Jazz Recommendations – 2012 Releases

The quality that most strikes me about the music that comes from James Falzone is spontaneity.  Even though his albums are typically dominated by tracks that serve up unusual rhythmic geometry and strange melodic assemblages, that spontaneity imbues the music with a lively hop, gives a light touch to the music of heavy thoughts.

Drawing his inspiration from the architectural landscape surrounding him during a one-week residency in Brooklyn, Falzone has created a set of original compositions that evoke their own architectural presence, bonding his music to the form and shape of the cities from which it sprung.

Your album personnel: James Falzone (clarinet), Jason Adasiewicz (vibes), Jason Roebke (bass, cracklebass), and Tim Daisy (drums).

Seemingly borne of the same cloth as fellow clarinetist Jimmy Giuffre, who led some amazing trios in the 50s & 60s, with his 1960s trio displaying innovative approaches to group improvisation and the patterns resulting from it.  It’s why sometimes a listener almost knows what to expect next when listening to a completely improvised piece… certain patterns that speak to the creative process and, thus, the humanity in both performer and listener.  Falzone, in fact, spoke directly to the Giuffre influence on an earlier release Tea Music, though that was more specifically tied back to Giuffre’s 50s trio.

So what does all that mean for this album?  Where I’m going with this is that this isn’t music to make first-blush assumptions with.  That what sounds like modern jazz edging near the avant-garde/free improv border will do some surprising things that you should’ve expected in the first place…

That Falzone may often sound on clarinet like he’s trying to elude a tail by perpetually doubling back, making sharp turns, and heading the wrong way into traffic, well, he is just as able to gently drift in space, like on the beautiful “It Felt As If Time Had Stopped.”

Adasiewicz’s vibes may often sound as if dictated by stormy winds (like on “Ukrainian Village”), but then suddenly shifts into a charming bop ‘n pop on “Jazz Searching Self.”

Whether live or in studio, Tim Daisy is a friggin’ tornado on drums, and he shows no inclination to refute that comparison on a track like “Brooklyn Lines,” but then suddenly he’s leading the swing on “Carol’s Burgers.”

And Roebke, though breaking out the wiry distortion of crackle box on “Ukrainian Village,” he also shepherds the quartet through the darting “Scuiridae” with deliberate meaningful phrases.

Spend some time with this music.  This is music that intrigued me with my first visit, a little more with my second, and then after some time away, I find myself listening to it pretty frequently, my admiration and enjoyment increasing along with the time spent.  The music becomes more friendly the more one gets to know it.  Some music is like that.

Released on the Allos Musica label.

Jazz from the Chicago scene.

You can stream the entire album, and purchase it, on the artist’s bandcamp page.

Available at eMusic.  Available at Amazon: CD | MP3

*****

On an unrelated note, I found this Falzone quote in some of his promotional material for the album.  Speaking of his time spent on his Brooklyn residency…

“I was staying in Carroll Gardens, and would wake up each morning at 6 a.m., walk for a coffee, walk a part of Brooklyn, then go back to the apartment I was renting and write music until afternoon. These are the pieces that came from that time.”

Oh man, does that speak to me.  Makes me think back to those times when I would have dedicated time to just writing a fiction novel, how I would become subsumed by everything around me, visceral reactions to environmental stimuli while simultaneously becoming immersed in the task of universe building in my head, as the book would form and re-form with each written page.  And how all of that profound feeling and thought would occur with the simple act of getting coffee from the corner shop or a quick walk around the neighborhood.

Anyways, just felt like sharing that.  Doesn’t have anything to do with anything.

Cheers.

Another lovely album by Brad Mehldau, who has to be considered one of modern Jazz’s vanguard artists.  The music from Where Do You Start originates from the same recording session as his previous release Ode, but, here, Mehldau forgoes original compositions in favor of interpretations of the music of a disparate group of artists like Clifford Brown, Jimi Hendrix, Toninho Horta, Sonny Rollins, Sufjan Stevens and Nick Drake.

Mehldau’s sound on piano is so distinct that I stopped worrying long ago that he might get lost in the weeds of the music of others.  It’s a risk of doing covers, that the artist might wind up sounding more like the original composer than themselves.  But not Mehldau, who has made a nice niche for himself by applying his talents to songs of the modern era (not to mention, helping develop a modern Songbook for a new generation of jazz artists).

