Louis Stewart: Joyce Notes
It’s been said a few times now – Ireland’s greatest writer meets her greatest jazz musician. Guitarist Louis Stewart’s suite, based on Joyce’s Ulysses, was premiered at Cork Jazz Festival in 1982 by an Irish-American octet, with readings from Dublin-born actor Eamon Morrissey. Stewart, like Livia Records founder Gerald Davis, were Joyce enthusiasts, and 1982 was the centenary of the writer’s birth. The performance was recorded, and is finally released for the first time.
Though not known as a composer, Stewart produced a bold, adventurous work that’s fully the equal of Stan Tracey’s Under Milk Wood as an example of jazz meets modern literature. Most tracks begin with Morrissey reading from the novel, and he has complete mastery of comic Joyce. Night Town is a blues named after a sordid red-light district, and opens with Jim Doherty playing stride, with appropriate drumming by Rosengarden. Stephen is a Giant Steps contrafact in which protagonist Stephen Dedalus talks drunkenly about piano playing – echoed by Jim Doherty’s incoherent piano accompaniment. Molly features the famous interior monologue.
It’s an excellent line-up with a fine American rhythm team of bassist Steve LaSpina and drummer Bobby Rosengarden. LaSpina is best-known for his work with Marion McPartland, Jim Hall and Benny Carter. Bobby Rosengarden (1924-2007) is a major figure, who recorded with Ellington, the Miles Davis/Gil Evans orchestra (1961), and Benny Goodman’s band conducted by Igor Stravinsky (1965). He also worked on The Tonight Show and was a member of the World’s Greatest Jazz Band (1974–8). The Irish players, two at least (Stewart and flautist Brian Dunning), are among the finest on their instruments. Dunning (1951-2022) was best-known as a member of Celtic band Nightnoise. Tenor saxophonist Richie Buckley became a long-time Van Morrison band member. Like Messrs Morrissey, Doherty and LaSpina, he’s still with us.
Joyce Notes was performed a second time in Ireland in 1991, with a different line-up, and then in Norway with Norwegian musicians, resulting in an obscure 1993 CD – not sure I’d go for that one, given that the text was translated into Norwegian! Joyce Notes has received a fraction of the attention rightly given to Tracey’s Under Milk Wood, and I hope that this reissue goes some way in correcting that imbalance. The readings are classic Joyce, and this reissue should remind those who haven’t read Ulysses – myself sadly included – to give it another go.
Discography
Bronze By Gold; Gerty McDowell; Night Town; Stephen; W. B. Murphy; Molly (63.12)
Stewart (g); Eamon Morrissey (v); Jim Doherty (p); Brian Dunning (f); Richie Buckley (ts); Len McCarthy (as); Steve LaSpina (b); Bobby Rosengarden (d); Peter Ainscough (pc). Cork, 1982.
Livia Records LRCD2504
Jon Irabagon: Saturday’s Child
When I realised – pretty quickly, I must say – that this was a duo album by two bass saxophonists, I wasn’t overjoyed. This will be challenging, I thought. In fact it’s almost immediately enjoyable and fun. Two New York based master saxophonists, Jon Irabagon and Dan Oestreicher, produce a playful yet deeply felt musical dialogue. Irabagon – he’s Filipino-American – is well-known as one of the most adventurous contemporary jazz saxophonists. Oestreicher is a name less known to me, who works across jazz, experimental sound practice and contemporary composition.
Bass saxophone duos aren’t an everyday phenomenon. The BBC made a film about the instrument, wittily titled The Lowest Of The Low (1986). The instrument’s best-known exponents are two very different figures, Adrian Rollini and Anthony Braxton. When playing a bass line, Rollini used slap-tonguing to sound like a brass bass; his solos, in contrast, were mostly in the upper register, in a baritone range. After WWII, the bass saxophone was the main instrument of Harry Gold (1907-2005), leader of London-based trad band Pieces of Eight. In free jazz, Roscoe Mitchell and Joseph Jarman played it, as well as Braxton, who also played contrabass. In fact the lowest saxophone is the subcontrabass, which seems to have few takers.
