The Penguin Jazz Guide (184 page)

Born 27 October 1958, Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Piano

Modern Standards

Sharp Nine 1032-2

Hazeltine; David Williams (b); Joe Farnsworth (d). December 2004.

David Hazeltine says:
‘I was worried how some of the tunes/arrangements such as “How Deep Is Your Love” would actually work and then go over with jazz fans. I remember listening to it months later and thinking: “Mission accomplished”, mostly because of how David and Joe brought things to life!’

Hazeltine’s list of influences includes Oscar Peterson, Barry Harris, Buddy Montgomery, Cedar Walton. He’s a communicator in the Peterson manner, voicing melodies in a recognizable yet inventive way, adding just enough rhythmic nuance to take an interpretation out of the ordinary and placing absolute trust in his musicians, and he himself always works for the band. Though he says he prefers to work with more modern material (‘Betcha By Golly Wow’ is on the debut Criss Cross), he still does very well out of more familiar standards when the need arises, an unerring sense of tempo helping to swing the melodies and set the pace for constructions that are intricate without seeming fussy or deliberately complex.

There’s an easeful consistency to Hazeltine’s music that might threaten to consign it to the background if he weren’t shrewd enough to keep the material fresh. The move away from Criss Cross – though Teekens had done him proud – was positive and well-timed.
Modern Standards
is, if anything, better even than the earlier
Classic Trio
, and merits every enthusiasm. Impeccably produced by Marc Edelman, the trio gets a full, rounded sound which maximizes its virtues. The tunes are familiar but not hackneyed, and Hazeltine bites the bullet on pop material: ‘Yesterday’, ‘How Deep Is Your Love’ and ‘For The Love Of You’ are all shaped with logic and finesse.

KAHIL EL’ZABAR

Born Clifton Blackburn, 11 November 1953, Chicago, Illinois

Drums, percussion, other instruments

Live At River East Art Center

Delmark DE566 CD/DVD

El’Zabar; Ari Brown (ts); Billy Bang (vn); Yosef Ben Israel (b). December 2004.

Kahil El’Zabar says:
‘A very emotional recording for me: the music acknowledges the spirit of my friend and mentor Malachi Favors, who taught me the importance of perseverance. I believe Malachi would have been proud of us, for the music represents something he was fond of repeating: “Ancient to the Future, a Power stronger than itself.” I felt very much in the moment and very much alive. The spirit expressed in our Oneness amplifies the baptismal ritual in living for the arts!’

A leading light among the spirits who emerged from AACM, the Chicagoan’s small groups, the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble and the Ritual Trio, seek big-scale results in terms of creating new African-American fusions. He once designed dresses for Nina Simone, played with rock groups and has more recently done the musical arrangements for the stage version of
The Lion King
. Above all, he upholds the communitarian values that framed and sustained AACM.

Somewhat like the Art Ensemble Of Chicago, El’Zabar’s groups are almost always best experienced live, something that Delmark’s DVD imprints are making possible. However, none of his records are anything less than exciting and intensely colourful, with a smack of spiritual uplift. Earlier records like
Renaissance Of The Resistance
and
Big Cliff
had involved Favors and Bang, and after the bassist’s death Bang rejoined for this tribute. There is, incidentally, a second tribute disc on Delmark, called
Big M
, but we find it strangely lacklustre.

The River East recording begins with a long, long El’Zabar intro on ‘Big M’, brilliant on kalimba, with Brown and Bang only coming in well through the track. The sound isn’t pristine, but the sense of occasion is palpable. The man with the hardest job on the night, new bassist Israel, has an opportunity to stake his claim at the start of ‘Return Of The Lost Tribe’, a deceptively easy-going jazz piece originally on the
Bright Moments
CD with Joseph Jarman and Kalaparush Maurice McIntyre, pushed along by El’Zabar’s solid kit-playing. ‘Where Do You Want To Go?’ has a curious mixture of poignancy and anger, also reflected in Kahil’s vocal contributions. He testifies exuberantly on ‘Be Exciting’, a memorial testimony to Favors but also a jeremiad on the post-9/11 world. El’Zabar always holds the centre, with Israel as his anchor, but it’s Bang and the outrageously underrated Brown who make this fine record. The crowd buzz merely adds to the party atmosphere and we’re not persuaded you really need the DVD to catch the mood of the event.

