Piano Jazz Masters Team Up For an Unlikely Collaboration at Bryant Park

Twin piano performances are even rarer in jazz than in classical music, so what happened last night at Bryant Park was as improbable as it was stunningly tight and conversational. Jazz pianists aren’t used to listening to each other onstage, but Orrin Evans and Aaron Diehl did plenty of that while working methodical, tidal ebbs and flows, with plenty of moments of solo expression in over an hour worth of music including some special guests.

The game plan seemed to be for each artist to give the other a wide berth for solos, backing away for simple basslines and rhythmic accents. As the night began, Diehl seemed to be going more for stride and the neoromantic while Evans worked a familiar crushing, clustering attack. But then the two switched roles in a split second, Diehl matter-of-factly developing variations on a bassline. Then Evans went further outside as Diehl methodically ushered in a hypnotic lull. Calmly and resolutely, Evans’ churning, vamping phrases built sturdy support for a wry cha-cha from his bandmate.

Evans took a breather while Diehl took his time assembling an expansively fond ballad out of thoughtful, judicious upward cascades interspersed with lots of space. And then gracefully handed off to Evans, who took the song into thornier terrain before Diehl joined back in with a spare bluesiness. They wound it down slowly to a virtual whisper until Evans’ quasi-boogie lefthand finally subsided.

Evans began the next number solo with leaping righthand against a murky, modal left. Diehl took a handoff and immediately went into reflecting-pool, resonant mode to launch a series of scrambles and a stygian atmosphere before Evans returned…on the mic! He gave a calm, soulful reverence to a “force that lives eternally, like the waves of a restless sea.”

Diehl took over again with Stella’s Groove, a dedication to his mother, winding his way into a firm, gospel-tinged stroll – this is one formidable mom! The brief parade of guest artists began with Benjamin Collins-Siegel on piano and Alberto Caravacca on trumpet doing a fluent, straightforward version of Ellington’s Take the Coltrane, Diehl joining in to bolster the piano lefthand

Then Helen Sung took over Evans’s piano for a jaunty, modally-fueled duet with Diehl on an alternately romping and judicious take of Rhythm N’ing. Diehl brought it up and out with a rumble, bolstered by Ted Rosenthal in the F clef.

There’s more jazz at Bryant Park tonight, Sept 9 at 7 PM with trumpeter Summer Camargo leading an octet.

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Low-Register Reed Maven Scott Robinson Hits a High Note or Two

Scott Robinson is one of this era’s great masters of the low reeds – specifically, the low, low reeds, the contrabass clarinet and such. But he’s even more than that: it wouldn’t be extreme to call him a master of wind instruments in general. For example, he’s also a competent trumpeter. With that in mind, it’s less of a surrprise that his favorite horn is a vintage 1924 tenor sax he rescued from a Maryland junk shop more than forty years ago. He’s playing that horn at a two-night birthday celebration at Birdland this June 21 and 22 at 7 PM. You can get in for $30; if that seems steep, consider that this is a pretty rare opportunity to get to see him play a whole set (one presumes – you never know) on tenor..

He’s also got a new album out, Tenormore – streaming at youtube – celebrating the sound of that instrument. For a guy whose own compositions are so often imbued with a quirky sense of humor, and are sometimes way out there, this is a very straight-ahead record, in an early 60s Prestige (or late tteens Posi-Tone) vein.

He opens it solo with a wry ascent to the very top of his register, in a spaciously exuberant take of the Beatles’ And I Love Her. Likewise, Tenor Eleven is a sprightly swing shuffle, Robinson’s carefree clusters over the spring-loaded pulse of pianist Helen Sung, bassist Martin Wind and drummer Dennis Mackrel. Fans of Robinson’s irrepressibly weird sci-fi themes may hear this and ask themselves, is it really him?

The group’s slow, expansive remake of Put on a Happy Face is a platform for Robinson’s balmy side, along with some very subtle extended technique and a wee-hours solo from Sung. The band pick up the pace with the briskly strolling Morning Star, Sung engaging in some glittering, emphatic, stride-inflected work, Wind bubbling and Robinson closing with striking, modal bittersweetness.

The tasty, lush noir atmospherics the band use to open The Good Life hardly offer a hint of the genial sway the tune will eventually take on, They return to steady postbop swing with Tenor Twelve, punctuated by Robinson’s punchy riffage, then the sumnery, jubilant, gospel-infused Rainy River with Sung switching to organ. They revisit that mood a little later with their chugging version of The Nearness of You.

