Dec 18 2012
Daniel Humair – “Sweet & Sour”
Something I find particularly enjoyable about reviewing albums by jazz vets is thinking back over their recording and performance history, and dissecting which influences most contributed to the current album. I mean, I understand that they all inform the current recording… creative development is a very fluid entity, not expressed linearly or via cause-effect, but as a giant lexicon of expressing existence, reality, and oneself. But still, it’s a fun excuse to revisit old albums.
Drummer Daniel Humair is certainly a jazz vet. A colorful career that spans back decades, he’s collaborated with a disparate group of musicians and taken to music with a varied range of approaches. On his current release Sweet & Sour, an album typified by high-tempo pieces that prefer sharp angles and sudden motion, there could be any number of sources from his past to look back upon.
Your album personnel: Daniel Humair (drums), Emile Parisien (saxophones), Vincent Peirani (accordion), and Jerome Regard (bass).
For instance, this isn’t the first time that Humair has worked with an accordionist. His collaboration with accordionist Richard Galliano a case in point. Also, collaborations with multi-reedist Michel Portal must have had plenty of influence on the current release. Portal likes to jigger the melody and tweak the rhythm in ways that sound equally unconventional and accessible, and his work with Humair certainly fell into that distinction. And of a more recent vintage, how to overlook Humair’s work with reedist Benjamin Koppel, a musician who straddles the line between Jazz and Classical that results in a singular sound, in which he lifts sublime melodies out of thick turbulence.
But regardless of the particular roots of this music, Sweet & Sour brings a fuzzy dissonance to the mix. For instance, on second track “Ground Zero,” accordion distillates up from a heady saxophone section. Or how about eighth track “Debsh,” which begins sleepy-eyed, then suddenly shits into an over-caffeinated percussive drive. A track like “Oppression,” show the quartet can be light on its toes. Parisien trades darting quips on sax with Regard’s bass, while Humair weaves a rhythmic path between the two. When Peirani enters on accordion, Parisien immediately switches to a harmonic role, and the two begin paralleling Humair’s trajectory. Fourth track “7A3” begins with the sound of a stroll down a Parisian thoroughfare, but begins adding the sound of cyclical surges to add a decidedly tumultuous spin on the pleasant proceedings. And then there’s the track “Care 4” that blips and squeaks and quakes like a composition made from the elements, then takes off into flight borne by powerful wings.
And yet, even as this album repeatedly presents itself as music that fights against containment, it has a friendly charm that makes it easy to warm to. Albums like that typically become more enjoyable with repeat listening over the course of time. For me, that’s what happened here. This is an album that’s both engaging and fun.
Released on the Laborie Jazz label.
Jazz from Sweden.
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Dec 19 2012
Reggie Quinerly – “Music Inspired By Freedmantown”
On Music Inspired by Freedmantown, drummer Reggie Quinerly draws his inspiration from Freedmantown, an area of Houston, Texas that once boasted the largest percentage of African-American homeowners immediately following the Emancipation Proclamation. Later referred to as the Fourth Ward, this was also where Quinerly spent his childhood years.
We know this, because on fifth track, titled “Interlude,” he tells us. And this is where it all could’ve fallen apart. On “Interlude,” Quinerly speaks to the listener. Backed by a church organ, Quinerly gives a short history of Freedmantown, then explains what the town means to him personally. To risk a break in the flow of the album by directly addressing the listener, it’s such a bad idea. Well, except those rare times when it actually works. And the reason it works is something Quinerly points out in the interlude, stating that his intention wasn’t “to try to recreate the music of this particular place, but what I did want to capture was a certain soulfulness… of music and the people… and the love.”
On Music Inspired By Freedmantown, Quinerly does exactly that.
By simply attempting to present an impression of Freedmantown through his personal lens, Quinerly avoids the pitfall of turning the album into a history lecture and makes it, instead, an artistic expression of creativity, leaving plenty of room for each listener’s imagination to leapfrog off the facts in whichever direction they choose. In a very subtle, very deft way, Quinerly inspires daydreams of a town that most listeners will never see in their lives.
