JENNY SCHEINMAN

Money Jungle
Terri Lyne Carrington
(Concord)
by George Kanzler
Baritone Monk
Claire Daly
(North Coast Brewing)
Two prominent female jazz artists honor jazz icons on
these albums. Drummer Terri Lyne Carrington
reimagines the music of one of the most celebrated allstar
trio LPs in jazz while baritone saxophonist Claire
Daly essays a program of Monk compositions in one of
his favorite performing contexts.
50 years ago last month, United Artists released
Money Jungle, a Duke Ellington album with bassist
Charles Mingus and drummer Max Roach, a one-off
trio assembled by producer Alan Douglas. Ellington
wrote eight mostly blues-based tunes for the date,
which also included three Ellington standards.
Carrington jettisons those in favor of originals and
augments her basic trio, with bassist Christian McBride
and pianist Gerald Clayton, on some of the eight Money
Jungle tunes. She also interpolates some soundbite
quotes about our economic problems from the likes of
Martin Luther King Jr., Barack Obama, George W. Bush
and the Clintons onto the opening title track, which
otherwise adheres closely to the original, right down
to McBride’s choked, upper register Mingus bass
technique. The album also ends with spoken words:
Duke Ellington’s in his poem “Music”, an extended
metaphor of music as a woman (voiced by Shea Rose)
and his comments about jazz, music and money (voiced
by Herbie Hancock). In between, Carrington and her
cohort inhabit and reinvigorate the spirit of the music
originally created by that allstar trio in 1962.
Some of Ellington’s pieces receive radical
makeovers. “Backward Country Boy Blues” adds
ethereal wordless vocals from Lizz Wright as well as
Nir Felder’s gritty electric guitar and some Rhodes
from Clayton. “Fleurette Africain”, a delicate pastel on
the original LP, becomes a colorful Romare Beardenlike
collage, adding Clark Terry’s “mumbles” vocals
and some mouthpiece brays as well as his trumpet
solo, plus flutes and trombone. “Switch Blade” begins
similar to the original, with deep groove blues piano
referencing Ellington, but expands to include Tia
Fuller’s alto sax, Antonio Hart’s flute and Robin
Eubanks’ trombone in Mingus-y polyphony. The trio
tracks are an inspired amalgam of tribute and creativity
and Clayton’s “Cut Off” is a deft pastiche of Ellington’s
“Solitude”, suggesting just how much this trio has
absorbed the lessons of Money Jungle.
After a spate of ‘novel’ Monk repertoire albums
including organ and guitar trios and Monk mid-size
bands without a piano, it is refreshing to hear a
straightforward tribute in the manner of Monk’s most
frequent working band, a quartet. Daly’s group, much
like that early and suave Monk tribute band Sphere,
plays Monk’s music without aping the composer or his
bands. Like Sphere, Daly’s quartet is more aware of
nuance and structure than the anarchic quirks and
humor of Monk’s tunes, but aside from a couple of too
bland takes, this CD delivers with moderate Monk-ish
spice. The title is reflected in the bass clef favoritism of
the best tracks, from “Light Blue”, wherein Daly’s
baritone begins phrases completed by Mary Ann
McSweeney’s arco bass, to “Ruby, My Dear”, a
deliciously slow, sinuous version with plucked bass
obbligati to the baritone lead. Also appealing to Monk
fans should be the care and detail applied to
singularizing such tunes as “Let’s Cool One”, with
accelerating A sections and a slinky sax solo entrance,
and “Bright Mississippi”, as an appropriately bright
tempo is complemented by a drum solo accompanied
by shards of sax melody. “Pannonica” features Daly on
flute and a waltz tempo while “Green Chimneys” is a
baritone sax and piano (Steve Hudson) duet that
invokes Monk’s fondness for stride with its two-beat
flavor. But this album triumphs on the expressive and
Monk-informed vivacity of baritone sax and bass.
For more information, visit concordmusicgroup.com and
northcoastbrewing.com. Carrington’s Money Jungle is at
Dizzy’s Club Mar. 26th-27th. Daly’s Baritone Monk is at
Birdland Mar. 28th. See Calendar.
ON DVD
Solo•Duo•Poetry
Cecil Taylor + Pauline Oliveros (EMPAC)
by Suzanne Lorge
Listening requires some effort on the part of the
listener - at the least, a certain receptivity. This kind
of interactive communication lies at the heart of
Pauline Oliveros’ work as a musician, professor and
philosopher. Her music can only be described as
such if one understands that all sound is music.
This is the message that Oliveros offered
listeners in her 2008 concert with pianist Cecil Taylor
at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where she
teaches. The occasion was the dedication of the
university’s Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media
and Performance Arts Center (EMPAC), a bright,
open space of glass and wood for avant garde artists
of all stripes. The DVD, with almost three hours of
spontaneous composition and improvised poetry,
not only shows off the Center’s stages to best
advantage but gives lovers of free improv a visceral
experience of the evening - not easy to do, given the
immediate nature of that musical process.
Oliveros and Taylor are experts at turning
themselves inside out during their solos; one can
almost hear their thoughts a second before they play
them. Each improvised separately before
collaborating on a 22-minute improv. In their solo
performances the musicians followed their
respective internal cues through the twists and turns
of their composition, changing musical direction at
will. When the two performed together, however,
they synched these internal cues nonverbally,
moving together the way birds do. The duo section
is a lesson in how to work together.
Taylor also improvises with words (the “poetry”
part of the title). In a separate performance in the
EMPAC’s theater, he read (or created spontaneously)
phrases and verses that questioned the nature of
existence - just what are these racial, sexual, cultural,
biological, cosmological structures all about,
anyway? As with the music, the answer seems to lie
somewhere in between the sounds.
This DVD is not for the passive viewer looking
to be pleased or entertained, even though there are
many pleasant, entertaining moments on the disc.
It’s for those looking to have their psyches prodded.
For more information, visit empac.rpi.edu. Oliveros is at
Roulette Mar. 30th. See Calendar.
THE NEW YORK CITY JAZZ RECORD | March 2013 17