The Penguin Jazz Guide (183 page)

Maria Schneider says:
‘That recording will always be close to my heart. It was my first record that felt like one cohesive musical statement. I got exactly the sound I wanted on it (our engineer, David Baker, died shortly after it was mixed, and it was the last record found in his CD player), it was my first record on ArtistShare that was completely funded by listeners, it brought us our first Grammy.’

After lessons from Bob Brookmeyer and a stint as assistant to Gil Evans, she had the best possible grounding in big-band jazz, and yet setting out on her own, as she did in 1989, was brave in the extreme; but a Monday night residency at Visiones in New York gave her a platform. Schneider’s characteristic voice is closer to Brookmeyer’s than to the more obvious Svengali, a rich fabric of sound that is alert to nuance but still capable of great power. Her use of a relatively straightforward rhythm section belies the sophistication of the metre, and often the horns are playing improbable counts over a basic 4/4. Schneider was blessed from the very start by a team of time-served craftsmen with enough musical individuality to temper the slightly too accurate placing of the charts.

Concert In The Garden
is the great achievement of her career so far, a flowing, sometimes
enigmatic, more often uplifting set that finally brings together all of Schneider’s strengths. A Grammy win helped put the seal on things. The closing ‘Buleria, Sole Y Rumba’ is the most obvious acknowledgement of all she learned from Gil Evans, but the ‘Three Romances’ which make up the middle of the record, with wonderful wordless vocalizing from Luciana Souza, are remarkable too. The only slight disappointment is the long opening title-track, which meanders, though Monder, Kimbrough and Versace trace a lovely path through it. Jensen’s ‘Pas De Deux’ with Pillow is another highlight, while McCaslin (who got a Grammy nomination, too) and Gisbert star on that amazing final track. A contemporary masterpiece.

ROSCOE MITCHELL
^&

Born 3 August 1940, Chicago, Illinois

Reeds

Composition/Improvisation Nos. 1, 2 & 3

ECM 1716989

Mitchell; Corey Wilkes (t, flhn); Evan Parker (ss, ts); Anders Svanoe (as, bs); John Rangecroft (cl); Neil Metcalfe (f); Craig Taborn (p); Philipp Wachsmann (vn); Nils Bultmann (vla); Marcio Mattos (clo); Barry Guy, Jaribu Shahid (b); Paul Lytton, Tani Tabbal (d, perc). September 2004.

Evan Parker says:
‘We played together for the first time in Chicago, at a club called The Hot House – it was summer and the landlord had switched the air conditioning off in a battle with Marguerite Horberg, the tenant and owner of the club, so it was
hot
. We decided to try to work together after that, but it took the Transatlantic Art Ensemble project in Munich to galvanize things. The connection between London and Chicago is strong.’

In the autumn of 2004, Mitchell and Evan Parker came together in a Munich concert hall to record a grouping that involves members both of the Englishman’s ensemble and of the Note Factory, as well as others, under the ad hoc title The Transatlantic Art Ensemble. The immediate feel is very much of a classical group, with strings, tymps and piano generating a sound-world reminiscent of European art music. Indeed, there is little obviously improvised about the longish opening track. Mitchell plays soprano saxophone throughout, while Parker also deploys his tenor, but what defines this music most clearly as the American’s is not the sound of his horn
per se
, but something about the way the music organizes itself, periods of intense activity bracketed by silence, duos (beginning with Lytton and Tabbal in the second section) breaking out of the ensemble.

