Dave Ballou, Solo Trumpet

How you react to a solo wind recording in the new jazz improvisational sweep is nearly unlimited. Some find it all annoying, some are automatically enthusiastic, and the rest are indifferent. The latter reaction is probably the most sensible. After all, it is all about the hearing. What happens? Dave Ballou gives us a full CD of improvisational soliloquies on Solo Trumpet (Clean Feed 349).

His background and abilities somewhat uniquely situate him as an unaccompanied artist of interest. He is a composer and a trumpet master who has been involved both in contemporary "classical" camps, performing new music by Gunther Schuller and Larry Austin, and he has been an important part of the jazz-spectrum via ensemble presences with Maria Schneider, Joe Lovano, Andrew Hill, Oliver Lake and the like. Now of course all that does not necessarily tell you that a solo trumpet outing would necessarily be interesting, or that any number of other possible backgrounds would not also make up an artist who could generate interest alone.

But in fact this is something to get and keep your attention. Ballou has a wide range of conventional and less-conventional techniques he puts into play for a ten-segment program that puts a series of coherent solo events into our listening space.

There are affective and structural zones that Dave evokes in his expressive playing. You can hear both jazz roots and the spectrum of contemporary sounds at play throughout the course of the program. Whether "straight horn" melodic spinning or speech-phrase trumpet soundings, growls or wide-ranging creative note-weaving that combine any number of these elements, Ballou comes through with a musicality that may take you several listens to appreciate, but then you get it.

No one is likely to set the world on fire with a set of unaccompanied trumpet outings. This does not do that, yet it satisfies in its singular directness, its unpretentious expressivity, its imaginative thrust.

It's a real addition to the solo brass jazz avant recitals to be had out there. It makes you want to hear him with his own group, too. So you may well want to check this one out.

Ascent of the Nether Creatures, Rashied al Akbar, Muhammad Ali, Earl Cross, Idris Ackamoor

One of the nice things about reviewing is that you get to check out things you might not otherwise have the chance to hear. And of course what seems worthwhile I pass along to you, the reader. Such a rather obscure but nice album is the 1980 Netherlands club date of the quartet of Earl Cross, trumpet, Idris Ackamoor, alto and tenor, Rashied al Akbar on bass, and Muhammad Ali, drums. They gather together their collective forces for a very fire-y freebop set on Ascent of the Nether Creatures (No Busines LP 78). It is one of those limited edition vinyl releases that No Business does so well, and it is a good one.

The sound is not entirely perfect yet very clear. The music makes up for what is very slightly less than pristine sound. Cross and Ackamoor make excellent front-line soloists and have it all together on this set. Akbar is doing good things on bass. And as might be expected of Muhammad Ali (late brother of Rashied Ali), the drumming is expansive and very swinging.

They do four originals that have contrast and plenty of room for free blowing. And they come through. These are players that have not gotten near enough credit for their contributions to new thing freedom. A careful listen to this record tells you why that should not be the case.

It captures a period when free jazz was still new enough that the thrill and even ecstasy of letting it all go to the rafters was still there. There is no reason why that should not still be the case but there seems less of it now. Listen to this one and recapture some of that thrill!

François Carrier, The Russian Concerts Volume 2, with Michel Lambert and Alexey Lapin

François Carrier has been pretty extraordinarily productive in the number and quality of his releases of late. I've covered many here over the last several years (type his name in the search box above for those posts). Now there is another very good one. It's Volume 2 of The Russian Concerts (FMR CD381), continuing the live recordings made on location in Moscow and St. Petersburg in 2013.

As before Carrier is on alto, joined by long-time drummer associate Michel Lambert and Russian pianist Alexey Lapin for a full set of open-form free jazz, avant jazz, free improvisation with the emphasis on complete spontaneity. François Carrier has become one of the guiding lights on the international saxophonic scene and he comes through once again here with some vibrantly stirring improvisations.

