An Intense Rarity and a Smalls Gig from Saxophonist Eric Alexander
In an era of generally dismal music memes, one of the rare auspicious developments has been the uptick in live albums. Live recording. which was the default setting until the mid-60s, makes sense on every level. One of the most enjoyable and rather unlikely ones of recent years is tenor saxophonist Eric Alexander’s trio album Leap of Faith, which came out in 2019 but never made it to the web. And that’s too bad, because it’s an extremely rare opportunity to hear Alexander cut loose in a chordless trio format, something he hardly ever does.
Having Johnathan Blake behind the drum kit and Doug Weiss on bass raises the potential for spontaneous combustion several notches throughout a playlist culled from a couple of memorably bristling shows at the Jazz Gallery in 2018. Alexander is leading a quintet at Smalls, which has no restrictions, on March 29 at 7:30 and 9 PM. Cover is $25 cash at the door, and who knows, maybe you might be able to pick up a hard copy of this rare gem.
The album’s opening number, Luquitas has tightly clustering, judiciously clustering riffs over allusive chromatic changes, set to a hovercraft swing, in a vintage JD Allen vein. Weiss racewalks as Blake keeps the gyroscope spinning, Alexander building to a galloping intensity, running brisk eights and then giving the drummer a tantalizingly brief chance to air out his big kit.
Likewise, in Mars, Alexander makes slashing, modal blues improbably based on an autotune Disney pop song, Weiss once again leading the charge, then signaling for subtle polyrhythms over Blake’s nimble, relentless flurries, up to a pointillistic solo sprint.
Alexander takes an even rarer turn on piano, playing spaciously in between darkly wafting sax phrases in Corazon Perdido, bass and drums building a suspenseful rumble behind him. Hard Blues has Alexander switching between sage, sober, distantly 19th century tinged minor riffage with occasional angst-fueled wails and some breathtaking duotone figures over a slowly bounding groove.
Brooding JD Allen-esque modalities return in Frenzy, the group rising from a rather ominously atmospheric intro to a tightly controlled inferno, Alexander again ranging from quicksilver spirals to sagaciously spaced accents.
Blake plays ghostly pianissimo flickers in Big Richard, a fond, wistful elegy for Alexander’s dad punctuated by breathtakingly articulate glissandoing motives. He parses enigmatic Bartok themes in Magyar, over Weiss’ moody, terse bowing. The trio close with the epic Second Impression, opening with a catchy Brubeck paraphrase before launching into a brisk swing, Alexander choosing his spots for uneasy modalities, methodical sprints and moments to throw coal in the engine of this metroliner express. This might be the best record Alexander has ever made, and he’s done a whole bunch of good ones
Saturday in the Park: Not the Fourth of July, But We’re Getting There
Late Saturday afternoon, the faint smell of honeysuckle filtered down across the elevation inside Central Park at around 82nd St. on the west side. There wasn’t a huge crowd there, but on low-hanging tree limbs, rock ledges, an outer ring of a bench and across the lawn, a silent and rapt audience had gathered to see tenor saxophonist Mark Turner leading a trio with Vicente Archer on bass and Johnathan Blake on drums. For free.
There was a gig bag for tips parked conspicuously in front of the band. This is what live music has come down to in New York in 2021: desperate times, desperate measures.
Before the lockdown, Turner would routinely sell out a weeklong stand at the Vanguard, and this crowd would have filled the joint. Until the Vanguard and whatever’s left of this city’s imperiled venues can legally reopen at capacity, we are at least blessed to have this weekend series which has been keeping hope alive…and keeping some of the world’s foremost jazz musicians at least somewhat employed.
Photographer Jimmy Katz’s Giant Step Arts not only sponsor the shows: they’re recording live albums here now. Genius move. People who missed this will be able to enjoy a series of defiantly strong performances made in the face of one kind of adversity after another. And future generations will hopefully take inspiration from the kind of heroism ordinary citizens displayed, staring down the absurdity of a global surveillance-state coup d’etat.
