Jazz Recommendations – 2016 releases

What’s becoming increasingly evident over the last few Neil Cowley Trio recordings is how comfortable they have become engaging in the art of nuance.  Cowley’s earlier recordings saw him firmly entrenched in a prevalent form of modern piano trio, where pop-music melodies were crafted at high speeds and delivered up as bold pronouncements, and even when the tempo did shift downward, the message was conveyed with the same dramatic flair.  It made for exciting music, definitely fun, too, and just enough sense of humor and intelligence to keep things cerebral.  But each successive recording increasingly highlighted a static quality that just begged to get shook off.

And then the trio released 2012’s The Face of Mount Molehill, where the addition of strings added new textures and manifested new possibilities.  But more essential to the trio’s evolution were the tracks that offered up a dreamy atmosphere and possessed a thoughtful motion that explored the tiny possibilities rather than exploit the grand proclamations.  And a return to the trio formation on 2014’s Touch and Flee saw that new development continue to evolve with songs that generated spirit by speaking calmly and with an unassuming demeanor.

Now, on their newest, Spacebound Apes, the trio’s transformation is even more startling.

Part of a larger multi-media project, Spacebound Apes attempts to be the story as much as the soundtrack, and it’s why the flow from song to song is somewhat punctuated, as if delineating the end and subsequent beginning of chapters in a book.

More to the point, though, is how dramatically the solemn moments resonate.  There’s no missing the emphasis on restraint with tracks like “Weightless,” “Hubris Major” and “Grace” and how the trio patiently coaxes the tiniest lights in each to burn with the greatest strength.  It’s an effort that scores extra points when the tone swings the other way on the delightfully twirling “Garden of Love” or those tracks that hearken back to the familiar singular focus up-tempo approach on a track like “The City and the Stars.”  The shifts between the various states can be jarring, abrupt, even.  Sometimes this is how a story unfolds.

And in the case of the Neil Cowley Trio and Spacebound Apes, ultimately, that statement applies to both band and album.

Your album personnel:  Neil Cowley (piano), Rex Horan (bass), Evan Jenkins (drums) and guest:  Leo Abrahams (guitar, effects).

Spacebound Apes is released on Cowley’s label, Hide Inside Records.

Music from the London scene.

Available at:  Amazon | eMusic

It’s also available on Cowley’s Music Glue page, which also lists combo retail packages that include other parts of the multi-media project, plus other stuff (LINK).

Here’s a LINK to a Neil Cowley Trio Tumblr page that is part of the multi-media project.

Here’s a LINK to another Spacebound Apes project site.

So, taking a look back over the last couple weeks and the music I’ve been writing about, with just a few exceptions, I’ve been hanging out on the fringes of Jazz… or just plain wandering into entirely different territory.  Time to calibrate and get back to the heart of things.  There’ll be no mistaking the music in today’s column for anything other than jazz.  It will sound familiar to you and remind you of the music of the past and trigger all kinds of potent nostalgia and warm memories.  That being said, the only way music is getting featured on this site is if that old language gets spoken as if new.  There’s words, but then there’s the conversational styles and approaches that give those words life and meaning and power.  The artists (and their albums) featured below hit that mark, which is why the music of the past is really the Jazz of Today.

This is Jazz Today.

Let’s begin…

Melissa Aldana – Back Home (Wommusic)

Saxophonist Melissa Aldana has an appealing conversational manner on tenor sax.  There’s a relentless quality to her dialog, a sense that forward momentum is something essential to the lifespan of each note in the stream.  But it’s never something that becomes pushy or so omnipresent that everything else falls off the radar.  That’s an especially big deal on her album Back Home, because she synchs up with a laid back cadence set down by the bass and drums duo of Pablo Menares and Jochen Rueckert, and that contrast of perpetual speed and innate patience is what frames every solo and structures each song in a way that presents a stream-of-conscious flow in a bound framework.

Artist site | Buy:  Amazon

Denny Zeitlin – Early Wayne (Sunnyside)

Of the many things to love about the music of Wayne Shorter, one is how the saxophonist was able to focus the intensity in a way that shaped the lyricism, provided it a sharpness and clarity even when his solo seemed to want to counteract those forces.  It’s why a streamlined motion was always there to pull the ear in the right direction even at the peak of getting lost in the thrilling details of a solo.  Pianist Denny Zeitlin captures that same characteristic on his solo take on Shorter’s songbook.  Recorded live at Oakland’s Piedmont Piano Company, Zeitlin summons up some intensity of his own as he launches off into improvisations that often wander far from Shorter’s originals.  The way that the melody of “Juju” keeps wandering back into the frame, each time wearing a different outfit, is particularly enchanting.  So is the heart-on-the-sleeve vulnerability of “Infant Eyes.”  Not your everyday kind of covers album, thank god.

Artist site | Listen | Buy:  Amazon – Bandcamp – eMusic

Kris Allen – Beloved (Truth Revolution Records)

Light on their feet and in synch with each step, the quartet of alto saxophonist Kris Allen, tenor saxophonist Frank Kozyra, bassist Luques Curtis and drummer Jonathan Barber make for enviable dance partners on this solid quartet session.  And while the motion is pretty damn enchanting, it’s the original compositions that are arguably the album’s strength.  So many of these tracks have something familiar about them, as if they could be traced back to performances on classic jazz albums… even though they’re construction is clearly marked by the jazz of the present day.  Really an excellent example of how to make an old language speak like brand spankin’ new.

