Darkly Focused, Kinetic Themes and Improvisations From Pianist Mara Rosenbloom

Pianist Mara Rosenbloom picked the most politically-charged possible title for her new album: Respiration. From George Floyd to the average corporate employee struggling for oxygen through his or her muzzle, that’s the one thing – other than basic human rights – that the world didn’t get enough of in 2020. To be clear, Rosenbloom made this record with her trio, bassist Sean Conly and drummer Chad Taylor, just prior to the lockdown. She got her start as an elegantly tuneful composer and bandleader, has very eclectic credits as a sidewoman and has drifted further into the more adventurous reaches of pure improvisation in the last couple of years.

The album – streaming at Bandcamp – doesn’t have the raw, feral intensity of what’s been her career-defining release so far, 2016’s Prairie Burn. It’s more somber and concise than viscerally crushing, if just as tuneful – as you would expect, with an intro based on a theme by the iconic Amina Claudine Myers. That turns out to be a loopy little latin-tinged thing with subtle accents from the bass.

Things pick up quickly from there with The Choo, which is just plain gorgeous. Rosenbloom’s warmly insistent, gospel-tinged lefthand anchors an increasingly anthemic soul song without words set to a muted shuffle beat, which she takes it down to a long, spare, summery, mostly solo outro.

The group improvise a lingering yet rhythmic transition aptly titled Daydream into a duskily otherworldly, rubato take of Caravan mashed up with Connie’s Groove, a similarly enigmatic, dancing Connie Crothers homage.

She keeps the uneasy modaliaties going in Uncertain Bird, veering in and out of purist, darkly ambered blues as the rhythm section kick things around, down to a tantalizingly fleeting, ghostly interlude and then back as an altered waltz. In The Ballad for Carolyn Trousers (Carol in Trousers), Rosenbloom skirts a famous Chopin theme and makes it vastly more lighthearted, once again blending in the blues over an allusive 3/4 groove.

Conly breaks out his bow and Taylor tumbles mutedly while the bandleader builds haunting, spacious minor-key lustre in their take of the spiritual Have Mercy Upon Us: her relentless, minimalist mantra of an outro is arguably the high point of the album.

She returns to the album’s opening circularity in Ramblin’ on Her Mind, inspired by the Lightnin’ Hopkins version of the blues standard. To close the record, Rosenbloom draws the band back into Caravan as a saturnine march out. You are going to see this on a lot of best-of-2020 pages this year.

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Mara Rosenbloom’s Improvisations Draw Darkly on Avian Inspiration

Growing up on the Wisconsin prairie, pianist Mara Rosenbloom became an astute observer of nature. Her latest trio album Flyways: Murmurations– streaming at Spotify – looks to the migratory patterns of birds not only as a metaphor for jazz improvisation, but also for what humans can learn from them in general. Rosenbloom draws particular inspiration from how starlings interact in flight, operating in subgroups within a flock and changing leaders periodically. Where Rosenbloom’s previous trio album Prairie Burn was absolutely incendiary, this one is much easier to map: the focus is clearer and often rather dark.

Here she’s joined by Rashaan Carter on bass and Anais Maviel on vocals and percussion. They open with a brief jam of a prelude which worked out so well that Rosenbloom kept it for the record. Her fondness for the blues and disquieting modes immediately come to the forefront, echoed by a bubbling bass pulse. A second miniature is anchored by Maviel’s quasi trip-hop beat on her surdo drum, her wordless vocals soaring over her bandmates’ steady, circling clusters.

The album’s epic centerpiece is I Know What I Dreamed. Over almost forty minutes, the trio shift from warm, lingering minimalism to spare, neoromantic phrasing, portentous rumbles on everyone’s low end, jagged rises and dips between uneasily expanding circles and a rhythmic insistence that’s often as hypnotic as it is lyrical. The slow, swaying, Monk-inflected mood midway through is marvelous. Maviel takes poet Adrienne Rich’s text imagining a world free of exploitative relationships and negotiates between calm assurance and troubled melismatics that sometimes reach horror-stricken peaks.

“No one lives in this room without living through some kind of crimes,“ Maviel intones over Rosenbloom’s starkly repetitive vintage soul riffs in Dream of a Common Language, piano and bass drifting into an echoey wash. The album’s final bird takeoff themes revert to gracefully circling variations. Rosenbloom winds up the record with a saturnine solo version of These Foolish Things, dedicated to the late Connie Crothers, obviously an influence as far as improvisation is concerned.

Pianist Mara Rosenbloom Leads a Magically Hypnotic Trio at the Jazz Gallery

At the Jazz Gallery Wednesday night, there was a point where singer Anais Maviel unleashed a serrated, descending, diamond-cut glissando straight out of the Coltrane playbook while bassist Adam Lane pedaled a low E and pianist Mara Rosenbloom filled out the space between with a lingering lustre. Coltrane would have been hard-pressed to replicate that kind of precision. Maviel would do that later, and again the result was spine-tingling.

