One Hell of an Overdue William Parker Review

As far as I can tell, I've been promising a review of William Parker's "Petit Oiseau" for at least three months. You're just going to have to take my word for it, though, that I have been incredibly, horrifically, hell, excruciatingly busy recently. As some of you know, I am a staff writer for the Berklee College of Music newspaper, The Groove, in addition to my responsibilities as a broke college student whose sources of income do not include amongst themselves "snarky jazz-blogging asshole." I do, however, keep up with the music (I can even get it for free now that I have two different papers I can use for credentials!), and whenever possible I plan on continuing to write reviews of new jazz albums and general nastiness about the jazz press (get excited for next time when I go through the Jazz Times Top 50, which includes Joe Lovano's syrupy "Symphonica" as the second best album of the year).

No one can accuse William Parker of being stingy or of allowing himself to sink into obscurity while other, younger free jazz musicians get all of the acclaim; he has appeared in a feature in Downbeat (remember the last time Downbeat had a feature article about a contemporary free jazz musician who wasn't young and sexy like Nicole Mitchell? Oh yeah, never) and has released two records a year since 2005. That said, however, Parker's recent outpouring of creativity has come at the expense of regular dates with his quartet, one of the best units in jazz. The last date, 2005's "Sound Unity," was the third part in a trilogy of sorts that included 2000's game-changing "O'Neal's Porch" and 2002's "Raining On the Moon." All three albums featured the trio playing lyrical free jazz in the OCDC ("Ornette Coleman Don Cherry") vein- the music was as melodic as any straight-ahead jazz but with enough craziness courtesy of saxophonist Rob Brown and Trumpeter Lewis Barnes that it retained its edge.

Those three records were all about the frontline, Barnes and Brown, coming up with crazy melodies. "Petit Oiseau" is all about the rhythm section, which in addition to Parker includes drummer and long-time co-conspirator Hamid Drake. The comparison's to Coleman's classic late-50s quartet are still relevant, of course, but by now Parker and Drake have been playing together for so long that they sound telepathic in comparison to Coleman's alternatingly madcap and pensive rhythm section of Charlie Haden and Billy Higgins. Besides, Parker is more interested in making his music funky: imagine an entire record of variations of the rhythm section part to Coleman's "Ramblin'" and you begin to get the idea. The grooves on tracks like "Grove Suite" and "The Golden Ball" recall funky world music, but with a looseness only heard in free jazz.

Of course, even though the focus has shifted a bit, Parker's horn players sound as good here as they do on his other records. Rob Brown's saxophone playing is rivaled in ferocity only by Rudresh Mahanthappa's, and on this album it is like an explosion in the center of Parker and Drake's grooves. Barnes, on the other hand, floats over the proceedings like the hummingbird on the album's cover. Together they make up the yin and yang in Parker's music; sometimes sweet, sometimes sour. On an uptempo number like "Four for Tommy," the difference in style becomes readily apparent: Barnes is interested in making music out of sheer sound, while Brown creates odd melodic and harmonic linear statements out of thin air.

Not Exactly A Free Jazz Round-Up

I know; I promised a round up of new free jazz recordings, and that was what I was initially planning on writing about. But then I heard Joel Harrison's "The Wheel," one of those albums that I've put off listening to forever; it's good, and it wasn't what I was expecting. Generally, when I hear "jazz with strings" without the words "Bill Frisell" and/or "Jenny Scheinman" (or, I suppose, "Anat Cohen") nearby, I cower away and put on "Esperanza" or "The Bird and the Bee" or whatever other catchy, unpretentious album I have nearby that I don't have to feel bad about listening to. Of course, "The Wheel" has nothing in common with the other album I'd like to talk about, "Beyond Quantum," which is a collaboration between saxophonist Anthony Braxton, drummer Milford Graves and bassist William Parker.

Joel Harrison's "The Wheel" is a collaboration between Harrison's jazz quintet (Harrison on guitar, David Binney on alto, Ralph Alessi on trumpet, Lindsey Horner on bass and Dan Weiss on drums) and a string quartet (Todd Reynolds and Christian Howes on violin, Caleb Burns on viola and Wendy Sutter on cello). It is not, however, a series of songs written for jazz quintet with string arrangements; the quartet is fully integrated in the band. Like Jenny Scheinman's recent "Crossing the Field" and Bill Frisell's "History Mystery," the feel is more rural-jazz than third-stream, as the strings improvise along with the rest of the band and the proceedings are given over to music reminiscent of Copland and folk melodies. The final track, "In Memorium: Dana Breyton," features Harrison's guitar, and his solo is characterized by long-held tones and beautiful phrasing. Recommended.

It's almost hard to believe that Anthony Braxton, William Parker and Milford Graves have never played together in a trio before "Beyond Quantum." In addition to the fact of both Braxton and Parker's prolificness, the album simply sounds like it was made by people who have been playing together forever. Braxton's snaky, staccato attack creates a polar contrast to Parker's melodic approach to his bass playing, and Graves serves as the level headed one; a moderator for the arguments that the other two carry out. Braxton plays four separate saxophones (I know the four types that you're thinking of- you've probably only got one right), and his approach to each instrument is slightly different, but equally violent. His bass saxophone plods, crushing everything around it, while his sopranino attacks like one of the namesakes of Hitchcock's "The Birds." Recommended for those who like a little bit of psychotic energy with their free jazz.

