Dennis Gonzalez, the Complete Improvisational Artist

Dennis Gonzalez doesn't just play the trumpet, or the cornet. And he doesn't just play well. He imbues every session and date as a leader with a certain wholeness of concept. It is a matter of grasping the possibilities inherent in a particular musical aggregation at a particular point and helping things run their course.

You can hear that clearly in The Great Bydgoszcz Concert (Ayler), a very productive live date he recorded with a quartet in Poland last year. There is a nice fit between the pieces chosen (originals by the band plus an Ornette Coleman piece and one by the late Polish jazz composer Krzysztof Komeda) and the personality of the band. The result is a long program of no-B.S. modern jazz in a post-Ornette framework ("post-" here designating "following in the wake of," not "negating or going elsewhere after a style has exhausted itself").

The band has real strengths. It's the union of his long-running Yells at Eels Trio with Rodrigo Amado. Dennis is the sort of trumpeter that never seems to run out of ideas or resort to personal pet phrases. Like a good conversationalist, he finds something interesting to say on the theme at hand. He also shows his affinity with Don Cherry and Bill Dixon here, in the sense that he too can construct lucid lines with a folksy trumpet sound that is all his. Rodrigo Amado shows on this date that we may have been missing something, that he is a tenor man who has built an edifice from a musical language he himself has forged out of the modern zeitgeist of what has been laid down in the music since 1960. Such music making is most welcome in an age where imitation may be flattery but does little to move the music forward.

Dennis has found a powerful rhythm team in his two sons, Aaron and Stefan on acoustic bass and drums, respectively. They have no small amount of responsibility for the success of this session. In part one can hear the Haden-Blackwell nexus at work, but only referentially. It's what they do with those initial models that counts.

I tend to think that everything Dennis Gonzalez does is worthwhile. But even if you are not a Gonzalez completist, The Great Bydgoszcz Concert is one of his very best to date, and so perhaps you will want to hear it.

Fred Simon and the Difference Between New Age and Lyrical Jazz

We've all no doubt sampled the many new age offerings that have been available to us in the last two decades. Some of you may be confirmed enthusiasts for one or more artists, and of course that's just fine. There's also the highly lyrical side of the jazz opus, which predated new age and was in many ways the model for some of what new age music does. Lyrical jazz such as you might find with the group Oregon or Keith Jarrett in a certain mode, notably the Jarrett of "My Song" (part of an older ECM release), combines substantial melodic and harmonic invention with appropriate improvisations in that style. New age may dispense with improvisations and at least some of the music I've heard in that bag can also dispense with the song form altogether to offer pleasant atmospheric doodles and lyric fragments that serve as what my father's generation called "mood music."

Enter pianist-song crafter Fred Simon. His new album Since Forever (Naim Jazz) auspiciously includes a lineup of players who have contributed greatly to the lyrical jazz out there. Most notably Paul McCandless has had a very important part to play in this music. As soprano sax, oboe and multireed personality with Oregon he has managed for many years to combine extreme lyricism with soul and an ability to play inside or outside according to the needs of the moment. Joining the band also is Mark Walter, the current drummer with Oregon, the latest in a line of exceptional artists to occupy that position and not undeserving of praise in his own right. Finally, there is Steve Rodby, bassist with Pat Metheny.

So there are the right sort of sidemen on this session. Other than a lovely retake of Joe Zawinul's "In A Silent Way," the program consists of Fred Simon originals. They are squarely situated in the lyrical jazz camp, as are his rather rhapsodic piano stylings. You get more than an hour of strongly lyrical music, with Simon and McCandless providing the spark of inspiration that keeps the program from falling into new age genericism.

Anyone who is a fan of Oregon and/or the lyrical side of Keith Jarrett will find this music most appealing, I think. It is not limpid to the point of enervation and it has the improvisational element through strong soloing from the principals. It is the sort of disk that stands up well to close listening, but also provides the backdrop for cool beans cocktail parties, not that I especially like such musical applications, but people are going to do this and Fred Simon may pick up some converts in spite of the chatter that will threaten to drown him out. (This is nothing new. Do you suppose many people actually listened closely to Handel's Water Music when it was originally performed? It was party time! Later for the masterwork status and the hushed adulation of every strain in the concert hall.) Ultimately, Fred Simon will be heard and he should be at that.

