Best of 2012: Jazz, part III

Here's the third and final installment of my 2012 jazz round-up. Complete, unannotated list is here, part I and an intro are here, and part II is here. And here's a thematically fitting bonus track: my Pitchfork review of the new Mingus box set on Mosaic. All-genres-in-play year-end lists coming soon!


Jim Black Trio
Somatic [Winter and Winter]

David Virelles
Continuum [Pi Recordings]

Grouping these two together might be a little bit of a stretch, but I think it makes sense. At heart, they're both unconventional piano-trio records that work hard to sustain a particular mood/feel over their respective running times.

I remember receiving a download of Somatic about a year ago, right in the middle of the 2011 year-end-list frenzy. Right from the first spin, I really enjoyed it, but I was worried that it would get lost in the shuffle as the year progressed; albums that come out early in January often do. (Though, interestingly, the album that ended up topping my 2012 all-genres-in-play list—to be revealed in due time—is also a record I've had my hands on since the very beginning of the year.) Fortunately, this did not occur. I saw a very good show by this band at Cornelia Street Café in February, and the record stuck with me pretty stubbornly throughout the year.

So what is Somatic, exactly? Jim Black is a musician I've come around to gradually. I first heard him at Tonic with Dave Douglas's Tiny Bell Trio, probably around 1999 or 2000, and soon after that I ran into him on records by Tim Berne's Bloodcount. I wasn't in love with his drumming at that time. I respected the skill, but the aesthetic didn't click with me; something about the way he was channeling rock seemed sort of like a knowing paraphrase rather than the result of true, head-on engagement, and I found his signature idiosyncrasies, both timbral and rhythmic, a little distracting. But as I heard more of Black's work over the years—especially the gorgeous records he made with his AlasNoAxis band (e.g., Houseplant), on which he did an awesome job of getting out of the way of his own compositions and simply letting them speak—I really turned around on him. Jim Black, the composer-bandleader, appealed to me much more than Jim Black, the sideman.

With Somatic, I think he's reached a new peak. He's stripping the aesthetic down to the bone here, uncluttering it in an admirable way. AlasNoAxis retained that rockish feel via Hilmar Jensson's guitar and the backbeat feel of some of the grooves, but that kind of allusion is less apparent here. This set of pieces feels entirely secure within itself; listening, you're not preoccupied with what the influences might have been. So yes, as I mentioned above, this is a piano trio record: Black, plus bassist Thomas Morgan and pianist Elias Stemeseder (a young Austrian player whose name is new to me). The writing is just remarkable. You get these simple, folksy, memorable themes, such as "Uglysnug" and "Terrotow," which gets stuck in my head constantly, and a bunch of moodier, more troubled-, pensive-sounding ones—like opener "Tahre" and "Chibi Jones"—and then some, like "Somatic," that seem to combine those two sensations. A lot of slow, extremely chilled-out music here, but unpredictable and unboring. "Somatic" is a good illustration of what's so compelling about this record; the composition is sort of lilting and catchy, but the playing is teeming with strange detail. Black, Morgan and Stemeseder are having a real Bill Evans Trio kind of group conversation here, drifting in and out of in-time playing, just sort of flowing where the piece takes them. This record isn't just my favorite example to date of Jim Black's writing; it might be my favorite example of his drumming as well. On "Somatic," he seems to be going for an unbelievably subtle version of the Tony Williams–on-"Nefertiti" thing, i.e., a sort of constructive disruption. The trademark sounds of his kit, those dry cymbals, the splatty bass drum, and the strange, slurred time feel—here you hear all this in a quiet and composed setting. The improvisation does threaten to heat up at times, but it's all so dynamically controlled, so essentially balladic.

This trio doesn't sound anything like the Motian/Frisell/Lovano band, but there's a similar kind of murky, liquid lyricism at work here—an experimentalism that has no time for obvious signifiers. A few pieces on the record veer off in other directions—the postboppish "Sure Are You," one of the only tracks here with what I'd describe as a jazzy rhythmic feel, and the tumbling, prog-funky "Beariere"—but overall, Somatic is a pretty remarkable feat of sustained moodcraft. If you like your jazz reflective, with a little stimulating yet unobtrusive weirdness around the edges, you will eat this record up. Every time I put it on, I feel like I've previously underestimated how good it is.



Again, David Virelles's Continuum—a very different record. Jim Black is a veteran compared to Virelles, whose name I've only started seeing around over the past couple of years. When I noticed that this Cuban pianist's working band, also called Continuum, featured Andrew Cyrille on drums—as well as Ben Street, also a member of the Billy Hart Quartet discussed in part II of this round-up—I was instantly intrigued. Cyrille's been doing awesome work in Bill McHenry's band over the past couple years (check out the recent La Peur du Vide), and he sounds incredible on Continuum. (I've written before about intergenerational jazz bands designed to showcase the work of an older drummer; you can add Virelles trio to that list.)

As Ben Ratliff pointed out in his review, Continuum is a multimedia presentation, in which Román Díaz's chant and even Alberto Lescay's painting play a central role. While I've come to enjoy those elements—and I'll admit that Díaz's vocals took some getting used to—the sound of the piano trio at the core of this ensemble is what's kept me coming back to Continuum. I love the way Virelles, Street and Cyrille groove on the funky dervish dance "The Executioner"—Díaz's subtle Afro-Cuban percussion is key here too—working up to a tense climax and giving way to a masterfully textural Cyrille solo. Some of the other pieces go for pure texture; "Threefold" is a super-quiet masterpiece, an abstracted ballad, in which Virelles and Street leave tons of space for Cyrille's pinging cymbals and rustling brush-on-snare work.

The record can be a little disorienting, since the group's approach mutates constantly; almost every piece seems to have a different sonic objective. After a few spins, though, I started to embrace the variety. This is a record that ranges from "Manongo Pablo," essentially a nimble, uptempo Cyrille drum solo set against Virelles's spacey, almost psychedelic Wurlitzer, to "Our Birthright," where a Díaz recitation over hushed accompaniment from the trio gradually transitions into a passionate, spirit-raising free-jazz episode, featuring guest horn players Román Filiú, Mark Turner and Jonathan Finlayson. (During this latter section, you really hear how valuable Cyrille is to the session; when the other players dial up the intensity, he keeps his volume and density carefully controlled, assuring that the crescendo doesn't turn into a cacophonous blowout.)

While I look forward to spending more time with Continuum, I'm not sure I'll ever understand fully what Virelles is going for here. In the liner notes, he writes about the Afro-Cuban religious practices that inspired the record, discussing the "highly complex cosmologies" that guide them and the way Díaz's verse weaves together Spanish with the "ritual languages" of Karabali, Kongo and Yorùbá-Lucumí. No translations of any of the text are provided, so in a sense, any listener not steeped in these traditions is kept deliberately on the outside. It's an intriguing and, in a weird way, almost refreshing way to present a record, i.e., clue the listener in slightly to the concepts guiding the work but don't overexplain. The result is that Continuum scans like a mystery rather than some sort of context-laden cross-cultural artifact. It's fascinating stuff.

Note that this band plays Drom tonight. They're also at the Village Vanguard from January 29 through February 3, with Filiú guesting Friday to Sunday and none other than Henry Threadgill (!) sitting in on Thursday.

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Henry Threadgill Zooid
Tomorrow Sunny / The Revelry, Spp [Pi Recordings]

As discussed on DFSBP a couple weeks back, I recently had a bit of a moment with Threadgill's three most recent Zooid releases, developing a new appreciation for the band's sound—and the ways in which it diverges from H.T.'s "classic" work. The postscript marked "Update" there features some in-the-moment impressions of this latest Zooid record, which welcomes cellist Christopher Hoffman to the fold, so I won't go into too much detail here. Tomorrow Sunny doesn't differ wildly from the bands prior two LPs—Vols. 1 and 2 of This Brings Us To—but you can hear a progression in terms of the band's deep-listening interaction. The group dynamic on tracks like "So Pleased, No Clue"—one of the sparser, shorter, less groove-oriented pieces—is stunningly sensitive. You really hear the players breathing together, completing each other's sentences, coexisting, collaboratively coaxing out the ensemble sound. In the post linked above, I wrote about how Zooid's music isn't the kind that comes to you; you have to meet it on its own terms. But once you're there—and for me, that meant shedding my desire for big, bold, super-memorable ensemble themes, so prevalent in older Threadgill—this is a very pleasurable, even sensuous record and probably my favorite Zooid statement yet.

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Joe Fiedler
Big Sackbut [Yellow Sound Label]

I don't know too much about the trombonist Joe Fiedler, but I have enjoyed the last couple of albums of his I've checked out: 2007's The Crab and last year's Sacred Chrome Orb, both lean trio discs geared toward showcasing the leader's charming compositions and impressive command of odd timbral effects. Big Sackbut debuts a very different project, a World Saxophone Quartet–style four-piece with three trombones (Fiedler, Ryan Keberle and Josh Roseman) and one tuba (Marcus Rojas. I like the more extroverted tracks on here, e.g. Fieder's "Mixed Bag" and a take on Willie Colon's "Calle Luna, Calle Sol," but the more measured, reflective pieces ("#11," "Don Pullen") impress me the most. For me, the real hurdle a project like this has to clear is "Does the music transcend the eccentricity of the ensemble make-up?," and I'd answer a definite yes with respect to this record. Enjoyable stuff, especially for the brass-inclined.

