Russ Lossing: Proximity Alert (Blaser Music Songs 003CD)
Pianist Lossing is on this basis working in areas outside the conventional finger-busting that the line-up of piano, bass and drums might be historically associated with. In this third decade of the 21st century, and in view of approximately a century of jazz on record, this is no bad thing.
Lossing’s vision is dependent on empathetic accompaniment, and in bass player Mark Helias and drummer Eric McPherson he has partners who are right on the money in terms of realising the music. This is nowhere more apparent than on Boo-Da, where the compositional demands are met with aplomb and there’s not a moment of doubt when it comes to offbeat musical coherence. The surface activity, periodically manifested in the contributions of all three musicians, belies the underlying rigour, which keeps the music from descending into incoherence.
Snowy Night, a title not without visual implications, bridges the divide between the heard and the seen with a sense of uncontrived mystery. In some hands this might descend into something similar to the ECM label’s by now very well-established take on atmosphere, but in this case the music takes account of titular implications and doesn’t lay back to the point where either atmosphere or some facile notion of beauty become ends in themselves.
The trio improvisation Silent Alarm is the last track and such is its placing that listeners are afforded a tantalising glimpse of what this trio’s capable of when happenings in passing moments are left to chance. The music is kind of unassuming in the sense that there’s no overt attempt at grabbing listeners’ attention, and is all the more compelling because of this.
O.N.E.: Well, Actually… (April Records APR153CD)
Apparently this is this quartet’s third album. This goes to show I should be less ignorant of their work, but more importantly, given the well-integrated quality of the group, that familiarity doesn’t and shouldn’t lead to detrimental predictability.
The ruffled atmospherics of Fount exemplify how the quartet is comfortable with a variation on free play that is likely to alienate the culturally conservative. Volume, dynamics and the deft use of silence and near silence as musical tools in themselves highlight the four musicians’ mutual understanding.
The restraint evident on Kaldur Vindur shows that these qualities need not result in music so well-mannered that it merges too quickly with the background. Drummer Patrycja Wybranczyk’s busy punctuations play no small role in keeping that risk at bay, while the slightly keening yet far from tart alto-sax lines of Monica Muc top and tail proceedings without overstating the case.
The more conventional yet angular title track appreciates that virtuosity is not an end in itself. It’s also sufficient to provoke thoughts of this group recording an album of Herbie Nichols compositions. Admittedly, they wouldn’t be the first to do so, but that major yet under-the-radar figure’s music deserves all the positive exposure it can get.
Mark Turner: Reflections On: The Autobiography Of An Ex-Colored Man (Giant Step Arts GSA 20)
As of October 2025 Mark Turner has staked out a personal vocabulary on the tenor sax – no mean feat given the instrument’s prominence in jazz history. Here, as well as playing saxophone, he narrates extracts from the autobiography of the title. Turner’s reading of that work is a kind of culmination of his autodidactic review of African American history. Sadly, there isn’t enough room here for a discussion of that, so if this review provokes readers into further reading of their own it’s served a greater than usual purpose.
The line-up of tenor sax, trumpet, piano (in this case keyboards), bass and drums is a staple of the bop to post-bop continuum but Movement 7: Mother…Sister…Lover is some distance from the conventional assertions of hard bop, with Turner unassumingly displaying his mastery of the higher registers in a manner which is lyrical but not to the point where improvisational bite loses all significance.
A fair measure of Turner’s musical character comes to the fore on Movement 3: Pulmonary Edema, where the group coalesces around melodic fragments the spacing of which allows the music to ebb and flow in a manner entirely unforced. Movement 9: Identity Politics documents Turner and trumpeter Jason Palmer engaged on a lyrical flight in which understatement is the order of the day before the quintet comes together to present a musical whole marked by common purpose and innate understanding.
