The Penguin Jazz Guide 1000 Best Albums

评语：George Lewis says: ‘In Voyager, where the computer and I improvise together, and the grid-structured “Shadowgraph 4”, you could say that orchestras became self-aware sonic bodies.’ As the years have gone by, Lewis has emerged as a benign philosopher of new music, confidently communicating across the human–machine ‘divide’, discoursing generously on the non-problem of the compo/impro dichotomy. The ’90s saw a rich new vein of work emerge. Voyager in 1993 was a collaboration with Roscoe Mitchell, a trombone and saxophone duo in the presence of interactive computer technology, yielding a multi-layered work quite unlike anything else around. Endless Shout is more diverse, almost a sampler of Lewis’s range of interests and achievements, from trombone–computer interactivity to a full-scale performance of one of the ‘Shadowgraph’ pieces.The title-piece is a four-part piano work, dedicated to Richard Abrams, and a homage to the stride and boogie masters – seeking to ‘reinterpret blues utterance in the light of my own experience’. Sarah Cahill gives an eloquent performance. ‘North Star Boogaloo’ fragments and reshapes a Quincy Troupe poem around a notated percussion part – deft, humorous, vibrant. But the most imposing pieces are a 1997 revision of ‘Shadowgraph 4’, where Lewis conducts the NOW Orchestra and enables them to pack a tremendous amount into an 11-minute rendition, and a new version of ‘Voyager’, where the composer-trombonist and his technology explore ‘one potential outcome between the improviser and the computer’. A memorable collection and a work that may in future seem historically important, too.

评语：Bob Brookmeyer said (1999): ‘My life fell into two parts, you know: the drinking part and the sober part. Though, to be honest, I don’t really think of it as “sober”. I think I’m a free spirit – or nuttier – when I don’t drink!’ Having weathered difficult professional situations – acting as intermediary between Jim Hall and Jimmy Giuffre in the Giuffre trio, struggling with Gerry Mulligan’s combative spirit (and terrible piano-playing) – Brookmeyer eventually succumbed to his own personal demons and there were long, blank spells in his career. Defying once again the stale dictum that there are no second acts in American lives, he came back in his ’60s and ’70s with a body of exceptionally fine new music. Warmly recognized as a composer in Europe, he often had to rely on non-American orchestras and labels to allow it to be heard. The earlier things on this delightful set were written for a festival in Lübeck in 1994, with Gerry Mulligan as guest soloist. Posthumously documented on record, it features the multi-talented Scott Robinson in the solo role, turning the folk- and dance-based material into something at once familiar and strange. Robinson is a formidable soloist and he brings a genuine individuality to the part. Of the other tracks, ‘Cameo’ is essentially a solo spot for Brookmeyer, while ‘Duets’, built on one of Bob’s minimalist themes, is a great basis for improvisation and includes some inventive drumming from John Hollenbeck. The closing item, ‘Boom Boom’, is derived from the earlier ‘Danish Suite’ and provides a light-toned and joyous closer. Brookmeyer has rarely written or played better.

评语：Michel Portal said (1998): ‘I would play compositions by Mozart or Debussy and think: “I can play this now, but what do I do next?” It became very mechanical. But I was also listening to American music on the radio and hearing Charlie Parker, or Jimmie Noone, or Duke Ellington, and I was … bouleversé. Excited, but I knew that I was not an American and did not think like an American. How was I to be a musician, and express myself?’ Portal is one of the few musicians in our book who has had a parallel performing career in modern composition. He was in earlier days an important interpreter of Pierre Boulez’s complex music, which some might regard as the antithesis of jazz. Portal, however, feels no strain between the two languages and has managed to carry over elements of each to the other. The only comparable figures on the recent scene have been trombonist Vinko Globokar and bassist Barry Guy. Portal developed a style which absorbed the formal rigours of classical playing with an improvisatory freedom that sounds complex, but proceeds from quite basic premises. Dockings is a quiet masterpiece from an all-star band. Portal’s daring in using such strong musical personalities so delicately and sparingly more than pays dividends, and it would be hard to imagine a record of such poise and grace. Baron and Swallow happily move between insistent ostinato figures and more or less free time, leaving Chevillon to anchor the basic metre. Bojan Z is as usual tasteful and responsive, and the two horns are deployed with great subtlety. Though there isn’t a vibraphone, the most obvious model for the sound is the Dolphy group of Out To Lunch! (Eric is the dedicatee of the second track), but rendered ever more abstractly lyrical. Stockhausen, who needs to be added to the roster of bi-partisan players above, has the penetrating intensity of a Freddie Hubbard, but with a softer and more plangent quality. The mourning dove timbre of Portal’s clarinet on ‘Dolphy’, building in intensity over Baron’s pattering accompaniment, is matched only by their interaction on ‘Ida Lupino’, this time with Portal on bandoneon.

