Recent CDs, Part 5: Cryptogramophone

Bennie Maupin was on the New York jazz scene as a saxophonist and bass clarinetist in New York in the 1960s and '70s, most famously as a member of Miles Davis's Bitches Brew cast and of Herbie Hancock's Mwandishi group. He worked off and on with Hancock for twenty years. In Penumbra (Cryptogramophone), he nods briefly toward those jazz fusion days, but the loveliest music on the CD is in the Castor and Pollux interrelationship of Maupin on bass clarinet and bassist Darek Oles. The highlight is "Message to Prez," which builds langorously into a colloquy of low-register counterpoint and, finally, perfectly intoned unison on the dance-like melody.

Oles uses his unAmericanized Polish name, which is Oleszkiewicz, for his album Like a Dream (Cryptogramophone). Like George Mraz, Frantisek Uhlíř and so many other Eastern European bassists, Oleszkiewicz has prodigious technique and a full sound. He also has good time and a rich improvisational imagination. In three different combos, his sidemen include pianists Brad Mehldau and Adam Benjamin, guitarist Larry Koonse and, briefly but vigorously, Bennie Maupin on tenor saxophone. All of the tunes but "You Don't Know What Love Is" are Oleszkiewicz's. The mood of the CD matches its title.

Oles joins pianist Alan Pasqua and drummer Peter Erskine for Pasqua's My New Old Friend (Cryptogramophone). Pasqua intersperses the title tune and other originals among several standards. He has a knack for ingeniously deconstructing melodies at the beginnings of the tunes and reassembling them for the final choruses. Pasqua's sure touch and skill as a tonal colorist center the music, but the strength of Oles' bass lines and Erskine's restrained power interacting with the piano make this an integrated trio. Anyone inclined to doubt that Pasqua comes out of Bill Evans is invited to listen to "One More Once."

The leader of The Jeff Gauthier Goatette is an acoustic and electric violinist, whose other instrument is listed as "effects." In One and the Same (Cryptogramophone), guitarist Nels Cline and pianist David Witham also play effects, meaning electronics. When all of the effects and all of Alex Cline's drums are working at once, as in a piece called "Water Torture," the result resembles random noise of the universe, the perfect accompaniment for astral travel. Nearly everywhere else in the album, the Goatette commits melody. Even in "Water Torture," there is an interval of lovely free improvisation between Gauthier's violin and Joel Hamilton's arco bass. Two pieces by the late Eric von Essen are particularly moving. Gauthier, not incidentally, is the moving force behind Cryptogramophone.

When von Essen died in 1997, he had become one of the busiest bassists in Los Angeles and a favorite of not only Gauthier and the Cline brothers but also of established mainstream musicians like Jimmy Rowles, Lou Levy and Art Farmer. In addition to bass, von Essen played guitar, piano, cello and chromatic harmonica, but his legacy to Cryptogramophone, and therefore to all of us, is that of a prolific composer. Cryptogramophone has released three CDs of songs from the dozens he left, played by musicians with whom von Essen worked. It is no coincidence that those players were--and are--at the core of the Los Angeles jazz community. Except for Bennie Maupin, they include everyone mentioned in the above paragraphs, plus Alan Broadbent, Putter Smith, Kendall Kay, Dave Carpenter, Stacy Rowles, Larry Koonse, Tom Warrington, Kate McGary and several others. The three volumes of The Music of Eric Von Essen constitute a living document of the harmonically demanding, yet intriguing and accessible compositions of this extraordinary musician.

Four years ago, Paul Conley did a substantial feature about Von Essen for National Public Radio's Weekend Edition Sunday. You can listen to it by going to the NPR archive. Click here.