Here's a clip of the group doing "Calle Luna, Calle Sol" live in 2010.

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Yoni Kretzmer 2Bass Quartet
Weight [OutNow]

Another one that foregrounds an unusual ensemble make-up. Here, I'd heard everyone but the leader—Israeli tenor-saxist Yoni Kretzmer—going in; the rest of the band—bassist Sean Conly and Reuben Radding, and drummer Mike Pride—are all NYC stalwarts.  There's definitely a gritty, post-Ayler quality to Weight, but that's only a fraction of what's going on here. Kretzmer has a very classic tenor sound, raspy yet melodic—I believe I cited Dewey Redman in one of the prior write-ups; I think of him here too—and a sometimes borderline-sentimental compositional sense; on pieces like "Giving Tree," and "A Bit of Peace," these qualities clash fruitfully with the grittiness of the improvising. This push-and-pull keeps me interested. I'm all for the backbeat-driven meltdown at the beginning of "Again and Again," but I'm even more intrigued by the way the dynamics dip down to ballad level instead of continuing to blare. "Smallone," a measured interlude that sets Kretzmer against the two plucked basses and Pride's tasteful brushwork, is another standout. As with the Threadgill record, Kretzmer really lets you hear every player in the band; it's a beautifully recorded disc, and its greatest pleasure is hearing the group members carrying on a lively yet expertly controlled conversation, e.g., on a track like the sing-songy "A Bit of Peace." Everyone's really listening, here and throughout the album.



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Ted Nash
The Creep [Plastic Sax]

I'd never really checked out Ted Nash's work before this year. One of the most welcome side benefits of researching my Jazz Composers Collective profile a couple months back was getting to know various Nash projects like the Double Quartet, Still Evolved and Odeon. As with the Fiedler and Kretzmer records above, some of this past Nash work—e.g., the tango-inspired Odeon and the string-quartet-augmented Double Quartet—thrives on unconventional ensemble make-up. The Creep is something different, though. It's simply a scrappy, hard-swinging quartet record, driven by Ulysses Owens's ass-kicking drumming and the stimulating warm-cool contrast between Nash's saxophone and Ron Horton's trumpet. Much like the Dolphy/Curson/Mingus/Richmond band, this group gets a ton of mileage out of its stripped-down instrumentation, emphasizing density or sparseness, abandon or control as the situation demands. Check out "Burnt Toast and Avocado" and "Plastic Sax Lullaby" in succession and you'll see what I mean. Nash has cited Ornette (particularly his use of a plastic saxophone) as an inspiration for this record, but to continue with our overriding theme, The Creep is another no-school jazz statement. It simply does its thing (many things, really) and leaves the classification up to the listener.




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Jeremy Pelt 
Soul [HighNote]

Hat-tip to Phil Freeman for turning me on to this one. I knew Pelt's name, but little else about him, going in. I was intrigued by the idea of hearing JD Allen and Gerald Cleaver in a new context, and I wasn't disappointed at all. This is a low-key and unassuming session, ballad-heavy, clearly indebted to ’60s Blue Note fare—esp. moody Wayne Shorter records like Speak No Evil—and gorgeously recorded. (Pelt's site says that Rudy Van Gelder himself engineered this one, though, oddly, Joe Marciano's name is listed on the CD itself.)  It's a throwback record, but it's not slavish in the slightest, and the playing is outstanding, whether on the more freewheeling, uptempo tracks like "What's Wrong Is Wright" or "The Tempest"—both of these have a pretty strong mid-to-late-’60s-Miles-quintet vibe going on, with Cleaver clearly mining a Tony Williams vibe on the latter, and sounding great—or whispery slow pieces like "The Ballad of Ichabod Crane." The latter piece exemplifies one of Soul's most appealing qualities, its ability to convey chill-ness without sleepiness; in the end, this is a fairly straightforward record, but there's enough intrigue and conviction in the playing that it doesn't feel rote. Playing this again now, though, I'm reminded by its subtle magnetism—I'll definitely be returning to this one, and keeping an eye out for future Pelt releases.

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Ralph Peterson 
The Duality Perspective [Onyx]

As with Soul, I woke up to this one after reading another writer's take, in this case Ben Ratliff's review. And again, I'm very thankful for the heads-up, since I wasn't familiar with Peterson's prior work. Part of what intrigued me in the Times write-up was the description of the Fo'tet—one of two bands featured on this record—a quartet with clarinet, vibes and bass. (The sidemen are Felix Peikli, Joseph Doubleday and Alexander L.J. Tosh, respectively—all new names to me.) The combination of clarinet and vibes is one I've loved since I first heard the ’30s Benny Goodman Quartet back in college—got a nice opportunity to binge on these sides during WKCR's recent Teddy Wilson centennial marathon—and though the Fo'tet is no Swing Era throwback, the texture of the band does hint at the crisp, fresh, chamber-jazzy interplay of Goodman and Lionel Hampton. To me, this group sounds best playing more or less straightforward postbop, as on album opener "One False Move." What I like about this piece, and "Princess" as well, is the contrast between the cool sound of the clarinet-vibes frontline—and I mean that more texturally, since Peikli is a daring and passionate soloist—and Peterson's busy, churning accompaniment. He's got a rumbling, Elvin Jones quality to his swing, and he certainly smacks the kit from time to time, but his dynamics are impressively controlled; he's driving the band without overdoing it. I'd have to agree with Ratliff's assessment of the record's latter half, which features Peterson's sextet ("The sextet has its moments, but it deals in more weighed-down and conventional moods and doesn’t have as recognizable a group sound," he wrote). The title track—a lushly orchestrated ballad—is a definite winner, though: a strong showcase for Peterson's writing/arranging, that muscular yet sensitive drumming style I mentioned above and the appealing two-sax frontline of Walter Smith III and Tia Fuller. I look forward to hearing more from Peterson, especially the Fo'tet.


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Eric Revis's 11:11
Parallax [Clean Feed]

Was a little apprehensive about including this one on my year-end list, mainly because it only showed up in the mail a few days before I filed. But I knew that (A) the band featured here—the sidemen are Ken Vandermark, Jason Moran and Nasheet Waits—was too special to overlook and that (B) the record wasn't really going to be eligible for 2013 consideration. Definitely still digesting this one, so my impressions are a little sketchy. But I will tentatively say that Parallax lives up to my high expectations. (I remember seeing this band listed on the Jazz Gallery schedule a few years back, and after missing that gig, I eagerly awaited a recording.) Revis is, in his own way, one of the most eclectic players I know. I've been seriously impressed by his playing with Tarbaby, Bill McHenry's current working quartet, Peter Brötzmann (the 2011 Vision Festival featured a Revis / Brötzmann / William Parker trio), and Branford Marsalis—a pretty wide range of contexts—and I remember really digging his last leader record, Laughter's Necklace of Tears, when I checked it out a while back.

Like that LP, Parallax is an eclectic and challenging set. Revis doesn't just put together bands and let them rip; he assembles real programs' worth of music. This album features muscular, trancelike solo bass ("Percival," e.g.); dramatic, tightly orchestrated pieces like "Dark Net" and "MXR," which almost come off as proggy chamber jazz; entropic yet sensitive free-jazz pieces ("I'm Going to Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter," "Celestial Hobo," "ENKJ") that really show off the potent group dynamic this quartet has achieved; and at least one piece ("Winin' Boy Blues") that sounds like a riff on the kind of stylized retro vibe that Moran and Waits often explore in the Bandwagon. Skimming back through the tracks now, I'm realizing that I can't wait to give this record a few more focused spins. Revis has put together a fascinating group here—one that can breathe free-form fire when called upon to do so, e.g., "Hyperthral," or groove hard and tough, e.g., "Split"—and he really seems to be wringing all the potential he can out of these players.




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Harris Eisenstadt
Canada Day III [Songlines]

  










Canada Day Octet [482 Music]

Harris Eisenstadt has been a mainstay of my year-end lists over the past few years—I particularly dug 2008's Guewel and 2010's Woodblock Prints. He's prolific, but he's always worth checking in with. I'd overlooked Eisenstadt's Canada Day band in the past, maybe because it's his most conventional-sounding ensemble, a quintet with saxophone, trumpet, vibes and bass. As with previous Canada Day releases, the writing on III is very clean, clear and lyrical, sometimes with a shade of playful quirk.  The pieces seem designed to show off the sidemen, specifically the extraordinary frontline of saxist Matt Bauder and trumpeter Nate Wooley; both can veer into abstract/abrasive territory—fans of Wooley's work in freer contexts will recognize what he's up to on "Nosey Parker"—but what impresses me most here is when they're playing in this sort of soft, murmuring style—as on "Song for Sara"—and mingling their sounds with Chris Dingman's vibes. It's a very pleasant and accessible group texture, but far from conventional, which seems to be a hallmark of Eisenstadt's work overall. Don't meant to short-shrift the Canda Day Octet record record when I say that it's more or less a companion piece. Eisenstadt's writing for this expanded group is just as sharp as it is for the core band—the multipart "Ombudsman" suite, which really takes advantage of the larger ensemble, is magical—and again, Bauder, Wooley and Dingman are the stars here. Both these discs are highly recommended.

