Ageless Jazz Vocal Icon Sheila Jordan Makes an Auspicious, Intimate Brooklyn Appearance
That singer Sheila Jordan is still active, and undiminished at 93 years old, is impressive enough. That she has the guts to release a live album is even more so. And she doesn’t restrict herself to Manhattan gigs. She’s playing the album release show for her new one Live at Mezzrow – streaming at Bandcamp – at Bar Bayeux in Crown Heights on April 12, with sets at 8 and 9:30 PM. Not only is she fronting a first- class, similarly lyrical band – Jacob Sacks on piano, David Ambrosio on bass and Vinnie Sperrazza on drums – but this is also a chance for you to see a legend for the price of, say, ten bucks in the tip bucket. Get there early if you’re going.
Jordan’s supporting cast on the live album is also simpatico: Alan Broadbent, with his signature low-key High Romantic style, proves to be an ideal choice of pianist, while her longtime collaborator, bassist Harvie S takes charge of the swing. And Jordan’s banter with the crowd and her bandmates is priceless. They open with a wintry take of Bird Alone: Jordan’s interpretation of the line about “flying over troubled ground” has depth beyond words. Just listen for enlightenment.
She has expert fun with her steady horn voicings as she scats her way through a couple of verses of The Touch of Your Lips Broadbent goes walking through the stygian lows to hold down the fort during a mutedly dancing bass solo.
The two instrumentalists scamper through a precise take of What Is This Thing Called Love until the bass takes the song unexpectedly into the shadows. Jordan then returns to stage for The Bird and Confirmation. The bass-and-vocal duet midway through the Charlie Parker tune, and the way the bandleader holds fast, just a hair behind the beat, gives new meaning to the world “timeless.”
She slows down with Look For the Silver Lining, working a vibrato wide enough to drive a truck through – and those overtones when she goes up the scale will give you chills. There’s another bass-and-vocal duet to open Falling in Love With Love, along with some classic Jordan messing with the beat and a spiraling, lyrical Broadbent solo.
The trio give Baltimore Oriole a shadowy Brecht/Weill swing, then hit a slinky bossa groove for I Concentrate on You: Jordan can still stretch out those melismas like few others. Then the band take Blue and Green by themselves, from a languid, summery atmosphere to an unexpectedly Twin Peaks crescendo to set up Autumn in New York. Which is the high point of the show, Jordan’s shivery, bittersweet delivery and Broadbent’s occasional noir bolero accent giving way to a genuine hope-against-hope and an ending that’s the most unexpected moment of many.
They close the show with an understatedly triumphant take of Lucky to Be Me – the moment where Jordan calls out the guy who’s on his phone is worth the price of the whole record. And if you want to watch the show, there’s a video of the whole thing up at youtube.
Michael Formanek Plays a Richly Disquieting Brooklyn Album Release Show
Last night at Roulette, bassist Michael Formanek led his Drome Trio with reedman Chet Doxas and drummer Vinnie Sperrazza through two rewardingly acerbic sets to celebrate the release of their new album Were We Where We Were. That title opens up a floodgate of questions: do we romanticize the deeply flawed world we had before the March, 2020 fascist takeover? Are we out of the woods yet? Do Formanek’s stunningly vivid, persistently troubled compositions reflect a present danger? It’s hard to believe that this frequently haunting performance could be as simple as a band merely flexing their chops throughout a set of edgy and unselfconsciously profound new compositions.
Doxas opened the show solo with a simple but spine-tingling series of vaguely Armenian microtonal riffs, Sperrazza quickly rising from a loose-limbed pulse to an increasing storm, Formanek unperturbed at the center, leading the group subtly toward a steady sway as Doxas circled his way through a long, uneasy, Messiaenic passage. Formanek’s allusive solo bubbled and signaled a long, melancholy drift down to a suspenseful handoff to Sperrazza, who then channeled the spirits with a momentary shamanic break. The trio brought everything full circle at several times the energy.
That was just the first 25 minutes or so.
Doxas echoed Formanek’s phantasmagorically-tinged opening solo as Sperrazza’s drizzle gained force in the second number. Wary Jackie McLean-like sax phrases and wispy hints of vaudeville from Sperrazza followed. A coy, wispy sax-drum conversation set off a wistful, spacious solo from Doxas, who’d switched to clarinet. They ended cold.
