Matt Weston – Four Lies In The Eavesdrop Business (self released, 2021) ****

By Fotis Nikolakopoulos

Even though every one of percussionist Matt Weston’s solo works is a deeply personal affair (performed, produced and arranged mainly by him), the main difference of Four Lies In the Eavesdrop Business from these previous ventures, like his last solo Tell Us About Your Stupor or his split album with Ted Byrne reviewed here, is that it is mastered by Jason Lescalleet.

As Lescalleet is a master of creating DIY atmospherics and an almost ambient sentiment, I get the feeling that his contribution has made Four Lies In… (which comes out as a double vinyl plus digital album) a totally different affair compared to Weston’s latest discography. We can say that a lot of the good percussionists right now expand the horizon of their work by adding elements who are not, so to say, so percussive. I believe Weston belongs to this category.

In those seven new songs that comprise the bulk of this double vinyl, Weston proves himself as a capable sonic producer, one that does not concentrate in the percussive elements of his art but goes out to find what there exists in areas like timbre, atmosphere, adding depth (plus a good production as well, I might comment) and even a strong cinematic feel.

Most of the songs last over than ten minutes, seemingly being sonic explorations or, as I would like to call them, small independent stories. I’m not sure if the electronic feel (unlike what we usually call electro-acoustic) of the songs, like in the small tale of 'You Tried To Fix The Paranoia,' shows how all of them were created before Lescalleet messed with them… In any case you will find yourself attached to its sounds and absolutely surprised by the sonic environments of all seven tracks.

This ambient feeling I mentioned earlier, makes Four Lies In…a sonic journey not just through any kind of percussion instrument, but by sculpting any kind of sound capable to tell –mostly as a linear narrative- a sonic story.

You can find this double album here https://mattweston.bandcamp.com/album/four-lies-in-the-eavesdrop-business

@koultouranafigo

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Guillaume Tarche - Steve Lacy - Unfinished (Lenka Lente, 2021)

By Stef Gijssels

What a pleasure to browse through this book on Steve Lacy. In over 460 pages it gives testimonials - and even essays - by musicians who worked with Lacy in various capacities in his life. It's written in various languages: primarily English (70% according to the publisher), French (25%) and Italian (5%). Next to testimonials it offers some interesting pictures, factoids, sheet music and even an overview of all albums that interpret music by Lacy. 

The texts and testimonials, sometimes short, some very long are by Steve Adams, Irene Aebi, Guillaume Belhomme, Etienne Brunet, Frank Carlberg, Kent Carter, Andrea Centazzo, Allan Chase, Alvin Curran, Martin Davidson, Jean Derome, Jorrit Dijkstra, Jean-Marc Foussat, Christoph Gallio, Ben Goldberg, Guillermo Gregorio, Phillip Johnston, Peter Katz, Suzanna Klintcharova, Gilles Laheurte, Vincent Lainé, Pablo Ledesma, Urs Leimgruber, Dave Liebman, James Lindbloom, Giancarlo nino Locatelli, Michala Marcus, Gianni Mimmo, Uwe Oberg, Roberto Ottaviano, Evan Parker, Jacques Ponzio, Jon Raskin, P.-L. Renou, Patrice Roussel, Bill Shoemaker, Josh Sinton, Bruno Tocanne, Jason Weiss, Elsa Wolliaston and Seymour Wright.

The book is not intended to be read in one go, but it's a great publication for some short reading bouts every day, full of personal anecdotes, little stories but also insights into Lacy the composer, the soprano player, the songwriter, and also the person, his dedication and vision on music. 

With humble honesty German pianist Uwe Oberg's first paragraph reflects what was also my first impression of Lacy: "I didn't catch the spirit of their music. I found Lacy's playing cool and reserved, austere, maybe not fast enough. Too little drama, not enough dynamics. And merely soprano saxophone. I was 23 and had never heard someone play like Lacy". Obviously that changed quickly, and he gives interesting views of what it means to play Lacy on the piano, how structure, themes and improvisation so unique to the saxophonist remain intact yet open possibilities for interpreters. He writes about Lacy Pool, his own tribute band, ending his text with the words: "I love to play Lacy because of the intrinsic logic of his music, the beauty of his lines, the vibrant radiance of his sound, his awareness for tradition, his eagerness to experience new things. And of course the unconditional freedom his music exudes". Oberg, like me, is no longer 23, and our tastes have clearly changed in the same direction. 

