Here are Andrey Henkin’s monthly picks, coming to you the last Wednesday of the month.
Gary Bartz, Damage Control (OYO)
What kind of album does an 83-year-old jazz musician make? Any kind he wants. That’s the premise behind the new release from veteran alto/soprano saxophonist Gary Bartz, his first full-length date since putting out Coltrane Rules (Tao Of A Music Warrior) in 2011, and a revival of the NTU Troop moniker, his main vehicle for albums on Milestone and Prestige between 1969-74.
The connection to that project is not Bartz’s spirited originals — there are none here — but music that mostly happened after its cessation in the soul, funk and R&B worlds of the late ’70s-early ’80s. The outliers are a 1970 Curtis Mayfield tune, “The Makings Of You” and a McCoy Tyner medley of 1982’s “In Search Of My Heart” and “Love Surrounds Us” (both on which Bartz played).
Alongside the leader are the project’s other main movers, keyboardist Barney McAll and drummer Kassa Overall, plus a host of guests, from harpist Brandee Younger and trumpeter Theo Croker to guitarist Spaceman Patterson and saxophonist Kamasi Washington.
The generally quiet-storm feel is OK for jazz transformation, and Bartz sounds generally strong on the instrumentals but his vocals on some tracks make one long for the late Andy Bey from the original NTU Troop. And some tunes are a tad cringey, no more so than Midnight Star’s “Slow Jam” featuring rapper DRAM.
Satoko Fujii/Natsuki Tamura, Ki (Libra)
An old trope is that couples listen to each other less and less as years go by, falling at best into comfortable silence. That is definitely not true of pianist Satoko Fujii and trumpeter Natsuki Tamura, who even as they continue a torrid pace of albums each year, always find fresh topics of conversation in a relationship that goes back three decades.
The two are usually, perhaps unfairly or simplistically, placed in the avant-garde category, but no matter the context are ultimately melodicists. That aspect is beautifully explored on Ki, their tenth duo album, comprising seven Tamura compositions and a Fujii piece billed as a bonus track.
If there is a single word to encapsulate Ki, translated from Japanese as “tree” with the songs also named for various species, it would be stately. The pace is two steps slower than relaxed, with lots of silence. There are none of Tamura’s emblematic extended techniques, and Fujii has rarely sounded quite this beautiful. Even with the longest songs, three of the seven hovering around the ten-minute mark, there is no flagging of interest, each note as deliberate and crucial as a brush stroke in a sansuiga painting. In fact, the longer the better as the dialogue plumbs ever deeper.
Johnathan Blake, My Life Matters (Blue Note)
Drummer Johnathan Blake has quietly risen to the upper echelon of modern jazz players over the past decade. Quietly because he favors firm support over flash, why he is a sideman of choice for players as disparate as Kenny Barron and Kris Davis.
That changes with Blake’s third Blue Note album My Life Matters. From its stark black-and-white cover photo of Blake against a wall (both physical and metaphysical) and the outcry expressed by the song titles, to the shift among feels, instrumentation and even tune lengths, there is palpable urgency to the message, one born of necessity rather than virtue-signaling.
Mostly this is an ensemble date with Dayna Stephens (reeds), Jalen Baker (vibraphone), Fabian Almazan (keyboards, electronics) and Dezron Douglas (bass). But there are numerous interludes by these players and guests, such as the opening “Broken Drum Circle for the Forsaken” with Blake and turntablist DJ Jahi Sundance; “I Still Have A Dream” with Douglas and spoken word by Blake’s daughter; the solo drum piece “Can You Hear Me? (The Talking Drums Have Not Stopped)” coming right out of the title track and leading into “Always the Wrong Color,” which should be required listening in today’s ignorance-celebrating society; and the closing epilogue “Prayer for A Brighter Tomorrow” with piano and wordless vocals by Bilal.
The album is only 52 minutes long, but like the best art can transmit an entire life’s experience and prod the recipient into their own need for reflection.
Kirk Knuffke, Window (Royal Potato Family)
One of the best aspects of jazz is how it connects players across generations. Drummer Bill Goodwin had been in the trenches for 15-plus years before cornetist Kirk Knuffke was even born, yet the two have developed a fruitful partnership over the past decade. Window is the fourth album where Knuffke has employed the veteran, whose discography includes work with only one other, vastly different cornet player in Warren Vaché. Goodwin’s combination of varied experience and perpetual hipness signals a likely trajectory for Knuffke as he himself approaches his 50s.
Acting as connective tissue, both chronologically and texturally, is bassist Stomu Takeishi, who was part of a Knuffke-led band with Goodwin for the 2014 Fresh Sound release Lamplighter. Takeishi’s fretless electric instrument transforms the music with a visceralness quite different from an upright bass, pushing it sometimes into almost avant-folk territory, other times into subverted trad.
Knuffke wrote all 12 compositions herein, not counting a Goodwin recitation of the short William Blake poem “A Divine Image” — loose jangly vehicles that accomplish a lot in pithy spans, with the most open being the three parts of “Gong Suite” scattered across the date. The leader also includes a few pieces where he figures as a shaman-like vocalist on poetry by Carl Sandburg. All are solidly grounded in melody rather than unnecessarily complex harmonies, allowing the musicians to make … gasp … music. JT