Jazz Recommendations

As a new generation of jazz musicians makes its mark on the Pacific-Northwest scene, composer Wayne Horvitz’s impact upon it is becoming increasingly evident.  Horvitz’s curiously cinematic mix of jazz, folk, chamber, and blues eschews common formulas for a singular expression that is equal parts distant warmth, cerebral complexity, and folksy charm.  It gives the sense of a foreign language that sounds intimately familiar.

Douglas Detrick’s Anywhen Ensemble speaks that language.  The Portland outfit has put out a series of albums that utilize Horvitz’s sonic lexicon, emphasizing different aspects of its rules of grammar.  Their 2008 debut, Walking Across, an album inspired by bridges around the world, illustrated their fluency with the different forms of the Horvitz language, often shifting between the different elements, but occasionally hitting upon that perfect synthesis of a composite expression.  Their 2011 release Rivers Music fit in with the contemporary classical crowd… two long movements that matched lovely floating harmonies with odd inflections interspersed at unusual intervals.  It was a bit of a diversion from the previous recording, but not an unpleasant one.

2014 sees two new projects from the Anywhen Ensemble.  The project Awake! Awake! has them collaborating with Horvitz himself on piano, reworking traditional folk tunes.  And then there’s their 2014 release, The Bright and Rushing World, a ten-part suite that gravitates around its opening motif, offering up different variations and facets of that opening, though with a subtlety and patience that often waits until the very end to fully reveal itself.

It’s here that Detrick’s ensemble most strongly favors the chamber music aspect of their sound.  Pieces snap into place with one another with the clean precision of building blocks, but the constructions possess unusual shapes and forms, resulting in unexpected pauses and sudden changes in direction… except when seen through the rear-view mirror, a perspective that leaves it all making perfect sense.

The clash and fray of Detrick and Assadullahi on trumpet and sax will seem slightly out of place from what has come previously, until, on the turn of a dime, they suddenly lock into a common trajectory, and now what appeared to be competing points of view reveals itself to have been one line of conversation all along.  Drummer Biesack will seem to be trailing the action for most of a piece, but then will come to show, in fact, he’s been leading the charge.  The cello of Shirley Hunt are the wings that spur the ensemble into flight and the bassoon of Steve Vacchi is the force of gravity that maintains the ensemble’s composure and prevents it from fluttering away.  And then there’s those moments, like on “How Can You Live Without a Name,” when the ensemble moves as one, with a grace and an elegance and a sublime beauty that requires no explanation, no rear view mirror, and no talk of influences.

Music that is both challenging and comforting.

Your album personnel:  Douglas Detrick (trumpet), Hashem Assadullahi (alto & soprano saxes), Shirley Hunt (cello), Steve Vacchi (bassoon), and Ryan Biesack (drums).

Released on Navona Records.

Jazz from the Portland, Oregon scene.

Download a free track, courtesy of the artists, by hitting the arrow button (pointing downward) on the audio player above.

Available at:  eMusic | Amazon: CD – MP3

*****

Other things you should probably know:

Detrick is also a member of Operation Northwoods, whose The Bureau of Fiction was one of the best things to come out in 2013.  I believe I had it slotted at #20 on the Bird is the Worm Top 30 of 2013 list.  I still listen to it all the time.  Read the review HERE.

Just a thrilling album from veteran flautist, Mark Weinstein, who employs concert, alto and bass flutes for this session.  On Latin Jazz Underground, he’s joined by a strong line-up consisting of bassist Rashaan Carter, drummer Gerald Cleaver, percussionist Roman Diaz, and pianist Aruan Ortiz.

Ortiz composed the songs for Weinstein’s excellent 2011 release El Cumbanchero, and contributes two more to this effort.  Intriguingly, the quintet also covers songs by free jazz artists Ornette Coleman, Sam Rivers, and Andrew Hill.  That Weinstein is able to incorporate the cerebral nature of the originals into a fluid Latin Jazz recording is no small accomplishment.

Take, for example, tracks like the Ornette Coleman composition “Open Or Close” and the Sam Rivers tune “Dance of the Tripedal,” (one of two Rivers compositions)… Weinstein doesn’t turn his back on the skittering tempos of the originals, but transforms them into rhythmic currents more likely to inspire the motion of dance than the cerebral vise grip of the originals.  And on the other Rivers composition, “Mellifluous Cacophony,” Weinstein retains Rivers’ hard-charging swing, but punctuates the rhythmic path with trail markers that provide a tighter, more focused feel.  With Andrew Hill’s “For Emilio,” Weinstein lets the song peacefully drift away.

