A Purist, Nuanced New Jazz Album From Chanteuse Sasha Dobson

These days Sasha Dobson may be best known for her work as a multi-instrumentalist in the supertrio Puss N Boots with Norah Jones and Catherine Popper. Dobson’s own work is more jazz-focused, with a nuanced Brazilian streak. Interestingly, on her new album Girl Talk – streaming at Spotify – Dobson appears strictly on the mic, even though she’s just as much at home behind the drum kit as she is on bass, guitar or keys. Fans of iconic Golden Age singers – Billie, Sarah, Dinah and the rest – will appreciate Dobson’s uncluttered, thoughtful, original style.

This time out, she’s pulled together an allstar cast with Peter Bernstein on guitar, Dred Scott on piano, Neal Miner on bass and Kenny Wollesen on drums. She opens with Better Days, casually slinging torrents of lyrics over an increasingly syncopated bossa pulse fleshed out by Bernstein’s erudite chords.

She spices Sweet and Lovely with some coy scatting, shadowed by Bernstein as the bass and drums edge into straight-ahead swing and then the guitarist’s signature litany of chordal variations. The album’s title track, a sly, low-key duet with Jones, celebrates female bonding – in an era where the Biden regime wants to get rid of moms and substitute “birth parents” instead, we need that bonding more than ever.

A hazy bolero lowlit by her brother Smith Dobson’s spare vibes, Perhaps Perhaps Perhaps has a misterioso understatement in contrast to Wollesen’s colorful cymbal work. The bandleader brings judiciously modulated acerbity to her lyrics in You’re the Death of Me over the band’s low-key stroll, then follows with a distantly Blossom Dearie-tinged delivery in The Great City. In her hands, Dobson it’s more about perseverance than urban angst.

Her take of Softly As in a Morning Sunrise reinvents the song as spare, sun-dappled, straight-up swing, with some unexpectedly biting blues phrasing. The chime of the vibes and the brushy guitar chords in Time on My Hands are a characteristically understated touch beneath Dobson’s low-key optimism.

She joins with Miner in a spare bass-and-vocal duet to open Autumn Nocturne, then the band swing it gently, Bernstein choosing his spots to raise the energy. Dobson winds up the album by transforming a big Nancy Sinatra hit into a swing blues with jaunty harmonies from special guests Steven Bernstein on trumpet and Ian Hendrickson Smith on tenor sax.

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Epic Big Band Surrealism and a Jazz Standard Gig From the Michael Leonhart Orchestra

The Michael Leonhart Orchestra‘s previous album traced the epic journey of a swarm of butterflies all the way from Mexico to Egypt. Breathtaking as that trip over the top of the globe was, Leonhart’s new album with the ensemble, Suite Extracts Vol, 1 – streaming at Spotify – goes in a completely different direction, although in places it’s even more swirlingly atmospheric. If the idea of big band versions of songs by Spinal Tap, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, the Wu-Tang Clan and Howlin Wolf are your idea of a good time, you should hear this record. Leonhart and the group are at the Jazz Standard on Nov 12, with sets at 7:30 and 9:30 PM; cover is $30.

The album opens with an exuberantly brassy Afrobeat arrangement of the Nusrat classic Alu Jon Jonki Jon, punctuated by cheery sax solos. Things get more surrealistically entertaining from there. The first of a grand total of six tunes from the Spinal Tap soundtrack, the wryly titled La Fuga Di Derek turns out to be a moody piece for Sara Schoenbeck’s bassoon and Pauline Kim’s pizzicato violin. Schoenbeck’s desolate solo intro to Big Bottom offers absolutely no idea of where the song is going: as you would expect, Leonhart has fun with the low reeds, and also adds an accordion solo from Nathan Koci. From there, they segue into a one-chord jam that’s ostensibly Ornette Coleman’s Lonely Woman. Most of this actually makes more sense in context than it would seeem to, Leonhart’s chart following a similar trajectory from spare and enigmatic to an extended, achingly shreddy sax break over mutedly snappy bass chords.

