Jazz Recommendations – 2015 Releases

A recent under-the-radar album I’ve been enjoying lately is Genklang, from saxophonist Björn Jansson.  Its easy-to-like mix of modern jazz, Nordic folk, and all-around alluring moodiness is a nice example of some of the music coming out of Sweden.

The album’s opening tracks come out with the grand statements.  “Begynnelsen” works it from an harmonic angle, while “Upp Igen” takes long loping strides and punctuates the statements of melody and its solos with a sense of finality.  And then there’s the way in which the powerful expressions of “Green Turned Blue” are able to maintain a drifting ambiance throughout.

A few tracks hover between states of introspection and torpor.  Both “Temat” and “Skogen Vaknar” keep motion to a minimum while developing strong atmospherics, creating a contemplative tone that is really quite captivating.

“Du Går Aldrig Ensam” breaks from the torpor with a brisk pace and a lovely tuneful delivery.  “Rastlös Psalm” keeps the brisk pace going and doesn’t let up on the loveliness.  And “Strömmen” doesn’t slow things down even as it dives headfirst into the deep end of the melodic pool.

The upbeat “Mellan Stjärnorna” and “Mistral” work a contemporary angle, hinting at a bit of bop without changing the face of the album.  This cohesion is imperative to this recording, as it is then able to end with the short, ambient piece “Skogen Brinner” without appearing out of sorts… a peaceful conclusion to an album that always found a ways to provide it.

Your album personnel:  Björn Jansson (tenor sax, bass clarinet), Tobias Wiklund (flugelhorn, trumpet), Adam Forkelid (piano), Clas Lassbo (bass) and Daniel Fredriksson (drums, cymbals).

Listen to more of the album on the artist’s Soundcloud page.

Released on Reach-Up Music.

Jazz from the Stockholm, Sweden scene.

Available at:  eMusic | Amazon

So gorgeous, it’s stunning.  With Slow Eastbound Train, tubist (yes, tubist) Daniel Herskedal provides yet more evidence that the cumbersome tuba can make the most graceful music.  His core trio of himself, pianist Eyolf Dale and percussionist Helge Andreas Norbakken are joined by a chamber string orchestra (The Trondheim Soloists) for some beautiful, ambient third-stream music and Nordic folk-jazz.

Several tracks create an environment from which the other album tracks spring from.  Album-opener “The Mistral Noir” is all kinds of serene ambiance, a murmuring tone that throws down a gauntlet of beauty-at-all-costs.  Tracks like “The Solar Winds Effects On Earth” and “Sea Breeze” reinforce that goal, with the latter track ending the album in just the same way it began.

“Rainfall” is an example of an album track that lets the jazz influence emerge with a clearer definition… an approach primarily manifested by the core trio of tuba-piano-percussion.  But for the most part, the ascendant influences are those of classical and folk.

This is especially evident in tracks like “Slow Eastbound Boat” and the title-track “Slow Eastbound Train.”  Both proffer up an alluring beauty, and the way Herskedal melts his tuba into the waves of string harmonies is simply gorgeous, not to mention so counterintuitive to the instrument’s lumbering reputation.  It makes for some inspiring moments.

Other standout tracks:

With a strong classical and folk music influence, “Bydlo” possesses a sweeping majesty that’s subdued just the right amount to ratchet up an undercurrent of tension without having to blow the lid off with a grand statement.

“Snowfall” begins with a bit of string section theatrics, not exactly appealing, but the way the core trio of tuba, piano and percussion cuts through the center makes perfect sense out of it all.  The contrast between the two states of being… pop classical and straight-ahead jazz trio… really allows the intelligence of the composition to emerge.

This is an album that doesn’t limit the ways in which it expresses beauty.

Your album personnel:  Daniel Herskedal (tuba, bass trumpet), Eyolf Dale (piano), Helge Andreas Norbakken (percussion) and The Trondheim Soloists (string chamber orchestra).

Listen to more of the album on Bandcamp.

Released on Edition Records.

Music from the Oslo, Norway scene.

