David Virelles, Mboko, Sacred Music for Piano, Two Basses, Drum Set and Biankomeko Abakua

Pianist-composer David Virelles is up to something rather different on his album Mboko (ECM B0021717-02). Cuban born and bred, David has reimagined the music of Abakua, a traditional male initiation society in Cuba that has roots in West Africa. It involves masked dancing and the experience of a cosmic Divine Voice in musical sound.

The essence of Abakua in ritual sound comes to us in recomposed form in a series of ten ritualistic movements for piano (Virelles), two double basses (Thomas Morgan and Robert Hurst), drum set (Marcus Gilmore) and Roman Diaz on the four-drum biankomeko, a fundamental part of Abakua.

The music is not a recreation as much as a contemporary analog to the rite. A ritual feel is at the forefront with the majority of moments where Afro-Cuban rhythm dominates or, alternately, where a kind of musical incantation is at the fore.

Virelles solos over the hypnotic rhythms in a very modernized Afro-Cuban mode, both engaging Afro-Cuban pianistic tradition and going forward in a sort of post-Bley avantness.

He played on recent albums by Tomasz Stanko and Chris Potter so his jazz credentials are strong. This album expands his approach both backwards to ancient roots and forwards into the advanced present.

The result is long-formed development of sound-specific mood over a full-length program. It is a vibrant, singular disk that takes its time creating sound worlds very worthy of Afro-Cuban tradition yet in their own way an extension into high-art improvisatory realms.

Hearing Mboko brings you under a spell that engages a sacred spirituality. It does it with a definite personal touch that calls attention to David Virelles as an artist of real importance. I hope we get to hear much more from him in the years to come.

Maldivian Traditional Music

Something different? What about music from the Maldive Islands? They are off the coast of India and now are independent. There is a recent 3-CD set out (though I have only heard one disk for preview) called appropriately Maldivian Traditional Music.

The music on the DL I got for review consists of male vocal music, in unison or as call-and-response with hand clapping and hand drumming of a vibrant sort. It is stirring, elemental music that sounds related to Sufi music from that part of the world and pockets in the Mid-East.

This is music seriously intended, not in the least bit "commercial" but DIY traditional. I don't know what else is covered in the set, but this bit of music is enlightening and moving on the primal level, with in some ways a music that crosses the borders between African, South Asian and Mid-Eastern music sensibilities.

Check it out!

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!

Marcin Wasilewski Trio with Joakim Milder, Spark of Life

Things can get going over in Europe to the extent that those of us in the States who aren't completely on top of what's happening there can find something fully flowered and in full strength when we are just getting to pay full attention to an artist or group. I find myself in that situation with Polish pianist Marcin Wasilewski and his trio. It's Marcin, Slawomir Kurkiewicz on double bass and Michal Miskiewicz on drums.

Here they are with their fourth ECM release, Spark of Life (ECM B0021718-02), joined by special guest Joakim Milder on tenor, a Swede with a post-Garbarekian sensibility that goes well with the trio.

The group has been around since the '90s, including tenure as part of Tomasz Stanko's outfit. So there is a Polish lyricism that has affinity with Stanko's later work, plus a love of the Polish icon Komeda, shown here by their nicely done cover of his "Sleep Safe and Warm" from Rosemary's Baby. Other than that there is a good mix of originals and unusual covers, from Sting and Herbie Hancock onwards.

The trio interacts in excellent fashion, showing mutual empathy and togetherness that is in part a matter of their long association, in other parts a matter of their mutual commitment to the lyrical romanticism that comes in its roots out of the Bill Evans-Keith Jarrett nexus.

These are some very subtle players doing deeply tonal harmonic-melodic wizardry that sounds "nice" no doubt to the uninitiated, yet on inspection from those who have listened long to this kind of music, they are filled with all the sophistication and, yes, brilliance of the most classic examples, only their way is theirs. They can get some traction, too, in exciting ways. It isn't all just singing-and-winging along sorts of things.

Milder sounds effective and completely in tune with the trio.

It's a lovely listen and an impressive outing all around. This kind of outfit must be a gas to hear live. But then again all this music is live, in that it lives!

Get an earful of this one if you can.

Marquis Hill, Modern Flows, EP Vol. 1

The problem sometimes with modern jazz that injects a contemporary funk element and other contemporary elements is that all too often the music is geared to please rather than express. Some of it is ultra-mundane, banal, tired. Not so with trumpeter-composer Marquis Hill and his recent album Modern Flows, EP Vol. 1 (Skiptone Music).

