The Penguin Jazz Guide (181 page)

If Marsalis feels that Coltrane’s legacy has been warped to inauthentic ends, there’s no sign of it in this moving re-creation of the composer’s most personal statement. Of all the current reworkings of Coltrane’s great spiritual statement, this one is the most unexpected and the grandest. If the work has a symphonic, continuous structure, divided into movements, the jazz equivalent of the New York Phil seems the ideal messenger. The sections are packed with extraordinary players, the production (Delfeayo Marsalis) is crisp and detailed and the familiar themes are given weight but allowed to fly upwards, particularly in the climactic final movement. There are dull bits, like the ‘Love Supreme’ motto itself, and Riley’s bridge into ‘Pursuance’ is sketchy. But it’s a worthy response to a masterwork and a strong indication of what Lincoln Center contributes to the music.

GERI ALLEN

Born 12 June 1957, Pontiac, Michigan

Piano

The Life Of A Song

Telarc CD 83598

Allen; Marcus Belgrave (flhn); Clifton Anderson (tb); Dwight Andrews (as); Dave Holland (b); Jack DeJohnette (d). January 2004.

Geri Allen said (2004):
‘There were enough powerful and charismatic women in jazz – Alice Coltrane, the great singers, Mary Lou Williams, maybe less well-known women like [pianist] Terry Pollard – that I don’t think there was ever any resistance. Women have made their mark on the tradition, maybe more than in other fields.’

It took some time for Allen to establish herself as a leader, and for a time she seemed to perform better on other people’s records than on her own. In a curious way, she came up the old-fashioned way but at a time when artists – and particularly female artists – were being pushed through the recording system prematurely and hastily, with more of an eye to presentation and possible press copy than to the music. She is a formidable technician, drawing elements from all over the modern piano tradition – Bud Powell, Monk, tinges of Cecil Taylor, less celebrated figures like Herbie Nichols and Mary Lou Williams – and from non-pianists like Eric Dolphy, whose spiky, restless ideas are also reflected in her writing.

Allen studied piano as a child and began playing in Detroit, where Marcus Belgrave was her teacher. She taught herself for a time in Washington DC, before moving to New York City and becoming involved in the M-Base collective. Her earliest works, including
The Printmakers
and some fine trio work with Charlie Haden and Paul Motian, are good but somewhat enigmatic, as if she were withholding something. In more recent years, after making something of a round of the labels, Allen has found a sympathetic berth at Telarc, where they value piano-players. This is essentially a trio date, with the horns reserved for a delicious closing version of Mal Waldron’s ‘Soul Eyes’. If Geri found sympathetic partners in Charlie Haden and Paul Motian in earlier years, the association with Holland and DeJohnette (heard to wonderful effect in their work with Betty Carter) has attained an organic wholeness and empathy that makes this one of the most effective piano trios around.

In her liner-note, Allen suggests the possibility – almost the reverse of what Eric Dolphy said – that when music is over it continues to reverberate outwards. By extension, are our attempts to make music the product of will or are we just caught up in a time-line of past music? These are heavyweight philosophical questions, but Allen, Holland and DeJohnette answer them by creating a graceful mixture of originals and standards which not only reference past performances but create a shimmering unity of sound that one can very readily imagine hovering in the ether long after the record is over. Allen’s readings of ‘Lush Life’ and of Bud Powell’s ‘Dance Of The Infidels’ are both historically rooted, but also aware of present-day harmonic imperatives. DeJohnette’s sudden change of metre halfway through the second chorus is typical of the way this trio manages to invest familiar, even hackneyed material with new emphases. Holland’s soloing is impeccable throughout, notably on ‘Lush Life’ and ‘Mount And Mountains’, where he phrases like a saxophonist, though without losing touch with a string bass idiom.

More conventional in attitude than some previous records, this is none the less an album that repays repeated listens.

ALAN BARNES

Born 23 July 1959, Altrincham, Cheshire, England

Clarinet, alto and baritone saxophones

Songs For Unsung Heroes

Woodville WVCD 106

Barnes; Bruce Adams (t, flhn); Mark Nightingale (tb); Stan Sulzmann (as, ts, f); Robert Fowler (ts, cl); Brian Dee (p); Simon Thorpe (g, b); Clark Tracey (d); Liz Fletcher (v). January 2004.