Likewise, The Dance of the Maidens at Stonehenge has repetitive low brass bursts bookended by lots of African percussion: it’s as sardonic as the original. As is the medley of Jazz Odyssey and Lick My Love Pump, a brooding accordion solo bridging the ominous opening soundscape and the majestic, sweeping arrangement of the film score’s most sarcastically poignant tune. The final Spinal Tap number, The Ballad of St. Hubbins is the album’s vastest vista, Robbie Mangano’s spaghetti western Morricone guitar over postapocalyptic Pink Floyd atmospherics.

The Wu and their members are first represented by the Ghostface classic Liquid Swords, reinvented with forlorn Ray Mason trombone over grey-sky ambience, with darkly Balkan-tinged accordion: RZA would no doubt approve. Da Mystery of Chessboxing vamps along, alternately gusty and blithe, hypnotic and funky, while Liquid Chamber provides a launching pad for a slashing, Romany-flavored violin solo from Kim.

The diptych of ODB’s Shimmy Shimmy Ya and Raekwon’s Glaciers of Ice is the album’s most distinctively noir track, all ominous rises and falls. The concluding tune is a beefy take of Fela’s Quiet Man Is Dead Man and Opposite People, which could be Antibalas at their most symphonic. And Leonhart recasts the Howlin Wolf hit Built for Comfort as a slow, simmering, roadhouse fuzztone groove evocative of Quincy Jones’ 1960s film work.

Leonhart conducts and plays trumpet, mellophonium and bass harmonica; the rest of the group also includes Kevin Raczka and Eric Harland sharing the drum chair, Elizabeth Pupo-Walker and Daniel Freedman on percussion; Joe Martin and Jay Leonhart (Michael’s dad) on bass; Nels Cline on guitar; Philip Dizack, Dave Guy, Jordan McLean, Carter Yasutake and Andy Bush on trumpets; John Ellis, Ian Hendrickson-Smith, Chris Potter, Donny McCaslin and Jason Marshall on saxes; Sam Sadigursky and Daniel Srebnick on flutes and Erik Friedlander on cello.

The Michael Leonhart Orchestra Bring Their Epic, Ominously Cinematic Soundscapes to the Jazz Standard

The Michael Leonhart Orchestra’s debut album The Painted Lady Suite – streaming at Sunnyside Records – doesn’t concern a medieval femme fatale. The central seven-part suite portays the epic, over-the-North-Pole migration of painted lady butterflies from Mexico to North Africa. Even by the standards of Bernard Herrmann, whose work this album strongly resembles, its mammoth sweep and dark majesty is unrivalled in recent years. The band are bringing it to life with a two-night stand this July 17 and 18 at the Jazz Standard, with sets at 7:30 and 9:30 PM. Cover is $30.

Along with his singer sister Carolyn, the trumpeter/multi-instrumentalist bandleader is the rare child of musical talent (dad is bassist Jay Leonhart) who’s also produced noteworthy material. Beyond the jazz idiom, the vastness of the music echoes an army of influences as diverse as Pink Floyd, Brad Fiedel’s film scores, Steve Reich and Antibalas (some of whose members play on this album).

The big title suite begins lush and lustrous in the Mexican desert, tectonic sheets of brass alternating with a hefty Afrobeat groove anchored by the low reeds, punctuated by Donny McCaslin’s slashingly modal phrasing. From there the swarm moves north over El Paso in a wave of symphonic Morricone southwestern gothic, Nick Movshon’s shamanistic drums and Nels Cline’s menacing psychedelic guitar interspersed amid the big swells.

North Dakota big sky country is the next destination, Sam Sadigursky’s alto sax fluttering uneasily over ambient, ambered brass ambience in a brooding, Roger Waters-esque soundscape. A couple of ferocious “let’s go!” phrases from the whole orchestra signal a move further north to the wilds of Saskatchewan: Philip Glass as played by the Alan Parsons Project, maybe.

As the migration passes through the chill air high above the Arctic Circle, Movshon’s tersely dancing, staccato bass punctuates serene orchestration, then the circling bass melody shifts to the high reeds, Erik Friedlander’s cello and Pauline Kim’s viola peering through the ether.

The suite concludes with nocturnal and then daytime Saharan skyscapes. With its ominous, repetitive siren motives and the bandleader’s echoey, allusively Middle Eastern muted trumpet, the first is awash in dread and mystery. The second builds from a cheerily strutting Afrobeat tune to a blazingly brassy, triumphantly pulsing coda – but the conclusion is too apt to give away.

