Brad Mehldau Trio: Ode

Ode is a traditional jazz record in that it features concise themes and long improvisations, with brilliant rhythmic play running throughout the trio’s incredible dialogue. It’s a high-wire act in the grand piano trio tradition, a clear heir to the likes of Bud Powell and Bill Evans and McCoy Tyner and in league with some of the recent quicksilver work from the mature Chick Corea. It’s hardly old-fashioned, but it’s a mature, solid piece of work. And it’s fantastic.

Mehldau will never seem like just another pianist, so it seems just fine that Ode has no particular gimmick. His playing is dashingly original by its very nature. Toward the end of the opening track, “M.B.”, for instance, Mehldau’s fiery solo becomes a duel between his left hand and right, each of which plays alternating single-note runs that develop naturally from the existing left-hand accompaniment. On “Twiggy”, one of his crystalline modern themes with a Latin feel, Mehldau plays it light and melodic, much like a pianistic Pat Metheny, but then spins the simple solo into something more ornate and intricate, the runs becoming faster and knottier over time. Imagination and technique jigsaw together when Mehldau plays.

Read the entire PopMatters review here:  Brad Mehldau Trio: Ode

Ode itself does not reach for epic dimension often, and that’s cool. It seems less like a manifesto or a film than like a very fine jazz album. Though the leading jazz pianists today are making lots of impressive statements about where the music is going, maybe creating a compelling album, old school, is still one of the music’s clearest callings. Ode fits the bill.

Jazz's Wizard of Wit—and Much More—Dave Frishberg

On days when you might want your jazz with some wit and some delight, one sure solution is the music of pianist, songwriter and singer Dave Frishberg. Frishberg is most famous as the composer of a handful of incredibly funny and clever songs, many made famous first by singer Blossom Dearie.

“I’m Hip” is a monologue by a deluded beat-era hipster who thinks he’s utterly cool because “I even call my girlfriend ‘Man’”, set to a series of chord changes so tricky that the song is nearly unsingable. “Peel Me a Grape”, more recently done to sultry extreme by Diana Krall, is written in the voice of a woman who is perfectly up-front about the fact that she’s using her man for luxury and little more (“Don’t outthink me—just mink me”). And “My Attorney Bernie” is a celebration of an unscrupulous lawyer: “Thanks to you, my attorney Bernie / Thanks to you I’m considered well to do / Sure, I made out like a bandit exactly like you planned it / But like Murray, my accountant, told me yesterday—I owe it all to you”.

Indeed, as a solo performer and singer, the Frishberg-Woody comparison seems utterly on target. Frishberg’s appearance and age are similar to Allen’s. Both come off as spectacled nebbishes, perhaps—balding guys with a facility for smart wordplay and a weakness for New York City. Take a listen to Frishberg’s brilliant “Do You Miss New York” written from the point of view of someone who fled Gotham for the west coast (“Do you miss New York—the anger the action? Does this laidback lifestyle lack a certain satisfaction?”), and just try not to think of Allen’s take of Los Angeles from Annie Hall, a movie that Frishberg references in the song’s last verse.

But if that were all of Frishberg, a bunch of funny, impish songs, then I wouldn’t find myself returning to his work as often as I do. In fact, Frishberg is a musician and composer who covers the full range of moods and emotional keys. As a pianist, he’s one of a kind—straddling an amazing two-handed technique that starts with stride roots but fully absorbs bebop harmonies and modern rhythms. And as a writer of complex ballads and mood pieces, he’s a composer who goes far beyond yucks. 

Read the entire PopMatters article here: Jazz's Wizard of Wit—and Much More—Dave Frishberg

Matt Wilsons Arts & Crafts: An Attitude for Gratitude

I like my jazz with some whimsy when possible, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be deep. Matt Wilson’s band, Arts & Crafts, fits this bill to a tee. They are loose and fun, but also capable of great emotion and subtlety. What a relief in a style of music that, too often, seems about precision and grandiosity. Wilson ambles and takes detours as a drummer, and his band follows. It’s a casual stroll, but the destinations are substantial.

