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