And as with the first volume, the threesome make inspired sounds together. Alexey is spikey and all-over present on piano; Michel punctuates and cracks the percussive sky with responsive free-time sensibility.

As is the case with the last volume, the trio have their quieter moments but much is about an on-the-edge expressivity, as much concerned with the notes as horizontally panned and fanned out as about the vertical concern with aural texture.

If you liked the first, this one continues the immediacy. If you know neither or for some reason have missed Carrier and his music, you probably should start with the first volume. Either way this is excellent free expression, confirming the threesome and their significant encounters in those days in Russia.

Very recommended.

Karmadog Live, Featuring Greg Pagel and Matt Turner at Culture Cafe

The creative possibilities of live electronics in avant garde music has blossomed in the last few decades, thanks in part to new devices, the laptop and software, among other things. Not everything done out there satisfies completely, of course, because it still has to do with musical creativity, but when everything is right we get something very good to hear.

That's true about Karmadog and their latest album recorded live at Culture Cafe (Ickerrecords), in Manitowoo, WI last year. Karmadog is Matt Turner on electronically altered cello and Greg Pagel on synthesizer. The live set we are concerned with here is a very varied presentation consisting entirely of free improvisations. It comes down on the side of new music more than jazz per se. It has an expanded tonality that usually has a key fulcrum center buried somewhere underneath yet it takes that tonality to the fringes of atonality at times. Other times it is firmly and ambiently tonal.

But it is the electronic sound colors and the pace of each musical section that distinguishes the music and makes it quite interesting. There are a great many more of these open-form live electronic groups out there today than might have been the case 30 years ago, so the competition (for what? Recognition, I guess. Surely not riches) is more fierce. Yet these two artists hold their own quite well in their own way.

I don't suppose I need to tell you that if Billy Joel is your idea of great music this may jar you to the roots of your teeth. But to make comparisons this is not as much a noise-oriented music than some other outfits out there so that if anybody will win over the Billy Joel fan, it will be Matt and Greg. Seriously though, that is not going to happen very often. This music will satisfy the dedicated follower of avant garde fashion. But no, fashion does not fit either, since this sort of thing is more anti-fashion.

The truth is, this may not be the place to start if you know nothing of the avant garde. Now if you Google "avant garde" as I just did you'd get 79,700,000 results in 0.37 seconds, so we are not talking about anything ephemeral any more. We have had 100 years or more of it. It may not surface in homespun circles very often, but it is very real and very much alive. Is it universally beloved? Hardly. And all 79,700,000 hits may not be positive. My partner's blank-to-English dictionary from years ago defined "beatnik" as a particular group of godless, immoral people, which perhaps misses the essence of that movement! So some things don't get beyond the "in" group intact, as that definition shows dramatically. Just an aside. It's what I face every day when communicating in these missives. How to get others involved outside of the usual converts?

Nevertheless Karmadog fits in well with all of it. This album is no marginal exercise in obscurity. It is pleasingly mellifluous, out music from two cogent improvisers who hit on good things throughout the set.

So go for it if you can see yourself listening to this and liking it. I did. Like it, I mean.

Darius Jones, Matthew Shipp, Cosmic Leider: The Darkseid Recital

You take two players of real breadth, stature, improvisational genious maybe, and you put them together. What will be the result? Sometimes you can't be sure the two will mesh. That's not the case today. Take the rolling-and-tumbling all-over-the-piano ballet of Matthew Shipp and put him with and against the starkly purposive alto of Darius Jones. You get Cosmic Lieder: The Darkseid Recital (AUM Fidelity 088).

It's from a couple of different live get-togethers recorded between 2011-13. It amazes, if I might suggest, with its bold give-and-take. This is free improvisation of the best sort. When Matt asserts a way through the open field, Darius counters with his own way, and both work together beautifully. Now that would be great whatever the content, pretty much, but what excites is the wealth of invention involved. Structure gets into the picture, the structure of the moment, but not just any moment. It's moment-ful as it is event-ful. There are spontaneous musical events that occur one after the other and each is in its own way a surprise, and each in every given segment works with the segments before and after to form a complete statement.

