Veronika Harcsa, Anastasia Razvalyaeva, Bálint Bolcsó: Schubert Now! (BMC Records, BMC CD3298)
Jazz has often courted so-called “classical” music, initially perhaps to gain respectability by association but latterly in the hope that something different or revelatory will emerge. An album of 11 Schubert lieder is performed here by a trio whose classical music component is embodied in a composer (Bolcsó) and a harpist (Razvalyaeva). Veronika Harcsa is a jazz singer. But Bolcsó’s compositional input is that of a designer of electronica; so that, without listening to a note, one wonders if the original piano-voice format of the songs, in which the piano has a narrative role, is going to be enhanced or effaced.
Schubert Now! is best approached without prejudice, even against the risible notion that its exclamation mark denotes the bemused horror of a purist as much as the expectation of delight. But this is only a jazz record in the sense that Harcsa is a jazzer, here turning her considerable talents to singing Schubert in a setting that also isn’t jazz but in many places comes close to it when she adopts a 1930s German cabaret delivery. Bolcsó recognises that the emotional states of the songs are so suggestive and heavy-laden that a conventional voice-piano arrangement only does them one sort of justice.
Misha Mullov-Abbado: Effra (Ubuntu Music UBU 0185)
The classical connection in this album is at least twofold. The band’s leader, bassist Mullov-Abbado, is the son of the violinist Victoria Mullova and the conductor Claudio Abbado – as he’s probably weary of seeing mentioned – and the pianist, Liam Dunachie, was once a cathedral chorister and student of the composer Robin Holloway at Cambridge.
Effra is a word associated with Brixton, where Mullov-Abbado has lived for 10 years, and the album is a decade’s coming-together of a sextet that everywhere sounds more like an accomplished feat than a work in progress.
The eight charts demonstrate writing and playing of a high order. Mullov-Abbado’s approach to arranging, for this band at least, is one of inspired collectivity, of ensemble rigour, in which no one player can venture forth without the others in close and watchful attendance. The Effra Parade‘s opening do-as-you-please soon galvanises into that familiar unity of purpose that’s nevertheless no stranger to exuberance. All the charts are conceived as associative, all the solos performed in the context of sonic diversity.
On Red Earth, the shortest track at 2.47, that feeling of no one player taking more than a fair share of responsibility is bound up with an almost orchestral nostalgia. The measure and flow of Canção De Sobriedade‘s carnivalia is certainly al fresco, and there are other tracks where the allusion to cityscapes will mean much to those who inhabit them. James Davison (trumpet and flugelhorn), Matthew Herd (alto and tenor sax), Sam Rapley (tenor sax and bass clarinet), Liam Dunachie (piano) and Scott Chapman (drums) sound as though they do. And the leader certainly does.
Glen Manby, John Gibbon Trio: When Sunny Gets Blue (33Jazz 305)
Cardiff altoist Glen Manby was not far from home when this album was recorded at the famous Rockfield Studios near Monmouth in 2022. His accompanying musicians – pianist Guy Shotton, drummer John Gibbon and bassist Olly Blanchflower – also have connections nearby. The term “classical” attached to the previous two albums might be changed to “classic” for this one, a competent airing of standards and two Manby compositions, Robinson On Madison and The Road To Sougia.
Apart from an unexpectedly heavy-footed My Favourite Things, the quartet skips through these charts with a light and undemonstrative tread, following conventional patterns, and with none in the piano-bass-drums background ever popping up to outshine the leader. Manby plots a steady course through his solos, often with soulful pinched notes in the upper registers of an ample mellow-toned delivery. The variety is circumscribed and includes Shotton’s lovely intro to the title track and trading with Gibbon’s graceful percussion on I Hear A Rhapsody. Gibbon’s hand-drumming on How Sensitive is a nice surprise, and it’s also a chart to which Blanchflower supplies a thoughtful intro. Note also Shotton’s two-pronged attack in his solo on The Blue Walk.
Sue McCreeth: No Evil (33Jazz 22 Digital)
Singer McCreeth recorded this album about 11 years ago alongside trumpeter Steve Waterman, guitarist Jim Mullen and bassist Andrew Cleyndert. It would have been her first all-standards CD, but she set it aside to concentrate on other musical interests, including online study with Gary Burton and Joe Mulholland at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. She started releasing original music, which Jazz Journal covered, in 2017. She’s now re-releasing, on 33Jazz Records, most of her recorded back catalogue, some remixed and remastered.
No Evil is a conspectus of her style: smokily languid with emphatic qualities of leadership and pin-point intonation. She doesn’t grab every opportunity that’s going but defers equitably to her colleagues in solos of singing eloquence, such as Mullen’s on The Man I Love and Waterman’s muted one on Speak No Evil. Honeysuckle Rose has McCreeth’s scatting combined with Mullen’s octave-stopping in the sunset ride. Cleyndert is everywhere a huge but unobtrusive presence.
Clarity, clean lines and judicious choice of personnel – Waterman drops out on a couple of tracks – are the virtues here, particularly when McCreeth sets the tempo (Very Early, Come Rain Or Shine, The Man I Love and – accelerating the Billie Holiday classic version – God Bless The Child). Round Midnight is moonlit nocturnal.
Joe Baione: Vibe Check (joebaione.com)
The laid-back quality on vibraphonist Baione’s album contrasts nicely with the upright seriousness of the first one on this list. His sextet has a penchant for Latin/Afro-Caribbean rhythms on originals – a few with links to his late father – whose texture is leavened by the often ethereal-sounding vibes. The voicings of vibes and Toru Dodo’s piano are thoughtfully accomplished, most notably on the ballad Quiet Ways, where the drifting melody has them segueing dreamily; it dispenses with the trumpet of Duane Eubanks, which on other tracks adds bright open-horn colour, muted on the reggae track Come Close, sung by Baione’s daughter Alexis, who wrote the lyrics. Drummer Jerome Jennings and bassist Marco Panascia create a firm, sometimes eruptive, foundation. An album easy to take in, with Blue Note echoes of Horace Silver and company.
