NatJim, Natsuki Tamura, Jim Black

 

In the history of Jazz, an important if at times under-discussed element is of configuration, ensemble size and makeup, the most obvious being big bands, as opposed to generally smaller groups such as the quartet. In the piano realm the solo configuration predates the Jazz form of course, while the trio of piano, bass and drums gradually and increasingly holds pride of place for piano Jazz. But in the realm of Jazz Modernism, there were other key possibilities--most especially in the early example of the solo tenor of Coleman Hawkins in "Picasso." After a number of years Bean's gem eventually led the way to important solo horn recordings such as Anthony Braxton's For Alto. Then beginning with Gerry Mulligan Quartets with Chet Baker and then Ornette Coleman's classic quartets and trios, and also in the later '50s the Sonny Rollins' Trio, so there was the gradual rise and triumph of the pianoless horn and rhythm group.

Finally we come to another configuration watershed that concerns us especially here, of trumpet and drums, beginning with Don Cherry's exceptional two-volume 1969 Mu with drummer Ed Blackwell. 

For every style there are associated a number of configuration or more in time. Like other radically pared configurations the trumpet-drum duo gives itself well to free melodics and rhythmic figurations.This is excitingly true with the new album NatJim (Libra Records 102-074) that pairs Satoko Fuji's lifemate Natsuki Tamura on trumpet with Jim Black on drums Here we feel a peak of creative frisson throughout.

The album divides into some nine Tamura compositions, some more obviously composed, others flowing remarkably in a  spontaneous zone that gives drummer Black a special melodic continuity of purpose, a fully developed and linear full set drum language that sets off Tamura's wide ranging romps nicely.

This is a superior set that ranks I think with the finest radically minimal configuration offerings out there today. Do not miss it. Tamura and Black shine like supernovas that define themselves increasingly with successive listens. Outstanding.

Listen to a stream of a representative track on SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/bk-music-pr/morning-city

Dave Sewelson, More Music for a Free World

 

Baritone saxophonist Dave Sewelson shows what he's made of on a quartet date he leads that's worth checking out. It's called More Music for A Free World (Mahakala Music MAHA 20-002). It features three collectively improvised, expansive tracks that allow all to stretch out and explore open-ended quartet possibilities.

Each of the quartet operates in a meaningful free musical space that plays off against the others to create long-form dialogs both exciting and moving. The quartet is in a finely creative frame so that all rise above the mundane world and make great improvisational sense. So Sewelson's baritone sax asserts itself and enters in a sublime musical conversation with Steve Swell's trombone, William Parker's contrabass and Marvin Bugalu Smith's drums.

It's freedom with a substantial dose of jazz inflection--Sewelson cleaving to open yet bluesy and soulful phrasings that loosely yet surely unfold to bring space for Swell's always open excitement, William's always meaningful bass lines and Marvin Bugalu's swinging but loose drum shaping.

It is music with that happy togetherness where each artist understands the space they are occupying and work their way to a mutual hipness, a set of expressions that mark the best of Jazz-directed freedom.

Baritone and trombone carve out a special front line, but then bass and drums take up rhythm team movements that have both a free time playing and a complimentary third and fourth line role to play in the totality.

As we listen we get an excellent slice of Dave Sewelson the consummate baritonist with a beautifully gruff tone, a spontaneous tumbling and swinging sureness and an inventive presence that Swell, Parker and Smith respond to wonderfully well in kind and in contrast.

This is inspired music making from first to last.  It confirms Dave Sewelson as an important voice on the baritone while giving us one of the finest improvisational quartet sets that I've heard in a long time. Each solos meaningfully and the sum total is a climbing over the top of possibility to extend a collective meaning rewarding and exciting to hear.

Bravo! Check this one out for sure if you can.

Edward "Kidd" Jordan, Joel Futterman, William Parker, Hamid Drake, A Tribute to Alvin Fielder, Live at Vision Festival XXIV

 

Alvin Fielder (1935-2019) was an important and influential drummer, a pioneering charter member of the Association of the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) in Chicago as well as the Black Arts Musical Society. He was an essential force on Roscoe Mitchell's first album, played and recorded with the Improvisational Arts group with Kidd Jordan, appeared with Ahmad Abdullah, Charles Brackeen and Dennis Gonzalez, gigged with Joel Futterman and Andrew Lamb, and etc.