Dan Aran, Lynch Pin of Israeli-American Jazz

OK, so there IS an Israeli-American jazz scene. What better day than Yom Kippur to bring it up? Drummer Dan Aran is an important part of it. His new album Breathing (Smalls) makes that clear. He can play some solid drums, lead a middle-sized ensemble from the drum stool, and makes use of the talent around him as well as his own in choosing a program of originals, standards and roots music finely arranged and performed.

The ensemble on this disk is in continual flux, but generally there is a front line of several horns (Avishai Cohen on trumpet being one of the most accomplished), plus some special sound color instruments here and there, like accordion and bassoon.

The music is contemporary with some bop underpinning now and then and some roots, like on the final cut, "Yemeni Prie," a very nice 7/8 timed piece based on Yemeni traditional music.

Those are the basics. For the specifics, you just need to listen to it a few times and you should find yourself falling in with its varied program and its delightfully solid musical qualities. If you want modern contemporary in the new mainstream and you have had enough of the cliches that can be repackaged and regurgitated from the Jamey Aebersold practice books and music-minus-one CDs, here are a group of folks who know that it's not enough to get the changes right and learn to string the "correct" cliches together flowingly. Not to take anything away from the Aebersold books. They are great. But they are like Wittgenstein's idea of philosophy. It is a ladder to get you somewhere. Once you've climbed up there, you don't need the ladder anymore. And that's when the real work begins. Dan Aran and his colleagues are way past the ladder and working on what comes after, what you put into the music after you get the basics down, with very successful and listenable results.

The Large Ensemble Music of Joe Giardullo

Reedman-composer Joe Giardullo may not be a household name. You may not have heard of him. Yet he's making some very interesting music that rests in the interstices of jazz improv and contemporary concert. The example I have spinning on my computer's CD drive is Red Morocco (RogueArt). It features an ensemble of Giardullo and 13 other instrumentalists performing a number of the leader's pieces.

It is the sort of music that seamlessly integrates the written and the improvised. In fact it is hard to tell which is which. According to the liner notes there were a number of visual and notational cues given to each musician and the working out of the finished performance was an exercise in sensitive group interaction and improvisation based on those initial guidelines.

That covers the nuts and bolts of how the music comes to your ears. And of course it doesn't do justice to the final results you hear. This is a fairly large group but, like in many contemporary chamber orchestra compositions, the full ensemble is not continually sounding. There is a virtual kaleidoscope of musicians grouping and regrouping in ever shifting combinations. Sound colors and tones present themselves in various permutations, in an endless set of variations without a set theme.

The effect for the attentive listener is most positive. There is much to hear and appreciate. It shows that Joe Giardullo is a musician who is well-positioned to become a critical mover in the music of today, and of tomorrow. Give this disk a hearing if you can.

Roswell Rudd, Trombone Pioneer

In the mid-sixties through to, say, 1970, there were only two really important American trombone players in the free-new thing echelons of improvisational music. There was Grachan Moncur and there was Roswell Rudd. That they both played for a time with Archie Shepp is not insignificant. (For Rudd's playing with Archie there's the monumental Live in San Francisco on Impulse if you can find it). I could say plenty of good things about Mr. Moncur, but we'll leave that aside for another posting.

Roswell Rudd had memorable and well-received associations in the early days with the New York Art Quartet and with the Steve Lacy-Roswell Rudd cooperative ensemble (the latter group playing Monk for the most part). Rudd also participated in what I gather were informal get togethers with the legendary Herbie Nichols, the tragically unsung composer-pianist who passed in the sixties with little notice but has been the subject of posthumous appreciation as his few recording have been reissued and his music revived by people like Misha Mengelberg. And Roswell Rudd.

A very good example of the latter is a Roswell Rudd Trio recording on CIMP, The Unheard Herbie Nichols, Volume 1. It was recorded in 1996 and features Roswell in great form along with Greg Millar on guitar and John Bacon, Jr at the drums.

