Recap: Best of 2011

Trumpeter Cuong Vu has established a sound quite unlike anyone else on the scene. With lighthouse moans soaring above a wash of dissonance and electronics, he’s created a post-bop ambient style of avant-garde. Or said differently, it’s the metaphorical equivalent of a straight-ahead jazz melody dropped onto a tiny desert island in a sea of chaotic noise. The end result is that it’s pretty damn hard to find a Cuong Vu album that isn’t compelling as hell.

That brings us to Leaps of Faith. Here’s your album personnel: Cuong Vu (trumpet), Ted Poor (drums), Stomu Takeishi (bass & electronics), and Luke Bergman (bass & electronics).

Vu opens with three covers of jazz standards. I had to poke around his discography a bit to see if this was something he typically did but never noticed because of his unique sound. Nope, his albums almost always feature his own original compositions. I’m thrilled he took a different course here. There may be no better way to illustrate Vu’s originality in approach than on a standard tune that everyone knows. For instance, how about the Jerome Kern tune “All the Things You Are”…

The familiar melody is there. It’s gotta be. A successful cover of a jazz standard requires that the melody get referenced throughout the track. It’s okay to break it down, shift it around, deconstruct it, and prod its heart to see what makes it tick… but please put it back into a shape that resembles the original, and reference the damn thing from time to time. Vu gets it, and it’s why it’s so easy to enjoy his versions of standards both as familiar songs but also on Vu’s terms as well. Just brilliant.  He also covers “Body & Soul” and “My Funny Valentine”.

When the standards end and the original compositions begin, the album begins showing Vu’s stripes with “Child-like”. Sweeping post-rock rhythms and grungy harmonics roil underneath Vu’s wailing, sometimes plaintive, sometimes ferocious, a song that begins with calm waters then builds into a monsoon, ending abruptly in the eye of the storm before the song comes to a sudden stop.

Vu lets that eye carry over into the next track “Something.”  Vu takes George Harrison’s song and turns it into a peaceful floating tune with Vu’s gentle lullaby on trumpet, the pitter patter of drums and squiggly electronic flourishes left in its wake.  It’s the kind of song that is so blissfully serene that I have to replay it immediately, even if it messes with the continuity of the album.

That ends, however, when the jet engines of “I Shall Never Come Back” start warming up.  But first, a little applause from the audience.

Yes, I said ‘audience’. This is the first time it’s revealed that this recording is from a live show. It’s a remarkable feat because, one, the sound is excellent, and two, the album is almost over before the audience sound hits the speakers.

But back to those jet engines. The build of noise is pretty cool, but not nearly as cool as the way that Vu tames the dissonance with strong trumpet calls that remind the chaos that it exists only on his own terms.

The album ends with the gentle “My Opening Farewell”, a tune with a dark atmosphere to drift away on.

It’s a stunning album, adding one more impressive notch to Vu’s already impressive discography.

Released on the Origin/OA2 label in 2011.  Jazz from the Seattle scene.

Stream the entire album on Vu’s Bandcamp page.  You can purchase it there, too, in most file formats.

A free album track is available on AllAboutJazz, courtesy of the artist and label.

Available on Amazon: CD | MP3

Recapping the Best of 2011, featuring:  Will Collier Septet, Joel Harrison String Choir, Tin/Bag (Kris Tyner & Mike Baggetta), and Adam Baldych Damage Control.

*****

Will Collier Septet – Those Who Wait

It is so refreshing to encounter a jazz ensemble who sounds as if they’d get along swimmingly back in the sixties, yet are in possession of a sound that is assuredly contemporary.  On both Those Who Wait, and its predecessor Everybody Loves, Will Collier strings together compositions that even at their most melancholy still sing of sunny days and hope for better times.

Your album personnel:  Will Collier (double bass), Ed Sheldrake (piano), Mike Lesirge (alto sax), Ben Somers (tenor sax), Bob Dowell (trombone), Joe Auckland (trumpet), and Ben Reynolds (drums).

While each of the septet’s members’ solos are quite lovely, it’s when they all come together, their sounds weaving around one another, that are the pinnacle moments of the album.  In some ways, Those Who Wait is a deceptively simple album.  I find myself struggling a bit to pinpoint exactly why this is an exceptional album.  The quality musicianship would be one; the septet doesn’t appear to have a weak link.  The joyfulness of modern jazz voices with two feet planted firmly in the jazz genre is another element of this album’s perfection.  The technical detail of the compositions that are almost hypnotically engaging, yet motivate more to dance than to introspective analysis would be another good point.  Ultimately, it all leads to an inspiring recording that has to be placed near the top of the Best of 2011 list.

Released on the F-IRE Collective label.  Jazz from the London scene.

