Aug 1 2013
Recommended: Jayme Stone – “The Other Side of the Air”
Bringing together a variety of regional influences and musical approaches, banjoist Jayme Stone offers up the intoxicating The Other Side of the Air. A mix of chamber jazz and folk musics absorbed from his travels, Stone accentuates the elegant warmth of the former and the amiable charm of the latter. It’s an album where songs fuse floating harmonies and earthy rhythms, and wraps it all up with beautiful melodies.
At its heart, this is a sextet session, anchored by Stone’s banjo mastery, and bolstered with a mix of woodwinds, brass, and rhythm section. Stone brings in additional accompaniment from all three of those instrument categories for an orchestral surge that is often enchantingly subdued, providing hints of the show of strength that a large ensemble is capable of without ever letting it overwhelm the moments of fragile serenity.
Your album personnel: Jayme Stone (banjo), Rob Mosher (woodwinds), Kevin Turcotte (trumpet), Andrew Downing (cello, bass), Joe Phillips (bass), Nick Fraser (drums, percussion), Aleksandar Gajic (violin), Aline Homzy (violin), Kathleen Kajioka (viola), Amy Laing (cello), Anne Thompson (flute), Clare Scholtz (oboe), Peter Lutek (bassoon), William Carn (trombone), and David Quackenbush (french horn).
The album’s inspiration originates from Stone’s own travels as well as imaginary travels elicited from simply sitting back and reading about locales of intrigue and fascination. That potent mix of Big Travel and Big Imagination comes through in the music. The mix chamber jazz air and folk music earth, contrasting and complementary elements that derive very real sensory reactions in the listener is further emphasized by the ethereal nature of imagined travels and the hard tack of real foot-to-earth experiences. It’s why so much of this album’s music sounds like it could go flying majestically off to the horizon despite its thick buried roots.
It’s a stunning illustration of the heights to which banjo can strive, but more to the point, it’s a tremendous example of that quality of Jazz that seeks to achieve new plateaus of expression and creativity. Just outstanding.
The album is Self-Produced.
Listen to more of the album at the artist’s Bandcamp page.
Jazz from Colorado.
Aug 2 2013
Recommended: Steven Lugerner – “For We Have Heard”
With his new release For We Have Heard, Lugerner returns with the same quartet from These Are the Words, and builds on that album’s pricklier nature. Basing this album’s compositions on a numeric approach to biblical text, Lugerner presents music that challenges the ear, just as it must have challenged the composer as he went about the task of crafting the songs. And as it is with any challenge, the effort to engage comes with its rewards.
Your album personnel: Steven Lugerner (Bb clarinet, bass clarinet, oboe, English horn, soprano & alto Saxophones, flute & alto flute), Darren Johnston (trumpet), Myra Melford (piano), and Matt Wilson (drums).
The album opens with “Us and Our Fathers,” a contemplative piano-led piece with some saxophone accompaniment. It channels the stillness of the morning.
“When a Long Blast Is Sounded” begins with a strong martial cadence. This holds fast, so that when the ensemble strays from a tight formation, there remains a sense of marching straight ahead. Drummer Matt Wilson, who brings a joyful swing to many of his own projects, displays yet again the breadth of his talent by contributing essential parts to an album with an acerbic disposition and one that employs an unconventional geometry in shaping songs. On subsequent track “Drove Out Before Us,” Wilson picks up right where he left off on the previous track, driving the tune with a cadence that crackles and pops with electricity, and partners with Lugerner’s sax in raising up and calling out into space.
There are several themes that act as threads throughout this recording, but it may be Wilson’s drums that serves as the unifying force.
On “Be Strong and Resolute,” the quartet’s development of an edgy groove breaks suddenly into a mesmerizing piano solo, which marks one of several occurrences of Myra Melford infusing a song with an austere beauty, providing a lightness to counteract the music’s tendency to go heavy and hard. Later, on the title-track, Melford adds some gentle accompaniment, partnering with the whisper of Wilson’s drums as Lugerner and Johnston work a melodic line that is about as fluid as any on this album of unpredictable motion. A musing ballad, the title-track is a bit of a throwback to Lugerner’s previous albums.
Trumpeter Darren Johnston fits in with this project easy-peasy. Whether it be with his quintet on a recording like the Clean Feed Records release The Edge of the Forest or a collaboration with top-tier players from the Chicago free-improv scene on an album like The Big Lift, Johnston is right at home with compositions that demand an aggressive expressiveness within an atypical framework of genially displayed ferocity. On “All Those Kings,” Johnston punches woozy notes through the spaces in between Lugerner’s flailing sax lines, giving illusory form to a song that presents an illusory dispersion.
Half of the album’s ten tracks clock in around two minutes in length each. They behave as vignettes, rather than simple interludes between songs, and as a result, express themselves as flash fiction… glimpses of imagination, with a brief life and an evocative punch. They have the added feature of being the most effective doorways into connecting with this album.
Of all of Lugerner’s work to date, this is easily the most challenging. But patience brings familiarity, and that leads to changes in how the album is perceived. It’s one of those albums that rewards effort. And considering Lugerner’s relative newness to the recording scene, it marks an intriguing chapter in his development.
Released on the Primary Records label.
Jazz from the Brooklyn scene.
Available at eMusic. Available at Bandcamp. Available at Amazon: CD
| MP3
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By davesumner • Jazz Recommendations, Jazz Recommendations - 2013 Releases • 0