Robinson’s wife Sharon guests on flute on The Weaver, a tasty, edgy clave tune  and a launching pad for the bandleader’s canny explorations throughout the entire register of his horn. They close the album with the title track, its coy, clever rhythmic and thematic shifts more reminiscent of Robinson’s further outside work than any of the album’s other cuts.

Helen Sung Brings Her Picturesque Mix of Poetry and Jazz Back to Curry Hill with Cecile McLorin Salvant on the Mic

The confluence of music and poetry goes back for millennia in cultures around the world, but it’s less common here. In American jazz, spoken word is typically associated with improvisation, which makes the new album Helen Sung with Words – a collaboration with poet Dana Gioia – a rarity. That’s not to say that there aren’t plenty of blazing jams on the album, streaming at Spotify. It’s a latin jazz song cycle incorporating the poet reading several of his playfully aphoristic rhymes. Sung debuted the project memorably at the Jazz Standard last year; she’s bringing it back there for a show on Dec 13 with sets at 7:30 and 9:30 PM. Cover is $30; Sung is also bringing along Cecile McLorin Salvant as a special guest on vocals, which makes sense since Sung plays piano in Salvant’s majestic, menacing Ogresse big band tour de force. And since Salvant will be in the house, the show will probably sell out, so reserving now would be a good idea.

Gioia’s wistful, wry memory of youthful jazz clubbing opens the album’s first track, animated counterpoint between John Ellis’ tenor sax and Ingrid Jensen’s trumpet setting the stage for a scampering swing anchored by Sung’s spacious, incisive attack over Reuben Rogers’ bass and Kendrick Scott’s drums. Ellis, Jensen and then the bandleader follow in turn, climbing the ladder and fueling the blaze.

Jean Baylor sings the bolero-tinged ballad The Stars on 2nd Avenue with an airy, regretful, distantly Sarah Vaughan-ish delivery, lowlit by Sung’s low-key, wee-hours piano and Samuel Torres’ tersely propulsive congas. “Let’s live in the flesh and not in the screen,” Gioia intones as Torres’ flurries kick off Hot Summer Night, Christie Dashiell and Carolyn Leonhart trading off energetically, the rest of the band following suit over a straight-ahead hard-funk beat.

The band shift subtly between swing and clave as Baylor builds a knowing bluesiness in Pity the Beautiful, Sung’s move from loungey comfort to plaintiveness mirroring Gioia’s contemplation of how good looks will only get you so far. Too Bad, a catchy salsa-jazz kiss-off number, features Dashilell and Leonhart out front again along with a triumphantly flurrying Jensen solo, Sung prancing and scurrying up to a horn-driven crescendo.

The album’s strongest track is Lament for Kalief Browder, who killed himself after being thrown into solitary confinement on Rikers Island for two years as an adolescent. Ellis’ muted bass clarinet over airy vocalese and tiptoeing bass introduces a weary, brooding theme reflecting the hopelessness of prison life; from there, the band take it further into the blues before a grim return, Rogers bowing somberly in unison with Ellis.

They pick up the pace again with the catchy syncopation of Into the Unknown, Ellis’ tenor dancing between the raindrops, Sung offering momentary solo pensiveness before leaping back in alongside bright horn harmonies. Her enigmatically chiming piano interchanges with Rogers’ flitting figures and Scott’s mistiness throughout Touch; it brings to mind the work of Spanish composer Federico Mompou.

In the Shadowland has catchy, moody tango inflections; Ellis’ soprano solo may be the album’s most lyrical moment. Dashiell and Leonhart bring understated exasperation to the punchy final track. Mean What You Say. One can only imagine what kind of magic Salvant will bring to this stuff live.

Cécile McLorin Salvant Premieres Her Macabre, Majestically Relevant New Suite at the Met

“The man is lying!”

Cécile McLorin Salvant’s voice rose with an ineluctable, fearsome wail through that accusatory phrase as the orchestra behind her reached hurricane force. In the year of Metoo, fake news emanating daily via Twitter from the nation’s highest office, and Brett Kavanaugh’s accusers risking their lives to deny rape culture a seat on the nation’s highest court, Salvant could not have picked a more appropriate time to sing that.

The character she was voicing in that moment, the most fervent in a night full of metaphorically-charged, magic realist narrative, was a robin. It was warning the protagonist in Salvant’s new suite, Ogresse, to beware of a would-be suitor’s ulterior motives. It was possibly the highest peak that Salvant and the band reached in almost two hours of lush, sweeping big band jazz drawing on a hundred years’ worth of influences.