Pianist Angelica Sanchez then joined them, choosing her spots to bound and ripple with a blithe Monklike swing in the first set’s closing number. Still, a disquiet persisted in her bell-like harmonies. Doxas took over with his muscular tenor lines, Formanek again an anchor with his insistent polyrhythms,
Sanchez opened the second set with an austere, somber solo, elevating to a clenched-teethed, close-harmonied intensity. It seemed she couldn’t wait to lighten the mood somewhat with a series of thorny rivulets. Doxas parsed the lower registers with a sinuous, Charlie Rouse-tinged solo, Formanek taking the song out on a fondly assertive note.
Next, the quartet danced through a catchy, Monkish swing fueled by Sperrazza’s subtle clave and Doxas’ smoky, insistent modal riffage. When he dropped out and Sanchez pulled the curtain back with a catchy if immutably melancholy solo, the effect was viscerally breathtaking.
The number after that made a good segue, with a more brooding chromaticism, through pulses and lulls. A wary mood persisted throughout, even the incisive Monkish riffage and syncopated bounce of the quartet’s concluding tune, with a tremoloing Doxas tenor solo and Sanchez’s eerily lingering incisions. Formanek plays in plenty of groups, but this might be the best of them all. Let’s hope this project continues.
The next jazz concert at Roulette is tomorrow night, Jan 26 at 8 PM, an epic performance where guitarist Joel Harrison leads five different ensembles including his Jazz Orchestra conducted by another fantastic composer, Erica Seguine, plus the New York Virtuoso Singers conducted by Harold Rosenbaum, plus the Alta String Quartet. You can get in for $25 in advance.
Catchy, Spare, Purposefully Playful New Jazz From Ember and Special Guest Orrin Evans
Ember play a very individualistic, catchy style of original jazz. It’s riff-driven, but it’s not toe-tapping oldtimey swing. Chordless jazz trios tend to busy up the rhythm section – which isn’t such a bad thing if they’re committed to saying something beyond self-indulgence – but saxophonist Caleb Curtis, bassist Noah Garabedian and drummer Vinnie Sperrazza are purposeful to the point of being minimalist. If you’re looking for jazz you can hum along to at a comfortable midtempo pace, this is your jam. Their debut album No One Is Any One is streaming at Sunnyside Records.
A slinky, funky, loopy bassline anchors a sparse, airily cheery melody in the opening track, Reanimation (Zombie Tune). Sperrazza opens that one with a simple beat that’s practically trip-hop. Garabedian is the one to introduce the second tune, Josephine and Daphne, with his steady, pulsing, syncopated chords before Curtis enters, cautiously building s allusively chromatic tune like a low-key JD Allen as Sperrazza colors the sound with his rimshots and frosty cymbals.
The trio step lightly through a stark minor-key oldtime gospel riff and variations in the title cut, Curtis again echoing Allen’s most successful, incisive adventures in the blues. Moody sax drifts over minimal bass and drum accents as the group make their way into the wryly and aptly titled Pilot Light, then Sperrazza signals that the kettle is on the boil and in a second the band bubble and the steam starts to rise.
Likewise, the drummer stirs up a slightly restrained, spiraling rumble in Glass House: Curtis’ irrepressible sense of humor is priceless here. Peace of Deoxygenated Sleep is not a sinister Covid hospital protocol metaphor but an unselfconsciously gorgeous undersea nocturne, Curtis echoing guest pianist Orrin Evans’ spacious, lingering. distantly Indian-tinged lines
Evans takes his time before he gets his sprightly clusters underway in Thomas, a Thomas Chapin homage, Curtis and Sperrazza driving the uneasy modalities as a polyrhythmic intensity simmers and then boils over. A Sperrazza composition, Graceful Without Grace reflects a Christian spiritual concept that serendipity is ours for the taking, a prescient observation in these apocalyptic times. It turns out to be a cheerfully swinging, playful number with stairstepping riffs and a droll game of hide-and-seek.
The next-to-last track, Chia-Sized Standing Desk is actually the furthest thing from cartoonish: this moody rainy-day improvisation is the album’s darkest interlude. They bring the album full circle with a cheerfully strutting shout-out to American Splendor legend Harvey Pekar.
Fun fact: the trio worked up much of the material on this record in Prospect Park. This no doubt would have been more fun if the decision to work alfresco had not been forced on them by the shuttering of indoor rehearsal spaces in the mass psychosis following the March 2020 global coup attempt. Desperate times, etc.
