'Six Encomiums for Cecil Taylor' and the question of the maestro's influence

Here is my Rolling Stone review of the new Tzadik release Six Encomiums for Cecil Taylor, on which six pianists — Anthony Coleman, Sylvie Courvoisier, Kris Davis, Brian Marsella, Aruán Ortiz and Craig Taborn — pay tribute to the late maestro with respective solo pieces.

I enjoyed this one a lot, and it made me think about how Cecil's legacy will be preserved and/or carried forward in the future. Playing Changes, Nate Chinen's excellent new up-to-the-minute history of contemporary jazz, concludes with an overview of last year's Monk@100 festival, which, by the sound of it, reaffirmed the already well-established inexhaustibility of the Monk songbook. As I point out in the review, Cecil wrote an enormous amount of music, but precious little of it has ever been performed without him present. (In addition to the Steve Lacy and Vandermark 5 examples I linked to there, this is the only other instance I'm aware of, outside of his actual funeral, at which a band of his associates played the piece "Womb Waters Scent of the Burning Armadillo Shell.") A lot of this likely has to do with the sort of learned-by-ear method he seemed to favor within his own groups, which is described in many accounts of his working process. Still, though, there's a lot of Cecil music out there, and I'm curious to see if anyone, either his former collaborators or those who simply love his work enough to want to internalize and interpret it, will take up that challenge.

Will there ever be, in other words, an enshrined and constantly renewed culture of Ceciliana, the way there is with Monk, Ellington, Mingus, even, increasingly, a figure like Wayne Shorter? Can Cecil's music exist without him?

And beyond a project like Six Encomiums, where exactly will we see evidence of his influence on other pianists? Certainly plenty of musicians not featured on this album have cited him as a key influence: to name just three, Vijay Iyer, Marilyn Crispell and Jason Moran (who performed his own Cecil-inspired solo piece at a 2015 tribute to Taylor held while he was still alive at HarlemStage).

His actual presence and the specific sensation and content of his performances, especially the solo ones, seems almost impossible to recapture, though, again, I wonder if anyone will try.

The question is, really, how do you carry on the legacy of a figure who, especially by the later stages of his career, stood entirely apart from genre, who carved out a new niche in American (and global) culture that only he could fill, right down to his dress and his manner of speaking. Outright imitation is generally ill-advised anyway, but what about even some kind of respectful emulation? How would an admirer of Cecil Taylor express that in his or her own endeavor? And more broadly, what will a post-Cecil reality look or sound like? I'll certainly be staying tuned.

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Note: Ben Ratliff's Times piece on CT from 2012, which arrived in advance of a 2012 Taylor-centered mini-fest that included a tribute concert with Iyer, Taborn and others, probes into some of these same questions. Essential reading.

"You have to create yourself a new language": Gorguts' 'Obscura' at 20

 

It was well received, but it was a very small audience. It took a while. And people were like, 'What the fuck is this?' Now, when I say 'Obscura,' everybody has their fist in the air, it’s like, 'Yeah, bring it on!' [laughs]. It's time, you know? It just happens with time. The sound was able to find its right place. —Gorguts' Luc Lemay on the band's 1998 album Obscura

It just keeps coming back to Obscura. During the past 10/15 years, as I've moved through interlocking communities of forward-thinking New York musicians (metal, jazz and beyond), both as a writer and as a player, the third album by Quebecois death-metal band Gorguts — released 20 years ago today — has become sort of gold standard for stubborn individuality, for the idea of placing absolute trust in one's muse, even if it leads you to a place of what seems at first like pure insanity.

As Lemay explains in the above interview with Metal Assault (well worth your time in full), the album came about through a process of sort of forced experimentation, with the band deliberately walling itself off from its trusty methods of writing and composing.

['Obscura'] came about because we made a very clear decision, everybody together. The three writers in the band [Lemay, his late fellow guitarist/vocalist "Big" Steeve Hurdle and bassist Steve Cloutier], of course the drummer included, Steve MacDonald, was writing with us in the arrangement department and everything. [Note: MacDonald helped compose 'Obscura,' but it was actually Patrick Robert who played drums on the album.] But the thing is, we did some kind of [manifesto] together. This was right after 'Erosion' [a.k.a. the band's more-conventional 1993 album 'The Erosion of Sanity'], so we said okay, writing a new record: no fast-picking riff is going to be accepted in the music, no scat beat, which ‘Erosion’ is all about. So none of those mentioned were going to be allowed, everything else, but none of those other ones. And then we’ll start from there, and see what happens. The band also decided to do both vocals as well, so those were the main lines.

I believe no tremolo picking as well, as you mentioned in an interview a long time ago.

Exactly! Good point, that was another one.

Why were those ‘limits’ set in place?
Because, if you stay in your comfort zone, it takes forever just to incorporate a new thing in your sound. But if you force yourself not to use everything that you’re comfortable with, then you have to create yourself a new language that you’re happy with. So it forces you to explore, to touch the instrument differently, and approach the music differently as well, to get new sounds out of it.

The results speak for themselves. The album is so perverse, so chaotic and discordant, yet at the same time so logical and deliberate within the parameters it sets for itself, that it achieves sort of strange counter-intuitive serenity.


This is in some ways an ascetic sound, the product of walling one's self off from the world outside and creating a new, insular one within. But it's also the sound of pure, unfettered discovery, of a kind of seething, ecstatic creativity. (During an intense period of Gorguts immersion, I once described the record as "...one of the most pungently progressive albums ever made, in or out of metal. Obscura didn't just register as technical; it sounded downright excruciating, as if its shuddering blastbeats, doleful bellows, and deliriously inventive guitarwork were being torn straight from the chests of its makers.")

