Jazz Recommendations

May 7 2012

Tiny Reviews: Andy Clausen, Interlunio, Michel Mandel/Yyes Gerbelot, & Chris Plansker Trio

 

Tiny Reviews, featuring:  Andy Clausen The Wishbone Suite, Interlunio L’ennui Riot, Michel Mandel & Yves Gerbelot Tuyaux, and Chris Plansker Trio Inside the Bubble.

It’s been a little while since I put up some Tiny Reviews, and today is as good a day as any, so let’s jump right into it.  Today we’ve got three albums that come nowhere close to straight-ahead and one piano trio album as a palate cleanser.  The Clausen album has a shot at making my best-of mid-year list, due out sometime in July.

Let’s begin…

 

Andy Clausen – The Wishbone Suite

Brilliant debut album by trombonist Andy Clausen,who finds a way to fuse a disparate line-up of musicians and their seemingly ill-fitting instruments into an alluring, whimsical, and just-plain-cool mix of jazz, classical, and experimental music. Clausen often paints harmonically with broad brush strokes, which highlights the joyful details of his meticulous treatment of simple melodies.  Challenging music that doesn’t shy away from also being pretty.

Your album personnel:  Andy Clausen (trombone), Ivan Arteaga (clarinet), Gus Carns (piano), Aaron Otheim (accordion, piano), and Chris Icasiano (drums, glockenspiel).

There isn’t much out there that sounds like this music. Matt Ulery‘s blend of jazz, classical, and lullaby seems like the closest thing I can offer by way of comparison. Just really compelling stuff which earns more of my esteem with each subsequent listen.

Released by the Table & Chairs label.  Clausen is a Seattle native currently attending Julliard in NYC, and I don’t think he’s the only one in the ensemble with that situation.  So, this is jazz from a couple music scenes.

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

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

Available at eMusic.

 

Interlunio – L’ennui Riot

Interesting quintet date that has plenty of avant-garde flavors to go along with a strong world jazz sound.  Ensemble via Portugal, but the ensemble members trace their individual studies to Mediterranean, Arabic, Flamenco, Renaissance, to name a few, and which inform the album music to varying degrees.  Interestingly enough, rather than try to give a healthy taste of their various music endeavors, the Interlunio ensemble utilizes an economy of sound… much to the recording’s benefit.  End result is something that sits in the same chamber jazz territory of, say, Wayne Horvitz’s Gravitas Quartet, but with heavy infusions of an ECM New Sound release.  An unusual beauty, unconventional melodies, and a peacefulness even during moments of chaotic interaction.

Your album personnel: Ricardo A. Freitas (bass guitar), Gonçalo Lopes (bass & soprano clarinets), Johannes Krieger (trumpet), Raimund Engelhardt (tabla, percussion), and Eduardo Lala (trombone).

Released on the JACC Records label.  Jazz from the Lisbon, Portugal scene.

Available at eMusic.

 

Michel Mandel & Yves Gerbelot – Tuyaux

A duet of saxophones and clarinets.  Vacillates between the peaceful end of things and the fiery side of the spectrum.  The pulse of a beating heart, the call of wild birds, the whisper of a cool breeze darting between the countryside trees, moonlight spreading out over a calm ocean surface… an album full of imagery.  And it’s always nice when a clarinet gets some time in the spotlight to really stretch out and remind everyone what a sublime sound it’s capable of achieving.

Your album personnel: Michel Mandel (Bb clarinet, bass clarinet) and Yves Gerbelot (baritone & sopranino sax)

Released on the La Forge CIR label.

You can stream an album track on the label site, here.

Available at eMusic.

 

Chris Plansker Trio – Inside the Bubble

Nice little piano trio date.  Nothing complicated, laid back with a vibrant sound, definitely with at least one foot in the modern jazz composition setting, but nothing that makes it inaccessible to classic jazz fans.  Focus on ambiance.  Quite pretty at times.

Your album personnel:  Chris Plansker (piano), Rob Avsharian (drums), and Jordan Schug (bass).

This album is Self-Produced.

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

Available at eMusic.

 

*****

That’s it for today’s article.  Looks to be about two more sets of Tiny Reviews from this batch of new arrivals.

Here’s some language to protect eMusic’s rights as the one to hire me originally to scour through the jazz new arrivals and write about the ones I like:

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

My thanks to eMusic for the freelance writing gig, the opportunity to use it in this blog, and the editorial freedom to help spread the word about cool new jazz being recorded today.

