Jazz Recommendations

Tiny Reviews, featuring:  Brooklyn Jazz Underground A Portrait of Brooklyn, Benjamin Herman Deal, and Miho Wada Wanderland.

*****

Brooklyn Jazz Underground – A Portrait of Brooklyn

An ensemble recording comprised of artists involved with the Brooklyn Jazz Underground Records label, an artist-run organization.  Each of the ensemble members present a nice pastiche of modern jazz compositions of their own making.  Melodies misshapen and warped, yet retain their beauty.  Rhythms shimmer like on the surface of displaced water.  Emotional shifts that enhance the album’s cohesiveness, rather than detract from it.  Track “The Hill” has a bandstand groove for Friday night dancing.  “The Cherry Bees” has a shimmering melody so intoxicating as to be addictive and so delicate as to threaten to drift away forever.  “Starr St.” has a heart-of-the-city presence, of an entire world of possibilities and stimuli all close enough to reach out and touch.  Just a very strong effort.

Your album personnel:  David Smith (trumpet), Adam Kolker (tenor & alto saxes, clarinet, bass clarinet, flute), Dan Pratt (tenor sax, clarinet, flute), Anne Mette Iversen (bass) and Rob Garcia (drums).

Released on the Brooklyn Jazz Underground Records label.

You can stream the album on the BJU’s bandcamp page.

Available at eMusic.

Benjamin Herman – Deal

Dutch saxophonist Benjamin Herman has been remarkably consistent over the years.  His sound is very reminiscent of the early 70s when jazz was getting strong infusions of soul, funk, and trip rock.  Herman has a cool jazz sound, amped way up, and his music would be just as comfortable as a soundtrack to a Motown themed movie as it would a hippie freak out flick.  On this album, his quintet is joined by the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra for a set of high voltage, swinging tunes, carried along with lush strings and an army of woodwinds.

Your album personnel:  Benjamin Herman (sax), Joost Kroon (drums), Manuel Hugas (bass guitar), Carlo de Wijs (Hammond B3), Jesse van Ruller (guitar), and the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra.

Released on the Dox Records label.

Download a free album track at AllAboutJazz, courtesy of the artist and label.

It appears you can purchase a Vinyl edition of the album direct from Dox Records.

Available at eMusic.  Available at Amazon: CD

Miho Wada – Wanderland

Flautist Miho Wada just does her own thing.  Not sounding like anyone else on the scene, she’s developing a very likable approach to jazz flute.  After immersing herself in Cuban music on her previous recording Para Ti (reviewed here), she returns with a new release that has more of an Indie pop flavor.  Catchy as hell, rapid tempos even when the melody is taking its time, and shifts between swinging and brooding.  The music sounds influenced by Wada’s New Zealand locale.  On this release, as with past Wada recordings, there is a palpable element of Fun inherent in the music.  It’s easy to imagine the musicians genuinely enjoying themselves as they record these tunes.  Song “Bears and Bamboos,” with its bittersweet violin and rock tempo, should appeal to lots and lots of you Indie fans.  Wada also doubles on sax for this recording.  Too pretty.

Your album personnel:  Miho Wada (flute & sax), Pascal Roggen (violin & electric violin), James Donaldson (cello), Andrew Rudolph (guitar), Takumi Motokawa (piano & organ), Leo Corso (bass), Alistair Deverick (drums), and Jane Chen (taiko drums).

The album is Self-Produced, released on Wada’s Florestar label.

Download a free album track at AllAboutJazz, courtesy of the artist.

You can stream the album on Wada’s bandcamp page.

Available at eMusic.

*****

Portions of these 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,“ reprints courtesy of eMusic.com, Inc.
© 2012  eMusic.com, Inc.

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

There can be a sublime eloquence to the perfect expression of restraint.  Complex statements can be simply said, and the friction exerted between the expansive and the succinct can pack a hell of a punch.  On Swept Away, four of the vanguards of the jazz scene come together and illustrate exactly that point.

These are artists with a strong familiarity with one another.  Wife-Husband team of Eliane Elias and Marc Johnson are partners in music too, and Joey Baron has manned the drum set on recent Eliase recordings Something For You and Plays Live.  And Joe Lovano first worked with this quartet as part of the ensemble on Johnson’s 2005 release Shades of Jade.

This is music for late night clubs in the classy part of town.  This is music for evenings home alone, a drink, and standing by the window and looking out over the city.  This is music that illuminates the darkness with shimmering lights, making it easier to embrace.  If the silence is thick, then here is an album to break it apart and make it safe to breathe again.

