Volume 23 Issue 2 - October 2017

is sublimely evocative music and is at times
played at such perfect pianissimo that it
comes closest to being hammerless piano.
But Hoefner never completely renounces
traditional tonality and form, even as he
cultivates an utterly contemporary pianistic
persona. His songs – for they are such works –
The Great Auk and Green Gardens are shimmering
and seductive and come from the
moment of reconciliation. Hoefner is in his
element here, revelling in the opulence of
new songs of the sea, performed on the piano
in all of its orchestral sonorities.
Raul da Gama
Ajivtal
Janis Steprans Quintet
Effendi Records FND145
(effendirecords.com)
! The album title,
Ajivtal, is Latvija
(Latvia) spelled
backwards and is
inspired not only by
the music of Janis
Steprans’ ancestors
who came
from there but also
by Sonny Rollins’ Airegin, which is Nigeria
spelled backwards. Steprans’ own sense of
melodic sense, though, is more rooted in the
lyrical leaping of Charlie Parker. You won’t
find any of the 1.2 million Latvian texts or any
of the 30,000 melodies that still survive in
the Baltic state’s traditional music. However,
in the high and lonesome melodic, almost
mystical hum of Steprans’ soprano and alto
saxophones, the low throaty rasp of his tenor
and even the voluptuous, woody bleat of his
clarinet there are indeed faint echoes of the
lyrical dainas, the drone vocal styles, and even
a hint of Baltic psaltery.
The textural and rhythmic tightness of
Steprans’ writing and the intensity of his
playing give the performance of this repertoire
a compressed timbre, which, despite
digital technology, makes it sound like
something fulsome and almost analogue.
Compositionally as well as in terms of
performance – especially in group dynamics
– there is a knitted pattern that emerges as
the music unfolds its undulating melodies
in the saxophone-guitar-piano contrapuntal
progressions. Flowing rhythms inform
the exquisite Ajivtal and Chambre No.5.
Meanwhile, the pulsing bass throughout and
the climbing reed and wind lines bloom in
Suite de Thèmes Lettons, and in Un Autre
Original there is a glorious headlong celebration
of instrumental virtuosity.
Raul da Gama
Lessons and Fairytales
Simon Millerd
Songlines SGL 1622-2 (songlines.com)
! Canada has produced some particularly
lyrical trumpeters, most notably the late
Kenny Wheeler and
the distinguished
BC native, Ingrid
Jensen. Simon
Millerd is a young
Montrealer whose
pensive lines and
subtle expressiveness
seem particularly
indebted to Wheeler at this point in his
career, as well as to the Norwegian trumpeter
Arve Henriksen, another musician whose
work is filled with a clear, Northern light.
Millerd’s primary support here comes
from a German group, the Pablo Held
Trio, a group he first played with in 2011
and which includes pianist Held, bassist
Robert Landfermann and drummer Jonas
Burgwinkel. It’s a spare and lucid group,
effectively setting off Millerd’s quietly intense
horn. Millerd plays regularly in the band
Nomad, consisting of McGill University jazz
program graduates, and other members
appear here in effective guest spots, the
most notable contributions coming from
tenor saxophonist Mike Bjella, whose
engaging force is an effective counterfoil to
Millerd’s approach.
Millerd acted as his own producer and
he may have tried to do too much, from
adding thickening synthesizer on one track
to working his way through nine tunes in 44
minutes. He also employs the (mostly) wordless
vocals of Emma Frank on five tracks,
a device just too derivative of Wheeler’s
distinguished work with Norma Winstone.
Millerd’s best moment is the concluding Tale
of Jonas and the Dragon, a sprightly sevenminute
outing for just Millerd and the trio,
with fine upwardly spiralling trumpet lines.
Stuart Broomer
Cub(an)ism
Aruán Ortiz
Intakt Records CD 290/2017 (intaktrec.ch)
! Aruán Ortiz is
a mid-40s pianist
who plays contemporary
improvised
music – alright,
jazz – in traditions
that are at
once folkloric and
modernist, rooted
in an Afro-Haitian, Cuban tradition that has
then mingled with several significant cultural
transformations: his acknowledgements
include Toussaint Louverture, who 200 years
ago led the first successful slave uprising
in the Western hemisphere (jazz buffs
might fact-check the birth name of trumpeter
Donald Byrd); cubist painters Picasso
and Braque; the Cuban musicologist and
novelist of genius, Alejo Carpentier; pianistcomposers
Cage, Nancarrow and Cowell;
and free jazz icons like Roscoe Mitchell and
Andrew Cyrille.
That’s a lot to say, let alone carry, but
Ortiz does it with determined grace, welling
passion and taut execution. He plays ten
original compositions here, many informed
by polyrhythms and counterpoint, complex
patterns that move insistently to new ground.
The longest work, Cuban Cubism, is a suite
of contrasting parts; Monochrome (Yubá)
matches contrasting keyboard patterns, one
part prepared, the other customary; the brief
Dominant Force is a charging polyrhythmic
pattern that links jazz piano from Fats Waller
to Andrew Hill in a singular gesture.
Cuban jazz piano often emphasizes
the island’s historical and cultural links
to 19th-century European Romanticism,
opting for a decorative, even glib style. Ortiz
is different, matching the primal energies
of Chano Pozo and the radical fictions
of Charpentier with the revolutionary
visions afoot in 20th-century European and
American cultures. In the process, he creates
heady, invigorating music.
Stuart Broomer
Les Malcommodes invitent …
Les Malcommodes
Effendi Records FND147
(effendirecords.com)
! In 2010,
Montreal pianist/
composer Félix
Stüssi created
the jazz trio Les
Malcommodes,
comprising
himself, bassist
Daniel Lessard
and drummer Pierre Tanguay. When Stüssi
turned 50 he decided to start a new project
and added other players to the mix – Sonia
Johnson, Ray Anderson, Jean Derome, André
Leroux and Jacques Kuba Séguin. Though
they had not really played together before,
Stüssi admired these musicians. The resulting
2016 music recorded here is exciting, happy,
tight-ensemble playing which, though mainly
based in tonal jazz sounds, also leaps into
other musical styles with ease and musicality.
Stüssi sets the musical stage with his piano
stylings in the opening track Fore-Bley, a
tribute to the late, great Canadian jazz pianist
Paul Bley. The following Bley On! features
short unaccompanied solos by each musician
interspersed with full band sections.
This is followed by more sonic explorations
in duets and band sections. Especially noteworthy
is Derome’s brilliant flute playing
against Tanguay’s witty drums, and Johnson’s
rich vocal tone in Debout Au Bout du Bout-
Du-Banc. Great Lessard bass solo in the
opening of I Can See Your Rainbow. Way too
much listening fun in the two-minute Jungle
Chat where the musicians hang up their jazz
hats briefly to squawk and tweet like jungle
beasts until they break into the more toetapping
melodies and grooves of Anderson’s
Monkey Talk.
Recording quality is great. Jam-packed with
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