Rosenbloom came up with the night and the concept: to improvise on the theme of Adrienne Rich’s poem “I Know What I Dreamed.” It’s part of a suite loosely exploring the possibilities of love without exploitation. A challenge, musically or otherwise, under ordinary circumstances; more so by far in the post-2016 election era. To what degree did the music reflect that struggle?

Maviel did the heavy lifting and made it seem effortless, even when pushing the limits of her extended technique via meticulously articulated sputters, playful detours toward scatting or building an accusatory mantra with the poem’s title. Meanwhile, without missing a beat – literally  – she played taut polyrhythms on a tom-tom, whether with many shades of boomy grey or a rat-a-tat on the hardware. Was this a cautionary tale to hold onto our dreams lest they be stolen by the trumpies and their dream police? Maybe.

Lane was the center of the storm, whether pulling elegantly against Rosenbloom’s lingering center, bowing stygian washes or pulsing higher up the neck over the piano’s dense but sparkling chordal washes. Rosenbloom didn’t reach for the churning firestorm of her most recent album Prairie Burn, instead orchestrating what seemed to be very Indian-inspired themes. Has she been hanging with the Brooklyn Raga Massive? What a great collaboration that would be.

She opened with a classy, distantly bluesy Gershwinesque resonance and grew much more minimalist early on, with judiciously exploratory righthand against a steady river from the left. Tersely and methodically, she directed a series of wavelike crescendos, Maviel the wild card who’d push one over the edge without a split-second warning. Bass and piano were always there to catch it in a reflecting pool and then bring it to shore: sympatico teamwork as unexploitative love? Rosenbloom finally encored with a solo piece that reverted to echoes of both Gershwin as well as earlier, deeper southern blues, in a Matthew Shipp vein.

There aren’t any upcoming shows by this auspicious trio, but Rosenbloom will be at I-Beam on on Aug 11 at 8:30 PM with Guillermo Gregorio on clarinet and Omar Tamez on guitar; cover is $15. Maviel is at the Freedom Music Fest in Copenhagen, solo, on Aug 31.

Potential Fireworks at the Jazz Gallery This Wednesday

This Wednesday night, Aug 1 there’s an especially auspicious show at the Jazz Gallery for people who like adventurous but purposefully tuneful improvisation. Pianist Mara Rosenbloom, whose aptly titled trio album Prairie Burn ranked high among the best jazz albums of 2016, leads an unusual trio with singer/percussionist Anais Maviel and bassist Adam Lane. It’s an especially interesting lineup considering that Rosenbloom’s work, prior to that incendiary release, leaned toward Sylvie Courvoisier-esque elegance. Maviel is a similarly purposeful improviser and shares that low-key sensibility: contrasts in styles may create some memorable fireworks at this gig. They’ll be exploring themes inspired by Adrienne Rich poetry. Sets are at 7:30 and 9:30 PM; cover is $15.

Maviel’s latest album, spelled hOUle, is streaming at Bandcamp. The song titles are in the multilingual Maviel’s native French. Much of the music sounds ancient, although it may be completely improvised. There’s a shamanic, hypnotic quality to her spare, blues-infused melodies, just wordless vocals and percussion. It’s a more direct and somewhat darker counterpart to Sofia Rei’s playful adventures in vocalese.

The first track, Animots contrasts Maviel’s blithe, blippy scat-like delivery with a boomy, staggered, gnawa-esque beat. She begins the almost thirteen-minute epic Blues Feraille with nuanced variations on a simple minor-key riff with echoes of 19th century African-American gospel. From there she subtly shifts to uneasy chromatics as the rhythm coalesces, then goes in a sunnier but similarly hypnotic direction before bringing the music full circle with a muted suspense.

Bois, Or (Wood, Gold) #2, for vocals, bell and frame drum is quieter, more spacious, veering in and out of hypnotic rhythms. Scat-style vocals also take centerstage in the more spare, kinetic variations of the next track, Bois, Or #1. Le Vent (The Wind), a bodymusic piece, has a leaping, Nordic-tinged melody.

The album’s most trancey number is Gens de la Mer (Sea People) #1. Gens de la Mer #3, the album’s closing cut, features some neat implied melody and Maviel’s most dynamically varied delivery: it’s less watery than a series of sea breezes. This is good rainy-day chillout album.

