Angelica Sanchez, Wadada Leo Smith, Twine Forest

Pianist Angelica Sanchez is one of those relatively new voices on the new jazz scene. She has great inventiveness, a harmonic-melodic brilliance which combines with a respect for the tradition that comes out in very original ways. She has been a part of some of Wadada Leo Smith's most important recent recordings and she now joins him in a series of trumpet-piano duets on Twine Forest (Clean Feed 287).

The two seem inspired, running through eight Sanchez compositions with greatly dramatic sympathy for one another's very music utterances. There is a poignant space that surrounds the two and punctuates their every phrase. It's the sort of outing where you hear new music avant influences in the overall matrix and then there are distinct blendings of that with a "jazz" sensibility. There are especially moving moments that have an out, yet bluesy soulfulness that Wadada and Angelica handle so well.

It's another breakthrough disk in many ways for Angelica; you hear her at great length and in inspired form. Wadada sounds his usual excellent self. There are very few out there who come close to his zen-like sound sculpture approach, his impeccable timing, his beautifully varied timbre and his always-right, always-meaningful entrances.

So if you follow the free, the new, the avant in "jazz" today, this is one not to pass by. Angelica Sanchez gives notice that she is here to stay and Wadada reminds us he's never left.

Gregorio/Swell/ Karayorgis, Window and Doorway

Part of where free-avant improvisation has been going has something to do with "New Music", that is it draws freely upon non-jazz concert elements at times but still has the expressivity and immediacy of jazz. We can hear this in a vivid way from three masters of free music who improvise and compose in equal measure. I refer to the trio of Guillermo Gregorio (clarinet), Steve Swell (trombone) and Pandelis Karayorgis (piano) in their live performance at Firehouse 12 in New Haven, released on CD with the title Window and Doorway (Driff 1301).

Each of the trio contributes two or more compositions as springboards for the improvisations and there are also three collective works.

Steve Swell should be known to all as at the top of avant trombone player-jazz composer-bandleaders. Pandelis Karayorgis may not be as well-known out there but has built a considerable reputation (deservedly) as one of the brightest new voices. Guillermo Gregorio I do not know all that well, but on the basis of this recording he certainly is right up there with the other two.

The music is abstract without being arid. It has soul and brains, too. It is doubtless one of those sleeper disks--something of great impact and avant beauty but not as well heard as it should be. The performers come through with a group synchronicity born of compatible, fertile musical imaginations and sensitive improvisational reflexes. The compositions set the mood and provide rough maps of the musical terrain which the trio covers with agility and creative thrust.

It's a disk to be heard and appreciated. Gregorio, Swell and Karayorgis are dwelling in advanced, frontier musical settlements and they stake out the territory with authority.

Tim Berne's Snakeoil, Shadow Man

Tim Berne's Snakeoil band continues and perfects the long evolution and development of his music. The new album Shadow Man (ECM) makes it clear that he is still moving forward. Tim puts together the compositional-conceptual forms as you would expect, plays the alto and fronts a quartet that sounds much denser than a four-person outfit usually does.

That is in great part so because of how Tim and ensemble give you intensely worked out multiple sounding motival rubato often enough. There can be a pulse involved but it is plastic, malleable. In a way Tim Berne has been working out his own group logic from such roots as Trane's Sunship, and perhaps some of Braxton's classic pattern repetition pieces, and maybe Roscoe Mitchell of Nonaah, though the music sounds nothing like any of the three, exactly. There is almost a four-way, subtle-ized free-modern fanfare going on in the music, a way to approach the long-form of modern improvisational music by freeing the ensemble of the standard post-bop role-playing and having each player develop an integral part of the improvised-composed whole. Then there are endlessly counterpointed ensemble passages too, which ultimately work around variable patterns of intervals that extend outwards, potentially into infinity. Soloing on top of either form further extends the long-range, long-term possibilities of a work and yet gives you a feeling like you are still in the "head" mode. Or at least that is what I hear happening.

It helps to have a foursome with excellent improvisational instincts and imagination. Tim of course, Oscar Noriega on clarinet and bass clarinet, Matt Mitchell on piano and Ches Smith on drums, vibes and percussion. This is a group where each member is totally key to the compositional-concept sound, not spelling rhythm or harmonies as much as actively entering the four-way musical discourse.

And so that's what I am hearing. It is Tim Berne's own way and Snakeoil is perhaps the ideal player combination for hearing it. Shadow Man has a breathtaking beauty-in-hardness to it. It is one not-to-pass-by. Tim Berne is here in the present-future and we cannot ignore the music because it is fundamental to OUR present-future, I think. Mind you I am not saying that Maestro Berne is THE next thing. He is clearly A next thing, an important music-maker to coexist alongside some other key cats today. But you listen four or five times yourself. New music, jazz, call it what you want. But don't ignore it!