Next time I will probably post a conversation with Terri Lyne Carrington, who I will be interviewing for the Berklee Groove tomorrow morning. You can expect a more sanitized version of that published in the next issue of The Groove. Also, tomorrow night I will be doing the first of what will be a bi-weekly segment for my friend James Krivchenia's show "Switch it Up" at 12 AM (as in, at night) on the Berklee Internet Radio Network

Flute Madness

A week or so ago I named Anat Cohen as my personal pick for the should-be winner of the Downbeat Critics' Poll rising star composer category; after having heard "Black Unstoppable" and "Xenogenesis Suite," Nicole Mitchell's two most recent albums, I've changed my mind. Like Vijay Iyer, the perennial winner, Mitchell's compositions grapple with the idea of total freedom versus through-composed standard fare, and come out somewhere between the two. Mitchell is often confused for a full-on free jazz musician, and after hearing her odd sounds on "Xenogenesis Suite" I can understand this impulse. That said, however, for every freak-out on either album, there is another tune that approaches funk, or falls somewhere completely uncharted in the jazz world.

"Black Unstoppable," the more straight-ahead of Mitchell's two most recent albums, still finds ample time to devote to her crazier side. The title track, "Black Unstoppable," is also the most out there, containing some odd extended technique-work from Mitchell herself. The best tracks, however, are the ones in which guitar-player Jeff Parker gets to show off. Luckily, however, that describes about half of the album. Parker is turning into something of a Chicago Nels Cline (or perhaps Nels Cline is a west-coast Jeff Parker), playing as a sideman on a random smattering of brilliant free jazz coming out of Chicago (Matana Roberts' "The Chicago Project," for example) and working with a rock band (the great instrumental post-rock group Tortoise). Of course the biggest star on the album is Mitchell's compositional ability; moving from the up-tempo funk opener "Cause and Effect" to vocal blues work-outs like "Love Has No Boundaries" and "Thanking the Universe" to crazy jams like "Navigator." Highly recommended for those who want to get into Mitchell's music.

"Xenogenesis Suite," although more than a little bit avant garde, will serve as a treat for anyone who loves free jazz or Mitchell's body of work. Based on a novel by science fiction author Octavia Butler, the suite sounds almost totally free upon first listen. After a few listens, however, it becomes apparent that Mitchell not only knows what she is doing, but is just as interested in creating a work that stands up track-by-track as she is in creating free music. While there are clearly sections that employ group improvisation as a device, these sections are clearly cued in some sense; even the clearly composed movements- "Before and After" and "Dawn of a New Life-" have a sense of free abandon to them. Recommended for those who love free jazz or Nicole Mitchell, or both.

I would like to apologize for the consistent lateness of this blog (I used to try and write every two days, now it's turning into more like every three or so); I recently started writing a column for the Scarsdale Inquirer and for the past day I've been swamped (I was planning on writing this yesterday but was hit with a deadline). In all honesty, I'm living day to day and have no idea what my next post will be about... maybe Marc Ribot and Ceramic Dog? Perhaps "What To Do Past the Days of Artistic Relevance," the new album from Wynton N' Willie? I have no idea. Check back in 2-3 days.

Freedom of Expression: Marc Ribot, Anthony Coleman and Brad Jones Tear it Up, Evan Parker Puts it Together

It's time for another free jazz round-up, everybody! After the overwhelmingly positive response (Well, actually, there were no comments... but on the plus side, there were no negative comments!) from the first one, a joint-review of new albums (or reissues) from the Free-Form Funky Freqs, Fieldwork, and Matthew Shipp from a month or two ago, I decided that as soon as I had enough obscure free jazz to write about, I'd jump on it immediately. For those of you who have not heard of Marc Ribot, Anthony Coleman, or Brad Jones, the three of them have played together sporadically over the past twenty years (and between the three of them have played with a lot of people in both the jazz and rock worlds), and after a few years of not playing together reunited at The Stone on Saturday night. Evan Parker is a brilliant European saxophone player who made his name by releasing one of the great solo saxophone records of the seventies, simply titled "Saxophone Solos," and his band on the new "Boustrophedon" is rounded out by a 14 piece orchestra that includes Roscoe Mitchell and Craig Taborn amongst its ranks.

