January 2009

Harris Eisenstadt

Tightly crafted as it was, drummer Harris Eisenstadt's music at Cornelia Street Cafe (Dec. 5th) had an elusiveness, an instability, even a darkness that contrasted with his quintet's celebratory name, Canada Day (the band formed on Jul. 1st). Joined by trumpeter Nate Wooley, tenorist Matt Bauder, vibraphonist Chris Dingman and bassist Eivind Opsvik, Eisenstadt unveiled pieces he planned to record the next day—wily contrapuntal inventions, concise yet elaborated, packed with rhythmic obstacles that the band rendered as naturally as breathing. Eisenstadt swung hard with "On Her Way" and "Keep Casting Rods," his flair at the kit as effortless as it was unobtrusive. He led off with "You Have Options, I Have a Lawyer" (a Sopranos reference), sketching tense 3/4 time as the horns looped a rising two-note figure against a falling three-note bass phrase. "Halifax" and "Every Day Is Canada Day" shared a slower, looser, metrically ambiguous feel, anchored by Opsvik's well-placed lines and colored by Dingman. "And When to Come Back" and "Don't Gild the Lily," based on 11-beat structures, featured Bauder and Opsvik, respectively, to great effect. Even at its rawest, Bauder's tone has a warm and round quality, a kind of old-school depth. Wooley, too, approached the music with far-reaching expression, employing the occasional mute and letting loose when the beats ("After an Outdoor Bath," "Kate Geeper") got funky.

Jon Irabagon

After winning the 2008 Monk International Saxophone Competition, altoist Jon Irabagon had the added privilege of leading off the annual Monk in Motion series at Tribeca Performing Arts Center (Dec. 1st). Despite the accolades, Irabagon wasn't about hogging the spotlight; he was wise to grant plenty of feature space to trumpeter Brandon Lee, pianist Randy Ingram, bassist Peter Brendler and drummer Marion Felder. Playing two generous sets, the quintet brought virtuosity and collaborative spirit to Irabagon's solid but fairly restrained original pieces. "January Dream" and "The Dollhouse" recalled the wistful twilight harmony of early Wayne Shorter. "Big Jim's Twins," "Camp Douglas" and "Theme" veered closer to the irreverence Irabagon cultivates with his other projects, Outright! and Mostly Other People Do the Killing. Although his horn was over-mic'd and saddled with excess treble, Irabagon moved confidently from swing to ballads ("Distilled Hope," "Acceptance") to brisk straight-eighth tempos ("Albosis"), ending with the mysterious arpeggiations of "Closing Arguments". He broke up his boppish lines and legato cries with fluid intervallic jumps, multiphonics, glissandos and quarter-tones, giving an "outside" edge to generally straight-ahead material. Playing off a recurring syncopated beat on the "Poinciana"-inspired "Joy's Secret," he rose to a fury of cascading runs—and yet even at his wildest, he got the band to stick to him, rhythmic focus unshaken.

—David R. Adler

Dave Douglas

The house lights weren't even down yet when Luis Bonilla, Vincent Chancey and Dave Douglas took the stage, playing as they walked out before a full house at Le Poisson Rouge Dec. 9th, three different solos with Nasheet Waits' drums lightly cascading behind them until Marcus Rojas followed and set a slow line below them on tuba, bringing them all into focus. There was a fitting looseness, given that Douglas' Brass Ecstasy was founded in tribute to Lester Bowie's Brass Fantasy and opening with Rufus Wainwright's "This Love Affair" was also a subtle, maybe even unintentional, way of paying homage without mimickry. The slow, New Orleans feel was an obvious nod to Bowie, as was interpreting a pop song (he famously obscured genre lines by adapting Whitney Houston and Michael Jackson for his band). Douglas is a very different player and didn't try to emulate Bowie, although there were a few pinched trumpet cries in his "Chicago Calling," a piece comprised of several marches interspersed with open sections. And Douglas' quintet was well prepared to meet the challenge: Bonilla, Chancey and Rojas all played in Bowie's mighty brass line. Waits proved again to be a remarkably steady presence—he has an amazing way of showing strength without using force. Bowie represented many things to new jazz and to "great black music" but Douglas' tribute was to Bowie the entertainer, the showstopper, the great pretender, taut arrangements played with joie de vivre.