Now maybe that's easy to say but it's true of the music here throughout. You listen closely, you hear how it all works together and you revel in it. The best free music has something to say and, if everything is right, says it with consistency, with excitement, with an inner presence. That's what this set does.

Matthew Shipp is an institution among avant-free pianists today. He's paid the dues and he's surmounted the obstacles to forge a playing style that belongs to himself alone and he comes through, here as elsewhere, as one of THE CREATORS. Darius Jones may not be as well-known. But he too has that something here, that one-to-one thought-to-execution lucidity. His soulful abrasiveness and intensive line creativity complements what Shipp is doing excellently.

So that is what I feel after a good number of listens. If somebody wanted to know what is going on in the free-avant sectors right now, I would recommend she/he listen to this, among some select others, to get it. That's how strong I think this set is. Strength. It's here.

Oh, this release has an official street date of August 12th. But you can order it now direct from AUM, and/or you can pre-order a download version from i-tunes.

Farmers By Nature, Love and Ghosts, Gerald Cleaver, William Parker, Craig Taborn

Love and Ghosts (AUM Fidelity 089/90) constitutes the latest, third album by Farmers By Nature, the name given the trio of Gerald Cleaver (drums), William Parker (contrabass) and Craig Taborn (piano). It is officially on the streets August 12th but you can order it now directly from the label.

I don't believe I've heard the first two albums, but I can say that this double live set is some of the finest avant piano trio music I've heard so far this year.

What's so impressive is the wide variety of territories and moods the trio covers. They can get inside themselves collectively and give out with some very inner musings, they can worry phrases until they become cosmic otherness, and they can scorch you with some heavy statements of transcendence.

The remarkable interplay of three equal partners makes for music that rivets. William Parker is lucid and supercharged with ideas; Gerald Cleaver plays with an aural awareness most drummers don't get near; and Craig Taborn never sounded better on piano, hiply chordal, melodically alive, tumbling into open zones without a safety net, taking risks that pay off every time, locking into patterns that develop and set the stage for a further ripping apart of the heavens.

Seriously this one blows you away. Two full CDs of live trio and they never flag while giving your ears much to digest and dig.

This is a holy grail of free music in many ways. It's one excellent example of what a free-avant piano trio can do when all members are gifted and inspired.

Just get it!

Rodrigo Amado Motion Trio & Peter Evans, Live in Lisbon

Today we revel a bit in the second volume of the meeting of trumpet firebrand Peter Evans and tenormaster Rodrigo Amado and his Motion Trio, Live in Lisbon (No Business NBLP 75). The first, a CD, I posted on last month, July 10th to be exact.

The companion album up today takes on the LP/Vinyl format in a limited edition of 300. It's a live set with plenty of the torque of the companion volume. Peter on trumpet, Rodrigo, tenor sax, with Miguel Mira, cello, and Gabriel Ferrandini, drums, show you they aren't about to let up anytime soon. Perhaps never! In an infinite incandescence? Anything is possible and as long as I could stay around and dig it, why not?

Seriously though this one gives you hot blasts of freedom and quiet gusts of playfulness in proportion and balance, the quiet affording a change of pace, then more heat! Everybody shows what they are made of, with of course Rodrigo and Peter sculpting sound brilliantly with no let up on note choice. Miguel and Gabriel give you a special sort of rhythm section that springs forward and falls back definitively and dynamically.

Peter seems in an especially puckish mood with full use of sound color. Rodrigo follows up and comes back with some torrid heat that puts everyone over the top. Amado and Evans are some of the very finest practitioners in avant improvising today and Live in Lisbon gives you more reasons why.

