Twelve’s the Charm for Amina Figarova

At this point in time, pianist Amina Figarova’s enduring masterpiece is her September Suite, a harrowing reflection written in the wake of 9/11 that remains one of the most haunting albums of the last couple of decades. Her new album Twelve is her best, most focused and most impactful release since then – intentionally or not, it’s interesting how the number twelve would follow 9/11 in terms of the high points of her prolific career. This album is considerably quieter and more pensive than her previous one, Sketches, a bustling, colorful, loosely thematic series of travelogues. Figarova’s always had a knack for translucent horn arrangements, and the ones here are among her richest. Although throughout her career she has been generous in giving herself and her band plenty of room for soloing, this album is remarkable for its absence of wasted notes and dedication to purpose. The chemistry in her longtime band – husband and multi-flutist Bart Platteau, trumpeter Ernie Hammes, saxophonist Mark Mommaas, bassist Jeroen Vierdag and drummer Chris “Buckshot” Strik – is comfortably familiar. The compositions are as cinematic as she’s ever written. Maybe trading her old Rotterdam haunts for a new life in New York is part of the deal – whatever the case, let’s hope she stays.

It’s interesting how New York State would inspire her to evoke Brazil on the opening track, NYCST, dancing syncopation from Platteau and Mommaas sandwiching Figarova’s precise pointillisms. The second track, Another Side of the Ocean is classic Figarova, pensive and acerbic and then growing more lush, Hammes’ gentle swirls adding brightness, Platteau’s flute dancing cautiously over its elegantly shifting pulse. The most gripping track here might be Sneaky Seagulls, which juxtaposes an abrasive sax/trumpet interlude that’s more Hitchcockian than beachy against Keystone Kops swing, and then a potently aching alto solo from Mommaas. Likewise, tense harmonies between sax and flute lead into an eerily fluttering Figarova solo on a quieter seaside scene, Shut Eyes, Sea Waves: the uneasy, atmospheric backdrop behind Figarova’s spacious, unsettled solo out has a gently resolute vividness worthy of Gil Evans.

By contrast, On the Go is another one of Figarova’s travelogues, a latin theme as Joe Jackson might do it, lit up by a cleverly wry trumpet solo, Platteau then taking it back to brisk, matter-of-fact insistence. The most vividly lyrical of all the songs here is Isabelle, a portrait of Vierdag’s girlfriend, who comes across as stunningly perceptive, beautiful and easily wounded – and on guard against that. Then the band goes back to brisk, just-short-of-breathless swing with the Midtown Manhattan-flavored Make It Happen. The title track – in 12/8 meter, just to hammer home the numerological concept – develops a pensive neoromantic piano theme backed by a gorgeously burnished horn chart, expansively explored by flute and then piano.

The samba-flavored New Birth has yet another richly harmonized horn arrangement, casually steady postbop incisions from Mommaas and a lively Figarova solo. Then they get quiet again with Morning Pace and its allusions to blues and spirituals – Vierdag’s bass mingling with and then peering up through Figarova’s solo is another especially choice moment here. A portrait of a favorite grandmother who comes across as more impish than stern, Leila is full of latin tinges and eventually a wry approximation of a conga break. The album ends on a potently uneasy note with Maria’s Request – Figarova will go to great lengths to make her fans happy, and this is a classic example. Platteau’s soulful, balmy bass flute leads it up over Figarova’s nocturnal phrasing, the chords of the bass taking it out with a bracing absence of resolution. All these diversely picturesque pieces come together with an effortlessness that soft-pedals the fact that this is simply one of the most consistently enjoyable and attractive jazz albums of 2012. It’s out on the German In + Out label.