STEVE LEHMAN

Born 1 September 1978, New York City

Alto and sopranino saxophones

Demian As Posthuman

Pi 17

Lehman; Vijay Iyer (p); Me’shell Ndegeocello (b); Eric McPherson, Tyshawn Sorey (d); Jahi Lake (turntables). March & June 2005.

Steve Lehman says:
‘I had Craig Taborn’s
Junk Magic
and Braxton’s
Fall 1974
knocking around my subconscious. I remember being able to write dense and challenging pieces like “Demian” knowing that they would be executed with precision by a combination of sequenced instruments and Tyshawn’s remarkable drumming. It was good to sneak in a chamber work for saxophone quartet, percussionist and live electronics, and to present compositions from multiple vantages (Cognition, Damage Mobility, Logic).’

A pupil of both Jackie McLean and Anthony Braxton, the impressive New Yorker works in an advanced post-bop vein. He first came to notice in Braxton’s ensemble, but has made rapid progress on his own account and as a member of Fieldwork.

Lehman’s breakthrough record was
Interface
in 2003, a spare, exposed trio with bassist Mark Dresser and percussionist Pheeroan akLaff (also a teacher at Wesleyan, where Lehman studied). As the sole horn, he sometimes over-elaborates ideas, notably on the long ‘Motion’, but a new emphasis on sopranino saxophone sets some stern harmonic hurdles which he clears without seeming effort and with some aplomb. The writing is hugely impressive.

Demian As Posthuman
(the name is a Hesse reference) took him on a somewhat different course. Basically a set of duets with the brilliant Sorey, some pieces are reworked with almost a hip-hop sensibility. There was to have been a hip-hop track on the disc but copyright problems meant it was withdrawn. Lehman treats ideas like ‘Damage Mobility’ in a neo-Cubist way, using multiple saxophone perspectives and tough harmonizations in the overdubbing. Some tracks are played over strong bass vamps from Ndegeocello, but the drama always returns to Lehman’s work with the drummer. Everything he has done since confirms his standing as a star of some magnitude. This one, though, stands out strongly.

MARTIAL SOLAL
^&

Born 23 August 1927, Algiers, Algeria

Piano

Solitude

CamJazz 7794-2

Solal (p solo). April 2005.

Trumpeter Dave Douglas says:
‘He has a unique writing style, with very long lines and very intricate in rhythm, to an extent that you can’t believe it was written down like that, but it was. He has the ability to make very complex things swing, in a way that is quite unique.’

Solal has just got better, steadily developing his compositional approach in ever more subtle ways. A duo album with Dave Douglas made around the same time as
Solitude
and for the same label is testimony to his continuing interest in new directions in jazz. But this CamJazz record is a near-perfect solo piano recital that combines favourite standards with a central section of originals. ‘Darn That Dream’ is broodingly romantic, but the romanticism is grounded in complex harmonic development and a deceptively loose metre that gradually pulls together towards the end. The alternate that bookends the record doesn’t have quite the same architecture, but it’s bolder still in terms of repositioning the original song and chords.

Any sense that this is an old man – he was nearly 80 – musing quietly on well-trodden themes and declining to exert himself is quickly dispelled by the next three tracks. ‘Caravan’ is breathtaking, spilled out with dash and a kind of dangerous glamour. The fulcrum of ‘Our Love Is Here To Stay’ is a descending chordal pattern that is all the more dramatic for being so utterly right in context. Then, cleverly, he programmes three originals. ‘Chi Va Piano …’ is all angles and determined purpose. ‘Medium’ might almost be Monk in places, but with hammered chords and sharp left-hand chimes that could be boxing bells. And
then ‘Bluesine’, which remains perhaps the one Solal composition that everyone knows. On that score, he’d be entitled to indulge himself a little, but he takes the pace right down and lets it merely … happen, brisk triplets, tightly pedalled chords and low, low bottom-end accents. You realize that much as he loves trio playing he can do bass and drums parts pretty much on his own. Superb.

