Clare Fischer Big Band, Directed by Brent Fischer, Pacific Jazz

Composer-pianist Clare Fischer may no longer be with us; his music remains. His big band in the last years remained active, under the direction of his son Brent, and the sessions comprising Clare's arrangements, compositions, and keyboard playing, along with some of Brent's own compositions and arrangements, are now with us on the album Pacific Jazz (Clavo 201408).

It is a combination of straight-ahead modern big band jazz with quirky modern twists and turns, as one might expect from Clare. There are unusual arrangements of standards like "Cherokee," "Cotton Tail," "Eleanor Rigby" and such, plus originals by Clare. Then there are Brent's own pieces (3) and arrangements or co-arrangements with Clare.

The band is first-rate with Bob Sheppard and Gary Foster on hand along with a host of interlocking combinations of crack West Coasters. The band shows a full and bright sound throughout and that in part because of the quality of the arrangements as well as the discipline and talent of the musicians.

I found myself coming under the spell of the disk gradually. By now I feel at home listening. There is much to hear and some of it is exceptional. The rest is very good. There is enough different about the arrangements and pieces that you do not feel like you are hearing rehashed big band. There is, to pardon my turn of phrase, new hashing going on. Even Brent Fischer's funk rock "New Thing" gives life to something that can get pretty tired when formula holds sway.

After all that was always part of what made and makes Clare Fischer's music sound good, today as yesterday. He always found a way to make it new. And so here.

The Buddy Tate Quartet, Texas Tenor

Buddy Tate came into the Basie band in 1939; Lester Young left Basie in 1940. Thereafter the harder, bluesier Tate held sway. His Texas roots and swinging presence was well-received and he went on of course to continue to blow some great horn in various configurations until his passing in 2001.

Sackville records got the good idea of recording him with a top Canadian rhythm section in 1978. Now that Sackville's back catalog is in the hands of Delmark we get to experience that session once again, with a couple of bonus extra cuts for good measure.

Texas Tenor (Sackville 3027) is one of many Tate small group records he made over the years. But it remains one of the best. It is near-definitive later Tate, with a touch of bop now in his playing, but with that patented hard-driving rooted sound as strong as ever.

The backing players are there with him, driving the music to very swinging heights. Pete Magadini is nuanced but direct on drums, bassist Dave Young gets the foundations moving and pianist Wray Downes deftly combines bop, swing and blues feelings that complement Tate's effusions completely yet are worth hearing in themselves.

Buddy holds forth on tenor for seven tunes, and spells himself with his own hip clarinet for two more. Chestnut standards are pretty much the order of the day. Tate sees to it that they launch the music into Tate territory with a flourish. We hear him not just swinging hard, but also in his own ballad lushness, as in "Alone Together." That's great.

It's a joy to hear Buddy go at it here. And his bandmates make sure that the whole session swings hard. I for one am glad I have a copy of this now, as I missed it originally. It's a corker.

Outhead, Take This Sound to the King

Life may not be like a box of chocolates lately, to refer to Mr. Gump, because we seem to know what we are getting, for good or ill. But it still applies to music. I get CDs in the mail often enough where I have no idea what it's going to be. Outhead's album Take This Sound to the King (Chahatatadra Music) serves as a good example. What was it? Putting it on I found it was something very good. Very modern jazz with a compositional base and a definite outside edge.

The credits list Alex Weiss on alto and tenor, Charlie Gurke on baritone, Rob Woodcock on acoustic bass and Dilton Westbrook on drums. Weiss and Gurke provide most of the compositions, with one by Westbrook. There is a skronky electric guitarist on a cut or two who sounds good, but he (or she) is not listed.

The music is very forward, rockish at times, contemporary like Morphine just a hair, but no, not entirely. The two-horn parts are intricate and weave well with rhythm-section routines. The band has a good thing going with Weiss and his hip solo style, both fleet and smart, with a full tone that doesn't sound like others so much. Gurke has a good sound and presence on baritone, too.

And the ensemble as a unit has real clout. It's new and hip sounding, with pulse and dash, and a certain "this is our music" and like it or not directness that appeals.

It's quite good. Different enough that you don't feel like you are repeating yourself when you put it on. Better than a box of chocolates! No doubt.

Nir Naaman, Independence

New and very good jazz players keep on coming up and that's good news for the fans. Take Nir Naaman, who I did not know from Adam. Until now. He has an album out, Independence (self-released), and it shows him in a very good light. George Cables, the piano legend, produced the album and plays piano on all but three tunes (Roy Assaf spells him for the others).

Other than a couple of standards the compositions are all by Naaman. They have grit and interest, all of them. Nir plays tenor, alto and soprano throughout. He is a player of poise and soul. You can hear his rootedness in hard bop, with a little of the edginess of Jackie Mac on alto, but also Trane and post-Trane, and something from his musical upbringing in his home in Israel. There are, in other words, Israeli melodic-tonal elements, even sometimes in the way he intonates certain notes in a mideastern scalular way. But more than that he has line-building facility and a sureness that goes with his original take on the modern way.

The sidemen are all up for it and come through well. Marcus Printup plays a hard-edged trumpet on three tracks; Dezron Douglas plays bass with authority; and the drum chair is shared with Gregory Hutchinson and Ulysses Owens Jr., both coming through well.

The Trane-meets-mideast mode especially sounds good to me. But it all testifies to Nir's genuine facility and musicianship. He already has a sound. I look forward to more. Well-done!