Sirens, helicopters and random chitchat notwithstanding, Katz, Turner and his band got a pleasantly and expertly conversational record out of this one. The saxophonist sussed out the scene: balmy atmosphere, gentle breeze, chill crowd and a set delayed about 45 minutes by a few droplets from an imposing but otherwise merciful bank of thunderclouds. He and the trio then explored a similar sense of calm, spiced with steady, lively, purposeful interplay.
Turner didn’t reach for the highs until about half an hour into the show, seemingly weighed evenly between canonic postbop hits and originals. But he did thrill the crowd with a real stunner of a downwardly spiraling, chromatically withering glissando in the first number. Archer followed shortly afterward with an undulating solo that grew grittier as Blake egged him on.
The second number established a pattern: Turner playing with a matter-of-fact lyricism, all subtle shades and understated optimism as Archer bubbled and grew slinkier while Blake added his usual blend of counterintuitive color and adrenaline. If you want to hear Johnathan Blake at his most mysterious – he’s done far more explosive shows as part of this series – this will be the record to get. Although his carnaval-esque groove on the third number eventually spilled over into exuberance, taking the whole band with him.
Giant Step Arts’ next concert in the park, this May 21 at 5 PM is an especially adventurous one, with cellist Marika Hughes‘ New String Quartet featuring Charlie Burnham on violin, Marvin Sewell on guitar and Rashaan Carter on bass. The show may be on the hill to the immediate north of the the 81st St. entrance, or in the space under the trees about a block north and east. Just follow the sound and you’ll find it.
A Sophisticated, Tuneful Album and a Central Park Show From Saxophonist Michael Thomas
There’s crushing irony in that saxophonist Michael Thomas‘ latest album, Natural Habitat – streaming at Sunnyside Records – is a shout-out to New York at a time when this city has never been more hostile to musicians. There’s even greater irony in that Thomas could leave the city he always gravitated toward, return to his native Florida and enjoy a busy career there. For the moment, he’s toughing it out here, and is playing one of Giant Step Arts‘ series of outdoor concerts on the west side of Central Park on April 25 at around 1 PM with a quartet featuring Michael Rodriguez on trumpet, Edward Perez on bass and Johnathan Blake on drums. Go in through the 81st St. entrance, follow the noise and walk uphill about a block north.
Blake also serves as the irrepressible force that propels this tuneful and ambitious album, alongside pianist Julian Shore and bassist Hans Glawischnig. Thomas opens it with Float, a vehicle for Shore’s rippling lyricism, assembled around a spiraling, syncopated, warmly pastoral sax theme.. The bandleader cuts loose with a long, triumphant solo as the backdrop grows more kinetic but also enigmatic.
He switches to bass clarinet to open the catchy jazz waltz Different Time with a sagely cheery solo, Glawischnig dancing between Shore’s spare chords. The band follow the goodnaturedly funky sway of First with the album’s similarly energetic, hard-swinging retro 60s title track and its slyly circling Blake solo.
Harbor, a pensive but anthemic ballad, takes its title from Boston Harbor, where Thomas was inspired to come up with the finishing touches. He saves his longest, optimistically crescendoing solo for Fourth, the rest of the band returning to a swaying, funk-tinged groove.
The album’s most dynamic number is Demise, at first built around a brooding, circling Shore riff, Thomas back on bass clarinet. Shore then switches to bubbly Rhodes for a cloudbusting solo as Blake gets more and more memorably restless.
Shore anchors No Words with his increasingly frenetic clusters, Thomas taking charge of bringing the sunlight in this time. The album winds up with Two Cities – a joint homage to Boston, where Thomas went to school, and New York as well, the contrast between the two reflected in the unsettled rhythm. Thomas picks this as the place to cut loose with his fieriest sax solo here as Blake pounces and prowls. If this is an accurate interpretation, Thomas sees Boston as having younger cred, while Gotham lives up to its vaunted sophistication. In actuality, neither New York nor Massachusetts are free states at the moment, and neither has much of a musical culture outside of speakeasies and clandestine venues…and public parks.
