Helen Sung Big Band: Oracles

"The jazz bandstand is where true democracy lives," the great saxophonist and composer Jimmy Heath told a young Helen Sung. "Everyone must understand their role and come prepared by doing the hard work of study and practice," he said. "Each person will get to say their piece, but it is in the act of integrating as a band that the musicians ultimately create something bigger, richer, and deeper." Oracles launches into a time and place where divisions are deep and democracy is under attack, which makes it a perfect moment to reflect on and embrace Heath's view.

As her first big-band offering, the album is Sung's response—to Heath and Clark Terry, Ron Carter, Wayne Shorter, Barry Harris, Kenny Barron, Herbie Hancock, and Sir Roland Hanna—which, as she put it, "expresses my deep gratitude and is a tribute to the masters who made room for me and entrusted me with a tradition they helped build." Her compositions affirm lessons she has learned and values she has internalized.   

In "A Little Bird Watchin' (for Jimmy Heath)," the ensemble leads the way. What begins with one voice (Nicole Glover's tenor saxophone) quickly becomes lively counterpoint as independent lines are layered in, followed by full-voiced harmonious homophony. Improvisation is the order of the day, with Vicente Archer's bass, Sung's piano, and Adam Cruz's drums coming to the fore as textures and tempos shift. Soloists dominate. There is plenty of composition, but it serves and is led by individual voices (those of "the people," to use Heath's metaphor).

Taking Ron Carter's advice to heart, that "in order to find your voice in this music, you have to write your own music," she uses material by her mentors as jumping-off points for creations that are very much her own. Terry's "Samba da Gumz" (track 2) becomes a prelude to her "Positively C.T." (track 3), which highlights her trumpets (Mike Rodriguez, Tatum Greenblatt, Alex Norris, Nathaniel Williford). And Shorter's gorgeous "Diana" (track 4), which Shorter so memorably offered in his 1974 collaboration with Milton Nascimento (Native Dancer, Columbia), here becomes a dreamy prelude for soprano sax (John Ellis) and Fender Rhodes, leading to Sung's quixotic "Wayne's World" (track 5). Sung's "Mr. Virtuoso" (track 6), written for Carter, opens with bass, piano, and drums in an out-of-time misterioso before she employs the full range of the ensemble, from flutes on top to the lower realms of her reed and brass sections. She plumbs the depths with solos from Andrew Gutauskas' baritone saxophone and Gina Benalcázar López's bass trombone then uses Carter's own "R.J." as a postlude, picking up the tempo and again centering on the rhythm section.

Sung followed Hanna's counsel to "not forget her classical roots" in composing Pianism, a piano concerto in tribute to Harris, Barron, and Hancock. The first movement, "I: Barry Harris," opens with a non-blues pentatonic passage in parallel harmony that is gradually reshaped metrically against a changing set of backdrops, finally settling—two minutes into the performance—into a bop melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic milieu reflective of Harris' position as "keeper of Bud Powell's legacy and the bebop flame." The timbres soften in the second movement, "II: Kenny Barron," which honors the "modern master of melody" with Rhodes, flute, and muted trumpet lines that sail on a cool groove that navigates swing and straight eighths. "III: Herbie Hancock," comes on strong with percussion hits and horns in a pentatonic canon that recalls the concerto's opening while heralding a funkier feel with a finely calibrated 16th-note subdivision and blues mode in its melodic backbone.

In keeping with her view of Hancock as "transcendence personified," Sung closes the concerto with a finale that aligns conceptually with aesthetic and formal norms of classical composition. She reminds us who and what we have heard in earlier movements, recapping themes, playing with and intertwining elements, transcending stylistic boundaries to create a work that—while it respects the "without you, no me" jazz principle—is undeniably, joyfully original.