评语：Michael Jefry Stevens says: ‘This was the last recording with the original group. When we listened to the Eindhoven recording of my composition “Birdtalk”, I realized that I had “laid out” for virtually the entire song, without realizing it. Funny what happens when you give yourself over to the power of music.’ Long-standing groups are relatively rare in jazz, where there is a premium on flexible personnels and fleeting encounters. Fonda/Stevens underlines the enormous benefit of settled relationships, even if individual careers go on in parallel. This is a group of relatively unfashionable – if not exactly ‘outsider’ – improvisers, who for the last decade and a half have produced music of consistent high intelligence and often great loveliness. Selecting their first release is a decision taken faute de mieux, since there is scarcely a weak or slack set in the entire output, and because we have a special affection for this line-up. Robertson and Whitecage are both conservative radicals whose most splenetic moments wouldn’t cause an earthquake. It’s their solos and dialogues with different members of the rhythm section that tend to direct the music, even though the writing is all by the leaders. The compositions are either open-ended sketches or Coleman-like melodies counterpointed between the instruments, and if the latter carry less conviction it’s because the playing is ragged when it should be pointed. Evolution, recorded live in Europe, sees the group move back and forth in musical time. ‘Birdtalk’ is a clear reference to the bop roots of most of the players. So absorbing is the music that after countless listens we hadn’t quite noticed that Stevens was largely absent, until he pointed it out. Robertson’s solo is superb, somewhere between Dizzy Gillespie and Booker Little, while ‘Song For My Mother’ breathes poetry. ‘Second Time Around’ was an intriguing rhythmic exercise, with just a few indications written out by Fonda for the players: no set harmonic or melodic material. Stevens’s ‘Strayhorn’ is a tender portrait of a great composer. By the time of Live At The Bunker (recorded at a favourite and supportive venue in Bielefeld; as a Jew of German extraction, Stevens isn’t blind to the irony of playing in a Second World War bunker!), Robertson had been replaced by Smoker, and Whitecage had moved on, too. It’s a new balance of sound and the group has continued to evolve, integrating new personnel here and there. For us, though, this remains the Fonda/Stevens record the others have to match up to.

评语：Valery Ponomarev says: ‘Listening to it right after the recording session I couldn’t help thinking that everyone played beautifully. Everyone except me. I was the only one who failed. I could have done much better. For a long time I didn’t want to listen to it. Much later, I needed to check out the title-track and ended up going through the whole CD. Bob, Sid, Kenny and Billy sounded just as great. And me? I couldn’t believe how much I liked it this time. “It’s me playing,” I kept thinking. “Not bad, Ponomarev.” ’ A Muscovite under Clifford Brown’s spell, he defected in 1973 and joined the Jazz Messengers in 1977, before leading his own group, Universal Language. That’s a rather wonderful band name for a man who left Russia during the deep freeze of the Brezhnev years in order to play jazz in the West. If anyone confirms that hard bop had become not just a musical lingua franca but also a confident assertion of human freedom, it is Ponomarev. He has an immediately attractive tone, round, ringing and accurate, and he has always had an instinctive swing with just a few subtle indicators of a non-American background. Though he has made many fine records, A Star For You remains the vintage Universal Language date. Ponomarev makes it clear that this is a set very much dedicated to the spirit and memory of Art Blakey, perhaps because the 25th anniversary of his arrival in America wasn’t so far away. The opening ‘Commandments From A Higher Authority’ is absolutely in the spirit of the Messengers’ great days, a wheeling, driving theme which never quite comes to rest but exudes authority in every measure. Bob Berg is the key addition to this group, superb on ‘Dance Intoxicant’ and the long standard ‘We’ll Be Together Again’, adding a warm-toned confidence to every track. Simmons and Walker get to show why they got the call, playing with intelligence and taste, never over-fussy, but subtle when the tune calls for another dimension.

评语：Marilyn Mazur says: ‘The music on Small Labyrinths with my group Future Song consists of four of my compositions for the group, the other eight tracks are actually collective improvs in the studio, inspired by conceptual titles, the used titles on the CD are in return inspired by the music we made.’ Mazur was born in New York but grew up in Denmark, where she led her own Primi Band in the ’80s before high-profile stints with Miles Davis, Wayne Shorter and Jan Garbarek. She was the 2001 winner of the Jazzpar prize. Dance has also been an important component of her work. In addition to Primi, Mazur has run three groups: Pulse Unit, Percussion Paradise and, more recently, Future Song. Future Song evolved while Mazur was touring with Miles and has remained pretty much intact since 1989. An earlier Stunt record is very good, but nothing matches the exquisite sound on her first ECM disc, where the added presence of Molvaer and Aarset gives more colour and texture to the ensemble. Most of the pieces are very short, like pinhole-camera captures of fleeting scenes, but ‘See There’, ‘Back To Dreamfog Mountain’ and ‘The Holey’ are all substantial cuts that document the evolution of a group language.

评语：T. S. Monk said (1999): ‘My task is to clarify, to put this music in a form that will be reachable by anyone who wants to experience it. That isn’t diluting it, but clarifying it.’ Thelonious Jr made his public debut with his dad at the age of just ten and, after some time away from jazz working in R&B, has devoted himself to the old man’s memory and to a sound that is intended to recapture the melodic energy of ’50s Blue Note hard bop, influenced by Art Blakey, Max Roach and Tony Williams. By the time Monk On Monk appeared, one might have expected the rising-50-year-old to have pushed out into territory he could legitimately call his own, rather than continue playing dad’s work. The dedication and obvious affection are hard to fault and some of the playing is very fine indeed. On this occasion, T.S. has assembled a superband which must have been the envy of the block. All the songs are by Monk, though ‘Ruby My Dear’ and ‘In Walked Bud’ have been transformed into vocal vehicles for Kevin Mahogany and Nnenna Freelon respectively. Herbie Hancock and Ron Carter solo on ‘Two Timer’, but the best double act of the evening bouquet goes to Bobby Watson and Wallace Roney for their spirited and lyrical attack on ‘Jackie-ing’.

