Kali Fasteau, Vivid, 1998-99

Ms. Kali. Z. Fasteau knows how to get a great batch of avant players together and facilitate them. Here we are today with yet another recording in her pretty extensive, impressive discography, Vivid (Flying Note 9007) live from 1998-99. Kali is joined by the happy confluence of Hamid Drake, Sabir Mateen, Joe McPhee, Ron McBee and William Parker.

This is excellent for some really lively horn swarms, collective improvisations of genuine fire and spirit with very hot free rhythm underpinning. As always Kali makes her presence felt most effectively on vocals and a variety of instruments, and her compatriots surround, expound, and cover all the free ground that is truly their turf.

This one is hot!

Carlos Alves "Zingaro", Jean Luc Cappozzo, Jerome Bourdellon, Nicolas Lelievre, Live at Total Meeting

A European avant quartet live, featuring the interesting violin playing of Carlos Alves "Zingaro"? That is what is in the offing on Live at Total Meeting (No Business NBCD 48).

The somewhat unusual lineup of violin, two horns and drums holds forth at the Total Meeting Festival in Tours, France, December 2010. Zingaro is joined by Jean Luc Cappozzo on trumpet and bugle, Jerome Bourdellon on flutes (including an incredible sounding bass flute) and bass clarinet, and Nicolas Lelievre on percussion/drums.

It's a very free spontaneous set where everybody lets loose and hopes it all works. It does. Zingaro, Jean Luc and Jerome have something to say on their instruments (LOVE that bass flute) and Nicolas adds his somewhat subtle percussive barrage.

If you love free done well, here it is, by people we don't hear that much from otherwise. Encore!

Harry Allen & Scott Hamilton, 'Round Midnight

Scott Hamilton came on the scene as a "very old school" tenor adept at a time when very few were still with us who were carrying on in that mode. Harry Allen is a newer (to me anyway) and slightly younger exponent of that same school, so it makes sense that they join together for this two-tenor gathering, 'Round Midnight (Challenge 73348).

Rossano Sportiello has impressed me in the past as another game adept in the tradition, in this case on the piano, and so it seems quite fitting that he occupies the piano chair for this set. He and the horns do very nice work throughout. The rhythm team of Joel Forbes and Chuck Riggs, bass and drums, know how to motor the music and keep the whole thing swinging.

So you get Zoot and Al, Bean and Ben, a little of the Texas tenors and the swing/bop convergence done with conviction. There is no holding back, no attempt at total recreation but instead the raw excitement of jazz as surprise, not as surprising perhaps as these styles were when first born, but spontaneous and honest.

There are standards and some swinging originals. It is a nice change to hear people play like this and actually mean it. But with this gang that's not so much a surprise as a confirmation.

Michael Attias, Spun Tree

By now the avant-stream in contemporary jazz has a number of facets going for it. One of them is highly compositional but with plenty of solo space, freedom and construction joining hands for a new meld.

Michael Attias's disk Spun Tree (Clean Feed 261) is an excellent example. It seems that the structural innovations of the best of the AACM composer-instrumentalists, George Russell and Bill Dixon's compositional approaches, influences of new music and the energy of the new thing classics have become synthesized in new and rewarding, even exciting ways. Spun Tree fits right in there among the best.

The band on this album is relatively small, a quintet, yet the way the voicings work it often sounds fuller. Michael is on the alto and he has some excellent support from Ralph Alessi on trumpet, Matt Mitchell on piano, Sean Conly on double bass, and Tom Rainey at the drums.

They run through eight composition-improvisations with great spirit. The composed parts don't fall into head-solos-head patterns so much as appear as vignettes to catalyze improvs and comment on them and vice versa. I won't say this sounds like Ornette's classic Free Jazz or Trane's Ascension. It doesn't. But the structural innovations of those classics have been expanded on and taken further in the complexity of how the music works.

Great compositions, soloists and pacing make this album a listen you should not miss! Michael Attias has it going for him.

Empty Cage Quartet, Limited Edition LP on Prefecture

The Empty Cage Quartet has been filling the West Coast and elsewhere with good sounds for ten years now. They have a relatively new recording out, a limited edition, self-titled LP (Prefecture 06).

The LP sometimes has an advantage that we used to see purely as a disadvantage, the shorter playing time. Some music gets into our heads easier and more completely in shorter doses. I wouldn't go so far as to say we should return to the 78 and the 2 x 3 minutes format, but any length of music surrounded by the silence of the after-end has a distinct discipline by virtue of time. So the LP clocks in around 40 minutes and must say whatever it does within that time frame.

The Empty Cage Quartet makes new music and one must get into it on its own terms. It has some of the two-horn influences of Miles' Filles de Kilimanjaro and Ornette's The Shape of Jazz to Come, but only in a hereditary sense. Empty Cage music is its own music.

Jason Mears, alto sax and clarinet, Kris Tiner, trumpet, Ivan Johnson, bass, and Paul Kikuchi, drums and percussion define the music personally, improvisationally and compositionally.

There are one and two-horn parts, both written and improvised, that stand out. Paul Kikuchi, like Tony on Filles, sometimes has almost a concerto-like role to play in the music, providing outstandingly inventive figures. Ivan Johnson imaginatively and firmly anchors it all.

Rock-steady, free or swinging, it hangs together with contrasting linear and circular qualities that work together to make something important. But hold on, it goes by in a hurry, each side keeping you riveted with nothing at all extra, just the essence.

ECQ is essential, essentialized and irresistible for those with the ears to hear it. Grab one of these while you can. You'll be glad you did, I think.

Julian Shore, Filaments, with Kurt Rosenwinkel

There is contemporary jazz to be had out there that has a lyrical melodic-harmonic brightness. In some ways it comes out of the Brazilian nexus that initially hit the States and the jazz scene in the '60s and has been internalized ever since. Then there are the lyric sensibilities of Vince Guaraldi and early Keith Jarrett, the ECM sound, Pat Metheny, all contributing something important to this kind of music today.

Julian Shore's album Filaments (Tone Rogue Music) fits right into this development, rather brilliantly in fact. It's a disk of Julian's brightly shimmered music, with Julian on piano, adding much in that wise, some lovely wordless or otherwise vocals from Alexa Barchini and/or Shelly Tzarafi, a good solid rhythm section, some horn soloists appearing succinctly here and there, and Kurt Rosenwinkel in a marvelous guitar fettle for three cuts, Jeff Miles sounding good also for three others.

It is beautifully tuneful jazz. And it is original in its own way. A stunner.

The Greg Abate Quintet, Featuring Phil Woods

Many years ago, Phil Woods, then a young man just beginning his long and fruitful career, teamed with fellow altoist Gene Quill for a number of sides. It was a lively affair. The interaction of the two altos was very dynamic and exciting. The sound of the two together was something to hear and remains so.

Altoist Greg Abate has done a present-day equivalent by inviting Phil to join him in a quintet setting. The album, self-titled (The Greg Abate Quintet) (Rhombus 7112), puts the two together with a first-rate straight-ahead grouping of Jessie Green on piano, bassist Evan Gregor, and the drum ace, long-time Woods associate Bill Goodwin.

It's some hard-hitting, bopping contemporaneousness going on here. Abate makes a strong showing both on alto and also soprano, bari and flute, Phil sounds great and they both sound beautiful together. The bandmates make sure that everything swings hard as called for and the blowing originals give the springboards needed for some impolite, exciting jazz.

Abate heads a great outing, sure to appeal to hard bopping fans out there. Try NOT to tap your toes too loudly if you have neighbors below your floor.