Noah Young, Unicorn Dream

Noah Young, originally known as Richard Youngstein, is a fine contrabassist, jazz composer, perhaps lesser known out there yet a fundamentally important figure in avant-free jazz from its formative period in the '60s on. He came on the scene in Roswell Rudd and Robin Kenyatta's respective groups, played with Carla Bley on Escalator Over the Hill, with Jimmy Giuffre, all kinds of seminal folks. He married and raised a family, found that the gigs were not enough to sustain him, ended up training and practicing as a licensed psychotherapist. He lost his beloved wife to cancer years ago. Now he himself is quite ill, and can no longer play because of neurological complications. But he is a living force on social media, coming up with inspiring thoughts, culling from wisdom from the east, and struggling to stay here on this earth to help others. I count him as a friend, full disclosure here, so my words are not entirely impartial. But as we know there is no such thing as impartial. We are by nature partial beings. And I would not be writing this if I didn't feel strongly about the value of his music. So we press on.

He put out his own album on LP in 1980. Unicorn Dream (Laughing Angel 33). It is out of print at the moment but somebody should do something about that. If you look around on the net you may be able to find a copy nonetheless. It's become a part of yesterday. But it sounds like today.

The album presents various avant-free-contemporary jazz segments in ever shifting combinations. Most of the compositions are Noah's and they are excellent. There's one by Andy LaVerne and that one has a mid-period Corea feel to it. The rest are post-Ornettian and prime examples at that. Noah plays excellently on contrabass throughout, whether out-walking, soloing with a very inventive and hip outlook, or as a member of the ensemble, a horn-like presence. There's one, the title cut, which is Noah overdubbed to form an acoustic bass quartet and that's something to hear--it has teeth!! And then there are shifting group configurations from cut to cut. Cleve Pozar, a fabulous drummer that needs to be remembered and heard, is a near continual presence and he sounds terrific. But then so does Mark Whitecage (on alto and flute), Bobby Naughton (vibes), Perry Robinson (of course clarinet) and Peter Loeb on tenor, who I don't believe I've heard previously but turns in a fine performance.

This is one of those releases that may have slipped through the cracks back then for many listeners, but there was no justice in that. In fact it is essential, excellent listening whether you love a bass played with true artistry or you just want to hear some primo avant jazz from the era. It's as good as it sounds on paper if you know the names. Or even better. And if you don't, here is your chance.

Try and find a copy! It will gladden Noah's heart if you listen. Mine, too. This is the real deal!

Andrea Centazzo, Perry Robinson, Nobu Stowe, Soul in the Mist, 2006

Nothing is simple today. Except that good and great music continues to be made. It continues to be recorded and made available to us all. And that writers like me continue to review it. You could think of that as ordinary or you could think of that as heroic. It depends on the place and situation involved. But it is by no means an easy task to do that and survive today, if it ever was.

So today we have another example of all that. Recorded in Trumpet's Jazz Club in Montclair, NJ, in 2006. It is what turns out to be an excellent grouping of Andrea Centazzo on percussion, the Mallet Kat keyboard and sampling; Perry Robinson on clarinet; and Nobu Stowe on piano. The compositional framework is Centazzo's. The album is called, poetically, The Soul in the Mist (Konnex-Ictus).

What we have are eight selections, modern-avant-minimal charts by Centazzo with room for the free improv for which these players are known.

Perry Robinson sounds especially good. I can't recall a time when he didn't but in the trio setting here there is plenty of space for him and both structure and freedom as jettison points from which to take off. And he does. Andreas has space as well to get the innovative full-spectrum sounds you expect from him, and the compositions bring out the sensitive exploratory side of his music to the max. Nobu Stowe puts in a very well conceived performance here, too.

In the end it's especially about Perry Robinson's clarinet though. This is one of his best showings of later years. He is superb.

Perry Robinson and Burton Greene Explore Jewish Roots

Clarinetist Perry Robinson and pianist Burton Greene came up as some of the most important "new thing" jazzmen of the sixties. They played together on a number of projects, but never as a duet. Until now, and their very lucid Two Voices in the Desert (Tzadik). This is an installment in Tzadik's provocative series of recordings that re-establishes Jewish music as a living, breathing contemporary art that, like Klezmer before it, opens a window onto a horizon of musical innovation, that brings old, even ancient tonalities into the vocabulary and syntax of today's sounds--modern jazz, rock, avant garde and you-name-it styles of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Like Steve Lacy did for the soprano sax at the time, Perry Robinson took the clarinet, an instrument that had become somewhat moribund and passe in the most modern of jazz endeavors, and remade the instrument into a thing rife with a personal sound and note choice. Perry's, that is. It established him at the forefront of the new free scene and made the clarinet an instrument to be taken seriously once again. Similarly the functioning of Ornette Coleman's classic two horn, bass and drums lineup and other developments made the pianoforte less desirable in the most advanced circles of improvisatory music. Its function to lay down the harmonic foundations of changes-based improvising, as a kind of musical traffic cop, was a hindrance to players who sought to follow the freed up melodic-harmonic contours of their muse. Burton Greene along with of course Cecil Taylor and a handful of other pianists redefined the pianists' role in terms of an exploration of percussive, coloristic and post-changes capabilities, to rejoin the front line as a soloist that did not need to hammer down the structure of the music as it was defined.

Years later, Perry and Burton have not so much mellowed as they have embraced and incorporated into their music what was part of their early informal ear training, something we all get without necessarily consciously seeking it out, the sound and content of the music around them that was imbibed like the air they breathed, from the cradle on. That doesn't mean that they are about to break into 28 choruses of "I'll Remember April," but it does mean that they can now come to grips with that which helped define them musically. In the case of this CD, the Jewish heritage that was so much a part of the New York aural world.

So we have a CD filled with music composed by Burton Greene, John Zorn and others, that takes a musical imprint of how those roots work for today. So Perry's clarinet shows some Klezmer-like inflections here, not surprisingly, but this series of duets subtly transforms and reworks the tradition to something that bears the personal stamp of these highly individual stylists.

The artistic fruition is most fortuitous--not in some accidental sense, but in the sense of fortunate, auspiciously impacted artistry. This is from first to last captivating music. Masterful music. And a true pleasure to hear. Anyone who thinks they know what these two artists are likely to sound like in some predictable sense would do best to hear Two Voices in the Desert. It will probably defy your expectations as well as redefine your sense of the reach and grasp of what Perry and Burton can and have accomplished. For this is an extraordinary accomplishment.