Volume 21 Issue 1 - September 2015

Something in the Air
Many Musical
Interconnections at 2015’s
Guelph Jazz Festival
KEN WAXMAN
As the Guelph Jazz Festival (GJF) settles into maturity, dependable
musical choices and the vagaries of touring mean that a few of
the performers at this year’s bash, September 16 to 20, are featured
in more than one ensemble. The happy end result is that the audience
gets to sample some musicians’ skills in more than one challenging
setting.
Take drummer Tomas Fujiwara for instance.
On September 17 at Heritage Hall (HH), he’s
one-third of the Thumbscrew band with
guitarist Mary Halvorson and bassist Michael
Formanek, Then on September 20 at the
Guelph Little Theatre (GLT) he and Halvorson
are part of cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum’s sextet.
After All is Said, Fujiwara’s CD with The
Hook Up (482 Music 482-1089) includes Halvorson and Formanek,
plus tenor saxophonist/flutist Brian Settles and trumpeter Jonathan
Finlayson. Displaying rare ability as a composer as well as a percussionist
– all seven tunes are his – Fujiwara’s lines are rife with unselfconscious
conviviality. At the same time, as a piece like Boaster’s
Roast demonstrates, effervescent riffs don’t mask the tune’s rugged
core, which his thrashing patterns and the guitarist’s intense vibrations
supply. Similarly on Solar Wind, smooth horn harmonies back
the drummer shaping Native Indian-like tom-tom beats to a jazz
program. With themes usually passed from instrument to instrument
throughout, there’s also space for Settles’ (Stan) Getzian flutter tones,
hocketing leads from Finlayson and unique interludes from Halvorson
that move chameleon-like from folksy strumming to obdurate
power chords.
Additional instances of Halvorson’s skills
are evident on Ghost Loop (ForTune 0010/010
for-tune.pl), except here, unlike Thumbscrew,
she is joined by solid bassist John Hébert
and drummer Ches Smith. Smith’s ingenious
approach to percussion can be heard at
the GJF though. On September 18 he’s part of
saxophonist Darius Jones’ quartet at the GLT
and at the same place the next night he works double duty in both
Marc Ribot’s Ceramic Dog trio and the Bly De Blyant band. A live date
from Poland, Ghost Loop (No.43) effectively demonstrates how much
can be done with just three instruments, as themes encompassing
the most pliable pastoral patterns or the most raucous battering ramlike
authority, and much in-between, are elaborated. On Existential
Tearings (No.44) for instance the three could be mistaken for a heavy
metal trio as Halvorson’s harsh twangs mirror Smith’s anvil-hard
pump. Meantime following an expansive scene-setting intro from
Hébert, the guitarist fashions a multi-hued tone exposition on the title
tune as if she had 88 piano keys at her disposal. Expressing the band’s
overall duality, the final Deformed Weight of Hands (No.28) is both
blunt and balanced, with the guitarist relaxing into legato picking to
temper Smith’s furious, but always controlled, rumbles.
Halvorson and Hébert are among the players who make up saxophonist
Ingrid Laubrock’s Anti-House sextet on Roulette of the
Cradle (Intakt CD 252 intaktrec.ch); the others are pianist Kris Davis,
clarinetist Oscar Noriega and drummer Tom Rainey. The careful
dynamics that unite the players can be experienced in a fashion at
the GJF when Davis’ Capricorn Climber band featuring Laubrock
and Rainey plus bassist Trevor Dunn and violist Mat Maneri is at
GLT September 17. Meandering like a country road, Laubrock’s most
vigorous CD interface with Davis occurs on …
and Light (for Izumi), which blends pointillist
reed tinctures with hearty Chopinesque
intimations from the pianist. Composed like
the other tunes by the saxophonist, Silence…
(for Monika) with Rainey’s reverberating bell
pealing and unhurried strums and sweeps
from Hébert could be confused with 1950s cool
jazz – that is until Halvorson’s sour clanks yank it into 2015. Davis’
solid comping that extends lines with the swiftness and regularity of
a teletype machine is angled leftwards to meet Laubrock’s emotional
reed slurs on the title tune; while Face the Piper, Part 2 demonstrates
how the guitarist’s jagged-edge approach transforms a composition
from regularized swing. Still the CD’s defining track is From Farm Girl
to Fabulous, Vol.II, where homespun inflections, suggested by Davis’
upright-piano-like woody plunks and mandolin-like strokes from
the guitarist, accompany a reed transformation as Laubrock’s output
begins simply and concludes with smirking urbane and gritty urban
enunciation.
Sharing the double bill with Capricorn Climber is the sole GJF
appearance of vibraphonist Jason Adasiewicz’s
Sun Rooms trio. However From The Region
(Delmark DE 5017 delmark.com)’s 11 tracks
itemize why the full-barrelled improvisations
of Adasiewicz, drummer Mike Reed
and bassist Ingebright Håker-Flaten mean
the three are continually busy with their own
groups as well as with North American and
European stylists, some of whom are featured
at the GJF. Considering Håker-Flaten’s string slapping is as percussive
as the others’ output, Sun Rooms could be the practice studio
of three drummers. With an instrumental bounce as forceful as any
vibist since Lionel Hampton, Adasiewicz as composer/player adds the
delicate sensibility of Milt Jackson and Gary Burton when needed.
In fact, a trio of appealing tunes – The Song I Wrote for Tonight, Mae
Flowers and Mr. PB – shows off this lyrical bent. Each succinctly
melds rhythmic colours and emotional melodies, augmenting the
results into a sway as gentle as a summer breeze. Stentorian swagger
and strength characterize many of the other tracks though. The bassist’s
rugged timing steadies the tunes, the drummer adds irregular and
broken patterns to their exposition and Adasiewicz consistently seeks
novel, raw but unifying tones to judder sympathetically alongside the
others’ contributions.
While the majority of these GJF improvisers who often work
together are young, a constantly innovative
stylist like British saxophonist Evan Parker, 71,
continues to operate as he has for the past half
century: partnering with as many musicians
as possible. His September 17 HH performance
is with baritone saxophonist Colin
Stetson, while he hosts trumpeter Peter Evans
and electronics exponents Ikue Mori and Sam
Pluta September 19 at the GLT. Suggesting how he will play during
both concerts is Hello, I Must Be Going (Victo cd 128 victo.qc.ca).
Another Canadian live concert, from last year’s Festival International
de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville, it’s a duo session, this time
with guitarist Fred Frith, 66. Frith’s command of the electric guitar
is such, though, that he adroitly presages some of the electronic
patterns Mori and Pluta come up with, as well as being fully conversant
with his instrument’s rhythmic and melodic tasks. Notably,
when both players are in full improvisational flight, searching for
novel timbres, it’s only Frith’s powerful strums that confirm that a
guitar is being used. Otherwise he comes across like an actor inhabiting
multiple roles in a one-man play. For instance, processed drones
and clicks meet the saxophonist’s flutter-tongued slurs on the title
track, while Frith’s resonating contributions to Particulars come
from what sounds like a mutant grafting of strings onto a combination
of tabla and conga drum. On the concluding Je Me Souviens,
unbridled sonic elation is attained, as Parker’s chortling pitch variations
turn straight ahead as Frith responds with abbreviated spurts of
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