Albums I'm Checking Out Now

This ain't Jersey City, pal....It's PORTLAND!

I'm still settling into the Portland situation;however, I'm still trying to expand my musical horizons. I've been hearing some great music around town, but I've also been checking out some albums from various eras and sources. I could easily just go to my hard drive with all my mp3s and find stuff that I haven't listened to. These are some things that were suggested to me, or actually given to me, recently. I'm in the process of checking them out. What a blessing it is, if you think about it, that we as the human race will never run out of music to listen to! And if the power goes out, we can sing and clap our hands, maybe beat a rhythm out on the hood of an abandoned car(I'm just picturing life after the apocalypse; even then,there will be music,but probably it will just be a lot of songs about radiation…).

I mentioned in a previous post that I traveled to Colombia recently. I was performing with clarinetist Don Byron, who always seems to be talking about some music of which I am ignorant. He was talking about his favorite Colombian musicians, one of which was a pianist named Edy Martinez. Martinez appears on an album by the late great conguero Ray Barretto called "Indestructible", released in 1976. I had seen the cover(It's Barretto looking like he's changing into the comic book character Superman), but hadn't really checked it out. It's classic Latin Jazz, with infectious grooves, and lots of powerful brass and passionate male vocals. This is unapologetic New York salsa at it's best. I would say this is more of a dance or commercial album, but there are some nice solos from Art Webb on flute, Roberto Rodriguez on trumpet, and "Little" Ray Romero on timbales.(I actually played timbales in the Baltimore based Rumba Club for a short minute. I still consider myself a beginner when it comes to Latin music, but I'm slowly attempting to rectify this.)

While I was teaching at the University of Manitoba Summer Jazz Camp in August, bassist Steve Hamilton turned me on to a number of great recordings. One which really impressed me was led by the great Jazz Guitarist John Abercrombie entitled "Abercrombie Quartet", which was released on the ECM label in 1979. This album is obscure, I suppose because it hasn't been re-released yet and is currently unavailable, unless you go on EBAY and find it on vinyl.(Full Disclosure: Hamilton burned me a copy.)The quartet features the harmonically innovative Richie Bierach on piano, much in demand George Mraz on bass, and Peter Donald on drums. I had never heard of Peter Donald before this recording, and I'm pleasantly surprised at how great he plays on this project. At times, he reminds me of Billy Hart; in fact, I probably would have guessed Hart in a blindfold test. And it's interesting also because Mraz is associated with many straight-ahead recordings, and he sounds a lot more creative than I am accustomed to hearing. And Bierach is also a surprise, yet contrastingly so, in that , for a creative project, he stays more in the pocket than I've heard him in other settings. This recording is so fresh, which proves that there's not much new under the sun. Compare this to any Kurt Rosenwinkle recording and I think you'd be surprised how "modern" things were in 1979.

Another recording Hamilton hipped me to is a duo recording by pianist Keith Jarrett and drummer Jack DeJohnette, again on ECM , but from 1971, called "Ruta and Daitya" (Daitya and Ruta  are Sanskrit  names for one of the last great islands of the Atlantean system in the Pacific Ocean)This is actually a fascinating look into the symbiosis between these two musicians, two of the greatest improvisors in jazz. The music is very spontaneous, and has a certain reckless abandon that you tend to hear from music of the 60's and 70's. And surprise, surprise, not only is Keith Jarrett playing piano, but he's playing bamboo flutes, as well as electric piano with EFFECTS! And organ as well! It's strange to me that Jarrett has taken up the position for many years that electric keyboards are not real instruments, adding that he always hated playing on them. Well, if you watch Keith Jarrett in the famous 1970 Isle of Wight concert with Miles Davis, he's playing an electric organ, and he looks like he's having the time of his life! And it's the same here; Jarrett is playing his butt off and his rapport with DeJohnette is one of the great pianist/drummer hook-ups of all time. Some of the music sounds more like Woodstock earthy ethnic world music space jam territory( "Algeria" features DeJohnette on hand percussion and Jarrett on flute), but there is plenty of intellectual free jazz as well("Sounds of Peru/Submergence/Awakening" is Jarrett modulating from introspective to free form to Americana gospel-y vamp mode). I'm gonna check this one out more……

And yet another album that Hamilton presented to me in the form of a blindfold test; I've been known to do well with those types of things, at least when they are jazz related, or at least I can make very educated guesses. Hamilton technically stumped me with bassist Miroslav Vitous' recording "First Meeting"; I'm a big Kenny Kirkland fan, but this is in a setting which most Kirkland fans have probably never heard. I think I guessed John Taylor, and then maybe Bobo Stenson, but there are some giveaways, in terms of the lines that Kirkland plays. The quartet also features John Surman on saxophones and bass clarinet, and Jon Christiansen on drums. It's another ECM, this time from 1980. A far cry from the the New York burning young lion Wynton Marsalis quintet type of music, this is as Euro-Jazz as it gets. Yet Kirkland fits in perfectly, such the great master musician he was. If you listen to "Silverlake" you can hear some recognizable "Kirklandisms", but other than that, it sounds like a completely different player.

