WDR Big Band with Sean Jones: Jagged Edges Elegant Lines

The release Jagged Edges Elegant Lines: The Music of Ayn Inserto is hardly decorative. This live recording by the WDR Big Band, featuring trumpeter Sean Jones, presents an evening of Inserto's compositions that seem determined to keep two things going at once. First, the music can be angular, interrupted, and rhythmically unpredictable; second, it always has an underlying sense of direction. What initially sounds fragmented invariably becomes part of a grander design. That tension is what gives Inserto's music its power of attraction.

A larger story also unfolds beyond the six individual compositions and the extended suite for Sean Jones. These pieces draw from different corners of Inserto's musical imagination and help paint a convincing portrait of the composer. The rhythms may be challenging, the ensemble writing dense, and the turns unexpected. Nevertheless, there is nearly always a melody, a groove, or a phrase to hold onto.

A good place to begin is "Eshel Sketch." What may have begun as a musical exercise is gradually pushed and reshaped by the horns. As the rhythm grows more complex, the ensemble takes control of the original idea, punctuated by robust interjections from soprano saxophonist Johan Hörlén and tenor saxophonist Ben Fitzpatrick. Remarkably, the band brings it all back, confirming that Inserto knew where she was going all along.

"La Danza Infinita" becomes an earworm surreptitiously. The opening wind chorale is deceptively calm before the brass begins to creep in. As the dance slowly emerges, Ludwig Nuss's trombone lends the number an appealing character, and the arrangement plays hide-and-seek with the eventual outcome.

"Down A Rabbit Hole" wastes no time in sending the listener somewhere less comfortable. The music descends into a maelstrom until John Goldsby's foreboding bass line provides a foundation. The melody then appears in fragments as Paul Heller's tenor catches fire, and the band piles into a shout chorus, signalling that the end is near.

The connective tissue of these pieces is that Inserto's rhythmic and structural language remains consistent even as the surface keeps changing. This connection becomes especially clear in the compositions "Mr. Jones and Company" and "BJ's Tune." The former is an Inserto composition, and the latter is her arrangement of a Jones number. Both sound perfectly at home in the same musical world.

This connection is reinforced in the Inserto-written "Suite for Sean Jones," a four-part commission for the WDR Big Band featuring Jones, with each movement dedicated to a distinct aspect of his character. The opening section, "The Artist," finds drummer Hans Dekker laying the foundation with his propulsive adaptability. Jones demonstrates clarity of attack in his virtuosic playing. In "The Educator," the tempo shifts to a slower swing, and the band digs in with remarkable weight. Jones's trumpet shows equal concern for melody and abstraction. "The Husband and Father" changes the temperature completely. Jones moves into a lower register, and the energy turns inward. The music feels less like a portrait of a celebrated musician and more like a glimpse of the man behind the instrument. The final section, "The Human Soul," opens everything back up, drawing on blues and gospel in a broad, deeply felt ensemble statement. Jones rides overtop, showing he is a firecracker of a trumpeter.

The album shows that music can be sharp without becoming brittle, and complicated without losing its emotional centre. The jagged edges give the elegant lines something to push against, and the lines keep the edges from becoming mere effects.