Jul 12 2014
Chris Morrissey – “North Hero”
There was nothing wrong with Chris Morrissey‘s 2009 debut, The Morning World. There was plenty to like about his nice mix of catchy tunes and rambling thought-provokers, but it left the impression that Morrissey was certain what he wanted to talk about, but unsure how to get the conversation started. The experience, and time, clearly has seen a shift in that matter. Morrissey’s 2013 release North Hero has a concision that his debut lacked, a presentation of a thesis statement for each song, so that no matter how tangential the music became in the course of the performance, there was never any doubt about where the subject began and where it would eventually end up.
The sole reason for this change is the melody.
North Hero gives the sense that the starting point for each song’s creation began with crafting the melody, and that only when it was perfect would it be okay to begin charting the outward bound routes. And with any truly great melody, it possesses an irresistible gravitational pull to return to it throughout the song’s duration. Thankfully, on North Hero, Chris Morrissey’s quartet obeys that particular law of physics, because it’s a series of one memorable melody after the other.
A great melody has a certain mutability. Within each great pop music melody lays dormant the potential for a great jazz melody. There are far more current examples of this, but the general acceptance and knowledge of John Coltrane’s classic take on “My Favorite Things” resonates even to this day. That mutability of a great melody holds for more than one direction. The use of Jazz melodies in modern hip hop, jazz musicians covering indie-rock artists and electronica acts incorporating jazz into their sets… the melody is the passport between genres.
Add to this the trend of a new generation of jazz musicians, raised on all kinds of music that often bleed into their own visualization of jazz music, and the genre cross-pollination evinces an even stronger effect on the Jazz of Today. And like many of Jazz’s newer generations, Chris Morrissey is just as likely to gig with non-jazz groups. So it shouldn’t be surprising that North Hero has elements of indie-rock as strong as those of Jazz. Jazz projects aside, Morrissey has also gigged with a diverse set of non-jazz acts like Dosh, Andrew Bird, Ben Kweller and Sara Bareilles.
Crossing music borders is going to reveal the parallels and commonalities between music influences and expressions. This clarity allows the musician to better honor the rules of any one particular genre while simultaneously arming them with methods to remain unbound by them. That is North Hero is a nutshell.
The urgent tempo and bubbly cheerfulness of a track like “The Spirit Of Chanhassen” and the melancholic lullaby sighs of “Minor Silverstein” recall the hard bop one-two combo of McCoy Tyner’s opening salvo on The Real McCoy (“Passion Dance” and “Contemplation“). The former, however, breaks into interludes of curling melodic fragments and snappy drum bursts more reminiscent of alt-country act Richmond Fontaine. The latter, on the other hand, has a weary sadness more beholden to indie star Bonnie Prince Billy than the hard bop legend.
Clifford Jordan’s name should be in play here, too. Both “Roman Subway” and “Electric Blanket” share Jordan’s predilection for melodies and tones with a strong cinematic presence that would often build up into dramatic, focused outbursts of intensity, but both hint at pop music and rock influences where Jordan was developing his own style of spiritual jazz. The comparisons are to be found in the melodic seeds, not the way in which the songs eventually bloomed.
Some songs weight the jazz-non-jazz ratio to one extreme or the other. “Midland, Texas Picnic Area” brings the heat and raw exuberance of modern post-bop, whereas “Hands Crystals Anderson” sets off with a rock tempo and pop music melody and never really looks back. On the other hand, “One Worn Mile” drawls out a thick blues, keeping things to a nice, cool stroll, and adds some diversity to the affair without detracting from the album’s identity. Same to be said for “Lullaby For Twins,” which accentuates the album’s contemplative nature… a quality that reveals itself in glimpses and insinuations when it’s not front and center.
