Here are Andrey Henkin’s monthly picks, coming to you the last Wednesday of the month.
George Coleman, With Strings (HighNote Records)
Almost exactly 73 years after Charlie Parker joined conductors Jimmy Carroll and Joe Lipman for Verve’s Bird with Strings dates, fellow saxophonist George Coleman wove his thread into the saxophone-with-strings tapestry. The album finds Coleman, then 87 (now 90), playing with the restraint and taste of an esteemed elder and, as such, does not jar with the honeyed accompaniment.
The arrangements are by Bill Dobbins, who worked on labelmate Eric Alexander’s recordings with strings the year before. For a rhythm section, Coleman selected players who collectively embody elegant support: pianist David Hazeltine, bassist John Webber and drummer Joe Farnsworth. Brazilian percussionist Café da Silva, heard on three tunes, adds a dash of cinnamon to the rich roast. The jazz quartet and strings were recorded separately.
Coleman must have been playing these selections from the Great American Songbook forever, but never, apart from “Stella By Starlight,” included them on his own dates. The one deviation is Thelonious Monk’s “Ugly Beauty,” emphasis on the second adjective.
Caroline Davis & Dustin Carlson, Sprites (Out Of Your Head)
Those who have taken acid — if not, don’t … drugs are bad … stay in school — it is remarkable how alto saxophonist Caroline Davis and guitarist Dustin Carlson evoke, in less than 36 minutes, the entire psychedelic experience so vividly, helped along by a setting completely at the mercy of spontaneity, liberal use of electronics and TJ Huff’s surreal cover art.
The 12 vignettes — none over five minutes, four under two — move first from the almost naïve expectation of spiritual awakening via Davis’s processed vocals on “Ghost Lullaby” to perceptual twists on the periphery as the tempo of second piece “It Feels Human” increases. Suddenly there are living neon squiggles in the ether during the title track, followed by the need to calm down and control the situation that is “Al Golpe.”
But this proves futile, as the middle segment of “A Bushel,” “Asphalt Didact” and “Nude” move across various nightmare scenes and imagined alien vistas. In the next three pieces, the trip is now the reality and vice versa, all senses prismatically inverted and buoyed by a timeless sense of peace. “Cooperation Wins” recalls the panic that this may never end, before breaks in the mental clouds and returning consciousness emerge for “Starlit Wasteland,” the listener profoundly changed.
Aruán Ortiz, Créole Renaissance (Intakt Records)
It’s a truism that history is written by the victors. What if it could be written by the musicians? That is the question obliquely raised by the intriguing new release from Cuban pianist Aruán Ortiz. Most people’s grasp of history is at best superficial — this author no exception — so it is welcome when an artist explores a period or cultural flowering, inspiring further research and, one hopes, a larger worldview.
Ortiz’s latest solo date continues a fruitful partnership with Switzerland’s Intakt, which since its founding has championed iconoclastic pianists. His playing on Créole Renaissance is graceful, full of purpose; he comes across as a sculptor, not a painter. The album resists passive listening, and the titles are not after-the-fact throwaways. There is a recitation on “From the Distance of My Freedom,” touching on an idea from intellectual history, Négritude, the early 20th-century African movement in philosophy and critical theory that challenged colonial narratives.
The pace of Créole Renaissance often mimics a long trek across a flat, almost featureless plain, notes popping up with the infrequency of desert plants, the shorter miniatures coming faster and denser, but only to a point. All that space gives one plenty of time to think.
Miguel Zenón, Vanguardia Subterránea (Miel Music)
There are numerous milestones in a jazz career: receiving one’s instrument; getting up at a jam session; a recording debut; first album as a leader; a headlining European tour. Another landmark since Sonny Rollins did it 1957 has been the live from The Village Vanguard date. Almost 24 years after his leader debut, alto saxophonist Miguel Zenón has notched his mark into the dark red walls of the legendary club with Vanguardia Subterránea.
All the music is new, or at least previously unrecorded, and all are originals apart from Willie Colón/Héctor Lavoe’s “El Día de Mi Suerte” and Gilberto Santa Rosa’s “Perdóname.” As to the latter, it takes years of collaboration to make songs across such different eras part of a band’s oeuvre. The Afro-Latin rhythms are strong, but ultimately Vanguardia Subterránea is a strongly melodic modern mainstream jazz date, benefitting from the energy of its historical locale.
It is Zenón’s eighth quartet album with Venezuelan pianist Luis Perdomo, Austrian bassist Hans Glawischnig and fellow Puerto Rican compatriot drummer Henry Cole, so the level of communication and shared music-making is hardly surprising. What is unusual is the length of the tunes for a live set, which, apart from the closing, nearly 11-minute “Perdoname,” average about seven-and-a-half minutes. That kind of focus and pithiness are, however, both laudable and likely the result of a deep, equitable bond. JT