The Penguin Jazz Guide (188 page)

Stillman was only 15 when he made
Cosmos
, which guaranteed his debut a certain level of attention. His light, agile tone was immediately sometimes likened to Lee Konitz’s and like the older man he was happy to dabble in free playing, as on the title-piece. Through no fault of his own, he got more attention for the date on his birth certificate than for the music, and it was some time before anyone recognized that here was a genuine writing talent and a musician who was in for the long haul rather than just a few column inches of ‘prodigy’ copy.

Inevitably, it took a little time to deliver a master statement.
Blind Date
featured a band to die for, elegant sound engineered by Jason Seizer and Stephan V. Wylick, and a batch of fine new compositions from Loren. It all adds up to a cracking contemporary jazz record. His alto sound has the kind of edge at the extremes of register that makes you wonder why he doesn’t double (notably) on ‘Shape Shifter’ and ‘Theme For A New Regime’, but at the same time glad that he sticks to his guns. Gress and Baron make a great partnership, tight and springy, and Versace keeps the ideas buoyant and alert. Hard to beat on the contemporary scene.

SAM NEWSOME

Born 28 April 1965, Salisbury, Maryland

Soprano saxophone

Monk Abstractions

Sam Newsome 6589

Newsome (ss solo). June 2006.

Sam Newsome says:
‘Making the record was a transforming experience. With no band to hide behind, I truly felt what it’s like to be exposed – the vulnerability of letting people hear the real me. When it was all over and done with, it wasn’t as bad as I had anticipated. It many ways, it made me even more fearless.’

Newsome settled on music after trying out for a time as a comedian, though frankly going from stand-up to solo saxophone performance is a little like jumping out of the frying pan into the fire. A scattering of early records – mostly on tenor – suggested a highly inventive player who was a little constrained by the exigencies of hard bop. He courted trouble by framing tributes to both Coltrane and Rollins on the debut, but ‘In The Vein Of Trane’, basically a simple F-minor vamp, manages to reflect on its subject without slavishly copying him, and ‘Pent-Up House’ settles for the brazen confidence rather than the delivery of the young Sonny. Actually, Newsome takes his time in his improvising, building solos methodically, savouring his best phrases and going for tonal extremes only when he sees their logical point.

Recent years have seen Newsome work in more interesting areas and with the courage to work out on his own, not just as an unaccompanied performer but without a commercial label to back him up.
Monk Abstractions
is a fascinating project: ten Monk themes, interspersed with some very short ‘abstractions’ of Newsome’s, which obviously attempt to extract some common essence from the work. The obvious – too obvious – comparison is Steve Lacy, but Newsome plays as if Steve’s meditations simply didn’t exist, and he doesn’t really ‘do’ the obvious, this man. Starting out with an improv and then ‘Boo Boo’s Birthday’ keeps it from seeming in any way predictable. He keeps the bluesy quality of the originals intact but tinkers with the form, which is an interesting alternative approach. Some quibbles with the sound, but mostly it’s good and certainly sustains attention.

MICHAEL BRECKER

Born 29 March 1949, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; died 13 January 2007, New York City

Tenor saxophone

Pilgrimage

Emarcy 1726531 SACD

Brecker; Herbie Hancock, Brad Mehldau (p); Pat Metheny (g); John Patitucci (b); Jack DeJohnette (d). August 2006.

Michael Brecker said (2001):
‘What would I like to be remembered for? … Doing a good job; playing great music; being part of it, I guess. Posterity and influence: those aren’t things that interest me much.’

Michael Brecker appeared on more than 500 record dates, but made few discs as solo leader. His steely brilliance and sense of structure inform almost every solo he played; whether it was matched with emotional resonance may depend on the listener. He exerted an influence on contemporary saxophone-players like no one since John Coltrane (who had influenced him) and Wayne Shorter, and while he made no innovations commensurate with theirs, his cumulative impact on contemporary jazz is immense.

