Jazz Recommendations – 2013 Releases

The Indo-Jazz music of Arun Ghosh is one of the more exciting developments on the jazz scene from the last few years.  2008’s Northern Namaste and 2011’s Primal Odyssey displayed the clarinetist’s talent at merging the music of his Calcutta, India childhood homeland and the modern jazz improvisational approach of his adulthood London hometown scene.  The result of that particular fusion is music with rich melodies that mainline straight to the heart and dynamic rhythms that get the feet moving fast.  It’s high voltage music with a deeply mesmerizing quality, making it just as applicable to kicking back on the sofa as it is to the dance floor.

His newest, 2013’s A South Asian Suite, came about as the result of a commission from the Manchester Mega Mela and PRS for Music Foundation.  The premise:  A chamber work that viewed the lands of Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, India, and Sri Lanka as viewed through the perspective of a British-Asian from a northern town.  That may sound a bit complicated, but taking into account Ghosh’s biographical data and his previous works, it’s about as simple as it gets.

This is a travelogue put to music.  And it’s as beautiful a voyage as you’ll ever take on one recording.

Your album personnel: Arun Ghosh (clarinet, harmonium), Chris Williams (alto sax), Idris Rahman (tenor sax, clarinet, flute), Zoe Rahman (piano), Liran Donin (double bass), Aref Durvesh (tabla, dholak, tambourine, drums), Nilesh Gulhane (tabla), Pat Illingworth (drums), Rastko Rasic (drums, tambourine, bells, Tibetan bowls).

“The Gypsies of Rajasthan” has a celebratory ebullience, a shout to the sky joy that is as melodically exalting as it is undeniably catchy.  Woodwinds develop the melody atop a crest of thick rhythms, though it’s pianist Rahman’s solo that provides the greatest thrills on this exhilarating track.  According to Ghosh, it is a song about traveling, about traversing the entirety of the South Asian landscape in the shoes of a nomad.

“After the Monsoon” has a hypnotic cadence and a melody that curls and drifts across its surface.  Melancholy in that way a beautiful sunrise can incite a sadness when dwelling upon its momentary existence.

The poetic refrains of interlude “Pilgrimage to the Ganges” leads into “River Song.”  Its melody is delivered with a speaker’s finesse and the nuance of blades of grass bristling beneath a soft breeze.  Influenced by the Bengali style of folk music Bhatiyali, Ghosh invokes his own personal voicing of the music traditionally sung by the travelers of the region’s waterways.  It is a series of harmonic surges and exhalations, of a texture transforming from wispy to luxuriant.

The interlude “Arise Dancing Dervish!” features a piano solo as bright as the stars, and a warmth equally as fleeting.  When Illingworth and Donin add their drums and bass to Ghosh’s clarinet, it begins a rising tide of intensity that flows right into the Qawwali music inspired “Sufi Stomp (Soul of Sindh),” a song that features a dancing ferocity to go with its cheerful ambiance and its determined gait.  Drums set the pace, drums drive the tune, drums announce the arrival of the melody with crashes of cymbals, and the partnership of percussion adds a fluency to the rhythm that is terrifically engaging.  Rahman, Williams, and Ghosh bring a fury to their delivery of the melody, but it’s the harmonizing that provides the song’s blissful warmth.

The piano solo of “Gautama’s Footsteps” gives a moment to catch the breath, as well as cleanse the sonic palate for the second half of the suite.  This peaceful introduction leads into the sublime “Mountain Song,” a composition dedicated to the Himalayan landscape of Nepal.  Clarinet is like moonlight, piano like the stars.  Melancholy and unassuming, the song has a stately presence, the elegance of a waltz.  The unraveling of melody between the layers of harmony is about as beautiful as music gets.

“Ode to the Martyrs” continues the music’s ethereal presence.  A foggy melody drifts for a while before it falls aside for the album finale of “Journey South.”  A thundering tempo, a firestorm for a melody, the song continues to build and build and build up to a frenzied conclusion that breaks down with an even greater intensity.  Ghosh describes this as a swirling psychedelic foray to Sri Lanka, marked by its methods of dance and the dictates of its rituals.

It’s a commanding finale for an album of many emotional shifts, and not a one of them anything but astoundingly compelling.  One of the best albums you’ll hear this year.

Released on Camoci Records.

Jazz from the Manchester, UK scene.

