Guillermo Klein Y Los Guachos, Village Vanguard, June 1st

Posted on June 3, 2012 by Gordon

GUILLERMO KLEIN Y LOS GUACHOS
Guillermo Klein-p, Chris Cheek-sax, Bill McHenry-sax,
Miguel Zenon-sax, Taylor Haskins-tpt, Richard Nant-tpt, perc.,
Diego Urcola-tpt, Sandro Tomasi-tb, Ben Monder-gtr,
Fernando Huergo-b, Jeff Ballard-d

The Guachos, says Wikipedia, are mixed-blood (Spanish-Indian) inhabitants of the pampas of South America.  It was great to hear this underrepresented minority play at the Vanguard under the direction of  Gulliermo Klein, under-recognized but obviously super-talented and original Argentinian writer of orchestral jazz.

Among the guachos – Chris Cheek (tenor), Miguel Zenon (alto), Jeff Ballard (drums), Ben Monder (gtr). What a hip subculture. Surprisingly sophisticated musicians, given their geographical isolation from the nexes of jazz today.

Well, to my shame, I hadn’t heard Guillermo play until Friday, but he was a mainstay of the jazz scene at Small’s during the 90′s, which explains why so many great current jazz players in NYC were happy to turn out to play his extremely original but less solo-oriented compositions. The guachos band is a mini-big band, with three saxophones, four horns (with two horns doubling tb+tpt and tb+percussion), and a rhythm section.

The overall impression of the music was audacious, non-cliched writing. It takes a lot of confidence to assemble an all-star NYC band to play music that is structured more around ensemble music than improvisation. This could be my projection, as a former musician who preferred improvising to reading, but I love it when I see improvisers showing up to play charts.

I’m sure not sure if Klein’s music is great, but it’s certainly beyond category. Most tunes in the set avoided cliche – or avoided easy predictability – by refusing to give you what you expect and not over-featuring improvisation. At the same time, there were improvisational highlights: Chris Cheek on baritone, pushing the big horn to keeping his loping, langorous line near the beat, trumpeter/valve trombonist Diego Urcola threading a Brookmeyeresque solo in the fifth tune, and Miguel Zenon showing his showmanlike, blazing alto approach.

Still, the writing, such as his voicing on voice + horn and guitar + trombone, the mideast-flavored first tune, or various metric games played throughout the set, were the main attraction. Mr. Klein, please keep coming back to NYC.

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Colloquoy: Recognizing the Sound

Posted on March 15, 2012 by Gordon

I’ve always been fascinated by the fact that great jazz players are identifiable. In fact, I pretty much buy the orthodoxy that great players have a signature sound. What I’m less sure about is how we cognitively recognize some players, and not others. So I figured, ask Daniel.

GORDON: Say I put on a Keith Jarret Trio record you’ve never heard. After a few bars, you are able to identify it’s Keith and guess the band. How do you do that?

DANIEL: I think a lot of what we ascribe to “intuition” is really due to our having a much more sophisticated information intake system than we credit ourselves for. When you have a bad feeling about something, I think it’s less about some spider sense than your noticing that the birds have all gone quiet, or whatever. I don’t think its as arcane as we like to believe.

Identifying Keith Jarrett is much easier than, say, knowing to duck from an incoming bullet. There are just so many alterable factors, including rhythm, pedaling, touch (which definitely matters on a piano), dynamics, but also including things like preferred mic placement and the like, that it is remarkable how easy it is to determine a player’s identity. Even when we listen to musicians playing the same lines, there are thousands of things that they can do differently from each other (and usually do). When you deal with improvisation, player identity is even more obvious. The only reason I ever mis-identify players is due to my ignorance, and there is plenty of that.

GORDON: Which elements (such as timbre, genre, attack, and so on) are most important in identifying a player?

All of the above, really. I was going to except genre, but that would be disingenuous of me. It would be a total lie to say that genre doesn’t play a part; when you gave me that smooth jazz track to identify, I couldn’t recognize Chris Potter for the life of me because it never occurred to me he would do such a thing.

GORDON: How do we develop this knowledge? How important is it to hear players repeatedly in different settings? On CD and/or live?

Repetition. I know my sister’s walks from everyone else’s because I’ve seen them walk a billion times, not because they are wildly distinctive walks. Second place is actual active listening.

It amazes me how much more I hear live than on record, even through terrible sound systems. Possibly a part of that is how I am always hyper-focused as a listener at live shows, but mostly I think it is because you don’t have the recording equipment and engineers able to get in the way or muddle things up. Unless you have a really bad engineer, which happens too.

GORDON: Every time we see a new face, we scan it to see if we know that person. As a survival reflex can’t help trying to identify that face by decoding it for gender, age, ethnicity, attitude, and more. Do we do the same thing when hearing a new or unfamiliar player?

DANIEL: Well, if I don’t have access to liner notes, I just keep matching heard characteristics with my personal mental database to see if I can come up with a match. I assume I’ve heard the player, even if I cannot recognize him or her. I have great faith in my ignorance.

GORDON: Name ten players you’re confident you could name after hearing for twenty seconds or less. What is the giveaway in each case?

DANIEL: 1. Metheny. That amp setup, the holding-the-pick-wrong thing, the synth guitar and pikasso guitar. Not to mention his melodic choices. I am not a guitar player, but I’ve heard him so much and visualize his fingering when I hear him play.

2. Grant Green. Mostly due to his restrictive bag; especially this one figure he does in everything.

3. Eberhard Weber, due to his special bass, and also that driving tone he gets out of a fretless that most guys don’t have.

