Jim Doherty with Louis Stewart et al: Spondance (Livia Records LRCD2403)
Pianist-composer Jim Doherty’s octet album was recorded in 1986 with close friends Louis Stewart (guitar) and Bobby Shew (trumpet). The band features the finest Los Angeles musicians – Bob Sheppard: alto, Gordon Brisker: tenor, Randy Aldcroft: trombone, Tom Warrington: bass, and Billy Mintz: drums. The pianist is a veteran of the Irish jazz scene, who also worked as a session musician and composer/arranger for TV and theatre. His jazz suite features six compositions showing his mastery of blues, ballad and Latin idioms, and the charts are attractive and thoughtful.
The two outstanding tracks, for me, are El Sponzo, a gorgeous Latin composition, and Maybe It’s You –which sounds like a contrafact of a Parker theme, perhaps Confirmation (described by Ted Gioia as “wholly original”). It has beautifully pellucid solos by Shew and Stewart. Sergeant Bones is a Charlie Parker-like blues. Bertha D. Blooze, despite its title, is based on Rhythm changes.
I should declare an interest here, because I learned to play jazz – insofar as I can – through several Aebersold courses on which Bobby Shew and Dan Haerle were tutors. Bobby made a great remark that’s unrepeatable in a family publication; Dan told me “Sounds like you’re trying to invent jazz”, which I took as a compliment of sorts. Actually here’s that unprintable comment, let’s see if it really is unprintable: Bobby referred to something pointless as “Like tits on a table – no damn use.” (This was the early days of political correctness.)
Spondance was originally released on cassette in 1986 and CD in 1995. It’s reissued on the relaunched Livia Records. Ireland’s first jazz label was set up in 1977 by the late Gerald Davis to record Louis Stewart and his contemporaries. It was relaunched by Dermot Rogers in 2021, to whom gratitude is due. Spondance is reviewed very favourably on the site Bebop Spoken Here, which is only right – that’s its language, and the album is exactly how bebop should be spoken, whether in the 1980s or today.
Satoko Fujii: Altitude 1100 Meters (Libra Records)
Japanese pianist Satoko Fujii celebrated her 65th birthday last year by participating in suzumi, a Japanese tradition of escaping the summer heat by retreating to the hills. She made a trip to the Nagano mountains, where at 1100 meters, the air is thinner, crisper and, she observed, carried differently: “The air’s density, weight, and feeling change from morning to twilight up on the plateau”. This suite was the result.
Over a long and varied career, Fujii has led a wide range of ensembles including large orchestras, blending jazz, contemporary classical, rock and traditional music. She divides her activities between Japan and the United States, offering a distinctive brand of multi-cultural jazz and free improv. Her playing is often reminiscent of Cecil Taylor and Don Pullen. As with Pullen, the emphasis is mostly on texture and dynamics rather than melody. The pianist’s compositional talents match her improvisational ones. Fujii is an eclectic conceptualist and fertile creator of group situations.
Altitude 1100 Meters, on her own label Libra, features her new string ensemble GEN – Japanese for “string”. It shows Fujii’s polystylism. She doesn’t have an obvious signature style, but her approach is constant across different genres – notably in its energy and virtuosity. Her excellent ensemble is fully simpatico, if furiously so. It comprises Yuriko Mukoujima and Ayako Kato – violins; Atsuko Hatano – viola and electronics; Hiroshi Yoshino – bass; Akira Horikoshi – drums.
The suite shows a mastery of string sonorities. The opening Morning Haze uses string glissandos to evocative effect, creating a halting lyricism. Morning Sun is luminously plangent, while Early Afternoon offers a furious soundscape. Satoko Fujii has the reputation of a force of nature in the music, and her latest album fully justifies it.
Vijay Iyer & Wadada Leo Smith: Defiant Life (ECM Records 7530980)
Defiant Life is the second duo recording for ECM by Vijay Iyer (piano, Fender Rhodes) and Wadada Leo Smith (trumpet). It doesn’t pull its artistic punches. As Iyer comments, the album is a meditation on the human condition: “Our time together… is most often spent talking about the state of the world, studying histories of liberation.” The album comprises original compositions, some with political content. The trumpeter is a long-time ECM artist who first appeared on the label in 1979. In the last decade, Vijay Iyer has led several trio albums on ECM, and one with a sextet.
The mood is generally subdued and sombre. Smith’s haunting Floating River Requiem is dedicated to Congolese prime minister Patrice Lumumba, assassinated in 1961 – an anti-colonialist hero, and one of a long line of victims of imperialism, Belgian and otherwise, in the Congo. Iyer’s Kite is dedicated to Palestinian writer and poet Refaat Alareer, killed in 2023. Iyer generates high-pitched organ-like electronic sweeps and swells on the lugubrious Sumud. Elegy: The Pilgrimage is perhaps the most powerfully affecting track.
Wadada Leo Smith’s playing shows how the Miles Davis sound has become dominant in jazz – though Smith’s tone is perhaps fuller overall than the master’s. The duo’s collaboration on ECM has been criticised as cerebral – that stupid putdown of jazz that aspires to high art. Their work is cerebral in the best sense – thoughtful and reflective, intelligent and moving. Defiant Life is a beautiful and compelling release.