Your album personnel:  Marc Johnson (double bass), Eliane Elias (piano), Joey Baron (drums), and Joe Lovano (tenor sax).

Calm discussions, tunes in a state of repose that feature intelligent statements delivered by pro musicians with equanimity and consideration.  Title-track “Swept Away” opens the album exactly that way, and its even-handed approach to collaboration informs much of the tone for the rest of the album.  “Foujita,” near the end of the album, reinforces it.  The ballad “Moments” features a velvety turn on sax by Lovano, who gives lullaby treatment to a love song.  “It’s Time” takes a handful of crisp pirouettes across a tune of stately elegance.

A few tracks break from that mold.  There’s “B Is For Butterfly,” which has a Vince Guarldi lightness and bounce to it, a childlike euphoria for simple things like falling leaves in Autumn.  Johnson’s arco on “Inside Her Old Music Box” melts into the cool moonlight of Elias’s piano phrasings, emitting a comforting warmth with brooding sound.  “When the Sun Comes Up” is perfectly titled, killing any need to utilize a metaphor of a composition slowly waking from sleep and springing to life.  “One Thousand and One Nights” simmers some bubbling phrases to start, then rises to a boil and brings some necessary up-tempo feistiness to an album that might’ve become too comfortable just coolly hanging back.

But when it all gets summed up, this is night time music, performed by musicians who provide every reason to stay awake and keep the moon company.

Released on the ECM Records label.

Jazz from the Hamptons, New York.

Available at eMusic.  Available at Amazon: CD | MP3

Indulging his fascination with numbers, guitarist Scott Anderson has recorded an album that is anything but formulaic.  By concocting a soup of fusion, chamber jazz, rock, and modern jazz, Anderson displays an intriguing array of differing views of his music.  The result is an album that alternates between the extremes of smoldering and smoking, with little room for anything in between.

Your album personnel:  Scott Anderson (guitars, piano one one track), Kathy Halvorson (oboe), Katie Scheele (english horn), Mark Snyder (english horn, oboe), Jeff Davis (drums), Eivind Opsvik (bass), and guests: Rob Curto (piano) and Bryan Murray (soprano sax).  Sound of handclaps can be accredited to most of the musicians.

There is a solidly fusion element to this music.  Guitar often sears notes bright and clean, aligning them with mathematical precision.  And while Anderson does keep his guitar in the thick of things, some tracks have him bringing up the rear.  “Being Nine” has piano leading the way down the trail, while the rest of the ensemble follows in its wake.  And on a track like “Short Piece #1,” while oboes and horns solo, Anderson adds some well-placed guitar accompaniment.

As mentioned previously, there’s plenty of jazz-rock fusion here, and on a track like “Severed,” it leans far more heavily on the conventions of the latter than the former.  And then there’s a track like “Ralphhead” and its pop music lilt… the dramatic build has a bit of a superficial sheen in the way it grows tension through an increase in volume and vamping, but it’s a pretty enough tune, and it lends strength as an emotional transition to subsequent track “O Waltz” with its chamber jazz enchantment, and arguably the strongest track on the album.

“Only the Trying” has a prog rock sound to it.  Oboes and horns give voice to probing notes, like searching in the dark for the light of a melody.  It’s a nice contrast to “Sita,” which develops an infectious groove out of oboe and soprano sax.

Two of the final three tracks illustrate even further the varied nature of this album.  Eighth track “All Are One” has Anderson taking a turn at piano, playing solo to start, a meditative piece that has cymbals and brushes add their voice in the back half of the tune.  Album ends with ‘Short Piece No. 2 Duolo,” a duo of guitar and English horn.

Numrerology Ology is a bit all over the place.  I often talk about an album’s cohesion as a positive quality about a particular recording, that it can act as the perfect bow to wrap a gift of music up just right.  This album doesn’t have much of that, but, really, that’s part of its charm.  In the creative process, sometimes things come to a boil, and it’s a fair expectation that all of the ideas that have been percolating in an artist’s head will come bursting out the moment the door to the recording studio opens.  It’s a scenario that often derives interesting results.  In many ways, this kind of album can act as a table of contents for all the possible stories the musician may tell down the road.

Numerology Ology gives plenty of reason to listen in to the next chapter.

Note:  Oboists performing on this album also have their own outfit, the Threeds Oboe Trio.