Jacob Garchik, Jacob Sacks, David Ambrosio, Vinnie Sperrazza, 40Twenty

The "new thing" art avant jazz tradition of Herbie Nichols, Thelonious Monk, Steve Lacy and Roswell Rudd is extended and made new again in the hands of the quartet that enlivens the disk 40Twenty (Yeah-Yeah 004).

It's a well matched group of jazz composer-instrumentalists: Jacob Garchik (trombone), Jacob Sacks (piano), David Ambrosio (bass) and Vinnie Sperrazza (drums). Each has a vital role to play in realizing the quite interesting compositions; each contributes at least one, Sperrazza and Ambrosio two apiece.

It's music with a harmonic base, but in no way a cliched one. The compositions set the mood and haunt the improvisations by integrating with them throughout.

Garchik is a very fine exponent of the trombone of finesse and control, virtuoso soul and line-crafting excellence. Sacks is a post-Nichols wonder of good musical sense. Ambrosio can solo with real ideas and hangs well with Vinnie Sperrazza's very swinging and smart drumming.

This is a quartet that does not come along every day. There is everything going for it, an avantness that incorporates earlier avant tradition while establishing a complete, cohesive identity of its own. Exceptional new music! Recommended.

TromBari (Glenn Wilson, Jim Pugh), The Devil's Hopyard, Music of Thomas Chapin

Glenn Wilson, baritone sax, and Jim Pugh, trombone, form the nucleus of the band TromBari. For the project at hand they assemble a version of the ensemble that includes violin, cello, cello or bass, and bass, drums and percussion to play the music of the late Thomas Chapin. The Devil's Hopyard (Jazzmaniac JR3625) is the CD in question and it's something to be heard.

Glenn Wilson is a vastly underrated barimaster and Jim Pugh an excellent trombone counterpart. They are in great form here. The rhythm section kicks it all with lots of heat when needed. Josh Hunt's drumming is just right, very swinging with a great sound, and his counterpart Chris Nolte on bass is there, too. The duo give the music a great swing when needed. The string section of Dorothy Martirano, violin, Tomeka Reid, cello, and Armand Beaudoin on cello and bass, can solo collectively and/or individually and play the arranged parts with the proper straddling between new music tone and jazz inflection. Percussionist Matt Plaskota adds color to the mix in good ways.

The star attraction here is the Chapin music, two burners and the ambitious five-part "Devil's Hopyard Suite." They are compositions with grit; they swing and bop with fire and they go on to more extended melodic developments that get the ear to listen and appreciate.

Glenn and Jim give the music a leverage that makes this album especially excellent. They play their parts with conviction and they solo collectively and individually in ways that attest to their own prowess and their long-time association.

In short this CD has it all going, great compositional platforms played with authority, a horn & strings sound that puts this music in a league of its own, and the exuberant presence of two horn masters.

I hope this band does some touring because it is impressive and should be heard widely. The Devil's Hopyard delivers some excellent music that you should not miss.

Michael Vlatkovich Ensemblio, An Autobiography of a Pronoun

Trombonist-composer Michael Vlatkovich has been responsible for some excellent avant music in the past. His latest may well be his most ambitious, and perhaps his most original. I speak of his An Autobiography of a Pronoun (pf MENTUM 067). It's been out for a little while but I am just getting to it (hey it's just me here, covering 500-1000 recordings per year on the three blogs).

I'm certainly glad of it because this one is very worthwhile. It's a fairly large ensemble, eleven musicians to be exact, doing Michael's compositions. Besides Vlakovitch there's Jeff Kaiser, William Roper, Brian Walsh, Harry Scorzo, Jonathan Golove, Tom McNalley, Wayne Peet, Anders Swanson, Mark Burdon, Ellington Peet. Brass, wind, strings, piano, bass, drums/percussion is how it breaks down.

The music strikes a good balance between the composed elements and the loose improvisational/spontaneous stance. When there's pulsation it is made more complicated and unique when Ellington Peet does the ride cymbal work and Mark Burdon the rest of the drum functions. The freetime passages gain something via this division of labor as well.

There is good use of the coloristic and textural possibilities of the ensemble, good use of the players' approaches to their instruments and sustained, flowing moods for each piece that have foundations in the writing and sequencing of the parts and are carried over into the improvisations.

It's a fascinating set, well worth hearing. Support small labels and this excellent ensemble by BUYING a copy.