Brecker and trumpet-playing older brother Randy made a name as the Brecker Brothers, playing a savvy jazz-fusion that allowed them to move almost at will into bop-based situations or rock and pop, whichever way the phone call went. It’s perhaps unfortunate that Michael didn’t make more records of his own, and he surely would have if illness hadn’t foreshortened his career, but he was the type of a working jazzman and his diary must have been a sight to see. To compound the perspective, the early GRP albums have been out of circulation for some time. However, the later Verve records are around, and they pretty much sum him up in high-quality surroundings.

Time Is Of The Essence
was a tag-team effort with three different quartets; Michael cruised along imperiously. He was outwardly less convincing on the ballad album
Nearness Of You
, but his discomfort with more expressive agenda was perhaps a self-fulfilling prophecy. There were other problems, common with these big-money dates and this was perhaps the most expensive band ever put together: it sounded like a supergroup idling in the departure lounge.

Pilgrimage
was posthumously released, which guaranteed it even better press. It may seem harsh to say it, but Brecker’s enormous reputation and influence are rarely suggested by his own records and his great talent often best expressed itself on other leaders’ work. That said, a line-up like this could hardly have produced a bad record and Brecker’s late-developing interest in composition yielded some fascinating lines here, notably the two long tracks, ‘Anagram’ (which may be too much like the old closed-off Michael) and the moving finale, ‘Pilgrimage’. Whether ill-health made a physical difference (‘When Can I Kiss You Again?’ is a direct reference to his chemotherapy, something his son apparently said) or whether he had simply found a new philosophical calm in the face of mortality, there is a calm authority here which avoids the parade ground playing of previous years. The pianists seem to treat him very respectfully, and as a memorial it’s pretty good. We suggested in our previous edition that our rating might have been less generous if Michael were still around. This was somewhat misread. So impressive, so meticulously crafted were his solos, and so many of them in circulation, that it was always easy to think there would be another one along any minute. Until 13 January 2007, that was the case. The ensuing silence has changed the value of what went before.

RAVISH MOMIN

Born 9 July 1973, Hyderabad, India

Percussion, voice

Miren (A Longing)

Clean Feed CF087

Momin; Sam Bardfeld (vn); Tanya Kalmanovitch (vla); Brandon Terzic (oud, effects). September & October 2006, March 2007.

Ravish Momin says:
‘While we all carry “miren” (sadness from lack of closure to past events) with us, this recording allowed me to come to terms with my own. We painstakingly recorded the entire album in a lovely studio, but scrapped most of it in favour of live cuts from a tour that immediately followed. They captured the raw emotional energy I’d been looking for. The second take of “Fiza”, with the added violist, is my favourite track, a step closer to my dream of adding a mixed “east/west” string section to the band sound.’

It was hard to keep track of the different ethnic traditions feeding into Momin’s first two Trio Tarana CDs. He spent his childhood in Bombay and Bahrain and has also studied Japanese and Afghan music. While some musicians might turn all this into an undifferentiated ‘world music’ mélange, Momin has clear lines of direction and a strong sense of how they should be communicated.

The debut CD,
Climbing The Banyan Tree
, teamed him with violinist Jason Kao Hwang and bassist/oudist Shamir Ezra Blumenkranz, who between them shaped a record that visited Chinese opera one moment and archaic Levantine ritual the next. Momin’s percussion is always melodic in nature, weaving a collage of musical philosophies. Few recent records have opened up such a strong sense of new rhythmic possibilities available to ‘jazz’ or post-jazz.

A second CD, released on the Polish Not Two label, consolidated the group’s language.
With a new personnel, though,
Miren
is both sensational and more obviously a jazz project. Bardfeld has more in common than Hwang with contemporary jazz violin-players like Mark Feldman, and Terzic maintains a steady drone behind the others, even when he isn’t featured. Kalmanovitch is only present on a second version of ‘Fiza’, which suggests the potential for all these pieces to be recast in larger, possibly even orchestral, forms. ‘Ragalaya’ is based on a traditional theme and finds Momin at his most physical, using hands and body to accentuate the linear progress of the piece as well as its visceral impact. ‘What Reward?’ is the most interesting hybrid, coming over like a cross between a gutbucket blues and some pan-Asian thing of complex provenance. ‘Fiza’ in both its forms is the best of the set, especially when Momin uses Paul Motian-influenced cymbals as a backdrop to the violin. Impressive, and lovely.

