2014 jazz top 10, plus

Did I hear enough jazz records in 2014 to comment authoritatively on what the "best" were? Did I listen hard/long enough to those I did hear, even the ones that yielded great pleasure? I'm thinking more about that word, listen, these days, after having read my friend Nick Podgurski's recent critique/manifesto on the topic, as it pertains to processing, appreciating and writing about music. His thoughts are well worth your time.

No, I don't feel that my jazz listening this year was really adequate, whatever that means. And I think that's as it should be. Those of us who follow and respond to the arts can always do more. But in the present tense, all you can do is make note of what moved you and why. That's why I like the year-end list bonanza, simply because it's a time of celebration. And celebration is the ultimate goal, always, maybe the only goal. "Criticism"—haha. I'm a fan.

So here are some 2014 jazz records I loved. The first ten are the ones I submitted as my ballot to Francis Davis's annual survey. The order feels more and more arbitrary to me as I look over the list, but I'll count down backward to build in just a little suspense. All of these should be easily accessible via Amazon and/or iTunes; most of them—the ECMs and the Palmetto excepted—are streaming on Spotify. Now, on to the music:

10. Louis Hayes Return of the Jazz Communicators (Smoke Sessions)

Smoke, on the Upper West Side, is a cool club. I admit I haven't been there in ages. The recent flurry of albums from the venue's in-house label, Smoke Sessions, makes me want to remedy that asap. As Nate Chinen recently reported, Smoke Sessions has been on a tear lately, much like its downtown counterpart Smalls Records. Every Smoke disc I've spent good time with has been strong, but I admit I'm biased toward the ones that pair elder bop masters with killer younger players. (Along these lines, I also highly recommend Jimmy Cobb's The Original Mob, with Peter Bernstein, Brad Mehldau and John Webber.) As I've written here before, the intergenerational concept often makes for great jazz: conventional jazz that feels profound, not perfunctory. And that's exactly what this Louis Hayes session is. On paper, it's completely straightforward—a nice, varied set of jazz-club jazz, played live at Smoke by an all-star band. But the sound is excellent, and it allows me to focus on what I want to focus on, namely the gorgeous thump and crash of Hayes's kit, the strange, somewhat loose, rattly snare sound, the relaxed insistence of his ride-cymbal patterns. Three outstanding soloists—saxist Abraham Burton, vibist Steve Nelson and pianist David Bryant—all of whom sound so comfortable in Hayes's luxurious pocket, and in the general idiom of this music: soulful hardbop, ’50s-style, from burners to ballads, like the sort that the now 77-year-old Hayes was playing with Horace Silver nearly 60 (!) years ago. I hope I get the chance to see Louis Hayes live soon, and I thank Smoke Sessions for reminding me to catch players like him while I still can.

9. Bill McHenry, Henry Grimes and Andrew Cyrille Us Free—Fish Stories (Fresh Sound New Talent)

I didn't know this album existed until a couple weeks ago. I think I was searching, as I often am, for new Andrew Cyrille delights and stumbled across Us Free on Spotify. As I mentioned on Twitter recently, it's been a great year for AC on disc; for example, Syvmileskridt, a trio album led by Danish pianist Søren Kjærgaard and featuring the drummer, narrowly missed making this top 10 list and is well worth your time, as is Wiring, by the illustrious Trio 3 (Lake/Workman/Cyrille) with simpatico guest pianist Vijay Iyer. When I saw that Us Free was actually recorded in 2006, I wondered if it might have some sort of core drawback that kept it from release until now, but once you hear it, I think you'll agree that it's every bit as excellent as you'd expect given the musicians involved. As I've often written, I'm a big Bill McHenry fan; put him together with a drummer as classy, adaptable and distinctive as Cyrille (see: the current McHenry quartet with AC, Orrin Evans and Eric Revis) and an intense, unpredictable bass presence like Henry Grimes, and you've got serious potential. When I first came across Us Free, I was wondering if it would be more or less an open-improv session. I'd happily listen to a record like that made by these three, but I find Us Free's actual content—a diverse program of concise tracks, most of them originals—way more interesting.

I'm not sure whose idea this session was; it seems like a sort of collective affair, but I'm just now realizing that in many ways it's a sequel to Grimes's underrated 1965 debut as a leader, The Call. Us Free reprises three of the Grimes tracks from that session, "For Django" (just called "Django" here; not to be confused with the John Lewis standard), "Son of Alfafa" and "Fish Story," clearly the new album's quasi-namesake. Like The Call, Us Three is a trio session that runs on a sort of jittery, dancing, almost whimsical energy, and juggles gritty, deep-pocket, hard-swinging freebop with more abstract styles. In the former vein, the trio's reading of Keith Jarrett's "Shades of Jazz" (an interesting choice; I'm guessing it might have been McHenry's call, since he's the only one who doesn't contribute original pieces to this date) almost reminds me of an Old and New Dreams performance, or maybe a particularly hard-swinging Paul Motian–led track; it has that same rough, rambling, freewheeling, celebratory vibe. McHenry, Grimes and Cyrille share a deep earthiness of aesthetic, and so, a conventionally swinging performance like "Shades" or "Django" feels completely of a piece with the freer, more intuitive style of improvising heard on "Son of Alfafa." Smartly, there are plenty of moments of deep repose here: a stupendously chill version of Cyrille's "Aubade" (which I remember from another excellent, not-well-enough-known AC reed/bass/drums session, the C/D/E album from 2000), which features the sparsest and most prayerful instrumental interplay I've heard on record this year. "Vibration"—one of several tracks on which Grimes plays violin (another is a moving solo rendition of "Come Sunday")—"Fish Story" and "With You in Mind" (featuring a narration by AC) exemplify a similar sort of texture-oriented balladry that's heavenly to get lost in if you're a fan of the softer side of these three players' sounds. Any trio album featuring these three players was going to catch my attention, but the fact that this turned out to be such a thoughtful, substantial, approachable, and, I'd be remiss not to mention, beautifully recorded album was a pleasant shock. Can't wait to spend more time with this one (and, for that matter, with The Call, an album I loved years ago but haven't revisited in quite a while).

8. David Virelles Mbókò (ECM)

Like many of my jazz-writin' peers, I was a big fan of Virelles's immersive 2012 set Continuum (see here and here). Mbókò is on a different label and features a different band—percussionist-vocalist Román Díaz is the sole holdover from Continuum—but to me it feels like a sequel to that session. David Virelles's work as a leader obviously has a very strong sense of mission. In the first write-up of Continuum linked above, I discussed how that record had an air of willful mystery. "I have also been asked about the meaning of Román Díaz’ words on this recording," wrote Virelles of Continuum, referring to the untranslated chant/narration that Díaz contributes to that album. "His poetry was created in Spanish, as well as ritual languages from the three main cultural lineages of African origin of Cuba:  Karabalí, Kongo and Yorùbá-Lucumí. He uses their inherited phrases by morphing and reorganizing them, contributing to these oral traditions. His words address issues particular to each song in a code-like fashion that would be challenging to understand even to Spanish speakers." (Emphasis mine.) In this newer interview, he discusses the Abakuá secret society and its influence on Mbókò. "…some of the information is available only to intitiates," he says at one point. And in this Continuum interview, he states, "I wanted to have access to the kind of information that people like Andrew Cyrille [who appears on Continuum] have, for example. I wanted direct contact with that."