Your album personnel: Brad Mehldau (piano), Larry Grenadier (bass), and Jeff Ballard (drums).

Best album track is his cover of Sufjan Stevens’ “Holland.”  Mehldau pinpoints the simmering tension hinted at in Sufjan’s wispy tune, and he lets it blossom with dramatic effect.  Coming in a close second is Mehldau’s interpretation of Toninho Horta’s “Aquelas Coisas Todas,” which, actually, is a good match for Mehldau, as he displays the same dynamic proficiency with harmonies as Horta, but gives his version a snappy jaunt in contrast to Horta’s mellower propulsion.

Two other tracks worth noting…

One, Mehldau’s adaptation of Hendrix’s “Hey Joe.”  I like the original, but it’s one of those songs that too many people have covered already, and now anyone else who covers it is greeted with a reluctant exhaustion.  Mehldau’s take on it, thankfully, rises to the level I’ve come to expect from him.  The two aspects I find most appealing about his rendition is the staggered cant he applies rhythmically, accenting beats to effect a delectable push and pull cadence.  Also, Grenadier launches into sections with a serious gusto that really gives the song some heart.

Two, he covers Nick Drake’s soul-crushing heartbreak song “Time Has Told Me,” and further proves that the Drake songbook may be as difficult to crack as any out there.  I’ve yet to hear someone really really pull off a great Drake cover, and while there’s nothing inherently wrong with Mehldau’s version, there’s also nothing laudably special about it either.

But overall, this is yet another excellent Mehldau recording.  When I look through my music library and cd shelves and see all the fantastic albums he’s put out, and then realize how often I still listen to each of them, it makes me want to proclaim that no other modern jazz artist has been so exceptionally prolific.  Omer Avital, Esbjorn Svensson, Bill Frisell and Guillermo Klein all spring to mind as counterarguments, but none of those names shoot the Mehldau assertion out of the water.  When people ask who are the Coltranes, the Monks, the Davis’s of the day… Mehldau is one of those names I immediately offer up. And there’s a bunch of reasons for that.

The best song covers make you forget the original, however briefly. Mehldau does this better than anybody.

Released on the Nonesuch Records label.

Jazz from NYC.

Available at eMusic. Available at Amazon: CD | MP3

If there’s one word emblematic of trumpeter Ben Holmes sophomore release Anvil of the Lord, it would be ‘propulsion.’  There is a steady relentlessness to this music that drives each album track, giving a sense of perpetual forward motion to even the slower tempo pieces.  It creates an undeniable immediacy, and a fruitless endeavor to try steering the interaction.  This album is like a shark.  If it stops moving, it dies.  That constant propulsion marks this album.

But it’s not the only quality that makes it special.

Your album personnel: Ben Holmes (trumpet), Matt Pavolka (bass), Vinnie Sperrazza (drums), and Curtis Hassellbring (trombone).

Fifth track “Otesanek” brings out the Romanian influence that other tracks hint at.  After a nice duo between trumpet and bass, it moves into a section that can be traced to Balkan music origins, and starts hitting on the same intoxicating buttons.  It’s an area that saxophonist Jessica Lurie has been mining for years now, and with wonderful results.  The folk music of this area just seems to pair so well with the myriad of possibilities of jazz improvisation.

Throughout this album, Holmes infuses the compositions with varietals of Southeast European music.  A waltz at heart, the song “Kingston” sounds as if it wants to evolve into a Romanian folk song.  It skitters and shakes, but just can’t come out the other side, and it’s that incubating tension that gives the track its energy.  The walking bass lines and post-bop trumpet phrasings of “Song for Creel Thompson” share the same space with the Klezmer affectations of “Moved Like a Ghost.”

This is also a quartet of two duos.  Holmes synchs up his trumpet with Hassellbring’s trombone and Pavolka and Sperrazza do the same with bass and drums.  And within each song, those pairs meet up in places, find common lines of communication, and interact.  But the album sounds often like it’s brass leading the way and rhythm section impelling the music ahead from behind.  It’s this quartet-of-two-duos effect that’s the primary contributor to this album’s nifty perpetual forward motion.  I’m not implying that the quartet members weren’t working in tandem, but an apropos analogy would be of four people carrying a long sofa… the two people out front and the two people bringing up the rear are going to be concentrating on getting in step with the person at their side before attempting to marshal the forces at the “other end of the sofa.”  The natural push and pull of a little bit forward then a little bit back then forward several steps, it’s a construct of perpetual locomotion.  And as far as defining characteristics go, it’s an enviable one for an album to possess.

