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Jazz CD reviews
New CDs reviewed by Chris Parker
For the full review click on the CD title.
Billy Jenkins I am a Man from Lewisham
From
the bluesy growl of the opening title-track, through a series of rousing,
eccentric instrumentals, to the closing 'Throw Them Blues in the Recycling
Bin' featuring the Voice of God Collective Junior League Choir, this is
quintessential Billy Jenkins: teasingly satirical, genre-melding, passionate,
deeply rooted in South East London.
Stefano Battaglia / Michele Rabbia Pastorale
Pianist
Stefano Battaglia is something of an old hand at the percussion–piano
freely improvising duo, having collaborated in the early 1990s with Tony
Oxley and Pierre Favre, and with his current partner, fellow Italian Michele
Rabbia, on an earlier ECM release, Re: Pasolini. On these eleven
pieces, which range from deft interpretations of prearranged material (the
musical prayer 'Antifona Libera', the wisps of melody that inform the title-track)
through Maghrebi-influenced improvisations ('Cantar del Alma', 'Sundance
in Balkh')...
Jason Adasiewicz's Rolldown Varmint
Locating
the vibrant, freewheeling music on this, Rolldown's second album, by identifying
its roots in the freer 1960s Blue Note recordings (Andrew Hill, Eric Dolphy,
Sam Rivers et al.) and in its home city Chicago's improvised music scene
(Art Ensemble, AACM, Sun Ra) provides a useful shortcut for those new to
the band, but might leave them unprepared for the thoroughly contemporary
nature of Jason Adasiewicz's compositions, which bristle with all the viscerally
affecting energy of the current avant-rock scene in which he used to operate.
Joe Zawinul Money
in the Pocket
Given
his subsequent wordwide fame as a masterful producer of keyboard textures
that provided the heart (and soul) of jazz-fusion pioneers Weather Report
(not to mention the odd Miles Davis early electric album) and his own uniquely
influential 'world-jazz' bands, Joe Zawinul's early outings as a band pianist
are intriguing and instructive in equal measure.
Tineke Postma The
Traveller
On
the inner sleeve of this album by Dutch alto and soprano saxophonist Tineke
Postma, she looks pleased as Punch, posing alongside the band featured on
it – keyboard player Geri Allen, bassist Scott Colley, drummer Terri
Lyne Carrington – and well she might, because together they've produced
something special.
Secret Quartet Bloor
Street
The
Secret Quartet are altoist Martin Speake, pianist Nikki Iles, bassist Duncan
Hopkins and drummer Anthony Michelli, and this is their second album of
in-band originals (the first, Secret, was issued by Basho in 2001).
Speake has been mining a rich seam of form of late, with his ECM outing,
Change of Heart, and his 'Generations band' project both proving
great showcases for one of the purest, most assured saxophone tones to be
heard in current UK jazz, and on this cultured, tasteful album he again
sets it off perfectly by pairing himself with another confident, lyrical
but surprisingly robust player, pianist Nikki Iles.
Wadada Leo Smith Spiritual
Dimensions
Trumpeter
Wadada Leo Smith recently revealed that he feels, at present, 'more driven
than ever … in a flow that could not be better', and the AACM pioneer has
certainly seldom sounded more vibrant than he does on these two live outings.
The first, on which he fronts his Golden Quintet (completed by keyboardist
Vijay Iyer, bassist John Linberg and two drummers, Pheeroan AkLaff and Don
Moye), was recorded at New York's Vision Festival XIII in June 2008, and
features free-ish interpretations of music composed by Smith, focused on
his spearing yet almost conversationally intimate playing...
Dan Berglund's Tonbruket Dan
Berglund's Tonbruket
Dan
Berglund, bassist with e.s.t., was a big fan, in his youth, of hard rock
(Deep Purple, Black Sabbath) and today cites bands such as Arcade Fire and
Radiohead as major influences, so this band ('Tonbruket' being the Swedish
word for sound workshop) unsurprisingly draws heavily on avant rock and
ambient music for its overall approach.
Rachel Brand Find
Yourself In My Shoes
Singer
Rachel Brand came to jazz singing late, after a career in business, via
the Fionna Duncan Jazz Workshop and the Guildhall School, but she handles
a standard ('I Didn't Know What Time It Was', 'I Got Lost in His Arms',
'It Never Entered My Mind') with energetic wit, grace and aplomb; addresses
blues-based material (Oscar Brown's 'Humdrum Blues') with finely judged
robustness, and sings less familiar material (Ben Watt's paean to simple
pleasures, 'On Box Hill') with sensitivity and intelligence.
Kayla Quintet End
Times
Tenor
saxophonist Ben Abarbanel-Wolff neatly sums up his musical approach thus:
'I like it to be a bit melancholy while still being free. Not so completely
free that it's just noise, but melodically free with multidimensional rhythms.
We don't write them down metrically; we put them together according to feeling,
so everything is really shaky and unclear.'
