The Dann Zinn 4, Gracie's Song

Here's a young tenorist Dann Zinn, who has found inspiration in the Trane and post-Trane zone and taken it to his heart. He has a tone and approach that combines Trane and the gutsy Texas tenors, with lots of Tranish note flurries, the cry and a trace of gutbucket kick. Oh, and a little later Pharoah in there? You tell me.

The band follows him into the zone. Taylor Eigisti has a McCoy influence that he wears well and makes his own place in it. The rhythm team of John Shifflett, bass, and Alan Hall, drums, get things burning with drive and finesse.

Zinn gives us seven strong originals and a version of Carmichael's evergreen "Stardust" that will give you pause.

Everything is the real thing and there's no nothing going on, so I found myself saying to myself, "yeah!" every so often. It's modern but it has deep roots. And Zinn can bring it on!

Louie's Dream, For Our Jazz Heroes, Eli Yamin, Evan Christopher

Time for that rather rare commodity these days, a pre-bop session for clarinet and piano. Eli Yamin plays the 88s, Evan Christopher the clarinet on Louie's Dream: For Our Jazz Heroes (Yamin Music 37574-8).

A warmly executed set of jazz classics and originals by Yamin and Christopher is what you get. Yamin plays a nicely striding, swinging piano in a mostly post-Ellington vein (to my ears). Christopher plays clarinet less like Goodman than Artie Shaw, maybe a little Edmund Hall in there, too. Or even Jimmy Hamilton. The tone is soulful and beautifully pellucid. And he plays!

Their originals are strong, especially the Mahalia Jackson tribute "Let His Love Take Me Higher," which others might cover too!

So the individual numbers, as implied above, are often dedicated to a "jazz Hero:" Duke, Mercer, Bigard, Bechet, Trane, Mary Lou Williams, and even Amira Baraka.

The vitality of the playing is what wakes you up, for starters. Both are very sincerely immersed in swing and pre-swing styles and they have the warmth of conviction. It's a heck of a nice set!! Recommended!

Confusion Bleue, Roulette Concert

Confusion Bleue is the collective effort of four talented improvisers (three plus guest), an exacting live-mix sound man, plus you, the listener. Specifically there is Nobu Stowe on piano and electric pianos, Ross Bonnadonna on electric and acoustic guitars plus alto and bass clarinet, Ray Sage on drums, Lee Pembleton on sound, and for the album at hand, Roulette Concert (Ictus 165), guest Chris Kelsey on soprano.

The album was made in the course of a gig at the Roulette in New York, 2010. Hence the title. There are four fully improvised sequences, the third based on Miles' "Blue in Green."

That having been said, let's turn to the music. What to say? There is excellent rapport throughout. Nobu Stowe is an all-encompassing presence, running the gamut from post-Taylor fanfares to wildly inventive chromatic extensions, outly dissonant rock riffing and undulating, driving tonal tangents. Chris Kelsey is blazing it up whatever is happening. He is fired up and letting it all go on this set. Lee Bonnadonna plays some very effective guitar in an in-and-out zone. He will give you a second voice with his reedwork as well, though I find his guitar playing the main attraction. And Ray Sage is hitting it with tumbling smartness and cooking looseness.

This is a very able and flexible outfit. They are captured on a good night, too. The "Blue and Green" improvs break up the set with unexpected tonal freedoms, even a little Bachian counterpoint before a burlesque of good humor. It all makes the time fly on the ear end.

One thing I like about this band that night is that they let themselves go without reservations, even if it ends up in stylistic territory not expected of "free" players. They go wherever it seems right at the moment and so you get combinations you might not expect in avant jazz. But then they do the "purely out" with dedication and fluidity to satisfy the "heavy energy" cravers (like me) fully.

As I listened over time I was reminded of the "wherever it needs to go" resolve of a Dave Burrell. This band has that sort of ranginess.

So it's good to hear this one. Creativity cannot and will not be suppressed! This evening at the Roulette was anything but (supressed, that is). Great sound. And fun, too! Bravo.

Antonio Adolfo, Finas Misturas (Fine Mixtures)

Finas Misturas (AAM 0705) involves a cohesive, meaningful blend of the Brazilian and jazz. Pianist-songwriter-bandleader Antonio Adolfo has drawn upon his many years experience in both worlds to create a program of four nicely turned Adolfo originals that find themselves in juxtaposition with six jazz classics, by Dizzy Gillespie, John Coltrane, Keith Jarrett, Chick Corea and Bill Evans, nicely arranged as a fine blend of Brazilian and jazz flavors.

The instrumentation can go as large as a sextet or less for more intimate arrangements. Here we experience the commingling of jazz and Brazilian with players who embrace both currents and make the arrangements happen.

Adolfo plays a rhythmically, harmonically and melodically sophisticated piano, an important exponent of the dual heritage as it has worked out in the music. Tenor/flautist Marcelo Martins has absorbed the Getz through Trane and Farrell lineage that forms the building blocks of the style, and made it his own. Acoustic Guitarist Claudio Spewak brings the subtle bossa comping chordal style along with a solo style that has beautiful tone and thoughtful note choice as its goal. He succeeds well. The rhythm section cooks nicely in samba jazz fashion.

The Adolfo originals shimmer in a setting where the classic jazz pieces are made to open up to Brazilian rhythm and creative harmonic articulation. So we have nice versions of "Con Alma," "Giant Steps," Jarrett's "Memories of Tomorrow," "Naima," "Crystal Silence," and "Time Remembered." The rubbing up against one another of classic modern jazz pieces and Adolfo originals holds together in ways that make Adolfo's music seem equally valid and cause the mind to toggle with the various elements in both realms as they coincide or sequence together.