By • Jazz Recommendations, Jazz Recommendations - 2012 Releases • 0

May 4 2012

Jessica Lurie Ensemble – “Megaphone Heart”

 

It’s not easy for a musician to nurture their sound into something quite unclassifiable, yet still remain strongly tethered to a particular genre.  Jessica Lurie makes it look easy.

This is jazz music, though put it side by side to an album recognized universally as jazz, and it’s like night and day.  It’s a matter of apples and origins.

There’s folk music here.  There’s quantifiable amounts of Klezmer.  The vocals could belong to an Indie-rock song.  There are excursions into Greek traditional folk dance.  And, yes, there’s jazz, too.  But where many artists begin with jazz and move outward toward the fringes while incorporating other influences, Lurie seems to move in a different direction… bringing her disparate elements together in a way that suits her, and which just so happens to coalesce into jazz.

It makes for an alluring and potent mix of music.  For this album, she brings together a stellar lineup.

Your album personnel:  Jessica Lurie (alto, tenor, baritone saxophones, flute, voice, megaphones), Brandon Seabrook (guitar, banjo, tape recorder), Erik Deutsch (piano, electric piano, organ), Todd Sickafoose (acoustic bass), Allison Miller (drums, percussion), and guest: Marika Hughes (cello). Tom Swafford (violin),  and Tina Richerson (baritone sax).

Aside from it being a heavy talent pool, Lurie’s choice of personnel was pretty crafty.  All the musicians on the album are quite adept at playing outside traditional jazz lines.  Brandon Seabrook fit in seamlessly with Jeremy Udden’s folk-jazz music.  Erik Deutsch plays funk/rock/jazz keys under his own name, as well as on bluegrass-jazz outfit County Road X and as sideman for Country act Shooter Jennings.  Todd Sickafoose recorded a brilliant indie rock-jazz album Tiny Resistors, and is a long-time sideman for pop musician Ani DiFranco.  Allison Miller is full-on modern jazz, and ably handles all the genre crosscurrents that exemplify it.  They all have proven capable of adapting to the music in front of them.  That’s a good quality to have when Jessica Lurie is leading the charge.

In doubt of what’s in front of you, stare right at the heart of the album.  In this instance, the album’s heart is “Der Nister.” It touches on so many of the themes and sounds glimpsed at throughout the album.

Lurie is growing more assured as a vocalist.  On previous albums, she displayed an adeptness at the turn of phrase, but on tracks like “Maps”, there is a richness to her emotive shifts in tone that smooths out the edges even as the words cut into the hearts of anyone listening.  Closing track “Once” is yet more evidence of her adeptness at vocal gymnastics and how no degree of difficulty is too risky if the song demands it.

Seabrook has always wielded the strings like a rusty blade… a sharp precision that displays its wear and tear on its sleeve.  And this doesn’t change whether it’s guitar or banjo.  There is nothing pretty about his sound, and, strangely, that makes it all the more rapturous.

Allison Miller is easy to notice on drums.  She has a distinctive sound, one that compels the rhythm though she’s never outwardly aggressive.  Miller has a way of getting the rhythm to obey without ever raising her voice or making a fist.  It was no different on her own solid 2010 release Boom Tic Boom.

“Same Moon” is a composition of sublime beauty that presents, in succession, Lurie’s drowsily hypnotic sax and Deutsch’s regal piano solo.

The guest appearance of strings is a nice touch.  On “Zasto,” Hughes’ cello, Swafford’s violin, and Sickafoose’s bass conjure up some serious magic.

I’ve been a fan of Lurie’s music for years now, so when I say I’m addicted to this album like none previous by her, it’s important to recognize that she had already established a pretty high bar to surpass.  Megaphone Heart does just that, and I’m absolutely sure it will be on my Best of 2012 when I make my half-way point of the year post in July.

You can stream the entire album, and purchase it, on her Bandcamp site.

The album is Self-Produced.  Jazz from NYC.

Available at Amazon: MP3

By • Jazz Recommendations, Jazz Recommendations - 2012 Releases • 0

May 2 2012

Brian Patneaude – “All Around Us”

 

Triangulation is a pretty useful method to determine where you’re at.  You take a couple known reference points, you check the angles, you extrapolate, and then you get that third point.  And when you’ve got all three, you can see the lay of the land.