Ember’s next free-world gig is May 13 at 7:30 PM at the Other Side Gallery, 2011 Genesee St in Utica, New York; cover is $20/$10 stud. And Evans is playing a rare trio gig with Matthew Parrish on bass and Vince Ector on drums tonight, April 28 at Mezzrow, with sets at 10:30 and midnight. Cover is $25 at the door. It’s an intimate space: if you’re in the neighborhood, you might want to peek in and see if there’s room (the club doesn’t have a phone).
An Edgy, Entertaining New Album From Individualistic Jazz Cellist Hank Roberts
While thousands of New York artists were getting brain-drained out of this city, cellist Hank Roberts went against the current and came back. And quickly returned to being a ubiquitous presence at the adventurous edge of the New York jazz scene. His new album Science of Love reflects a particularly fertile period after his return here, recorded in 2017, but just out now and streaming at Sunnyside Records.
Roberts is an exceptionally versatile and purposeful player. Sometimes he’s part of the rhythm section, walking the changes like a bass player as he does early during the opening number, a careening swing tune that doesn’t take long to hit a colorfully haphazard dixieland-flavored raveup with a bubbling interweave from trombonist Brian Drye, clarinetist Mike McGinnis. pianist Jacob Sacks and violinist Dana Lyn over drummer Vinnie Sperrazza’s low-key groove. The rhythm drops out for a surreal freeze-frame tableau while Roberts picks up his bow for extra low-end resonance.
The album’s epic centerpiece is a fourteen-part suite titled G. It opens with a title track of sorts, Sperrazza’s altered latin groove quickly giving way to Sacks’ clusters and then a bright, anthemic theme from the rest of the band, which they take on a loose-limbed stroll with echoes of the Claudia Quintet.
Many of the suite’s segments are miniatures, akin to film set pieces. There’s a tongue-in-cheek, distantly suspenseful interlude, an uneasy, Satie-esque piano theme, and a cello/piano conversation that decays from austere steadiness to playful leaps and bounds. Roberts wafts uneasily over Sacks’ brooding minimalism and Sperrazza’s muted, scattershot snare in the fourth segment, Earth Sky Realms,
Part five, titled D23 pairs Roberts’ bluesy riffs against Lyn’s coy, jawharp-like accents and Sperrazza’s squirrelly shuffling as the harmonies grow denser and hazier. How funny is Levity Village? It’s more of an expectant, resonant string theme. The two brief passages afterward flit and dance acidically, then Roberts and Sacks pair off in a more wistful direction.
A wryly tiptoeing. deceptively catchy dance gives way to the GLC Magnetic Floating Stripper, a cheery quasi-match that shifts to more rhythmically unsettled terrain, McGinnis’ soprano sax bobbing and spiraling in a stormy sea of low midrange piano.
A lusciously lustrous, Ellingtonian theme introduces the suite’s practically thirteen-minute next-to-last section, which kicks off with a fondly lyrical trombone/piano duet, Roberts stepping in for Sacks with darkly sustained chords as Drye solos amiably. A shambling, undulating groove sets in as the music grows more dense yet also more agitated. Roberts’ solo, from stark acerbity to a little funk, is arguably the high point of the record. Anxious piano and cello trade off as Sperrazza rustles, then the whole group gets into the act. They close the suite on a surprisingly suspenseful note and then close the album with a rainy-day orchestral melody.
Roberts’ next gig is July 24 at the Fingerlakes Grassroots Festival upstate.
An Uneasy Treat From Noa Fort and Vinnie Sperrazza
The new short album Small Cities by multi-keyboardist Noa Fort and drummer Vinnie Sperrazza – streaming at Bandcamp – is a real change of pace for both of them because it’s so minimalist. The centerpiece, Only Happy When I’m Haunted, is the real showstopper here. Bookended by a wry drum solo, and a final, playful vocal-and drum-tune, it features Fort on what sounds like an old Yamaha organ instead of her usual piano. And it’s creepy, with an almost-unhinged tension similar to Serena Jost’s improvisational work in a completely diffferent context.
All proceeds of purchases go to Planned Parenthood.