The album is Self-Produced.  Jazz from the Brooklyn scene.

You can stream, and purchase, the album on the artist’s Bandcamp page.

Available at eMusic.  Available at Amazon: CD | MP3

Tiny Reviews, featuring:  Mike Mahoney Wallingford, Raynald Colom Rise, and Pink Monkey Ink.

*****

Mike Mahoney – Wallingford

On drummer Mike Mahoney‘s debut album Wallingford, it’s easy to imagine that he has all three Brian Blade Fellowship albums within easy reach.  This is modern jazz, with a heavy cross-pollination of post-rock that leads to reflective melodies and tempos that rarely, if ever, swing.  It’s the kind of album that can make one start to question whether it’s jazz at all, and then suddenly the clouds part, and a hopping sax solo breaks through, and the bass player (of which there is a rotating cast of three on this album) and pianist establish a nifty groove, and now we’re back in jazz territory again.

Based on the liner notes, and not unlike many debut albums, Mahoney attempts to encapsulate much of the imagery and memories and thoughts he’s had in all the time leading up to his debut recording session.  Typically, a scope that wide leads to a wandering, somewhat unfocused album.  That’s not necessarily a bad thing, nor is it even a real criticism.  It’s just a trait I find commonplace on many debut recordings, especially by younger musicians.  I find if I’m prepared for it going in, and accept it on those terms, it makes for a much more enjoyable listening experience.

Wallingford is definitely that.  A promising first album.

Your album personnel:  Mike Mahoney (drums), Mark Allen (baritone & soprano sax, flute), Jon Rees (alto sax, flute), Dylan Babitch (piano, Rhodes), Ian Brick (guitar), and a team of bass players on various tracks:  Jon Smith (electric bass), Brian Howell (upright bass), and Jason Fraticelli (upright bass).

The album is Self-Produced.  Jazz from (I think) the Wallingford, PA scene.

You can stream, and purchase, the album on Mahoney’s Bandcamp page.

Available at eMusic.  Available at Amazon: CD | MP3

Raynald Colom – Rise

Not an easy album to encapsulate, due primarily to the expansive breadth of music influences that trumpeter Raynald Colom attempts to incorporate into this complex, yet elusively straight-ahead jazz album.  Bringing in musicians with backgrounds in a varied set of regional musics and focuses, Rise is, at its heart, a modern jazz recording.  Yet by spotting the compositions with spoken word, vocals, orchestration, and traditional jazz, Colom creates enough folds and angles to the music in a way that inspires the delight and wonder of an elegant origami construction.

This is the kind of album that makes for a long, slow reveal, one that’s ultimately rewarding when it’s all said and done.  Three of the tracks have orchestration.  They’re my favorites.  The third of the three also has a spoken word piece incorporated into it, a blend which goes a long way as evidence of Colom’s talent as a composer.

P.S.  This is a really strong line-up.  Pukl, Ortiz, and Royston all have put out solid albums this year, and Carter has contributed to Ortiz’s excellent recording as well as to a number of other albums and performing with Wallace Roney.  A good album to use as guidance to find other good albums.

Your album personnel:  Raynald Colom (trumpet), Jure Pukl (tenor saxophone), Aruan Ortiz (piano), Rashaan Carter (double bass), Rudy Royston (drums), and guests:  Philippe Colom (bass clarinet), Roger Blavia (percussion), Core Rhythm (spoken word), Sofia Rei (vocal), and the Eclectic Colour Orchestra.

Released on the Jazz Village label.

Available at eMusic.  Available at Amazon: CD | MP3

Pink Monkey – Ink

Fiery sax trio whose music, if Pink Monkey were a child, was probably often sent to the time-out box. Energetic like crazy, but also capable of some blissed-out moments, like the thrilling “It Was Yours (Stomped)” which should grab the ears of anyone who’s into the Colin Stetson sound. This is music to start off a weekend of Too Much Fun, performed by musicians who want to be rock stars while jamming out to jazz albums.

Your album personnel: Tim Koelling (sax), Nick Kokonas (drums), and Mike Koelling (bass).

You can stream the album on the trio’s bandcamp page.

The album is Self-Produced.  Jazz from the Chicago scene.

Available at eMusic.

*****

The Mike Mahoney and Raynald Colom reviews are original to Bird is the Worm.  However, a portion of the Pink Monkey review was 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,“ reprints courtesy of eMusic.com, Inc.
© 2012  eMusic.com, Inc.

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