4. Coltrane, partially for the squawk but also those lines.

5. Don Cherry. He’s got an open-ness and earthy sensibility that is unmistakable.

6. Miles Davis, even the early fast stuff; mostly just due to knowing his choices inside out.

7. Terje Rypdal, for that sound he gets out of his amps and pedals. I’d feel less secure if he ever played without that sound, but he doesn’t.

8. I hate to bring up Jarrett again, but no one has his liquid tone but him. Well, maybe I’d have some trouble with some of the American Quartet stuff, but that would be it.

9. Michael Brecker, for tone, for sure, but also for that one bird-call lick he puts in everything.

10. Bela Fleck, but that’s cheating.

GORDON: What kinds of players or instruments do you have a hard time identifying?

DANIEL: The instruments on the lowest and highest ends are the trickiest, for me. Piccolo or contrabassoon? Forget it. Also, particularly dry instruments, like harpsichord, are pretty tough.

GORDON: Here are the names of ten highly rated contemporary players. Which ones are you most confident you could identify and why?

Esperanza Spalding: Not too confident, unless she was singing too.
Vijay Iyer: I was recently reading the drop-the-needle that Jason Moran did for JazzTimes, and he talked about Iyer’s predilection for descending lines. True that. But also, he’s got a detatched, thatch-y sound to be. I’d give myself a 75% chance to get him.
Jeff Ballard: Not confident at all. My ignorance, not his voice.
Mark Turner: I just heard him again this past weekend with the SF Jazz Collective, and it reminded me about the pre-Renaissance-like purity of his tone. Like he’s playing a soprano. I’d say 85% chance.
Stefon Harris: Harris was the only vibraphonist I listened to in the nineties, and I’m pretty into his thing. He’s got a more crystalline tone that most vibes players I know of, so I’d say 80% chance.
Gerald Clayton: He’s too new to me. Pretty unlikely.
Josh Redman: I’ve put in a lot of ear time with him. 75% chance, for note choice.
Miguel Zenon: I have a harder time with alto players than tenors. And I don’t know him too well… 25% chance.
Jeremy Pelt: Shockingly ignorant of Mr. Pelt so far… 0%.
Avishai Cohen: Hmm, I’d say 35% chance? I’m not confident that I know his choices too well, although I’ve listened to enough to have a shot at it.

By the way, I disagree with the notion that a great musician must be instantly identifiable. To me, some of the greatest playing is executed in the service of the music, which can (and sometimes should) subsume character.

GORDON: Could a computer recognize a jazz player? Could you write a program to recognize Bill Evans? Could a monkey, given enough time, recognize the great Bill Evans?

DANIEL: Lots of monkeys have recognized Bill Evans. Still do.

But, yeah, this stuff is absolutely quantifiable, I believe.

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Winter JazzFest 2012

Posted on January 10, 2012 by Gordon


Winter JazzFest is the way that you want to start the year. Your palette is destroyed by New Year’s celebrations. You have socialized with relatives more than is natural. You have heard too many Christmas songs in too short a period.

Along comes an NYC festival of jazz that promotes downtown new music, that is accessible to kids old enough to drink, affordable (day passes for $30-40), and breathes some young lion and old cat life into the tired club circuit. It’s a palette cleanser for the jaded. Kudos to the people who thought about doing this the first weekend of January, when early onset S.A.D. is manifest in the city.

This year’s fest was my first event and I heard a lot on the first night, less on the second night, when I was introducing my 2-year-old-son happily to basement jazz. More on that later. On with events, with thanks to Daniel to pulling info on musicians and bands, and more.

Friday, January 6th

Curtis Hasselbring’s New Mellow Edwards – Le Poisson Rouge

Curtis Hasselbring’s New Mellow Edwards (Curtis Hasselbring – trombone & guitar,  Chris Speed -tenor saxophone & clarinet, Mary Halvorson – guitar, Matt Moran – vibraphone, Trevor Dunn – bass, Satoshi Takieshi – drums & percussion, Ches Smith – drums & percussion)

Awesomely brainy jazz-rock from Brooklyn. Notice all the modifiers I used here. My comment to Daniel: “this music could only have been created in your borough (Brooklyn).” His reply: “This music makes me laugh.”

When I was young and naive, I lumped all fusion together. It’s all pop-influenced! Not so. Or yes, but pop is diverse. For example, some pop music is whiter than others.

What made Curtis Hasselbring‘s band super enjoyable was some of the classic features of downtown jazz: tunes actually written based on concepts (this is a hallmark of art), jazz-rock primitivism in the writing and instrumentation, a true improvisatory approach, and great musicianship. I really enjoyed the vibe player Moran’s solos, and Hasselbring’s playing. On the downside – as cerebral music it the was a tougher sell in the early post-dinner slot.

John Medeski (John Medeski – piano, pump organ, & end-blown flute) - Le Poisson Rouge

Medeski’s gig had a rapt, and much larger audience but as a non-fan, I had a harder time accessing the music. Freed from his groove-band confines (that’s a paradox, folks), Medeski seized the opportunity to explore a freer context, playing piano, pump organ, and a convincing flute, and the crowd seemed to be all ears. Truth be told I am not a fan of free playing at all unless it’s exceptional – ie. it has to be good enough to penetrate even a dunderhead like mine.

That’s my excuse anyway. I’m not sure based on this show, whether Medeski is accomplished enough a soloist to capture the attention like a Jarrett. Why should he be? He’s the consummate group player, more collectivist than egoist. To my ears, the ideas weren’t stark or fast-developing enough. The crowd loved the non-piano stuff more than the piano improvisation, which constituted the majority of the gig.

