Chicago Reed Quartet, Western Automatic, Mazzarella, Rempis, Williams, Vandermark

From Dave Rempis and his Aerophonic label comes another satisfyingly advanced project, a saxophone quartet, more specifically the Chicago Reed Quartet and their album Western Automatic (Aerophonic 009). It is a worthy gathering of four great avant reedists from Chicagoland in a program of eight composition-improvisations.

Joining Dave Rempis on alto, tenor and baritone is Nick Mazzarella on alto, Mars Williams on sopranino, soprano, alto and tenor, and Ken Vandermark on clarinet, bass clarinet, tenor and baritone saxes. Each contributes two compositions.

If you think of the Rova Sax Quartet on one hand and the World Saxophone Quartet on the other, the Chicago Reed Quartet perhaps gravitates towards the edgy qualities of Rova, yet also has the soulful demeanor of World Sax. That is only a rough approximation to give you an idea of what you will hear. The music stands on its own, ultimately. They do not sound like either as much as they sound like themselves.

For all that we get sounds that are robust and full, avant in their expressive thrust, filled with structural-compositional significance and improvisational excellence, both collectively and individually. There is always a good deal going on that brings out the collective and individual personalities of the artists. There is a tang and classicism to the music that somehow strikes me as being exemplary of Chicago style these days, something of course present in much of the original AACM outings, but then extended and worked through anew today as well.

Each work has its own compositional touchpoints and so we hear a spectrum of possibilities that keeps the ears and attention focused in great ways. All who appreciate virtuoso energy saxophonics will find much to like and a good deal of form to fit it all into as well.

It is an essential recording for anyone interested in sax ensemble avant jazz, certainly. This is a group to be reckoned with, and the album maps it all out for us so that in the end we have an offering of substance and, yes, soul! I hope they can come together often and do more. Meanwhile get this one!

The Rempis Percussion Quartet, Cash and Carry

Dave Rempis and his Aerophonic label have been giving us some excellent Chicago-style avant jazz improvisation. The present-day Chicago style is as contentful and distinctive as deep-dish pizza, I suppose you could say. The Dave Rempis contingency gathers together some of the best players and opens up special territories of sound with every new release, it seems.

The Dave Rempis Percussion Quartet continues where the earlier Aerophonic releases leave off--in this case with two long cuts of live music from Chicago's Hungry Brain club, featuring Dave on alto-tenor-baritone, the busily significant bassist Ingebrigt Haker Flaten, and two of the best drummers active on the scene, Tim Daisy and Frank Rosaly. Cash and Carry (Aerophonic 010) is the title of the CD.

This August 31, 2014 set celebrated ten years of the group's existence as it also marked the end of that year's Chicago Jazz Fest, so that on hand was a crowd of advanced jazz lovers who migrated from the outdoor festival to the club.

Judging by the recording, the crowd was treated to some superior music that night. All four are in full-bore expressive mode. Dave is on fire and has a great deal to say, Ingebrigt plays with much authority and imagination, and of course Tim and Frank give us the freewheeling thrusts of power and subtlety we expect from them, only doubled, so to say, by their dual generation.

The open freedom of the two lengthy, in-the-moment performances has everything to recommend: solo excellence, group dynamics and interactions at a high peak, plenty of ideas and that special something you get from dedicated avantists when everything clicks.

If you don't know Dave Rempis well Cash and Carry is an excellent place to begin. Those who already dig Rempis and the new Chicagoans will find this one essential. Yes!

Ballister, Worse for the Wear, Dave Rempis, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Paal Nilssen-Love

Dave Rempis's Aerophonic label has gotten off to an auspicious start with some very interesting albums. Up today is one by the trio called Ballister, Worse for the Wear (Aerophonic 008). You know it means business from the first moments of the opening. Fred Lonberg-Holm makes free use of electronics to alter his cello at times and that helps give the music an electric jolt that has a "take no prisoners" approach to avant improvisation. This music rivets you to your chair!

