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Rifftides

Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...

In Breve: Catching Up

June 6, 2011 by Doug Ramsey

Periodically, we post brief alerts to recordings the Rifftides staff finds worthwhile. The mini- or micro-reviews are not intended as deep analysis, but as guideposts. Some of these albums are recent arrivals. We select others, not quite at random, from accumulations in the music room and office, stacks like those on the left. Beneath the piles of CDs is my desktop. I remember it fondly.

Bill Cunliffe, How My Heart Sings (Torri).

The album has pianist Cunliffe’s ingenious sextet arrangements of 10 songs by Earl Zindars, a friend and favorite composer of Bill Evans. Zindars’ work is notable for lyricism, charming melodies cloaked in harmonic sophistication and, often, metric daring. Some of the pieces here, including the title tune and “Elsa,” gained recognition through Evans’ recordings. Others, like “City Tune” and the complex “Heads or Tails,” are barely known. Cunliffe’s sextet includes Bob Sheppard on saxophones, flutes and clarinet; Bobby Shew on trumpet and flugelhorn; Bruce Paulson, trombone; Joe LaBarbera, drums; and Jeff D’Angelo, bass. Flugelhornist Justin Ray augments the band on two tracks. Solos by Cunliffe, Sheppard, Shew and the underrated Paulson are superb. Shew must be singled out for his flugelhorn work on “Elsa.” This collection was a sleeper when it came out in 2003. For Zindars’ compositions and the high quality of these performances, it deserves an audience.

Luciano Troja, At Home With Zindars (Troja).

Troja, an Italian pianist, recorded 14 of Earl Zindars’ songs and one of his own. Playing unaccompanied, he clearly has Evans in mind but does not imitate him. Among the pieces are the familiar—”Mother of Earl,” “How My Heart Sings,” “Silverado Trail”—and new ones like “Joy,” “Nice Place” and “Roses for Annig” that Troja discovered when he had access to the composer’s manuscripts during stays with Zindars’ family in California following Zindars’ death in 2005. Troja gives a splendid two-part treatment of one of Zindars’ best-known tunes, “Sareen Jurer” (“The Mountain’s Water”). His tribute piece “Earl and Bill” parallels the reflective character of Zindars’ own writing. The pianist’s touch, both firm and delicate, is an essential element of his success in negotiating the dimensions of dynamics in Zindars’ works.

Wadada Leo Smith’s Organic, Heart’s Reflections (Cuneiform).

The trumpeter’s playing, writing and ability to field-marshal combinations of acoustic and electric instruments come together in another epic two-CD set. In a large sense, it is a continuation of Smith’s electronic approach in 2009’s Spiritual Dimensions. His music owes something to Miles Davis’s electric period, but the power of his personality and vision guarantees the kind of distinctively individual music we get here. Employment of multiple amplified guitars would seem to threaten electronic goulash, but even when four of them improvise freely at the same time, they blend rather than clash. Piano, violin, drums, two alto saxophones and—I swear— two laptops enrich Smith’s palette. From it, he applies tonal colors, sometimes in flecks, more often in swaths saturated with blues. In addition to Smith’s virtuoso playing, full of risk-taking and humor, I must mention the supercharged drumming of Pheeroan akLaff and lovely piano lines by Angelica Sanchez.

Ruby Braff, For The Last Time (Arbors).

Another two-CD set, another trumpeter (well, cornetist). Another world, one might think. And yet, Leo Smith and Ruby Braff are connected in the jazz tradition and the joy of spontaneous creation. I can imagine Smith getting a kick out of listening to Braff here. In this concert at the 2002 Nairn Festival in Scotland, Braff was playing with his customary verve and inventiveness and announcing tunes with his usual wit— often acerbic—as he kidded with the musicians and the audience. The repertoire is ten standards, fully explored; the longest track is nearly 16 minutes, the shortest about five. Braff’s frequent companions tenor saxophonist Scott Hamilton, pianist John Bunch and guitarist Jon Wheatley are aboard. With Bunch and Wheatley in the rhythm section are bassist Dave Green and drummer Steve Brown, UK sidemen often sought out by visiting leaders. The proceedings are relaxed and happy, the level of inspiration high. Braff’s choruses on “Rockin’ Chair” and “I Want a Little Girl” are saturated with feeling. There is nothing in his playing to disclose that he was ailing, but he opened up the tunes to more frequent solos by his colleagues than he might have in healthier days. Braff died six months later; thus, the title of an album that is a good way to remember him.

Fay Claasen, Sing! (Challenge).

The Dutch singer with uncanny control, intonation, swing, and English with no trace of an accent sings 12 songs associated with singers from Bessie Smith to Björk. She is as convincing in “Is You Is Or Is You Ain’t My Baby” (Dinah Washington”) and “A Felicidade” (Elis Regina) as in Joni Mitchell’s “Be Cool” and Abbey Lincoln’s “Throw it Away.” Her overdubbing of three ad-libbed improvisations on Miriam Makeba’s “Unhome” is astonishing, as are her flawless unison passages with the ensemble on “Tea for Two” (Anita O’Day). Michael Abene conducts. Claasen soars on Abene’s beautifully crafted arrangements and on support by the WDR Big Band. Bonuses abound in excellent solos by trumpeter John Marshall, alto saxophonists Johan Hörlen and Karolina Strassmeyer, pianist Frank Chastenier and other WDR members. The exclamation point in the title is warranted.

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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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