Moment's Notice
Reviews of Recent Media
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Denman Maroney Quintet
The Air-Conditioned Nightmare
Neuma 204
Denman Maroney is rightly acclaimed for hyperpiano, his innovative technique of simultaneous keying and direct string manipulations, yielding timbres that shimmer and jolt. He is also recognized as a composer who understands how complexity is rooted in the relationships between simple components, which he masterfully mixes to create knotty, yet infectiously pulsating works. However, Maroney is almost never cited for his writing for voice, in large part because there has been scant evidence. One has to dig out Time Changes, his 2004 album co-led with Mark Dresser, to hear Alexandra Montano elegantly glide over Maroney’s supple lines. There was one element missing in that music – lyrics. On the disc-long title suite of the 2-CD The Air-Conditioned Nightmare, Maroney takes on the role of lyricist – as well as appropriating materials from diverse sources including T.S. Eliot and Henry Miller – to pen slyly hooked songs sung by the radiant Emilie Lesbros. Unlikely but true: Denman Maroney leads one of the more satisfying jazz vocal recordings of the year.
The album-opening title track exemplifies Maroney’s knack for creating edgy contrasts between seemingly innocuous materials and scathing lyrics. The lilting, permutating figures for piano, dovetailed by the light touches of Robin Fincker’s clarinet and Scott Walton’s bass, become vaguely foreboding when Lesbros’ airily delivers lines like “We’re drowning in the offal of baubles and bangles and gewgaws.” One might think that Eliot’s “The Waste Land” would inspire dark atonality and an impending-doom pulse. Instead, Maroney’s “A Game of Chess” has a carefree lope that Lesbros hovers gracefully above, setting up an interlude where Maroney, Walton, and drummer Samuel Silvant lock into a groove while Fincker daubs tenor saxophone textures. Two pieces without Lesbros punctuate the subsequent songs as the hues deepen, particularly on Maroney’s funereal casting of W.B. Yeats’ “Sailing to Byzantium.” The album ends with “On a Boat,” a lengthy episodic composition with an aura of surreal interminability, with Lesbros imbuing its lyrics about a wet man in a boat in the rain rowing towards a bed on its end in a bend in the road with a sublime mixture of immediacy and detachment.
The ensemble (sans Lesbros) stretches out at several key points during “Covid Variations,” the ten pieces comprising the second disc. Recorded two years before “The Air-Conditioned Nightmare,” Fincker, Walton and Silvant already have agility and ease in navigating Maroney’s often knotty structures. On “If I Were You,” they prove to be a hard-driving unit when required – Fincker’s soaring clarinet solo is a highlight – and they can strut Monk’s “Stuffy Turkey,” even while they turn the tune inside out. The closing “For Every Tatter” also has a Monkish tinge. However, this is music of the times, evidenced by titles like “No Justice? No Peace;” but, again, Maroney’s penchant for dissonance between words and music is at play, with the juxtaposition of a serious-as-a-heart-attack title and a bright, catchy groove.
Maroney has made important albums over the past quarter-century. The Air-Conditioned Nightmare is the equal of earlier benchmarks like fluxations, Undentity, and Gaga. It is a major statement from a singular figure in American music.
–Bill Shoemaker
Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre
Live from Studio Rivbea, July 12, 1975
NoBusiness NBCD 169
Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre’s is a perplexing, sad story. In the mid to late 1960s, he was in the thick of the teeming Chicago scene. Not only was he an early member of the AACM, playing in Muhal Richard Abrams’ Experimental Band and contributing to both the pianist’s Levels and Degrees of Light and Roscoe Mitchell’s Sound, he worked with everyone from George Freeman to J.B. Hutto and His Hawks. John Litweiler, McIntyre’s most tenacious advocate, led his notes to Humility in the Light of Creator, McIntyre’s stunning 1969 Delmark debut, by proclaiming him “a visionary of our times.”
McIntyre joined the AACM exodus to New York in the 1970s and thrived for several years. He taught at Creative Music Studio, where he recorded Kalaparusha with Karl Berger, Jack DeJohnette, and others for Denon. In 1975, he played on For Players Only, Leroy Jenkins’ ambitious large ensemble project issued by the JCOA. “Jays,” recorded with Chris White and Juma Santos (another CMS colleague), was the first track on the first of five volumes documenting the 1976 “Wildflowers” festival at Studio Rivbea. By the end of the decade, McIntyre was touring Europe at the helm of his own groups, recording notable albums like Peace and Blessings for Black Saint.