Everybody’s Jumping Out of Their Shoes to Play Central Park
What a pleasure it was to walk down the hill to the Central Park mall on Sunday afternoon without being assaulted by the tedious, computerized whoomp-whoomp that all the druggies would be dancing to in years past. Instead, the sounds were organic. A guy with an acoustic guitar. A bunch of southern kids having a picnic and listening to twangy Nashville pop on a big boombox. Ralph Williams, tall and resolute, running sinuous riffs solo on tenor sax as he’s been doing since forever at the far end of the benches by the bandshell. The Dark Sky Hustlers playing expertly slinky, vampy funk instrumentals in the middle of the mall.
And at the south end, four of the foremost musicians in jazz, busking.
OK, this wasn’t your typical busker gig. Photographer Jimmy Katz and his nonprofit Giant Step Arts began booking top-tier jazz talent there on the weekends last fall, as a way to help keep New York musicians solvent in the time since Andrew Cuomo criminalized live music venues. Katz is keeping the series going this year, working with drummer Nasheet Waits on the booking side and Jazz Generation’s Keyed Up program for sponsorship. Sunday’s allstar lineup was the kind that people pay a hundred dollars a ticket for at swanky festivals: Wayne Escoffery on tenor sax, Jeremy Pelt on trumpet, Dezron Douglas on bass and Johnathan Blake on drums. At the peak of the quartet’s first set, there might have been forty people scattered around the area. Where was everybody else? In the middle of the mall, watching the Dark Sky Hustlers. More about that later.
But even with the sonic competition from the Hustlers’ loud guitar amp, this was the place to be for a set of classics. The four players took a winding staircase up into Sonny Rollins’ East Broadway Rundown, Escoffery’s flurrying solo contrasting with Pelt’s spacious, allusively modal approach. The way Pelt shadowed Escoffery at halfspeed or thereabouts, as they wound it down to a brief drum solo, was the kind of sage, perfectly executed moment so many jazz fans have had to turn to albums and youtube clips to find over the past year.
The rest of the set underscored the group’s combined erudition, each a bandleader in his own right. By the time they’d made it halfway through a roughly ten-minute, hard-swinging, anthemically bluesy take of Joe Henderson’s Punjab, Blake was already getting hot, throwing elbows and jabbing when least expected. Kenny Dorham’s Short Story was more of a short novel, from a snazzy latin intro to swinging sizzle from Escoffery and Pelt and a rat-a-tat coda from Blake that he could have kept going for twice as long and everybody still would have wanted more. They closed with a ballad, If Ever I Would Leave You, the drummer immediately cracking the whip when it was apparent that the Strat across the way was drowning out the horns. When Douglas went to take a spare, plaintive solo, the guitar went silent: pure serendipity.
After the set was over, the Dark Sky Hustlers were still going, and it turned out that they were good at what they were doing: loopmusic, essentially. The Strat player has a deep bag of Memphis and New Orleans licks, and used them voluminously over one slowly undulating two-chord vamp after another, stashed away in his loop pedal.
Therein lies the joy and also the hazard of playing public spaces. The elephant in the room, of course, is Cuomo: if clubs were open at capacity, all of these musicians could continue their careers without jousting for sonic space. What’s most ironic here is that had the Dark Sky Hustlers known who was playing just a few hundred feet away, they might have joined the crowd. They’re a funk band; Johnathan Blake plays in Dr. Lonnie Smith‘s group. And there’s nobody funkier than him.
This spring’s lineup of jazz talent in the park is just as off the hook as this group. This coming Saturday, April 10 there’s a twinbill starting at noon with alto saxophonist Sarah Hanahan leading a trio with bassist Phil Norris and drummer Robert Lotreck followed at 1:30 by iconic free jazz bassist William Parker‘s Trio with Cooper-Moore plus Hamid Drake on percussion at Summit Rock in Seneca Village in Central Park – enter at 82nd St. on the west side. Hanahan and her trio return on Sunday the 11th at the same time, followed at 1:30 by intense tenor saxophonist Melissa Aldana leading hers with Pablo Menares on bass and Kush Abadey on drums. It’s not likely that there will be any funk bands to compete with up there.