As fans know, Gorguts are in the midst of a glorious renaissance, which kicked off with 2013's outstanding Colored Sands and continued with 2016's equally impressive Pleiades' Dust. The gradually snowballing influence of Obscura helped set the stage for this moment, when one of extreme metal's most challenging bands could also be one of its most beloved.

In honor of 20 years of Obscura, here are a few thoughts on the record drawn from interviews in my Heavy Metal Bebop series, which began as the result of seeing pianist Craig Taborn (who would eventually meet and collaborate with Steeve Hurdle) at a Gorguts show.

Ben Monder (2017)

How would you describe what's happening on Obscura? I'm not a guitar player, so I can't necessarily verbalize it?

It's not about guitar at all. There's nothing really virtuosic on that. It's just like, there are sounds that he was getting — I don't know technically what you would even call it, like pick-scraping type things. I had never heard that before. It was more about the mystery of what was happening. I had never heard those elements put together in that way before. You know, when you first heard a record like that, you just don't know what's going on; there are all these novel ideas swimming around and colliding. And it almost seems like it shouldn't even work, but it's perfect. And it's also very integrated. It doesn't sound clever or contrived; it sounds like this integrated language that is just natural, but it's the result of all these technical elements. I like that aspect in music where it's mysterious and sounds correct and yet you have no idea how or why it works. And of course it has the darkness, and it's got "Earthly Love" with the violin. Where else is a death-metal song going to have a prominent violin feature that sounds perfect, you know? That's one of my top five metal records.

Matt Mitchell (2016)

Man, Obscura came on the other day. I've had that album for almost 20 years, since it came out, and it struck me how totally [crazy] that album is. It's so bizarre. [Laughs] It's really out there, man. And I basically live off of weird music, and that's, like, still... even in metal, there's nothing that quite goes that far.

Craig Taborn (2011)

There are a few metal albums that really intrigue me, and Obscura was one because it kind of came out of nowhere for me. That was such a weird little blip when it came out. Nobody knew what it was. It was too out. A lot of metal guys hated it. It was all wrong. The doom thing wasn’t big, and it had these things that were super-slow, and everybody hated that. Not everybody – obviously people liked it. But it was so dissonant and so dense; it was like Beefheart-metal.

Dan Weiss and I also talked about Gorguts extensively, during the first HMB interview back in 2011. He has some fascinating things to say about the drumming on the band's masterful fourth album From Wisdom to Hate.

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I'd like to thank Chuck Stern, Tim Byrnes and Colin Marston (now a member of Gorguts!), fellow travelers in the NYC scene, for introducing me to Obscura sometime in the early 2000s. I had heard The Erosion of Sanity in the '90s, but it didn't really stick. When I caught up and heard how completely the band had transformed itself, I was stunned and amazed.

Recent raves: Immortal, Pat Metheny and more

Happy spring! A few recent musical obsessions and raves:

Immortal
I'm generally not a fan of the endless microdivision of music into various subcategories, but I guess that looking back at my consumption of metal in its various forms over the years, I could generally say that I haven't gone that deep with the movement they call "black metal." Of the various canonical groups, the one I'd spent the most time with before the past month or so was Mayhem, whose shadowy, esoteric vibe (both re: the classic stuff and the more current releases) I dig very much. Recently, though — prompted by the announcement of a new album, Northern Chaos Gods, out in July — I dove into the Immortal catalog and made my way through their eight prior full-lengths. I took a backwards route, and while it was fun to hear the sound grow more and more primitive, as is often the case for me, I gravitated more toward the band's "mature" sound, where they'd dispensed with the seemingly central black-metal value of sounding harsh and lo-fi for the sake of pure extremity and moved on to a place I could relate to more: where it's simply about the songs.

The 2002 album Sons of Northern Darkness, the band's final album before their initial breakup a year later, particularly struck me. What I love about this record is the way that the material just sort of instantly obviates those subgenre distinctions I was referring to above. Yeah, the dudes like to paint their faces and dress up in leather and spikes; yeah, the vocals take the form of an otherworldly croak. But when you get right down to it, this stuff is just heavy, anthemic rock and roll, built around extremely sturdy, memorable riffs and designed for maximum live efficiency. I watch a performance like the one below, of Immortal playing at the 2007 edition of the legendary Germany fest Wacken Open Air — and I highly recommend checking out the entire concert, released in audio and video forms as The Seventh Date of Blashyrkh — and I see and hear the purest essence of heavy metal: a gloriously over-the-top, turn-off-your-brain-and-rage spectacle. So much metal, especially "extreme" metal presents itself as some kind of insular rite, where the spectator is merely an incidental presence. That kind of thing can be cool in the right hands, but to me, there's something really joyous and inspiring about Immortal's total commitment to pure heavy-metal entertainment.



This 2008 Guitar World interview with Immortal co-architects Abbath and Demonaz only drove home the band's deep connection — seemingly denied by so many in the metal underground —  to the rock and roll tradition:

Abbath: "Me and Demonaz are true. You can’t find truer people than us. But what’s true? We’re true…to rock and roll. It’s not about being evil and nasty to the rest of your fellows; it’s about showing those who think that rock and roll is a bad thing that, yeah, it is a bad thing: It’s baaad, in an all right way. It’s good. It’s freedom. Metal? Sure. But it’s rock and roll! If you don’t have the rock and roll attitude and vibe, you’ve got nothing."