Throughout Adolfo sounds great, the other soloists shine, the rhythms and harmonies pop. It's a fine outing for all and will mellow the harshness of the most world weary without sacrificing the musically substantial aspects of Brazilian jazz. That is a trick the best Brazilian player-writers know to perfection and Antonio Adolfo is one of the very best at it.

Grab this one for a beautiful synthesis, like a fine wine, fully matured and filled with subtle nuances of the senses. Antonio Adolfo blends finely indeed. This one's a winner!

Giuseppi Logan, More, Anniversary Edition

First off, I would like to wish ESP Disk a very happy anniversary. They are celebrating 50 years (hard to believe) as a label this year. To mark the occasion they are remastering a number of classic sides and making them available in vinyl and CD versions, with the original art and design intact. The Giuseppi Logan album More (ESP 1013) is one such release.

I've had this album for many years and I find it to be his best, for the effective groundbreaking live journey into "new thing" that it is, recorded at Town Hall in New York City in May of 1965. Giuseppi opened the concert and was followed by Albert Ayler and his group. The classic Bells recording came out of Albert's set.

So why do I like this album especially? Giuseppi's very free playing on alto, bass clarinet and flute reached a zenith that night. And his brief "Curve Eleven" piano solo is a very creditable effort in the free-ranging Tayloresque zone. He is supercharged. Then the rest of the band is fabulous as well. There is a great performance from a very young Don Pullen, playing definitive slam-bang avant piano. Milford Graves gives us a pristine version of his iconically percussive, orchestral style of free drumming. He sounds particularly beautiful on the set. Another icon, Eddie Gomez, gets a jump start on things with Giuseppi and you can hear him to good advantage on the final ten minutes of the recording. Reggie Johnson otherwise is the bassist of record, and does a quite credible job. Together the group reaches a fine zone of outness that makes the record a classic in the early "new-thing" discography.

I leave the most interesting part for last. An additional ten minutes of music was discovered while preparing the tapes for remastering. It turns out that the second half of "Shebar" was on the tape that otherwise contained Ayler's Bells set! It rounds out the performance and gives you a complete composition for the first time. Most importantly it is as vital as the rest of the set. So that's a very nice bonus.

So there you are. THIS is the version to have. It still sounds meaningful to me. If you don't know this album and want to get a feel for the early days of "free jazz" by all means check it out.

Blaise Siwula, Dom Minasi, Nobu Stowe & Ray Sage, New York Moments, 2006

...and speaking of New York, there's time today to cover another first-rate avant jazz outing going back to 2006. It's Blaise Siwula, Dom Minasi, Nobu Stowe and Ray Sage holding forth at length on New York Moments (Konnex). Anyone familiar with the New York improv scene know these are players with formative Big Apple profiles, although pianist Nobu Stowe spends more time on the West Coast of late.

In any event this set features alternately blazing and then more introspective fully improvised moments in time, a slice of undistilled creativity if you will. Blaise Siwula gets to the heart of the matter with some of his best recorded work on soprano, alto and tenor, guitarist Dom Minasi puts in some very effective fully activated electric guitar work, showing us a thinking-man's approach to guitar harmo-melodicism, Ray Sage kicks everything up several notches on freely flowing drums and Nobu Stowe puts us on notice that he can (and does) give us an all-over turbulance but also can flourish quite definitely as an ultra-chromatic out piano lyricist and tonal-center inventor of lively piano.

That's the gist of the session but it is of course in the hearing that the moment is given meaning.

And happy to say, the meaning is out front and moving with this kinetic grouping of like souls. Grab this one.

Ras Moshe, Outsight

New York based tenor-reed-windman Ras Moshe has been tearing it up for a number of years, though he is not always as well documented by recordings as he should be. So a new album devoted to his music is a particularly welcome event. That is in the form of the full length set Outsight (straw 2 gold pictures) which is available as a download and as a CD as well--online or at DMG.

The album gets off to a kicking start with the modal swinging "I Hear You," featuring Ras on tenor, Tom Zlabinger, contrabass and the always-in-motion drummer Lou Grassi. Ras breaks it up with a firey solo that makes good use of a recurring scalar riff. Tom gets some supercharged tensile walking going and puts it all in gear.

Next up is the suite "Circle One, Two, Three and Four" which features Ras on tenor and a second group of under-recorded New York avant improvisers: Matt Lavelle on trumpet and bass clarinet, Chris Forbes at the piano, James Keepnews on electric guitar, Daniel Levin at the cello, and Dave Miller on drums.

This one flows with collective free variations of the looser and a-temporal sort, everybody getting the chance to blend together around a freely articulated tonal center and some head riffs. Matt has a hard brassy sound, Ras gets full-toned post-Ayler presence with an especially fine lower resonance, Chris Forbes hits it dynamically in a turbulent post-Taylor mode, Levin plays the burning role that ordinarily a bass might in these kinds of out-ings, sounds great and gives the music its underpinning. James Keepnews mixes it up with electric sound colors, some bluesy outness and unpredictable creativity. Dave Miller contributes a very appropriate free-zoned percussion wash. It's a great showcase and a model of the variations-on-variations outward excursions.

The final piece gives tribute to the recently fallen avant tenor hero David S. Ware. Levin on cello and Zlabinger on bass get expressive. Ras comes in for one of his best recorded solos, probing, searching, paying respects.

And so ends an excellent set. If you don't know Ras's music this is the place to start. He comes through with a first-rate outing that does justice to the ins and outs of his attack and shows why he is an indispensable part of the New York avant jazz scene. Everybody puts in effective personal statements and gells together as three separate dynamic units that work it to strong ends. Get this one and you'll be getting a critical piece of Big Apple present-day advancing.