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.

Chick Corea / Eddie Gomez / Paul Motian: Further Explorations

Further Explorations, is a play on the 1961 LP from Evans, Scott LaFaro and Motian, Explorations. It’s a perfect title because the new record both comes from that early Evans conception and never feels trapped by it. As with the template, Corea/Gomez/Motian share the musical space equally, creating breathtaking jazz democracy. But there is very little sense that the group consciously restricts itself to some notion of a “Bill Evans style”. The early Evans trio is strictly a springboard, and then it’s off into the sky.

The trio’s take on “But Beautiful” is a prime example. This Jimmy Van Heusen song was introduced by Bing Crosby in Road to Rio (1947) and later recorded by Billie Holiday, Nat Cole, and Doris Day before Evans got to it—but for modern jazz players Evans essentially defines a delicate, impressionistic take on this tune.

The new version here begins with Gomez playing a classical-tinged bowed solo that begins freely away from the melody and then brings us in. In “Part II”, Corea takes the baton from the bassist as a solo pianist and brings the trio into a swinging, mid-tempo exploration. The piano references the melody in places but not much, with Motian playing his standard but fragmented version of swing and Gomez providing accompaniment that is better heard as commentary, with dramatic bursts of plucked melody rising through the conversation every few bars. When Gomez takes his proper solo, it’s Corea who is impossible to suppress, and finally the song moves into a final phase where the rhythmic play becomes more complex. It is decidedly not a fragile ballad performance that another Evans imitator might cook up. Thank goodness.

Read by full PopMatters review of the disc here: Chick Corea / Eddie Gomez / Paul Motian: Further Explorations

Rez Abbasis Invocation: Suno Suno

Here is one of best and unique recordings of 2011—a wildly fun and powerful outing from jazz guitarist Rez Abassi. Outwardly, this band (with Vijay Iyer on piano and Rudresh Mahanthappa on alto sax—essentially an all-star band) is creating a surging connection between jazz and Pakistani music. But to my simpler and less sophisticated ears this sounds like a super-smart fusion record.

Yup, as in jazz-rock. It has the power, precision, and frenzied drive that lived in the best of the early “fusion” records of the 1970s.

Other than Abbasi’s occasionally over-driven electric guitar, this would hardly seem like a real “fusion” band. But the leader’s compositions and arrangements make it so nevertheless, built as they are on lean and repeated licks that lock together across a rock-solid backbeat. “Onus on Us”, for example, starts simply enough with a syncopated two-chord groove, then it tacks on a basic and clear unison melody for alto and guitar. Quickly, however, the drums grow more complex, and the bass line interlocks with the melody, which in turns starts to jabber with more complexity. The whole arrangement comes together not just in trickiness but also in a programmed mutation into different rhythms and forms — so, for example, the guitar solo has a different, stuttering rhythmic feel than the statement of melody. So the music is “fusiony” in two ways: in that it relies on complex and precise arrangements that do not shy away from a certain virtuosity, and that drummer Dan Weiss plays with a rock-level of energy across the tunes.

Read my entire review of the disc here: Rez Abbasi's Invocation: Suno Suno

Remembering Paul Motian: The Drummer Who Quietly Shook Things Up

Late last year, jazz lost one of the quiet guys, the subtle guys, the guys that only insiders are really in love with. But it hurts more because he wasn't a famous jazz musician. You mourn his loss more quietly—which in Paul Motian's case is exactly the right way. You know that for those cared about this music, the hole he leaves in the scene is huge. Particularly in New York, which is where he exclusively played in the last years of his life.

I saw Paul Motian for the last time in on the first Friday in September. He was, of course, playing a gig at the Village Vanguard, New York's temple of mainstream jazz, with his "New Trio", a band that jazz folks wanted to see. Paul's other band are legion—it seems like he became much more prolific in the last ten years, composing like mad, forming great bands, showing up on critical recordings by others.

I brought my daughter to this gig, which makes it stick in my memory that much more.

As was typical of Motian over the last three decades of his art, he played very little straight “time”. Rather, he was engaged in a continual conversation with the guitar and tenor, which is to say that he was playing a conversational and independent counterpoint to his own compositions and arrangements. He played not just time and accents but contrasting and complementary melodies and rhythms, often seeming more sculptor of sound and texture than merely a “drummer”.

This was Motian’s revolution.

I had no idea that Motian was ill, suffering from complications of myelodysplastic syndrome, a blood and bone-marrow disorder, which killed him in November 2011. Motian had seemed old, or let’s say “distinguished”, for a long time—but never less than vital. In fact, he was the rare artist who seemed to be getting larger and more varied over time. In the last few years I had seen him or listened to him in musical conversations with young players like Greg Osby and older players like Lee Konitz. In the best sense, he was the most alive jazz musician on the scene.

Like Miles Davis, Paul Motian was said to use silence very effectively in his art. But 22 November brought too much.

Read the rest of my tribute to Paul here: Remembering Paul Motian: The Drummer Who Quietly Shook Things Up

The Best Jazz of 2011

O these "best of year" lists! What good are they? Must everything in life be a competition?

Yet they help to focus the mind and provide a moment of synthesis. And this year, so scattered in so many ways, needed that more than most.

So, flawed and full of holes, based on incomplete listening and silly forgetfulness, here is my list of the dozen best jazz records of 2011, compiled with fellow PopMatters critic John Garratt: The Best Jazz of 2011.

For me, the top disc, the one that still thrills me the most is the Blue Note debut of trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusere.  It still sounds to me like this young(ish) artist is playing his instrument in a genuinely new way, moving past some boundary previously established and also bring a great young band along with him (or, maybe I should write: being propelled forward by a great young band).  If you are going to fish for just one 2011 jazz record, that's the one.

Apologies to Tyshawn Sorey, Gretchen Parlato, and many others who really should be on here. The cookie, she crumbles at the end of the year.