评语：Brad Mehldau says: ‘The Art Of The Trio series nicely captured the development of that group of three musicians over the course of a few years.’ Without any question, the dominant piano influence in contemporary jazz is Bill Evans, an overdetermining presence similar to that of Coltrane for saxophone-players. Mehldau is certainly the most accomplished, because also the most individual, and is now among the most keenly followed pianists in the music. His Warners records are a formidable lot, but the early Fresh Sound releases which signalled his arrival and which he probably looks back on as mere student-work are already exceptional. Under his Warners contract, Mehldau set out to create a sequence of albums under the Art Of The Trio heading. There are five of them, but they stand as comfortably apart as they do in order and there’s no reason not to pick a later one as a starting-point. This is the first of two recorded at the legendary New York club, and it has all the virtues of a modern live recording, with extended performances, heightened by place and moment, taken down in high-quality sound. At the Vanguard, Mehldau played a new version of Coltrane’s ‘Countdown’, which has acted as a marker for his progress since the debut album on Warners. Where the earlier version was created out of disparate lines, this one is detailed and dense – he gets a long, long way into the piece, which his unaccompanied passage seems suddenly to illuminate, as if abruptly finding answers to a lot of questions. This is perhaps a more ambitious record, sparked by the live situation, and it’s like a detailed addendum to the finished elegance of the first volume. ‘Moon River’ is exquisite, but also full of unexpected detail. ‘Monk’s Dream’ seems outside Mehldau’s usual realm, but he nails it with a faint swagger. ‘Young And Foolish’ is a fine version of that often overlooked staple. Rossy and Grenadier follow Mehldau without a stumble. In the presence of a player as omnicompetent as this, their role is inevitably more subdued, and there is no hint of Scott LaFaro’s relationship with Grenadier, excellent as he is, but at the best moments this is unmistakably a trio playing, not just a pianist and rhythm.

评语：Michael Marcus says: ‘Being with Jaki in the studio was so relaxed. When we recorded the slow blues in A (“The Continuum”), Jaki turned to me with his beautiful face and smiled. Every tune on the recording was one take!’ Marcus didn’t get the idea of manzello and stritch directly from Roland Kirk, but from George Braith, a Rahsaan follower who recorded briefly for Blue Note and Prestige in the ’60s. Michael’s microtonal approach is a near equal hybrid of R&B and modernist polytonality, reflecting an apprenticeship on the chitlin’ circuit with the likes of Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland. Interestingly, in recent times, Marcus has set aside his odd-shaped horns – including saxello and Conn-O-Sax, a saxophonic variant of the cor anglais, in F – and his bass clarinet in favour of the B-flat clarinet, on which he gets a wonderful tone, concentrated but not effortful. The records are as varied as the instrumentation used to be. There are recent duos with trumpeter Ted Daniel and various outings with the Cosmosamatics group he co-leads with Sonny Simmons. For that reason, it’s hard to pick just one. Justin Time has acquired an impressive knack of putting together intriguing duos – Paul Bley and Kenny Wheeler being a more obviously homegrown promotion for the Montreal label – and on this one it has excelled itself. Byard’s weird barrelhouse-meets-free-jazz style suits Marcus perfectly. On This Happening he sticks largely to the stritch (a straightened-out alto, also in E-flat) but also plays a saxello. On just one track he reverts to bass clarinet, a medley of ‘Giant Steps’ and ‘Naima’ in the spirit of Eric Dolphy. The only other familiar tune is ‘Darn That Dream’, an eccentrically romantic end to a wonderful, offbeat record. Jaki’s death in 1999 robbed Marcus of his most responsive playing partner to date, a musician who instinctively understood his balance of traditionalism and experiment. A second record, recorded a year later, is less sure-footed, but together they offer a valuable glimpse of a brief association.

评语：Sue Mingus says: ‘This was an ambitious recording, done live over three days at the Time Café. What I most remember is that because the energy was beginning to flag on the second day, I called up Ku-umba Frank Lacy, whom I had fired the summer before, and begged him to come back. The band caught fire on that third day. Sy Johnson, who arranged nine of the pieces, calls it his favourite MBB recording because of the “thorny, challenging material”, like “Number 29” and “Children’s Hour Of Dream”. The band rose to the occasion, bringing the fire and spirit one expects of Mingus music. (In addition, Kenny Drew [Jr] came in and sight read the piano part on “Children’s Hour”, something few other players on the planet could have achieved!)’ Of the projects dedicated to the great man’s memory and legacy, this is perhaps the most important, and now the most durable as well, enjoying the active blessing of the composer’s widow and access to tapes and manuscripts from the huge Mingus archive. The band began round a regular Thursday session at Fez under the Time Café in New York City. Mingus had shrewdly recognized that a band could rehearse at the public’s expense if an event was labelled a ‘workshop’ rather than a concert, and so the Mingus Jazz Workshops were born. These days the task is perhaps less urgent, and less driven by constraint; the Big Band provides an opportunity to work through the scrolls, providing exegesis and commentary on a vast body of work. Live In Time of course refers to the venue, but it also underscores the vital, ongoing nature of the project and the fact that all of this music is being worked out in real time. A huge slab of music spread over two discs, it comes the closest of the group’s recordings to recapturing the spirit of Mingus himself. The opening is stunning; ‘Number 29’ was written by Mingus as a challenge to all the gunslinging trumpet-players in town – and, as written, it was impossible. Arranger Sy Johnson has spread the part through the trumpet section and given it a hard, bi-tonal quality that is pure Mingus. Two early pieces, ‘Baby, Take A Chance With Me’ and ‘This Subdues My Passion’, are recorded here for only the second time since they were written in the ’40s. Conrad Herwig solos on the second, Frank Lacy and Gary Bartz on the first. ‘So Long Eric’ is a tour de force, a solo feature for the entire horn section; sheer excitement. The second disc is not quite as powerful as the first, though Johnson’s long arrangement on ‘The Shoes Of The Fisherman’s Wife Are Some Jive-Ass Slippers’ and the superb ‘E’s Flat, Ah’s Flat Too’ are impeccably conceived and performed. The night ends a day late with ‘Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting’, a stunning solo from Randy Brecker, ably supported by Shim and Eubanks.

