The Penguin Jazz Guide (182 page)

In 2004,
Above Our Heads
seemed a remarkable disc. With hindsight, and remastering, it has repositioned our listening to British improvised music. Even with an augmented ensemble, the group’s main energy comes from Harris himself. He is constantly in motion, stoking insistent cross-rhythms and building the deep, slow pulses that give each of these remarkable records their shape. His rock background is shared to some degree with long-term associate Hearn and with Dzierzanowski, but that is tempered by Stevens’s and Wimhurst’s background in classical music, though both have also worked in other genres. It was meeting the Ganelin Trio that redirected Harris’s career, and while
Zaum
,
As Slow As Flowers
and
Above Our Heads
were all recorded at home in Poole in a gallery space normally associated with fine arts (painters were literally at work around them when the first record was made), there is a sense of quiet, intimate theatre to a Zaum performance.

Zaum
saw the group finding its feet, having only come together immediately before the performance.
As Slow As Flowers
is a masterpiece.
Above Our Heads
utilizes many instrumental permutations to create a vivid soundtrack whose abstractions are none the less rooted in palpable human dramas. The fourth date, from which Wimhurst was absent on family duties and on which she is only audible among Newton’s samples, is a confident consolidation by what has been the most exciting group in Europe. The most recent inevitably lacks the sheer surprise and freshness of its predecessors, but it does find Harris confidently assimilating another new voice into the group. Parkins sounds as if she might have been a founder member; Harris plays more gently, as perhaps befits the title, but there are moments of real edge and danger to the playing throughout and the climactic ‘Juarez’ and ‘Watt’s Curve’ are high-points in contemporary improvised music. Harris’s premature death from liver cancer was a tragedy and a posthumous release of live material has only underlined how much extraordinary music was cut suddenly short.

ROSARIO GIULIANI

Born 1967, Terracina, Italy

Alto saxophone

More Than Ever

Dreyfus FDM 36669

Giuliani; Jean-Michael Pilc (p); Richard Galliano (acc); Rémi Vignolo (b); Benjamin Henocq (d). April 2004.

Rosario Giuliani said (2004):
‘After I studied, I worked with Giovani Talenti Del Jazz Europea, and working with a bigger band was great study, but I had so many ideas for writing for a small group. I could hear it in my head from the very beginning.’

Though he had made a couple of earlier records in Italy, Giuliani exploded on the scene with
Luggage
, but without carrying any undue baggage from his influences. One of them is hinted at in Wayne Shorter’s ‘Oriental Folk Song’, but while the angular attack and severe minimalism of line might come from Shorter, the rest of the sound emphatically does not. This young man has listened deeply in the jazz literature rather than merely follow current trends. The second album prompted yet more head-scratching about Giuliani’s models on the alto with everyone from Eric Dolphy to Charles MacPherson getting a mention. Fact is, he emerged pretty fully formed and has already devised his own idiom, which is eclectic, slightly mysterious in tonality, and inherently dramatic, but not yet fully formed.

A new band oozes with confidence on
More Than Ever
. The first quarter of an hour zings with energy – and a good deal of carefully marshalled abstraction – before Giuliani wheels on Galliano for two lovely compositions by the accordionist, a tribute to Astor Piazzolla and the equally effective ‘J.F.’. Thus softened up, we’re prepared for ‘Suite Et Poursuite’, a three-part idea that suggests the saxophonist’s ambitions may take him in ever newer directions.

KEVIN NORTON
^&

Born 21 January 1956, Brooklyn, New York

Drums, vibraphone

Time-Space Modulator

Barking Hoop BKH-008

Norton; Dave Ballou (t, c); Tony Malaby (ts); John Lindberg (b). August 2003, April 2004.

Kevin Norton says:
‘The basis of the sound and approach of
Time
-
Space Modulator
is built on my CD
Knots
, after years of both free improvisation and composition; the interaction of my drumming with Lindberg’s bass and the sound of my vibraphone influencing the horn writing … the space between ringing notes over the intense density of bass and drums.’