Canadian saxophonist Jean Derôme explains how he went to a music summer camp in France as a 22-year old, where Lacy was one of the teachers, and receiving Lacy's note books for the day with his handwritten music, each item dedicated to another artist, with a picture attached. The young Derôme ran to the nearest copy shop to copy the books, as a basis to start imitating his great example. Today, Derôme has his own Lacy project, called "Somebody Special", which released an album two years ago with Lacy compositions and songs. 

Dutch saxophonist Jorrit Dijkstra tells about how he received lessons from Lacy in Boston, and how the master started playing "raindrop sounds" on his horn, while watching the rain outside. Dijkstra asked why he played these particular pitches. "He answered, a bit mysteriously, 'because they sound like the rain'. I'm not sure if he had another secret theoretical explanation, but I immediately agreed that this scale ressembled the melancholic, droopy feeling of being in a rainstorm." Dijkstra revels in Lacy's compositional talent ("not just nice tunes with a cool harmony, or vehicles for blowing"), offering deep insights in some Lacy compositions such as "Existence". He also mentions that when he visited Lacy's widow, the singer Irene Aebi, she gave him scans of the 50-odd composition notebooks that Lacy penned. All the originals are now available for consultation at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. 

In a very long essay, French producer Vincent Lainé gives a deep analysis of Lacy's music (unfortunately for many of our readers it is in French) in which he mentions an interview with Lacy by Philippe Carles, "qui lui demande à quoi il pense quand il joue - un paysage, une femme ou des accords - le saxophoniste répond: "Non, je ne pense jamais ni aux accords, ni au changements d'accords. Jamais à ce genre de choses. En fait, je ne pense pas en quoi que ce soit. J'essaye seulement de suivre la musique, de rester avec elle, de ne pas la perdre de vue. Si vous la perdez, vous êtes dans le pétrin, vous en faites des gâchis, mais si vous ne la perdez pas, c'est parfait" ("who asks him what he thinks of when he plays - a landscape, a woman or chords - the saxophonist replies: "No, I never think of chords or chord changes. Never of that sort of thing. I don't think about anything at all. I'm just trying to follow the music, to stay with it, not to lose sight of it. If you lose it, you're in trouble, you mess it up, but if you don't lose her, that's perfect"). 

He also mentions the incredible amount of time Lacy spent on refining his music: "Le premier morceau composé du cycle Tao est 'The Way', en 1967. 'The Breath' suivra en 1969 et les autres l'année suivante. Le cycle est enregistré en intégralité en 1971, mais sans paroles, comme l'indique sans ambages la pochette de l'album Wordless. Ce n'est qu'en 1979 qu'il est enregistré en version vocale, soit '20 ans pour lire six poèmes'. ("The first piece of the Tao cycle is 'The Way', composed in 1967. 'The Breath' is from 1969 and the other ones the following year. The cycle is recorded in its entirety in 1971, but without lyrics, as indicated in the liner notes of the album Wordless. It is only in 1979 that it is recorded in vocal version, or to put it differently, it took him '20 years to read six poems')

Swiss saxophonist Urs Leimgruber writes: "Steve was not only a musician, he was a real artist and creator. He had a totally open mind toward any form of music, visuals, film, literature, dance. His definition of jazz: "We want to play like that, never mind the others, we want to play our own way - it's partisan music - we are the partisans of music"". 

Italian percussionist Andrea Centazzo mentions that "in this horrible pandemic 2020, sitting at home without gigs, I had the opportunity to go over about 300 tapes (!!!) which I had in storage without labels, being a total disaster at archiving my work. And suprise! I found some recordings left over from the duo and trio sessions! Once again, restoring the sound, I got enough material to release my seventh album with Steve, entitled Scraps". Who knows what more will turn up from other sources. 