The personnel in Morrissey’s quartet are well suited for crossing genre borders. Drummer Mark Guiliana’s career epitomizes it, in fact, whether it’s his electronica jam out with pianist Brad Mehldau (“Mehliana”), the inventive “world” jazz sessions from Brad Shepik and Lionel Loueke, or the modern jazz-funk collaboration with pianist Jason Lindner (“Now vs. Now”)… Guiliana is a chameleon-for-hire. Pianist Aaron Parks has been a go-to guy for an all-pro line-up of modern jazz stars, with names like Kurt Rosenwinkel, Terence Blanchard, Ambrose Akinmusire, and Lage Lund calling for his services, and then there’s his forward-thinking modern recording Invisible Cinema, the modern masterpiece of James Farm, and his recent solo release, the introspective Arborescence. In addition to collaborating with Dosh, Andrew Bird and Bon Iver, saxophonist Michael Lewis is a member of progressive jazz trio Happy Apple, who counts Dave King of the Bad Plus among its members. It also seems relevant to mention that Morrissey, Guiliana, and Parks all have worked with jazz vocalist Gretchen Parlato… who, as a vocalist, is keenly aware of the latent power of a well-crafted melody.
It’s those melodies that make North Hero something special.
Your album personnel: Chris Morrissey (bass), Aaron Parks (piano), Mike Lewis (saxophone), and Mark Guiliana (drums).
Released on Sunnyside Records.
Jazz from Minneapolis, MN, via the NYC scene.
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Welcome to the Best of 2013.
This music has a boundless energy, and it grabs me each time I hit the play button. Teubal brings both modern jazz and Argentinean music to the table, but infuses it with other influences to where it’s not so easy to draw a clear lineage. Apparently this was Teubal’s intention, and it clearly worked. A stunning album of immaculate beauty. It’s about as near perfect as an album could be, and I still find it hard to believe it didn’t end up as my Album of the Year. On saxophones, Sam Sadigursky puts out some of the best moments on a jazz album in 2013. Cellist Erik Friedlander had a quietly massive 2013, putting out a beautiful album under his own name, and also performing on some of 2013′s top recordings in a supporting role. On the fourth and fifth tracks, “El Acrobata” and “Un Dragon Dormido,” which could be considered the same composition, Friedlander interacts with other ensemble members to create some heavenly sonic expressions, of a supreme elegance and stately beauty. Jazz is more diverse than ever, and the internet age has opened up new avenues for jazz artists to record and produce their own music, thus making it tougher for the general public to decipher what they should be listening to… but when someone asks you what will be considered the classic albums of this modern jazz age in fifty years time, you should point to this recording as one of them. As near to perfection as you can get.
Clarinettist Ghosh has one of the more original sounds on the modern jazz scene. His style of Indo-Jazz is both eccentric and amicable, diverse and complex, yet so easy to connect with. I was taken with his previous recordings quite a bit, but on his newest recording, he brings an even fuller sound to the table, one more rounded out and self-assured. Melodies that strike to the heart of the matter and rhythmic architectures that offer up plenty of ornamentation and structural fireworks. Or said differently, this album sounds like it has a lot going on, and it does, and yet by crafting rich, beautiful melodies, Ghosh makes this gregarious album so easy, and enjoyable, to spend time with. His mix of modern jazz approaches with that of regional musics from Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, India, and Sri Lanka spin a breathless weave of influences, all which abide comfortably under the same roof of one album, and which import a sense of excitement as the sound shifts from scene to scene. Just an outstanding album.
Goldberg opened 2013 with two strong recordings, released simultaneously at the outset of the year. Unfold Ordinary Mind was the stronger of the two (though Subatomic Particle Homesick Blues was certainly no slouch), courtesy of how Goldberg’s ensemble managed to create challenging music cloaked in catchy melodies and intermittent grooves. It’s not unlike an avant-garde rendition of a Motown recording session. Goldberg has always been an innovative sort, delving into projects that probably shouldn’t work, but producing engaging, often very listenable music despite the odds. He does that here, too, and the result is no less impressive or fascinating with many many subsequent listens. An outstanding achievement in a career marked by them, and a fun album, to boot.