STEVE NOBLE

Born 16 March 1960, Streatley, Berkshire, England

Drums

Obliquity

Bo’Weavil 23CD

Noble; Alan Wilkinson (as, bs, v); John Edwards (b). October 2006.

Steve Noble says:
‘
Obliquity
was recorded in the rehearsal room I shared with Wilkinson – a dingy, damp room in an old hospital in Dalston, London. This was only the fourth time the trio had played together! An 11 a.m. start, a four-hour session; do or die! London calling – free jazz style, innit?’

Though consistently underrated, Noble has been a key figure on the British improvisation scene for more than two decades. He studied with Nigerian master drummer Elkan Ogunde and all his work has an alertness of context that suggests he considers music a social rather than a merely individualistic activity. He has worked in partnership with Alex Maguire, Derek Bailey and countless others, but typically, he’s not well-represented on record as a ‘leader’. Noble’s listed first on the superb
Obliquity
, though it obviously has to be considered the work of a collaborative trio. Wilkinson’s fiery, often humorous tack on improvisation suits Noble’s approach to perfection. The level of interplay between the two is extraordinary, often curiously reminiscent of Coltrane and Rashied Ali. In Edwards, there’s a third contemporary master in the group, a stunning technician who seems to play with bottomless enjoyment. Much of it is headlong and fierce, but Noble’s sense of time and its elasticity means that the music isn’t just a blow-heater but has pace, dynamics and considerable subtlety.

MYRA MELFORD

Born 5 January 1957, Evanston, Illinois

Piano

Big Picture

Cryptogramophone 134

Melford; Mark Dresser (b); Matt Wilson (d). 2006.

Myra Melford says:
‘Playing with Mark and Matt is always a great pleasure, whether performing for an audience or recording. There’s a sense of trust that the music can go anywhere and everyone will be right there enjoying the ride.’

Melford’s piano training, which began with boogie and blues and moved on to lessons with Art Lande and Don Pullen, is hardly orthodox, even for a latter-day avant-gardist. What is consistently delightful about her work is the ability to sound like a musician in touch with all the jazz traditions, even when she is spinning a free line, and to sound edgy and oblique even when she is playing within an orthodox form. Some of her comfort in developing an amalgam of vernacular and advanced procedures has to be put down to an apprenticeship in the groups of Leroy Jenkins and Henry Threadgill, both leaders who command a blurring of forms.

Melford moved to New York in the mid-’80s, but didn’t begin recording under her own name until almost a decade later. Her early discography has sadly disappeared into the deleted zone, but recognition came from hat ART, Arabesque and then Cryptogramophone and, together with recordings for other leaders, there has been pretty much an album a year since the mid-’90s, the titles often taken from Rumi’s mystical poetry, the music ever more confident.

Big Picture
comes from Melford’s Trio M and jumps straight into the ‘essential’ category. It might seem strange that a record in what has become the most conventional of all jazz instrumentations should seem such an imperative, but even allowing that this is very much a collaborative trio, she’s never played with such command and authority. ‘BrainFire And BugLight’ is a wild surreal thing, ‘For Bradford’ revisits Ornette Coleman on the least Ornettish of instruments, ‘Freekonomics’ suggests a world turned upside down, while ‘Secrets To Tell You’ is a small-scale emotional epic that must be stunning in live performance, with prominent roles for all three. A definitive modern jazz record.

GARY SMULYAN

Born 4 April 1956, Bethpage, New York

Baritone saxophone

More Treasures

Reservoir RSR 190

Smulyan; Mike LeDonne (p); Dennis Irwin (b); Steve Johns (d). November 2006.

Gary Smulyan says:
‘At the end of the day, this session felt less focused and cohesive than its precursor,
Hidden Treasures
, but there were moments of excellence. We completed the session in five hours and most tunes in one or two takes. It had the spontaneous feel of a blowing session from the 1950s and ’60s.’