The Data Lords Are No Match For the Rest of Us in Maria Schneider’s Visionary Magnum Opus
Imagine what Hitler could have done if Facebook and Instagram had existed in 1938. There wouldn’t have been a single Jew or Romany person left alive in Europe. Or any musicians, artists, writers, or member of the intelligentsia.
All genuine art is transgressive. And fascists don’t like people who disobey.
There are a lot of little Hitlers working for the Trace and Track Corps right now who are datamining Facebook, Instagram, and every other digital platform including private phones.
You do the math.
So it’s kind of a miracle that Maria Schneider has been able to release her new album Data Lords in the year of the lockdown. In a career where she’s been widely acknowledged as the foremost jazz composer since the 1990s, this is a magnum opus, her bravest and most musically ambitious release yet. And it ends optimistically. As Schneider sees it, the people – and the animals, and the lakes and the trees – are going to win this war.
It’s a double album, the first titled The Digital World, the second Our Natural World. Schneider grew up in Minnesota, an outdoorsy kid whose love and advocacy for nature remains a persistent theme throughout her work. That resonates more strongly than ever on the second disc.
The first is protest music on the highest level of artistic expression, with Shostakovian irony and defiant Mingus humor. Improvisation seems to play an even greater role than ever in Schneider’s work here, and her brilliant ensemble attack it with reckless abandon and attention to the most minute details. It would take a book to dissect each of these pieces.
The opening number is A World Lost. Reduced to lowest terms, it’s basically a one-chord jam. From Frank Kimbrough’s elegaic, modally circling piano and Jay Anderson’s somber bowed bass, drummer Johnathan Blake adds mutedly shamanistic color. The orchestra develops a chromatic menace anchored by the low reeds, Rich Perry’s hopeful, defiant tenor sax pulsing through what could be groupthink. Anderson signals a rise to a fullscale conflagration; Perry’s tumble out of the sky, shadowed by guitarist Ben Monder’s atmospheric lines, is one of the most stunning moments on the album. Is this a portrait of the innate feebleness of the data lords, whose machines have not liberated but disempowered them? Or is this the failure of the world to realize the sinister implications of digital media?
The sarcasm in Don’t Be Evil – you know, the Google motto – is savage to the extreme. The quirky intro hints that these dorks couldn’t hurt a fly – but wait! A folksy caricature grows more macabre, with stabbing horns and a spastic, tormented guitar solo as a marching lockstep develops. Trombonist Ryan Keberle plays momentary voice of reason, Kimbrough the gleefully evil architect of an empire of spies with his phantasmagorical ripples. This might be the best song Schneider ever wrote.
Although CQ CQ Is There Anybody There predates the lockdown, it could be a portrait of what Del Bigtree calls the “illuminati of clowns” behind it. This one’s particularly creepy. There’s a persistent rubato feel to a large proportion of this disc, and this song is a prime example, from acidically swooping atmospherics and a descent into the murk with guitar lurking just overhead. Tenor saxophonist Donny McCaslin provides ebullient contrast over the growl as Blake builds wave motion, then trumpeter Greg Gisbert and his pedal become a one-man cheer section for impending doom as the orchestra fall in and out of sync, until his shriek signals complete control. Those masks will never come off again.
Scott Robinson channels a vast range of emotions on baritone sax, from burbling contentedness to valve-ripping extended technique throughout Sputnik. Kimbrough introduces it somberly, then it becomes a contented deep-space theme. The way Schneider weaves the initial disquiet back in is nothing short of brilliant; the group bring it full circle. A 5G parable, maybe?
