Jazz Recommendations

Your Sunday edition of Tiny Reviews!

Featuring:  Andy Biskin Ibid Act Necessary, John Chin Undercover, and Tal Gur Under Contractions.

*****

Andy Biskin Ibid – Act Necessary

A quartet of clarinetist Andy Biskin, trombonist Brian Drye, drummer Jeff Davis, and cornetist Kirk Knuffke.  Act Necessary plays out like each musician is attempting to recount a dream they had about performing New Orleans jazz, tin pan alley, swing, blues, and polkas… with each member of the quartet vividly channeling the dreams of early music forms, but now, awake and the dream fading, can’t help but color the dream retelling with sounds and methods of the present day.  This is not a throwback album, but there’s no doubt it will appeal greatly to the old-school fans.  And considering how entrenched each of these musicians are in the NYC scene, often with varied projects that sound nothing like Act Necessary, it’s going to offer all kinds of value to those jazz fans whose ears are very much attuned to the music of today.

Released on Strudel Media.

Available at:  eMusic | CDBaby | Amazon MP3

*****

John Chin – Undercover

Refreshingly loquacious trio session from pianist John Chin, who’s joined on this live performance by bassist Orlando le Fleming and drummer Dan Rieser.  Undercover has got some originals, some renditions (Coltrane, Shorter, Ellington).  A tune like “Edda” illustrates Chin’s talent for shifting from bursts of quick dialog to pauses of melodic restatement served up with a most appealing emphasis.  Whether up-tempo or simply coasting with his foot off the gas pedal, Chin’s piano seems to carry further and with greater strength than his unfussy delivery might otherwise indicate.  It’s not unlike the strange intimacy generated by a huge firework show viewed from afar.

Released on Brooklyn Jazz Underground Records.

Available at:  eMusic | Bandcamp | Amazon: CD – MP3

*****

Tal Gur – Under Contractions

Under Contractions is an oddly compelling album.  Led by Tal Gur‘s alto & soprano saxes, this quartet (rounded out by Eyal Maoz on electric guitar, Sam Trapchak on double bass and Nick Anderson on drums) uses languorous passages as the seed for further explorations.  Many tracks possess a lazy, peaceful ambiance that is all kinds of attractive, and sometimes these moments build into freer, more vociferous passages that leave the serenity behind.  The quieter moments make the rousing sections that much more compelling by point of comparison.  Neat album.

The album is Self-Produced.

Available at:  eMusic | CDBaby | Amazon MP3

*****

Some of this material was used originally in the weekly new jazz releases column I write for eMusic’s Wondering Sound, so here’s some language protecting their rights to the reprinted material as the one to hire me to write about new jazz arrivals to their site…

“New Arrivals Jazz Picks” reprints courtesy of eMusic.com, Inc.
© 2014  eMusic.com, Inc.

As always, my sincere thanks to eMusic for the gig.

There are no songs here.  Using the word ‘tunes’ is out of place.  The Nature of Connections, the new release by trumpeter Arve Henriksen presents pieces that possess no semblance of form.  This music is revealed as beauty in motion, providing an illusion of presence… a timelessness where each piece has no beginning, no end, just an existence in the present moment of a particular expression.

And it is absolutely gorgeous.

The core trio of trumpet, bass and drums is partnered with a string trio of violins, fiddles, and cello.  There are no divisions of labor here.  Strings occupy the same space as the trumpet trio, with no one instrument seated permanently at the head of the table.  Henriksen may be the group leader, but his behavior on the bandstand indicates a view toward equality under the spotlight.

The influence most evident is of Nordic folk.  Sharing territory with that of violinist Oskar Schonning’s excellent 2012 release The Violin, Henriksen infuses small doses of Norwegian jazz and chamber music into these pieces.  This is peaceful music that doesn’t sit still and where serenity is not a permanent state of being, but always the final landing spot.

A few tracks challenge the notion of serenity.  The urgency of strings provides “Hymn” a bit of propulsion.  Bassist Mats Eilertsen takes a winding path through the string trio.  The interplay between his bass chatter and the sudden surges of harmony from the string trio is a powerful device.  Eventually Henriksen steps in on trumpet and lifts right up, with strings following soon after.

Drummer Audun Kleive spurs the string trio on and gets the pulse rate up a bit on “Keen.”  Henriksen crafts a melodic thread with some defined features and rides it for the length of the piece.  It’s the closest this album gets to structured expression, and its value as a tool of differentiation can be measured in the clarity it brings to the pieces with a vaguer shape and definition.

