Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre Quartet, Musical Blessing

Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre left this earth this past November, after a long career dotted with important milestones and after garnering great respect from those who follow and make the new jazz music sometimes called "free".

He is gone but his recorded legacy remains for us to appreciate. One of his last recordings came out last year and shows him in good form. It is a quartet in his name and the title of the disk is Musical Blessing (CIMP 395).

Kalaparusha on tenor is joined by the acoustic basses of Michael Logan and Radu Ben Judah (aka Richard Radu Williams) and the drumming of the the prolific and percussively beautific Warren Smith.

It's a game combination that Smith particularly brings some strong, timely fire to, as you can depend upon. He is hard hitting, propulsive and creatively stoked throughout. The two bassists work well together and give considerable bottom drive to the pieces.

Kalaparusha sounds strong. After a bit of reed trouble that he works around well, he comes through with the sort of performance that made his reputation over the years. One thing Kalaparusha is not here and never was is a "lick" player. He creates his improvisations afresh every time out from the raw melodic-harmonic materials available to him, his interactions with the players on hand and the implications of the compositional materials that are put into play.

The disk contains a few somewhat unexpected touches--an impromptu version of Trane's "Impressions" and a mostly unaccompanied solo version of "The Very Thought of You," which Warren suggested Kalaparusha play in the manner he did when working his horn for subsistence on the NY subway--a sad reality and part of the reason he found himself caught as a new improviser in what he called a "starvation box". He is free of all that now. But we will miss him. We will remember him.

This disk is a fine tribute in its own way to his legacy. Kalaparusha puts himself out there like he always did, with no pretensions and just the love of playing to bring us to a good place. RIP, Kalaparusha.

Ralph Alessi, Baida

The trumpet has over the more than 100 years of jazz we know of become an instrument of central importance. I don't need to tell you this. But think of it. The trumpet is to jazz as the violin is to classical music. It's a pivotal instrument. (Just like the tenor is to the pianoforte in the two genres; but then the piano is to the piano, too!)

And Ralph Alessi is right there these days doing a pivotal advanced action. Sure there are others, too. A lot of very good ones out there. But listen to him on the recent Baida (ECM 2321) and you'll know he is in with the heavies.

There's a quartet of great players on this. Ralph, Jason Moran on piano, Drew Gress, bass, and Nasheet Waits on drums. They play around with rock-funk in a post-Milesian mode without channeling any of the usual riffs, just building off the feel and playing themselves along with Alessi compositional lines. They have free moments, they swing, and there is original music. That's what hits me especially--this music is a conceptual step ahead in feel, original compositional lines melding with state-of-the-art improvisation.

I don't need to tell you about these players if you know the music today, except to say they are in great form and Ralph shows you what he is made of!

I may be reviewing this one a little later than usual, but a couple of months doesn't change the fact that this album steps up to the plate and nails one out of here. Listen!!

Paul Carlon, La Rumba is a Lovesome Thing

Today, Latin jazz of a particular sort. It's tenor, soprano, flute-man Paul Carlon with a crack Latin big band doing Carlon arrangements of the music of Billy Strayhorn. La Rumba is a Lovesome Thing (Zoho 201309) gives you some excellent rumba-ed, Latinized Strayhorn, really hip arrangements of Billy works and a few he did in collaboration with the Duke, even an ear-opening version of the wildly modern "Tonk," originally a piano duet by the two.

There is room for some good soloing from Carlon and others and the Strayhorn gems are pretty much all here. It will get you off of your seat and it will do it in very cool ways. Oye!