It's impossible even to capture the wealth of information and the depth of the insights you receive here from many people who knew Lacy personally or who dug deep into his music, his philosophy, his admiration for Monk, and so much more. One of the fun aspect of this book is the enthusiasm with which it is written, as well as the creative angles used by some musicians to capture Lacy's essence. One nice example is Giancarlo nino Locatelli who writes a number of short poetic lines about Lacy, mentioning his last words to visitors at the hospital: 'Drop the bullshit and keep the tempo'. 

The few examples given above demonstrate that Lacy's legacy is still very much alive, and will continue to inspire and offer ingredients for today's music. 

You can order directly from the publishing company. 

A must-have for all fans of modern music. 

This is not the first book written about Steve Lacy.  Jason Weiss published "Steve Lacy: Conversations" in 2006, a collection of 34 articles and texts written about Lacy during his life. 

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John Zorn - Bagatelles (Tzadik, 2021)

By Gary Chapin

Disc 1 & 4  *****

Disc 2  ****½

Disc 3 ****

There’s a scene in Amadeus when Salieri is getting his first look at young Mozart’s scores. He reads through them as he walks into his studio. The soundtrack swells up with whatever piece he’s reading, and he falls into a reverie. The scores fall from his hand, the leaves of music like the leaves of a tree in autumn. My question is this: was Salieri translating the written word to the sound of violins, cellos, etc., in his mind? Was he imagining what it would sound like? Or was he reacting to the musical ideas in their pure form. Was he reacting to the musical notations as direct ideas, unmediated by timbre? I wonder because, what if those same ideas emerged not from a Viennese orchestra, but from a British band shell group, or an accordion orchestra, or a punk group?

I wonder because this— the question of musical ideas and their relationship to the enacted timbral experience— is one of the fascinations that infuses my love of John Zorn’s body of work.

In 2015, from March to May, Zorn set out to compose a new book of tunes (as he had previously with the three books of Masada tunes) and came up with three hundred. His goal was to compose tunes that were “more atonal” then previous tunes books, and to create tunes that would serve as heads around which improvisers could blow freely. Five years of performances happened with a wide and deep variety of ensembles/players, and then some “choice” groups went into the studio. The four discs of this Bagatelle’s box set are the first fruits of that harvest, the discs featuring, respectively, the Mary Halvorson Quartet, Erik Friedlander and Michael Nicholas, Trigger, and Ikue Mori.

No compositions are repeated in the set. I had hoped at least some would be so that I could make comparisons, to look at the impact of musician and genre and instrumentation on a tune. Still, ostensibly, all the tunes of the book are the same kind of thing. This isn’t a knock on the creativity of the effort. It’s just a fact that a bunch of tunes consciously composed as a set will have some sort of unity to it. Do the mysteries of timbre, idiom, improv upset this assumption?

Not only are the groups different players, they are playing from different worlds. Trigger is hard core/punk guitarbassdrum trio (forgive the sloppy taxonomy). Mary Halvorson’s is a two guitar post-bop/po-mo/free quartet. Erik Friedlander and Michael Nicholas are two free improv cellists in Zorn-land. And Ikue Mori is … Ikue Mori.

This is an extraordinary set. The tunes are clever, intriguing, and bewitching. In the “head-blow-head” sense they provoke great improvisations from great improvisers. The tunes are a conceptual core threaded throughout in the form of melodies that hold together radically different aesthetic experiences. It is the melodies that hold this boat together. The melodies “are” the tunes.

Guitarist Mary Halvorson’s quartet, with Miles Okazaki also on guitar, Drew Gress on bass, and Tomas Fujiwara on drums is easily the most joyous of the four. Halvorson is a dang national treasure, and while it might seem a thankless task to be her “second guitar” the two are having such fun playing off and with each other, and suddenly the fun is happening inside you. It’s the sort of fun that Eric Dolphy had in his compositions, with reckless, daring (as in “I dare you”) musical leaps across chasms of pitch, harmony, and timbre. The guitarists play freely with the envelopes of their instruments. Sometimes approaching the dry tone of “jazz guitar” other times getting at the ineffability allowed by effects boxes and metal melodrama and surfer surrealism. Gress is a dream (he always is), and Fujiware drives the whole band from underneath.

