Klez-Edge, The Struggle Can Be Enobling, Featuring Burton Greene

When I heard that pianist-avant-icon Burton Greene was doing something in the Klezmer realm, I knew that it would not be standard Klezmer fare but had no idea where it was going to go. Happily he sent me his 8th Klez venture recently and I have been very much digging into it. Klez-Edge The Struggle Can Be Enobling (Disk-Respect 01) is a very nice mix of rearranged Klez-classics and originals.

Klez-Edge manages to sound both Klezmer authentic and throughout free-loose in the classic Burtonian ensemble way. That does not mean this is specifically a "free jazz" set, but there is an invigorating openness that makes it edgy as well as "Klezzy."

That is made possible of course by Burton's arrangements and compositions but also by the quartet line-up. Burton is on piano and keys and sounds great. Alex Coke plays a limber and central role on tenor, soprano and flute, with a good open-jazz feel and a Klezmer flourish when it seems right. Larry Fishkind gives the band an old-timey-and-beyond sound with the tuba functioning in rootsy and avant ways where the double bass might otherwise be. That gives the band some flexibility too in that he can play counter-lines and solos that stand out as horn lines as well as bass foundations. He does well. Roberto Haliffi is the backbone of the group on drums, combining the snare-centric Klezmer drum style with more modern and open forms.

This is an album of lively music, some old favorites done newly, some new gems both Klez-like and beyond and an unmistakable Greeniana to it all.

Wipe away expectations of what the typical Klezmer revival band is supposed to sound like and instead dig the innovative world-jazz-Greene way through this music. I have been taking to this album more and more. I now perk up to see the cover and find it unforgettable.

Great album! Thanks Burton for taking us to a very good place here. Get this!

Burton Greene Trio "Ins and Outs," 2005

Burton Greene to me is always interesting. He was a pioneer of the avant jazz scene in the early sixties and he keeps it strong. I've taken the liberty (as I do sometimes) of covering something that is not the flavor of the month here, since it was recorded in 2005. Good music should not be subject to the demands of clock time. Ins and Outs (CIMP 345) certainly should not be.

It's a trio date that came at the end of a larger group session and so has a relaxed loose quality. Burton Greene's piano is joined by the Schuller brothers--Ed on bass, George on drums. The three together make for excellent chemistry.

Half the pieces performed by the trio are covers of lesser known songs; the other half are Greene originals. In all cases there is a loosely outbop approach. Heads are stated, usually with a regular rhythmic thrust, and then the music can get freely loose and out of strict time, with all three implying the song structure but most definitely on the outside track. Ins and Outs makes for an apt title, then.

Ed Schuller has developed into a bass player that can have great presence in an ensemble and also solo with musically substantive flair. George's drumming is the right combination of pulse and freedom. And Burton is in his element. He is utterly distinct and has been for years,

You may have missed this album but if you like Burton Greene you should definitely check it out. It also would interest anyone who wants to get into modern piano trio jazz that melds the avant with the directly accessible. It's a nice combination and deserves a hearing. Check the Cadence link on this page for the CIMP site.

Perry Robinson and Burton Greene Explore Jewish Roots

Clarinetist Perry Robinson and pianist Burton Greene came up as some of the most important "new thing" jazzmen of the sixties. They played together on a number of projects, but never as a duet. Until now, and their very lucid Two Voices in the Desert (Tzadik). This is an installment in Tzadik's provocative series of recordings that re-establishes Jewish music as a living, breathing contemporary art that, like Klezmer before it, opens a window onto a horizon of musical innovation, that brings old, even ancient tonalities into the vocabulary and syntax of today's sounds--modern jazz, rock, avant garde and you-name-it styles of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Like Steve Lacy did for the soprano sax at the time, Perry Robinson took the clarinet, an instrument that had become somewhat moribund and passe in the most modern of jazz endeavors, and remade the instrument into a thing rife with a personal sound and note choice. Perry's, that is. It established him at the forefront of the new free scene and made the clarinet an instrument to be taken seriously once again. Similarly the functioning of Ornette Coleman's classic two horn, bass and drums lineup and other developments made the pianoforte less desirable in the most advanced circles of improvisatory music. Its function to lay down the harmonic foundations of changes-based improvising, as a kind of musical traffic cop, was a hindrance to players who sought to follow the freed up melodic-harmonic contours of their muse. Burton Greene along with of course Cecil Taylor and a handful of other pianists redefined the pianists' role in terms of an exploration of percussive, coloristic and post-changes capabilities, to rejoin the front line as a soloist that did not need to hammer down the structure of the music as it was defined.

Years later, Perry and Burton have not so much mellowed as they have embraced and incorporated into their music what was part of their early informal ear training, something we all get without necessarily consciously seeking it out, the sound and content of the music around them that was imbibed like the air they breathed, from the cradle on. That doesn't mean that they are about to break into 28 choruses of "I'll Remember April," but it does mean that they can now come to grips with that which helped define them musically. In the case of this CD, the Jewish heritage that was so much a part of the New York aural world.

So we have a CD filled with music composed by Burton Greene, John Zorn and others, that takes a musical imprint of how those roots work for today. So Perry's clarinet shows some Klezmer-like inflections here, not surprisingly, but this series of duets subtly transforms and reworks the tradition to something that bears the personal stamp of these highly individual stylists.

The artistic fruition is most fortuitous--not in some accidental sense, but in the sense of fortunate, auspiciously impacted artistry. This is from first to last captivating music. Masterful music. And a true pleasure to hear. Anyone who thinks they know what these two artists are likely to sound like in some predictable sense would do best to hear Two Voices in the Desert. It will probably defy your expectations as well as redefine your sense of the reach and grasp of what Perry and Burton can and have accomplished. For this is an extraordinary accomplishment.