Pat Metheny
What can I say? The man's discography has brought me an extreme amount of joy over the years, and periodically, I get swept up and totally lost in the insane quantity and variety of sound he's brought into the world over the years. I can't remember what set off this latest immersion, but I started out by traversing many of the Pat Metheny Group recordings both vintage and more recent. That band's 1978 debut has become a major touchstone for me in recent years. I poke fun at the Group's smoothness sometimes — let's be honest, for pure frictionless breeziness, that ensemble has often rivaled the most unabashed practitioners of so-called yacht-rock — and among friends and bandmates I've taken to labeling their aesthetic "elevator shred," but in the moment, while the listening is in progress, there are no qualifiers or disclaimers: I adore this stuff, plain and simple. As with Immortal above, I'm just extremely attracted to the unabashed quality of this body of work: Metheny and Co. seem concerned with nothing but making the most purely beautiful and epic music they can conceive of, completely irrespective of genre or fashion. At times does the Group ride a certain line of blandness that dampens my enthusiasm? Yeah, certainly — I'll admit that some of the mid-period output loses me a little bit. But at their best, and my three faves are probably that self-titled debut, the Travels live album from a few years later and the most recent PMG set, The Way Up, I find this band to be an inexhaustible source of transportive joy.

And what's so impressive to me is that the PMG aesthetic, which for some musicians would be the basis for an entire career, is only a sliver of what Pat Metheny is about. He's got this whole other, more capital-J Jazz side of what he does (I talked a bit about this duality in a 2008 DFSBP post), collaborating with the greatest musicians in the world in that style — "hanging," to speak with that circle, but never losing his core identity as this sort of Midwestern maverick, endlessly committed, yes, to chopsy virtuosity but also to a certain soulfulness and, again, the unabashed projection of the ecstasy of each musical moment. I've been returning to many of the established classics, from 80/81 to Rejoicing, and, again, just finding them to be so radiant and loose and enjoyable and free of pretense.

Another project that's been really grabbing me is the Unity Group (which grew out of an earlier project called the Unity Band), one of Metheny's latest ventures, which seems to be an attempt to reconcile various strains of his work, from the PMG "pastoral prog" vibe to the hardcore jazz stuff to the whimsical Orchestrion project, into one kind of superband. I highly recommend checking out both the 2014 album Kin and the live-in-a-black-box 2016 follow-up The Unity Sessions. The depth of the band (featuring Metheny's current drummer-of-choice Antonio Sanchez, monster saxist Chris Potter, bassist Ben Williams and multi-instrumentalist/vocalist Giulio Carmassi) allows Metheny to revel in all sides of what he loves to do in turn, from tender ballads to epic, quasi-proggish, through-composed suites to fiery extended solos, in settings ranging from reflective unaccompanied guitar to the full band's mini-orchestral lushness. I think of The Unity Sessions in particular as a sort of sweeping celebration of the Pat Metheny Sound in all its splendor. (Appropriately, the material ranges from pieces specifically written for the Unity Band/Group to classics from '80/'81, Song X and more.) For the full experience, I highly recommend checking out the concert-film version of the release, which is available in full on iTunes. Here's a preview:



Another recommended Metheny document: this excellent long-form interview conducted by Willard Jenkins last year. It really drives home for me the sort of pleasure-principle aspect of what Metheny does. He seems sort of marvelously unconcerned with how anyone might sort of classify or evaluate the various strains of his output, and on the contrary, marvelously concerned only with how much happiness and fulfillment a given musical endeavor might bring him. (Some might dispute me on this, but in my mind, his pleasure-principle attitude almost seems punk, a quality that aligns him directly with his similarly prolific and eclectic onetime collaborator John Zorn.) I have to say, though there are albums and projects of his I respond to more and less, that spirit of sort of innocent enthusiasm seems remarkably consistent throughout his body of work, from the Bright Size Life days up till now.

Demilich + Blood Incantation at Saint Vitus; May 4th, 2018
Speaking of joy, this show was just a goddamn blast from start to finish. I'd been wanting to see Demilich live for years. I have such a deep reverence for their lone 1993 album, Nespithe, which I went deep on when it was reissued a few years back, and that reverence has only grown after seeing Antti Boman and Co. rip through this material with no-nonsense passion and precision. The quarter century in between has not dulled the singularity and strangeness of this material in the slightest. Those stupendously grooving, asymmetrical riffs; that odd, bubbly belch of a voice — there's just nothing else like it in metal, and it's so inspiring to see that they're still commanding such respect and adoration this many years later (two sold out shows in one night at Vitus!). As I wrote on Twitter the other night, this sort of weird, roundabout cult success story could only happen in underground metal.

And Blood Incantation just absolutely blew me away. I'd read the raves about their 2016 release Starspawn, and while I've revisited in recent days and can confirm that it does indeed rip, I have to say that it doesn't even come close to approximating (for me, at least) how overwhelmingly captivating and intense this band was live. Their set just felt absolutely possessed and commanding, like they'd been locked in some underground bunker for years just drilling this stuff over and over (maybe just a.k.a. "on tour a whole fucking lot"), and when they emerged it was just pure internalized ritual, and channeling of some expertly honed force. They left me floored with how skillfully they covered the full spectrum of metal values, from a truly feral feel and energy to a truly grand, majestic compositional vision. Next time they play here, I will be dragging everyone I know, because this set was a fucking marvel to behold.

And shout-out to Artificial Brain as well! I'm deeply into their frontman's sort of good-natured ringleader vibe, and the band's highly appealing/effective blend of the slamming and the spacey.

