Monthly Archives: August 2009

Disc of the day: 30-08-09

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Stuart McCallum: Stuart McCallum (SAM Productions)
This is the second disc from the guitarist whose is best known for his work with the Cinematic Orchestra, and again shows him in some ways going against the flow of the new British jazz. Where many are espousing leanness and a rather spikey, punky nature, McCallum goes for the sumptuous.

The band here features horn and string sections as well as rhythm, and the effects are of a jazz chamber orchestra at times.

The opener, ironically titled Last Song, starts quietly with piano but steadily builds in intensity over an increasing swirling beat. 7point4point1 features a seductive and insistent nuevo-funk groove, where the interest lies in the varying decorations added by McCallum on guitar and Myke Wilson on electronic drums. A track like March is sparser, but even here the sounds are expansive and lustrous.

The horn charts have a quiet grace throughout the album and Andy Schofield and Iain Dixon are strong soloists when they get a chance. Track three, Involuntary Mental Hospitalisation, has a great multi-layered mood to it, with didgeridoo sounds (or Dixon’s bass clarinet?) underpinning the horns and strings, and all kinds of attractive computer bloops and bleeps filling in the spaces.

I am  not sure that the rowdy track, Dirty Ari, works quite as well as the others, but it provides a contrast. It is  presumably written in honour of the drummer on the date, Ari Hoenig.

Disc of the day: 27-08-09

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The Modern Jazz Quartet: Bluesology (Warner Classics & Jazz)
This excellent double CD compilation put together by Florence Halfon at Warner Bros covers the chamber jazz group’s years on the Atlantic label between 1956 and 1988.

Those numbers say it all, really, a band that lasted and lasted and ploughed a singular furrow all that time, creating a very special kind of jazz and changing our world in the process. It might be oversimplifying things to suggest that before MJQ classical musicians were the only ones wearing DJs and playing to orderly audiences in suits and furs and pearls, sitting in formal seats in concert halls, whereas after MJQ jazz bands were doing it too… Well, certain kinds of jazz groups.

All the favourites are here – The Golden Striker, Vendome, Django, The Sheriff – and the full range of the band’s range is clear when we move from an orchestral reworking of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen – called here England’s Carol – to a statuesque reading of Ornette Coleman’s Lonely Woman. On disc two we get the live stuff and some of the collaborations, like A Fugue For Music Inn and Fun, both with clarinettist Jimmy Giuffre, and Night In Tunisia, with Sonny Rollins.

I missed something from the Porgy & Bess disc, and the one the band did with guitarist Laurindo Almeida, and then, of course my all-time favourite is the version of I Should Care from the European Concert album, recorded in Scandinavia in 1960.

But there is only so much you can fit on two discs when there are 32 years to choose from.

The last three tracks are taken from the Plastic Dreams sessions, but previously unreleased. Little must-haves for the completists, and of exceptional quality.

This might have been a band best known for its formality and precision, but it could swing like a wild thing and a goodly number of chances were taken – it’s just that they were taken so suavely!

Gig review: The Sub Ensemble

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The Sub Ensemble at the Rainbow (Pic: Garry Corbett)

Jazz Club, The Rainbow
26-08-09
Getting the right band together is difficult enough in itself; keeping them together down the years in an uncertain world needs great determination and forbearance. Bassist Chris Mapp is managing just fine with the band that grew out of Sugarbeats, but last night illustrated the ongoing challenge.

It was the last gig for the drummer who has been there from the start, Alan Gardiner. He is sliding south to Brighton, and will, I reckon, be sorely missed. His ability to play a rock solid groove and yet bring light and energy to it as well has always been one of the band’s strong points.

But it was also the first gig with the band for trumpeter Aaron Diaz, and here there is great cause for celebration. Slightly reticent at first (or rather slightly down in the mix due to his softer tone when compared with that of fellow trumpeter Mike Adlington), he quickly started to look and sound at home and  played some of the evening’s strongest solos. The two-trumpet line-up was one of the things I liked most about later incarnations of Sugarbeats, and the chrome brightness it gives to the horn section suits perfectly the shiny vibe of the music.

So, as one door closes another opens, then… and I am sure there are some hot drummers around just longing to lock into the tight rhythm team of Mapp, keyboardist Rob Norman and percussion man Mark Robertson.

And up front? Needless to say Adlington continues to do the business, in his cool, always assured manner, and Colin Mills provides the wild card on baritone. There was one tune last night which paired Mills’ and Mapp’s bass clef instruments that I thought was particularly effective, and points to how Mills might be best used in the future. There is a tendency for his excellent solos to get lost in the mix if they are treated as conventional horn improvs against full rhythm backing (especially if Norman is feeling enthusiastic, as he was last night).