评语：Roswell Rudd says: ‘This project was on my mind since 1960, when I first spent time with Herbie. He was using these compositions to teach me form and improvisation. I realized then that what we were doing needed to be recorded. No takers … until, fast forward to two exhausting, uplifting, back-to-back days at CIMP in Redwood, New York. It was a modest budget but we had free rein and were able to lay down respectful outlines of 15 of the folio of 27 songs. It was a long, long hope come true.’ Rudd worked with Herbie Nichols for nearly two years between 1960 and 1962. The pianist died a year later and since then Rudd has been the most dogged keeper of the spirit, campaigning with Steve Lacy to reverse the great pianist and composer’s marginalization. In 1982, on a record that punctuated what was to be a long studio silence, he joined Steve Lacy on a record of Nichols and Monk tunes called Regeneration, a satisfying tribute to both. The CIMP session was an opportunity to concentrate on Nichols entirely and to dig out some of the most obscure themes. Rudd contacted CIMP boss Robert Rusch, who has a deserved reputation for putting out adventurous music by artists who otherwise might lack recording opportunities. There are some surprises in instrumentation. On ‘Some Wandering Bushmen’, Rudd played trumpet on the first take, before reprising the theme on his usual horn. On the long ‘Jamaica’ (Volume 1) he plays percussion, and elsewhere on the same disc gets out the little-used mellophone. He’s always been an enthusiastic rather than polished singer and gives his all to ‘Vacation Blues’ at the end of Volume 2. Much of this material is genuinely unknown and unheard, even by those who do know ‘Shuffle Montgomery’ and ‘Lady Sings The Blues’. It seems extraordinary that tunes like ‘Freudian Frolics’, the far from lightweight ‘Tee Dum Tee Dee’, ‘Prancin’ Pretty Woman’ and ‘Karna Kanji’ are not in the wider repertoire. The trio is well-balanced and responsive, with Millar taking much of the accompanist’s role. He and Bacon duet on ‘Dream Time’, leaving Rudd to play ‘One Twilight’ and ‘Passing Thoughts’ unaccompanied; the latter is quite remarkable. A valuable insight into two great – and sadly under-documented – artists.

评语：Gerry Hemingway says: ‘The swan song of my wonderful quintet of the ’90s, cobbled together from mostly radio recordings made on the most ambitious tour I ever put together, 27 gigs in 28 days all over Europe. Despite a very high level of stress, including a heated feud between Ernst and Michael, I think an elegant view of this versatile ensemble shone through. One favourite piece, “Gitar”, is still in the repertoire.’ Hemingway is a (somewhat distant) kinsman of the great novelist, and a dogged exponent of the principle of grace under pressure. He won his spurs with Anthony Braxton’s group, where he held the percussion job for more than a decade. The Hemingway Quintet toured tirelessly during 1996. Two of those dates are represented here. Hemingway had recently taken charge of his own management and distribution, an overload which might have been disastrous had happenstance not lightened his load. The electronic samples which were to have accompanied the tour were lost when a computer crashed. The mishap threw Hemingway back on the band’s internal resources, and Waltzes is a superb representation of its improvisational versatility. There are duos and trios, solo spots and areas of near silence as all five ponder decays in the markedly different acoustics of the Berlin Jazz Festival and Fasching in Sweden. Hemingway had been writing a lot of material in waltz-time, though in practice the count is often 7/4 or 9/4 rather than a strict three-quarter. That is acknowledged on the opening ‘Waltz In Seven’, with its mournful rubato opening. The first of the long tracks is the slow, stately ‘Gitar’, which opens with Hemingway on harmonica, albeit an instrument so oddly pitched that he sounds like a consort of Tibetan Buddhists playing shawms. The main melody could almost be Aaron Copland in a melancholic mood, with Wierbos playing in the lower reaches of his register. By contrast to the open-form pieces, ‘Gospel Waltz’ is a relatively straight-ahead blowing piece, though each of the group approaches its changes and melodic form in a quite different way. ‘XI’ is an arrangement of a madrigal by Gesualdo, further evidence of how tirelessly Hemingway ranges for new inspiration. ‘Ari’ is a traditional German waltz and an ideal curtain-piece.

评语：Saxophonist Tommy Smith has played with Arild Andersen: ‘It’s not only the note or space that’s crucial; it’s the when and the how. Arild’s personality is as big as his bass sound. A man who is the centre of every party and a man who is at the centre of all his music.’ Like many players of his generation in Scandinavia, Andersen was much influenced by exiled guru George Russell’s Lydian Chromatic approach to harmony. The bassist has worked in a wide range of contexts and was leader of Masqualero, a latter-day simulacrum of the Miles Davis quintet. His characteristic manner is resonant and fleet, with much of the harmonic complexity Russell’s influence imbued. He probably isn’t immediately thought of as one of ECM’s main stars – in the way that Garbarek, Jarrett, Rypdal, Weber, even Surman are – but he has been a constant and steady presence at the label and on the European scene, his big but not insistent sound at the centre of many fine recordings. The earlier ECMs, Molde Concert, If You Look Far Enough, the folksier Sagn, are varied enough to suggest that Andersen doesn’t have a single compositional style, but writes very much for specific contexts. The only surprise is that ECM have never seen fit to record him unaccompanied, as they have with other bass-players on the roster. Andersen would easily command such a space. Hyperborean is a reference to the cool, ageless land the Greeks believed lay beyond the north wind. The music is disciplined, unromantic and timeless. Andersen dispenses with effects pedals, combining his increasingly elaborate improvisations in real time with keyboards and string quartet, lending the whole – ironically enough – a jazzier feel than anything he has done since Masqualero. Hofseth and Brunborg are reduced to supporting cast and it’s the Cikada Quartet that dominates the first half. Things loosen up later, albeit leaving an uneasy sense that Andersen has delivered his main ideas upfront and is then struggling to fill the slot. Though structurally less elaborate than Sagn, which is organized as a three-part suite, Hyperborean has a unity of tone and an overall sense of direction lacking on the earlier discs. Andersen dominates completely. His sound is immense and his soloing involved and compelling. Every time one hears Andersen at work, one wonders why he isn’t automatically on every list of influential contemporaries.