Nels Cline Singers (Nels Cline – guitar, Yuka C. Honda – keyboard,  Scott Amendola – drums & electronics, Trevor Dunn – bass) - Le Poisson Rouge

Compelling avante-garde rockish noise from a downtown icon. What makes this jazz, I wondered, peering through a crowd that seemed to have tripled even since the Medeski gig. Dunno. Jazz harmonies, sensibility, primary focus on improvisation?

Michael Blake’s Hellbent (Michael Blake – tenor sax, Steven Bernstein – trumpet, Charlie Burnham – violin, Marcus Rojas – tuba,  G Calvin Weston – drums) – Kenny’s Castaways

At this point in my first JazzFest, I was wondering – OK, when is somebody going to swing? That question was not exactly answered by the Michael Blake band at Kenny’s Castaways.  Michael Blake’s band, featuring the great Steve Bernstein and Marcus Rojas on the original bass, the tuba, was a raucous, artful downtown ensemble. To me, thoroughly interesting but not quite connecting. Or maybe not sufficiently visceral to penetrate my end of week funk. I have to admit it was great to see a serious jazz band play at Kenny’s, site of many junior rock band gigs. (My first NY gig was at Kenny’s in 1994 with a band called This Way Out.)

Saturday, January 7th

Laurence Hobgood (Laurence Hobgood – piano, Joel Frahm – tenor sax, Todd Bashore – alto sax, Brandon Lee, trumpet, Jared Schonig – drums, Matthew Rybicki – bass) - Le Poisson Rouge 

OK, this first gig on Saturday night was what I was waiting for. Full disclosure: my wife and I are lucky enough to be friends of the amazing pianist and composer Laurence Hobgood. But, I still have ears, and this kicked the ass of everthing else I heard that weekend.

Many educated jazz listeners know Grammy-winning Laurence Hodgood through his 15 year + collaboration with Kurt Elling in the KE Quartet. And naturally so, because that’s his major achievement. But Laurence also has some amazing trio records from his early years in Chicago with Paul Wertico, a recent meisterwerk with Charlie Haden, and has taken some of the arranging achievements from the G.R.E.A.T albums Flirting with Twilight and Dedicated to You (for which Laurence earned a Grammy for instrumental arrangement for a vocalist) and written a body of work for sextet that really tore up the audience in the first set on Saturday. Joining him for this gig was a collection of up-and-coming New York cats. A leader in seniority and beatific soloing was tenor player Joel Frahm.

Looking back on this gig, what made it great was not Laurence’s soloing, I am happy to say. At a KE gig, I listen to Laurence for his telepathic rapport with the singer, for his ability to swing, surprise, and take the audience to deeper emotional places. At this sextet gig, he sounded great as a player, but the focus was more on his music expressed through his writing, which took the form of some incredibly dense swinging writing in heads, horn section playing, and arrangement behind the solos. It was extremely swinging and fresh, really the kind of ensemble writing that I love the most, where the writer takes every opportunity to develop an idea through the 6-10 minutes of a tune and takes a lot of care to avoid jazz cliche, playing the changes etc.

The band, I think, only played four songs in 45 minutes but the crowd was totally into it. I saw head bops not evident the night before. The musicians were into it too, giving it their all, and playing the challenging parts with the kind of attention that this level of music deserves. Joel Frahm had a sublime, Buddha-like solo on the song with the Japanese name. He’s a musician who could transform himself from a per-excellence sideman to an iconic soloist if he’s not there already.

Lastly, I have to comment that this Jazzfest gig was made extra special by our bringing our 2-year-old son Ewan, who was bopping around during warmups and dutifully pointing out each instrument (“phone,” “piano,” “trumpet,” “bass”) as it made its appearance. I was triple digging the gig as we were both proud of Laurence’s manifest talent and our son’s ability to hang in the mosh pit with the diehard Six Point drinkers.

Unco Laurence! Piano.

I wouldn’t minimize the importance of playing music that a kid can be excited about; it’s a sign that the music is working, connecting, doing its business and giving us new spirit to face January ordeals.

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And thus ends the year of the rabbit…

Posted on January 6, 2012 by Daniel


Gordon suggested that, rather than review the year on record with the traditional ranked list, we just cite some records that we dug. I heartily concur; it’s not a race. Besides, I cannot pretend to even come close to having heard all of the jazz that came out last year, and any top ten would be disingenuous without that knowledge. So, below is my list of highlights. Mind you, these were only the records that came out in 2011… much of my favorite fresh for the year listening had been recorded years before.

The Chinese called it the year of the rabbit, and its hallmark are creativity, sensitivity, and compassion. Works for me.

P.S. I love how Gordon and I don’t have ONE SINGLE OVERLAP. Nice!

Bienestan, Aaron Goldberg and Guillermo Klein, Sunnyside Records

For me, the album of the year. Klein’s arrangements are simply thrilling, and the interplay with Goldberg is intricately beautiful. Very much in the tradition while furthering it along. Klein deconstructs tunes like “Moose the Mooche” and “All the Things You Are” into lovely shards of color like early-sixties sculptural abstractions.

Avenging Angel, Craig Taborn, ECM

Transcendent art without borders, this album showcases Taborn’s deft hand and intelligent polyglot approach. Ethan Iverson called this record “important stuff.” Enough said.

When the Heart Emerges Glistening, Ambrose Akimusire, Blue Note Records

I almost wanted not to like this album, since there was so much hoopla about it. But the stellar cast, smart compositions and assured voice of the leader won me over. This calls to mind another great opening volley, Don Byron’s Tuskegee Experiments. Required listening for the year.