Yet, the bottom fell out on McIntyre in the 1980s. Drug addiction is the commonly cited culprit that saw him reduced to sustaining himself largely by playing on the streets; however, that does not fully explain why McIntyre was marginalized when his AACM contemporaries, in essence, were bankable. The short answer is that loft jazz had its moment, gigging at Rivbea and other grassroots venues was not economically sustainable, and, for whatever reason, Europe was not an option. By the time McIntyre assumed the mantle of the elder emerging from the wilderness at the turn of the century, he simply could not reassert his initial stature, despite solid recordings with The Light – Ravish Momin and Jesse Dulman – for Delmark and CIMP. He died in poverty in 2013.
Live from Studio Rivbea, July 12, 1975 makes a very persuasive case that McIntyre merits a place among prominent post-Coltrane tenor saxophonists, his searing lines, squalling vocalizations, and avant-gutbucket flourishes fitting in among Sam Rivers and Frank Lowe. McIntyre’s three untitled compositions on this date are sturdy, well-constructed blowing vehicles that withstood the terrific centrifugal force created by his quartet with trumpeter and AACM alum Malachi Thompson, Sound drummer Alvin Fielder, and electric bassist Milton Suggs. Suggs, who was also working with Elvin Jones at the time, is the real surprise, his propulsive facility matching Fielder’s, constantly pushing the music upstairs.
Why this band didn’t become a going concern adds to the mystery that is Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre. Their music had all of the components that made loft jazz so incandescent throughout much of the 1970s: passion, chops, and imaginative rewiring of the vernacular. McIntyre and Thompson were a formidable front line. Even though McIntyre is in excellent form throughout, Thompson’s solos are consistently riveting, a welcomed reminder of the trumpeter’s brilliance. While Live from Studio Rivbea, July 12, 1975 will undoubtedly be lost in the glut of overhyped Record Store Day extravaganzas and “complete” versions of previously available concerts or studio sessions, it meets the high standard of substantively filling in an incomplete picture of an intriguing artist’s work.
–Bill Shoemaker
Jordina Milla + Barry Guy
Live in Munich
ECM 2827
There is no deeper connection to artistic fundamentals than music created in the moment, and there’s no better way to imbibe its grandiose intimacies than a beautifully recorded live concert. Given just the right circumstances, the music crystalizes with the full-bore energy and ruminative introspection of the room and all those in it, like the forces guiding this 2022 concert performance from pianist Jordina Milla and bassist Barry Guy along its blazing trails and winding paths toward discovery and resolution.
Should grandiosity and intimacy seem unlikely cohabitants, maybe the dueling archetypal impetuses of innocence and experience, as William Blake envisioned them or not, fill the bill better. The youthful innocence of Blake’s children seems translatable enough into pitched simplicities, and the voice of the bard shakes the ancient trees as low-register thunder rattles strings and hammers. We also have Miles Davis’ well-worn adage about lived experience and the horn. Experience counts for a lot, ranging far beyond the purely musical variety into the metaphorical. Poetic or practical, Guy and Milla’s combined musicality and invention ensure that they bring an abundance of those conjoined opposites to whatever interaction they’re exploring. Their 2021 album, String Fables, provides fitting but incomplete intimations of the vast territories charted during the 2022 Munich concert, another jewel in Guy’s ECM catalog. Both performers explore their instruments with the intrepid spontaneity of play, bringing back the proverbial news from the state of whimsical discovery so integral to the creative game’s field of endeavor. Simply put, they’re on top of every game imaginable. They hit, caress, bow, stroke, and sustain to the point that piano and bass embody and become the dynamic forces they potentialize. The three bass gestures opening the fourth of these six episodes query, and the ensuing piano dyad resolves, but the minute upper-register pluckings change the character of the entire phrase, imbuing it with a sense of wondrous finality robed in the simplest garb. A fraught and psychologically complex contrast surfaces 6:05 into the fifth piece, where Guy and Milla tremolo the same pitch in stark dynamic increase. A similarly vibrant if somewhat dark mood slams the final piece into focus as the duo revolves around a series of repeated clusters and bass harmonics forming densely concentrated crags and deep troughs until, nearly without warning, a low B-flat clears the path for the valedictory whisps of gorgeously meditative counterpoint.
