Sam Braysher: That's Him: The Music Of Kurt Weill

On his first two albums under his own name, London-based alto saxophonist Sam Braysher focused on the Great American Songbook. On this, his third album, he takes a sideways look at mid-twentieth century American popular music through the work of German-born, naturalized American composer, Kurt Weill. Braysher, whose warm tone and consonant and inquisitive approach to harmony is attracting growing attention on the British jazz scene, is accompanied by pianist Matyas Gayer, double bassist Dario Di Lecce and drummer Steve Brown. Singer Sara Dowling is featured on three of the ten tracks.

A key figure on the porous border between art music and cabaret culture in the anything-goes Berlin of the late 1920s, partly through his collaborations with the poet and playwright Bertholt Brecht, Weill—a socialist and a Jew—had become a target of the Nazis by the turn of the decade. He escaped Germany in 1933, first to Paris, then in 1935 to New York. (Almost a hundred years later, whether America will continue to offer refuge to persecuted people from beyond its borders is questionable, as is the fate of US Democracy itself. The answers will follow the result of the 2024 Presidential election.)

As he did on Golden Earrings (Fresh Sound New Talent, 2017) and Dance Little Lady, Dance Little Man (Unit, 2021), Braysher's selection of material avoids the obvious. That's Him does not include "Mack The Knife," "September Song," "Alabama Song" or "Speak Low." Instead we get lesser known tunes, three from the late 1920s, six from the mid to late 1940s. Before hearing the album, one might regret the absence of "Mack The Knife" et al. But as the album unfolds, Braysher makes his point: there is plenty more gold in Weill's songbook (check the YouTube below).

Dowling is heard on "What Good Would The Moon Be?" (lyrics Langston Hughes), "The Right Guy For Me" (lyrics Sam Coslow) and "That's Him" (lyrics Ogden Nash). Only "That's Him" has any sort of currency in the jazz world, and was the title track of an Abbey Lincoln album released by Riverside in 1957. The sole Braysher original, "Ships Adrift," is the closest the album gets to Weill's hit parade, being a boppish contrafact of "Speak Low." There are two duo tracks: on "Marterl," from Weill's The Berlin Requiem, a 1928 setting of Brecht poems, Braysher is accompanied by Gayer only, and on "Bilbao-Song," from 1929, by Di Lecce only.

A thoughtful, well researched and delightful album.

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