Jazz Recommendations – 2013 Releases

Quite often I run into albums that fit into a general category of “close, not quite, but so very glad you tried.”  The general tenor of these albums is that they have their flaws, but they come as the result of creative risk taking.  I love this.  I encourage it.  I often write of such albums, just by way of highlighting the magnificent axis where intelligence and imagination crash together in beautiful symbiosis.

One such album that I frequently return to is Design Your Future, by the Lucien Dubuis Trio & The Spacetet.  There is a playfulness to this album, even as it attempts to barrel over you.  The album possesses a wild abandon, a forward momentum that sends it crashing through walls as it heads off to the horizon of the final note.

Your album personnel: Lucien Dubuis (alto sax, bass clarinet, contrabass clarinet), Roman Nowka (bass, guitar), Lionel Friedli (drums), Estelle Beiner (violin), Isabelle Gottraux (viola), Regula Schwab (violin), and Barbara Gasser (cello).

A saxophone trio at its heart, but the addition of a string quartet adds a fascinating dimension to this album that sounds way more European free jazz than it does chamber jazz.  Sometimes, like on album opener “Albumblatt Für Herrn Schprögel,” the strings add a warmth that could melt the iciest saxophone skronks.  And then there are times, like on “Pàrl,” when the strings dramatically enhance the emotional punch already thrown with considerable force when Dubuis tears into a melody on alto sax.  And other times, like on the 4-part “Suite En Eb,” when the strings accentuate the asymmetry of the moving parts, and though everyone sounds to be moving in the same direction, there is an overpowering sensation of wild kinetic energy unbounded by limits or borders.

Dubuis brings a ferocity to the music, regardless of which reed instrument he employs.  But on alto sax, he brings a fuller sound, whereas on clarinets, he expresses himself lithely, letting strings of notes trail off like a wisp of smoke.  On drums, Friedli is the propulsive element, and leads the charge from behind… letting his counterparts run out front, and then following in their wake and using his drums to illustrate the context within which all the craziness occurs.

Nowka in the wildcard of this unit.  He isn’t relegated to any one role, and doesn’t stay in the same place long enough to develop a generality.  Sometimes he’s providing the sweat equity on a thick danceable groove, other times he’s twanging out a boozy accompaniment, and yet other times, he’s lending a hand rhythmically to the drums, melodically to strings & clarinet.  He is as much responsible as any ensemble member for the album’s chameleon nature, switching from wild frenzied jazz to wild frenzied rock ‘n roll, and best of all, to those moments when the two come together and create something that’s high-energy and strangely sublime.

Fun, creative music.  It is easy to imagine it performed with a smile.

Released on Unit Records.

Jazz from Switzerland.

Available at:  eMusic | Amazon MP3

Creativity is an energy with an unending motion. It inspires, generating more of its creative energy, art resulting in more art, sometimes similar, sometimes quite indistinct from its source.

The beauty of the Swedish archipelago Ängsudden inspired visual artist MuKha. She began with a series of poems about this spot on the planet where the sky meets the sea with stunning visual images. MuKha wrote those poems in the Philippine Tagalog language associated with a small Palawan tribe, slowly disappearing. From there, she developed those poems into paintings. And those paintings inspired a new friend, clarinetist Mike McGinnis, who had recently moved to New York City from Maine, a place of visual beauty that connected with him not unlike the source of MuKha’s poems and paintings. That new generation of creativity resulted in the Ängsudden Song Cycle, McGinnis’s new album. It’s one of the more compelling album released in 2013.

Your album personnel: Kyoko Kitamura (voice), Mike McGinnis (clarinet, bass clarinet), Sara Schoenbeck (bassoon), Khabu Doug Young (cavaquiño), Sean Moran (acoustic guitar), Jason Kao Hwang (viola), Dan Fabricatore (bass), Harris Eisenstadt (percussion, vibraphone), and guests: Jun Kitamura (voice), Davalois Fearon (percussion), and MuKha (percussion).

These are the poems of MuKha put to music.

The album opens with the striking harmonic beauty of “You Were With Me.”  Viola and bassoon transform from thick beautiful brush strokes into refracted harmonies. Kitamura’s voice begins with a sharp tongue, similar to the original disposition of the viola-bassoon duo, before she, too, undergoes the same transformation, slipping into a comforting tone, soft with her words.  Viola and percussion continue to roil, simmering nervously.