Arts & Crafts consists of veteran trumpeter Terrell Stafford; the pianist, accordionist, and organist Gary Versace; new bass player Martin Wind; and the leader on drums. Wilson does not lead by being the loudest player but rather with a willingness to infuse his playing with a human looseness. It might be unfair to call his playing “messy”, but it has a spontaneous, shambling character that refuses to be straightened out by strict rules. The result is a band that has many modes and moods, each of which is truly genuine. Although we’re talking about instrumental jazz here, the music on An Attitude for Gratitude has heart and humor and soul.

Read my whole review here:  Matt Wilson's Arts & Crafts: An Attitude for Gratitude


Nearly half of the tunes on Gratitude are original, and all carry water. Aside from “Bubbles”, there is the bouncing Versace tune “Poster Boy”, which allows the pianist to unspool a great line of modern jazz that culminates in a set of jagged chords leading to a hypnotizing bass solo. Wind’s “Cruise Blues” is pure relaxation, and Wilson’s “No Outerwear” has an easy swing that could be fruitfully covered by a big band. Wilson drives it with authority, and then he even gets in a quick drum solo –clacking away like an old pro. His tune “Stolen Time” is the most open thing on the record: a form that turns some fast swing into an open plain of semi-organized freedom. Wilson gets to fragment his playing as the rest of the band gallops out over the landscape and plays with abandon.

“Play” remains the operative word with Matt Wilson’s Arts & Crafts. This is jazz that emphasizes a sense of childlike wonder. The full range of emotions is here, not just blues or ecstasy and especially not merely nostalgia. Matt Wilson is working, freely and with great pleasure, in the here and now, where jazz has always been at its best.

An Attitude for Gratitude has its finger, easily and pleasantly, on the present pulse.

Joshua Redman: Moodswing

 In 1994, Joshua Redman was the “It Musician” in jazz – a young guy getting a ton of press because he was a biracial guy who had gone to Harvard and decided to pass up Yale Law School for the life of a jazz musician. Plus, he was the son of the great tenor saxophonist Dewey Redman and took the top prize in the Thelonious Monk Saxophone Competition in 1991. Oh, and the guy could really play – boasting a rich, round tone on tenor and a natural, conversational style that was utterly appealing. All this resulted in a major recording contract, rare for almost any jazz musician, on Warner Bros. And the young player delivered with a debut that showed him as equally adept at “Body and Soul” and “I Feel Good”, then a sophomore effort where he played even-Steven with Pat Metheny, Charlie Haden, and Billy Higgins. The hype was not all hype.

For his third release, 1994’s just-rereleased Moodswing, Redman recorded with his working quartet. And it seems fair to guess that Warner Bros. decided to reissue this record because of that band. Pianist Brad Mehldau has become not only a top-flight jazz pianist but also a phenomenon of his own – a daring recording artist who tackles classical material and fascinating pop hybrids. Christian McBride has become jazz’s most prolific bassist, a man for all seasons and all styles. And Brian Blade has become not only the drummer in Wayne Shorter’s adventurous quartet but also an ingenious composer, arranger, and collaborator across musical styles. In retrospect, it is an all-star band, a supergroup. So how does Moodswing sound 18 years later? And how well does it fulfill its own mission, stated in Redman’s high-toned liner notes, to demystify jazz a bit, to rescue it from being seen only as an “intellectual music” and, instead, create feeling?

Read the full PopMatters review here: Joshua Redman: Moodswing

Without a doubt, Brad Mehldau is the secret ingredient on this disc. “Chill” finds a groove that lives somewhere in the Pink Panther/”Fever” zone: slinky and blue, set low in the tenor’s range, the bass and piano playing a lovely descending pattern. It’s a theme that isn’t, in and of itself, all that interesting, but it sets up the soloists just fine. Here is where the young Mehldau does his damage –playing light and easy, but with a melodic invention that is exceptional. It’s a solo that you might play for a skeptical friend who “doesn’t like jazz” and maybe win a convert. And when it’s Redman’s turn, things get interesting in a different way: the band sets of simple syncopated groove with no harmonic motion, and then the tenor and McBride’s bass trade blues rips. Nice.