John Warren Following
On
Documenting
another selection of small-group pieces from the same early-2008 session
that resulted in John Warren's previous Fuzzy Moon release, Finally Beginning
(also reviewed on this site), this nine-track album shares its predecessor's
grace, elegance and poise. Warren's originals range from re-scored versions
of previously heard pieces ('Dreamlines', for instance, was originally written
for John Surman's Octet;
Tammy Weis Where
I Need to Be
'Vancouver's
loss...London's gain' is how one jazz magazine referred to Canadian singer
Tammy Weis, now resident in the capital. She's certainly immersed herself
sufficiently in the UK's jazz scene to have surrounded herself with wonderfully
sympathetic musicians: pianist Tom Cawley (who co-wrote seven of the album's
eleven tracks with Weis), guitarist Al Cherry (familiar from his work with
Gwyneth Herbert), bassist Arnie Somogyi and drummer Sebastiaan de Krom.
John Donalson's Unity Nearer
Awakening
John
Donaldson knew fellow pianist Bheki Mseleku (1955–2008) as a friend
and inspiration in the South African's final decade, and toured England
and Scotland with him shortly before his premature death, so this album,
on which Donaldson and a tight, responsive band (completed by tenor player
Ian Price, bassist Simon Thorpe and drummer Tristan Banks) address eight
Mseleku compositions, is a personal as well as musical tribute.
Vijay Iyer Historicity
In
his thought-provoking notes to this album, pianist Vijay Iyer defines historicity
as 'a condition of being placed in the stream of history; also, a result
of such placement', and his trio's versions of compositions by Andrew Hill
('Smoke Stack'), Julius Hemphill ('Dogon A.D.'), Ronnie Foster ('Mystic
Brew'), Stevie Wonder ('Big Brother'), Leonard Bernstein ('Somewhere') and
Maya Arulpragsam/M.I.A. ('Galang') are, as Iyer suggests, informed by what
he himself terms 'eons of recorded music ringing in our ears'.
Tyratarantis Tyratarantis
Pianist
John Law, opposite whose trio Tryatarantis recently played, calls them 'a
wonderfully fresh-sounding trio of young musicians who play so easily you
lose sight of the technical accomplishments of all the band members and
just dig the feel … they communicate great joy. I think no one's told
them yet that life's supposed to be difficult.'
Mark Lockheart and the NDR Big Band Days
Like These
Saxophonist/composer
Mark Lockheart has been making superb albums under his own name for over
a decade now (Through Rose-Coloured Glasses, Subtone, 1998, contained
nine pieces played by the mid-size Scratch Band, augmented by eleven more
by a similar band on 2002's Imaginary Dances; his subsequent couple
of CDs have been small-group recordings), and has also made a number of
acclaimed albums with Perfect Houseplants from 1993 onwards, so this collection
of pieces arranged for the NDR Big Band, drawing as it (largely) does on
this body of work, has a justifiably retrospectively celebratory feel to
it, emphasised by a collage, on its sleeve, of pictures of Lockheart at
various stages of his development.
Brass Jaw Deal
with It!
Its
overall spirit summed up by the uproarious laughter that greets a wrong
note in the alternate take of Neal Hefti's 'Falling in Love All Over Again'
that is tacked on to the end of this fourteen-track CD, Deal with It!,
documents the brio and artistry of the 'a cappella horns' – trumpeter
Ryan Quigley, altoist Paul Towndrow, tenor player Konrad Wiszniewski, baritone
saxophonist Allon Beauvoisin – who make up Brass Jaw.
Nicolas Meier Journey
Structured
– from its opening track, 'Sunrise', through the sights and sounds
of 'Mountain Baba', 'Silent Lands', 'Summit' etc. to the concluding 'Sunset'
– to evoke the eponymous 'Journey', Swiss guitarist Nicolas Meier's
fourth album, like his previous two Naim CDs, features reeds player Gilad
Atzmon and drummer Asaf Sirkis, but they are joined by bassist Pat Bettison
(who also plays harmonica) and Uruguayan pianist Jose Reinoso, so the resultant
group sound is even richer and fuller than before.
Trichotomy Variations
Trichotomy
cite EST, later Radiohead and fellow Australians the Necks among their chief
inspirations. From the first-mentioned trio they get their pleasantly rackety
but carefully controlled robustness, a dynamic variety that sees the album's
opening track, 'Island of the Sun', for instance, build naturally into a
gloriously exuberant three-way musical tussle, but which can also see them
muse quietly through passages of subdued minimalism to equally dramatic
effect.
Fringe Magnetic Empty
Spaces
The
result of 2006 UCL/Institute of Education commission to write a 'cross-genre
project for jazz and classical musicians … to work on composed and improvised
music in a cohesive context', Rory Simmons's Fringe Magnetic is comprised
of the trumpeter/composer's core quartet (completed by pianist Ivo Neame,
bassist Jasper Høiby and drummer Ben Reynolds replacing regular member
Dave Smith), supplemented by clarinettists Robin Fincker and James Allsopp
(both members of Simmons's Curve quintet), flautist Tori Freestone, violinist
Kit Massey and cellist Natalie Rosario, joined on vocal tracks by singers
Elisabeth Nyhaard and Andrew Plummer.
Chris Parker
Chris Parker was commissioning editor for Quartet Books jazz list and
publisher of Wire magazine and has written on jazz forJazz Review
and Jazzwise, the Independent, the Daily Telegraph
and The Times).
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