Jazz Recommendations – 2012 Releases

I’m always delighted when musicians take common ingredients and create something refreshingly new and exciting.  On New Focus, saxophonist Konrad Wiszniewski and pianist Euan Stevenson blend Jazz, Classical, and Pop musics.  This is nothing that hasn’t been done before.  But by employing the just-right equation of inspired compositions and lovely group improvisation, they offer a recording that is delightfully uplifting, even breathtaking at times, and possesses a sense of something original, something new, even if the album’s building blocks are tried and true.

It’s the kind of thing that dazzles via the possibilities of taking what is ordinary and making it special.

Your album personnel:  Konrad Wiszniewski (saxes & compositions), Euan Stevenson (piano, compositions & arrangements), Alina Bzhezhinska (harp), Michael Janisch (double bass), Alyn Cosker (drums), and the Glasgow String Quartet: William Chandler (violin), Jacqueline Speirs (violin), Ian Budd (viola), and Betsy Taylor (cello).

I like that the album opens with strings.  On “Nicola’s Piece,” the Glasgow String Quartet begins with a captivating cello line atop quavering violin notes.  Bzhezhinska and Janisch then enter on harp and bass, providing some slight contrast at the upper and lower registers, and some nuance to the rhythm.  Wiszniewski’s sax picks up where cello left off and takes the song aloft to a higher elevation.  Cosker’s drumwork is the flapping of wings.

And, actually, I could go on all day with the flying metaphors.  This is one of those albums.  Lots of soaring moments, of songs looking down from great heights.  For instance, on “Music for a Northern Mining Town,” strings are a gentle breeze propelling the tune forward.  Stevenson’s piano missives are effortless in flight, while sax offers long slow sight lines.

But that’s not all there is to this album.  For instance, the interplay between sax and strings on “El Paraiso,” each pretending to be disinterested in one another, yet bonded by the smokey glances directed at one another when they think nobody’s looking.  Strings sometimes sway woozily, sometimes prance sprightly across the room.  This is movie scene music, for when two lovers first become aware of the other.  Interplay.

I’ve mostly talked about the slower pieces thus far, but there’s a nice offering of up-tempo pieces, too.   On “Illuminate,” drums keep things close to the ground and moving straight ahead, piano paralleling its trajectory.  Sax gets chippy, but stays in line with the rest of the ensemble.  A group effort.  And “Parson’s Green” sends the album out with a bang.

“Leonard’s Lament” is the most song-like of the album tracks.  One of those rich melodies that sounds inviting each time it’s restated.  Sax really drives the melody, but piano adds nuance via counterpoint, and thus melodic depth.  When Cosker shifts on drums from accompaniment to foil, it provides for some tiny fireworks to end the song on a thrilling note, and brings a strong rhythmic quality to a song that was already strong melodically.

Just a fine album, and one of the highlights of 2012.

Released on the Whirlwind Recordings label.

Jazz from the Glasgow, Scotland scene.

Available at eMusic.  Available at Amazon: CD

Some music has a natural swagger so that it can’t help but sound bad-ass.  This is one such album.

Benedic Lamdin (who also goes by the monicker Nostalgia 77) has made his mark on the UK music scene by performing and producing with a variety of solid music acts, ranging from R&B artist Alice Russel to the wonderful free jazz Tippett family.  On The Taxidermist, he’s collected some strong names from the UK Jazz scene, tagged them as The Monster, and created an album with hypnotic grooves and absorbing textures.

And it’s the coolest thing in the room.

Your album personnel:  Ross Stanley (organ, fender rhodes, piano), Riaan Vosloo (bass), Fulvio Sigurta (trumpet), Tim Giles (drums), Noda Fernandez (percussion), Matthew Bourne (piano), James Allsopp (tenor sax, clarinet), and Benedic Lamdin (producer, arrangements, guitar).

The album opens with the title-track and immediately illustrates that swagger.  Bassist Vosloo, who contributed the majority of the compositions, partners with Giles’s drums to set down a catchy groove so infectious it echoes throughout the album.  Stanley creates darker tones on organ in the background, which sometimes simmer up and spread outward across the surface of the song, while Sigurta and Allsopp take similar arcs on trumpet and sax, offering notes that sigh wistfully.  Eventually, Allsopp breaks off from the trajectory and begins with some skronking dissonance.  This contrast with the entrenched groove enhances it, doesn’t muffle it.

