Linda May Han Oh: Strange Heavena

 

    There are times in the life of any music fan when a promised collaboration of favorite musicians will be wildly anticipated, only to end up sounding better on paper then on the stereo. Then there are particularly inspired dates that exceed anything you might expect. The utterly magnificent Strange Heavens by bassist Linda May Han Oh and her trio with trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire and drummer Tyshawn Sorey is one of those successes. Sorey’s simultaneously torrid and sensitive beat, Akinmusire’s broad range of expressive techniques, and Oh’s solidly rooted bass combine for an enchanting musical experience. Oh composed most of the pieces, and arranged Geri Allen’s Skin and Melba Liston’s Just Waiting for the trio. We begin with Portal, kicking off with a tricky bass pattern, drums that sneak up on you, and relaxed trumpet that fills out the sound. As the track proceeds, the trio’s remarkable cohesion, dynamic range, and ease in shifting tempos are revealed as keys to this program’s success. Oh and Sorey have been playing together quite a lot in pianist Vijay Iyer’s much-acclaimed trio, and their experiences there have clearly informed the intensity and commitment they bring to this group. There’s only one piece that exceeds five minutes, the straight-forwardly funky Noise Machinery which clocks in at 5:27. The trio likes to get into the compositions, have their say, and get out quickly, an attitude that promotes concentrated listening. Other highlights include the spacious title track, the hard-driving Paperbirds, and the impassioned musical conversation on Skin. As Oh notes, “Playing in chordless trios is invigorating and rewarding, in that I have freedom when I solo, but I also have a responsibility to make sure there’s clarity in what I’m saying and the story is being told.” The story that is told so well on Strange Heavens evokes the kernel of the creative music experience, when individuality and the collective experience of the group are in perfect balance. Strange Heavens is one of the best albums I’ve heard this year, and it should surprise no one if it rates highly in year-end polls. Highly recommended. 

Biophilia; Ambrose Akinmusire (tpt) Linda May Han Oh (b) Tyshawn Sorey (d); no dates or location specified; Portal/ Strange Heavens/ Living Proof/ Acapella/ The Sweetest Water/ Noise Machinery/ Home/ Paperbirds/ Folk Song/ Work Song/ Skin/ Just Waiting; 48:03. biophiliarecords.com

PlainsPeak: Someone To Someone

     Multi-instrumentalist Jon Irabagon has been an extremely busy performer since his debut on record with the Chicago Metropolitan Jazz Orchestra in 1997. He came to prominence with his role in Mostly Other People Do The Killing, which began as a quartet in 2003. He’s appeared on numerous releases over the years, with 133 sessions listed in Tom Lord’s online Jazz Discography. Irabagon has returned to his Chicago roots with his latest project Someone To Someone, recorded with a quartet he calls PlainsPeak. Trumpeter Russ Johnson played on Irabagon’s debut as a leader (Jon Irabagon’s Outright!, Innova, 2008), and the rapport they display as the front line is impressive. They sound like a grittier version of the Ornette Coleman/Don Cherry partnership, a comparison aided by the trumpet, sax, bass and drums format of PlainsPeak. The impeccable rhythm team of bassist Clark Sommers and drummer Dana Hall has energized a batch of sessions since their first appearance together on Sommers’ 2012 album Ba(sh). Irabagon, who composed all the selections for this release, confines himself to the tenor saxophone. His tunes are always deeply interesting and unpredictable, both in their melodic wanderings and the arrangements. You can never be too sure when one of the horns or the bass will burst out for a solo. It’s a tactic that promotes dedicated listening on the parts of both the listener and the performers. One of the highlights of this consistently engrossing release is the appropriately somber Tiny Miracles (at a Funeral for a Friend), but there are many passages of unforced beauty throughout. Heartily recommended. 

Irabbagast 032; Russ Johnson (tpt) Jon Irabagon (ts) Clark Sommers (b) Dana Hall (d); Chicago, IL, December 9-10, 2024; Someone to Someone/ Buggin’ the Bug/ Malört is My Shepherd/ At What Price Garlic/ Tiny Miracles (at a Funeral for a Friend)/ The Pulseman; 42:29. jonirabagon.bandcamp.com