Friedlander and Nicholas’ two cello set (see this review talking about another of Zorn’s two cello project) begins with the sort of wide vibrato jump scare that Bernard Hermann made obligatory long ago. It’s sort of a calling card. Two free jazz cellos just showed up! Moving on, I am reminded very often of Friedlander’s work in the Masada String Trio. Does this make me shallow? It’s come to the point, I’ve heard so much Zorn ‘n’ cello that improvising cellos take me into a particular space — it’s an idiom. Though Zorn aimed for atonal, there’s still plenty of groove happening, and the two cellos shift from stabby-stabby to lush to intricate with facility. As with the two guitars in disc one, the communication here is a treat. These gentlemen are having a good time.

Trigger, featuring guitarist Will Greene, Simon Hanes, and drummer Aaron Edgecomb builds a bridge between Zorn the tunesmith and Zorn the hardcore/punk lover. I am not a hardcore/punk lover. Only a “liker.” I had not heard Trigger before, but when I tapped “play” it immediately felt familiar. I tracked it back to Zorn’s album, Insurrection, featuring different players with Julian Lage and Matt Hollenberg as paired guitars. The first tune on that disc, “Recognition,” occupies the same sonic space as this entire Bagatelle’s disc. But while Insurrection moves into different spaces, this disc does not. It feels like a case of “If you like this sort of thing, then you’ll like this sort of thing.” It further illustrates the fact that Zorn’s tune’s can occupy any idiom with startling success, even if that idiom is not especially interesting to me.

Which brings us to the Ikue Mori disc, which has left me a bit speechless. I am in awe. Mori “plays” a laptop for this work and the pieces have such wit, depth, knottiness, and complexity … it may be just that I’m not very familiar with electronic music these days, but I found myself asking, more than once, how is she doing this? Her sounds are “typical” computery synth sounds or instrument patches (which makes them untypical sounds for this context), and come in quantized fragments that have me wondering what is improvised and what not. Just as so much of Zorn’s work is found in cinema soundtracks, Mori’s work inhabits the space from 1950s electronica to “Song of Storms.” My intrigue and curiosity (i.e., ignorance) don’t form a barrier to loving this disc, which is in the purest sense one of the most beautiful sets of music I’ve heard in years, but drive me to listen again and again and again.

Zorn is in a race (consciously or not) to become the world’s most prolific composer (Zappa, Braxton, and Trad Arr are still ahead, I think). I once heard Zorn lament about folks likening the Masada quartet to Ornette Coleman’s original group. He attributed it to the fact that the two groups had similar instrumentations. But Coleman’s project through those Prestige and Atlantic years was creating weirdo melodies — wonderful weirdo melodies — within which joyfully free improvisors could fly (ditto with Braxton’s 1974 and 1975 recordings for Arista). This work, the Bagatelles, feels like part of the same project, and I kinda can’t imagine a better project to join up with.

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Ken Vandermark (x2) & Nate Wooley

Ken Vandermark & Nate Wooley - The Chicago Manual of Style (Superpang, 2021) ****

Ken Vandermark - Snapshots Vol. 1 (Kilogram, 2021) ****

By Kenneth Blanchard

Were it your ambition to catalog all the sounds that a saxophone is capable of producing, you might need nothing more than these two recordings. I warn you, though, you are going to have to invent a brand-new vocabulary with about twenty-seven thousand words. Best to start with some solid experience, say twenty years naming new ice cream varieties and pharmaceutical products. Then get creative.

Vandermark’s Snapshots Vol. 1 includes six minutes of solo saxophone, released on two sides of a seven-inch vinyl disk and digitally. Side A seemed to me the most adventurous, as I listen to a moment ago. The only sound I’ve name so far is martini glass on keyboard causing computer to studder loudly and percussively, alpha 14. That will leave room for lots of variations in this sound. If you like this kind of music, and I do, you must have developed an ear for the vocabulary of texture. What Vandermark does better than anyone in the business is use the horn as a percussion instrument. By this he divides the music into accessible segments and each segment presents a distinct set of variable textures. “In 20th-century music, a dot placed above or below a note indicates that it should be played staccato, and a wedge is used for the more emphatic staccatissimo.” I got that from Wikipedia. They’re going to need a barrel of dots and wedges for this one.

The second side is a little more romantic in the first part, while the second goes full Hymenoptera. Look it up. When it’s not buzzing angrily, it is snorting out short but vigorous bursts of steam. Just what I needed for this Saturday afternoon.

