Ralph Alessi, Quiver

Trumpet master, composer, bandleader Ralph Alessi may have reached a wholistic pinnacle on his first ECM release Baida (see my January 10, 2014 review on these pages), but the process proceeds apace on the new one, Quiver (ECM 2438). It's his quartet as in the last album with Gary Versace replacing Jason Moran on piano but otherwise again giving us Drew Gress on doublebass and Nasheet Waits on drums. The quartet has achieved a sort of togetherness and unity that leaves room for the significant individual originally of the four artists but also sets the table for each composition (all by Alessi).

In the process the increasingly glowing trumpet work of Ralph is pronounced and exceptional. Versace acquits himself very well in both his solo and accompanying roles. Drew Gress as always is a bassist of real stature and goes very far in making the quartet shine forth. Last but not least, Nasheet Waits drums with a kind of subtle brilliance that keeps the music moving forward in truly artistic ways.

The compositions put the entire album on a special plane, much akin to the pronounced lyrical side of many ECM dates, but with an integrity and subtle sophistication that grows on you the more you listen to it.

It marks Ralph Alessi as an artist who has reached the more sublime realms of the modern improvisatory arts, making his way to the heights as a full-flowered original.

And the music has a beauty that does not sacrifice itself on the altar of accessibility. It manages to have all the earmarks of the jazz arts today, with all the complexities served up to us in very original terms, yet with an accessibility that will doubtless find a wide audience of admirers.

Highly recommended.

Enrico Rava Quartet with Gianluca Petrella, Wild Dance

Ever since the 1967 release of Steve Lacy's The Forest and the Zoo many of us in the US have had the happy chance to follow trumpet master Enrico Rava's evolution and development. Some nearly 50 years later the music continues to flow. Recently we had the Enrico Rava Quartet plus trombonist Gianluca Petrella in a new album, Wild Dance (ECM B0023623-02).

It is a fine gathering of 13 original Rava numbers and one collective improvisation, played by Rava, Petrella, and quartet members Francesco Diodati on electric guitar, Gabriele Evangelista on double bass and Enrico Morello on drums.

The collective sonance is special, Petrella and Rava forming a spectrally unified yet two-in-one individual front line, guitarist Diodati comping sparely and soloing carefully and creatively when called upon, and the rhythm team of Evangelista and Morello giving us an open, pulsating looseness that moves the band forward in a swingingly laid-back fashion. But it's not all meditative. Listen to the afterbop motion of "Infant" or "F Express," for example, and you will get another dimension.

Rava sounds as sprightly as ever, but more and more concentrated in his solo work and the dual trumpet-bone double improvs. His tone is ever-ravishing. He has perhaps turned more to the spaciousness of a modern ECM sound than what he was doing 50 years ago, but one should expect development in a great artist and we certainly get that with Enrico.

Evangelista has some of the rootsiness of Roswell Rudd, with whom Enrico did some stellar work. He sounds perfect here. Diodati's guitar has a little of the Abercrombie space lining, but adopted and furthered in original terms. Hear also Envangelista in a solo framework and you get another dimension of the artistry there.

The album is going to appeal to Rava fans, for sure. It gives us new and excellent examples of his special ways, furthered to move on to the present-day. Anyone who appreciates a painstakingly sculpted modern/postmodern jazz sound that has adventure and lyricism built squarely into the presentation will love this one.

Bravo, Enrico!

Andy Sheppard Quartet, Surrounded by Sea

Carla Bley a few years ago remarked in an interview that she decided to bring tenor-soprano artist Andy Sheppard into her band "because he didn't sound like Coltrane." She was looking for a different sound and Andy was well along the way to developing it.

With his third album, Surrounded By Sea, (ECM 2432 B0023141-02) we hear the Sheppard approach in full bloom. On it we get his quartet mapping out an atmospherics squarely in the ECM jazz camp, not concerned so much with vivid torrents of notes or ultra-expressivity as with a mostly quiet, lyrical spaciness that may well remind you of Jan Garbarek albums in the classic phase, only Sheppard does not mimic Garbarek so much as go his own way. He has plenty of technique and can travel with it, but the emphasis is on a sort of rhapsodic, cosmic sound.

