Human Being Human & Chris Cheek: Being
I’ve enjoyed previous music from this accomplished post-Evans Danish trio, where an overall quality of mellow yet questing lyricism can be complemented by welcome passages of freshly turned rhythmic potency: see my review of their Equals release on April Records.
Here the trio acquires extra resonance through the expressive albeit poetically measured contributions of New York-based saxophonist Chris Cheek. Born in 1968 in St. Louis, Missouri, Cheek’s credits include work with Paul Motian and Charlie Haden. From the late 1990s on he has built an impressive discography of his own, featuring musicians of the quality of Brad Mehldau, Ethan Iverson, Larry Grenadier and Jorge Rossy, on labels such as Fresh Sound, Blue Moon and Criss Criss Jazz.
Cheek has also been a mentor to that fine Danish saxophonist Cecilie Strange. Sample the appeal of his finely shaded tenor sound and phrasing on the meditative title track or enjoy his extensively developed soprano lines – as reflective as they are singing and “up” – on the the rolling and quietly kicking Human Impact. And don’ t miss the overall beauty of the rubato group interaction which bodies forth the concluding, deeply inner-directed Human Instinct, with its fine pizzicato opening from Bjørnskov, pensive and affecting soprano from Cheek and deliciously spaced contributions from Tjalve and Bulow.
I described Equals as an album as elegant and graceful as it is melodically and rhythmically vibrant in its own distinctive way. Exactly the same words apply to the lucidly conceived and superbly delivered programme that is the spiritually charged Being. Enjoy!
Discography
Human Rights; Being; Human Impact; Filia; Human Spirit; Human Nature; Human Instinct (44.21)
Cheek (ts, ss); Esben Tjalve (p); Torben Bjørnskov (b); Frederik Bulow (d). Copenhagen, April 2025.
April Records APR155CD
Trøen-Arnesen Quartet: New Paintings Of Jazz
An intriguing album title for the second release from a most pleasing Norwegian quartet: it follows their well-received Tread Lightly of 2020, also on Losen Records. Fortunately there is nothing programmatic or illustrative here – no attempt to demonstrate how jazz music might offer a sonic or metaphorical parallel to, say, the structural or improvisatory physical or optical factors which underpin the work of such jazz-loving 20th century painters as, e.g., Stuart Davis, Joan Mitchell or Alan Davie.
What is here is some of the most well-turned and melodically appealing, harmonically seasoned and rhythmically captivating music one could wish for. Above all, the music flows. The quality of Tread Lightly prompted some reviewers to essay favourable comparisons with Keith Jarrett’s mid-1970s Belonging Quartet with Jan Garbarek, Palle Danielsson and Jon Christensen and a similar response could well attend New Paintings of Jazz. Here I would just draw attention to the intrinsic quality of the compositions, all by Elisabeth Lid Trøen (ts, ss, f) and the seamless musicality with which they are rendered here.
As rhythmically alive and enticing (the lyrical Early Morning Song and the playful and part-funky A Sunday Hike) as she can be poetically charged and atmospheric (Travel Song, The River) and with a pleasing touch of Crescent-era Coltrane infusing the potent Modalen, the sonorous, strong yet subtle Trøen is a relatively new name to me. But I’ve long admired the playing of her co-leader (who wrote the majority of the pieces on Tread Lightly, while all here are by Trøen).
Born in Bergen in 1950, the classically trained Dag Arnesen (p) has long deserved to be better known than he is outside his native land, where for many years he has featured in the Bergen Big Band. His ability to blend folk roots with a modernist harmonic and rhythmic twist has drawn comparison with the work of Swedish legend Jan Johansson. But Arnesen is very much his own man: hear the 2007/8 Resonant Music volumes of his Norwegian Song with Terje Gewelt (b) and Pål Thowsen (d) or the 2015 CoCo & Co release, the delicious, elegant and swinging Grieg, Tveitt & I scored for jazz trio and string quartet. Sample on New Paintings his now spare, now richly developed work on Interlude For A.
Factor in the beautiful sound of bassist Ole Marius Sandberg (evident from the first notes of his ostinato figures on the opening Song) and the assured touch and drive of drummer Sigurd Steinkopf (hear him work out on Modalen) and you have what is simply superb, heart-warming music for the ages. Beautiful!
Discography
Early Morning Song; Modalen; Travel Song; A Sunday Hike; Interlude For A; Turbulence; The River; Crossing; Aftermath ( 62.12)
Elisabeth Lid Trøen (ts, ss, f); Dag Arnesen (p); Ole Marius Sandberg (b); Sigurd Steinkopf (d). Bergen, July 2024.
Losen Records LOS 307-2
Pippo Lionni, Sergio Corbini & Stefano Franceschini: Actionreaction 2
As I remarked in my review of his quartet album Ajuda, the British saxophonist and enterprising producer George Haslam has long been lauded as one of the most experienced and widely travelled musicians on what is loosely known as the free-music scene. He launched his estimable SLAM label in 1989 and has subsequently done a great deal to document and help develop free playing, particularly with regard to British musicians but also casting his net wide to feature international left-field improvisers such as we encounter here, in an album which offers a further and very different take on the idea of “new paintings of jazz”.
The New York-based painter, graphic artist and avant-gardist Pippo Lioni (born 1954) brings the various sounds of his painting practice to complement Italian free improvisers Sergio Corbini (p, syn, elec) and Stefano Franceschini (ss, bar, elec). CD1 opens with “small noises” and some brief uncredited vocals, the music’s development exhibiting that paused yet rumbling low-key “start-stop-start” factor in free improvisation which can either entrance or infuriate, depending on the listener’s ears (and patience).
I confess I was more bored than either entranced or infuriated by ihe proceedings. But turning to CD2, my interest was piqued as the Sienna-born bassist Silvia Bolognesi (ex-Butch Morris Orchestra) helped bring matters of tone and rhythmic pulse into welcome focus: the music took on a subtly cast narrative character, at times reminiscent of Swedish pianist Susanna Lindeborg’s excellent Natural Artefacts ensemble.
To my ears, the overall mood of the music is both much stronger and more poetically compelling here than on CD1, with plenty of welcome, differentiated rubato pulse and rhythmic impetus, dynamic variety and, overall, both impassioned and ultra-sensitive group interaction (sample the opening AR14 and AR15). Forget my reservations about CD1. On the strength of CD2, I would recommend this latest SLAM venture quite highly.
Discography
CD1: (1) AR29 Mov 1; AR29 Mov 2; AR29 Mov 3; AR30 Mov 1 (41.33)
CD2: (2) AR14; (1) AR15 Mov 3; Mov 4; Mov 5; Mov 6; AR18 Mov 1; Mov 3; AR23 ( )
(1) Lioni (spackle knife, paint roller); Corbini (p, syn, elecs); Franceschini (ss, bar, elecs) plus (2) Bolognesi (b). Gustavsberg, July 2024.
SLAM CD 2118
