Articles by Ty Cumbie

Mysterium: For Quintet

by Ty Cumbie
March 18, 2007

Improv jazz is, by nature, a creature best observed in its natural habitat: the live performance. This is especially true of groups who've been at it a while, as the interaction between players is half the fun. With a new group like Eric Eigner's Mysterium, it seems the opposite can be true. There's scarce onstage chemistry to be found, while a winsome new recording reveals greater studio possibilities. Eigner is a young drummer who, like Federico Ughi, ...

Nakatani-Chen Duo: Limn

by Ty Cumbie
February 10, 2007

One of the highlights of the Vision Club series in 2005 was a crowd-pleasing duet set with legendary violinist Billy Bang and the brilliant percussionist Tatsuya Nakatani. With a lesser drummer, this might've been a case of star-player-with-accompaniment, but that was far from what happened. Nakatani was more than up for his share of the spotlight, putting on a thrilling show of technique and artistry.

Some of what makes Nakatani so exciting live is, naturally, lost in recordings, but there's ...

Microscopic Sextet: Seven Men in Neckties & Surrealistic Swing

by Ty Cumbie
January 13, 2007

Microscopic Septet Seven Men in Neckties Cuneiform 2006 Microscopic Septet Surrealistic Swing Cuneiform 2006

The Microscopic Septet's founder Phillip Johnston frequently posits that the band's music, much of which was penned by him, is “avant-garde . It can be quirky, is often fun to hear and it just manages to swing, ...

John Hollenbeck: Joys & Desires & Sequence

by Ty Cumbie
January 13, 2007

John Hollenbeck & Jazz Bigband Graz Joys & Desires Intuition 2005 Jorrit Dijkstra + John Hollenbeck Sequence Trytone 2006

Jazz' tradition police may have a necessary role to play, but that role is purely negative if it inhibits the music's continued creative mutation, especially as manifest in new work by iconoclastic ...

Chris Welcome / Shayna Dulberger / John McLellan: Wound Unwound and Within

by Ty Cumbie
August 10, 2006

Talented musicians seem to arrive in New York by the busload every day. In fact, the music schools, local and otherwise, are churning them out yearly and depositing them unceremoniously onto the mean streets of this city, where they compete for scanty gigs and elusive attention. Two recent arrivals, bassist Shayna Dulberger and guitarist/cellist Chris Welcome, have quickly carved out spots on the underground scene by playing lots of low-paying gigs and pouring their hearts into every one.

They teamed ...

Graham Haynes/Hardedge: Austere Geometry & Reality Eclipsed

by Ty Cumbie
July 15, 2006

Graham Haynes Austere Geometry Hardedge 2005 Graham Haynes Reality Eclipsed Hardedge 2006

Some jazz musicians lean hard toward experimentation. A few fall over the rail. Trumpeter Graham Haynes seems to have been eaten alive by the exotic creature known as 'electronica'. These two CDs are live recordings from ...

Guitar Fest: Ophiuchus Butterfly & Two Hours

by Ty Cumbie
July 15, 2006

Liberty Ellman Ophiuchus Butterfly Pi 2006 Samo Salomon Two Hours Fresh Sound-New Talent 2006

For starters, Ophiuchus is a constellation, a group of stars. In titling his new record, perhaps Liberty Ellman wanted to make a subtle reference to his all-star band. A more on-target reference would be his own rising ...

Odean Pope Saxophone Choir: Locked and Loaded

by Ty Cumbie
June 15, 2006

On Locked and Loaded, Odean Pope and his saxophone choir offer up lush, drum-tight voicings as gorgeous and rich as any golden age big band section, then shift gear from full-throated crooning to full-throttle blowing with no audible effort. The first two tracks, both Pope originals, set the agenda: the standard-ish ballad “Epitome," which is nearly devoid of improvisation, is followed by the wildly swinging “Prince Lasha," which is just about all improvisation, and free at that. Pope plays both ...

Modern Jazz Guitar: Vol.19: Acoustic Guitar and The Compass, Log and Lead

by Ty Cumbie
May 29, 2006

Barry Chabala Vol.19: Acoustic Guitar Sachimay 2006 Frith, Wishart, Kihlstedt The Compass, Log and Lead Intakt 2006 A guitarist's scraping, tapping, twisting and tweaking the strings of the instrument is commonly called “extended technique . Musicians who focus on improvisation are expected to have a wide range of these techniques. Nearly all of them ...

Ray Russell: Goodbye Svengali

by Ty Cumbie
May 20, 2006

Heavy chops and slick production values are the dominant traits of this recording by British guitar wizard Ray Russell. While offering due tribute to the guitar master's powers, I would have liked to have heard more ideas and fewer effects. Russell was called up from the minors near the time fusion was starting to catch fire, and his sound remains redolent of that period. His playing, on single-note runs and complex, edgy chord voicings, is formidable indeed ...