评语：Alan Broadbent said (1997): ‘Maybe jazz really isn’t for everyone. If you don’t have that subtlety and that responsiveness to changes in time, maybe it just doesn’t work for you, and you’re always going to be just OK with fusion, or whatever. I look for things like that in a song before I can do anything with it; the beauty of time, if you like.’ Broadbent went to Berklee in 1966 and from there joined Woody Herman as pianist-arranger. His career has divided along those lines ever since. He worked with Chet Baker and has more recently worked with Diana Krall, but his most prominent playing roles have been as a member of Charlie Haden’s Quartet West and as a solo and duo recitalist in Concord’s Maybeck Hall series. He deserves to be better known. There’s great clarity of thought to Broadbent’s playing, the interpretations entire and well-formed rather than merely busked, and if that suggests a lack of spontaneity, he always manages to make the music sound fresh. Broadbent takes his cues first from Parker and Powell, yet one seldom thinks about bop while listening to his two-handed approach. Personal Standards is superlative. Here he tackles eight originals, plus one he wishes he had written himself, Smith’s ‘North’. It’s something of a shock to come across such a rich vein of writing and not be able to identify by name any of these beautiful melodies. ‘Song Of Home’ and ‘The Long Goodbye’ are familiar from Quartet West performances, but who has picked up that remarkably original blues ‘Uncertain Terms’ or ‘Idyll’? The playing is so impeccable, the responsiveness of the group so refined (LaBarbera has never played better), that one is left at a loss for words. Broadbent deserves the highest acclaim.

评语：Nat Adderley said (1985): ‘… and Terell Stafford, there’s another young trumpet-player out of Florida. There’s definitely something in the water, except all these guys sound different and distinctive, and I like Terell’s sound.’ Stafford was a regular member of Bobby Watson’s group Horizon, which also numbered Simon and Lewis, and he came to his own debut recording with a sensibility very much marked by Watson’s small-group/big-sound idea. Stafford isn’t just another latter-day run-of-the-mill bopper. Though he draws on a range of influences running from Fats Navarro (a fellow Floridan) and Clifford Brown to mid-period Miles and Lee Morgan, he already has a distinctive inflexion and a very personal phraseology. Centripetal Force is exactly what’s at work here, a group which is working very closely and sympathetically. Again Tim Warfield brings his clean, youthful sound, but on just one track this time. A version of ‘Daahoud’ is a special dedication, but it also points up the Brown influence again. Though the whole band is never heard together, the richer palette suits the trumpeter admirably and he produces some magnificent statements on ‘I’ll Wait’ and ‘Skylark’, a back-to-back pair that are as sheerly refreshing as anything from the last few years. Thad Jones’s ‘A Child Is Born’ is for trumpet and guitar, and ‘My Romance’ is an elegant trumpet solo.

评语：Claire Martin says: ‘Apart from Peter Washington nailing “Estate” in 5/4 in one take, the highlight was a photo shoot with the late, great William Claxton. Afterwards, I was alone in the back of a limo – the driver’s next job was to pick up Clint Eastwood! – thinking: “I’ve really made it … check me out!” when a huge truck slammed into us and the dream came to a swearing, honking, sticky end. I had to go back on the subway, but for just a moment … queen of the world.’ Martin was the most exciting female jazz singer to emerge in the ’90s and an inspired signing for Scottish-based label Linn. Though her British groups have done her consistently proud, American success and a fruitful association with Richard Rodney Bennett have propelled her onto a new stage; for once, the label that shaped her career has been able to come along and enjoy the fruits. Influenced by some of the great cool jazz singers, Chris Connor most obviously, but with a hint of Julie London’s laid-back sense of drama, too, Martin never over-dramatizes a lyric, but shows a clear understanding of what she is singing. Much of her early work for Linn has been parcelled up in compilation boxes. These are a good way to make her acquaintance, but for a quick fix of Martin in mature form, it’s best to go straight to Make This City Ours. Martin approached her 30th birthday with a solid reputation, but not yet with a statement on record that matched up to her live presence. She also had, so far, no real reputation in the US. If one album deserves to establish her as a singer with real star potential, then it’s this one. Even the title sounds like a confident declaration of intent. Recorded in New York, with Washington, Hart and Hutchinson guesting, it has a more cosmopolitan feel than any of its predecessors. Presencer’s trumpet-playing conveys innocence and weary maturity, and Hart always sounds good around singers. A new Martin composition, ‘Empty Bed’, bodes well. We were divided on her arrangement of Bruno Martino’s ‘Estate’, with words by Joel Siegel, but it stands up strongly on repeated hearings and only ‘Another Night’ sounds remotely formulaic. Arguably, there were even better records to come, notably a tribute to Shirley Horn called He Never Mentioned Love and A Modern Art, but it’s always great to hear an artist coming into her own, and that’s what happened one autumn in New York.