The sequence of ‘movements’, nine in all, and the title reference to three parts don’t quite seem to square unless one checks the sleeve frequently, but that is why the title is not given as
Composition & Improvisation
(as if a set of themes and variations) but with a slash that more or less suspends any fundamental distinction between the two. As with much of Mitchell’s work, the delivery is mostly rather quiet and unemphatic, with a tendency to dwell not just on exact pitchings but also on the precise tone-colour of particular sounds. Taborn’s role is fascinating. At moments, he seems to be articulating some approximate tonal centre for the music, some gravitational point of reference that never quite manages to resist the centrifugal energy of the strings and horns; at others, he is the archetypal pianist-as-percussionist, banging out sharp attacks that are more reminiscent of Cecil Taylor’s famous ‘88 tuned drums’ definition than most of the work lazily and misleadingly attributed to Taylor’s influence. The long ‘Movement III’ moves into something like ‘free jazz’, but while there is considerable exhilaration in the playing, this is arguably the least typical and least successful aspect of the performance. After some more short sequences, there are two extended movements – ‘VII/VIII’ – in which the integration of elements seems more
complete though not subject to any discernible logic or determination. The coda is deliciously ambiguous. Far from reaching a climax, the sequence dissolves into a shimmer, as if some tiny subset of the whole cosmological process has gone into reverse, solids turning to gas, orbits no longer regular or fixed, location and velocity uncertain. Nothing in the canon of 20th-century Western art music conveys so much satisfying mystery.

& See also
Sound
(1966; p. 337);
ART ENSEMBLE OF CHICAGO, A Jackson In Your House / A Message For Our Folks
(1969; p. 369)

MARTY EHRLICH

Born 31 March 1955, St Paul, Minnesota

Reeds

News On The Rail

Palmetto 2113

Ehrlich; James Zollar (t); Howard Johnson (tba); James Weidman (mca); Greg Cohen (b); Allison Miller (d). November 2004.

Marty Ehrlich says:
‘The title comes from a phrase Jerome Harris heard in North Carolina. “I’m wondering what’s waiting on the rail for the lizard.” Howard Johnson thought the emphasis should be on the second syllable of “lizard”. Every player on this recording has their own vernacular dialect, with rich blues roots. A lot of flavours to write for, luxuriate in, and give context to.’

Ehrlich studied with Ran Blake and others at the New England Conservatory and after establishing himself in New York at the end of the ’70s became an indispensable figure on the scene there, his multi-instrumentalism a huge asset to any group. He’d begun his professional career with Human Arts Ensemble before starting to develop a line of work of his own that seems to us to pick up where Eric Dolphy laid off.

Some of Ehrlich’s previous records were marred by inconsequential writing. An earlier Palmetto session,
Line On Love
, fails on this account. What’s immediately striking right from the opening of
News On The Rail
is how confidently this sextet crackles along on the vivid charts for ‘Enough Is Enough’. A relatively unusual instrumentation comes into its own on ‘Hear You Say’, with the redoubtable Johnson setting down a righteous groove for Ehrlich’s stunning alto solo. Elsewhere the leader favours his clarinet, interweaving with more unique ensemble effects; melodica’s not often strongly featured in jazz, but it has its place and Weidman makes the strongest possible case for it. Miller keeps everything tight but not regimented and Cohen, who plays a sweeping intro to the title-track, is in excellent supportive form.

BERNARDO SASSETTI

Born 24 June 1970, Lisbon, Portugal

Piano, percussion

Unreal: Sidewalk Cartoon

Clean Feed CF070

Sassetti; Sérgio Carolino (tba); Perico Sambeat (ss, as, f, fluteophone); José Lopes, José Massarão (as); Mário Marques (ts); Alberto Roque (bs); Rui Rosa (cl, bcl); Nuno Inácio (f); Angelina Rodrigues (f, picc); Jean-Michel Garetti (ob); António Augusto Aguiar (b); José Salgueiro (d); Miquel Bernat, Nuno Aroso, Pedro Oliveira, Rui Rodrigues, Francesco Aparisi, António Sérgio, João Cunha, João Tiago (perc). December 2005–October 2006.

Bernardo Sassetti says:
‘I’ve met a lot of people in my life and a lot of musical instruments, but I never thought there were so many until I first went into Drumming’s percussion room. It changed my life. It was almost shocking to see hundreds of small instruments, dozens of huge ones. It was then I decided to go ahead with
Unreal: Sidewalk Cartoon
.’

Sassetti spent some time in London in the ’90s and became familar to British audiences from his work in the Guy Barker group. You may have seen him as a member of the Napoli Jazz Sextet in the Anthony Minghella movie
The Talented Mr Ripley.
He’s now back in Lisbon and thriving in the burgeoning live and recording situation there.