Saturdays Child was recorded at the Hungry Brain, Chicago as part of the 2023 Instigation Festival. This album falls within the tradition of free jazz, but without feeling the need to push all boundaries of freedom, tonal and rhythmic. There are lots of melodies and grooves. The imagery of childhood play is a conceptual frame that draws on a vital component of the artistic impulse. I guess that following Rollini, the soloing is mostly in the baritone register. But I’m not over-familiar with the registers of the Lowest Of The Low. Perhaps the musicians will turn to something more challenging next time – a duo of contrabass and subcontrabass, perhaps? Highly recommended.
Discography
Mood Swing; Daycare Infantry; Medley: Molasses Candyland / Tag / Gripe; Waking Dreams; Sugar Rush (52.51)
Irabagon, Dan Oestreicher (bss). Chicago, September 2023.
Irabbagast Records 033
Olivier Le Goas & Ensemble Pulse: The Chaining Loops
There’s so much great music out there – some of it by musicians I’ve never heard of. This excellent album, by a group of French musicians, is an example. Ironically, Brexit has made harder what was always difficult – American jazz players always tour the UK more than Europeans do. But it looks like I should know Olivier Le Goas – his band Reciprocity with John Escreet and Chris Tordini played Pizza Express Soho in 2022.
Much French jazz seems to be either impressionism, or – more likely in my experience – a muscular reaction to it. This music is neither. All compositions and arrangements are by Le Goas, and they’re compelling, original and deeply engaging. Born in Senlis, where the first Capetian King of France was crowned in 987, Le Goas clearly has a sense of history, musical and otherwise. He got to know the musicians on the album over several decades. He met vibraphonist David Patrois in 1991, when they joined harmonica player Olivier Ker Ourio’s quartet – a very French-sounding band. And in 1998, he met cornetist and vocalist Médéric Collignon at Paris jam sessions. The ensemble is named Pulse, from “pulsar”, a neutron star that rotates rapidly on its axis.
The title track The Chaining Loops is a large-scale composition built on interlocking patterns and stretching melodic lines. (Pity about the fade ending.) Direction, originally composed for Le Goas’s group Reciprocity, gradually gains in density, complexity and unity. The guitar solo by Michael Felberbaum has that wonderful tone that John McLaughlin produced, thick and with strictly controlled feedback – he’s more restrained on the bluesy Fifteen Miles. My colleague Mick Wright tells me that McLaughlin’s sound varies, between his “very little overdrive, warm amp tone and new strings” sound on In a Silent Way, and the Mahavishnu’s ecstatic jazz-rock guitar overdrive. Felberbaum has a comparable range, and the effect is beautiful. Friction is a short suite formed by the aggregation of multiple themes.
The music is metrically complex and polyrhythmic, but with a strong sense of melody. The album reminds me somewhat of Neil Ardley’s Kaleidoscope of Rainbows, with its metrical complexity and colourful orchestration. As on Ardley’s classic, there are strong soloists. As well as Felberbaum, there’s Gueorgui Kornazov’s broadside trombone. Less to my taste is the wild scatting and vocalese of Médéric Collignon on Fifteen Miles and Light In The Sky, comparable to British vocalist Phil Minton but more jazzy. But that’s a matter of subjective taste – The Chaining Loops is a splendid achievement.
Discography
The Chaining Loops; Direction; Friction; Fifteen Miles; Light In The Sky (46.41)
Le Goas (d); Frédéric Borey (s); Médéric Collignon (c, v); Gueorgui Kornazov (tb); Michael Felberbaum (g); David Patrois (vib); Yoni Zelnik (b). Paris, 23-24 June 2024.
Challenge Records DMCHR 71479