Here's some live footage of the octet.


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40Twenty  
40Twenty [Yeah Yeah]

David Ambrosio has shown up a couple times on this list already, on the Schuller and Yamamoto records, and the other three here are familiar names, all of whom lead their own projects. (Garchik's The Heavens is definitely one to check out.) This is a subtle one that I might have overlooked if it wasn't for Nate Chinen's recent shout-out. I like how this record manages to sound both weird and composed at the same time, as when the band plays an expertly controlled form of free jazz on Ambrosio's "One Five," or a slurry Monkish march on Sacks's "Jan 20." With only trombone in the frontline, the group has a kind of drollness about it, a vibe that's also reinforced in the writing, but there's some really heated, energized playing on tracks like Garchik's "Gi." Like many of the other projects on this list, 40Twenty is taking what it needs from various jazz strains without aligning itself to any of them. "Jan 20" sounds almost throwbacky—appropriate since the band's name is a nod to the grueling nightclub gig schedules of yore—while "Plainchant" is as delicate and austere as the name would suggest. The feel of the latter piece captures what I enjoy about this record—the way both its beauty and its oddness feel muted, sort of far off. 40Twenty is more elusive than most of the records cited above, but it's worth taking the time to get close to it.



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P.S. The best jazz performances I saw this year, with links to coverage, where applicable:

Miguel Zenón Quartet
January 6; Zinc Bar (Winter Jazzfest)

Craig Taborn Trio
April 6, 8; Village Vanguard

Darius Jones Quartet
June 12; Roulette (Vision Festival)

Marc Ribot Trio
June 29; Village Vanguard

Ethan Iverson / Ben Street / Albert "Tootie" Heath
August 26; Village Vanguard

Bob Stewart Quintet
November 10; Central Park (Jazz and Colors)

Henry Threadgill Zooid
November 24; Roulette

Best of 2012: Jazz, part II

Here's part II of an ongoing rundown of my favorite 2012 jazz recordings. Full, unannotated list here; intro and part I here. Part III to follow as soon as I have time to write it up!


Joel Harrison / Lorenzo Feliciati
Holy Abyss [Cuneiform]

As I suggested in a TONY preview back in May, guitarist Joel Harrison is a hard guy to keep tabs on. He's about as prolific as, say, Ken Vandermark, and even harder to pin down, stylewise; I've only woken up to his work within the past couple years, and I already feel a little overwhelmed by what there is to hear. Harrison also put out a very good album on Sunnyside this year, Search, but the one I kept coming back to was this oddity, a session co-led by Lorenzo Feliciati, a Italian fusion bassist whose name was new to me.

Like with many of the other records on this list, Holy Abyss carves out its own stylistic niche—a boldly unfashionable one that I'd loosely peg as some sort of prog-blues fusion. The second track, "Saturday Night in Pendleton" moves from a whimsical, laid-back swing intro to a raunchy roots-rock stomp, with drummer Dan Weiss sloshing it up on the hi-hat, keyboardist Roy Powell providing gleaming B3 organ and Harrison shredding in a sort of Pat Metheny–gone-roadhouse style. Some of the writing and arrangement reminds me of Metheny as well (tracks like "Requiem for an Unknown Soldier," which you can hear below, and "North Wind (Mistral)," esp.); something about the unabashed drama of the compositions and the super-stylized arrangements recalls a record like The Way Up for me. (Also, Metheny Group trumpeter Cuong Vu is on trumpet here.) But Holy Abyss has a mood all its own, evidenced in the soothing yet sinister drift of a piece like "Faith," which is much more about pure texture than flash.

I'm just now reading on Harrison's site that writing duties are shared on this record, and that's impressive because this set of pieces really does feel coherent in some hard-to-pin-down way. Maybe it's that sort of noirish mood I was getting at above in the "Faith" description, or the way the pieces will suddenly move from spacey to ballsy. As with the more proggish Metheny, this music can flirt with over-slickness, but there's enough grit to make it work. Overall, Holy Abyss really surprised me, and I'd love to hear more from this band.

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Jasmine Lovell-Smith's Towering Poppies
Fortune Songs [Paintbox]

Haven't spent as much time with this one as I would've liked, but it has me hooked. Fortune Songs is an almost incredibly assured-sounding debut. Lovell-Smith is a soprano saxophonist (a still-rare specialist on the instrument) from New Zealand, and this is the first I'd heard of her; same for the other four members of her band. What she's going for her is a boldly lyrical sound, almost uniformly mellifluous without being saccharine. As you can hear on a track like "Darkling I Listen," the themes are often striking, but what impresses me most is the way the band plays like a single instrument—Lovell-Smith has a beautifully songlike style, and the entire band seems to channel that sound, operating in a kind of dreamy trance—as well as how measured and focused the improvisations are. I may be leaning too heavily on this notion, but it's very apt here: This record is of no school. Listen to the unmoored rhythm section work going on in "Confidence (Two)"; this is jazz that's free but that subscribes to no clichés of the avant-garde. (The in-time playing on, e.g., "A Nest to Fly" is just as satisfying.) Fortune Songs isn't in a hurry to grab your attention; it just patiently goes about its business. It's pretty rare for any record, let alone a debut, to put forth such a firm yet subtle aesthetic. Really impressive stuff.


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Matt Wilson's Arts and Crafts
An Attitude for Gratitude [Palmetto]

This is another very beautiful and approachable record that's full of surprises. I've been impressed with Wilson's playing for many years, and his Matt Wilson Quartet records have always grabbed my attention. But this is probably my favorite album I've heard from him. What I love about the Arts and Crafts band—a quartet with Terell Stafford on trumpet and flugelhorn, Gary Versace on keyboards and Martin Wind on bass—is the way it comes off as both classic and eccentric. The band's preferred mode is simple, buoyant swing, soloists proceeding in orderly fashion, etc.; they sound thoroughly convincing playing groovy soul-jazz ("Little Boy with the Sad Eyes") or a romantic ballad ("Happy Days Are Here Again"). Where Wilson's fun-loving personality comes through is in the offbeat details—e.g., Versace's stylized accordion on "Bubbles," which also features a Wilson recitation of a Carl Sandburg poem—which add color without tipping the project over into quirkiness, and in his gleefully liberal approach to repertoire. In addition to "Little Boy," a Nat Adderley piece, you get pieces by Jaco ("Teen Town") and Jon Scofield ("You Bet"), originals from Versace, Wind and Wilson, the standard "There's No You"(played unaccompanied by Stafford, a brilliant late-in-the-album curveball) and an absolutely gorgeous Versace/Wind/Wilson rendition of "Bridge Over Troubled Water," maybe the best jazz cover of a well-known pop song I've ever heard. That performance sums up the charm of this record; as with the Yamamoto above, An Attitude for Gratitude is easy to love but still deep and nourishing.

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The Cookers 
Believe [Motéma Music]

Billy Hart 
All Our Reasons [ECM]

Believe is another record that wears its charms right on the surface. The Cookers' 2010 debut, Warriors, landed on my best-jazz list for that year, but I think this one (their third LP) might be even better. The Cookers are an all-star band—convened by trumpeter David Weiss as an illustration of the timelessness of great hardbop—filled with lifers such as George Cables, Cecil McBee and Billy Hart and they play like it, with plenty of flash, brawn and virtuosity, but what I love most about them is the way their records don't just feel like a bunch of pros jamming. The repertoire consists mostly of compelling originals from the band members, arranged in little-big-band fashion. There's generally a theme-solos-theme thing going on, but there's nothing auto-pilot-y about the way the Cookers perform this material; they're playing compositions, not just heads. That said, when it's solo time, the frontline just steps up and shreds, esp. tenor player Billy Harper, who shines on two pieces he wrote: album opener "Believe, for it Is True" and "Quest." Billy Hart sounds typically magical throughout this record, whether propelling the band through a rave-up like Wayne Shorter's "Free for All" or a delicate waltz (Cables's "But He Knows"); what I love about Hart is the way that, like, say, Elvin, you always hear his personal sound stamp, even when he's playing a background role, and the Cookers is a great showcase for that. As with Spirit Fiction, Believe is another record that muddies the idea of a contemporary jazz mainstream; sure it's accessible, conventional and crowd-pleasing in a sense, a little retro even, but at the same time, it's not part of any contemporary jazz movement. It's just too damn engaging to pigeonhole.

Here's a Cookers EPK.

