Fred Hersch, Solo

Surely one of the supreme litmus tests for an accomplished jazz pianists is in the unaccompanied solo realm. Not every great jazz pianist in the history of the music did much of it, Bud Powell for example, but these days many if not most of the best pianists give us some solo offerings.

Fred Hersch qualifies as one of the very best today and it is well for us that he does delve into the unaccompanied space where it is only the artist, the instrument and the creative, inventive abilities that hold sway. To celebrate his 60th year on earth he gives us an especially attractive and beautiful volume of such things, simply entitled Fred Hersch Solo (Palmetto 2180).

It was recorded live at a small wooden church for The Windham Chamber Music Festival in 2014. In fact it is his 10th solo album, I read. It sounds fabulous. It captures the master artist in a specially inspired mood and he himself believes it may well be his best.

His pianistic sense most certainly is untouchable. The piano sings. The lines and harmonic sensitivity are acute, alive.

Standards form the bulk of the musical subjects, "Caravan," "The Song is You," "In Walked Bud," Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides Now," all get very considered treatment, the sort of deep subtlety that only a piano "genius" can provide, and there is much that spells out his brilliant originality in the process.

There are a couple of originals too, one for Robert Schumann, one for Suzanne Farrell, and both speak to us eloquently.

There is a continuous flow of ideas, of striking ways to articulate the implications of the song vehicles.

Fred Hersch is a national treasure by now. He has emerged from a near-death health crisis to gain a new depth and strength. This solo recital must be heard. He is a titan!

Mayman-Pritsker Project, 2015 Annual Report

The Mayman-Pritsker Project is a collaborative effort between Gene Pritsker, an important contemporary multi-stylistic compositional force in the music of today, and Yaacov Mayman, a saxophonist of ability and a writer-arranger in his own right.

2015 Annual Report (Composers Concordance), gives us an album of the wild and wooly possibilities that are actualized when the borders between genres are ignored willfully and creatively. So Gene on guitar, melodica and as DJ joins forces with Yaacov's saxophone, with Yevgeny Lebedev on keyboards and Aleksandra (Mogilevich) Mayman on drums, plus guest Borislav Strulev on cello.

Gene's DJing gives us a wide arc of sampling possibilities and the band gives us some fine improvisational tenor sax while Gene plays some subtle guitar and the rock-hip-hop contemporary arrangements of all sorts of things carry the day.

Mayman and Pritsker give us some worthy compositional ideas but then the eccentric arrangements of Bach, Gershwin, Tizol, and Hancock open things up further. Tabla against the opening Prelude to "The Well-Tempered Clavier"? Why not!

It's all good fun and ingenious at that. There is an occasional smooth jazz gloss that maybe is a bit jarring but all the more unexpected.

It is music you might expect from Gene Pritsker, meaning that it is absolutely unexpected. It is a hoot!

Nick Fraser, Too Many Continents, with Tony Malaby, Kris Davis

Nick Fraser is an imaginative drummer on the avant jazz scene, out of Canada, one I am not well acquainted with. Until now, anyway, and his trio recording Too Many Continents (Clean Feed 336) with his talented cohorts Tony Malaby (tenor and soprano) and Kris Davis (piano).

There are three Fraser-penned compositions; the rest are collective collaborations. The free interplay of three bountifully creative musicians is what this set is about, and it is very nice to hear. All three have no shortage of inspired interactive ideas. They put them to excellent use in the service of the whole.

Kris Davis is a pianist I have come to appreciate very much over the last few years. She is within the scatter and splatter piano zone, individually so. She can let loose with torrential noting but then do sparser phrasings too, all with a keen ear for detail and musical coherence.

Tony Malaby, most everyone will know, has his own ever brimming wealth of ideas and timbral presences. He sounds particularly well here with plenty of testificatory declamations that at times ride atop Kris and Nick's dramatic effusions like a person effectively and artfully riding a wild horse. But then there are quieter moments too and Tony phrases and invents rather brilliantly at those times as well.

Nick shows himself a world-class freetime drummer on the set. The openness of a smaller ensemble that knows what it is all about gives Fraser the space to sound his way artfully, with an ear to the totality of sounds and gestures within which a great drummer can both find and lead the way.

Kris is a player who interacts especially well while making her own personal pianistic statements. Tony and Nick do the same within the material particularities of sounding their respective instruments.

It is an impressive and consistently exhilarating blaze of considered sound we get to experience on Too Many Continents. It says a wealth about the creative originality of the three, but it at the same time summons you, the listener, into the orbit of sound ideas and expressions.