Dave Holland / Evan Parker / Craig Taborn / Ches Smith, Uncharted Territories
I'm still digesting this (extremely long!) album, which comes out May 11th, but I'm absolutely loving it so far. Old Spontaneous Music Ensemble buds (btw, did you catch that phenomenal Karyobin reissue from last year?) Holland and Parker join up with two new-school leaders for a deep, varied free-improv excursion (rounded out by a select few compositions). As previously stated, there's an almost absurd amount of music here, but what I dig about the release is that that tracks themselves are relatively compact and digestible. I've been enjoying putting this one on shuffle and just sort of savoring whatever comes up. Given that the album includes basically all combinations of the four players, there's a ton of variety in the sound and the texture. Beautiful recording quality too. Don't miss this excellent Holland interview by Steve Smith, in which Dave tantalizingly alludes to a possible tour by this fine ensemble.

More on the Holland here, via RS.

Starebaby in the Times

Just a brief note to say that I'm happy and proud to unveil this New York Times feature on Dan Weiss and his fascinating Starebaby project.

You may be hearing more from me on this topic. In the meantime, check out the record below (it's officially out next Friday, April 6) and don't miss Sunday's show at Nublu.

Goodbye, Big Steeve

In the midst of Deathfest insanity, there was no time to report that the death-metal community lost a beloved innovator a few days ago: Mr. Steeve Hurdle, best known for his work in Quebec's Gorguts (specifically, on the awe-inspiring 1998 album Obscura) and in the spin-off project Negativa. My sincere condolences to his family and friends.

Despite all the amazing work he did during his lifetime (see above; that's Hurdle on the right, playing guitar and singing lead—in that inimitable anguished, sobbing style of his—throughout most of the song; the footage was posted by Hurdle himself, in tribute to Gorguts' then-drummer, Steve MacDonald, who had committed suicide in 2002), I can't help but think of a missed opportunity when I think of Big Steeve, as he was known. A little over two years ago, Steeve was scheduled to perform at the Stone in NYC, both solo and in a duo with Craig Taborn, but he was turned away at the border and the gigs never happened. I'll never forget how bummed I was when I heard the news. I was worried then that I'd never get to see Hurdle perform live (I got into Gorguts only well after he'd left the band and, as far as I know, Negativa never played in the U.S.), and it turned out to be true.

When I had the opportunity to sit down with Craig Taborn last year, I grilled him incessantly about his experiences working with Steeve. The two had met on MySpace, of all "places," and connected in person when Taborn played Montreal with David Binney in the mid-aughts; then Toby Driver of Kayo Dot booked the NYC Hurdle gigs, and Taborn visited Hurdle the week before the show was scheduled to occur. At that point, the two jammed. Taborn described the session to me in an e-mail:

"Steeve and I did not record that day, unfortunately; at the time, we were expecting to play the next week in NYC and I knew that would be recorded. It was fun, though, playing with him, especially [once] we got past the idea that i was a 'jazz' guy and so certain things had to happen a certain way. We fused immediately, maybe more because his way of playing sounded so comfortable to me, because I have really listened to those recordings for hours on end and learned everything, so it felt very home-like to me."

Of Steeve's work with Gorguts, Taborn said:

"Obscura really turned my head around about a lot of things compositionally and in terms of sound. Really a groundbreaking album and still full of secrets for me."

I corresponded briefly with Steeve himself after the Stone cancellation. I couldn't help asking him what he had been planned for his two sets. This was his reply:

From: Steeve Hurdle

Date: February 20, 2010 3:48:12 AM EST

To: Hank Shteamer

Subject: RE: sorry to hear about cancellation

Hello Hank,
sorry about the delay man...


What did i have planned for the stone concert was, an improvisation with Craig, we actually met the week before as Craig had a concert in Ottawa and the day after he just drive to montreal, to my rehearsal place and we had that really good improvised jam together.As for my solo set, i wanted to play the NEGATIVA album, all the songs that are gonna be on our first CD.....Unfortunately, this gonna be for another time...:S


I knew Craig from the internet, we've been writing to each other for the last 4 years.The first time i met him, he was playing, along with Dan Weiss in the David Binney band, back in 2007.


 As you said, Craig is a unique musician,lots of respect for him!


Thanks for writing and hopefully we will have the chance to meet one day...


Steeve

I remember feeling so disappointed and tantalized re: the NYC Hurdle show that never was. Now, it's hard to feel anything but sadness.

Steeve Hurdle's body of work is small but timeless. (It really just comes down to Obscura, an incredible three-song Negativa EP, some live material and early work with the band Purulence; speaking of the latter, anyone know if Hurdle appears in this clip? Hard to tell…) I have no doubt that open-minded listeners will continue to discover it and marvel at it. Hurdle showed me a new frontier in metal, something feverish, hallucinatory, terrifying at times, soul-plumbing, mercilessly extreme. Listening to, say, the excruciatingly drawn-out prog-doom dirge "Clouded" from Obscura (a track on which Hurdle was the sole composer; on much of the album, he collaborated with bandmates Luc Lemay and Steve Cloutier), you could tell that this was an artist who was going to keep pushing and pushing, whether anyone followed him or not. The grotesque array of squiggles, scrapes and squeals that made up Hurdle and Lemay's guitar vocabulary on Obscura and beyond—one of the most insular, unmistakable musical languages I've ever heard— screamed the message that metal was a limitless form of expression.

Whatever I could write here pales next to what you'll see and hear in the Negativa clip below. (Big Steeve is the first person that shows up in the vid, jokingly requesting that the viewer "Be quiet" when entering the studio; he's also the one starting off the song with the insane fretboard tapping.) Innovative technique in the service of unfettered imagination; from-scratch invention of form and content; willing something into being that has never before existed. There is no higher achievement. Genre is irrelevant here. It's simply creativity, and Steeve Hurdle was a master creator. Let us honor his memory.

