Kinan Azmeh and CityBand: Live In Berlin (Deyer Gaido 11796)
The dialectical relation between unspeakable horror and subsequent inspiring human creativity continues to boggle the mind. In his short sleeve note the Syrian-born, Brooklyn-based clarinetist Azmeh (born 1976) tells us that most of the original and consistently arresting music here was composed and performed “during many difficult years for Syrians in the aftermath of the revolution of 2011, music that is inspired by anger, sadness, frustration, and above all, the need to hold on to one’s optimism and creative tools in the face of atrocities”.
Recorded with great sound in concert at Berlin’s Pierre Boulez Hall in June 2021, this 14th release from Azmeh features the CityBand group which he set up in New York in 2006 with Kyle Sanna (g, elg), Josh Myers (b) and John Hadfield (d). Years of diverse activity have bred a rare collective empathy and understanding: chiefly modal in nature, with a spacious yet deliciously detailed Middle Eastern ambience throughout, the playing here is a model of pinpoint yet flowing group interaction, sustained and compelling melodic utterance and finely clipped, rolling and floating rhythmic motifs and moods.
Sample The Queen Commanded for the translucent and transcendent beauty of Sanna’s sometimes oud-touched guitar and Azmeh’s clarinet sound in ultra meditative mode, or The Translator and Wedding for the electrifying vivacity and intricate intelligence of this exceptional quartet in full frame mode. Here is music of both irresistible motoric invitation and heartening spiritual compassion. Bravo!
Natural Artefacts: Signs And Symbols (LJ Records LJCD 5263)
In my July 2019 review of Swedish pianist and electronics manipulator Susanna Lindeborg’s The Crux – recorded with her Natural Artefacts ensemble of Anton Jonsson (pc), Merje Kagu (elg) and Per Anders Nilsson (programming, live electronics) – I suggested that Lindeborg and her various cohorts have been making some of the most stimulating and refreshing music of recent years.
The good news continues here with a further weird, wild and wonderful blend of structure and freedom, of shape-shifting, time-bending and genre-leaping acoustic and electronic elements, of the interplay of ice and fire, brain and heart. The above-named personnel is retained (with Nilsson now using Octatrack, Nord A1 and Taiga modular, whatever they may be) and augmented by Swedish alto and sopranino improviser Thomas Jäderlund, known for his work with drummer Bengt “Beche” Berger.
Sample the plangent resonance of Jäderlund’s sparely cast lines on the reflective and Garbarek-like Melodic Hope, also distinguished by a fine piano outing from composer Lindeborg. And check out the lyricism of her intensely wrought, urgent yet spacious and flowing pianism in Nilsson’s potent and concluding All That Is The Case, which precipitates some searing lines from Jäderlund.
I heard some distant traces of Weather Report on The Crux, as I do here in Simple Message. But, as on The Crux, the point to underline – as with the Garbarek allusion above – is how Natural Artefacts bring something fresh and transmutative to any such matter of possible precedent.
The “big” pieces here are offset by an intriguing range of short “interludes” from all participants. It makes for a fascinating and essential release, as ultra intelligent as it is soaked in sensuous chromatic surprise: as I said of The Crux, the more you listen – and listen hard – to this music, the more it gives you.
Billy Hart Quartet: Just (ECM 754 5295)
What a life and career drummer and music mentor and teacher Billy Hart (born 1940) has had – and continues to have. There was an informative appreciation by Hank Shteamer titled “Billy Hart Has One Foot in Jazz’s Past and the Other in Its Future” in The New York Times in February last. Here is many a fascinating detail about the man whose discographical credits run to over 600 items – including work with Miles Davis, Stan Getz, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter and McCoy Tyner – and who remembers seeing the classic 1960s Coltrane quartet “at least fifty times”. Oceans Of Time – a memoir written with pianist Ethan Iverson – is due out this summer and should prove a fascinating read.