Douglas Ewart

If not expressly a tribute, Lester Bowie still seemed present at Douglas Ewart's concert at Roulette on Dec. 11th. Ewart was a founder of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, of which Bowie was one of the most celebrated members; pianist Adegoke Steve Colson and drummer Reggie Nicholson, both part of Ewart's Inventions, are longtime members and trombonist Craig Harris has a long history with the organization. Ewart's "one world" philosophy reflected AACM tenets, from the economic justice argument of "The Worlds Above, The Worlds Below" to the crossing of cultural bridges in "Reflections of Haiti," performed live with Haitian artists via Internet. The metallic ring of the audio link may have been due to faulty technology, but it made for an interesting collision of sounds against Ewart and Harris' didgeridoos and Henry Grimes' warbling violin. It was a meditation with foreboding tones, especially in light of the financial collapse of the first piece. The night concluded with "Crepuscule," a set of composed possibilities to which Ewart repeatedly returns. In this instance it was a fragmented post-bop piece, Ewart circling on sopranino, built around the repetition of an eight-note ascending phrase. Although the performance was flawed—Ewart thanked the audience for their patience with the experiment—it was worthy as an opportunity to hear one of the most inventive people to come out of the AACM on a rare trip to New York.

—Kurt Gottschalk

mi3

For all the people who complain that avant-garde jazz doesn't have enough venues in New York City anymore, particularly for out-of-town acts, the crowd at Brooklyn's Union Hall for mi3 Dec. 9th was disturbingly small. The trio—pianist Pandelis Karayorgis, bassist Nate McBride and drummer Curt Newton—was giving the penultimate gig of a six-date East Coast tour for a small audience of friends and well-wishers. Perhaps Union Hall, which has become a stopping point for touring Chicago groups (Vandermark 5 and The Engines, both in 2007), is still not on the radar for the listenership that mi3 would attract. But those that were there were treated to an expansive hour-long set that featured Karayorgis exclusively on Fender Rhodes, giving the set a pared- down Mwandishi feel. They played Monk's "Locomotive" as a closer with guest alto saxophonist Jeff Hudgins as well as originals by Karayorgis and McBride that moved from funk grooves and the musical equivalent of a drunk staggering from lamppost to lamppost to some unreassuring 'ballads,' given quite a different feel on Rhodes and one with connection problems to boot. The most interesting segment of the evening was the take on Eric Dolphy's "Gazzelloni". The version would have been almost unrecognizable if not announced beforehand, the quirky theme seemed as if were played under duress, cast out quickly like a fishing line, in order to see what improvisational fish it could reel in.

L'Orchestre de Contrebasses

Who would want to see an ensemble made up solely of six contrabasses? At the Connelly Theatre Dec. 2nd, one obvious answer was other bassists, demonstrated by the number of them in the audience. But aside from practitioners, could the ordinary listener enjoy the 75-minute performance of "BaSS, BaSs, bAsS, BAsS, BAsS & baSs" by the French-Canadian ensemble L'Orchestre de Contrebasses? The answer is absolutely. The group, led by Christian Gentet for the past 27 years, is not a raucous, free improvising ensemble mired in the low end of the sound spectrum. But neither is it one of the often clumsy assemblies of same instrument convened for novelty—or superstar—value. Gentet et son amis have created what could be best described as a performance piece for the contrabass, one where beautifully sculpted melodic and textural explorations alternate with surreal, visual spectacles more narrative than musical. Too much of the former would try anyone's patience; the latter could easily become kitschy. But designed as it was, segments where the musicians pounded each other's instruments, visually and aurally recreated a seashore or a car stuck in traffic, waltzed or turned their (upside) basses into some bizarre percussive alien life form made the more 'traditional' pieces even more appealing. The bass is traditionally the most ignored instrument in an ensemble. L'Orchestre de Contrebasses shows quite expertly that it can captivate spectators in many ways.