Linda Sharrock, Eric Zinman, Noah Rosen, Mario Rechtern, Acknowledgements

Linda Sharrock is back! Her double CD No is No has been getting good reviews from those disposed toward the outside music she embodies. I reviewed the album myself last December 8th here.

As a prelude or a postlude we also have her with piano and sax in another live recording from Paris on May 2013. It is a limited edition recording issued on JaZt Tapes (049). Acknowledgements, Not for Sale has some very volatile music, often the equal to her more expansive release, though more informal (she coughs for a second at the beginning, for example). Linda may not reach the screaming heights of No is No but she is very playful in mood and her cohorts play some inspiring free expressions that she brings out of them (and vice-versa).

Mario Rechtern smokes a heady fire on what sounds like a baritone. He is liquid and blazing, blowing his top as the beboppers used to say. The piano chair is occupied alternately by Eric Zinman and Noah Rosen, and they too are in a fine fettle.

It's stormy music of a very high order. It contains some fine fringe outsideness that those who revel in that will most definitely appreciate.

For more info and a link to get a copy go to http://www.janstrom.se/6.-recordings/6.3.-jazt-tapes-6267605

Cynthia Felton, Sings the Nancy Wilson Classics, Save Your Love for Me

There are singers in the jazz realm who create artistry with whatever they have. Then there are those who simply have it all--the vocal instrument in all of its beauty and finesse--and start from a place in some ways already there. The second kind of singer is Cynthia Felton. She has come out with a number of albums that show us how good she is. And now the same with the latest. In the new volume she sings songs made classic by Nancy Wilson, but puts her own instrument into it. That album is Save Your Love for Me (Felton Entertainment 0004).

I suppose it is fitting that this album was recorded in Capitol Studies, where if I am not mistaken Nancy did much of her tracking. The instrumentation is from small to middle-sized, with the emphasis on a jazz orientation. There are too many to name here, but they all do exactly what they need to do to set off Ms. Felton's fine voice.

The repertoire is both American Songbook gems and some others less typical but worthwhile. So "I Wish You Love" is on the agenda, but also Wes Montgomery's waltz-time "West Coast Blues," with lyrics by Sascha Burlan. Nancy did this one in 1963 but Cynthia nails it, too. Ms. Felton has the feel for the blues as much as she can do a sophisticated ballad. Like Nancy. But like Cynthia, really.

Cynthia has soul, a projection of her considerable vocal ravish with phrasings that are never less than impeccable. She adds and subtracts notes here and there with the sureness of the major jazz vocalist she is. And it always works.

I am hardly going out on a limb to say that she is an indispensable member of the vocal elite today. This album is yet another feather in her considerable cap. It's a great one to start with if you don't already know the voice. And it is a wonderful confirmation of her talent, something that hangs just right in its instrumental frame. Get this and you'll hear it!

Fail Better!, Zero Sum

For the new year we have first up some open-form free jazz from Portugal. The group is Fail Better! The album is Zero Sum (JACC Records 021). This an album that has so much about it that it takes several listens before you grasp it all.

The band is made up of Marcelo dos Reis on electric guitar, Joao Guimaraes on alto sax, Jose Miguel Pereira on double bass, Joao Pais Filipe on drums and Luis Vicente on trumpet. They create a potent, shifting blend with six pieces that run a sort of gamut of possibilities. "Bright Red," the opener, pivots around a fundamental key center for a sort of dirge. This segues to a plaintive unaccompanied solo sax soliloquy that gradually brings in percussion and bass and gives the trumpet some space, still all within a pedal-pointed center. It is sombre in cast, perhaps in keeping with the title "This is Our Gun." The alto rejoins the throng and then the guitar as momentum and intensity gradually increase. Dos Reis solos, then is joined by sax and trumpet for a three-way extemporization that has power. The music thins out a bit for guitar and horn statements that extend the key center. Dos Reis opens up the tonality for extra-tonal freedom and the horns join for the ensuing section which has interesting ebbs and flows of energy freedom and experimental landscaping.

With "Dysfunctional Wire" a gradual, free-arcing crescendo builds momentum, then dissolves into a brief respite before they are off again into an an energy foray underpinned by dos Reis worrying a rapid-fire series of notes as all blow off of that until they rather literally explode with force and fire, dos Reis wildly hitting quickly strummed distorted psychedelic chordings as Pereira manically bows harmonics and the rest surf atop in a heavy tumult. A held note of guitar feedback ends it and the last section gives us a coda of machine-like drum repetitions and quiet freedom. Dos Reis begins rocking over a repeated, building chordal barrage and everybody takes it into a sort of nirvana drone cataclysm.

This is a group effort, but dos Reis, Giumaraes and Vicente get a fair amount of front-line time which they use to good advantage. Each has grit and ideas a-plenty. The rhythm section makes an important contribution too, never flagging, articulate in their freedom. The continuous but sectional approach gives the entire performance a dynamic worthy of our ears. This sort of episodic structure reminds slightly of the Art Ensemble when they went free in the classic years. Yet there are distinctive personalities at work here so the similarities are more lineage than in-the-image. The gradual build throughout has the effect of taking the listener from a peaceful dirge to a manic insistence that rocks you off your seat.

It is a worthwhile foray that will leave you with a feeling of having been on a trip to nether regions of space. Bravo to that!