The Penguin Jazz Guide (146 page)

It staggers even purported fans of McCoy Tyner that he has made more than 70 records to date. How many could the average enthusiast actually name? There isn’t just a quantitative element to the often stinting and half-hearted appreciation he has attracted down the years. Tyner’s contribution to jazz pianism is as large as his harmonic innovation, an assessment perhaps best sampled in the context of a solo recording.

Tyner’s second, very happy spell at Blue Note opened with a triptych of solo works that sums up his art: rushing, open-hearted, grand of gesture, ineffably romantic, muscular, florid. He still takes every chance to overplay his hand, but that is his way: ‘Willow Weep For Me’, for instance, is about as aggressive a version of this tune as has ever been recorded. Yet his best melodies – either written or improvised out of tunes by Powell, Coltrane and, surprisingly, Dexter Gordon – are as communicative as they are powerful. He has written for long enough to make his own choices of tune a reflection on his own dynasty: ‘Effendi’ dates back to his earliest Impulse! sessions, ‘Española’ – a haunting use of the Spanish tinge – is brand new, and both are performed with fine evocative skill. Together with
Things Ain’t What They Used To Be
(which included some duets with George Adams and John Scofield) and
Revelations
, both of them recorded in near ideal sound at New York’s Merkin Hall, this ushers in the grand late period work of a modern master.

& See also
The Real McCoy
(1967; p. 343),
Sahara
(1972; p. 391)

JOEY BARON

Born 26 June 1955, Richmond, Virginia

Drums

Tongue In Groove

Winter & Winter 919056

Baron; Steve Swell (tb); Ellery Eskelin (ts). May 1991.

Joey Baron said (1993):
‘With me, less really is more. I never wanted to work with some gigantic kit and I wouldn’t get any more music out of one. Just a four-piece kit, with a ride, sizzle, crash, hi-hat. It all comes from that.’

Baron plays with a smile on his face, delivering a skittering, melodic line that is always more solid and substantial than on first hearing. He has a background in rock and has worked in virtually every conceivable contemporary form, but seems at his best in a challenging modern jazz setting. Unfortunately, his discography as leader is quite small and some of the records have not been granted a long life in the marketplace. The live
Tongue In Groove
, formerly on Polygram, features a bold instrumentation under the group name Barondown; Joey has enjoyed working without harmony or other rhythm instruments and this early venture is the best of them, a rollicking set that doesn’t lack for high thought and sophistication. Apart from the traditional ‘Terra Bina Kia Jeena’, most of the tracks are very short, the majority under two minutes, but they deliver a solid impact every time and they aren’t all tongue in cheek. ‘The Shadow Of Your Smile’ is genuinely romantic, in its perky way.

DONALD HARRISON

Born 23 June 1960, New Orleans, Louisiana

Alto saxophone

Indian Blues

Candid CCD 79514

Harrison; Cyrus Chestnut, Mac Rebennack (Dr John) (p, v); Phil Bowler (b, v); Carl Allen (d, v); Bruce Cox, Howard Smiley Ricks (perc, v); Donald Harrison Sr (v). May 1991.

Donald Harrison said (1995):
‘The Mardi Gras Indians have their roots in Africa. That’s where those rhythms come from. And those rhythms have become a kind of universal language. You find them in R&B and soul music; they turn up in hip-hop, which is a very traditional music, and you find them in jazz’.

Before Katrina struck, New Orleans had regained its centrality in American jazz. Much of the credit goes to Ellis Marsalis, who was one of Harrison’s teachers at NOCA. Like many of the younger generation, Harrison has tried to fuse traditional idiom – he has a hereditary role in one of the leading New Orleans ‘tribes’, the marching bands of Mardi Gras – with a thoroughly contemporary style honed during his stint with the Jazz Messengers. For a time, Harrison played the Eric Dolphy role in a latter-day version of the Dolphy–Booker Little Quintet.

Hard bop is still the basic language here, but Harrison has also tried to combine the Blakey sound with that of his real father. Donald Harrison Sr has been leader of the Guardians Of The Flame, who also feature on the album. ‘Hiko Hiko’ and ‘Two-Way-Pocky-Way’ are traditional (the former is credited to the legendary Black Johnny); ‘Ja-Ki-Mo-Fi-Na-Hay’ and the opening ‘Hu-Tan-nay’ are credited to the Harrisons. Dr John sings and plays piano on the two originals, sings on Professor Longhair’s ‘Big Chief’ and plays piano on ‘Walkin’ Home’ and Big Chief Jolly’s ‘Shave ’Em Dry’.

