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Rifftides

Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...

Recent Listening: Martin, Strickland, Felten

October 7, 2009 by Doug Ramsey

Brand New: In Brief
Joe Martin, Not By Chance (Anzic). Martin is a versatile and rounded bassist who has Martin Not By Chance.jpgcollaborated with a wide range of musicians at the heart of the 30-something generation of jazz players in New York. Here, he enlists two fellow members of that generation’s elite, pianist Brad Mehldau and saxophonist and clarinetist Chris Potter. The drummer, several years younger, is Marcus Gilmore, an accompanist who listens, reacts and adjusts. All of the tunes but Jaco Pastorius’s “The Balloon Song” are Martin’s. The compositions and the performers radiate assurance and peacefulness regardless of tempo or harmonic challenge, yet there’s not a hint of complacency. For all its loveliness, this is music that energizes the listener’s imagination.
E.J.Strickland, In This Day (Strick Musik). Like Marcus Gilmore, drummer Strickland is elastic in his approach to rhythm. In this album of his compositions, he drives the music while accommodating the E.J. Strickland.jpgidiosyncrasies and divergent approaches of his horn players, pianist and bassist. The sidemen are his twin brother Marcus, a resourceful tenor and soprano saxophonist; the increasingly impressive alto saxophonist Jaleel Shaw; pianist Luis Perdomo; and bassist Hans Glawischnig. The latter two are regular members of alto saxophonist Miguel Zenon’s band. An assortment of guests is employed on various tracks for atmosphere and a couple of spoken-word episodes that are weak poetry. The quintet provides the primary interest, and it was all Strickland needed except for Pedro Martinez’s congas on the Latin pieces, Tia Fuller’s winsome flute on “Illusions” and a reflective guitar interlude by David Gilmore on “Robin.” The saxophones achieve a lovely blend on “Enternal,” managing to convey with their different pitches alone a sense of harmonization. “New Beginnings” is a particularly effective Strickland composition, with Strickland and Martinez laying down a shifting percussion foundation for eloquent solos by Perdomo and the saxophonists. It is a balanced and thoughtful album.
Oldish: Less Brief
Eric Felten, T-Bop (Soul Note). Conducting research, I came across this first album by the trombonist.T-Bop.jpg Somehow, it got by me when it was released in 1993. Not long out of graduate school when he recorded it, Felten made his debut in the heavy, even intimidating, trombone company of Jimmy Knepper (1927-2003), one of the great unconventional thinkers and players among improvising musicians. On some tracks, the third horn is a tenor saxophone played by Joshua Redman barely known when the album was made in 1992. He was a Harvard friend of Felten. Redman’s own first album Felten.jpg come out the following year. The rhythm section was pianist Jonny King, bassists Paul Henry or Paul LaDuca and drummer Jorge Rossy, emerging Boston-area musicians roughly Felten’s age. King’s boppish work here made me decide to go back and pay closer attention to some of his own recordings. Rossy is noted for his association with pianist Brad Mehldau and as the unofficial house drummer for Fresh Sound Records.
More or less in the J.J. Johnson camp, Felten contrasts with Knepper’s languid trickiness, although at moments he seems inclined to emulate it. With one of the most tromboney of trombonists standing by as he solos, if Felten is a tad nervous, well, who wouldn’t be? In any case, they sound as if they’re having the time of their lives. The joyKnepper.jpg of their counterpoint in the last chorus of “T-Bop” is infectious. Over the intervening 17 years, Redman’s work has taken on sophistication and complexity. Here, he wears simplicity and directness on his sleeve. His earnestness is refreshing. All of the pieces but “Stella By Starlight” and “I Guess I’ll Hang My Tears Out to Dry” are by Felten the developing composer. “On Second Thought” is an amusingly fractured line on “I Got Rhythm” changes, “Hold Back the Dawn” a brooding ballad worthy of a good lyric. “Deconstruction” is a minor exercise with Latin tendencies that encourages the musicians, particularly Redman, to take their solos to the border of free playing. “Ontology” is a questioning blues line appropriate to its title. There is no question about “Blues for Lester Dubree;” it’s down-home and funky and kicks off with a Louis Armstrong quote. “Delphi” would have been at home in Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers book.
Felten has gone on to refine his trombone playing, lead a big band in Washington, DC, develop as a singer, publish a book and write a general-interest column in The Wall Street Journal. His second CD included Joe Lovano, Randy Brecker and Bob Mintzer. His tribute to Mel Tormé and Marty Paich featured a who’s-who of west coast jazz stars, among them Herb Geller and Jack Sheldon. T-Bop is evidently rare as a physical object but available as an MP3 download. If you missed it the first time around, as I did, you may want to investigate it.

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Doug Ramsey

Doug is a recipient of the lifetime achievement award of the Jazz Journalists Association. He lives in the Pacific Northwest, where he settled following a career in print and broadcast journalism in cities including New York, New Orleans, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, San Antonio, Cleveland and Washington, DC. His writing about jazz has paralleled his life in journalism... [Read More]

Rifftides

A winner of the Blog Of The Year award of the international Jazz Journalists Association. Rifftides is founded on Doug's conviction that musicians and listeners who embrace and understand jazz have interests that run deep, wide and beyond jazz. Music is its principal concern, but the blog reaches past... Read More...