I don't pretend to understand the subtleties of Virelles's rich statements, either verbal or musical, but it's clear that his work is about communion, both with jazz tradition and with Afro-Cuban ritual tradition. And if you don't necessarily fully grasp all the references, you can still get lost in the music, feel its meditative composure and shadowy intrigue. Mbókò takes me to those same places, but to my ears, it's a less esoteric album than Continuum, more aligned with Jazz Piano proper. Part of that has to do with the fact that Díaz's verbal element is downplayed; his chant is featured, but in a less central role than it was on Continuum. I admit that this appeals to me; I enjoyed the vocals on the earlier record, and I understand their centrality to the project, but I found myself relishing the straightforward piano-bass-drums interplay the most. More than Continuum, Mbókò feels like a jazz album that has a strong Afro-Cuban ritual element, rather than an Afro-Cuban ritual album that has a strong jazz element. Some of the pieces, like the opening "Wind Rose (Antrogofoko Mokoirén)," feel like spirit-raising soundscapes, but other tracks here, like "Aberiñán y Aberisún," "Stories Waiting to Be Told" and "Seven, Through the Divination Horn" really let us hear Virelles the piano player and bandleader, as opposed to, for lack of a better term, Virelles the channeler-of-vibe. Díaz's percussion is beautifully integrated into the record's piano-bass-bass-drums fabric, and there's something really compelling about hearing his folkloric percussion set against kit drummer Marcus Gilmore's futuristic, electronica-inspired grooves on "Transmission," to name one example of how Díaz's contributions play out on Mbókò. If I had to venture a guess, I'd suspect that ECM's Manfred Eicher might have had something to do with the somewhat more conventional bent of this album with respect to its predecessor. (Interestingly, in the newest interview mentioned above, Virelles discusses how some listeners told him they felt Continuum wasn't traditionally "pianistic" enough; is Mbókò simply a response to that?) But whatever the reason for this slight shift in orientation, the important thing is that Mbókò delivers a lot of what I liked about Continuum, while telling us even more about the David Virelles aesthetic. This budding visionary clearly doesn't make records casually, and I can't wait to see what he comes up with next.

7. Dave Douglas and Uri Caine Present Joys (Greenleaf Music)

I'm not all that familiar with Dave Douglas's enormous body of work. I've enjoyed the handful of his records I've checked out during the past few years, and there are a few back-catalog titles I remember digging many years back (including the Booker Little tribute In Our Lifetime and the Tiny Bell Trio's Songs for Wandering Souls), but I'm no expert. That's even more true re: my knowledge of Uri Caine. But Present Joys immediately felt familiar and inviting to me, and it's stuck with me since its release over the summer. I think this is because it falls into a certain category of record that I have an affinity for—not just a horn/piano duo album, but one with a powerful unifying mood, a reason for existing. There's a good amount of variety on Present Joys, but its prevailing mood is a sort of churchy somberness, stemming from the fact that several of the pieces are from the Sacred Harp songbook. And some of the tracks that aren't drawn from that source clearly take cues from this tradition. Much like Branford Marsalis and Joey Calderazzo's similarly hued Songs of Mirth and Melancholy, Present Joys is a document of two badass jazz musicians getting together and deciding to do something other than simply play some tunes. Douglas and Caine are zeroing in on a wavelength, using their gifts to set, and burrow into, a mood, rather than just perform. As with Songs of Mirth, the album isn't all one thing; there's some nicely jaunty, bluesy, swinging, sometimes abstract material ("Ham Fist," "Seven Seas," "End to End") to season the mix. But the slower pieces seem to me to be the meat of the album. "Bethel" is one of the originals that's clearly indebted to the Sacred Harp material; it's intensely lovely and funereal. There's delicateness to the playing here and also great gravity. This performance, along with the other slow pieces, is the sound of two musicians playing a song, sitting with it and meditating on it, rather than perfunctorily stating a theme as a prelude to improvisation. I've always been a fan of, for lack of a better term, sad jazz: Booker Little's "Man of Words," Grachan Moncur's "Evolution," Andrew Hill's "Dedication" and much of the aforementioned Marsalis/Calderazzo set. If you, like me, love it when jazz slows, quiets, grows still, bears down emotionally, bares its heavy heart, then Present Joys will likely do for you what it does for me. I'm sitting here listening to the final track, "Zero Hour," and I'm feeling like I could live in this music. It's not some relaxing-background-music vibe; it's the power of jazz to embrace sparseness and patience and real reflection. A zone beyond ballads, approaching pure feeling. That's what Dave Douglas and Uri Caine achieve here.

(Incidentally, I'm curious to know what other duo albums in the vein of Present Joys folks might be able to recommend. Off the top of my head, I can think of three LPs I know of, but don't know so well, that might do the trick: Archie Shepp and Horace Parlan's Goin' Home, Hank Jones and Charlie Haden's Steal Away, and Haden and Metheny's Beyond the Missouri Sky. Now that I think about it, Haden's classic duets collections, Closeness and The Golden Number, fit the bill too.)

6. Johnathan Blake Gone, But Not Forgotten (Criss Cross)

Plenty of conventional jazz appeal on this record by drummer Johnathan Blake, another player I'm not super familiar with in general. I don't typically see promos from Criss Cross, but I sought this one out after reading Ethan Iverson's rave on Do the Math. I'll second his praise and state that I love the way this album both fulfills and subverts the paradigm of brawny, hard-swinging two-tenor jazz. There's no denying the thrill of hearing the clearly very Elvin-inspired, and sometimes (as on "Broski") beautifully bashy Blake light a fire underneath Chris Potter and Mark Turner. The former, who seems to really excel at soul-volcano catharsis, fits comfortably into this context, while Turner finds ways to match Potter's intensity while at the same time bringing his usual feeling of thoughtful composure into the mix. (Interestingly, I was just reading this Turner Ted Panken Blindfold Test, where Turner says of Potter, "I wish I could play that well. He’s totally incredible.") Blake clearly designed this as a playing date. In contrast to Present Joys, there is a feeling here of "Get the head out of the way so we can jam" on pieces such as "New Wheels" and monster opening track "Cryin' Blues." But the simple assuredness with which Blake and bassist Ben Street swing, and with which all the players solo (I'm listening to a killer Street bass feature on final track "Two for the Blues" right now) makes this record a moment-to-moment delight, whether the band is ambling or cooking.

The pianoless-quartet format yields a great feeling of openness; in that sense, this is free jazz, literally jazz that's free to do what its architect, Blake, clearly loves to do most, which is hang out in the pocket and just jam. (Not to play the pointless pigeonholing game, but I'm having a hard time placing this brand of jazz; there's a lot of hardbop in here, but the pianoless element takes it out of the realm of super-conventional jazz-club jazz; maybe you could liken the format heard on Gone, But Not Forgotten to some of the Elvin-led bands of the ’70s, including the Liebman/Grossman/Perla quartet from Live at the Lighthouse.) Blake picked the right players; as Iverson noted, he picked the right repertoire (a cool smattering including pieces by Eddie Harris, Cedar Walton, Paul Motian and Jim Hall) and he picked the right arrangements, just meticulous enough to create an appealing framework for the solos; and he clearly picked the right studio and engineer, because this album sounds excellent. I've got the Trudy Pitts ballad "Anysha" on now, and much like the Louis Hayes album, it just sounds good, in a simple, nourishing way. This is an uncomplicated jazz album—familiar though not, to my ears, particularly retro-feeling—but one with a really savvy design and a very clear, consistent appeal. I would love to see this music performed live.

5. David Weiss When Words Fail (Motéma Music)

Speaking of clear, consistent appeal, I'm really starting to recognize David Weiss's name as a mark of quality, a brand that implies a certain amount of seriousness and sophistication, and a determination to produce top-quality small-group jazz that summons an orchestral grandeur without skimping on the improvisational fire. I'm a big fan of his work with the Cookers, which released its latest robust, powerful disc this year, Time and Time Again, an album I wish I'd been able to spend more time with. Part of the reason I didn't, though, might have been that this disc under Weiss's own name really sated my appetite for that trademark Weiss sound that's so evident on the Cookers albums: big, lush, little-big-band arrangements bookending passionate solos. There's nothing particularly radical about the David Weiss aesthetic, but I do hear in his work a certain defiant spirit, an insistence that contemporary jazz ought not to shy away from being jazzy: big and bold and dramatic and flashy and hugely spirited, while taking on a range of emotions with a broadly shaded palette that clearly takes cues from the composerly likes of Wayne Shorter, an artist Weiss paid tribute to on last year's Endangered Species.

