Rodrigo Amado Motion Trio & Jeb Bishop, The Flame Alphabet

It should come as no surprise to those who know their work that pitting tenor Rodrigo Amado with trombonist Jeb Bishop is an excellent idea. They join forces as Jeb joins Amado's Motion Trio in the incandescent scorcher The Flame Alphabet (Not Two 896-2).

Both players are among the very best out there today; both have made their mark on the post-bop avant jazz scene. And both play hard and well with absolute consistency. The Motion Trio context also is an excellent one, with Miguel Mira's cello and Gabriel Ferrandini's drums providing closely paired strength and freedom.

The five numbers are group inventions, a torrid yet very articulate fire. This is some of Rodrigo's and Jeb's best work of late and the foursome really kick modern tail. The front line interacts beautifully together too.

I could say a great deal more but instead I will say, "just go get it and if you like new jazz it will NOT disappoint." These are folks doing some of the most important new improvised music you can hear today!

Pablo Ziegler & Metropole Orkest, Amsterdam Meets New Tango

Where we can go musically these days is...anywhere. And when we do and it goes well, we all gain a great deal in the process. That's how I feel about Pablo Ziegler & Metropole Orkest's Amsterdam Meets New Tango (Zoho 201307).

Now as we all know the tango is first and foremost a dance originating if I am not mistaken in Argentina and spreading throughout the world in a big way last century. Of course it is also a musical form, with a pronounced rhythmic feel and certain melodic-tonal aspects. The history of this music is so rich and evolved that my knowledge of it spanning the advent of recorded sound is growing month-by-month, thanks in great part to what I can experience of the very early recordings on the internet and its continued vibrancy. It is one of the musical frontiers for me right now. So this innovative musical treatment of the form comes at quite the right time, personally speaking.

But more than that Amsterdam Meets New Tango is one of those landmark new things that comes at you and you recognize it straight off as such. Pablo Ziegler is a critical and important exponent of New Tango. And he shows us why on this album in a big way.

Ziegler plays a very sophisticated jazz-tango piano throughout. He is joined by other soloists to good effect--namely Quique Sinesi on nylon string guitar, Walter Castro on bandoneon, Quintino Cinalli on percussion and cajon. The fully-engaged, fully fleshed-out Metropole Orkest also provides good soloists that enter into the music as called for. The group for this project is a conjoining of a big band jazz outfit and an orchestra with strings and the like. Jules Buckley conducts, and an admirable job he does.

So those are the elements. The point of it all is to create an innovative compositional large group New Tango setting that has tango, jazz, orchestral, big band progressive elements, and to do it with real flair and innovative authenticity. All but one of the compositions are by Ziegler; one is by Sinesi.

What makes this work is the vibrant contemporary tango-plus-jazz plus-modern-compositional-elements and wow, does it work or what? It's a beautifully performed, beautifully written, beautifully improvised series of pieces. It takes on traditional tango motifs and the world of music today and combines them in ravishingly terrific ways.

I can't say enough about this one without rattling on and on, so I wont. It gets my highest praise!! Ziegler is tango genius!

Albatre, Descent into the Maelstrom

Today, another volume in the adventurous Shh Puma series of avant recordings overseen and manufactured by the makers of Clean Feed. It's a good one. The trio at work on this program is Albatre. The disk is entitled A Descent into the Maelstrom (shh puma 005).

Albatre is a rather explosive grouping of Hugo Costa on alto sax and loops, Goncalo Almeida on electric bass and effects, and Philipp Ernsting, drums and electronics.

This is out, very edgy music with a pronounced electricity. It has the power of avant metal though it isn't quite that. It is highly energized avant free jazz-rock on the fringes. Hugo Costa warbles, screeches and blasts his way through walls on the alto. Goncalo Almeida hits the bass full-force and gets the power of hard and furious playing with the judicious aid of effects. Sometimes he sounds very guitar-metal like, sometimes it is a bracing set of low-frequency barrages, but it's good. And Phillip Ernsting hits the drums on all-fours, bashing, thrashing and weaving in and out of time. He also provides washes of electronics which add to the tumult.

Now I know there are some that might not appreciate this music. But hey, some of what I cover is not for the unwary, and so this fits right in with those sorts of recordings. It does it excellently, flat-out, with no attempts at commercial amelioration whatsoever. A first-rate avant blow-out! Recommended if you dig the interface between free jazz and metal thrash. Yeah!

Satoko Fujii New Trio, Spring Storm

One thing about Satoko Fujii, pianist, composer, avant bandleader. She will not be pinned down. You cannot predict what she will do from one project to the next. And that I admire. This is true of her "New Trio" and their inaugural Spring Storm (Libra 203-034). Satoko is on piano, Todd Nicholson on contrabass and Takashi Itani is the drummer.

Now what is interesting as ever with Ms. Fujii is that the trio is fully into the interactive piano trio zone with all three making this an intertwined musical statement. The second noteworthy part of this is how free tumultuous barrages alternate with open avant lyricism and pushing pulsation, often in the same number. Nicholson and Itani have much to offer and they come through in ways that further stimulate Ms. Fujii to dig in a little deeper, as it should be in this sort of outfit.

It is excellent Fujii, excellent piano trio new music-jazz, and it reminds you how important she is. Nobody quite has her outlook and she realizes it with style, grace, and fire! Listen to this one!

Peter Lemer Quintet, Local Color, 1966

Here we have a Peter Lemer Quintet album from 1966, his only as a leader and quite a nice one. Local Colour (ESP 1057) must have come and gone quickly because I certainly don't remember seeing it in the shelves by around 1970 or so when I started actively filling out my knowledge of avant jazz, but no matter because it sounds as vibrant now as it must have then.

