Hundreds of CDs have piled up around Rifftides world headquarters. At a meeting, the staff voted whether to write, long, exhaustive analytical reviews of three of them or highlight many more in an effort to keep up with a jazz scene that—take our word for it—is not dying, at least not in terms of sheer recording output. Short and pithy won the vote over learned, diagnostic and likely to put you to sleep. This survey will go on intermittently, with other matters popping up, as usual.

Sean Smith, Trust (Smithereen).
In Smith’s career of more than 20 years as a bassist, he has been so busy with Bill Charlap, Gerry Mulligan, Clark Terry, Tom Harrell, Art Farmer, Peggy Lee, Jacky Terrasson and others that he has taken time to be the leader on only two previous albums. His first CD in ten years features his new quartet with saxophonist John Ellis, guitarist John Hart and Smith’s longtime colleague Russell Meissner on drums. The group stirred anticipation with web videos that popped up a few months ago. Their album more than meets expectations raised.

Admired as a composer by Charlap, Phil Woods, Bill Mays and others who have recorded his music, Smith wrote all 12 of the tunes. Unlike many albums laden with originals, Trust has variety, from the harmonically demanding Wayne Shorter tribute called “Wayne’s World” to the sunny waltz “Bush League,” to “Voices,” an affecting ballad. On “Voices,” Smith’s solo highlights the darkness and heft of his tone and his ability to play successions of high notes as music, not the strain of acrobatic exercise. Ellis’s tenor sax tone and his phrasing are key to the success of the piece.

“Graham Ewan,” a duet with Hart, is a brief demonstration of Smith’s skill with the bow, a lull in the proceedings. If Catherine of the Italian Renaissance Medicis inspired “Ditty for Ms. de’ Medici”, she must have danced a mean soft shoe between intrigues and poisonings. It’s a happy piece. Ellis’s tenor playing on “’de Medici,” “What’d You Say?” and a few other tunes is so distinctive that it leads one to wonder why he didn’t leave the soprano in its case. There is no law that, in the wake of Coltrane, every saxophonist must double on soprano. In Ellis’s case, he’s eroding his comparative advantage.

Often in albums led and produced by bassists, the sound designs make it clear who’s in charge, sometimes to the point of ear pain. This one will not have you lunging for your tone controls. Sound reproduction and balance match the quality of the music.

Cuong Vu, Leaps Of Faith (Origin).
Like Smith’s, Vu’s is a pianoless quartet, but the instrumentation is rather different: his trumpet, two electric basses and drums. He begins with three standards, “Body and Soul,” “All The Things You Are” and “My Funny Valentine,” assuring listeners that he is about more than 21st century space music. It’s a clever strategy. Vu, bassists Stomu Takeishi and Luke Bergman and drummer Ted Poor bring plenty of adventurism to the classic ballads, but Vu’s long lines and lyricism carry over into the collective improvisation of his title tune. Then he edges “Leap of Faith” further and further out until it vaporizes in the exosphere of electronic distortions. Vu’s musicianship is so solid that when he mixes jazz, pop, street grunge and amplified random noise, it somehow works, is even reassuring. That is as true of his calming treatments of the Beatles’ “Something” and Jackson Browne’s “My Opening Farewell” as it is of his kaleidoscopic “I Shall Never Come Back.”

Brian Lynch, Unsung Heroes (Hollistic MusicWorks).
“Unsung” is right. Lynch pays tribute to his trumpet predecessors or contemporaries Tommy Turrentine, Joe Gordon, Charles Sullivan, Idrees Sulieman, Charles Tolliver, Claudio Roditi and Louis Smith. Known to few but the most committed and attentive listeners, all have earned respect of their peers and critics. In some cases, Lynch plays compositions by his heroes. In others he composes pieces in their honor. In all, his arrangements are as impressive as is his playing in a tight sextet that includes alto saxophonist Vincent Herring, tenor saxophonist Alex Hoffman, pianist Rob Schneiderman, bassist David Wong and drummer Pete Van Nostrand. Among highlights of the album, which is itself a highlight, are Lynch’s treatment of Sulieman’s “Saturday Afternoon at Four” and his own “RoditiSamba.”with memorable solos by him and Herring. Hoffman’s gliding, muscular work comes as a pleasant revelation. The CD is a followup and companion to Lynch’s 2000 album Tribute to the Trumpet Masters.