Moodswing is appealing, but not anything truly new or daring for a jazz quartet to pull off. And that is where any judgment of Moodswing probably has to land. It’s terrific music, but it is played over well-traveled territory. In jazz, that’s common and just fine, but it doesn’t really live up to Redman’s liner-note manifesto in emotional directness. As great as the band is, with a vintage that now spins our heads, in 1994, this was a young working band making its first recording. I’d call it lovely but not essential, incredibly fun but not ... moving. Not that it doesn’t make me feel something. Good jazz always does. If that’s not true for every music fan, I’m not inclined to lay it at the feet of a single saxophone player, particularly one with such range, tone, and ambition. Josh Redman was under no compunction to lead a movement. Moodswing shows how fine even a merely good date is by a strong player.

JAZZ TODAY: The Vijay Iyer Trio Takes Over

The best band in jazz has made the best album of the year—or of the decade. Pianist Vijay Iyer and his trio (with Stefan Crump on bass and Marcus Gilmore on drums) have been making great music, alone or with others, for some time. But Accelerando is an instant jazz classic, a record that is both accessible and daring at once, both in the tradition and wholly new.

On this recording, the trio plays with an incredible degree of integration, sounding like it has fully worked out a series of ideas about how a band should deal with rhythm and dynamic interaction in today’s jazz. The music on Accelerando is immensely elastic, but it’s not loose. Rather, the band plays with a roaring, united front of sound, within which the rich tradition of jazz plays out in scintillating conversation.

Read the full JAZZ TODAY column and review here: The Vijay Iyer Trio Takes Over.

The Heatwave tune, “The Star of the Story” (written by Rod Temperton in the ‘70s) is a classic piece of sophisticated groove music, and Iyer seems to understand it from the inside out. The trio begins by playing it with great fidelity to the original but then sets off into a wild section that is grounded by a pounding Gilmore pattern setting off a bowed bass solo that grows under a set of stuttering cross rhythms on piano. Once Crump drops back to playing a series of funky low notes, Iyer returns with a set of variations on the tune’s theme that, again, build to amazing unity of purpose.

Even better is the Michael Jackson hit “Human Nature”, which starts with the recognizable piano lick and then moves to a straight melody statement that is syncopated over an idiosyncratic, interlocking pattern that finds Gilmore and Crump mixing funk rhythms with sudden gaps of silence. In the way Iyer digs into the melody (especially the second verse), there is just a bit of how The Bad Plus attacks a pop tune, but then the band moves into an improvisation that shatters all expectations.

Nothing like regular “jazz”, this finds the rhythm section deepening the way it lurches through this groove, while Iyer plays largely like a drummer, striking his right hand in staccato jabs while his left thumps in an octave pattern. And this combination of elements evolves and builds until the waves of contrasting rhythms simply can’t be any more intense. And after a brief moment of silence, the melody returns until a long slow fade allows the song to begin all over again at the piano lick. Magically, it means that the band can intensify even more greatly the second time and into a shattering, beautiful ending.

All of the music on Accelerando sways and swaggers, surges and shudders with power. It’s the sound of a style of music rediscovering its ability to move a whole body or a whole room. It’s the power of three men, playing like ten but mainly playing like one, who have a single conception that requires then to playing in very different ways, simultaneously.

It’s the best album of 2012 in jazz by the best band in jazz, no doubt. The Vijay Iyer Trio sounds like jazz history in real time, unfurling for your personal revelation.

Listen up: this is why music matters.

