Lorraine Feather, Flirting with Disaster

Lorraine Feather, accomplished singer and songwriter, is to me one of those who are, in Duke's phrase, "beyond category." That is not to say that there aren't categories one could and perhaps should apply to her music. And on the internet, I know I had better come up with categories if I want my articles to be read. So yes, this is contemporary jazz, songs that might be appreciated by anyone out there with a little sensitivity, as sung by a golden voice of great character and musicality.

I've appreciated everything I have been able to hear of hers (and you might type her name in the search box above if you wonder what I've said about the others). The new one, Flirting with Disaster (Jazzed Media 1072), continues her progression, and may in fact be a breakthrough album in terms of public attention, which she very much deserves.

There are 11 originals to be heard, written by Lorraine and various co-writers. They are all about love, relationships, the fullness of promise and the emptiness of loss, or both in the complexities of life. She is on a lyrical level into the sort of poetic, romantic yet realist situational story-song that resonates with (if you need precedent) that later period of Joni Mitchell when she was jazz-inflected yet still strongly personal. It's about being an adult with feelings in a world that might open to beauty or just as well collapse into a cold, empty absence.

Some teacher in college once hipped me to the idea that writers of an autobiographical sort sometimes create a difficult living zone in order to have something interesting to write about. That may be true but Lorraine is not about that, not about creating a self-story sensation so much as expressing a poetic universal, about capturing the resonating feelings centered around the beginning of relationships, their moments of fulfillment or perhaps the sad closing aftermaths. It's about the fragility of it all. And if you think that is interesting and want some excellent music themed in this way, this is for you.

Now, reflective songs like this are all-too-rare these days it seems to me, but more than that, Lorraine makes beauty out of it. The songs, her expressive and very unique vocal instrument, and the arrangements are all things that set her apart. Not to mention winter, which she gets beautifully insightful about on "Feels Like Snow" here. Some of us feel the winter more lately I suppose than others, but it is a season that has symbolic significance. And Lorraine gets that.

Well so what's so "beyond category" about it all? It's music that anyone, virtually anyone who looks for great lyrics, wonderful songs and beautiful singing will appreciate, I do think. Yesterday was Lorraine's birthday, as I understand it. She's the sort of artist whose birthday needs celebrating, to my mind. This is central contemporary music. You feel it might be your birthday when you hear her music. It's special in that sort of way. It's music that you wish long dead friends were still around for, because you wish you could play it for them. So you play it for yourself instead.

Just hear the album! Buy it if you want some great songs and singing in your life.

The Convergence Quartet, Owl Jacket

The Convergence Quartet is a significant gathering of notable instrumentalists who also compose/arrange, in a provocative limited-edition LP release of six numbers entitled Owl Jacket (NoBusiness Records NBLP84).

Specifically this is a cooperative venture between Taylor Ho Bynam on cornet, Harris Eisenstadt on drums, Alexander Hawkins on piano and Dominic Lash on bass.

Harris arranges two traditional Ghanaian songs, "Dogbe Na Wo Lo" and "Mamady Wo Murado Sa;" Dominic gives us "Jacket" and "Azalpho;" Taylor contributes "Coyote;" and Alexander comes up with "Owl."

The music is smartly free but also structured by the compositions-arrangements. All four give us original improvisational inventions that work together well in the four-way. When combined with unusual and idiomatically structured compositional ideas the whole set stands out.

Bynum's "Coyote" and Alexander's "Owl" are good examples. They both have a memorable post-modern/post-minimal circular melodic head structure that sets up what the ensemble improvises off of in excellent ways.

In the end the music stays with you. It shows off the ingenuity and creativity of the foursome while also letting your ears grab onto compositional guideposts that lead you through the journey.

A seminal release that gets better and better the more you listen. Only 300 copies have been pressed, so get this one now if you can.