Ambrose Akinmusire, When the Heart Emerges Glistening (Blue Note).
Always approach the latest universally heralded trumpet prodigy with caution; that’s my motto. Caution, however, dissipates rapidly in the face of Akinmusire’s musicianship, the evenness and warmth of his sound, his passion and the unity of his quintet. Though his mastery of the horn is stunningly complete, music comes before virtuosity. Displays of trumpet fireworks are incidental, as in “The Walls of Lechuguilla.” “Regret,” as affecting slow playing as I’ve heard recently, has little to do with virtuosity, nearly everything to do with expressiveness. Akinmusire’s duet on “What’s New” with pianist Jason Moran, who produced the album, is pure invention, a la Tony Fruscella, until near the end when he lands on the last few bars of the melody. Tenor saxophonist Walter Smith III; pianist Gerald Clayton; bassist Harish Raghavan; and drummer Justin Brown are finely in tune with Akinmusire and one another. His band of young men are significantly beyond hard bop or post bop emulation. This is——to reach back for a phrase used by swing era musicians who wished to bestow high praise——original stuff.

More to come.

On the blog known as Brew Lite’s Jazz Tales, Bruno Leicht just posted a piece about jazz vocalese. It is centered on the recordings of Annie Ross and includes a rare video clip of her singing “Twisted,” with Count Basie accompanying. It’s a treat.

Rifftides readers who responded enthusiastically to the video we posted on February 22 in connection with a piece about the Modern Jazz Quartet may be absolutely delirious when they see—and hear—this one. Again, the music is John Lewis’s “The Golden Striker.” The video is from the same 1982 MJQ tour that produced the version recorded in Holland. This time, they were at the Alexandra Palace in London. Now, there is more than the mere suggestion of a smile from Milt Jackson. Everybody is smiling. This is a remarkable performance by all hands, but Percy Health’s solo won the audience.

“The Golden Striker” is from John Lewis’s score for the film No Sun in Venice. His inspiration was these figures on the clock tower In the Piazza San Marco.

We have been notified that Rifftides is on the Accredited Online Colleges’ list of 30 best blogs for jazz students. This is the entry:

Rifftides bursts at the seams with award-winning jazz critic and journalist Doug Ramsey’s observations on the scene past and present. He updates almost constantly with all the latest news and opinions from around the jazz world.

We’re 30th on the list, but the staff felt better when we found a disclaimer in the preamble:

This is by no means a comprehensive list, nor is it one ranking entrants in any particular order.

That’s a relief. To see the list, which is equipped with links, go here. Blogs are proliferating. You may find a few that you hadn’t known about. After you check them out, please hurry back.

Welcome, students. We’re all lifelong students, aren’t we?

Bill Dixon, Intents and Purposes (International Phonograph). Dixon, who died last year at 84, is typically described as a force in the free jazz that emerged in the1960s. He was that, but Intents and Purposes defied labeling when Dixon recorded it more than four decades ago. This long overdue reissue confirms that the album withstands categorization. Its daring and forthright iconoclasm has substance that outlives much music that was conceived in protest or defiance in the roiling atmosphere of that era.

Dixon’s trumpet and flugelhorn improvisations flow, jab, dance, flutter, growl and brood through, around and over the other musicians. In some cases, the other musicians are Dixon himself, overdubbed. The first of the two brief “Nightfall Pieces” has multiples of Dixon and flutist George Marge creating a mesmerizing soundscape. In the second, Dixon ruminates in call-and-response with himself across the stereo channels. Favoring low notes on his own instruments and those of others, he employs the ten-piece group in “Metamorphosis” to create rich substrata voicings. Bass trombone, bass clarinet, cello and two double basses are among the instruments that provide oddly reassuring contrast with Dixon, alto saxophonist Robin Kenyatta and bass clarinetist Bayard Lancaster, whose solos search almost to the edge of desperation. “Metamorphosis” includes written passages of subtle complexity that it would be easy to overlook in the passion of the performance.

In “Voices,” whether he achieves it on paper or by contrivance in the studio, Dixon manages to give his trumpet, Lancaster’s bass clarinet, Jimmy Garrison’s bass, Catherine Norris’s cello and Robert Frank Pozar’s drums fullness of sound one might expect from an ensemble half again bigger. Dixon’s choice of musicians was eclectic; avant gardists like Kenyatta, Lancaster and Garrison alongside the mainstream trombonist Jimmy Cheatham and Marge, a reliable reed specialist of the New York studio scene.

To his credit, reissue producer Jonathan Horwich saw to it that the Dixon album looks like the original RCA Victor LP, down to the striking cover shot. It is a reminder that record packages were once a pleasure to handle and the notes easy to read. The liner notes are included as an insert that unfolds to nearly the size of an LP sleeve. More important, the quality of the sound recorded in RCA’s storied studio B is flawlessly remastered. In a brief addendum to the notes, Horwich writes of Intents and Purposes,

It stands as one of the most important and revolutionary musical expressions of the 20th century.

