Jazz Recommendations – 2013 Releases

It’s tough to strike a balance between creating a peaceful album and a sleepy one, between the establishment of an atmospheric presence and a snoozer of a recording.  There’s gotta be something going on, either thick simple melodies to keep the heart attentive or some tinkering with motion and moving parts to create a dynamic environment to keep the cerebral side occupied… all without shattering the serenity the musicians have worked so hard to create in the first place.

This World and One More, the new release by the Whirlpool trio of Caroline Davis (alto sax), Charles Rumback (drums), and Jeff Swanson (guitar) hit the sweet spot where serenity and spontaneity converge, and they’ve created a dreamy little album for those times when sleep is the last thing on the mind.

Album opener “Freedom Waves Flotilla” gets right to the heart of what this album is all about.  Davis has a soothing tone on alto sax, even when she’s gives the notes a little edge… too lively to be a lullaby, so comforting as to put one at ease.  Rumback accentuates that latter quality with economical yet steady crashes of cymbals and bursts of rain drop taps on drums.  Meanwhile, Swanson’s guitar wends its way between the two, adding a glittering shine to the melody, adding softness to the rhythm.

The next two tracks do nothing to shatter the serenity, though “Dreamliner” is a bit more talkative, whereas “Raysh and Jonah” is a long, peaceful sigh.  Title-track “Whirlpool” is a slower version of the album opener and makes use of loose ends and frayed threads.

Even a track like “Dragons in Denver,” with a jagged edge for a melody, goes about its display of dissonance with a nonchalance that’s more than a little bit appealing.

“Spark” differentiates itself from the fold courtesy of flurries of bright notes from Swanson’s guitar, bolstered by a chipper rhythm and pulsing saxophone notes.

The album ends with “That Day,” a song that begins with typically dreamy fashion, but then builds up to a dramatic conclusion.  But even here, this display of life doesn’t grow into dissonance or deconstruct into abstraction… there is still an overriding melodic element to the intensity that doesn’t break from the album’s mesmerizing presence.

This is one of those recordings that sets out to do one thing really well and just nails it.

Released on Ears & Eyes Records.

Cool album cover by Jacob Hand.

Available at:  Bandcamp CD & Digital

*****

Other Things You Should Know:

Definitely track down other recordings by Davis and Rumback.  Davis’s last album Live Work & Play was reviewed here, and was one of my eMusic Jazz Picks.  She’s also got an outfit called Pedway that I’ve been meaning to touch upon in a future article.  Rumback is a member of the Colorlist duo, whose album Sky Song I recently reviewed here, plus he’s also a member of Stirrup, whose album Sewn was also reviewed here.  I have an upcoming article (TBA) that focuses on the music of Rumback and fellow Colorlist member Charles Gorczynski, so keep an eye out for that.  This may be my introduction to guitarist Swanson, and I couldn’t really find any information on him online.  Lemme know if you turn up anything interesting.

This is an album that finds its identity in its changing tempos.  Percussive Mechanics, the new album by Anna Webber, is an album with an array of moving parts, a collection of assemblages that don’t appear to be easy fits, yet keeping finding their home.  This album is a multifaceted entity consisting of crosscurrents of motion and perpetual incitements of activity.  The key is in how the alternating rhythmic patterns accentuate melodic fragments, and the way in which they smooth out the edges between compositional exactitude and wild improvisational flurries.

The other thing to know is that this is one of the most compelling albums of 2013.

Your album personnel:  Anna Webber (tenor sax, flute), James Wylie (clarinet, alto sax), Elias Stemeseder (piano, wurlitzer), Julius Heise (vibes, marimba, whistling), Igor Spallati (double bass), Max Andrzejewski (drums, glockenspiel, miscellaneous percussion, whistling), and Martin Kruemmling (drums, miscellaneous percussion).

No track better exemplifies the way Webber’s ensemble utilizes the shiftiness of time than in second track “Certain Transcendence.”  Webber’s opening solo on tenor sax is a series of quick hits, offered up more for their rhythmic value than note selection.  But this transforms slowly into a statement of melody, turning into something quite pretty when Stemeseder and Heise accompany on piano and vibes.  With Spallati’s bass as propulsion, they create a surging tempo that carries bits and pieces of the melody to shore.  And in the same way it builds up to a crest, the ensemble breaks it back down, first by digging in deeper and transitioning into a thick groove, before transitioning back to a surging tempo that becomes increasingly sparse, so that by the time the song reaches its conclusion, it has returned to solitary notes murmuring words of rhythm.

This music stands pretty much alone.  At times, it recalls the Claudia Quintet’s talent at summoning strange melodic threads from the midst of a thick rhythmic fog.  It is also reminiscent of Todd Sickafoose’s Tiny Resistors, in that way a mixed bag of moving parts are made to coalesce into songs quite tuneful.

“Dan:ce” embodies both of those references with its pulsing tempo and spry melody.  It’s a tune both blithely carefree and mathematically erudite.  It’s a song whistled by an android on a beautiful Spring afternoon.  And “Terrarose” with definitive melodic shouts amidst a sea of jumbled percussion… criss-crossing lines with a surgical precision and Jackson Pollock imagery.

