The New World Jazz Composers Octet, "Breaking News"

Daniel Ian Smith's full octet does something not easy to do. They play hip nubop charts with the mid-later Blue Note Renaissance attention to swing, finely rendered jazz composition/part writing and some very worthy solo work. That is on Breaking News (Big and Phat Jazz Productions 1022). They call themselves the New World Jazz Composers Octet.

Mark Walker is a very swinging drum cat and that sets the foundation for some very good doings. There are good soloists a plenty: Felipe Salles' and the leader's tenors, Tim Ray on piano, Ken Cervenka and/or Walter Platt on trumpets...And there are some very hip charts by Platt and Salles as well as Jeff Friedman, Matthew Nicholl, Richard Lowell and a three-part "Trilogy" by longtime Berklee presence Ted Pease.

This is their third album to date and it shows that they are a force of good for the state of the jazz world. And they can hit it. They do! Recommended.

Noah Kaplan Quartet, Descendants

Tenor saxist Noah Kaplan graduated from the New England Conservatory, where he quite obviously studied with the late Joe Manieri, and now emerges with an interesting album centering on his quartet, Descendants (HatOLOGY 688). It's a freewheeling avant date with very nice collective and individual moments from Joe Morris, guitar, Giacomo Merega, electric bass, Jason Nazary, drums and of course Kaplan.

I found I first had to get used to Noah's playing style, which uses glissandos and quarter tones along with bursts of more "conventional" avant phrasing. It's ultimately well worth hearing what he does here, though it takes a while to get into. Joe Morris's chromatic atonality is well suited as a countervoice to Kaplan and he sounds quite nice on this session, as always. Merega and Nazary open things up quite a bit in the free domain and so give the front line the ultimate flexibility to weave their spells.

It takes a few listens to get acclimated. Then, if you are like me, you dig it.

Carol Morgan Quartet, Blue Glass Music

Trumpetismo Carol Morgan returns with a nicely put-together quartet on her Blue Glass Music (Blue Bamboo Music 019) in a program of songbook and jazz standards and a couple of originals by band members. It's thoughtfully straight-ahead jazz in a contemporary bopping-the-changes mode. Drummer of note Matt Wilson grounds the music with his tasteful swing, Martin Wind wields the bass in appropriate ways, tenorist Joel Frahm plays an eclectic and limber tenor, and Carol Morgan shows her debt to the cool-heat of past masters while sounding ever more confident in her own right.

This has good blowing frameworks and the emphasis on the trumpet-tenor solo spots, with some nice interplay between the two as well. They cover some well worn paths, from "April in Paris" to Ornette's "Lonely Woman," but they do so with the special fingerprint of players with their own take on where to take it all.

Ms. Morgan has poise and fluency. She is sounding better than ever here. Nice job.

Lama, "Oneiros": Contemporary Modern Jazz from Portugal

Lama is a trio of Susana Santos Silva on trumpet, flugel and electronics; Goncalo Almeida on contrabass plus effects and loops; and Greg Smith on drums. Their album Oneiros (Clean Feed 240) gives us a good hearing of what they are about with eight pieces, six by Almeida and one apiece by Silva and Smith.

First off, a quibble. Sometimes the electronics on the pieces sound extraneous and unnecessary, little sounds akin to surface noise or digital distortion. I found it most times a distraction to what was going on elsewise. Once I recognized what it was I was hearing (not my stereo blowing up) I managed to partially tune it out and concentrate on the other musical voices. Other times the electronics seem more integral to the proceedings. There are only a few sections that have this sort of electronic undercurrent, so it is a minor concern.

This is contemporary trio jazz with Silva's trumpet defining the sound distinctively. Much of the music works around motives that repeat and transform, solos following in part the impetus and implications of the motif. Silva's brass work tends to be puckish in interesting ways, she does not often let loose with long strings of improvisational speech but more often sticks to short stabbing cells that she works out of. Goncalo has a more long-phrased approach and does some quite interesting work within the collective format. Greg Smith plays nicely free or swinging drums depending on the context and is a good addition.