James Farm, Joshua Redman, Aaron Parks, Matt Penman, Eric Harland, Nonesuch

Four open-eared masters just making music, and damn the torpedoes. Not wildly deep, but delicious. One of the great disappointments of the year was missing them at Newport. Next time, I promise myself.

First in Mind, Mike Moreno, Criss Cross

For me, Moreno is the one to watch on the guitar. He’s grown an incredible amount in the time since he’s hit New York from Houston, and it shows. I’m waiting for his break into the big time… if the records keep to this high level of quality, it should be soon.

Live at Birdland, Lee Konitz, Brad Mehldau, Charlie Haden & Paul Motian, ECM

Man, I miss Motian already.

Time of the Sun, Tom Harrell, Highnote

Cosmically fuzzed-out post-bop with a heavy quartal flair. Gordon didn’t like where the horns were in the mix on this recording. I hear Harrell and Escoffery together almost like an electric guitar in the tuttis. Great groovy rhythm section.

Balloons, Kenny Werner, Half Note Records

Werner writes tunes as self-contained universes with their own inescapable internal logic. This live set also reminds me why Patitucci and Sanchez get so much work.

Action-Refraction, Ben Allison, Palmetto Records

Allison is a strong compositional voice, and it’s fun to hear what her can do with a few pop songs. This is ensemble music, and more power to it for that.

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2011 in Review

Posted on January 6, 2012 by Gordon

The New Year has come and gone, so it’s a good time to review 2011 resolutions kept or squandered. One vow I had for 2011 was to keep better track of jazz right now.

How’d I do? In my mind, I was picking up new discs at alarming rates. In reality, checking out the many best of 2011 lists, I missed some important recordings, or at least records that everyone else liked. And some records I really got into, I found were 2010 records. Whatever. Amazon is now sending me the critics’ picks.

Here’s what I heard that I liked:

Weightless – Becca Stevens
I loved this record. Curiously original, reflective and slightly poppy music played largely by jazz musicians. I really dig Becca’s voice, even though it’s somewhat small, it’s focused and intimate and literate.

The Gate, Concord – Kurt Elling Quartet
Full disclosure – I like Kurt Elling’s music. So unlike some of his critics, some of dubious provenance, I loved this 2010 record released in Feb 2011. Intelligent rethinking of pop standards, some standard Elling + Hobgood intelligence, and some swing in extremis from Pattitucci and Kobe Watkins.

Keep the Faith – Mike LeDonne
This record documents a slamming Tuesday night regular set at Smoke. I can’t imagine a more nutritionally satisfying sound than Eric Alexander’s tenor backed by Mike LeDonne’s organ.

What is the Beautiful? – The Claudia Quintet + 1
This album is. Some other author on this blog has been pining for Kurt Elling to make a cat as a sideman to New York cats. Well, here you go! Unbelievably hip almost avante-garde arrangement and improvisation supporting Kurt Elling and Theo Blackman singing Kenneth Patchen. Almost worth it for the text.

For True – Trombone Shorty
The last time I went to New Orleans, I saw so many awesome street musicians I couldn’t believe it. Tromebone Shorty is heir to that tradition. This album really belongs in R&B, funk, and rap sections as much as jazz but is worth a listen to remember what great entertaining, balls-to-the-wall, improvised music can sound like.

Gladwell – Julian Lage
This sequel to the lauded Sounding Point release has Lage’s current band and sounds better to my ears – more convincing, more like a band. Lage’s playing is still sparkly and maybe a little too elusive, but the instrumentation, writing, and overall commitment is impressive. The whole thing sounds very Americana, like Bill Frisell.

To My Surprise – Mike Longo Trio + 2
I have a couple of records from Mike Longo’s 70s career, when he was MD for the Dizzy Gillespie band. On those records, he sounds authentically 70s, not a pastiche of that era – sounds like 70s jazz the way it was supposed to be. This record is patchier, marred by some less than excellent writing, but with Lewis Nash, Bob Cranshaw, and Jimmy Owens, it has some bright swinging moments too.

Graylen Epicenter – Dave Binney
This is a weirdly compelling record full of driving playing and quirky writing. It’s been way too long since I heard this brainy alto player – resolution for next year!

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Peter Apfelbaum’s NY Hieroglyphics, the Jazz Gallery, December 16th.

Posted on December 29, 2011 by Daniel

First and Second sets: Peter Apfelbaum – tenor saxophone/piano, Steven Bernstein – trumpet, Josh Roseman – trombone, Natalie Cressman – trombone, Jessica Jones – tenor saxophone, Tony Jones – tenor saxophone, Charlie Burnham – violin, David Phelps – guitar, Viva DeConcini – guitar, Patrice Blanchard – bass, Justin Brown – drums, Abdoulaye Diabaté – vocals.

 GORDON: This was my first time hearing any edition of Peter Apfelbaum’s Hieroglyphics group, SF, NY, or otherwise, and I had some mild apprehension about the gig because I knew Daniel has always dug this band. What if I didn’t like it? I had two Hieroglyphics albums but had never become a symbolistic convert.

No worries, mate. Ten minutes into the first extended tune I remembered everything that was intriguing and enjoyable and also evanescent about the albums and was also thoroughly enjoying a festive pre-Christmas musical treat.

What’s interesting to me about Peter Apfelbaum, which also explains why in my 20s and 30s I had a hard time accessing him, is that he is an auteur. He’s an artist with an original vision, someone committed to finding original sounds,  avoiding cliche, and pursuing his own artistic, non-commercial path while in unabashedly sampling an all-you-can-eat buffet of world music styles. Even though (or maybe because) his music is so personal, he seems to have found an army of musicians willing to help him play it.

