Jazz Recommendations – 2016 releases

I’ve developed a mild addiction to the new one from trumpeter Terell Stafford for the better part of this year.  Forgive and Forget swings cheerfully along, dishing out old school jazz that’s upbeat and joyful and beams a melody like a wide smile.  This is music to wake up to first thing in the morning.  This is music for getting through your day.  This is music to jumpstart a night out on the town.  This is music for when the evening grows faint and a soft landing on a soft bed is all that remains.  “A Two-Per To Fill” comes heavy with the blues and “Owl Express” shows the album has a whimsical side.  And when the quintet slows things down on the title-track and “Please Rest My Soul,” the slower pace and contemplative tone does nothing to extinguish the cheerful mood or the strength with which the music resonates.

You’d have to possess a heart forged of ice and a soul hungry for despair for this album not to spark a connection.

Your album personnel:  Terell Stafford (trumpet), Tim Warfield (tenor sax), Kevin Hays (piano), Greg Williams (bass) and Rodney Green (drums).

This Self-Produced album was released on Herb Harris Music.

Music from Philadelphia, PA.

Available at:  Amazon | CDBaby | eMusic

The enthralling element of Living Here is how melodically rich and textured it all is.  Hermine Deurloo possesses a lyricism on chromatic harmonica that comes off as both intricately detailed and effortlessly fluid.  Pianist Rembrandt Frerichs gets a melody to radiate a vibrancy that is often jaw-dropping beautiful, and how that matches up with the dancing motion of the tempos sparked by drummer Jim Black is a big reason why the music remains light on its feet even when packed tight with melodic inspirations.  It’s an effect further accentuated by the harmonic possibilities explored by Jörg Brinkmann on cello.

And that’s why songs exhibiting the intense melodic focus of “Long Story Short” and “Sketch on November” can be nicely complemented by tracks like the hard-charging “Achiltibuie” and the playful “Samba de um Breque” and the folksy charm of title-track “Living Here.”

There’s a poetry to every expression on this lovely recording, and it informs each act of motion, each form of articulation.  The music incites vivid imagery, but not to the point of distraction… where story and storyteller become indistinguishable and where method and meaning hold hands tight.  And every last bit of it is captivating.

Your album personnel:  Hermine Deurloo (chromatic harmonica), Rembrandt Frerichs (piano), Jim Black (drums) and Jörg Brinkmann (cello).

Released on Zennez Records.

Listen to more of the album at the label’s Soundcloud page.

Music from Rotterdam, Netherlands.

Available at:  Amazon

The winning characteristic of the electro-acoustic project from trombonist Filippo Vignato is how he keeps teasing at the complete and total immersion into electronic effect dissonance, right up to the point where an organic melody breaks through like a bold sun parting thick clouds.  He hints at this approach on the second track of his 2016 release Plastic Breath.  It’s a muddy haze of electronics to start things out, but then Vignato’s trombone comes through with a crisp melody and immediately begins expanding its horizon line.  Meanwhile, the Fender Rhodes and drums of Yannick Lestra and Attila Gyarfas stake out territory of their own.  In the former instance, it’s outlining the path of the melody, while in the latter, it’s forging a path ahead with clear lines of demarcation.  The electronic effects are still there, but now they’re merely background scenery to the post-bop main attraction.  But there’s an ebb and flow to it, and the transitions from one state to the other rarely, if ever, culminate fully into either extreme.  “Red Sky Hymn” further cements this pattern, while showing that it can play out at higher speeds, too.

The thing to keep in mind is that none of this would be nearly as successful were it not for the embraceable melodies offered up by the trio.  Whereas the electronic fog can come off as impenetrable, it’s essential for the melodies to counterbalance that with inviting expressions, emitting a warmth that compels the ear to reach out and meet the sound halfway.  This is something Vignato’s trio does time and time again on this intriguing album.  It’s a quality seen most clearly with the gorgeous melodic trombone sighs on “Provvisorio” and how Fender Rhodes keeps laying them on thicker, accompanied by the susurrant crash of cymbals.

There’s a sense that this is an updated version of the 1990’s electro-acoustic projects of Bobby Previte and Wayne Horvitz.  But where they often anchored their songs to a cinematic brew of folk music, Vignato works from a European Jazz perspective… but the interplay between organic and electronic voicings is a shared quality of both.

Really, just a seriously intriguing album.  It’s attuned to cerebral appetites, but there are moments on this recording that are an open channel straight to the heart.

Your album personnel:  Filippo Vignato (trombone, effects), Yannick Lestra (Fender Rhodes, bass synth, effects) and Attila Gyarfas (drums, percussion).

Released on Auand Records.

Listen to more of the album at the artist’s Soundcloud page.

Music from Italy.

Available at:  Amazon

Saxophonist Alban Darche possesses a strange lyricism all his own.  It has an edge, and plenty of it.  But its delivery isn’t propelled by aggression, and the edges aren’t made to draw blood, and that’s why a melody from his saxophone is received more as sunlight than steel.  But like sunlight, Darche refracts the melody in a way that keeps it approaching from every direction but head-on.  And that he infuses it with strong doses of bop and blues makes the angular nature of the music that much more alien, even as it rings with the echoes of something familiar.

The quartet JASS exponentially raises this sonic effect, since it brings together four like-minded artists who revel in act of creating unconventional music.  Their name, taken from the first letter in the quartet of drummer John Hollenbeck, saxophonist Alban Darche, trombonist Samuel Blaser and bassist Sébastien Boisseau, slyly hints at the music’s origins, but Mix of Sun and Clouds is created by modern artists who are working on the music of tomorrow before the sun sets on today.

The odd geometry utilized to structure each piece is captivating when viewed in isolation.  There’s the way that “Roman I” bops around excitedly in all directions, but seems always guided in diagonal lines perpetually orbiting the song’s melodic center.  There’s also the peculiar tunefulness of “Wagonnet Song” and its foundation of rhythmic and harmonic collisions… as if they’d engineered a subway system from four different starting points and with four distinct junctions in mind.  But what really gives the music its personality is how the odd geometry provides room for details to emerge and resonate with comparative strength.  There’s the comforting familiarity of a thick streak of the blues emerging on “Bio” and the slow build of groove on “Ansia Da Separazione” and how it carries the melody on to greater heights.  And there’s also how a whisper of melody to start “Lonyay Utca” carries all the way to the end as it cycles through endless revolutions of nuance and subtle changes.

A fascinating album from artists who have made it their habit conjuring up fascinating music.

Your album personnel:  Alban Darche (tenor sax), Samuel Blaser (trombone), Sébastien Boisseau (double bass) and John Hollenbeck (drums).

Released on Yolk Records.

Listen to more of the album on the artist’s Soundcloud page.

It appears this album is only available for sale at the Yolk Records store.