.

The six other tracks were penned by Miles, and they capture the same feeling even more : a sensitive and inventive evocation of deep roots, full of dust and wide landscapes, yet intimate and human, friendly and easily switching from sadness to joy, two basic feelings that lie at the basis of most music, and that are also reflected in the form that is rock solid in the themes and harmonies, yet as free as it gets in the improvisations.    It's at times amazing to hear how the trio changes the piece completely upside down and shows all various aspects and possible modes of playing in a row, as if it's the easiest thing in the world, and all that while improvising and enjoying themselves. It all feels so relaxed and playful that it's hard to believe that three musicians are thinking and listening with extreme focus and concentration. Don't expect any of the fashional feelings of anger or distress or violence or even surpise and wonder. This is pure jazz, in one of its finest dresses.

And the overall result is stellar. Ear candy from beginning to end.


© stef

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HAPPY NEW EARS AWARD - THE VOTE IS ON!

The final list : a balancing act between various subgenres and innovative ways to take music and listening a step further, by coincidence - or not? - also offers a great spectrum of nationalities and instruments, genders and ages. This is of course a selection, and by definition an arbitrary one, based on inputs from specialists who only listened to a tiny fraction of what is available. That being said, there is at least some consensus that these are all albums worth listening to. The vote is on!

1. RED Trio + Nate Wooley - Stem 
2. Eivind Opsvik - Overseas IV
3. Tim Berne - Snake Oil 
4. Levity - Afternoon Delights  
5. Katherine Young's Pretty Monsters
6. Mikolaj Trzaska's Ircha - Zikaron Lefanaj 
7. Thomas Heberer's Clarino - Cookbook 
8. Eve Risser - En Corps 
9. Pão - Pão 
10. MMM Quartet - Live at the Metz’ Arsenal  
11. Stian Westerhus - The Matriarch And The Wrong Kind Of Flowers 
12. Evan Parker, Okkyung Lee, Peter Evans – The Bleeding Edge
13. Bobun - Suite Pour Machines À Mèche
14. Angharad Davies, Tisha Mukarji, Dimitra Lazaridou-Chatzigoga – Outwash 
15. Evan Parker's Electro-Acoustic Ensemble: Hasselt

You can vote between now and December 31, 2012 at midnight, when the winner will be known. Cast your votes, mobilise your fans, persuade the cynics, convince the indifferent, wake up the musical sleepers .... and have fun!

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