The Billy Hart Quartet, oft-praised on this blog, is a very different setting in which to hear Hart. All Our Reasons is only the band's second album, a long-awaited follow-up to 2006's Quartet, but it shores up what the group was doing on that earlier release, makes it official; the Billy Hart Quartet, in other words, has trademarked a sound—or more accurately several sounds. Every piece on this record has something very specific to say: the slyly funky "Tolli's Dance" and the sprawling and meditative "Song for Balkis" (both Hart originals); Iverson's "Ohnedaruth," which reconfigures "Giant Steps" much as the band scrambled "Moment's Notice" on the first record, and "Nostalgia for the Impossible," a mysterious and poetic ballad that's probably the closest I've heard another composer come to nailing the Andrew Hill vibe. Material aside, though, what I love most about this record is how it captures the way these four musicians—Hart, Iverson, saxist Mark Turner and bassist Ben Street—have braided together like ivy in this project; as I listen back to "Tolli's Dance," Turner's dusky tenor tone, Hart's whispering cymbals, Iverson's sparse chords and Street's funky undergirding all seem to spring from one mind. You feel that especially on a piece like "Wasteland," where Turner, Iverson and Street play a floating melody as Hart murmurs underneath, playing mallets on his toms. What I'm trying to get at is that this band has a headspace, a shadowy and beautiful one, and All Our Reasons captures it exquisitely. (For some background, here's my profile of the group, based on a joint interview with Hart and Iverson.)

Here's a Billy Hart Quartet EPK.

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Wadada Leo Smith / Louis Moholo-Moholo
Ancestors [TUM]

Sam Rivers / Dave Holland / Barry Altschul
Reunion: Live in New York [Pi Recordings]

Speaking of shadowy and beautiful… Leo Smith has been on a tear in recent years, and it's been tough, though thrilling at the same time, to try and keep up. I've loved the various records he's put out on Cuneiform, including Heart's Reflections, Spiritual Dimensions and Tabligh, and while I just haven't had enough time to digest this year's civil-rights-themed opus Ten Freedom Summers, I look forward to digging in further. Ancestors—the second Smith album to come out on the Finnish label TUM—is very different than any of the ensemble-oriented albums listed above. It's the latest installment of an ongoing sidebar in Smith's career that has found him dueting with some of the world's best drummers, yielding stunning collaborations with Jack DeJohnette (check out 2009's America), Ed Blackwell (heard on The Blue Mountain's Sun Drummer) and Gunter "Baby" Sommer (the Smith/Sommer performance I caught at the Vision Festival a few years back was one of the best free-improv sets I've ever seen, if not the best). Here's another one to add to that list. I don't really know what you say about a record like this, other than that it documents two masterful improvisers sharing time and space, in absolutely gorgeous studio fidelity. I've always loved what I've heard of Louis Moholo-Moholo (e.g., Remembrance, his duet with Cecil Taylor, found in the big 1988 FMP box set), but because I don't own very many recordings by him and because I've never caught him live, he seems like an elusive figure to me. This record helps bring him into focus.

It's a true pleasure to hear him and Smith simply dancing together. Each of these musicians is the kind of player who has little time for the self-conscious avant-garde gesture. Yes, they're playing free, but that doesn't mean they're playing "out," i.e., they're not preoccupied with ugliness, strangeness, unconventionality, disruption. They're just interested in singing a song that's made up in the moment. There are very few free-improv records that truly matter to me—increasingly less, as time goes by, I find—but an album like Ancestors is the exception. It's not just a random live date, packaged and sold as though it had been intended as some lasting statement; it's a real legacy documented, played, recorded and issued with love.

Reunion: Live in New York is similar case. This is, in fact, a live recording, though it documents a pretty special 2007 gig, the first performance by the Rivers/Holland/Altschul trio in (as Pi reports) 25 years. I'll admit to being a tad skeptical about this release at first. First, I was worried that its reception would get too tangled up with the sad fact of Rivers's sad passing a year ago this month, making the record seem like some kind of definitive musical epitaph, when it was really just one night of music-making in a life filled with them. Second, I attended the actual concert heard here and while I definitely remember enjoying it, my recollection of the performance was that it was somewhat tentative and diffuse—about what you'd expect from three old friends who hadn't stepped onstage together in decades.

What a pleasant surprise, then, to find this music sounding so fresh on disc. I haven't spent enough time with this record to be able to give you an event-by-event rundown, but I feel secure in recommending it highly. It's pure improv, and it's very long, but the sound is fantastic, and the listening and responsiveness are exemplary. There's as much conviction and purpose in the abstract sections (such as part 3 of the first set here, with Rivers on piano) as in the swinging ones (part 4 of the same set), and in that sense Reunion: Live in New York is classic Rivers, a document of the way he didn't wall himself and his bands off from any area of jazzmaking. You can't get all the Rivers you need in just one record, but this one is definitely a real keeper, a worthy cap to any well-rounded Sam collection—not to mention the fact that it's a rare recent example of Dave Holland playing in a free-improv mode, and that it's a chance to hear Barry Altschul right at the point when he was starting to reemerge as a real force around NYC and beyond. (Speaking of, he's playing tonight at Cornelia Street Café with Jon Irabagon.)

Best of 2012: Jazz, part I

I've posted a list of my favorite 2012 jazz recordings at the Jazz Journalists Association site. As you'll see, it's a little unwieldy: 15 numbered choices, plus 11 extras. I'd almost rather not order these at all, but so far, I've submitted rankings to two year-end polls (one jazz-only and one where all genres are in play), and I wanted to maintain some consistency between my various lists. Really, though, I view this as a non-hierarchical set. I consider all these picks honorable mentions, in a non-consolation-prize sense; this is the jazz that captured my attention this year, and each of these albums comes highly recommended. Below are some thoughts on eight of the selections, presented in an intuitive order not related to the rankings of the aforelinked list; I'll post comments on the rest soon, probably in two more installments. I've included Spotify and Bandcamp embeds, as well as video links, when available.

Ravi Coltrane
Spirit Fiction [Blue Note]

I'll begin with this album, and devote extended space to it, because (A) it slipped my mind as I was hastily compiling my year-end lists—one or two worthy records always do—and (B) I've been re-enchanted with it over the past couple days. Before hearing Spirit Fiction, I was only vaguely familiar with Ravi Coltrane's work; I think I may have skimmed through his 2009 full-length, Blending Times. I can't tell you how this compares, but as an entry point, it's stellar.

Normally I like my albums of a piece, i.e., recorded in one session—or at a few close together—with stable personnel, but Spirit Fiction makes a strong case for a different model. The record flip-flops between tracks by two different bands: Coltrane's working quartet with pianist Luis Perdomo, bassist Drew Gress and drummer E.J. Strickland, and a quintet with trumpeter Ralph Alessi, pianist Geri Allen, bassist James Genus and drummer Eric Harland. Joe Lovano, the album's co-producer, sits in on two tracks by the latter, and though this all sounds like a bit of a jumble, the pieces flow together beautifully.

Interestingly, the quartet focuses on free jazz, in the literal sense (i.e., jazz that's free, rather than Free Jazz; compare progressive rock and Progressive Rock)—a strategy that's also employed, as I'm now reading, on Blending Times. There's only the faintest connection here to the ecstatic jazz launched by Coltrane senior; these improvisations are nimble, lyrical, responsive—almost like a more overtly jazzy version of what you hear on the Spontaneous Music Ensemble's Karyobin—with the players sort of skipping over and around each other as they gradually cohere into grooves. In contrast, the quintet tracks (three of which are by Alessi) are tight, swinging and refreshingly nonformulaic; "Who Wants Ice Cream," e.g., starts with a magical little Coltrane/Alessi duet before the full group kicks in. A few other pieces also atomize the personnel: "Spring and Hudson"—a Coltrane/Strickland duet—and "Fantasm," a remarkable Coltrane/Lovano/Allen reading of a Paul Motian composition that does right by the title. Rather than distracting you, the variety helps you focus. Listening straight through, you don't know what's coming next, and the changes in personnel, ensemble texture and performance strategy re-engage the ear.

Basically, Spirit Fiction is the kind of record that proves to me that there really is no contemporary jazz mainstream, per se, at least not a uniform one; any artist who matters, and I'm now fully convinced that Ravi Coltrane does, comes off like a movement of one. Coltrane isn't a soul-baring searcher like his dad; he's far humbler and more emotionally cool than that. But at the same time, there's nothing staid or rote about what he does; it's accessible without being particularly conventional. Spirit Fiction doesn't reach out and grab you; instead, it subtly draws you in, gradually waking you up to an aesthetic that's far richer than it seems on the surface, one that wants to present the leader against various backdrops, to showcase him as a consummate interactor. (Again, it's a small miracle that the album hangs together, and doesn't feel at all haphazard.) I have no idea what to compare this record to, and I find that exhilarating. Hear this.

(In case you're keeping track, tracks 1, 3, 4, 7 and 11 are by the quartet; 2, 5, 8 and 9 are by the quintet, with the latter also featuring Lovano; 6 is the Strickland duet; and 10 is the Lovano/Allen trio.)