New York's Vision Festival XXIV in the summer of 2019 honored Maestro Fielder in memoriam. Happily it was recorded and released last year as A Tribute to Alvin Fielder Live at Vision Festival XXIV  (Mahakah Music CD 086, Digital DL at Bandcamp). It is a lively gathering of four artist colleagues, friends, collaborators with Fielder over the years. 

So we have Kidd Jordan on tenor saxophone, Joel Futterman on piano, William Parker on contrabass, and Hamid Drake on drums. It is one continuous set, a free improvisation lasting 45 minutes. 

Everyone sounds motivated, committed, filled with ideas and mutual flow. Though Kidd Jordan was no "spring chicken" when he took the stage with the quartet, he was totally on the case, warm, post-Trane in depth and ideas, fired up. Joel Futterman's piano playing too is lucid, slam bang on top of the world, filled with ideas that combined well with the others.

William Parker as always has energy, fire and note-choice smarts that firmly anchor everything with immense strength and imagination. Hamid Drake is a firebrand throughout, putting in one of his very best mid-sized group wash performances of explosive drive.

In short this is a fabulous set you may well want to hear frequently. Strongly recommended.

Thomas Heberer, Leap of Faith, Solution Concepts

Reed jazzman PEK has been quite prolific making avant jazz happen up in Boston with his two ensembles. Today we hear a CD of characteristically interesting music played by his Leap of Faith outfit with guest Thomas Heberer, Solution Concepts (Evil Clown 9076).

It is a full set recorded live at New York's Downtown Music Gallery last August. The outer numbers are long improv tracks with Heberer on cornet for the latter, plus PEK on tenor, piccolo oboe, clarinet and contra-alto clarinet. Glynis Lomon is on cello and aquisonic, Steve Norton on sopranino, alto clarinet, and alto sax. And Yuri Zbitnov is at the drums with resonant metal objects adding to the sound.

This is full-blown free outness in the grand tradition, spontaneous outbursts of individual and collectively free sound with all playing and hearing one another to create shifting constellations of aural expression. Thomas Heberer enters following the first long improv for a series of unaccompanied solos. Thomas shows us his smartly expressive way in a kind of tour de force of melodic invention.

The final number is a twenty-minute conflagration of Heberer and Leap of Faith joined together. It gives the entire ensemble space to open up worlds of improv and at the same time gives space as well for Heberer's voice to respond to the others and vice versa. The track has a great deal of strength and shows the complete complement of artists at their best.

All in the end is worthy ear fare. It is a fine example of Leap of Faith in its current guise and Thomas Heberer in an inspired frame of being, both with and without the ensemble.

Recommended!

Joseph Daley, Warren Smith, Scott Robinson, The Tuba Trio Chronicles

In the realm of jazz in our lifetime, Joseph Daley has consistently shown that he is one of the very most distinguished and original tuba players in the music. Especially important to his career was his appearance as an integral part of Sam River's Tuba Trio, consisting of Rivers, Daley and drums (Syd Smart or Warren Smith), with Joseph's tuba acting as the bass instrument in inimitable and innovative ways.

Of course Mr. Daley did not come out of nowhere. He was already the complete tuba master. But that trio gave him a prominence and a leg up and he has continued to do great work to move the music forward in all the years intervening between then and now.

As if to recall those heady days and to mark how far he has gone since then we have another tuba trio with Joseph at the head, in a significant album called appropriately The Tuba Trio Chronicles (JoDa Locust Street Music 004). It is dedicated to Sam Rivers and pays tribute to his tremendous importance to the music.

Joining Joseph is drummer-percussionist Warren Smith, who of course was there for the flowering of the original Tuba Trio, along with Scott Robinson on reeds--tenor and bass sax, bass flute, contra alto clarinet, etc.

The idea was to recreate the open, spiritually uplifting freedom of the Rivers Trio days, without recourse to literal River compositions except "Beatrice," but instead improvising around some very worthy Joe Daley compositions and the freedoms inherent in this trio today.

