Jason Keiser: Kind of Kenny

Over the past decade San Jose guitarist Jason Keiser has carved out a sterling reputation as a bandleader whose musical passions range across North America's expansive soundscape, and this album extends his exploration into arrestingly lyrical territory. After highlighting Woody Shaw's treasure trove of intervallic leaping post-bop gems on 2023's Shaw's Groove, he turns his attention to another undersung trumpet maestro with Kind of Kenny, a deep dive into the ravishing music of Canadian composer Kenny Wheeler (1930-2014).

Ranging across Wheeler's sumptuous discography, Keiser reimagines pieces like the elliptical "Hotel Le Hot" from 1990's The Widow in the Window and the folky "Kind Folk" from 1997's Angel Song. Delicately filigreed but wired with tungsten-tensile strength lines, the performances capture the burnished beauty and close calibration that mark Wheeler's free-chamber compositions. "I love Kenny's music. Particularly his records with odd instrumentation featuring John Abercrombie," Keiser says.

Rejoining Keiser from the Shaw project are Berkeley-reared trumpeter Erik Jekabson, a creative catalyst on the Bay Area scene as leader of the Electric Squeezebox Orchestra, and prolific Portland guitarist John Stowell, a near legendary figure who's worked extensively with heavyweights like NEA Jazz Master Dave Liebman and Mike Zilber, another key Kind of Kenny contributor (on tenor and soprano saxophones). With her crystalline tone and graceful phrasing Danielle Wertz provides a defining ingredient with her (mostly) wordless vocal lines, while delivering Norma Winstone's portrait of a guarded soul on the sing-song "For Jan."

Moving between electric and baritone fretless electric guitars, Stowell holds down the ensemble's bottom range as he provides efficiently eloquent counterlines responding to Keiser's acoustic steel and nylon string work. In many ways Stowell's shared love of Wheeler's music put the project on track. "John was the first link, making sure he was interested and available was important to me," Keiser says, noting that Stowell has recorded several Wheeler tunes in the past, including "Kayak" and "Everybody's Song But My Own."

"John not only has a unique sound, phrasing and sense of time, his ideas and openness to the music are exceptional. He's open to pushing boundaries, and we're always bouncing ideas off of each other."

With Kind of Kenny, Keiser and Stowell have taken an impressive leap, shining a welcome new light on a singular, insistently surprising body of music.