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Matt Choboter's Hypnopompia: Sleep Inertia
by Doug Collette
In keeping with its title, these eight tracks of just over fifty-minutes comprise a waking/sleeping dreamscape where conscious thoughts crystallize. then turn amorphous in an engrossing cyclical pattern. The fourteen or so minutes of the two-part “Converging Diverging" elucidate the most literal instrumental explication of the concept: replete with far too much ornate detail to fit the description of free jazz, the musicianship nevertheless radiates an abiding spontaneity with all instrumental commentary and elaboration/embellishment from around the quintet.Canadian ...
read moreSara Schoenbeck/Wayne Horvitz: Cell Walk
by Dan Bilawsky
The relationship between Sara Schoenbeck, one of the only bassoon practitioners to truly and successfully fold the instrument's sound into the realm of chamber jazz, and pianist Wayne Horvitz, a touchstone in creative music, has been documented in the past. The work of Horvitz's Gravitas Quartet, formed in 2004 and featuring Schoenbeck alongside trumpeter Ron Miles and cellist Peggy Lee, is but one indicator of the way those two have managed to meld the roaming and refined into a single ...
read moreGordon Grdina: Safar-E-Daroon
by Mike Jurkovic
Safar e Daroon germinates from its dark, submerged interiors immediately and immediately brings you into the light. But a light of what? A lover's lamp? A hushed arena? An Australian wildfire? Take your pick and let your mind go. It's all going to happen and does so in spades on oudist Gordon Grdina's second go-round with his associates, The Marrow. As it has been on recent releases such as Gordon Grdina's Nomad Trio> (Skirl, 2020) with pianist Matt ...
read moreGordon Grdina: Cooper's Park
by Mike Jurkovic
Cooper's Park's eighteen minute centerpiece crashes into energetic existence sounding like someone just remembered to push record while the ensemble was in high flight mid jam. Flailing majestically away, guitarist Gordon Grdina, alto saxophonist/bass clarinetist Oscar Noriega and pianist Russ Lossing are heard early working overtime on every level from solo to tag-team tandem, giving, taking, trading instigating and echoing the rush of melodies that inhabit the track's sprawling, malleable margins. Ignoring musical boundaries comes second nature to these guys ...
read moreGordon Grdina Quartet: Cooper's Park
by Troy Dostert
Since the release of his first album in 2006, Think Like the Waves (Songlines), Gordon Grdina has sought a musical language that would allow him to incorporate his dual interests in the electric guitar and the oud. It is tempting to view this as an “East meets West" process, wherein Grdina's jazz and rock-infused guitar playing melds somehow with the Arabic influences that typically contextualize oud performance. But that is not entirely accurate, as Grdina's recordings are more likely to ...
read moreWayne Horvitz: The Snowghost Sessions
by Glenn Astarita
This trio set is one of two concurrent releases by venerable composer/keyboardist Wayne Horvitz. On Those Who Remain (National Sawdust, 2018) he is supported by an orchestra and guitarist Bill Frisell, to complement his other classical-focused outings spanning the past two decades. As The Snowghost Sessions finds Horvitz aligning with longtime cohorts, bassist Geoff Harper and drummer Eric Eagle who recorded this outing in the enviable settings of an audiophile-grade studio in scenic Whitefish, Montana. Horvitz has been ...
read moreFrancois Houle - Alexander Hawkins - Harris Eisenstadt: You Have Options
by Glenn Astarita
The late co-founder of the Vancouver Jazz Festival, Ken Pickering, recommended British pianist Alexander Hawkins to consummate this trio featuring Canadians: drummer Harris Eisenstadt (drums) and clarinetist Francois Houle. And, based on the output of this exquisite studio set, it was a sound decision to align with the pianist, who for several years has performed with Eisenstadt in the Convergence Quartet. Houle's melodious lines occasionally adopt flotation-like aspects, as the trio executes staggered asynchronous grooves with quaint shifts ...
read moreGordon Grdina: Ejdeha
by Mike Jurkovic
Fifteen years into his study of Arabia's mysterious and resonant oud, Vancouver, Canada-based guitarist Gordon Grdina has released Ejdeha, with his equally mysterious and resonant ensemble, The Marrow. Expanding out from his debut, Think Like the Waves (Songlines, 2006), recorded with Gary Peacock and Paul Motian, Grdina takes his jazz improvisations further into the poetic exoticism of the Middle East. “Telesm" pulls the veil back on Ejdeha, as The Marrow--bassist Mark Helias, cellist Hank Roberts, and Hamin Honari, ...
read moreMikkel Ploug: Alleviation
by Dan Bilawsky
Alleviation is a fascinatingly winsome document showcasing what occurs when tool serves as muse. While out and about in New York in 2016, Danish guitarist Mikkel Ploug happened upon a musical curio--a mahogany-top Gibson Banner LG-2. The instrument, essentially a wartime relic made by the (mostly) female work force in Gibson's Kalamazoo plant in the early '40s, was a worn-down wonder, preserved yet clearly put through life's demands. But the personality, quality of sound, and innate character of this guitar ...
read moreSimon Millerd: Lessons And Fairytales
by Jerome Wilson
Canadian trumpeter Simon Millerd is one of those musicians who effortlessly moves between genres. This new CD of his is a collection of work that mixes folk, jazz-rock, electronic minimalism and jazz in original and personal ways. The opening track, “Looking Back" echoes the glitchy electronics of modern Norwegian music with Millerd's trumpet and Emma Frank's gliding, wordless vocal rising out of a solemn bed of whispery synthesizer and drums. The scene then abruptly shifts on “Lesson 39" ...
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