Available at:  Bandcamp – eMusic – Amazon

*****

Here’s a nifty, quick promo video for the album.  As this site has illustrated previously, many times, I’m sucker for trains in music videos.

*****

Heritage/Evolution Volume One is the Prism Quartet pushing all-in on saxophone.  By way of celebrating thirty years together as a working unit, they chose to highlight the saxophone rather than themselves… honoring the instrument that has served as the mechanism for their creativity over that span of time.  The route taken to achieve this goal was by commissioning new pieces to preeminent jazz saxophonists on the scene who are known to embrace both the saxophone’s past and take it to entirely new territories.  These pieces were to be performed live and accompanied by the Quartet… who are accomplished saxophonists in their own right.

The six guest saxophonists who were chosen (Steve Lehman, Dave Liebman, Rudresh Mahanthappa, Greg Osby, Tim Ries and Miguel Zenon) each bring their own sound to Heritage/Evolution.  It’s fascinating how the context of a saxophone quartet plus one shapes the performance in ways unexpected and often quite sublime.

The influence of Indian music on “I Will Not Apologize For My Tone Tonight” has Mahanthappa’s signature indelibly planted right on the composition’s first notes.  It opens with a reverential tone… a characteristic that rises up throughout this recording, regardless of who is sitting in as the guest saxophonist.  Soon after, the song grows into a bubbling cauldron of activity, a sense of serious fun.  This, too, is common throughout the recording.  Over the composition’s 16-minute span, it also enters into a low drone, a whimsical game of melodic leapfrog, a solo behaving like a bird in flight, and then eventually back to its opening state of mind, where it closes out a thrilling series of scene changes.

Zenón’s “The Missing Piece” has a hymnal quality that radiates the beautiful and the sublime.  He shifts between a darting motion and a glide atop the bed of warm harmonies.  Solemn and gentle.  On the other hand, his “X Marks the Square” has a celebratory tone as it sends joyful notes up to the rafters.  The song becomes increasingly dense with intertwining lines and boisterous charm.

Ries’s “Name Day” is a dance.  It is intensity expressed through subtle gestures, power expressed through highly-charged surges, and as it winds down, it does so with an unassuming grace.

Lehman typically utilizes an unconventional method of beguilement, and that trend continues with his 5-part suite “15 Places at the Same Time.”  The first part, “Line/Texture,” is an echo bouncing off four walls of a room while chasing its own tail.  Its alternating pattern of change and repetition is massively hypnotic.  Part II “Gesture/Rhythm” doesn’t stray far from its predecessor, but it does take its act out of the bare room and to a succession of staircases, where ascensions and declinations punctuate cross currents of motion and melody.

The third part, “Solo” shows how even a murmur possesses the strength to mesmerize, and this leads right into “Radical Alignment,” a song with a churning motion, a cyclical force that folds into itself and decimates the line between start and end.  And the concluding section, “Afterlife” is amusingly disjointed, the sense of many leaders, no followers and each with their own manifesto.  Its foundation is a gamesmanship of crossing over the lines of one another, and possesses the ultimate irony of the group falling into lock-step after it all shakes out.

With “Covenant of Voices,” Osby returns the affair to a hymnal state, at peace with its surroundings, soft like a sunrise while the world is yet asleep.  This continues with Liebman’s “Trajectory,” as well as his arrangement of Coltrane’s “Dear Lord,” where even the spiritual fervency is expressed with a demeanor molded in reverential tones.

Heritage/Evolution Volume One is an album comprised of countless stunning moments, often quite breathtaking.

Your album personnel:  Timothy McAllister (soprano sax), Taimur Sullivan (baritone sax), Zachary Shemon (alto sax), Matthew Levy (tenor sax) and guests: Rudresh Mahanthappa (alto sax), Miguel Zenón (alto sax), Tim Ries (tenor sax, percussion), Steve Lehman (alto sax), Dave Liebman (soprano sax) and Greg Osby (alto saxophone).

Released on Innova Recordings.

Listen to more of the album on Innova’s Soundcloud page.

Jazz from the Philadelphia, NYC and Ann Arbor, Michigan scenes.

Available at:  eMusic | Amazon