Of course, notions of innocence and experience are as arbitrary as foisting any emotive states on musical abstractions. Opposing forces of all sorts tell the ever-evolving tale. The beautifully percussive exchanges adorning the second piece in tender upper registers (0:55) speak to areas beyond the instruments they represent and, consequently, to the opening of possibilities beyond musical preconception. The pizzicato dyads executed by Guy 2:46 into the first piece are wiped from the slate by Milla five seconds later in a flurry of tone and shifting accent to which Guy responds in kind. The whole comes to a discrete pause at 2:56, encapsulating opposites in motion or rest interrupted, experience subservient to perception. The pizzicato tenths Guy slides up the fingerboard moments later stand in contrast to Milla’s single reiterated pitch, conflating diametrically opposed rhythmic frameworks conjured and dispelled in little more than an instant. Every constructive aspect of each instrument is highlighted and laid sonically bare. In those passages of highest tension that permeate the disc, the fearful symmetries of Blake’s tiger incarnate, wood and wire components shock, rebound, and resonate in the exposed light of timbral metanarrative at blinding speed. These set up and parenthesize, or are parenthetical to, those near-silences that bring activity close to a halt. Even beyond these linear instances, one of the album’s most beautiful and wistful moments emerges, at 4:36 of the second piece. Milla’s pianism is velvety-trenchant, weaving tone and chord together in gossamer threads threatening either to unravel or disappear. Palpably, Guy listens. Tonality nearly surfaces and is gone as each brief phrase embodies the innocent experience existing just beyond the contradictory names that would stain it.
The points of connection, Hermann Hesse’s perilous bridge, essentialize the music even as the superb recording captures it, and this is where a first-rate production becomes paramount. There is nothing quite like an ECM concert recording to sample and hold the fluidly precise dream state, the perfect blend of environment and stage activity enshrining each tone-and-timbral exposure. Stasis and motion evolve with a verve and delicacy making the whole experience vividly clear, and, in the equally luminescent words of Hildegard Jone that conclude Anton Webern’s Das Augenlicht: “That makes it good.”
–Marc Medwin
Matt Mitchell Trio
Zealous Angles
Pi 103
Creativity thrives on challenge. That phrase might serve as a credo for pianist Matt Mitchell’s career. And nor would it be out of place on the masthead of Zealous Angles, which presents him in trio format for the first time with longtime confreres bassist Chris Tordini and drummer Dan Weiss. As the album Bandcamp page discloses, the 17 cuts “reflect Mitchell’s recent interest in multiple asynchronous cycles using polyrhythms and polymeters. The pieces contain anywhere from two to six lines of different lengths, with the performers having the freedom to play any of the lines and also interpret and improvise within and among the material.”
Of course, it is the outcomes rather than the process which are the bait for most listeners, and this dazzling multi-faceted session doesn’t disappoint. An entire day was booked in the studio, but Mitchell called it a wrap after three hours having got what he wanted ahead of time. Such concentration ensures a palpable sense of synapses constantly sparking between the highly attuned threesome, as they encroach on one another’s orbit at differing speeds, sometimes coinciding, but rarely exactly or for long. Those longer in the tooth may be reminded of Anthony Braxton charts for his classic 1990s quartet, such as “Composition 159” with its strata of recurring cycles. But in Mitchell’s universe, there also seems to be the possibility to step outside, to respond, perhaps nudge the orbits into synchrony. It all lends a delicious slightly woozy off-kilter appeal to the proceedings, a product of time appearing to expand and contract, as the tensions between the layers plays out.