Ken Vandermark is a Swiss army knife of a jazzman. Not only is a virtuoso on the tenor sax and the clarinet, bass clarinet, and baritone saxophone; he is also a master poet when it comes to naming albums. Airports for Light (not of light but for light), Burn the Incline, Beat Reader (I recommend William S. Burroughs), these Vandermark 5 projects come to my mind as I sit on my deck. Turkey vultures are appearing against a well-lit cotton sky.

The Chicago Manual of Style, a title familiar to anyone who has ever submitted a manuscript for review, is a flawless manuscript. It is not easy reading at first, until you realize how the dialogue works. In Time Piece 1, around 3:39, both horns are sputtering fast when Vandermark goes into a series of sharp reports while Wooley begins a haunting wail. That exquisitely spooky sound will remind you of Albert Ayler’s Ghosts.

Brass trio with wind soloist lays down a wobbling machine tone that softens into a more emotionally stable fuzz, one horn sings in, and we get light, brief, knocks from the other. This seems to me to be the heart of the recording. A soft, high cry punctuated by breathy taps. We get a persistent science fiction buzz, a fully charged sonar display, that is romantically evocative at the same time.

'Back and Forth 2' has more of a morning traffic mood, though I am not sure whether it is Chicago or Machiavelli’s Florence. The sound fields lay on one another like colored scarves.

'Time Piece 2' had me thinking of a stopwatch as the enthusiastic chortling on the left earbud traded information with the pensive, deep-dish horn on the right (when the latter isn’t squeaking). Toward the end of the piece, Wooley fades back into a more ghostly tone.

This is marvelous. From the hollow plunk to the breathy series of taps, I don’t believe I can think of anyone who uses horns as percussive instruments better than Vandermark. I am not sure anyone knows what is inside a trumpet better than Wooley. I say, check it out.

Ps. If you want to see them work this magic, check out this clip:

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Bob Bellerue - Radioactive Desire (Elevator Bath, 2021) ****½

By Keith Prosk

Bob Bellerue - with Ed Bear (baritone saxophone), gabby fluke-mogul (violin), Brandon Lopez (contrabass), Jessica Pavone (viola, organ), and Luke Stewart (contrabass) - crafts longform amplified feedback-based environments on the six-track, over-two-hours-long Radioactive Desire.

Bellerue, who here contributes feedback, electronics, suling gambuh, howling, metal, and piano, has done some engineering work for Lopez and Pavone but has not previously played with these musicians on a recording. Indeed, while Lopez and Stewart appear together separately on NYC LIMINAL SERIES, vol. 1 , I don’t think any of these musicians have played together on a recording. Which is somewhat surprising, given that each of these musicians perhaps has a reputation of reveling in the noisier aspects of their instruments. And what’s immediately striking is the composition of the string quartet, rebalanced towards the low end with two basses instead of two violins and also balanced in having two - fluke-mogul and Lopez - known for their visceral acoustic shredding and two - Pavone and Stewart - known for their explorations in amplification, a kind of composition that reveals something about the music.

Because though these pieces swim in feedback and radiate electric, the possible harshness of these environments is always tempered towards emotive movement, rarely running wild and instead underscoring the fragility of what is often perceived as power in sound, a smart balance. There are exceptions, like in the bite of saxophone and violin’s twin snakes on the title track or Bellerue’s crashing Salmoneus in the beginning of “Metal Gambuh,” but I think the group more often subverts expectations of abrasion. Bellerue’s amplified gambuh a plaintive song and his howl more mournful coyote call than heavy metal growl, swaths of sound playing on some arcane catharsis similar to whale song, or the warmth of the organ shining more brightly than its distortions on “Organ Feedback.” I also found what I did not expect elsewhere, “Bass Feedback” accentuating the treble of the group or “Empty Feedback” illuminating the orchestra of its vessels rather than some singular sine sound. There are frenzies, sometimes a shearing squall of strings or the motor chug of bass with the tea kettle whistles of violin and viola and electric dinosaur roars, but I think more often the group plays in pulse, dynamic domes’ troughs and peaks intersecting among fishtailing feedback transitions and beating patterns, all accentuated by cathedral reverb, forming a polyrhythm of waves. Between denser soundings a kind of electric tanpura simmers, inviting the ear to parse the layers of its sonic mille feuille. It stands at a crossroads, of acoustic and electric, power and fragility, harshness and warmth, drone and frenzied movement, and sounds like some ovidian renewal through violence for it.

