Matthew Shipp, Piano Sutras

Matthew Shipp goes his own way. Those who know his music know this. And I have no doubt that's the way it is going to be going forward too. A series of sketches and portraits of Maestro Shipp right now is to be heard to very good advantage on the new solo release Piano Sutras (Thirsty Ear THI57207.2).

In it you get 13 moods and modes of Shipp the pianist and improvising-composer-thinker today. Some have balladic thrust, some a free originated walking postbop, some fourth chorded modality, hard scrabbling cascades, tender introspections, new music jaunts, out blues, the sound of an important talent thinking out loud musically, and a few gem standards played the Shipp way: Trane's "Giant Steps" and Wayne Shorter's "Nefertiti" (and yes, this is respect for the elders so you can forget about jumping on something he said isolated and taken out of the conversational setting).

Like Monk, Matthew uses technique not to wow, but to express what he needs to, the way he needs to do it. It's not like, "oh look at me playing fast" or "look at me giving you everything including the kitchen sink, here." It's a matter instead of Matthew carving out blocks of sound by hand, raw inspiration harnessed to the man, the artist, the original pianist that he most certainly is.

It's improvised music that rings true because there isn't a hollow note in the lot. It's Matthew Shipp music. Make no mistake. And that can be sublime. Here, it IS. Here it is.

Nina Simone, Little Girl Blue, 1958

The Bethlehem series of jazz recordings appear to be coming back. There have been at least two major reissue cycles that I can remember, the first as LPs, the second on compact disk. In the second cycle the Nina Simone debut from 1958 Little Girl Blue (Bethlehem) never got to me and so I presume it never got onto CD, but I did have the album originally on LP and I am glad it's back. It's Nina all the way, holding forth on vocals and piano in a jazz trio setting that includes a young Tootie Heath on drums and Jimmy Bond on bass. They sound fine but it's Nina who steals the show.

At the time Nina was aspiring to be a classical pianist, I read on Wiki, and you can hear that in some of the fugal treatment of themes--sounding oddly enough Brubeckian in those moments. Otherwise her pianism sometimes has a straight-ahead accompanying role, other times there is almost Duke Ellington, quasi-Monk-Basie solo and space in her playing. She convinces in the bluesy corners of her playing, less so with some of the nightclub fanfare things.

But as interesting as all that is, Nina the singer is what makes this album worthwhile. She already had it then. A slightly smoky instrument of great beauty, impeccable diction so that the lyrics come right at you without a moment of sacrificing lyric to melodic line--but she has a way with phrasing, a very subtle thing. In all that she comes across at this stage as somewhere between Sarah Vaughan and Carmen McRae, only it's Nina with all that she was to build upon over the course of her career.

Other than a couple of piano showpieces mentioned above, the music has some well-known standards and some ones I don't think I've heard elsewhere. It's hard to imagine a more moving performance of "I Love You Porgy" than the Decca side by Billie Holiday, but Nina's version comes pretty close in its very own way.

So that's what this is all about. Some totally solid Nina at the very beginning, swinging, singing and giving notice to the world that here is a major voice. If you don't have it and like the greats being great, this one fills that bill well.

Melodic Art-tet, 1974

The Melodic Art-tet was an inspired band from the '70s that never quite got the recognition it deserved. A full-length WKCR broadcast from October, 1974 (No Business CD 56) tells the story with a full 80-minutes of music. The band by then consisted of Charles Brackeen on flute, soprano and tenor saxophones, Ahmed Abdullah on trumpet, William Parker on bass, Roger Blank on drums and Tony Waters (Ramadan Mumeen) on percussion. Now that is a heavy gathering, so you would expect high-level Afro-New-York modernity at its finest.

And you get it. Charles Brackeen, Ahmed Abdullah and William Parker are the kind of soloists you can expect lots of great invention from, and they do not disappoint. The rhythm section of Mr. Parker, Roger Blank and Tony Waters combined makes up the sort of conjunction where you expect the feel to be strong. And again this date has all of that.

But of course this was a band that worked on compositional ideas too, getting the concept-composition and surrounding, freely articulated improvising to mesh beautifully. It's a band that had intertwined both elements in ways that stand out, now as then. All the compositions are by Brackeen save one, which is by Abdullah. They work so well with the band that this long set seems to go by in a flash.

The music is great and the band is very much a single unified thing. Everyone however is outstanding. Brackeen, Abdullah and Parker by then had become masters, Blank a drumming dynamo of the first caliber, Waters an excellent percussionist. There are some fired up moments when Ahmed Abdullah really takes off that especially stay in my mind afterwards, but it's all good. And so they excel as a group and as themselves, so that five plus you equals one when you are listening.

An excellent date. We are fortunate that the session is coming to light. Highly recommended.

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!

Brian Landrus Kaleidoscope, Mirage

Brian Landrus is no slouch on the baritone sax, and he shows what kind of composer-bandleader he is with Kaleidoscope and their latest, Mirage (Blueland 2013). It's his quintet along with a string quartet. The fare is well-thought-out progressive jazz-rock with much more than a set of riffs and solos. Much more.

Kaleidoscope is Brian on baritone, bass clarinet, bass flute, contra alto clarinet and bass saxophone, Nir Felder on guitar, Frank Carlberg on electric and acoustic pianos, Lonnie Plaxico on acoustic and electric basses, and Rudy Royston on the drums. Then there is the string quartet: Mark Feldman, Joyce Hammann, Judith Insell, Jody Redhage. Ryan Truesdell conducts.

Everyone sounds very good. Brian, Nir, Frank, Lonnie and Rudy get time out front and they use it to their advantage. The combination of baritone and other low register winds from Brian, a crack band and the string quartet in the hands of the Landrus compositional touch makes for an excellent mix and some moving music. The string quartet writing really makes it all work. The parts really do enhance the music rather than sounding somewhat out-of-place, as one can often hear in less successful pairings of strings and band. And the compositional frameworks are very distinctive.

This one is a serious blast! If you like your jazz-rock with soul AND brains, and dig the baritone, consider this one essential. Even if you aren't sure. Good show!

Cristina Braga, Samba, Jazz and Love

Music. Where some lead, we follow. That is, if we like what we hear. With vocalist-harpist Cristina Braga, I most certainly like. At least I like her album Samba, Jazz and Love (Enja 9593 2). I like her singing, which has that quiet sweet intensity that has some relation to Astrud Gilberto, though clearly this is Cristina in her own voice, but with that gentle quality. She lays back a tad on the beat which gives the delivery a pronounced swing. And I like her harp. I generally love the harp anyway but she really can play (what she chooses to show us of it, this isn't a harp showcase per se); it's a beautiful sound she gets in this set of samba-bossa classics and some lesser known but all worthwhile. And I like the band, which is I believe all-Brazilian, with some nice vibes, trumpet, contrabass, and drums. By the way that bassist, Ricardo Medeiros, is the musical director and has no doubt much to do with the arrangements, which are quite nice.

So she leads, I follow. I mean that. To me good Brazilian samba jazz is one of the joys of life. (Of course there are many joys, but it is one.) Combine a beautiful set of songs, a beautiful voice, a loosely swinging band and that harp playing of hers, and you have something. Really something good. Just get it. You'll get it.

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!