And it’s that kind of arrangement to the compositions that makes this album something more special than just another modern take on the jazz-funk motif.

Most of the tracks have a cosmic vibe to them… a mix of post-bop and avant-garde jazz, space-rock, and modern R&B.  The track “The Last Few Days” brings together some trumpet and sax pairing that speaks to the Jazz voice of the album, but drums and percussion suggest something more of an R&B groove, while piano splits the difference between jazz and rock.  From the description, the inference might be drawn that this tune is a muddled combination of genres, but, much the opposite, the song possesses an easy-going poise, developing at a casual pace, even when it offers up soft growls and a show of teeth.

“Algernon” has a thick melody full of warmth and catchy enough to get everybody humming.  “The Ignored” has the heart of Tango, and a sense of humor that would brighten up the night at late-night lounges.  “Zippy Slipper” feels its way through the dark, prowling after scattered moonlight.  A cover of Sun Ra’s “Angels & Demons At Play” embraces the cosmic spirit of the original, but brings an unhurried tempo to the mix, providing a differing environment for the stabs and jabs of sax and trumpet to thrive in.

The cover of Kenny Dorham’s “Sunrise in Mexico” is the only thing approaching conventional on this album.  With a classic Hard Bop demeanor, Stanley has some thrilling moments on rhodes when the spotlight shines his way, and adds some lively accompaniment for those times when the spotlight is directed at Sigurta and Allsopp.  The cheerful drumwork of Giles comes a close second to Stanley for this song’s top performance.

The album ends with “By the Light of Your Eyes,” a smokey ballad that features some lovely sax work by Allsopp.  Yet even when employing a lighter touch, this ensemble presents a song that hits hard, but plays it cool without even having to throw a punch.

Sorta bad-ass.

Released on the Tru Thoughts Recordings label.

Jazz from the UK.

Download a free album track, courtesy of the artists and label, either by hitting the download button in the audio player above or by following this link to the artist’s bandcamp page.

Available at eMusic.  Available at Amazon: CD | MP3

Drummer Harris Eisenstadt confounds me.

He consistently puts out challenging recordings.  He toys with compositions, delves into the process of creating them… of giving them meaning and function, then deciphering the implications of that meaning and function, and then re-working the damn things.  Read over his site, check out interviews he’s given… he’s a tinkerer.  If he were a watchmaker, Eisenstadt would find a way to change the flow of time.  He does it now with his drums and his compositions.

I’ve always found it a shame that I can’t enjoy his music more than I do.

Canada Day III is, arguably and as far as these thing go, an accessible recording.  And yet here I am struggling to take it all in.

In truth, this isn’t a unique experience for me.  It’s happened before.  Most notably, in regards to the music of Ornette Coleman… another musician who found himself tinkering with the way of things.  I dove right into Coleman’s Atlantic Records releases, pretty much one right after the other.  I never made a hell of a lot of sense of them, but I just kept listening with the hope that eventually they would sink in.  That technique didn’t give me the results I wanted.  Coleman remained an enigma for a long time.  And then I heard his collaboration with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, as part of the soundtrack to the movie adaptation of William S. Burrough’s “Naked Lunch.”  Hearing Coleman’s squirrely harmolodic style of play interact with the distant warmth of the stately LPO, everything fell into place.  I was able to revisit all of those old Coleman Atlantic recordings, and though their ferocity was a distant cry from the contained fire of the Naked Lunch soundtrack, the connection between me and the music was instantaneous.  I’d found my way in, so to speak, and now all of Coleman’s music made sense to me.

I guess I’m hoping that the same thing happens with me and Eisenstadt’s music one day.  I think he’s one of the most important composers on the scene… forward-thinking, inventive, and expressive.  I love reading about him talk about music.  It reminds me of many of my own thoughts about the creative process.  His music does, too.  I just don’t enjoy listening to it that much, though.  It eludes me.