There’s no sense of a break between the densely rhythmic New Orleans numbers with their chattering percussion and the more orthodox jazz tracks. Harrison plays ‘Indian Red’ pretty much as a straight alto feature, but then adds a rhythmic line to the prototypical standard ‘Cherokee’ that gives it an entirely new dimension. His own ‘Indian Blues’ and ‘Uptown Ruler’ reflect a decision in 1989 to ‘mask Indian’ again and join the feathered throngs that march on Mardi Gras. In touching his roots, he’s brought them right up to date.

SERGEY KURYOKHIN

Born 16 June 1954, Murmansk, Russia; died 9 July 1996, St Petersburg, Russia

Piano

Some Combinations Of Fingers And Passion

Leo CDLR 179

Kuryokhin (p, perc solo). June 1991.

Producer and label boss Leo Feigin remembers:
‘It was recorded in the basement of the World Service of the BBC on an unused and out-of-tune piano. Halfway through the session two keys got stuck and Kuryokhin had to play avoiding those two keys and choosing some unusual combinations of fingers. Hence the title …’

There was something of the
yurodivy
– or Holy Fool – about Sergey Kuryokhin. Many of his public pronouncements were baffling, as was his later commitment to the extremely doctrinaire National Bolshevik Party, and his most famous group, Pop Mechanics, hovered uneasily between avant-gardism, rock populism and elements of the put-on or happening; his mixed-media pieces ape Western forms in a deliberately exaggerated, ‘Martian’ fashion that is not so much satirical as clownishly respectful. As with the Ganelin Trio, it is perhaps impossible to understand Kuryokhin’s music without some understanding of the cultural politics of his country, which is perhaps impossible for an outsider. Musically, he was a
genius, trained in classical piano after arriving in Leningrad in 1971, but his progress was erratic and his output uneven. Since his untimely death, aged just 42, the major source for Kuryokhin enthusiasts is
Divine Madness
, a multiple-CD set of mostly unreleased material which covers his solo piano work and his pop mechanics projects in some detail. This, though, will be too much for the uncommitted, and it is, in addition, a rare and expensive item. The surviving single discs are a better bet.

The early
Ways Of Freedom
, originally on the state music label Melodiya, now on Leo’s Golden Years of New Jazz imprint, presents a musician of preternatural facility, comparable only to Tatum or Paderewski in terms of speed and accuracy of articulation; but it also finds Kuryokhin treating the whole soundbox of the piano as an instrument, tapping out percussive lines, working directly on the strings in a spirit closer to the non-canonical one of Pop-Mekhanika, which was born four years later in 1985, by which time the West had enjoyed the first few confusing glimpses of the new Russian music, thanks to Leo Feigin.

The tragedy is that Kuryokhin rarely had an opportunity – unless he spurned them – to play in ideal circumstances and on first-rate equipment. The first record is either a technical mess or an expression of some subversive spirit. With
Some Combination
, recorded on the fly in London, it becomes clearer that Kuryokhin was resigned to ill-fortune. And yet, the curious sound and obvious no-go areas of these recordings do somehow heighten his distinctive technique.

Kuryokhin was more likely to reference Rachmaninov than Tatum in his solo performances; indeed, he seems to make it a point of principle to avoid direct reference from the jazz tradition, except, arguably, the ‘bar-room piano’ sound. ‘Blue Rondo A La Russ – A Tribute To Dave Brubeck’, combining ‘power and passion’, is an apparent exception, but Kuryokhin’s tribute is typically oblique. His technique is interesting largely for its avoidance of the usual jazz piano dichotomy between the left hand, with its rhythmic chording, and the right, which carries the melody and the subsequent improvisation. In addition, Kuryokhin was a virtuosic user of the pedals (‘hands and feet’ in another of the variations here), creating some quite remarkable two-piano illusions. Rapidly pedalling also creates an occasional sense, as on the long ‘Passion And Feelings’ section of the later session, that tiny segments of music are being edited together at high speed, creating the studied artificiality of tone one hears throughout his earlier work. Kuryokhin’s is difficult music to characterize, because it consistently undermines its own premises.

ITALIAN INSTABILE ORCHESTRA

Formed 1990

Group

Live In Noci And Rive De Gier

Leo CDLR 182

Pino Minafra (t, flhn, didjeridu); Guido Mazzon (t, flhn); Alberto Mandarini (t); Giancarlo Schiaffini (tb, tba); Sebi Tramontana (tb, v); Lauro Rossi (tb); Martin Mayes (frhn); Mario Schiano (as, v); Eugenio Colombo (as, ss, f); Carlo Actis Dato (ts, bs, bcl); Daniele Cavallanti (ts, bs); Gianluigi Trovesi (as, cl in A, bcl); Renato Geremia (vn); Paolo Damiani (clo, b, v); Bruno Tommaso (b); Giorgio Gaslini (p); Vincenzo Mazzone, Tiziano Tononi (d, perc). June 1991, January 1992.