Denny Zeitlin: With A Song In My Heart

     Pianist Denny Zeitlin was in grade school when his parents took him to see Oklahoma! and he was “electrified” by the music of Richard Rodgers. Zeitlin started playing jazz gigs in high school and made his first albums for Columbia in 1964. All that time, he’s been thinking about Rodgers’ music, often playing one of Rodgers’ over 900 (!) songs on gigs and on record. With A Song In My Heart offers a generous helping of Zeitlin devoting an entire program to Rodgers’ music. The first six tracks come from the 2019 edition of his solo piano appearances at Oakland’s Piedmont Piano Company, each devoted to the work of a single composer. The balance of the CD was recorded that fall in his home studio. The playing throughout is elegant in its phrasing, with the composer’s ever-lovely melodies at the forefront of Zeitlin’s inventive improvisations. While this kind of album, with so and so playing the music a particular composer, was a staple of record labels at one time, the earliest examples of the sub-genre generally have the performers staying fairly close to the song they were playing. By now, musicians feel perfectly free to reharmonize their material or give it a different feel with an unusual time signature. Thus we get a exploration of I Didn’t Know What Time It Was in 7/4, and I Have Dreamed recast as a bossa nova. Zeitlin’s carefully considered sequencing choices give the album a genuine flow. Variation in tempo from piece to piece help draw the listener along for the ride. For instance, Happy Talk really cooks, while his lengthy live exploration of Ev’rything I’ve Got simmers. The artist’s brief liner notes put each of the tunes in the context of the musicals where they first appeared, as well as pointing out musical tidbits about his arrangements. Concluding the album is a straight ahead version of the oft-played With a Song in My Heart. This exquisite rendition of this popular standard neatly sums up the session with its graceful beauty. Definitely recommended. 

Sunnyside SSC 1781; Denny Zeitlin (p); Oakland, CA, December 13, 2019* or Kentfield, CA, November & December 2019; Falling in Love With Love*/ I Didn’t Know What Time It Was*/ He Was Too Good to Me*/ Johnny One Note*/ Wait till You See Her*/ Ev’rything I’ve Got*/ This Nearly Was Mine/ Have You Met Miss Jones?/ I Have Dreamed/ Happy Talk/ With a Song in My Heart; 77:36.
sunnysiderecords.com

Andy Biskin: Reed Basket

     I’ll admit that when Reed Basket arrived in my inbox, I was a bit apprehensively about the virtues of a clarinet quartet. But I needn’t have worried. Clarinet wizard Andy Biskin and Reed Basket, with fellow clarinetists Peter Hess, Mike McGinnis, and Sam Sadigursky, uncork a relatively broad range of sound generated by five different members of the clarinet family. Biskin composed every one of the odd numbered tracks, which alternate in the program with an astonishing range of covers by composers including Franz Schubert (Moment Musicaux #3), Horace Silver (Blue Silver), Jelly Roll Morton (Wolverine Blues), and the biggest surprise, Lou Reed (Walk on the Wild Side). The carefully detailed arrangements are brought to vibrant life by musicians that are marvelously attuned to the nuances of each other’s sound. And Biskin’s smart sequencing of the program provides an engaging flow to the project. If I were impelled to pick a favorite piece from this baker’s dozens of delicious performances, today it might be the group’s dissection of fellow clarinetist Pee Wee Russell’s Wailin' D.A. Blues. Tomorrow, Biskin’s own Yasmina, with it’s A-section of rapturous melody and stately mien and the B-section that gives it some lift, might just hit the spot, and the day after that, it could be the easy groove of the Horace Silver piece or the winsome and lively arrangement of the Lou Reed song, or ... You get the idea: not a wasted moment in over an hour of charming and captivating sounds, beautifully recorded and mixed by Marc Urselli. Improvised music is full of surprises; I like it when an album I was hesitant about knocks me out in the listening. Very happily recommended. 

Self-produced; Andy Biskin (Bb, bcl) Peter Hess (Bb, Eb, alto clarinet, bcl, contra-alto clarinet) Mike McGinnis (Bb, alto clarinet, bcl)/ Sam Sadigursky (Bb, Eb, bcl); NYC, May 17, 2024; 1.Easy Chair/ 2.Camelot/3. Yasmina/ 4. Moment Musicaux #3/ 5. New Fangle/ 6. Wailin' D.A. Blues/ 7. Old Self/ 8. Blue Silver/ 9. So Forth/ 10. Walk on the Wild Side / 11. If Time Allows/ 12. Wolverine Blues/ 13. Minotaur; 62:10. andybiskin.com

A pair of guitar duos: Joe Morris & Elliott Sharp/Eyal Maoz & Eugene Chadbourne

     Two of modern music’s most outré guitarists, Joe Morris & Elliott Sharp, unite for an absolutely wild session they’ve dubbed Realism. Now this collaboration, involving acoustic guitars and electric guitars plus Morris’ effect pedals and Sharp’s electronics, is nearly as far from realism as you can get. I say “nearly” because the instruments are usually recognizable as guitars. Noisy, scrabbly, and definitively weird, their abrasive sounds will certainly not be to everyone’s taste. But so what? As producer and current ESP honcho Steve Holtje reminds us, one of the early slogans of the label was “you never heard such sounds in your life,” and that’s certainly true of this set. Totally improvised, and chock-full of surprising moments, this music twists and turns in so many directions at once it can feel somewhat dizzying. From the first fairly gentle flurries of sound on Shapes Mentioned to the whoops and clangs of the lengthy Arrokoth, Realism is both insanely beautiful and beautifully insane. Totally recommended.