It is a very cohesive and moving freedom they attain here, in every way parallel to the open yet directed Rivers ensemble. Joseph is a marvel as ever, with creative invention never at a shortage. Warren reminds us just how complete a drummer-percussionist he is, with a wide range of creative responses and initiations. Scott Robinson shows he is no stranger to Sam River's inspirational ways, as he channels that fire and spirit into his own way of playing free.

The album is essential listening in itself, not just a tribute but a living extension of the legacy of the master.

I strongly recommend this one to you. It is an event, a beauty of a set!

Bobby Bradford / Frode Gjerstad Quartet, The Delaware River

On the docket today is a very together recording of the Bobby Bradford / Frode Gjerstad Quartet live in Philadelphia called The Delaware River (No Business NBLP 87). The quartet includes Bobby Bradford on cornet, Frode Gjerstad on alto sax and Bb clarinet, Ingebrigt Håker Flaten on bass, and Frank Rosaly on drums. which not surprisingly is a very game proposition.

In the tradition of No Business's keen appreciation for the avant jazz music scene, this is a first-rate window onto the quartet's world that night in March of 2014. The rhythm section is, as you'd expect, completely focused on the music at hand, giving the front line a very creative wash of free momentum that Bobby and Frode draw from as a catalyst. For anyone who knows the work of Bradford and Gjerstad, it will come as no surprise that the two are well suited to work together. Frode has held his own for years as a very important reed presence in free jazz Europe and of course Bobby Bradford is a legend in the US for his association with Ornette Coleman and his partnership with the late John Carter in a landmark quartet.

But of course no one can be sure of what an outcome might turn out as until the hearing. This set is a confirmation of the rightness of this quartet, of the continued creative excellence of Bobby Bradford, the equally inventive Frode Gjerstad in a non-compromising "new thing" world, and the righteous chemistry of the quartet as a full-bloomed entity.

This is music with space for all. Bradford and Gjerstad get some remarkable interplay together with their simultaneous two-way soloing, each clearly hearing one another and responding with parallel ideas. Their space openings for the rhythm team are judicious as well. Ingebrigt and Frank are two of the liveliest artists in their own right these days and they know how to extend the music accordingly with good ideas and open support as well as independance.

So as the Delaware River flows so does this quartet. It is not a floodtide of histrionics nor is it in a drought condition of narrow trickling. This is the quartet like the river in steady-state continuity. And so the program gives us a fascinating earful of these four in productive and fruitful togetherness.

It is a nice addition to the discography of all four artists. It satisfies. I am clapping enthusiastically with these words. Listen to this one.

Joe Hertenstein, HNH, with Pascal Niggenkemper and Thomas Heberer

HNH (Clean Feed 332) is the potent trio of Joe Hertenstein on drums and compositions, Pascal Niggenkemper on contrabass and Thomas Heberer on cornet and compositions. There are four works by Joe, four by Thomas, and four collective improvisations. There was a first album on Clean Feed a while ago. I have not heard that one as yet but I plan to. This HNH is a follow-up.

Clifford Allen wrote the liner notes for this album. He pretty much says it all about the history and objectives of the trio in its lifetime from 2007 to where it is now. I suggest you read that. For this posting I come forward to give you my impressions after a careful listening to the music.

Joe Herstenstein's drumming impressed me on the recently covered Blaise Siwula album and also as a member of the Curators a while back. You can look up the reviews in the search box above if you are curious.

This second volume of HNH, as most readers would expect, covers the latest interactions between the three, who since their arrival in New York from Germany have made a definite reputation as avant-free players of distinction.

The album nicely covers free and pulsating, composed and improvised, solo and collective inspirations with contrasting segments/numbers. Joe Hertenstein once again impresses me as a very musical drummer with the sort of conversational line improvisations of timbre and periodicity that are rarely encountered except among the best of the free percussionists. In this spacious trio setting his playing is very much the equal voice in the three-way dialogues at hand.

Pascal Niggenkemper is a bassist of finesse and thoughtful invention. He fills his space with the kind of bowed and pizzed richness that helps very much to make the totality of the music something special. And his wide spectrum of extended techniques makes him essential to the sound-design of the trio.