评语：Dewey Redman said (1999): ‘That’s one of my best records. I like to play in Europe. I think they appreciate jazz music there, more than in America, except perhaps New York. And you sense that and you try things, knowing that no one minds if you fall on your ass.’ In his last years, Redman’s reputation was almost eclipsed by that of his son Joshua, with whom he sustained an arm’s-length but affectionate and respectful relationship. Of course, Joshua’s success also introduced the father to a generation who hadn’t been buying records when Ear Of The Behearer was made. Like Pharoah Sanders, who had worked with Redman in one of his earliest bands, Dewey got mellower as the years went by. The more eldritch qualities of his attack were almost gone by the beginning of his last decade. Instead, there was a philosophical calm beneath which roiled the remnants of his avant-garde persona. Recorded live at Ronnie Scott’s club, Redman sounds rejuvenated and adventuresome with a band that splits down naturally into two pairs, himself and long-standing collaborator Brown up against the Italian Marcotulli and Wilson. The band actually work from a different axis on ‘Tu-Inns’, the most adventurous tune on the set. Piano and bass take off darkly, building up a steady, brooding ostinato against which saxophone and drums enter with an explosion of sound. As ever, Redman mixes outside and relatively mainstream styles, giving ‘The Very Thought Of You’, his tribute to Dexter Gordon, a loose, swinging energy and Sammy Cahn’s ‘I Should Care’ an easy, melodic interpretation. ‘Portrait In Black And White’ is an unexpectedly straightforward Jobim cover, but what’s interesting about all of these middle-of-the-road numbers is how carefully they’re juxtaposed with the more adventurous material. Tunes like ‘I-Pimp’, ‘Kleerwine’ and ‘Elevens’ are a reminder that Redman hadn’t entirely abandoned his avant-gardism and commitment to the new. An old lion, still dangerous, and nowhere close to falling on his ass.

评语：Jessica Williams says: ‘That session was hard. Jay was incredible, but the bass-player and drummer were fighting. Remembering what Duke said about dealing with hostile machinations in the band, I put his theory to work, getting them so riled they wanted blood. I said to Jeff: “The drummer says you’re dragging” and then to Mel: “The bass-player says you’re slowing the time down.” After that, each tried to outplay the other, scowling and grunting and glaring. They’re good friends now but they sure were mad at that session, and that’s why it burns – that time is aggressive! Just like I wanted it.’ Williams performed for a time as Jessica Jennifer Williams using electronic keyboards, and didn’t make much of a splash in the jazz mainstream till she started releasing acoustic jazz records in the ’80s, when her distinctive style – compounded of Tatum, Monk, Evans, Brubeck – became immediately evident. She has been prolific ever since, despite living off the beaten track in north California and one suspects that for Williams CDs are more than calling cards or gig souvenirs, but an important aspect of her art. She has most often been heard either solo (including a Maybeck Hall date) or in a trio context, so it was surprising and at first unsettling to hear her work with horns. A slightly earlier disc with Thomas and Hadley Caliman was called Joy. It certainly emoted but there was a distracting busyness to some numbers which is all but eliminated here. Straightforward melody statement is the priority, leaving ample room for soloing. Williams contributes a catchy whistle to the opening ‘Smoking Section’, an excellent original dedicated to Roland Kirk. Most of the first half is devoted to Williams compositions, all of them testy and potentially lethal, though one now understands why the mood was so abrasive. There’s a change of pace and tone with ‘See See Rider’, and later on Thomas plays his trumpet on ‘St Louis Blues’, getting a ripe old sound out of it: a rare musician who seems as easy on brass as on a saxophone where his solos are funky and to the point. ‘Raise Four’ allows Williams to exercise her Monk obsession again, but to dramatic effect. It’s a cracking performance and this is perhaps her best record. The other players challenge her and mitigate the somewhat florid intellectualism of some of the solo recitals.

评语：Larry Ochs says: ‘Bingo sums up our plan of attack in the ’90s. We admired the British improvised music scene and with grant support from Meet The Composer we were able to get Barry Guy to write his first version of Witch Gong Game for us; the beautiful score hangs in both Raskin’s and my homes. I always loved playing the opening sopranino solo in Lindsay Cooper’s “Face In The Crowd”, even though the tuning was always an issue!’ An American all-saxophone group, its name derived from the surname initials of the players, although Andrew Voigt has been replaced by Steve Adams (ROAA would be harder to pronounce). Though their music seeks an exact balance between composition and improvisation, and they have over 30 years created an extensive body of remarkable music for saxophone quartet, they have lately been written for extensively by many different composers. As Larry Ochs points out, Bingo is not representative of the major works composed by himself and bandmates Adams and Raskin, but together with the preceding Ptow! and Resistance on Victo it offers a spectrum of ROVA music ranging from free improvisation and structured improvisation to composition for improvisers. That said, Ochs’s piece ‘Initials’ is one of the strongest in the group’s collective history, and it sits beautifully alongside two pieces by Lindsay Cooper, two versions of Barry Guy’s ‘Witch Gong Game’ and Fred Frith’s ‘Water Under The Bridge’, their presence here a striking tribute to ROVA’s interest in British improvisation/composition. The album opens with Cooper’s intricate ‘Face In The Crowd’, which is delivered with perfect dynamics by the quartet. If it stands as a kind of symphonic tone-poem for quartet, then the first, short version of the Barry Guy piece is almost a concerto for baritone, with Raskin backed by written saxophone parts from the others. Frith’s standing as a fine contemporary composer still doesn’t go unquestioned, but the piece here – dedicated to Jimmy Giuffre – should dispel any doubt. It’s audibly part of some larger design, but it stands impressively on its own, breezily present and evanescent by turns. It also sets up the long – 25-minute – version of ‘Witch Gong Game’, which is the set’s climax. As the culmination of a trilogy, Bingo completes the card, but ROVA is a group best heard in bulk and anyone intrigued by this should scroll back to the early records and on to the collaborations of recent years, of which more below …

