Vijay Iyer Trio, Break Stuff

One thing seems clear to me this morning. That is that pianist Vijay Iyer does not care what is expected of him as a leader of a modern jazz piano trio. "I'm interested in how things grow when no one's forcing them to," he says. That means he and his trio give latitude to the inner muses within them. And those muses are driving the trio in various directions that are unexpected and original.

You can hear that in the latest outing, Break Stuff (ECM B0022567-02). He and his partners Stephen Crump on the double bass and Marcus Gilmore on drums are going somewhere, an original set of places. There is a looseness much of the time, coupled with polyrhythmic feels, minimalist openings in the firmament, sometimes with seemingly more than one tempo active, linear expansions on thematic, harmonic, and rhythmic elements, Strayhorn's "Blood Count" and Monk done in ways nobody else would think to do, original structures that can cook or they can clean the counter of pots and pans, as they feel it.

It is easy enough to say that Vijay's South Asian roots give him a special feel for rhythm. And something African in feel, too. Now that may be true but how that works out with his trio nowadays is not in any way automatic. There is a subtle channeling that all three are in on and it is very original.

An outstanding album, this is. They are touring the US February 19th through April 11. Eugene and Portland, Oregon, are the starting points, then New York, Albuquerque, San Francisco, Chicago and Boston. Check the net for more info. They are into something definitely "progressive," so now is a good time to hear them. And grab this disk!

Andrew Drury, Content Provider

You may know Andrew Drury as a fired-up, most original drummer who has sparked many a session in avant contemporary jazz around New York and over the world. What you may not know is the Andrew Drury who is a potent composer and bandleader. That you can hear wonderfully well on his brand new release Content Provider (Soup and Sound 50001). He sometimes reminds you how much he digs Eddie Blackwell, but there is so much more, too.

He's picked some very game players in Briggan Krauss on alto, Ingrid Laubrock on tenor and Brandon Seabrook on electric guitar. (Brandon is perhaps more well-known as a blazing banjoist, but as guitarist here he sounds quite good, quite at home.)

The compositions are challenging and filled with rhythmic complexities and noteful stamina. The music suits Andrew's very involved and hip drumming and he takes advantage with some great work. There are free elements and some heavy rock moments thanks to Brandon's heat. Briggen and Ingrid make a great two-horn team. They work some very involved two-horn dialogs that get over-the-top in very cool ways. And of course they solo individually with their own very personal approach.

Brandon's guitar work is pretty exceptional--he goes out and gets some real steam with avant metal moments that certainly get my attention. And the two horns and guitar voicings of some of the themes are really strong and right at you!

So the electric part may get some purists snarled up. It's time we recognize that it's not only legitimate to do this (and how many years ago did Sharrock first startle us?), but it can also, as here, be a vital expression of our contemporary world.

It still ain't what you do. It's still the way hatcha do it . . . as Jimmy Lunceford's band put it so many years ago. And the way Andrew Drury and band do it is beautifully. Beautifully alive.

This is a drummer's album in some ways. It has the rhythmic vitality that drummer-leaders give you when they feel it. And it has a very vital energy and electricity that speaks to our world today. So, yeah! Dig on this one because it has the courage to make a beautifully huge noise!

Gebhard Ullmann Basement Research, Hat and Shoes

Is there a relation between where you live and the music you make? Always, I suppose, though often enough it is not easy to put in a short number of words. Gebhard Ullmann is an example of the complexity of that. He is a European who makes significant free improvisational jazz that has as much or more a relation to roots New York "New Thing" as it does to any "European School" of avant improvisation we may care to evoke.

This is beautifully clear in his Basement Research ensemble recording Hat and Shoes (betweenthelines 71238). The title reminds of Eric Dolphy's classic piece "Hat and Beard" and I am sure it is intentional, for the music here seems a modern extension of the later Dolphy ensemble ethos. Not in any obvious way, but there is a growth from the Dolphy trunk so to speak. Not just in Ullmann's excellent bass clarinet work--and tenor sax. But also in the ensemble's special collectivity, the compositions and how they jump start some really good group improvisations and solos.

He is very well served by the band he has assembled. The critically important Steve Swell joins the ensemble on trombone, as a key component of Ullmann's music over the years. Julian Arguelles makes a fine showing on baritone sax. And the rhythm team is excellent as well, with Pascal Niggenkemper on acoustic bass and Gerald Cleaver on drums. Some Europeans, then, some Americans, and a clear vision of the interpersonal freedom and compositional staging needed.

It is an album that excels extraordinarily well at pitting talented improvisers with vibrant material, like Dolphy's Out to Lunch only very much of today.

Everything and everyone comes together for a beautiful result, surely one of Ullmann's very best albums and some prime examples of the prowess of all the players. Don't miss this one!

Laurence Cook, Burton Greene, A 39 Year Reunion Celebration

As Eric Zinman's liner notes to the album at hand explain, Paul Bley introduced drummer Laurence Cook to pianist Burton Greene in 1968. They hit it off musically and made some excellent sessions together with Mario Pavone on bass in the next couple of years.

Now 39 years later they reunite thanks to Zinman on a session titled appropriately A 39 Year Reunion Celebration (Studio 234 011).

Laurence has always impressed me as a kind of "thinking person's drummer," a free player who chooses his notes wisely and provides a very creative backdrop for free ensemble explorations. Burton it goes without saying has for a long time now prevailed as one of the new thing's pioneering pianists and an artist who continues to grow and expand his compass, year after year.

