David Adler
July 2002

New York @ Night
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By David R. Adler

Jason Moran Trio with Sam Rivers

Seems that Jason Moran has made his introductory hip-hop montage a permanent part of his show (see my September 2001 column at http://allaboutjazz.com/articles/nyan0901.htm). There’s no overstating how original and captivating a move this is: the scratchy vinyl sound stops, the lights come up, and the acoustic environment takes over, but the welter of sampled sounds remains fresh in one’s aural memory. Moran begins laying out a chordal roadmap at the piano and is soon joined by Tarus Mateen and Nasheet Waits. But Mateen, in another twist, is playing an acoustic bass guitar — playing the hell out of it, in fact, giving Moran’s music an altogether different kind of timbre. (Hans Glawischnig played one at Dafnis Prieto’s gig last month; could it be catching on?) The great Sam Rivers joined after the first number and remained for the rest of set, playing sublimely on tenor, soprano, and flute. To the guy who bellowed "THAT’S PRETTY, THAT’S PRETTY!!!!" after every solo: Thanks for diminishing an otherwise beautiful experience The musicians thank you too, I’m sure. (Thumbs up on the new Iridium space, by the way.)

Bass Birthday

Matthew Garrison played the Jazz Gallery on his birthday, June 2, with Adam Rogers on guitar, Jojo Mayer on drums, and Arto Tuncboyacian on percussion and vocals. Rogers was technically stunning, his lines a maze of rhythmic and intervallic invention. He was too loud, but he still practically made the show. (Guitar nerd tangent: Rogers’s merciless right hand is the very model of precision and control. His fretting approach seems to pivot on fingers two and four, rather than one and three. He could probably lift weights with his left pinky.) The finer details of Garrison’s solos got lost in the shuffle (the price of high volume and a muddy mix), but he was hip and melodic, grooving forcefully with Mayer. Tuncboyacian made his percussion count and also threw in some vocal flavor, evoking the mountains of the East. A highlight: "Groove Tune," from Garrison’s self-titled debut, out last year. This track’s as catchy as "Jean Pierre."

Blood Sutra

Vijay Iyer’s turn in the Jazz Gallery Composers Series spotlight featured his quartet, with altoist Rudresh Mahanthappa, bassist Stephan Crump, and a young hurricane of a drummer named Tyshawn Sorey. This was the premiere of the pianist’s "Blood Sutra" suite: 12 compositions in all, some brand new, some refurbished for this new context, all in one way or another dealing with blood (as bodily substance, as metaphor, as poetic/religious/political trope, and so forth). The first set began with an unaccompanied prologue, took off into the nasty polyrhythmic attack of "Cardio," and ultimately wound down with a reading of Jimi Hendrix’s "Hey Joe." The song’s slow pulse, original chord changes, and chromatic ending were left intact, but Iyer played way outside over it all; Sorey, too, saw in the lingering bars of E major an opportunity to go nuts and leap bravely over rhythmic cliffs. Then Iyer and Mahanthappa pushed it over the top with an extraordinary unison line. In the program the song appeared as "Hey Joe/Because of Guns" — apparently this second title is simply the unison line itself, Iyer’s brilliant variation on a theme. The quartet was even more powerful during the second set, beginning with the haunting 9/11 meditation "Proximity (Crossroads)," culminating in "Imagined Nations" (about "the movement from blood ties to bloodshed"), and closing with the tranquil "Desiring (One Thousand Days)."

A brainy thematic production like "Blood Sutra" is risky in the best way, and the fact that Iyer can take such risks and still connect to a diverse audience is remarkable. He’s able to unite sources of inspiration from a wide range of disciplines and cultures into a seamless, convincing whole. Even people quite new to his difficult music can feel its honesty and power.

Doldrums

Sad to report that their last Vanguard set of the week found Jacky Terrasson, Sean Smith, and Al Foster sounding spent, lifeless. (The disastrously out-of-tune Baldwin didn’t help.) For some reason Terrasson opted to play none of his own music, instead rehashing things like "Nature Boy," "Summertime," "Georgia On My Mind," and "Cantaloupe Island." Foster was out to lunch on Jacky’s 7/8 reading of "Parisian Thoroughfare" — for some reason he wound up soloing in four, a good indication that apathy was in the house. But the nadir was Terrasson’s tossed-off solo rendition of Tony Williams’s "Sister Cheryl." The version on 1997’s Alive! is a tear-jerking masterpiece. Here the timing made no sense in the context of the set, and Terrasson had no idea what he wanted to say. It made one wonder: why is this brilliant pianist relying so heavily on material he’s been playing for over five years?

