Beyond Trio Live at Spectrum, Cheryl Pyle, Roberta Piket, Newman Taylor Baker

What we know today as avant jazz can take many forms, in a spectrum ranging from free jazz to new music improv with many shades in between. We get a blend slightly verging toward new music realms on the Beyond Trio's download EP Live at Spectrum (11th Street Music 2013). This edition is a very good one, caught in peak form in 2013. Cheryl Pyle chimes in on flute, Roberta Piket on piano and Newman Taylor Baker on drums.

Baker brings his chamber percussion set and its ubiquitous washboard for a discerning barrage of freely articulated small sounds. Roberta Piket sounds out responsive, advanced lines that come out of a Taylorian-Bleyian-new music lineage, opening up the harmonic center to a greatly expanded chromosphere. Cheryl Pyle is in excellent form on flute, deftly winding her way through the full range of the instrument and the open-form chromatic choices that are part of her hallmark.

In the 30-minute set presented on this album we get a number of contrasting moods and some striking trio interplay. It is one of the best for this trio and Cheryl, a refreshing offering of what makes this band something altogether else! Listen and enjoy.

Biggi Vinkeloe, Cheryl Pyle, etc., Flute Duo/ Raw Sound Sweden, Live at Downtown Music Gallery

Last March 15th avant jazz improv reed master Biggi Vinkeloe was visiting New York to touch bases and do some playing. On that night she carried her music to the Downtown Music Gallery in Manhattan for two segments. The results are available as a download album entitled Flute Duo/Raw Sound Sweden, Live at Downtown Music Gallery (11th Street Music). This is a prime "women in the new jazz" showcase with some very lively music.

The main part of the night is the Raw Sound Sweden segment, with Biggi on alto sax, Elsa Bergman, bass, Anna Hogberg, alto sax, Malin Wattring, tenor sax, Signe Dahlgreen, tenor sax, Anna Lund, drums, and two important resident New Yorkers--bassist Shayna Dulberger and flautist Cheryl Pyle guesting. It is primo open-ended avant jazz with lots of saxophonics in the new and newer zone and a very structured sense of freedom.

The second half is devoted to Biggi and Cheryl in a "Sonata for Two Flutes," a duet with a significant meeting of Cheryl and her patented flute ways and Biggi in her own zone.

It is music of a special sort, Biggi carrying forward her own linear sensitivity with some very choice co-musicians. This is a good one for those (and hey, that should be everybody) who want to keep abreast of the women in jazz movement. Nice sounds, bravo!