Hasler-Paeffgen-Berger, Thoughtful Open-Ended Trio Freedom

(Werner) Hasler-(Gilbert) Paeffgen-(Karl) Berger (No Business NBCD 33), trumpet & electronics, drums, and vibes, respectively. This is alternatingly subtle and bracing, free-floating and rhythmically driving music. Paeffgen plays some well conceived drum improvisations, Hasler's trumpet is engaging, his electronics colorful, and Berger is his always exploratory self throughout.

I suppose this is chamber jazz, though it hardly matters what you call it on the level of the music itself. The sparseness of the instrumentation gives plenty of room for all three to collaborate dynamically, to use the space allocated to them for strongly creative interactions. The notes denote a fully healthy, fully concious musical animal. It is alive with vibrant improvisations restricted to no formal limitations.

If you needed evidence that Karl Berger keeps trudging forward after so many years, here it is. He is unassumingly central, still. And the other two thirds of the trio are no less important to this music gem.

Bill Dixon, "Intents and Purposes," Beautifully Done Reissue of a Classic

Bill Dixon's Intents and Purposes (RCA) came out in 1967. It probably would have had a much greater impact had it stayed in print longer. By the early '70s it was only available as a hard-to-find, expensive import in the States.

Thankfully an excellent reissue has been made available to us by International Phonograph for the RCA reissue series. It has an LP style gatefold cover with the original art and liner notes, the CD is imprinted with the original label, and there is a paper insert with the liner notes updated for today. The remastering is excellent.

This was Bill Dixon appearing before the public as a startling trumpet master of avant sounds and a jazz composer of major stature. It's a mid-sized group for "Metamorphosis," a smaller group for "Voices," and trumpet and flute only for the "Nightfall Pieces." They seque together as a cohesive, massively innovative essay in evocative sound color. It is the fully mature Dixon and it is a masterpiece.

If we have the pain of losing Bill Dixon the living artist, we DO have the joy of hearing his music in recorded form. This one is essential!

Skaller/Holt Duo, Music of Mark Dresser: Two Keyboard Excursions into Free-Modern

When something doesn't quite fit into your preconceived notions of what goes with what, you can do a number of things: ignore it, get angry with it, or listen to it carefully and get somewhere with it. Naturally I tend toward the latter. The Skaller/Holt Duo (Philip and Danny, respectively) is decidedly different. They combine a free improv sensibility with a new music approach and get someplace very expressive. That is, on their Music of Mark Dresser (pfMentum CD 062). Where the Dresser compositions leave off and the improvisation kicks in is not clear-cut, and that too is interesting.

The duo gets to the music on pianos, prepared pianos, toy pianos, celeste, melodica and percussion. And what they do is a kind of Cecil Taylor-meets-John Cage-meets-Skaller/Holt. It is music of energy, ultra-expressiveness and a little slapdash helter-skelter thrown in besides.

I find it quite invigorating and really interesting. Recommended.

Kali Fasteau, "Comraderie," 1998

Several days ago I covered an interesting album of duets by Kali Fasteau and Donald Garrett. Today we push the clock forward to 1998 and an album of Kali with six avant players of note, Comraderie (Flying Note 9006).

It's a free date with some of the finest: Bobby Few on piano, Noah Howard, alto, Joe McPhee on tenor, Sonelius Smith, piano, Warren Smith on drums, and Mike Wimberly on djembe, talking drum and percussion. Kali wrote the compositional frameworks and plays soprano, nai & kaval flutes, cello and sheng. She also does a little vocalizing.

The session makes full and exhilarating use of the possibilities such a significant gathering of reeds offers. There are passages of collective improvisation by all hands that work within a tonality and (it seems, in the main) a basic scalar scaffolding, such as with the "Joyful Blues."

Kali's eastern-post-Trane flutes and soprano are an important component throughout, and in many ways she sets the tone for what happens. Bobby Few, the master, has some beautiful things to say on piano. But of course the saxophonists do as well. Warren Smith gives things a good kick when needed. And everybody is onto what needs to be done, and does it well.

This is a kind of spiritually based freedom music, coming out of later Trane and the inspiration of Asian music and experience. But there is music that blows bluesy blue-hot too.