Saxophonist Carlo Actis Dato says:
‘IIO è un collettivo che riunisce musicisti provenienti da tutta Italia e di diverse generazioni, ognuno leader di propri gruppi. A turno si suonano e dirigono proprie composizioni, rendendo lo stile dell’Orchestra molto vario e inimitabile.’

Founded in 1990 by trumpeter Pino Minafra and the poet Vittorino Curci, the orchestra was originally intended as an ad hoc project to play at a festival in Noci. It immediately became clear that it should continue on co-operative lines, and it became one of those rare
large-scale groups who manage to buck the economics through sheer dedication, consistently inventive music and a modest but intensely loyal fanbase. IIO subsequently benefited from the attentions of ECM and producer Steve Lake, who delivered a richly inflected sound on the 1994 recording
Skies Of Europe
. We’ve continued to enjoy the first record as well as any in the orchestra’s discography.

The aesthetic is uncategorizable. Like ARFI in France, the Orchestra seeks to articulate an ‘imaginary folklore’, an improbable common ground between popular forms, formal composition and free improvisation. All but one of the pieces were recorded at Radio France’s international jazz festival at Rive-de-Gier. The exception is Giorgio Gaslini’s ‘Pierrot Solaire’, which proposes a sunshine cure for the moonstruck icon of musical modernism. Relaxed, funny, joyous and a long way from Schoenberg, except, of course, he’s in there too. The set opens with Damiani’s ‘Detriti’, a Noah’s ark of musical and textual specimens rescued from the latter-day flood of genres and styles. The only disappointment is Eugenio Colombo’s ‘Ippopotami’, which merely provides an excuse for a free-jazz free-for-all. Minafra’s ‘Noci … Strani Frutti … No. 1’ is a surreal modern classic. There’s a more convincing free-jazz workout – reminiscent of Globe Unity on a sunny day – right at the end, with ‘I Virtuosi De Noci’, which must have been a gas to watch as well as listen to.

DON BYRON

Born 8 November 1958, New York City

Clarinet, bass clarinet

Tuskegee Experiments

Elektra Nonesuch 79280

Byron; Bill Frisell (g); Joe Berkowitz, Edsel Gomez (p); Kenny Davis, Lonnie Plaxico, Reggie Workman (b); Richie Schwarz (mar); Pheeroan akLaff, Ralph Peterson Jr (d); Sadiq (v). November 1990, July 1991.

Don Byron says:
‘I thought of it as a sampler of the stylistic range of my later CDs: the quartets with Frisell,
Music For Six Musicians
, the
Arias
and
Lieder
record, the Mickey Katz, and the
Blaxploitation
record are foreshadowed by the two core bands. It was made in two halves, the poetry, Schumann and Diego Rivera pieces in the latter session. It was all very exciting and new.’

The sight of a young, dreadlocked black man playing klezmer with the same facility as music by Robert Schumann and post-bop jazz was perhaps the most vivid anticipation of the pan-stylism of the 1990s. One of the first young players to emerge with a bang at the start of the decade, Byron also gave jazz clarinet a fresh visibility. He worked with a range of creative people – Frisell, Gerry Hemingway, Bobby Previte and as part of Hamiet Bluiett’s Clarinet Family – often producing some of the most exciting music in those groups, but made a substantial critical splash on his own account with a first record for Elektra.

It has become something of a critical cliché – and we are guilty of it – to criticize a debut record for packing in too much, showcasing too many styles and compositional strategies. Byron seems to concede that this was exactly the purpose of
Tuskegee Experiments
and increasingly it seems a strength rather than a failing. Ending a jazz record with a straight reading of Schumann’s ‘Auf Einer Burg’ might seem unduly self-conscious. Nor did many jazz records of the period namecheck Diego Rivera, the Mexican muralist who influenced many American artists in the ’30s and ’40s, but this is a period which seems to fascinate Byron. The title-piece relates to a bizarre and shocking ‘medical’ programme conducted in Alabama from 1932, by which black syphilitics were neither treated for nor even informed about their condition, in order to document prognosis. The second experiment involved subjecting intelligent black men of military age to systematic humiliation in order to prove that they were not suitable to fly military aircraft.