Available at:  eMusic | Amazon MP3

The key to this album is its warmth.  Aquarius, the new release by Nicole Mitchell’s Ice Crystal, is an album of blunt edges, sharp angles, and a haunting presence that doesn’t inspire happy dreams.  And yet, this album is so damn personable as to render all of its adversarial components into friendly points of connectivity.

The most glaring reason for this dichotomy of element and presence comes from the behavior of flute (Mitchell) and vibes (Adasiewicz) toward one another.  Like butterflies at play, they inspire a sense of exhilaration and freedom, watching their intertwining patterns shape pretty melodies out of the randomness of improvisatory trajectories and atypical flight plans.  Take, for instance, album opener “Aqua Blue,” with its springtime cheer, and the similarly inclined “Today, Today,” with its glimmering beauty and slightly darker tones.

Your album personnel: Nicole Mitchell (flute), Jason Adasiewicz (vibes), Joshua Abrams (bass), and Frank Rosaly (drums).

The rhythm section of drummer Rosaly and bassist Abrams are the rhythmic tether to Mitchell’s and Adasiewicz’s melodic acrobatics.  They provide a structure within which to greater appreciate the melodic development, in that same way that the flight of the butterflies is made that much more spectacular when viewed from the perspective of two feet planted on solid earth.  However, that doesn’t preclude the imposition of motion by the rhythm section upon the tenor of the tunes.

For instance, the tempo of “Yearning” takes long strides, focused like a laser beam on the path head, and when it seems like that’s all that left to expect, Rosaly and Abrams pull it back in with a nifty little hook and land the tempo on a resting spot that imbues the song with a satisfying sense of finality, like snapping a gift’s bow in place.  And then there’s the happy little dance of “Sunday Afternoon,” a blues groove, accentuated by vibes, but bass and drums the real stars.  Mitchell solos over the top, with Adasiewicz’s vibes darting between the notes while staying within reach of the rhythm section.  A straight-ahead tune that shines brilliantly in the midst of this album that comes from every other direction but head-on.

On the stranger side of town are tracks like “Aquarius,” with its intense bursts of nervous activity, anchored to some bass arco, then set loose with shimmering vibraphone notes.  And “Diga, Diga” is a haunted house of dissonance.  Sounds are not what they appear to be, and there is a new fright around every corner.  Flute is a shriek, bass is a moan, and vibes a death rattle.

The deft manipulation of time on this recording is also exemplified by the slight but profound differentiations between a track like “Above the Sky,” with its hypnotic repetitions broken by brief melodic glides, and a track like “Adaptability,” with bass bouncing ideas off some conversational drums, an up-tempo piece insinuating a swing, over which flute and vibes flutter and shine.  The insinuation grows even thicker on “Expectation,” with its walking bass line and punctuated riffs on vibes.  And while the tempos may change, and the melodic diversions grow disparate, album cohesiveness is maintained with a shared bond of songs growing increasingly thick, trading hypnotics for intensity.

The album ends with a tribute to Chicago Jazz legend Fred Anderson.  It’s a jaunty tune, celebrating Mr. Anderson’s contribution to the city scene as much as mourning his passing.

Just a wonderful album.  Loosely speaking, this is what people would consider an avant-garde recording, which would typically indicate a certain abundance of dissonance and edginess as to keep the listener at a distance.  Not the case with Aquarius, which despite all appearances, is very easy to embrace, and provides plenty of friendly warmth to go along with its atypical sound.

Released on Delmark Records.

Jazz from the Chicago scene.

Available at:  eMusic | Amazon CD | Amazon MP3

Bird is the Worm has documented plenty examples of musicians attempting to blend influences, mesh approaches, and fuse together contrasting sounds.  If anything, this is both typical of the modern jazz scene, as well as its primary contributing factor to why Jazz has become so difficult to define and categorize.  The upside is that this approach leads to some exciting music, even if not all of it is entirely successful.  The creative spirit that drives Jazz leads to the most wonderful of surprises.

Key to bringing together disparate elements in the same recording is to render the individual ingredients into a new form and altered shape that still allows them to float to the surface with their identities intact, while simultaneously having a transformative effect on the other, contrasting elements.  The influences must be changed and not changed, recognizable and brand spanking new.

