Jazz Recommendations

An album I’ve been particularly enjoying lately is Zweigedanken, the debut album by Das Blaue Pony.  A quartet led out by two saxophones, they display an appealing restraint that leads to a nice contrast between the weight and heat inherent in the lead instruments and the soft warmth generated by their expressions.

This especially comes into play on a track like “Abschied (im Guten),” where saxophonist Johannes Moritz switches over to bass clarinet, providing a resonant hum as a balance to the spry flightiness of Sebastien Wehle‘s soprano sax.  And the contrast between tenor and soprano saxophones is no less potent.  On “Der Schwarze Peter,” the woodwind sighs float harmoniously across the room, while the rhythmic diversions of drummer Phillip Scholz accentuate their fluttering beauty by sometimes matching their cadence and sometimes counteracting their weightlessness.

Das Blaue Pony doesn’t offer up strong melodies so much as great opening lines to chapters.  Songs like “Sturmvogel” and “Der Rückzug der Eisbären” treat their melodies more as concepts than concrete statements, and it’s a big reason why this music maintains a beautiful drifting ambiance despite an instrumental array that could lead to the sharp angles and distinct lines of a hard sonic geometry.  The latter of those two tracks has bassist Robert Lucaciu providing one of several rhythmic volleys he scatters throughout the recording.  These flurries are typically brief with an economy of lyricism, and it’s the way in which they insinuate themselves seamlessly into the flow of an otherwise fluid conversation that makes them so damn compelling.  Scholz performs a similar feat on drums at various intervals, and the way in which both wind instruments play off the percussion leads to some tiny thrills.

There’s no lack of heat on this recording, but it’s dispensed in small doses.  Most tracks fall in line with “Eintagfliege,” which has the quartet rearing back their heads for a brief shout to the skies.  This is typically preceded by a slow build up from a mild serenity and a subsequent descent back down to it just as the song reaches its conclusion.  This pattern, thankfully, isn’t without deviation.  Tracks like “Der Schwarze Peter,” “Schwalbentiefflug,” and album-closer “Das traurige Pony” keep to the quiet end of the spectrum, letting peace reign, and allowing that wonderful contrast of heavy and lightness envelop the song.

A very enjoyable recording, and one that keeps getting better to my ears.

Your album personnel:  Johannes Moritz (tenor sax, bass clarinet), Sebastian Wehle (tenor & soprano saxophones), Robert Lucaciu (double bass), and Philipp Scholz (drums, percussion, glockenspiel).

Released on Unit Records.

Jazz from the Leipzig, Germany scene.

Available at:  eMusic | Amazon MP3

Tiny Reviews edition!

Featuring:  Lena Bloch Feathery, Anton Schwartz Flash Mob, and Jon Irabagon Trio It Takes All Kinds.

*****

Lena Bloch – Feathery

Feathery is the strong debut from saxophonist Lena Bloch, who brings an updated voice to a classic cool-blue sound.  Moody even when it swings, there is a burgeoning intensity to much of this music that is quite appealing.  Some comparison to Tristano-Marsh could be drawn, and not unfairly.  Tracks like “Hi-Lee,” “Marshmallow,” and “Featherbed” hop with a sound that would get along swimmingly on a 1950s bandstand, as would a slow-burner like “Baby Suite.”  But where this album has a presence of the 1950s, it has displays of personality very much situated in the present day, with Bloch extending songs out on rhythmic and melodic forays that don’t neatly fit into the classical cool blue structure.  This quality is best represented by a track like “Rubato,” which is the stuff of dreams, opening with the softness of moonlight and closing with the unease of nightmare.

Just some good stuff here.

Your album personnel:  Lena Bloch (tenor sax), Dave Miller (guitar), Cameron Brown (bass), and Billy Mintz (drums).

Released on Thirteenth Note Records.