This album won't be around long at 300 copies so I'd get it quickly if I didn't already have it. But the CD reviewed last month is especially essential so...really you might do well with both!! That's what I'd recommend.

It's an important go-round for this quartet. I hope they get together again soon, because they have chemistry in abundance and really rise to the occasion of intersection.

Highly recommended!

Ellen Burr, Michael Unruh, Where Am I From, Where Am I Going

In the days when record stores ruled, when record hunting consisted of pouring through bins of records in search of both the known and the unknown, the recording up today would probably not normally have been stocked in the typical jazz stacks, unless you went to a large "full-line" store. And you might have overlooked it.

Today things (for better and worse) are different. People like me cover music that interests those who seek a particular style set. The music may be totally obscure or well-known but releases stand a better chance of review than they might have 30 years ago. Going to the relevant web site to buy such recordings is just a matter of typing in an IP address and going from there. But then the possibility of an unknown artist getting lost in the thickets of the web maze is quite real, too, unfortunately.

And so I present to you the music of Ellen Burr and Michael Unruh, perhaps not people you know of. Their free avant woodwind duet set, Where Am I From, Where Am I Going (pfMentum CD076), is unlikely to unleash a tidal-wave of acclaim and popularity, in part because of the newness of the names, in part for the uncompromising nature of the music. Ellen Burr plays flute, alto flute and piccolo; Michael Unruh the bass clarinet.

For seventy or so minutes they unleash their imaginative and technical powers in a series of 15 duets. It is music of a completely free nature, traversing territory both charted and uncharted, filled with energy and sound colors, weaving a contrapuntal tapestry of sounds that gets to you if you let yourself go and allow a willful selflessness, an immersion in the spontaneous effusions.

When I was much younger I remember a Downbeat review of an ESP disk called Free Music that the reviewer rated with five stars/no stars, symbolically and in fact concluding that there was no way to evaluate such music. It was a cop-out then and it is a cop-out now. If you don't like free music then you have no business reviewing it, unless you want to use the review as a platform to warn the unwary listener that they will be thrown willy nilly into a maelstrom of chaos.

As anybody who reads these blogs knows I do champion free music among other things. This series of duets has integrity, thoughtful creativity and a sense of form and style built-in to the mix. And so I do recommend it to you. It may not be my first choice among such disks thus far this year, but it is quite worthy of your attention. Recommended.

Nate Wooley, Hugo Antunes, Chris Corsano, MALUS

Trumpeter Nate Wooley is a player you should never take for granted. Because when you do he'll come along and surprise you. He has a kind of consistency of tone, sure, but he operates in the realm often enough of truly free improvisation, so that you just don't know what he'll do next.

That comes through clearly in the excellent trio recording of MALUS (No Business LP 73) a limited vinyl release.

Nate is joined by bassist Hugo Antunes and drummer Chris Corsano. You may well be familiar with them from their various recordings and associations. They sound well-primed and on the mark here.

The record gives us seven short- to medium-length improvisations that have varying degrees of structure and freedom. All three players are out front at various times in a very democratic give-and-take.

In a free session like this the key will nearly always reside in the interest-level of the solos, both collectively and individually, and of course the group dynamic as a whole. Both are high in this recording.

So needless to say it's something I think you'll dig if you are into the free scene.

Urs Leimgruber / Roger Turner Duo, The Pancake Tour

Relative Pitch records has been releasing consistently interesting avant free jazz music for a number of years now. I return to one I didn't cover that is several years out, a focused duo between Urs Leimgruber on soprano and tenor and Roger Turner on drums. The Pancake Tour (Relative Pitch 1007) gives us seven improvisations recorded in Cologne in 2011.

The sound of this music is heightened by the deliberate limiting of the drums to just a snare, tom tom, hi-hat, cymbals, an "f-blade", a chain, and "the comb". What this does is to force Roger Turner to work deliberately albeit spontaneously on the timbres he can extract from what is available to him. He does this quite well. In the end he doesn't sound typically drummer-like in what he does much of the time, more new-music orchestral.