Josef Woodard, Charles Lloyd, A Wild, Blatant Truth

Anyone who grew up when I did and was musically aware will know the name of Charles Lloyd, and no doubt his music as well. Many who who came to the planet later may also know and appreciate him, but there was a time when Lloyd the masterful tenor saxophonist and his quartet were on the very top of the world. His name was on the lips of the hippie-hipster cognoscenti, as the first jazz artist to capture wholeheartedly the allegiance of the young, flowering boomer audience. His recordings sold in the millions, he played the Fillmore East and West (before Miles did), he was a kind of guru to the young and their quest for an alternative life. This was in the later '60s. Then just as quickly he burned out, disappeared from the scene, and lived in self-imposed exile on the coast of California for years, a hermit-sage.

He never quite disappeared from sight but it wasn't really until the '80s that he seriously reconnected on the jazz scene and brought his music forward. From then on he remade himself as an artist, regained his light in the jazz firmament. His music evolved and flourished again. In many ways there he is still, a wise elder, now an octogenarian.

And now all those complex developments in his life are mapped out in a very first biography by Josef Woodard, Charles Lloyd, A Wild, Blatant Truth (Silman-James Press, 229 pp., paper, $18.95).

Josef is a talented jazz journalist who partly by virtue of his Santa Barbara home base got to know Charles rather well and in the course of many years interviewed him numerous times. The reviews were centered around promotional moments in Charles career and in part have a self-promotional slant, which reveals something of two constrasting Lloyds, the public figure and the recluse. So it is never a mere recounting. It is from this lengthy and invaluable documentation that Woodard has woven together the biography at hand. He fleshes out the narrative with additional connecting details, commentary and other interviews, so that there is a biographical continuity in place as the main story thread.

The end result is a narrative that primarily tells the tale of Lloyd's life in his own words. Since the original intent of the reviews were about in-the-moment concerns, projects, group tours and single appearances, new albums and such, and not primarily as an a-to-b recounting, there are a number of alternative flows to the book. For example we get a good deal of Lloyd's view of his inner growth on a spiritual, consciousness-raising level. And this is partly a key to Lloyd. As a musical-spiritual being he has traveled a long and at times difficult road. All that is wrapped up in his presentation of self-to-world, and his presentation of world-to-self, too.

Because each interview segment was a slice in a moment of Charles life, we get repetitions with variations of how Charles felt about parts of his life story. So there are times when the book reads as a series of reflections of Lloyd's view of himself over time. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is in that way not an entirely conventional narrative. Charles has a way of speaking that, as the author notes, goes forward in circles, with digressions on the past, reminiscences and spiritual thoughts, then finally a return to the present. And so as you proceed forward in the chronology you also look backward repeatedly, and in part see how the perspective changes somewhat as Lloyd goes through his life in time.

Charles is a complicated personality who, perhaps like many of us, has conflicting feelings and needs--the need to create great jazz in front of an attentive audience, to be gregarious and outgoing, but also the need to retreat from what he calls "the tollbooth," the business of it all and its distractions, the modern contemporary pursuit of mammon-like gain that is so much a part of our world, the potentially self-destructive lifestyle of gigging.

It is a tribute to Woodard's openness to the complex persona of Lloyd that he repeatedly got Charles to open up to him over the years. And so this is a story of the inner narrative of Lloyd in his quest for spirituality and musical growth as much as it is a story of learning to master a personal approach to the art of jazz, the associations, the groupings, the interactions with fellow musicians, record labels and audiences, his reception and reputation over a very long period of time.

This perhaps will never be the definitive Charles Lloyd biography because of how it is made up. It is nevertheless a kind of definitive look at how Charles has reacted to his life events and how his inner-self has been a critical, perhaps the critical factor in the directions his life has taken. So for all that it is a fascinating and absorbing read. By its very nature it is a critical source document for Lloyd's own vision of his life and in part how some of his fellow musical travelers have seen him.

