Jazz Recommendations

Tiny Reviews edition!

Featured album: Dave Phillips & Freedance Confluence.

Plus:  Gunhild Seim & Time Jungle Elephant Wings, Matt Otto Broken Waltz, Amadablam Quartet London-Samarcande, & Studnitzky KY Do Mar.

*****

Dave Phillips & Freedance – Confluence

Interesting release by bassist Dave Phillips.  On Confluence, he shifts between two phases… a mildly dissonant post-bop and a folk-influenced mainstream jazz… and never completely shrugs off one while focusing on the other.  The result makes for an appetizing bit of contrast between divergent sounds made to sit at the same table.

The album doesn’t reveal much of this in the beginning, instead spends its time establishing a strong post-bop foundation.  Even absent the folk brush strokes that, later, make this such an intriguing album, Phillips offers a solid set of tunes with both feet in Jazz territory.  But the fun really begins with third track “Cricket Song,” with its galloping tempo blended with a countryside ease, mostly bought about with Abbasi’s acoustic guitar and a dynamic percussive element.  A track like “RT,” which brings a stronger Jazz presence via piano and bass contributions counterbalances it with some rustic sax, guitar, and drum sections.  “Gathering Rain” is all moody, with gentle guitar and arco bass, the soft murmur of sax and whisper of drums… a folk tune that dreams of being a post-bop ballad one day.

An album which generates some excitement via inventive compositions, and, also, promising signs of what might come next.

Your album personnel:  Dave Phillips (bass), Rez Abbasi (guitars), John O’Gallagher (alto sax), Tony Moreno (drums), Jon Werking (piano), and Glen Fitten (percussion).

Released on the Innova Recordings label.

Jazz from the Bronxville, NY scene.

Available at eMusic.  Available at Amazon: CD | MP3

Other Albums of Interest:

Gunhild Seim Tim Jungle – Elephant Wings

Beautiful quintet date, with trumpeter Gunhild Seim collaborating with pianist Marilyn Crispell.  Best part is the constant interaction between Seim tendency to soar and Crispell’s tendency to scramble. Creates a tension that serves the album well.

Your album personnel:  Gunhild Seim (trumpet), Marilyn Crispell (piano), Arild Hoem (alto sax), John Lilja (double bass), and Dag Magnus Narvesen (drums).

Stream the album on Seim’s soundcloud page.

The album is Self-Produced, released on Seim’s Drollehola Records label.

Available at eMusic.

Matt Otto – Broken Waltz

Album with an easy sway, even as it takes asynchronous steps.  Saxophonist Matt Otto leads a sextet through a series of tunes that drift way more than they groove, which lets the bass clarinet use its nuanced range and lets Rhodes try something a little different.  Neat album, especially for a debut album.

Your album personnel:  Matt Otto (soprano, tenor sax), Brian Walsh (bass clarinet), Leonard Thompson (Rhodes), Jason Harnell (drums), David J. Carpenter (bass), and Sara Gazarek (vocals).

The album is Self-Produced.  Jazz from the Kansas City, Missouri scene.

Available at eMusic.

Amadablam Quartet – London-Samarcande

Amadablam Quartet is a moody piano trio plus one member who casts ripples of electronics and effects throughout their tunes.  Haunting at times, catchy at others.  Sometimes the sampling gets a bit intrusive, but overall adds some nice texture.

Your album personnel: Roland Favre (piano), Benoit Converset (bass), Julien Aubert (electronics & effects), and Luc Berney (drums).

Stream the entire album on the artist bandcamp page.

The album is Self-Produced.

Available at eMusic.

Studnitzky – KY Do Mar

The music of Studnitzky is lite and atmospheric, with effects not unlike a Nils Petter Molvaer recording.  Breathy languid trumpet, drifting piano lines, some twangy guitar, intermittent thump from drums interspersed between steady pulse tapping.  Peaceful music. Unlikely to blow anybody away, but a likable recording.

Your album personnel:  Sebastien Studnitzky (trumpet, keyboards), Paul Kleber (bass), Tommy Baldu (drums), and Andreas Hourdakis (guitar).

Released on the Sonar Kollektiv label.

Available at eMusic.

*****

The Dave Phillips review is original to Bird is the Worm, but portions of the other reviews were originally used in my Jazz Picks weekly article for eMusic, so here’s some language protecting their rights to that reprinted material as the one to hire me to write about new jazz arrivals to their site…

“New Arrivals Jazz Picks,“ and “New Arrivals Jazz Picks“ reprints courtesy of eMusic.com, Inc.
© 2012  eMusic.com, Inc.

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

These are simple songs.

Three musicians, four songs, an intimate recording.

Trumpet, sax, and piano.  Strands of bright melodies like lights on a Christmas tree.  Melancholic statements shot through with streaks of warm harmony.  Compositions that contrast a dreamy presence with a bracing vulnerability.

This is quiet music for quiet moments.  It is music that breathes sadness even as it remains hopeful.  This is music for late night bars where all the dreams are cracked, but still worth fighting for.  Simple songs that open doors to complex reactions, sometimes on the cusp of something quite breathtaking.

Your album personnel:  Benje Daneman (trumpet, flugelhorn), Andrew Rathbun (tenor sax), Jeremy Siskind (piano), and guest:  Ashley Gonzalez Daneman (vocals).

Opening track “Sun Shadows” leads with melody right out of the gate.  The languid opening statement is followed by punchy phrases while keeping a casual stroll.  The presence of the melody is always present, even if just barely… like fading contrails of an airplane that has flown over the horizon.  Except that, in this instance, the trio ends with a final restatement of that melody.