P.S. Go here for some info on Hurdle's life outside of music.
P.P.S. Invisible Oranges has posted a moving Hurdle tribute by Doug Moore of the band Pyrrhon.

On fire: Craig Taborn at the Vanguard

Growing up in Kansas City, I played a lot of video games. During one phase, my friend Drew and I became obsessed with a cartoonish basketball title called NBA Jam. A key feature of this game was the possibility of one of your players achieving "on fire" status, awarded after they had scored three consecutive baskets.

After a two-basket streak, the game's announcer would say, "He's heating up…," and then, if you were able to land that crucial third basket, he would yell out, "He's on fire!" At this point, pandemonium would ensue: Your player suddenly became superhuman, gaining the ability to sprint turbo-speed and to take off from half-court for monster anti-gravity dunks. There was a wild ecstasy to these moments, your player turning into some kind of supernova. All you had to do was press a few buttons and rack up the points.

It seems silly to say so, but I couldn't help thinking of "He's on fire!" last night as I watched Craig Taborn perform at the Village Vanguard. I cannot remember the last time I witnessed a performer so utterly ablaze on a stage: pulling off so many dazzling technical achievements while exercising such a purely musical imagination. The show demonstrated that virtuoso skill doesn't have to get in the way of ideas; the two can coexist in a feverish frenzy, the hands doing the bidding of the sparking neurons and the overflowing heart.

Last year, Craig Taborn released a very good solo piano album, Avenging Angel. Around the time that I interviewed Taborn for my Heavy Metal Be-Bop series, I listened to the record obsessively. I found it beautiful but, in the end, somehow impenetrable, one reason I left if off my all-genres-in-play year-end top 10 list for Time Out NY (it did rank on my jazz-only list); I had to come clean and admit that I respected it more than I loved it. On my CD shelf, it's a hushed museum piece, to be savored in rare moments of undivided attention rather than to be really lived with in a practical sense.

For me, the performance I witnessed last night, a trio set with bassist Thomas Morgan and drummer Gerald Cleaver, was like the fulfillment of every hope I'd had for Avenging Angel. The album enthralled me with its strange, austere logic (in Time Out NY, I wrote of one piece that it "[felt] like stepping out of a spaceship onto an ice planet—vast and iridescent, but with a lurking malevolence…") but in the end, I was yearning for some kind of warm blood pumping through the chilly atmospheres.

That passion, that human pulse flooded the room last night. If Avenging Angel feels like a classic shut-in record, the sound of a man burrowing deep inside himself, this trio set was all about communication. Taborn, well known for his self-effacing personality, was clearly loving being in front of an appreciative crowd (there were whoops and hollers during several climactic moments) and communing with his bandmates, both of whom achieved their own kind of "On fire!" status.

Taborn mentioned at the outset that he wasn't one to do much "mic work," and that we shouldn't take his lack of announcement as an indication that he wasn't thrilled by our presence. I'm paraphrasing here, but he went on to say something to the effect that, rather than taking breaks to speak and catch his breath, he preferred to dive into the deep end and remain submerged for the duration, the better to focus on (I believe this was the phrase he used) simply "creating music."

And thus it was so, especially during the first piece in the set. I have no idea how long it lasted; my guess is somewhere in the neighborhood of 35 minutes. (No titles were given, so I can't help you there.) The piece felt to me like an expanse, a onflowing river that the players waded into and then ever so gradually began to attune to, growing more and more powerful, joyous, daring, until they evolved into some kind of collective superhuman aqua-being, capable of harnessing the water's enormous energy and using it to his own creative ends.

Okay, that's an out-there metaphor, but I'm struggling to convey the sensation of this piece. It had a feel that I'd liken to midtempo electronica, a steady, almost breakbeat-ish drive, but without the clichéd sped-up James Brown groove; there was no sense of typical jazz swing, just a subtle, airy funk laid down by Morgan and Cleaver. Sometimes Taborn would hammer on the rhythm, constructing these ingenious hypnotic vamps that sometimes sounded to me like sped up Tim Berne themes. Other times, he would let the left hand handle the vamp and unleash the right in a fit of wild expressionism, smearing it across the keys or leaping between distant notes. If the moment grabbed him, he'd let both hands free and let fly with a downward-stabbing, knitting-needle-like frenzy.

You couldn't not think of Cecil Taylor watching these outbursts, but I'm hesitant to invoke the Maestro, simply because the effect was so different. With Taylor, there's often this sense of private ecstasy, a feeling that he'd be playing exactly the same way if he were at home alone; with Taborn on the other hand, I felt a real exuberance, a "Come along with me" feeling. Juxtaposing these daredevil flights with infectious rhythmic drive had a "Eureka!" affect: Taborn's playing had all the extroverted thrust of McCoy Tyner comping behind John Coltrane—but employed in the service of a much more contemporary-sounding groove—combined with the unbounded imagination of Taylor. For me, it was a whole new kind of chocolate and peanut butter: two great tastes I'd never thought I'd get the chance to taste together.

I can tell that my description is doing a disservice to the pervasive collectivity of this performance. In a sense, yes, Taborn was the leader and the star. But in another sense, he was more a servant to a vibe than its master. The piece (I'm still talking about this marathon opening selection, which moved through several transitions and likely included two or three distinct compositions) was the real focus and all three players were giving themselves over to it. Taborn was going off, as it were, but it rarely felt like he was soloing in the traditional sense. At all times, the three players were building something, participating in something collective. There were no clear cues to orient you in terms of foreground/background: "Now he's soloing; now he is," etc. Taborn eased back just as often as he surged forward, and you felt the music playing itself.