Paal Nilssen-Love of course is one of the more celebrated free drummers to come out of Europe and you hear very clearly why that is the case on this album. He is a bubbling, boiling cauldron of energy that spikes the trio and sends them rocketing forward. With his energy and the cello-plus-electronics of Lonberg-Holm the stage is perfectly set for Dave Rempis to put across his smart high-energy playing on alto, tenor and baritone. He reacts with blazing, searing torrents of sound that remind you that there has developed a fire-y wing of the "free jazz" school (which has been with us since nearly the music's beginnings) and Dave is an excellent, original exponent of it, one of the select top avant hornmen coming out of Chicago.

The three together melt the cosmos into liquid fire on this one. They are supercharged and extraordinarily impolite about it. You would not put this one on for a white-tie dinner party (do they still have such things?), nor is it intended for such occasions. Rather than seat you in front of an elegant place-setting it rockets you off the planet.

It is one of Dave's most energized performances on disk and the same might be said of his trio-mates Lonberg-Holm and Nilsson-Love. And the quieter moments when they come are far more than pauses in the action; they are cohesive free statements with less energy but lots of texture and a sense of structure that Ballister never abandons.

Hold on to your hats and put this one on. Get it by all means if you revel in free heat! It will drive the cold winter away, bring out the blooms of spring or transform whatever season you are in into Ballister-time!

Pandelis Karayorgis Quintet, Afterimages

If a new Pandelis Karayorgis album comes out (and it has) and I do not cover it more or less right away, it is an oversight. My piles of CDs awaiting review can sometimes get cumbersome, and a spill of the box intended for this particular blog late last year put my hypothetical sequence into permanent chaos.

But anything worth hearing is worth talking about at any time, so today we get to contemplate the Pandelis Karayorgis Quintet and their Afterimage (Driff 1404). The quintet date continues Karayorgis's fertile cross-pollination with some of the heavy Chicago cats on the scene. We get a potent lineup on this one with Dave Rempis and Keefe Jackson on reeds, Nate McBride, bass, and Frank Rosaly on drums. Pandelis directs the proceedings from the piano, while also furnishing ten compositions for the quintet to immerse themselves in and blow off of.

The compositions set up a harmonically advanced, modern post-boppish avant-free landscape that has interest in its structures and gives the players a good bit of latitude. Everyone rises to the occasion, with Rempis, Jackson and Karayorgis quite naturally forming the front line.

I have said often enough here that Karayorgis comes out of Monk more than Cecil or Bley. It's as if the music is an outcrop of what Monk might have done if Monk took his music further out in later years. That is a gross simplification, but the jagged-edged angularity is in Karayorgis's pianism, taken in his own way further afield and originally reworked to become something else.

Rempis sounds great on baritone (an important exponent these days) as well as tenor and alto; Jackson gives us some outstanding tenor and bass clarinet. Together their multisax orientation changes the sound of the group accordingly over time and they put in some excellent work. It is no surprise that McBride and Rosaly really nail down the free and the pulsating in swinging ways.

There is much music to be heard here and it all works. This is another fine out expression from a combo of players who work together with the ease of mutual understanding and compatibility.

Oh, yeah! Do not miss this one.

The Rempis/Daisy Duo, Second Spring, Dave Rempis, Tim Daisy

Chicago saxophone notable Dave Rempis continues on with his worthy series of recordings on his Aerophonic label with a couple of new releases. Up today is the Rempis/Daisy Duo and their Second Spring (Aerophonic 003). Dave gets a lot of music out of his alto, tenor and baritone saxophones; Tim Daisy responds in kind on drums/percussion.

Both are key members of a Chicago group of avant jazz musicians who tend to play together. We've heard from many of them in various configurations on these pages, but never these two in duo. It usually helps in these intimate situations if the players know each other's playing well, if they have spend a good deal of time playing together. That's certainly the case with Dave and Tim. The musical sympathies are there to hear in these improvised sequences. This is free blowing of good provenance--they come from inspired places within and the spirit-feel does not flag. Both show why they are fully themselves and in-demand players on the Chicago avant scene.

Second Spring showcases Rempis and Daisy in great form. It is a straightforward blowing romp that gets rolling from the start and does not stop until the last phrase is played. Check it out and get some good sounds!