I considered doing an overview of his recordings for this column, but decided against it.  I’m going to simply talk about his current release Canada Day III.  It won’t make my Best of 2012 lists.  On the other hand, it may rank in top ten lists of other music writers.  Don’t dismiss their opinions on this album.  They might very well be right.  One day, years from now, when Eisenstadt’s music stops shadowboxing with my ears, I might sit up with embarrassment that I never included his music in my Best Of columns.  That’s very likely, actually.  But this is how music is sometimes.  Gotta roll with it.

Now, let’s briefly talk about that music…

Your album personnel:  Harris Eisenstadt (drums), Garth Stevenson (bass), Chris Dingman (vibraphone), Nate Wooley (trumpet), and Matt Bauder (tenor sax).

Y’know, before I get into the album, I had to laugh as I typed the album personnel out just above.  I began this article with the word ‘confounding,’ and it occurs to me that this album’s personnel are like a murderer’s row of challenging artists.  That makes sense, in a way.

Album opens with “Slow and Steady.”  It exemplifies much of what to expect on the remainder of the recording.  Sudden fluctuations in rhythm, melodies that gradually become formless and drift away, excursions into the grey areas that act as the border between the ominous and the enchanting, and series upon series of notes as earthy as a golem yet as shifty as a doppelganger.  On “Slow and Steady,” many of these album characteristics are somewhat muffled, and the tune is a dream of serenity during a night of fitful sleep.

But I don’t want to give the impression that this all just a quixotic swarm of avant-garde ferocity.  Second track “Settled” has some pleasant post-bop swing to it.  Wooley starts things out on trumpet, and Bauder jumps in on sax for a section of contemplative lyricism.  I enjoy how the song breaks down.  It’s a slurred rendition of the melody, a trait which gives it a likable quality… friendly, even.

Okay, that said, but the third track “A Whole New Amount of Interactivity” is kind of a quixotic swarm of avant-garde ferocity.  It’s the kind of track that typically frustrates my attempts to connect with the music.  I think I have difficulty adapting to the shifts in tempo, the rhythmic pinball that recalibrates my own sense of timing.  Seventh track “Shuttle Off this Mortal Coil” messes me in a similar way, though that’s mitigated by the inclusion of some waltz motion (which my internal clock is finely attuned to), and a reference, maybe just the implication of a reference, to Monk’s “Epistrophy.”

Fifth track “Song For Sara for Sara Schoenbeck” comes damn close to roping me in.  Bauder’s sing-song intro, with a fluttering touch, and set atop the barely perceptible rhythmic palette of Eisenstadt, Stevenson, and Dingman, it makes for a thrilling moment.  Then Wooley joins on trumpet for another statement of melody, before the two begin weaving progressions together that sound effortless and without elaboration.  When Dingman’s vibes transition from a rhythmic to a melodic function, it adds texture that just makes sense.  Stevenson also begins to sing on bass a bit, and Eisenstadt sets down an exuberant groove.  After a Dingman solo, sax and trumpet rejoin for a section that’s practically celebratory.  That moment when they all come together is a great thing, and the way they play off into the sunset makes for a satisfying end to the song.

Track six “Nosey Parker” has more of that staccato hop, but gets washed away with the purifying flame of Wooley’s trumpet.  A kinetic sax section by Bauder returns to the hop.  It’s that kind of thing that I don’t much care for while simultaneously fascinated by.

Another track I liked was album-closer “King of the Kutiriba for Mamady Danfa,” a noir-ish mystery soundtrack.  Bass strolls down an alley lit by vibes moonlight, and pursued by muted trumpet.  Drums are the soft patter of footfalls in the shadows, hidden but comforting.  Everybody is cool, everything is cool, just watch your back.  It’s an odd way to end the album with a tune that’s incongruous to everything that came before, but it does echo the shimmering effervescence of the album’s opening statement, so there is a tie-in.  And besides, a nifty tune is a nifty tune, regardless of how well it plays with other album songs.

And that’s how it ends.

Released on the Songlines Recordings label.

Jazz from NYC.

Download a free album track at the label site, courtesy of the artist and label.

Available at eMusic.  Available at Amazon: CD | MP3