For the painstakingly detailed blow-by-blow narrative of a definitive biography it is an excellent first start, but is not primarily that. And as such it gives the reader an excellent introduction to the development of his musical style over time, a guide to his recorded output, a chronology of his Memphis beginnings, his initial rise to prominence and the subsequent re-thinkings he underwent to get back to the music.

Most certainly after reading A Wild, Blatant Truth you will feel like you know Charles Lloyd and what kind of man he is and has been. You will no doubt appreciate his music more fully, too. For all that it is an important read. Highly recommended.

Deux Maisons, For Sale

Catching up on some worthy music today, namely the very focused avant quartet known as Deux Maisons and their album For Sale (Clean Feed 320). If you have been following my posts and the Euro-Free-New-Music scene in general you may well recognize some or all of the names: Luis Vicente on trumpet, Theo Ceccaldi on violin and viola, Valentin Ceccaldi on cello and Marco Franco on drums.

The album features six collective improvisations that have both jazz and avant concert elements, which is a growing amalgam among recent and edgy European improv ensembles.

What struck me on first listen and thereafter is the way the two Ceccaldi strings form a sort of mini-string-section in contrast to Vicente's trumpet and Franco's drums. They come across in many ways as a kind of threefold timbral sound interaction. But not of course in any old way, given the caliber of the artists and their clear directional thrust.

The music runs a sort of idiomatic gamut, with all four artists interacting rather exceptionally well, setting up spontaneous counterpoint in inventive ways, each showing a set of original approaches to the instruments they have mastered, and ultimately achieving a lucid four-voiced music that is a good deal more than four-in-one, more one-from-four, if that makes sense.

Franco makes excellent use of varied parts of his total kit to create nicely phrased washes of sound that set the scene for the bowed-plucked-muted-open interactions of the three melody instruments.

It is one of those sessions where everyone has a determined confidence each in the other to create significance and they go boldly where they may, with true success.

For Sale is something I might put on for someone who wanted to hear the state-of-the-art today in chamber free improv. It convinces and intrigues!

Highly recommended. One of the best examples of high-avant spontaneous music today!

Samuel Torres Group, Forced Displacement

Samuel Torres is a very talented conga master. He heads the Samuel Torres Group in a vibrant recent album of Latin jazz, Forced Displacement (Zoho 201507). It is an eight-member ensemble with an excellent trumpet-sax-trombone horn section, piano, bass, drums, and percussionist Jonathan Gomez along with of course Samuel presiding from the congas.

Ten tightly together Torres compositions comprise the program, which are substantial in themselves and serve to showcase Torres's multi-conga melodic-percussive mastery while also getting some wonderful Latin grooves going and setting the stage for some very good soloing from the band.

Torres's playing is not to me missed. It is exhilaratingly advanced and innovative. He is a melodic force in the compositional framework, with his multi-congas tuned to scales, and can flat out groove, too. And the band is very hip, very fresh, tight, and musically sound in the best ways.

Anyone who wants to be bowled over by a top-notch congalero will find this one unbeatable. But then it is some advanced and forward moving Latin jazz, too, with very involved arrangements and a wide spectrum of musical ideas and grooves.

Forced Displacement reaches for the sky and grabs it. Listen to this one, definitely!

Ravi & Anoushka Shankar, Live in Bagalore, Ravi Shankar's Farewell Indian Concert

The passing of India's most prominent musician Ravi Shankar in a way put an end to an important phase in Indian Classical music, one where the excellence of the tradition and the innovations of the present-day era were especially and artfully embodied in a single figure who achieved for the music a world awareness and appreciation as never before. And of course the music lost one of its very most brilliant sitarists and composers, a Master for the ages.

In his last years, through increasingly frail, he made excellent music that may not always have had the speed of execution of his prime period, yet his brilliance and inventive genius remained intact. And so it was on February 7th, 2012 that he, his illustrious daughter Anoushka and an excellent ensemble appeared in what turned out to be his farewell performance in India.

Fortunately for us the audio and video equipment were running so that we can now appreciate that two-and-a-half-hour concert in a state-of-the-art collection of two CDs and a DVD--on a set entitled Live in Bangalore (East Meets West EMWM1014).