Also interesting to me is that this is the rare big band in which the improvisation is really an organic outgrowth of the music. Apfelbaum’s big band has some great players, and many of them are good soloists, but solos begin and end as logical extensions of the groove and rarely have a “see what I can do” quality about them. I’ve seen many big bands in which big name musicians childishly look bored stupid for large chunks of the set, until they get a chance to solo. In the Hieroglyphics band, players bob their heads, check out other’s solos, seem to be listening to the writing, etc. and when it’s time to solo it feels like a collective experience.

As it should! In the diverse folk musics Apfelbaum draws on in his writing, a musical performance is more about some kind of social or religious celebration than an individual’s artistic statement. And somehow he has managed to create that ethos in his NY/SF coast to coast set of musicians. What’s in it for them? Not fame or fortune, considering the bleak economics of the big band. It must be love of the music.

Given this sunny summary, you might wonder why I wasn’t a Hieroglyphics nut years ago. Well, to me, the band presents a certain paradox for jazz listeners. The music is very organic and groove-based, so there’s a laudable absence of cliche. But that also means there’s less melodic development to hang your hat on. The music is very danceable but not so hummable, and thus perhaps less memorable. With collectively-oriented soloists, the vibe is always interesting but there’s less individual spark to capture the jazz listener who wants to be blown away by a tenor solo, for example.

Earlier on I characterized this music as evanescent, and in the best sense of the word, I think that’s a good way to characterize it. It’s more the sum of its parts than most jazz. It’s a powerful impression that is not easily accessible to analysis and interpretation. Hear it live and you’re captured by the vibe. It sounds like the world distilled through a west coast magpie man and his merry band of followers.

 

DANIEL: West Coast is right. Even though the group is billed as the New York Hieroglyphics, a heady percentage of the musicians are sunset’s children. And the music carries that imprinteur, in large measure unchanged from the band’s blood and thunder days. Apfelbaum’s compositional voice has remained instantly identifiable, although the newer tunes have more of an orchestral effect than the big band one that was the hallmark of the original incarnation.

I admit that this band has always represented, for me, where I have always wanted the large jazz band to head in the dawn of the new millennium. The aural connection to non-western popular musics (most obviously African) is genuine, and not merely the let’s-put-kora-in-a-band-and see-what-happens thing that ended up being the modus operandi of so many “world music” projects of the nineties. I’ll save most of my thoughts on Apfelbaum for a larger post, but suffice it to say that he is undersung by a long shot.

Gordon failed to mention one neat feature of the gig, the inclusion of griot Abdoulaye Diabaté from Mali. Diabaté is a perfect fit for the group, organic and emotive. His melodic bag is directly culled from traditional Malian music, and it is a testament to its intensity that it floated effortlessly above the throaty brass.

Twenty-some-odd years down the road, the Hieroglyphics remains, for me, an important band. It was great to hear evidence that they are very much alive and well.

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Gig: Dave Douglas & Sō Percussion, the Jazz Standard, December 9th.

Posted on December 13, 2011 by Daniel

First Set: Dave Douglas – trumpet, Eric Beach, Josh Quillen, Adam Sliwinski, Jason Treuting – marimba, crotales, drum kit, steel drums, metronomes, pump organ and other percussion, vocoder.

There was a good portion of Friday night’s audience at the Jazz Standard that was clearly puzzled. My guess is that they came to see “jazz”. Fair enough; the name of the club does promise some connection to the venerable vehicles for improvisation that are the lingua franca of such clubs all over the world. There were a few couples that were dressed up for a night out; my heart breaks a little when I contemplate how they must have felt, sitting in the dark and watching Eric Beach manipulate a collection of metronomes in an extended introduction to a cover of Carla Bley’s “Ictus”. For, despite whatever promises the audience thought it had been made, the set by Dave Douglas and Sō Percussion certainly wasn’t “jazz” with a capital Swing.

Well, Douglas himself certainly was playing jazz, or at least improvising in the same spirit and with the same vocabulary. Sō Percussion is more of a contemporary “classical” ensemble (gosh, lots of quotes in this “review”), and they wore their pedigree on their collective sleeve. It was more the Bang-On-A-Can style of classical, but classical nonetheless. In fact, I overheard marimba player Adam Sliwinski telling Douglas that classical music was fractured into camps as they sat at the bar prior to the set; clearly, this was where these guys make their bread and butter. And they do it with a panache that makes them fascinating to watch.

Unlike many percussion quartets, the members of Sō are not interchangeable on their various instruments. This gives them more of a sense of being a band, rather than a traditional percussion quartet. Often, you get a sense that classical players can be swapped out easily and with no discernible affect and this is not the case with Sō. True, Sliminski focuses on the marimba (although it’s one of those Corvette models that is becoming popular now – with more pitches than usual), but the others are more iconoclastic from a classical perspective. Josh Quillan’s primary bag is the steel drum, Jason Treuting was firmly planted behind a drum kit (less common in classical music, and played with a Dave King-like freedom) and the aforementioned Beach augmented his metronome playing with pump organ, laptop and other detritus. That a percussion ensemble should have a varied palette is not unusual, but a personal presence is.

The set was part of an event to celebrate Douglas’ GPS (Greenleaf Portable Series), a multiple EP project that he has been releasing in digital format. In response to great interest, Douglas has released the first three records (which includes a more traditional quintet and a Brass Ecstasy outing as well as the Sō project) in a boxed set. The event featured four nights of music, one each for the three GPS releases as well as a performance by Douglas’ Key Motion quintet. The project with Sō, this year’s Bad Apple, showcases Douglas’ trademark compositions and bears a marked aural resemblance to his Keystone band. In both, Douglas floats atop thick slightly-dour grooves performed by sensitive, mildly wonky ensembles. It’s a good formula, and while it is not as elastic as his more traditional bands, the format exposes the quality of his trumpet lines to a revealing degree.