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

*****

Anton Schwartz – Flash Mob

This seriously expressive quintet date from saxophonist Anton Schwartz is straight-ahead jazz that speaks plainly, right into the ear and masking nothing.  The blues sound just like the blues should.  When it’s time to swing, that’s what the quintet does.  If they want to make the head bop, they get right to it.  An album that has the heart and the spirit to have been right at home back when Hard Bop was the reason for the season.  And ignoring the irony that their cover of “Epistrophy” is the track that sounds most like the jazz of today, for the rest of the affair, there’s a classic Blue Note Records feel to the album.  Whether it’s the joyful hard-charging title-track to open the album or the cool drawl of “Swamp Thang” or the stamped-into-memory melody of “Pangur Ban,” it’s not a stretch to posit that Flash Mob would fit right in with a playlist of Donald Byrd, Dexter Gordon and Duke Pearson.  This album has got feel to it.

Your album personnel:  Anton Schwartz (tenor sax), Dominick Farinacci (trumpet, flugelhorn), Taylor Eigsti (piano), John Shifflet (bass), and Lorca Hart (drums).

The album is Self-Produced.

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

*****

Jon Irabagon Trio – It Takes All Kinds

There are times when the music of Jon Irabagon doesn’t have its own sound so much as its own motion.  He shapes melody by contorting the cadence, and it’s why his music often sounds avant-garde and unconventional, yet possesses a tunefulness that’s tough to deny.  Recorded live at the 2013 Peitz Festival, It Takes All Kinds does nothing to contradict that assessment.  The jack-in-the-box cadence of “Cutting Corners” is a strangely catchy tune that is as much twist as bop.  “Vestiges” is a car undauntedly speeding straight up to red lights.  “Elusive” is a series of tangential comments lacking a central thesis and slurred with an agreeable drawl.  And then there’s the punches in bunches of “Quintessential Kitten,” ended with a big flurry at the finish.

The veteran rhythm section of Altschul and Helias have no difficulty cracking the code of Irabagon’s emerging method of communication.  This is not ordinary music.

Your album personnel:  Jon Irabagon (tenor sax), Barry Altschul (drums, percussion), and Mark Helias (double bass).

This Self-Produced album is released in partnership with the Jazzwerkstatt label.

Available at:  eMusic | Amazon: CD – MP3

*****

Some of this material was used originally in the weekly new jazz releases column I write for eMusic, 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.

Pianist Uri Caine has recently released two albums, each which find him in duo collaborations.  Most of my history with Caine’s music comes via the excellent label Winter & Winter, which puts out an eclectic array of music, only some of which is Jazz.  I haven’t been crazy about most of what I’ve heard from Caine, though that’s an opinion heavily weighted to “what I like” versus “what I think is good.”  It’s why I’m always interested in anything new that Caine puts out.

The thing of it is, much of what I’ve scooped up of Caine’s is more likely to get filed on the Classical shelf at your local music store than it is Jazz, and, admittedly, I’m much slower to warm to Classical music recordings than I am Jazz.  It’s a big reason I was so excited, going in, to hear Caine in something other than Classical, and what I found has me excited to share word of it in today’s column.  It’s yet another example of why it’s advantageous to keep giving artists new chances to make an impression, and to never forget that the streams of subjectivity and creativity sometimes converge with the most wonderful results.

Let’s begin…

*****

Ernst Glerum & Uri Caine – Sentimental Mood

Sentimental Mood has the patient, easy demeanor of a sunrise, and it provides moments as stunning and beautiful as rays of light cutting an early morning path over the horizon.  On this EP of classic standards, Caine and his piano match up with bassist Ernst Glerum.  Their renditions of songs by Monk, Ellington, Jerome Kern and Harry Barris are uncomplicated and simply presented.  They hop on the melody and ride it to the end of the song.  They take occasional diversions, but never to where the land becomes unfamiliar.

When Glerum takes to arco on “Black and Tan Fantasy,” the thick melodic strains nestle right in with Caine’s sunny phrases on piano.  On “Yesterdays,” Glerum’s arco displays a trembling vulnerability that contrasts nicely with Caine’s striking accompaniment.  The duo provides Monk’s “Evidence” a languorous sigh of melody before picking up and skipping jauntily along.  The duo deftly isolates the melancholia hidden within Bing Crosby’s rendition of “I Surrender Dear.”  On “In a Sentimental Mood,” the duo presents two types of elegance… one that flows gracefully and one with a statuesque beauty.

A sublime recording, and clocking in at barely over twenty minutes, leaves the ear thirsting for more.