In that way he sets things up for Urs Leimgruber to respond with vertical timbres and textures on his saxes more than horizontal jazz-ish lines.

The hour of music on this recording continues working within those constraints with moments that are somewhat sparse, some in the middle zone of activity and volume, and a few minutes here and there of more intensive scorching.

I can't say I didn't appreciate this exploration in sound. I did. The more "traditional" side of my ear-digester wanted to hear more bottom--a bass drum and a contrabass. But the objective presumably was to make creative sound essays within these limitations and for that they succeeded perfectly well.

If you like the idea of free music that is almost brutally paired down, here is a case where it works, no question about it. As always when I hear something that doesn't complete a picture as much as sketch out a presence in part through erasure, I remember that there are plenty of recordings to hear afterwards that do something else. One does not need to assume that any one recording represents THE music of the future so much as A music of today that we can appreciate. If this isn't one of my "desert-island" disks, it doesn't matter. I am not packing for an extended desert-island stay, thankfully for that. So this is quite cool with me.

Gary Hassay with William Parker and Daniel Carter, Emanate

Saxophonist and free jazz luminary Gary Hassay kindly sent me a burn of a set he did last summer with iconic bassist William Parker and multi-instrumental notable Daniel Carter. It was a live gig in Eaton, Pennsylvania. Though Gary is in the process of landing a label deal and so this is not yet available I was motivated to write about it early because of the satisfaction I've gotten listening to it. This is not standard practice with me of course but I make an exception because I hope you all will be motivated to anticipate its release.

The title of the disk is Emanate.

William Parker sounds beautiful throughout. It is hard to imagine a better catalyst in an intimate setting of this kind, opening up the harmonic spectrum with well chosen, woody, forceful yet rich bass sound.

Daniel Carter speaks in salient musical phrases in the three-way dialog; he plays flute, trumpet and saxes.

And Gary is utterly primed. The breathy outness of his alto here is far from canny (uncanny, then) and extraordinarily lucid. And he heats on up to a firey climax as he and his co-creators get the spirit. There is also a brief spot for his overtone singing which must be heard to be appreciated.

Well that's all I'll say for now. It is one of Gary's very best for his well-expressed alto passion--and in no small way via the inspiration the trio generates internally and outwardly as a whole.

I hope someone puts this one out quickly so you all can hear it. It is a winner!

Joe McPhee, Sonic Elements, for Pocket Trumpet and Alto Saxophone

Joe McPhee has become a kind of legend for his very productive career making great improvised music under his own name and with Trio X. He is one of the very few (Bennie Carter being the first?) that can hold his own on both trumpet and saxophone. But the point of interest is of course what he plays on the instruments, not just that he plays both well.

He does not record as unaccompanied soloist with any frequency, excepting spaces here and there within ensemble contexts, so an entire solo album is welcome. We have just that in Sonic Elements (Clean Feed 278) and I have been listening closely.

It's comprised of two segments, each lasting around 20 minutes. The first is for pocket trumpet, the second for alto sax. "Episode One" is for Don Cherry, "Episode Two" for Ornette Coleman.

That makes sense of course since Maestro McPhee comes out of a modern improvisational lineage that recognizes both as important "ancestors", so to speak. And anyone who listens to the new jazz with any seriousness knows the importance of the two artists to what follows.

McPhee combines an absorbed attention to the sound element of both instruments for some invigorating abstractions but he also makes both instruments "sing" in song-like ways, and that is part of the McPhee approach in general so it should not surprise us.

Nonetheless he comes across here as very focused, very committed, and very much worth hearing. This is music minus nothing. Joe McPhee is the complete artist.

Recommended.