“Arco Akropolis” lays the drama on thick with a rise of intensity and tighter trajectories locked within a smaller roaming area.  It, like “Keen” before it, provides something just a little bit different, and gives the prevailing serenity some texture and personality.

The album returns to form with the concluding song, “Salm.”  Graceful, poignant, tranquil, and, like the rest of the album, it is absolutely gorgeous.

Your album personnel:  Arve Henriksen (trumpet, piccolo trumpet, piano), Mats Eilertsen (double bass), Audun Kleive (drums), Nils Økland (violin, hardanger fiddle, viola d’amore), Svante Henryson (cello), and Gjermund Larsen (violin, hardanger fiddle).

Released on Rune Grammofon

Music from

Available at:  eMusic | Amazon: CD – MP3 – Vinyl

And if you purchase directly from the label, they have a couple different types of vinyl options in addition to the CD.

It’s how City Speaks doesn’t seem quite finished that registers as its most appealing quality… that the grand idea visualized in its conception came so very close to materializing, but fell just short.  This could be considered a flaw.  But the thing about flaws is that, often, they are responsible for some of the more intriguing outcomes.  That happens, here, on the debut album by trumpeter Callum G’Froerer.  There are times when City Speaks gives the impression of moving off in an entirely different direction, one which transcends genre and hints at something quite new, something quite different.

Songs like “Virginia” and the title-track “City Speaks” present the most lovely shimmering guitar accompaniment to gentle surges of skittering rhythm as the low moans and high sighs of trumpet and sax coexist in a tenuous state of harmony.  These tracks have a striking allure, and they give the sense that they could undergo a metamorphosis at any moment, becoming something comfortingly familiar or something wondrously alien.

And then there are tracks that are more conventional.  “Silver Platter” is a mid-tempo post-bop tune, a vehicle for trumpet to do its thing.  Guitar switches to a more traditional role, and like trumpet before it, solos in the range from sedate missives to fiery proclamations.  There are a few bass solos of note, too, but mostly it, along with drums, keeps the soloists tethered to the group dynamic.  “The Thinker” is a bit more punchy than its counterparts, which let thoughts linger in the air, whereas “Sweetness x3” sits at the edge of combustion.  A slow tune with a slow burn, yet this ballad suggests that it could ignite into a firestorm with a snap of the fingers.

There’s nothing wrong with the conventional tracks.  In fact, they deliver plenty of wonderful passages.  But after that very different, very attractive opening track, the subsequent conventional tracks don’t seem quite to pick up where it left off.  But they also don’t stray too far away, so that when the gripping interlude “Trio” arrives, with its fluttering of sax and trumpet and its high pitched atmospherics, it doesn’t at all sound out of place or jarring in the flow of one song to the next.

The glue that binds the album together is “Gemmani.”  A trumpet ballad that bends like moonlight, it bridges the divide between the traditional and unconventional album tracks.  When the song bubbles to life with a flurry of activity, there’s no doubt that it will return to a peaceful state.  And it does.  The trumpet section sounds like it would be right at home in your everyday modern jazz piece, but the way in which the group swells up and coalesces around the trumpet solo provides it a context that is most certainly not an everyday modern jazz piece.

And it’s that push and pull between what-could-be and what-almost-was that makes City Speaks a compelling listen.  It’s what keeps bringing me back to this album over and over and has me interested to hear what comes next.  That this was a debut recording is all kinds of promising

Your album personnel:  Callum G’Froerer (trumpet), Andrew Brookes (alto sax), Brett Thompson (guitar), Alex Boneham (bass), and Hugh Harvey (drums).

Released in 2013 on the Listen/Hear Collective.

Jazz from the Melbourne, Australia scene.

Available at:  Bandcamp | eMusic | Amazon MP3

A few other notes:

There are two bonus tracks.  Kynan Tan re-mixes the title-track, and it works pretty well as the album’s “final” track.  While I’m as interested as the next person to hear other people re-mix cool songs, I really hate when they get tacked onto the end of a proper recording.  Re-mixes are the kind of thing that Soundcloud was made for.  That said, Tan’s remix of “City Speaks” is a rare exception and works remarkably well in tandem with the rest of the album.