Thomas Heberer has become an in-demand cornetist on sessions and gigs these days. To hear what he does on this second HNH is to give you some very bright moments and a key to the way he channels avant and jazz tradition into his own original stream of development. He can line with a careful free lyricism or a soulful bursting forward depending on the work at hand and the implications of the dialogue of the moment. Muted, pure or burred, he is the master of control and expressivity.

The music in the end is tightly focused, free yet considered, exemplary of the art of avant improv today. Hertenstein, Niggenkemper and Heberer are making music of real importance, music gratifying to hear, exciting to experience, filled with singular artistry.

These are three of the best and their confluence is nothing short of auspicious on this set. Get to this one if you can. It's very worth your time!

Joe McPhee, Jamie Saft, Joe Morris, Charles Downs, Ticonderoga

If you've been reading this blog regularly you will notice that Joe McPhee has been very active of late. And so today we have his vital presence again, on a quartet date, with Joe, Jamie Saft (piano), Joe Morris (in his double bass persona) and Charles Downs (drums). The album is another goodie, called Ticonderoga (Clean Feed 345).

The four let sail with four collective, freely improvised pieces in the best tradition of post-new thing expressive heft. It's great to hear Joe carry forth with his tenor and soprano on this album. Clearly he is inspired and comes through with his personal way, fluid like crazy and able to create stunning hairpin turns of expressive color, vibrato and non-vibrato, a master of his instruments who both sounds and phrases with a linear conversational logic and fluency that puts him at the top of reedists in the "free jazz" zone.

Jamie Saft is a treat in this context because you don't hear him that often on disk in this total blow-out vein. He makes full use of the inside-the-piano possibilities as well as conventional note-ing and he creates a beautiful congress with Joe and Joe's way to get beyond. Jamie is monsterful and masterful here, beyond Cecil Taylor while in some ways channeling his legacy, but adding to it with a less cyclical, more linear horizontality.

I've said this before about Joe Morris on bass but I will say it again because it still has relevance for sure: that he is the kind of bassist who can, in the language of pitching in baseball, "expand the strike zone," that in other words he creates a busy and cogent foundation of expanded tonality that allows the soloists to go wherever they will in terms of key center and beyond and make it all seem inevitable and right. And he does it all with a rhythmic all-over quality that lets the band go in time wherever they will, too, freely.

Charles Downs has that special all-over quality on the drums as well. He establishes a multi-present open rhythmic space and ever varies it while using the kit sensitively for all the sound fields he uncovers at any point in timelessness. Whew.

And in this quartet setting all four get a oneness of result that takes years to do right like this. I never tire of exceptional freedom sets of this sort, because there is a continuity of variability and there is nothing to tire of--for there is never just one thing happening. Like the best free players, they all are bent on creating a confluence born of an open totality, an infinite variability within the free jazz parameters they come out of, which takes all of the past and makes it present in a future now, if you can dig what I am trying to say.

In short, a free gathering of total togetherness, a whole of great artistry born of linear fluidity and exceptional avant virtuosity. Is that enough? You bet it is! It is an album of vital presence and if you dig the outer realms this will make you smile and play it twice, more than twice!

Brotzmann/Edwards/Noble, Soul Food Available

The question to me is not whether you should have avant reedist Peter Brotzmann's music in your collection. If you embrace avant "free" jazz, you no doubt should. The question then is how many. For the completest who already has 50 or so, there is no issue since you want it all. For those with only a few, selection becomes important. The second release of the Peter Brotzmann trio of Peter on tenor, alto, b-flat clarinet and taragoto, John Edwards on double bass, and Steve Noble on drums has been out for a little while: that is, Soul Food Available (Clean Feed 316). It was recorded live at the Ljubljana Jazz Festival in 2013.

If you don't know, Peter Brotzmann burst on the scene in Europe in the late sixties as someone who had listened to and internalized the torrents of tenor sounds that Albert Ayler made so originally and vibrantly in his lifetime. Brotzmann created an equally torrential expression that related to Ayler but branched off into his own realm.

