All sorts of big ideas about how today's jazz fits into history and maybe into popular culture
by Tom Hull
FIELDWORK *Simulated Progress* Pi On first approximation, this is a piano trio with Steve Lehman playing the bass parts on alto and sopranino sax, where they take on a life of their own. Lehman has such a strained, narrow tone that his work tends to duck behind the piano, anchoring the rhythm and painting the background. But then the pianist is Vijay Iyer, who can lead by the sheer force of his percussiveness and has a knack for putting the finishing touches on whatever Lehman and drummer Elliot Humberto Kavee throw at him. A MINUS DENNIS GONZÁLEZ'S SPIRIT MERIDIAN *Idle Wild* Clean Feed The good doctor's prescription for a country "sick with Bush" is "Bush Medicine" -- a delightful calypso fragment recalling "St. Thomas" with an Ornette twist, but fractured into discrete bits. Small pleasures, take them when you can. Oliver Lake's playfulness enhances González's spiritfulness, while the rhythm section keeps things loose. Of course, Bush Medicine is only a palliative. A cure starts with surgery, and the rehabilitation is likely to be slow and wrenching, with so much damage to be undone, and so much that cannot be undone. A MINUS
ERIC ALEXANDER *Dead Center* HighNote An appropriate title, especially since he's already used *Solid*. His one original is a feisty piece that lets him show off his huge tone and plentiful chops. Then he works through the covers, a range of postbop swing including one by his redoubtable pianist Harold Mabern and a pair by Lerner and Loewe that he takes to the races. The center of the mainstream, but far from dead. A MINUS SCOTT AMENDOLA BAND *Believe* Cryptogramophone This turns the Nels Cline Singers on their head, adding Jeff Parker's sweet guitar to Cline's sour, reinforcing the string sound with Jenny Scheinman's violin. Amendola supplements his drums with electronics, for groove and textures you'd have to be hard of hearing to reduce to ambient. A MINUS PIERRE DŘRGE & NEW JUNGLE ORCHESTRA *Dancing Cheek to Cheek* Stunt Two nods to tin pan alley: "Cheek to Cheek" done Louis/Ella style, except that this Louis is Ray Anderson; and "Body and Soul" slowed to a savory crawl by Josephine Cronholm. The rest of the album is Afro-Danish big band, griots and pennywhistles, references to Mingus and Sun Ra, and a Dukish impression of Jakarta. Dřrge, like his Jungle Music idol, plays orchestra, but when the occasion calls for it he also fills in smartly on guitar. A MINUS JERRY GRANELLI *Sandhills Reunion* Songlines Granelli's music, constructed from clarinets and baritone sax, guitars and cello, has a spare windswept quality well suited to Rinde Eckert's plain-spoken words about Billy the Kid and the Sand Hills of Nebraska. The words make you think, as with the story of a sheriff who quit after shooting a man, troubled not by regret but how certain he was that he was in the right: "It's a dangerous thing that kind of certainty. I believe doubt is what keeps us sane. Without it a man becomes a monster." A MINUS JIM HALL *Magic Meeting* ArtistShare The byword on Hall is subtle, but this live trio anchored by bassist Scott Colley provokes the veteran guitarist to reveal if not himself at least his bag of tricks: bright lines that take off from Colley's contrasting bass, tight chords that compress the rhythm, effects that synthesize a nimble sax on Sonny Rollins' "St. Thomas." A MINUS HAPPY APPLE *The Peace Between Our Companies* Sunnyside This starts with the trio's signature sound, drums so sharp and loud they rip right through you. The drummer is Dave King, better known for his other band, the Bad Plus. While the latter prides itself as an *acoustic* piano trio, this one rides happily on Erik Fratzke's electric bass, with multireedist Michael Lewis adding a voice. The pieces alternate between hard and soft. In soft mode they go for avant-scratch; in hard mode Lewis rocks Ayler/Coltrane while King knocks your socks off. A MINUS ARI HOENIG *The Painter* Smalls Led by the drummer, but Guadeloupean Jacques Schwarz-Bart could write a book on state-of-the-art tenor sax, and French pianist Jean-Michel Pilc can dazzle even when he's dutifully helping out. Recorded live at Fat Cat, it sneaks up on you, like the realization that you've just had a real good time. A MINUS IBRAHIM ELECTRIC *Meets Ray Anderson* Stunt When they turn up the heat the Danish guitar-organ-drums trio is more rockish than its soul jazz avatars. And when they dial it down they're knee deep in the blues. Neither trait is all that remarkable, but their meeting with the trombone master was inspired. After all, Anderson's first language is gutbucket, so when he growls and groans he delivers the dirt this band needs. But he can improvise on their grind, punching out lightning solos then diving back into the grime. A MINUS RUSS LOSSING *Phrase 6* Fresh Sound New Talent This piano trio moves slowly but efficiently, like a team of rock climbers negotiating difficult terrain. Teamwork matters because Lossing's compositions leave many variables to be resolved on the fly. A MINUS RAVISH