Felipe Salles, Ugandan Suite, with David Liebman

The music on today's post is of a very ambitious sort, a suite of music combining jazz and traditional African strains, very successfully so. Felipe Salles and his Ugandan Suite (Tapestry 76023-2) is no joke. It is serious composed-improvised music for sextet.

I am one who has long favored African-jazz meldings, and not just because I am a percussionist-drummer by persuasion who also plays other instruments. It is because the rhythmic complexities of the African mainland lend themselves well to the modern jazz ethos when done properly. Here we do certainly have that.

Felipe Salles composed the music and plays tenor, baritone, flutes and bass clarinet; David Liebman plays wooden flute, soprano and tenor. The two-horn tandem often enough has important composed melodic material and both solo in ways you would expect from Liebman, but also very well for Salles too. Nando Michelin has a fundamental role to play on piano and solos idiomatically and very nicely. The three-person percussion-drum team lay out an excellent rhythmic counterpoint. Damascus Kafumbe and Rogerio Boccato excel at the hand percussion; Bertram Lehmann does a great job on the trap drums. Finally Keala Kaumeheiwa has a central role on acoustic bass, laying down ostinatos with just the right leverage and sometimes playing a melodic role in the compositional passages.

The suite comes at us in five movements. It is a rhythmically vivid, compositionally inventive and soloistically exceptional work and recording. It makes me smile every time I hear it. It will no doubt do the same for you, so grab a copy if you can. An Afro-jazz triumph!

Charles Evans, On Beauty, with David Liebman

Baritone sax phenom and jazz composer Charles Evans has been giving us much to like with his consistently worthwhile albums, more than a few by now, and he shows no signs of letting up. If there is such as thing as sophomore jinx in jazz, and I am not sure there is, he is not one prone to it. Quite the opposite.

The new one delves deeply into an avant chamber jazz that consists of a multi-part composition-improvisational platform called On Beauty (More is More 152). It is a through composed suite by Charles featuring himself of course on baritone, his mentor David Liebman on soprano, Ron Stabinsky on piano and Tony Marino on bass.

Evans and Liebman have a very inspired improvisational presence, both separately and collectively, as they weave improv with the compositional material. Ron Stabinsky plays his very modern harmonically extended parts and adds some brilliant improvisations as well. And bassist Tony Marino brings up the bottom with a full tone and good ideas.

This is music that plays structure against freedom in ways that may remind you of early AACM or even Jimmy Giuffre in his more outside period when Paul Bley and Steve Swallow were key members in his ensemble. But that only covers precedents, not things imitated, for Charles comes through once again as a determined and eloquent musical personality, a baritone of stature but also a music composer-director who has direction and purpose, who succeeds in carving out his own new jazz turf in ways that make you listen and appreciate.

It is one more landmark-signifying notch in the musical belt of Mr. Charles Evans. It is more-or-less required listening for anyone who wants to explore the newness to be had out there today. Formidable music!

Phil Haynes, No Fast Food, In Concert, with David Liebman and Drew Gress

With a trio of sax, bass and drums in modern advanced jazz these days we expect to have a good amount of interplay between the three artists. Drummer Phil Haynes and his No Fast Food trio has that and maybe even more than is the norm. Haynes has supremely capable improvisers in David Liebman on tenor, soprano and flute and Drew Gress on bass. No one needs to tell you that if you follow the music, yet Phil's compositions and the sequenced dynamic that is on display between Haynes and cohorts make this band explosively triple.

Often enough these days if a band is drummer-led you may not be able to tell. He or she may not always be out front. Not so with No Fast Food. Phil Haynes gives us lots of excellent drumming, though he is in no way out to steal the show. It is a naturally organic triple-sound.

You can hear this plainly and to good advantage on the 2-CD In Concert (CornerStoreJazz) out fairly recently.

The music is culled from two small jazz venue appearances. Both find the band in top form. Liebman seems to be grateful for the hard swinging, open approach of the trio, for he sounds his very best. He is a living master, of course, and does not hang back. Drew Gress has paid dues and played with all kinds of folks, gaining in poise and stature cumulatively as time goes by, so that now he is doing some of his best work. He may not come off the tip of your tongue if someone asks you to name three of the top modern jazz bass players today, but there is no doubt he is one of the very finest for sheer musical imagination and deeply rich tone. And Phil Haynes! He swings hard like Elvin, has an acute sense of set sound and inventive figuration like Tony, and he plays with the others, not especially against them (and not to take away from the latter strategy when it works). He shines forth as an especially well-integrated musical drum master in this trio. A player who has soaked up the tradition and gives out with himself.

That's what you hear in these two full disks, the sound of a very together trio that can play a blues with a soulful contemporary stance, take it out, and at the same time work within varying compositional structures for a program that never tires.

It is perhaps a sleeper? There is so much coming out these days that you might miss it if you are not paying attention. But you should not because it is some great new jazz!

Get it if you can. For Liebman. For Gress. And for Phil Haynes.

Charles Evans, Subliminal Leaps, with David Liebman

Baritone saxist, compositionally minded Charles Evans has been doing some very interesting albums over the last several years. He comes through once again with his Subliminal Leaps (More is More 132). This time out he fields a quartet that includes the presence of his mentor David Liebman on soprano, along with pianist Ron Stabinsky (who is also on the new MOPDTK, see entry of a few days ago) and bassist Tony Marino.

This one has a very well-turned chamber jazz feel to it, with very adventurous soloing from all juxtaposed with and contained within a six-part composition (the album is named after it). There is a AACM feel to this music, along the lines of classic Braxton, Mitchell and Abrams without sounding derivative. It has its own, originally slanted new music architectual heft and improvisational avant sweep. It bodes well for where Charles Evans is headed, for movement most certainly is a part of his career thus far and there is a long ways he can travel given his relative youth.

Charles chose the right people. Maestro Liebman excels in this setting, as he does in almost any setting he becomes a part of, but then Stabinsky and Marino are expressively integral, too. Charles Evans sounds his usual lucid, inventive self.

So what more is there to say? Only that the no-joke advanced music proffered here is an excellent start on who Charles Evans is. It is pretty essential avant chamber jazz whether you know his other work or not. Get it while you can!