He has been at it ever since, an indefatigable expressionist who can be relied upon to produce energy music of a high level in ever-varying playing contexts.

For the Ljubljana set he brings in a trio where he is often very out front. Edwards and Noble provide the sympathetic, energized openness that is much needed to motivate Brotzmann to speak torrents. They both have the torque and imagination to bring the free moments to vibrant life.

Brotzmann responds with fanfarish high scaling, of course especially on the tenor but also in a varied way on alto, clarinet and taragoto.

It is an excellent full-length example of the raucous yet considered sound of Brotzmann in full bloom in this, his later period. So if you don't have any or much of him in a small group setting later on, this one fills that gap very well. It is excitingly uncompromising total freedom. And it blazes through the heavens like, I suppose, a meteor.

So this would be a good addition to your avant collection if you don't have enough of him as he plays today. If you don't know him at all, this isn't a bad place to start. If it does not offer huge surprises, it captures Peter in fine form with an excellent trio. Enough said.

Dave Rempis, Darren Johnston, Larry Ochs, Spectral

When avant chamber jazz turns its attention to small ensembles of horns the emphasis generally turns to color and texture and sometimes less to rhythmic momentum. The playing routines and structure brought to the music, either spontaneously or in terms of pre-planned sequences, usually put the emphasis on the personal intermixtures of the stylists involved.

We can hear this readily and notably in the three-horn presence of Dave Rempis (alto sax), Darren Johnston (trumpet) and Larry Ochs (tenor and sopranino saxes) on the recent album Spectral (Aerophonic 006).

This gathering conjoins the Chicago-based Rempis with two key players associated with the West Coast (Johnston and Ochs) for a series of seven improvised segments that excel in the inspired variety of sounds the three make together, seemingly with pronounced improvisational spontaneity.

Larry Ochs of course is best known for his key association as a member of the Rova Saxophone Quartet, but all three are no strangers to the horn-based chamber style.

All three thrive in their association here. They listen closely to one another and respond with extraordinarily creative utterances. This is music that can go from volcanic explosions of energy to more subdued melodic interplay. The timbres evoked show the great control the artists have gained over the sound possibilities of their respective instruments and the note choices open up the musical universe to subtle or exhilarating melodic variations, sometimes one following close upon the other.

In the end we hear great things, the art of three excellent improvisors forming a synergy that ranks with some of the best such outings in recent years. It is fascinating and ever-moving.

This is real-deal freedom!

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

Jason Ajemian, Tony Malaby, Rob Mazurek, Chad Taylor, A Way A Land of Life

You take a lineup of Jason Ajemian, bass, Tony Malaby, saxes, Rob Mazurek, trumpet, and Chad Taylor, drums, and if you know these players your expectations are high. And they make a limited edition LP vinyl album, 400 copies. They call it A Way A Land of Life (Nobusiness LP74).

And not surprisingly, the album comes through. Nobody on these sides is playing tiddlywinks. They are serious and inspired. There are good compositional elements, by Jason, and the playing is first-rate free jazz.

The front line includes bass at times, there is some good solo bass work too, and when the drums are going at it Chad has front-line presence. It's a four-way conversation broken up in segments but always absorbing your attention.

Each player has a personality that puts him in a zone--but you know that if you know the players. I guess this is Jason Ajemian's date officially. And more power to him for it, because the four dedicate themselves with no reservations to the music and it all reflects well on Ajemian's leadership and musicianship.

This is good, hard-hitting freedom music! Recommended.

Rodrigo Amado Motion Trio & Peter Evans, The Freedom Principal

There are pairings of artists in the improvisational avant garde that make very good sense. Some others surprise you with unexpected chemistry. Still others may not exactly have been written in the stars. The recording up today is of the first kind. The gathering of tenor-master Rodrigo Amado and his Motion Trio with trumpet firebrand Peter Evans on The Freedom Principal (No Business NBCD67) results in music as good, as accomplished as one might expect.

