Jazz
Garry Booth’s latest selection includes legends reunited and classics reimagined
JAZZ CHOICE
A memorable reunion
The years fall away in this hotly anticipated return by the great Joshua Redman Quartet
Joshua Redman Quartet
LongGone
Joshua Redman (tenor saxophone), Brad Mehldau (piano), Christian McBride (bass), Brian Blade (drums)
Nonesuch Records 75597910032
When the Joshua Redman Quartet made its debut in 1994 with MoodSwing, the 20-something year olds were not your stereotypical Generation Xers. Far from sounding disaffected like many of their peers, the group’s polished post-bop projected an urbane confidence. In the intervening years (the band was together for just 18 months), its members have all forayed into more challenging contemporary territory. But, reuniting for LongGone, the years fall away as the timeless music they make together falls back into place.
Redman still leads from the front, providing six straightahead original numbers for his sidemen to revel in. His playing on the title track has the sweet, restrained feel of a late-’50s Blue Note session, the tenorist barely breaking a sweat as he deftly negotiates his tune’s twists and turns. Virtuosic pianist Brad Mehldau is in his happy, high tempo place on ‘Disco Ears’, urged on by Blade and McBride snapping at his heels. Redman’s sax lines bob and weave on ‘Kite Song’, tethered by Mehldau, both hands independently busy. Everyone finally lets go completely on ‘Rejoice’, a bustling 12-minute live jam animated by McBride’s vamping.
★★★★★
Jazz round-up
French multi-instrumentalist Cédric Hanriot ’s protean keyboard skills have been much sought after by big stars across the jazz spectrum since he left Berklee College of Music. But his debut as leader, Time Is Color, suggests he’ll soon be operating at the same level – albeit in a hard-to-pigeonhole genre. A truly original thinker, Hanriot’s multi-textured sound palette is stunning. Hypnotic piano lines threaded through synth washes and bubbling bass, with kit drum beats, create music that realistically should be beyond the trio format. Laconic vocal lines from the slam poet/rapper Days add yet another compelling dimension on four tracks. (Morphosis Arts LMA 001) ★★★★★
With his eponymous Ragawerk project, the accomplished Frankfurt-based guitarist Max Clouth is the latest jazz musician to tap into the rich seam of Indian classical music. Clouth has perhaps gone further than most, following up German conservatoire training with three years in Mumbai immersed in Indian music; even his tailormade double-neck guitar is based on Indian string instruments. Alongside longtime collaborator, drummer Martin Standke, and a cast of 15 (mostly Indian) players, he’s created a sound that identifies with John McLaughlin’s Shakti, expanded by lush synth, ethnic acoustic instruments and vocals. The production is epic and left me looking for concert dates in the UK. (L+R Records CDLR 584020)
The sax, bass, drum trio has always been a rarity, yet some of the music’s finest horn players have made their greatest recordings using the format (think Sonny Rollins and Joe Henderson). They were attracted to the chordless ensemble because of the openness it allowed them. It takes a high level of creative and physical energy to pull it off and Duncan Eagles has both in spades. Anniversary Song, the fifth album from Partikel, his trio with Max Luthert (bass) and Eric Ford (drums) is a tour de force – albeit tightly controlled force. Teeming, sometimes torrential rhythm accompaniment swirling around Eagles’s even, muscular tenor improv, grip the ears across the ten original pieces on this terrific album. (Berthold Records BR321099) ★★★★
The Blue Note label is best known for its rich legacy of groundbreaking jazz from the ’50s and ’60s. But recently, under the leadership of Don Was, it has re-established itself as source of fresh, unfettered talent. With its Re:imagined series it cleverly combines new sounds with classic material, inviting young players (not necessarily signed to Blue Note) to reinterpret recordings from the vault. For Re:imagined II, Was let some of the UK’s bright young stars loose in the archive. The result is a selection box of reverb heavy, radio friendly confections (like Ego Ella May’s take on drummer Chico Hamilton’s ‘The Morning Side Of Love’) interspersed with more outré numbers, like tubist Theon Cross’s glowering version of Thelonious Monk’s ‘Epistrophy’. Re:imagined II is an uneven and quirky snapshot of the scene, but none the worse for that. (Blue Note 4564812) ★★★★
With Man In The Hot Seat, the mephistophelean acid jazz pioneer James Taylor and his quartet have reimagined the sound of action movie soundtracks from the ’60s and ’70s. Taylor’s surging orchestral arrangements are totally spot on and, combined with rollercoaster keys playing (on Hammond, Rhodes and Wurlitzer!), produce a prolonged adrenaline rush. (Audio Network JTQ004) ★★★★
TAKE FIVE
An interview with today’s finest jazz musicians
This month: Butcher Brown
You could stick a ‘jazz’ label on Butcher Brown, but the five-piece collective are likely to have peeled it off by the time you next hear from them. Downbeat magazine described their 2014 debut, All Purpose Music, as ‘groove buoyed and genre subversive’.
Their newest, Butcher Brown Presents Triple Trey featuring Tennishu and R4ND4ZZO BIGB4ND, is a spectacular fusion of classic big band sounds and hiphop. A seemingly improbable pairing, it makes perfect sense for a group that grew up in Richmond, Virginia, US. ‘There’s a tradition of big bands in Richmond. They’re always present. But they’ve developed a modern sound, with traditional instrumentation,’ says producer/ instrumentalist DJ Harrison.
What started as a passion project for bassist/composer Andrew Randazzo (‘to hone my writing chops a little bit’) took on a new dimension just after trumpeter, saxophonist and MC Marcus ‘Tennishu’ Tenney had released his own hiphop album. ‘It was simply, “You got a big band and I got a rap album – let’s put it together with Butcher Brown as the rhythm section and I’ll rap the songs”,’ Tennishu says.
‘Like Miles Davis, what we put into our music represents the current times’
‘We’ve been together for over ten years and we have trust in one another when we bring fresh ideas in. None of us wants to micromanage,’ says drummer Corey Fonville. Everyone has wide-ranging taste. Right now Fonville has Miles Davis’s mid-’60s quintet side-by-side with nu-jazz duo Domi and JD Beck on his playlist: ‘Like Miles Davis, what we put into our music represents the current times.’
‘The legacy stuff is deeply engrained because it is where we all came from – jazz school,’ adds guitarist Morgan Burrs. ‘It’s a mix and we all believe what we are doing is a continuation of jazz.’
Tennishu thinks that hiphop has long been a gateway into jazz for younger people, because of the samples it used: ‘It was like a young person taking an older person’s words and reshaping them for their generation.’
Butcher Brown’s explosive new album, which is more hiphop than big band, might actually reverse the flow – and give straightahead jazz lovers a taste for rap and hiphop.