Scott Fields, Matthias Schubert - Minaret Minuets (Clean Feed, 2111) ****

By Paul Acquaro

There is a great deal of space for electric guitarist Scott Fields and tenor saxophonist Matthias Schubert to fill on this recent duo outing.

Clean Feed offers this description on their site:

"In the Minaret Minuets system there are two separate but equal branches: the electric guitar and the tenor saxophone. Composer slash instrumentalists — those roles smear — Scott Fields and Matthias Schubert find myriad methods to blend and contrast, to appear to be at one moment a larger ensemble and then to sound as just one."

I do not think I could have composed a better summation of the music within -- the tracks feel organically grown and composed by the spontaneous reactions between the musicians, running the gamut from tiny sounds produced by the acoustics surrounding the instruments to playing at their extremes. Without the grounding of bass or percussion and sans any traditional song structure, all emphasis is shifted to the musician's interplay and sonic atmosphere.

For example, there is a passage about halfway into the extended "Will's Billy Beer" where the guitar melody skitters over light saxophonic flatulence. So intimate, barely making a sound, the woodwind's breathiness provides just enough subtle support for the delicate melody. Soon, everything from key clicks to short snippets of melody from the sax begin interacting with string scratches and muted pickings. It's the textures of sound bouncing off each other that make such sparse moments so effective. Their approach seems to capture emotions and subconscious thoughts more than overt statements.

But all is not calm, while there are great expanses of ruminative rambling, there are also moments of rambunctious raucousness. The 7-minute "Multi Trill" begins exhilaratingly - all skronk und drang - but eventually settles into a more lyrical flow. "Santa on a Segway" has moments of sweetness and synergy where the rhythms and tones between the two players meld delightfully.

This is a long recording - clocking in around the 75 minutes mark and while it takes some determination to sit through the whole event, it takes its time to unfold and contains many interesting passages that make it worth the listen. At any one point the guitar may be laying down a rhythmic single note figure and then drop in some chords while the sax bounces melodic figured off the morphing structures, then the roles may shift or transform into other shapes and sounds.

This is a conversation that never ends - it's one held in music and while there may be lulls and heated moments, there is no time when the ideas dry up.

Available thru eMusic. 

     

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Piano, piano, piano

David Arner Trio - Porgy & Bess (CIMP, 2011) ****

A little over a year ago, I was quite excited about David Arner's piano trio with Michael Bisio and Jay Rosen, called "Out In The Open". The same trio released "Porgy/Bess, Act 1" and now "Porgy/Bess Act 2", also on CIMP. The trio's take on the Gershwin classic is everything you could expect from Arner's light and precise touch, combined with an adventurous and abstract spirit.

I must admit that I am not too familiar with the original music, but that's not a real handicap to enjoy the music on this album. The themes and harmonics pierce through the improvisations once in a while, and you can recognise the stylistic elements of the mid-30s jazz, yet in order to capture the drama and the emotional levels more fully, the "soul" of the opera if you want, the trio uses the more dynamic grammar of today's jazz, and then pushing even that a little further into more expressive territories.

Bisio and Rosen are the ideal partners for Arner's now thundering, then sensitive piano-playing, often quite functional, with some though not much solo time, but with Bisio coming more to the front on the last track, "Lament", a duet between arco bass and piano.

Reverent for the original, yet utterly modern.

Listen and download from iTunes.

Matthew Shipp - Creation Out Of Nothing (SoLyd Records, 2010) ***½

Matthew Shipp's solo album "Creation Out Of Nothing", is a little bit in the same sphere as Arner's, bringing solo improvisations in his own typical and creative way, but with standards popping up every so often, including "Summertime", "On Green Dolphin Street", "Yesterday's", in between his introspective and abstract musings, full of a strange angular lyricism, of the kind that does not flow like Jarrett's, but one that takes strange turns and even less expected returns to the core theme, but all in one movement, as if it was preconceived.