Artist site | Listen | Buy:  Amazon – Bandcamp

Michael Dease – Father Figure (Posi-Tone Records)

Trombonist Michael Dease can mix things up a little bit, with an affinity for showing how nuanced the concept of straight-ahead jazz can be.  But what’s particularly welcoming about his forays into this area is the genial soulfulness that so much of his music is infused with.  Even when it’s not a Hard Bop tune, it still seems to exude that presence of an enthusiastic hop and wide smile of a melody.  Definitely plenty of that on his newest.  Technically it’s a quintet session with Dease, vibraphonist Behn Gillece, pianist Glenn Zaleski, bassist Endea Owens and drummer Luther Allison, but Markus Howell and Immanuel Wilkins take turns on alto sax for almost all of the tracks, so really the magic number is six.  Good stuff.

Artist site | Buy:  Amazon

The Cookers – The Call of the Wild and Peaceful Heart (Smoke Sessions)

That this ensemble of jazz giants continues to breathe new life into a hard bop body of work is more than a little impressive.  Their newest, on the always solid Smoke Sessions, sees them advancing on from an excellent hard bop unit to something that gets more demonstrative in the way it launches off from that form of expression.  There are moments on this recording that break out with a sound from when hard bop was transitioning into freer forms of expression and those that offered up more of an edge than a groove.  But that the septet can shift gears and land plumb with a gorgeous ballad or cheerful bop speaks plenty about how their talents can both incite and tame their sense of adventure.  To those new to jazz, fyi that trumpeters Eddie Henderson and David Weiss, alto saxophonist Donald Harrison, tenor saxophonist Billy Harper, pianist George Cables, bassist Cecil McBee and drummer Billy Hart are all names that will lead you to some of the best jazz you’ll ever hear.

Artist site | Listen | Buy: Amazon – eMusic

*****

There are times when it seems that Michael Blake holds this album together through sheer force of will.

There are so many operating mechanisms and moving parts and mass hysteria, but those beautiful melodies just float effortlessly from the center of all that chaos.  It’s the perfect vehicle to navigate the wildness of the recording, to take it all in like scenic views from a window seat on a speeding train.

What’s particularly crazy about Fulfillment (and it is a crazy album) is that somehow Blake and crew are able to get all these shifting gears and conflicting imagery to unite in a solitary vision, however brief, then eagerly break it apart and start the process all over again.

Sometimes the ensemble serves up a sing-song melody to go with its sing-song cadence, and then goes and immerses the whole thing into an atmosphere of being tossed about in violent seas.  Sometimes the music displays a heart of blues beating strong, and even though the surging intensity pulls hard on its strings, the discernible impression is that of the ineffable confusion of heartbreak.  And then there are moments when the music is solemn and beautiful, simply, before everything returns to a state far more complex and transitory.

I am finding it difficult to explain how special and amazing this album is.

Your album personnel:  Michael Blake (tenor & soprano saxes), J.P. Carter (trumpet, electronics), Peggy Lee (cello), Chris Gestrin (piano, MicroMoog), Ron Samworth (electric guitar, banjo), André Lachance (bass), Dylan van der Schyff (drums, percussion) and guests: Aram Bajakian (acoustic & electric guitar), Emma Postl (voice) and Neelamjit Dhillon (tabla).

Released on Songlines Recordings.

Listen to more album tracks at Songlines’ Soundcloud page, here & here.

Jazz from the Brooklyn scene.

Available at:  eMusic | Amazon

The music of Les Âmes Perdues is restrained in tone and temperament, but each note beats with a heart that means it, and resonates like the rising sun.  Tenor saxophonist Christophe Panzani took a little road trip to seven houses of seven pianists and recorded seven songs, one with each.

“Sisyphe” with Edouard Ferlet has the two darting circles around one another.  With Leonardo Montana, “Endless Wars” has the simmering intensity of an approaching storm.  On “Die Grunen Bohnen,” Laia Genc doesn’t develop the melody so much as bring it to a sudden full bloom.

The undercurrent of tension on “Le jardin aux sentiers qui bifurquent” with Dan Tepfer and “Le Reve d’Icare” with Yonathan Avishai are individual lessons that the final, comforting words “good night” are sometimes followed by uneasy dreams.  But when it’s all said and done, this is an album where peacefulness wins out in the end, as both “Etrangement Calme” with Tony Paeleman and “Traduire Eschyle” with Guillaume Poncelet go about proving with infusions of pure tranquility.

Simply a beautiful album.

Your album personnel:  Christophe Panzani (tenor sax) and Yonathan Avishai, Edouard Ferlet, Laia Genc, Leonardo Montana, Tony Paeleman, Guillaume Poncelet and Dan Tepfer (piano).

Released on Jazz & People.

Listen to another album track at the label’s Bandcamp page.

Available at:  Bandcamp | Amazon | eMusic