An early recording is out of circulation but Sassetti has found a niche with Clean Feed and his previous records,
Nocturno
(an astonishingly mature self-assessment) and
Indigo
, should be checked out for a glimpse of his elegant pianism and compositional vision. A hugely ambitious project that unites Sassetti’s jazz-based work with his cinematic projects. It’s a collaboration with percussion ensemble Drumming (GP), and on some tracks the Quarteto Saxofinia and Cromeleque Quinteto; the basic group is a fine but unorthodox sextet comprising reeds, flute, tuba, double bass and drums. Sassetti himself works at the keyboard and inside his Kawai concert grand and also plays marimba, glockenspiel, steel drums and gongs. The sound is rich, delicate, flowing and constantly inflected in new ways, all laid over a pattering, softly ringing accompaniment.

If jazz is largely concerned with line, trajectory and movement, this is much more like that contemporary cliché, an ‘immersive’ experience. Nothing clichéd about Sassetti’s approach, though, and in the final analysis it is still essentially a jazz record. Sambeat’s exquisite line on ‘Conjuntivo Plural Do Iniciativo’, which follows the abstract prologue, is reminiscent of some of Carlos Ward’s spacious, folk-tinged solos. There’s even a reading of Monk’s ‘Evidence’, a stop/start interpretation that opens up the original metre and finds acres of new territory to explore. The closing ‘Sidewalk Cartoons’, which is listed separately to the main course of tracks and begins with what sounds like studio chatter, is almost a new-music piece, and testimony to the precision and careful integration of the ensemble. It’s possible to fake an entry on a woodwind instrument, sliding in behind the beat, but quite impossible on percussion – either it’s there or it’s not.

The pianist’s own finest moment comes on the lyrical ‘I Left My Heart In Algandros De Baixo’, a graceful ballad. Quite the finest work from Sassetti to date, this is music beyond category and, for us, pretty much beyond criticism. The pianist is also responsible for the booklet artwork, a mysterious collage which reflects the aesthetic of the music perfectly. A moving, involving experience.

JOHN BUTCHER

Born 25 October 1954, Brighton, East Sussex, UK

Soprano and tenor saxophones

The Geometry Of Sentiment

Emanem 4142

Butcher (ss, ts, feedback solo). November 2004, May, September, October & November 2006.

John Butcher says:
‘Live situations can stimulate playing intentions as varied as thinking about Derek Bailey, making sense of multiple reverberations and taming feedback into song. The CD is a virtual solo concert from different mental and geographical states.’

Often hailed as a successor to Evan Parker, Butcher has moved on a parallel path, exploring solo saxophone improvisation, joining a latter-day configuration of the Spontaneous Music Ensemble, and diversifying into electronic manipulations. He is, however, a distinct and highly independent musical thinker who began his career as a theoretical physicist,
researching quarks and their mysterious property of ‘charm’. His first forays into music were with pianist Chris Burn’s group and playing Stockhausen’s ‘intuitive’ scores. Since then, he has worked in a wide variety of contexts, extending contemporary saxophone language in free music, scored composition and electronic context, but with a growing interest in the properties of feedback and site-specific resonances.

Now a prolific recording artist, under his own name and with ensembles as various as Polwechsel and the London Improvisers Orchestra, Butcher first came to wider notice with the 1991 solo record
Thirteen Friendly Numbers.
One of the most remarkable developments of his music since that time has been his ability to blur the distinction between ‘acoustic’ and electronic sounds, and those produced in conjunction with the playing environment. The first two and the last of these quite extraordinary performances were made respectively in the Ova Stone Museum at Utsunonimaya in Japan, and in a rebuilt gasometer at Oberhausen, Germany. The latter deal with elements of delay and decay in a way that other instrumentalists have also examined, but the Japanese recordings make use of the location’s strange, square-cut space in a quite unique fashion, yielding a sound radically divorced from any conventional – or ‘extended’ – saxophone language. On ‘A Short Time To Sing’, the use of amplification/feedback yields a curious percussive effect. The other piece which uses this approach is ‘Soft Logic’, from the same London performance. Perhaps the most straightforward saxophonic playing on the set comes on ‘But More So’, recorded in Paris in November 2006 in tribute to Derek Bailey.

DAVID HAZELTINE