Yet the world premiere of the work, performed to a sold-out crowd last night at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, turned out to be juat as firmly rooted in the here and now. Many of the suite’s themes mirrored Rachelle Garniez’s fabulist reinventions and Rose Thomas Bannister’s great plans gothic as much as they did Billy Strayhorn, or Cole Porter, or Ellington.

The book on Salvant is that she can personify just about any singer from jazz’s golden age. That may be true, but as much as the night’s more coy moments brought to mind Dinah Washington, along with Sarah Vaughan in the more somber ones and Ella Fitzgerald when the music swung hardest, Salvant was most shattering when she sang without the slightest adornment. Knowingly, she went to that calm purity at the night’s most telling junctures.

The suite began with a hypnotically atmospheric, practically Indian lustre and ended with a bittersweetly low-key glimmer. In between, In between, Salvant bolstered her chameleonic reputation with expertly nuanced, torchy ballads, stark delta blues, epic swing anthems and a couple of detours into French chanson and all sorts of blue-neon Lynchian luridness. Late in the score, the band finally alluded to the Twin Peaks theme for a couple of bars.

Darcy James Argue conducted and also arranged the suite. Having seen him many times in the former role over the last few years, he seemed to be having more fun than ever before – then again, he plays his cards close to the vest onstage. Whatever the case, Salvant’s songs have given him fertile territory for his signature, epic sweep and counterintuitive pairings between individual voices in the ensemble.

Helen Sung’s poignant, lyrical piano traded off with David Wong’s similarly inflected bass during a graveyard waltz. Tenor saxophonist Tom Christensen’s plaintive oboe, vibraphonist Warren Wolf’s sepulchrally sprinting marimba, and trombonist Josh Roseman’s surprisingly lilting tuba all rose to the surreal command demanded by Argue’s wicked chart. The solo that drew the most awestruck applause was from Alexa Tarantino’s soprano sax, a particularly poignant, emotionally raw salvo.

Brandon Seabrook began the show on Strat but quickly switched to banjo, which anchored the 19th century blues-inflected interludes. Yet he never picked with traditional three-finger technique, hammering on enigmatic open chords or aggressively tremolo-picking his phrases. Maybe that was Argue’s decision not to dive deep into the delta swamp.

Salvant’s lyricism is as deep and vast as her music. The suite’s plotline involves a rugged individualist who has her own grisly way of dealing with the menace of the townspeople outside – we learn toward the end that she’s no angel herself, either.

Father had flown away sometime ago
My face was all he left behind
But soon he left my mother’s mind
She remarried a shadow

That set the stage for the grim ramifications of that particular circumstance, which Salvant and the group slowly unveiled, up to a literal forest fire of a coda. The conclusion, which Salvant had been foreshadowing all along, drew a fervent “Yessssss!” from an alluring, petite brunette in glasses and a smart sweater seated to the author’s immediate right. The audience echoed sentiment that via three standing ovations, a triumph for a group that also included purposeful trumpeter Kirk Knuffke, percussionist Samuel Torres and the sweeping strings of the Mivos Quartet.

This could have been the best concert of the year – and the Metropolitan Museum of Art has many more. Some of them are free with museum admission: you could see plaintive Armenian duduk music played by the duo of Gevorg Dabaghyan and Vache Sharafyan in Gallery 199 at 5:30 PM on Oct 26.

Revisiting Some Classics by Mingus and His Many Advocates

Trombonist Ku’Umba Frank Lacy is a mainstay of the New York jazz scene, with a list of recording and touring credits a mile long as a both a bandleader and sideman. His Live at Smalls album, a red-hot straight-up postbop sextet date at the well-loved West Village basement spot, got a big thumbs-up here in 2014. And as big band fans know, Lacy is also an excellent singer with a distinctively gritty, dynamic low register. New Yorkers have at least three chances to catch him over the next week or so. He’s leading his own group on Dec 5 at 10:30 PM at Smalls, their usual haunt; cover is $20. In addition, he’ll be with the Mingus Big Band at the weekly Monday night Mingus ensembles’ residency at the Jazz Standard on Nov 27 and Dec 4, with sets at 7:30 and 9:30 PM; cover is $25

Lacy’s latest album with the Mingus Big Band, Mingus Sings – streaming at Spotify – is his star turn in the studio with the group. Although Charles Mingus’ music pretty much speaks for itself, he was an underrated wordsmith, and there are four tracks here representing his poetic side, along with others by Joni Mitchell, Elvis Costello, and a rarity  by his widow and longtime champion Sue Mingus.

