Volume 21 Issue 1 - September 2015

Bradford – an on-off
member of Coleman’s
quartet for years – and
influential clarinetist
and soprano saxophonist
John Carter,
divide the compositional
chores during
nuanced performances that are craggy and
irregular as a mountain path, but always
explicit in direction. Pointedly using two
basses – Roberto Miranda and Stanley Carter
– at times playing arco, the results suggest
the calmness of a chamber intermezzo,
though drummer William Jeffrey’s dislocated
rhythmic accents keep the sounds edgy as
well as swinging.
Consider how the fluent clarinet passages
arch over the others’ notes, while playing
in near tandem with the cornet bringing
up pseudo-Dixieland memories on the
concluding Circle for instance. Still chiming
double-double bass line and a freer percussion
tempo confirm the tune’s modernity,
a certainty strengthened by Bradford’s skyhigh
blasts and Carter uniquely exploring
the woody qualities of his horn. This sense
of continuum plus imminent discovery
permeates the four other tunes, especially
one like She. Initially developed from
a series of slurred grace notes from both
horns, its passionate mood is maintained by
euphonious string motions and the drummer’s
positioned rim shots. After Carter’s
syncopated tremolos set up a counter melody,
he joins Bradford’s melancholic chirps for a
dual coda of heart-breaking sighs.
Like Coleman who died this June, Carter
(1929-1991) is no longer with us; but Bradford
is still going strong at 80. Both Texans,
again like Coleman, singly and together the
co-leaders demonstrate how sound deconstruction
isn’t frightening, as long as it, like
Coleman’s concepts, is coupled with a direct
rhythm. No U Turn may be the paramount
expression of this truism.
Ken Waxman
Butterfly Blue
Halie Loren
Justin Time JTR 8591-2 halieloren.com
!!
Gifted vocalist
and composer
Halie Loren’s latest
recording (her eighth)
is all about transformation
and the resilient
nature of the human
heart. In keeping
with these themes, Alaskan-born Loren has
deftly selected a musical palette that incorporates
not only beloved standards from The
Great American Songbook, but well-written
contemporary and original compositions as
well as a beloved jazz anthem of hope. Loren
acts as co-producer here, along with pianist/
composer Matt Treder – and she is firmly
and beautifully supported by her longtime
rhythm section including Treder, bassist
Mark Schneider and drummer Brian West.
Tastefully arranged horns and strings also
grace the project in all of the right places.
The original opening track, Yellow Bird,
is a stunner and Loren’s sumptuous, multitracked
vocals and jaunty horn arrangement
makes this tune a total delight. Another
gem is I Wish You Love (Que reste-t-il de nos
amours?), which was a huge hit for Keely
Smith in 1957. It is no easy task to perform a
venerable song that has been previously interpreted
and imbue it with your own special
emotional language and musical statement…
but Loren has done just that, in spades. With
her smoky, resonant alto voice, gorgeous
French and innovative instrumentation, she
has firmly affixed this classic ballad with her
own special stamp.
Other delights include a languid and
smouldering take on Harold Arlen’s Stormy
Weather, a bluesy reboot of the Dubin and
Warren tin-pan alley classic Boulevard
of Broken Dreams and the late jazz giant
Horace Silver’s heartbreakingly beautiful
Peace – the ultimate song of transcendence
and healing, rendered simply, movingly and
lovingly by Loren.
Lesley Mitchell-Clarke
Now This
Gary Peacock Trio
ECM 2428
!!
Gary Peacock may
be best known today
as a longstanding
member of Keith
Jarrett’s Standards
Trio, but the bassist,
now 80, has one of
the most varied and
distinguished résumés in jazz. In his long
career, he’s complemented everything from
the concentrated lyricism of Miles Davis, Bill
Evans and Paul Bley to the torrential expressionism
of Albert Ayler; he’s also one of the
great bass soloists, able to communicate
emotional nuance with a special attention to
vibrato and pitch. Here Peacock leads a trio
with pianist Marc Copland and drummer Joey
Baron in which his own musical conception is
in the foreground.
Peacock composed seven of the eleven
compositions here, many of them with a
spare, sculptural, yet mysterious sense of form
that generates tremendous freedom: brief
phrases with myriad suggestions pass from
one member of the group to another with
a liquid ease. There’s a suite-like continuity
here, as if the pieces constitute reflections on
a single theme, their moods ranging from the
drama of Moor to the levity of Christa and
the brooding Vignette. The music’s surface is
consistently beautiful, with Peacock’s sound a
warm centre for the three voices.
The only piece included from outside the
band is Gloria’s Step, a composition contributed
to Bill Evans’ repertoire by Peacock’s
friend, Scott LaFaro, the brilliant bassist who
changed the course of the instrument before
dying in a car accident at 25 in 1961. As well as
an homage to lost genius, it marks the beginnings
of the kind of fully interactive trio music
that Peacock, Copland and Byron realize here.
Stuart Broomer
The Elephant’s Journey
Lama + Joachim Badenhorst
Clean Feed CF 332 CD (cleanfeed-records.
com)
!!
Expressing themselves
on a CD that is
surprisingly calm as
well as cutting edge
are the members of
the Lama group, who
also extend the band’s
internationalism with
this memorable set. Consisting of trumpeter
Susana Santos Silva from Porto, Portugal,
plus Portuguese bassist Gonçalo Almeida
and Montreal-born drummer Greg Smith,
both of whom live in Rotterdam; the trio’s
guest on The Elephant’s Journey is Belgian
clarinetist Joachim Badenhorst. Instead of
adding unnecessary weight to the musical
pachyderm’s load, Badenhorst joins Silva in
creating resilient acoustic timbres which are
buoyant enough to coordinate nicely with the
other instruments’ electronically enhanced
structures.
Like the use of an animal trainer’s hook,
arrangements on the eight tracks here
adeptly direct the themes so that their singularity
is apparent with little pressure added
to the load of the titular camelid. Case in
point is The Gorky’s Sky, where Almeida’s
string slaps, surmounting harmonized group
precision, make the reedist’s Dolphy-like
tremolo dissonance appear to come from
within an ensemble larger than a quartet.
Smith’s percussion prowess gets a workout
on Crime & Punishment, but there’s no
felony associated with his bass-drum accents
which downplay clashes and clatter, while
triumphant trumpet blasts mixed with bass
clarinet snorts confirm that Lama plus one
can operate with the speed and efficiency of
the best swing era combos. At the same time,
although Silva’s chirping hockets often create
enough unusual obbligatos to the spider weblike
patterning of Badenhorst’s timbres, additional
experimentation isn’t neglected either.
Smith’s composition Murkami – the other
tunes are all by Almeida – finds the clarinetist
expressing a sour, bansuri-like squeak before
the combination of lustrous trumpet extensions
and positioned bass strokes surmount
the dissonance with meditative calm.
Featuring textures that are both quixotic
and pointed, the concluding Don Quixote
includes understated electronic loops,
contralto reed slurs, string pressures that
move crab-like across the bass face, Smith’s
tabla-like drone and Silva’s melodious brass
accents. By the time the track finishes, it
72 |Sept 1 - Oct 7, 2015 thewholenote.com