A period of work with Anthony Braxton, a record dedicated to the founder of Situationism, a work-list that includes composition for new-music ensembles, theatre and dance: one can hear the Jazz Police rattling their batons in the distance. But Norton is the real thing, a jazz drummer who, like Jack DeJohnette or fellow Braxton alumnus Gerry Hemingway, is also a complete musician. His recordings of the ’90s and after are essential listening for anyone interested in the direction of contemporary music, and he’s worth searching out, too, as an ensemble member (Braxton again) or duo player (with Joëlle Léandre and others).

Before
Time-Space Modulator
, Norton’s most important records were
For Guy Debord
(the above-mentioned Situationist) and
Knots
, which in 1999 immediately marked him out as a significant presence.
Time-Space Modulator
is credited to Norton’s Bauhaus Quartet, which implies yet another political agenda but more fundamentally a commitment to old-fashioned – or rather new-fashioned – craft. The title is an adaptation of Moholy-Nagy’s ‘light-space modulator’, a synaesthetic receiver for as yet undeveloped media. The analogy answers nicely here, because Norton and his men seem to be moving in umpteen dimensions at once: fiery Braxton-like grooves, long abstract episodes and deceptively simple material that harks back to the drummer’s early work with bass master Milt Hinton. The opening ‘Mother Tongue’ is a blast, with the two horns playing in relatively unfamiliar guise, though Ballou is an avid shape-shifter. ‘Seoul Soul’ is collectively improvised and perhaps the least successful item on the set. The other long tracks, ‘Didkovsky’ and ‘Moonstruck’, are vintage Norton, subtle, thoughtful, packed with cheerful guile.

& See also
JOËLLE LÉANDRE/KEVIN NORTON, Winter In New York
(2006; p. 721)

POLAR BEAR

Formed 1999

Group

Dim Lit

Babel BDV 2446

Mark Lockheart, Pete Wareham (ts); Tom Herbert (b); Sebastian Rochford (d); Julia Biel (v). 2004.

Sebastian Rochford says:
‘It was recorded in the 93 Feet East studio in Brick Lane. A friend of producer Paul Epworth believed in our music and offered to do the album for free. We recorded for three days in this tiny little hot room, fuelled by fruit and curry.’

Few British groups of recent times have been so extravagantly hyped and yet Polar Bear do, on closer inspection, really match up to the publicity and press raves. Rochford is a formidable musician and in Lockheart and Wareham he has seasoned players who know their way around a range of idioms. They weave in and out of Rochford’s deceptively quiet playing; this, perhaps, is the point of the name – polar bears are attractive, cuddly creatures but among the fiercest beasts on the planet – and there is a dark energy to these tracks reminiscent of Radiohead at their most extended. Rochford’s rock and avant-rock tastes are evident here and there on both this record and the later
Held On The Tips Of The Fingers
, but there is no hint that his ambitions run to either prog-rock or Nu Jazz. A formidable improviser, he keeps jazz playing in focus at all times.

‘Eve’s Apple’ (one of the great contemporary jazz songs) and ‘Wild Horses’ were apparently done in the hope that Björk (elderly jazz fans scratch their heads) might do a guest
vocal. As it is, Julia Biel does just fine on her spots, more than fine when the voice relaxes out of ‘projecting’ mode, but this is the first album’s only besetting fault, an air of eagerness and self-consciousness that sometimes blunts the music. ‘New Dark Park’ is an anthem for the new age, for good or ill.

RUDRESH MAHANTHAPPA

Born 4 May 1971, Trieste, Italy

Alto saxophone

Codebook

Pi 21

Mahanthappa; Vijay Iyer (p); François Moutin (b); Dan Weiss (d). June 2004.

Rudresh Mahanthappa says:
‘This was an attempt to humanize and even beautify the perceived coldness of cryptography, data encryption and the mathematic concepts behind both. Engaging such methodology in music composition is nothing new but my goal was to be blunt with it while putting forth something emotionally varied and aesthetically complete that is worthy of multiple listens.’

