Jacob Melchior Carries the Torch on "It's About Time"

You know something hip is up from the opening of the first track, where drummer Jacob Melchior plays the head melody of Johnny Hodges' "Squatty Roo" on the traps to a walking bass underpinning. And It's About Time (Self Released C2010) turns out to live up to that promising beginning. It's a straight-ahead date with a piano trio that integrates the three contributors and at the same time creates interesting group arrangements that accentuate the rhythmic and melodic-chordal aspects for a kind of little-big-band sound. In that they are like the classic Oscar Peterson, Red Garland, Bill Evans and Ahmad Jamal trios.

This trio is Tadataka Unno at the piano, Hassan JJ Shakur on acoustic bass, and of course Mr. Melchior at the drums. Frank Senior jumps in for a gorgeous vocal rendition of "For All We Know."

There is a more or less even split between band originals and standards in the widest sense of the term (like with a samba version of Stevie Wonder's "Bird of Beauty," which goes quite well). The trio has been together for a while and it shows in the tight-loose approach. It's a showcase for the subtle yet swinging Melchior. But all three players are doing some fine swinging work here. It exudes the sincere commitment to a traditional bop-and-after style of playing that makes such traditionalism enjoyable and moving. This is the music they want to be doing and it's clear they live it every day.

It might be easy to miss this one. If you love the piano trio thing you might want to make a point of hearing "It's About Time." It is an excellent example of how, with the right players, the older style is far from dead. It is vitally alive in the hands of Melchior's trio.

The Andrew Lamb Trio Performs "New Orleans Suite"

From Engine Records (019) comes New Orleans Suite by the Andrew Lamb Trio. We are talking about Warren Smith on drums and recitation, Tom Abbs, bass, and Andrew Lamb working the tenor, flute. clarinet and harmonica.

There is a long narrative in the first part of the recording where Warren Smith expresses sardonic outrage at the handling of the Katrina event. I still feel that sense of outrage myself and so I cannot say I did not respond to the words.

The rest of the program centers on some fine free oriented improvisation from the potent trio. There are times where the direction reminds a little of AACM/Art Ensemble excursions of the looser sort, with Warren Smith taking a major role in producing the little sounds, but all joining in from time to time. This is not music of a technical tour de force sort. It is an expression of heartfelt anguish at the Katrina disaster and ultimately love, affection and hope for NOLA and its rebirth.

Rued Langgaard and the Visionary "Music of the Spheres," 1916-18

Danish composer Rued Langgaard (1893-1952) never received his due during his lifetime. He lived in the shadow of his more famous compatriot Carl Nielsen. His native Denmark afforded him few performance opportunities and, so it seems, he was faced with hostility and incomprehension.

Ironically part of the contemporary audience incomprehension was because he was simultaneously somewhat conventional at one moment (romantic) and presciently ahead of his time, surely with the Music of the Spheres work for large orchestra and chorus.

A recent recording by the Danish National Symphony Orchestra and Choirs under Thomas Dausgaard (Da Capo 6.220535) brings together all the stylistic elements of this Langgaard masterpiece for our wonder and appreciation. This is music with a mystical vision at work. The massed forces of full orchestra, choir, soprano solo and a smaller orchestra playing at a distance make for some deeply varied tone colors and gargantuan potency, the latter of which is only fully unleashed 30 minutes into the work.

What is most startling about the piece is not the post-Mahler reveries and Straussian thickness of texture of the tutti orchestra (though it all makes for an exciting piece of music). It is rather when Langgaard seeks to express the more cosmic programmatic elements of the music. There are soundscape-like ambiances, proto-minimalistic repetitions, and bold strokes of musical impasto.

A full analysis would be beyond the scope of this review article. It is a one-of-a-kind work; Langaard did some later interesting, and apparently, not as interesting work after his Music of the Spheres failed to capture the Danish imagination. But he never approached this level of invention.

The performances are excellent, sound is good, and several bonus works are added to the the program to round out our perspective on the composer's overall style shifts. If you've never heard this work the CD at hand gives you the perfect opportunity to unveil its abundance to your listening cycle for many years to come.

Harris Eisenstadt's Remarkable "Woodblock Prints"

So here I am once again, talking about a CD I really like. What, do I like everything? No. Definitely not. The things I don't like don't usually find their way onto the postings, unless there is something exemplary or interesting about the music that illustrates some aspect of the contemporary scene. Otherwise, not.

