Variable Density Sound Orchestra, Evolving Strategies

Guitarist-composer Garrison Fewell's Variable Density Sound Orchestra has made some excellent music in the past. The smaller ensemble heard in the album Evolving Strategies (Not Two MW911-2) has a particular resonance, in part because of the beauty of the compositions and their improvisational fulfillment, and in part because they are some of the last recordings made by the avant titans John Tchicai and Roy Campbell, Jr., both of whom were tragically taken from us not so very long after.

The band as a whole is every bit as good as the illustrious nature of the names. OK, perhaps bassist Dmitry Ishenku is not very well known, still he is very good. But then there is trombone master Steve Swell, who graces the session with his rangy expressions and a composition that stays long in the mind, "Mystical Realities," with a very groovy ostinato and a head melody that matches it. John Tchicai is on tenor and gives us two of his compositions and some beautiful improvisations. Roy Campbell reminds us why he is so missed on trumpet, flugel and flute. Reggie Nicholson turns in as always the right performance, with an impeccable feel and touch on drums. And then there is the leader, Garrison Fewell, with his very smart guitar freedom and exemplary compositions.

These are players at the peak of modern avant jazz and they perform accordingly. Whether collectively or singly they come through with sterling utterances that could serve as models for what the state-of-the-free-art is all about today. The compositional frameworks are both sophisticated and down-home at the same time, reminding at times of what was so exciting about the work of AACM artists in the first years of their blossoming (and after, surely).

It's an album you grow into each time you hear it, so that by now it is a recent favorite for me. It is that good and so much worth hearing and having. Get it!

Shepp, Cherry, Tchicai: The NY Contemporary Five's Lively and Lovely Montmartre Album

There has been so much ink spilled over the music of Don Cherry and Archie Shepp, especially back in earlier days, that I feel preceded. This has never stopped me in the past though, and not now either.

The album by Archie Shepp and The New York Contemporary Five (Delmark 409) first came out in the states in 1967 I believe. I didn't get to it myself until around 1971. It's a live date from the Jazzhus Montmartre, 1963. Shepp, Cherry and John Tchicai were the equally featured front liners, with bassist Don Moore and drummer J.C. Moses rounding out the group.

It's available on CD now, and one can only feel glad of it. The New York Contemporary Five were one of the first important groups to step into the floodlights after the advent of Ornette Coleman's seminal quartet recordings and appearances. By the time this album was recorded, the classic OC Quartet was no more (at least for a time) and so Don Cherry was free to pursue new horizons. He found them with Tchicai and Shepp. The set recorded that night featured two pieces by the founder of the feast, as it were, Ornette, plus a Monk classic and one original apiece by the three front liners.

It is a band that goes both beyond and behind what OC had been doing. The band is putting across a sort of early freebop associated with the principals through the OC influence, but also extending it as well as rooting it in new soil. The horns put together head arrangements plus some horn lines to accentuate the soloist of the moment. That works fine and is completely idiomatic to where they were back then. And that was a very good place indeed. Shepp was forming his style and was well on the way to getting it perfected. Sometimes he sounds a little more under the influence of Trane than he would later be, but he sounds quite enlivened. Cherry is himself, as always, puckish, foundational yet given to flights outside the range and sound of what the mainstreamers were doing. Tchicai is the more unsung of the three historically and he shows why he should be recognized. His sweet-and-sour plaintive alto is in very good evidence.

A note about J.C. Moses. He plays a fair amount of drums on this set. Does he overplay? Subtract his many accents and bombs and it would not have been the same group. So no, he does not.

This and their Savoy recordings are prime examples of the new. new thing. They sound as good or even better to me than they did when I first heard this album. It is timeless. It is indispensable listening for the serious follower of the avant garde lineages of free jazz. But more importantly, it is perfectly raw, but perfectly great music.