{"id":7234,"date":"2016-01-09T23:29:29","date_gmt":"2016-01-10T07:29:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/?p=7234"},"modified":"2016-01-09T23:48:00","modified_gmt":"2016-01-10T07:48:00","slug":"recent-listening-houston-person-bren-plummer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/2016\/01\/recent-listening-houston-person-bren-plummer\/","title":{"rendered":"Recent Listening: Houston Person, Bren Plummer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Your Rifftides<\/em> host tries to keep up with the relentless inflow of albums. The effort is doomed, of course, but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s great fun to keep at it. Here are thoughts about two more or less recent arrivals.<\/p>\n

Houston Person<\/strong>, Something Personal<\/a><\/em> (High Note)<\/p>\n

\"HoustonPerson_span3\"The clever album title stands as a fair description of the tenor saxophonist\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s approach. Person is a melodist who finds the heart and essence of a tune and, within a few notes, puts his trademark on it. His choice of songs here is as satisfying as his choice of colleagues. As annotator Willard Jenkins suggests, Person internalizes what he plays\u00e2\u20ac\u201dfrom the harmonic content to the flow of melody and the importance of the words. In common with his predecessors Ben Webster, Lester Young, Stan Getz, Zoot Sims, the listener senses Person thinking<\/em> a song\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s lyric. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s true in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Crazy He Calls Me,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d the Ruth Brown classic \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Teardrops From My Eyes,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Irving Berlin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Change Partners,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Jimmy McHugh\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s and Dorothy Field\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153On The Sunny Side of the Street.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d It is true of all 10 songs here, including Benny Golson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I Remember Clifford,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d the longest and most heartfelt performance on the album.<\/p>\n

Bassist Ron Carter, a frequent collaborator with Person, told me when we were discussing a previous project, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Houston knows all the verses to all the songs. He knows the complete melodies. He plays with a great sense of feeling, and he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s open to any kind of harmonic suggestion.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Then there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Person\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s irresistible swing, buoyant at any tempo. In that aspect, he is in admirable company here with vibraphonist Steve Nelson, pianist John DiMartino, bassist Ray Drummond and drummer Lewis Nash. Guitarist James Chirillo is an additional asset on four tracks.<\/p>\n

Bren Plummer<\/strong>, Nocturnal<\/em><\/a> (Bren Plummer Music)<\/p>\n

\"brenplummer\"A veteran jazz and classical bassist, Bren Plummer heads a trio with fellow Seattleites John Hansen, piano, and Reade Whitwell, drums. He applies his incisive bowing technique in Duke Ellington\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s and Billy Strayhorn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Star-Crossed Lovers\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and\u00e2\u20ac\u201din one chorus of pure melody supported by a filagree of Whitwell\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s cymbal strokes\u00e2\u20ac\u201din the impressionistic title tune composed by drummer Joe Chambers for a 1968 Bobby Hutcherson recording. The trio is full of vigor on Lee Morgan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Boy, What a Night,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d energizes the 1942 Tommy Dorsey-Frank Sinatra hit \u00e2\u20ac\u0153In the Blue of Evening\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and plays Miles Davis\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Take Off\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in the neo-bop spirit of the original Blue Note recording.<\/p>\n

Plummer and company bring dynamism even to ballads customarily played slow, including Matt Dennis\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Night We Called it a Day,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Mitchell Parish\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Stars Fell on Alabama\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and Bill Evans\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Turn Out the Stars.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Arco or pizzicato, Plummer solos impressively throughout. Hansen invests everything he plays with a light touch and harmonic depth. The track titles suggest a preoccupation with night, but there is little danger that a listener will fall asleep while Nocturnal<\/em> is playing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Your Rifftides host tries to keep up with the relentless inflow of albums. The effort is doomed, of course, but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s great fun to keep at it. Here are thoughts about two more or less recent arrivals. Houston Person, Something Personal (High Note) The clever album title stands as a fair description of the tenor […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-7234","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry","8":"has-post-thumbnail"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7234\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}