Eri Yamamoto Trio: The Next Page

I like this trio, led by the lyrical pianist Eri Yamamoto. Here, she produces ten engaging melodies for improvising—often wheels that spin around in your head, hooking you. This is modern jazz playing of high quality—with improvising that tells stories, probing the harmonies and moving like a rush of momentum at the right moments.

The band has been together for just about forever in modern terms: with a decade-long standing gig at New York’s Arthur’s Tavern. Bassist David Ambrosio is soulful on every tune, and drummer Ikuo Takeuchi keeps time while still being playful about it. They are not an overwhelming unit like Keith Jarrett’s Standards Trio, not a fleet-footed outfit like Brad Mehldau’s trio, nor a band that is playing with modern pop forms like the trios of Vijay Iyer or Jason Moran. Rather, you can picture them on their home turf, keeping matters intimate but engaging.

That’s all great. But the group’s most recent recording, The Next Page is perhaps a bit too nice. Yamamoto’s great distinction on previous recordings may have been her ability to be both genial and somewhat avant-garde at once—a blend of refreshing freedom and down-home appeal. True to her history, she was a pianist both in love with a great mainstream influence (Tommy Flanagan) and the pianist in out-bassist William Parker’s freewheeling quartet. This kind of sweet-and-sour combination made recordings such as 2008’s Duologue among the best of the year.

The new record is congenial to a fault. It opens with a string of sweetheart songs—like, on the title alone, “Sparkle Song”—that leave plenty of open space around their mostly simple, diatonic melodies. “Whiskey River” has a melancholy sound, but is a blue kind of pleasure for sure: quiet and contemplative but also wound into circles of slow ecstasy. “Night Shadow” has a similar appeal, with a slinky, almost Pink Pantherish blues melody that leaves plenty of room for discussion while never really leaving the key center. There are snappier tunes as well, such as the hip, backbeat-heavy “Waver”, or the clattering “Swimming Song”, which uses a gospel groove to set up Takeuchi for plenty of busy accompaniment.

But what never seems to come along on The Next Page is a tune that leads Yamamoto or Ambrosio outside the expected. “Just Walking” uses just a repeated bass line as its melody, which would seem to invite a freer form of exploration, but the pianist keeps her harmonic choices relatively mainstream here, despite the open-ended possibilities. It’s an exciting performance, with plenty of daring without mainstream forms, but just a tad tame for a player with Yamamoto’s history and young pedigree.

Read my full review here: Eri Yamamoto Trio: The Next Page on PopMatters.

Kenny Garrett: Seeds from the Underground

Seeds from the Underground boasts the sound of a tight-as-a-glove small jazz group, one that has played together for a while and knows how to let the sparks fly. Every tune here is an opportunity for ecstasy. Every solo tells a story. Fireworks or feeling are where every sequence is heading. This is straight-ahead jazz with the emotions turned up.

The sound of this band is generous. The Venezuelan pianist Benito Gonzalez is a maximalist, fusing plenty of world rhythms with his massive post-bop jazz chops, sounding occasionally like Herbie Hancock and more often like McCoy Tyner, but always like a young monster. Nat Reeves plays fat-toned acoustic bass, and Ronald Bruner is splashy and vibrant on drums. Then most tracks add Rudy Bird on percussion, who blends integrally with the jazz vibe, not seeming merely tacked on like too many percussions on straight-ahead dates. And, finally, several tracks add to the melodic ensemble some (mostly) wordless vocals by Nedelka Perscad—a great, soaring sound.

Here is the full PopMatters review: Kenny Garrett: Seeds from the Underground.

Most typical are the up-tempo workouts on Seeds. “J. Mac” (for Jackie McLean) is a rollicking modal tune that features thundering piano chords and a straight-ahead swinging feel. Garrett takes the first solo, and it is plain that he is charging up the hill at full speed, headed for the summit. As usual, the leader’s tone is pungent in the low register and squawking and raspy heading into the upper octave—in short, delicious. The solo builds to a peak of longer held notes, then it reloads into swirls that spin even higher. It is exhilarating. Or check out the opener, “Boogety Boogety”, with Bird percolating out front in a hip Latin groove that positively screams “Happiness!” Gonzalez’s solo here dodges and dances with smooth daring until it rises up on a series of upper register tremolos and fizzles back to the melody. Tasty.

Seeds from the Underground is not Kenny Garrett’s best record—he’s been around since the mid-1980s and has made a consistently solid string of records include several that aim higher than this one—and Garrett almost always achieves his goals. But Seeds is so satisfying because it is meat and potatoes jazz from a real working band and from a leader who never gets cute or pulls punches.

This is driving, cooking jazz—old school if you will. And that’s never been easy, even if the greats make it seem so.

JAZZ TODAY: Esperanza Spalding Stays the Jazz Course While Norah Jones Gets Indie

Jazz has done so much to resist popularity since the end of the big band era: the squirrel-chase sound of bebop, the steely architecture of Coltrane, the raw honk and squeal of free jazz, the over-academic approach of neo-conservatives. So when a genuinely appealing jazz figure arrives—George Benson, Harry Connick, Jr., Diana Krall, Norah Jones—it’s only a matter of time before they leave jazz behind for real pop popularity.

The last few weeks have debuted mature recordings by the two most pop-worthy jazz phenoms of the last decade. One artist’s arrow aims back to the heart of jazz, while the other sends her into another orbit.

Both discs are discussed at length in my latest JAZZ TODAY column: Esperanza Spalding Stays the Jazz Course While Norah Jones Gets Indie.

This month, Norah Jones released Little Broken Hearts, a mature singer-songwriter type of recording that places her singular and beautiful voice in an indie-pop context. Not that Jones ever claimed to be a pure “jazz musician”, but she attended the esteemed jazz program at North Texas and records for Blue Note Records, the premiere jazz label. With Little Broken Hearts, however, Jones is writing songs with Brian Burton (“Danger Mouse”) and breaks her jazz ties entirely.

