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Warren Vaché/
John Allred Quintet
Top Shelf
ARBORS 19399
★★★★
Warren Vaché appeared on our radar 35
years ago, a time as far away now as he
was then from the music that seemed to
inspire much of his work. His swing-era
sensibilities hovered around 1940 and
stood in starkly reactionary contrast to the
fashions of fusion, soul-funk and ECMstyle
austerity everyone was talking and
arguing about circa 1975.
The lesson is time warps all perceptions.
Charles Mingus and Ornette Coleman
are now part of the preservation hall
of repertoire alongside Fletcher Henderson and
Gil Evans. As the once sharp contrasts between
old and new have softened and dissolved, the music
that Vaché and John Allred brew here seems
far less imprinted with any conspicuous stigma of
swing-era atavism than those once-trendy Headhunters
and Weather Report LPs that sounded so
a la mode in the ’70s. In the perspective of time
this music feels as close to a Blue Mitchell Blue
Note as a Rex Stewart Bluebird.
The second Vaché–Allred teaming on Arbors
tilts a bit more toward contemporary bebop standards
than before, taking on several lesser-played
titles by Thelonious Monk, Cannonball Adderley,
the trio of oz
The Trio Of Oz
OZMOSIS RECORDS 001
★★½
I sure like the concept of this album—doing
jazz trio versions of
an eclectic selection of romantic
love songs originally sung by rock
groups, from old favorites like The
Police to more recent heroes like
Death Cab for Cutie and Coldplay.
Jazz sorely needs new repertoire,
particularly songs young people recognize.
But with a couple of exceptions,
the execution here leaves me
cold. Or just bored. The whole idea
of doing a song as jazz is to improve
on it, not just invoke it. The reason we love John
Coltrane playing “My Favorite Things” or Bill
Evans playing “My Romance” is that their versions
are value-added. For the most part, Rachel
Z merely decorates songs with grace notes or
fast, smart scales, often increasing the tempo as
a substitute for transforming the content. Part of
the challenge, surely, is that the originals—usually
simple lines that don’t have much melodic
interest to start with—derive a lot of their power
from the volume, heft and texture of rock instrumentation
itself, not to mention the range of their
vocal sounds. Playing a simple rock line like
48 DOWNBEAT NOVEMBER 2010
Bud Powell and Clifford Brown. Bassist Nicki
Parrott’s “Aussieology” is the one original, a
fluid 32-bar bebop line. And has anybody done
“Top Shelf” since Blue Mitchell in 1959? The
band follows where the material leads, from a
bluesy funkiness on “Spontaneous Combustion”
to an unexpectedly evocative overture of cacophony
on “Parisian Thoroughfare.” Vaché recorded
“Sweet Pumpkin” and two others in England a
decade ago, but with a different group.
Whatever the material, Vaché has always
struck me a musician who considers his notes
with as much precision as a writer chooses his
words. Although I’ve never found in his playing
Alice in Chains’ “Angry Chair” as a single-note
piano melody just sounds, well, silly.
The other problem is that Rachel Z doesn’t
seem to have a piano trio here so much as a piano
accompanied by an extremely creative drummer.
Bassist Maeve Royce is barely audible on several
tracks (is she even playing?), but when she
is, there is only one track—Morrissey’s sappily
crooned “There Is A Light”—on which this group
actually sounds like an interactive jazz trio. That’s
in stark contrast to, say, The Bad Plus, which long
ago perfected a strategy for playing interactive
trio jazz with a rock outlook. Due credit to Royce,
a “sound” as clearly patentable as that of, say,
Ruby Braff, to whom he was often compared in
his early years, he speaks in fluid strings of petite
musical thoughts laid out in a slightly staccato
strut that combine to give his playing a confident
and orderly civility that camouflages its private
sense of risk. If you rate your music on an index
of irony, iconoclasm or insurrection, you won’t
find that here. For those who respond to proven
pros on top of their sport, though, this covers all
bases. Allred also adds welcome weight to the
front line and proves a cohesive partner, especially
on in the soft instrumental conversations of
“East Of The Sun.”
Speaking of which, the liner notes promise a
Vaché vocal here. But unless Warren has experienced
a sudden drop in his testosterone numbers,
I hear instead (and mercifully) a lovely, luminous
and unidentified female voice—presumably one
belonging to Nicki Parrott, who somehow doesn’t
get credit for her extra work. Also, at the risk of betraying
a certain male penchant, I can’t help noting
that Parrott is the other lady bassist-singer around
these days whose beauty matches her musicianship.
Perhaps she’s not getting the attention she
deserves there, too. —John McDonough
top shelf: Top Shelf; Sweet Pumpkin; Aussieology; Ba-lue Bolivar
Ba-lues; Moonlight In Vermont; Tiny Capers; The Best Thing For
You; Spontaneous Combustion; By Myself; My Romance; Whisper
Not; East Of The Sun (And West Of The Moon); A Parisian Thoroughfare.
(72:32)
Personnel: Warren Vaché, cornet; John Allred, trombone; Tardo
Hammer; piano; Nicki Parrott, bass; Leroy Williams, drums.
ordering info: arborsrecords.com
however, for her lovely arco work on New Order’s
“Bizarre Love Triangle,” a good melody and a
song that gets new meaning from the trio’s take
on it. Royce pulls out her bow to good effect on
Swedish folk/rock group Dungen’s “Det Tar Tid”
and Coldplay’s “Lost,” as well.
As a pianist, Rachel Z falls on uneasy ground
that feels somewhere between Vince Guaraldi
and McCoy Tyner. She certainly knows her way
around the keyboard and can beef up a chord with
polytonality when she feels like it. But her idea of
making a melody more interesting too often centers
on adding a few grace notes or banging out
octaves. Her soloing, while able, is more decorative
than structural. I wish there were more tracks
like “Lost,” which the trio genuinely transforms,
moving from a mysteriously light feel reminiscent
of EST into an intense excursion of metric
diversity, then ritards to a misty arco. I also like
that the trio does Death Cab’s haunting “I Will
Possess Your Heart,” but, again, this song’s obsessive
power is elusive when you’ve only got an
acoustic piano and drums. On this one and Stone
Temple Pilots’ “Sour Girl,” Omar Hakim’s fluttering
inventions almost make the ride worth it.
But not quite. —Paul de Barros
the trio of oz: Angry Chair; Sour Girl, Det Tar Tid; I Will Possess
Your Heart; Lost; When You Were Young; In Your Room; Bizarre
Love Triangle; There Is A Light; King Of Pain. (58:58)
Personnel: Rachel Z, piano; Omar Hakim, drums; Maeve Royce,
bass.
ordering info: thetrioofoz.com