It’s also a handy tool for measuring the development of a musician’s sound.  Much can be revealed over the course of three albums.  Musicians who embrace the search for their sound, who accept the challenge with hard work and enthusiasm, charting their development with a little triangulation makes for a nifty device.

Tenor saxophonist Brian Patneaude just gave us point number three.

The key to the Albums of Three rule is in accurately picking the “first” album.  You can’t just start anywhere.  You gotta find an album where the musician says something new, makes a statement about the shape of their music to come.

Patneaude’s first album was Variations, released back in 2003, and followed two years later with Distance.  Both are solid albums with plenty of decent jazz, but nothing that would set them apart from all the other decent jazz released at that time.  But there was a peek into where his sound was going on the title track to Distance, a little something that was incongruous to what came before, that didn’t quite fit in the flow of the rest of the album… but in a good way.  Sort of how a new house with innovative modern architecture can look totally out of place on a block of older classic Victorian homes, but still enhance the quality of the block just because the craftsmanship and design on the new addition is so peculiarly intriguing.  That was how the song “Distance”, from the album of the same name, stood out from the other tunes.

But it wasn’t until 2007’s As We Know It that Patneaude’s current sound broke from the soil and showed itself to the world.  It was a startling development, both in terms of its unexpectedness, but also in the huge leap it had made from the previous album.  Displaying a lyricism shining through the sound of setting sun mist, Patneaude gave a tip of the hat to modern jazz introversion and ambiance while simultaneously embracing the 1980s sound of blistering melodies a la Brecker Brothers.  It also made it an easy pick for album number one of three… the starting point.

The foray into that sound continued with 2009’s excellent Riverview, in which he wielded the sound with more confidence, both through his play and the compositions.  Riverview didn’t just expand on the ideas of its predecessor; it doubled-down on them.  Soloists were allowed to wander further from base camp.  The presence of tranquil introversion was amped up another level.  Melodies burned brighter, but with an emphasis on brightness over heat.  And if As We Know It was the time just after sunset, then Riverview was the hours as the night comes to a close… a shimmering electricity that refuses to quit even after burning through a full tank of gas.

In addition to a rhythm line of drums and bass, both of these albums had Patneaude’s tenor sax matched up with guitar and Fender Rhodes/organ.  The quavering notes of guitar and fuzzy notes of Rhodes & organ lent much to the moodiness of these albums, and were a deft counterbalance to the clean palate of Patneaude’s sax.  They went a long way to setting the environment in which the soloists performed.

So, about All Around Us.

Your album personnel:  Brian Patneaude (tenor sax), Mike DelPrete (acoustic bass), Danny Whelchel (drums, percussion), and David Caldwell-Mason (piano, fender rhodes).

After expanding outward the previous two albums, Patneaude has returned to home.  In some ways, it resembles the straight-forward Distance, but listening to them side-by-side, the gulf that separates the two albums is unmistakable.  The moodiness is most all gone, and introversion has become extroversion.  And whereas on the previous two albums, Patneaude developed a sound more inclined to induce daydreaming, now it an affable warmth that he sends notes out with, an easy fireside chat.  But it isn’t a break from the past, not by any means.  A bit like he has stepped out from the woods and into the studio, but brought some of the forest mist and gurgling stream of previous albums along for the ride.

The change in Patneaude’s approach is noticeable right from the start.  “Lake Timeless” opens the album with some wistful phrases from Patneaude on tenor while piano shades the composition from the edges, drums and bass building slow to end with a roar.  But through it all, Patneaude maintains that extreme likability and warmth.

Never is this new warmth more pronounced than in Patneaude’s rendition of Wayne Shorter’s “Juju.”  Patneaude takes Shorter’s intense song and approaches it with a congenial ease, his phrasing of the melody giving the sense of humming a little ditty.  It’s a startling transformation, one that took me about half the duration of the song to even recognize what tune it was.  It’s an outstanding track, one that demands return visits.

For All Around Us, Patneaude drops guitar from the line-up.  This strategy works to the album’s benefit.  The quartet uses the extra room to let their notes drift and float in space.  And when they do put some pop into their solos, it’s with an unhurried ease that emphasizes an economical use of speed over an extravagant display of power.

It feels live an Arrival Point, that album three of three in this particular arc of Patneaude’s creative development has been achieved.  From this listener’s perspective, it’s always a satisfying experience to hear an artist develop from one plateau to the next.  As an album, All Around Us is a positive indication of the state of things, and a promising signpost of what lies ahead.