“Floating On” brings Ashley Daneman in for a guest vocal.  The airy brightness of her voice brings a vibrancy to the album and a cheerfulness that adds an essential bit of lift to an album that might’ve nosedived into some exquisite, but ultimately oppressive despondency.  Rathburn’s sax and Daneman’s trumpet brighten noticeably in response to her tone.  And even after she drops off after this one song, it remains as an integral counterbalance to the lovely moodiness of the final two album tracks.

“To Lay Down One’s Life” begins with intoxicating melodic statements that threaten to drift off but suddenly coalesce into something even stronger.  The tune suddenly off-roads it with a free form section highlighted by Siskind’s somersaulting-down-stairs piano lines, and where Daneman’s vocals provided some needed warmth, Siskind’s piano emits some necessary heat.  Rathburn matches the rising temperature on sax.  The trio eventually return to whence they began, again, to the melody.  Of the four album tracks, it’s easily the most expansive.  Coming back home to the melody brings a clear focus to the distance traveled from the song’s first note to last.

Album ends with the title track.  Daneman’s trumpet just drifts atop Siskind’s piano’s sea of tranquility, and Rathbun’s sax enters with the unhurried ease of a setting sun.

A lovely ending to a lovely album.

The album is Self-Produced.

Jazz from the Kalamazoo, Michigan scene.

You can stream the entire album, and purchase it, at the artist’s bandcamp page.  Both digital album and CD format are available there.

Available at eMusic.  Available at Amazon: CD

This album is a flower that just keeps on blooming.  On Triumph, drummer Ferenc Nemeth plants several motifs within the first couple songs, then builds on them in subsequent tracks while adding new motifs, extrapolations of existing ones, and repetitions of the originals.  The result is an album that is perpetually revealing itself by offering a series of windows to its soul.

Your album personnel: Ferenc Nemeth (drums), Joshua Redman (tenor & soprano sax), Kenny Werner (piano, Rhodes), Lionel Loueke (guitar, vocals), and guests: Barabara Togander (vocals), Juampi di Leone (flute), Carlos Michelini (clarinet), Martin Pantyrer (bass clarinet, baritone sax), Richard Nant (trumpet, flugelhorn), and Maria Noel Luzardo (bassoon).

Lionel Loueke is the best place to start talking about this album.  With his truly original sound that presents an alluring blend of West African folk and forward-thinking modern Jazz guitar, Loueke has collaborated with Nemeth plenty before.  And Hungarian-born Nemeth has had no difficulty applying his own background and influences to a wide variety of projects, and seems to have a keen affinity for guitar players, having collaborated with a disparate group including names like John Abercrombie, Federico Casagrande, Francisco Pais, and Ben Monder… artists who, like Loueke, bring a singular sound to the table.  But the guitarist Nemeth has most often worked with is Loueke, and their symbiosis is put on display right from the start.

Following an opening interlude that simmers actively with many suggestions of motifs, the bubbles begin to pop off the surface with title-track “Surface.”  What begins as a murmur of post-bop moodiness slips right into an suit more fit for the mainstream crowd.  Chipper jaunty statements molded from the kind of warm smile and firm handshake crafted to appeal to the largest possible segment are anchored by saxophonist Redman, who has made a career out of deftly shaping tricky constructions into palatable shapes.

But it doesn’t stop there.  Loueke’s Beninese folk sound launches right off Redman’s contemporary motif, and the two are joined at the hip, fusing simultaneous sounds that should come off as disjointed but for Nemeth keeping them from veering off from one another.

This happens several times throughout this album, though with different sounds, different constructs.  Often one section of a song will sound markedly different from the section which proceeded it, yet not so different that the relationship goes unnoticed… as if the clothes worn remain the same even if the musician donning it has changed.

The album has several interludes that tie various album tracks together, providing Nemeth with yet another binding tool to allow everything to coalesce into a satisfying whole.  Srong folk interludes transition right into a variety of Bop varietals, like on track “Purpose,” which allows Werner a chance to unfurl his wings on piano.

Nemeth brings in a variety of guests, the most effective being the inclusion of woodwinds (conducted and arranged by Nicolas Sorin).  Having the moody burn of bassoon, bass clarinet and baritone sax enter into the frame, like on the terrific “Hope,” elicits thrilling subtleties from music that is already a series of textural fireworks.

On the theme of fireworks, the second half of the album witnesses the blooming of all the seeds Nemeth planted in the first half of the album.  For instance, an explosive duo of drums and guitar lead into the ballad “Longing,” which superimposes folk and modern jazz flairs atop a standard ballad structure.  And from that resting place, the album leapfrogs into a modern bop interlude, whose hyperactivity is so deliciously counteracted by the lovely, low, calming hum of woodwinds.  And the best is yet to come.

An interlude of an elegant piano solo slips into “Sorrow and Wishful Thinking,” which begins by backing Loueke’s lullaby guitar and vocals with a dirge-like rhythmic partnership.  The folk lullaby aspect of the song surges ahead, and briefly becomes the face of the song until it transforms yet again, this time into a contemplative post-bop tune that grows increasingly agitated as the song progresses to its grand finale.

It’s yet more of the shadowplay of texture and contrast, of perpetual revelations, that makes this such a winning recording.

The album is Self-Produced, released on Nemeth’s Dreamers Collective Records label.

Jazz from the Brooklyn scene.

Sign up for Nemeth’s email list and get a free album track on his site.

Available at eMusic.  Available at Amazon: CD | MP3