The Penguin Jazz Guide (179 page)

BRIAN LYNCH

Born 12 September 1956, Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Trumpet

Fuchsia/Red

Cellar Live CL020201

Lynch; Brad Turner (p); André Lachance (b); Bernie Arai (d). February 2003.

Brian Lynch said (2001):
‘I’m not very concerned about questions of genre, because jazz plays a defining role in lots of musical styles, and particularly the Latin styles. It’s a way of thinking about music, a procedure rather than something fixed and absolute.’

Lynch’s eclectic approach is a refreshing alternative to the elbows-out approach of many hard-bop dogmatists. He has worked with Art Blakey and with Prince, and his projects include a Latin jazz strand as well as a more eclectic – and electric – approach. Lynch first made an appearance on Criss Cross and his debut,
Peer Pressure
, was a reminder that hard bop, however inflected with modern concerns, was still alive and well. After that, Lynch made records for Sharp Nine, including a more than usually interesting
Tribute To The Trumpet Masters
, which made room on its roster for Charles Tolliver, who’s not often cited with the Lee Morgans, Blue Mitchells and Booker Littles.

That same capacious understanding of the tradition plays a strong part on this live album as well, recorded at the Vancouver club and released on the house imprint. What other contemporary horn-player can so confidently pick up Booker Little and Charles Tolliver licks, take new bearings on Lee Morgan’s ‘Search For The New Land’ and cap a fine
solo on the Björk tune (‘Aurora’) with a quote from ‘It Don’t Mean A Thing, If It Ain’t Got That Swing’?

This is the trumpeter’s ‘electro-mechanical’ mode with Turner on Fender Rhodes, which he never tries to play as if it were a Bechstein but lets the shimmer work for him. Arai complements him with a lot of cymbal work on the title-track and Lynch falls in line with a long reverb. There are moments as tough and tender as Prewett playing taps in
From Here To Eternity
and passages of almost free abstraction, before the beats kick in and bassist Lachance finally gets to show his Ron Carterish mettle. If it’s a ‘fusion’ record, so be it: it’s a damned good fusion record. ‘Red’ and ‘Mysteries Of Travel’ find Turner squarely in a Chick-and-Keith idiom, with some nice displacement of the trumpet sound which makes it sound as if Brian might actually be out walking round the tables; good live sound from the Cellar.

MALACHI THOMPSON

Born 21 August 1941, Princeton, Kentucky; died 16 July 2006, Chicago, Illinois

Trumpet

Blue Jazz

Delmark DE 548

Thompson; Kenny Anderson, Elmer Brown, David Spencer (t); Steve Berry, Bill McFarland, Kirk Tracy (tb); Gary Bartz (ss, as); Ari Brown (ts, cl); Gene Barge, Billy Harper (ts); Kirk Brown (p, org); Harrison Bankhead (b); Leon Joyce (d); Dee Alexander, the Big DooWopper (v). February 2003.

Malachi Thompson said (2002):
‘Jazz is about time, and whatever some of the scientists tell you, time only moves in one direction and that’s forward into the future. Other music might deal with the past, but not this one and not this trumpet-player.’

Mixing hard bop with free playing in about equal measure, Thompson is of the generation which fuelled the new music of Chicago in the ’60s, although he took a fundamentally more conservative line. With 20 years of recording behind him and no real recognition on a world stage, Thompson quietly built up a catalogue of records for Delmark in his home base of Chicago. Despite a serious illness diagnosed as lymphoma in 1989, he has come back with a personal take on new Chicagoan developments which bespeaks a courageous outlook. If he is not an especially outstanding technician or any kind of innovator, his music is a skilled synthesis of several threads from the Chicagoan repertory. None of the early records really stands out as a classic. All have strengths, and some disappointments.

Blue Jazz
was effectively his curtain call but it’s a terrific record on every level. The writing is great, with everything but Wayne Shorter’s ‘Footprints’ a Thompson original and that exception a brilliant big-band arrangement; the sections are packed with fine players and soloists; the charts are mobile and inventive without being avant-garde; and the sound delivered by Delmark engineers is true and accurate. This is Africa Brass, but it’s the saxophonists who probably catch the ear first – Bartz and Harper, Brown and local legend ‘Dr G’ Barge. ‘Black Metropolis’, ‘Blues For A Saint Called Louis’ and ‘Genesis/Rebirth’ are all powerful ideas, and even the smaller, rootsier tracks like ‘Po’ Little Louie’ and ‘Get On The Train’ bespeak a great composing talent who died relatively unrecognized and still not finished with his work.

