Dec 19 2016

This Is Jazz Today: Vind, Eric Johnson, Knuckleball, Inventions & Dimensions and Coexistence Trio

 

 

Vind – Vind (Self-Produced)

This is an album with three strands of melody that are perpetually intertwining, the weaving patterns complex and the beauty so very simple.  The trio of pianist Sandrine Machetti, guitarist Paul Jarret and the (mostly) wordless vocals of Loïs Le Van create an arresting melodic atmosphere that is about as enchanting as it gets.  This is music that is completely tranquil, even when the trio raises up their voice… the serenity remains.  Aside from a rendition of “Julia,” there are no songs here, per se, replaced, instead, by the metamorphosis of imagery, one vague shape after the other.  This is seriously gorgeous music.

Your album personnel:  Sandrine Marchetti (piano), Loïs Le Van (voice) and Paul Jarret (guitar).

Artist site | Listen | Available at:  Bandcamp

 

Eric Johnson – Train to Enkenbach (Self-Produced)

The melodies sort of rumble along on this interesting quintet session from saxophonist Eric Johnson, and the sense that it isn’t a singular motion driving them ahead adds an undercurrent of tension to what amounts to some rather arresting statements.  The quintet features the alto sax and Rhodes of Peter Epstein and Adam Benjamin; the former adds some nifty textures to the contributions from Johnson’s tenor sax, while the latter is focused on providing essential contrast.  “Lonely Lama” is a rare instance where they take a more conventional approach, and it really brings to light just how dynamic this group is.  Also nice to feature an album that comes out of the Reno, Nevada scene.

Your album personnel:  Eric Johnson (tenor sax), Peter Epstein (alto sax), Adam Benjamin (Rhodes), Jordan Keach (bass) and Tyler Cravines (drums).

Artist site | Listen | Available at:  Bandcamp

 

Knuckleball – Knuckleball (Gold Bolus Recordings)

There’s nothing random about how the trio of drummer Devin Gray, trumpeter Daniel Levine and pianist Marc Hannaford named themselves.  Nothing about the melodies of their self-titled debut is straight-forward.  Keeping an eye on them is difficult enough without taking into account the trouble of keeping up with the rhythmic motion.  At first, the music is unpleasantly dizzying.  But once adapted to the peculiar motions and odd melodicism, the element of fun rises to the surface, and keeping track of where the music is going at any one moment becomes a secondary consideration to simply accepting what comes your way.  It’s a simpler way to listen to complex music, and has the added benefit of opening a window to a view of some pretty thrilling music.

Your album personnel:  Daniel Levine (trumpet), Marc Hannaford (piano), and Devin Gray (drums).

Artist site | Listen | Available at:  Bandcamp

 

Inventions & Dimensions – Wabi Sabi EP (Self-Produced)

More often than not, the melodies of the Inventions & Dimensions trio roll along like a road trip… the scenery changes from city to city, interstate to countryside and back again, and yet even with all of that differentiation, the changes still come off as being interconnected by the journey from the beginning of the song to its final destination.  That the Minneapolis-based trio of bassist Chris Bates, pianist Joe Strachan and drummer Matt Buckner are able to pull this off and still keep the music solidly in modern straight-ahead territory is more than a little impressive.  But more to the point, the music is more than a little bit enjoyable.  Much more.

Your album personnel:  Chris Bates (bass), Joe Strachan (piano) and Matt Buckner (drums).

Artist site | Listen | Available at:  Bandcamp

 

Coexistence Trio – Momentum Forward (Self-Produced)

This Denver-based trio situates themselves dead center of the modern piano trio landscape.  They shoot melodies out as crisp phrases, then run with them as far as they can, eventually returning back to the opening just before closing up shop on the song.  Brisk tempos can pretty much be counted on across the board.  On their Bandcamp page, the trio states that if you like GoGo Penguin, you’ll like Coexistence Trio… and in as much as that kind of comparative statement goes, it’s pretty accurate.  The music is plenty enjoyable, if somewhat ordinary.  But what earned the album a recommendation in today’s column are the passages in “Deep Space” and “Distorted Talks” when the trio released their foot from the gas pedal and showed some patience with those crisp melodies.  Damn, they get an evocative tone, and the music resonates with more strength than all of the up-tempo pieces combined.  It’s a promising sign, and it’d be interested to see what happens if it’s a direction they spend more time pursuing.

Your album personnel:  Peter John Stoltzman (piano), Andreas Schmid (drums) and John Grigsby (bass).

Artist site | Listen | Available at:  Bandcamp – Amazon – eMusic

 

By • Jazz Recommendations - 2016 releases • 0

Dec 19 2016

These are videos that I like: Jonathan Rowden WYR Terranigma

 

Today’s featured video comes courtesy of saxophonist Jonathan Rowden and his new ensemble WYR.  On successive nights in September of last year, they performed entirely improvised pieces.  The second night’s show was at the Blue Whale in Downtown Los Angeles, CA, and it resulted in the recording Terranigma.