Yes, really good going to be heard on this one. A red-hot ticket item to warm your innards like an avant cup of hot chocolate!

Joseph Daley, Warren Smith, Scott Robinson, The Tuba Trio Chronicles

In the realm of jazz in our lifetime, Joseph Daley has consistently shown that he is one of the very most distinguished and original tuba players in the music. Especially important to his career was his appearance as an integral part of Sam River's Tuba Trio, consisting of Rivers, Daley and drums (Syd Smart or Warren Smith), with Joseph's tuba acting as the bass instrument in inimitable and innovative ways.

Of course Mr. Daley did not come out of nowhere. He was already the complete tuba master. But that trio gave him a prominence and a leg up and he has continued to do great work to move the music forward in all the years intervening between then and now.

As if to recall those heady days and to mark how far he has gone since then we have another tuba trio with Joseph at the head, in a significant album called appropriately The Tuba Trio Chronicles (JoDa Locust Street Music 004). It is dedicated to Sam Rivers and pays tribute to his tremendous importance to the music.

Joining Joseph is drummer-percussionist Warren Smith, who of course was there for the flowering of the original Tuba Trio, along with Scott Robinson on reeds--tenor and bass sax, bass flute, contra alto clarinet, etc.

The idea was to recreate the open, spiritually uplifting freedom of the Rivers Trio days, without recourse to literal River compositions except "Beatrice," but instead improvising around some very worthy Joe Daley compositions and the freedoms inherent in this trio today.

It is a very cohesive and moving freedom they attain here, in every way parallel to the open yet directed Rivers ensemble. Joseph is a marvel as ever, with creative invention never at a shortage. Warren reminds us just how complete a drummer-percussionist he is, with a wide range of creative responses and initiations. Scott Robinson shows he is no stranger to Sam River's inspirational ways, as he channels that fire and spirit into his own way of playing free.

The album is essential listening in itself, not just a tribute but a living extension of the legacy of the master.

I strongly recommend this one to you. It is an event, a beauty of a set!

Dave Ballou, Solo Trumpet

How you react to a solo wind recording in the new jazz improvisational sweep is nearly unlimited. Some find it all annoying, some are automatically enthusiastic, and the rest are indifferent. The latter reaction is probably the most sensible. After all, it is all about the hearing. What happens? Dave Ballou gives us a full CD of improvisational soliloquies on Solo Trumpet (Clean Feed 349).

His background and abilities somewhat uniquely situate him as an unaccompanied artist of interest. He is a composer and a trumpet master who has been involved both in contemporary "classical" camps, performing new music by Gunther Schuller and Larry Austin, and he has been an important part of the jazz-spectrum via ensemble presences with Maria Schneider, Joe Lovano, Andrew Hill, Oliver Lake and the like. Now of course all that does not necessarily tell you that a solo trumpet outing would necessarily be interesting, or that any number of other possible backgrounds would not also make up an artist who could generate interest alone.

But in fact this is something to get and keep your attention. Ballou has a wide range of conventional and less-conventional techniques he puts into play for a ten-segment program that puts a series of coherent solo events into our listening space.

There are affective and structural zones that Dave evokes in his expressive playing. You can hear both jazz roots and the spectrum of contemporary sounds at play throughout the course of the program. Whether "straight horn" melodic spinning or speech-phrase trumpet soundings, growls or wide-ranging creative note-weaving that combine any number of these elements, Ballou comes through with a musicality that may take you several listens to appreciate, but then you get it.

No one is likely to set the world on fire with a set of unaccompanied trumpet outings. This does not do that, yet it satisfies in its singular directness, its unpretentious expressivity, its imaginative thrust.

It's a real addition to the solo brass jazz avant recitals to be had out there. It makes you want to hear him with his own group, too. So you may well want to check this one out.

Bob Gluck, Billy Hart, Eddie Henderson, Christopher Dean Sullivan, Infinite Spirit

Herbie Hancock's Mwandishi band was one of the most innovative and important jazz creations of the late-'60s early-'70s. But the outspoken proponents of Neo-Trad conservatism from the '80s on denigrated the reputation of all bands that used electricity and electronics. So the legacy of Mwandishi like other key period outfits was for a time eclipsed.

With the new millennium all that has come to be reconsidered. Bob Gluck's You'll Know When You Get There, the excellent recent book on the band, its history and its importance has done much to restore for good and all Mwandishi's reputation as one of the high achievements of the period.