On Mirage, the gorgeous new recording by the Brian Landrus Kaleidoscope, the funk and groove of 70s soul jazz is meshed with the modern jazz utilization of strings, and the resultant sound is one that should serve as a vanguard example of how to fuse disparate elements into one on a modern jazz recording.

Your album personnel:  Brian Landrus (baritone & bass sax, bass & contra-alto clarinets, bass flute), Rudy Royston (drums), Nir Felder (guitar), Frank Carlberg (piano, Rhodes), Lonnie Plaxico (electric & acoustic bass), Mark Feldman (violin), Joyce Hammann (violin), Judith Insell (viola), Jody Redhage (cello), and Ryan Truesdell (conductor).

This wasn’t just a wild Hail Mary shot that just luckily found its mark.  On previous recordings, Landrus has shown an adept touch with the groove-focused sound, instilling an elegance into the bright electric fusion.  And conductor Ryan Truesdell displayed his talent at wielding a big sound and giving it a crystal clear focus on his Gil Evans Project.  Pianist Carlberg, perhaps more than anyone on this session, has been involved in a crazy display of crossover projects.  Veteran bassist Plaxico was the perfect choice for an album that is anchored to grooves, and drummer Royston’s pronounced drumming on Bill Frisell’s heavily melodic recordings is exactly what this project required.  Guitarist Felder has the rock ‘n roll thing going for him, as well as the Greg Osby reference, but it may be his contribution to Ben Wendel’s genre-bending Frame that is most illustrative of why Felder sounds right at home in the mix of influences that mark Mirage.

And then there’s the string quartet.  This is not a superfluous addition meant to boost the breadth of the album’s wingspan, nor is it a cheap grab at emotional soft spots.  The strings share the stage both as soloists and accompaniment, sometimes working together as a team, sometimes breaking off from one another and getting to individual tasks of melodic development, rhythmic support, and harmonic initiative.

The sequence of the songs is of no little interest, with the melodic elements emphasized more in the first half of the album, and the rhythm taking increasing control as the album approaches its conclusion.

The album opens with “Arrival,” an up-tempo piece with a sunny attitude, gliding along through a series of solos that features strings and clarinet.  Both melody and rhythm exemplify the song’s fluid motion, and both command equal attention, thus elevating this music’s seamless presentation to something quite as lovely as it is engaging.  “Sammy” continues along this line, leading out with some alluring harmonics with strings and low-end reeds, before breaking into a spry cant, accentuated by the guitar section, and driven by Royston’s frenetic delivery on drums.

“Don’t Close Your Eyes” slows things down a bit, keys and strings insinuating a bit of an R&B groove… an insinuation that grows stronger when Landrus emphasizes it.  Carlberg gets off a nice contribution here, dancing notes off the tips of the rhythm section’s needles.

The album has a couple of interludes.  “A New Day” is all strings, serving as transition from the R&B groove of “Don’t Close Your Eyes” and the determined gait of “The Thousands,” a piece that opens with a Plaxico bass solo, then slides into a modern jazz piece that gets off quick shots, and then bobs and moves before returning for more.  As the song reaches its conclusion, it echoes the melody of second track “Sammy,” and tightens up the album cohesion even more satisfyingly.  “Reach” is a Landrus solo, deep voiced yet restrained, and bridges the gap between the languidly swaying “Someday” and the patiently building tide of title-track “Mirage.”

“I’ve Been Told” comes right out of the gates with a thick groove, and yet the buoyant melodic delivery by clarinet, bolstered by strings, gives the song an airy presence that belies its rhythmic quality.  “Three Words” and “Jade” both maintain a similar vibe, though ramping up the contemporary fusion aspect a couple notches.  But even here, the album’s cohesion in maintained with the contributions from the string quartet… on the former, via a nifty break in the action with a string solo, altering the course of the rhythm section, and in the latter, with a furious violin solo atop the groove and well-placed harmonic glides across the rhythm’s surface.

The album ends with “Kismet,” a Landrus solo with a storyteller’s heart and the economical delivery of an introverted thinker.  It is both evocative and cerebral, and it’s a nice send-off to this excellent recording.

Released on BlueLand Records.

Jazz from the Brooklyn scene.

Available at:  eMusic | CDBaby CD | Amazon CD & MP3

Tiny Reviews edition!

Featuring:  Samuel Blaser Consort in Motion A Mirror to Machaut, Robert Hurst BoB: A Palindrome, and Shannon Graham Shannon Graham & the Storytellers.