 ESP-Disk’ ESP5084; Joe Morris (g, effects) Elliott Sharp (g, electronics); Brooklyn, NY, July 17, 2023; Shapes Mentioned/ Neither Odd Nor Even/ Light Asking/ Freezing in Hell/ Soft Version/ Arrokoth; 64:40. espdisk.com

    Another guitar duo, Eyal Maoz & Eugene Chadbourne, has a big batch of fun on The Coincidence Masters. Freely improvised music needs surprising coincidences to result in more than a random jumble of noise, and veteran weirdo Dr. Chad along with Maoz are more than ready to create the right conditions for those surprises to erupt. Where the Morris/Sharp duo is prone to big noises with lots of electronic effects, Maoz and Chadbourne take a calmer approach to their interactions. Chadbourne’s many projects over the years have nearly always had a humorous edge to them, and The Coincidence Masters is no exception. It comes through in the quietly subversive back and forth that the pair engages in, as well as the titles they’ve given for their improvised encounters. Song titles like And Now, All Is Left Is The Titles Search and The Last Track point directly at their playful attitudes in the recording studio. But in the end, They are no less serious about their music than the more raucous Morris/Sharp duo. Listened all the way through, the CD feels like a kind of suite, with track times running from the thirty-eight seconds of Eager for the Ad-Lib to a pair of lengthy excursions in Unexpected, Also For Us, clocking in at just over ten minutes, and the longer Naming Comforts People. The Coincidence Masters is a delightfully entertaining showcase of improvisation, mastered by none other than Elliott Sharp! 

Infrequent Seams (CD, digital album); Eyal Maoz, Eugene Chadbourne (guitars); NYC, June 10, 2022; Words Are Not Intended/ Two Guitarists/ Improvisation Enthusiasm/ On-the-Spot/ Eager for the Ad-Lib/ Unexpected, Also For Us/ And Now, All Is Left Is The Titles Search/ We Need It/ Naming Comforts People/ All Through / The Last Track; 52:05 . infrequentseams.bandcamp.com

Classic Vanguard Jazz Piano Sessions

        Following closely after Mosaic’s compilation of Classic Vanguard Small Group Swing Sessions comes a companion set, Classic Vanguard Jazz Piano Sessions with 6 CDs containing a total of eleven complete sessions. The fun starts with the Jo Jones Trio, recorded in early stereophonic sound at the end of April 1958. Mosaic has eschewed its usual chronological sequencing in favor of a more thematic approach, and the glorious sounds of the Jones trio with pianist Ray Bryant and his bassist brother Tommy Bryant. Drum master Jones, a mainstay of the Small Group Sessions collection, is heard again with the almost forgotten pianist Sir Charles Thompson in a quartet date on the remainder of disc 1. Thompson led a few band dates on the earlier box and is represented here in two contexts. The quartet date of January 1954 features Jones with bassist Walter Page and guitarist Freddie Green, while the February 1955 session, which starts off disc 2, is a drummer-less trio with Skeeter Best on guitar and Aaron Bell on bass. The rest of disc 2 offers a solo set from pianist Bobby Henderson, a very enjoyable Fats Waller tribute recorded in November 1956. This fine performer was rediscovered after 23 years by producer John Hammond during a random stopover in Albany, NY where Henderson was performing under a different name. After Henderson made a second solo recording for Vanguard in 1957 (Call House Blues), he disappeared again, resurfacing again two decades later to make two more solo albums for Chiaroscuro in 1969. Discs 3 & 4 are given over to four sessions led by pianist Mel Powell, closely associated with Benny Goodman. First up is a swinging sextet date featuring trumpeter Buck Clayton. That’s followed by a fascinating August 1954 trio date with Powell joined by the “Vice Prez” Paul Quinichette on tenor saxophone and Bobby Donaldson on drums. Just a week later came another trio excursion, with trumpeter Ruby Braff and Donaldson. The last Powell session, done in October 1955, is a hodge-podge of lineups, with trios, quintets, and septets. There’s some fine music here, but the ever-changing configurations make for an odd listening experience. Thomas Cuniffe, principal writer and editor of jazzhistoryonline.com who contributed a liner essay to the first Vanguard box, repeats that effort here. He describes the Ruby Braff/Ellis Larkins duo sessions that make up discs five and six as the “crown jewels of this collection,” and it’s hard to disagree with that assessment. Trumpeter Braff and pianist Larkins recorded a baker’s dozen of songs in February 1955, released as on two 10-inch volumes aptly titled as Two Part Inventions in Jazz. The pair followed up with an October date devoted exclusively to songs by the well-loved team of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, issued on Lp as 2 x 2. Larkins had established a reputation as an accompanist to singers, notably Mildred Bailey and Ella Fitzgerald. In Braff he had a partner whose style frequently took a song’s lyrics as a springboard for his improvisations. They are clearly of one mind in their approaches to the music, and together they manifest an unhurried and sophisticated approach to their material. The late Michael Cuscuna, co-founder of Mosaic Records, was deeply involved in the preparation of the Vanguard sets, and these collections testify to his wide-ranging engagement with all eras of jazz. He’s much missed, but his overwhelming contribution to the music will live on as long as there are enthusiasts to listen to his many productions. Easily recommended. 

