Recap: Best of 2011

Featuring Tiny Reviews of Best of 2011 Jazz Albums by:  Marcin Wasilewski Trio, Susana Santos Silva, Steven Lugerner, Francis Drake, Jean Lapouge, Omer Avital, and Fabrice Sotton.

*****

Hey.

So, I’m gonna briefly hit on some of the albums that were standouts for 2011.  There were a lot, and those are just the ones I know about, so this series may not end for awhile.  Tentatively, I’m thinking I’ll keep this series limited to seven tiny reviews per post, an album for every day of the week.

Let’s begin…

Marcin Wasilewski Trio – Faithful

This follow-up to the Marcin Wasilewski Trio’s 2008 release January doesn’t build anything different or wander off in strange new directions.  This is not a bad thing, though, because January was one of the 2008’s best.  Wasilewski’s sound on piano is sometimes introspective, sometimes meditative, and it rarely ever lifts a fist up in anger.  Slawomir Kurkiewicz is mostly a wallflower, but when he does step forward, the sound he attains in the spotlight is quite dramatic while also understated.  Michal Miskiewicz has a consistent pitter patter, like stones skipping over the water.

It’s a fine line between serene and sleepy, and Wasilewski has displayed a talent at keeping things interesting.  Even at its quietest moments, Faithful has a tiny fire lit under the composition that keeps the brain anchored on the tune.

Released on the ECM label.  Over an hour of serene modern piano trio jazz.  Jazz from Poland.

Available at Amazon: CD MP3

Susana Santos Silva – Devil’s Dress

The debut album for Susana Santos Silva‘s quintet was one of the more exciting developments of 2011.  Devil’s Dress is an exhilarating fusion of jazz and indie rock, replete with twisting melodies, surging guitar licks, percussion that seamlessly alternates between jazz and rock rhythms within the space of one tune, and just a fun vibe that brings out both the joy of jazz and the bop of rock.

Your album personnel:  Susana Santos Silva (trumpet), Zé Pedro Coelho (tenor sax), Andre Fernandes (guitar), Demian Cabaud (bass), and Marcos Cavaleiro (drums).

Santos’s sound on trumpet is so warm, even when she’s warping a melody into some indescribable shape.  I’ve been listening to this album since it came out in April, and I still find it as compelling and fun as the first time.  Fans of Ben Allison and Todd Sickafoose, who also employ inventive compositions to incorporate the sounds of rock and indie music into their tune, should take to Devil’s Dress pretty easily.

Released on the Toap label.

Here’s a link to a free download from the album on the AllAboutJazz site, courtesy of the artist.

Available at Amazon: MP3

Steven Lugerner – Narratives

Outstanding debut album by multi-reedist Steven Lugerner.  Leading a septet with an array of instruments consisting of alto & tenor & soprano sax, clarinet, trumpet, flute, guitar, piano, bass and drums, Lugerner tells a simple story with plenty of depth.  By eloquently stating the melody and returning to it throughout, he’s able to let the instruments loose to develop as much texture as they want, because the tunes keep coming back to that essential melody, like looking at a photo of home when life on the road grows too long.

Your album personnel:  Steven Lugerner (soprano & alto saxes, clarinets), Lucas Pino (tenor sax & flute), Itamar Borochov (trumpet & flugelhorn), Angelo Spagnolo (guitar), Glenn Zaleski (piano), Ross Gallagher (bass), and Michael W. Davis (drums).

It’s an aptly titled album, as the recording has the intimate feel of a good epic novel.  Lots of ebb and flow of emotional intensity.  The layering of sounds is just phenomenal, really keeps my attention wanting to linger on every detail.  Lugerner has a nice light touch on the sax and it serves him well as he binds all the various part of the ensemble together with his notes.  Has sort of a Guillermo Klein meets Brian Blade feel to it.

Narratives is Self-Produced.

Jazz from the Brooklyn scene.

A free track from the album is available at AllAboutJazz, courtesy of the artist.

Available to stream, and purchase, at the artist’s Bandcamp page.

Available at Amazon: CD

Francis Drake – Stories

Francis Drake is the trio name for musicians Max Frankl (classical, acoustic, and electric guitars), Max von Mosch (tenor & soprano sax, clarinet), Henning Sieverts (bass & cello).  On Stories, they’ve created an ambiance of intermittent sharp busts of sound in a quiet setting.  Like the wild chirping of birds just before dawn, Mosch’s reeds cry out in the darkness while Frankl’s guitar is a flash of motion seen between the trees and bushes nearby.  Sieverts is the darkness, especially when he lays thick cello lines over the sound of everything else.

Fans of modern releases on the ECM label will probably like this, as would fans of Christope Pays album Ellipse.  On the Double Moon Records label, fifty two minutes of modern jazz trio. Jazz from Germany.