An Indian-American based in NY since 1997, Mahanthappa addresses questions of identity and culture within his own jazz idiom. Tired of being asked: ‘Do you speak Indian?’, he gave a powerfully direct answer in
Mother Tongue
, a sequence of compositions that are ‘directly based on melodic transcriptions of Indian-Americans responding to such questions in their native Indian tongues’. It was a high-concept project compared to the usual jazz date, but he delivered a convincing statement, somewhat reminiscent of some of Greg Osby’s small-group music, punctuated with bittersweet episodes and steep contrapuntal inclines. A couple of limited-circulation CDs,
Yatra
and
Black Water
, preceded
Mother Tongue
, but it was what came after that consolidated his reputation as one of the most interesting younger players on the New York scene. He arrived in the Big Apple in 1997.

Mahanthappa can be terse and inward in his delivery, but he has a fine, wounding sound on the alto and on
Codebook
he seems to have got past all vestiges of polemic and into an idiom that bids for nothing less than a rich new musical metalanguage. One sees immediately how these concerns arise out of those of
Mother Tongue
, but the music, peppery and sometimes confrontational, is rich and inclusive, with every note there for a purpose, and no fat. It might sound belittling to liken this to logic and algorithms, but there’s something of that cleanness. ‘The Decider’ and ‘Refresh’ make for a fine opening, but the set ends on ‘My Sweetest’, and if ‘ballad’ playing is the ultimate test of a saxophonist’s skill and vision, Mahanthappa passes here too: it’s a subtle but by no means cloying statement, worthy of Stan Getz.

BEN GOLDBERG

Born 8 August 1959, Sycamore, Illinois

Clarinet

The Door, The Hat, The Chair, The Fact

Cryptogramophone 126

Goldberg; Devin Hoff (b); Carla Kihlstedt (vn); Rob Sudduth (ts); Ches Smith (d). June 2004.

Ben Goldberg says:
‘This music is for my hero, Steve Lacy, written after I learned he had cancer. I idolized Steve and used to listen four times a day to
Evidence
, made in 1961 with Don Cherry. I memorized his solos. What was he doing? The note that lifts all other notes up into the world. Punctuation. The line that’s backwards and forwards and the pop of logic more logical than logic. He gave me a lesson once. Steve said you had to know the difference between materials and material. He talked matter of factly about the invisible. I worked on his exercises for ten years. I had booked the studio for June 7th; Steve passed away June 4th. We had a rehearsal and then made the record. It was a sad time.’

Goldberg is an experienced voice in and out of jazz. He’s an adept of klezmer as well and savvy about modern composition. At heart, he’s an improviser, despite the ‘correct’ tonality and very accurate pitching. Few players in this realm dare to let the note-choices do the work, without ‘expressive’ contortions, and he’s to be commended for it. The trio record
Almost Never
is reminiscent of a latter-day Jimmy Giuffre project, albeit the reed tone is different, but Goldberg has an even more ambitious game to follow.

After 2000, Goldberg seemed to look around and take stock. There seemed to be a break of almost five years in recording under his own name. His return came freighted with emotion following the death of his inspiration, Steve Lacy. The great man’s personality is woven through these mournfully effervescent tracks. The title comes from Lacy’s favourite poet, Robert Creeley. The most explicit tribute is Lacy’s own ‘Blinks’, which then informs writing of a markedly numinous sort. The playing is outwardly chaotic, with the three leads vying for space, but there’s a stern inner logic, even if it doesn’t present in logical forms. This seems to be the album’s subtext. There is ‘Cortège’, but there is also ‘Song And Dance’, though not in the expected order. It’s a record full of complex messages and stunning play. Hoff and Smith create an intricate web of rhythm patterns, leaving the front three, with Kihlstedt doubling on vocals, to create a rich, ambiguous drama.

MARIA SCHNEIDER

Born 27 November 1960, Windom, Minnesota

Composer, arranger

Concert In The Garden

ArtistShare 5734

Schneider; Laurie Frink, Tony Kadleck, Greg Gisbert, Ingrid Jensen (t, flhn); Keith O’Quinn, Rocky Ciccarone, Larry Farrell, Pete McGuinness (tb); George Flynn (btb, cbtb); Rich Perry, Scott Robinson, Tim Ries, Charles Pillow, Donny McCaslin, Andy Middleton (reeds); Frank Kimbrough (p); Ben Monder (g); Gary Versace (acc); Jay Anderson (b); Clarence Penn (d); Jeff Ballard, Gonzalo Grau (perc); Luciana Souza (v). July 2004.