Book of Three, Continuum (2012), Taylor Ho Bynum, John Hebert, Gerald Cleaver

Anyone who regularly reads this blog and listens to what comes out knows that Taylor Ho Bynum is a heavy--a cornetist with a great imagination, good ideas and a personal sound. Similarly bassist John Hebert and drummer Gerald Cleaver are important presences on the new improvisation scene, top caliber players with original musical personalities. Put the three together as Book of Three, turn them loose and you've got something. That's what happens on their CD Continuum (2012) (Relative Pitch 1012).

Of course a trio configuration like this one gives all three artists a clarity of presence and exposes their playing in the most aurally transparent way. Bynum, Hebert and Cleaver rise to the occasion and create a very open, pulsating happy three-way coincidence.

They start out with a Bobby Bradford number, and one is immediately put in mind of the Bradford-Ornette nexus and the great music it has produced. But of course this is a trio with its own way so one then adjusts to the improvisational distinctiveness they bring to the music. The program goes on to feature compositions in a three-way collaboration, some solid Cleaver pieces and one each by Jim Hobbs and Salim Washington.

The play is the thing with these creative three, ultimately, and we are treated to some excellent interactions. All sound great, whether swinging along with a time element or diving into freetime excursions.

One comes away from a hearing of this disk with the desire to hear it again, and again. A sign that this is important music is that the luster never fades the more you listen. It only glows more brilliantly. This is one to hear, by all means.

Giuseppi Logan, ...and They Were Cool

When an artist is off the radar as long as Giuseppi Logan was, it is understandable if his comeback is subject to a certain amount of fits and starts. That has been the case to my ears but in his new one ...and They Were Cool (Improvising Beings 16) he is firmly in his zone. Giuseppi fronts a quartet for this one in a program of freely spinning improvisations. There's Giuseppi on alto and piano, Jessica Lurie on flute and alto, Larry Roland on bass and Ed Pettersen on electric guitar.

Now certainly Maestro Logan has never been known as a high-velocity technician and he is not that here. But he is most certainly back to full form as a free thinking, original sounding avant reedest. And his bandmates complement him contrastingly and appropriately, Jessica as an excellent front-line reedest who stylistic remains very much herself yet meshes nicely with Logan, Ed Pettersen as a very stimulating electric presence that still maintains a group balance while he brings his own line and texture weaving to the table, and Larry Roland in a nearly classically free role of foundation builder and expansion creator.

This is a new, reconstructed Giuseppi that nevertheless reminds us why he was interesting in the first place. He is brashly out in a starkly affective way here and his bandmates do much to further his vision. New-thing-ologists, take note.

Sophie Agnel, John Edwards, Steve Noble, Meteo

I don't recall having heard pianist Sophie Agnel before her new trio release Meteo (Clean Feed 272), a live date. But apparently Sophie and the trio with John Edwards on contrabass and Steve Noble on drums have had others. This one gives us a long continuous improvisation squarely in avant-free territory.

We have here a very well integrated three-way effort with sensitive sonic sound coloring that is sometimes quite boisterous but more often on the less dense side--not sparse but pointilistically give-and-take, with as much in the way of sustained legato soundscaping as in the way of staccato hot-potato passing.

It's so successful a group thing that it's more a three-headed improvising beast than a matter of stars soloing, though what each is doing makes for a three-star constellation. Sophie gets a series of excellent sound-sculptured utterances via inside the piano jangles with added objects, plucks as well as conventional keyboard sounding, without resembling the freestyling of anybody else. And it turns out that John and Steve are doing just the right sort of complementary sound generating of their own to make the mix compelling.

So compelling free music is what you get. A very considerable 38 minutes' worth. Recommended!

Andrea Centazzo, Marilyn Crispell, Stolen Moment

There is an Ictus (00180) CD-Rom and indeed a very good one that's been around for a short while. It features a duo of Andrea Centazzo on drums and percussion, Marilyn Crispell on piano in a series of four improvisations.