Simply put, many of these pieces (e.g., "The Intrepid Hub," "MJ") sound like they could be standards from somewhere between about ’65 and ’75—"White Magic" is actually a 1973 tune by pianist John Taylor—but the way Weiss's band performs them, they sound utterly urgent. I'm particularly impressed by altoist Myron Walden's voicelike wailing on "Aftermath." (You can sense Walden and the other sidemen's devotion to the Weiss enterprise in this promo video.) Does this jazz sound old? In a certain sense. When Words Fail makes me think of those proud, determinedly classy, brassy, swinging jazzmen of the ’70s, the Charles Tollivers and Woody Shaws, say; it's an album that asserts Weiss's unshakeable belief, expressed in Cookers liner notes I've read, that hardbop is an infinite and infinitely durable medium. So this record is not "cutting-edge" in any obvious way. What it is, though, is simply sturdy and superb and confident in its idiom and in control of its materials. Does hearing music this flawless sometimes make me want to grasp for something rawer, chancier, less pristine? Sure, but if you're in the mood for jazz with polish and grandeur and heart, and these sort of skyscraping, spirit-stirring themes—and I find that I often am—When Words Fail is an excellent bet.

4. Sarah Manning Harmonious Creature (Posi-Tone)

Like the Smalls and Smoke imprints mentioned above, L.A.'s Posi-Tone has a strong label identity, mostly orbiting around straight-ahead hardbop. While I've often enjoyed their output in the past, I've never felt as strongly about any of their records as I do about this one, and that might be because it stands so far apart from what they usually release. I have to thank Phil Freeman, a passionate Posi-Tone advocate, for turning me on to Harmonious Creature, via this interview with saxist-composer Sarah Manning. (The album ranked highly on Phil's very comprehensive and worthwhile year-end jazz list over at Burning Ambulance.) All of the albums on this list are, in one way or another, strong, individualistic statements, but to me, none of them feels as distinctive as this record. Harmonious Creature is an entire world; everything, from the makeup of the ensemble to the character of the writing, and Manning's alto-saxophone style and improvisational approach—and even the cover art/design—feels deeply personal. I can recall hearing jazz with strong overtones of chamber music, Americana or Eastern European folk, all currents I hear in this music, but there's a certain sense of fantasy, of elegant reverie, that pervades Manning's aesthetic and sets it wholly apart from any other soundworld I can think of. The themes are sturdy and instantly memorable; I'm particularly taken with the swaying, twisting, piquant "Radish Spirit" and the blazing, dervish-like "Floating Bridge." And the grouping of musicians, particularly the frontline of Manning, violist Eyvind Kang and guitarist Jonathan Goldberger, is an exemplary feat of bandbuilding. There's just such a synergy between material and format; you can tell that Manning crafted this music to be played by this band. The sax and viola solos, which often overlap, can feel like a single improvising brain expressing itself in two different voices: Manning's gorgeously liquid, almost stringlike sound—imagine Sonny Simmons's register-jumping daring combined with the calmly inspired flow of Lee Konitz—mingling with Kang's woody, super-emotive flights. Guitarist Johnathan Goldberger adds a luminous haze to the performances; he's particularly effective on the quasi-ambient ballad "I Dream a Highway" and the excellent cover of Neil Young's "On the Beach," which explodes into a blur of swimming colors.

Harmonious Creature stands apart from most jazz the way that Young song stands apart from most "roots rock." It expresses a very private vision, but also a very openhearted and inviting one, beautifully rendered by a profoundly sympathetic band. I have no idea who to compare Sarah Manning to soundwise, but spiritwise, I'm tempted to mention Booker Little, Kenny Wheeler, Bill Frisell and Paul Motian. The first two for specificity of vision, depth of affect and richness of texture, and the latter two for their championing of a deeply romantic, dreamlike vision of jazz—jazz that seems at once nostalgic and fantastical. I think Harmonious Creature embodies all of that. I love this record, and I'm fascinated to hear future dispatches from Sarah Manning's singular brain.

3. Kenny Barron and Dave Holland The Art of Conversation (Impulse!)

I came around to Dave Holland's 2013 release, Prism, pretty late. It was only a month or so ago that I really had a moment with that record, a fun, swaggery funk-fusion romp. This LP couldn't be more different from Prism. It's not anything like the other duo album on this list, Present Joys, either. In some ways, The Art of Conversation has a lot in common with the Johnathan Blake session above. Both are about providing elegant frameworks in which master improvisers can simply play—get down to business and be themselves. Kenny Barron's playing on this record is so assured, so swinging and bluesy and virtuosic, that it almost feels unassailable. I'm not sure how jazz piano could be played any better than this. Of course, there are a million more idiosyncratic ways it could be played, but Barron's playing seems free of quirk. The passion I hear in his playing is the passion of assurance; he's nailing this music and making it look easy. Holland solos too—and handles the melody statement on the exquisite Barron ballad "Rain"—but mostly, he's playing a straightforward pizzicato bassist's role on this program of originals by both men, plus a couple standards.

I truly don't mean to take anything away from this pair or minimize the album's appeal—even in a year of particularly strong jazz releases, this stood way out for me—when I say that The Art of Conversation seems like the platonic ideal of cocktail jazz. The performances are uniformly tight, pleasant and—again, I don't mean this as a value judgment—polite. The repertoire is well-balanced, from witty and urbane (Monk is clearly a touchstone; the duo plays "In Walked Bud," as well as Barron's very Monkish "The Only One") to stirring and romantic (Holland's "The Oracle," Ellingon/Strayhorn's "Daydream). And these pieces do work just fine in a background mood-setting capacity, but when you take the time to zero in, The Art of Conversation just sounds sublime. The album title is at once a) cliché and b) completely true. To listen closely to a piece like the gorgeous Holland ballad "In Your Arms" is to hear two players interlocking, exchanging, dancing together, reinforcing one another in turn.

The Art of Conversation contains a lot of music that will sound familiar to anyone with even a passing knowledge of jazz. It's tempting to gloss over an album like this, even if you find it appealing. It's great jazz musicians playing jazz, right? But beneath the almost casual, offhanded facade, its seeming effortlessness, is a deep conviction about how jazz ought to be done. There are obviously many more conventionally exciting and distinctive Dave Holland records than this chill and dynamically narrow release, and while I don't know the Kenny Barron catalog well, I'd guess that the same goes for him. But taken on its own merits, The Art of Conversation rewards every second you spend paying it close attention. Listen hard enough, and its straightforward excellence starts to sound almost radical. This album achieves urgency by simply being its own unassuming self.

2. Frank Kimbrough Quartet (Palmetto) 

There's an illustrious jazz tradition of building on tradition, wearing one's influences proudly, whether that's Mingus channeling Duke, or Steve Lacy channeling Monk. You tell the listener where you're coming from, and you demonstrate how you're starting there and taking them somewhere new. I hear so much loving homage on this Frank Kimbrough album. The first three tracks he selects on this desert-island list are by Keith Jarrett, Paul Bley and Andrew Hill, the latter two being former mentors of Kimbrough's. And his aesthetic, as expressed on Quartet, bears traces of all three. Like those three pianists, and I'm generalizing wildly here, Kimbrough operates at the intersection of modernism and the blues, creating radical music that's full of earth and hearty pulsation. He's a kind of eccentric/romantic—in some ways my favorite kind of jazz musician, Andrew Hill being my No. 1 example—who relishes freedom but also values rapturous emotion. The result is that you get a piece like "The Call," which opens Quartet. The performance operates in what I think of a post-Jarrett/Bley/Haden/Motian mode of free jazz, stumbling along in propulsive yet metrically free time while also embodying an intense sentimentality, so that the players enter into a kind of sweet delirium, pouring out a song as if it were so much sweat. I can't help but see Keith Jarrett's super-soulful, Afro-topped ’70s countenance when I hear much of this music, such as "The Call" or the clearly American Quartet–indebted blues-soul workout "Kudzu."

