Silke Rollig, Burton Greene, Space is Still the Place

Advanced avant jazz vocals are probably the hardest challenge an artist can face. We all know how some of the historically critical vocalists approached swing through bop. They envisioned their voice as a horn, doing the subtle rephrasings like a great saxophonist or trumpet player might, and scatting with wordless lines in improvisatory fashion.
When the music got "free" we had various approaches from Jeanne Lee, Patty Waters and others, but it was by no means an easy thing to pull off. Essentially though there was the emotive, timbral, expressive side and the finessive, difficultly advanced lining side. Both are still with us in various ways in avant realms. And then there is of course a carry over of more traditional jazz singing ways, ballads and song reframings owing something to the master vocal interpreters of the past.
Silke Rollig goes for all three aspects in her recent album with piano icon Burton Greene, Space is Still the Place (Improvising Beings 39). The album covers much ground beginning unexpectedly but effectively with a cover of a Kurt Cobain opus "Something in the Way" and goes from there with a series of Rollig and Greene originals and collaborative pieces.
Burton sounds as good as ever. Silke takes on some difficult music heroically, mostly in the Burton zone and she also freely emotes/plays with vocal utterances, all with a distinctive vocal instrument and a freedom that even toys with intonation at times.
The end result is a musically packed set that relies on compositional and improvisational originality from both sides of the duets. One needs to listen more than once, certainly, to get all of this in. And as one does it blossoms outward as some very out and unusual vocal-piano interactions, with more synchrony (intuitive or planned, or both, depending on the moment) than one might ordinarily hear in such settings.
Rollig has a very ambitious span of things she does here. Some of the lines she articulates in tandem with Burton's piano are quite difficult; others are more laid back and considered; and then there are the open, free soundings that fall somewhere in between.
It is an extraordinary album, a walk on a tightrope without a safety net, a musically full album that will satisfy the Burton Greene fans and challenge you to get on Rollig's wavelength. Once you do, there you are! This is music sometimes difficult, other times organic, always provocative! Listen!

De Beren Gieren, One Mirrors Many

De Beren Gieren is a uniquely different sort of improvisational-compositional piano trio from Benelux. Their recent album One Mirrors Many (Clean Feed 344) has been absorbing my attention in the past weeks and I emerge from my ear-time attention to talk about it a bit.

The compositions and the piano chair are both held down definitively by Fulco Ottervanger. Lieven Van Pee is the bassist; Simon Segers is on drums. They have a remarkable cohesiveness together and a sound perhaps like no other. The stance is one of a brightly defining set of sound colors via conventional and extended techniques on all three instruments. Fulco plays inside and outside the piano in remarkable ways, and the same is true to a somewhat lesser extent by Lieven and Simon. There is occasionally some very subtle alteration of the piano sound, etc., by effects, or so I hear something in the sound that would so indicate. It is very sparingly utilized and works quite well.

The compositions have a special kind of innovative quality to them. There are ruminative adventures in harmonic and melodic creativity, there are striking sonic envelopes created in various ways, and each artist takes on a prominent role in making the pieces come to life via unusual patterns and improvisational extensions.

It is thoroughly a music of today, born out of piano trio traditions going forward from, say, Bill Evans' time through Bley, Kuhn, early Jarrett and much more besides. The end result is striking and well conceived, with both a new music and a modern/free jazz piano trio component that meld seamlessly into an expressive uniqueness.

The trio comes at you with an accomplished amalgam that begins with Ottervanger's well defined piano/compositional way and extends to some consistently ear-worthy bass and drum styles that fit exceptionally well with the piano soundings. The music is advanced and lyrical, at times brashly bold and stylistically fearless. The sequence of pieces are all together a fascinating adventure in what can be done with a special vision and sound color approach that is carried through and brought to full fruition.

It's a most unusual and innovative set from some startling players. I would strongly suggest you hear this!

Wow!

Sarah Murcia, Never Mind the Future

What a "standard" is today is potentially quite a bit different than, say, what was on John Coltrane's Prestige "Plays Standards" album that was recorded nearly 60 years ago. Yet some jazz artists stick to the same old masterpieces that were well-enshrined by the time Trane addressed them. Other artists, however, have opened the floodgates of songs made between then and now, and the results are as potentially differing as they were then, only of course the artistic choices have grown in many ways.

So what is a standard except a song that we feel the need to resurrect and in some way enshrine, interpret and infuse with personal creativity?

So what about the Sex Pistols? What about their iconic punk album "Never Mind the Bollocks"? The songs there changed around plenty of heads and looking back, they were probably the best of the movement. So if somebody did a rethinking and reinterpretation of those songs, what would you think? The fact is, Sarah Murcia did do just that, on the new release Never Mind the Future (Ayler 149).

The group on the album is made up of Sarah Murcia, double-bass, voice; Benoît Delbecq, piano; Mark Tompkins, voice; Olivier Py, saxophones; Gilles Coronado, electric guitar; and Franck Vaillant, drums, percussion.

These are rather brilliant transpositions of the songs. They are de-punked, vocally and instrumentally, and given careful articulation so that the bleak lyrics, the protest against status-quo and limited prospects comes through all the more for it. The music has an avant jazz-rock originality that one might call post-Mantler, with an emphasis on post. Really this is a new sort of standards album, in content and treatment.

And as that it breaks boundaries and describes worlds we may all be experiencing without the least irony now....though the words can still shock, especially when sung-spoken plainly. Murcia connects with the Sex Pistol's punk essence and reflects on it with brilliant arrangements, really, and creative performances as well.

I am not one to tell people what to do, but you might find this album something that very much speaks to you, and very artfully so! Thanks Ayler Records for continuing to keep us all on the cutting edge!! Get this one and keep the label alive.