Playscape at the Knit

Coming off a European tour (with Gerald Cleaver on traps), Mario Pavone’s Nu Trio sounded strong at the Old Office, although Peter Madsen should’ve had a piano to play on (he made do with a little Roland keyboard). Michael Sarin scraped, scratched, and grooved at the kit, buoying the intense lows coming off Pavone’s bass. Madsen managed to find a decent sound — call it Rhodes-lite — and he played very much like himself, i.e., brilliantly, with the kind of harmonic openness only the most knowledgeable players can achieve. Of his instrument he remarked, "It’s terrible, but sometimes I like terrible."

Later the same week in the Alterknit room, Madsen sat before a Yamaha grand and really took flight. This time it was the "Op-Ed" quartet, with guitarist Michael Musillami joining Pavone, Madsen, and Sarin. The band’s angular, atonal, often odd-metered themes set up dynamic rounds of improvisation, a kind of free-blowing-in-time that’s pretty specific to the musicians associated with the late Thomas Chapin. Musillami’s lines were free of jazz clichés yet full of swinging intensity; occasionally a percussive snap of the strings would drive his point home. The guitar can greatly enhance the dramatic sweep of some of these tunes, particularly Pavone’s memorable "Bass Song." For repertoire, the band was drawing upon the Op-Ed record and Pavone’s new Mythos, as well as a forthcoming quintet disc featuring Art Baron and George Sovak — although the absence of horns here gave that music a very different feel. These guys do brilliant work; it’s a shame they have to struggle so hard to get their music heard. That Pavone and Musillami live well outside greater New York probably doesn’t help.

Prior to the quartet’s gig, pianist Anat Fort and clarinetist Perry Robinson played a fabulous set of free duets in the same room. Entirely unmiked and unrehearsed, the two gave a glowing performance. Fort’s got a highly developed harmonic sense — she recently completed a full-blown orchestral work — and Robinson’s got ears that allow him to go anywhere. When Fort began a rendition of the Hebrew prayer "Oseh Shalom," Robinson didn’t even wait for her to state the theme once through. He jumped right in and got the vibe exactly right, even though he’d never heard it before. "We’re traveling. Many places. Wow!" That was Robinson’s assessment mid-set. (His bubbly eccentricity could win over the Grinch.) Pondering a finale, he asked Fort, "Should we do a fancy-free, scooby-doo kind of thing?" and then he simply started scooby-dooing on the clarinet. The distinction between voice and horn was gone.

Snapshots

Jim Hall doesn’t really play lines on the guitar. He plays polyphony — a hushed yet relentless flow of intervallic discoveries and sonic suggestions. He could cut down on the octaver and harmonizer stuff and I wouldn’t complain, but his Vanguard stint was nonetheless superb. Late Thursday night found him in excellent form. Same goes for Scott Colley, who was fluid, golden-toned, and harmonically inventive, especially on "Don’t Explain." Terry Clarke was straightforward and swinging yet highly individual, telling it like it is on "Blackwell’s Message," a Lovano tune from the album Grand Slam (Telarc).

Stumbled upon a really good acoustic hip-hop band called Grandfather Ridiculous, fronted by Taylor McFerrin, Bobby’s son, on rhymes and human beat-box. Straight out of the New School, this quartet knows how to stir up drama, with Jason Fraticelli and Nigel Sifantus laying it down on upright bass and drums and John Rybczyk, Jr. sounding most precocious at the piano The band’s in residence at the Knitting Factory, Tap Room, on Tuesday nights — check ’em out.

David Hazeltine played two nights at Smoke with Eric Alexander, Peter Washington, and Louis Hayes — the lineup from his new Sharp Nine disc, The Classic Trio Meets Eric Alexander. From the very first notes of Charlie Parker’s "Cheryl," the quartet was swinging hard, with that heavy yet spacious and transparent feeling that really separates the "classic" from the banal. An ultra-fast "My Old Flame" (half-time bridge) and Hazeltine’s smoky reading of "What the Wolds Needs Now" were among the other highlights.