It continues into “Last Night the Wind,” with viola and percussion agitated and urgent, and Kitamura’s words sometimes masked within the sonic cloud, sometimes rising above it.  And then, like a sun lifting up over the horizon and dispelling the nighttime frights, McGinnis’s clarinet sends out warm notes, backed by a resurgent harmonics of Hwang’s viola and Moran’s acoustic guitar, which itself leads to the infectiously happy song “You Are Morning,” a tune bubbling over with unguarded enthusiasm… an anthem for the sun.  Young’s cavaquiño’s rustic charm springs to life in this cheerful song.

“Encircled, Repeated” is a crosshatch of skittering sound and darting words. It’s not quite a dissonant sound, but it does serve as its precursor.  “Even the Pillow” begins as a slasher movie soundtrack, with strings and guitar as the sharp ends of the blade and Fabricatore’s bass the ominous tolling of the arrival of doom. Eisenstadt contributes some icy vibraphone notes, which actually add warmth to a very cold song.  Moran’s acoustic guitar notes meet those of the vibraphone as they splash against the ground, becoming puddles of indistinguishable melody.  Bassoon and bass clarinet rise with warm harmonies above it all, though just briefly, before returning to the darker tones.

That harmonic beauty hinted at in the previous section comes back strong on “It’s Still Warm.”  The sound of bassoon and vibes are heavenly, lifted up high by viola.  Kitamura’s vocals are soft and inviting.  Moran’s guitar like the glittering of stars, set against the enfolding darkness of Schoenbeck’s bassoon.

“You Said One Day” is a rare up-tempo piece, and it carries a simply defined melody on its shoulders.  Eisenstadt’s contributions on the vibes continue to draw rewards. Kitamura and McGinnis engage in some wonderful interplay, as if joining hands and twirling about, existing outside the ongoing cadence.

Album ends with “We Ate the Wood.” Moran’s acoustic guitar leads out, sets the tone and keeps it there.  Kitamura’s vocals walk beside Moran’s guitar along the same path, with the clarinet and bassoon and viola of McGinnis and Schoenbeck and Hwang sticking nearby, sending harmonic washes across interludes of silence.

This is one of those albums that, initially, presents itself as challenging, but after spending some time with it, becomes as easy to converse with as a very best friend.  It’s also one of the most original works I’ve heard in 2013.  And it’s always nice when a recording of such great differentiation is also so magnanimously personable.

Released on 482 Music.

Jazz from NYC.

Available at: eMusic | Amazon LP+CD & MP3

Or you can buy the LP/CD pack directly from the label, at the 482 Music store.

Stunningly beautiful follow-up for the trio of Bill Frisell, Carol Emanuel, and Kenny Wollesen, on the heels of 2012’s The Gnostic Preludes.  Performing the compositions of John Zorn, who, with his mystics series, attempts to wed spiritual music of the past with modern approaches, the trio offers up rich, simple melodies upon a foundation of dynamic, vibrant rhythms.  2013’s The Mysteries doesn’t differ dramatically from its predecessor, but there is a subtle shift in the complexity of the music’s motion…  the newest offering possessing a greater intricacy of activity, of rhythms within rhythms, and thus a greater tableau across which the trio intersperses fragments of succinct melodic expressions.

Ultimately, this results in an album imminently more engrossing, in which the presentation of additional facets blurs the lines between song and dance, between melody and motion.

Your album personnel:  Bill Frisell (guitar, effects), Carol Emanuel (harp), and Kenny Wollesen (vibes, bells).  All compositions by John Zorn.

Opening track “Sacred Oracle” has Frisell skipping across Wollesen’s stream of melodic lines.  Emanuel slips in and adds a complementary line on harp, first as partners to Wollesen’s vibes, then in tandem with Frisell’s flight pattern.

“Hymn of the Naasennes” takes a more straight-forward approach, with all three members moving at the same speed, contributing differing motions to the same cadence, endowed with the enveloping tranquility of a skipping stone gliding over choppy waves.

“Dance of Sappho” moves with a different motion, of tight circles orbiting a song center that rotates in the opposite direction.  The trio’s different parts mesh into a kaleidoscopic high-speed melodic revelation, its gentle features punctuated by sharp rings of bells.

“The Bachanalia” has Frisell bringing a ghostly twang and his blurring of melody with effects to create a strange crosshatch with Emanuel’s sunny notes on harp… a match made further complex by the rhythmic cross-currents seeming, at first, quite dissimilar until a wider view shows them flowing into the same confluence.  Wollesen’s bells are like the resonant sound of buoys out on the water’s surface.

