Jazz Recommendations – 2015 Releases

With their latest album, the Greg Foat Group took a huge step up.  Their debut Girl and Robot with Flowers was a plenty enjoyable mix of electro-acoustic space-jazz and throwback psychedelic jazz-blues, providing equal attention to both thick melodies and thicker grooves.  But there were too many times when the music came out sounding thin, lacking some emphasis to the punch and some depth to the vision.  Their sophomore release, the live performance album Live at the Playboy Club, London kept the same ingredients, but exuded a much stronger presence, and the album brought out elements of their sound that weren’t completely sussed out on their debut.  And then there’s how a song like “Blue Melody” provided a strong hint on what was coming next.

What came next is The Dancers at the Edge of Time, and it represents a much fuller, more concrete expression of the sound that carried so much promise on their previous recordings.  The most noticeable advancement?  Even though their vision rings with a greater clarity and cohesion, the flow of ideas sounds looser, less fussy.  Songs like the dreamy “Door Into Summer” and “Dancers Waltz” express the melody with the right dose of patience, and just lets it hang out there and linger for those few extra ticks of the clock to allow the notes to fully resonate before taking them in new directions with a series of lovely solos.  This holds true even on a track like “Eye of Horus,” when the temperature spikes from all the heat, and, conversely, “Riff for Raff,” with its blues drawl and sing-song cadence.

But even more to the point of the band’s greater presence are tracks like “Hygiea” and “Love Theme,” which excel in how the combination of melodic fragments, a subtle rhythmic patter, and foggy harmonic fronts maintain a strong form and clear voice as they drift from first note to last.

How strong are the ties that bind this excellent recording together?  Exhibit A is “Rocken End,” a song that has a bit of drone and melodic introversion to accompany what amounts to a very long track of nothing but the sound of ocean waves crashing against the shore… and it works remarkably well.  So much of the music that preceded it, for all of its emotional punch and diverse influences, there was always an abiding serenity, and, really, the sound of waves crashing against the shore is simply another facet of this album’s potently tranquil personality.  Exhibit B would be “The Hunt” and how it sits at the polar opposite of “Rocken End” with its furious saxophone solo and explosive rhythmic attack, yet sits plumb with it and every other track on this outstanding work.

One of the better things you’ll hear all year.

Your album personnel:  Greg Foat (grand piano, church organ), Simon Keates (cello), Phil Achille (double bass, electric bass), Liam Danby (electric bass, glockenspiel), Simon Spanner (flute), Warren “Woz” Hampshire (guitar, glockenspiel, organ), Rob Mach (tenor & baritone saxes), Andy Hicks (viola), Bob Brace (vioiin) and guests:  Charlie Harris (cabasa), Jamie Thorpe (cabasa, guitar), Trevor Walker (trumpet, flugelhorn), Dave Champion (guitar) and Ben Dabell (soundscaping).

Released on Jazzman Records.

Listen to more of the album at the artist’s Bandcamp page.

Jazz from the London, UK scene.

Available at:  Bandcamp | eMusic | Amazon

Guitarist Cristian Hernández approaches his jazz-classical music project with a chessboard vision.  With all the pieces spread out before him, Hernández goes about illustrating all of the different potential moves that can be executed when you bring together elements of jazz and classical music together, and even though each adopt very different forms expression, there’s no room left for doubt that A Strings Affair all belong to the same vision.

There’s the gentle ambiance of “Autumn in Barcelona,” with its lazy day sway and finely shaped threads of melody.  Hernández gives space for both his jazz guitar trio and the string quartet to get in some solos, and he keeps them steadied in the same focused vision, and that’s why each solo presents itself as a series of waves lapping up against the shore.  It’s an arresting sort of tranquility, further evidenced by the way it still holds sway over the album even when subsequent track “Oreneta Coleman” breaks through with increasingly heavy dissonance and improvisation.  Intriguingly, the squeak of strings comes off sounding like the chirping of birds, and even when the song enters into a state of high volatility, that little bit of a throwback to the seaside peacefulness of the previous track tamps down the potential for transition shock between the two songs.

Title-track “A Strings Affair” finds a middle ground between the two opening tracks.  The invocation of tranquility isn’t a motivating factor, but, also, when they do let their voices rise up, the song maintains its tight focus on the expression of melody and the way its woven into the fabric of its own fragments.  Both the jazz trio and the string quartet continue to act as one, sometimes in a seamless unison and sometimes as different parts so commingled as to make it difficult to differentiate between the individual parts.  It’s the kind of thing that keeps the ear busy paying attention to many things at once, while simultaneously connecting with the unmissable observation that there is only one expression, just with many facets.

“The Giant” isn’t that far removed from its predecessor, but it does indulge the inclination to lean back and roar.  In itself, it’s a fun track, but that it leads into the album finale “String Quartet for Béla Bartók,” which Hernández composed only for the string quartet to perform, it goes a long to showing just how daring this unassuming recording really is.  Of particular interest is the way this song with the heavy classical influence doesn’t stray far from the effusiveness of the previous track, “The Giant,” which leaned far heavier on the jazz influence.  It’s yet one more sign of how this septet manages to vary their expressiveness widely while never straying far from the same patch of turf.

A seriously enjoyable recording, and a nice little find as the year comes to a close.

Your album personnel:  Cristian Hernández (guitar), Xavi Castillo (double bass), Josep Cordobés (drums), Mireia Vila (violin), Apel·les Carod (violin), Elena Martínez (viola) and Marta Pons (cello).

The album is Self-Produced.

Listen to more of the album at the artist’s Bandcamp page.

Jazz from the Barcelona scene.

