Walter Smith III: Twio Vol.2
The sleeve info includes the statement that this project was “Proudly Presented By The Blue Note Capitol Team.” Well crafted and enjoyable – if not especially arresting – as the music is, I can’t see much to be proud of in the way the personnel details are supplied.
We’re told that Jo Sanders (b) appears on tracks 1-3, 5 and 8. But we’re also told that Ron Carter plays bass on those same tracks. It may be my ears, but I can hear no doubled bass contributions. And to add further confusion, the leader’s own short sleevenote thanks Carter for sharing his special creativity “throughout the session”.
Oh well. Smith is a thoughtful, rhythmically and harmonically fluid player with a fine command of a rounded albeit slightly dry tone. I enjoyed his contributions to the exploratory In Common III he cut with (a.o.) Matthew Stevens (elg), Dave Holland (b) and Terri Lynne Carrington (d) and which I reviewed for JJ in 2022. Here things are plenty different. A literate, wide-ranging yet integrated modern-mainstream programme features material by Thelonious Monk, Carla Bley, Wayne Shorter, Kenny Dorham, Billy Strayhorn and Duke Ellington, and Ellis Marsalis.
There are also a couple of evergreens (My Ideal, I Should Care) and an original from Smith (the nicely up, swinging and appropriately linear Casual – Lee). The addition of Branford Marsalis on Casual – Lee and Swinging At The Haven raises the temperature a touch, but Smith’s sleeve statement to Marsalis that “It was an honor to be destroyed by you on record” sounds a tad lame in today’s world. And – to my ears, at least – we’re not talking, here, of anything likely to dim one’s memory of the initial impact of the exchanges of Rollins and Coltrane on the legendary Tenor Madness session of the mid-1950s.
Discography
(1) My Ideal, Circus; Light Blue; (2) Casual – Lee; (1) Lawns; I Should Care; Fall; Escapade; Isfahan; (2) Swinging At The Haven (46.56)
(1) Smith (ts); Jo Sanders (b); Kendrick Scott (d). New York, 14-15 January 2025.
(2) as (1) plus Branford Marsalis (ts); plus, elsewhere & variously, Ron Carter (b).
Blue Note 00602488137966
Lis Wessberg, featuring Veronika Rud: In The Wake Of Blue
A beautiful release from the lyrically inclined Danish trombonist and composer who a while ago abandoned the plunger mute and whose work I have enjoyed recently on record (Yellow Map and Twain Walking, both on April Records) and live (see my JJ review of Wessberg’s concert at the University of Southampton’s Turner Sims Hall in March 2024).
As I remarked in that review, the widely recorded Wessberg (born 1967, a graduate of Copenhagen’s Rhythmic Music Conservatory and once a member of the late Marilyn Mazur’s Shamania ensemble) has long retained a special affection for the work of Curtis Fuller on Coltrane’s classic Blue Train session of 1957. And she loves equally Miles Davis and Palle Mikkelborg, Lee Konitz, Wayne Shorter and Joe Henderson, Johnny Hodges and Ben Webster. At the same time, she is also open to contemporary developments in the worlds of, e.g., Massive Attack, Radiohead and Portishead.
Featuring her regular, superbly attuned trio of Steen Rasmussen (p, kyb), Lennart Ginman (b) and Jeppe Gram (d) as well as, in good part, the intimate and exquisitely pitched vocal artistry of Veronika Rud – plus, on The Promise and The Endless Thread, a judiciously employed string quartet – In The Wake Of Blue certainly has the capacity to set fingers clicking and toes tapping (hear the driving Longing). But this recital is chiefly remarkable for the reflective depths of its poised and poetic intensity: an intensity simultaneously etched and floating in nature and delivered in a most subtle range of rhythmic accent, tone and texture.
Sample the wondrous The Endless Thread and relish the way in which these ultra-sensitive musicians are able to swing and compel attention in a variety of slow tempi and space-conscious lines. No wonder fellow trombonist Nils Landgren contributed the laudatory sleeve-note, emphasising as he did the presence of “liquid sounds all over”. Like her compatriot, the saxophonist Cecilie Strange, Wessberg offers nothing less than pure Nordic longing – and healing – for the soul.
Discography
(1) The Promise; (2) Longing; In The Wake Of Blue; (3) Flux; Vapor; (1) When Birds Flock; The Endless Thread; (4) The Quiet Edge; Shadows In Bloom (40.50)
(1) Wessberg (ts); Rud (v); Steen Rasmussen (p, kyb); Lennart Ginman (b); Jeppe Gram (d); Andrea Gyarfas Brahe, Karen Johanne Pedersen (vn); Naja Helmer (vla); Live Johansson (clo). (2) as (1) but string quartet out.(3) Rud out. (4) Rud & String quartet out.
People In Orbit: Viewpoint
I hadn’t come across this Malmö-based electro-acoustic Swedish quintet until now. Viewpoint follows their well-received debut Close/Away, released on Prophone (Naxos) in 2023. And as noted Orkesterjournalen contributor Patrik Sandberg tells us in his sleeve note, a tour of Iceland and the Faroe Islands is in the offing. So things are looking good for a band of accomplished young players, big on modal vamp-sprung energy, now thickly textured, now limpid, lyrically turned voicings and a rhythmically differentiated approach to matters of shape-shifting form which serves their mytho-poetic narrative ambitions well.
There is an engaging, albeit curious undercurrent here of a blend of the assertive energy and wildness of 1960s free jazz and the later mediated structures and dynamics of jazz-rock. That doesn’t mean that People In Orbit is some kind of revivalist enterprise, far from it. There’s a palpable aura of freshness and contemporary ambition to the mix, delivered with broad-shouldered group awareness and a fine-tuned interplay of acoustic and electronic elements. Occasionally I would have welcomed a touch more of that “Space Is The Place” quality dear to Sun Ra, but overall, Viewpoint is an impressive achievement which bodes well for the future of this potent outfit.
Discography
Synchronized Wholestuff; Prelude to Cycles; Cycle 1 Bombastic and Majestic Introduction; Cycle 1,5 Reaching. Searching. Longing; Cycle 2 The Clueless Marchers; Cycle 2,5 Running; Cycle 3 Everlasting Confusion; Cycle 4 Landing; Spinning Downwards (39.20)
Adam Sass (t); Edvin Ekman (ts, EFX); Niklas Bergstrom (p, mini-moog; EFX); Edwin Elmersson (b); Frank William Reis (d). Malmö, 9-10 May 2025.
April Records APR 157CD