Rodrigo and Peter are joined by Motion Trio members Miguel Mira on cello and Gabriel Ferrandini on drums. The results are all you could hope for. Peter Evans brings the fired-up color sound playing and facility that mark him as one of the primo trumpet stars of our time. Rodrigo matches him sound-for-sound and note-for-note when they play in tandem. Each one solos with avant-free authority, with a boil-over-the-pot-lid insistence and dexterity that one would be hard put to better among today's free-jazz, free-improv players. It's about the sound and about the notes here. Both are at the top of their game, which means the sounds and the notes are something very worth hearing.

The cello-drums backwash from Miguel and Gabriel performs its function very nicely--opening up rhythmic, harmonic and sonic possibilities that play off of what Rodrigo and Peter are doing and vice versa.

This is one of those sessions that was meant to be. It comes across as excitingly and artistically as one would hope.

It doesn't flag but you could well salute it. In fact, I do! An indispensable out disk for your collection!

The Curators, Thank You

Last October 11th I posted here on The Curators' online album Heavy Metal Spartacus. Today a look at their first album for Engine Records, Thank You (Engine 054). The trio comes across in the studio as less the in-your-face chaos-ticians that the online live album portrayed, and more as free players with a very together group chemistry and a wide spectrum of moods and attitudes.

Mikko Innanen sounds especially powerful on the baritone sax--one of the better new names out there on that instrument, in fact, but he also switches off to other members of the sax family with no less facility. He creates many bright moments throughout. James Ilgenfritz can bow very nicely and has pizz-power in the hands and fingers when he needs it. Joe Hertenstein has very good inventive freedom in the wide array of kitchen-sink percussive sounds he produces and a very effective asymmetric a-rhythmia that brings out a jagged-edged sort of feel that lays well with the free ventures of the two melodists in the band.

It's an open and well felt-thought session broken into ten interrelated sections. All of it has free avant ease of expression to it but plenty of traction when needed.

What's especially good about it all is that they never flag in invention. They are players inspired to come up with THE NEW spontaneously and they a do a great job of it.

The Curators are a free trio to be reckoned with. Thank You brings them into clear focus with some exciting and thoughtful sounds. Get it!

Tiger Hatchery, Sun Worship

ESP Records made its mark in part as the label that dared cover free-jazz artists (circa 1965) on the fringe when almost nobody else was doing so. Their catalog of releases in that decade reads nearly like a who-is-who of the genre. In their 50th year they remind us that free music is by no means only a thing of the past with a release by Chicago trio Tiger Hatchery, Sun Worship (ESP 5003).

The press sheet mentions Peter Brotzmann and Albert Ayler as precursors to what the trio is doing, and I would most certainly concur. It's outside intensity all the way, for sure, and so that fits. Mike Forbes incants on various members of the sax family with an in-your-face insouciance that you will want to pay attention to, since this is no background music. Ben Billington on drums is a dynamo in the way you might expect. He adds considerably to the level of power here. But it is bassist Andrew Scott Young who puts it over the top and gives this trio an almost rock push. He is all over the place, kicking the living H out of the proceedings in ways that make me listen to what he's doing. He has a kind of traditional arco ESP bag which you can hear, but the pizzicato is devastatingly strong. He is either close miked or plugged in, and at times sounds like he is playing an electric, but either way he brings up the bottom with fire.

Well, so this is impressive free mayhem. Certainly one of the stronger, most mayhemishian free jazz release this year. So if that motors you you will not go wrong here! You won't need to have a dental hygienist clean your teeth if you play this one a couple of times at full volume. But your neighbors might give you some odd looks later, too. That's a given.

Francois Carrier, Overground to the Vortex

Francois Carrier has shown himself especially over the last several years as an alto saxophonist and leader of avant freedom jazz that has consistency, fire and great invention. The latest, Overground to the Vortex (Not Two 904-2), confirms that and sends us to some nicely constructed new zones.

Francois is aided and abetted by John Edwards, bass, and Michel Lambert, drums, players who get it and give back in full measure for formidable threesome work. They are joined by English pianist Steve Beresford for much of this live set (at the Vortex in London) and that most definitely adds to the whole.

This is music of the well-turned line as much as it is sound sculpture. Francois is a master of both and comes through once again. But this is a group effort and everyone is on top of where the wave is riding, cresting and flowing.