If like most of my readers you know the music of these two, you know that a meeting of them in a spontaneous setting is bound to be something good. And that is what it IS. Stolen Moment is something to behear, to mangle an expression.

There is an incredible aura the two create in this stolen moment together. It is filled with a haunting spaciousness, a concentrated drama of sound and silence, an uncanny simpatico between the two that is inspired. They create an interplay of varying density, sparse to full, slow and cosmic to rapid and fire-stoked.

Andreas Centazzo in his many years of wonderful activity has become a completely original and startlingly inventive percussion orchestra unto himself. He most certainly is that here in one of his most moving performances in years.

Marilyn Crispell is the master of many zones of improvisational pianism. Here she shines in a freely abstracted place that she more or less owns.

Put the two together and, certainly on this occasion, there is magic. Stolen Moment is a magical disk, one you should not miss.

Jean-Luc Cappozzo, Geraldine Keller, Air Prints

There is music out there that may not get the attention it deserves because it is somewhat esoteric, demanding of concentration, not necessarily difficult but Zen-like in its singleness of purpose. I believe that would describe Jean-Luc Cappozzo and Geraldine Keller's Air Prints (Ayler 131). Now that is by no means a put-down. Far from it. It is only to say that this music brings its rewards like a well-crafted set of boxes-within-boxes. You must be ready to open up to each stage to get the whole set assimilated.

It's live music from 2011. Jean-Luc plays trumpet, horns and sound-producing objects of various sorts; Geraldine Keller vocalizes, plays flutes and also sounds objects.

The first thing you will notice is the almost ritual, chant-like vocals of Geraldine. It is a voice that goes well with her flutes, in fact is almost flute-like itself at times. On other occasions there is something a bit exorcising about what she is vocalizing. Her flutes have a world-sound at times. Jean-Luc plays trumpet with brassy boldness but can also take on sotto voce qualities. He has a slightly Dixonish growl sometimes, a Bowie playfulness at times, other times something else that comes out of where he is as a player right now.

It's a set of free avant provenance and it goes where you might not expect. So in some ways it's not only the novice that has work to do; the old hand at avant-free will find there are world and new music qualities here that need your attention if they are to come off. So in no way is this precisely easy listening in the Ivesian comfy-sofa sense.

I don't have much more to say except that after five hearings I still feel like I have not entered the inner sanctum of the duo's musical minds. That's saying something. I am not sure yet what. It's a definite adventure!

Jemeel Moondoc, Connie Crothers, Two

Two (Relative Pitch 1009) pits Jemeel Moon- doc's alto with Connie Crothers' piano, recorded live at Connie's Loft in 2011. Good free explorations are what you would expect, and that you surely get.

Jemeel's post-bop outness shows strong roots here, transformed, and Connie's rootedness comes through a little bit more than on some of her other recent collaborations. What is nice especially about that (and what in part distinguishes the set) is that neither are looking back. They are continuing their movement forward into new avant freedom. It's just that the past figures as reference point a little more from time to time than perhaps on some other recordings lately.

There's even a song . . . or two. Jemeel's "You Let Me Into Your Life," for one, with a harmonic-melodic base which they launch off of. Connie's "Deep Friendship" isn't as much taking on song form, but it has compositional guideposts that serve as the basis of a free salvo.

This is the first time the two have recorded together and that turns out to be an auspiciously good thing. Both bring their "A" game, not that I have heard either in a "B" mode. They do what two improvising masters do best when engaging in spontaneous two-voiced interplay: to respond to each other's uniqueness with the uniqueness that is their own and in the process create something not quite the same, intermelded twoness, as what they might have done by themselves or with any other possible twosome.

They have mutual brilliance and the shining that comes about is that much better in tandem, like the earth if it had two suns and it was a beautifully sunny day. Like that.