Lemer studied with Bill Dixon, Paul Bley and Jaki Byard in the States, most certainly reflects the great deal he absorbed, later recorded with the Spontaneous Music ensemble, and also played with Annette Peacock and Harry Beckett, Gong and the Baker Gurvitz Army. Impressive credentials and he lives up to them.

John Surman is in the quintet on soprano and baritone. It was his first recording but he sounds already in full flower. The very obscure Nisar Ahmed Khan is on tenor sounding quite fit. But who is he? The press sheet tells me he was involved for a time with the Crazy World of Arthur Brown and Robert Wyatt. He fits right in here at any rate. Then John Hiseman is on drums, the fellow who later founded the jazz-rock outfit Colosseum. The bassist is John Reeves, who also was in that band.

So that is the line-up. They run through Carla Bley's "Ictus" nicely, then proceed to five Lemer originals. They are fine, even memorable, but in the end you especially hone in on the new thing avant piano soloing Lemer, the two-sax punch of Surman and Khan, and the kinetic heat of the rhythm team.

It a very nice surprise to hear this album now. There is a timelessness that applies to any of the well-done New Thing sides from the era. And this one is so obscure you probably never heard it. Now's the time. Recommended.

Yma Sumac, Recital, 1961

Vocalist Yma Sumac was a supreme presence in the late-'50s early-'60s. She came upon the scene as part of Capitol Records' somewhat ambitious series of hi-fi exotica releases of that time. Space-age bachelors and other adventurous souls suddenly found themselves craving a music that satisfied the paradoxical two-fold need of furnishing an aural complement to their professed modernity while at the same time giving them access to the remote far-away ethnic paradises they envisioned after work hours, after the incessant strivings of the work day had taken their toll and it was time to get away into sanctuaries of cooldom.

Enter Yma Sumac, Inca Goddess. The original LPs combined Les Baxter's faux-ancient exotic arrangements with real contemporary Peruvian musical touches. And of course Yma Sumac herself. Hers was a voice of extraordinary range and color, trained yet let free to reach some thrilling heights of brilliance.

Some time in 1961 she appeared in Bucharest for a full recital with a few traditional musicians and the full sonic arsenal of the Romanian National Radio-Television Orchestra. Fortunately the tapes were rolling and the results are available on a new LP/CD all-inclusive package as Recital (ESP 4029). The LP omits the instrumental orchestral interlude cuts in order to fit the time limitations of vinyl; the CD has the full concert.

This live setting gives you a good bit of Yma, many pieces from her LP releases and several I do not recognize. Either way her vocal exceptionality is in full-force on that evening. There is power, freedom and an experimental side to her vocal barrage. Listening here to this decent, quite acceptable if sometimes a little orchestrally cramped sonic stage, I think of vocalists in the jazz avant realm who followed and wonder if they had listened to Ms. Sumac. It is possible. There is a certain avantness to her singing.

The producers-arrangers in their wish to create the exotic ambience allowed, even encouraged Ms. Sumac a good bit of latitude at times and her exceptional vocal prowess led to some pyrotechnics that one can hear as in the "out" realm. Because, after all this was suppose to be music in the realm of "out." Out of the ordinary, out of the mainstream. And too as I listened again after so long I realized that Yma Sumac was to Inca music what Sun Ra quickly was becoming in that day for the music from Outer Space. It all came about once one felt one could (assuming the talent, ability, sometimes genius to do it well) take latitude to create imaginary yet very much living musical cultures on the basis of musical free license. I would not like to compare Les Baxter with Sun Ra because Sun Ra far exceeded Mr. Baxter for musical innovation and importance. Yet there is a relation. There was something in the air, then. And, though it would never have happened I suppose, it would have been something else and not that far a stylistic stretch to imagine a collaboration between Yma Sumac and Sun Ra's Arkestra. It would have been something to hear, I am sure. Especially with Sun Ra's music as the focus and catalyst.

But what we do have is this Recital and the original LP sides. The music works best when there is enough of a Latin-Peruvian cast to the overall sound yet the full-blown exotica fantasy is also operative. There is plenty of that on the Recital. And there are some nice moments of traditional Peruvian music too.

It's a great way to introduce yourself to Yma Sumac the artist. And for those who have the LPs and love what they hear this will be a treat!

Michael Bates Samuel Blaser Quintet, From One to None

Samuel Blaser is one of the important new trombonists out there. I've covered two of his albums previously on these pages (see January 11, 2010 and March 28, 2013 posts). Now he returns with a quintet co-fronted with bassist Michael Bates, on a recent album One From None (Fresh Sound New Talent 414).

This is a kicker of a group going through some avant-propulsive jazz with real flair. Bates is a bassist anybody would love to have on a session--he boots everybody forward with style and drive. He also writes the charts for five songs and they work well. Blaser sounds excellent again and turns in three charts of his own. He has a worthy foil in the tenorism of Michael Blake, a player we've all gotten to know and dig for his post-Trane heat and inventive vocabulary. Russ Lossing plays the Rhodes for most of the session and gives us a reminder that someone who knows what to do can give such a quintet a real sound with that instrument (and so he reminds along with the band sometimes of the seminal early '70s lineups that used it) and he also gets in good things with the conventional pianoforte on one or two of the numbers. Drummer Jeff Davis is a push ahead, a combustible time keeper with finesse and fire and a freetimer that doesn't waste strokes but gets right to it.

Maybe most importantly this is a group sound, a group effort with all artists working together in the written and the improvised to get a cohesive and distinctive sound. They do it and they do it very well. Fully recommended!