Volume 25 Issue 5 - February 2020

JAZZ AND IMPROVISED
Taking Flight
Mike Murley
Cornerstone Records CRST CD 150
(cornerstonerecordings.com)
!!
Around 1998,
saxophonist Mike
Murley formed a
trio with guitarist
Ed Bickert and
bassist Steve
Wallace. The group
only endured until
Bickert’s 2001
retirement, but it represented a high point for
chamber jazz: a debut CD, Live at the Senator,
won the 2002 JUNO for best jazz recording;
Test of Time, a later release of 1999 material,
won the 2013 JUNO. The spirit of the group
has found continuing life in the Murley Trio
with Wallace and guitarist Reg Schwager.
Taking Flight adds the superb expatriate
Canadian pianist Renee Rosnes to the mix,
with Jim Vivian substituting for Wallace on
four of nine tracks. The group emphasizes
the quiet end of the dynamic spectrum, but
it does so with resilient firmness and determined
invention.
The group covers a spectrum that’s tailormade
to its gifts. The late Kenny Wheeler,
both partner and inspiration, is represented
by Winter Suite and Phrase 3, models
of introspective collaboration. The former
begins with just Murley’s tenor, before it’s
joined by Rosnes’ floating accompaniment.
Wayne Shorter’s Penelope has its own evanescent
glow, and the spinning lines of Charlie
Parker’s Bird Feathers feels Tristano-like in
this context, emphasized by Rosnes’ rapid
invention.
The CD concludes with Nikolaus Brodszky’s
I’ll Never Stop Loving You, played by the trio
of Murley, Schwager and Wallace and dedicated
to the memory of Ed Bickert, who
passed away a couple of weeks before this
March 2019 recording session. No tribute
could be more fitting.
Stuart Broomer
Intention
Marilyn Lerner; Ken Filiano; Lou Grassi
NotTwo MW995-2 (nottwo.com)
!!
Marilyn Lerner
is one of Canada’s
most creative pianists,
from ventures
into klezmer to the
avant-garde playfulness
of Queen
Mab Trio with Lori
Freedman and Ig
Henneman. Her most intense and inventive
project, though, may well be the longstanding
and virtuosic trio with two veteran New York
free jazz musicians, bassist Ken Filiano and
drummer Lou Grassi. The group’s first CD,
Arms Wide Open, was recorded in a Brooklyn
studio in 2008. The next two ‒ Live in Madrid
(2012) and Live at Edgefest (2013) ‒ documented
festival appearances. Intention comes
from a 2018 New York concert with the trio
achieving ever higher levels of empathetic
creation.
Taking a conversational approach, there’s
a certain pointillist playfulness to the soundoriented
Plink Plunk, complete with hand
drums, isolated piano string plucking and
sudden bass glissandi; but even in this mode
the group is a dynamic collective, suddenly
mustering episodes of dense interactivity.
Each musician might open a dialogue with
a solo foray, a series of suggestions and
motifs, as Grassi does in his multi-directional
opening to No Farewell. Before long the group
is embroiled in another collective composition,
in this case a particularly pensive
episode, a layering of distinct yet interactive
parts, distinguished by bright piano trebles,
rich arco bass and varied metal percussion.
While jazz piano trios once resolved into
pianos with accompaniment, Lerner, Filiano
and Grassi are full partners, the trio pressing
dialogue into meteorological events, the
tempestuous, the torrential and often the
impending.
Stuart Broomer
Higienôpolis
James Hill’s Local Talent
Projectwhatever Records
(projectwhatever.com)
!!
Local Talent is
the newest project
from James Hill,
a Toronto-based
pianist who has
surely and steadily
established a presence
for himself on
the national music
scene. In many ways, Local Talent’s debut
release, Higienópolis, is a continuation and
expansion of the work that Hill has done in
two other notable Canadian groups: the jazz
trio Autobahn, with drummer Ian Wright
and saxophonist Jeff LaRochelle, and the
hip-hop/jazz band BADBADNOTGOOD, with
whom Hill has played for the past several
years. Wright is back in the drum throne on
Higienópolis; rounding out the trio is bassist
Rich Brown, who, at this point in his career,
may be Canada’s preeminent voice on the
electric bass.
Higienópolis begins with the title track,
a mixed-metre affair that unfolds carefully
over the song’s six-minute runtime.
Busy, snare-drum-driven sections are juxtaposed
with compelling solo piano passages,
whose sparseness becomes expansive through
the intelligent application of reverb and
other time-based effects. When a solo does
start, halfway through the song, it seems
like a welcome inevitability, rather than a
demonstration of athletic prowess.
Local Talent’s commitment to patience,
as demonstrated both in Hill’s compositions
and in the band members’ individual
artistic choices, is one of Higienópolis’ most
charming features. At its best, as on the title
track, on The Silent Cry, and on Sailing At
Night, the album evokes a sense of theatre,
of the familiar refracted and re-presented as
something new. Highly recommended.
Colin Story
Bliss Station
Eric St-Laurent
Katzenmusik KM10 (ericst-laurent.com)
! ! Torontobased
guitarist
Eric St-Laurent’s
new album,
Bliss Station, is
a continuation
and expansion of
the work that he
has done on past releases, including Dale
and Ruby, both of which feature his longstanding
trio of bassist Jordan O’Connor
and percussionist Michel DeQuevedo. Both
DeQuevedo and O’Connor join St-Laurent on
Bliss Station, as does trumpeter and pianist
Sebastian Studnitzky.
Though drums are more common in
guitar trio/quartet settings, Bliss Station
benefits from swapping out a drum kit for
DeQuevedo’s percussion (as on previous
outings). Of the many effects that this
exchange produces, the most prominent is
that of intimacy: without cymbals, snare and
bass drum splashed across the sonic spectrum,
the acoustic nuances of each instrument
become more clear, and small moments
acquire greater weight. Another, more subtle
effect, the rhythmic interplay between band
members, comes to the fore. St-Laurent plays
the guitar with deep metrical commitment,
whether on melodies, supportive riffs, chords
or solos. Bliss Station’s title track provides a
great example of this, as St-Laurent moves
through melodic statements and a solo with
a propulsive, unerring sense of momentum.
The funky Mustard Arizona is no different,
though it is also remarkable for Studnitzky’s
ability to make his trumpet sound nearly as
breathy and understated as a flute.
The fun of Bliss Station is in the band’s
interactivity, as well as in the sense of
immediacy, fun and rhythmic joy that the
performances succeed in evoking.
Colin Story
thewholenote.com February 2020 | 77