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Doug’s Books

Doug's most recent book is a novel, Poodie James. Previously, he published Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond. He is also the author of Jazz Matters: Reflections on the Music and Some of its Makers. He contributed to The Oxford Companion To Jazz and co-edited Journalism Ethics: Why Change? He is at work on another novel in which, as in Poodie James, music is incidental.

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Doug’s Picks

Monday Book Recommendation: Lilian Terry’s Jazz Friends

Lilian Terry, Dizzy Duke Brother Ray And Friends (Illinois) Lilian Terry’s book is full of anecdotes about her friendships with the musicians mentioned in the title—and dozens of others. Enjoying modest renown in Europe for her singing, Ms. Terry has also been involved in radio and television broadcasting and is a cofounder of the European […]

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Monday Recommendation: Oscar Peterson Plays 10 Composers

Oscar Peterson Plays (Verve) In this five-CD reissue, the formidable pianist plays pieces by ten composers who dominated American popular music for decades. Peterson had bassist Ray Brown and guitarist Barney Kessel, succeeded by Herb Ellis. It’s the trio that made Peterson famous with Jazz At The Philharmonic and–by way of the 10 albums reproduced […]

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Monday Recommendation: DIVA At 25

The DIVA Jazz Orchestra 25th Anniversary Project (ArtistShare) It has been a quarter of a century since Buddy Rich’s manager and relief drummer Stanley Kay found himself conducting a band whose drummer was young Sherrie Maricle. Intrigued by her playing, Kay set out to find whether there were other women jazz musicians of comparable talent. […]

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Monday Recommendation, Keith Jarrett Trio: After The Fall

Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock, Jack DeJohnette, After The Fall (ECM) In 1998 Keith Jarrett was emerging from a siege of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome that had sidelined him for two years. As he felt better, he was uncertain how completely his piano skill and endurance had returned. He decided to test himself. He gathered his longtime […]

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Monday Recommendation: Gerard Kubik, Jazz Transatlantic

Gerhard Kubik, Jazz Transatlantic, Vol. I and Vol. II (University Press of Mississippi) The first volume of Kubik’s work is subtitled, “The African Undercurrent in Twentieth–Century Jazz Culture;” the second, “Jazz Derivatives and Developments in Twentieth-Century Africa.” The descriptions indicate the depth and scope of the Austrian ethnomusicologist’s research, which has taken him to Africa […]

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Monday Recommendation: Magris In Miami

Roberto Magris Sextet Live in Miami @ the WDNA Jazz Gallery (J Mood) Widely experienced and recorded in Europe, pianist Magris demonstrates in this club date that he knows how to reach an American audience steeped in Latin and Caribbean music. The front line has trumpeter Brian Lynch at his fieriest, and the imaginative young […]

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More Doug's Picks

Blogroll

All About Jazz
JerryJazzMusician
Carol Sloane: SloaneView
Jazz Beyond Jazz: Howard Mandel
The Gig: Nate Chinen
Wonderful World of Louis Armstrong
Don Heckman: The International Review Of Music
Ted Panken: Today is The Question
George Colligan: jazztruth
Brilliant Corners
Jazz Music Blog: Tom Reney
Brubeck Institute
Darcy James Argue
Jazz Profiles: Steve Cerra
Notes On Jazz: Ralph Miriello
Bob Porter: Jazz Etc.
be.jazz
Marc Myers: Jazz Wax
Night Lights
Jason Crane:The Jazz Session
JazzCorner
I Witness
ArtistShare
Jazzportraits
John Robert Brown
Night After Night
Do The Math/The Bad Plus
Prague Jazz
Russian Jazz
Jazz Quotes
Jazz History Online
Lubricity

Personal Jazz Sites
Chris Albertson: Stomp Off
Armin Buettner: Crownpropeller’s Blog
Cyber Jazz Today, John Birchard
Dick Carr’s Big Bands, Ballads & Blues
Donald Clarke’s Music Box
Noal Cohen’s Jazz History
Bill Crow
Easy Does It: Fernando Ortiz de Urbana
Bill Evans Web Pages
Dave Frishberg
Ronan Guilfoyle: Mostly Music
Bill Kirchner
Mike Longo
Jan Lundgren (Friends of)
Willard Jenkins/The Independent Ear
Ken Joslin: Jazz Paintings
Bruno Leicht
Earl MacDonald
Books and CDs: Bill Reed
Marvin Stamm

Tarik Townsend: It’s A Raggy Waltz
Steve Wallace: Jazz, Baseball, Life and Other Ephemera
Jim Wilke’s Jazz Northwest
Jessica Williams

Other Culture Blogs
Terry Teachout
DevraDoWrite
Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise
On An Overgrown Path

Journalism
PressThink: Jay Rosen
Second Draft, Tim Porter
Poynter Online

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