Heise’s vibes open title-track “Percussive Mechanics” with the crispness of icicles and the warmth to melt them away.  Wylie is a dust devil on alto sax, matching the song’s herky-jerky motion, but hinting at a pattern within apparent randomness.  Heise returns to the forefront with a vengeance, pairing up with Webber’s tenor sax to bring an enveloping heat that covers the entire surface of the rhythm section.

“Sleeping Is Giving In” with its dreamy saxophone harmonies twirling about Spallati’s thick bass line, resounding like a heart muscle pumping blood to save its life.  Those heartbeats get ever closer as the ensemble drives the song up into a furious roar, vibes creating something approaching a drone, and saxophones cresting above the rhythmic wave with wailing statements of melody.

Some melodies never leave the embryonic stage.  “Vigilance” is a continuity of rhythmic stream-of-conscious statements.  Webber’s opening solo seems more intent on warping time than forming something that a listener could hum along to.  Heise accompanies on marimba, serving as glittering stars to Webber’s dim moonlight.  And yet, there is a moment when Webber rises above it all and soars overhead with the most beautiful melodic phrasing… a brief interlude from the percussive dynamics that surrounds it.

“Histrionics” doesn’t even have so much as an interlude.  It begins with the mewing of saxophone, and it ends with flailing… the appeal lies in the illustration of how a reed instrument can effectively spar with drums.  And “Let It Cut More Deep” with arco bass and glistening marimba notes are a shadowplay duet between darkness and sunlight, bisected by a sudden confluence of the ensemble joining together for a grand statement of fury, before receding back to a smaller, sublime expression of unformed sound.  And album closer “Eins!” uses tempo as a blunt force object, casting aside melodic intentions for a conclusion that’s all bang.

A recording that holds no small amount of fascination, offering up big sounds in tiny doses, and utilizing motion to toy with the sense of time.

Released on Pirouet Records.

Jazz from NYC.

Available at:  eMusic | Amazon CD | Amazon MP3

There is something deceptively straight-ahead about Bridges, the new release by pianist David Ake.  A track like “We Do?” with its punctuated cadence and winding saxophone lines, and “Year In Review,” with its fiery hard bop warmth, and a bass line that walks the ensemble to the finish line… they both scream the characteristics of a middle of the road mix of classic and modern forms of bop.  “Dodge” is an up-tempo burner that plays it straight and “Grand Colonial” intimates a ballad, even when it builds up into something more lively.

But this only part of the story, and not even the most intriguing part, at that.

Bridges is released on Posi-Tone Records, a label who can be relied upon to present tasteful straight-ahead jazz.  Sometimes that bop is more akin to the swing of fifties and the groove of the sixties, and other times it’s constituted of the hard angles and looser melodies of the modern post-bop era.  But, typically, with Posi-Tone, you’re gonna get some sort of bop.

Well, most of the time.  Every now and then they throw a wildcard into the deck.  The new release by David Ake is one such recording.

Your album personnel:  David Ake (piano), Ralph Alessi (trumpet), Peter Epstein (alto sax), Ravi Coltrane (tenor sax), Scott Colley (bass), and Mark Ferber (drums).

The album opens with the moody title-track “Bridges.”  A pulsing tempo, anchored by Ake’s piano and Epstein’s alto sax.  The bass of Scott Colley gurgles happily along, charting a course that shapes an unformed melody.  When the ensemble digs into a simple, yet rich harmonic offering, it becomes a song in flight.  And this leads right into “Sonomads,” an expanded version of the opening track, ratcheting up the harmony and providing a melody with greater definition.  Colley continues where he left off on the previous track, growing increasingly talkative when Alessi joins the conversation on trumpet.  Drummer Ferber peppers the song with rapid rhythmic punches… the kind of blows that snap the head back as it bobs along to the music.

The glittering piano solo of “Waterfront” leads into “Story Table,” a song with nice solos by Alessi and Epstein, issued forth over the tune’s staggered gait.  Of those tracks that break with straight-ahead jazz conventions, this one stays closest to the nest.

“Boats (exit)” is a moody piece, with trumpet calling out over the swirling mist of harmony.  It’s another example of the temporary departure from conventional bop expressionism.  “Open/Balance” is no less moody, but freer in nature, harmonies coalescing then dispersing just as quickly.  Coltrane’s tenor sax is just one stream in that harmonic conversion, but its presence is most felt, both when the song operates at just a murmur, and then when it lifts up and shouts.

The album ends with “Light Bright,” a song of assemblages that prefer to remain nearby one another without ever locking into place.  It gives the sense of many things happening at once without ever traveling very far away.

Which, actually, is emblematic of this excellent recording… an album of many dimensions of subtle differentiations that keeps within shouting distance of Jazz center.  It’s the kind of album likely to appeal to both old- and new-school fans alike.

Released on Posi-Tone Records.

Jazz from the Reno, Nevada scene.