Iverson has been a member of the Billy Hart quartet for two decades, together with Mark Turner (ts) and Ben Street (b). This is the ensemble’s latest release on ECM, following the well-received albums One Is The Other and All Our Reasons. There are 10 pieces in the 57-minute programme: Iverson has four, Hart and Turner three each.
The music – which includes a tempered take on Layla Joy, first heard on the avant-oriented Enchance, Hart’s 1977 debut as leader – is as literate as it is elegant, with welcome modern-day walking bass and blues touches on South Hampton and some tear-inducing ruminations on the mellow and sombre opener that is Showdown. But I would have welcomed longer drum introductions on Layla Joy and Naaj, plus a touch more of the fire which marks Bo Brussels, where Turner moves though the registers to enlivening effect and Hart kicks up a wondrous, rolling and stomping storm.
Max Roach: Deeds, Not Words (WaxTime 772365)
Given the title of this 1958 Roach outing with Booker Little (t), George Coleman (ts), Ray Draper (tu) and Art Davis (b) one might have expected a clear foretaste of the fierce political energy and ambition which marks Roach’s 1960 masterpiece We Insist! Freedom Now Suite. But the most notable thing about Bill Lee’s richly voiced title-track piece is the mellow frame it sets for a typically fluent and appealing solo from Little – which evinces just why it was that Kenny Wheeler would come to find this tragically short-lived musician (1938-1961) such a fructifying influence.
Roach had tried a piano-less format before, on the 1957 The Max Roach 4 Plays Charlie Parker (with Hank Mobley and Kenny Dorham on board). Here, with Little and Coleman in fine fettle, he chose to bring in an extra voice in the shape of a young Ray Draper on tuba. In his sleeve note, producer Orrin Keepnews praises Draper’s ability to shift from rhythm section drive and weight to solo invention, singling out Draper’s own composition Filidé. But in recommending this album I’d rather draw attention to Roach’s near four minutes of multivalent and coruscating creativity on the solo piece Conversation. A strong programme overall is enhanced by two bonus tracks, Love For Sale and Minor Mode Blues, taken from a Los Angeles KABC TV show in October 1958, and on both of which George Coleman shines.
Charles Mingus, Eric Dolphy, Roy Eldridge: Mysterious Blues (WaxTime 772368)
What an attractive but strange release this is from WaxTime.
The origins of this music, recorded in New York in November 1960, are to be found in the protest which various musicians (who called themselves the Jazz Artists Guild) made about the commercialism which they felt had infected the programme of the Newport Jazz Festival earlier that year. They organised various events during the festival: writer and producer Nat Hentoff’s original sleeve note, which I know from the 1978 Barnaby Candid Jazz release Newport Rebels: Jazz Artists Guild, is reprinted here, giving contextual background to music delivered variously by Mingus (b), Dolphy (as) and Eldridge (t), Jimmy Knepper (tb), Tommy Flanagan (p) and Jo Jones (d).
It’s good to hear the two classic medium-up/perky strolling blues, R & R and the title track (the former previously presented on Hentoff’s companion volume The Jazz Life, also issued by Barnaby Candid in 1978). But in neither of these issues is there any mention of the recording of Body And Soul which is found here in not just one, but two lengthy takes featuring Mingus, Dolphy, Eldridge, Knepper, Flanagan and Jones. There are also two takes of Wrap Your Troubles In Dreams, presented in only one take on the aforementioned Newport Rebels, with Knepper and Flanagan absent and Jones conjuring fabulous, flimmering and dancing solos.
My question to WaxTime is: why offer the two takes of Body And Soul (with no contextual information about the recording) and Wrap Your Troubles In Dreams (taking up, all in all, over half of the LP’s 50-plus minutes) and – given the title of this release – neglect to include one of Eldridge’s most memorable blues performances – with a splendid solo from Flanagan – on the near 10-minute, mellow and searching Me And You from the November 1960 session?Presented on the 1978 Newport Rebels album, its paint-stripping power and soulfulness elicited final and unimprovable approbation from Mingus: “Yeah, baby!” Too bad it couldn’t be relished here.