Your album personnel:  Uri Caine (piano) and Ernst Glerum (bass).

Released on Glerum’s Favorite Records label.

Available at:  eMusic | Amazon MP3

*****

Dave Douglas & Uri Caine – Present Joys

Caine and trumpeter Dave Douglas are long-time collaborators.  The kind of familiarity developed over the course of fifteen years is a valuable resource, and it’s a big reason why it’s so exciting to hear them perform as a duo for the first time.  The duo setting will come with its prerequisite feeling-out process, and that low-level interaction will simultaneously occur with a high-level interaction of two musicians intimately familiar with each others creative personalities.  That mix of uncertainty and expertise is a potent equation, and it can lead to some startling surprises while also serving up some expert craftsmanship.  And that’s what happens on Present Joys.

The focus of their 2014 release is on the Sacred Harp songbook and the shape note tradition.  The shape note book, by way of its modified notation, opened the door for amateur singers who might not be able to read music from traditional, and more complex, key signatures on a music staff.  And with the Sacred Harp songbook, there was more flexibility given to the singers in terms of pitch and voice lead.  The result was to widen the entryway for people to participate in congregational music.  It was about being inclusive.

For those of you who aren’t sure what that all indicates for Present Joys, what it means is that you’re going to get tunes like “Bethel,” Supplication,” “Confidence,” and “Old Putt,” which offer up solemn tones in hushed voices, songs that may, in fact, be hymns or just strongly resemble one.

And it means you’re gonna get tunes like “Seven Seas,” “End to End,” “Ham Fist,” and title-track “Present Joys,” all which possess a cheerful disposition and a method of burning off excess energy while still maintaining an inside voice.

And then there are tracks like album-opener “Soar Away” and closing act “Zero Hour,” which provide a view of both faces of this album.

And each time, the melody will take you by the hand and lead you down the bright path of a beautiful song.  Difficult to talk about this album and not use the word “sublime.”

Your album personnel:  Uri Caine (piano) and Dave Douglas (trumpet).

Released on Greenleaf Music.

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

So, based on some cover songs from her previous two releases, I suggested that vocalist Nicky Schrire might benefit from an album consisting of just Beatles tunes.  Wisely ignoring my advice, Schrire returns with an EP of originals, and it’s pretty damn charming.  With a trio that includes pianist Fabian Almazan and bassist Desmond White, Schrire’s To the Spring deftly toes the line between pop music catchiness and vocal jazz complexity.

Schrire repeatedly proves she’s capable of running a contortionist’s act with her vocal chords.  Both “Your Love” and title-track “To the Spring” have Schrire hitting the sweet spot between sudden modulations and streamlined fluidity.  On the former, it works especially well in combination with the nifty rhythmic interplay between Almazan and White… an undercurrent that raises the song up a level, going so far as to overshadow the dramatic finish.  It’s a similar highlight that marks the success of “Father,” which gets the piano-bass duo further out front.

However, it’s when Schrire reins it in and works the song from a pop angle that the music really shines.  The bittersweet love song “Traveler” has Schrire telling a tale of two heartbreaks, and then, later, on “Give It Away,” her advice to avoid that fate is offered up with a sweet simplicity carried on the back of a pretty melody.

And Schrire shows that the pop music atmosphere doesn’t have to be a permanent thing for a song to achieve success.  No better example of this than “Fall Apart,” which comes out with some pretty embellishments adorning a mean song structure… the kind of catchiness that dares you to forget it.  And without discarding any of those qualities, Schrire’s voice gets increasingly playful, less “pop,” which in combination with the lyrical kiss of White’s bass solo, the song is just as likely to hold strong appeal to jazz vocals fans as it would to those who turn on the radio to hear a pretty tune.

It’s easy enough to lose track of the intelligence of these songs amidst their eminent tunefulness.

Maybe a Beatles tribute album some other time, yeah?

Your album personnel:  Nicky Schrire (voice), Fabian Almazan (piano), and Desmond White (double bass).

The album is Self-Produced.

Album cover art by Johannes Felscher.

Jazz from NYC.

Available at:  eMusic | CDBaby | Amazon MP3

*****

Some of this review 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.