This is an album of beautiful melodies. The melodies aren’t stated… they’re slowly exhaled. Tenor sax man Bill McHenry is the perfect musician for this type of album, with songs of a languorous demeanor, even when they’re moving at a brisk pace. His big sound is delivered with a peaceful ease, and matches well with Moreaux’s ensemble, which utilizes a dynamic percussive approach that serves more as an undercurrent of crackling electricity, and allows the melodies to serve up the heavy voltage. Bassist Moreaux has been collaborating with jazz-folk saxophonist Jeremy Udden, and this album clearly illustrates that those two are peas of the same pod… they both have that eminently peaceful sound, of a warmth that provides sufficient heat to prevent the music from ever getting terribly sleepy. This is a strong album that, unfortunately, seems to have flown a bit under the radar. Hopefully this will kick-start some interest. It should, because this is a gorgeous recording.
Aug 28 2014
Bob Stewart – “Connections: Mind the Gap”
Back in 1992, music producer Hal Willner spearheaded a tribute album to the late great Charles Mingus, bringing together a wide cross-section of different musicians from different genres (of which guitarist Bill Frisell was a key component) to reinterpret Mingus’s music. Bob Stewart, who had performed with and recorded for Mingus, was a part of that recording, entitled Weird Nightmare: Meditations on Mingus. Its mix of jazz, avant-garde, folk, rock, classical, pop and spoken word created an intoxicating blend of music that sounded a bit like each of those genres, but in its totality sounded like something completely different, entirely new.
Over twenty years later, and Stewart’s Connections: Mind the Gap has created an album that utilizes a similar recipe while devising a meal that, in and of itself, is no less mesmerizing and inimitably singular. The music is a thick fog of influences, creating a wall of impenetrability out of something that shifts focus from one passage to the next. Tracks like “Simone,” “Bush Baby” and “Odessa” express themselves with an odd tunefulness, behaving like a sonic Rube Goldberg contraption where disparate moving parts incomprehensibly function in concert to guide the song from first note to last.
The latter two of those three tracks are Arthur Blythe compositions. The history between Stewart and Blythe goes back over thirty years to the NYC loft scene, and has included some excellent sax-tuba-percussion trio sessions, as well as larger unit works, both serving to expand the horizon line of jazz and the role of tuba in it. The fact that Stewart is able to breathe life into these pieces in a modern setting and with a new vision says a lot about the staying power of the original music as well as Stewart’s ability to show new facets of that vision with the changing of time.
Also front and center on Connections is the five-part suite “In Color,” dispersed throughout the recording, and featuring Stewart’s tuba interacting with the swirling harmonies of the string quartet, PUBLIQuartet, of which his son Curtis is a founding member (as well as a member of Stewart’s working unit, First Line Band).
The rendition of Mingus’s “Jump Monk” comes out swinging and allows the traditional elements to rise to the surface. This is also the case with three other renditions. One is of Henry Thomas’s “Fishin’ Blues,” which has guitarist Jerome Harris taking a turn at vocals on a blues track with a lazy afternoon charm. Another is an inspired rendition of “Monk’s Mood,” with its boozy disposition and a melody viewed through a haze and rhythms staggering with an impossible fluidity. And then there’s Astor Piazzolla’s “Libertango,” with its bursts of propulsion and unqualified grace, adding a nice dose of differentiation to the album while remaining part of its confluence.
Just a brilliant album, serving up something quite different without turning its back on all that has come before. It’s a testament to the diversity of projects that Stewart has been a part of and his ability to transcend conventions imposed upon his instrument.
Your album personnel: Bob Stewart (tuba), Matt Wilson (drums), Jerome Harris (guitar, vocals), Randall Haywood (trumpet), Nick Finzer (trombone), and the PUBLIQuartet: Curtis Stewart (violin), Jannina Norpoth (violin). Nick Revel (viola), and Amanda Goekin (cello).
Released on Sunnyside Records.
Jazz from NYC.
Available at: eMusic | Bandcamp | Amazon CD
| Amazon MP3
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By davesumner • Jazz Recommendations, Jazz Recommendations - 2014 Releases • 0 • Tags: Bob Stewart, Sunnyside Records