Stan Harrison: Some Poor Soul Has a Fire

As befits someone who has spent years in the pop/rock arena performing with name acts from David Bowie, Radiohead and Stevie Ray Vaughan to Duran Duran, Bruce Springsteen, Laurie Anderson and many others, composer and saxophonist Stan Harrison sees jazz through an extremely wide lens. While there are a few moments of clean straight-ahead blowing on Harrrison's album Some Poor Soul Has a Fire, there are many others that emulate more closely his kinship to and respect for the kind of music that has provided the bread and butter for much of his career.

To bring his anomalous charts to life, Harrison employs a core quartet (Elias Stemeseder, piano and synths; Kim Cass, bass; Steven Crammer, drums) expanded by guitarist Michael Gregory Jackson on two numbers ("The Details," "They Must Be Praying") and by a string quartet on one—the harsh and strident "It's Time to Put the Dog to Bed"—on which Harrison also "sings." As Harrison himself concedes, his compositions are "quite varied," which could be an understatement, as each one seems to be divorced from the others, leaving no common thread with which to tie them together in any sort of nexus.

This may be the whole idea, as Harrison points to their diversity as a strong point. And there can be no doubting their disparity, from the opening "(Smaller Than) the Big Things," which is actually more jazz-centered than most of its companion pieces (but with little or no tangible improvisation), through the limber finale, "Joy," wherein Harrison uses the bass clarinet early on before relocating to tenor sax.

Sandwiched between those discrepant themes are half a dozen of Harrison's typically offbeat and eccentric compositions, each one a rampart unto itself. If disparity is indeed the goal, mission accomplished. But to what end? This is jazz of a stripe that more than likely rests well beyond the discernment or satisfaction of the average jazz aficionado. As such, it cannot be highly endorsed as a jazz album. On the other hand, those who have matured under the banner of pop and rock may warm more readily to its idiosyncrasy.