There are three more tracks on the album. In the Kingdom of M.Q. features dancing, loopy phrases and a little dissociative swirl beneath a bubbly McCaslin solo. The sardonically titled Music Your Grandparents Would Like has a slow, steady sway, tense close harmonies, a crime jazz interlude and a bizarrely skronky Cline guitar solo. The final cut is The Girl From Udaipur, its enveloping wave motion punctuated by allusions to bhangra.

The orchestra lineup is just as epic as the music. The rest of the trumpet section includes Dave Guy, Taylor Haskins, Andy Bush, Carter Yasutake and Andy Gathercole. Ray Mason and Mark Patterson play trombones, with John Altieri on tuba. Matt Bauder, Ian Hendrickson-Smith, Aaron Heick and Cochemea Gastelum round out the sax section, with Charles Pillow on bass clarinet and alto flute. Sara Schoenbeck plays bassoon; Mauro Durante plays violin; Erik Friedlander plays cello. A revolving drum chair also features Homer Steinweiss and Daniel Freedman. In addition to the bandleader, Joe Martin also plays bass, with Mauro Refosco and Leon Michels on percussion.

Killer Ray Appleton’s New Album: Truth in Advertising

If you’re not working in a classical idiom, why would you want to make a record of other peoples’ music? To reinvent it? To document where you’re at musically? To capture a group you’re working with before everybody gets busy again and goes their separate ways? To have something available to sell as a souvenir after the show? Or maybe because you’ve got a group that’s just plain fun, and you think that making a record would be just as good a time as playing a gig. That more than anything seems to be the fuel that propels veteran drummer Killer Ray Appleton’s, um, killer new album Naptown Legacy, due out March 4 from Hollistic Music Works. He’s playing a couple of album release shows at the Jazz Standard on March 5 and 6 at 7:30 and 9:30 PM. If latin-flavored postbop at its most tuneful and entertaining, or bands like the Cookers, are your thing, this is for you.

The album title refers to Indianapolis, where Appleton got his start, mentored as a gradeschooler by Freddie Hubbard. That led to a long association with Wes Montgomery’s bassist brother Buddy, followed by a long career in Europe. Appleton now makes his home right here in New York; the band here includes Brian Lynch on trumpet, Ian Hendrickson-Smith on alto sax, Rick Germanson on piano, Todd Herbert on tenor sax, Robert Sabin on bass and Little Johnny Rivero on percussion.

They blaze into the album with a hard-charging take of Wes’s So Do It with blustery tenor and scampering piano, Lynch taking it to a nonchalant crescendo. Hubbard’s Backlash gets reinvented as a stormy guaguanco groove pulsing along on the wings of Appleton’s cumulo-nimbus cymbals. They reinvent Johnny Mercer’s Out of This World as a slinky cha-cha with lively intertwined horns and a long, bobbing, weaving Germanson solo. Melvin Rhyne’s Bamboo gets a similarly sly, shuffling, smoldering workout.

Lynch’s arrangement of Flamingo is expansive, with a stagger-step rhythm to keep things lively, and lyrical tenor and trumpet solos. Their take of Hubbard’s Luana begins as a noir shuffle and never loses sight of that even as the horns and then the piano springboard off it in turn. After a hot, horn-driven, swinging romp through JJ Johnson’s Fatback, guest guitarist Peter Bernstein takes his time warmly and pensively on a solo version of Wes Montgomery’s Quiet Thing, an unusual and welcome interlude on an album by a drummer-led combo. Bernstein gets to pick up the pace on a concise version of another Wes tune, Twisted Blues, a bit later on.

They elevate Norman Luboff’s Yellow Bird to the level of the rest of the material with Appleton’s clenched-teeth aggression on the cymbals and toms, Germanson moving from edgy modality to an acerbic, insistent gleam. The albums winds up on an unexpectedly brooding note with Maybe September that offers a nod to Tommy Flanagan, although the gorgeously morose solo here is from Herbert rather than the trumpet. Crank this album after a long day at work, throw the windows wide open, make your neighbors happy too.