This really is a wonderful recording.  Highly recommended.

Listen to two album tracks on the artist site.

Released on the Skirl Records label.

Jazz from the Brooklyn scene.

Available at Amazon: MP3

*****

As an aside, I’d like to really commend Skirl Records on the presentation of this CD.  It comes in a DVD-size box, and has the beautiful art design of Hjalti Karlsson and Jan Wilker, who form the company Karlssonwilker.  Everything about this package is very cool.  My eyes popped open wide when I first opened the mail and slipped this album out of the mail packaging.  It made a hell of an impression, and I know I wasn’t the only one struck, because I exchanged a couple tweets with someone who had the same reaction and mentioned it on Twitter.

Here’s some photos…

Learn more about the Skirl Records collaboration with Karlssonwilker HERE.

Now, that’s how to package an album.  Excellent job, to everyone involved with this.

Plenty of instruments that belong to the guitar family, but you don’t often see them appear on a jazz album. There’s some exceptions, of course. Bill Frisell has famously created his very own jazz subgenre of Americana Jazz, a form of folk-jazz fusion, which incorporates instruments like pedal steel and dobro, as well as their music forms and qualities. And other artists have begun carving out territory in the Americana-Jazz subgenre, notably Jeremy Udden, Jessica Lurie, Hank Roberts, Jeff Cosgrove, and, of course, Bela Fleck’s inspired collaboration with the Marcus Roberts Trio. But with the exception of Lurie’s Balkan influenced form of folk jazz, most of the main players are U.S.-centric.

With Mónókróm, Icelandic guitarist Andrés Þór breaks that trend. Like a Nordic version of Frisell’s Americana Jazz sound, Mónókróm adds dobro, pedal and lap steel, Wurlitzer and pump organ to the mix for a set of intoxicating tunes that transition between a brooding simmer and a lively bounce. It doesn’t sound like anything else, which, I suppose, is a pretty impressive quality for an album to possess.

Your album personnel: Andrés Þór (guitar, dobro, lap steel, pedal steel), Agnar Magnusson (piano, Wurlitzer, pump organ & Celeste & Mellotron), Þorgrímur Jónsson (bass), and Scott McLemore (drums, percussion).

(Note:  Andrés Þór also goes by Andres Thor, and it’s how I’ll refer to him for the rest of the review.  I haven’t confirmed this, but I’m certain that the alternate name is a matter of convenience for the English-centric keyboard and databases.)

Mónókróm is one of those albums that proves it often doesn’t pay to be too hasty when searching through the new arrivals listings. The album opens with the title-track, and while it’s a nice enough tune, there’s nothing about it that would’ve normally snared my attention to stick around. However, I’m tremendously gratified that I did.

“RNA” is a brooding composition. Magnusson creates little eddies on piano while Jonsson and McLemore skip rocks over the water’s surface on bass and drums. And over the top of this, Thor casts out wistful notes on dobro. Dobro is all about the hopeful kind of blues, when sad times are embraced as the precursor to better days ahead, and so that juxtaposition of hopeful dobro over melancholy piano and rhythm section makes for quite the intoxicating song, and one of the best I’ve heard all year.

“Heima” also keeps things on the quiet side of town. A gentle lullaby that takes its time to develop, Thor casually puts one foot in front of the other, performing a slow reveal on the melody in a way not dissimilar to Frisell’s method. The lovely part of this track, however, is when Thor hands off the ball to piano and accompanies on pedal steel. Magnusson, also, switches things up mid-stream, offering some wavering notes on mellotron to open the track, and some pump organ, to boot.