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Ed Jones/Emil Karlsen – From Where The Light Falls (FMR, 2021) ****½

By Fotis Nikolakopoulos

This cd, which came out after a forced pandemic hiatus for both musicians, is a slow burner. Track by track, minute after minute, it won me over so to say that it is (now that this year comes to a closure) one of the best duos I’ve listened to so far. I’m a big fan of reeds-percussion duos and have listened to a lot of them, but that makes is really hard to feel that there’s something new its time. This is one of those times.

Ed Jones plays tenor sax while Emil Karlsen is on percussion and drums. Their task is one the difficult ones. The sax-drums duo in free jazz and improvised music had, by now, built a strong tradition of masterpieces. Thankfully for them (and for us, the listeners) they choose to present their truth without follow a certain path or tradition. I guess the pandemic dystopia that has hit so hard all musicians played an important role on this. Talking to any musician right now you get the feeling that they need to play, that playing for them has the urgency that never had before. From Where The Light Falls seems like it was an important procedure for both artists.

I must say here that FMR by being such a prolific label has had some misses here and there. But the label’s recent years output is of the highest standard, making it one of the best in improvised music right now.

A duo by definition is a laconic statement when it comes to music. Still it is a totally different situation than playing solo. For me, as a listener, the key to a successful duo is not two strong individual voices but the interaction between the artists, the way they disavow their egos for the collective way of thinking and playing. Both the musicians here think and play in this manner.

The tenor sax can be intimidating and “heavy” many times. Pardon my minimum technical knowledge but as a listener I feel the burden of its jazz tradition plus that it can saturate a recording if the sax player feels like it. Ed Jones seems like the ideal partner. His playing is subtle, relaxed but focused on what Karlsen is doing. And how to respond. He improvises in short phrases blending melody in his improvisations. Karlsen has this ability of being the leader while he is not. Even though I’m familiar with his work, I am too impressed by his playing. The way he utilizes his drums, makes his percussion work so vital for this recording. He is definitely not the one who just keeps the tempo.

All eight tracks of the cd refer to a month, probably reference to the time spent during the pandemic. It seems that they took advantage of the time they had in isolation and this cd proves it.

@koultouranafigo

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Rodrigo Amado Motion Trio & Alexander von Schlippenbach - The Field (NoBusiness, 2021) *****

By Eyal Hareuveni

The Field is the second excellent album that Portuguese tenor sax player and bandleader Rodrigo Amado released this year, following his quartet This is Our Language’s Let The Free Be Men (Trost, 2021). The Field offers Amado’s Motion Trio - cellist Miguel Mira and drummer Gabriel Ferrandini, collaborating with one of Amado’s greatest all-time heroes and forefather of European free-improvisation, German pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach, the leader and founder of the Globe Unity Orchestra and his legendary trio, with Sax player Evan Parker and drummer Paul Lovens. The Field was recorded at the Vilnius Jazz Festival in October 2019, and Amado, who is also a gifted photographer, contributed the cover photo.

Amado told (Free Jazz Blog’s esteemed contributor) Stuart Broomer that he formed Motion Trio in 2009 and the von Schlippenbach Trio represented for the Motion Trio a model for what it was looking for in its own music. The von Schlippenbach Trio refines for the last five decades a bold and uncompromising abstraction of the jazz tradition (and von Schlippenbach is one of the most original interpreters of Thelonious Monk songbook), contemporary and roots music (von Schlippenbach incorporates compositional ideas of Arnold Schönberg and Anton Webern into his own compositions) into a new language of its own. Add to this inclusive vision the collaborative spirit of the Motion Trio, with trombonist Jeb Bishop (Burning Live at Jazz Ao Centro, JACC, 2012, and The Flame Alphabet, Clean Feed, 2014) and trumpeter Peter Evans (The Freedom Principle and Live in Lisbon, NoBusiness, 2014), and undocumented meetings with Steve Swell, Matthew Shipp and Larry Ochs, all emphasize Motion Trio confidence in its own identity and its openness to new adventures.