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George Schuller's Circle Wide
Listen Both Ways [Playscape]

Schuller is another artist I woke up to this year; I knew that he was Gunther's son, and that I'd enjoyed his brother Ed's bass playing in the ’80s Paul Motian quintet, but I'm not sure I'd ever heard him before this record showed up in the mail. And like Spirit Fiction, Listen Both Ways is the kind of record that doesn't fit into any convenient jazz subcategory; it's nonformulaic without feeling eccentric in any obvious or gimmicky ways, and it's unabashedly beautiful without seeming saccharine. Unlike Spirit Fiction, Listen Both Ways is very much the sound of a single ensemble, made up of really strong, distinctive, seasoned players who—the leader included—are probably less well known than they should be: saxist Peter Apfelbaum (for me, he might be the star of the record; he's got this gruff yet songful tone that reminds of me of Dewey Redman at his best), guitarist Brad Shepik (I first heard him with Dave Douglas's Tiny Bell Trio, probably the first "downtown" jazz group I saw live), vibist Tom Beckham and bassist David Ambrosio. Most of the music is by Schuller, and it's got this airy, folkish yet still propulsive and engaging quality—much like the leader's drumming. Sometimes, as on "Store Without a Name," the aesthetic reminds me of Paul Motian—sort of this ghostly, free-floating mass of melody; other times, as on Margo Guryan's "Edwin," it's more playful and boppish. But what's present overall is a very strong engagement with the material; the forms aren't terribly unconventional, but this isn't just a band playing heads and soloing. Both together and as a unit, these players are putting forth something personal and intimate. As with Spirit Fiction, it's easy to call Listen Both Ways worthwhile jazz, but it's hard to peg it with any easy signifier beyond that.

Schuller and Circle Wide play a CD-release gig December 19 at ShapeShifter Lab in Brooklyn.

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Tim Berne
Snakeoil [ECM]

In contrast to the two names above, I knew Tim Berne's work really well coming into Snakeoil; so this one wasn't so much about surprise as it was about appreciating a subtle reframing. (More on that in my Time Out NY preview.) Over the past few years, Berne has been working hard with his current quartet (Oscar Noriega on clarinets, Matt Mitchell on piano and Ches Smith on percussion, an ensemble formerly known as Los Totopos), and though his writing for this group doesn't differ hugely from the multivalent prog-jazz he put forth in projects like Hardcell, the band has found its own way into the material. As you hear on Snakeoil, the upshot is kind of a "chamber" version of the Benre aesthetic—not defanged, by any means, but especially engaged with moody, lyrical improvisation. You'll find some of the prettiest Berne to date on pieces like "Spare Parts"; these performances still have his trademark robot-ballet momentum, but the band seems to always be pushing toward a pensive, abstract place, which they do without losing a sense of purpose. Not exactly something new from Berne, in other words, but fresh enough to be entirely worthwhile.

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Darius Jones Quartet
Book of Mæ'bul (Another Kind of Sunrise) [Aum Fidelity]

Book of Mæ'bul parallels Snakeoil in two ways: (A) It presents an often gritty alto saxophonist-composer in a relatively refined light, and (B) it also features Matt Mitchell and Ches Smith, contributing the same sort of elegant adventurousness that they do on the Berne recording. But this album serves a very different function in the Jones discography than Snakeoil does in the Berne one. Tim Berne has issued many, many full-lengths, whereas Jones is still a relatively young recording artist; Book of Mæ'bul is, by my count, only his third LP as a leader (in addition to a duo with Matthew Shipp, a couple records with Little Women and a new one as part of the Grass Roots collective). I enjoyed Jones's last two records, 2011's Big Gurl (Smell My Dream) and 2009's Man'ish Boy (A Raw and Beautiful Thing)—especially the latter, which featured the monster tandem of Cooper-Moore and Bob Moses—but I think he's reached a new level with Book of Mæ'bul. No one who's heard Jones over the past few years would dispute that he's one of the more searingly soulful young saxophonists playing today, a worthy heir to the original Free Jazz giants, but with this record, he shows that he's after much more than straight catharsis. Here, you really hear Darius Jones the writer, sculpting poetic melodies—opener "The Enjoli Moon" breaks my heart, and deserves to become a new standard—living with them, and then, when he gets the urge, blowing them to bits. Music like this makes me think of the classic Sonny Sharrock manifesto: "I've been trying to find a way for the terror and the beauty to live together in one song." To me, Book of Mæ'bul represents Jones's own quest for that same aesthetic grail. Fortunately, the musicians in his quartet grasp this entirely. To me, this group sounds like a potential heir to the late David S. Ware's fabled quartet; there's a similar kind of caress-then-crush duality going on in. I can't wait to hear the next chapter.

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Federico Ughi
Songs for Four Cities [Skycap]

Eri Yamamoto Trio
The Next Page [Aum Fidelity]

More personnel overlap here: The band on drummer Federico Ughi's Songs for Four Cities features both Darius Jones and pianist Eri Yamamoto—whose own 2012 full-length also made my list—not to mention the aforementioned Ed Schuller. The Ughi was a real sleeper for me; unlike the records above, and many other records I chose, this one didn't benefit from any sort of PR push whatsoever. I doubt I'd have heard of it at all if it weren't for my weekly TONY duties; I checked out Songs for Four Cities after I noticed a listing for a record-release show at Firehouse Space (a show I unfortunately didn't get to see). Before this, I had a sense of Ughi as a staunch free-jazzer, mainly affiliated with William Parker, Daniel Carter and other Vision Festival mainstays, as well as with guitarist Adam Caine, an old friend and former bandmate of mine who currently works with Ughi in a rousing freeform duo known as The Moon.

But while there are moments of old-school ecstatic-jazz catharsis on Songs, that's not the prevailing vibe here at all. No, on the contrary, this is one of the warmest, most straightforwardly approachable records I've heard in 2012, jazz or otherwise. The Songs in the title is no accident; the pieces here—inspired, as the title would suggest, by four cities around the world where Ughi has lived—feel as elemental as deep, old hymns, and as catchy as great ’70s soul. Once you've heard tracks like "Tolmin" and "Claygate," I can pretty much guarantee they'll be looping in your head. And the band plays the material with such loving respect; the themes aren't just improvisational fodder, stated and then jettisoned; Jones and Yamamoto, both proud guardians of melody in their own work, really dig into these compositions, nurturing them, seeing to it that they bloom. I'm thinking of moments like Yamamoto's solo on "Claygate"—it's just so lush and bluesy and fun and heartfelt, so extremely not about hip jazz sophistication, geared entirely to bringing out the essence of Ughi's writing and sharing it with the audience. Again, there are hints of free-jazz fire in this music, as on "When We Cry," during which the band reaches a hectic, increasingly abstract crescendo, but even here, it's not at the expense of the tune. The straighter pieces are what really put this one over the top for me, though; every time I put this record on, I marvel at its unpretentiousness—how it's not some knowing gloss on a sort of pop-jazz aesthetic (and I use pop-jazz in a totally non-pejorative sense), but a fully realized embrace of that idea, the notion that jazz, whatever its "school," should be about the song first and foremost, and about how improvisation grows from that like a flower from soil. Whatever your particular tastes, you need to hear what Ughi and his band are doing here.



Here's some video from a 2011 gig by the Songs for Four Cities band.

Much of what I've written above also applies to Yamamoto's own 2012 release, The Next Page. I've enjoyed her last couple discs on Aum Fidelity, but this latest one seems to me like a definitive statement. As with Songs for Four Cities, there's something wonderfully out-of-step about Yamamoto's aesthetic as a bandleader. A good illustration of what I mean: I had The Next Page on in the kitchen the other day, and my wife asked if I was listening to A Charlie Brown Christmas. I laughed and told her that that was exactly what I thought of when I first heard this record. (Maybe my recent appreciation of Yamamoto's work is no coincidence, given that I woke up to Vince Guaraldi's trio in a big way earlier this year when I wrote about drummer Jerry Granelli.) I think the Guaraldi comparison is fully apt here, and fully complimentary. Again, as with the Ughi, this is an unfashionable record: unfashionable in its plainspoken devotion to song. I mean Yamamoto and her bandmates (bassist David Ambrosio, who's also on the George Schuller record above, and drummer Ikuo Takeuchi) no disrespect when I say that pieces like "Whiskey River," a particularly warm and bluesy piece here, sound almost like themes for vintage sitcoms, the kind of music that might play as a camera pans down a row of inviting Brooklyn brownstones in autumn.

This is the kind of jazz that's extremely easy to take for granted, even to condescend to. (Indeed, I guess you could accuse me of the same in light of that sitcom description, but I'm just honestly reporting the images this record conjures for me.) Reviewing this album on PopMatters, Will Layman wrote, "But in a field of new jazz piano trios operating at the heights of Glasper and Moran, Iyer and Taborn, Shipp and Parks, Yamamoto’s group on The Next Page seems too sweet and too pleasant to grab a listener’s ear and demand that it listen." In a way, I think that's exactly what I enjoy about the Yamamoto aesthetic, i.e., its alleged too-pleasantness, which doesn't seem excessive at all to me. On the whole, I respect and enjoy the work of the pianists above—as readers of this blog might know, I'm particularly partial to Taborn, Shipp and Moran—but to me, it seems narrow-minded to portray jazz piano as some kind of arms race, a contest to see who can sound the most contemporary, whether it be via hip repertory choices, engagement with cutting-edge pop forms or staunch avant-gardism.