Drummer-composer Harris Eisenstadt's new Woodblock Prints (nobusiness lp 18), is a vinyl release that showcases music for a nine-piece unit. Eisenstadt's compositions are the central focus. The unusual instrumentation (for jazz) gives the overall sound a distinct quality. There is a large group of winds (clarinet, alto sax, bassoon, French horn, trombone and tuba) plus electric guitar, contrabass and Eisenstadt on the drums. Think of it in some ways as a wind sextet with guitar and rhythm. I believe that would help you envision the musical results. The winds are treated often as a block of sound, with soloists emerging from that group from time to time. The guitar is another color and voice, and the rhythm section performs its function in a loosely attractive way.

The point, though, is that Harris puts together music that has an unmistakable burnish. It is full yet filled with various smaller combinations of instruments within the whole. Some of it has a chorale-like quality, there is well considered latitude for solo and group improvisations and each piece has an overall character to it.

The guitar and rhythm often convey a modern, slightly or definitely electric edge that contrasts nicely with the alternately old-world or modern concert-textured block of winds.

It is music that is utterly personal. And in this case that's a terrific thing because Harris Eisenstadt has an utterly personal musical mind. This is his best album yet. It is an indispensable addition to your "What's going on right now?" collection. He is getting up there with Henry Threadgill and Carla Bley with this one. Up there as somebody who follows his very musical nose in ways that lead to delightful results. Listen to this record!

Stockhausen's "Mantra" in a Pleasing New Interpretation

Karlheinz Stockhausen was without doubt an enormously important composer of the last half of the 20th century. If you are reading this you may well know that. He said something after 9-11 that was apparently misquoted and he became anathema to some during the period leading up to his death. We now can put all that behind us. A resurgence in the performance of his works would indicate that it is happening.

There are many aspects to Stockhausen's music. His music for the pianoforte is very much a central part of it all. The Klavierstuck series and the sprawling two-piano work Mantra would seem to all-but-assure a permanent place in the ranks of the last century's greatest music titans (though I could go on and talk about some other seminal aspects of his output).

So it seems appropriate that his Mantra has been the center of a new spate of performances and recordings. Xenia Pestova and Pascal Meyer have done a version of the work, recently released as a Naxos CD (Naxos 8.572398).

There are a couple of factors to consider when thinking of this fine new recording. First off, I am reminded of what John Cage said about one of his Variations works after hearing it performed countless times. The gist of his comment was that, as time passed and performances continued, the piece started to transform itself. At first, the notes and silences seemed like isolated punctuations in the fabric of aural life. As further versions came about, the notes came to have a logic not previously noticed. The notes became melody; the combination of notes, harmony. In part that was a matter of the listener's (Cage's) perception; but it also appeared that the performers were grasping the score more as music than as avant experiment.

The second thing that comes to mind was a review of Mahler symphonies I read in the New York Times years ago. I forget who wrote it, but he spoke of how Mahler performances, as well as the continued performance of other originally less-known works, could be seen as following a pattern. The more familiar the musicians-conductor-audience were with a work, the slower the tempo of at least some passages. The idea was that now that most everybody was accustomed to the music, it was time to savor it in a more leisurely fashion. As one of my professors used to say, it that is not true, it should be!

All this applies to the new Pestova/Meyer version of Mantra. The original DGG recording of the work by the Kontarsky brothers may be definitive; but the Pestova/Meyer version here generally takes things slower. It is more deliberate. And it perhaps brings out more the quality of the note values in the score. The Kontarsky brothers made the music seem strange; this version makes it seem familiar.

For example, there is towards the end a long and rather exciting passage where the two pianist drive into a long series of endlessly modulating, continuous lines. The Kontarsky brothers took it at a maddening clip, as a cosmic blast of sound. Pestova/Meyer take it slower, almost at a boogie-woogie tempo. And the note values are more specifically articulated at that speed. It is more a savoring of the familiar.

There are listener-perceptual issues involved in this too, as the allusion to Cage's comment above implied. In 1970, Mantra was at the very edge of the avant garde. Its use of live electronics, its added percussion colors as performed by the pianists, the incorporation of spacial silences, the introduction of repetition. . . all that seemed vitally avant. Listening to the new version 40 years later, I hear it as much more coherently musical. I get where it is and where it goes much more readily than I did when I first heard it back then. What I hear now reassure me that it is indeed a masterpiece of the era, fully worthy of revival now and appreciation in the years to come.