This is the video of that performance.

Your video personnel:  Jonathan Rowden (tenor & soprano saxophones, electronic effects, sampling), Areni Agbabian (prepared piano, voice), Joanna Wallfisch (voice, electronic effects), Chris Wabich (drums, percussion, Fender Rhodes) and James Yoshizawa (drums, percussion).

You can hear more from each performance and purchase them at Rowden’s Bandcamp page.

And both Terranigma and its counterpart Nova were yesterday’s daily recommendation.  Follow the LINK to read more.

By • These are videos that I like • 0

Dec 18 2016

Recommended: Jonathan Rowden’s WYR – “Terranigma” and “Nova”

 

On successive nights in September of last year, saxophonist Jonathan Rowden and his new ensemble WYR performed entirely improvised pieces.  The second night’s show was at the Blue Whale in Downtown Los Angeles, CA, and it resulted in the recording Terranigma.

Though improvised, the music of Terranigma possesses a narrative flow.

The opening saxophone blasts and raging percussion set the scene and elicit a sense of immediacy… things are happening now.  But then the ensemble settles into the patient building of the story, focusing on the nuance and tiny details that eventually feed the transformation into a massive presence and literary presentation.

At times, it’s poetry coming from the voices of Areni Agbabian and Joanna Wallfisch, while other times they mimic the sound of woodwinds, their harmonies like moonlight capturing the fluttering path of Rowden’s saxophone fireflies.  The electronics and effects and looping are no more distinguishable from the whole than soft ripples on a lake surface.

The second movement of Terranigma doubles down on the subtleties.  The percussive chatter of James Yoshizawa and Chris Wabich isn’t a direct line of communication, nor is it a straight-forward message.  It is as if they’re applying a director’s commentary to each others soundtrack.  And yet, when saxophone and voices join in, they achieve a seamless unison, as if this were a kind of conversation had all the time.  But keeping in line with the narrative flow, it’s no surprise either that the expressionism enters a phase when a quiet dialog between Rowden and pianist Agbabian creates a late night jazz club scene or that it, in turn, enters successive transformations into ambient minimalism, a series of melodic lightning strikes, and a flirtation with a groove before entering the same state of chaotic drama with which the piece began.

Your album personnel:  Jonathan Rowden (tenor & soprano saxophones, electronic effects, sampling), Areni Agbabian (prepared piano, voice), Joanna Wallfisch (voice, electronic effects), Chris Wabich (drums, percussion, Fender Rhodes) and James Yoshizawa (drums, percussion).

The recording Nova is from a performance the night before that of Terranigma.  For this performance, held at McKinney Theater at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo, CA, it was just the trio of Rowden, Wabich and Yoshizawa.

And where Terranigma presented itself as a multi-phase tone poem, the Nova performance opens things up much wider, and the pared down sound results in a more focused range of expressions while allowing for the individual moments to express themselves in greater detail.

The electronics go from ripples to the force of waves.  Rowden’s sax articulates itself with an expanded lexicon, but more often in the service of imagery than poetry.  The motion spurred on by the percussion of Wabich and Yoshizawa becomes as significant as its cadence, and they display a greater willingness to adopt divergent paths.  There’s even moments of pleasant tunefulness that emerge halfway through the second movement, with a particularly special passage when Wabich switches over to steel pan.

Your album personnel:  Jonathan Rowden (tenor & soprano saxophones, electronic effects, sampling, flute head-joint, found percussion), Chris Wabich (drums, percussion, steel pan) and James Yoshizawa (drums, percussion).

It’s very easy to tell that Rowden’s vision guided both performances, but the nature of improvised music holds steady and results in two recordings with very different, equally enjoyable identities.

You can hear more from each performance and purchase them at Rowden’s Bandcamp page.

Here’s the LINK for Nova.  Here’s the LINK for Terranigma.

Also worth noting that another Rowden recording, Becoming, received a warm recommendation on this site.

Read more (LINK).

Also worth noting that we’ll be featuring a very cool video from that performance tomorrow morning, so be sure to check back in soon.

By • Jazz Recommendations, Jazz Recommendations - 2016 releases • 0

Dec 18 2016

These are videos that I like: John Zorn’s The Dreamers

 

John Zorn may be better known for his free jazz full of skronks and screeches, but to dismiss him as such and move on is a pretty unfortunate mistake.  Over the course of his career, he’s expanded his personal sound and the scope of his compositions to where his most recognizable aspect is the difficulty in which it is to categorize him.  His albums with the Dreamers ensemble is an excellent case in point.