The album’s title track and centerpiece has a cold vindictiveness, from the glitchy electronic sarcasm of the intro, through an anxious flutter of individual voices as Blake circles his kit. Trumpeter Mike Rodriguez chooses his spots over a grim vamp, offers a guarded optimism but finally grows frantic. Could alto saxophonist Dave Pietro’s menacing chromatics and wobbly microtones over Kimbrough’s tinkle be a cartoonish take on a Bill Gates type? When everything completely and abruptly falls apart, leaving only glitches behind, Schneider leaves no doubt that the data lords are doomed – and as the rest of the record attests, there are better things ahead.
Our Natural World begins with Sanzenin, a steady, calmly pulsing anthem which could be a largescale Claudia Quintet piece with Gary Versace’s terse accordion at the center. Steve Wilson’s coy blippy soprano sax is joined by warmly rippling piano, followed by whimsical conversation between accordion and sax in the carefree Stone Song, a rubato samba with lots of quick staccato bursts from everybody
Kimbrough’s glistening, incisive chords introduce Look Up, trombonist Marshall Gilkes echoing that bright lyricism throughout several solos. Gospel allusions from the piano filter through the orchestra’s lustre: Schneider’s signature colors shine especially in the inventive harmonies between low and high brass. There’s a jaunty son jarocho bounce as it moves along, Versace’s accordion coming to the forefront once more.
Braided Together, the album’s shortest number, is a lustrously triumphant, anthemically pulsing pastoral jazz vehicle for fondly soaring alto from Pietro. Bluebird, the most epic track here, is a throwback to Schneider’s Concert in the Garden days, with Gil Evans sweep and expanse, a muscular rhythmic drive, Kimbrough fueling the upward climb. The rhythm section channel the Meters behind Wilson’s jubilant, blues-tinged alto sax; Versace leaps and spins like a seal in the water. The orchestra reach a blazing peak and then shuffle down to a fadeout
The Sun Waited For Me makes a benedictory coda, glistening highs mingling with burnished lows. Eventually, a soulful, increasingly funky ballad emerges, McCaslin’s tenor ratcheting up the energy. A career highlight from a group that also includes trumpeters Tony Kadleck and Nadje Nordhuis, trombonist Keith O’Quinn, and George Flynn on the bass trombone.
As you would expect, the web abounds with live performances from Schneider’s rich catalog; at present, this is not one of them. Schneider has had a long-running beef with youtube, and considering what’s happened this year, who can blame her. This is a treasure worth waiting for when it comes out on vinyl.
A Cinematic, Impactful, Insightfully Catchy New Album by Saxophonist Dave Pietro
Before the lockdown, music fans in New York had innumerable opportunities to see some of the best players in town work up their new albums in front of an audience. Watching the Dave Pietro Group run through a considerable portion of the picturesque, Ravel-inspired material on the saxophonist’s new record Hypersphere at a relatively intimate theatre show last year was a good omen – for the album at least. Fast forward to more than a year later: it’s out, it’s excellent and streaming at Bandcamp…and it’s illegal for the band to play that venue now. Feel like you’re living in communist China?
Pietro may be best known as a lyrical soloist and a first-call player for big bands, but he’s also a strong tunesmith with a sharp political awareness and a great sense of humor. He wrote the album’s opening track, Kakistocracy before the lockdown – yet, at a time when the corporate media have nothing but shrill masker paranoia on loop 24/7, it resonates even more potently. Over a brooding Gary Versace piano figure, he orchestrates a tense triangulation with trumpeter Alex Sipiagin and trombonist Ryan Keberle, the latter subtly ushering in a serpentine groove. Johnathan Blake’s insistent flurries behind the drum kit are another highlight; the final conversation between the horns is irresistibly funny.
Likewise, the early part of Pietro’s solo early on in Boulder Snowfall, which is more lustrously wary than wintry, Blake and bassist Johannes Weidenmueller adding bounce as the scene warms up to some triumphant flourishes from Versace.