Alan Barnes says:
‘Alan Plater suggested writing these songs, I agreed and the emailed lyrics started arriving: songs about Lester Young, slobs, British A roads, Miles Davis fans and a defiant declaration of a chicken refusing to be eaten by Slim Gaillard! I’ve never asked Alan to change a lyric and he’s never asked me to change the music. Apart from that we get on very well.’

Barnes has been a stalwart saxophonist in all kinds of British jazz situations since the early ’80s, and he keeps coming up trumps in fans’ polls, which is a welcome indication that musical quality and popularity do go together. A phenomenal technician, he is all over his instruments, and as time has gone by has applied much of that virtuosity (for once the word is justified) to writing as well, with a fondness for suites: Sherlock Holmes and Marbella both figure in the subject box, and on this record a shared but highly personal pantheon/Room 101 of heroes and others.

Lyricist Alan Plater, who has forgotten more about jazz than most fans learn in a lifetime, but hides his affection under a sardonic mask, gets a co-credit here, and apologies from us for calling him Alan Parker in the last edition though they come too late: Alan passed away in the summer of 2010. The band, tight as a nut, is packed with the best of British talent, including regular oppo Bruce Adams and the big voiced Mark Nightingale. There’s even a number about Joe Harriott, which suggests again how awkwardly Barnes fits into the ‘mainstream’ bag that has all the longhair ‘progressives’ dismiss him as a lightweight. Woodville is the ‘home’ imprint, steadily taking over from Zephyr as the home of some of the best British jazz of the last two decades.

DAVE BRUBECK
^&

Born 6 December 1920, Concord, California

Piano

London Sharp, London Flat

Telarc 83625

Brubeck; Bobby Militello (as); Michael Moore (b); Randy Jones (d). January 2004.

Iola Brubeck said (2001):
‘The extraordinary thing is that you can see him getting stronger as he plays. Even when he’s tired or unwell, there is something about sitting down at the piano that lights the fires and stokes the boiler!’

The first reaction is admiring disbelief: that at nearly 84 Brubeck should turn in a composition as daring as the title-track – opposite runs in sharps and flats for each hand – and secondly that the band should take it on so confidently. Moore is right behind him, as he always is in such contexts, and Militello plays one of his best solos on a Brubeck disc. It’s almost like the ‘classic’ quartet reconvened, except that everyone sounds different and the music is unmistakably more modern. The remainder of the record isn’t quite up to that standard of inventiveness, but he digs into some fascinating material, old and new. ‘To Sit And Dream’ survives from a Langston Hughes-based commission; ‘Yes, We All Have Our Cross To Bear’ is co-written with his daughter-in-law for a sacred concert and ‘Steps To Peace’ was written
by the father of one of the 9/11 hijack victims, and both seem to belong in a different world to the opening cut. But there is also ‘Mr Fats’ and a revival of a song written while Brubeck was in uniform, ‘Ballad Of The Rhine’. At the same time, Dave recorded a fascinating musical memoir
Private Brubeck Remembers
, which brings his early years back to vivid life. A jazz institution, and part of its evolving history.

& See also
The Dave Brubeck Octet
(1946–1950; p. 106),
Time Out
(1959; p. 240)

SAMO ŠALOMON

Born 9 October 1978, Maribor, Slovenia

Guitar

Ornethology

Samo SSCD 03

Šalomon; Achille Succi (as, bcl); Salvatore Maiore (b); Zlatko Kaucic (d, perc). 2004.

Samo Šalomon says:
‘At this period I was virtually obsessed with Ornette Coleman; I really liked his openness and melodic approach to soloing, so I transcribed almost all of his solos with the legendary quartet! That changed my playing for ever! Of course, at this time I was also totally into Scofield as well: nice mix …’

Much admired by his friend and fellow guitarist John Scofield, Šalomon has enterprisingly released much of his music so far on his own imprint, and it has paid off with recent attention for more established imprints. The first albums pay respectful debt – ‘Blues For Sco’ and ‘For Susan And John’ – to an influential supporter, but more importantly they confirm a strong writing talent, which emerges ever more fully formed on subsequent releases.