Interestingly, Lacy doesn’t play on this record, although the band otherwise is as much of an allstar outfit as it always its, comprising trumpeters Alex Norris, Jack Walrath and the late Lew Soloff; trombonists Coleman Hughes, Conrad Herwig and Earl McIntyre; saxophonists Craig Handy, Wayne Escoffery, Alex Foster, Ronnie Cuber, Abraham Burton and Brandon Wright; bassists Boris Kozlov and Mike Richmond; pianists David Kikoski and Helen Sung, and drummer Donald Edwards.

The material spans the iconic composer’s career, from bustling swing to haunting third-stream epics. Lacy narrates Langston Hughes’ poetic commentary over slowly swaying lustre and then fingerpopping swing in Consider Me, a pensive Stormy Monday-inspired first-person commentary on black empowerment. Clearly, not much has changed in sixty years.

Dizzy Profile, part elegant waltz, part brisk swing, is a mighty, knowing reminder of how much controversy the pioneers of hard bop faced; again, somewhat ironically, it’s Coleman Hughes who gets to take a sagacious trombone solo instead of Lacy.

Weird Nightmare, as you would expect, is one of the real standouts on the album: Lacy holds back to let Mingus’ angst and longing really resonate while the band builds an eerily surreal backdrop. Portrait comes across as quite a contrast between the lyrics and the regal, almost somber quality of the music, animated by solos from Walrath and Handy. Another stunner, Goodbye Pork Pie Hat – with the first of the Joni Mitchell lyrics – is awash in grim, close harmonies, introduced by a gently plaintive Kikoski piano solo, Handy contributing a pensive, achingly angst-fueled alto solo.

Sweet Sucker Dance – from Mingus and Mitchell’s 1979 collaboration – has an infinitely more purist, epic sweep compared to the original and really does justice to Mitchell’s bittersweet, detailed character study. Likewise, Lacy digs in and wraps his tongue around Invisible Lady’s torrents of Elvis Costello noir iconography over murderous, tense  harmonies and nonstop, shadowy urban bustle: it’s the rare resurrection of a classic where the new lyrical dimension isn’t hopelessly ponderous.

Duke Ellington’s Sound of Love, which Mingus did write all by himself, is surprisingly restrained here: Cuber blows some purist blues spirals and Lacy saves his biggest melismatic moment for this one. Contrastingly, Dry Cleaner From Des Moines has a jaunty rumble to match Mitchell’s surreal beatnik narrative.

Noonlight – the one real obscurity here, posthumously discovered along with the scores for Mingus’ magnum opus, Epitaph – gets its lyrics and title from Sue Mingus. It turns out to be a saturnine-tinged but catchy and ultimately cheery ballad, shifting matter-ofl-factly between meters.

Mitchell’s lowdown vernacular and imperturbable narrative fit seamlessly with Chair in the Sky, with its sly bluesiness and unstoppable upward trajectory  – and Lacy has a ball matching its unhinged exuberance. Eclipse, the final number with Mingus’ words and music, is typically symphonic, a study in contrasts, slinky latin ballad morphing into towering anthem, Foster’s flute nailing both when the time comes. The final track is the second-line strut Jelly Roll, with a Costello lyric to match. It’s a good bet that most Mingus diehards already have this album, or at least have it playlisted somewhere; if not, hell, why not now?

Potent, Evocative New Vocal Jazz: Helen Sung with Words Last Night at the Jazz Standard

On one hand, Helen Sung with Words last night at the Jazz Standard was a chance to hear both multi-reedman John Ellis and trumpeter Ingrid Jensen blaze together in front of a tight latin-flavored rhythm section, a treat not to be missed. On the other, it was an opportunity to witness the most cutting edge of vocal jazz, a tantalizingly eclectic, often harrowingly relevant work in progress bookended by a couple of real burners.

Singers Christie Dashiell, Carolyn Leonhart and Vuyo Sotashe took turns and often harmonized Sung’s settings of poems by Dana Gioia, whose recorded words wafted through the PA as each song got underway. Alternately brooding, sardonic or droll, Sung wove them into constantly shifting shapes, Dashiell getting the most time in the spotlight with her airy, often vividly wistful delivery bolstered by Leonhart’s sometimes brassy harmonies, Sotashe reaching toward Al Green territory from time to time with his balmy falsetto.

