Nicholas Urie's "My Garden:" Composer's Big Band Music Based on Charles Bukowski

Without a great deal of build up and/or suspense I'll say right off the bat that I like what Nicholas Urie is up to on My Garden (Red Piano Records [RPR] 14599-4405-2). It's very modern big-band music, well played, with the moderately acerbic and melancholic poetry of Charles Bukowski as the unifying theme.

Christine Correa handles the vocals. She's pretty much perfect for the texts. Sometimes I am reminded of the Steve Lacy-Irene Aebi collaborations in terms of the jagged art-folk of the melodic lines and Christine's delivery. But it's only at moments. The entire thrust of the album is toward a well-conceived, slightly avant modernism. With apologies in advance, I am not going to list the big band members here. I have not heard of many of the names (which doesn't necessarily mean anything) and really the primary focus is on Mr. Urie's musical vision, which has lots of room for elaboration between the various moods of Bukowski's poem-texts and the extended musical suite form utilized. But the band sounds good.

Nicholas would seem to have found his own voice in this work. It is a most interesting and highly recommended disk. Keep going, Nicholas Urie. You have something to say!

Fred Ho and the Green Monster Big Band

Fred Ho always seems to be up to something interesting. He is a very talented jazz composer and he plays reeds in a very compelling way. So when he formed the Green Monster Big Band, populated it with stellar players like Bobby Zankel, Salim Washington, Stanton Davis, Taylor Ho Bynam, Earl MacIntyre (my apologies for leaving some out on this listing. . . not enough space), then fronts the big band with his baritone and his compositions and arrangements, well, you know something is a'bound to be happening. And with this debut album Celestial Green Monster (Mutable Music), there certainly is!

First off, there's a sense of humor. To start off with rousing versions of the "Spiderman Theme" and "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" is a touch of brilliance but also of whimsy. And perhaps the most funny thing about it is that the music completely works! Kudos, by the way, to Mary Halverson and her guest guitar solo on the Iron Butterfly icon.

The CD goes on from there for some more "serious" music. We hear powerful renditions of three Fred Ho charts, one a long and ambitious "The Struggle for a New World Suite."

This is important modern big band music, superbly performed. I hope there are lots more releases from them. But even with this first, there is another feather in Fred Ho's very hip hat.

Charles Tolliver Big Band at the Blue Note

Charles Tolliver is one of those trumpet/bandleaders whose relative eclipse over time is, from a musical standpoint, inexplicable. I will not attempt to fathom why in this space. Rather, I would like to celebrate his last Half Note release, Emperor March: Live at the Blue Note.

This is excellent big band jazz with the emphasis on what Tolliver has always been into, which is the hard bop/post-bop nexus of Trane, his sidemen and followers, and of course, Tolliver himself. The band is hot, the music steams and Tolliver shows himself still vital. This belongs with the very best big-band releases of last year. Much ink has been spilled about it so I will only reaffirm. Dig in and dig yourself out of the winter doldrums with this one.

Fat Cat Big Band's Third

Guitarist, jazz composer and arranger Jade Synstelien has a big band named Fat Cat. They've now released the third of their trilogy of CDs, Face (Smalls), and it is a good one. For reviews of the other two in the series check out the postings on my other site at www.gapplegate.com/musicalblog.html.

This is not a hearkening back to the old days of the big bands, nor is it particularly avant garde. Rather it has a twisty-turning nubop-nobop take on things. That is to say, it has been informed by developments in jazz from bop and after onwards, yet there is no copycat simulacra presence on their agenda.

They swing and execute like the Dickens, they have some very good soloists (like Sharel Cassity on alto) but it's Synstelien's charts that really make the band something hip.

He has a most eccentric vocal style which he unleashes on several numbers. It is an acquired taste. I've acquired it.

The rest are hard charging instrumentals and a balladic interlude or two. This is one of the most interesting big bands to emerge in recent years. I am rather taken with Mr. Synstelien's music. You might be as well. The only way to know for sure is to listen!