Cleaver was absolutely unflappable throughout this piece, keeping up an airy future-funk texture—I hesitate to even call it a groove; it was more of a sensation; you felt that you were moving forward, even though it was hard to tell at what speed or for what duration. What he and Morgan (who like Cleaver, gave himself over to this strange, enveloping onrush) were providing was a kind of endlessness. When I was describing above how the music felt like the players were wading into a river, what I was trying to get at was the idea that this imaginary river had already been flowing for eons before the musicians waded in; they were participating, communing with, thriving on the strength of some kind of preexisting current. In that sense, the music did feel a whole lot more like great electronica than like jazz. It was an unmarked superhighway, and however turbulent Taborn's embellishment got, you still felt like you were just cruising. That's a testament to Morgan and Cleaver's marvelous attunement to Taborn's strange, ambitious, very un-jazz-like concept. (The cohesion makes sense b/c this trio has been touring Europe regularly for several years; you can download two 2009 concerts here, though, respectfully, as good as these bootlegs are, they pale in comparison to what I heard last night.)

The piece finally did stop, but there was no break. Taborn played alone for a little while, entering into what sounded like traditional jazz-ballad territory, but extremely slow and tender. It was a startling juxtaposition. Again, back to my earlier point that yes, Taborn often reminds me of various piano giants, but he seems much more willing than, say, Taylor to employ relatively conventional devices. I don't mean to say that he's somehow reliant on clichés; I mean that he seems totally okay with dipping into traditional modes for moments at a time if it suits his overall purpose. When you hear Cecil Taylor, you're hearing Cecil Taylor; and that's it. There's a wall there. Taborn has a very different kind of humanity to his playing; he wants to blow your mind—and, maybe, his own—but he wants to welcome you through the door. I guess what I'm saying is that this particular solo ballad section was straightforwardly gorgeous, and juxtaposed with the magic-carpet ride of the previous long piece, it felt like a revelation. You're exploring the ice planet, this vast, alien landscape, and all of a sudden you come across an inviting little cabin, with smoke coming out of the chimney.

The band worked back up to another Berne-ish prog-groove peak in the final piece. Morgan took a poetic bass solo somewhere in there; Taborn and Cleaver both laid out for several minutes, and then Cleaver reentered not with a sound produced from the kit, but by rubbing his palms together. Somehow, you could hear it perfectly. There was a real sense of meditation in that club, of everyone knowing they were experiencing something rare and magical. When the band finished, stopping together on a dime, there was a glow in the room, not to mention wild applause.

In case it isn't clear from the above, I'm feeling evangelical about this performance. If you live in New York and you've ever had any interest in Taborn's music, you must see this trio play tonight or tomorrow (sets at 9 and 11pm; check the Vanguard site or Time Out NY for details). With respect to his existing body of work, this was, idiomatically, some whole other shit. I always know that a show is going really, really well when I shoot astonished glances at my wife and she mirrors them, rather than simply humoring me. We were both floored by this show, and I'd have a hard time imagining that any attentive, open-minded listener (no "jazz-fan" credential needed) wouldn't be. I cannot wait to hear where this trio goes in the coming years; right at this very moment, they are my favorite band on the planet.

P.S. Before the Taborn show, we caught Billy Hart's magnificent quartet, discussed in the previous post. I don't mean to short-shrift that set here; it's just that they're a known quantity to me, about whom I've already written at length, whereas I was encountering this Taborn band more or less fresh. I will say that Hart himself was on the warpath last night; I can't remember the last time I heard a drummer of any kind thwack a floor tom or bash a cymbal with such conviction. You can still catch the Hart band too; they're closing out their Birdland run tonight.

P.P.S. There's been some good Taborn-trio buzz building throughout the week. I've deliberately held off reading Ben Ratliff's review or checking out too much of the archived set (plus very cool A Blog Supreme interview) that's up at NPR b/c I knew I wanted to attend myself and approach the music without too many preconceptions. Now that I've seen the show and weighed in myself, I'm looking forward to catching up on the conversation.

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:



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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.

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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.

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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)

Halftime report: 10 strong 2011 jazz releases

Last week, several top jazz writers took a minute to survey the year in recorded jazz thus far. (The Undead Jazzfest, which starts tonight—TONY preview here, full schedule here—serves as a handy peg, dividing the calendar more or less in half.) Here's a 25-strong list from Jim Macnie, and 25 plus change from Patrick Jarenwattananon.

To some, these midyear round-ups might seem like overkill; you may even question the value of the ubiquitous year-end polls. But I'm with Jim, who defended the practice in his own wry way ("We all love our horse races and we all love our listicles."). As for me, I'm just really happy that so much jazz is still being recorded and released on albums, and I'm doubly happy that so much of it is being sent to me. As a fan, it's only natural to want to celebrate the bounty and take stock, whether that's yearly, biyearly or daily.

In that spirit, here's an alphabetical list of 10 2011 jazz releases I'm digging. (For reference, here's my 2010 midyear list.) I try to get into a zen frame of mind re: such lists, i.e., not to choose but to be chosen. Great records exude a subtle magnetism and they keep pulling you back. You can't always identify them on the first spin, but they call to you. Playing them, there's a perpetual sense of unfinished business. They are unknowable or at least elusive. That doesn't rule out straightforward appeal, but there has to be something drawing you back. These have all had that effect on me.

Ben Allison Action-Refraction (Palmetto)
This is a record of covers (plus one original). Most of the pieces are new to me (or, like Monk's "Jackie-ing," only vaguely familiar), so I came to them fresh. I just love the sound of the band: funky and sassy and full, and with a rock edge (e.g., on P.J. Harvey's "Missed"), though not trying too hard to mimic rock, which can be a major red flag. My favorite tune is a reading of Samuel Barber's "St. Ita's Vision," which has a psych-happy, retro-synth sheen that—as I suggested in a Time Out NY preview—puts me in a Clockwork Orange frame of mind. You can stream the whole album on Allison's site.