Perhaps, as the fancy pants couples seemed to feel, this was the wrong venue for this show. There was a definitely Brooklyn-underground vibe to the set, which would have sounded out of place in some Dumbo loft or Williamsburg happening. The metronome solo referenced earlier could serve as a microcosm of the whole show; chittering polyrhythms that constatntly phased and shifted into different patterns. The only elements that gave the sound any weight, the trumpet and the drum kit, grounded the music somewhat. But the overall impression was one of trumpet+stuff, and that stuff tended to have considerably less heft than the horn. To compound this, no one aside from the trumpet soloed in a linear fashion, so the tunes tended to lose some energy after Douglas’ inventions were complete. This isn’t a problem with a bespectacled and black-clad crowd, but the accent on a funny syllable in the beer-and-barbecue context of the Standard.

Nonetheless, the set was characterized by wit and serious fun. Treuting’s drumming was appealingly earnest and twisted conventional drumming in surprisingly delightful ways. Beach was the doohickey guy, and held down a lot of quirky drones on the pump organ and bubbles on the laptop. Quillan’s highlight was an extended vocoder improvisation which set the other band members grinning. Sliwinski’s work might well have been evocative, but due to the micing was almost inaudible (at least from the bar, where I sat). And Douglas, as is always the case, controlled with a thorny and benign hand. If anyone could sell this project, it would be the undisputed master of chameleons.

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Gig: Christian McBride and Inside Straight, the Village Vanguard, December 3rd.

Posted on December 6, 2011 by Daniel

Second Set: Christian McBride – double bass, Warren Wolf – vibraphone, Steve Wilson – soprano and alto saxophones, Lawrence Fields, Carl Allen – drums.

“The largest re-tweet I ever had, had like almost 200 re-tweets, was I said, “not enough grease in jazz”. Personally, I think what we we just played is what I’m talking about. When I listen to jazz – all of us up here listen to all kinds of styles of different music – but something about that the root of it being grease, and funk, and nastiness, and soul, and blues, and neckbones, hamhocks, candied yams, chitlins, hot sauce, you know? Livers and onions, chicken gizzards, crackling bread…. macaroni and cheese when it’s burnt on the side and stuck to the pan. Ice tea that’s too sweet. Red velvet cake, bread pudding, sweet potato pie, you know? Kale, collard greens, mustard greens. Jimmy Smith laid one on me years ago. He said, “You see, McBride, you need to get yourself some kale and put some chitlin juice on it.” Heard of chitlin juice? Chitlin juice. Baby-back ribs, dry rub ribs, Kansas City ribs, St. Louis ribs. Now you see, jazz used to have that in it. Then jazz went vegan. Now, I’m not saying all jazz has to be soulful and greasy. You get high cholesterol. You’ve got to balance it out with some salad. I’m talking about salad with all that cheese and stuff all over it. We Americans, we just be putting corn and beets and mayonaisse and cheese and all kinds of mess all over the salad take all the vitamins out of it. We needs to balance the thing these days and that’s what we like to try to do in this band. When you come here, you’re going to go home full. When go home, you’re going to have gas. When you go home after hearing this band you’re going to have to sleep with the covers off. That’s what I’m talking about, jack. Miss that. Miss that.”

With that, Christian McBride introduced his band Inside Straight at the Village Vanguard on Saturday night. The outfit had just completed an appropriately juicy reading of his blues-drenched “Used Ta Could”, so it was evident that he meant what he was talking about. As possibly the first of the first call bassists, McBride has had call to play just about every category of jazz and some pop with the greatest practitioners of the art. Consequently he can be given some latitude for hyperbole; the assertion that ‘jazz has gone vegan’ is the kind of statement that make for great copy but doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. But for a packed and enthusiastic crowd on a Saturday night, it was precisely what the doctor ordered.

In fact, most of the set were tunes from 2009′s Kind of Brown, the band’s inaugural effort, which is only tangentially a ‘greasy’ effort. The compositions are mostly characterized by the angular, tuneful clarity that has always been a McBride hallmark. The opener “Rainbow Wheel” (for everyone who uses a Macintosh computer… which is about as greaseless as you get) is a cannily melodic construction that was lifted in performance by Steve Wilson’s peerless alto lines. The third song, “Uncle James”, is a bright swing waltz and was more about tender poignancy than any overt blues connection.

 

Chitlin juice?

East of the Sun, West of the Moon was offered as a piano trio, with the melody (not surprisingly) carried by McBride. Allen’s tasteful brushwork and Field’s light-and-air-filled comping evoked Miles Davis’ Prestige albums from the mid-fifties. [One wonders why Fields didn't make the poster for the gig (see above). Christian Sands?] McBride is one of the few bassists who has truly mastered pitch bending, and the effect is never gestural in his hands the way it so often is on the bass viol. His solo was rife with lines that swayed drunkenly only to land impossibly on two feet.

