David Haney: four albums on Cadence and New York Jazz Stories
Pianist David Haney’s put out a number of albums this time round, including appearances by musicians including Marty Ehrlich, Kirk Knuffke and, implausibly in Haney’s generally avant-garde milieu, funk-drum maestro Bernard Purdie.
His musical approach might be described as post-Cecil Taylor, although more helpful descriptions are available I’m sure. Exotic Materials comes in two parts with a sub-title of Green Light. The music throughout feels kind of enticingly claustrophobic and at the same time indicative of a private language being made public. The inter-instrument relationships are of a rarefied order, yet at times the music almost takes on the air of a soundtrack for an unusually conceived horror film.
The album Music Of Herbie Nichols, Live In Valparaíso, Chile features a Haney trio making music which as far as I can hear amounts to a kind of interface between Taylor and Nichols. Piano, bass and drums work in an abstract tongue, so to speak, and the results are pleasingly no small distance from prevailing contemporary jazz strands.
Scarla O’Horror: Semiconductor Taxidermy For The Masses (Not Applicable NOT075)
Music at the old/new technology interface comes in Scarla O’Horror’s Semiconductor Taxidermy For The Masses and it leaves an impression deep enough to get the better of wince-inducing names and titles. Reed player James Allsopp, trumpeter Alex Bonney and drummer Tim Giles all fall on the acoustic side of the electro-acoustic divide, with Giles doing some bridging with his use of electronics, while Isambard Khroustaliov’s dedication to the same serves the purpose of taking the music far outside the usual post-bop or dancefloor parameters, which makes it refreshing in itself.
Anna Marie: Interludes with Anna Marie / Marilyn Maye: Marilyn… The Most! (Fresh Sound Records FSRV 139)
JJ readers for whom the past is the only place where it’s at might well be already aware of the Fresh Sound label’s series The Best Voices That Time Forgot, a tag which in present-day marketing terms uncommonly doesn’t overstate a case. The two-on-one approach has this month brought us the pairing of Anna Marie’s Interludes With Anna Marie and Marilyn Maye’s Marilyn…The Most. The former was recorded in 1955 and the latter in 1961, and both embody an era now long since passed in which a singer could gain some kind of acclaim through the ability to interpret a lyric. Anna Marie (full name Anna Marie Genovese) is better served in terms of fidelity and she tackles staples of the Great American Songbook with passing vocal reference to the likes of Jeri Southern. Maye has a curious echo on her voice throughout her programme of songs by one Carl Bolte Jr., a writer with whom I was entirely unfamiliar prior to hearing this set.