Here’s where you can stream three songs from the album on Max’s site.

Available at Amazon: CD MP3

Jean Lapouge – Temporare

Some music just sounds pretty when all evidence indicates that it shouldn’t.  Jean Lapouge’s Temporare makes for an excellent Exhibit A.  Lapouge’s trio consists of his guitar, the trombone of Christiane Bopp, and the vibes of Christian Paboeuf (who also double on oboe on a couple tracks); not a typical jazz trio.  And the compositions don’t exactly bring it back wholly in the jazz tent.

There is a palpable tension in the harsh calls of Lapouge’s guitar against the skittering vibes, and against the backdrop of blaring trombone notes.  But then guitar grows gentle and the trombone is a friendly word in the ear and the vibes are bright and warm, and an odd serenity sets in.  As dreams can be both serene and terrifying, Temporare shows no inclination to draw a dividing line between the varied emotions this album evokes.

Lapouge, a founding member of the Noetra Collective (would fit right in with early ECM world-jazz like Oregon and Terje Rypdal), may not have seen much commercial success from his music, but the development of his sound has resulted in a genuinely unique voice.  Tempoare, a 2011 release on the Musea Records label, is gonna appeal to fans of Bill Frisell’s Quartet.  It is an album of eerie music that happens to also be quite beautiful.

A free download from the album is available on the AllAboutJazz site, courtesy of the artist.

Available at Amazon: CD MP3

Omer Avital – Free Forever

An outstanding quintet date album from one of the great composers and bassists on the jazz scene.  Straight-ahead jazz with Omer’s unique modern voice.  An album so powerful at times it can make the listener sit and shout, not unlike Ellington’s masterful performance at Newport. Recorded live in Italy, with Omer Avital (bass, composer), Joel Frahm (soprano & tenor sax), Avishai Cohen (trumpet), Jason Lindner (piano), and Ferenc Nemeth (drums)… all jazz heavyweights.

I’m still amazed to be reminded that it’s only a quintet date; the sound is rich that at times I’d guess there were twice that many musicians on the bandstand.  I’m gonna stop there, since I plan to write a more detailed review in the very near future.  But let me leave it that this was truly a top album of the year.

Released on the Smalls Records label, approximately 70 minutes of pure unadulterated jazz.

Here’s a link to Omer’s site, where you can stream a few songs from the album and a whole lot of other music he’s involved with.

Available at Amazon: CD MP3

Fabrice Sotton – L’attente

A very engaging release from pianist Fabrice Sotton.  Fabrice switches from traditional to electronic piano with zero drop-off in quality.  Compositions have mysterious strings slicing through the interludes.  Fabrice’s sound has the introspection of an Abdullah Ibrahim solo piece with transitions to the playful bounciness of a Vince Guarldi tune.

Just a series of fun and pretty tunes.  A few solo pieces, some duo with percussion, flourishes of South African style jazz, a bit of neo-classical and a little bit of funk.  Sotton mixes the sounds up without ever losing the albums center; or said differently, it doesn’t sound like a compilation of songs from various albums.

Self-Produced, fifty minutes of piano jazz.  Jazz from France.

Here’s a link to Fabrice Sotton’s site, which seems to be hosted on a french music site platform.  Basically, if you give them an email, you can stream all his stuff.

Available at Amazon: MP3

Not sure what causes it to happen, but it’s not so rare in jazz that I haven’t noticed the pattern happening before with other jazz musicians…  The artist puts out a debut album, one that’s perfect listenable, but doesn’t exactly set the world on fire.  And then the second album comes out and everyone’s left stunned and looking around the cinders and ashes for who was holding the damn match.

In this instance, it’s Rafal Sarnecki who’s got the flame.

The Madman Rambles Again, Sarnecki’s sophomore release, is a huge step up from the 2008 debut Songs From a New Place, and places him squarely at the forefront of new jazz voices to the scene.  Ironically, it may have been Sarnecki’s wise decision to take a step back that got him to the front of things.

Songs from a New Place suffered from its conventionalism.  It sounded like so many other guitar-led jazz albums, with the guitarist out front, stepping aside politely for other ensemble members to speak up for a little while before they, too, returned the gesture and let the guitar back in for some closing statements.  In that, there’s nothing wrong, but to excel in music, it helps when the musician’s voice sounds like their own and only their own.  Madman is an album in its own class, and it has a lot to do with Sarnecki’s wise decision to let everybody step forward at the same time.  The end result isn’t a series of people taking turns playing their parts, but instead a glorious layering of sound where concurrent solos intertwine and accompaniments circle without end, leaving the delirious sense of watching a tornado chase after its own tail.