& See also
Balade Du 10 Mars
(1998; p. 625)

PETER EVANS

Born 1981, New York City

Trumpet

More Is More

psi 06.08

Evans (t, picc t solo). 2005.

More Is More
appeared on saxophonist Evan Parker’s label:
‘I asked Peter what was the longest period he’d taken off from practice since he started at the age of seven, and he told me: “Five days.” ’

A new star. Evans studied at Oberlin and has since turned up in some of the most exciting projects around, including the warped (non-)repertory group Mostly Other People Do The Killing, Histrionics, Carnival, and the Sparks duo with Tom Blancarte, who also plays in Evans’s quartet. However, he first made a wider impact in that most difficult of all forms, a solo trumpet recital.

More Is More
is jaw-droppingly good, a calmly studied deconstruction of jazz trumpet that makes for one of the most exciting records of recent years and one that at a stroke proposes new directions for the instrument. It is not so much that Evans dives deep into ‘extended technique’, more that he harnesses the instrument’s untapped potential for ideas and procedures that immediately affect how a ‘lead horn’ might sound in a group situation. Evans made those implications clear in his first quartet record a year or so later, where the usual hierarchies of horn and rhythm and the familiar parameters of melody, harmonic architecture, pulse are not so much subverted as cheerfully circumvented: a brand-new jazz sound, equalled for freshness and invention only by someone like guitarist Mary Halvorson.

Though it is far more than a set of exercises, the technique on
More Is More
is extraordinary, whether on piccolo trumpet (his apparent preference) or a concert instrument: notes are bent, stretched, pulled through timbral spectra and sometimes stabbed into the air with an almost physical intensity. It might not grab someone whose expectations are based on Lee Morgan or Miles Davis, but consider how close to the early jazz masters he sometimes sounds. This is music in a powerful lineage, not on a blank page.

INGRID JENSEN

Born 12 January 1966, North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Trumpet, flugelhorn

At Sea

ArtistShare AS0039

Jensen; Geoff Keezer (p, ky); Lage Lund (g); Matt Clohesy (b); Jon Wikan (d, perc); Hugo Alcazar (perc). April 2005.

Ingrid Jensen says:
‘A magical and mystical adventure into many of my past and present life influences. Through the music we made, I still hear and feel things that I never thought I could translate into sound: the ocean I grew up near, the open trail that I spend hundred of hours horseback riding on, all of the many powerful voices of song and groove I’ve heard and responded to – we just channelled it all.’

At 25, Jensen became the youngest faculty member at the Bruckner Conservatory in Linz. Early recognition came in Europe partly because she had chosen to study there, initially with Austrian pianist Hal Galper. In terms of trumpet sound, she is a cross between Woody Shaw (an acknowledged hero) and Art Farmer, with whom she also took classes; the latter debt is predictably most evident when she switches to flugelhorn, a warm, ringing sound but with a solid-metal core.

Jensen’s early recordings on Enja were consistently impressive, and
Here On Earth
in particular is worth tracking down. However, her work matured rapidly during the early years of the new decade, not so much in terms of playing skill as in maturity of conception.
At Sea
, released on the estimable, fan-supported ArtistShare, is an altogether more impressionistic record than its predecessors, but in the most positive sense. The opening is a moody soundscape with the trumpet heavily reverbed over piano, keys and cymbals. Keezer’s ‘Captain Jon’ and ‘Tea And Watercolours’ are driven along more familiar grooves. ‘There Is No Greater Love’ has a mournful, elegiac quality. Then the tracks become longer and more exploratory, with ‘Everything I Love’ coming in over nine minutes, the original ‘Swotterings’ and ‘KD Lang’ (with wah-wah Rhodes from Keezer (!) and Ingrid double-tracked) at ten and 12 respectively. It’s a powerful final section.

Jon Wikan’s production and Eric Troyer’s deft engineering lend the trumpet immense presence, accurately pitched but with delightful little burrs of overtone round the edges. A simply beautiful record.