Emma Grace Stephenson Brings Her Dynamic Piano Songcraft to Gowanus This Weekend

If state-of-the-art tuneful songcraft is your thing, the place to be this weekend is at Shapeshifter Lab on April 29 at 7 PM where brilliantly eclectic Australian pianist and singer Emma Grace Stephenson opens a fantastic triplebill, leading a trio with a surprise mystery guest singer (the venue says it’s Kristin Berardi). Afterward at a little after 8 another pianist, Richard Sussman leads his sweeping, enveloping allstar Sextet, which includes Tim Hagans on trumpet; Rich Perry on tenor sax and Zach Brock on violin. Then at 9:30 by the Notet with saxophonist Jeremy Udden, trombonist JC Sanford, guitarist Andrew Green and guests playing he album release show for their new one.

Stephenson is an artist who rightfully could headline a bill like this. She’s an extraordinarily vivid composer whose work gravitates toward the dark side. Her greatest achievement so far is probably her work with the Hieronymus Trio, whose 2016 album is a high-water mark in recent noir cinematic jazz. But she’s also a songwriter, and has a plaintively dynamic new album, Where the Rest of the World Begins, with them and singer Gian Slater, due out soon but not yet up at her music page.

Maybe coincidentally, the opening track, Crows Will Still Fly comes across as a more rhythmically tricky take on the same kind of moody parlor pop that Stephenson’s fellow Oz songwriter Greta Gertler Gold has perfected over the past decade or so. Slater’s airy, expressive high soprano is a cross between Gertler Gold and Minnie Riperton, but more misty than either singer. The lithe bass and drums of Nick Henderson and Oliver Nelson push the song into a bright, triumphant clearing for Slater’s scatting; then Stephenson follows with a similarly crescendoing piano solo. “With great joy comes great sorrow” is the theme.

Song For My Piano is a wry, saloon blues-love ballad: “While you throw stones in the water, blowing my cover, who am I kidding?” Slater wants to know; then the bandleader goes for a cautiously rippling spiral of a solo. As a pianist, Stephenson brings to mind Mara Rosenbloom’s blend of neoromantic gleam and brushfire improvisation.

If the Sun Made a Choice has a jaunty Dawn Oberg-like bounce and an imagistic lyric pondering the pitfalls of narrow, dualistic thinking. Rising out of purposeful chords and washes of cymbals, Love Is Patient is much more expansive, even rubato in places: ”Always in the present tense with every sense, do less, live more,” Slater cajoles.

Stephenson switches to Rhodes, then eventually moves back to the grand piano for Going In Circles. an unlikely but successful mashup of artsy ELO-style pop, 70s soul and trickily metric, tightly  unspooling Philip Glass-ine melody. The final cut is the epic title track, which takes a turn in the brooding direction of the trio’s previous album. Stephenson opens it spaciously and expands from there with her rippling water imagery:

An endless flow of useless thoughts and consequent sensations
Can govern every step we take filling us with trepidation
But we are not the thoughts within nor just an empty vessel…

From there a magically misterioso drum solo and Stephenson’s pointillistic, music-box-like solo punctuate this poetic meditation on impermanence and change. Lots to sink your ears into here from a fearlessly individualistic talent who defies easy categorization.

Pianist Mara Rosenbloom Makes a Fiery Statement With Her Incendiary New Trio Album

Mara Rosenbloom‘s first two albums showcase an elegance and melodicism that compares to Sylvie Courvoisier. Where Courvoisier veers off toward the avant garde, Rosenbloom is more likely to edge toward hard bop, no surprise considering that she has Darius Jones on alto sax as a member of her long-running quartet. But her new trio album, Prairie Burn, with bassist Sean Conly and drummer Chad Taylor – streaming at Spotify – is her quantum leap into greatness. An absoutely feral, largely improvisational suite, it’s essentially about playing with fire, something Rosenbloom turns out to be very, very good at. She and the trio will be setting a few things ablaze at her birthday show on Dec 15 at around 9 at Greenwich House Music School. As a bonus, Conly opens the night at 7:30 with his Re:Action+1 with Michaël Attias and Tony Malaby on saxes, Kris Davis on piano and Gerald Cleaver on drums. Cover is $15/$12 stud/srs.

Controlled burns of pastures and plains are nothing new: take the coastal route to Boston in the fall and you may see one or two in progress. But they’re a lot more dramatic at the edge of the Great Plains where the Wisconsin-born Rosenbloom grew up than they are here…and obviously left a mark on her Recorded in a single four-hour session at Brooklyn’s legendary Systems Two, the album captures both an unbridled ferocity and a remarkable chemistry honed in concert over the course of a year’s worth of gigs.