As one has come to expect Maestro Shankar fields an excellent ensemble. His daughter Anoushka on second sitar, Tanmoy Bose on tabla, Pirashanna Thevarajah on mridangam, Ravichandra Kulur on flute, Sanjeev Shankar on shenai.

The DVD includes the opening portion of the concert, with Anoushka Shankar heading the ensemble in a wonderful mix of ragas and a Ravi Shankar composition originally meant for sitar and violin, here performed quite nicely by sitar and flute. Anoushka is an accomplished and fully flowered sitarist in her own right and she gives a great performance to set the tone for the evening. This part of the concert is on DVD only due to space considerations, but no matter.

In the second half Ravi joins the ensemble. He and all concerned show a loving joy in the creation of musical magic, which is most moving to see. Several ragas feature Ravi in inspired alap and gat sequences, with Anoushka joining in the composed sections and engaging in some jugalbandi interplay with Ravi. Flautist Kulur also plays an important role. Raga Tilak Shyam is especially moving, with a very inspired Shankar and truly lovely compositional elements.

The mrindigam-tabla solo duet is phenomenal. And the grand finale gives the entire ensemble a chance to shine brightly.

Since Anoushka is very much still with us we feel the loss of the Master acutely but we appreciate her artistry here all the more, as she will be with us for years to come to carry on and expand upon the tradition. Such is how it has been for a thousand years and a thousand years to come.

Anyone who loves Indian Classical and Ravi Shankar will find this a wonderful documentation of his last years as well as a very beautiful example of the classical art. Highly recommended!

Wayne Horvitz, Some Places are Forever Afternoon

Do not take Wayne Horvitz for granted. He is not fixed into the scene like a peg in a hole. His latest album, Some Places are Forever Afternoon (Songlines 1612-2), subtitled "11 Places for Richard Hugo," is a collection of interrelated compositions inspired by the places the poet dwelled in and the verses that came out of his place in that space.

The pieces are scored for a seven-instrument ensemble: Wayne on piano, Hammond B-3 and electronics, Ron Miles on cornet, Sara Schoenbeck, bassoon, Peggy Lee on cello, Tim Young, electric guitar, Keith Lowe, bass, and Eric Eagle on drums.

It is music redolent of the American West that Hugo immersed himself in. It is music that conveys a musical evocation, each piece taking inspiration from a line or two of Hugo's verse.

Beyond that it is contemporary composition of a modern jazz, post-jazz sort with space for improvisations but an emphasis on the seven-part writing and how it can evoke something of Hugo. But then it is more besides. You find yourself in boogie blues rock territory for a few minutes, for example. You find yourself in various musical settings, some more compositionally formal than others, but all brilliantly conceived and realized.

Each instrumental artist injects something of self into the parts, whether improvisatorily or in the interpretive reading, the realization of pulse and texture. Like Duke's music, this suite thrives in the way the parts work for the ensemble artists. Ron Miles takes some beautiful solos, too!

It is music that has that special something that captures moments in the contemporary air, things that very much sound like they grab at the possibilities of the contemporary as it lays out potentially, but then ultimately come at you in a distinctively Horvitzian manner.

It is not quite "Americana," in that it is very personal and less "universal," but it surely captures some local elements and transforms them. You find for example, that you have entered a sort of country and gospel realm, but not so much literally as transformatively. And so it goes throughout.

The music has such image-ination that it speaks far more elegantly than I can with words this morning. Suffice to say that the music gives you, the listener, a wealth of connotations and a hearty population of meaningful ghosts of thought-images, all to do with I guess the feeling of "being there" that Richard Hugo so vividly conveyed in verse.

It is a milestone compositional offering by Wayne Horvitz. It gives us a depth of field that reminds us that Horvitz has a multi-dimensional musical imagination. It is music to hear right now. A fantastic achievement, really. Viva, Wayne!