Jean-Baptiste Rousseaux: Kaveriot Korridor
Thanks to the kindness of JJ colleague John White, I was recently made aware of a new development in the affairs of Angelo Mastronardi’s excellent GleAM label from Italy. The 2025 double-CD release More Than You Know, an extensive 1981 concert session in Genoa by tenor master Dexter Gordon, in the company of Kirk Lightsey (p), David Eubanks (b) and Eddie Gladden (d) began what Mastronardi calls a “new chapter” for GleAM. Recording quality and a range of historically informed sleeve-commentary on the long-positive reception given to American jazz in Italy spoke alike of the sort of top-quality commitment which GleAM has already brought to contemporary jazz.
It’s that latter commitment which is in pleasing evidence here. Born in Clermont-Ferrand in 2001, Jean-Baptiste Rousseaux graduated from the Vichy Conservatory in 2019 and quickly established himself as a coming trumpet name and composer. His fine, rounded sound – clean yet open to expressive modulation, and most thoughtfully projected– has a crisply rounded edge to it. Allied to his adroit diversity of both melodically and rhythmically striking phrase, this makes for some delicious music.
Rooted in a classic modernist jazz sensibility – the programme includes both Sonny Rollins’ Airegin and Gordon Jenkins’s Goodbye, the latter given a beautiful double-tracked solo reading by Rousseaux – the programme also evinces the sort of disciplined approach to matters of tensile structure and dynamics which suggest a literate sensitivity to the poetics of latter-day classical or “straight” music.
This is not to speak of any laboured Third Stream aesthetic: far from it. Thanks in good part to the spot-on contributions of the thoughtful Konrad Waldert (b), excellent in both pizzicato and arco mode – hear his deep and resonant sound on the patiently cast solo that is Intro – and the dynamically vibrant Gianbattista Di Genio (d) the music’s conceptual clarity is complemented by a leavening quality of both swinging and perky, at times almost Don Cherry-like organic interplay. Hear the potent title track and Là Où Les Toits Sont Bleus or Sileok and the latter stages of Lyre Kollocienne, where Di Genio stretches out.
There are welcome nods to Guillaume Apollinaire (Interlude – Clotide from the 1913 Alcools collection) and Enrico Rava (Duo Grave Alla Rava).The Canadian guitarist Alex Goodman features to unified effect on the latter, as he also does on Emmêlées Ancolies. All in all, this is a terrific debut release from a young man with much indeed at his fingertips. Check out Youtube for the several videos which GleAM Records has made available.
Discography
(1) Intro; (2) Airegin; Degab; Kaveriot Korridor; Interlude – Clotilde; Lyre Kollocienne; Sileok; Là Où Les Toits Sont Bleus; (3) Emmêlées Ancolies; Duo Grave Alla Rava; (4) Outro (Goodbye) (57.07)
(1) Konrad Waldert (b).
(2) as (1) plus Jaen-Baptiste Rousseaux (t); Gianbattista Di Genio (d).
(3) as (2) plus Alex Goodman (elg).
(4) Rousseaux (double-tracked solo).
Graz, 7 & 12 November 2024.
GleAM Records AM7043
Eivind Aarset 4tet: Strange Hands
Recorded with Jan Bang for ECM in 2011-12, Aarset’s aptly titled Dream Logic remains my favourite album from the post-Rypdal shaper of enfolded acoustic and amplified sound, electronic moods and interwoven textures. I’ve enjoyed a fair amount of his subsequent work, both live and on record, and applauded his contributions to collaborative sessions like the recent After The Wildfire (see my review).
So I was looking forward to hearing this, the latest release from Aarset’s regular quartet, especially as the press release advised that all participants are in “lean, restless form”. Having listened to it some 10 or so times, I’ve come to like the music. But it took a bit of a struggle.
This was primarily because of the factor which the press release addresses when it characterises the opening Snow Crash as featuring “an insistent backbeat, nudging steadily towards something closer to indie rock”. Such a quality also marks the subsequent Slumberjack and Space Bob. As the press release says of the latter, “A lopsided, almost cartoonishly stubborn riff hints at funk and blues while refusing to settle into either.”