When soul and blues reared their heads, though, there was no mistaking the stylistic integrity of the band. The aforementioned “Used Ta Could” featured a jaw-dropping, down-home solo on the bass, which was to be expected. The other musicians were likewise nasty, though, with a notable example being the piano solo, which was reminiscent of Bobby Timmons but with a gentler touch. The set was closed out by an original by Wolf from his eponymous Mack Avenue release from last summer entitled “Sweet Bread”. Food-wise, this was the hot sauce cited in McBride’s monologue, and gave Wolf ample opportunity to display the shenanigans that he can get up to with two Lollipop League mallets, played Lionel Hampton style. Most contemporary vibraphonists aim for a more crystalline sound. Not Wolf, who seems more interested in an aggressive, bulldozing (but sure-footedly accurate) approach. McBride mentioned during his fifteen minute introductions that he founded the band to get a chance to work with Wolf. Based on the set, it is clear why. They are well-matched in temperament and energy.

While I may contend, a bit, with McBride’s assertion that this band is greasy, there is no arguing that the band has a connection to hard bop that runs more than skin deep. Where many contemporary bands can seem to only be ‘jazz’ by virtue of the amount of improvisation present, Inside Straight wears its blues with a definite pride. I did indeed go home fed.

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Gig: Chick Corea Elektric Band, The Blue Note, November 26th.

Posted on December 1, 2011 by Daniel

First Set: Chick Corea – piano and keyboards, Eric Marienthal – alto and soprano saxophones, Frank Gambale - electric guitar, John Patitucci – electric bass, Dave Weckl – drums.

This was my third outing to Chick Corea’s month-long birthday party, having gone to hear his duet with Bobby McFerrin and the uneven but piquant From Miles set. Unlike the other two, this show really did feel like a party.

When Corea hired Eric Marienthal, John Patitucci, Dave Weckl, and Frank Gambale into the band, he essentially jump-started their careers. And the boys – although now they are all over fifty – are clearly grateful. Before each song, a different band member took the mic and testify to how much they thought of Corea (except, inexplicably, Weckl. There was even a last tune that had to make do with a Corea intro. What was that about?) Patitucci talked about how Corea was his own school of influence, like Horace Silver or Miles Davis. Marienthal noted how every gig he’s gotten in the interim can be traced to his Elektic Band tenure. Gambale effused, Australian-style. When Corea picked up the mic, he seemed genuinely tickled pink by the adulation, and he was even more playful with the audience than usual.

The air was joyous. The band fired through some of the greatest pieces by the band, igniting tunes like “Trance Dance” and “Ritual” with undimmed energy. I always watch Patitucci closely when he’s on stage; his facial expressions a great barometer for the quality of the music. In this case, he was constantly flashing a huge grin at the other members of the band and telegraphing entrances with great animation. It was a special gig for him, since it marked his return to the band after a eight-year hiatus, and everyone seemed happy to have him back. Marienthal looked like a kid in a candy store. Gambale smilingly nodded appreciatively at the others’ solos throughout. When, at one point, he flubbed an entrance at one point, he just grinned. Sitting at the bar, I couldn’t see Weckl at all, so I have no idea what he thought of the whole thing. [The Blue Note tends to have the opposite of the bar problem at Birdland. In the former, bar patrons never see the drummer, while in the latter the drum chair dominates.]

The view from the bar.

The musicians were in fine fettle. Patitucci’s bass lines were adventurous but bedrock-solid. His one featured solo, in the early innings, meandered a bit, but was melodic in a way that showed how he’s grown since the first iteration of the band. Marienthal’s nimble hawkish sound was in full bloom and characterized by eerily perfect intonation. Gambale’s preferred tone in the guitar is well-suited to this music – nastily fuzzy but still in control enough to let the quality of the lines shine through. Weckl was less showy than I’d expected, havin gnever heard him in person but being well-acquainted with his work with this and his own band. As I had expected, though, he was in complete control of every nuance and well-placed stroke. Corea was, well, Corea. I hope I have half his incisive precision at seventy.

Rightfully so, Corea lapped it up like milk. He seemed to be having a blast with the other men, stopping to play a moment to applaud some key solos with hands above his head. In an extended intro to the burner “Got a Match?” (from 1986′s eponymous release), he had the audience repeat his keytar lines over a three-against-two polyrhythm. The audience ate it up, lustily repeating Corea’s melodies. In a sense, it was our chance to wish the master a happy birthday.

I’m already looking forward to the eightieth birthday hootenanny.

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Time of the Sun, Tom Harrell

Posted on November 22, 2011 by Gordon

This isn’t the first time I’ve been baffled by the opening track of an album. It happened with Dave Binney’s Graylen Epicenter earlier this year. Now it happened with Tom Harrell’s Time of the Sun, whose eponymous opening track evokes some kind of ponderous heavy metal anthem with its thumping drums and backing horn tracks somehow masquerading as a melody. For a while, I can’t get into the album because the opening track kills my enthusiasm like some soggy appetizer at a hyped restaurant.

But hey, I got over it. Skip, says the digital media!

I first saw Tom Harrell in 1988 at Sweet Basil with Phil Woods when I was just a strip of a lad and jazz musicians were still gods. I was there to see Phil Woods, demon bopster with his fiery quintet, which had been together the entire 80s, and not particularly to see Tom Harrell. But of course I was blown away by Phil’s skinny trumpet player, by the extraordinary contrast between Tom Harrell’s cognitive condition and his bebop condition. Cognitively, he appeared to be a man walled in by schizophrenia. Musically, he was unfettered. When it was his turn to play, he would step up, inscribe amazing lines for two or three minutes, then lapse into himself at the back of the stage and await his next turn.

So I’ve always been excited to hear Tom Harrell, or hear about it him. In 1996, I think I witnessed some kind of live recording at Small’s with Tom and Tim Armacost that did not go as well as it could have, which made me wonder how on earth Tom manages a band. It must be a severe challenge for his bandmates. According to this interview excerpt with Charlie Rose, playing is the only thing that keeps the voices in his head away. Another interesting theme in the clip is that he struggles with criticism to a greater degree than other musicians. This clip here has him absolutely waxing about why the trumpet is beautiful.