Marquis gets together a very capable and hip ensemble, a sextet of instrumentalists plus vocalist and two poet-rap personages. He builds charts that have very much something to them, modern Afro-influenced jazz that features intricate arrangements with excellent writing for the horns of Hill and altoist Christopher McBride and some very hard hitting rhythm-solo work from Justin Thomas on vibes, Josua Ramos on acoustic bass, Bryan Doherty on electric bass and Makaya McCraven on drums.

To that are added poetic recitations/raps/vocals from Meagan McNeal, Tumelo Khoza and Keith Winford. The lyrics-words portray the plight of the Afro-American today in no uncertain terms, African roots, chokeholds, Obama bashing, identity and respect, among other things.

It all works really well, thanks in part to the very fluent musicianship and the compositional brilliance. You listen, you listen again, and there is no weary recognition that here we have a bunch of cliches strung together for radio play. It is the opposite. It gets better and the substance of the music is THERE.

No kidding. This is excellent. It hearkens back to old Blue Note horn voicings, hip tunes and the best of funk-jazz from the golden age of Norman Connors, Herbie, Azar Lawrence and the others. It's in its own court, though, too.

Get this one if you want something that convinces yet gets funky in a really advanced but rooty way!

Michael Mantler, The Jazz Composer's Orchestra Update

Jazz-composer Michael Mantler in tandem with his then-spouse Carla Bley did an awful lot of good things with the Jazz Composer's Orchestra in its series of recordings--as well as creating a viable model for independent new music distribution while their JCOA remained active. The Mantler JCOA recording came out in 1968 and in many ways revolutionized the idea of the new jazz big band. It remains to this day seminal and sounds every bit as advanced as it did then. Time went on and so also Mantler went on to do other excellent work, but nothing quite on this ambitious scale.

So when Michael agreed to revisit his early scores, both from the original album and not, in conjunction with the Nouvelle Cuisine Big Band under Christoph Cech and the radio.string.quartet.vienna, in a new project for ECM, one had high expectations. What came of it, The Jazz Composer's Orchestra Update (ECM B0022098-02), now out, lives up to expectations in every way.

Sure, we do not have the pathbreaking soloists that were on the original--no Don Cherry, no Pharoah Sanders, no Cecil Taylor, no Larry Coryell...but for that you still need to listen to the original recording, which was reissued some time ago on ECM and I believe is still in print. The new soloists do their job and guitarist Bjarne Roupe gives us some exceptional sounds. The performances and ECM's audio are fully top-notch.

These are reworked charts to include the electric string quartet and Roupe, and as a big bonus provide some excellent scores from the period that have not been previously recorded.

What we get is a beautifully rendered series of large group compositions that not only hold their own, but stand out as models for a modern, "ahead" orchestral jazz every bit as advanced as they sounded back in 1968. Along with the work of the late Sam Rivers, Mantler's charts remain a guiding light for what a modern jazz orchestra can be all about.

The recording is simply excellent.

Trio 3 & Vijay Ayer, Wiring, with Oliver Lake, Reggie Workman, Andrew Cyrille

There are master jazzmen, avant or otherwise, who as they mature gain a depth to every note they sound, just about, and an impeccable feel to whatever they do. Such a three are certainly Oliver Lake (alto sax), Reggie Workman (bass) and Andrew Cyrille (drums). Their incorporation as Trio 3 is more than just a great idea, it is a band with a certain monumentality about it. Each excels as a master of their instrument; each has a musical sensibility that years of open playing have made possible--but of course only with the work of titans such as these. And each works together to get an interplay far above "avant business as usual."

So when they team up with a guest who is younger yet most definitely on the track to an open profundity, expect some real kinetic synergy. Such is the case with the teaming of pianist Vijay Iyer and Trio 3 on the album Wiring (Intakt 233).

There are compositions by all and one by the very undersung Curtis Clark. A high point is Vijay's "Suite for Trayvon (and Thousands More)," which underscores the series of brutal and very questionable shootings of Afro-Americans by those in law enforcement made only too real this past week by a "no indictment" decision in another case. A sense of outrage is put into music. And I hope it will help the collectivity out there come to grips with the facts and demand reforms. Period....Question mark.

But this album lays it all out to give us great playing from start to finish. Iyer fits right in and they get from the quartet a classic sort of freedom of expression that has in it the essence of the very best from times past. Trio 3 were a part of those earlier days, an important part, so it does not surprise. It confirms.

Yet one cannot predict what a meeting such as this will bring about. Iyer and the three hit it off strikingly well. They make a set that ANYONE with an interest in the new jazz should hear. Something of an instant masterpiece is what this is. Only of course to make music of this depth and power takes the collective work and experience of many years!

Don't miss it!