Available at:  eMusic | Amazon CD Amazon MP3

Another album that I’ve been drawn to repeatedly over the course of the last handful of months is the new release by Francisco Mora Catlett, titled AfroHORN Rare Metal.

This is an instance of an artist becoming so inspired by a fictional work that he made it a part of his own creation, thus rendering the original fiction more real while also expanding the strength of the fiction’s mythology.  Afro Horn is an element to the Henry Dumas short story “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.”  There are only three such horns, forged from the rare metals found only in Africa and South America.  One such horn is in the possession of a jazz musician.  Through the context of that jazz musician, the topics of music tradition and the evolution and migration of those traditions are explored.

Catlett’s music is an illustration of those themes.  Rare Metal is a blend of African spiritual jazz, Afro-Caribbean music, and the particular vintage of avant-garde music that is both wildly unfettered and rooted in the music of the past.  The contributing musicians themselves come from a variety of backgrounds and geographical locations, mirroring the development of jazz itself.  And though this is only the second recording of Catlett’s AfroHORN ensemble (the first being 2012’s AfroHORN MX), this ensemble has been alive conceptually for far longer than that, dating back to Catlett’s days with the Sun Ra Arkestra.

It’s an album that sounds very much of Today, yet presents music that parlays the comforting sensation of belonging to an established lineage and all of the voices from the past who still resonate in the present sound.

Your album personnel:  Francisco Mora Catlett (drums, percussion), Sam Newsome (soprano sax), Salim Washington (tenor sax, flute, oboe), Alex Harding (baritone sax, bass clarinet), Aruan Ortiz (piano), Rashaan Carter (acoustic & electric basses), Roman Diaz (percussion, vocal), Andrew Daniels (percussion), and guests:  Danys “La Mora” Perez, Meredith Wright, Liethis Hechavarria, and Sandra D. Harper (vocals).

Chant and poetry are scattered throughout the album.  It opens with such.  Brief spoken word accompanied by the tinny charm of thumb piano and the rattle and shake of percussion.  This leads to the nifty Afro-Jazz groove of “Afra Jum,” which receives its liftoff from the triple percussion propulsion of Catlett, Daniels, and Diaz.

There is a fluid motion to this music, throughout, something that the ensemble chips away at, throughout.  On “Afra Jum,” saxophone accompaniment moves out front, and gradually begins to flail about dramatically.  It’s a pattern mirrored by pianist Ortiz, who displays here as he has on his own album Orbiting, that frenetic phrasing is no obstacle to lyricism.

No matter how much the soloists twist around one another, presenting different shapes to the same song, the rhythm section keeps finding a straight and narrow path through the tune.  It captures the soloists.  It makes it so they can’t venture too far away from the song, because the rhythm section will always be there to draw them in.  Bassist Carter, who has worked with pianist Ortiz on other projects, is particularly relevant here… much in that way that glue is hidden behind connected pieces, if it weren’t for its unseen presence, things would fall apart.

“Baruasuayo Mamakenya” starts nice and easy, a swaying groove, a soulful presence.  Harding’s bass clarinet provides some searing heat to go with Ortiz’s warm embers on piano.  Newsome’s soprano sax dances on the tips of rhythmic beats, displaying the same spry athleticism as on his 2012 release Art of the Soprano.

“5 X Max” has a spritely, celebratory sound.  One of the rare times all woodwinds are moving in conjunction.  A straight-ahead solo becomes a fiery solo, hotter emotions conveyed, while percussion remains chipper and upbeat.

“Salina Ago” opens with a soulful chant, continues with a spiritual jazz piece that has that right mix of hard bop groove, kinetic intensity, and eclectic clash of dissonance.  “Yeye Olude” is classic Afro-Jazz… a nice steady groove, textured rhythms, saxes saddled up on the groove, and piano skittering around like a dust storm at the rhythm’s feet.  It’s a song that one can tap their foot while watching soloists dart about.

The album is peppered with interludes.  The general decision to be made is whether to make the interludes stand-alone pieces that cleanse the sonic palate between proper tracks or utilize the interludes to serve as introductions and reprises of proper album tracks, presenting an element of the melody or rhythm in an alternate form, and a point of comparison that reveals additional facets of the source material.

Mora Catlett runs with the latter approach on Rare Metal, and to useful effect.  Album opener “Moyuba Afro Horn” opens the curtain nicely with a peaceful expression before the burgeoning intensity of “Afra Jum” sets in.  “Olodo” is a captivating mix of chant, soprano sax, and percussion, leading into “Blue People,” a tune that takes a winding path from its initial statement of melody and its last, often running off the trail and not always in the same direction, which is followed by “Blue People Epilogue,” a contrail of dissonance between piano and sax.  And the album ends with one final short piece, the lullaby “Salina Ago Reprise,” a return visit to fifth track “Salina Ago,” in which Washington’s flute provides a soothing accompaniment to comforting vocals, growing quieter until the final note.

A very enjoyable recording, one that grabbed my ear on first listen and which hasn’t ever really let go.  It’s a CD that has never strayed too far from my stereo.

Released on AACE Records.

Album cover art by David Mora Catlett.

Available at: Amazon MP3