Ellis intoned mournful, blood-and-blues-drenched motives off the inside of the piano as a steady, hauntingly reflective elegy for a  murdered inmate in the US prison system got underway. Likewise, bassist Ricky Rodriguez gave a Lower East Side wee-hours lament a starkly bowed intro as percussionist Samuel Torres and drummer Kendrick Scott added their misty accents to the wounded ambience: it was the most avant garde moment of the night.

Yet there was as much adrenaline as poignancy in the set. Dave Brubeck famously joked that there’s a little lounge in every pianist, but whenever Sung hinted that she might go there, with a playful little trill or a chromatic downward run, she’d break it up with a fierce block chord or two. Her work defies standard A/B/C sectionality – these songs seemed to have an F, a G and an H too – and she has a flair for latin jazz. She wound up a couple of the more upbeat numbers with an altered couple of mambos that made a launching pad for tantalizingly brief duels between Torres and Scott.

The joyous closing number, the most straight-ahead of the evening, had echoes of funk. The opener – illustrating Gioia’s early 70s memories of a smoky West Coast jazz joint – grew out of Ellis and then Jensen blistering through a thicket of bluesy eights to Sung’s long, majestically driving solo, artfully expanding toward tropicalia and then back. As kaleidoscopically lyrical as the rest of the set was, it would have been even more fun to hear her cut loose like that again. As the saying goes, always leave them wanting more. Sung plays next on June 3 at 8 PM at Lulu Fest in Austin, Texas.

No Restrictions on Great Tunesmithing From Iris Ornig

Bassist Iris Ornig’s latest album No Restrictions has a lot to offer: translucent compositions, terse arrangements, purposeful playing. It has a lot in common with pianist Danny Green’s latest release (recently reviewed here), a tuneful mix of tropically-tinged romps and ballads. The cast of musicians alongside Ornig – Kurt Rosenwinkel on guitar, Helen Sung on piano, Michael Rodriguez on trumpet and Marcus Gilmore on drums – embraces the bassist’s welcoming melodicism as well as her fondness for Brazilian rhythms and tones. Ornig doesn’t solo much, but when she does, even that is catchy, which pretty much sums up this album.

The understatedly jaunty, bossa-flavored ballad Autumn kiss opens, Rodriguez fluttering warmly over a rich chordal groove, Rosenwinkel’s terse sostenuto picking up and then going flying. Likewise, the distantly gospel-tinged ballad We Shall Meet Beyond the River is a showcase for Rodriguez’ warmly sustained, soulful approach, Gimore’s hushed brushes whispering behind Ornig’s judicious, incisive drive.

The upbeat Venus As a Boy works a catchy guitar hook over a bossa pulse spiced with coyly pouncing piano/bass riffage, a hard-hitting but nimble Sung solo folllowed by Rosenwinkel cartwheels. The title track, another bright bossa tune, has Sung dancing and then handing off to Rodriguez’ incisive shuffle. If Anything Goes Wrong, a trio piece, opens with a long, lyrical, gorgeously tender solo piano intro. Finally, Ornig takes a solo, tiptoeing judiciously over Sung’s gleaming embers, handing off to a similarly rhythmic piano solo that engages Gilmore’s lithe cymbals – and then Sung continues the upward arc with variations on the bass solo.

The Way You Make Me Feel works its way from steady swing to an Afro-Cuban groove, Rodriguez nonchalantly building his solo from carefully spaced pulses, Ornig bouncing and prancing through hers with bluesy horn voicings. Gate 29, a funky, nocturnal shuffle that would work as a quirky film or tv theme, has a neatly concealed exchange between Ornig and Sung following soulfully crescendoing Rodriguez and Rosenwinkel solos, Spark of Light, a pulsing, anthemic clave tune, alternates lush orchestration with a direct hookiness carried by the trumpet and then the guitar. The closing track, Uptight (a sarcastic title if there ever was one) works a relaxed, funky swing, Ornig’s prominent, woodtoned swing lines and solo anchoring Rosenwinkel’s wry, restrained yet pillowy chords and accents.  There’s also an absolutely gorgeous, alternate version of the title cut with a more relaxed, sustained guitar drive to it. It’s one of the most consistently enjoyable albums of the past several months. Ornig is at the Garage with her band on March 24 at around midnight.