Versace switches to organ for Gina, a lush, pillowy, catchy ballad which Pietro dedicates to his wife. The album’s title track, with its echo phrases and incisive Versace piano chords, makes a good segue. Sipiagin takes a flurrying first solo; Pietro bounces around at the top of his range; Blake’s colorful volleys drive it home.
Incandescent is exactly that, a triumphantly soaring and glimmering jazz pastorale of sorts. Pietro’s carefree but slightly smoky solo is matched by the other two horns in turn, exploratory and lyrical. Quantum Entanglement, a cha-cha with Versace opening on blippy electric piano, is a carefree platform for dancing sax and piano solos.
The understatedly moody, modally-tinged Tales of Mendacity has steadily wafting, distantly ominous harmonies and Pietro’s edgiest, most incisive solo here. The jaunty disco crescendo is suspiciously blithe: this would fit well in the Darcy James Argue catalog. Pietro closes the record with Orison: the pensively dancing bass solo is an unexpectedly cool way to open this bright chorale with its increasingly animated French Late Romantic-inspired atmosphere.
A Wildly Majestic New Double Live Album and a Vanguard Stand from High-Voltage, Individualistic Drummer/Composer Johnathan Blake
These days pretty much every phone can capture at least some of a concert in various degrees of dodgy audio or video. But what’s the likehlihood of being at a transcendent performance that ended up being released as a live album? For anybody who might regret missing out on drummer Johnathan Blake‘s transcendent, torrential trio performances with Chris Potter on tenor sax and Linda May Han Oh on bass at the Jazz Gallery earlier this year, good news! You can hear the group in all their dark, majestic, wickedly catchy glory on Blake’s marathon new double live album, Trion, streaming at Bandcamp. Blake has been on a creative tear this year: he’s making his Vanguard debut as a bandleader tonight, Dec 3 with his similarly exhilarating Pentad featuring Joel Ross on vibes and Immanuel Wilkins on tenor sax on a stand that continues through Dec 8, with sets at 8:30 and around 11. You might want to get there early because it’s going to be intense.
For anyone who might scowl snarkily at the idea of a seventeen-minute chordless jazz version of the Police’s Sychronicity I, you have to hear the album’s opening track – to be fair, the original is actually a decent new wave tune and fertile source material. The bandleader kicks it off with a judicious solo tour of the drumkit, like a tabla player making sure everything’s right: Blake’s unusually musical tuning instantly identifies him. All the other tracks here are as epic, if slightly shorter, i.e. around the ten-minute mark. If you want to kick back with an album that’s going to keep you up all night, this is it.
Potter playfully throws a spitball or two before launching into the tune head-on with the rhythm section tightly alongside. From there they motor along, leaving a lot of space and elbow room for Oh’s gritty propulsion, Blake’s adrenalizing outward expansion and Potter’s artful variations. The saxophonist teases the crowd until a searing trill in response to an evil Blake roll; Oh’s long solo has a remarkably austere, balletesque grace.
Oh introduces Trope, her lone composition here, with an expansive yet darkly terse, distantly Appalachian-tinged solo intro, taking the implied menace introduced by the Police tune to the next level; then Potter enters hazily over her warily pulsing chords, which will give you goosebumps. The rest is equal parts gorgeousness and latin-tinged gravitas, which Blake seizes on: it’s arguably the highlight of the night.
Likewise, Oh’s funky intro kicks off the scampering shuffle One for Honor, by Charles Fambrough, the bassist who took a young Blake under his wing early in his career in Philadelphia. This song without words is just about as catchy and unsettled, Potter working the unease of the passing tones for all they’re worth, up to an enveloping hailstorm of a Blake solo.
Blake’s first anthem on the album, High School Daze, will resonate with anyone who couldn’t wait to get the hell out” Potter channels soul-crushing tedium balanced by guarded hope and then playful defiance. Oh subtly runs a hip-hop-tinged loop; Blake makes a second-line groove out of a simple rap riff; then Oh takes a biting solo that brings to mind mid-70s Stevie Wonder. No Bebop Daddy – an incisively waltzing shout out to Donny McCaslin’s kid, who really knew what he didn’t want to hear on the morning drive to school – has a delicously dark, pointillistic Oh solo and a long climb to an aching, livewire Potter crescendo.
