Romain Collin, Press Enter

Some albums leave such a vivid impression on me that the review that follows practically writes itself. That feeling comes over me as I write today about pianist Romain Collin and his Press Enter (ACT 9583-2).

This is Romain's third album and it is a very memorable one. It is mostly a set of originals with his trio and some guests here and there. The trio is a lively entity thanks not only to Romain but his very accomplished trio-mates Luques Curtis (doublebass) and Kendrick Scott (drums).

They journey together across some very animated, lyrical melodic-harmonic-contemporary jazz-rock fare that is far from ordinary. It all has some of the lyricism of Jarrett in his early-mid period, without at all sounding derivative for this is Collin music through-and-through.

The compositions are stated loose-tight creatively (with some rubato stretching yet tightly moving forward) and the improvisations are often enough within the song structure architecture.

But the compositions are so strongly put together and memorable you do not find yourself clamoring for more blowing time. There is enough but the songs carry everything forward beautifully. And the improvisatory passages show plenty of pianistic fluidity.

So you are left with some really striking music. Can I leave it at that and suggest you listen? It is very worthwhile music and so I do not hesitate to recommend it to you.

Phil Haynes, Sanctuary

Phil Haynes is a drummer-bandleader of stature and creative...brilliance, I think you could say. His latest album, Sanctuary (Corner Store Jazz 0086), is just him, his drum set and a set of percussive found objects.

So this is a solo drums album, an unusual one in its sonically innovative qualities. He embarks on a five-part suite that makes full use of the various ways of sounding the instrument, from sticks to hands to mallets to brushes, the breath, etc. The segments range from the modern abstract to the mystical to the swinging, and all come together as a unified statement.

The entire program hangs together as a series of sonic poems with a sometimes almost-Asian use of space, but also a mastery of new jazz drumming ways and a sense of melodics that comes out of an acute sense of sound colors in alternation.

It holds its own impressively as percussion music as much or more so than drum soloing. And in that way there are new music elements as well as jazz improvisatory attacks.

In the end we get a very creative approach to the art of drumming, a long episodic essay in sound and one of the more important solo drum offerings in this yet young new century of ours.

Haynes is a dynamo of good ideas here. Anyone who appreciates the power and depth to be had from drumming in our times will find this a great example of the percussive arts. Very recommended.

Creative Music Studio, Archive Selections, Volume 2

In the latest release, Creative Music Studio, Archive Selections, Volume 2 (Planet Arts 301547 3-CDs) we get a wide assortment of never before released gems from Karl Berger's Creative Music Foundation concerts at their center in upstate New York during the fertile period of 1976 to 1981.

There is so much here that is very good and absorbing in varied ways that it defies easy summarization. Each disk in the three-CD set is devoted to a particular ensemble configuration. CD One covers Small Ensembles. To be heard are a duet between Anthony Braxton and Marilyn Crispell, the Kalaparusha Trio, a two piano piece by Frederic Rzewski and Karl Berger, the Paul Motian Trio (with David Izenzon and Charles Brakeen), and Lee Konitz doing a version of "Oleo" with Berger and quintet.

CD Two looks at three large ensembles--headed by Don Cherry, Bakida Carroll and Gerry Hemingway, respectively.

CD Three covers world music and perhaps is the most surprising of the three disks in its thoroughly advanced world eclecticism. There is an ensemble headed by tablaist Ismet Siral, a vina solo by Ustad Dagar, a duet between percussionist Aiyb Dieng and Karl Berger, a trio headed by Paulo Moura on reeds, a djembe solo by Amadou Jarr, and a Colin Walcott ensemble with Colin on sitar, Nana Vasconcelos on percussion, Trilok Gurtu on percussion and Aiyb Dieng on percussion.

What's most important is that it captures a broad spectrum of new improvised music/jazz at a crucial period and documents music and ensembles with examples that flesh out the recorded legacy of these artists with music that differs from or extends the recorded repertoire in very good ways.

To hear those now gone in rare settings--Walcott, Cherry, Motian, Kalaparusha--is to be given very good examples of why they are so missed by us all today. But there are many good and unusual performances from those still with us, too.

It is a testament to the importance and vibrancy of the Creative Music Studio and the artists that graced us with their presence there. The three-CDs are welcome additions, fertile explorations, genuine adventures made at the height of the loft scene and the aftermath. And it of course is a tribute to Karl Berger and his creative presence both in the musical examples and as the organizing force behind a critical institution.

It is all very worthwhile, music you I think will be glad to have and hear repeatedly. Outstanding!

Free Form Improvisation Ensemble 2013, Abdelhai Bennani, Burton Greene, Alan Silva, Chris Henderson

If you want to experience the roots of new thing-avant free jazz-avant improvisation, you of course can go back to Ornette Coleman's classic first recordings, early Paul Bley, Cecil Taylor, Albert Ayler's first recordings and . . . the Free-Form Improvisation Ensemble. The latter is no doubt the least known but very important and pathbreaking. The original version of the band (which features Burton Greene and Alan Silva) can be heard in a recording from 1964 (see my review from February 19, 2010 http://gapplegateguitar.blogspot.com/2010/02/pioneering-music-from-free-form.html) that is astoundingly ahead musically.

Now some 40 years later, we get a new incarnation of the Free Form Improvisation Ensemble 2013 (improvising beings 40, 2-CDs) and it is a fine thing to hear. Back are Burton Greene on piano, Alan Silva on orchestral synthesizer, plus Abdelhai Bennani on tenor (who passed away, sadly, not long ago) and Chris Henderson on electric drums.

