Feeling Fly

If you stripped the term "smooth jazz" of every single negative connotation, and then sought out the epitome of what those words actually mean, you might find yourself obsessing over Fly, as I currently am. If I'd have spent due time with this trio's 2009 release, Sky and Country, it probably would've placed a lot higher on my year-end jazz list. The album has mystified me over the past days: so wispy that it recedes into the background with even a moment's lapse of attention, but so sturdy and engaging if you can manage to focus.

Saxophonist Mark Turner's sublimated heat and drummer Jeff Ballard's exceedingly delicate yet hard-driving momentum. Bassist Larry Grenadier ruminating or holding it down. Compositions with thorough, convincing architecture. A lot of variety from piece to piece: backbeat, post–second-great-Miles-quintet freebop, hushed prayers, even a crazy drum 'n' bass styled thing. (All rendered on Sky and Country with inimitable ECM classiness: perfectly elegant.) It almost goes without saying, but this is a working band (and one that bills no player's name out front, which I love). This weekend they'll be working at Jazz Standard. Jim Macnie has some brief words of praise and a great video. David Adler wrote a nice profile for TONY last year. [After writing this, I discovered some strong recent live recordings on the Fly MySpace.]

/////

Also: Tonight, Hexa and The Octagon share a bill at Bruar Falls. Both bands feature good friends of mine and musical collaborators past and present. I'm biased but both also create outstanding modern guitar-pop music. The Octagon has a great new record out on Serious Business--you should definitely pick it up.

Also: Jean-Ralphio. I cannot stop watching this.

Also: Neglected to mention here that Roaratorio has an awesome new limited-edition Joe McPhee LP out with liner notes by me, sourced from this blog post. (The gig you hear on the record is the very same one I wrote about.)

The man with the horn

[Photo: Linda Nylind, from The Guardian]

Please join me in welcoming Evan Parker - one of the world's foremost sound scientists - to NYC. Last night he kicked off a two-week stand at the Stone on the LES. The list of collaborators, viewable here, is pretty stunning. Here is my Time Out NY preview of the residency. Please note that, sadly, Parker will not be playing with bass master Dave Holland on October 14; I'm not sure what the deal is, but Holland confirmed yesterday via Twitter (!) that he will not be able to participate. There's still plenty of other awesome stuff going down, though. I'm not going to make any promises about what nights I'll be able to make it out, but I will say that I definitely have my eye on the George Lewis duo set this Saturday - was just digging the amazing From Saxophone and Trombone (1980) last night - and the Joe McPhee and Susie Ibarra duo sets next week. We'll see what happens.

Bonus tracks: Here's my All Music Guide review of Parker's phenomenal solo release Monoceros. I'm pretty sure this is one of the first reviews I ever published; if I'm remembering correctly, I wrote it during college, about a decade ago. And here - buried within an aggregated stream of early DFSBP posts - is my account of the last time I saw Evan Parker live (at the Stone on 10/15/06). Scroll down to about the middle of that page and you'll find the piece in question.

Cup of Joe

It's always wonderful and poetic when I'm in a deep listening rut (the good kind) and then the artist or band in question happens to play a show. There's no chance Mr. Giuffre (R.I.P.)--whom you'll recall from below--will be coming to town anytime soon, but fortunately, his onetime collaborator (and another-time tribute-payer) Joe McPhee stopped by the RUCMA series tonight, on this drizzly Monday evening.

The program was billed as New York Alto Solos, which in practice meant a few pieces on alto sax, one on alto clarinet (an instrument not unlike a bass clarinet that I don't think I've ever seen or heard before) and then another one on alto sax. It was a steely Monday today--a deep slog--and I felt outstandingly nourished by what McPhee was up to. He is a stellar improviser, relishing his sound materials so caringly and for so long, the kind that invites you to really step outside of whatever mix you're in and think and feel for a while.

The setting was an LES bar, formerly Meow Mix and now called Local 269. There was loud traffic and some arguing outside and it was raining. Some in the audience looked back nervously every time the door opened or the cash register dinged. McPhee kept his eyes closed. Before the last piece, he remarked, "I'm really liking the rain, and that bus that went by was great." It was like a gift of permission: "Don't stress about the din," or somesuch. He didn't shun it or shut it out and it taught a valuable lesson by example.