“Consolamentum” illustrates the lovely way Frisell is able to take flight with melody from a head-start of rhythmic dynamism.  He takes shuffling steps with his notes at odd intervals, building a cadence that doesn’t, immediately, sound fluid or indicate a motion gaining speed, and yet, the pattern emerges, one that displays an almost loping momentum… and from there, he takes off.

“Ode to the Cathars” begins with Frisell’s use of effects and loops, instilling a moody ambiance that borders on spooky.  But this dwindles away, and after a few steps down his guitar’s bass string, the trio jumps off into a deeply melodic tune.  Frisell throws in a few pings and whirrs of effects, but Wollesen’s deeply affecting run on vibes immerses the trio in warmth.  Even when Frisell turns up the heat on guitar, an intensity matched by Emanuel’s harp, it’s the underpinning of vibes that maintains a steady course that sees the song to its end.

“Apollo” takes on darker tones.  Melodic lines are cut short, interspersed with silences, occasionally flipped over to the dissonant side of the pillow, creating an uneasy tension that contrasts nicely with the comforting fluidity of most other album tracks.  Here, Frisell lets little effects bubble to the surface.

“Yaldaboath” is a fully immersive track, with all three artists creating a sonic wave that spreads out like an ocean enveloping the entirety of a shore line.

The album finishes strong with “The Nymphs,” a composition that accretes intensity with the thoughtful purposefulness of a skyscraper constructed slowly upward to the clouds.  Though presented with a rapid pace, Wollesen’s vibes have a timeless quality that accentuates the idea of motion and much as the quality of stillness.  Frisell takes quick leaps and hops across the surface of the vibes’ rhythm, but with a grace that belies its rate of speed.  Emanuel bridges the gap between the two, sometimes matching Wollesen’s percussive energy, sometimes synching up with Frisell’s intervallic expressions of melody.

An album of mesmerizing beauty.

Released on the Tzadik label.

Available at: Amazon CD | Amazon MP3

You can also buy the CD directly from Tzadik, and the price is actually better than Amazon’s.  Plus, it’s always better to buy directly from the artist/label.

The theme of water and its visceral effect on creative intuition comes up frequently on these pages.  The number of albums reviewed on this site that were inspired by views of lakes, oceans, and rivers outnumber, perhaps, any other similar type of categorization.

With the theme of a one-day cycle on the water’s edge, pianist Alan Blackman‘s The Coastal Suite reflects both the sublime nature of time spent on the shore as well as its temperamental unpredictability.  It is an album of tepid rhythmic dissonance interspersed by the loveliest melodic expressions.

Your album personnel:  Alan Blackman (piano, ebow, glockenspiel, pan flute), Rogerio Boccato (percussion), Donny McCaslin (tenor & soprano saxes), Max Murray (bass), and Frank Russo (drums).

The album opens with a few tracks that murmur at a volume just barely above a whisper, the cry of arco and the echoing footsteps of bass, the sursurrance of piano and percussion mesmerizing to the point that it is easy to lose track of time and song, only returning to the sense of ‘now’ when Donny McCaslin’s sax cries out urgently, like seagulls, on the lively “Eddies and Pools.”

Interspersed throughout the album are improvised solos by each of the ensemble members.  The given song titles are simply the instruments’ names, but their symbolism is much more nuanced than that.  Fifth track “Percussion” mirrors the sound of waves lapping up against buoys and the dock… Baccato’s hush of insistent, soft crashes of water hitting metal and wood, slaps and dings, whispers and chimes, a hypnotic lullaby with no melody, only rhythm.

“The Channel Marker Sounds” are beautiful saxophone yawns and sighs, piano twirling about with a enchanting grace, percussion chiming in like a heartbeat at rest.  The song’s brevity is made to seem even more so by weight of its stunning beauty.

Blackman’s piano solo interlude leads into “Driftwood,” a jubilant piece that speaks the same emotional language as that of Keith Jarrett’s American Quartet 1970’s work… a soulfulness that is equal parts spirituality and groove.

Frank Russo’s drum solo, like stormy waves battering the shore, leads into the delicate sound of piano notes, like the first raindrops hitting the water’s surface.  The intensity of those notes increases, and when McCaslin joins in on sax, the downpour of music reflects the forewarning of Russo’s drum solo.