A lot of what helps Quartet transcend its influences is Kimbrough's shrewd choice of sidemen. Steve Wilson's alto work is in some ways the most appealing thing about this album. The dude absolutely soars on Quartet, drenching the pieces with sweet songfulness. And bassist Jay Anderson and drummer Lewis Nash do an excellent job of providing the molten rhythmic lava—not violent so much as restless, joyously multi-directional—that jazz like this so desperately needs. A performance like "Afternoon in Paris" here, essentially interpreted as free jazz (in the same sense as "The Call"), perfectly illustrates the album's blend of romance and abstraction. Like Present Joys and Harmonious Creature above, Quartet is a hugely openhearted album, a document of virtuosos getting down to meat of song. The ballad "November," with its dark, sensuous melody, might be my favorite track; it's such a delight to hear the way the band burrows into the material, scooping out all possible emotion and meaning. That goes for Quartet as a whole; the compositions are love letters to Kimbrough's forebears, and the solos are love letters to the compositions and the moods that inspired them. The effect is radiant and intoxicating.

1. Mark Turner Lathe of Heaven (ECM)

Whenever I see Mark Turner's name on an album or gig listing, I take notice. I suspect I'm not alone in this. He's been a musicians' and critics' favorite for some time. (See this great 2002 Ben Ratliff profile.) Every time I've seen him live—with several different bands, including Fly and quartets led by himself, Billy Hart and Gilad Hekselman—he's been, for me at least, the music's center of gravity. There's a composed, shaded purity to his solos, a patient, unshowy determination.

Those same qualities also apply to his bandleading, to the extent that Lathe of Heaven barely registered with me on the first couple listens. The same thing happened when I saw this particular band, a quartet with trumpeter Avishai Cohen, bassist Joe Martin and drummer Marcus Gilmore, at the Vanguard earlier in the year; the group honestly didn't make much of an impression. But duh, it's Mark Turner, so you have to look more closely. I doubt I could describe Lathe of Heaven in a more appropriate and evocative way than Turner himself does in this video profile: "…mystery and tension"; "In a lot of these songs, you're not going to hear the whole [story] from the beginning; it's going to develop over the course of the song."

I love all six tracks on this record, but there's something about the final one, "Brother Sister 2," that has me particularly enthralled. There's a version of this track on Fly's third album, 2012's Year of the Snake, yet another Mark Turner dispatch that I haven't quite gotten my head around yet. But the Lathe reading is one of the most enthralling puzzlements I've heard on any record this year. This notion Turner mentions of not revealing the whole story from the beginning comes through strongly here, though I'm not sure he and the band reveal the whole story even by the end. A simple, bluesily melancholy horn theme—played first by Turner, then by Cohen, then by both—set against an exaggeratedly slow Gilmore backbeat, which keeps petering out, losing steam. Martin meanwhile, plays what sounds like an entirely independent line, as though he's walking his fingers along to a whole other track that's piping through his headphones. The overall effect is extremely odd, almost as if the whole band is playing in a drowsy trance. Then, right as you're starting to orient yourself to the wavelength of the piece, its strange start/stop hypnosis, the piece shifts into another theme, played in a very slow, murky 6/8 that unravels into a pool of swirling sound. Turner and Cohen begin soloing at once, with the rhythm section barely implying the pulse, really letting the music swim. (I should make it clear here that Cohen is a dream foil for Turner throughout this record; Lathe really got me excited about the trumpeter, and sent me back to his own very good 2014 leader session, Dark Nights.) If you're one of those listeners who, like me, loves to relish jazz as pure sound, this section will be a deep delight for you. I could listen to this band sprawl out in collective, controlled freedom—as they do from around 4:00 through around 6:30 in "Brother Sister 2"—all day. There are hints of abandon, but this isn't "free jazz"; it's thoughtful, listening-oriented abstraction. Then around 7:20, the original drowsy-backbeat passage returns. Joe Martin really lets go here, stretching the tempo like taffy with his weird, oblique walking pattern. Then the rhythm section drops out, and Turner and Cohen lay the piece quietly to rest.

I don't know exactly what to make of "Brother Sister 2," but I do know that it exemplifies Turner's stated objectives of mystery and tension extraordinarily well. And not in obvious or obtuse ways. It draws you in, but it doesn't tip its hand. That doesn't mean there's not an order there. The rest of the pieces on the record are somewhat more conventional, but the whole album feels, to me, sort of infinitely worthy of regard, if that makes sense. (I think I know what Ben Ratliff meant when he wrote this of Lathe: "It does something that jazz records used to do more: you might hear it, feel there’s really nothing to add, and decide not to listen to records—including this one—for, say, a week.") It creates an atmosphere, a vibe, a hazy yet super-sturdy intensity, and sustains it, just like Mark Turner solos tend to do. I particularly love "Ethan's Line"—with its slyly shimmying rhythm, complex yet catchy theme and, similar to "Brother Sister 2," daringly but not chaotically abstracted midsection—and "Sonnet for Stevie" (another version appears, along with Turner himself, on Billy Hart's very good 2014 album, One Is the Other), an extremely laid-back, balladlike piece that slowly builds up swagger during the solos. The whole record is just pure content and composure and, thus, is a perfect summation of the Mark Turner aesthetic so far. I recommend that you spend serious time with Lathe of Heaven. And secondarily, I recommend the Ursula K. Le Guin novel that gives the album its name, which I picked up after falling for the disc.

/////

Honorable mentions:

At one point or another, I considered each of these ten albums for the above list.

Ginger Baker Why? (Motéma Music)
The fiercely individualized, incomparable-to-anything-else wonder that is Ginger Baker Playing Jazz.

Nels Cline and Julian Lage Room (Mack Avenue)
In other settings, Cline sometimes loses me with what I hear as fussy faux-weirdness, but there's a delicacy and thoughtfulness to the best material here that I find completely disarming.

Jeremiah Cymerman Pale Horse (5049)
Minimalist meditation and sinister mind control from an increasingly vital experimentalist and two expertly attuned collaborators. (Hear/buy on Bandcamp.)

Kris Davis Trio Waiting for You to Grow (Clean Feed)
One of the most formidable and formidably weird pianists on earth reaches new heights of exacting insanity—jarring and meditative in turn.

Donald Edwards Evolution of an Influenced Mind (Criss Cross)
State-of-the-art virtuoso postbop, deepened by excellent writing from the leader and an extraordinary lineup including ubiquitous geniuses Orrin Evans and Eric Revis.

Billy Hart One Is the Other (ECM)
The third album, and third straight essential statement, from one of the best working bands in contemporary jazz, featuring Turner, Street and Ethan Iverson.

Søren Kjærgaard, Andrew Cyrille and Ben Street Syvmileskridt (ILK)
A wonderful surprise, which finds a Danish pianist continuing his rich collaboration—and furthering a truly collaborative, subtly individualistic trio—with two American masters (incidentally also the rhythm team behind David Virelles's Continuum). (Hear/buy on Bandcamp.)

Kirk Knuffke and Jesse Stacken Five (Steeplechase)
A handsome trumpet-piano companion to the Douglas/Caine above: warmth, intimacy and inspired, unconventional repertoire, via a pair whose ongoing duo project really feels like a proper band.