Mosaic MD6-281; Disc 1 63:21): (A) Jo Jones Trio (4/30/58) (B) Sir Charles Thompson Quartet (1/22/54). Disc 2 (70:10): ©) Sir Charles Thompson Trio (2/16/55) (D) Bobby Henderson (11/26/56). Disc 3 (61:43): (E) Mel Powell Septet (12/30/53) (F) Mel Powell Trio (8/17/54). Disc 4 (72:37): (G) Mel Powell Trio (8/24/54) (H) Mel Powell Septet/Quintet (10/19/55). Disc 5 (60:43): (I) Ruby Braff/Ellis Larkins duo (2/17/55). Disc 6 (50:43): Ruby Braff/Ellis Larkins duo (10/14/55). For complete discographical details, go here. Limited to 5,000 sets; available from www.mosaicrecords.com

Kenny Burrell with Art Blakey: On View At The Five Spot Café: The Complete Masters

     The cast: guitarist Kenny Burrell with Art Blakey on drums, plus Bobby Timmons and Roland Hanna alternating on piano, tenor saxophonist Tina Brooks, and bassist Ben Tucker. The date and place: August 25, 1959 at the Five Spot Café, near the Bowery in lower Manhattan. The recording engineer: Rudy Van Gelder. What could go wrong? Nothing! For the original Lp, the producer’s biggest problem was likely to be what to include and what to leave out from the five sets of the evening. Now we have On View At The Five Spot Café: The Complete Masters, with six previously unissued tracks joining the original album and the three tracks that were added to an earlier CD reissue. While the music is great, The Complete Masters is a misnomer. According to Tom Lord’s online Jazz Discography, there were twenty-five pieces recorded that night. Hanna was on piano for sets one, three, and four, replaced by Timmons on the other two sets, with Tina Brooks playing only with Timmons on piano. For this collection, compilation producer Joe Harley has simply sequenced the original album followed by the CD bonus selection, and then added six more tracks after that, for a total of fourteen tracks. That leaves eleven performances unaccounted for. The notation “rejected” is appended to thirteen takes in the Jazz Discography, a few of which have now been issued. To a jazz nerd like me, it seems wrong to call this The Complete Masters when it’s really the Incomplete masters, without an explanation as to what’s missing. And why wasn’t the music put back in the original sequence, instead of the hodgepodge that’s been issued in the past? Even so, there’s nearly two hours of fine music at hand. And who could scoff at having more Tina Brooks to listen to, or to relax with an especially frisky Kenny Burrell with the mighty Art Blakey at the drums? Not me, that’s for sure. The booklet includes an essay by Syd Schwartz about the history of the Five Spot, his notes on the performances, and a revealing interview with Kenny Burrell. While I’m looking forward to the eventual release of the entire evening in its original sequence, I’m pretty happy listening to what’s here. 

Blue Note (2 CDs/3 Lps); Tina Brooks (ts on #) Kenny Burrell (g) Bobby Timmons or *Roland Hanna (p) Ben Tucker (b) Art Blakey (d); NYC, August 25, 1959; CD 1 (63:36): Birks’ Works#/ Hallelujah*/ Lady Be Good#/ Lover Man#/ 36-23-36/ Swingin’/ If You Could See Me Now*/ Beef Stew Blues*. CD 2 (51:22): The Next Time You See Me, Things Won’t Be the Same*/ The Take Off*/ Birks’ Works#/ Lady Be Good#/ Love Walked In/ 36-23-36 (The Theme)#. www.bluenote.com