Available at:  Bandcamp

Roots is the fascinating 2015 recording from violinist Tomoko Omura, who takes well-known Japanese songs, both traditional and those of a more recent vintage, and rearranges them for a modern jazz quintet.  With a foundation of sharp melodies carried along by flowing tempos, Omura really digs into the development of each tune, but no matter how complex and expansive things may get, she retains those qualities that made the songs memorable in the first place.  It’s a hell of an accomplishment.  It’s also a seriously exciting album.

Omura hits her mark right from the first note with “Antagata Dokosa (Where Are You From?).”  A children’s song at heart and in practice, Noah Garabedian‘s bass line is the sound of a bouncing ball and Omura’s vocals the song put into play.  It’s the ultimate show of the album’s spirit and intent, and the opening is also the launching point for Omura’s violin to take off into flight, her quintet aiding her journey away from the seed of the song with one lively solo after the next.  It’s a pattern repeated throughout the album to great success.

There’s the whimsical treatment of “Ge ge ge,” which also honors the manga’s spirit-monsters with some untamed wildness, especially via Will Graefe‘s electric guitar contribution.  In a similar vein, renditions of “Kojo No Tsuki” and the National Anthem epitomize the stately formality of the subject matter while also using it to mirror the sense of awe that each inspires.  Of the former, pianist Glenn Zaleski‘s swirling piano lines capture the mystery and grandeur of composer Rentarō Taki’s imagery of the Oka Castle.  And there’s a nifty mix of mathematical precision and youthful spontaneity in the Okinawan “Tinsagu Nu Hana.”  The melody of “Soran-Bushi” is about as addictive as it gets, but it’s the drums of Colin Stranahan, talkative as waves lapping up against a fishing boat that is the conversational undercurrent that carries the song.

There’s an almost epic nature to the exhilarating shifts in tone and tempo.  The sense of the dramatic might not be better represented than in the way “Cha Tsu Mi (Green Tea Picking)” goes from peaceful to wild abandon and then slides into the evocative “The Mountain (Lord Mito),” a song with a smoky atmosphere that resonates with the inner strength of a beating heart seeking peace.  Whether up-tempo or slowly swaying in place, these are songs that radiate a massive presence.

The recording officially ends with a short reprise of the National Anthem, but the album’s true final statement is “Hometown,” a rendition of Teiichi Okano’s “Furusato.”  Though intended as a children’s song, the theme of reminiscing upon a homeland far away, feeling both cheerfully nostalgic and painfully homesick are captured by the quintet with a striking clarity.  It’s an outstanding track on an album that is comprised of nothing but.

One of the best things to come out all year.  It was my Pick of the Week when it first hit the shelves back in January… and it remains one of the best things on that shelf as the year comes to a close.

Your album personnel:  Tomoko Omura (violin, voice), Will Graefe (guitar), Glenn Zaleski (piano, keyboards), Noah Garabedian (double bass) and Colin Stranahan (drums).

Released by Inner Circle Music.

Listen to more of the album at the artist’s Bandcamp page.

Jazz from NYC.

Available at:  Bandcamp | CDBaby | Amazon | eMusic

There’s something pretty cool about the way saxophonist Geof Bradfield uses old school blues and sacred music of the South as a way to pivot to varying expressions of hard bop, spiritual jazz, modern post-bop and even a quasi-contemporary jaunt on one track, while keeping the different expressions corralled under the basic concept and theme.  With Clifford Jordan’s Leadbelly tribute (1965’s These Are My Roots: Clifford Jordan Plays Leadbelly) as his central thesis, on Our Roots, Bradfield and quintet cycle through a set of tunes by Leadbelly, the Georgia Sea Island Singers, Blind Willie Johnson and three original pieces, each in their own way as set down in the past yet bound together by the vision of today.

The traditional “Adam in the Garden,” Leadbelly’s “Yellow Gal” and the Bradfield original “Clinton Hill” each anchor themselves to the blues, one with lines of age and seams of wisdom, but that anchor does nothing to prevent the bursts of volatility and leaps of melodicism and harmony that take the songs far and wide from that central focal point.

No less noteworthy in terms of the embrace of music from different eras is the traditional song “Before This Time Another Year.”  Bradfield and crew take that spiritual and play with an underlying intensity reminiscent of John Coltrane’s own spiritual jazz tune “India.”  But then, with this quintet propelled by a three-horn front line, the harmonic force of delivery is even further reminiscent of French horn specialist John Clark’s own rendition of Coltrane’s “India” (on his under-the-radar 1997 recording I Will).  And with the coup-de-gras of Bradfield’s quintet giving it their own modern touch, it becomes a four-stage bit of time travel down the lineage of blues, jazz and sacred music.

The original Bradfield composition “Mbira Song” would’ve fit in just fine during Coltrane’s first run at the Vanguard, and that it’s sandwiched unobtrusively between a languid take on Leadbelly’s “Dick’s Holler” and an emphatic rendition of Blind Willie Johnson’s “Dark Was the Night, Cole Was the Ground” goes a long way as evidence of the strength of Bradfield’s quintet’s vision.  Speaking of Blind Willie Johnson, the quintet’s gorgeous take on “Motherless Children” is arguably the album’s finest.

But this is an album of many such moments.  Between Our Roots and Bradfield’s previous recording Melba!, you’re not likely to find a better one-two combo of successive releases than that.

Your album personnel:  Geof Bradfield (tenor sax), Marquis Hill (trumpet), Joel Adams (trombone), Clark Sommers (bass) and Dana Hall (drums, cymbals, tambourine).

Released on Origin Arts.

Listen to more of the album at the artist’s Bandcamp page.

Jazz from the Chicago scene.

Available at:  Bandcamp | Amazon