While he is playing, you hear his mind working with the chords and the progress, playing games with the structure and tackling his own ideas sometimes in the process (but I might be imagining this as I can't read the guy's mind, obviously). He is at his best when he does not seem to think (and again I may be mistaken), when his lyricism flows out of pure sentiment and heartfelt emotions.

Shipp is a great improviser, with incredible musicianship and command of his instrument, yet his improvisations on this album often lack the necessary tension to keep the listener's attention with the music. His best pieces are his own compositions : "Patmos", "Gammay Ray", "Module" and "Blue In Orion", four compositions that already figured on "One", and "Wholetone", a new composition that will also figure on his just to be released double-CD with Michael Bisio and Whit Dickey. His own creations are a lot stronger and more powerful than his elaborations on the standards.

Listen and download from CDBaby

Alexey Lapin - Parallels (Leo Records, 2011) ***½

Russian pianist Alexey Lapin surprised me several times last years by his own playing and by the music of the various bands he played with : rich in scope, plenty of new musical ideas and with a willingness to explore with vision. Check him out via the search engine at the top right of this blog.

We find him now on a solo performance gig, playing fourteen pieces that range from the expressionist modern jazz to the avant-garde use of extended techniques. Even when he plays his piano in the conventional manner (using the keys unchanged), his improvisations are abstract, expansive and openended.

He surely deserves much more attention. A true artist.

Listen and download from iTunes.

Thollem McDonas - Gone Beyond Reason To Find One (Edgetone, 2011) ***½

Another one of these underrecognised piano greats is Thollem McDonas, equally uncompromising, equally visionary. This solo album consists of two long and one short piece, full of thundering and dense playing, alternated with moments of silence and sparse, barely audible notes puncturing the emptiness around him.

As a modern pianist, extended techniques are a must, always used functionally, as in the second half of the first piece, playing in counterpoint with his regular playing. If anything, he is a master of variation, tension, changes in intensity shifting from exuberant expressionism to more intimate finesse.

Listen and download from eMusic.


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Michael Bisio - Travel Music (Self-published, 2011) ****

By Stef 

A cold rainey night, with small snow flakes falling hesitatingly from the sky, and the best remedy for warming you up is this intimate solo bass album by Michael Bisio. I have written plenty of reviews of music with the bassist as part of the band, or even as leader of the band, but to my knowledge this is his first solo album. 

It is intimate, remarkably so, yet even on the arco pieces, which tend to be a little bit more epic, the overall warmth of the sound prevails. And it is all about sound, the deep color of gut resonating through wood. Forget about rhythm, the bassist's usual primary role. Listen to Bisio's cover of Charlie Haden's "Human Being" and you will understand that Bisio is close to Haden in spirit, and possibly has been all along : an innovator with a soul as deep as his tones of his instrument. This is far away from the physical playing of Kowald, or the abstract precision of Barry Guy, or the expansive drive of William Parker, or the epic lyricism of Paul Rogers  ... 

Bisio is himself : adventurous, yet soulful, taking his time to explore, avoiding shock elements or cheap effects, while at the same time avoiding the beaten track. Cautious precision, building his music around the empty space, and going almost in a dialogue with it, avoiding density or fast runs, but giving the strings the time to resonate in the full time it takes for the warm sound to gradually subside, to be followed by its successor, building harmonic sequences and some tension, just enough to keep the attention going, but not too much so that warmth is preserved.

His "hit single"  - "Nitro, Don't Leave Home Without It" also figures on the album as a very long an intense arco piece, the summit of the album together with "Oil", a very deep and slow bowed improvisation. 

Even when playing solo, Bisio is self-effacing. His personality, his technique, his skills are all there, but fully in the service of the music, real music then, with a depth that transcends the physical aspect of sound : it is so full of deep "human-ness". An absolute joy to hear, in many respects. 

 

 Listen and buy from the artist's website.