Jeffrey Hayden Shurdut, Sound Journal, 2007

There is one thing you can depend on in life, at least. That is, you can depend on Jeffrey Hayden Shurdut to be out there in the trenches month after month, creating very good to excellent free jazz, free music, or whatever you might want to call it. He gets around, finds the best free musicians, can play cohesively and movingly on piano, reeds or guitar, is a real leader-organizer, finds playing situations and gets the music out.

He may be the Eddie Condon of the avant garde jazz scene in a way--a good player who brings others together and creates an environment for serious blowing.

You can hear it in the JaZt Tapes Artist's Promo CD-R release Sound Journal (JaZt Tapes 031). This one goes back a little to a live date in NYC, 2007. It's one free improvisation lasting 50 minutes, with Jeffrey on the piano, Blaise Siwula on saxes, Marc Edwards on drums, Daniel Carter on saxes, flute, clarinet and trumpet, Nick Gianni on contrabass and also tenor, flute and soprano, and Enrico Oliva on alto. The CD-R came out in 2011.

This one gives you a thick carpet of free maelstroming, Ascension-like multi-horn layers, all-over piano cascading, and Marc Edwards' muscular free-drumming style.

Some excellent blowing happening here. Everybody is keyed into one another, responds with the right thing for a collective mayhem that is exhilarating! If you like a good blow-out this one has it.

Find out more about this disk and how to get it at http://www.janstrom.se/6.-recordings/6.3.-jazt-tapes-6267605

Triptet, Figure in the Carpet

Are there too many jazz/avant releases coming out these days? I recently read an interview with a prominent artist who expressed this thought. We sometimes forget how many releases proffered as jazz came out during the late-'50s-early '60s. Only a portion were truly worth your time, and there were many thousands that usually erred on the side of mood pablum. And some of the rote blowing sessions didn't always stand the test of time.

As someone who tries to keep up with the slog of output that hits our senses yearly, I will admit that there is much at times that seems premature and unnecessary today, partially because recording and releasing a CD is relatively easy and inexpensive. But there is some great music too that we might not have had a chance to hear in years past. It is an enormously time-consuming job to sift through what can be had--I know and I only get exposed to a part of it, so it's easy to overlook something.

Such a something might well be the latest album by Triptet, A Figure in the Carpet (Engine 2012). Hailing Sun Ra as primary influence, the trio winds their way through a live electro-acoustic set that has an acid-etched series of sound design episodes to give you pause and get your attention.

Who are these guys? Michael Monhart plays saxophones, splitting his signal so that the input goes into a laptop for further electronic manipulations. Greg Campbell plies a "junkstra" combination of set drums and percussive extensions, plays a beat up French horn and subjects things to laptop electronics as well. Tom Baker plays an acrid and wide-timbred fretless guitar, a theremin and too gets involved in electronic manipulations.

Can these guys play "Giant Steps" or "Cherokee?" I don't know about that. They don't try and it isn't a concern. Their version of tradition goes back to Ra in an out plugged-in and acoustic mode, and live electronic, live outside pioneers like AMM, MEV, the Spontaneous Music Ensemble, to my ears, groups and artists that sought to create sound worlds where often there were no virtuoso soloists carrying the music further, but instead sought to create stimulating envelopes of improvised, experimental sound worlds, seeking an overall cohesion more than a Promethean individuality. I may overly simplify, but that's in essence what at least part of it was about.

So too Triptet. They create a widely travelling set of ten episodes that hang together as a legitimate, successful, poetic traversal of some of the possibilities available to them. This one gets fairly orchestral in its denseness and has the drama of dynamics and a kind of sustained-versus-punctuated dialog of contrasts.

If their next album was a great songbook-bebop revival I'd be surprised. But they do what they do with results that consistently interest, surprise and extend the listener's home turf, ultimately shooting him off to distant realms, trips of fancy and imagination.

If you are into the electro-acoustic realm of spontaneous outness, you will gravitate toward this, I think. Definitely recommended for those pioneering ear-souls!