Pandelis Karayorgis Quintet, Circuitous

Boston-based Pandelis Karayorgis is a post-Monk avant pianist with poise, great ideas, real torque and feeling conjoined with a lively musical mind. And he writes compositions that reflect his angular way and stay with you long after you've heard them. For the recording Pandelis Karayorgis Quintet Circuitous (Driff 1304) he gathers together a significant group of Chicago jazzmen in a studio date recorded there. These are musicians often associated together (see previous reviews on this site) and their conjunction with Pandelis is most fortuitous, fortunate, fabulous, productive.

The musicians involved are Dave Rempis, tenor, alto and baritone, Keefe Jackson, tenor sax, bass and contrabass clarinet, Nate McBride, contrabass and Frank Rosaly, drums, cutting edge musicians all.

The set involves all Karayorgis compositions. They set the tone for the improvisations and inspire all to some of their best work--the powerful Rempis, puckish, ascerbic Jackson, angular Karayorgis, deep exploratory McBride and the wise ranging swing and free intelligence of Rosaly. This is symbiosis at its best: the Chicago artist clearly get a jolt from their association with Pandelis and vice versa.

A fine date, great example of Karayorgis today and a testament to the creative thrust of four exceptional Chicago improvisers. Grab this one.

Wheelhouse, Boss of the Plains

We return today to Dave Rempis' kickoff of his new label with release two, another good one. It's Rempis on alto and baritone, Jason Adasiewicz on vibraphone, and Nate McBride on acoustic bass under the collective name Wheelhouse. The album is Boss of the Plains (Aerophonic 002).

The threesome has played together since 2005; since 2008 they have chosen to play exclusively in the collective free zone. This is their first recording but understandably it does not sound like a beginning. The years spent exploring free musical terrain together carry with them a development of a tripartite approach that by now is very much seasoned, aged, tempered-weathered (always a consideration in Chicago) and burnished.

So there is most definitely a sound that has come about, a chamber freedom that has heat but also space and mood. You can hear it fully on Boss of the Plains. Of course all three have gotten the respect of peers, critics and audiences alike in their own right.

Adasiewicz by now is well-established as a star of the vibes with much of something new to say within a lineage of important stylists on the instrument. He is not derivative in the least but he clearly carries that lineage with him as an unstated basis from which he springs highly and with agility. Nate McBride of course is simply one of the most inventive and complete contrabassists on the scene. And Dave Rempis is at the top of the list of the new Chicago saxophonists, no small feat given the wealth of horn talent there. He carries with him a feeling for the avant tradition of those that have come before (and right back to the earliest period of jazz at that) but he has an exceptionally fertile imagination and so creates inventive line and tone universes time and again. He is one inspired cat. And with him playing the baritone here as well as alto there is a second sound to bring his ideas and timbres further to the fore.

So that is the basic set of player-ingredients and something of what they are about. And on this album they give us a generous set that shows you how far afield their explorations can and do carry them. There are free balladic episodes that showcase the quieter side, and in that probably no one can touch them for sheer free eloquence. Then there are the more heated moments and here too they come off as masters of their own sound and pacing.

There no doubt could be more I might say here about the music, but the point is the music more than my saying. So I will leave off with the idea that this is chamber jazz fully into the future of the present, here now and I do believe, here in the nows to come. It's important and it is satisfying. Give it a good listen and I think you'll hear what I am hearing!

The Rempis Percussion Quartet, Phalanx

Dave Rempis, a saxophonist composer-conceptualist of high repute and attainment, has launched his own label, Aerophonic, and gives us as first offering a 2-CD set of his Rempis Percussion Quartet live. Phalanx (Aerophonic 001) pits Dave on alto, tenor and baritone with a formidable gathering of Ingebrigt Haker Flaten on bass and the excellent two-drum pairing of Tim Daisy and Frank Rosaly.

This makes for some very together free burning and a killer rhythm section. The quartet gets a disk each for two live sets, one in Milwaukee, one in Antwerp.

It's a matter of extended free blowing and a fine thing it is. Dave sounds great as always on tenor and alto but I don't recall hearing much of him on baritone, and that is a real treat. Ingebrigt as one can always expect brings a busy and smart bass approach to the mix and the one-two punch of Daisy and Rosaly is everything you could ask for. Not surprising given what we have heard them do in one drummer situations, but as a two-part percussion team they give complexity and depth to the blowing that sends it all over the top.

