Elijah Shiffer: Star Jelly

Sometimes very talented people write difficult music. The music is difficult because its intent is not immediately clear. Or it does not follow canonical criteria, at least as currently understood. Music history presents us with many examples: Charles Ives, Igor Stravinsky, Dmitri Shostakovich—these are only very famous "classical" composers whose work passed from controversial to acceptable to mainstream. In jazz, one thinks of Ornette Coleman or someone probably considerably less orthodox and perhaps much less well known.

Elijah Shiffer is a New York-based musician, composer, arranger, editor and critic. Star Jelly is described by Shiffer himself as " an expanded version of the Star Jelly Horns, an eclectic, sax-heavy version of a New Orleans-style 'brass' band which grew out of busking in Prospect Park in 2020." It is, to put it mildly, Not Your Father's Oldsmobile. Listening to the opening track, "Blues My Naughty Sweetie Gives to Me," sort of conjured up the persona of El Dorado Caddy, the nom de guerre of Tim Hauser, late of The Manhattan Transfer. Hauser could put on quite a show to a tune like this. For some reason, "Blues" resurrected him. He would have liked it, and probably figured out some form of performance to suit it. Not everyone is that creative.

An overall impression of the recording: it is really interesting, again to put it mildly. Sort of hot klezmer meets New Orleans as Earl Bostic wanders around lost in a cemetery. Meters and rhythms come and go, not randomly, but in a scheme which perhaps only Shiffer knows. There are some terrific musicians here, playing and soloing wonderfully. That comes as no surprise, because only a pretty accomplished musician could read a chart like "Crustacean Celebration" or "Gowanus Blues." "The Rarest Bird in Central Park" is a reflection on Shiffer's hobby, birding. Is he, one wonders, partial to songbirds? This is, in any event, serious music. Repeated listening would make its overall message a bit clearer—maybe It is a matter of taste and "world enough and time." Economists call this, less poetically, opportunity cost: inevitably, in part, at least, subjective and to be judged by the hearer.