   
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Agustí Fernández, Barry Guy & Ramón López - Morning Glory (Maya, 2010) ****½

By Stanley Zappa

At its high points, Morning Glory is no less a musical achievement than the greatest of the great piano trios in our beloved music. Two that come to mind are the The Lowell Davidison Trio and Bill Evan's Sunday at the Village Vanguard. At their best Agusti Fernández, Barry Guy and Ramón López continue the larger, transcendent conversation begun by the players on those canonical recordings and could, for approximation reasons, be likened to a combination of the two.

Though few and far between, the low points on Morning Glory, most of which are on the live bonus CD, provoke the same shudder as the triumphant positivism of Bruce Hornsby. If you've ever come across a clump of brown sugar in your morning muffin that didn't get totally blended in, you know what I mean--hardly a disaster, but enough of an issue to keep Morning Glory from the full five stars. Such are the wages of tonality and song. Fernandez traffics in both.

Though fluent in a harmonic tartness that reminds me an awful lot of Lowell Davidson (compare Davidson's Ad Hoc with Aurora on Disc two) Fernández tends to disarm rather than agitate — that's where the comparison to Davidson falls short and Bill Evans comes in. A “Latin” rather than “jazz” feel is Fernández's gestalt, abounding with earnest, melodic sincerity that confounds much in the same way paintings by Titan or Raphael don't connect as much as they let you know what you don't know (cf. Oberg's accounting office).

In and of themselves, Fernández's themes and flourishes steer Morning Glory dangerously close to Windham Hill territory, let alone ECM. Fortunately, Fernandez is never given that chance with the ever vigilant Guy and completely capable López on the case.

As with all the Maya releases (and I have most of them) the embodied energy, care to detail and depth of musical statement is so evident, so resounding that I can't help but seize up when it comes to review them. Guy's contributions to music and the bass are so deep, it's hard not to sound like Fred Willard's character in Best in Show when talking about them.

Can Barry Guy make an ugly inappropriate sound on the bass or does audible genius squirt out every time he touches the instrument? Even if he has never once listened to Scott Lafaro's with Bill Evans (or Eddie Gomez's with Davidson), Guy continues to write the history of the bass in music in real time, in the same aesthetic trajectory and with the same remarkable fervor. We all know that with a lesser pianist Sunday at the Village Vanguard would universally be understood as a “bass record.” The same is true for Morning Glory.

There is every reason to believe that Guy's generation of bassists (I'm thinking particularly of Alan Silva and William Parker) not only brought the age of bassist-as-quarter note marker to an end, but also thoroughly exhausted their own conception of the bass. It's hard to think of a facet of the instrument that Guy himself hasn't explored, asymilated and made his own. (Add to that Silva and Parker and ask yourself what's left?)

In Guy's case, his musical dominion extends back to baroque music. Guy's bass solo at the beginning of Don Miguel draws liberally from a 400-year-old harmonic well, without sounding like the intro to Roundabout. And yet, for as inventive as his reading is of that tradition, it's Guy the improviser we salute and must unanimously acknowledge as a fully realized living master of the Bass. This recording is but one reason.

While López never eclipses Milford Graves' work on The Lowell Davidson trio, López never makes me cringe either—something drummers are predisposed to do. While Lopez never eclipses Guy or Fernández
either, we have to thank him for that, so let us shower him with ample points for the assists and support. Never once does he stumble or fall behind. His ease with quiet on An Anonymous Soul endeared me to
him for good. It's not like López is faceless in and amongst it all, he's just not writ quite as large.

Here's hoping there is at least as much economic as there is aesthetic incentive for this group to continue. If there is, we'll all be the richer.

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Agustí Fernández, Baldo Martinez & Ramón López - Triez (Emarcy, 2010) ****

By Stef

No doubt Spain's number one piano player in jazz is Agustí Fernández, whose playing spans the history of music, from classical over traditional jazz to avant-garde. Just to show the pianist's breadth, I confront this very accessible and almost Bill Evanesque album with Trio Local, reviewed below, bringing music totally out of the comfort zone of every listener, yet equally coherent as a trio performance.