It's nearly 70 minutes of getting together and reaching upwards. With the players at hand there are heights to be scaled. And they DO reach the top. Retrace the climb yourself by digging on the disk. It will get you there. Beautifully.

Paul Hartsaw Quintet, "Circuitses," Post-Freebop at its Finest

Chicago tenor-soprano-composer-conceptualist Paul Hartsaw has done many good CDs in the past few years, and I've covered them in my various blogs. The new one from his Quintet, Circuitses (Metastablesound 015), certainly ranks among his very best.

It's a nicely put-together group of Hartsaw, Ryan Schultz, bass trumpet, Jim Baker, piano, Cory Biggerstaff, contrabass, and Damon Short, drums. These may not be names you know off the top of your head, but they are in fine form here. It's loose driving swing from the rhythm section and three good front-liners, who with Biggerstaff bring out the nuances of Hartsaw's worthy compositional elements and go on to get chromatic hipness going in the lines. Paul sounds especially good. Ryan and Jim get their time too and use it well.

It's post-Freebop in that it goes beyond outbop to a world where there can be twisting lines of eighth or sixteenth note runs both in the heads and solos, but they are well beyond the bop idiom and on into advanced tonal implications, stretching the key centers nicely without losing sight of them.

Good band, excellent music. This may be a sleeper but it will wake you up. Paul Hartsaw is going places and you'll want to be onboard for the trip.

Andrew Cyrille & Haitian Fascination, "Route de Freres"

Andrew Cyrille doesn't get old, really. He ages like a fine wine. Whether playing diffuse a-rhythmic patterns or digging deep into a groove, he remains ever vital. His group Haitian Fascination presents a modern improv-centered interpretation of the Haitian Tinge, so to speak, in the slam-dunk album Route de Freres (TUM 027).

Part of the vitality of the music centers around the drum dialog between Andrew and percussionist/vocalist Frisner Augustin. Listen to what they do together as a duet and in the ensemble and you definitely get some of the hippest Afro-Haitian cross-rhythms going. Mr. Cyrille re-invents his drum style with all kinds of patterns and master-drummer solo figurations, which Frisner responds to in kind.

Lisle Atkinson plays driving ostinato patterns much of the time, with the sort of dead-center pliability that helps send the groove to the top. Alix Pascal plays very earworthy acoustic guitar comps with time and chord choice right there where they need to be. His solos make some very musical statements in ways that give the ensemble presence and depth. Augustin's vocal renditions have a Haitian realness and the phrasing that works it. Then there's Hamiet Bluiett and his baritone sax, lyrically soaring, digging deep, blasting through with righteous soul. He sounds as good as ever.

Put all that together with good song-composition-arrangements that give you a Haitian bead on the music and what do you get? An album that HAS it.

Fred Ho, Deadly She-Wolf, Assassin at Armageddon/Momma's Song

One thing I know. You can count on Fred Ho to shake up the music scene with music that is anything but complacent. The Innova (788) release Deadly She-Wolf, Assassin at Armageddon!/Momma's Song combines two collaborative works, the first (She-Wolf) a major 50-some-odd minute suite of music intended as the soundtrack to a theater piece written by Ho and Ruth Margraff. It presents an ensemble of Ho on baritone and a small group of musicians playing western and traditional Japanese instruments.

She-Wolf fascinates and rivets your attention by pitting classical Japanese elements against Ho's version of "jazz-rock." It takes a few listens to get acclimated, but it is quite worthy of your time.

The second work, Momma's Song, adapts the music and poetic essence of Archie Shepp's "Blase" and expands on it. Christine Stark wrote the new poem and it is startling in its depiction of brutality against woman, specifically the mass murder of a group of prostitutes in Vancouver. There is 20 minutes of recitation with a simultaneous Ho reworking of Shepp's music.

The CD comes with a wonderful booklet with the text from Momma and the She-Wolf script, lavishly illustrated in Manga style.

Fred Ho cannot be ignored. This is one reason why. It may not have a wall-to-wall jazz element, but that is what Mr. Ho can be about--a fusing of jazz and other musical worlds. It gives you another way into Ho's fertile musical mind. It is music of much merit!! May Mr. Ho continue on with many more years of musical brilliance.