The result is a fearless, often feral yet extremely intimate and highly improvised performance. What might be most impressive about this is that it’s a true trio effort. Just as JD Allen does with Gregg August and Rudy Royston, Rosenbloom puts her rhythm section on equal footing with her own instrument. Taylor is just as much a colorist, and Conly as much a part of the melody as the rhythm – and Rosenbloom completes that rhythm section as much as she drives the harmonic balance. The opening number, Brush Fire (An Improvised Overture) rises apprehensively with bowed  bass in tandem with Taylor’s increasingly tense, spiraling drums, then calms, Conly steady at the center as the band converges and diverges, Rosenbloom’s dynamic attack embodying elements of 70s ECM, dusky 20s blues, percussive Jason Moran-style insistence, spare gospel-tinged chords and glistening melody. Taylor’s bristling, sparely snare-driven pulse indicate that this is a fire that won’t go out anytime soon

The four-part Prairie Burn suite opens with Red-Winged Blackbird, a jaunty, balletesque pastoral jazz theme based on a popular, playfully joshing rhyme from Rosenbloom’s childhood. The trio expands it to a similar percussive intensity with stairstepping crescendos that sometimes allude to and sometimes directly channel the deep blues that Rosenbloom has immersed herself in most recently. Her cleverly vamping interlude gives Taylor a chance to cut loose, and then turn it over to Conly for some solo comic relief

From there the trio segues into the second segment, aptly titled Turbulence, a tightly bustlning opening interlude giving way to harder-hiting pastoral variations. Conly picks up Rosenbloom’s looping triplets as the pianist’s methodical, kinetically chordal drive shifts around the center. After they wind down to a murky, allusively ominous solo piano interlude, the bandleader springboards off it for terse, ruggedly ambered blues, her uneasily looping lefthand anchoring sternly balletesque, Russian-tinged varations.

Part 3, Work! begins with ruggedly cyclical spin on the earlier triplet theme, Taylor giving it a wry clave, descending to a stern, Monk-like solo interlude and then a long, slow upward drive. The suite concludes with its fourth segment, Songs from the Ground, slowly coalescing from a darkly lingering nocturnal solo piano intro to a spare, resonant gospel-tinged 6/8 riff and moves outward from there, Taylor prowling around the border with increased agitation and driving it upward. Conly’s spare, wistfully bowed phrases deliver to Rosenbloom, who ends it on a note of hope and renewal.

The album’s two final tracks are a blues and a standard. The first is Rosenbloom’s epic take of John Lee Hooker’s I Rolled and I Tumbled. Like Hooker, Rosenbloom takes her time, slowly developing a terse lefthand groove, building intensity with her judicious but assertive righthand chordal attack. She concludes the album by reinventing There Will Never Be Another You as a blues-infused, angst-fueled lament. Mirroring her approach to her own suite here, she chooses to end it sweetly. Count this as one of the ten best jazz albums of the year (you can see all of this blog’s picks when they’re published by NPR).

Thoughtful, Tunefully Arranged Piano Jazz from Mara Rosenbloom

Pianist Mara Rosenbloom’s latest album Songs from the Ground is elegant and purposefuly crafted, with recurrent, sonata-like thematic variations. But there’s a tension here, intentional or not. Alto saxophonist Darius Jones is a hard bop guy: brevity is not necessarily his thing. Rosenbloom is judicious to a fault and anything but showy: she’s all about the tunes. Sometimes that dichotomy provides contrast; in places, it’s jarring. Bassist Sean Conly and drummer Nick Anderson team up for an understated, dancing bounce. True to the album title, everyone keeps things close to the ground: there’s a lot of space here, and nobody uses it more effectively than Rosenbloom.

She also contributes a couple of solo interludes. The album opens with Relief, which builds to a victoriously stately, chordally-fueled third-stream majesty; later, Rosenbloom improvises an insistently crescendoing miniature. The first ensemble track, Whistle Stop, looks back to 80s jazz-pop but with considerably more rhythmic sophistication. taking on a folk-dance pulse on the wings of Rosenbloom’s leaping chords. Small Finds works a simple, emphatic, looped piano figure in 7/4 against Jones’ balmy, gentle lines and eventually goes swinging. Likewise, Unison casts the sax as a string section against Rosenbloom’s circularity and then a marvelously judicious, spacious solo, Conly’s similarly considered solo kicking off an unexpectedly dusky modal drive out. Common Language cleverly takes a wry blues drag and makes an anthem out of it with an expansive but nimbly orchestrated series of exchanges between the sax and piano.

The album winds up with the title track, a rainy-day pastoral epic that rises slowly out of the mist, shifting tempos from a pretty straight-up jazz waltz to a 6/8 sway, Anderson’s tersely emphatic rolls finally signaling a release from restraint for a soaring Jones, moving up and down from carefully considered to a scampering dance. It’s ridiculously catchy, very accessible and just as smartly assembled and played. Not bad for somebody playing with a surgically reconstructed elbow. If it holds up – and let’s hope it does – maybe someday Mara Rosenbloom and Tommy John will have more in common than they realize.