Michael McNeill Trio, Flight

Pianist-composer Michael McNeill has been busy as an important member of the Buffalo music scene for a number of years. He also leads a very potent trio with Ken Filiano on bass and Phil Haynes on drums. They put out an album, Passageways, in 2011, and now they are back with Flight (self-released).

Based on the new one, I am sorry to have missed the first. This one is filled with ultra-modern trio jazz that has gritty, pointed, harmonically advanced qualities in a post-Corean sort of way (in the classic trio era), and a bit of early Jarrett and classic Herbie rechanneled, a beautifully swinging-free Filiano and Haynes and some striking piano "blowing."

Phil Haynes gives us his very smart drumming in abundance and Ken Filiano is ideal for what he does as well as how it fits. Both solo nicely, too!

Ultimately, though, it is McNeill's compositions and concepts, his pianistic advance that completely carries the day. It goes from adventurous new music ruminations to wildly swinging postbop and as it does, it seals the music with a irreplaceable fingerprint.

This is the sort of music that reminds us, as we are in the thick of mechanical and now digital reproduction, that the art of jazz resists homogenization, standardization and cloning in the best examples. For piano trios, the McNeill outfit as heard on the new album is one-of-a-kind, enormously talented and pushing the boundaries of the art in the best ways.

I am very happy to have this one! I think you'd be, too. Check it out.

Thomas Heberer, Leap of Faith, Solution Concepts

Reed jazzman PEK has been quite prolific making avant jazz happen up in Boston with his two ensembles. Today we hear a CD of characteristically interesting music played by his Leap of Faith outfit with guest Thomas Heberer, Solution Concepts (Evil Clown 9076).

It is a full set recorded live at New York's Downtown Music Gallery last August. The outer numbers are long improv tracks with Heberer on cornet for the latter, plus PEK on tenor, piccolo oboe, clarinet and contra-alto clarinet. Glynis Lomon is on cello and aquisonic, Steve Norton on sopranino, alto clarinet, and alto sax. And Yuri Zbitnov is at the drums with resonant metal objects adding to the sound.

This is full-blown free outness in the grand tradition, spontaneous outbursts of individual and collectively free sound with all playing and hearing one another to create shifting constellations of aural expression. Thomas Heberer enters following the first long improv for a series of unaccompanied solos. Thomas shows us his smartly expressive way in a kind of tour de force of melodic invention.

The final number is a twenty-minute conflagration of Heberer and Leap of Faith joined together. It gives the entire ensemble space to open up worlds of improv and at the same time gives space as well for Heberer's voice to respond to the others and vice versa. The track has a great deal of strength and shows the complete complement of artists at their best.

All in the end is worthy ear fare. It is a fine example of Leap of Faith in its current guise and Thomas Heberer in an inspired frame of being, both with and without the ensemble.

Recommended!

WAS? What About Sam, Happy Meal

Portuguese avant modern jazz comes through with flying colors via the quintet WAS? What About Sam and their album Happy Meal (JACC Records CD). It is free but structured composition-improvisation that in its own way reminds of classic AACM music but then has its own twists.

The group is a strong one with Luis Vicente on trumpet (whose music I have covered on these pages before) and providing two of the compositions, Federico Pascucci on tenor and one composition, Roberto Negro on piano, providing a composition as well, Andre Rosinha on double bass and Vasco Furtado on drums. The additional two numbers on the album are collective improvisations.

What strikes me about the music is how the front line and the entire band improvise around the written and their overall sense of cohesiveness. The numbers have a sequential quality with worked out sections that may center around a solo or collective improv but impose unexpected turns not typical. There is open freedom to be heard, but different and unusual structuring of what the group unleashes from moment to moment.

Vincente, Pascucci and Negro have much to say as soloists, but the rhythm section has an active role to play too that goes beyond time keeping or the studious avoidance of pulsation.

In short the ensemble gives us an original approach to taking it out and in the process generates plenty of way-stations of musical interest that keep the ears busy and well nourished.

It is yet another notable example of the vitality of the Portuguese scene. I hope the quintet stays together and gives us yet more. As it is Happy Meal provides us with a great deal of unusual music. Here's one to check out, by all means.

Desert Sweets, A Place Not Meant for Birds, Biggi Vinkeloe, Mark Weaver, Damon Smith

Today another of the fine recent releases to be found on Damon Smith's Balance Point Acoustics label. Desert Sweets is the name of the trio and the album is entitled A Place Meant for Birds (bpa-5). It is a valuable addition to avant jazz discography because it gives us a nicely articulated threesome in Biggi Vinkeloe on alto and flute (an artist very worth hearing who has been some what under-recorded as a whole), Mark Weaver on tuba and didgeredoo (someone whose playing I do not know well but sounds totally appropriate here) and Damon Smith on bass, one of the master talents deserving wider recognition in the music today.

The approach is rollicking free-avant improv, with each member filling a key role. The recording is well staged with a perfect balance between the trio. Most importantly, it is a platform on which the three can excel at creating considerable spontaneous interest.

Biggi has a way about her. She is on the outside edge of the music yet there is also a lyrical side that shows here, nicely contrasting with Damon's advanced sound color bass adventures and Mark's tuba textures and good note choices.

There are seven segments that hold our interest. One includes a poem recitation by Lisa Gill that broadens the scope nicely.

It may be a bit of a sleeper of an album. Those who do not know the artists well may not find this album in their hands unless someone calls it out to them. I am doing that today because it is music that keeps sounding better to me the more I listen to it. The beauty of Ms. Vinkeloe's approach, the excellent improvisational bass lines and the nice color additions of Weaver's tuba show us an collective artistry that dwells in a rarified space where the lines work together yet each instrumentalist adds much of her-his own personal way.

Excellent.