And to Jones, who has sold over 40 million records, I say: bravo, friend. Little Broken Hearts is a much, much hipper record than Come Away With Me ever pretended to be, drenched in processed guitar sounds, looped but static grooves, studio production style with the absence of any band feeling, and a different kind of vocal phrasing. A tune like “After the Fall” pulses with synthesizer patches and a syncopated snare sound and is built around Jones’s flat delivery in octave harmony with a male voice. “Travelin’ On”, similarly, puts a laconic Jones vocal over a strummed acoustic guitar (or is it just a digital simulacrum of that?), supplemented by a chilled-out cello line. Both have the cool vibe of something that might have been on the Garden State soundtrack

Radio Music Society is the fourth solo album for the singer and bass player Esperanza Spalding, though Spalding recorded with a rock band called Noise for Pretend as teenager. That is, Spalding and Jones are at similar stages in their recording careers.

Like Jones, who plays plenty of piano, Spalding was trained first as a bass player (acoustic and electric) and came to singing less formally. But in the marketplace, she is a singer first. And like Jones, Spalding made a first record (Junjo, 2006) that was closer to convention. The most critical similarity—and then difference—between Jones and Spalding is in the expectation and then execution of their 2012 releases.

Just as Little Broken Hearts was announced in advance as a further departure for Jones from her jazz-pop roots, a record meant very clearly for the non-jazz market, Radio Music Society was announced as Spalding’s attempt to make a commercial record. Understood as the flip-side companion-piece to Chamber Music Society, this new record would jettison the string group and, instead, embrace electric guitar and the sound of some great hooks. Rather than imagining that Spalding would make an indie-rock record like Jones, it was easy to imagine Spalding releasing an impeccably crafted soul album.

And that is almost what she has done. The difference, however, is that Spalding’s latest uses soul music as a form—but one that is essentially transformed by jazz practices. Radio Music Society may have a bunch of ripping hooks, but it’s equally rich in saxophone solos, tricky bebop vocal melodies, and complex contrapuntal forms. Spalding, at her core, is a jazz musician rather than a pop player who just happened to get singed to Blue Note. Centrally, Spalding is drawn to virtuosity and technical complexity.  She is so clearly a jazz musician that even her most commercial stuff has the swing and swagger of a fine jazz record.

In fact, both of these records stand as remarkable career highlights for Jones and for Spalding. Each seems to be refining a kind of essence. Jones may have started like a torch singer, but it turns out that she was really always “just” a brilliant pop voice, and one from a generation more likely to be influenced by Radiohead than by Blossom Dearie or Ella Fitzgerald. And Spalding’s debut, featuring the Jimmy Rowles classic “The Peacocks” and Chick Corea’s “Humpty Dumpty” as well as originals that use mainly wordless vocals, was also not a full expression of her musical personality, but it was in many ways her essence: a substantive jazz workout with a delicious sense of appeal.

Today, a generous handful of records into each career, however, Norah Jones and Esperanza Spalding seem like interesting examples of how jazz remains important to American pop music, even if jazz was long ago turned into a kind of art music. The impulses of jazz—to sing or play with interpretive style, to infuse the music of the day with syncopation and freedom, to force each musician to develop an utterly distinctive voice on the basis of personality and skill—still make the best pop more lasting.

This is not to say that jazz musicians make the best pop records, but rather that American popular music still works best when it embodies a taste of its past. And, it’s also true that jazz benefits from how it rubs shoulders with pop. May they forever be bumping into each other

Mary Halvorson Quintet: Bending Bridges

Mary Halvorson is a knotty player, a guitarist with an unadorned tone and an approach that could almost be called unmelodic. She specializes in jazz lines that lurch and twist and abrade the ear, finding freshness by avoiding the very musical familiarities that most listeners, well, enjoy.

Except that, in this avant-garde approach, Halvorson is finding fresh ways to sound great, to write catchy tunes, and to put a fire of urgency into hearing jazz in a new way.

Bending Bridges is the second beautiful and urgent recording from her quintet, with trumpeter Jonathan Finlayson, saxophonist Jon Irabagon, bassist John Hébert and Ches Smith on drums. The band plays with precision and fire on a series of Halvorson tunes that entertain and tell stories. Every track here sounds like a journey: with repetitions but also fresh horizons, with sweeping vistas and moments of pure road momentum. Bending Bridges hasn’t the foggiest idea of how to bore you.

Read my full PopMatters review HERE.

Among the great things about the construction of this band is the way that Hébert’s woody bass tone contrasts with Halvorson’s unadorned guitar or her subtle forms of distortion. “That Old Sound (No. 27)” is for guitar trio only, but the sense of dynamic range is extreme. Hébert is natural and lovely in laying down the harmonies, and then the guitar continuously distorts and bends, with Halvorson laying in strange effects and supplementary tonal variations such that it almost seems as if the whole quintet must be hiding inside her Guild’s hollow body.

Halvorson, in the final tune on Bending Bridges, makes her very unconventional technique span the precise and the peculiar. “All the Clocks” could be a tune from Eric Dolphy’s Out to Lunch but it could also be the product of a “post-rock” experimental outfit like Tortoise. A tiny bit prog and a whole lot free, a decent part tuneful but a whole dollop adventurous, the Mary Halvorson Quintet is an ideal modern jazz ensemble.

Fans of the today’s beyond-category jazz should be lining up for this music, but so should indie-rock fans or guitarheads or noise-rockers or any other music fan who cares to hear the daring mix with the heady. This is another great record from an outstanding band. May they keep coming.

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.