The Penguin Jazz Guide (163 page)

MARILYN MAZUR

Born 18 January 1955, New York City

Drums, percussion

Small Labyrinths

ECM 533679-2

Mazur; Nils Petter Molvaer (t); Hans Ulrik (reeds); Elvira Planar (ky); Eivind Aarset (g); Klaus Hovman (b); Audun Kleive (d); Aina Kemanis (v). 1997.

Marilyn Mazur says:
‘The music on
Small Labyrinths
with my group Future Song consists of four of my compositions for the group, the other eight tracks are actually collective improvs in the studio, inspired by conceptual titles, the used titles on the CD are in return inspired by the music we made.’

Mazur was born in New York but grew up in Denmark, where she led her own Primi Band in the ’80s before high-profile stints with Miles Davis, Wayne Shorter and Jan Garbarek. She was the 2001 winner of the Jazzpar prize. Dance has also been an important component of her work.

In addition to Primi, Mazur has run three groups: Pulse Unit, Percussion Paradise and, more recently, Future Song. Future Song evolved while Mazur was touring with Miles and has remained pretty much intact since 1989. An earlier Stunt record is very good, but nothing matches the exquisite sound on her first ECM disc, where the added presence of Molvaer and Aarset gives more colour and texture to the ensemble. Most of the pieces are very short, like pinhole-camera captures of fleeting scenes, but ‘See There’, ‘Back To Dreamfog Mountain’ and ‘The Holey’ are all substantial cuts that document the evolution of a group language.

VALERY PONOMAREV

Born 20 January 1943, Moscow, USSR

Trumpet

A Star For You

Reservoir RSR CD 150

Ponomarev; Bob Berg (ts); Sid Simmons (p); Ken Walker (b); Billy Hart (d). April 1997.

Valery Ponomarev says:
‘Listening to it right after the recording session I couldn’t help thinking that everyone played beautifully. Everyone except me. I was the only one who failed. I could have done much better. For a long time I didn’t want to listen to it. Much later, I needed to check out the title-track and ended up going through the whole CD. Bob, Sid, Kenny and Billy sounded just as great. And me? I couldn’t believe how much I liked it this time. “It’s me playing,” I kept thinking. “Not bad, Ponomarev.” ’

A Muscovite under Clifford Brown’s spell, he defected in 1973 and joined the Jazz Messengers in 1977, before leading his own group, Universal Language. That’s a rather wonderful band name for a man who left Russia during the deep freeze of the Brezhnev years in order to play jazz in the West. If anyone confirms that hard bop had become not just a musical
lingua franca
but also a confident assertion of human freedom, it is Ponomarev. He has an immediately attractive tone, round, ringing and accurate, and he has always had an instinctive swing with just a few subtle indicators of a non-American background.

Though he has made many fine records,
A Star For You
remains the vintage Universal Language date. Ponomarev makes it clear that this is a set very much dedicated to the spirit and memory of Art Blakey, perhaps because the 25th anniversary of his arrival in America wasn’t so far away. The opening ‘Commandments From A Higher Authority’ is absolutely in the spirit of the Messengers’ great days, a wheeling, driving theme which never quite comes to rest but exudes authority in every measure. Bob Berg is the key addition to this group, superb on ‘Dance Intoxicant’ and the long standard ‘We’ll Be Together Again’, adding a warm-toned confidence to every track. Simmons and Walker get to show why they got the call, playing with intelligence and taste, never over-fussy, but subtle when the tune calls for another dimension.

FONDA/STEVENS GROUP

Formed c.1995

Group

Evolution

Leo CD LR 260

Joe Fonda (b); Herb Robertson (t, flhn); Mark Whitecage (as, ss); Michael Jefry Stevens (p); Harvey Sorgen (d). April–October 1997.

Michael Jefry Stevens says:
‘This was the last recording with the original group. When we listened to the Eindhoven recording of my composition “Birdtalk”, I realized that I had “laid out” for virtually the entire song, without realizing it. Funny what happens when you give yourself over to the power of music.’