There’s an additional bonus track “Rocky Mountain” that is provided in download form if you buy the CD through the label’s Bandcamp page.  As of the time of this writing, I haven’t yet heard it, so, obviously, no opinion provided.  If that changes at some point, I’ll update this review.

Ambrose Akinmusire‘s enthralling new release, The Imagined Savior Is Far Easier To Paint, presents a series of picturesque narratives that reveal a burgeoning intensity beneath a moody facade.  The trumpeter serves up lyrical melodies that aren’t afraid to trust the strength of their initial pronouncement and go wandering.  It’s a noir-ish style of post-bop reminiscent of the Brian Blade Fellowship’s storyteller heart.  It’s also a style that leads to some very exciting moments.

And though Akinmusire’s newest release shares some borders with that of Blade, the trumpeter is clearly exploring territory quite distinct from anyone else.  Of that noir-ish post-bop style, tracks like “Vartha,” “Memo (G. Learson),” and “The Beauty Of Dissolving Portraits” possess a fire at their core that is most evocative when they perch upon the edge of combustion.  This, in combination with their moody reserve, provides a strong dose of tension.

An intriguing turn of events sees Akinmusire adding strings on “The Beauty of Dissolving Portraits” and “Inflatedbyspinning.”  On the former, his trumpet shifts between statements of hope and sorrow, each expression swimming in the contextual sea of the strings’ thick harmonic drone… a sound not unlike sunlight when Akinmusire’s tone grows dark, akin to shadows framing the light of brighter tones.  On the latter, flute and strings overlay patterns of an endless melodic beauty.

Adding further richness to the album’s profile is the addition of three separate guest vocalists.  Each enhance the album’s moody appeal, each in their own way.

Vocalist Theo Bleckmann displays his talent for harmonic accompaniment on the the ethereal “Asiam (Joan),” his voice possessing the deep mysterious resonance of a bass clarinet, even when he soars up to the higher registers.  Bolstered by Justin Brown’s cymbal work, the ensemble’s patient melodic sighs bob and float on a sea of clouds.

On “Our Basement,” vocalist Becca Stevens‘ focused delivery serves as the perfect foil for Akinmusire’s wild aeronautics through the smoky tune.  Meanwhile, the simmering intensity of “Ceaseless Inexhaustible Child (Cyntoia Brown)” movws with a purpose and a determination where every word sung by Cold Specks is laced with heavy meaning.

Worth noting the track “Rollcall For Those Absent,” a song that has a child, Muna Blake, reading off the names of recently departed.  The name Trayvon Martin brings the song some context.  There’s very little music accompaniment to the recitation of names, and though the song sounds unhinged from the rest of the album, Akinmusire employing song as social protest is not unprecedented.  The track “My Name is Oscar,” dedicated to Oscar Grant, an unarmed passenger shot by a Bay Area transit cop in 2009 was featured on Akinmusire’s 2011 release When the Heart Emerges Glistening.  That song, too, had a startling absence of cohesion with the rest of the album’s tone, and apparently that effect is something the trumpeter was going for, because he accomplished it with a remarkable consistency on his newest, despite the inherent differences between the two recordings.

Speaking of that 2011 release, Akinmusire uses it as a launching pad for a more expansive view of a creative horizon line.  Prior to this, Akinmusire had already gained a reputation as an emerging talent on his instrument, and previous recordings illustrated that Akinmusire had both the talent and the vocabulary for a solid post-bop trumpet-led recording.  His newest proves that he can utilize those tools to tell an unconventional story overflowing with imagination and lyricism.

The album ends with 16+ minute live track, “Richard (Conduit),” a song that brings together the Akinmusire post-bop of before and the boundless Akinmusire sound of now.  It’s a fitting send-off to a remarkable album.

Your album personnel:  Ambrose Akinmusire (trumpet, Juno keyboard), Walter Smith III (tenor sax), Sam Harris (piano, mellotron), Harish Raghavan (bass), Justin Brown (drums), Charles Altura (guitar) and guests: Becca Stevens, Theo Bleckmann, Al Spx (vocals, effects), Maria Im, Brooke Quiggens Saulnier (violins),  Kallie Ciechomsky (viola), Maria Bella Jeffers (cello), Elena Penderhughes (flute), and Muna Blake (spoken word).

Released on Blue Note Records.

Jazz from NYC.

Available at:  eMusic | Amazon: CD – MP3 – Vinyl