Sarnecki’s sound on guitar really is good.  He has a way of getting the melody to shimmer on the soft edges and burn on the hard.  Jerzy Malek plays trumpet on the album, and his opening statement on the opening track announces vividly that this ain’t just another jazz album.  Lucas Pino on tenor sax plays these long rising notes that nearly lift the tunes’ intensity up and down all on his own.  The percussion unit of Lukasz Zyta, Pawel Dobrowolski, and Jose Manual Alban deftly navigate the obstacle course set by others without sacrificing any of their bang and pop.  Sarnecki on guitar, Pawel Kaczmarczyk’s piano and Wojciech Pulcyn’s bass are the binding force that keeps everything from spiraling apart.

When Sarnecki does raise his guitar’s voice up, it has a wonderful lyrical effect, not so much storytelling as providing an unconventional view of a fast car ride through a vast and dynamic city.

Sarnecki is a Warsaw, Poland native relocated to New York City.  I’ve been discovering some excellent jazz coming from the Polish scene, from both residents and ex-pats alike, some who I’ll feature in this blog.

The Madman Rambles Again clocks in at an hour and twelve minutes of excellent modern jazz.  It was released in 2011 on the Fresh Sound New Talent label.

Here’s a link to the Rafal Sarnecki site, where you can listen to all (or most of) Madman for free.

Here’s a link to the AllAboutJazz site where you can download a track from Madman for free, courtesy of Rafal and Fresh Sound.

Here’s a link to the Fresh Sound label site.

Available at Amazon: CD MP3

Madman was arguably album of the year for 2011.  It’s one of those albums that each subsequent song makes me so happy that the album isn’t over yet.

The last time Bill Frisell recorded an album with the 858 ensemble, things were a bit noisier.  The 2002 recording Richter 858 had Frisell substituting jet engines for amps, and let the compositions not so much speak for themselves as growl and roar.  Sign of Life shows that there was a heartbeat just behind all the fury and fuel of Richter.

Different sound; same ensemble.  Bill brings his incomparable voice on guitar, and long-time collaborators Jenny Scheinman on violin, Hank Roberts on cello, and Eyvind Kang on viola.

As with any inventive musician, Frisell’s sound has evolved over the years.  His current phase is often referred to as Americana Jazz, a blending of jazz aspirations and conventions within a folk framework.  Sign of Life fits snugly into that label, comparable to other recent releases like the excellent Disfarmer, the perfectly acceptable Beautiful Dreamer, and the under-the-radar All Hat. It’s an album of languid back porch tunes, of foreboding compositions echoing over desolate Appalachian trails, of lush stringed instruments that is alternatingly soothing, threatening, and transcendent.

Two tracks from Sign of Life…

Good string ensembles force the absence of drums and percussion to go unnoticed, but the best ones provide their own percussive elements and make the issue of absence a moot point.  Frisell’s 858 quartet falls under the latter category, and it’s one of the many admirable traits of this album.

Two criticisms I can see getting leveled at Sign of Life:  One, it’s not jazz, and two, it sounds like most of the stuff he’s done lately.  As to the first point, I really don’t care.  Seriously, I just don’t feel like getting into some territorial pissing contest over what jazz is and isn’t.  Quite honestly, I can see both the big-tent and small-tent sides of the argument; it’s just not an argument I’m interested in entertaining on an album review.  Mostly I just care if an album is inventive and beautiful and fun to listen to.  It hits all those notes for me, so I’m moving on.  As to the second point, yes, it does sound like a lot of the albums Frisell has put out lately, and for that, I’m glad.  There was a stretch of time where Frisell’s sound varied dramatically from album to album, and it always left me wishing that he hadn’t moved on to the next sound so soon, that he had spent more time exploring that current sound, took it in several different directions, investigated all of its different facets.  Well, it appears I’ve got my wish.

Sign of Life does sound like many of Frisell’s other Americana Jazz albums and yet it doesn’t.  When I feel like listening to a Frisell Americana album, I’ll have several to choose between, yet there will be a time and place for Sign of Life, just as there is a time and place for Disfarmer and All Hat and Beautiful Dreamer.  And for the record, it’s sizing up to be that the time and place for Sign of Life will be in the afternoon, when that damn winter sun starts dropping in the sky waaaay sooner than it ought to and way before I’m ready for nighttime to drop the curtain over the view from my writing room.

When talking of the best jazz releases of 2011, it deserves some votes.

Sign of Life clocks in at just under an hour of music that’s sometimes peaceful, sometimes introspective, sometimes joyous, sometimes ominous, but always beautiful throughout.  Released on the Savoy Jazz label in 2011.

Here’s a link to the Frisell site’s radio, which streams the first 5 songs from the album

Here’s a link to Bill Frisell’s site where you can watch a making-of-album video.

Here’s a link to the Savoy Jazz site, where it appears to have pretty much the same content on the Frisell site, but some additional news.