But it’s not all moody drifting. The catchy “Pink Wilco” has a nice blues-rock persona, both melodically and rhythmically. “X” climbs out of bed and slips into a hopping post-bop tune, with some nice interaction between Thor’s guitar and Magnusson’s piano, and “1982” that has a nice steady groove, a groove which Thor keeps hazy with lap steel in the first half of the tune, but turns up the heat on the second half with guitar. “Sjavargrund” is a pretty ballad given all types of life by Magnusson’s Wurlitzer. “Hrio” is pretty standard fare as to modern jazz guitar, though McLemore gets some decent chatter going on drums to keep things interesting, and “Munchen” brings the album to a close with an uptempo piece that, again, has some fine work on piano.

In terms of overall sound, this album marks a shift for Thor. Previous albums had him in more conventional modern jazz guitar sets, with recordings in a sax-guitar quartet, a guitar-organ trio, and the traditional guitar/bass/drums trio (notably, with Einar Scheving at the drum set). In addition, the Thor, McLemore, and Magnusson have a separate outfit called ASA Trio, which typically offer a quirky groove. I’m hoping that Mónókróm isn’t a one-off recording for this particular direction, and I’m already looking forward to what comes next.

Released on the Dimma Sweden label.

Jazz from the Reykjavik, Iceland scene.

You can stream, and purchase, the album on the artist Bandcamp site.

Also available at:  eMusic | CDBaby | Amazon CD – MP3

I’m a sucker for moody piano trios.  They make the perfect soundtrack for a slow wake to an early morning.  The best ones refrain from any sudden moves that might accelerate my pace, and keep volume and tempo at a level that matches the effect of coffee and Irish cream on my nervous system.  But they also possess sonic blips, often going undetected, that coax my brain into action.  An album like that can give me all kinds of mileage as a First Album Of the Morning.

The Benedikt Jahnel Trio‘s new album Equilibrium is looking to be the newest in a proud lineage of albums that remain right near my stereo for those times when the sun is showing signs of climbing out of bed.

Your album personnel:  Benedikt Jahnel (piano), Antonio Miguel (double bass), and Owen Howard (drums).

This is an album that often leads with simmering tension, and either keeps it leashed or lets some steam rise up from the surface.  Album opener “Gently Understood” begins like a ticking time bomb, and, thankfully, the trio recognizes that the build-up is more evocative than any cheap explosions.  Howard provides the strongest moments for this track as it fades out with rhythms that crackle and spark.

That leads to the placid “Sacred Silence.”  A gentle ballad that murmurs and coos and dreams of one day becoming a lullaby.

“Moorland & Hill Land” is arguably the most adventurous track on the album.  It begins with sparse notes that quiver and rattle.  After several minutes, the trio coalesces back into a cohesive unit.  This leads to an absolutely lovely piano solo by Jahnel that is as uplifting as the opening section was foreboding.  The emotional shift within the confines of this tune is exactly the kind of subtle tweaking that goes a long way for me when it comes to a morning album.  I could just drift away to this music.  When the solo ends, the trio coalesces with the same seamless perfection with which they engaged after the song opening.  The track has a superb driving cadence that breaks only for some astounding bass solo resonance by Miguel, who rejoins the trio just as the song ends.

“Augmented” and “Hidden Beauty” keep to the course, elegantly restrained piano-led songs which counterbalance tracks that stray from the normal, like “Wrangel,” with Miguel’s wavering arco bass and Jahnel’s oblique phrases creating a moody tone and setting the table for the trio to launch into higher tempos.

The album ends with the title track.  Apropos of all that led up to this point, it’s a quiet tune that picks its way deliberately across the span of the song.  It has a light touch and a meandering path, and Jahnel sticks to the direction he first sets out on.  The song has a pleasant looseness to it.  It is, truly, the kind of pace one should aspire to wake slowly and pleasantly to.

I’m very taken with this recording, and I expect it will accompany many sunrises in the months to come.

Released on the ECM Records label.

As an aside… It’s the trio’s first album for ECM, but it’s not Jahnel’s first experience with the label.  He’s a member of Cymin Samawatie’s Persian folk-jazz outfit Cyminology.

Jazz from the Cologne, Germany scene.

Available at eMusic.  Available at Amazon: CD | MP3

Another aside… speaking of First Album of the Morning albums… Marcin Wasilewski Trio’s January last over a year as a regular play to start my day.  There’s a good chance that Equilibrium will live up the standard set by Wasilewski’s excellent recording.