Tne second record also gets a solo Blake intro, the subtly leapfrogging Bedrum, leading into the first of the Potter ompositions, the bouncy, hypnotically crescendoing, vampy Good Hope, with a long climb to a mighty sax solo. His second tune is the warmly saturnine Eagle, Oh’s twilit, folksy riffs setting the stage for the saxophonist’s lyrical drift toward wary, modal JD Allen-esque intensity and back. The trio stay in a similar, slightly more carefree latin-tinged vein for a sprawling, impromptu encore of Charlie Parker’s Relaxing at the Camarillo.
The debut recording of the catchy but enigmatically shifting Blue Heart, by Blake’s dad – the distinctive and underrated jazz violinist John Blake Jr. – has a loose-limbed, syncopated strut and Potter’s most casually genial work here. The album’s final number is West Berkley Street, a jaunty shout-out to Blake’s hip-hop-infused childhood stomping ground. What a treat to be able to revisit such a magic couple of nights.
Thunderous Tunesmithing with Johnathan Blake’s Trio at the Jazz Gallery
What’s the likelihood that tenor sax powerhouse Chris Potter would find himself onstage with two other equally formidable tunesmiths? That happened last night at the Jazz Gallery, in an ecstatically pulsing, rumbling, thundering trio set with bassist Linda May Han Oh and drummer/bandleader Johnathan Blake.
Another way to look at it is to ask how recently a drummer-led, chordless trio sold out a major Manhattan jazz venue – which was also the case last night. The premise of photographer/engineer Jimmy Katz’s new non-profit Giant Step Arts’ new Jazz Gallery series, which Blake’s trio inaugurated over the past couple of evenings, is to provide ambitious, outside-the-box artists with “What a record label would have done for them in the 90s,” as Katz put it before the show. From a two-night stand, a bandleader gets professional quality audio, video, a press kit, a live album and cds to sell.
What Katz didn’t say is that back in the 90s, an awful lot of up-and-coming jazz composers were locked out of that establishment because they thought too far outside the box, so this is an auspicious development. The upcoming slate of performers is also auspicious: alto sax titan Rudresh Mahanthappa leading yet another new trio, and also trumpeter Jason Palmer leading a quartet with tenor saxophonist Mark Turner and bassist Ben Williams.
Let’s hope that all of last night’s first set makes it onto the live album! Drummers aren’t often known as tunesmiths, but from the very first judicious riffs of Blake’s toms, he had an anthem going: his drums are tuned to play very discernible, catchy melodies. From that jaunty intro he wove a cumulo-nimbus vortex of intricately articulated polyrhythms, calm and immutable in the center of a storm, often anchoring the music with a steady clave. Blake likes to ride the rims for extra color to balance out that looming undercurrent, another consistent source of entertainment throughout the band’s roughly hour and a half onstage.
There were a couple of moments early on where he’d jab on an insistent, crushing beat and Oh would jab right back. Otherwise, she played melodies, as she always does. She opened the night’s third number – a playful tune by one of Blake’s Philly mentors, based on a simple four-note descending progression – with what grew into a tropical fanfare of sorts. That echoed what Blake had done with his intro to Mary Had a Little Lamb earlier. Later she found herself walking a scale – but tossed that idea aside after barely a couple of bars. Cliches simply don’t exist in her world.
Potter was his usual self, playing endless volleys of terse, purist minor-key blues phrasing without once lapsing into anything remotely rote – Charlie Parker did the same thing, but without Potter’s relentless focus. And Potter really waited for his moments to unleash that legendary extended technique: a devious detour into duotones when Blake and Oh backed off for a moment during a catchy, subtly shapeshifting clave-fueled Blake number, and a smoldering coda of valve-grinding harmonics to wind it up.