This album's title is a kind of joke, referring to the word "trio", but also the suffixes of the three musicians' names, ending with "ez", originally meaning "son of" in Spanish. At the same time, it also means that they are "sons of the trio".

What you get on this album is Bill Evans, some Paul Bley, not much of Cecil Taylor. But then again, it's the trio's music, with broad references to music outside jazz : Spanish music, African music, Indian music. 

And of course, you also get a great cover of "Lonely Woman", Ornette Coleman's musical gem and gift to humanity, and not Fernández's first try at it, but equally impressive.

The music is improvised around clear themes and structures, often with great unison moments, and it is all about the joy of making music (and there is lots of fun to be heard), but also of joint introspection and meditation. And the remarkable thing is that it all quite fits well together.

Trio Local - Vitralls (Agharta Music, 2010) ****

The more hermetic Vitralls brings us Agustí Fernández on piano, Joan Saura on electronics and Liba Villavecchia on soprano and tenor sax. The album brings one long piece of forty-eight minutes of sound textures built around silence, lots of silence, and dark as the cover suggests. The title means "stained glass", as the kind that you see in ancient cathedrals, with barely any light passing through the centuries of darkened glass, reinforcing the uncanny atmosphere of mysticism rather than enlightening the building's visitors. The three musicians create an incredible level of tension and interaction with a total lack of lyricism, but more expressive than if it had, but for the end of the long live improvisation, when the notes of the sax seem to find a level of continuity and flow, but the electronics drag this sign of hope down into the deeper and darker corners with no light has a chance to survive.

And Fernández in all this? He lets you hear the sounds of the piano that were rarely heard: as percussion instrument, as screeching background clatter, as thunder without lightning.





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Memorize The Sky - Creeks (Broken Research, 2010) ****

By Stef

I was quite thrilled by "In Former Times", the second album by "Memorize The Sky", for its uncompromising nature and their adventurous take on the sax trio, a journey they take totally over the edge in "Creeks". The band is Matt Bauder on reeds, Zach Wallace on bass and Aaron Siegel on percussion.

And they add some electronics. Strangely enough, the album reminds me of John Zorn's "O'o" because of its fresh jungle and bird sounds, with one big difference, what Zorn does with melody and rhythm and rich instrumentation, is done here with sonic explorations and timbre and instrumental minimalism. Forget about melody, forget about structure, it is all about sound, more often than not impossible to describe its origin, light, ever so light. You hear bells, and prolonged tones, and some beats, and a whistling sound, coming and going, built around empty space, reacting to one another, like birds, or not at all, like water dripping from leaves.

Very few people would call this music, yet these very few are right : despite its lack of melody and patterns, it is beautiful, pure and fragile : it is the kind of thing you can do with sound, weave textures light like a spider's web, full of glistening dew in the morning sun.

It sounds like the new beginning of music.


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Jason Stein’s Locksmith Isidore – Three Kinds Of Happiness (Not Two, 2010) ****1/2

By Guy Peters

I have a soft spot for the bass clarinet. The quirky look of the instrument certainly has something to do with that. Also the fact that it has rather few practitioners and the realisation that some of them (like Rudi Mahall and Louis Sclavis) do tremendous things with it. Of course, there’s also the peculiar, bleating sound, especially in the lower register. As it happens, the latter is almost absent on this third album by Jason Stein’s trio, on which the leader does so much more than stressing the instrument’s extremes.

Like its predecessor “Three Less Than Between” (Clean Feed, 2009), it marks quite a departure from the debut “A Calculus Of Loss” (2008), on which Stein and drummer Mike Pride were joined by cello player Kevin Davis. The album continues the more traditional approach of the second album (on which bass player Jason Roebke replaced Davis), while sounding even more ‘traditional’. There’s not much aggression, dissonance and bleating going on here, while Stein’s lighter approach stresses the melodic qualities of the songs. Several of these have a carefree, almost breezy quality that makes the album a joy to listen to, without ever succumbing to blandness or predictability. And Stein sounds, more than ever, like a regular clarinet player.