Samuel Blaser Consort in Motion – A Mirror to Machaut

Trombonist Samuel Blaser rarely takes the easy road.  Doesn’t matter whether you’re talking compositions or improvisational delivery.  The thing is, while his music is often atypical and complex, it’s not all that difficult to connect with.  On his newest, A Mirror to Machaut, he finds a middle ground between experimental jazz and medieval court music (via Machaut & Dufay).  Artistic intentions aside, it’s a music of a particular glowing beauty, steeped with deep moments, but so easy to just kick back to and drift off peaceably.  Kind of stunning at times, in a laid back way.

Your album personnel:  Samuel Blaser (trombone), Drew Gress (double bass), Russ Lossing (piano, Rhodes, Wurlitzer), Gerry Hemingway (drums, percussion), and Joachim Badenhorst (tenor sax, clarinet, bass clarinet).

Released on Songlines Recordings.

Jazz from the Berlin scene.

Available at:  Bandcamp Digital & CD | eMusic MP3 | Amazon CD & MP3

Robert Hurst – BoB: A Palindrome

The full scope of this gem of an album doesn’t reveal itself into the home stretch is in sight. Featuring a seriously all-star lineup, this straight-ahead jazz album constantly changes the lens through which the nature of straight-ahead is viewed.  This, actually, makes sense considering that Robert Hurst‘s BoB: A Palidrome is an album that has been evolving over the course of decades.  Some tracks are rooted in a modern post-bop, but others call back to other times.

There’s opening track “3 for Lawrence,” with the James Moody Last Train from Overbrook contrast of melodic and harmonic lightness set against a tempo that elicits a heavier emotional reaction.  The three-part “Middle Passage Suite” evokes the spiritual jazz-avant-garde nexus of John Coltrane.  And then there’s “Picked From Nick” and “Indiscreet In Da Street,” of which the former has the bright notes of the modern nu-soul jazz sound, and the latter is a nifty straight-ahead bop session that gives plenty room for solos over a tight rhythm section.

A case where inventiveness is reflected in the strength of the musicianship and the lengths to which it allows the artists to stretch out, all the while keeping both feet firmly entrenched in jazz territory.

Your album personnel:  Robert Hurst (bass), Branford Marsalis (tenor & soprano saxes), Robert Glasper (piano, Fender Rhodes), Adam Rudolph (percussion), Marcus Belgrave (trumpet, flugelhorn), Bennie Maupin (alto flute, bass clarinet, tenor & soprano saxes), and Jeff “Tain” Watts (drums).

Released on BeBob Records, which is Hurst’s Self-Produced label.

Jazz from the Detroit scene.

Available at:  eMusic | CDBaby CD & Digital | Amazon CD & MP3

Shannon Graham – Shannon Graham and The Storytellers

Debut album from Shannon Graham.  Some jazz, some classical, some folk, some pop… and all of it mesmerizing in the way it remains engagingly lyrical whether speaking in soothing tones or swerving like a car chase movie scene.  Fans of Matt Ulery’s chamber jazz works should probably spend some time checking this out, though where Ulery’s music has a classical stateliness at its expansive roots, Shannon Graham and The Storytellers is more inclined to cinematic flair and its character more expressive in its varied branches and stems.

Your album personnel:  Shannon Graham (sax, viola, vocals), Kelly Lefaive (violin, spoken word), Aline Homzy (violin), Jessica Deutsch (viola), James Ervin (trumpet), Aidan Sibley (trombone), Tom Fleming (guitar), Chris Pruden (piano), Matt Fong (bass), and Evan Cartwright (drums).  Most members contribute to the choir sections.

This album is Self-Produced.

Jazz from the Toronto scene.

Available at:  eMusic | Bandcamp CD&Digital | CDBaby CD&Digital | Amazon CD & MP3

*****

Portions of the above reviews were originally used in my Jazz Picks weekly article for eMusic, so here’s some language protecting their rights to that reprinted material as the one to hire me to write about new jazz arrivals to their site…

“New Arrivals Jazz Picks,“ “New Arrivals Jazz Picks,“ and “New Arrivals Jazz Picks,“ reprints courtesy of eMusic.com, Inc.
© 2013  eMusic.com, Inc.

As always, my sincere thanks to eMusic for the gig.  Cheers.