Even if the home releases are hard to find,
Ornethology
is worth searching for. The brief, improvised pieces show a brilliant instinct for texture as well as strong lines and unusual chords. ‘Does Your Girlfriend Know You Play Free Jazz?’ is as wry as it sounds, but the major statements are ‘Something Ology’, which may be taking a sideswipe at efforts to pigeonhole this music as Adriatic Ornette, the powerful ‘Tribeca’ and ‘Humpty Dumpty’. The relative absence of blues cadences distinguishes the sound from ’80s Scofield, but there is no mistaking Šalomon’s modern jazz sensibility or his staying power.

MARK DRESSER

Born 26 September 1952, Los Angeles, California

Double bass

Unveil

Clean Feed CF043

Dresser (b solo). January 2003, February 2004.

Mark Dresser says:
‘In 2002 luthier Kent McLagan designed me a set of custom-made pick-ups embedded behind the fingerboard which facilitated ideas I have worked on since 1983 regarding multi-voiced solo potentials. With subdub performer, producer and composer Raz Mesinai in the basement of his mother’s apartment in Manhattan I recorded a series of edited improvisations. With the exception of the title-cut, there was no overdubbing.’

Often assumed to be a lifelong New Yorker, Dresser cut his musical teeth in his native LA, where he studied with the great Bertram Turetzky. He later worked with David Murray and Arthur Blythe, and was a member of the celebrated Anthony Braxton quartet of the mid-’80s.
His own discography is impressively substantial for such a busy player, and early records like
Force Green
and
Banquet
(his threnody for the victims of TWA 800) bespeak not just a fine compositional talent, but an artist interested in exploring new sonic possibilities.

Solo bass performance is a tough discipline and the unconverted might be resistant, but there are few more thoroughly musical records around than
Unveil.
Dresser’s use of the Giffus, a system of pick-ups suspended from the scroll of the bass, has evolved steadily over the years. He now employs a system developed for him by luthier and electronics expert Kent McLagan which affords much more control and consistency. In addition to this, he continues to experiment with notes played above rather than below the stop, creating a fascinating range of harmonics and bitones. Apart from the acoustic ‘Bacachaonne’ (loosely based on a Bach partita), everything here is electronically manipulated, but strictly in real time. The results are easier to enjoy than to describe, but the combination of pick-ups and subtly altered finger pressure creates a buzzing effect which gives these pieces a richness of sound that seems impossible from a single instrument and player.

STEVE HARRIS / ZAUM

Born 16 August 1948, Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, England; died 11 January 2008, Dorchester, Dorset, England; Zaum formed 2001

Drums / group

Above Our Heads The Sky Splits Splits Open

Slam CD258

Harris; Geoff Hearn (ss, ts); Karen Wimhurst (cl, bcl); Udo Dzierzanowski, Matthew Olczaki (g); Cathy Stevens (vla, violectra); Adrian Newton (live, found samples); Chrome Strings. March 2004.

Steve Harris said (2006):
‘I steer clear of the “jazz” label. My favourite-ever song is Bobby Darin singing “Beyond The Sea”, though I’d have mixed the drums up just a little bit in the bridge.’

After a background in pop and punk – he even auditioned for T Rex – Harris drummed in saxophonist Jan Kopinski’s Pinski Zoo, but left to work in music education, before forming Europe’s most exciting improvising ensemble. If the Spontaneous Music Ensemble, ISKRA 1903, AMM and the various aggregations round Derek Bailey’s Company established a basic discourse for British improvisation from the ’60s onward, Steve Harris’s Zaum took up the torch and moved that language on a step further. The ensemble takes its name from the Futurist notion of a new guttural language that might approximate the hard discontinuities of (post)modern life. The group’s music does not follow a hard-line ‘non-idiomatic’ course but explores new sonorities within and against a recognizable instrumental discourse. A Zaum performance is always in flux, always trading warmly ‘organic’ sounds against tonalities that are not so much dissonant or alien as uncanny, in the strict and original sense. It is a profoundly humane music that communicates at a very deep level.