With so much time passing, so much music by Greene and Silva happily coming to our ears, one would not expect for this fortuitous reunion that the artists would sound precisely the same as they did then. And of course with Bennani and Henderson in the mix, there are important new voices to contribute as well.

Surely this recording shows us a new, evolved freedom. It is not the same music. But look around you, see how much has changed in our world, so how would we expect seminal free music pioneers to have the same musical outlook? This is nevertheless inspired free music, music of today, and we are all the better for it.

Alan Silva's orchestral synth playing gives the group an expanded harmonic and textural base that pulls the music into new territories imaginatively and adroitly, and Burton Greene responds to that sonic directedness with playing that works excellently well, thematically inspired, fully congruent. The two form a dynamic center that Abdelhai Bennani applies his special tenor phrasings to, sounding perfectly right and in total control over his sound and its place in the whole. Chris Henderson embellishes the totality with a vibrant set of colorations wholly right for the spontaneous events at hand.

Saying all that is not saying enough, though. We get two full CDs of music that expresses a contemporary freedom rich in ideas, filled with very directed music that constitutes not a reworking but rather a culmination of 40 years playing and reflecting.

It is the work of seasoned masters, with brilliance and a richness of invention that rivals any free ensemble out there today for focus, relevance, and the excitement of the now.

This is essential listening for avantists, a treasure of the present-day scene. RIP Andelhai Bennani. Long live Alan Silva, Burton Greene and Chris Henderson!

Matt Lavelle's 12 Houses, Solidarity

The open-form freedom, new thing now jazz world of contemporary New York has a 16-member big band that shows us where the music is on a recent release. I'm talking about Matt Lavelle's 12 Houses and their album Solidarity (Unseen Rain 9945). The band runs through six Lavelle pieces that have each a special melodic mood soulfulness and act as a catalyst for the considerable collective and individual improvisational thrust of the band members.

There's Matt on cornet, flugelhorn and alto clarinet (and conduction), Ras Moshe Burnett on tenor soprano, soprano and flute, Jack DeSalvo on banjo and mandola, John Pietaro on vibes and percussion, Francois Grillot on double-bass, Anais Maviel on vocals, plus soprano and clarinet (Odom), alto and clarinet (Waters), baritone and bass clarinet (Stocker), flute and piccolo (Cherney), bassoon (de Brunner), piano (Forbes), violin (Ortman), cello (Selinger), guitar (Nillson) and drums (Sawyer). In other words a very full band with players who articulate the melodic-harmonic gamut with a special collective sound and can blow.

There are some dirge-like threnodies, some sanctified testifying and some blow-outs, all showing a very together Lavelle approach and a group that knows where to go with it all. Ras takes some blistering moments to call the spirits on tenor, Matt shines in his solo moments (dig "Cherry Swing"), but really this is for everybody in the end.

And it is a remarkable set, showing us roots and toots, troubled times and resolved transcendence, queueing up and getting there, a gentleness and a fierceness, fragility and strength, all that it takes to keep scuffling but never shuffling.

It is fabulous music from a band that I hope is destined to become an institution in the city. They have what it takes and they show it, they let loose and blow the world forward.

Lavelle is a trailblazer, a full force, a jazz composer and bandleader of stature, a player of strength and depth. And the band is on it.

So very recommended it is!! Grab one.

The AndersonPonty Band, Better Late Than Never

I promise on these pages to cover rock song and such, and so I unleash today a review of something very good in that mode.

If Yes was a different band altogether and featured Jean Luc Ponty on violin and Jon Anderson on vocals, that's pretty much what you'd get, nicely, with the AndersonPonty Band. I have been watching the DVD and listening to the CD for their recent release Better Late Than Never (Liaison Music 4034), and though I didn't know quite what to expect, it turns out that the band and all concerned are most definitely coming at us with first-rate prog-fuse.

The band is tight and "soundful" in the best sense. Anderson and Ponty are joined by Baron Browne on bass, Jamie Glaser on guitar, Rayford Griffin on drums and Wally Minko on keyboards. These sidemen have much in the way of musicianship and the arrangements give consistent ignition to the material.

Jean Luc is out front very sonorously as the principal soloist and sounds as good as ever. Jon Anderson has lost none of his vocal abilities and matches the Ponty sonority with his own special vocal timbre.

There are some redone Yes classics to be heard here, just different enough that there is freshness and genuine new life to them, even with something like "Roundabout" but also "Owner of a Lonely Heart" and "Time and a Word." There are some new songs, too. They are good.

Both on the live DVD set from a concert at Aspen and on the CD, the band has a happy confluence that I'll admit I was not ready for until I listened a couple of times. It is a beautiful set from a band who most definitely HAS it.

Well, so if you have a place in your heart for prog this will turn you on, I suspect. If my Mets baseball watching this October-November got in the way of DVD time, blame that for my late response. Better Late Than Never, of course. Dig this one.

Manu Katche, Touchstone for Manu

A change of pace today with an anthology of music by drummer Manu Katche, Touchstone for Manu (ECM 2419). We get selections from four albums, covering the period between 2004 and 2012. It is melodious and spacious ECM jazz that features Manu's very interesting jazz-rock playing with a host of sidemen from Jan Garbarek to Tomasz Stanko to Nils Petter Molvaer.

Manu is a drummer who plays an open jazz-rock style with its own twist, interjecting small cymbals and toms into a fluid pulse very nicely.

The music is first-rate ECM style jazz-rock and the soloing and tunes are well done.

I missed this music the first time around and find it quite worthwhile. It will certainly appeal to those who dig the ECM sound harnessed to a rock pulse.