On the 2009 release O’o, he’s cooked up a soup of jazz, klezmer, surf, rock and field sounds resulting in a mesmerizing set of tunes, often quite ambient even when they show some bite.

This first video is the track “Laughing Owl” and set to the passing landscape.

Your album personnel:  John Zorn (conductor, arrangements), Kenny Wollesen (vibes), Jamie Saft (keyboards), Marc Ribot (guitar), Trevor Dunn (bass), Joey Baron (drums), and Cyro Baptista (percussion).

I’m a sucker for home videos like this.

The next video is a live performance of the song “Little Bittern,” which also appears on the album O’o.  The personnel on this live performance at the 2010 Jazz in Marciac festival are the same as the video above.  It shows that the ensemble is perfectly capable of bringing some edginess to their tranquil sound.

You can buy the album either at Zorn’s Tzadik label site or at Amazon.

The first couple weeks of the new year will see a few posts giving rundowns of various Zorn-Tzadik label recordings.  O’o will be just one of the Dreamers ensemble recordings covered by those columns.

By • These are videos that I like • 0

Dec 17 2016

Five Birthday Candles: A Bird is the Worm anniversary

 

So, apparently my site has reached a certain age when it no longer remembers its own birthday.

Back on December 9th, Bird is the Worm had officially reached its five year anniversary.

(Note to self:  Yes, that’s correct. Five years.)

This post will be the 1,427th post on this site since it first opened up shop.  And that doesn’t include all of the columns I wrote for eMusic’s 17 Dots (blog), their spin-off Wondering Sound, my new gig at Bandcamp and my seriously sporadic write-ups at Music is Good (dot org).  That’s a lot of music, and all of it has been fun as hell to listen to and share the word.  Here’s one such album…

Bird is the Worm looks different than it did when the year began.  I’m thrilled with some of the changes, disappointed with some of the things that got lost in the move but looking at opportunities to improve upon them, and thinking about maybe changing something else up again.  But after a lot of downtime from the change in domain and theme, I’m happy just to be back to where the site is featuring regular recommendations again.

Also new is my regular contributions to The Bandcamp Daily.  It’s nice to have a writing gig again, but I’m especially gratified that it’s with Bandcamp… a retailer that I was on board with early as a music fan.  It’s been very cool seeing how many jazz artists and labels have gravitated to it as a retail platform.  Back in the day, it was a wasteland for modern jazz.  Now, it’s all I can do to keep up.

The radio appearances on Kevin Coultas’s WXOX-fm show The Mingle continue to be fun.  It’s also wonderful to discover how much of the music he features is also recommended on my site.  It used to be that it was easy for me to cobble together a playlist of music for a guest appearance on his show… but now it takes serious effort to find albums that he hasn’t already featured.  This, too, I chalk up as a good thing.

The year 2017 may open up some possibilities for me to help musicians find gigs in Kentucky, especially here in my new hometown of Frankfort.  If you think you might be touring through the South/Mid-South in 2017, you should shoot me an email and we can chat.  Some of these plans are very much in the conceptual stage, but they will be moving forward one way or the other.  So, get in touch.

Speaking of live shows, it was pretty cool to cover the Chicago Jazz Festival this year.  Here in Frankfort, KY, I do my own thing and keep to myself and have a certain isolation from all of the music and musicians I write about.  It was nice to finally meet some of the musicians and personnel that work so hard in getting the music out there.  I also got to meet some of this website’s visitors, which was no less cool.  Covering the festival was a lot of work, but all of it fun, and I’ll be looking to do more of it in 2017.  I’m already tentatively planning on finally hitting the Iowa Jazz Festival, and hopefully the Chicago Jazz Fest will be in the cards next year, too.

I have some other plans for the new year, but five years of doing this has finally got me wise to keeping those close to my vest until I can actually proceed on getting them done.  A perusal of my previous anniversary posts could substitute for a very long, unaccomplished to-do list.  But there’s reason to be hopeful for the new year, and I look forward to rolling them out.

But the current year is not quite over.  The Best of 2016 reveal begins next Saturday, December 24th.  We’ll be running down the top thirty albums of 2016, four a day, until announcing #2 and #1 on the 31st.  I’ll talk more about that list on January 1st, when I typically unleash a rambling still-drunk-from-New-Years-Eve post upon my unfortunate site visitors.  As it was before, it was not easy selecting just thirty, and picking the top three was no less painful.  Any one of my top three could have been given the top slot, and I’ll probably continue to second-guess myself for as long as I’m running this site.

Thanks to all of you who stop by Bird is the Worm.  I appreciate all of your kind words and comments.  I appreciate those of you who I never hear from, too.  It’s my sincere hope all of you keep finding favorite new albums.  And an equally sincere thank you to all of the musicians who make life better with your creativity.  It wouldn’t be the same without you.

Cheers.

By • Announcement - Site & General • 10

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