MOMIN'S TRIO TARANA *Climbing the Banyan Tree* Clean Feed Indian percussion, Chinese violin, Middle Eastern oud -- released in Lisbon, but recorded in that old melting pot, Brooklyn. Note that Jason Kao Hwang and Shanir Ezra Blumenkranz are U.S. natives, and the leader is a Hyderabadi student of the *north* Indian classical tradition who went to Carnegie Mellon. That none of the three are too deeply rooted in their ethnicity lets them join together as a distinctive jazz group rather than limiting them to exotic fusion. A MINUS *ONE MORE: MUSIC OF THAD JONES* IPO A bebopper who never lost his first love for big bands, Jones is remembered mostly for his compositions and arrangements, less so for his quirkily unpolished trumpet. After his death, his famous brothers, Hank and Elvin, recorded a loving tribute called *Upon Reflection* (Verve). With a dream band listed alphabetically from Bob Brookmeyer to Frank Wess, this one deserves a place on the same shelf. A MINUS GREG OSBY *Channel Three* Blue Note In fifteen years on a major label, Osby has pursued all sorts of big ideas, especially about how today's jazz fits in history and might fit into popular culture, but his albums raised more problems than they resolved. This one delivers, largely because his ambitions here are formally constrained within jazz itself. In a trio with bass and drums, Osby wants more than to show off his chops. He wants to make music that precludes any felt need for harmony. That would be old hat in the free world but demands uncommon discipline in the postbop mainstream. A MINUS HOUSTON PERSON *To Etta With Love* HighNote That's Etta Jones, not James. While the songbooks overlap, and both did Billie Holiday tributes, Jones never played with dynamite. Nor does Person, who produced Jones' records from 1975 to her death in 2001, often adding his own soulful sax. On his own, he delivers the most poignant ballad album of a long career's worth of sax balladry -- perhaps because he's got an excuse for picking sureshot songs, or perhaps because he's entitled. A MINUS
JAVON JACKSON *Have You Heard* Palmetto With his degree from Art Blakey's Hard Bop U. and a masters thesis on Joe Henderson, Jackson cut a series of mainstream tenor sax albums for Blue Note that started out impressive and wound down redundant. Since then he's tried to refashion himself as a soul jazzer with a dash of funk, but fails at both. He doesn't have the grit to suggest he staggered into a bar straight from church, and sidekicks Dr. Lonnie Smith and Mark Whitfield don't have enough gravity to land on dirt. Lisa Fischer moans and hectors about it being "funky in here," but nobody in the band notices. C PLUS
Honorable Mention
TRIOT WITH JOHN TCHICAI *Sudden Happiness* TUM As when Johnny Dyani's township jive bursts out of the dominant gray and ominous matrix. THE NELS CLINE SINGERS *The Giant Pin* Cryptogramophone No vocals, but the power trio plays heavy metal jazz, replete with free drumming. BENOIT DELBECQ UNIT *Phonetics* Songlines Congo drums and piano dance polyrhythms with sax and viola textures. FRED LONBERG-HOLM TRIO *Other Valentines* Atavistic Cello-bass-drums, the leader solid and surprisingly mellow. STEVE TURRE *The Spirits Up Above* HighNote A robust mainstreaming of Rahsaan Roland Kirk, but Kirk went further out than anyone here. JAMES FINN TRIO *Plaza de Toros* Clean Feed Living by his wits, with momentary flashes of Spanish bravado. EUGENE CHADBOURNE *The Hills Have Jazz* Boxholder Skewed guitar swings on Basie, hops on Coltrane, doodles on Sun Ra. SHERMAN IRBY *Faith* Black Warrior Faith, hope, charity, a fight for life that isn't a kneejerk slogan. DUO NUEVA FINLANDIA *Short Stories* TUM Piano-bass improvs by Eero Ojanen and Teppo Hauta-aho, who've played together forty years -- tight, but never sweet. KEELY SMITH *Vegas '58-Today* Concord Louis Prima's straight lady steals his best songs, cops his best lines. ROSENBERG/BAKER/HATWICH/DAISY *New Folk, New Blues* 482 Music Not least of all, new new thing. TORD GUSTAVSEN TRIO *The Ground* ECM Quiet, almost sedentary piano trio, but remarkably patient and precise.
Duds
BILL FRISELL *Richter 858* Songlines DOUG WAMBLE *Bluestate* Marsalis Music/Rounder
These are short reviews of records that don't fit into the Jazz Consumer Guide proper. These will be published on the web somewhere once the above column is published.
THE DAVID S. WARE QUARTETS *Live in the World* [1998-2003] Thirsty Ear Three discs, three concerts, three drummers. Aside from the drummers, the Ware Quartet is the longest running small group in history. Ware almost never works outside of the group, but his cohorts, William Parker and Matthew Shipp, have distinguished careers in their own right, and their own stardom gets more play in these looser concert gigs than on the studio albums. Looking back, the energy jolt that arrived with Susie Ibarra and the shift to electronics heralded by Guillermo E. Brown may have been side-effects of the maturation of the three mainstays. That the drummers matter less is made clear on the date with the redoubtable Hamid Drake sitting, and merely blending, in. A MINUS