A free album track is available at the AllAboutJazz site, courtesy of the artists and label.

Available at Amazon: MP3

*****

Joel Harrison String Choir – The Music of Paul Motian

It really makes sense that Joel Harrison would record an album of Motian compositions.  Joel’s guitar on his own albums falls right into that Paul Motian Halloween Jazz sound… a little bit ominous and scary while simultaneously a lot of fun.

Your album personnel: Christian Howes (violin), Sam Bardfeld (violin), Mat Maneri (viola), Peter Ugrin (viola), Dana Leong (violincello), Joel Harrison (guitar), and Liberty Ellman (guitar).

For this recording, Joel adds an extra guitar, two violins, two violas, and a cello for a mesmerizing set of tunes that alternate between being very pretty and mildly threatening.  The end result is a very compelling album.

Recorded not long before Paul Motian’s passing, the album carries an additional weightiness, as any reminder of a sad loss will do, but being as beating hearts are pretty much open season for string ensembles, there’s an emotional depth that is undeniable.

Released on the Sunnyside Records label.

Listen to more of the album on Sunnyside’s bandcamp page.

Available at Amazon: CD | MP3

*****

Tin/Bag – Bridges

Tin/Bag is a duo of trumpeter Kris Tiner and guitarist Mike Baggetta.  This isn’t their first duo album together, and it shows.  And it’s easy to see why they enjoy working together.  Each on their respective instruments, they have an inquisitive style, music curiosity that isn’t so much interested about what lies around the next corner as an obsession in viewing the corner from unusual perspectives.  It renders a feeling of wandering great distances without ever traveling very far from home.

They work together even when they don’t sound on the same page.  It’s as if their familiarity with one another’s style leads to an understanding of what the other is thinking, but instead of using that as a planning tool for improvisation, the familiarity is seen as more useful as establishing trust.  It’s why it can appear that they’re not reading off the same page, yet still never come close to stepping on each others toes or getting hopelessly separated.  It makes for an odd cohesion; they’re not bonded together by composition so much as held together by the magnetism of their improvisations.

It’s a peaceful album of modern jazz.  Self-Produced, jazz from the Boston & New York scenes.

Stream the album in full on the Tin/Bag bandcamp page.

Download a free album track from AllAboutJazz, courtesy of the artists.

Available at Amazon: CD | MP3

*****

Adam Baldych Damage Control – Magical Theatre

Violinist Adam Baldych has recorded an odd little album here, one that occupies a space that has advanced the rock-fusion of the Mahavishnu Orchestra, but has substituted out the 70s rock for a modern indie-rock sound.  Inspired by Polish traditional music, classical, and European trends in jazz, the end result is a very intense album that arguably may be standing outside the jazz tent and looking in.

The best example of what I’m talking about is embodied in the second track on the album, “The Room of Fear.”

It opens with a sound that would stand up against anything similar put out on ECM (moody world-jazz languid tunes), Baldych’s violin soars over a quick step hop and skip rhythm section while guitar spurts out choppy chords for texture.  There’s an ebb and flow to the tune.  When Baldych’s goes from up-tempo to silence, bass solos in with frenetic bursts of sound, drums tapping its toes barely heard, before Adam and the gang comes back in for the grand finale.  Ultimately, it might have more in common with Andrew Bird or Camper Van Beethoven than fellow modern jazz violinist Mark Feldman.  It’s also a thrilling tune, the strongest on the album.

But then after the strong fusion track of “Party Place”, Adam presents us with a straight-ahead modern jazz piece in “Princess Ballet Room”, where trumpet and piano alternate between float and frenzy, with Baldych’s violin the jazz ballad foundation.  But just in case anyone started getting the idea in their head that this was an indicator of things to come, the guitar brings in the wah-wah pedal on the following track “Devil’s Kitchen”, and so much for trying to pigeon-hole this wonderfully complex album.

Your personnel for the album: Adam Baldych (violin), Josh Lawrence (trumpet), Pawel Tomaszewski (piano), Andrzej Gondek (guitar), Piotr Zaczek (bass), Jakub Cywiski (upright bass), Michal Bryndal (drums), and Adam Sak (background guitar).

Released on the Eleet Records label, which might actually be Adam’s own label.  Adam Baldych has relocated to NYC, but its more evidence of the rich jazz coming from Poland.

A free album track is available on the AllAboutJazz site, courtesy of the artist.

Available at Amazon: MP3

*****

It’s the warmth of vibes that I believe is that instrument’s quality I most enjoy, and it’s not a coincidence that vibraphone-led albums tend to display an uptick in playtime on my stereo during the autumn and winter months.  But just because vibes sound like one big ol’ cozy hug doesn’t encapsulate their identity; if they put their mind to it, vibes can can string nighttime icicles all over the place.