Long-standing groups are relatively rare in jazz, where there is a premium on flexible personnels and fleeting encounters. Fonda/Stevens underlines the enormous benefit of settled relationships, even if individual careers go on in parallel. This is a group of relatively unfashionable – if not exactly ‘outsider’ – improvisers, who for the last decade and a half have produced music of consistent high intelligence and often great loveliness. Selecting their first release is a decision taken
faute de mieux
, since there is scarcely a weak or slack set in the entire output, and because we have a special affection for this line-up. Robertson and Whitecage are both conservative radicals whose most splenetic moments wouldn’t cause an earthquake. It’s their solos and dialogues with different members of the rhythm section that tend to direct the music, even though the writing is all by the leaders. The compositions are either open-ended sketches or Coleman-like melodies counterpointed between the
instruments, and if the latter carry less conviction it’s because the playing is ragged when it should be pointed.

Evolution
, recorded live in Europe, sees the group move back and forth in musical time. ‘Birdtalk’ is a clear reference to the bop roots of most of the players. So absorbing is the music that after countless listens we hadn’t quite noticed that Stevens was largely absent, until he pointed it out. Robertson’s solo is superb, somewhere between Dizzy Gillespie and Booker Little, while ‘Song For My Mother’ breathes poetry. ‘Second Time Around’ was an intriguing rhythmic exercise, with just a few indications written out by Fonda for the players: no set harmonic or melodic material. Stevens’s ‘Strayhorn’ is a tender portrait of a great composer.

By the time of
Live At The Bunker
(recorded at a favourite and supportive venue in Bielefeld; as a Jew of German extraction, Stevens isn’t blind to the irony of playing in a Second World War bunker!), Robertson had been replaced by Smoker, and Whitecage had moved on, too. It’s a new balance of sound and the group has continued to evolve, integrating new personnel here and there. For us, though, this remains the Fonda/Stevens record the others have to match up to.

MICHEL PORTAL

Born 27 November 1935, Bayonne, France

Saxophones, clarinets, bandoneon

Dockings

Label Bleu LBLC 6604

Portal; Markus Stockhausen (t); Bojan Zulfikarpašic (p); Bruno Chevillon, Steve Swallow (b); Joey Baron (d). June 1997.

Michel Portal said (1998):
‘I would play compositions by Mozart or Debussy and think: “I can play this now, but what do I do next?” It became very mechanical. But I was also listening to American music on the radio and hearing Charlie Parker, or Jimmie Noone, or Duke Ellington, and I was …
bouleversé
. Excited, but I knew that I was not an American and did not think like an American. How was I to be a musician, and express
myself
?’

Portal is one of the few musicians in our book who has had a parallel performing career in modern composition. He was in earlier days an important interpreter of Pierre Boulez’s complex music, which some might regard as the antithesis of jazz. Portal, however, feels no strain between the two languages and has managed to carry over elements of each to the other. The only comparable figures on the recent scene have been trombonist Vinko Globokar and bassist Barry Guy.

Portal developed a style which absorbed the formal rigours of classical playing with an improvisatory freedom that sounds complex, but proceeds from quite basic premises.
Dockings
is a quiet masterpiece from an all-star band. Portal’s daring in using such strong musical personalities so delicately and sparingly more than pays dividends, and it would be hard to imagine a record of such poise and grace. Baron and Swallow happily move between insistent
ostinato
figures and more or less free time, leaving Chevillon to anchor the basic metre. Bojan Z is as usual tasteful and responsive, and the two horns are deployed with great subtlety. Though there isn’t a vibraphone, the most obvious model for the sound is the Dolphy group of
Out To Lunch!
(Eric is the dedicatee of the second track), but rendered ever more abstractly lyrical. Stockhausen, who needs to be added to the roster of bi-partisan players above, has the penetrating intensity of a Freddie Hubbard, but with a softer and more plangent quality. The mourning dove timbre of Portal’s clarinet on ‘Dolphy’, building in intensity over Baron’s pattering accompaniment, is matched only by their interaction on ‘Ida Lupino’, this time with Portal on bandoneon.

