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.

Matthew Shipp Trio, Piano Song

Since my move to Cape May I have been struggling to re-establish the bio-rhythms I had absorbed up north as a matter of course. I am getting there, thanks in part to the infinitely helpful presence of some very worthwhile releases, especially one up today.

It is a new one from the ever seminal Matthew Shipp Trio, Piano Song (Thirsty Ear TH157212.2). The latest edition of the trio has had a little time to season and ripen and certainly with this one they stride forward in an ever more confident way and an interplay of great depth and strong horizontal motion.

In short, they swing loosely and freely to raise the bar on what a contemporary piano trio direction consists of, how it can get beyond the accumulated tradition of more than 100 years of recorded jazz piano in an organic way, musico-naturally.

Matthew sounds inspired and relaxed, presenting 12 originals that serve as exemplary pianistic springboards for his three-way dialogues with bassist Michael Bisio and the newest trio member, Newman Taylor Baker on drums.

Bisio remains as always a spontaneously acute second melodic voice in the trio, a bassist with something original to say and the means to say it. His interactions with Matthew's smart-soulful piano declamations make this outing something special and further evolved. Newman Taylor Baker takes in all that his bandmates are doing and replies with both what may be called for and the unexpected, sometimes both at the same time.

And Matthew sounds as authoritative as ever, becoming what he in fact is, a prime carrier of the piano jazz legacy, a great synthesizer and innovator, a critically important voice in the new jazz of today.

This album simmers it all so that what is left is pure essence. No covers, no minimum, just music at a highest pitch, whether introspecting or clambering for the stars.

The Matthew Shipp trio these days is like a train that is ever arriving as it ever departs for destinations not yet known. The three in tandem exemplify what the improvisatory arts are all about when they are in their purest state. There can be no final destination because the track extends outwards into infinity.

Perhaps their very best, this is! So far.

Matthew Shipp Trio, The Conduct of Jazz

The trouble I sometimes have about writing a review of an artist-group I consider seminal and have pretty much covered in a long sequence of releases is to convey something of what makes the album different yet still talk about the general importance of that artist without just repeating.

The Matthew Shipp Trio is one such artist/group. Here we are with a new one, The Conduct of Jazz (Thirsty Ear THI 57211.2). It is worthy and moving in ways that the Shipp Trio has been for a long time. Yet it is not entirely business-as-usual, not an eternal resurrection of the something that makes Shipp Trios exceptional. Yet there is continuity, yes.

One thing that stands out is the new addition to the personnel. Sure of course there is Matthew and the titan strength of Michael Bisio on bass. But this is the first recording with drummer Newman Taylor Baker. Using one drummer in place of another can sometimes change the thrust of the band dramatically. Think of the classic Trane Quartet with Elvin Jones, then with Roy Haynes on some of those dates when Elvin was unavailable. The band is playing in much the same mode, often enough the same pieces, but the result is influenced greatly by the change in percussive approach.

I would not go so far to say that replacing Whit Dickey with Newman leads to such radical change, but then that classic Trane quartet is so internalized for me and many of us that the presence of Haynes seems like a very different animal and is easily heard.

Newman Taylor Baker adds a very different drumming personality to the threesome. He plays time in his own very swinging way and his "free" and solo playing have an almost orchestral sense of drum sound possibilities, not to mention impeccable timing and sense of dialog. And the way he does all that shifts the trio's emphasis a bit.

Another thing maybe is the classical logic of Matthew's compositions. The whole album remains in the advanced trio zone, for sure, yet the compositional elements both make use of repetition in increasingly emphatic ways but also show roots going as far back as Duke, which is not surprising given the trio over time yet it nonetheless is a prime foundational element. The playing of the trio, Matt holding forth beautifully but Michael and Newman forming an integral lock to the three-tiered sound, is ever fresh, maybe also quite readily grasped by the listener perhaps not as much up on the "new new thing" jazz today as may be the case with other ears.

And there is lots of variety--an out rocking number, abstractions with razor sharp clarity and a nod to those greats that came before, transposed uniquely to the Shipp way of going about things.

Put all that together and you get a set that holds your ears in concentrated interest. And yes, it is smoking, always.

Is this the album that defines Matt Shipp and the Trio today? Sure, in part, though what is to come will continue to do that.

It is an album that should get attention for how it communicates vividly without compromising the spirit-essence of the Shipp way. He is one of the most important pianists on the scene now and this trio is essential in no lesser sense.

Don't miss out on the future of the present. It is here. It is very present on The Conduct of Jazz. Do not pass this one by!

Solo Drums From Newman Taylor Baker: "Drum Suite Life"

The drum set as we know it has a surprisingly short life. Essentially sometime around the turn of last century the basic marching drum ensembles of snare drum, bass drum and cymbals-hit-together-in-pairs became a three-piece set for a single player, thanks to the development of the foot pedal and the foot-activated sock cymbal or high hat. Since the latter device was good for four-square time keeping but not necessarily the best way to produce a cymbal crash, another cymbal or two on one or more stands became a part of the set. Eventually a set of tom toms were attached to bass drum and/or affixed with legs in the manner of a chair. The modern drum set was essentially finalized in that form and remains with us today.

Players at first regarded the set as if it was an adaptation of the marching ensemble for a single player. Snare playing still had a continuous phrasing style, with the marching drum rudiments continuing to form the essential technical vocabulary. Bass drum and sock cymbals played simple figurations in a consistently regularly articulated two-four or four-four for the most part, an extension of their alloted role in the marching band.

It took a number of years and the innovations of some key players to get to the drum set as a fully musical instrument. No need to rehearse the details, except to say by the middle-to-late sixties very sophisticated drumming and melodic solo stylings were out there in the hands of players like Elvin Jones, Tony Williams, Ginger Baker and others. Max Roach did a number of unaccompanied drum solos for an Atlantic album in the mid-sixties, and it went on from there.

Segue to today and Newman Taylor Baker, who joins the ranks of the handful of drummers who have crafted an unaccompanied series of drum solos for a single album. Drum Suite Life (Innova 238) captures his creative abilities in an eight-part recital.

One thing to get out of the way first off: Mr. Baker is not technically overendowed. Compared with Rashied Ali, Elvin Jones, Jack DeJohnette or Tony Williams, his independence (that is the coordination between all four-limbs) is not well developed, or at least is not made use of on this CD. His concept of time does not seem to be extraordinary or original either, compared with those named above. Further his command of marching rudiments, which he makes use of in a couple of segments, is only average.

However, what Newman Taylor Baker IS is imaginative and creative. "Red Brush Blues" is a brilliant transposition of the blues feeling to a solo drum piece. There are other nice moments on this disk. If you like the drums, you will appreciate this one.