VIJAY IYER

Born 26 October 1971, Albany, New York

Piano

In What Language?

PI 109

Iyer; Ambrose Akinmusire (t); Rudresh Mahanthappa (as); Dana Leong (clo, tb); Liberty Ellman (g); Stephan Crump (b); Trevor Holder (d), Mike Ladd, Latasha N. Nevada Diggs (v, elec); Allison Easter, Ajay Naidu (v). May 2003.

Vijay Iyer says:
‘We never set out to make a “jazz” or “hip-hop” album. It was about honouring the people we tried to portray. What I like most is that the music is always in service to the storytelling. When Latasha’s character on “Security” fantasizes of escaping her dreary circumstance, Rudresh’s alto immediately takes flight, bringing the thought to life. And haunting everything, Mike’s vintage analog synth swoops – the sound of surveillance! He was a crucial foil, never afraid to say when I wrote something that sucked.’

Iyer is a first-generation New Yorker who has himself transplanted to the West Coast. Some aspects of his Indian heritage surfaced on the debut
Memorophilia
, but since then, through a number of regular groupings (Fieldwork, Poisonous Prophets, Spirit Complex) and associations with other leaders such as Steve Coleman, and like-minded musicians, including Rudresh Mahanthappa, hip-hopper Mike Ladd and Tyshawn Sorey, he has attempted to create a vital new jazz soundtrack to an America that having witnessed the melting-pot work was now witnessing the separation of some of its ores and amalgams. Iyer has very wisely pointed out that some of the ‘Indian’ elements in his music were learned from Bud Powell. There has been an unfortunate tendency to look at the personnels of his records and make guesses at the content, rather than listening to it. One might suggest that Andrew Hill is a major source, certainly on the early
Architextures
, less obviously on the fine
Blood Sutra
, which appeared nearly seven years later, released at around the same time as Iyer’s remarkable post-9/11 meditation,
In What Language?

Political art doesn’t come much more direct or shattering. The title is drawn from the complaint of Iranian film-maker Jafer Panahi, detained for hours at JFK airport while passing through New York – ‘I am just an Iranian, a film-maker. But how could I tell this, in what language?’ The deeper irony is that this incident took place prior to 9/11. The shorter pieces have a disproportionate authority: ‘Plastic Bag’ squeezed immensities into small measure, and ‘Density Of The 19th Century’ flirts with post-First World War futurism as much as post-9/11 paranoia. Speech and rap are integrated into music which sounds much closer to the M-Base system than Iyer’s other music. But this is clearly a different situation. It is uncomfortable listening, but as a piece of sonic collage it’s been created with formidable skill and clarity.

JEREMY PELT

Born 4 November 1976, Newport Beach, California

Trumpet

Close To My Heart

Max Jazz 403

Pelt; Mulgrew Miller (p); David O’Rourke (g); Peter Washington (b); Lewis Nash (d). June 2003.

Jeremy Pelt says:
‘My favourite part was actually
before
we recorded it, when I would go over the string parts with the arranger, David O’Rourke. He wrote everything so that they could be played on his computer and I could play along. That’s when I knew that there was something special afoot. Recording the session was probably one of the easiest things I’ve done. We pretty much nailed every song within two takes.’

Pelt plays with an unashamed nostalgia for the great days of Blue Note but still manages to produce records which are fresh and contemporary. He may favour a retro sound, but he doesn’t lack the confidence to inscribe the idiom in his own terms. Most of the material on his first forays as leader is original, and promisingly individual. The debut album,
Profile
on Fresh Sound, is full of strong, committed writing and he had the wisdom to anchor the group – and its successor – on Ralph Peterson’s motivational drumming; no one plays badly in front of RP.

A different, but even tighter, line-up for
Close To My Heart
and it marks a process of change in Pelt’s music, on record at least. There aren’t many young trumpeters around who can move from Charles Mingus to Jimmy Rowles with aplomb. Pelt kicks off his new contract with a version of ‘Weird Nightmare’ and only then returns to the hard-bop idiom which made his name. One’s tempted to say that his faster stuff – like an unexpected reading of ‘Take Me In Your Arms’ – puts him close to Hubbard or Morgan copyism, but listen a little longer and it’s clear that here’s a guy who grew up in a rock and hip-hop era. The phrasing is subtly different, more pungently on the beat and yet still with a strong sense of swing. Pelt’s flugelhorn solo on ‘52 Blues (Drinkin’ And Drivin’)’ remains a career high. As exposed as this, without another horn, and even with subtle backing from O’Rourke, he can’t afford to coast and there isn’t a lazy or poorly thought-out track on the album.