All-in-all this is a quite interesting set. It is so as much or more so compositionally-conceptually as it is improvisationally in any long-lined linear sense. But that in part is what makes the music different.

I found the music stimulating. Let us see where they go from here.

David Arner, Live from the Center, 2003

The more I listen to pianist David Arner's recorded output the more I am convinced he is one of the more important avant improvising pianists active today. His 2003 Live from the Center (Dogstar 0506) reaffirms that. It's a solo concert with Arner and a good sounding grand piano holding forth at some length.

What strikes me about this release is how Arner emphasizes the improvisation-new music aspect of his work. Inside-the-piano thrums, dampened strings, clusters of notes and fluid note-weaving are at the forefront, with less referential allusions to historical jazz styles than can be the case in other recordings he has made.

Another thing that struck me on repeated listens to this disk is how rhythmically different he is and how different his approach to melodic cells is as compared with the approach of Cecil Taylor. Cecil is of course a prime ancestor to almost all piano improvisations of this sort. To manage NOT to sound like him is not easy. To sound like David Arner in ways that are musically stimulating is that much more remarkable in light of the Master Taylor's all-encompassing influence. Of course there are other influences to be heard here, but again in terms of David managing NOT to sound like them either in any direct sense.

Aside from that this is a musical piano hour-plus of great interest. It should provide endless hours of listening for those like myself who imbibe such music as prime aesthetic nourishment.

Dennis Gonzalez, Joao Paulo, "So Soft Yet"

Dennis Gonzalez over the years has shown himself not just as a creative and masterful trumpet player and important bandleader. He also composes some excellent music and, equally importantly, he plays and conceives most everything with a sort of thoughtful compositional deliberation. I've never heard a release of his that didn't have its own reason for existence, a clear "thing" happening, a kind of focus.

With keyboardist Joao Paulo he has an ideal duo partner. Joao too has a deliberation in his spontaneity, a structural thinking inherent in his note and timbre choices.

So when they got together for a second volume of duets (see the July 6, 2009 article for a review of the first) these factors were again decisive in the resulting music, So Soft Yet (Clean Feed 243).

Joao Paulo gets a sound on the electric piano, plays a folk-free sort of accordion and uses the full scope of the conventional piano strings--plucked and sounded, dampened, regular key articulation, etc., to set the mood of each number. Of course it is also WHAT he plays that sets up the duet interaction. Simple pulsed riffs, freely unfolding tonal-centered flourishes, gospel-like rollers, lyrical balladic freedom, atmospheric ambiance, almost koto-like figures, rapid repeating and varying riffs that expand into free tonal interplay...I could go on.

And Dennis responds with a series of marvelous improvisations on C trumpet and Bb cornet, limber and eloquent, spontaneous and structured.

It's another enormously engaging series of duets that are as pleasing to hear as they must have been a pleasure to play. Hear this one!

The Mike Wofford/Holly Hofmann Quintet, Turn Signal

Mike's Wofford's well defined pianism and musical personality was an important component of Shelly Manne's last units. Holly Hofmann has been gaining increasing credence as a flautist of considerable resource and mainstream inspirations. Put the two together with Terell Stafford (trumpet and flugel), Rob Thorsen (bass) and Richard Sellers (drums), and give them some interesting material to work with and you have something worthwhile. That is, on Turn Signal (Capri 74111-2).

I like the repertoire, an original each by both leaders, some lesser-known jazz compositions, including Dick Twardzik's "The Girl From Greenland," and a standard ("Pure Imagination"). The arrangements are well wrought and create landmarks through which the improvisations weave.

Wofford sounds excellent on piano these days. A complete melodist-harmonist in the sophisticated tonal vein that Bill Evans most succinctly established in his own way, Mike Wofford in another. Hofmann has a beautiful tone, good ideas and some soul too. Mr. Stafford has equal solo billing much of the time and deserves the hearing he gets as a well-burnished noteful presence. The rhythm team knows where to put the pulse, embellishes and drives at the appropriate points, and gets in the groove.

So in the end this is thoroughly accomplished, thoroughly enjoyable straight-ahead jazz. It should have a wide appeal.