That may be true.

There was nothing like it before 1966/67 and there has been nothing like it since.

That is true.

Bill Mays writes from Japan, where—despite earthquake, tsunami and radiation—the Phil Woods Quintet is on tour: Mays, piano; Woods, alto saxophone; Brian Lynch, trumpet; Steve Gilmore, bass; Bill Goodwin, drums.

Food and bottled water have not been a problem here in Tokyo. Transportation has posed no problem. Radiation levels are “safe.” We are avoiding milk, tap water, other questionable items. I was a little paranoid the first two days here and ate nothing but bananas and trail mix. Have felt 5 or 6 mild aftershocks. Aside from streets being not as crowded and neon signs off, life in Tokyo appears normal.

Phil’s group is holding up well, and concerts are near sold out, and that at 8000+ yen a seat (more than $100 U.S.) They are starved for the music, what with all the groups that have canceled.

Boy did we have a soulful audience in Yokohama tonight. They just about ate us up. There were young (all of them girls) alto sax players lined up to have Phil sign their alto cases–so cute).

As an addendum to his note from Tokyo in the preceding item, Bill Mays sent a link to a video and wrote:

After Bird’s version of this tune, this one’s my second favorite.

I can see why. The Rifftides staff rounded up both versions of “Just Friends.” Here they are, in Mays’ order of preference.

Frank Foster wrote “Shiny Stockings” when he was in Count Basie’s “New Testament” band of the mid-1950s. He gained fame as half of Basie’s “Two Franks” tenor saxophone tandem with Frank Wess. The piece became a staple of not only the Basie band but of big jazz bands around the world. There is hardly a high school or college stage band that doesn’t have “Shiny Stockings” in its book. An experienced musician before he joined Basie, Foster went on to earn widespread admiration as a player, composer, arranger, educator and—for a time—leader of the Basie band following Basie’s death in 1984. He also led his own big bands, the Loud Minority and the Living Color Band.

At 82, Foster is recovering from a stroke and fighting diabetes. To help with medical expenses, there will be a benefit for him this weekend not far from his home in Chesapeake, Virginia. Bill Lohman writes about it in the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

One would think Foster would be a rich man, based on just that one song, but that is not the case. Foster had never received his full due for “Shiny Stockings,” which he wrote in 1955, or other songs he had written or arranged because of contracts that took advantage of his primary interest being in music, not business.

To read all of Lohman’s column, go here.

It is unlikely that anyone who ever heard the Basie recording of “Shiny Stockings” has forgotten how it goes, but just in case, here it is with Foster soloing on tenor and a picture of Basie.

Among dozens of videos featuring “Shiny Stockings,” the Rifftides staff could find no trace of film or tape of the piece when Foster was on the Basie Band. If you know of one, let us know.

It is the first day of spring and, naturally, Igor Stravinsky is on everyone’s mind. Well, perhaps not everyone’s, but he is powerfully on the minds of The Bad Plus. That trio of restless and sometimes disturbing seekers are adapting Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, a piece that nearly a century ago sent even more shock waves through the music world than The Bad Plus sends today. National Public Radio’s Weekend Edition Sunday launched into spring with a feature on a marriage that seems less unlikely the more you hear about it. To listen to Liane Hansen’s discussion with Ethan Iverson, Reid Anderson and David King, and samples of their work-in-progress, go here.

It wasn’t only Stravinsky’s music caused the chaotic stir at the 1913 premier of The Rite of Spring. It was ballet music, and no one in the scandalized Paris audience had seen anything like this ballet. Here is some of the Joffrey Ballet’s 1987 recreation of Nijinksy’s choreography. The video cuts off prematurely, but there’s enough to give you a vivid idea of what the shouting was about.

Here are two great spring songs, performed at European festivals.

First, Ellis Marsalis at Spain’s Jazz Vitoria Gasteiz in 1992 with Tommy Wolf’s and Fran Landesman’s “Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most.>”

Randy Brecker played at Plovdid Jazz Nights 2009 in Bulgaria’s second largest city. With him were Ventzislav Blagoev, flugelhorn; Shibil Benev; guitar; Plamen Karadonev, piano; Trifon Dimitrov, bass; and Dimitar Dimitrov, drums, playing Freddie Hubbard’s “Up Jumped Spring.”

Have a happy Spring.