Top avant jazz! No question. Ride this wave and you will get to a new shore.

Rodrigo Amado Motion Trio & Jeb Bishop, The Flame Alphabet

It should come as no surprise to those who know their work that pitting tenor Rodrigo Amado with trombonist Jeb Bishop is an excellent idea. They join forces as Jeb joins Amado's Motion Trio in the incandescent scorcher The Flame Alphabet (Not Two 896-2).

Both players are among the very best out there today; both have made their mark on the post-bop avant jazz scene. And both play hard and well with absolute consistency. The Motion Trio context also is an excellent one, with Miguel Mira's cello and Gabriel Ferrandini's drums providing closely paired strength and freedom.

The five numbers are group inventions, a torrid yet very articulate fire. This is some of Rodrigo's and Jeb's best work of late and the foursome really kick modern tail. The front line interacts beautifully together too.

I could say a great deal more but instead I will say, "just go get it and if you like new jazz it will NOT disappoint." These are folks doing some of the most important new improvised music you can hear today!

Jeffrey Hayden Shurdut, Live at ABC No Rio, NYC, 2007

The JaZt Tapes series seems to me a very good idea. It is a series of limited-edition releases by mostly avant jazz artists, music they want the music community to hear, as a promotion of their music and as a way of introducing the music to the public in hopes of a larger-scale release in the future.

Today we take a look at one such release by Jeffrey Hayden Shurdut, Live at ABC No Rio, NYC (JaZt Tapes CD-029). It is a 2007 performance with a shifting set of improvisers that includes Shurdut on piano along with Chris Welcome, Robyn Siwula, Ken Silverman, Blaise Siwula, Marcus Cummins, Raymond Todd, Shayna Dulberger and Scott May.

It is nice sort of free-energy anarchy that gets going on this set, put in to orbit with Shurdut's all-over density at the piano, with Silverman's guitar and Blaise Siwula's alto and clarinet some of the other more outstanding voices in the general tumult.

It's music that does not compromise. It is music that should fascinate those into the "new thing" because the mix is very dynamic, ever-changing and sonically diverse. It's worth the effort to track this one down. Some Shurdut is no doubt essential to any free improv collection and this is a good one.

Go to http://www.janstrom.se/6.-recordings/6.3.-jazt-tapes-6267605 to find out more about the series and how to order a copy.

Platform 1 Takes Off, with Ken Vandermark and Steve Swell

Platform 1? The name of a very lively "free jazz" quintet. Platform 1 Takes Off (Clean Feed 255) is the name of what I take to be their first CD as a unit.

It's Magnus Broo on trumpet, Steve Swell on trombone, Ken Vandermark on tenor and clarinet, Michael Vatcher, drums, and Joe Williamson on bass. All but Vatcher contribute compositions for the outing, and they have a memorable head blast off quality.

The rhythm section is loose and first-rate. The front line gives us extroverted improvisational joy and collective madness of the best sort. Swell and Vandermark come though as expected with their well-developed artistry. Magnus Broo holds his own among them.

It's a beautifully performed set of modern, cutting edge avant improv. Those who know these folks from past haunts will not be disappointed; those coming to this music for the first time, with a little patience, will find themselves digging in and digging the sounds, I certainly think. Yes!

Aram Shelton Quartet, Everything for Somebody

There's a loose confederation of Chicago jazz performer-composers at work making exciting music these days in various combinations and altoist Aram Shelton is one of them, though he is Californian much of the time chronologically. He steps forward with a quartet offering (the second album with this lineup) on Everything for Somebody (Singlespeedmusic SSM-011).

It's a well-meshed, energized band of Aram, Keefe Jackson on tenor, Anton Hatwich, acoustic bass, and Tim Daisy on drums.

The music on a number of levels takes the legacy of the early Ornette quartets and puts it in an original place. The rhythm section swings with gusto, the Shelton compositions framework the band well and have a kind of mental staying power, and both he and Keefe solo with their own ears wide open.

It's one of those albums that gives me lots of joy to hear. And it combines old-new-thing and new-new-thing for maximum torque.

Give this one a hearing, by all means.