One of those recordings that just sweeps a listener up and carries them away.  And yet another strong release from the Zoho label, to boot.

Your album personnel:  Mark Weinstein (concert, alto & bass flutes), Aruan Ortiz (piano), Rashaan Carter (bass), Gerald Cleaver (drums), and Roman Diaz (percussion).

Released on Zoho Music.

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

*****

Some of this review 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.

Over time, vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson grew to be one of my favorite jazz musicians.  Were I to retrace my progression of favorites over the course of my discoveries as I navigated the landscape of 1950-1960’s Jazz, not only would this column grow upwards of 50,000 words, but it’s the kind of path impossible to rediscover.  It’s not even a path, I suppose.  The more one dedicates oneself to discovering new music, the more it seems like it’s everywhere… surrounded by it.  Not a path so much as just wading into the middle of it all.

But anyways, at some point, I grew to find myself tracking down anything with Hutcherson’s name on it.  If I had to hazard a guess, it probably began the first time I sat down with his 1967 Blue Note Records release Oblique.

I had already been familiar with Hutcherson’s work.  In fact, one of the very first (perhaps, even, the actual first) jazz album I purchased was the soundtrack to Round Midnight, a movie that focused on an aging jazz musician (played by none other than Dexter Gordon), and featured the music and acting of many other jazz musicians (who, at the time, I was largely unaware of… hell, I was just a teenager when that movie came out).

Later on, my teenage years behind me and a decent ways into my immersion into the jazz of the past century, I remember enjoying Hutcherson’s work on John Handy‘s New View, Joe Henderson‘s Mode for Joe, Eric Dolphy‘s Out to Lunch, Dexter Gordon‘s Gettin’ Around, and probably a couple of those Jackie McClean recordings that I had a brief infatuation with.

Did I have any Hutcherson-led albums at this point?  Hard to say.  I’m pretty sure that Dialogue was the first one I scooped up, and I remember not being particularly drawn in by it.  I also had this weird cut-out recording of Hutcherson’s called Natural Illusions, which left his hard bop and avant-garde sounds behind for an appealing 70s lite-jazz jaunty ambiance.

What I liked about him then, and what I’ve always liked about him, is how Hutcherson is able to strike a near-perfect balance between his instrument’s need to emit a bop warmth and its undeniable charm for some avant-garde iciness.  He was able to construct a sound that was simultaneously welcoming and fearsome.  And when I heard Oblique, it drove both those points home with a masterful synthesis that still stops me cold in place when the album comes on.  And shortly after that, I scooped up Happenings.  This, too, can mesmerize on demand.

And it was at about this time I went on a binge and purchased everything of Hutcherson’s I could find on the Blue Note label.  Over time, I’d grab up other recording of Hutcherson’s, either on other labels or where he was sideman… notably, Billy Mitchell‘s excellent recording This is Billy Mitchell, and, tangentially, several Al Grey recordings, with my favorite being Snap Your Fingers.  The two mentioned here come out at the start of every new autumn and winter.  They’re ingrained in my life as much as the seasons associated with them.

Hutcherson is still going strong these days.  Over the last decade, he’s appeared on albums from the new generation of jazz stars, with Kenny Garrett and the SFJazz Collective being prime examples of collaborations that hit my personal radar.  He also released a trio of recordings on the Kind of Blue label.  Do I sound less enthused than earlier in this column?  I guess I am, and therein lies my problem as I listen to Bobby Hutcherson’s newest release (ironically, on Blue Note Records), entitled Enjoy the View.

I want the old Bobby Hutcherson.

For those of you who were around back in the day when all this was going down, this is not a new experience for you.  Many of you have been wistful for what was as those same musicians released new albums in subsequent decades.  But remember, Round Midnight was my first real-time Hutcherson recording, and from there, over the course of twenty years, I was merrily immersing myself in his 1960s discography.  For me, during the years 1992-2005, from a jazz music perspective, I was living through the decade of the sixties.  Post-2005, when my attention slowly began to shift to the Jazz of Today, that’s the first time I came up for breath and had to evaluate Bobby Hutcherson’s Jazz of Today.

His Coltrane tribute album Wise One was perfectly acceptable, and it was a nice change from the drowsiness of his previous release For Sentimental Reasons.  That’s also an album that had its moments (“Ode to Angela” and “I’ll Be Seeing You” immediately spring to mind), but it’s not a recording I’ll ever grow sentimental for.  More recently, Hutcherson released a live recording, Somewhere In the Night.  I didn’t much care for his choice to pair his vibes with organ, but whatever, the album has some pleasant moments.