If I were nearer to 18 than I am to 80 I might have immediately applauded all such. But having spent many a decade relishing hearing a good many of the great post-bop to contemporary jazz drummers live, the insistent backbeats and stubborn riffs of Strange Hands struck me initially as way too close to the banality of much stadium rock and pop.
Others, however, have felt the motor rhythms of Strange Hands to be life-enhancing and anthemic. So I listened again (and again) with what I remember as being my 18-year-old ears: the ears that thought there could be no better music than that of Cream (whom I first caught at Brighton Dome in winter 1966).
And, eventually, this strategy worked. What had previously irritated (if not infuriated) me began to appeal much more, especially as I sank further into the contrasting, subtly projected and poetically rewarding moments here. Sample especially the meditative Deep Green, where Mira Thiruchelvam’s spaciously cast pullankulal outing follows Sara Övinge’s violin figures to lovely effect. The eerie slo-mo title track and What Drifts Below will also amply repay repeated listening.
So, maybe the lesson here is, yes: cherish the unsurpassable magic that is the diversely energising and ever unfolding rhythmic pulse of jazz – but check in what just might be your jazz prejudices when you encounter music that might be jazz-flecked, but wants to fly on its own terms. And I’m happy to say that Strange Hands might just, in time, become my second favourite Aarset album.
Discography
(1) Snow Crash; Strange Hands; Slumberjack; (2) Deep Green; (1) Space Bob; (3) What Drifts Below (39.21)
(1) Aarset (elg, elec); Audun Erlien (elb); Erland Dahlen (d, pc); Wetle Holte (d, pc, p, elec.
(2) add Mira Thiruchelvam (pullankulal); Sara Övinge (vn).
(3) as (2) but Thiruchelvam out.
Amper Tone Studio, nd (c. 2025)
Jazzland Recordings 3779791
Judith Berkson: Thee They Thy
This is one tough listen – but who said music had to be easy on the ears? Born in 1977, the American Berkson is a mezzo-soprano vocalist, pianist, composer and improviser. Having studied voice with Lucy Shelton and theory and composition with Joe Maneri at the New England Conservatory, she received her MA in composition from Wesleyan University and a doctorate in performance and composition from California Institute of the Arts.
Her wide-ranging CV includes collaboration with the Kronos Quartet: her previous ECM release, the well-received solo Oylam from 2010, revealed an artist with jazz and free form, swing and silence, Schoenberg and Satie in her hands, moving with conviction from jazz standards to Schubert and liturgical music.
The present Thee They Thy finds Berkson in the excellent company of Trevor Dunn (b) and Gerald Cleaver (d). I hadn’t heard Dunn before but he jells beautifully in both pizzicato and arco mode with Cleaver, a really tasty drummer I’ve admired for many years, particularly for his work with Miroslav Vitous (check out, e.g., Universal Syncopations, Remembering Weather Report or the recently released Mountain Call, all on ECM).
Apart from what I assume is a Jewish liturgical piece (V’shamru) the music and lyrics here are from Berkson. The trio interaction is excellent throughout: at times the edgy, pulsing phrasing can recall Cecil Taylor (sample Torque) while at other moments a more reflective and diversely figured mood prevails.
Some vocal acrobatics recall (but do not imitate) Meredith Monk in her more sprightly moments while elsewhere, a somewhat mournful (the uncharitable might say dreary) mood can emerge, with the minimalistic lyrics sometimes bringing Robert Creeley to mind, e.g, Torque: It’s calling you here / Often they take / Open ways home / Yet you try / Come back / to alone.
The more I’ve listened to this music, the more I have got from it. So it’s a tough – but, overall – rewarding listen.
Discography
Slow; V’shamru; Torque; Dust; Cleave; Notice; Thee They Thy; Amerika; Slowly Walk Into It; Sated (47.49)
Berkson (v, p); Trevor Dunn (b); Gerald Cleaver (d). Oktaven Audio, Mount Vernon, NY, July 2021.
ECM 882 5399