The two together in this 2008 Cambridge session are in a most inspired mode. Obviously the intervening years have done nothing to dampen their mutual musical compatibility and it shows in the way they interact. Laurence plays the drums as a modern painter wields the brush (and in fact he started as a painter), deliberate yet open to the spontaneity of the creative moment, sensitive to the drums in front of him and their potential, patiently drawing out the sounds in conjunction with Burton's varied and expressive creative stance.

And Burton sounds as good as ever, perhaps a bit more reflective now than when he first started out, not afraid to work in tonal realms but ever the abstractionist at heart, giving weight to each episode, drawing from other's compositions as well as some of his own, and just going it spontaneously with Laurence when that seems right.

The meeting turned out, not surprisingly, most opportune and fortunate. This is some of the finest recent work from either of them, worthy of listening to closely and often. In short it is a winner! Encore!

Kenny Wheeler, Songs for Quintet

The passing of trumpet-flugelhorn-composer-bandleader Kenny Wheeler recently marked the loss of a major figure in the jazz of the later 20th century. He was a rather rare artist who could and did sound completely at home in the more avant camps (such as when a member of Anthony Braxton's celebrated quartet years ago) and in the tonal, changes-oriented contemporary jazz scene. He excelled in both worlds.

As if to remind us of what we will miss, his last album is out. Songs for Quintet (ECM B0022443-02) gathers together a nice grouping of mutually compatible players and sets them loose on some excellent Wheeler songs. They cover remakes of some older classics, such as "Old Time" and "Nonetheless," plus some very attractive new ones.

The band has a sound in very much the later Wheeler style, and if that sound is also a classic ECM sound, do not forget that Kenny helped very much to shape it with his lyric and open rhapsodic yet bittersweet style. Stan Sulzmann on tenor saxophone, John Parricelli on electric guitar, Chris Laurence on double bass, Martin France on drums make up with Wheeler's flugelhorn the complete unit.

They play each number and go to the soloing with an assuredness and poise that knows what Kenny is about and gives lyrical strength and heat as it is abundantly, alternately called for. Kenny still sounds very good here and it is of course with sadness that we realize we will not hear that beautiful horn playing in person again.

But we do have his impressive body of recordings. . . and this final one, in every way worthy of our rapt attention, a final kind of tribute, and a goodbye.

Well recommended. RIP Kenny Wheeler.

Woven Entity

Music that transcends borders may be a little harder to write about than music that doesn't. Part of that has to do with giving the reader an idea of what she/he will hear. Sometimes "like Brainiac, only with more hair," to quote Captain Beefheart, may sound great but may not be helpful.

That is the situation with the London-based outfit Woven Entity, enjoying their first release, which is self-titled (Babel Label BDV12123).

It's freely improvised music that owes little to jazz per se yet has a more DIY approach than you might hear in more formal new music settings. It is a quartet with a percussive orientation, which means it can groove with pulsations of various kinds and ordinarily does.

Who are they? Lascelle Gordon is one of them. He started as a DJ in London, graduated to a number of bands in avant rock and improvisation, and now appears before us as a key member of Woven Entity. He plays percussion and a battery of miscellaneous instruments here.

Patrick Dawes plays percussion and has been around in various contexts prior to Woven Entity.

Paul May nails things down on drums. He's played with pianist Carolyn Humes and been a part of the electro-acoustic improvising trio Sonnamble, Elvers.

Peter Marshall is on bass. He's played with Lol Coxhill, Paul Rutherford, and Robert Dick among others.

That's the lineup. Now what do we get? This album concentrates on out grooves that have some tangential relation to dance music, but in fact are far removed from it. There is a bit of turntabling, some electronic and electro-acoustic colors, bass anchorage and multi-instrumental ensembles with the emphasis on percussion.

More than that, there is the sense that the whole is ever-shifting and permeable. They go to various zones with freedom and some lock-step tribal sense. They excel at something that is at this point very much their own. Think of Zappa's "Son of Monster Magnet" only with all these years intervening and a more dedicated sense of structure-in-freedom and you might not be so far away from what this is. Also there are moments where one is reminded of the Art Ensemble of Chicago in their percussion groove moments.

It is good. It is evocative. It is non-normal in a very avant way, yet there are plenty of foot-tapping episodes to guide you through. I like it! You might as well.

Juan Pablo Carletti, Tony Malaby, Christopher Hoffman, Nino/Brujo

Sometimes it amazes me no little how much good music comes out lately. Other times I have a pile of dogs to contend with. But with a little care in selection there is much to be heard. Today's example is as good as any, a limited edition 300 copy LP pressing of the trio of Juan Pablo Carletti (drums and composition), Tony Malaby (tenor) and Christopher Hoffman (cello) on Nino/Brujo (New Business LP 79).

The compositions are good platforms for the blowing, the trio is in great form and everything happens as if the stars were aligned properly. Tony is of course a tenor man of consequence, someone who you know will put in a good showing for himself, and he does. Cellist Christopher Hoffman takes an active role and brings bowing, double stops and pizzicato work that ordinarily a contrabass would handle, yet of course you get that upper range here. Juan Pablo Carletti does some compositional doubling with Tony on Glockenspiel and plays some excellent group-oriented drums.

It is the kind of free but themed improvisation that grows on you. This is new music firmly in the jazz camp, free and carefully wrought. Between the three there are always interest event-inventions and after a few hearings you start to appreciate what sort of inspiration is happening.

Contemporary free jazz has good health today. It isn't gasping for air. There is a marvelous flourishing of the music all over the planet. This is a good example of its primacy! 300 copies seems too little, but it's all the more reason to grab one. The artistic merit is not at all in proportion to the maximum sales figures. No Business knows its business though, so get one of these while you can!

A very good date! Recommended.