That brings us to Chris Dingman.

On Waking Dreams, Dingman states that it’s a retrospective of the last 12 years of his life.  That’s a hell of a lot of ground to cover on one album, a hell of a lot of emotions, and it’s why sometimes the music will make the room all cozy and sometimes it’ll leave it colder than the sub-zero on the other side of the windows.

The music is a series of vignettes, some tunes that fall under the jazz avant-garde of the sixties, some under the post-mod jazz of today, some tunes that are straight-ahead jazz ballads, and some that stray closer to neo-classical or moody indie-rock.  There is a lack of cohesion between the songs, and it’s not just a strong point of the album but also likely how Dingman intended it.  Looking back on any of our lives, cohesion is a tough element to suss out.  We look for commonalities, for foundations, for people and objects that provide a sense of permanence, and then all the crazy unspeakable emotions they inspire inside us.  No way any of us fit twelve years of our lives onto an hour long album in a way that makes any sense.  Honesty and sincerity are all that can be asked, and it’s what Dingman gives us here.

I’m just glad he didn’t give us an album that could be described as cinematic or a soundtrack, something that pushes us to imagine parts of a movie as we listen to the album.  Ah, the opening scene, where the hero makes his entrance.  Oh, this is a tense song where the hero faces his Big Conflict.  And now a calming song; we must have reached the denouement of the story.  No, not here.

Waking Dreams is not an emotionally linear album.  There are bursts of tension where vibes and piano bite ferociously at one another just to be interrupted by the calming voice of sax.  Flute and bass clarinet should be at odds, but instead appear on the same page, voicing the same opinion in their very different ways.  A dreamy interlude followed by a serene ballad immediately juxtaposed against an ominous tangle of free jazz and children’s lullaby.

After the last note had played, it felt like a lot of information had been thrown at me.  Tough to interpret it all as it happened, tough to do the same in the silence that followed.  Unsurprising, since Dingman is encoding his music with a complex soup of thoughts and emotions.  This is the kind of album that requires, and deserves, repeated listening.  The good news is that even though it’s a challenging album, it’s also quite enjoyable to hear on its face, too.  This ain’t some doctoral thesis masquerading as a jazz album; this album is a nice bundle of listening happiness all on its own.  But I’d be lying if I said it didn’t take a couple listens to form that opinion.  Nice, though, to learn that when the dust has cleared that I’ve been listening to an album that deserves mention as one of the Best of 2011.

Your personnel for this album:  Ambrose Akinmusire (trumpet), Loren Stillman (saxophones), Fabian Almazan (piano), Joe Sanders (bass), Justin Brown (drums), and Chris Dingman (vibraphone)

With special guests: Ryan Ferreira (guitar) Erica Von Kleist (flute), Mark Small (bass clarinet).

Released on the Between Worlds Music label.

Here’s Dingman’s bandcamp page, where you can stream the album in full (and purchase it, too).

A free album track is available on AllAboutJazz, courtesy of the artist and label.

Available at Amazon: CD | MP3

I so badly want to throw out a Neuromancer reference here, to comment that if Wintermute ever recorded a jazz album, that New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges is how it would sound.  AI Robots manipulating instruments with human-like precision, rapid saxophone lines like strings of binary digits, inverted melodies not quite human but proof of a creative soul, an electric undercurrent beneath a beating heart, and an acute sense of humor not easily translatable.  I don’t know if William Gibson ever envisioned this type of album in his cyberpunk novel, but he should have.

With Judges, Multi-reedist Colin Stetson has created a recording of epic breadth and vision.  A solo recording that uses no looping and a bunch of mic positions.  Mixing jazz, drone, and avant-garde, Stetson has put down an indescribable monstrosity of vast beauty.

Warbling cornet like the honking of birds heading south for the winter, mesmerizing vocal chanting and murmuring bits of dialog from discarded conversations, twisting sax lines veer through tunes bending sound, moments of tranquility broken with tension and panic then back to tranquility, percussion the sound of broken bones thrown down stairs with scientific control. Stetson’s sound experiments are wondrously textured, and the music’s indefinable qualities result in an album that isn’t out of anybody’s reach.  By sounding like no kind of music at all, it transforms into everybody’s music.

That’s not say that it’s an album everyone will like.  It’s probably not.  No album is. But the experimental and creative driving forces of Judges are elements that everyone can relate to.  An outstanding album.

A current member of Bon Iver, Stetson has worked with a variety of non-jazz artists, including Tom Waits, David Byrne, and Arcade Fire.  Guest vocals on Judges by Laurie Anderson and Shara Worden.

Released on the Constellation Records label.

Available at Amazon: CD | MP3 | Vinyl+CD