The 56-minute title piece of The Field is a masterful demonstration of free improvisation by experienced and strong-minded shamans of this art, an open-minded, coherent and organic one where the outcome is greater than its parts. A transcendental listening experience that suggests optimistic thoughts about camaraderie, collective artistic and social activity and the human spirit at all. Von Schlippenbach, 81 years old at the time of the live performance, bursts with fresh and articulate ideas and knows how to engage with or inform the idiosyncratic aesthetics of the Motion Trio with wise and insightful ideas, always with remarkable precision, and how to shift the intense dynamics and add timeless depth into it. Often he acts like a magician architect that instantly lies or removes the right blocks, creating a parallel harmony or liberating chaos. He often challenges the intense commotion of Amado, Mira and Ferrandini, as a trio and as individual improvisers, sometimes surprising fragile and emotional ones and other times patient and meditative ones, including the poetic coda. Amado sounds at times more rooted in the legacy of American jazz great tenorists than in his other outfits. And, yes, there are brief fragments where von Schilppenbach draws Monki-ish cyclical lines, and immediately answered by Amado who is well-proficient with Monk history with the great tenorists. Throughout this piece, and again and again, the Motion Trio and von Schlippenbach find their own conversational and well-balanced common ground as if this was not their first-ever performance.

The Field sounds like Amado and Motion Trio found their own field of dream with von Schlippenbach, full of wonder, passion and imagination.

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María Grand - Reciprocity (Biophilia, 2021) ****

By Lee Rice Epstein

María Kim Grand and Savannah Harris and Kanoa Mendenhall: a power trio is, by necessity, more than the sum of its parts. Over the course of her first albums, Grand worked with her DiaTribe ensemble, a core rhythm section with part-time expanded lineups. For her latest album, Reciprocity, hits refresh on the lineup and delves into some brilliantly exciting new compositional strategies. If that sounds overly academic, just know this band is on fire: swinging, funky, and blazing.

“The joy of being exactly who I am,” the opening vocal statement in round, is only one half of the album’s thesis, the other is the first word of the title: “Creation.” Reciprocity continues Grand’s exploration of womanhood, focused here on motherhood and her personal experience with pregnancy. Mendenhall and Harris embrace the journey, and each player takes both a supporting and leading role. The great band leaders know music’s more than a set of charts, it’s a shared spotlight, an opportunity to lift each other up equally. 

Grand’s journey through the spiritualism and physicality of womanhood and maternity is reminiscent of the polyphony of Glenn Spearman’s “Seed Sounds” from his classic Blues For Falasha, where Spearman likewise channeled parenthood, religion, and philosophy to great effect. Grand’s project is less musically hurried, with interwoven through-lines running the length of the album. The “Creation” series, for example, comprises half of Reciprocity, patiently laying out a kind of thesis statement for the trio itself. On “Creation, Ladder of Swords” and “Creation, Interlude,” Mendenhall takes the lead, making a clear case for the trio as counterbalanced unit, more than a lead-plus-rhythm section configuration. Mendenhall’s in the class of Nick Dunston and Junius Paul, the generation that grew up post Mario Pavone, Gary Peacock, and Charlie Haden, and she carries forward their tradition of melodically complex statements. Harris’s playing has the feel of Kenny Wollesen, and she is nicely highlighted on “Fundamental” parts 1 and 2. Later, on “Now, Take, Your, Day,” Harris gives the Rollins-esque melody a funk-rock jolt, pivoting to hard bop and back in lockstep with Grand and Mendenhall. 

Like the piano trio, the sax trio has both a longstanding tradition and seemingly infinite evolution. Grand, Mendenhall, and Harris slide effortlessly into this continuum, calling back and looking forwards with an imaginative, inventive dynamic. 

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Eddie Prévost Band - Bean Soup and Bouquets (Matchless, 2021) ****½

By Ron Coulter

Bean Soup and Bouquets is a 2020 release on Eddie (Edwin) Prévost’s own label, Matchless Recordings and Publishing. It is a live concert recording from February of 2020 at London’s Café Oto featuring a reunion of Prévost’s 1970s free-jazz quartet, the Eddie Prévost Band with Prévost on drum set, Geoff Hawkins on tenor saxophone, Gerry Gold on trumpet and flugelhorn, and Marcio Mattos on double bass.