Odean Pope Trio with Marshall Allen, In This Moment

I sometimes swear to myself that I will never again review music received as downloads. It is a nightmare of PDFs, clogged hard drives, download glitches that cause skips, drop outs and mysterious track disappearances, and toggling back and forth in totally counter-intuitive ways to get information that when in hard copy form takes only a minute to transcribe. Who says our technology is so great? A bunch of 12 year olds, mostly, who will soon learn perhaps that their future is dismal thanks in part to those "labor saving devices" we are no longer allowed to do without. You go shopping and see people smiling like idiots in the aisles because. . .not because they recognize you or your humanity, but because they are talking remotely to somebody you'll never know. It's a thankless, cold and nasty world out there. Our technology in some ways has made it worse. I am no Luddite, but the current state-of-the-world can be frustrating and alienating, OK? But no I know, it's all here to stay and I am in the thick of it without thought of turning back. We cannot.

Paradoxically I now get to the subject at hand, in a medium that would not have existed several decades ago. The CD thank the stars was received as a real concrete entity so I can get this review done in half the time and be sure that it will play on my machine as I typo-type this. So what is it all about? It's the master tenor Odean Pope, and I will take a leap and say of all the players out there, Maestro Pope is at the very top in terms of of unsung brilliance. Anyway it's the Odean Pope Trio with Marshall Allen and their recent release In the Moment (CIMP 394).

The group includes Marshall of course on alto plus Lee Smith on acoustic bass and Craig McIver on drums. The sound is full and purist in the CIMP fashion and that works out just fine. The group takes a pure music, gimmick-less approach, which is always the Pope method. Producer Bob Rusch has been a staunch supporter of such things and Odean's music for many decades, as many of you will know.

There is an Allen-Pope duo track and one with Pope and Smith. There is also a brief but interesting Lee Smith unaccompanied track. The rest is the band all the way. Allen and Pope, as you might expect, hit it off musically and have a sort of vinegar and oil identity-in-separateness which is quite pleasing. The Smith-McIver rhythm team get friction and frisson by playing a strong "hostess with the mostest" foundational role to some very hip two-horn improvisations, some hip horn solo moments and otherwise set the pace with heat and subtlety as needed.

The program is well thought-out and Pope's compositional sense gives it a guaranteed substance that the performances and improvisations make into an excellent totality.

This is free-thinking free music, with soul and thought put into every bar, not that bar lines are a big factor when the band gets full-out into the moment. In This Moment has that state-of-the-art feel to it. Pope is doing great work. You should support this music because it deserves support, but of course also because it is so good.

Remi Alvarez Trio, Lafahmisi

Mexico-City based tenor Remi Avarez keeps getting better and better. You can hear it in his new trio release Lafahmisi (Intolerancia 172). It's Remi plus Arturo Baez on the contrabass, Gustavo Nandayapa on drums. And they are inspired on this set. Eight tunes, all originals I believe, and it's fire-breathing all the way.

The rhythm section is hot and supercharged. Whether involved in advanced time or freetime, they are on it. When I first put this disk on I thought, "hmm...I hear Dewey Redman and/or Ornette on tenor being rechanneled!" but then the music shifted a bit. There are "new thing" roots to be detected here for sure but the trunk and branches are Remi and the trio, and they sound terrific.

Remi plays with an authority, command and fire I've not heard from him before. At least not like this. That's not to say that his earlier sides weren't excellent (type his name in the search box above and press enter for earlier reviews); they were. But the combination of this hard-charging rhythm section working with some very good compositional head material seems to have catapulted Remi into a really articulate, very steam-driven zone. His tone is edgy but full and he is in TOTAL COMMAND.

You must hear this, ye of the free persuasion. This sounds like a milestone to me. Viva Remi Alvarez; viva his trio!

Marilyn Lerner, Ken Filiano, Lou Grassi, Live in Madrid

When a music considered by most to be in the avant garde reaches a certain maturity, there usually is some sort of consensus among those practicing it as to what the language consists of, what has become standard operating procedure, that sort of thing. I am not sure that is the case today with the music ordinarily known as "free jazz". The music has license by its own definition to do whatever it sees fit at any given moment. One can of course group practitioners into various schools and some have done this, myself included at times. Yet the reality is at least at this point that "free" means there is free invention, that improvisation is a critical element, and that at least theoretically "anything goes". Of course there is nothing wrong with this. In fact it is a sign that the music is living, healthy, moving ahead.