New Faces Bring Their Cutting-Edge Postbop Party to the Jazz Standard
Every so often a record label puts together a house band that actually works. Willie Dixon, Otis Spann and Fred Below made Chess what they were in the 50s – and got virtually nothing for it Twenty years later, Fania threw all their solo acts together into one mighty, sprawling salsa orchestra. These days, there’s the Mack Avenue Super Band, and most recently, Posi-Tone Records’ New Faces, a serendipitously edgy lineup of rising star New York jazz talent. Tenor saxophonist Roxy Coss just released The Future Is Female, a brooding broadside that might be the best jazz album of 2018. Vinnie Sperrazza, who could be the best New York jazz drummer not named Rudy Royston, holds fort behind the kit in tandem with ubiquitous bassist Peter Brendler. The reliably ambitious Behn Gillece plays vibraphone, joined by Theo Hill on piano and Josh Lawrence on trumpet. They’re playing the album release show for their aptly titled debut, Straight Forward – streaming at Posi-Tone – at the Jazz Standard this July 25, with sets at 7:30 and 9:30 PM. Cover is $25.
Wtth two exceptions, the compositions are all by members of the Posi-Tone family. The group open with Jon Davis’ bitingly swinging Happy Juice, setting the stage with only slightly restrained jubilance amid harmonic dualities between vibes and piano and also the horns. Lots of contrast between upbeat solos and a darker undercurrent.
Gillece contributes three tunes. The first, Down the Pike is truth in advertising, a briskly shuffling motorway theme lit up by sparkling vibes and piano, judicious sax and trumpet spirals. Vortex has a lustre that rises from the writer’s subdued, lingering intro with hints of Brazil, both Coss and Gillece maintaining an enigmatic edge throughout expansive solos. The last number, Follow Suit is a platform for scurrying soloing in turn over Sperrazza’s counterintuitive charge.
Lawrence is represented by two numbers. He infuses the briskly pulsing Hush Puppy with volleys and glissandos, playing with a mute, echoed by the rest of the band. Frederico, a coyly shadowy cha-cha, is the album’s funnest track: the relaxed/uptight tension between Gillece and Hill is a hoot.
Brian Charette’s West Village is a comfortable, tourist-free stroll – a wish song, maybe? – with wistful muted work from Lawrence and nimble pointillisms from Gillece. With Lawrence in cozily jubilant mode, I’m OK, by Art Hirahara has the feel of a late Louis Armstrong number. Preachin’, by Jared Gold – who like Charette has really developed a brand-new vernacular for the organ – has a laid-back gospel-inspired swing. It’s the big hum-along here.
No matter how many distractions the soloists provide in a rather cinematic take of Herbie Hancock’s King Cobra, Hill’s piano is relentless. And Edwing’s Delilah Was a Libra offers a vampy platform for solos as well. If you missed the days when jazz was urban America’s default party music – and most of us did – this is for you.
Stephanie Chou’s Chinese Jazz Shifts the Paradigm at Lincoln Center
Lincoln Center booked Stephanie Chou and her quartet to celebrate International Women’s Day. They couldn’t have made a more imaginative choice. Chou is a strong singer with an unadorned mezzo-soprano, a strong saxophonist and a brilliantly individualistic composer who’s shifting the paradigm, blending Chinese themes from over the centuries with jazz, classical and more than a little rock in places. Her show last night drew heavily from her latest, innovative album, Asymptote. Her music is relevant, and lyrical, and amazingly eclectic, typical of the programming here lately.
The concert began with Isamu McGregor’s pointillistic, twinkling upper-register piano, joined by Andy Lin’s stark erhu fiddle. Then in a split second he picked up his viola and plucked out a spiky pizzicato riff before returning to the erhu as In the Moon You’ll See My Heart, a new version of the famous 1970s Teresa Teng Chinese pop hit, picked up steam.
Chou picked up her alto sax for General’s Command, reinventing an old Fujianese zither song as hard-hitting, kinetic postbop with more than a hint of gospel, Lin’s violin adding shivery ambience behind Chou’s calm, resolute melody.
“We’re gonna switch gears a little bit,” the college math major and bandleader explained, introducing the lustrous title cut from the new album. “The more you look the less you really see,” she sang: the enveloping, enigmatic sweep of the sax, viola, piano and drummer Vinnie Sperrazza’s muted mallets on the toms dovetailed with the philosophical paradox it alludes to, two lines converging infinitely but never reaching the same point.
Quiet Night Thought – a tropically-tinged setting of a Li Bai poem – followed a similarly lush, distantly brooding nocturnal tangent, Chou singing in Chinese. Then they switched gears again: Lin’ s solo version of an old folk song about birds flutttered, and chirped ,and soared, but with a fluidity that would make any feathered friend jealous.
Chou illustrated Odysseus’ arduous journey home to his true love with Penelope, a haunting, crescendoing backbeat rock ballad fueled by Lin’s aching viola and a spiraling, smoky sax solo. It would have been a huge radio hit for an artsy band like the Alan Parsons Project thirty years ago.