Prévost is most widely known from his 55+ years of textural and atmospheric improvising with the pioneering improvisation group, AMM. However on this free-jazz outing, Prévost displays a rhythm-oriented improvisational approach and an instrumentation (drum tuning and cymbal sound) showing the influence of, and reference to, traditional straight-ahead jazz.

The album consists of three tracks of 40’52”, 24’08”, and 5’42”, minutes in duration and the audio quality is excellent for a live recording. This is not the wall-of-sound approach to free jazz, but rather an approach with a high sense of orchestration and a conversational type of interactivity. The quartet has a strong sense of large-scale development, or pacing, to their playing as they move sensibly between solos, duos, trios, and quartets in a fluid and unforced manner. Even in the two lengthy tracks of 40’52” (“Bean Soup”) and 24’08” (“Bouquets”) there is a swinging sense of forward motion, melodicism, and emerging structure that captivates the listener over the extended listening experience.

While Prévost and Mattos generally provide an abstracted, swinging rhythmic underpinning, Hawkins and Gold trade loose melodic lines that sometimes interweave and trade phrases in a call-and-response-like manner. However, both Prévost and Mattos have engaging solo moments as well. Overall, this is a great album filled with excellent, mature improvising from four top-tier musicians.

See: https://matchlessrecordings.com/music/bean-soup-and-bouquets

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Miguel Ângelo - Dança dos Desastrados (Porta Jazz, 2021) ****½

 

By Jim Marks

For his fifth release as a leader on the Porta Jazz label, the bassist Miguel Ângelo enlists his frequent collaborators João Guimarães on alto, Joaquim Rodrigues on piano, and Marcos Cavaleiro on drums. He also maintains his preference for program music, in this case, presenting the tracks in three “chapters” relating to the “clumsy” individuals of the title, who are imagined to be performing “possible traditional dances” (the concept is explained—in Portuguese and English—on a website, which also offers a whimsical video game interface for the music).

A fairly brief group improvisation introduces each of the three chapters. “Capítulo I” starts things off, setting a tone of anticipation announced by the piano and sax with some brushwork and bass notes in the background. “Era Uma Vez” then presents an engaging theme that develops into a groove with some tasteful soloing. “Caminho dos Perdidos,” another strong mid-tempo number, offers especially nice interplay between the leader and Rodrigues. The title track closes out the first chapter, with Cavaleiro’s cymbal and snare work cleverly suggesting the clumsy dancing while at the same time driving a clever, knotty solo from Rodgrigues and a lovely, birdlike solo from Guimarães. “Capítulo II” resets the program with a vaguely menacing exchange among the instruments starting with the bass. The two tunes that make up this chapter are somewhat more meditative than those in the first. “Valse do Solitário” moves along in a stately manner buoyed by Guimarães’ gentle tone. In “Soldado Desconhecido,” dynamics and interplay that give the track a cinematic feel. The saxophone starts “Capítulo III” off with a feeling of resolution that animates the closing tracks. The piano and bass join in a lovely duet to open “Vira do Avesso” before the sax and then the drums join in a recurring interlocking melody to convey the “inside out” feeling of the title. “Réquiem do Insignificante” rounds out the set, developing from a languid sax and bass duet into a gentle farewell from the group to the (now presumably weary) dancers.

Dança is a fine example of the benefits of sympathetic musicians playing together over an extended period of time. The members of the quartet clearly appreciate each other and know how to bring Ângelo’s compositions alive. Rather than fiery solos, the group creates and resolves subtle resonances and tensions within the tunes in ways that reward repeated listening. Like all Porta Jazz releases, this recording sounds great; fittingly, the bass is full and distinct whether in a supporting role or soloing, and all four instruments are crisp and well separated. Longish at 54 minutes, this record doesn’t drag but progresses satisfyingly through its three “chapters.” While never sad, the music suggests the themes of uncertainty, loss, and isolation in ways that are both timeless and, unfortunately, timely.

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