Since Bob is a seminal pianist and electronician in his own right, it is fitting that he express his appreciation in directly musical terms. He has done just that on the album Infinite Spirit (FMR Records CD398-0915).

For the project Bob unites with two key Mwandishi members, drummer Jabali Billy Hart and trumpet master Mganga Eddie Henderson, rounding off the ensemble with the very adept acoustic bassist Christopher Dean Sullivan.

Wisely the band does not try to duplicate the original arrangements and stylistic parameters of classic Mwandishi. Even if that were possible what would be the point? Instead the four adapt some of Mwandishi's best compositions and some original material, and take the music wherever it will go, relying upon a present-day mode of being that is free yet centered on the idea of playing off of the thematic impetus of the numbers. And all that is in the spirit of what Mwandishi did back then anyway, only this present-day outing features fruitfully extended improvisations in the moment of now as the artists feel it.

We get new interpretations of Hancock's "Sleeping Giant" and "You'll Know When You Get There," plus Maupin's "Quasar" paired with Gluck's "Sideways," Maupin's "Water Torture," and a Sullivan composition, "Spirit Unleashed."

Bob prepared some electronic sound universes that enter into the music effectively and appropriately at times, which of course recognizes an important element of the original Mwandishi in the hands of Patrick Gleason. Here we get Bob Gluck's own intriguing parallels and it adds much to the musical ambiance throughout.

The beauty and originality of this musical offering rests especially upon the lyrically ruminating creative improvisations. Bob Gluck has his own approach to the music which echoes Hancock's own harmonic-melodic brilliance but then gives it a spin that is all Gluck. His piano playing is a high point throughout. Eddie Henderson sounds as accomplished as ever here, too. He is still the master these many years later and sparks the group with some of his best work.

Christopher Dean Sullivan makes a strong case for his essential presence in the ensemble with, yes, some ostinatos but also with an openly free interactive melodic sense that goes perfectly well with the wide-ranging ideas expressed by his bandmates.

Billy Hart, as most everyone knows, remains one of the outstanding drummers in the music today. His time is a thing of beauty and he uses cymbals and drums to create real MUSIC as always. He sounds here as ever inventive and subtle in his special driving ways.

What we have most happily on Infinite Spirit is not a typical tribute album, but a genuine refashioning of the Mwandishi legacy according to the open-ended vision of the four in the ever-expanding now of original personal expression and the improvisatory arts as it has evolved since the time of the classic band.

And it is most rewarding to hear this foursome come up with a music that is an exemplary contemporary outing yet nonetheless pays homage to another very impactful era without remaining held fast to its dictates.

This is a quartet that holds its own as an entity very much itself--and gives us one of the finest new jazz performances of last year. Thank you all for your continued excellence! Readers, do not miss Infinite Spirit.

Sylvaine Helary, Antonin Rayon, Hugues Mayot, Sylvain Lemetre, Printemps/Spring Roll

What is worth hearing remains so in time. I am late in covering the album at hand, which appeared last summer. It is no less interesting as I write this in the thick of winter.

It is the quartet of Sylvaine Helary (flutes, voice), Antonin Rayon (piano, synthesizer), Hughes Mayot (saxophones, clarinets) and Sylvain Lemetre (vibraphone, percussion) plus guests in the double CD offering Printemps/Spring Roll (Ayler 144-145).

This is new music composition and improvisation, straddling the avant jazz realm while also stressing the pre-improvised possibilities inherent in the ensemble. Each disk encapsulates an interrelated set of numbers that coheres as a whole. "Printemps" uses the spoken sound expressions of Julien Boudard, Xavier Papais and Aalam Wassef (an Egyptian blogger) along with the music of the quartet to give us an impression of the "Arab Summer," a movement filled with promise and hope for the participants. If you do not know French very well the words may remain as abstractions in the mix, but the music has such vitality and originality that it does not deter.

"Spring Roll" is an all-instrumental suite that continues the theme of freedom.

Both are filled with meaningful collective and individual soloing and compositional strengths. There is a continual directionality to all of it, a decisive stance on where the music should go. Sylvaine Henry apparently is responsible for the compositional elements, and they are impressively advanced and fluidly effective.

It is music that must be heard to appreciate. The quartet rises to the occasion with fully worked-out ensemble performances, both of the written and the improvised sections.

It may perhaps be a bit of a sleeper...until you give it a close listen. At that point you unexpectedly come to grips with a richly intricate and genuinely original jazz-new music intersection, one of the more important such releases of last year to my ears!

Get this one if you can and listen well. It's great and Ayler Records deserves your support!