Oh’s tune turned out to be the night’s most complex adventure, moving beyond slinky, circular phrases punctuated by bright bass cadenzas over Blake’s pummeling rollercoaster grooves, to bright yet uneasy vistas far beyond any standard A-B-C sectioning. The night’s catchiest tune was the enigmatically modal Blake waltz that wound up the set. The bandleader explained that he took his inspiration for that one from something that Donny McCaslin’s son said to from the backseat of the family car, in response to a Phil Schaap piece on WBGO: “No bebop, daddy!” It was easy to see how this resonated with Blake – he and the kid have the same affinity for a hook.
A Tuneful Two-Horn Postbop Effort from Saxophonist Stephane Spira
French-born, New York-based saxophonist Stephane Spira has an interesting backstory. An engineer by trade, he pursued his passion for jazz in wee-hours clubs in his native Paris before relocating to New York to play fulltime. His previous efforts in the studio have included collaborations with trumpeter Lionel Belmondo and pianist Giovanni Mirabassi. Spira’s fourth album as a bandleader, In Between, features more of the strikingly translucent, disarmingly catchy compositions that have characterized his work.
The performances here center around a tight harmonic interplay and lively, intuitive interaction between Spira and trombonist (and Steve Lacy collaborator) Glenn Ferris, anchored and spiced by a similarly integral rhythm section, Steve Wood on bass and Johnathan Blake on drums. There’s irony in the album title, inspired by the cosmopolitan dynamic of a Paris-born bandleader in NYC, and the American-born, Paris-based Ferris. As usual, Spira matches a terse lyricism to a slightly smoky tone on tenor sax and a similarly thoughtful, considered, Steve Lacy-inspired clarity on soprano, all the while engaging the rest of the band both rhythmically and melodically throughout a diverse mix of numbers that span the emotional spectrum. In addition to nine originals here, Spira radically reinvents Duke Ellington’s Reflections in D as a mystical tone poem before swinging it hard, and transforms the Baden Powell/Vincius de Moraes classic Samba en Preludio into a haunting dirge driven by Wood’s starkly funereal arco work. The album winds up on a cleverly humorous note with Grounds 4 Dismissal, Wood’s wry, historically allusive joust for bass and drums.
The album’s opening track, Cosmaner, wastes no time in setting the stage with a wickedly catchy shuffle theme that’s equal part Rio and New Orleans, with nifty handoffs from tenor to trombone and Wood’s bass filling in all the implied melody. Likewise, Glenntleman serves as a bright feature for Ferris’ bluesy soulfulness. Dawn in Manhattan gives the group a long launching pad to build from balmy ambience to a slinky implied clave underpinning Spira’s warmly casual soprano and Ferris’ sly, low-down lines. In the same vein, Ferris channels Wycliffe Gordon in laid-back, drolly acerbic mode on the chromatically-fueled In Transit, divergent horn voicings coalescing to a lively conversation before Wood shifts from hypnotically circular riffage to resonant atmospherics.
Spira offers a nod to Coltrane on Flight, with its unexpected rhythmic shifts and purposeful tenor work over Blake’s flurrying, colorful volleys. The vivid ballad A Special Place has Ferris elegantly leading the band out of lushly misty Brazilian ambience into a purist blues ballad, Blake again playing colorist with his misterioso brushwork, Spira adding his signature spacious, judiciously considered phrasing.
N.Y. Time, a kinetic jazz waltz, has Spira leading an allusively moody modal groove, Ferris adding an incisive solo before Blake takes it shuffling into the shadows. With its shifting counterrhythms and tight, purist horn harmonies, the album’s title track alludes to Monk without being derivative. And the aptly titled Classic juxtaposes a bluesy Wood solo with a neat horn chart that diverges and then regroups, up to a triumphantly emphatic chorus: it’s “in the tradition” without being overly reverential, a quality that in many ways defines Spira’s work.
Lucid Culture 