I'm not sure exactly when this gig ended, but for a long while—I'm talking years—Yamamoto and her band played weekly (maybe even more frequently?) at Arthur's Tavern in the Village. I've never been there, so I can't tell you exactly what it's like, but I do know that Arthur's isn't a jazz haunt, per se, like, say, Smalls is. My sense is that it's a neighborhood bar, where the music plays more of a background role. Or at least, that's how I imagine it, hearing The Next Page. This is music that fits into and shores up life, rather than music that demands intellectual engagement. It doesn't flatter the listener's urbane sophistication, so it's only logical that it wouldn't be a critics' favorite. (Hey, I like brainy jazz as much as the next person, enough so that I've been accused of "recondite hipsterism" in the past; the inclusion of, say, Steve Lehman's record on my year-end list shows you that I'm still very enticed by progressiveness, when done well, that is. Also, I should say that part of the uphill battle for Yamamoto in particular might be that she records for Aum Fidelity, which many consider synonymous with classically styled free jazz. She's also appeared on albums by William Parker and Whit Dickey. Maybe there's an unfair expectation that her own work will follow up on that thread.) On the other hand, The Next Page sounds really good and gives you a genuinely warm feeling—much the way "Linus and Lucy" does. In these areas, it succeeds mightily, and I think that's all one can ask of a record: that it choose a direction and head that way wholeheartedly. The Next Page is a simple pleasure, but it isn't a shallow one. Much like on the Ughi record, Yamamoto, Ambrosio and Takeuchi are really singing songs here, together, and I think jazz could use a bit more of that.

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Steve Lehman Trio
Dialect Fluorescent [Pi Recordings]

Since I mentioned the Lehman above, I'll head here next. I wrote at length on Lehman and this record in a June profile for TONY, so I'll keep this relatively brief. Part of what attracts me to Dialect Fluorescent is how smartly it contrasts with Lehman's previous LP as a bandleader (not counting sessions co-led by Rudresh Mahanthappa and Stephan Crump), 2009's octet release Travail, Transformation and Flow. As I wrote in the TONY piece, Travail is a contemporary masterpiece, an example of "what you point to when someone asks you what NYC jazz sounds like right now." Dialect Fluorescent is also a very right-now kind of jazz record, but one achieved with a totally different set of tools, namely the incorporation several standards (not to mention the theme from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory) and the use of a slimmed-down ensemble. Simply put, this trio, with bassist Matt Brewer and drummer Damion Reid, cooks in a way that a record like Travail couldn't. In 2009, I wrote about a live performance by Fieldwork (the collective trio of Lehman, Vijay Iyer and Tyshawn Sorey), dubbing their aesthetic robojazz. There's a similarly prog-minded virtuosity at work on Dialect, but the pure funk is closer to the surface here. To me, this record is as much about the super-dry, unforgiving sound of Reid's kit as it is about Lehman's tart-toned lines; it's about daredevil busy-ness, but with tons of space left, as on pieces like "Foster Brothers." Travail was about Lehman the composer; this one's more about the athleticism, the breakdance. And simply by virtue of it being a trio release, the sidemen aren't really sidemen anymore; they're right there with Lehman, pushing, prodding, stutter-stepping. You have to be in a certain mood to dig this one: caffeinated, almost—primed for hyper-awareness, as you would be when stepping up to an addictive yet fiendishly challenging arcade game. But when that feeling strikes, Dialect Fluorescent is the perfect musical counterpart.

Here's an EPK on Vimeo.

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Dr. Lonnie Smith
The Healer [Pilgrimage]

The Healer is, again, a totally different kind of jazz record than any of the others I've listed: not complex and acutely engaged like the Lehman, or homey and inviting like the Yamamoto. I think of this album as an exercise in vibe cultivation. Going into this record, my impression of Lonnie Smith was more or less a caricature: classic soul-jazz organ dude, wears a turban, etc. He's the kind of artist that almost invites you to underestimate him, pigeonhole him, align him with a sound or an era or a motivation, to file him away with a "Yeah, I get it." As with the Yamamoto, though, it's a mistake to consider approachability and shallowness to be synonymous. This record blindsided me and swallowed me up. I'm not familiar enough with Smith's recent career to know how long he's been gigging in a trio format with guitarist Jonathan Kreisberg and drummer Jamire Williams—the band featured here, as well as on 2010's Spiral—but this group has achieved a rare kind of mojo: somewhere between laid-back funk, chopsy fusion and spacey psychedelia. On pieces like "Backtrack," the three musicians enter a kind of slow-burning group trance: humid, slinky, almost impossibly patient. These are the kind of grooves you wish would go on forever, vamps where in the macro sense, nothing much of consequence is happening, but where the tiny details have mind-altering potential if you let them work on you. Yes, the aesthetic here is very retro, as though a crate-digger's samples had come to life, but obviously Smith comes by it honestly, having been at it since the ’60s; Kreisberg and Williams, meanwhile, groove like a dream. Every time I put this record on, I want to drift away with it (see esp. the molasses-slow version of "Chelsea Bridge"); if you're a sucker for the intersection of funkiness and trippiness, I think you'll feel the same. I should mention too, that the disc is far from uniformly placid: "Beehive" burns like the rare-groove equivalent of Mahavishnu Orchestra. It's all just badass, super-authentic and, to me, pretty much irresistible.

Check out the EPK here, and a Spotify stream below.

Dimples: Learning to love Zooid

Photograph: Frank Stewart

It's a cliché for artists working in pretty much any area, especially a self-consciously experimental one, to talk up their desire for constant reinvention. Henry Threadgill walks that walk more than most, as he's proven throughout a four-decade-plus career; his M.O. has generally been to found a band and along with it a compositional concept, burrow as deep as he can into that particular aesthetic for a number of years and then simply let it go and start all over. Threadgill spoke extensively about this pattern when I interviewed him for The Wire in 2009; at that point, This Brings Us To, Vol. 1, the third album (counting the limited-edition Pop, Start the Tape Stop) by his current group, Zooid, had just come out—or was just about to—and when I made reference to Up Popped the Two Lips, the band's debut—eight years old at that point, to be fair—he set me straight: "I'm talking about the new, this record. That other record, you can't reference that. That has nothing to do with what I'm doing."

As I've spent more time with Zooid, I've come to realize that not only does it not really make sense to compare the band's current output with Up Popped; it might be best to banish the rest of the previous Threadgill catalog from your mind, as well, when dealing with H.T. in the present tense. The most honest I can be when describing this music—documented so far on three Pi Recordings discs: the two This Brings Us To volumes and this year's Tomorrow Sunny / The Revelry, Spp—is that I have often found it borderline impenetrable. This could easily just be due to a lack of music-theory training on my part. "It's an intervallic language that's kind of like serialism," Threadgill told me of the current Zooid compositional method (employed on the This Brings Us To albums and, I'm assuming—though perhaps unwisely, given H.T.'s rate of evolution—on Tomorrow Sunny and in recent live works, like the brand-new Dimples, a concert-length piece that I heard at Roulette last night). "Serialism is like when you have so many pitches, generally 12 pitches, but you can serialize stuff with 6 pitches, 7 pitches, whatever… Well, the language, the compositional language, the musical language, the harmonic, contrapuntal, melodic language is such that we move from one series of intervals to another series of intervals throughout a piece of music." I only understand what that means in a very surface way; I'd hard-pressed, e.g., to tell you in any any given Zooid piece when the interval series has changed, and for that matter, I'd love to listen to one of these recent H.T. records in the company of someone who truly gets what was going on.

That said, having spent good time with every single other recording Henry Threadgill has made under his own name (including his wonderful LPs with Air), I can tell you that the fundamental sense of uncertainty I've felt when listening to Zooid, that sense that there's something there to listen for that I'm missing, some key that will unlock not just my greater "comprehension" of the music but also my greater joy in it too—the sense of drama and dazzlement and, yes, I'll come right out and say it, fun, that I get from, say, the Sexttet or Very Very Circus—is unique to this band. To put it bluntly, Threadgill seems to have—and I guess it shouldn't have taken me three long years to make an observation like this, but I've wanted to take more Zooid in before attempting to quantify my general impressions of the band—refocused his attention away from the elements of his work that I'd previously found most enjoyable. In the interest of defining those elements, it probably makes the most sense to just play a piece like this:


This is from the 1989 Sextett album, Rag, Bush and All, but I could have just as easily picked something from ’93's Too Much Sugar for a Dime or ’96's Where's Your Cup? (featuring the Very Very Circus and Make a Move bands, respectively), or any number of Air records. I rarely hear Threadgill discussed in the greater "mainstream" jazz lineage, but when I first got to know his work, he made more sense to me there—in the grand tradition of Ellington and Mingus, especially in line with the latter, given Mingus's penchant for epic, sumptuously melodic, composition-forward works (e.g., The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady), where conventional instrumentation and form was only a basic blueprint; all of these are descriptors I'd apply to a good deal of vintage Threadgill, esp. the Sextett—than in line with, say, AACM cohorts such as Anthony Braxton or Roscoe Mitchell. He seemed, in short, like an avant-gardist whose work you could truly love, rather than just respect. (Not trying to say, by the way, that I don't love the work of Braxton or Mitchell or, say, Muhal Richard Abrams, as well; it's just that Threadgill at his best is, for me, on a different level. He is one of my favorite composers, period, something that I couldn't honestly say about those others I've mentioned, as much enjoyment as I've derived from their work.)