The band played lots of familiar favourites – 22-21, For You, Dual-eyed Entity, Beautiful Spring – and they were all sounding as fine as I have heard them, but the real stand-out of the evening was the band’s reworking of the 4Hero piece Humans. Like the encore, a Dee Dee Bridgewater tune (“done in one of my favourite styles: fast latin!” as Mapp told us), it showed the originality the band can bring to other material (though it must be stressed, Humans, is a near fresh creation compared to the original).

It is this strong and individual band character, and the huge bonus of the tunes former Sub saxophonist Mike Fletcher has bequeathed to them, that ensures them a healthy future. The cast may change but the story continues.

There are more of Garry’s mood-capturing pictures here.

Disc of the day: 26-08-09

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Air: Air Song (Why Not/Candid WNCD 79403)
Way back in the last century and friend and I would try to make sure we didn’t duplicate our vinyl purchases so we could swap LPs and therefore listen to the widest possible range of jazz coming out then. And the 1970s were a pretty exciting time for jazz, we thought then, and, on reflection, would think so now too.

I remember borrowing his two albums by the trio Air – Air Time and Air Lore if memory serves – and being particularly reluctant to give them back. Henry Threadgill on saxophones, Fred Hopkins on bass and Steve McCall on drums just made the greatest music. It was wild and free and full of edge and exuberance, but it also had enough of the tradition in it. It was that balance between form and chaos that really appealed to me.

The opening tune here – called Untitled Song – has some regular swiftly walking bass, some almost formal, mock marching rhythms, and , with Threadgill singing out on tenor, a perfectly balanced triangle of musical nodes.

It is followed by the marvellously titled Great Body Of The Riddle Or Where Were The Dodge Boys When My Clay Started To Slide. Threadgill is on baritone now, and the warped logic of his compositions is as striking here as it has been ever since.

The disc is completed by Dance Of The Beast and the title track – two more equally fascinating tracks – none are less than 11 minutes. Air Song itself has a particularly affecting opening, with Threadgill’s earthy flute against Hopkins bowed bass and then vulnerable but strong in solo, before McCall brings the cymbals shimmering in. I suspect that contemporary classical composers might find this as fascinating as the the jazzers do. There is such great control, and use of space and silence from all three players

I always hear his music as I imagine I might hear the speech of an extra-terrestrial from a friendly planet – the language might be distantly foreign but the underlying emotional content is sympathetic and the message warm. Hopkins and McCall are much more rooted on earth and, again, it is the balance of strange and familiar that works.

The Why Not was the label of a Japanese businessman Masahiko Yuh, who persuaded some of the ’70s most explorative musicians to record for him. Candid’s Alan Bates acquired the label in the 1990s and this is one of four fine discs now available on CD. More of the others in due course.

In the meantime, get some Air into your collection and breath a sigh not only of relief but of pleasure, too.

Disc of the day: 25-08-09

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Roy Nathanson: Subway Moon (Enja/Yellowbird YEB77112)
The Jazz Passengers mixed jazz players with celebrity pop vocalists like Debbie Harry and Elvis Costello; since then, its co-founder has worked increasingly at mixing vocals in with instrumental jazz. Not just solo vocals but harmony voices, linking the street corner doowop and the jazz traditions. Now he adds spoken word poetry and goes beneath New York street level.

As its title suggests, this album is inspired by the subway – not soulless tunnels of noise and alienation but, in Nathanson’s words, “a roaring breathing place. A place to reflect, scheme, mourn, groove or dream under neon lights – pressed hard against your neighbours. A secular underground temple that encourages endless celebration and acknowledgement. An intensely private, public place”.

The stories – characters seen on the Q-train on Nathanson’s trips from Brooklyn to Manhattan where he teaches music and back again to Brooklyn and home – are rich, and the music is just as inspiring: the click clack of the tracks made in human beatbox fashion (Napoleon Maddox is the kitless drummer) overlaid by the leader’s dry alto saxophone (not exactly Martini dry, more gritty, more street than that – maybe Margarita dry), Curtis Fowlkes’s bearhug, funky trombone, the rich Balsamic slide of Sam Bardfeld’s violin, the deep pulse of Brad Jones’s bass. Subway sounds are sampled and so is a clip from Allen Ginsberg, over which Nathanson sets his own poetry.

It’s a remarkably eloquent and completely original sound picture which makes familiar territory feel fresh again. Timeless and so now; funky and subtle; street and arty all at once. A real treat.