“Steps in the Sand” is, by far, the most conventional song in the suite.  A simple melody, returned to frequently, and accompanied by an insinuation of a groove.  Murray’s nifty bass solo switches things up momentarily, giving a straight-ahead tune a sleight-of-hand wrinkle to differentiate the song without materially changing it.

It transitions right into a McCaslin sax solo.  Conversational in tone, it cycles with a tight circumference, occasionally twisting off into a tangential curl before returning to its prevailing orbit.

The suite’s final part, “Fractured Moonlight,” possesses a melody with the fragile weariness of Charles Mingus’s “Goodbye Porkpie Hat,” a tribute to the passing of good friend and collaborator Eric Dolphy, and much like any encapsulation of a life or definitive statement of finality, the song encompasses not just that initial mournfulness, but also builds up into a celebratory tone, of recognition of the vast spectrum of human emotion.  Blackman, Baccato, and Russo develop excitable chatter on the rhythmic side of things, and McCaslin rides that crest with some talkative demeanor of his own on sax, while Murray alternates between wave and surfer on bass, adding a little to each, adding a lot to the whole.

Also instrumental to the music of The Coastal Suite are the paintings of Ruth Brownlee.  In performance, Blackman displays images of Brownlee paintings across the backdrop of the stage, marrying the imagery of the music to that of Brownlee’s art.  In correspondence with Blackman, he stated that he wanted to “help mark a new standard for live jazz performances, including a visual element.”  And, Blackman adds that “the band members have loved seeing the projected images as we perform.  It helps so much with the mood and can even influence how you are playing your solo pieces.”

For Blackman, what drew him to Brownlee’s work is that “she lives on a remote island, and for the most part, exclusively paints coastal scenes.”  That inspiration appears to have been a good one to embrace, because between the music’s effect on the performances and the connection of drawing breath from the beauty of the water’s shore, Blackman adds, “I now associate some of [Brownlee’s] paintings with specific compositions from the suite.”

An absolutely gorgeous album, which communicates its waterside vision with stunning resonance.

The album is Self-Produced.

Jazz from the Baltimore scene.

Listen to a live performance of the Coast Suite on NPR’s JazzSet.

Beautiful album artwork by Ruth Brownlee.

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

Guitarist Bill Frisell has spent a career making strange and beautiful music, following creative paths that connect genre points that include jazz, but often travel far and wide from that spot.  Over the last handful of years, he’s settled into a sort of jazz Americana, an inventive blend of jazz, folk, and rock that has allowed his singular voice to reach a full bloom.

On Frisell’s newest release, Big Sur, he features a new lineup (his Big Sur Quintet), which pulls together members of his 858 Quartet and Beautiful Dreamers trio.  The result of a commission and residency in California’s Big Sur region, the resulting music isn’t a departure from recent Frisell albums, but it reflects aspects of each through Frisell’s focused inspiration from his natural surroundings.

Your album personnel:  Bill Frisell (guitar), Eyvind Kang (viola), Jenny Scheinman (violin), Hank Roberts (cello), and Rudy Royston (drums).

At several moments in Big Sur, a string quartet gives voice to captivating languid melodies, a sound typical to Frisell’s 858 Quartet 2011 release Sign of Life.  But here, Frisell’s addition of drummer Royston provides the strings with a delightful counter-rhythmic element, instilling a tension that enhances, rather than shatters the drifting serenity of the music.

And it’s not all music to drift off to. Not dissimilar to Frisell’s 2010 release Beautiful Dreamers, several tracks, like “A Good Spot” and “We All Love Neil Young,” have a spry demeanor, matching jaunty percussion with sunny expressions from the string section, while Frisell wends unending paths between the two camps, sometimes shadowing the melody, sometimes shading in the lines of rhythm.  And then there’s a track like “Hawks,” where Frisell takes over the song with an electric burn, ballasted by the hailstorm of drums and strings like lightning flashes streaking through the sky.  It’s yet more strange and beautiful music from an artist who has made a career from creating it.

Released on Okeh Records.

Jazz from the Big Sur region, and the Seattle jazz scene.

Available at:  eMusic | Amazon: CD MP3 Vinyl

*****

This review was originally published at 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…

“Bill Frisell Big Sur review,“ reprints courtesy of eMusic.com, Inc.
© 2013  eMusic.com, Inc.

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