ALEXANDER VON SCHLIPPENBACH
^&

Born 7 April 1938, Berlin, Germany

Piano

Monk’s Casino

Intakt CD 100 3CD

Schlippenbach; Axel Dörner (t); Rudi Mahall (bcl); Aki Takase (toy p); Jan Roder (b); Uli Jennessen (d). June 2003, February 2004.

Alexander von Schlippenbach says:
‘I think Monk is probably the greatest composer in jazz. In this, Steve Lacy was my teacher. We met in Paris in the ’60s, and he later played with Globe Unity. He showed me so much he had learned from and through Monk. I copied everything.’

Schlippenbach’s clean, atonal lines are far more reminiscent of Thelonious Monk than of Cecil Taylor, the figure who is usually adduced as ancestor for this kind of free music, almost always incorrectly. An extraordinary project,
Monk’s Casino
is executed with vision, humour and considerable intelligence. Schlippenbach had long been fascinated by these pieces: he featured ‘Trinkle Tinkle’ on
Smoke
with Sunny Murray, who joined him again on tour in 1996 for some all-Monk programmes. First conceived in that same year,
Monk’s Casino
was an attempt to go further still and arrange the great pianist and composer’s work for a single, whole-evening performance. The idea came to fruition two years later, when Norddeutsche Rundfunk broadcast the work entire. Festival and club appearances followed, including a rendition at A-Trane in Berlin, from which these recordings are taken.

In his liner-note, John Corbett makes a wise distinction between a songbook and an oeuvre. Monk’s tunes (or at least the better-known ones) have been a resource for jazz improvisers for 50 years and more. This, though, represents a different take: Monk’s music as a highly flexible singularity, articulate in the original sense, and with its own internal motions and logic. How freely Schlippenbach has interpreted the music can be heard in a long, abstract introduction to ‘Bemsha Swing’ on the first CD, three and a half minutes dominated by Dörner’s microscopic trumpet. Just a couple of tracks earlier, ‘Stuffy Turkey’ had been despatched in just 44 seconds. This is very much the pattern for the set. Some
pieces are explored at some length – ‘Misterioso’/‘Sixteen’/‘Skippy’ the longest at just over ten minutes – while others (‘Raise Four’, ‘Light Blue’, ‘Ruby, My Dear’ and ‘Bye-Ya’) get less than 60 seconds.

The instrumentation is pared down to the minimum necessary to get the music across, much as on Monk’s own records. The only exceptions are the medley of ‘Japanese Folk Song’, ‘Children’s Song’ and ‘Blue Monk’, on which Schlippenbach plays trumpet and Dörner the piano; that and ‘A Merrier Christmas’, on which Aki Takase plays toy piano. Jennessen’s lightly swinging drums are the key element, often left to sound out a cadence while the other instruments lay out for a bar or two. Stylistically, the arrangements range from near-pastiche to the outside treatment of ‘Evidence’.

A modern masterpiece, nothing more or less, and not merely of interest to Monk fans. This is a project that asks deep questions about the nature of jazz composition, the identity and persistence of an artist’s entire body of work, and what makes a ‘standard’.
Monk’s Casino
is essential listening.

& See also
Pakistani Pomade
(1972; p. 401)

KEN VANDERMARK

Born 22 September 1964, Warwick, Rhode Island

Reeds

Elements Of Style / Color Of Memory

Atavistic ALP 150 / 166

Vandermark; Jeb Bishop (tb); Dave Rempis (sax); Kent Kessler (b); Tim Daisy (d). July 2003, July 2004.

Ken Vandermark says:
‘Coinciding with
Elements
was my last work on the Free Jazz Classics project, the music of Roland Kirk. I decided to abandon the exploration and documentation of other composers’ material, because I felt that certain listeners and critics found it easier to consider my arrangements of celebrated composers than to look at my own work …
Color
was the final recording made with Jeb Bishop, one of the original members of the Vandermark 5. It was difficult to see him leave the band after so many years, but we decided to continue by asking Fred Lonberg-Holm to join the ensemble, effectively re-energizing the music and the group.’