Gerald Cleaver's Uncle June Be It As I See It (Fresh Sound)
If I remember correctly, I received this album right after I finished compiling my best-of-2010 lists. I recall liking it then, but I was worried it would get lost in the shuffle as the year wore on. Fortunately, that hasn't come to pass; this one is a keeper. Don't let the noisy opener, "To Love," throw you: This a sensitive, gently colorful record. The second piece, "Charles Street Sunrise," absolutely knocks me down with its chamberish beauty—like something off Andrew Hill's A Beautiful Day. Some tracks thrive on chaotic vocal overdubs and other programmatic content (alluding to Cleaver's family history), but the sweet ones are the ones that grab me. Like the Allison, the whole disc is streaming online via Cleaver's Bandcamp page. Check out "Fence & Post: Statues/UmbRa," which features a breathtaking Craig Taborn piano solo. (I should also nod respectfully to Out of This World's Distortions, a deep new Aum Fidelity effort from Farmers by Nature, Cleaver and Taborn's trio with William Parker.) I caught a nice live set by this band at Cornelia Street Café a few months back; hope Cleaver takes Uncle June to the stage again soon.

Eric Harland Voyager, Live by Night (Sunnyside)
This one originally came out last year, but apparently Sunnyside is reissuing it in July. The disc showed up in the mail a few days ago and it instantly caught my ear: fiery, chops-forward postbop (in the second-great-Miles-quintet vein) with a great sense of pacing (check out the solo "intermezzos" from pianist Taylor Eigsti). Lots of swagger here and a whiff of hotshot fusion, via Julian Lage's guitarwork. Hadn't heard too much of Harland before (I remember seeing him with Don Byron's Ivey-Divey trio a few years back, subbing for Billy Hart, who in turn subbed for him during the second half of the set), but he's been front and center this year, via this record and the cool James Farm collective. Wish I could've caught that latter group live this past weekend.

Ari Hoenig Lines of Oppression (Naive)
Speaking of hotshot fusion… I saw this band live at Smalls this past Monday and was floored, as I have been by Hoenig & Co. in the past. You should go hear them (Hoenig, bassist Orlando Le Flemming and guitarist Gilad Hekselman, with one of several pianists—the other night it was the marvelous Shai Maestro) in the flesh, but this record gives you a good taste. This band plays tricky, unapologetically flashy daredevil jazz that brims over with the joy of challenge. (I think of my math-rock survey, and the idea of the obstacle course.) Each player always goosing the other. This isn't really about subtlety as much as high-wire interactivity, and I can see it turning some people off, but for me it feels like watching great college basketball or something—a constant rush. Very catchy tunes too, most of them Hoenig originals. Check out some samples at Amazon ("Arrows and Loops" will not leave my brain) and a recent live set via Soundcheck.

Honey Ear Trio Steampunk Serenade (Foxhaven)
Another one that blindsided me. Had heard of drummer Allison Miller before, but had not checked out much of her work. Saxist Erik Lawrence and bassist Rene Hart were totally new to me, though. This cooperative trio plays like a dream, subcategories be damned. Something about the way they operate reminds me of Old and New Dreams, not that there's anything Ornette-ish about the music, but I get a sense of free-jazz-informed players working in a kind of autumnal mode, embracing that tradition as well as meat-and-potatoes swing and soul, all at once. They groove when they want (hinting at reggae, electronica, rock), fray at the seams when they want, always exuding a loose, gracious vibe. I get a strong Dewey Redman sensation from Lawrence (apparently a longtime sideman type dude who works with Levon Helm, among others)—tender yet never too far from a grizzly-bear outburst. I can't imagine a debut record sounding more assured than this. Stream here. (Let me say that it's great to see jazz artists embracing the excellent Bandcamp platform—it's the best way to go.)

Branford Marsalis and Joey Calderazzo Songs of Mirth and Melancholy (Marsalis Music)
Darius Jones and Matthew Shipp released a killer classical-inflected duo disc, Cosmic Lieder, earlier this year, and they sounded even better live. But this sax/piano session, on which the classical element is an even bigger factor, is the one I can't stop playing. I'm not an expert on Branford's music (I will say that I've been digging Crazy People Music majorly of late), but I have some sense that it's the norm for him to be preoccupied with classical repertoire/vibe (see the Branford piece in Ben Ratliff's The Jazz Ear). This CD takes that and runs with it: There is a Brahms piece here, but moreover, the whole thing is dripping with stately elegance, way more reminiscent of chamber music than jazz. The poise and lyricism heard on pieces like "The Bard Lachrymose" and "Endymion" really gets me—it's pretty, yes, but it's something way more than that: almost prayerful. Simply put, I know of no other record that sounds like this. For me, it's one of the biggest surprises of 2011. Some samples here.

Jerome Sabbagh/Ben Monder/Daniel Humair I Will Follow You (Bee Jazz)
As with the Harland, this is another one whose release date is a bit vague. Apparently, it originally came out in 2010, but I definitely didn't receive it last year, and moreover, I remember a CD-release party (with Paul Motian in for Humair) going down only a month or so ago. (Speaking of, did anyone catch that show? I was dying to see it, but couldn't get there.) Anyway, a lot of what's here is free jazz. It isn't Free Jazz, however; it's lunar-landscape free jazz, WTF free jazz, free jazz that isn't afraid to get weird, without getting dense or loud or heated, or signifying "freedom" in any of the obvious ways. Ben Monder is a good person to have in your band if you want to go down this road (see Bloom, with Bill McHenry). So is Humair, a veteran French drummer who I only remember hearing alongside Steve Lacy, not to mention Sabbagh, a beautifully supple tenor player who often works in a boppier mode. If you like your improvisation textural and hear-a-pin-drop sensitive, with no conventions taken for granted—along those lines, the Frisell/Motian/Lovano trio isn't a bad reference point, though this might even venture deeper into innerspace—you will love this CD. Check out samples here.