And then I heard the news that he was going to be releasing a new studio album on the recently rebooted Blue Note Records label.

This was news that had me sitting up and paying attention.  I was ready to hear it right then and there.  A new Bobby Hutcherson release on Blue Note Records… how great was that!

Hutcherson’s newest features saxophonist David Sanborn, drummer Billy Hart, and organist Joey DeFrancesco (returning from Hutcherson’s previous recording).

I want the old Bobby Hutcherson.  I want the old Bobby Hutcherson on Blue Note Records.

This album has its moments.  The rendition of “Montara” is a stand-out track.  The title-track to Hutcherson’s enjoyable 1975 release, the Latin jazz influence is stripped out, which on its face seems like a source of disappointment, but the new version maintains an alluring undercurrent of the original’s delicate nature that I find quite remarkable.  “Hey Harold” lets the masterful Billy Hart carry the tune, and as a result, it’s the fiercest thing on this relatively soft recording.  Both Hutcherson and, especially, Sanborn react favorably to Hart’s hard-charging lead and respond in kind.

But there aren’t too many more moments than that.

Hutcherson is still a joy to hear.  And, please, don’t dismiss this album out of hand just because of David Sanborn’s presence.  Yes, Sanborn is responsible for some of the over-produced schlock that typified some of the jazz of the 70s and 80s, but don’t forget that he had a bit of a turn-around and began putting out some decent stuff in collaboration with Bill Frisell’s crew… artists like Joey Baron and Don Alias and Greg Cohen and Frisell himself.  Hal Wilner even got into the act with some production work.  Also, Sanborn’s collaboration last year with keyboardist Bob James, Quartette Humaine, was generally overlooked despite being pretty damn good.

Drummer Billy Hart is one of the best things on the scene today, and you could drop him and his drums into the middle of any collaboration, and he’s going to elevate it a notch or two.

Joey DeFrancesco is a pro’s pro on organ, but I still don’t understand why anyone thinks this vibes-organ match is something to be pursuing.  So much of Enjoy the View is devolved down to a groove-based set of tunes, and no matter how these compositions are constructed and no matter how well the musicians (DeFrancesco included) perform, there’s just no getting out of the viscous groove that organ is gonna lay down.  When DeFrancesco provides something of an ethereal accompaniment, the tunes get a little air under them, but those times are few and far between.  “Little Flower” veers into some serious contemporary territory, and, actually, that’s something of a relief to hear a syrupy melody instead of a thick groove.

How am I supposed to deal with how much I want to hear more of the Hutcherson music that I grew to love and still go back to, no matter how hectic my listening schedule gets?  It’s a tough position to be in, to want so much from the music, but getting something else.  Because for someone like myself, relatively speaking, 1960 was just a handful of years ago.  And if I put in Oblique right now, then right now it’s 1967.

I feel bad for not raving about the new Bobby Hutcherson recording.  I treasure his music and I am thrilled that he’s still out there performing and recording.  I wanted his newest album to be something great.  And the fact that it was on Blue Note Records upped my expectations even more.  The new Blue Note Records, under the guidance of Don Was, has been putting out jazz that defies conventions, might not even be Jazz some of the time… but whatever, y’know, because categories and genres becomes less significant when the music is forward-thinking and, well, just plain solid.  I was split between hoping that Hutcherson’s newest album would, also, go somewhere new, somewhere Today, with the other part of me hoping that I’d hear another The Kicker, a new Stick Up!, maybe even a nostalgic trip back to Oblique.

Instead, this new recording sounds trapped in the nineties, caught between two extremes and unsure which way to go.

It’s not a bad album.  I’ve listened to it several times, will probably revisit it down the road.  But I was hoping for so much more, and I feel terrible that I can’t post something enthusiastic.  I really wanted to, but the music just wouldn’t let me.  Maybe next time.

I’m ready.

Your album personnel:  Bobby Hutcherson (vibes), David Sanborn (sax), Billy Hart (drums), and Joey DeFrancesco (organ).

Released on Blue Note Records.

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

It’s the way this trio works a small pocket of sound, revealing interesting facets through slight shifts in expression that renders Color of the Year a winning album.  The sax-vibes-drums trio of Danny Meyer, Mark Clifford and Colin Stranahan offer up an album of tenuous serenity, which they will occasionally mar and crack and pull at the seams… all with the intention of illustrating just how elastic the concept of serenity truly is.  Opening track “First Rain” is their baseline.  Meyer’s peaceful saxophone phrasings, the shimmering glow of Clifford’s vibraphone accompaniment, the comforting tap and rattle of Stranahan’s drumwork… all elements that will go through a series of permutations, and yet the trio will always remain in that pocket of tenuous serenity.