Opener “Crayons For Crammy” immediately makes its case, with a catchy melody and appropriately subtle backing by Roebke and Pride. It is music with an original yet natural flow, creativity in abundance and a good-natured atmosphere. The album also has its thornier moments, like “Arch And Shipp” (starting off with unpredictable probing by the rhythm section and a venture into free jazz) and “Man Or Ray” (sudden starts & stops and an almost cartoonish atmosphere). These pieces sometimes hint at more radical terrain (just like “Cash, Couch & Camper”), but usually end up finding a refreshing balance between the tradition and the experiment.

To prove that the trio is still capable of setting the house on fire, the album also includes a live version of “Miss Izzy” (from the previous album), which has a tougher, more muscular style that ends the album on a forceful note. Make no mistake: these guys have the chops to move into any direction they wish to explore, but the willingness to include a more conventional basis and turn it into something exciting and entirely refreshing, as they see fit, makes it a compelling delight from start to finish and an album that only benefits from repeated listenings. If it were vinyl, I’d need a second copy in the meantime. Jovial interplay, gentlemanly adventure, an embarrassment of riches!

* The trio is currently touring in Europe at this very moment. Check out Stein’s website for the dates. For the Belgians out there: this Saturday, the band will play at Kunstencentrum BELGIE (Hasselt), along with Cinc (Vandermark/Lytton/Wachsmann).

Buy from Instantjazz.

  

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Joëlle Léandre Tentet - Can You Hear Me? & Trio (Leo Records, 2011) ****½

By Stef

Another treat from Joëlle Léandre, her 60th birthday gift to music lovers, two CDs in one set, with two totally different approaches, showing the various sides of the artist, and both equally compelling.

Both were also recorded live on two consecutive nights in Ulrichsberg, Austria.

The first one is a tentet recording, a piece which made Léandre quite nervous because she had not composed for a large ensemble for quite a while, being better known as a small ensemble improviser first and foremost. The fifty-three minute long piece is like a suite, with a string quartet consisting of Thomas Wally on violin, Elaine Koene on viola, Melissa Coleman-Zielasko on cello, and Léandre on bass, with a horn section of Sussana Gartmayer on alto saxophone and bass clarinet, Boris Hauf on tenor saxophone and clarinet; Lorenz Raab on trumpet, Bert Mutter on trombone, and completed with Burkhard Stangl on electric guitar and Kevin Norton on vibes and percussion. But it is one band in truth when you hear them. The music evolves from modern classical to avant-garde with rock elements, free jazz moments, strange atmospheres with spoken words overlapping each other, dramatic tension, the intensity of free improvisation, with changing moods and modes, in a tribute to her masters and role models: Morton Feldman, John Cage. The central moments of the composition please me the most, with the arco bass evolving into a menacing classical chamber string quartet, almost Michael Nyman-like, leading to unison trumpet and sax, hesitatingly, vulnerable, abruptly encountering a walking bass and jazz drums, supported by a great string cadence, evolving in absolute free expression of the whole tentet, cautiously, respectfully, then arco bass, with Léandre adding her angry poetry, jazz power and silent whispers. In sum, the composition brings a huge wealth of ideas, a strange compilation of instrumentation and styles without actually merging them, with accuracy and extreme discipline to keep things light, without overdoing it, a lifetime celebration of music. 

And good as the tentet album may be, the trio improvisation is absolutely stunning, with Léandre on double bass, John Tilbury on piano, and Kevin Norton on vibes and percussion. The music is minimalist to say the least, weaving the lightest textures out of sparse sounds, creating an unreal, primeval atmosphere of incredible purity, where sounds are dissociated from form, yet combined they offer the organic lyricism of life itself, before it actually takes shape. This doesn't mean the music is naïve or friendly, no, it can be harsh and dramatic, but almost without consequence, just as sound, arising and evaporating, leaving an imprint as context for the next sound, equally beautiful by itself, equally powerful, ..... fragile beauty.