But what sounds!, sometimes flinty and turbulent, and then other times that patented deep abstract-soul thing that McPhee is so insanely good at. In the latter mode, a piece called "Old Eyes," dedicated to Ornette Coleman. "We have to give people their flowers while they're here," said McPhee when he was done.

He dedicated the first piece to the Lower East Side itself, so I guess it was fitting he welcomed in the city ambience. He welcomed happy sonic accident too. An errant squeak on the horn led to a few minutes of exploring that texture, exhausting the chance find, resolving it, making it part of the song. It's a lesson in economy, watching him. He spent a lot of time with just the keys, no breath, tapping them and just zoning out on that soft makeshift percussion. It sounded like a hushed thumb piano.

When I heard the Sunn O))) playback a few weeks ago, I thought about the blessing of the time to just sit and zero in. That was recorded music, though, and this was a blissful live scenario, just sitting there drinking a Hoegaarden with an orange in it that tasted fizzy and delicious, and closing my eyes and even feeling like I wanted to cry a few times. (Felt choked up also on the train earlier listening to a Paul Bley solo piece, "Mephisto," from this record.) The whole audience was with McPhee. It's not some "heroic" and hackneyed ecstatic-jazz thing when he plays, just a miracle of concentration. He cares about sound and its conservation and finding out what can happen at a certain time and place and seeing it through.

Insanely, a 69-year-old man. Always thought of him as of a younger generation, but he's only a few years younger than Ayler or Shepp. Seems like he didn't get his due really till the late '90s, but maybe that's just when I started hearing about him. (Or maybe it's that he took a little while to come into his own; his current work sound much, much deeper to me than what I've heard of his early stuff.) He was wearing a killer hoodie advertising Scandinavian power-jazz unit The Thing, with whom he sat in to brilliant effect at Zebulon a few weeks ago. Also, cargo pants.

Last night, an evening crammed full of luminaries at Radio City. Fine, even rad in spots, but it didn't even remotely do for me what this did.

A great American artist, inadvertently responsible for the name of this blog, once sang, "I could spend my whole life just listening to sound." It seems like Joe McPhee pretty much has, and I could spend my whole life just listening to him. He performs again this coming Thursday, 5/7, at The Stone. Maybe I will see you there.

Playlist: Jimmy, Joe, etc.

Was offblog longer than I'd hoped, but not necessarily longer than I'd expected. Anyhow, some recent listening, apropos of very, very little:














*Jimmy Giuffre
The Jimmy Giuffre 3, Emphasis & Flight, Free Fall, Conversations with a Goose
What can I say but that I'm floored. I'd had a date with this music for a while. I guess I first became aware of the Giuffre/Bley/Swallow trio via my former colleague K. Leander Williams, who was a big fan. But I didn't dig in seriously till the past week or so, abetted by some loaners from Joe, who recently scored a bevy of JG discs. For all my drummerness, I adore the phenomenon of strategic drummerlessness in jazz. The clarinet-piano-bass music heard on E&F, Free Fall and Conversations with a Goose is exquisite: liquid and microscopically interactive. Sumptuous and titanically strange, in tiny ways. It is music of Discovery, no doubt. Free Fall (waxed in 1962), the last studio recording by this band, is a real head-scratcher, sounding formless at first and then blooming into something ultramysterious but also structured. Emphasis & Flight is PHENOMENAL. It's two live concerts, from 1961. Much more apparent form here, with clear-cut heads and the like. But no less free-sounding. Incredible variety of pieces and masterful concision. You must acquire this music. I might try to help with that at some point, but I can't now since I've got no web storage just now. Conversations is from '96; it's part of the aforementioned trio's second phase. (I could be mistaken, but I'm pretty damn sure Giuffre is holding a cooked goose on the cover; anyone got a large scan of this amazing pic?) Swallow on bass guitar this time. Superstrange music that has a feeling of oozing along. There's a real mindmeld to this session; don't think there's any precomposed music here, but I could be wrong. Didn't like Swallow's tone at first, but I'm fine with it now; started thinking how I shouldn't disparage bass guitar in this context if I'm down with Jim Hall's nonbass guitar in an earlier drummerless Giuffre band, documented on The Jimmy Giuffre 3. What a charming, charming record. Dry, spare sounds abound but with much plainspoken beauty. The record gets weirder as it progresses, gradually segueing from happy-go-lucky swingers into oblique melodic poems. In the latter vein, "The Green Country (New England Mood)" is a masterpiece.