To oversimplify things, I'll say that with Zooid, the Threadgill lovability factor seemed to me to have decreased greatly. (And as always, I'm speaking only for myself here; not trying to evaluate his work objectively, only to record my personal response to it.) Whereas I've often found, e.g., Air, Sextett, Very Very Circus and Make a Move pieces getting stuck in my head, that has never happened with a piece from the current Zooid phase. Again, that's not a value judgment; it's just an observation. Although I realize full well that there's nothing random about Zooid—in fact, according to my limited understanding, this body of work might be Threadgill's least random and most meticulously plotted—the music can sometimes sound that way to me, either in its more abstract-sounding, chamber-improv-ish mode or its more groove-driven mode, the latter of which often makes me think of a mobile with each component rotating on its own axis, sharing only a mysterious, subliminal relationship with the others.

After hearing last night's concert—which augmented the core Zooid sextet with two extra trumpeters and two extra trombonists—I feel like I'm closer to appreciating Zooid on its own terms. The work, one long episodic piece of about 90 minutes, felt about as slippery to me as previous Zooid pieces had, but hearing that much of the band in an uninterrupted context, and getting to watch Threadgill conduct and marshal his collaborators, I had the sense that I was getting inside the project more, grasping both what it is and isn't. That "conduct and marshal" part is key; Threadgill's participation in Zooid is far less that of a conventional bandleader/performer and more one of an organizer; to put it straightforwardly, he barely played last night. There were a few brief Threadgill solos on two different flutes (a "regular" one and a larger, lower one that I'm pretty sure was bass flute) and some typically searing alto saxophone work near the end of the set—Threadgill's burry urgency on that horn is one of my absolute favorite musical sounds, period, and as with many of the other blatantly pleasure-giving aspects of his prior work, it's only delivered sparingly in Zooid—but Threadgill spent much of last night's set glued to the score, cuing in various players or "sections"—there was a very clear strings vs. brass thing going on, with Threadgill tending to deploy the two sections separately, only bringing in the full ten-piece at select moments—and marking time for drummer Elliot Humberto Kavee.

Speaking of Kavee, he's the clear nerve center of Zooid for me, bringing a badass kind of drive and hypnotic funk to the band that harks back to the best of Very Very Circus. I rarely feel like I'm able to parse out the specific rhythmic cycles—I'm guessing they're as intricately plotted as the intervallic ones—but at the same time, I relish the danceable momentum that comes to the fore whenever his beats kick in. (Threadgill seems to as well; he may not play a lot when onstage with Zooid, but he sure does dance.) These "groove" sections, for lack of a better term, took up about half of last night's set. There were also various other textural episodes: the trumpeters and trombonists playing sans rhythm section, summoning low, Bill Dixon–like tones with just their mouthpieces; guitar, cello and bass reveling in their own tangly feature; fleeting moments of quasi-big-band-ish full-ensemble deployment. It's to Threadgill's credit that as elusive as the music could seem at times, none of the players appeared to be daunted by the Zooid concept; while guitarist Liberty Ellman, a charter member of the group, is clearly the band's chief shredder, the new recruits (esp. trombonist Ben Gerstein and trumpeter Stephanie Richards) got some pretty deadly, unbridled improv in as well at various points.

My favorite moment of the set came right at the end, when Threadgill (on alto) and the strings were playing this kind of airy, unsettled dirge, with a creeping rubato time feel. The trumpets and trombones, all muted, entered for a final few meditative moments, and I felt like was hearing some new organization that I hadn't heard from this band or from any Threadgill project before. Zooid doesn't necessarily leave you with big, splashy, memorable moments that you go home humming, but it does leave you with a desire to look deeper. It keeps you on the outside, operating in its own little bubble, but at the same time, it subtly invites you to look in, observing this strange little mini civilization with its own tough-to-discern but clearly orderly laws and customs.

I'm finding, gradually, that the less I hold on to what I instinctively want from Threadgill, what I've loved about him in the past, the more drawn in I am by Zooid. As I was reminded last night, this current body of Threadgill work is indeed difficult, tough to get a foothold in, but it burrows under your skin if you let it, especially if you see it live, where's Threadgill's hyper-engaged joy in the music, and the committed attunement of his collaborators, is unmistakable. I guess the greatest compliment I can pay to Dimples is that, as it ended, I found myself instantly wishing I could take home a recording of it. (There were mics set up, so let's hope someone's working on that.)

Threadgill's never founded a nation I didn't want to visit and spend good time in; Zooid has sometimes seemed to me like an unfriendly place—a rocky, sparsely settled island country, maybe—but I'm starting to feel more at home there: studying the fossils embedded in the ground and the seabirds flying overhead, relishing the salty sting in the air. I'm not sure I'll ever feel the sheer warmth for this band that I do for, say, the Sextett, but there's an intrigue there, a magnetism that's perfectly in line with past Threadgill feats. I trust him enough that I'm always going to want to know more, to do the legwork. Last night, I could feel that effort slowly, almost imperceptibly paying off.

Update [11/26/12]:
Since Dimples isn't yet available in recorded form—again, I'm really hoping that Threadgill/Pi see fit to issue something by this expanded version of Zooid—I've returned to Tomorrow Sunny / The Revelry, Spp in the wake of the performance. The more I listen for what's there, and not for the absence of what isn't, the more I find this album blooming before my ears. (I plan to go back to the prior Zooid full-lengths as well, and that includes the oft-overlooked Pop Start the Tape, Stop, a limited edition LP that came out in 2005.) It sounds reductive, but the pleasure I'm finding in Zooid is the pleasure of a band. I mentioned above how Threadgill played only very sparingly at Saturday night's concert. That's not so much the case on Tomorrow Sunny; he pops up as much as any of the other soloists here. But still, his alto and flute work isn't necessarily the focus of the music. It's like what he's trying to do with Zooid is wind up a top and let it go, spinning off either in that hugely infectious avant-funk vein (e.g., "Ambient Pressure Thereby") or a more searching, open-ended one ("Put On Keep / Frontispiece, Spp"). The result is that you focus on the respective contributions of the "sidemen" not just as much as if not more than Threadgill, but as much as if not more than the given "composition."

As I noted above, there are very few examples of what I'd call thematic material in this music. (Again, maybe my ear is deficient, but I'd still be at a loss to sing you any of these pieces, the way I could some of my favorite Sextett or VVC selections.) So what you have is this very spare, uncluttered sonic space (even when the music is at its most heated)—a kind of terrarium you can look into, a forum for the observation of behavior. I'm listening right now to "Put On Keep," which ends with an extended duet between cellist Christopher Hoffman (who makes his recorded Zooid debut on Tomorrow Sunny) and bassist Stomu Takeishi (who, I should note, was not on the Dimples gig; Zachary Lober was on bass). There's nothing guiding your ear beyond the intimacy of the sound; no particular melodic arc, no rhythmic cycle (as far as I can tell). Could this passage and the many others like it in the recent Zooid literature be considered free improv? I'm guessing there's an underlying parameter, but the beauty of it is how unhurried, untaxed, un-goal-oriented it sounds. It's just coexistence and deep listening—a moment-to-moment "Let's see where we get." There are certainly moments of such playing in, say, Air, but there's a serenity and grace to the group interaction in Zooid that feels new—an unpretentious invitation to simply listen to what each musician sounds like, singly and set against the others. Again, I'm still in the midst of my reappraisal (and fortunately, there's no time limit on such things), but right now, that's the aspect of Zooid that's jumping out at me most.


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*Howard Mandel has also written, with refreshing candor, about the slipperiness of Zooid. ("Is the music or are we ourselves at fault?") Mandel was reviewing an earlier Zooid-plus performance, this one featuring the core group plus extra strings; I'm not 100% positive, but I believe this is a video, via Roulette TV, of the concert in question (both the review and the video annotation reference a piece called "All the Way Light Touch").

*Ethan Iverson touches on the stark distinction between Zooid and earlier Threadgill here:
"The last two records on Pi, This Brings Us To Vol. 1 and 2, showcase this latest atonal language, a language that definitely gets a certain sound out of the music.  I admit that I could use the occasional non-language piece to offset the encroaching web!  But, again, Threadgill never looks back, and he's hardly the first great composer to settle into a dauntingly abstract, granitic late music."

Basra lives: RIP Pete La Roca

I'm not an authority on the work of drummer Pete La Roca (born Peter Sims), who, as Ethan Iverson, A Blog Supreme and Sonny Rollins have reported, passed away this past Monday. But I am a fan of his work. I remember some friends turning me on to Basra—La Roca's 1965 debut as a leader, and the only session he led for Blue Note during that period—in college, and it grabbed me hard. I've returned to the record periodically, and it's had the same effect every time. I spun it yesterday when I heard the news, and it seemed stronger than ever—dark, swirling, heady, raw but incredibly tender. The tones of the instruments are so present and unadorned; you feel like you're right there within the mix.

It's because of this kind of record that I get queasy when I see all-time "Best Jazz Albums" lists that stick to the same old narrow canon. Kind of Blue is a great album; I like A Love Supreme very much. But not only are there tons of respective Miles and Coltrane records that I love more, there are so many classics that you'd just never see on a list like this, records that might hit neophytes harder that the so-called staples. Basra is one of these records.