I preface these comments to the album at hand today because my first reaction to it was, "oh, this is classically free piano trio music". Then I stopped myself. What can that mean? In any given point in the performances on this disk there are so many choices to be made by the three musicians collectively and individually that one could not say that the results are in any way predictable. And maybe that's crucial to what makes "free" music good.

What we have on hand is a recent disk, Live in Madrid (Cadence Jazz 1247). It involves Marilyn Lerner on piano, Ken Filiano on acoustic bass and Lou Grassi on drums. This is a well-recorded set they played live at a Musicalibre-sponsored 2012 Hurta Cordel Festival in January of that year.

There are three collective improvisations involved and they are by all definitions "free". The fact that each of the musicians are consummate masters of this musical zone of course has a great bearing on the results. You expect a certain level of interaction of all three in tandem; you expect solo moments where one of them steps forward, dynamic variations from quietude to rousing energetic fullness. You get all of that. Yet there is no real blueprint that an audience will have (if they know the music, anyway) about what should happen when.

What's especially good about this outing is just that. The three come together with highly inventive fare, each contributing in their own specific way whatever they deem goes together at any point. And it works, whether it's a full blown energy drive with each emerging from time to time with a riveting figure, then an equal sort of three way mix, then on again to someone coming a little forward to assert something else that stands apart, and so on.

The longish middle improvisation starts very quietly with a logic of bowed bass, malleted drums and inside-the-piano colors, gathers momentum with Marilyn emphasizing a repeating interval in her lower register that sets up freely articulated lines in the right hand while Lou's drums gather steam and Ken's bowing becomes more heated, switching to pizzicato while Lou switches to sticks and breaks out into a very busy, musical working of toms. This is what it's about. The arco solo that follows by Ken fits the sequence perfectly, too. And then it's on from there. It would mean virtually little if each musician did not have that inventive touch.

But of course they very much do. That's what makes this excellent "free jazz", a set that hangs together and builds excitement by the ecstasy of being in the moment. This is what musical creativity is about in the new improvisations today. Is it "classic" free jazz? In a way, yes, but not in any foreordained way. These three play what they hear and feel and the open form gives them all they need to place themselves in a state of continual invention.

So I would certainly recommend this one. Great trio sounds!

The Burton Greene Trio, On Tour, 1966

Burton Greene deserves to be heard, both in terms of what he is doing now and as a pioneering pianist in the early "New Thing" era. His second album for ESP, the Burton Greene Trio On Tour (ESP 1074) is out on CD as part of ESP's anniversary commemoration, so here's a chance to check out some more from the early days.

It was recorded as part of the ESP New York State College tour that took place in the spring of 1966. I had the original LP back a little after its release but it is if I am hearing it for the first time now. And I find it intriguing.

The trio is notable for the presence of drummer Shelly Rusten, who didn't get a lot of exposure in terms of recordings in those days but had his own way. He plays "free" with a different approach than Sunny Murray or Barry Altschul did then. It's a lot of the full drum set in a virtuoso way and there is somewhat less of the sort of pulled-apart abstraction of "playing time" that you'd often get with Sunny or Barry. At least that's the impression I get listening. It makes the trio go in slightly different directions. Steve Tintweiss is on bass and plays in his own open-ended fashion as he did so effectively for others as well.

Burton Greene is his robust early self, playing inside the piano, hammering clusters, doing his all-over style and playing along with the other sequences one somewhat atypical number that starts with a more harmonically oriented tonal base than was the case with most of the free-compositional jumping-off platforms on the early recordings. But otherwise this is pretty firmly rooted in the free-out zone as you would expect.

It's an adventure and another important documentation of those first days of free jazz. It may not be Burton Greene's best album from the era but it's filled with some very bright moments and is a must-have for those who want to get a sense for the open possibilities available to the new thing then. It's been very hard to find in recent years so grab it now!