JAZZ TODAY: Rock is the New Jazz

Here is the start of today's new JAZZ TODAY column over at PopMatters. To read the whole thing, you gots to go to: http://www.popmatters.com/pm/column/154630-rock-is-the-new-jazz.-sorry-rock/


Hardly anyone is listening to rock these days. Sure, dinosaurs like the Rolling Stones remain huge draws on the road—baby boomer fans can afford the $150 ticket price to relive the old days. But the future, measured by radio play and music sold and people under the age of 30 caring about a new album by Bruce Springsteen or Wilco or The Hold Steady—the future points away from “rock”.

The hip-hop wave has fully washed over the beach.

A visit to the Billboard Hot 100 today yields only two songs in the top 20 that could be argued to be “rock”. Maroon 5’s “Moves Like Jagger” (#13) sounds utterly not like rock (dancebeat bass drum, the tinge of auto-tune, a chirping synth hook), and Gavin DeGraw’s “Not Over You” comes a little closer though it seems more like a pop throwback tune than anything with a genuine edge. Further down the chart there’s a little country and one indie-rock hit (Foster the People’s “Pumped Up Kicks”) and that’s about it. The Black Keys in position 67 are pretty much the flag-wavers for “rock” in early 2012.

Rock, in other words, is The New Jazz.  And Rock, horrible as this may sound, jazz and I have some good news and advice for you.

Get Used to Being Unpopular. It has its advantages.

First, Rock, don’t despair. Not being popular is simply not as bad as it sounds. You are no longer sitting at the Popular Kids’ Table in the cafeteria, it’s true. But now you have the chance to develop some serious nerd cred, to get listened to carefully, and to get serious without turning off your fans.

You see, Rock, you are slowly morphing into jazz—a style of music that once was very popular but then was supplanted by the cooler young thing (uh, you) and had to discover new ways to survive. Is it hard to believe, from 2012’s distant perspective, that there was a time when America positively fluttered and moved to swing rather than a backbeat? It’s true. Dance halls once were the province of Benny Goodman rather than techno. And squeezed somewhere in the middle there, Rock, was you. Everything passes into history.

Sure, you’ll still be on magazine covers for the foreseeable future, just like Dave Brubeck and Wynton Marsalis and their ilk. But you’ll see, the days when your every move was a public matter are over. Big stars can’t walk the sidewalks in their heyday, but do you think that Ryan Reynolds will have any trouble walking into a Burger King when he is 65? Unlikely, Rock. And so with you.

Being jazz ain’t that bad. But it’s not glamorous. And there’s a price. Here are the details.

Read more HERE.

JAZZ TODAY: Jazz Triumphs of 2011 That Only a Fool Could Miss

To be a critic is to risk being a boob. Those who dare to open their blabbermouths and spout an opinion are going to get called on the carpet. As they should.

And in the arts, with matters of judgment being highly subjective, getting it “wrong” is essentially guaranteed. Not everyone can agree with you.

Jazz singer Gretchen Parlato, unfairly overlooked by ME.

And often enough, a critic can’t even agree with himself. For me, as a jazz critic, the music is in constant motion, evolving. Just as a jazz musician plays a different solo every night on the same tune, my ear takes in the music in varying ways over time.

And so it is that, with the ‘ink barely dry’ on the PopMatters Best Jazz of 2011 list, I feel the need to come back with some amendments or additions—five recordings that I realize are so good that, well, how dare I have left them out?

Here they are; here’s why they’re so fine; and here’s why I may have missed them the first time around.

Tyshawn Sorey, Oblique—1 (Pi)


Miguel Zenón, Alma Adentro, The Puerto Rican Songbook (Marsalis Music)


Gretchen Parlato, The Lost and Found (ObliqueSound)


Brad Shepik Quartet, Across the Way (Songlines)


Steven Bernstein and the Millennial Territory Orchestra, MTO Plays Sly (The Royal Potato Family)

Read by full review of each of these discs HERE: Jazz Triumphs of 2011 That Only a Fool Could Miss.