Paradoxical Frog? It Doesn't Croak. It Makes Intriguing Music.

Paradoxical Frog is a trio with Kris Davis on piano, Ingrid Laubrock, tenor, and Tyshawn Sorey on drums. Their self-titled new CD (Clean Feed 183) gives you 75 minutes of their music, and there's nothing to be disdained about any of it. It's serious avant improv. Serious in that it doesn't try to entertain. The three players are after some good expression of their musical minds, and those minds are fertile.

There's chemistry in the combination of these three. Tyshawn Sorey is a drummer of sensitive accompaniment and fire-breathing power when needed. Ingrid Laubrock is a potent weaver of significant form. Kris Davis has a great linear sequencer wired into the musical neural network. The playing generally is out of the Cecil Taylor camp but not in the sense of taking on any of Cecil's lines or phrasing per se.

There is much to get oneself immersed in. And in fact, immerse one must, for this is music that doesn't allow itself to be relegated to the background. It soars. It settles into an evocative quiescence. It dishes out jagged abstractions that anyone who digs the free vocabulary will understand and love, I would assume.

Unassumingly, quietly, Paradoxical Frog makes some stunningly good music that has the essentialism of "new music" but the passion (when needed) of the improv approach. It's revelatory of the three players and their vision, individually and collectively.

James Moody at 85

Anyone who is 85 years old has earned the right to sit back and revel in the highlights of a life well-spent. In the case of tenor titan James Moody, the many years of his musical excellence gives us all an enriched musical world. He could stop. But he still can play it! So Mr. Moody keeps on blowing.

His latest, 4B (IPO 1017), shows that he still has it. OK, so sometimes his phrasing can be less that perfect these days, but the Moody approach is there, pared down to fighting weight. His cohorts for the venture follow up on the album of last year. Todd Coolman walks the bass with authority, drummer Lewis Nash swings along gracefully, and Kenny Barron never sounds anything less than magnificent.

There are a couple of originals, one by Barron, one by Coolman. The rest are a mix of songbook and jazz chestnuts, done Moody style.

It's great to hear Mr. Moody hold forth with the sound and sequential improvising that made his name for so many years. We can only be grateful for his contributions, which continue so exhuberently on 4B.

KaiBorg: David Borgo and Jeff Kaiser

The world of electronic music has altered drastically since the days of Milton Babbitt and the RCA Synthesizer. . . one man in extended real-virtual time with a wall of glowing tubes and tediously compiled punch cards. You can do things on a laptop or two live that used to take months in the studio to accomplish, tape splicing block in hand. New software gives improvisers the ability to incorporate live electronics into their performances without a mass of equipment. Of course making things easier does not always lead to more "masterpieces." You get what the musicians' ideas can accommodate. Happily there is nothing ill-considered, unimaginative or hastily conceived in the music of today's posting.

KaiBorg's new CD Harvesting Metadata (pfMENTUM 058) reflects contemporary technical developments with music that entertains, challenges and stimulates. KaiBorg consists of reedman-composer David Borgo and composer-quarter-tone-trumpeter Jeff Kaiser. Together they explore the electro-acoustic interstices with a varied program of pieces that alternately overwhelms the senses and gives pause for contemplation. There are moments of thick electronic texture and quieter way stations of comparative repose. Free-style improvisations have counter ballast in the electronics that give form to a dialog between two imaginative players and their performance resources.

This music can at times be a bit abrasive but always expressive. It's an impressive outing.

Soulstorm: Ivo Perelman in Very Good Company

Tenorman Ivo Perelman arrived in Portugal for a series of gigs and a recording session in April of 2009. He was slated to appear with an interesting configuration: Daniel Levin on the cello and Torbjorn Zetterberg on upright bass. It all culminated in the newly released two-CD set of the three improvising in the spirit of adventure and discovery.