评语：Ellery Eskelin says: ‘What should rightly have been a disaster – a location recording made in a room with strange acoustics using questionable equipment run by an engineer with peculiar attitudes about the whole affair – miraculously turned out to be one of our best-sounding recordings!’ Eskelin stands apart from the throng. He has a querulous tone and likes to stretch phrases into elongated shapes that follow a logic all their own. He was raised in Baltimore from an early age and studied at Kenton Orchestra summer schools, but despite the fact that his father was the cultish songwriter Rodd Keith the main early musical influence was his mother, Bobbie Lee, who played organ and led her own groups. After a bunch of earlier records, some of which have disappeared into the void, Eskelin convened this unusual trio for a 1994 record called Jazz Trash. Its roots in sax-and-organ soul-jazz aren’t difficult to excavate, but typically Eskelin grafted new ideas and procedures onto the basic stock. On that first meeting, he created a record which is undeniably interesting, but doesn’t quite make the next step. He appeared again with Parkins on Green Bermudas, his most out-there and uncategorizable disc, on which the saxophonist decorates her oddball array of sampled sounds (singalong pop, varispeed drums, chunks of Eskelin himself from Premonition) with some of his sparsest playing. A lot of it feels like experimental bits and bites, at least until the two long tracks which close the record, each a testing dialogue. One Great Day restores the Jazz Trash situation; Black’s compendium of jazz, rock and free rhythms is spontaneously exciting; Parkins conjures unpredictable shapes out of her instrument; Eskelin plays with real physicality, seeming to grab and twist the sound as it emerges from his horn. ‘Vertical Hold’ is an astonishing piece that like the title-track seems to weave together a freebop sensibility with a warped version of television music (presumably what the title means) and does so with a kind of playful seriousness. The inclusion of Roland Kirk’s ‘The Inflated Tear’ is a useful pointer to the kind of aesthetic this trio pursues. Black is a percussion giant who frequently gives his skins a rest and finds other ways of making sounds. On ‘Fallen Angel’, our pick of the tracks, he sounds as if he might be picking out the swaying rhythm on a suitcase, while Eskelin emotes elegiacally and Parkins toys with dance measures: sardana? Or something closer to home? Eskelin takes enormous pains with sound, treating the studio like a fourth member of the group. However difficult the circumstances of the recording, it’s a near-flawless disc by one of the undersung leaders and underexposed groups of the last 20 years.

评语：Ornette Coleman said (1983): ‘A piano gets in the way.’ Coleman’s contract with Verve, albeit under his own Harmolodics imprint, didn’t set off a tide of later recordings. In fact, the flow of material has been slower than ever. It was initially a surprise when the duo album with Joachim Kühn was announced, initially because he was a piano-player, and Coleman had shown little enthusiasm for keyboards since he worked with Walter Norris and Don Friedman years before. The same year as Colors, though, he did also work with Geri Allen, so yet again the mould was broken, or had never been that entire in the first place. In addition, by any standard, Kühn seemed an ideal duo partner. There are few more sophisticated and few more heterodox harmonic thinkers around and, whatever else, the encounter promised to spark off some interesting conflicts of style, the German’s ethereal classicism (if you hear it that way) against Ornette’s ‘jazz’ roots. It’s interesting to compare their encounter with another, almost contemporary Verve release, the 1 + 1 duo by Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter, which is pipe-and-slippers compared to this restless, searching set, recorded live in Germany, at the Leipzig Opera. Kühn had recorded in a duo context before, with CMP in-house genius Walter Quintus, and with guitarist Jan Akkerman. Both times he demonstrated a responsive intelligence that thrives on harmonic ambiguity and on a suspension of conventional harmonic resolutions. The record opens in relatively straight-ahead fashion with ‘Faxing’, which is more unexpected for the pianist’s part than Ornette’s. He’s in more familiar territory on ‘Three Ways To One’, which might almost be a through-composed chamber piece. All the tracks, relatively short by live-performance standards, were written specially for the date. ‘Refills’, ‘Story Writing’ and ‘Night Plans’ are the most substantial pieces, though most of the detail comes from Kühn rather than Ornette. A wholly unexpected meeting of minds.

评语：Pat Metheny said (2004): ‘He’s one of the younger guitarists I most admire, not just for his technique. His whole approach is just right.’ A ubiquitous presence on the New York club scene of the late ’90s, Rosenwinkel is one of those rare musicians whose rise from sideman to leader status has been earned rather than merely taken as a matter of routine course. He got a break working with his teacher, Gary Burton, and has been building on that. His busy diary probably gets in the way of developing projects of his own, but he has ideas to burn and will certainly prevail, even if the move up to Verve did him no obvious favours. There’s already a substantial body of recorded work, but we still return to the first album, the first of two live sets he has put up; a later one, on ArtistShare, was recorded at the Village Vanguard. The debut has a beautiful feel – the three men were recorded in Small’s Club, where Rosenwinkel has had a regular gig, and the sound of the record is close, almost humid. The interplay lifts the material to a high level of invention – when they fade ‘All Or Nothing At All’, it sounds as though they could have gone on in that groove for hours yet. Rosenwinkel plays with a clean, almost classical sound and his melody-lines are spacious and paced to suit whatever tempo they’ve chosen – he never seems to feel he has to rush through his phrases. The title-piece suggests a composer who’s not working outside his comfort zone yet, but time will tell. Cohen and Rossy are just as generous of spirit on a very enjoyable set. It’s certainly more successful than the subsequent Criss Cross Intuit, which is all right but basically uneventful bebop, as that provenance would suggest. Rosenwinkel, though, could make Dixieland sound modern and remains a man to watch.