The excellent performance of the Pestova/Meyer Piano Duo in the Naxos recording helps me get there. It stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the original recording. It creates another space for the work that gives it another life for us in this second decade of the millennium. Bravo for that! And bravo for the recording!

Sarah Wilson's "Trapeze Project" Breaks the Rules of What Modern Jazz is Supposed to Be!

We all know that music, like anything else, develops normative standards for what is supposed to be done in a particular style category. What is played as "Free Jazz," for example, has sometimes been codified in a set of unexpressed rules for what is acceptable and what is not. It isn't free in that sense. Not if being "free" is doing something essentially unfree. In another example the sonata form originally was a rough way of composing. Only later did it become a kind of rule book of prescriptive practice, systematized into a formula that very few composers had followed in the all-or-nothing sense it later was presented as. The critic, music theorist, music commentator and/or what have you helps shape the expectations of a listening public by these means. As a form of music matures, more and more rules and expectations form around it, until artists come along and topple the system by breaking the rules and starting the game over again.

Sarah Wilson could be one such artist. She certainly is on her own turf. Whether this will be something the music community sees as emblematic of some "new" music movement or not is irrelevant I suspect in terms of her new CD as we stand today looking forward. What counts is the music and whether it's worth hearing, for now.

So we turn to her Trapeze Project CD (Brass Tonic 001). Sarah plays trumpet and sings. She is joined by a nicely balanced group of Myra Melford (piano), Ben Goldberg (clarinet), Jerome Harris (bass) and Scott Amendola (drums).

What strikes me on repeated listenings to this disk is how lyrically melodic she is. Her songs are very memorable. The songs that feature her vocals have a special folk quality. She sings about longing, hope, the complex simplicity of childhood as seen in retrospect, going home, losing home....Her vocal style is warm and direct, and not what one expects for a jazz artist.

Mingus once declared that jazz is a folk music. And of course it is. When you listen to Sarah Wilson's music, you feel that strongly. It has improvisation. It has the sort of rhythm section things one expects to hear (and they sound fine). Sarah, Myra and Ben make congenial sounds together and as soloists (as does Jerome Harris in his solo time). But you get the feeling that "here is music, plain and simple in its essence." It doesn't try to kill you with fast runs or various postbop phrasings. It simply goes the way that people letting themselves articulate their music history at the cumulative point of the NOW moment are allowed and willing to do. They play what seems right for the songs. AND damned if it isn't right.

Even when they do the Goth anthem "Love Will Tear Us Apart," there is no self-conscious posturing involved in doing it. It isn't a gesture of "Oh, look at us. We can do material that comes out of rock." They just do it with straightforward conviction.

What could come off as mannered, cute or contrived in other hands speaks straight to the ears and heart. That is quite rare and Sarah Wilson's album is that. She doesn't try too hard to be different. She just IS. Check this album out for a revelation of refreshment! It's either the pause that refreshes or something more for a future way to go. Time can tell us that if we live long. Otherwise it will be up to those who aren't here yet. That's true of all music. But it may be even more true of this music. Either way it's a damned fine record.

A New One From Darrell Katz and the Jazz Composer's Alliance Orchestra

A new disk by Darrell Katz (A Wallflower in the Amazon [Accurate 5059]) and his Jazz Composer Alliance Orchestra is a matter of some occasion to me. I've followed the music over the course of a number of albums and have found that there is virtually always something to interest me in them. Mr. Katz is a well wrought sort of arranger-composer.

The new album continues Katz trend of increasingly tailoring aspects of his music for a larger audience. So there is an arrangement of Duke Ellington's "I Like the Sunrise" from "Liberian Suite," there are arrangements of a couple of classic blues numbers, and their are vocals here and there. Now the vocals should appeal to people who cannot relate to music on any level without there being some verbal-vocal content. I tend to expect the very best from jazz singers. And when I don't get it I don't like it.

The vocalists on this album are quite decent, but I do end up asking myself if they are totally necessary to the proceedings. But that is a matter of preference.

The arrangements are sonically detailed and quite well performed by the orchestra. The compositions are weighty and contemporary, they add colors and complexities that Mr. Katz does so well in creating, and there are those elements that should help more people appreciate his music.

It is a remarkable feat to keep a big band such as this one going for as long as it has, and the result is a tightly presented sonance that any lover of the larger aggregates should appreciate. It is in, but it is also out when there is an expressive need. Good!