This is a real-deal scorcher! A great kick-off to the label and plenty of heat throughout. Dave Rempis takes off in style!

Construction Party, Instruments of Change

Today, a quartet recording in the avant vein by four formidable exponents of the new jazz who, as it turns out, work very well together. They call the quartet Construction Party. The album is dubbed Instruments of Change (Not Two 852-2)

It's Forbes Graham on trumpet, Dave Rempis, alto, Pandelis Karayorgis, piano, and Luther Gray, drums. Now that works out well. Graham has good melodic improv ideas that range over the whole horn. Dave Rempis, as followers or the music know, is his own man on alto. Pandelis Karayorgis is one of the important pianists out there now with a percussive attack and, important for this bass-less group, an ability to play inventive, innovative lines with both hands independently. So he sometimes has a kind of pianistic bass line going that complements the drumming. The latter is handled adeptly by Luther Gray, who has power and a very effective time-freetime sense.

There are eight numbers; each bandmember composes two. They are of the abstracted avant head sort and work well in setting up the blowing. There are moments where Rempis and Karayorgis solo together that got my attention, but everybody has a chance to intermingle collectively and individually in good ways.

It's top-notch new avant jazz. So of course I recommend it.

Ballister, Mechanisms, Dave Rempis with Lonberg-Holm and Nilssen-Love

Ballister is the confluence of Chicago alto-tenor-baritonist Dave Rempis and the Europeans Fred Lonberg-Holm and Paal Nilssen-Love, the former on cello and electronics and the latter of course on drums.

Mechanisms (Clean Feed 245) puts the three together live at the Hideout, Chicago, in late 2010.

Fred Lonberg-Holm's cello in place of the expected double bass lightens up the texture of the music and gives more general frequency presence to what Fred is doing.

It's a three-way freeway with three lengthy group-conceived extemporaneous workouts presented.

The group builds up energy that explodes in alto-cello-drums mayhem for the opening "Release Levers." "Claplock" tones it down and gives some space for Rempis's inspired saxophony, a phraser of stature, sound color master, post-Ayler, post-AACM wizard. Nilssen-Love reminds us why he is one of Europe's premier free-drummers while Lonberg-Holm gets some interesting lines going in his own right. Rempis returns for some lucid wailing. He doesn't always go where you expect and where he goes is something to hear. They get into another froth and Dave is in fine fettle. The final "Roller Nuts" kicks it up a couple notches with blow-out extroversions that will wake anybody up who has ears.

There is some very fine free sax trio music to be heard on Mechanisms. It says much about what sort of connection the three made that day--a synchronicity of a definite high order.

Jeb Bishop, Dave Rempis and The Engines, 2006

If I wake up early on the morning of July 4th to get some additional reviews done, it stands to reason that I am here right now to praise the music, not to bury it. Otherwise, why would I bother?

And so today I get in a review of some great music that, since I bought a copy of the CD when I had money to spend and then somehow never got it into the review pile until now, gets covered a little late. The Engines already have a second album. The self-titled first (Okkadisk 12057) is not the kind of record that needs complete currency to justify a discussion. This is music that, one assumes with good reason, will have relevancy for many years to come. At least that's how it grabs me.

You've probably noticed, if you follow what's been happening in Chicago, that there is a loosely interrelated group of jazz player-composers that tend to seek each other out. They are known for being avant but also greatly concerned with compositional and arranged ensemble music that gives equal weight to individual solos, collective improvisations, and challenging group routines that do not end with the conventional "head," if there is one.

The Engines are an excellent example of this new Chicago school. As of this first recording they consisted of four Chicagoland heavyweights: Jeb Bishop, trombone, Dave Rempis, alto-tenor-baritone, Nate McBride, bass, and Tim Daisy, drums. Each writes interesting charts, for this album as well as in general, and are notably important sorts of players.

And all of that is amply in evidence on this first recording. It strikes a beautiful balance between freedom and pre-thought, spontaneity and structure, expression and deliberation. And they do it all in a stylistically singular way. They come out of some heavy, OUT Chicago traditions (like Hal Russell, Art Ensemble, others) and extend and transform them to suit their musical personalities. And they do it well. Very very well.

A great record!