The band is a solid one, with that ECM headroom paramount. Eivind Aarset on electric guitar gives us ambient envelopes of misty, far-away harmonies and dreamy noting. Bassist Michel Benita has the open full tone and improvisational exuberance of a Charlie Haden and/or Arild Andersen and some of the bowing presence of a Miroslav Vitous, but all harnessed to the original approach of the quartet. Sebastian Rochford plays an appealingly loose style of drumming that fits in very appropriately with the musical objectives of Sheppard.

The Sheppard compositions set the tone and mood for each number. What we get is a very listenable contemporary ECM offering, well in the tradition of the label but different enough to hold its own as a worthwhile addition. Bravo.

Louis Sclavis Quartet, Silk and Salt Melodies

I have not been hipped to French clarinetist-composer Louis Sclavis all that much until now. I did like his work with the Eldorado Trio (see review from back on November 10, 2010). His new album Silk and Salt Melodies (ECM 2402) has been on my player and I appreciate what I hear.

The music has a general ECM vibe, meaning in part it is melodious and spacious. But there is also an active element, a noteful, partially folk-inspired aspect that sets his music in a larger context than just a lyric melodiousness would imply. (And of course ECM music is more than that anyway most of the time.)

As a player he is well worth hearing. How many clarinetists are active today? Not enough but he qualifies as one to hear. And the band on this date has a kind of singularity. The sound colors of the band make for something that stands out. Gilles Coronado on guitar is widely eclectic. Benjamin Moussay on piano and keyboard has prowess and a very pianistic modernity. Keyvan Chemirani brings out a key ensemble trait with his finely executed traditional Persian hand drumming on the zarb (tumbek).

Together they match up with some serious compositional contributions from Sclavis. The results stand out as chamber jazz of a very worthwhile sort. It's all different enough that having this to hear repeatedly is very recommended.

Julia Hulsmann Quartet, In Full View

German pianist Julia Hulsmann gathers a quartet together for her third ECM album, In Full View (ECM B0018446-02). I missed the first two, both trio outings, but the new one is something I am very glad to be hearing.

If there is a "cool school" alive today, much of it has been spawned by ECM artists. In Full View is one of the finest examples of the new, introspectively internalized yet vividly communicating jazz sets one can hear.

Trumpet master Tom Arthurs brings a quiet intensity to the outfit, with a post-Wheeler kind of purity of tone and a way around the tonalities of the quartet's compositions represented here. Julia is thoughtful and in no way anemic, perhaps impressionist may be a word that works for her performances. The solid rhythm-team foundations of Marc Muellbauer on double bass and Heinrich Kobberling on drums do much to set up the two-person front line, to reinforce the melodic-harmonic-time grounding, to set off the beautiful playing of Hulsmann and Arthurs.

All band members contribute compositions and they set the mood well. Julie Hulsmann is onto a group sound that quietly fills your listening being with intrinsically musical content, nicely turned musicianship of a high order. This one is different enough that you need to return to it several times to fully adjust. It's quite beautiful.

Ketil Bjornstad, La notte

Ketil Bjornstad, pianist, composer, leader of a sextet live at the Molde Jazz Festival in 2010, which is out as a CD entitled La notte (ECM 2300 3724553).

Ketil proffers what we have come to identify as "ECM Jazz," which means that it has a spaciousness, a lyricism, a composed element, an ambiance that essentially was stolen and bastardized eventually as New Age. To get back into ECM Jazz means in part to forget what New Age has made of it and appreciate the real thing, so to speak. Now not all New Age is terrible, but much of it doesn't stand up very well over time. ECM Jazz does.

So with that in mind we have some quite beautiful music from a sextet that includes Arild Andersen sounding great as always on contrabass, the brilliant Marilyn Mazur on percussion-drums, Andy Sheppard sounding a bit more Garbarekian than usual on tenor and soprano, plus Eivend Aarset in a post-Rypdalian mode on electric guitar, Anja Lechner on cello (sounding beautifully resonant) and of course Maestro Bjornstad on piano.

This is a sonically alive instrumentation that Ketil takes good advantage of in his compositions-arrangements and of course there is some world-class improvisation to be had from the band, including Bjornstad.

There is a lot of music to digest and it doesn't just follow in classic ECM footsteps but builds upon it. If you dig the Weber/Garbarek kind of ECM lyric sounds from the classic era this will remind you of it but it goes somewhere with it as well. Stunning and worth it for Arild Andersen alone. But of course there is much more! Listen and soar along if you will.