评语：Kenny Davern said: ‘All my teachers did was give me a lot of things I didn’t need to know. I learned music – and everyone should learn music – by listening. Otherwise, you’re standing there in the middle of the band, knowing everything, but not able to play.’ Davern had claims to being the major clarinettist in jazz, having forsaken the soprano saxophone (‘I play soprano once a year and it takes only a few moments to confirm that I made the right decision’). It did, however, provide him with a good platform during otherwise dark days for jazz when he co-fronted Soprano Summit with Bob Wilber in the ’70s. Though associated at various times with avant-garde projects, Davern remained true to older loyalties and waved the flag for New Orleans jazz at a time when modernism reigned. As obituaries pointed out, Davern might have been working with Steve Lacy in the ’80s but he made his recording debut in 1954 with Jack Teagarden. It’s a relatively extensive discography, but the Arbors records gave Davern the bright, uncluttered sound his light, nimble delivery required and the late discs are generally terrific. Breezin’ Along is a peach, though. Pizzarelli and Alden make a great team, driving the fast numbers and softly suggesting the harmonic detail in the slower ones. Davern measures the material with an almost insouciant virtuosity: two Beiderbecke chestnuts, ‘Since My Best Girl Turned Me Down’ and ‘Jazz Me Blues’, are super, but ‘Baby, Won’t You Please Come Home’ is Kenny at his peak. Sometimes his note choices are unexpected, but only the unwary would assume this was any sign of the avant-garde peeping through. Kenny was playing with Red Allen at 16 and most of his language still dates back to players of that generation, including the ‘out of tune’ snaps, altissimo endings and almost toneless phrases, many of them most effectively deployed in the stripped-down situations Davern liked as rhythmic devices. A lyrical player, though, and always a joy to hear.

评语：Cecil Taylor said (2002): ‘That music is alive! I almost cried. He plays one sound, aah! and walks off; another sound, eeh! and walks off again. But when he confronts that sound, that new sound out of rhythm and blues, there is such passion. His life is there.’ From those initials much was expected; not miracles perhaps, but certainly something special. Carter’s coming out was rapturously received and almost everything since has been fascinating. He arrived in the unlikely packaging of the Tough Young Tenors. It was an inspired idea to throw Carter up against those ancestral voices and with a programme that takes in swing to bop and beyond to the contemporary avant-garde. Both guests and material come from out of a past not always so very distant, but certainly very different from the scene the young man inherited. Carter’s loyalty to Shahid, Tabal and Taborn is exemplary, and they form a unified background for the guest spots. The most venerable, chronologically speaking, are Edison and Tate, and ‘Lester Leaps In’ and ‘Centrepiece’ with Sweets and ‘Moten Swing’ and ‘Blue Creek’, the latter with Buddy on clarinet, are convincingly, supremely authentic. The paired altos on ‘Parker’s Mood’ almost cancel each other out, so rigorously do they observe the master’s cadence, and Smith – heard, as all the guests are, through the left channel – doesn’t seem to want to bust loose. A hometown legend, the Detroiter has very few recording credits to his name. The set kicks off, wonderfully but rather deceptively, with Bowie’s ‘Freereggaehibop’, on which his entire armoury of rips, snorts, smears and impossibly low-register vocalizations are used. Appropriately, he comes back to round off the album with ‘Atitled Valse’, but by then the honours have already been secured by Bluiett and by two fantastic baritone duets, on Coltrane’s ‘Naima’ and, more boldly, on Anthony Braxton’s march-metred ‘Composition 40Q’, one of the more approachable themes in the Braxton canon, but still a startling piece to cover. Carter is playing with dazzling confidence and restrained power. His early tendency to over-emphasize the attack has given way to a breathily intimate sound which can be scaled up or down in keeping with the material. His multi-instrumentalism is so much in service to the song that one scarcely notices the switch while understanding instinctively that such-and-such a tune could only be played that way on that horn. That’s the sign of a master.

评语：Joe McPhee says: ‘As Serious As Your Life is, of course, a tribute to Valerie Wilmer’s marvellous book and the musicians she championed, but more personally it is a tribute to my father. It was he who gave me the gift of music and he had recently passed away.’ A deep thinker as well as a passionate musician, McPhee is a rare exponent of both brass and woodwind instruments, doubling on trumpet and saxophone on many of his records, using other horns as circumstance dictates. He developed his musical learning in the military, exposed to the traditional jazz which has always profoundly affected his work. He emerged as a significant player with the 1969 album Underground Railroad on the CjR label he co-founded. Other rarities from that period have re-emerged in recent years. Perhaps the two great intellectual wakenings of his life were his reading of Edward De Bono’s heterodox psychological theories, which led to McPhee’s ‘Po’ aesthetic, and his meeting with radical composer Pauline Oliveros, whose philosophy of Deep Listening chimed strongly with his own ideas. McPhee has many recordings, featuring many permutations of instruments, but it seems only appropriate to include one of his great hat ART dates, not just because it is a remarkable record, but because the label was established (in 1975) by Swiss businessman Werner X. Uehlinger specifically to put out McPhee’s music, some 14 records between 1970’s Black Magic Man and this. McPhee has identified 1996 as an important transitional year, a point at which he looks back and forwards, with the oneiric logic that dominates the ‘Project Dream Keeper’ sequence. Working alone and with ambient sound welcomed rather than edited out, he creates a body of work which is as evocative and expressive as anything he has ever made. ‘Tok’ is a Coltrane-influenced tenor piece which harks back to the earlier solo performance. ‘Conlon In The Land Of Ra’ documents an imaginary meeting between Sun Ra and the radical composer Conlon Nancarrow. Dedicated to Marilyn Crispell, Coltrane’s ‘After The Rain’ is a piano solo played on the house piano of the Village Gate jazz club and played with the sustain pedal depressed throughout, giving it a floating, fugitive quality. On ‘The Man I Love’, McPhee brings a highly personal focus to the Gershwin standard, a similar tonality and language to the two parts of ‘As Serious As Your Life’, named after an important book by British jazz writer and photographer Val Wilmer. As well as these, there is the opening ‘Death Of Miles Davis’, a heartfelt tribute, and ‘Haiku Study #1’, a sketch for work developed later in duets with violinist David Prentice.