The catchy groove of “Day Job” has Meyer giving his sax a raised voice before reining it in for the ballad of “Twos.”  Stranahan’s brushes drift across its path, creating a crossroads of cadence.  But even love songs can have rough edges, and the trio ends the song with a thrash and a crash.  Peaceful saxophone accompaniment hovers just above the spoken word of child voices on “Everything is a Mirror” and drums echo the voices’ footfalls.  On “Calla,” both sax and drums grow more soulful for the lullaby of “Calla.”

The sequences of punchy notes matching wits with a staggered tempo on “Children” veers into post-bop territory, and provides Clifford an opportunity for a nifty transformation from filling in the gaps to shaping the terrain to driving the tune forward to its conclusion.  This, along with his melodic-percussive balancing act on “Day Job” are the fireworks of Clifford’s contribution to the album, which may, in fact, be exceeded by the icy brilliance resulting from the minimalist approach he applies to other album tracks.

Album finale “You Will All Go Shopping” is an encapsulation of everything that has come before.  Opening up with a sound that mirrors the introduction of “First Rain,” the trio slowly transitions from a tranquil ambiance to a flirtation with a groove, which it shakes free of to thrash and roar before returning back to its opening serenity, as if nothing had changed and they’d never left the spot they first were standing.  A fitting end to very enjoyable recording.

Your album personnel:  Danny Meyer (tenor sax), Mark Clifford (vibes), and Colin Stranahan (drums).

Note:  There is, actually, a bonus track at the end, taken from a live performance.  Judged on its own merits, it’s a nice enough track, but as part of the album’s entirety, in the interests of cohesion, it’s just as well to leave it off.  “First Rain” and “You Will All Go Shopping” make excellent bookends for this recording.

This album is Self-Produced.

Nifty album cover photo of Colorado high country by Danny Meyer.

Jazz from the Brooklyn and Oakland (CA) scenes, though all three grew up together in Denver, Colorado.

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

Sophomore trio release from pianist Kekko Fornarelli, one of the more exciting standard-bearers of the New Piano Trio sound.  His first foray into the trio setting, Room of Mirrors, was one of the best things to come out in 2011.  A treatise on how far a strong melody can carry a song through any kind of terrain, it also accentuated the value some tasteful electronics and effects can provide a small group session.  On his newest, Outrush, Fornarelli focuses more on generating harmonic intensity, with the melodies, still strong, but riding the coattails rather than leading the charge.

If Room of Mirrors was the act of riding a melody down a twisting winding river, then Outrush behaves as the surges of waves rising up and crashing down upon the shore.  A different perspective might be to say that Fornarelli’s trio debut was more Esbjorn Svensson; his newest more from the school of Mehldau.  But either way, Fornarelli has two very strong efforts under his belt in his first two recording sessions as trio leader, and listening to those albums back to back, one can hear the development of an individualistic form of expression.

Arguably the strongest track is “Drawing Motion,” which strikes a nice compromise between the melodic demands of the previous album and the harmonic goals of the newest.  The strongly crafted melody is repeatedly referenced, either in whole or just with a wink of the eye, even as the swell of intensity continues to build to a peak.  The ebb and flow, triggered by the most lovely arco from bassist Giorgio Vendola, allows both aspects to regroup and come back even stronger with the next surge.

“Weeping Souls” gets right to the heart of this album.  Short, repeated phrases that suddenly bloom into pretty melodies, sprouting up from a rich harmonic soil.  Drummer Dario Congedo continually shifts gears, yet maintains a fluidity that enhances the song’s grace.

Meanwhile, “What Kept You So Late” shows that Fornarelli hasn’t lost his touch with the electronic embellishments, bringing the tempo to a sizzling boil.  And “Like a Driftwood” displays Fornarelli’s talent at synthesizing heartbreak down to its barest elements.  A sole vocal track, “Don’t Hide,” has some appeal, especially when guest vocalist Roberto Cherillo matches the bursts of intensity from the piano trio with a Thom Yorke style of accompaniment.

A very enjoyable album, and an interesting marker in Fornarelli’s development as trio-session leader.  Definitely someone to keep attuned to.

Your album personnel:  Kekko Fornarelli (piano, fender rhodes, synth), Giorgio Vendola (double bass), Dario Congedo (drums), and guest: Roberto Cherillo (vocals).

Released on Abeat Records.

Jazz from the Bari, Italy scene.

Available at:  eMusic | Amazon CD | Amazon MP3