The way in which all three address the challenges means that it’s not the individual pyrotechnics which astound, even with someone as virtuosic as Mitchell (although fans will be pleased to hear that he still has his moments, during “Rapacious” for example when such is the independence between the hands that it suggests the work of two separate brains). Rather it is the group realizations which are the stars, as the overall mesh and collective gear changes never cease to enthrall, perhaps most especially on the release’s longest track, the 10-minute plus “Zeal.” Although that ethos translates to a dearth of drum or bass features as such, there are still brief spots where one or the other catch the ear from within the ensemble. The personification of the truism that a good bassist is seldom short of work, Tordini pops up in an increasing number of blue-chip bands in the company of Tyshawn Sorey, Marta Sanchez, Chris Speed, and Anna Webber to name but a few. Never one to showboat, he brings a robust grace to the table, acting as a muscular counterpoint to Mitchell while simultaneously providing the fulcrum around which Weiss pivots. The drummer executes crisp beats and unanticipated accents in such a way that he enhances rather than impedes the transparency of the group. Mitchell extracts the full gamut of emotional possibilities from the method, from the initial doomy ambience of “Angled Languor,” to the rocky clatter of “Cinch,” and the introspective lullaby of “Gauzy.”
Pi makes full use of the capacity of a CD, with the 75-minutes duration including five, what might be termed, alternate takes, except that the options chosen make them more akin to new works – and they are titled as such – notwithstanding the common thematic DNA. One reimagining appears on the album proper, with the jagged all elbows “Jostler” later reappearing as “Rejostled.” Lines on the sleeve helpfully link the other alternates, which are separated from the main program by a minute’s silence, to the originals.
Although occasionally taking song form, more often the pieces seem open-ended, creating a continuous flow that accentuates the feel of a unified whole. One byproduct of the shared system is that if not paying close attention the array can seem homogenous. Like a tray full of precious stones, you know there is value there, but it’s not until one is selected to examine closely that the full glory of the cut, clarity, color, and carat is revealed. If the experience of the whole can be overwhelming, perhaps then like me, it may be worth sampling in small doses upon which to marvel and reflect.
–John Sharpe
Tony Oxley Quintet
Angular Apron
Corbett vs Dempsey CD110
In his appreciation of Tony Oxley, who died on 26 December 2023, saxophonist Seymour Wright writing in The Wire, identifies a number of binaries which the drummer embodied: “electronic and acoustic sounds; improvisation and composition; pitches and rhythm; ‘jazz’ and new experimental musics; America and Europe; sound and silence; ‘time-’ and ‘free-’drumming.” Oxley’s’ embrace of many of those dichotomies is on full display on Angular Apron, a 1992 live date from Bochum in Germany’s Ruhr region, thankfully rescued from the archive and issued for the first time by Corbett vs Dempsey.
The performance comprises the hour-plus title cut, composed by Oxley in the early ‘70s and, according to the press material, revisited frequently throughout his career. However, I can find only one other occurrence on disc, as part of a medley on Seven Compositions (Trio) 1989 by Anthony Braxton together with Oxley and bassist Adelhard Roidinger, which bares scant resemblance to what passes here. While the obviously composed components – horn unisons mostly – form only a small part of the piece – heard 7’ in, and in a truncated reprise just before the close – there is a clear sense of orchestration and arrangement of what comes in between.
And what comes between is a series of free-flowing episodes which offer plentiful opportunities to savor the five individual voices which make up the quintet, both apart and together. Oxley by this juncture had already been an integral part of Cecil Taylor’s Feel Trio along with bassist William Parker, but had yet to hook up with trumpeter Bill Dixon. Here he recruits another Taylor alumnus, the American bassist Sirone, who was living in Berlin at this time, to supply a pulsating thread which undergirds the proceedings and proposes a link back to the (free) jazz tradition. Joining them are two more regular collaborators: pianist Pat Thomas, who was still an up-and-coming figure on the British improv scene at this stage, and saxophonist Larry Stabbins, already a veteran of bands led by Keith Tippett and John Stevens as well as co-leader of the cult jazz-funk-pop outfit Working Week. Completing the lineup is the pioneering German trumpeter Manfred Schoof, who brings a whiff of lyricism to the otherwise uncompromising date.
