Volume 24 Issue 7 - April 2019

Something in the Air
Saluting Musical Forebears
without Replication
KEN WAXMAN
French actress Simone Signoret titled her memoirs, Nostalgia Isn’t
What It Used to Be, and the number of uninspiring salutes to
earlier jazz heroes or heroines easily bears out this sentiment.
However, when the right player selects the right material to record
from a celebrated predecessor’s music and – most importantly – puts
his or her own spin on it, the release becomes more than an exercise
in nostalgia. Each of these sessions shows how this feat can be
accomplished.
Ornette Coleman: Reflecting his influence on improvised music
following his sudden arrival on the scene in the late 1950s, it’s no
surprise that two of the sessions honour alto saxophonist Ornette
Coleman (1930-2015). What is remarkable though is that neither
group plays the same Coleman compositions. Plus each takes a
diametrically opposite approach.
Italian drummer Tiziano Tononi & the
Ornettians’ Forms and Sounds: Air
Sculptures (Felmay fy 7058 felmay.it)
features an 11-piece band which, besides
nine compositions by Coleman, interprets
Tononi’s The Air Sculptures Suite. It’s not
just Tononi’s indomitable rhythms from
drum set and other percussion that animate
his CD, but how soloists preserve their identities although immersed
in Coleman’s sounds. Tracks such as the Tononi-composed Fireworks
in N.Y.C and Fort Worth Country Stomp interpret aspects of Coleman’s
music without copying. The latter track, for instance, is a country
blues played with Italian panache featuring sharp staccato slurs and
snorts from alto saxophonist Piero Bittolo Bon, spurred by backbeat
drumming; while Fireworks in N.Y.C is straightforward swing,
tempered by trumpeter Alberto Mandarini’s brassy and graceful solo
plus hearty bass clarinet glissandi from Francesco Chiapperini. It
climaxes with percussion outgrowths that are as African as American,
highlighting Tononi’s cowbell and kalimba. This ingenuity remains
with the Coleman compositions. The expected outlines of Peace
for instance, are reconfigured when propelled by Tito Mangialajo’s
walking bass line and penetrating twangs from Paolo Botti’s banjo (!).
At breakneck tempo, Bittolo Bon’s high-pitched flute and Emanuele
Parrini’s violin stops brighten the performance without losing the
melody. Similarly Rushhour is played acoustically, but with a swelling
sound reminiscent of Coleman’s electric band, and is led by Parrini’s
sizzling double stops as Daniele Cavallanti’s bluesy tenor sax and the
drummer drive everyone forward. Cavallanti brings the same intensity
to Law Years paired with brassy upsurges from Mirko Cisilino’s
trumpet. The lineup on Una Muy Bonita with Mangialajo and Silvia
Bolognesi both playing bass plus Bittolo Bon and Chiapperini on alto
saxophones, allows soloists to reconfigure Coleman with elevated
tremolos or flutter tonguing as the dual basses propel the narrative.
There are only six players on trumpeter Chris Pasin’s Ornettiquette
(Planet Arts 301820 planetarts.org), but two of them, vibist/
pianist Karl Berger and vocalist Ingrid Sertso worked with Coleman.
Beside five Coleman tunes interpreted are two by Pasin and one by
Albert Ayler.
Mostly concentrating on Coleman’s earlier
works, Pasin’s take on Ornettiquette is low
key but inventive. For instance, as Karl
Berger’s vibes elaborate Jayne’s theme, the
band plays up its blues underpinnings at the
same time as Pasin’s clarion blasts are
pitched Maynard Ferguson-like high.
Michael Bisio’s slap bass adds rhythmic
emphasis and the finale is a timbral battle between Pasin and alto
saxophonist Adam Siegel’s supersonic slurs. Ingrid Sertso’s scatting in
tandem with vibraphone clangs and burbling horns almost transforms
When Will the Blues Leave into jittery bebop. But her recitation of the
title and response of “never” reasserts solemnity. Pasin’s OCDC,
saluting Coleman and his trumpeter Don Cherry is more linear than
the dedicatees’ compositions. Plus the trumpeter’s quirky configuration
of Cherry’s role is original. Walking bass and drummer Harvey
Sorgen’s positioned whacks hold the bottom so that the horns can
improvise freely.
Someone who never stinted on the improvisational
or melodic content of his own
compositions was Canadian-born, Londonbased
trumpeter Kenny Wheeler (1930-
2014). Fellow Canadian, trumpeter Ingrid
Jensen and American tenor saxophonist/
clarinetist Steve Treseler lead a seven-piece
band on Invisible Sounds for Kenny
Wheeler (Whirlwind Recordings WR 4729
whirlwindrecordings.com) playing nine Wheeler tunes that are
audible, not invisible. Bookended by a studio and a live version of
Foxy Trot, which in its live incarnation trots along courtesy of Jon
Wikan’s crisp drumming and an array of arpeggios spilling from
Geoffrey Keezer’s piano, the set emphasizes Wheeler’s versatility.
Expressive ballads like Where Do We Go from Here are buoyed by
mellow saxophone swoops and upward puffs from the trumpeter, as
piano chording brings out its swing underpinning. Meanwhile, Old
Time is an out-and-out funk tune with a stop-time narrative, shuffle
beat, slurs and snarls from the tenor saxophonist and acrobatic pitches
from Jensen’s open horn. Still the most characteristic interpretation is
of Wheeler’s best known tune, Everybody’s Song but My Own. A
minor key lament, its essence is reflected in harmonic horn melding,
slippery tremolos from Keezer and Jensen’s supple mid-range
pitch slides.
Another composer who has a Canadian
connection via her late ex-husband is
83-year-old Carla Bley. The 12 tunes played
by Finns, pianist Iro Haarla and bassist Ulf
Krokfors plus American drummer Barry
Altschul on Around Again – The Music of
Carla Bley (TUM CD 054 tumrecords.com)
come mostly from her creative beginnings in
the 1960s, coincidentally a time when the drummer was a member of
Paul Bley’s bands that first played this music. Expressing the compositions’
inflections, performances are almost uniformly unhurried and
dampened with percussion accents, double bass stops and focused on
piano-led themes played respectfully. That way motion and melody
are exposed at the same time. The exposition on Batterie, for instance,
picks up sonic colours from keyboard jumps and is extended with
low-pitched bass-string stops and indirect percussion clatters, and
then slyly redirected to the head. Squirming and swaying, Haarla uses
kinetic glissandi to turn the title track into a fantasia that gives the
bassist enough space for plump pumps. Appropriately and subversively,
both And Now, the Queen and Ida Lupino are spun out in
processional fashion, with the latter balancing Krokfors’ heated string
stabs and Haarla’s cooler key manipulation; and the former cleanly
sweeping up tempo with double bass prods that lead to unstoppable
forward motion, soon intensified with variable and emphasized
voicing from the keyboard. The only track to feature a drum solo that
82 | April 2019 thewholenote.com