BOB BROOKMEYER
^&

Born 19 December 1929, Kansas City, Missouri

Valve trombone, piano

New Works: Celebration

Challenge CHR 70066

Brookmeyer; Thorsten Beckenstein, Jorg Engels, Ralf Hesse, Torsten Maass, Sebastian Strempel (t); Christian Jakso, Ludwig Nuss, Ansgar Striepens (tb); Edward Partyka (btb); Marko Lackner, Stefan Pfeifer (as); Nils Van Haften, Paul Heller (ts); Marcus Bartelt, Scott Robinson (bs); Kris Goessens (p); Jurgen Grimm (ky); Ingmar Heller (b); John Hollenbeck (d); Christopher Dell (perc). July 1997.

Bob Brookmeyer said (1999):
‘My life fell into two parts, you know: the drinking part and the sober part. Though, to be honest, I don’t really think of it as “sober”. I think I’m a free spirit – or nuttier – when I don’t drink!’

Having weathered difficult professional situations – acting as intermediary between Jim Hall and Jimmy Giuffre in the Giuffre trio, struggling with Gerry Mulligan’s combative spirit (and terrible piano-playing) – Brookmeyer eventually succumbed to his own personal demons and there were long, blank spells in his career. Defying once again the stale dictum that there are no second acts in American lives, he came back in his ’60s and ’70s with a body of exceptionally fine new music. Warmly recognized as a composer in Europe, he often had to rely on non-American orchestras and labels to allow it to be heard.

The earlier things on this delightful set were written for a festival in Lübeck in 1994, with Gerry Mulligan as guest soloist. Posthumously documented on record, it features the multi-talented Scott Robinson in the solo role, turning the folk- and dance-based material into something at once familiar and strange. Robinson is a formidable soloist and he brings a genuine individuality to the part. Of the other tracks, ‘Cameo’ is essentially a solo spot for Brookmeyer, while ‘Duets’, built on one of Bob’s minimalist themes, is a great basis for improvisation and includes some inventive drumming from John Hollenbeck. The closing item, ‘Boom Boom’, is derived from the earlier ‘Danish Suite’ and provides a light-toned and joyous closer. Brookmeyer has rarely written or played better.

& See also
Brookmeyer
(1956; p. 177)

GEORGE E. LEWIS
^&

Born 14 July 1952, Chicago, Illinois

Trombones, sousaphone, tuba, computer

Endless Shout

Tzadik TZ 7054

Lewis; John Korsrud, Bill Clark (t); Ralph Eppel, Rod Murray (tb); Brad Muirhead (btb, tba); Mark Nodwell (ss); Saul Berson, Coat Cooke (as, f); Paul Cram, Graham Ord (ts); Vinny Golia (bs, picc); Paul Plimley, Sarah Cahill (p); Ron Samworth (g); Peggy Lee (clo); Paul Blaney, Clyde Reed (b); Dylan van der Schyff (d); Steven Schick (perc); Quincy Troupe, Kate Hammett-Vaughan (v). September 1995–November 1997.

George Lewis says:
‘In
Voyager
, where the computer and I improvise together, and the grid-structured “Shadowgraph 4”, you could say that orchestras became self-aware sonic bodies.’

As the years have gone by, Lewis has emerged as a benign philosopher of new music, confidently communicating across the human–machine ‘divide’, discoursing generously on the non-problem of the compo/impro dichotomy. The ’90s saw a rich new vein of work emerge.
Voyager
in 1993 was a collaboration with Roscoe Mitchell, a trombone and saxophone duo in
the presence of interactive computer technology, yielding a multi-layered work quite unlike anything else around.

Endless Shout
is more diverse, almost a sampler of Lewis’s range of interests and achievements, from trombone–computer interactivity to a full-scale performance of one of the ‘Shadowgraph’ pieces.The title-piece is a four-part piano work, dedicated to Richard Abrams, and a homage to the stride and boogie masters – seeking to ‘reinterpret blues utterance in the light of my own experience’. Sarah Cahill gives an eloquent performance. ‘North Star Boogaloo’ fragments and reshapes a Quincy Troupe poem around a notated percussion part – deft, humorous, vibrant. But the most imposing pieces are a 1997 revision of ‘Shadowgraph 4’, where Lewis conducts the NOW Orchestra and enables them to pack a tremendous amount into an 11-minute rendition, and a new version of ‘Voyager’, where the composer-trombonist and his technology explore ‘one potential outcome between the improviser and the computer’. A memorable collection and a work that may in future seem historically important, too.