Chou returned to Chinese with her vocals in Making Tofu – inspired by a funny proverb about an only slightly less arduous process – a moody jazz waltz with a gorgeous, sternly crescendoing meteor shower of a piano solo and ominously modal sax work. Who knew so much energy was required to make those innocuous little cubes!
She led the crowd in a Chinese tongue-twister – the gist of it was, “If you eat grapes you spit out the peel, if you don’t eat grapes then you don’t” – then scatted it as Sperrazza rattled his toms and woodblock. She got serious again with the somberly verdant, astringently crescendoing tonalities of In the Forest, inspired by Johann Stolting, a 19th scientist turned hermit and something of a tragic character in her Irvington, New York hometown
Chou’s latest project explores the struggles of the women forced into prostitution by the Japanese in World War II. The world premiere of Manchurian Girl, a reworking of a 1938 Chinese pop song, had a sardonic martial beat: the longing and disillusion in Chou’s voice was visceral and transcended any linguistic limitations. She followed with a dramatic ballad, McGregor’s lingering glitter contrasting with Lin’s insistent attack and closed with a brief tone poem of sorts, part Debussy and part stately Chinese folk.
The next jazz show at Lincoln Center the atrium space on Broadway just north of 62nd St. is an especially amazing one, with ageless latin jazz piano icon Eddie Palmieri and his band on March 16 at 7:30 PM The show is free so get there early or else.
Smart Balkan-Tinged Tunesmithing and Improvisation from the Ben Holmes Quartet
Trumpeter Ben Holmes’ Quartet is one of those great bands that defies categorization. Rhythmically, they are most defnitely a jazz group; melodically, they encompass everything from Balkan music, to klezmer, to a cinematic sensibility, with plenty of improvisation and elements of both the high Romantic and the avant garde. Over the past couple of years, what began as a trio has expanded to a a quartet with trombonist Curtis Hasselbring (who’s got a typically wry, witty album of his own due out momentarily from Cuneiform), Matt Pavolka on bass and Vinnie Sperrazza on drums.The group’s album Anvil of the Lord – Holmes’ second as a leader, just out from Skirl – doesn’t hammer anywhere near as hard as the the title suggests, but it is a mighty intriguing listen. Holmes has a fondness for shuffle beats along with impeccable tonal control, from an ambered gleam to rustic and gravelly, depending on context, adding tantalizing Eastern European spice to his warmly expansive melodies. Throughout the album, improvisation is drivem by a commitment to judicious exploration rather than anything remotely approaching a squawking free-for-all.
A Doodle For Rhapsody, a pensively altered klezmer shuffle anchored by Pavolka’s insistently suspenseful pedalpoint and tense, terse rising lines opens the album. Hasselbring brings a characteristic wryly bubbling touch to his firsr solo, shadowing Holmes on the way out. Magic Mondays waltzes along casually, Sperazza taking charge as the horn harmonies fall away for a similarly matter-of-fact, lyrical Holmes solo. The deceptively catchy Moving Like A Ghost shuffles and slips between minors and majors, with a transluscent, crystalline solo from Holmes, Pavolka’s restless bounce underpinning the horns’ moodily rising lines and Sperrazza’s misterioso cymbals.
Kingston isn’t a reggae song but a rather wistful waltz, Holmes using just the faintest touch of a mute as he shifts from pensive to assertive, the band swirling up a stew as Hasselbring brings in southern-tinged heat. It’s one of many instances where holding the center is left to the bass while Sperrazza supplies color, in this case a nebulous cymbal ambience.
Otessianek hints at bossa nova as Pavolka and Hasselbring come together and then methodically take it into livelier klezmer territory over a hypnotic bass vamp. The title track opens with a tongue-in-cheek, effervescent bass solo and then an animated duel from the horns as Sperrazza kicks the smoke machine into high gear.
The moody, atmospheric ballad Malach Hamovi has Pavolka channeling Chopineque morosity with his stately, tiptoeing lines, Sperrazza bringing the shuffle back via a sardonic march. Song For Creel Thompson is a rather austere midtempo swing number; the album ends with Nada Vs Armitage, the rhythm section walking the line between suspense and swing: and then the band goes for it wholehog with the nonchalant determination that permeates this expertly crafted collection. Holmes’ next gig with this unit is on March 12 at 7 PM at Barbes, setting the stage for Slavic Soul Party’s mighty brass assault.
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