Rudy Royston 303 (Greenleaf)
Lush, funky, confident postbop that isn't afraid to go for big emotion or pop-friendly slickness—this one's a delight when you're in the right mood.

Tyshawn Sorey Alloy (Pi Recordings)
Deepening mystery and stubborn patience from a drummer-composer who's making a habit of demanding and rewarding sustained attention.

P.S. I feel like I should mention one record I was dying to hear but haven't yet managed to get ahold of: Tarbaby's Fanon, on RogueArt. Hope to be able to check it out soon!

/////

Archival:

I haven't spent as much time with any of these as I'd like, but I adore what I have heard of them. The first two offer further proof of what we already knew about these giants' respective genius; the latter shows us yet another facet of an unpigeonhole-able original.

Keith Jarrett, Charlie Haden and Paul Motian Hamburg ’72 (ECM)
 
John Coltrane Offering: Live at Temple University (Resonance)
 
The Jimmy Giuffre 3 and 4 New York Concerts (Elemental Music)

/////


Live:

The 2014 jazz shows that stand out most strongly in my mind are the Ornette tribute at Celebrate Brooklyn! and Farmers by Nature at ShapeShifter Lab. James Blood Ulmer at Vision Fest was also a revelation.

Best of 2011, part I: Jazz

Since I didn't annotate the 2011 top 10 I submitted to the Jazz Journalists Association (and Francis Davis's annual Jazz Critics Poll), I thought I'd provide some commentary here. For each entry, I've either linked to a purchase page or embedded a streaming player that allows you to click through and buy MP3s. Thank you to the publicists and musicians who have submitted music to me this year; I've done my best to keep tabs on it all, and as usual, I've had a blast.

1.Branford Marsalis/Joey Calderazzo Songs of Mirth and Melancholy (Marsalis Music)

As you can see from my 2011 jazz halftime report, published back in June, this one grabbed me early on. Now that the year is winding down, I'm happy to report that it didn't let go. There's no embeddable stream of this record, but I implore you to sample it here, especially the tracks "Endymion," "Face on the Barroom Floor" and "La Valse Kendall." When mentioning my interest in this album to friends, I've received a few raised eyebrows, which pains me. As I discuss in a Time Out NY preview of Marsalis January 9, 2012 "A Duo of Duos" gig at Jazz at Lincoln Center (during which he'll perform with both Calderazzo and Harry Connick, Jr., the latter of whom won't be singing), Marsalis's celebrity still overshadows his art. It's a trite point at this stage, but the prejudices persist: He's the saxophone player your mom likes.

And I'm not trying to say that moms wouldn't love Songs of Mirth and Melancholy. But what I am trying to say is that this is an extremely deep record. There's so much grace and poetry to this session. I don't know enough about the connections between jazz and chamber music (or chamber music itself) to know how unprecedented Songs is, but I can't think of another jazz recording I've heard that mixes raw beauty and virtuosic refinement the way this album does. I like Marsalis's quartet with Calderazzo just fine, but in the end, it is an updating of a known quantity (post-Coltrane small-group jazz); this, on the other hand, feels like new terrain to me, or at least extremely underexplored terrain. Again, if you're a Branford skeptic, please spend some time with this album and let me know what you think. I can't imagine you won't be at least a little surprised and impressed with what you hear.

Three quick notes:

A) Strangely, the opening track on here, "One Way," a whimsical, rompy, bluesy type piece, does very little for me; if it weren't for this quibble, Songs might have beat out Anthrax for the No. 2 spot on my TONY all-genres-in-play top 10 list.

B) Purchasing this record digitally from Amazon is a good idea, because you get a meaty 16-plus-minute bonus track, "Eternal."

C) The Marsalis Music YouTube channel is streaming a series of making-of vids.

2. Gerald Cleaver's Uncle June Be It as I See It (Fresh Sound New Talent)

Again, I kept coming back to this record. There's a tenderness and a lushness to Clever's writing that I just adore.—at times, the colors and emotions remind me of Andrew Hill's big-band classic, A Beautiful Day. I've always enjoyed Cleaver's drumming, but after spending time with this record, I'm most excited by him as a bandleader. (As I witnessed a little over a week ago, there's more where this came from!) He's writing rich, painterly music and putting it before improvisational geniuses like Craig Taborn. Don't miss this one. Here's one of my favorite tracks:



I should note here that as with the Marsalis disc, the opening track of Be It as I See It, the noisy, backbeat-driven stomp "To Love," doesn't grab me. I like the contrast between this and the more delicate material that makes up the bulk of the session, but I found myself wanting to skip it on repeated listens (and believe me, there were many).

3. New Zion Trio Fight Against Babylon (Veal)

This one came out of nowhere and knocked me on my ass. The idea—a jazz/reggae hybrid—did not entice, and I'd never quite clicked with the work of bandleader Jamie Saft before. I never imagined that this record could be so patient or mysterious. As I indicated in my TONY top 10, there's a methodical languidness here that could slow your metabolism. Listening to this album, and I recommend playing it in its entirety while driving or cooking or engaging in some other focused activity, is like going swimming in a murky ocean filled with jellyfish, both gorgeously iridescent and subtly menacing. It's such a trip to hear jazz bass pro Larry Grenadier get all trancey on the riffs, and drummer Craig Santiago blows me away with his taste and precision. As for Saft, all I can say is that this record is an absolute piano feast. He isn't playing jazz and he isn't playing reggae; this one is closer to classical music, but really he's just playing wide-open music, flowing in the moment. The track below isn't my favorite from the record, but it's the only one streaming on Bandcamp. Go to the Veal site to order MP3s or a CD.



4. Ben Allison Action-Refraction (Palmetto)

I've largely slept on Ben Allison's work in the past; even though this one is a covers record, I can still say that it's converted me into a bona fide fan. Before hearing this, I wasn't familiar with any of the songs (aside from a Monk piece) that Allison and his band interpret here (including works by Donny Hathaway, Samuel Barber and PJ Harvey), but that turned out to matter very little. The band really savors these melodies, delivers them on silver platters, tweaking them a bit but never engaging in any sort of pat "deconstruction" or irreverence.

If there's a twist here, it's in the fascinating make-up of the band, which includes Jason Lindner on both piano and sci-fi synths, the wonderfully fluid guitarist Steve Cardenas (and on two tracks the noise-courting daredevil Brandon Seabrook), the grittily passionate reedist Michael Blake (a player I'd heard of for years without really checking out) and the alternately sensitive and pummeling drummer Rudy Royston (whom I knew from JD Allen's fine trio). The players really draw you into these songs, especially the Hathaway ("Someday We'll All Be Free"), which is like this swelling vortex of melody. Covers records are always in danger of feeling gimmicky, superfluous or just plain boring. This one holds my attention straight through, though, and keeps me coming back. It's a motley assemblage of pieces turned into something cohesive by the magic of meticulous arrangement and smart curation. Plus, the textures (keyboards, guitars, etc.) feel contemporary without giving you that pesky sense of jazz musicians trying too hard to convey that they're down with rock. You can stream (and buy!) the record via this handy embed:



5. Honey Ear Trio Steampunk Serenade (Foxhaven)

Like the New Zion disc, this one hit me pretty much out of nowhere. I'd heard a bit of drummer Allison Miller's work, but saxist Erik Lawrence and bassist Rene Hart were new names to me. This is a really special saxophone trio, brimming with guts and tension, but also with a love for the songfulness of jazz. The level of ambition isn't the same, but part of me wants to compare this to something like Henry Threadgill's Air—a more accessible version, let's say. But there's a similar drive to create a true group sound, to make variety a priority, to mingle the harsh with the pretty. As with the Allison, there's a contemporary sheen to this one, expressed via Hart's electronic effects and Miller's scrap-metal-style percussion, but again, it feels honest and ungimmicky. Overall, this album is just a very strong statement of purpose; Honey Ear Trio clearly wants to be a proper band, not just a steadily gigging saxophone trio. They're taking in rock, reggae, maybe a little electronica, freebop, Aylerish catharsis, Paul Motian Trio openness and producing something diverse but not scattershot. As with the aforementioned JD Allen Trio, there's also a welcome drive to make this music work on record—not just to play, but to edit, to make each track feel like a concise song rather than a meandering jam. I'm excited to hear more from this band. Here's a track:



6. Jeremy Udden's Plainville If the Past Seems So Bright (Sunnyside)

There seems to be a movement brewing of pastoral, song- and melody-driven jazz. Some of the tracks on the Allison get at that vibe, and in a TONY preview on saxist Jeremy Udden's Americana-infused Plainville band, I also cited projects by bassists Eivind Opsvik and Chris Lightcap. (Another group in this vein that intrigues me is Bryan and the Aardvarks.) For me, If the Past Seems So Bright crystallized this whole trend; in its own unassuming way, it seemed like a definitive statement. Some of the rockier, brasher material on here (the very Neil Young–ish "Leland") didn't gel for me, but when this band is speaking in its own voice, such as on the stunning opening track "Sad Eyes," I find it absolutely mesmerizing. As on the Allison record, Plainville is singing songs without words, in which the improvisational accents humbly serve the melody. The dreamy, rootsy prayers on here can really cut into you; again, we're talking about ungimmicky fusion, where the material and not the stylistic conventions are calling the shots. Here's "Sad Eyes" (though I'm having a hard time not embedding "Thomas," which gets me every time):



7. Bill McHenry Ghosts of the Sun (Sunnyside)

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a tad disappointed by the fact that the first new Bill McHenry–led small-group album in four years (he has put out other records in the interim, including joint ventures with Ben Monder and John McNeil) was a collection of outtakes, pieces recorded during the same sessions that produced 2007's Roses. But after spending good time with this one, I realized that it would be pointless to resist its charms; Roses was such an enchanting record, and this is more of the same. The band is a dream: Monder, bassist Reid Anderson, and yes, the dearly departed Paul Motian. Crazily, the album came out one day before Motian's death. No one record could serve as a Motian epitaph, but there was a mystery and wonder about Ghosts that made it feel like a worthy final statement, a perfect summation of how he'd passed his strange, flickering, mirage-like torch to a younger generation. McHenry clearly got what Motian was about (and vice versa) just about as well as anybody, and this record's curious mixture of haunting beauty ("Ms. Polley") and insidious chaos ("William III") seemed as indicative of the drummer's aesthetic values as of the leader's. The track I haven't been able to get out of my head is "La Fuerza" (since I myself had to look this up, I might as well share that it means "power" or "might"):



8. Craig Taborn Avenging Angel (ECM)

Speaking of mystery… This is most definitely a major statement from a complicated, hard-to-pin-down artist, and that's likely what you're seeing it pop up on so many top 10 lists. (Steve Smith, Nate Chinen, Ben Ratliff and Seth Colter Walls all included it in their all-genres-in-play round-ups, and it topped David Adler's jazz list) I spent a ton of time with this album, both in the immediate wake of my Heavy Metal Bebop interview with Taborn, and beyond. At times, Avenging Angel seemed so daunting—like you would've have to intimately know every significant piano statement of the last several hundred years, and a lot more than that, to truly grasp it—that it exhausted me. And admittedly, there is a ton here to digest, but there's also an almost sacred kind of beauty here—lonely and remote. I'll defer to my TONY preview from June, in which I likened one track ("This Voice Says So") to "stepping out of a spaceship onto an ice planet." You always feel like you're grasping for another metaphor here, because the music is so vast-seeming, almost inhumanly patient and genre-impervious. Virtuosic, sure, but that's almost beside the point; Avenging Angel seems to go beyond mere virtuosity into some kind of alien realm of higher intelligence. It's not a record you'll pull out every day, or even every year, but you can't deny that it's some kind of awesome benchmark. No stream for this one, but you can hear some tracks at the ECM site.

9. Wadada Leo Smith's Organic Heart's Reflections (Cuneiform)

Another mammoth statement, though more in sheer length than in daunting-ness. As I've learned over the past few years, Leo Smith is by far the most accessible of the AACM giants, and maybe the most sheerly pleasurable. I loved the 2008 Golden Quartet disc, Tabligh, but this might be my favorite Wadada album yet, a sprawling set of avant-leaning funk, with an emphasis on the funk. I have never heard drummer Pheeroan akLaff drop such fat, greasy beats as he does here; right from the start of this two-disc behemoth, he's sliding and swaggering. Smith's electric work in this vein will always be indebted to Miles, but the vibrancy and clarity of the textures he conjures in his large-ensemble work are absolutely his own. This record is just swimming in swirls of guitar, keyboard, brass; it's a blissed-out soup of color. And it's got a real flow to it; balancing the backbeat passages are these rubato ruminations, free-floating texture pieces that show off the chamber-style improv know-how of players like keyboardist Angelica Sanchez and bassist John Lindberg. This is definitely one of those "Play it for a friend who's wary of avant-garde jazz" records. There's a lot of adventure here, but little abrasiveness; Wadada has been on a real roll lately (abetted by the stalwart Cuneiform label), and what he seems to be aiming for is the kind of experimentalism where you can shed the facade of stone-faced imposing-ness and just get down to feeling, moving, emoting. Your samples are at Amazon.

10. TIN/BAG Bridges (MabnotesMusic)

Like New Zion and Honey Ear, another very pleasant 2011 jazz surprise. I had heard the two members of TIN/BAG before (trumpeter Kris Tiner in Empty Cage Quartet, and guitarist Mike Baggetta at the head of his own bands), and I may have even sampled a bit of this duo in the past. But it was instantly clear to me that this one was going to make a stronger impression than anything I'd heard previously. As with Honey Ear Trio, TIN/BAG is taking pains to speak in its own language, and the tongue they've honed is a very subtle and distinctive one. You've only got trumpet and guitar here, and there's very little effort made to fill up the empty spaces. This is intimate music, more cozy than lonely—much more modest in scope than, say, the Marsalis/Calderazzo. The two play together beautiful, with Tiner's pillowy lines dancing over Baggetta's plush, chiming notes. Their work is almost unfailingly beautiful, but it's not merely polite; there's a sense of real daring to the project—stripping all distractions away and making the most of what's left. (There are references to yoga in the liner notes, which makes perfect sense when you hear the record.) There are no drums here, of course, but in a way, you could view this band as a descendant of the Frisell/Motian/Lovano trio. There's a similar willingness to step out into the abyss, with only the warm, beating heart of song to guide you. The quietude of Bridges can really pull you in if you let it. Hear for yourself:



/////

In the interest of concision, and so as not to dilute the list of truly standout releases above, I'll name just four honorable mentions:

Jerome Sabbagh with Ben Monder and Daniel Humair I Will Follow You (Bee Jazz)

Some very focused and engaging freeform trioism. Some prior thoughts in the 2011 halftime report. (Interestingly, Paul Motian subbed for Humair at the NYC release party for this album in April, and subsequently hired Sabbagh and Monder for a week at the Vanguard in September; I'm kicking myself that I didn't make it out to hear them.) Stream it here.

Matana Roberts Coin Coin Chapter One: Gens de Couleur Libres (Constellation)

A deeply ambitious and at times straight-up harrowing statement. I've been following the Coin Coin project since around 2006, when I profiled Roberts for TONY (sadly, I can't locate the piece in the online archives at the moment), and I'm glad to see it finally starting to get a proper documentation. From Ellington to Roach to Mingus to the Sharrocks—Roberts is taking it all in. Stream it here.