The resulting release is dubbed (not inappropriately) Soulstorm (Clean Feed 184). This is concentrated, seriously intent music. The cello-bass-tenor combination gives the group sound a darkly expressive bent. All three get the chance to interact in depth and they succeed quite well in giving the music a spontaneous yet considered spin. Ivo clearly appreciates the chance to stretch out in such a context, and puts in some fine work. Daniel and Torbjorn respond with sometimes dense, vividly thick textures and a maelstrom of bowed and plucked sounds, sometimes building to a carpeted barrage of dissonance and energy.

This is not a causal listen sort of set. It demands your attention. It rewards in kind with improvisatory flights the likes of which one seldom hears. If you put three other very good improvisers in their places (on the same instruments) it might be very good as well, but it would not sound like this. The three have put an indelible stamp of identity on the music. Those willing to work their ears as hard in response as they did in execution will be the beneficiaries of what makes improv so interesting these days.

Holly Hofmann and Bill Cunliffe for Eloquent Flute and Piano Duets

One of the really good things about doing these blogs is the chance to hear music I never would have thought to check out. Like flautist Holly Hofmann and pianist Bill Cunliffe's duo association. I had heard of them. I'm sure I've even heard them separately at some point. I hadn't heard them in tandem. Their fourth collaboration Three's Company (Capri 74099-2) has come out and now plays on my computer's CD-ROM drive.

What first strikes me is the way they incorporate pre-bop stylistic traits into a contemporary framework. Cunliffe's bright originals partake of the contemporary melodic-harmonic contours you might hear in something Chic Corea or Gary Burton (or both) have advanced (with some Latin overtones on occasion), but reworked to an original result. Then there's a hint of stride; there are some boppish influences here and there too, especially on Holly's title track, but they are not always pronounced. Cunliffe and Hofmann are joined by a guest artist for half of the numbers and each adds his or her own inimitable luster. There's violinist Regina Carter (for a beautiful reading of Strayhorn's "The Star-Crossed Lovers"), reedman Ken Peplowski (see earlier review posting on his new album), the drums of Alvester Garnett, and Terell Stafford's trumpet.

But in the end it is the exceptionally beautiful flute tone and phrasing of Ms. Hofmann and the vividly colored piano of Bill Cunliffe that win the day. This is exceptionally soothing music that does not lack spirit and shows two considered talents at the height of their art. Who cares what category you would like to put it in. It's some kind of jazz, surely. But it's very good music first and foremost.

I was really quite pleasantly surprised and pleased with this set. You may well also feel that way. Listen, by all means!

Spaceways Incorporated Do Sun Ra and Funkadelic, 2000

Concept albums spice up musical life a bit. Most of the time. That's true of Spaceways Incorporated's Thirteen Cosmic Standards by Sun Ra and Funkadelic (Atavistic 120). Spaceways was/is Ken Vandermark on reeds, Nate McBride on acoustic and electric basses, and Hamid Drake on drums. The session was recorded in 2000. It's a bit of a hoot. These are some of Chicagoland's finest, of course, and they seem to have been stimulated by the contrast between the two musics. You get out funk for the Funkadelic tunes, and you get interesting trio blowing and arrnagements of the Sun Ra pieces.

Hamid gives the funk rhythms his skillful twist and of course he can play in any manner of outness or swing powerfully. And he does. Nate is solidly there on the electric funk lines or the finessed Ra on the upright. Ken V. goes to various places as only he can do. It's a fun record!

Eric Alexander Meets Harold Mabern

Tenor artist Eric Alexander has spent several decades now doing what he does. He is a modern mainstream tenorman who manages to have a great feel for the hard-bop-and-after style of his forebears but puts his own Alexandrian spin on it. He's a player you could actually hear in a blindfold test and identify, which alas does not apply to all players working in this tradition. Pianist Harold Mabern, of course, IS the tradition. He was a large player in forging the sort of funk attack and finesse of the pianistic style.

Getting the two together of course is a good idea. In the recent album Revival of the Fittest (High Note 7205) the collaboration yields a bountiful harvest of good sounds. It's a blowing date with Nat Reeves and Joe Farnsworth providing solid backing on bass and drums, respectively.

There's a standard ballad and original swingers. It may not be the greatest album either Eric or Harold has made, for there have been many, but it sure sounds good!