Léandre has sometimes referred to herself and her instrument as the farmer using her tractor, but this music is among the most sensitive she has created, surely as the result of hard work and lots of sweat, yet the album shows you the artist as she learned to be from the start:  "Be yourself! Do it and go!". She did exactly that. This is her music. This is her musical journey compressed into two CDs.

The second CD alone is worth the purchase. The first CD alone is worth the purchase.

  

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Donny McCaslin - Perpetual Motion (Greenleaf Music, 2011)

By Bryan McAllister

Known for his work in Dave Douglas Quintet and Maria Schneider Orchestra, Donny McCaslin’s ninth solo release, “Perpetual Motion,” is a funkafied, spacey, electronic rock-jazz masterpiece. McCaslin’s playing is virtuosic, and his tight rhythm section provides the canvas for explorative improvisation from every member of the band.

Adam Benjamin is a mad scientist. If you’re not hip to his playing in some of the best bands in modern jazz, go check out Kneebody and Dave Douglas’ Keystone group immediately. On this record, his Rhodes and piano work provides the harmonic and textural support for McCaslin’s solos as well as brings life to each composition.

Tim Lefebvre, Uri Caine, Antonio Sanchez and Mark Guiliana each have a unique quality to their playing, and McCaslin has employed their talents marvelously. Each track has something different to offer, while at the same time the whole album retains a specific musical message.

This album is a total homerun, and I would obviously recommend it to any fans of jazz and/or fusion. I’ve been playing this album very regularly for the last couple of weeks, and I will not be stopping any time soon.


Donny McCaslin – Tenor saxophone
Adam Benjamin – Fender Rhodes, piano
Uri Caine – Piano, Fender Rhodes
Tim Lefebvre – Electric bass
Antonio Sanchez – Drums
Mark Guiliana - Drums
David Binney – Alto saxophone, electronics


Listen and download from Greenleafmusic.

  

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Emergency! - Live in Copenhagen (2010, JVTlandT) ****½

By Paul Acquaro

Japan's Emergency! is a powerful jazz quartet whose dual guitar attack of Otomo Yoshihide and Ryoichi Saito is irreverent and irresistible. Rounding out the group is double bassist Hiroaki Mizutani and drummer Yasuhiro Yoshigaki. Apparently the group does not play outside of Japan all that often, which makes "Live in Copenhagen" on JVTlanDT even more of a treat for purveyors of cathartic rock inspired jazz.

The opening song, "Re-Baptizum", slowly unfolds from a seemingly unscripted start while the electric guitars pierce and puncture the undulating rhythmic ground work. When the drums pick up with a uptempo beat, the guitars push and prod each other deeper into the distorted landscape. Sonic images of deep fissures, burnt hills, twisted charred remains, and the grotesque beauty of smoldering ruins follow.

The start of "Sing Sing Sing" channels Powertools era Bill Frisell with its simple lines cloaked in feedback and dissonances. The melody is rendered faithfully and then it all slips into slashing and burning. After a liberating improv, the quartet brings back the melody, and by the end of this quarter hour conflagration, lands us on the head, to the appreciative applause of the audience. Mingus' "Fables of Faubus" is also freely interpreted. The original brooding bass melody breaks out into more experimental excursions, while the guitars play off each other, crashing chords and weaving around the instantly recognizable melody. Rahsaan Roland Kirk's "The Inflated Tear" closes out the album. It begins with the edgily played melancholic melody and slowly devolves into a long feedback laden free-improv soundscape. Eventually the group jumps back into the melody line, but that too rapidly decomposes into a manic noise jam.

This album, with its three of its four extended pieces covers, keeps the spirit of the original tunes but brings to them an updated sonic palette. There are moments reminiscent of Jerry Granelli's UFB, moments when I think of Joachim Kuhn's Let's Be Generous and moments when I find it's best not to think at all. The energy emitting from Emergency! is invigorating, original and spirited.

Listen/download from eMusic.
     

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