Luis Perdomo, the fine pianist, led a quintet at the Jazz Gallery — Miguel Zenon on alto, Sam Newsome on soprano, Essiet Essiet on bass, and the redoubtable Ralph Peterson, Jr. on drums. (Essiet’s relationship with Peterson goes way back, an early document being 1988’s Triangular, the great trio session with Geri Allen.) Being on the bandstand with Peterson requires giving a thousand percent, and that’s what these players did, particularly Zenon, whose knife-edged tone kept pace with Peterson’s batterie at every step. Perdomo’s compositions can flow lyrically like "Landscape" and "Procession," or they can hit hard, like the free-ish "Book of Life" and the pounding, bata drum-inspired "You Know I Know." (Perdomo handed Ralph Peterson these difficult charts on Monday; Peterson didn’t have charts anywhere near him by Friday.) Blistering renditions of "Speak Low" and "Oleo" and a shimmering "Prelude to a Kiss" rounded out the set beautifully.

Omar Sosa made his first New York appearance at the Blue Note — wait, make that a capital-A Appearance. You might think that the huge sonic canvas the Cuban-born pianist creates on his records would need to be scaled down for the stage, but not at all. The band was big and perpetually active, with Eric Crystal on saxes, Geoff Brennan on bass, Elliot Kavee on drums, Gustavo Ovalles on percussion, Martha Galarraga on Yoruba vocals, Said Hakmoun on Arabic vocals, and the bushy-goateed, baseball-capped Brutha Los on hip-hop vocals. Sosa came out in priestly garb, with flowing white robes and a red ceremonial candle. His piano playing was showy, adventurous, quite sophisticated; he often led the band with his tall, lean body, leaping off the bench to signal cues and/or dig into particularly hip lines. His multiculti spiritualism got a little overwrought at times. But the music was ecstatic and lyrical, emphasizing Sosa’s melodic gifts, Crystal’s strong, huffy tone, and Kavee’s polyrhythmic ears and sheer endurance.

At Cornelia Street Café, tenor saxophonist/composer Ohad Talmor co-led a fascinating sextet project with bassist Steve Swallow. The group premiered a handful of pieces from an unfinished work called "L'histoire du Clochard" (after Stravinsky’s "L’histoire du Soldat"). Joining Talmor and Swallow were Greg Tardy on clarinet, Russ Johnson on trumpet, Jacob Garchik on trombone, and Meg Okura on violin. Drummer Dan Weiss sat in for a pair of trio pieces (tenor/bass/drums); "I Remember You" came across as filler, quite unlike Carla Bley’s "Ups and Downs," which was far more substantial. In addition to Talmor’s exquisite chamber pieces, the standing-room audience heard stirring sextet arrangements of Swallow’s "Hullo Bolinas" and "Ladies in Mercedes." Talmor’s mastery of modern classical harmony, and his ability to perform uncontrived jazz/classical marriages, makes him a talent well worth watching. And Cornelia Street Café, which has produced contemporary classical-meets-jazz events in the past, was an ideal venue. Next month is the Café’s 25th anniversary, so check those listings.

Guitarist Marvin Sewell, of Cassandra Wilson fame, led an inspired band at the Jazz Gallery. In addition to his multiple guitars, he had Jerome Harris on acoustic bass guitar, Khalil Kwame Bell and Ricky Gordon on percussion, and — most surprisingly — Rochelle Garnier and Joe Barbado on accordions. With poise and eccentric charm, Sewell wailed the blues, playing slide on a strange little pistachio-colored electric and even speak-singing some choice Lightnin’ Hopkins verses. (He didn’t have a mic, so you had to really lean in to hear him.) He switched between nylon- and steel-string acoustics for most of the remaining tunes, which were rootsy, melodic, an absolute joy. Ricky Gordon donned a washboard — worn over the chest like a plate of armor — for one particularly upbeat number, which blew like a cool breeze on this unbearably hot night. Sewell is starting to create his own niche in creative, guitar-based instrumental music, bucking all the New York jazz trends. He’s a little defensive about it, too. He signed off with a barb about trying to get "the jazz police to give me my license back."