Released on the Wepa Records label.  Jazz from the Albany, NY scene.

Download a free album track from Patneaude’s last four albums at AllAboutJazz, courtesy of the artist and label.

Available on Amazon: CD | MP3

By • Artist Overviews, Jazz Recommendations, Jazz Recommendations - 2012 Releases • 0

Apr 30 2012

Colin Vallon – “Rruga”

My review of Colin Vallon‘s Rruga has been pubbed over at Music is Good.  After the lead-in paragraph, you can follow the link to read the read of the article at MiG.

*****

The ECM catalog is filled with piano trio albums of austerity and minimalism.  For a piano trio to approach an album with a Doing More With Less minimalism is a daring venture, because the high risk is a drowsy album that ends up sounding flimsy and thin or, worse perhaps, lounge music for the late night dinner set.  It’s not an easy thing to do, the peaceful piano trio recording.

The choice of notes has to be impeccable, since there ain’t gonna be as many to offer the listener.  Honor has to be paid to the silence, and used as effectively as the sound made from the black and whites.  Bass and drums have to be more than just tools of accompaniment, but in the framework of the quiet piano trio, they need to be sure to only use their Inside Voices.  And then there’s the compositions themselves… (read the rest of the article, HERE, at Music is Good).

Your album personnel:  Colin Vallon (piano), Patrice Moret (double bass), and Samuel Rohrer (drums).

Released on the ECM Records label in 2011, and one of the year’s best.

Jazz from the Bern, Switzerland scene.

By • Jazz Recommendations, Jazz Recommendations - 2012 Releases • 0 • Tags: ,

Apr 30 2012

Recommended: Lynne Arriale – “Solo”

 

Following up on her strong quartet album Convergence, pianist Lynne Arriale returns with a solo recording—a risky venture for any artist.  In an ensemble setting, a musician has collaborators with whom to work and exchange ideas before the record button is punched, and more importantly, while the session is on the move.  In ensemble play, a musician’s unformed ideas or sound can be made whole by the other musicians in the ensemble; this is a big reason why group improvisation is such a glorious thing in jazz, that the whole is greater than the sum of its individual parts.  Everyone brings something to the moment and it all fits together.  However, in a solo project, the musician is completely alone, his/her artistry naked.  There is no one to talk to but the listeners themselves. Solo albums are revealing moments, and it is because of that that, when they succeed, they elicit such an emotionally profound reaction.

Which brings us to Arriale’s Solo.

Your album personnel:  Lynne Arriale (piano).

The opening notes of Solo are symbolic in the ways that count most. “La Noche” begins with discordant notes in descent, a sense of dramatically falling down a flight of stairs.  Arriale, however, never loses her balance, never hits ground. Instead, she exudes a grace and control that epitomizes her sound throughout.  Can one even fall if they breathe elegance with each step and note?  Is it falling or simply flight?  Arriale gives no insight into these questions, but provides the thrilling sensation of both.

Much like a brief glimpse, the subtlest touch can convey substantive and heavy emotions, as does Arriale with her expressions on piano.  Solo is never fussy, never overbearing.  On “Dove,” a tune of sublime beauty, Arriale gets everything it is possible to get out of each note without meticulously wringing them dry or ponderously studying them from every angle.  Arriale has attained such a level of mastery in her approach that all she requires is a brief moment of polish before she moves on.  It would be easy to describe it as effortless, but accuracy would be better honored by supposing that hard work and deliberation has resulted in a near subconscious fluidity of motion and thought.  Said differently, Arriale knows what notes she’s looking for and can find them right quick.

Solo is a mix of originals and covers.  Two of the selections come from Thelonious Monk.  On “Evidence,” Arriale presents the composition as she sees it, no more, no less.  While she passes on attempting a groundbreaking turn on Monk’s version, she also avoids doing a by-the-numbers rendition.  As such, like the other selections, the tune settles naturally into the flow of the album.  The album flow, from first note to last, remains undisturbed, with Arriale alone at the center of it all.

It’s all about the elegance.

Released on the Motema Records label.

Jazz from NYC.

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

Available at eMusic.  Available at Amazon: CD | MP3

*****

My review of Lynne Arriale’s Solo was originally published at AllAboutJazz)

By • Jazz Recommendations, Jazz Recommendations - 2012 Releases • 0

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