Re-listening yesterday, what struck me about Basra was its droney expanse, the patient way it constructs a mood and just lets it ride. Iverson used the word "folkloric" to describe La Roca's left hand, but I'd apply that term to the entire feel of this album. Listen to the title track, how it sprawls out, like an improvisatory incantation. The rhythm section brings out some of the freest, most speaking-in-tongues playing of Joe Henderson's career, not via commonplace fire (I think here of La Roca's astute critique of free jazz in the interview Iverson links to, e.g., "Free music is in a constant state of surprise and, consequently, presents no surprise at all.") but via hypnotic drift, an authoritative yet almost ghostly pulse, like a James Brown groove slowed way down so that the funk becomes merely implicit. The Henderson figure that starts at 4:43, this overblown, Spanish-sounding thing, just slays me; and then listen how he trails off into this writhing tail of a phrase. What I feel when I hear this saxophone solo is that it is a sort of conjuring on the part of the rhythm section, i.e., that these strange sounds are being drawn out of him by Sims, pianist Steve Kuhn and bassist Steve Swallow. Not to take any credit away from Henderson—just to say that this is a band discovering sound together in real time.

Listen around 5:37 as Sims begins to imply a backbeat feel, faint yet stealthily funky. Then into a kind of bass-drums joint solo, with La Roca limiting himself to hand work: snare rolls that remind me of Tony Williams and the occasional thunderous, Elvin-style tom thwack. But the dynamics and the groove are all his own; he's soloing, yes, but also protecting the pocket, riding the drone. When Henderson reenters at 8:55, the entire band sounds like it's in a stupor, hypnotized by La Roca's faint, earthy churn and Kuhn's eerie high-end textures. I really can't think of any other jazz like this, so engaged with the drone and the sprawl, the way-sublimated funk. And this vibe is no accident, heard on this track alone; it pervades the entire album. La Roca was in search of a mood here, and he nailed it. Blue Note albums, as wondrous as they tend to be, don't often feel fully coherent, holistic in this way, which is why a deliberate concept album like Wayne Shorter's The All-Seeing Eye (recorded just five months after Basra) seems like such an anomaly among the BN discography of that period. I think Basra deserves to be called a concept album as well; its concept is its sustained mood, the one that propels Henderson to an ecstatic trance state, sounding, to me, more unfettered and in-the-moment than on any other of his countless sessions.

La Roca does provide some clues to Basra's otherworldly mood in the aforementioned interview, citing how his two early records as a leader—the other is Turkish Women at the Bath, an interesting LP but not the intoxicating powerhouse that Basra is—were built around "ethnic themes." He cites "Basra" in particular as a Middle Eastern melody (the title comes from a city in Iraq), though it seems to be credited to La Roca himself in the various discographies. Does anyone know if this is a traditional tune of some sort?

The opening track on Basra, "Malagueña" (by Cuban pianist-composer Ernesto Lecuona) uses a very different rhythm than the title track—a classic, Elvin-y 6/8 swing feel—but the vibes of the two pieces are similar, and Henderson reaches that same place of ecstatic incantation. I love "Malagueña," dearly, but during my pass through Basra yesterday, the other track that stood out most prominently was "Lazy Afternoon." I'm not sure that it's possible for a ballad performance to conjure more mystery or more grace than this one does. It feels to me as though the entire quartet is dreaming the same dream, drifting along on the same cloud. Pieces like this, where you stop feeling the genre, the style and start feeling total mood immersion, are the ones that really sold me on jazz in the first place (Andrew Hill's "Black Monday" is another one that hits me this way) and the ones that still fuel my devotion. Listen to how La Roca's brushwork starts pushing ever so slightly harder at about 4:10, like a whisper growing more passionate without getting very much louder. And then by 4:50, back down to that hushed dream state, which sounds like it could last forever. That's how I think of Basra as a whole, as a reverie with no defined beginning or end. It's a sensation you step into, along with the players: a group trance, a collective prayer.

When I hear the record now, in light of the sad news, I imagine it as an ongoing present, where Kuhn and Swallow—both still with us—continue to coexist with the late masters Henderson and La Roca, tapping into that otherworldly flow. La Roca is gone, but Basra lives.

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*I recommend this brief take on Basra, from last August, by the outstanding metal drummer Aesop Dekker (Agalloch, ex-Liturgy), via his fine Cosmic Hearse blog. Dekker cites the "exotic, yet grave" feel of "Malagueña" and has this to say of "Basra": "The title track is an absolutely gorgeous landscape of sound, sultry, sexy, and altogether mysterious."

*Anyone heard this 1997 La Roca/Sims session, SwingTime? The samples sound really nice.

The math and the rock, live

Very excited about tomorrow night's STATS show, at which we'll open for Dysrhythmia and Loincloth. Go here for a TONY preview by Jordan Mamone, also the man behind the classic Pen Rollings interview in Chunklet that first put Loincloth on the map. "To put it bluntly," Jordan wrote then, "Loincloth is the most amazing fucking metal band in existence right now." Can't recall the exact date of that article—’04 or ’05, maybe?—but as Iron Balls of Steel proved earlier this year, the sentiment is still accurate. Amazingly, the ’Cloth's very first live show ever is tonight in New Jersey (also w/ Dysrhythmia), making tomorrow's Brooklyn gig only their second onstage appearance.

A few months ago, I had the privilege of interviewing Loincloth's mad (though, as it turns out, incredibly nice!) drum genius Steve Shelton. You can read the results in the current issue of Modern Drummer, available now in print and via iTunes. Steve wrote an incredibly gracious thank-you note to myself and another journalist on his new blog, the Poundry. I highly recommend checking out all of Shelton's previous entries as well; this man's ideas re: metal and percussive aesthetics are essentially a one-man philosophical school.

Dysrhythmia's new album Test of Submission, is my favorite of theirs to date—I've spun this thing front-to-back about 50 times in the past two weeks. Disciples of the math and the rock, we hope to see you tomorrow night in Brooklyn. Here's a playlist to get you psyched up:

The JCC at 20

I had a great time speaking with Ben Allison, Ted Nash and Frank Kimbrough for this TONY profile. The subject is the Jazz Composers Collective, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year and is in residency at Jazz Standard this week. (The mini fest, which actually started last night, runs through Sunday.)

I loved the most recent Ben Allison record, Action-Refraction, but beyond that, I didn't know much about these musicians or their JCC cohorts when I signed on to write about them. I arrived in NYC in ’98, and during the next decade or so, I was largely focused elsewhere; for various reasons, this scene just wasn't really on my radar. Now, this body of work, much of which came out on the Palmetto label, is exactly the kind of thing I'm looking for in jazz: challenging, but listenable; eccentric, yet staunchly coherent. I'm talking about records like Allison's Riding the Nuclear Tiger and Buzz, Kimbrough's Lullabluebye, Nash's In the Loop and the Herbie Nichols Project's Strange City. (You can stream each of these LPs in full at its respective link.) Having an excuse to catch up on all this goodness in advance of the interview was a real privilege.

Playing heel: An interview with Billy Corgan

I recently interviewed Billy Corgan for Time Out New York. I was never a big Smashing Pumpkins fan growing up; I loved—and in many cases, love—many bands connected to the alt-rock of yore, but aside from "Cherub Rock," the Pumpkins didn't speak to me. I started hearing good things about the new SP album, Oceania, though, and when I checked it out, I found myself taking to it right away. The record is not a revelation; these SP songs sound pretty much like the ones I remember from the early ’90s. But for some reason, it was easier for me to appreciate Corgan's balance of vulnerability and bombast this time around. I admired that he was still going for an unabashedly big sound, and that he still seemed unafraid to flirt with pretentiousness in order to achieve the effect he desired. Plus, I found (and find) the material catchy as hell—concise and memorable, nearly all the way through.

In conversation, I found the man improbably charming. He's just as, shall we say, inflammatory as you might have read, but what the caricature misses is how good-natured he is about it. He seems to genuinely enjoy repartee, the trading of blows, the dropping of science. As you'll read in the interview, Corgan runs his own wrestling league. One of my favorite parts of the conversation comes when we discuss the parallels between a "bad guy" wrestler and his persona within the world of rock & roll:

"So in wrestling language, I play heel. I like to kick the shins of the Pitchforks of the world because they're pompous, and equally so, they like to point where I'm pompous. So in a way, we're benefiting from the feud."

It seems to me that there's something charmingly old-fashioned about this idea. It's almost like an Oscar Wilde kind of thing. It's just hot air, he seems to be saying of his gratuitous opinion-spouting; it's just entertainment. If we seem to be taking these sorts of pop-cultural dialogues too seriously, it's only because they're more fun that way.

In short, he knows what an interviewer wants from him, in the tabloid sense. He seems to actually relish playing the part that has been foisted on him. He does it with a smile. I recently read somewhere (I really wish I could remember where) a positive reframing of the term "bullshitting," a suggestion that this kind of idle, aimless, sometimes puffed-up talk shouldn't necessarily be considered a bad thing. I'd agree with that. Sometimes we want to tune in and hear someone taking shots. The problem is, it's usually (as on reality TV) cast in a dead-serious light. With Corgan, it's all about mutual amusement. I had a blast talking to him.