All of which would make you want Tom Harrell to succeed, even if he wasn’t great. Fortunately, he can play his ass off, which seems to go a long way to attract loyal musical colleagues and fans.

OK, so back to the album. I’ll admit it, I didn’t get the opening track Time of the Sun, which begins after some sun-derived overtones with trumpet and tenor playing long backing notes over a thumping rock beat. Somebody forgot the melody, I thought. Then the pianist soloed with a Casio-like timbre. Tom takes a solo, but the overall feel is so repetitive and lacking in grace and somehow the horns are pushed to the back of the mix. When the figures/melody return at the end, they are slightly altered like a backing phrase should be. Only, it’s the melody! Oof. This is not how my reunion with Tom Harrell was supposed to go.

Track two Estuary (is that an Estate reference?) juxtaposes grooves with horn figures too, but it sounds a million times better than the first track because there’s a samba feel. Long breaths and whole notes feel uplifting, airy, and the horns blend really well together. Not coincidentally, this sets up a beautiful Tom Harrell solo, full of inclusions, buttery sound, logic and some Lee Morgan like blues licks. The mix is still bugging me a little – it sounds like the instruments are in different rooms? But the vibe is so much more musical – very Maiden Voyage. Piano player Danny Grisset sounds better on piano, contributing a Herbie-like solo of increasing range and fluidity. I like Wayne Escoffery’s solo on this track too – glad he starts off with long notes, biting out big chunks of sound, creating a contrast with the notier Harrell, though I’m not in love with his double-time playing or his sound quality after the first chorus.

Third track Ridin‘ is a metronomic tune with arpeggiated bebop lines over a funk drum beat. Hmm – it’s a great vehicle for solos once they get going but I’m not so sure about the writing here. The concept and title seems a bit simplistic, like an Aebersold tune designed to give young players a good vehicle to solo over. Harrell’s solo has nice moments, and sounds great over a Rhodes piano comping, but there’s also a fair amount of lick repetition going on, and sometimes he’s not sufficiently on top of the beat. The Escoffery solo is is ambitious but his tone sometimes sounds unsupported and out of tune. When he starts playing double time he plays too much. The rhythm section sounds great in the four section, where Blake solos.

On The Open Door, the long breath melody writing with horn and tenor sounds effective melodically though the register limits its effect, as if it’s not a comfortable zone for one of the two horns. In the second half of a nice bass solo, the melody returns as a backing figure, and sounds much better that way. Harrell solos, and yet I have the same feeling I had earlier of loving his sound and the logic of his solos, but also sensing an uncharacteristic clinical quality here and there.

Dream Text is one of my favorite tunes on the album. The long notes in the melody let the rhythm section crackle along with Blake’s rim shots popping away. After the tenor solo, Harrell improvises with some more logical, sequential thought patterns. He really does have a golden sound. I think the ensemble sound on the head is terrific on this track. In Modern Life that follows, there’s a wonderful attention to stagey dynamics that reminds me of a Blakey band tune, even though there are only two horns.

River Samba continues a samba vibe which is very effective for this band. The rhythm section sounds lithe and alive. Tom creates a fluid solo beautiful sounding solo. Again, there is some element of repeated licks, which makes me wonder whether groove-oriented music somehow limits or hurries his storytelling. A nice piano solo followed by some amazing snare drum work by Jonathan Blake that makes me want to hear this cat live.

Cactus as you might expect is a spiky tune with an interesting vibe and funkiness creating by the Rhodes. The terse tune gives way to a tenor solo, after which Harrell solo with bebop flourishes. I really dug the open fifth sound of the horns as a backing figures at the end of the Rhodes – it creates a lot of tension and release for Grissett. The backbeat comes to the fore at the end of the tune. The album wraps up an outro track called Otra, a rousing vehicle for tenor and trumpet, with some awesome ostinato work by the piano player.

Overall: This album kept burrowing into my head though I had some reservations. I liked the overall sound, but I’m not ultimately sure that the full organic majesty of Tom Harrell is really evident in a backbeat setting, and I thought that the horns were somehow mixed too far into the back. As far as Harrell’s playing goes, it could be a preconceived conception, but I thought I heard some corners and a certain detachment in his playing that I haven’t heard when he plays straight head jazz. He’s a fiery but relaxed player. With a backbeat groove, he can sound emotionally reticent if he’s not on top of the beat.

Finally, I loved the ensemble sound but the insistence on making the horns play backing figures in melody slots contributed to an overall lack of contrast. I think they could have maintained the groove without sacrificing melodic interest for the horns. The better the horns sounded, the more you wanted to hear them stretch out in melody parts.

OK, that’s it for me. Daniel’s next assignment is to listen to analyze the tenor saxophone classic, Ben Webster meets Oscar Peterson.

 

I’m asking Daniel to evaluate this based on his comment that “I am hard on saxophone players.”

Well, DT, players of Ben Webster’s generation are the reason I feel that way. To today’s players who want to carve out some new territory in jazz saxophone, I saw, try sounding half as good as Ben on this record!

I’ve heard it said, and I 100% agree, that modern players do not spend as much time developing the quality, expressiveness, or individuality of the sound on their instrument as their worthy predecessors. (There are some exceptions, with Garbarek being a fiord sized one.) This is something you can hear most obviously on long notes, ballads, in areas where the pure sound itself as opposed to notes, phrasing, etc. is exposed and should be the focus.

So man, what do think of this, as pure saxophone playing? Oh yeah, and please let me know about Oscar and co.

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