Matt Lavelle's 12 Houses, Solidarity

The open-form freedom, new thing now jazz world of contemporary New York has a 16-member big band that shows us where the music is on a recent release. I'm talking about Matt Lavelle's 12 Houses and their album Solidarity (Unseen Rain 9945). The band runs through six Lavelle pieces that have each a special melodic mood soulfulness and act as a catalyst for the considerable collective and individual improvisational thrust of the band members.

There's Matt on cornet, flugelhorn and alto clarinet (and conduction), Ras Moshe Burnett on tenor soprano, soprano and flute, Jack DeSalvo on banjo and mandola, John Pietaro on vibes and percussion, Francois Grillot on double-bass, Anais Maviel on vocals, plus soprano and clarinet (Odom), alto and clarinet (Waters), baritone and bass clarinet (Stocker), flute and piccolo (Cherney), bassoon (de Brunner), piano (Forbes), violin (Ortman), cello (Selinger), guitar (Nillson) and drums (Sawyer). In other words a very full band with players who articulate the melodic-harmonic gamut with a special collective sound and can blow.

There are some dirge-like threnodies, some sanctified testifying and some blow-outs, all showing a very together Lavelle approach and a group that knows where to go with it all. Ras takes some blistering moments to call the spirits on tenor, Matt shines in his solo moments (dig "Cherry Swing"), but really this is for everybody in the end.

And it is a remarkable set, showing us roots and toots, troubled times and resolved transcendence, queueing up and getting there, a gentleness and a fierceness, fragility and strength, all that it takes to keep scuffling but never shuffling.

It is fabulous music from a band that I hope is destined to become an institution in the city. They have what it takes and they show it, they let loose and blow the world forward.

Lavelle is a trailblazer, a full force, a jazz composer and bandleader of stature, a player of strength and depth. And the band is on it.

So very recommended it is!! Grab one.

Linda Sharrock, No is No

Linda Sharrock set the avant jazz community on fire in her days as co-conspirator with Sonny Sharrock, the late great guitarist and then-husband of Linda. She was a prime vocalist in the primal scream style that had nothing initially to do with Yoko Ono, but rather went along with some of Abbey Lincoln and Patty Waters sides in the first heyday of protest and avant expression. She and Sonny made several albums together in the '60s and then, for a time, nothing (at least that I am aware of). Nothing much of her after.

Her personal history in the intervening years I will leave to those who know it. The main thing is that she is back, very much so, and holds forth with some very fire-y music as the vocalist with a crack lineup of free-avant jazz artists today. No is No (Improvising Beings in 30) gives us two-CDs of Linda and company live, essentially going into space and creating a great noise there.

This is totally improvised music in the tradition of the old days where collective breathing of fire was a staple of the new thing. Linda is very much present, warming up and maintaining a certain level with "wah-wah-wah" soundings and then lifting the roof off the venue with some blood-curdling cries. It is not music for the timid, to say the least. But in her cries are the struggles to be faced by us all, especially those who do not feel themselves as participating in some sort of consensus world. It is a cry for freedom, of freedom, from a world where some still feel enchained.

And it's not just what she does on these sides, it's her vocalic-volcanic presence and how it inspires the instrumental sextet to outreach themselves and reach for the stars. This is one of the most extreme recent examples of avant jazz in terms of sheer energy, a calling out, a cry of existence, for existence.

Reedist Mario Rechtern and pianist Eric Zinman turn in especially strong performances here. But then Itaru Oki on trumpet (especially), Makoto Sato on drums and Yoram Rosilio on bass are very much key as well. This is collective, fired-up mayhem at its classic best.

It will smoke you. You either give in to the reaching out of our stratosphere and join the flight into the beyond, or you walk away. There is no in-between because this music will not work for you on any other level than participation. You are the Fifth Beatle, the Lost Tribe, the Godot who appears or you are left behind.

And in that this is superlative hot-freedom blowing and vocalizing. If you are ready for it, it is here for you. Anybody who finds Sun Ra at his most intense, Ascension at its cacophonic best or a number of classic other free dates . . . . If that is a world you gladly inhabit, then this is for you! If you don't know what that means, you may find this blissful if you open yourself to it anyway. It clears out anything remotely prevaricating and gives you pure truth. Not necessarily the truth, for there is more than one. That's how I feel. It sends me out there!

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.

Dick Wood, Not Far From Here

There was a soulfully raw sound in many of the new thing freedom bands in the early days that somehow seems to have all but disappeared in many corners of the free zone these days. Dick Wood's Not Far From Here (pfMENTUM 065) brings that back in no uncertain terms.

The band charges ahead throughout, led by Wood's alto and flute. With him are Dan Clucas, cornet, Hal Onserud on acoustic bass, Mark Trayle, electronics, and Marty Mansour on the drums. For two cuts they are joined by Dan Ostermann on the trombone and Chuck Manning on tenor.

Dick writes all the pieces, which have an early Simmons, early Dixon-Shepp-Cherry feel to them. The band blows through them with the conviction, looseness and fire of an early Art Ensemble, though I wouldn't go so far as to say that therefore they are the next AEC. The point is that they go about their music in ways that are not especially polite, and that's good.

This is a group effort with lots of cross-improvs and sounds both little and big. Nobody is going to blow you away as the improviser of the century, but collectively they get it very right. And that's refreshing. That's good to hear.

Vinny Golia Quartet, Take Your Time

Vinny Golia has for 30 years give-or-take created vibrant uncompromising jazz that bears his distinctive waterprint. That he is very much alive and well is quite apparent on the 2007 recording just now coming out: Take Your Time (Relative Pitch 1003).

It's a quartet of fine players--Vinny on tenor, alto and soprano, Bobby Bradford on cornet, Ken Filano on bass, and Alex Cline on drums.

This one is remarkable for the Golia-Bradford interactions, the interaction of the two with Cline and Filiano, and the latter with themselves.

It is an appealing straightforwardly "new thing" date, with heads and plenty of space for the soloists. Bradford sounds his effective self; Vinny moves to his own inner voice, original all the way, and the Filiano-Cline combination catapults the music ever upwards.

Is this album a huge revelation and the best thing Maestro Golia has ever done? No. But it IS an excellently realized, unpretentious meeting of four accomplished improvisational masters, who by being themselves, by playing with soul and fire, by their candor and concentration, give you a lively set of new jazz.

And that's what it is all about. Part of it anyway.

Jason Adasiewicz's Sun Rooms, "Spacer," A Fine Trio Outing From A Vibes Master

Jason Adasiewicz, in his many appear- ances in advanced Chicago lineups and his previous trio effort, has established his credentials as a most-promising cutting-edge vibist for today. With the latest trio effort from his Sun Rooms outfit, Spacer (Delmark 2012), he moves beyond the promising to the realized. The trio of Jason, Nate McBride on bass and Mike Reed, drums, presents a very swinging set of mostly Adasiewicz originals.

The group interplay is first rate, the compositional vehicles forward moving and open-ended, the performances satisfying and classical-modern. There is something of the early Bobby Hutcherson in there, but Jason takes it further into an orchestral fullness of his own. He makes good use of the sustain pedal as in the previous trio outing, but this time he zeros in on the linear creativity which was so important an element of his presence in the larger ensembles he has been a part of.

McBride and Reed propel in classic new thing ways, with their own take on the open form that brings this trio into the 21st century.

So there you have it, model performances, innovation, swinging looseness, and open-form improvisational prowess that is anything but formulaic. We see. We hear. We dig. And thanks, Sun Rooms, for the musical joy and brightness you bring to our ears.