Wadada Leo Smith's Organic Heart's Reflections (Cuneiform)
Speaking of the unfinished business mentioned above, I can't wait to get back to this one. This release is a monster: two robust CDs' worth of new music for a 14-piece band. Wadada has been on a serious roll in recent years; Tabligh from 2008 was a particular favorite. Heart's Reflections really ups the ante, though, re: its treatment of Wadada's patented current mode of marrying the funky and the meditative. In terms of those respective poles, two supporting players nearly steal the show: Drummer Pheeroan akLaff (sounding downright nasty) and keyboardist Angelica Sanchez (grabbing me even more here than she did on her recent solo album, A Little House). There's definitely some electric Miles here, as is often the case with Wadada, but he's busted into a whole new realm with this wide-spectrum project. Gorgeously recorded and every bit as essential as Tabligh or other great later-period Wadada efforts such as the self-titled Golden Quartet debut and the Jack DeJohnette duo America (both on Tzadik). Destination: Out has a preview; Amazon has samples of each track.

Craig Taborn Avenging Angel (ECM)
It's probably best that I saved this for last, and maybe even that I didn't have access to it before I interviewed Mr. Taborn on the topic of metal a few months back. Simply put, this album is spellbinding and mystifying. Maybe it's that I just don't know the reference points that would unlock it, but I've noticed other reviewers regarding it with a kind of perplexed awe (check out Ratliff's take). By way of an illustration, here's a bit of my TONY preview: "At their best, these performances function like environments: Listening to 'This Voice Says So,' which builds gradually from an ethereal three-note theme, feels like stepping out of a spaceship onto an ice planet—vast and iridescent, but with a lurking malevolence. 'Glossolalia' takes elegant ascending lines and scrambles them into the sonic equivalent of Web-browser error code." What I'm trying to express is that you can't access this record via genre (jazz, classical, whatever); for me, it only made sense when I dropped the frameworks and just listened, when I let the sound pictures happen. I've spun it countless times, and it has retained an unknowable quality, as well as a powerful intrigue—the most I could really ask of a record. You really should hear it. Add Taborn's solo show at the Rubin last week to the list of gigs I was very bummed not to be able to attend. I read a few dropped-jaw accolades (Macnie, Panken), but I'm yearning for a fuller description. Anyone?

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Five honorable mentions: Sir Roland Hanna Colors from a Giant's Kit (was planning on including this in the above, but it slipped my mind—you need this record; beyond masterful/gorgeous solo piano, again with a strong classical flavor); Matana Roberts Coin Coin Chapter One: Gens De Couleur Libres (some thoughts via TONY); Shane Endsley and the Music Band Then the Other (playful yet state-of-the-art 21st-century quartet jazz; Taborn also in great form here); Matthew Shipp Art of the Improviser (heavy-duty two-disc set, one trio and one solo); Tin/Bag Bridges (haven't spent good time with this trumpet/guitar duo set, but I love what I've heard; check it out on Bandcamp).

Heavy Metal Be-Bop #2: Craig Taborn

I'm happy to announce that the second installment of Heavy Metal Be-Bop, my jazz/metal interview series, is live at Invisible Oranges. Once again, a big thanks to site honcho Cosmo Lee for hosting and for lending his editing and layout expertise to the project.

My guest this time around, Craig Taborn, is more or less the main inspiration behind the series, and I speak a bit about that (specifically Taborn's connection to the Gorguts universe) in the intro. I also mention Taborn's seemingly boundless metal knowledge, but I feel like I ought to note that this knowledge extends way beyond a single genre. Taborn has his iTunes hooked up to his TV, so I got a chance to check out his music library; I have to say, it might be the most diverse and comprehensive collection I've ever seen. I hope he won't mind me listing a few of the artists I spotted in there: Springsteen (Nebraska), This Heat, Thelonious Monk, Arcade Fire, Stravinsky, Sonic Youth, Henry Threadgill's Air, the Walker Brothers, Shudder to Think, Muddy Waters, Descendents. (He even had craw in there, which—as any regular DFSBP reader could guess—absolutely blew my mind. It turns out he went to college with their early-period drummer, Neil Chastain!) Looking at that list now, it doesn't scan as terribly unusual (everyone's got a world of music on their iPod these days), but the point I'm trying to make—a point hopefully illustrated in our conversation—is that Taborn is an especially deep listener; he really gets inside all of these different areas. That may be one reason so many different bandleaders call on him regularly. Dan Weiss, my first Heavy Metal Be-Bop guest, made all this explicit during a recent appearance on WKCR's Musician's Show. Listing the personnel for the new Dave Binney album, Graylen Epicenter—on which both Weiss and Taborn appear—he shouted out Taborn's insider nickname: Encyclopedia Tabes. Having spent time with the man, I assure you that it's an accurate moniker.

I hope you enjoy this installment of Heavy Metal Be-Bop. I have another interview in the pipeline, which I hope to publish soon, but I'm definitely on the lookout for future subjects. Can you think of anyone who might be able to shed light on the jazz/metal connection? If so, please let me know via e-mail or the comments.