In a move which already signals an overall conception, Thomas opens the account alone. His splendid introduction of clanging piano contains quixotic hints of tunefulness at first juxtaposed with, but then ultimately submerged by, rampaging atonal clusters, before being paced by Oxley’s drums. The same pairing occurs later, this time with Thomas manipulating swirling electronics in a dialogue which evokes some contemporary classical tropes, at least until the sputtering trumpet and saxophone intrusions. Although Oxley is credited with electronics on the sleeve, any evidence is hard to discern in practice as his distinctive cavalcade of pitch, color, and clip clop clatter pervade the set. Other standout sequences include a wonderful trio with Stabbins’ initially plaintive then squalling soprano in spacious interaction with bass and drums, and a masterful unaccompanied spot for Sirone which contrasts scrabbling pizzicato and deep resonant plucks with almost vocalized bow strokes. The ensemble passages too have their merits, not least one seemingly extemporized section in which Thomas and Oxley (stylistic omnivores both) unite in a staccato carnival prance while Schoof’s melodically inclined trumpet pontificates.
With much of Oxley’s discography under his own name hard to track down, Angular Apron provides an excellent entry point for curious listeners to get an insight into a singular talent.
–John Sharpe
Jason Robinson
Ancestral Numbers I
Playscape PSR# 082323
Like music, ancestry is inseparable from the passage of time. Saxophonist Jason Robinson translates his family history into evocative musical forms on Ancestral Numbers I, the first of a two-part project tracing the roots of his family tree. For this intriguing endeavor, Robinson recruited four members from his Janus Ensemble, including trombonist Michael Dessen, pianist Joshua White, bassist Drew Gress, and drummer Ches Smith. But Robinson and his ensemble do not merely paint musical portraits; in Robinson’s scholarly manner, he writes challenging compositions inspired by Greek and Roman mythology, geography, oceanography, and the connections between memory and community. The quintet infuses these demanding compositions with earnest emotion, imbuing Robinson’s forward-looking aesthetic with a captivating sensibility.
The inspiration for Ancestral Numbers was the death of Robinson’s maternal grandmother in 2022; her passing was the catalyst for turning his attention towards his heritage, but not merely to commemorate it, as Robinson states, “the project isn’t really about interpreting the sounds of my ancestors. It’s more about making music for them.”
The album begins with the bluesy “Second House,” where White’s powerful chords, a funky New Orleans rhythm, and fervent blowing from Dessen and Robinson establish a soulful theme. White’s playful interjections get increasingly frenetic while Dessen (using a plunger mute) and Robinson on tenor, spar playfully while Smith and Gress push them further. A bridge crescendos into spontaneous gutbucket solos that evoke storytelling, echoing the album’s theme of celebrating one’s roots.
Symbolizing the ominous path of a maternal ancestor through the American south, “Malachi” unfolds from a slow march to a scorching tenor solo. Over aleatoric musings, the horns play long tones behind Gress’ bowed bass; the rhythm section temporarily drops out for a conversational acapella duet between Robinson and Dessen before the band eventually rejoins with a brisk Latin beat. Robinson’s statement builds to a blistering, unaccompanied climax, the band returning at the coda.
The brief “Potentially” introduces random aspects of old school swing, and Robinson’s solo – dynamic, spirited, and brimming with intensity – similarly defies convention. Like most of the pieces, calm alternates with ardor in “Remembering Water,” a ballad inspired by a predecessor’s journey to Ellis Island. On “Roots and Routes” the mood shifts as Robinson doubles on flute and Smith plays glockenspiel. But serenity is short-lived; Robinson switches to saxophone, delivering passionate solos while the band drifts into abstraction. The funky reggae shuffle of “Wattensaw” is dedicated to a town in Arkansas where an ancestor’s journey ended. Here and throughout the session, Robinson and Dessen merge old and new forms, with a strong turn from Gress and Smith’s funky groove underscoring intricate unison passages that shift into explosive solos. The penultimate “Vestibule” features Robinson on soprano over a 6/8 rhythm that gives way to explorative free sections, punctuated by Gress’ probing pizzicato and White’s scintillating cascades.
A significant artistic statement, this series prompts deeper reflection on Robinson’s work. Paying homage to his family heritage, Robinson creates a meticulously crafted sound world that balances traditional jazz elements with avant-garde expressions, conveying a heartfelt concept that’s both expansive and personal. Ancestral Numbers I was written specifically for this ensemble; each unique voice enriches the album’s narrative as a reflection on personal journeys, encapsulating the power of music to convey historical legacies.
Ancestral Numbers II is scheduled for release in October.
–Troy Collins