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Some Observations on Winter Jazzfest 2011

As Search and Restore’s emcee explained Friday night at Kenny’s Castaways, the concept of Winter Jazzfest is to introduce new players, or older players tackling newer ideas. What he didn’t mention is that Winter Jazzfest is a spinoff of APAP, a.k.a. the annual booking agents’ convention, which until the past year didn’t even schedule jazz among its CMJ-style array of relatively brief sets showcasing an extraordinary amount of talent across the city. In a good year, APAP might draw 1500 people, most of them from larger community arts venues across the country. The Census Bureau has made a big deal about how their 2010 data shows an increase in attendance at jazz shows. Friday night’s crowd – young, scruffy, hungry, and overwhelmingly local – offered potent validation of that claim. We’ve said it before, we’ll say it again: great art has tremendous commercial appeal.

Drummer Mike Pride’s From Bacteria to Boys, whose run at Coco 66 in Greenpoint is one of New York’s more memorable residencies of recent years, explored how much fun there is in playing around the outer edges of funk. Artfully blending color and drive, Pride led his group – Darius Jones on alto, Peter Bitenc on bass and Alexis Marcelo on Rhodes – through a captivating, witty and too-brief set. All but one of their numbers (their catchy opening track, Surcharge, by a Berlin friend of the band named Uli) were originals. Themes were alluded to more than stated outright, Jones having a great time skirting the melody and then going way out into the boposphere on his own while Bitenc ran terse, hypnotic figures and Marcelo sent rippling washes out against the current.

“We’re professional travelers. In between we play music,” laughed pianist Amina Figarova, who delivered a thoughtfully expansive set at Zinc Bar with most of her longtime sextet: Bart Platteau on flutes; Marc Mommaas on tenor; Ernie Hammes on trumpet; Jay Anderson subbing on bass and Chris “Buckshot” Strik incisive and playful behind the drums. To paraphrase Mae West, Figarova is a woman what takes her time. Deliberately and matter-of-factly, she developed her solos with a slow and inexorably crescendoing approach which still left considerable room for surprise. And yet, a sudden solar flare or martial roll from her left hand didn’t catch her band unawares: they have a supple, intuitive chemistry that comes with rigorous touring. The most captivating songs in the set were the most bustling: the vivid airport scramble Flight No., and a cleverly shapeshifting version of the deceptively simple, unselfconsciously assertive Look at That!

As the evening wore on, it became clearer and clearer that the clubs were on a tight schedule: concertgoers accustomed to small clubs going over time as the night wears on were surprised to see acts actually take the stage before their scheduled time. Anat Cohen regaled a rapt, absolutely wall-to-wall crowd at le Poisson Rouge with a program that mixed crescendoing, ecstatic gypsy/klezmer clarinet, Jason Lindner’s lean latin piano lines and balmy sax ballads. And later, 90-year-old drummer Chico Hamilton and his band reaffirmed that if you have swing and use it, you never lose it.

Back at Kenny’s Castaways, it was nice to be able to simply see Jen Shyu as she swayed and held the room with her understated intensity: the last time she played Lincoln Center, she sold out the hall. She’s one of the few newer artists who actually lives up to all the hype that surrounds her: she can belt and wail to the rafters if she feels like it, but this was a clinic in subtlety and purposefulness. The high point of the entire evening, at least from this limited perspective, was a slowly unwinding, hypnotic arrangement of a Taiwanese slave song. Shifting from English, to French, to Spanish and then to Chinese vernacular, Shyu underscored the universality of humankind’s struggle against brutality, against overwhelming odds. Bassist John Hebert ran mesmerizingly noirish circles lit up in places by David Binney’s alto sax or Dan Weiss’  effectively understated drumming, Shyu contributing wary, starkly pensive Rhodes piano from time to time. Their last piece bounced along on a catchy tritone bass groove, Shyu’s vocalese sometimes dwindling to a whisper, bringing the band down under the radar to the point where the suspense was visceral. It would have been great fun to stick around the Village for more, but there was another mission to accomplish: like CMJ, APAP requires a lot of running around. Which was too bad. The ease of access to such a transcendent quantity of music is addictive: if you do this next year, make a two-night commitment out of it and experience it to the fullest.