I received CDs from two Portland area musicians recently. The first is a recording from the Portland Jazz Orchestra, conducted by bassist,composer, arranger, and educator Charley Grey. It's strangely titled, "Good Morning, Geek, ", but don't let the title fool you, this big band is no joke. It's a very modern mainstream large ensemble concept, but the arrangements are very smooth, and there are some wonderful solos throughout the entire album. Pianist Dan Gaynor takes a finger-popping ride on the title track(which is actually called "Good Morning Geek, Again". I'll have to ask him what this means….)Brian Dickerson is also an impressive soloist on Baritone saxophone. I usually find that big bands tend to be either very tight but lacking in satisfactory solo space, or vice versa, meaning almost feeling like a small group, but too loose in terms of ensemble playing(the Mingus Big Band always felt that way to me-great soloing but sloppy, rough around the edges,although this seems to fit Mingus' music somewhat). The Portland Jazz Orchestra seems to have a good balance of both. Grey has a good feel for shout choruses and orchestration, and there is a lot of craftsmanship within the arrangements on the album. " Lucy" is a great Latin jazz chart, with a virtuoso tour de force for solo trumpet( I believe Farnell Newton-it's not listed on the track), as well as the entire trumpet section, which shows their ability to scream into the extreme high register.

Another CD I acquired this week was from Portland-based guitarist Dan Balmer. We got an opportunity to perform together at Jimmy Mak's, which is arguably Portland's best jazz club. We had Kansas City native Todd Strait on drums. I got to play a really nice Hammond B-3, which I rarely get to do nowadays. We did a mix of Balmer's original music and my own, and a handful of standard tunes. The gig was loads of fun, I must say, and I believe it's the beginning of a fruitful association. After the gig, Balmer laid his most recent album on me. The album is entitled "Thanksgiving"(the cover features his two young sons playing guitars... it's adorable! As a father myself, I can relate). This CD features Balmer, organist and former Oregon resident Gary Versace on Hammond B3 Organ, as well as the well known Matt Wilson on drums. This recording just "sounds" great; I put it on in my car, and it's great night driving music. There is a lot of sonic variety in this trio, and that's from everyone; Balmer can play a very straight tone, but he can add effects very tastefully. Versace is very creative with his drawbar settings and all the other parameters that organists use to work that beast of an instrument. Matt Wilson is a great jazz drums, and some of his playing on here is surprising in that he goes into a heavy back beat mode that I had never heard from him previously. He's HITTING the snare drum on tracks like "Greasy Kid Stuff", which is a tune that nods to The Funky Meters, or "Stalled" where you might mistake his drumming for that of Stewart Copeland from The Police! But there's also his atmospheric side on cuts like " The Sea, The Sea", or " The Longest Day Of The Year." Balmer uses chorus and delay( I think)to great effect(no pun intended) Versace blends everything beautifully with his manipulation of the expression pedal and fast leslie settings.(Versace is one of the great modern Hammond B3 players; he's also a really great pianist and accordion player, as well.) I'm inspired by this CD and I highly recommend it.

Finally, I'll back track to my trip to Colombia. Usually, when you go to play at a jazz festival in a foreign country, they have somebody travel around with you as your guide; somebody who makes sure you get to the gig on time, makes sure you don't get sidetracked, or kidnapped, etc..Our "guide" was a young woman named Maria Monica Gutierrez. As we were leaving the jazz festival grounds, Maria gave me a CD to listen to. I usually make a point to at least try to listen to the CDs that people give me. I didn't really know what to expect in this case, but I was quite shocked when I put on her CD. The band name is Suricato(which is Spanish for Meerkat, a mammal which belongs to the mongoose family) and the title of the CD is"Remolque Juguete" (which may or may not mean "toy trailer" in Spanish). The music here is not you typical singer vs jazz trio at all(which is what I stupidly assumed, after Maria told me she was a jazz singer). The instrumentation is voice, guitar, bass, drums, and trombone, which the band uses in a varied and quirky way. At first listen, especially the first song, entitled"Duerme", the sound is Bjork meets MBase meets Colombian folk music. "Mariposas" has a dirge-like groove, almost nodding to New Orleans second line, while Gutierrez sings a soft, ghostly melody over top. It's very eerie. But Suricato threw me for a curve with the next tune, in which the soft and mysterious turns to anger. Gutierrez is now almost shouting atonally, while the band rocks out in a very free form manner. It's quite chaotic. Trombonist Sebastian Ciufuentes uses the full range of the trombone to create effects and distinctive sonorities throughout the CD. It's not truly a jazz CD, but considering how worldly jazz has become, it really IS a jazz CD in the most modern sense. This was a real sleeper for me; I see infinite potential for this band. I wish I could tell you how to buy their CD, because I highly recommend it. They have a Facebook page; maybe they'll be able to give ordering info in English if there is a demand. Here is a link to a youtube video of a live performance, which might whet your appetite a bit....