I know everyone and their mother said this when JG died last year, but WHY is he not better known and WHY is the Free Fall trio NEVER mentioned in any account of seminal free jazz? (Okay, Ken Vandermark named a band after it, but still...) And why can't I find any interviews with Giuffre online? Seems like an outstandingly underdocumented figure journalistically. Damn, I would've love to have had the good sense to go and talk with this brilliant man while he was still alive.

BONUS--> Dig this, from the liner notes to Free Fall: "Given: this trio; a great studio on 30th Street in New York City; an engineer with radar ears and safe-cracking fingers.... [ellipsis mine] Given: the visions received from thinking on such things as ... [ellipsis sic] gravity, Monk, electricity, time, space, the microcosmos, leaves, chemistry, power, Gods, white-hot heat, asteroids, love, eternity, Einstein, Rollins, Evans, the heartbeat, pain, Delius, Scherchen, Art, overtones, the prehistoric, La Violette, wife, life, voids, Berg, Bird, the universe.... [ellipsis sic]"

Has anyone written a more profound "influences" list EVER? We need more thinkers like JG in music.














*Joe McPhee
No Greater Love, As Serious as Your Life

Heard Mr. McPhee live w/ the Thing a little while back and was reminded of how much he rules. He brought major gravitas there, as he pretty much always does. What a strange musician, though--not at all just a post-Ayler tenor giant as he's so often pigeonholed as. No Greater Love is an amazing CIMP release from 2000. There are some spirituals on the program, which definitely brings Ayler to mind, but the record (a quartet with reedist Joe Giardullo and two bassists: Dominic Duval and Michael Bisio) doesn't have that vibe at all. It's lush and strange and joyful, not harsh or anguished. Definitely file this one under "Speaking of the awesomeness of drummerlessness." And no coincidence, b/c McPhee not only recorded a Giuffre tribute album back in '91, he actually appeared on disc alongside Giuffre himself on a record from that same year called River Station. Would kill for a copy of this but can't find it anywhere. Anyone? As Serious... is a great solo set named, of course, for Val Wilmer's essential free-jazz tome, one my favorite music books. Very cool and odd trumpet thing starts off the set. It's called "The Death of Miles Davis" and features many fascinating tiny, alien sounds of the sort often heard from Nate Wooley and his ilk. Also there's a sort of overdubbed chorale that put me in mind of George Lewis's awesome Solo Trombone Record. Some very focused and intense solo alto stuff on As Serious... as well. McPhee plays in exactly that setting this Monday in NYC, as part of the RUCMA series, so don't sleep on that.

*Neil Young
Mirror Ball
Beautiful, beautiful '95 recorded with all of Pearl Jam as the backing band. Has that awesome bigness and shaggy warmth heard on PJ discs from that era, e.g. the phenomenal No Code. Read more on this rekkid here, via the Volume.

*Ween
The Pod, All Request Live
Ween is on the brain and... that's likely to be the case for a while, I'm "afraid." The Pod is outstanding: like a weirder, more deliberately agonizing Pure Guava. The obnoxious stuff here is ultraobnoxious ("The Stallion, pt. 1"), the funny stuff is ultrafunny ("Pollo Asado," of course) and the sad stuff is borderline terrifying ("Demon Sweat"). All Request Live has a version of "Happy Colored Marbles" (a song from the epochal Quebec that I'd never really paid that much mind to) that I find superbly moving. That disc as a whole is an awesome demonstration of the way the current Ween (i.e., full band) honors and animates the group's lo-fi duo back catalog.

*Chester French
"Ciroc Star"
Unbelievable song from these Harvard-hop buzz magnets. The full album don't cut it at all IMHO, but this track is golden. Listen here, via the Volume.

/////

Also: Thanks, Hexa, for a really fun show.

/////

Also: Laal and I got to check out a Deep Tones for Peace rehearsal last weekend, featuring the awesome pairing of Henry Grimes and Trevor Dunn. Check out a pic and some vids here, all from behind the scenes.