—Andrey Henkin

Wayne Shorter

The music and spirit of Wayne Shorter filled Carnegie Hall for two uninterrupted hours in a recital (Dec. 2nd) that united the genius saxophonist/ composer and his quartet of Danilo Perez, John Patitucci and Brian Blade with the contemporary classical quintet Imani Winds for an intriguing fusion of modern sounds. The Quintet opened the concert with a Villa Lobos composition, followed by a fluid reading of "Terra Incognito," a multi-hued chamber piece composed by Shorter that traversed a multiplicity of emotions. Greeted with an extended standing ovation, Shorter and Company then took the stage for a typically courageous set, interweaving numerous compositions from his voluminous repertory into a vibrant, everchanging tapestry of sounds. Rarely remaining tied to any single melodic mooring long enough to settle into comfortable complacency, with the leader shifting between tenor and soprano, the four master musicians engaged each other in a musical conversation that was cerebral, soulful and constantly surprising. Remarkably, when the wind quintet returned to the stage to join the band, the music remained as revelatory, the nine musicians melding together into a single entity with Shorter at the helm, directing the inventive arrangements of a trilogy of his compositions—"The Three Marias," "Prometheus Unbound" and "Pegasus"—with a singular attentiveness to sound and silence that held the audience in spellbound rapture.

Craig Harris

Trombonist Craig Harris brought the revival of his multi-disciplinary masterpiece "God's Trombones" to the Harlem Stage Gatehouse (Dec. 6th), an appropriate setting for the work composed around the book of the same name by James Weldon Johnson, an author much associated with the Harlem Renaissance. Directed by Avery Brooks, Harris' creation augmented his working quartet of Bob Stewart, Adam Klipple and Tony Lewis with a brass choir featuring Curtis Fowlkes, Al Patterson and Gary Valente on trombones and Joe Daley on euphonium, which alternately soloed with inspired abandon or set lush backgrounds for the four exceptional vocalists. Kevin Anthony, Gina Breedlove, LaTanya Hall and Trent Kendal brought life to Johnson's lyrical words based on sermons preached in the black church. Providing a moving religious experience in a secular setting, the well-paced theatrical work was moving in its emotional drive, the singers conveying the trial and tribulations of black Americans that their churches addressed in songs of joy, praise, sorrow and redemption. Filled with uninhibited swing and restrained melancholy, the music excited and stirred the sold-out house with emotion not often felt outside of houses of worship. The sheer passion of each member of the ensemble was so powerful as to draw the audience deeply into their world, so that by the end the crowd became part of the show, the joyous congregation to which the music preached.

—Russ Musto

Recommended New Listening:

* Interplay—Apology to the Atonists/Tritone Suite (Porter)

* Jim McAuley—The Ultimate Frog (Drip Audio)

* Tony Malaby Cello Trio—Warblepeck (Songlines)

* Chico Pinheiro & Anthony Wilson—Nova (Goat Hill)

* Ben Schachter—Omnibus (s/r)

* Mark Sherman Quartet—Live at the Bird's Eye (Miles High)

—David Adler NY@Night Columnist, AllAboutJazz.com

* Steven Bernstein/Marcus Rojas/Kresten Osgood—Tattoos and Mushrooms (ILK Music)

* Nicola Cipani—The Ill-Tempered Piano (Long Song)

* Ray Warleigh—Rue Victor Massé (psi)

* Julian Siegel Trio—Live at the Vortex (with Joey Baron & Greg Cohen) (Basho)

* Natsuki Tamura/Satoko Fujii—Chun (Libra)

* Matthew Shipp Trio—Harmonic Disorder (Thirsty Ear)

—Laurence Donohue-Greene Managing Editor, AllAboutJazz-New York

* Daniel Erdmann/Benjamin Duboc/Antoine Paganotti—Passages (SansBruit)

* Ingebrigt Håker Flaten/Håkon Kornstad—Elise (Hemlandssånger Compunctio)

* Satoko Fujii Orchestra New York—Summer Suite (Libra)

* Anders Mogensen/Rudresh Mahanthappa/Kasper Tranberg/Jacob Anderskov/Carlo DeRosa—Real People (Blackout)

* Ken Vandermark with Kent Kessler, Ingebrigt Håker Flaten, Nate McBride, Wilbert De Joode—Collected Fiction (Okkadisk)

* Townhouse Orchesta—Belle Ville (Clean Feed)

—Andrey Henkin Editorial Director, AllAboutJazz-New York

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