To be frank, Saturday's concert at The Stone (John Zorn's cramped, non-air conditioned mecca for experimental music in New York City), featuring Marc Ribot, Anthony Coleman, and Brad Jones, was not for everybody. In fact, it probably wasn't for most people. All three of my friends wanted to leave at one point or another, but I wouldn't let them drag me out. The music was abrasive, occasionally boring, audience-bating- everything that can make a great free-jazz concert fall apart- but for some reason, the stars aligned and it just happened to hit the spot perfectly. Ribot, Coleman, and Jones tore music apart at its seams and made no effort to sew it back together; the three "songs" (I put "songs" in quotation marks because each piece was more of a lengthy improvisation than a standard) floated around the room, sometimes turning into outright noise with Anthony Coleman's prepared piano acting as a percussion instrument and occasionally anchoring the groove. The best "song" of the three was the second; it began as a folk dirge, complete with open chords and a triplet feel (although it changed arbitrarily between 3/4, 6/8, and 9/8), staying there for a while until moving into a lengthy portion devoid of time and finally move into a pulsating section that could only be described as funky Stravinsky. The concert clearly wasn't for everyone, and many people walked out. But man is it fun to just see great musicians bang on shit and see what kinds of cool noises they can make every once in a while.

Evan Parker takes the opposite tack on "Boustrephedon," recorded at a concert a few years ago; as opposed to simply deconstructing and rearranging music and rearranging music with life-affirming zeal, Parker is more interested in finding the meeting point between the worlds of free jazz and avant garde classical music. Some passages in "Boustrephedon" are clearly composed in some fashion (either written out or dictated), and in "Furrow 5" and "Furrow 6" there are moments in which entire segments of his 14-piece orchestra play in tandem. These backing figures- if you can even call them that- add a different back-drop for the soloists to work with, and in that sense they serve to make the music more interesting. The soloists themselves are all incredible, with a particularly interesting solo from clarinetist John Rangecroft towards the beginning of "Furrow 4." The portions during which the band freely improvises as a whole are just as cacophonous and dissonant as one would expect from a group like this, although anybody who actually goes out and buys and Evan Parker record probably knows what to expect. While, again, it's not for everybody, "Boustrephedon" poses an interesting answer to the question "How free should free jazz be?," and for those who are interested in this sort of music it's definitely worth listening to.

But that said, it doesn't offer the same catharsis as hearing a bunch of great musicians bang on shit and do things they aren't supposed to do to their instruments. Seriously, what a great concert. Next time I'll either have a joint-review of Moss' new self-titled album and Cassandra Wilson's "Loverly" or a review of Marc Ribot's new album with his band Ceramic Dog (whose 10 o'clock show at The Stone I would have gone to if not for my wussy friends).

"Free" is Just Another Word for "Nothing Left to Lose"

An odd development of the last twenty years or so has been the adoption of free jazz language into the vernacular of straight-ahead music, and of the adoption of a more straight-ahead approach to free music. After classics of totally free group improvisation like John Coltrane's "Ascension," free jazz musicians realized that there was no where left to go but back in as early as Charlie Haden's 1969 classic "Liberation Music Orchestra." Two recent releases, "Urban Mythology Vol. 1" by the Free Form Funky Freqs and "Door" by Fieldwork, and one reissue of a classic of 90s free jazz, Matthew Shipp's "Multiplication Table," explore the concept of structured free music at length.

"Urban Mythology" is the most fun of the three records, and ironically the band's members are the oldest; two of the three members (Jamaladeen Tacuma on bass and G. Calvin Weston on drums) have spent time in Ornette Coleman's Prime Time outfit, and the other (guitarist Vernon Reid) has worked with everyone from Ronald Shannon Jackson to Bill Frisell. "Urban Mythology" is a funky record with more in common with bluesy classic rock than free jazz, and partly for that reason something feels trivial about it. To me, at least, "free jazz party record" sounds like something of an oxymoron, and while the playing is uniformly good, tracks like "Chump Champ Chunk" and "Get Your Legs On" seem to be trying a bit too hard. That said, if booty bass, power chords, and free jazz pedigrees are your thing this one is worth checking out.

Fieldwork, something of a power trio of young musicians, including Vijay Iyer (piano), Tyshawn Sorey (drums) and Steve Lehman (alto saxophone), is free mostly in the way these compositions were created: each member came in with works of their own, which were then reworked by the trio as a whole. This concept works surprisingly well; its impossible to tell which compositions are Sorey's, Lehman's or Iyer's without looking up the credits. Like The Freqs, the playing is all around excellent, but unlike The Freqs, it never sounds forced into a groove. Tracks only last as long as they have to, some ending after three minutes while others go on for up to eight. An interesting record by an interesting trio. Recommended.

HatOlogy is reissuing a number of classics in underground improvised music (look out for reviews of Paul Bley's "12 (+60) In a Row" and John Zorn, Bill Frisell, and George Lewis's "News for Lulu" if I can get my hands on them), but the stand-out is Matthew Shipp's "Multiplication Table," a classic of post-modern 90s free jazz. Shipp violently tears apart a number of songs, both standards and originals, but the best performance on the album is his nearly five minute solo piano intro to "C Jam Blues," drastically reharmonized and battered out by Shipp as if his life depended on it. Later on in the track, as Shipp is joined by drummer Suzie Ibarra and bassist William Parker, the song is given a trio treatment. Parker's playing on "Zt 1" and "Zt 2" is also particularly notable; his extended bowing technique on upright bass creates a creepy effect.

Next time I'll post reviews of the new Gregg August record and possibly the Hank Jones and Roberta Gambarini collaboration "You Are There."