That’s pretty cool.
Let’s talk about that music…
Your album personnel: Reggie Quinerly (drums, percussion), Tim Warfield (tenor sax), Mike Moreno (guitar), Gerald Clayton (piano), Vicente Archer (bass, electric bass), Antoine Drye (trumpet), Matt Parker (tenor saxophone), Corey King (trombone), and guests: Sarah Elizabeth Charles (vocals), and Enoch Smith Jr. (vocals, piano, organ, and some arranging).
Most tracks open with gusto and then proceed to swing. Album-opener “#13 A Corner View from Robin Street” gets things started with a rollicking mood almost celebratory. And eighth track “The Virginia Gentleman” is a hopping up-tempo piece with choppy emphases and interludes of delicate swaying. But these are just two examples of an album that is typically gonna keep everyone’s feet moving.
Second track “Live From the Last Row” is a bit more inquisitive, a moody bossa hybrid, though Quinerly’s exuberance on drums never lets any gloom settle in. Moreno’s guitar refracts notes with alarming delicacy and precision. It’s a sound that worked well on the modern nu-jazz of Brian Patneaude’s Riverview, and it’s cool to see that Moreno can bring that same sound to Quinerly’s old-school jazz album and have a similar positive effect. The same can be said about the swinging heat Moreno brings to fourth track “Fenster.”
The title-track is probably my favorite. A soulful groove light on its feet, Enoch Smith’s barely audible vocals riding it like a cresting wave, and trumpet and sax nudging the tune forward. Even the congregation of voices that pop up from time to time, as if the recording studio was located in a neighborhood church, enhance the tune’s warmth and accessibility. One of those songs that makes it so damn easy to like.
Seventh track “A Portrait of a Southern Frame” comes in a close second for favorite album tune. A somber, moving piece, Drye’s trumpet takes it nice and slow, and couldn’t possibly achieve a lovelier tone to express sadness. The bridge has a wonderful moment of Clayton’s piano taking deliberate steps and contrasting against Quinerly’s frenetic drumming. This leads back to Drye restating the melody, slow and somber to end the tune. Just wonderful.
“#2 Xylent Letters” is another standout track. A tune with brooding undertones, Warfield’s sax brings a surging element that Clayton’s piano cuts sharp cross-sections out from. And all of this happens with Moreno’s guitar dancing in and out of punching range on guitar. The appealing quality here is that Quinnerly sounds to have juxtaposed a meandering post-bop section atop a classic hard-bop tune.
“Victoria” is the other album track with vocals. Sarah Elizabeth Charles sings a blues, accompanied by elegant piano work. Quinerly sits this one out, and the vacuum this presents allows Charles’s voice the room to stretch out a bit and add some emotional punch that might’ve been sacrificed for the sake of percussion.
The album ends with the only two non-original compositions: “I’m Old-Fashioned,” which features a nice solo on drums, and “Sentimental Journey,” which Quinerly admits to choosing because it’s a favorite of his mother’s. While not falling out of line with the album that proceeded it, these two songs also don’t add anything significant. The only real weak spot on the album (if solid jazz can actually be construed as a ‘weakness.’). It would’ve been better had Quinerly cut these two tracks out and either ended with the powerful “Victoria” or added one additional original composition as the album closer. This, however, comes down to nitpicking over what was, ultimately, an excellent recording.
I first gave this album a spin back in August, and now five months later, Music Inspired by Freedmantown is becoming an increasingly necessary part of my music routine. It deserves far more attention that it appears to have received, especially considering this is Quinerly’s debut. An auspicious recording debut, to be sure.
Released on Quinerly’s Redefinition Music label.
Originally from Houston, TX, Quinerly is part of the NYC jazz scene.
Listen to more of the album at the artist’s Soundcloud page.
Available at: Amazon
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By davesumner • Jazz Recommendations, Jazz Recommendations - 2012 Releases • 0 • Tags: Gerald Clayton, Matt Parker, Reggie Quinerly