Ellery Eskelin Trio New York (Prime Source)

Harris Eisenstadt September Trio (Clean Feed)

Two featuring the saxist Ellery Eskelin, a perpetual sleeper fave of mine, whom I never feel like I've investigated fully enough. I'm happy with my TONY preview of Trio New York, in which I contrasted this new group—featuring organist Gary Versace and none other than Gerald Cleaver on drums—with Eskelin's previous signature trio, the Andrea Parkins/Jim Black band. Hear some samples here.

Eisenstadt, who topped my 2008 jazz top 10 with Guewel and ranked again in 2010 with Woodblock Prints, made another strong showing with a disc featuring Eskelin and Angelica Sanchez (who might be the MVP of Wadada's aforementioned Heart's Reflections). As usual with Eisenstadt, you're getting something abstracted yet focused, something beauty-forward, settings that confer deep respect for his bandmates. I'm looking forward to spending more time with this one, and I hope the project continues. Hear samples at Amazon.

/////

I listed just two reissues: the landmark Miles Bootleg Series set, which I reviewed for Pitchfork, and the exemplary International Phonograph, Inc., edition of Julius Hemphill's fun, raw, expansive, eclectic opus Dogon A.D.

/////

And finally, here's my chronological list of best 2011 live shows (as with the list of recordings above, only jazz was in play), outfitted with links to coverage.

J.D. Allen's VisionFugitive, conducted by Butch Morris at Le Poisson Rouge
(Winter Jazzfest) - January 7
(feat. Gregg August, Rudy Royston)

Dan Weiss Trio at Cornelia Street Café - January 10
(Thomas Morgan, Jacob Sacks)

Wayne Shorter Quartet at the Town Hall - February 9
(Danilo Pérez, John Patitucci, Brian Blade)

Wynton Marsalis Quintet/Septet at Frederick P. Rose Hall - March 31
(Quintet: Walter Blanding Jr., Dan Nimmer, Carlos Henriquez, Ali Jackson; Septet: Victor Goines, Wessell Anderson, Vincent Gardner, Marcus Roberts, Reginald Veal, Herlin Riley)

The Bad Plus with Joshua Redman at the Blue Note - April 21

Matthew Shipp/Darius Jones at Jazz Standard - April 27

Ari Hoenig Group at Smalls - June 20
(Gilad Hekselman, Shai Maestro, Orlando Le Fleming)

Tarbaby with Oliver Lake at Le Poisson Rouge (Undead Jazzfest) - June 23

Bill McHenry Quartet at Village Vanguard - November 11
(Orrin Evans, Eric Revis, Andrew Cyrille)

Gerald Cleaver's Black Host at Cornelia Street Café - December 10
(Darius Jones, Cooper-Moore, Brandon Seabrook, Pascal Niggenkemper)

The floating world: Goodbye, Paul Motian

Paul Motian passed away yesterday at the age of 80. I wrote a brief remembrance for the TONY blog.

In looking back over my writings on Motian—and there were quite a few, especially from the last year or so, during which time I'd grown particularly obsessed with his work, and, fortunately, had the chance to see him live a few times—it occurred to me that verbalizing my feelings about his playing presented a particularly constructive challenge. More so than the work of many (probably most) musicians, what he did defied explanation. Even yesterday, when I heard the news and collected my thoughts, I was thinking, "How do I express what he meant, what he was up to all that time?"

He inspired me to look outside music, for one. Reflecting on the 2005 Frisell/Motian/Lovano record I Have the Room Above Her in 2009, I wrote:

"It's an aqueous record. You will probably not ever find a more convincing display of slippery, nonmetrical jazzmaking. This music floats and is *about* floating. I'm thrilled by the swirly weightlessness… It just hangs there, or drifts there, or flows there, or whatever air or water metaphor you want to apply. It's unmoored music."

Re-reading that, it's almost as though I'm saying you can't describe Motian's work in anything but elemental terms. His great achievement was to restore the wonder to jazz, the mystery. As I mentioned in the TONY write-up, there was a deep historical reverence to what he did—he would constantly repay his debts to Monk, Bird, etc. by performing their work—but there was nothing pat about his approach to repertory. He was always looking for the mystical element, the place where he could pierce convention and let weirdness whoosh in. There was no affect, though, no pretense of struggle; he just seemed to be searching for the most relaxed, human way to play the drums, a state of being where you could work in a given style (jazz) without letting it control you, without letting its calcified methods obscure the warmth and the magic at its core.

Listening to Paul Motian was, for me, remembering that jazz could really be—and not just in an aphoristic way—about constant surprise. Especially as a drummer, I relished the sense of bafflement his playing imparted. The logic behind what he was doing, the "Why?" of it was rarely clear to me (a phenomenon that other writers have eloquently described—see, for example, the end of this recent Ben Ratliff review). All I knew was that Motian never went on autopilot; he responded honestly, directly, instantaneously, at the risk of sounding obtuse, awkward, or, on the other end of things, at the risk of sounding utterly weightless. He was a ghost of a drummer, phantomizing the music. At his best, he seemed to bring everyone (players like Tony Malaby and Ben Monder, who played in a Motian band I caught in 2008) into this mindset, to slow down their metabolism, to resensitize and hypnotize them. Sitting there, inscrutable behind his ever-present sunglasses, he'd swing the watch in front of your eyes and you were entranced, even scared a little by the sensation of anti-gravity. He'd proceed up the route ahead of you, confiscating the road signs, and you were that much more attuned to each little signal.

Again, I've veered off into mystical territory, but Motian had/has that effect. As I reflected in October of 2010, I grew more or less addicted to the flavor of mystery that his music provided. So much so that I found myself unfairly criticizing jazz that didn't provide that, jazz that wasn't even trying to. Re: how another musician or band would even begin to deliberately imitate Motian's style, or the style of his groups, is beyond me. Players like the aforementioned Malaby and Monder—as well as Bill McHenry, who also played with Motian quite a bit—have clearly internalized something of his trance-jazz imperative, lessons about how even when playing, say, a standard, an improviser should never lose sight of the great beyond.

He may be gone, but I don't think his aesthetic values will slip away. He was gracious (and smart) enough to constantly collaborate with younger musicians—read this beautiful homage by Jerome Sabbagh—so there are many possible torchbearers, who have the good sense to honor what he was about without trying to reconstitute it.

Goodbye to a great dreamer of jazz, a conjurer of the sticks, cymbals, drumheads. Thank you for showing us the floating world.

/////

*Hear Motian's music all day (Wednesday, 11/23/11) on WKCR.

*My favorite Paul Motian record is The Story of Maryam, from 1984. It's on Spotify, so why not give it a shot? (Have you ever, in your life, heard anything like "Owl of Cranston"? Jesus…)

*The Motian chapter in Ben Ratliff's The Jazz Ear—readable in original Times incarnation here—is essential: reverent, but also funny. Ratliff clearly relishes the eccentricity of Motian's personality, as well as that of his musicianship. I love this observation dearly:

"I have heard him call a room full of people, at one time, 'man.' (As in 'Hey, thanks for coming, man!')"

*The Inconstant Sol archive contains two fantastic bootlegs of Motian's short-lived ’70s trio with Charles Brackeen and David Izenzon. I recommend this one.

*Ted Panken and Howard Mandel have each posted illuminating archival interviews with Motian.

Go see Bill McHenry

Bill McHenry is playing at the Village Vanguard tonight and tomorrow with Orrin Evans, Eric Revis and Andrew Cyrille. Having caught a set last night, I strongly recommend that you go.

I've been following McHenry for a few years. I think it was 2006 when I first heard him live, playing at the Vanguard with the same band on his ’07 record, Roses: Ben Monder on guitar, Reid Anderson on bass and Paul Motian on drums. (McHenry's new record, Ghosts of the Sun, features the same personnel, and I'm pretty sure it comes from the same sessions as Roses.) In ’09, I caught McHenry in a very different context—a freeform duo with Monder, which you can hear on the album Bloom.