The recording gives you unvarnished Rudd in a small-group context and several unaccompanied trombone cuts. There are previously unrecorded Herbie Nichols pieces as the launching point and those pieces are surely worth hearing. But it's Rosewell's playing that forms the main event of this contentful disk.

With absolutely no disrespect intended, one might say that Rudd is the master of the "new tailgate" trombone. Though the tailgate style of trombone so prevalent in NOLA's early jazz ensembles was latter dismissed by some as technically limited and overly boisterous, those criticisms were misguided and the product of a general prejudice that the "Moderns" had against "Moldy Fig" music in the '40s and '50s. From the very beginning Roswell Rudd (who did some time playing dixieland as did Nichols, interestingly) brought back some of the bluster and fire of those old tailgate style players. Whatever you can say about his playing, technically limited is certainly not one of them. And he combined that bluster with an avant style that joined extended sound color capabilities with melody lines that stretched the boundaries of what note combinations and phrases could "lawfully" be played with what.

After the advent of Rudd on the scene, you can trace the rise of other free bonists that also brought back the dramatic bluster to the music. I wont go into names (that would involve us in a discussion that is beyond the scope of this posting). The point is that he influenced many that followed in his wake. And he's still doing it today.

So the CIMP disk gives you a very nice slice of Roswell the trombonist. There's bluster, but there's also fabulous phrasing and note choice. And there's a hell of a lot of heart in his playing.
This CIMP disk may not have sold a million copies as yet, but it is essential listening. For Rudd's trombone and for Herbie Nichols' jazz compositions.

Ted Sirota with A New Rebel Souls Album

A couple weeks ago we discussed a fine Ted Sirota recording of several years back. Today we look at a brand new one, Seize the Time (Naim). What was true of the earlier disk is true of this one too. A diverse series of styles are corralled into Sirota's musical ranch, each taking on the brand of the ensemble sound the band so successfully projects. There are funky moments, free moments, transformations of reggae and other Caribbean strains, Afropop, vintage Mingus and more else besides. It all gets processed to become Rebel Souls music.

This is a different lineup than the one on the previously reviewed recording. It is distinctive in its own way. Geof Bradfield and Greg Ward play reeds, Dave Miller is the guitarist, Jake Vinsel, bass and of course Mr. Sirota is a guiding presence on the drums. They come through with that rare inside-outside ability to shift their playing according to the piece at hand without sacrificing their own stylistic integrity.

What particularly distinguishes this Rebel Souls disk is the long and variously contrasting program of interesting originals. But like the best of classic Chicago music, the story is all in the telling. The excitement and raw power generated by the players fit seamlessly into the clearly articulated arrangements and routines of the ensemble.

Another smashingly good one from Ted Sirota. Seize the time. And get the CD.

Five "Nuts" Have A New CD If You Are Willing to Shell Out

Bassist Benjamin Duboc put together the group called "Nuts" with the unusual instrumentation of two trumpets (Rasul Siddik, Itaru Oki), two drummers (Didier Lassarre, Makoto Sato) and of course bass. Based on their inaugural recording Symphony for Old and New Dimensions (Ayler), the group is inclined toward the long, sprawling improvisational form. There are two lengthy segments totalling nearly 70 minutes of music on this live session. If you realize from the start that these musical nuts are going to be in no hurry to come to some final musical fruition, you will relax and begin to appreciate the long flowing meander that makes "Nuts" a satisfying, leisurely journey through a landscape of freely articulated sound.

The liner notes on the CD point out the similarity of approach between this group and some of the classic AACM musicians, particularly the Art Ensemble. I do not disagree. Like the AEC when in a certain group mind-meld, Nuts conjure a meditative mood that does not look to an eventful series of conclusions, but rather an open-ended dialogue that leaves room for all but expects each participant to contribute to the collective affect. Nobody is exactly soloing, nor are they accompanying.

All the above distinguishes this set from the more typical improvs that can be heard. It takes a few listens to appreciate, at least it did for me. Once you get there, though, you know you've been some places that are at least a shade rarefied. And, if you are like me, you appreciate it the more for all that.