The band he's playing with this week is extraordinary. You've got pianist Evans and bassist Revis—both hailing from Tarbaby, who blew my mind at this year's Undead Jazzfest—and Cyrille, longtime Cecil Taylor collaborator and all-around jazz-drumming badass, behind the kit. I guess what struck me overall is this group's versatility, its refusal to align itself with any particular jazz faction. The band has no "angle," no spin, no gimmick; its M.O. is simply to commit fully to whatever tune McHenry calls, to get deep into it, to execute. The set was beautifully constructed: It opened with a stirring free-time piece, and I also remember a midtempo swinger, a funky soul-jazz stroll, an easygoing ballad. There was no channel-changing vibe at play though; it was just smart pacing.

"La Fuerza," a piece from Ghosts of the Sun, sticks out in particular. McHenry led the band through its floating theme—which for me paints a picture of a proud matador (as the title suggests, it's definitely got that Spanish flavor)—and then stepped aside to give Evans and later Revis some space. Each player built up from a misty cloud to a shuddering, super-physical climax. When those storms died down, Cyrille began an unaccompanied solo, constructed of little taps and clicks. Revis joined in, striking the wood frame of his bass; McHenry, sitting off to the side, started pressing down the keys of his horn, getting a percussive effect, and for a few minutes, the Vanguard stage became a makeshift drum circle.

Here and throughout the set, McHenry seemed delighted by the invention of his bandmates. After his solos, he'd retire to the bench at stage right and sit and listen, looking like a wide-eyed boy. There was a lot to hear. Evans was simply excellent: tasteful, minimal, bluesy at times, but breaking also into seismic, full-keyboard runs, episodes of zoned-out minimalism or full-on classical-styled romance. As he was when I heard him with Peter Brötzmann at this year's Vision Festival, Revis was both tough and songful, using his brief solo spots to advance the music rather than trot out technique. And Cyrille was a model of understated gravity; he swung and propelled with airy funkiness, the pulse sliding and gliding, and you felt no less buoyed by his out-of-meter colorations, which gave off a deep feeling of careful intent.

As so many have written, McHenry has this one-in-a-million tone, gauzy yet robust. It just sounds so classic, well-aged, the sonic equivalent of his tenor's tarnished gold finish. He sings through the horn with no agenda, assured rather than chopsy, no show-offiness. But like Evans, he has these sudden devilish impulses; he might let out a series of brief screeches, or a booming foghorn sound, or get caught up in a tic of fingering, a little OCD figure that he repeats and repeats.

This is that rare brand of jazz that has no name. No one seems to know where it came from. (Is is the Motian-Frisell-Lovano band, maybe?) It's the kind of jazz where the classic and the experimental bleed together and seem as one. Neither aspect feels perfunctory and both are heightened by exposure to the other; you listen harder to the "straight-ahead" swinging, sense more form in the open-ended blowing. It is not a noncommittal middle ground. It is an aesthetic of making calm, mature peace with the full spectrum of available materials. It does not draw attention to its own breadth and range. It is about using each strategy and sitting with it, making it genuine, so that it's not putting on a different hat for every tune, so that it all feels gracious and above board and non-intellectualized, non-"clever." Hear this band and you're not hearing a style of jazz; you're hearing players who take themselves out of the way of the music and just let the songs in, discovering on the spot what they want to sound like.

/////

*NPR graciously streamed Wednesday's 9pm set by this band. Check it out in archived form here.

*As a P.S., here's a 2003 All About Jazz profile I wrote on Andrew Cyrille. I have fond memories of interviewing him; aside from his patience and thoughtfulness, I recall that he was the one who put me in touch with the late, great Walt Dickerson.

*As a P.P.S., I should note that I sent a few live-Tweet dispatches from this show, as well as from a performance by the great Texan black-metal band Absu, which I also caught last night, via the Time Out New York Music Twitter page. I'm still getting the hang of this practice, but I encourage you to follow our channel to check out further on-the-spot concert impressions from me and my esteemed colleagues.

In Bloom: Monder/McHenry at Cornelia Street Café

[Photo: Laal Shams]

If all goes as planned, I will hear Sunn O))) live tonight at Brooklyn Masonic Temple. It will no doubt be a guitar/amp communion, and I'm definitely looking forward. Heading over to a duo set by tenor saxist Bill McHenry and guitarist Ben Monder last night at Cornelia Street Café, I didn't realize I was in for a prelude of similarly glorious semi-abstracted dronesmithery, but as it turned out, Messrs. Stephen O'Malley and Greg Anderson may have a hard time living up to what I beheld this evening.

If I was surprised by McHenry and Monder's set, it's a fair bet that the musicians were as well. Mere seconds before they began, I saw Monder turn to McHenry and ask, "So what are we doing?" What they did was a freely improvised 45-minute set - divided into four or so longish pieces and a brief coda - and it was a killer. You really don't hear spontaneous musicmaking of this coherence and grace very often.

From the start, the music had a prayerful quality. The first piece felt palpably humid, with Monder gradually constructing this hazy sort of drone, abetted by his volume pedal and a bevy of effects, employed tastefully. He held the pick in his mouth and coaxed the notes, shaking the body of his instrument to draw them out. McHenry drifted slowly alongside him, blowing meditative tones and seeming utterly committed to an aesthetic of melting, of hovering ooze. It was hot in the room. The players' faces were slick with sweat early on, and you felt that in the music - static and singing and luminous, hanging in the air.

From there, the pieces blur together in my mind. I know that Monder at one point (or two?) slowly worked up an ominous cloud of distortion, a harsh, scary shape on the horizon of the music. McHenry stepped forward on the stage and dug in. The music was completely abstract, but in a very physical way. The musicians were wrestling with the sounds, and there was deep tension in the music. You honestly didn't know where it was going to go, and neither did the players.

Monder began one improvisation solo, with a few minutes of jagged sci-fi riffage. Brusque, hard-edged - like cyborg fusion (anyone who's heard 2005's mighty Oceana knows that he's completely at home with robojazz). McHenry entered tentatively and then stopped. It was easy to sympathize. The tempo Monder had suggested was just too brisk, his syncopations too thorny, for any horn to find its way in. So Monder backed off and McHenry came back, and together they began another steely, hovering prayer. It was music that wasn't about anything at all, but it was so unpretentious, so listenable. No bullshit difficult-for-the-sake-of-difficult sounds, no ostentatious experimentalism. What it was, was a humbly free music - created totally in the moment but without that self-congratulatory or "What I'm doing is the most unprecedented thing ever" vibe that you get from bad experimental improv.

There were moments later that hinted at starry-eyed jazz balladry, even at twangy Metheny- or Frisell-ism, but the music wasn't jazz, anymore than it was, say, post-rock. It was just an atmospheric feat, one of those sets where you're marveling at the concentration of the players as much as the music. And at the heart of it all was this hovering drone, this glacial "om" sort of thing, with McHenry painting artful squiggles over top. It never got all that loud, but you could feel it oozing into the room and into the mind. I took off my glasses for a lot of it, and the blobby shapes I saw seemed more complementary to what I was hearing than the clear lines I'm used to. The set had that special kind of diffusion and amorphousness and yet it didn't overstay its welcome. I know Sunn O))) will get at that smokelike, room-filling ambience - how could they not, with all those amps and those taffy-stretched riffs? - but will they get there so unfussily, so organically? I've got to say, these two jazzers in street clothes just might beat the cowled avant-metalists at their own atmospheric game.

P.S. Haven't heard the new-ish Monder/McHenry duo CD, Bloom - and I didn't even know it existed till just now, since the musicians did not hawk it whatsoever from the stage or, as far as I know, sell it at the gig - but I nonetheless have a very strong feeling that a better ambient CD will not be released this year.