http://www.kzmu.org/listen.m3u ~ Use this link to access the show online.
Tuesday, July 11, 2017
Cene Resnik Watch for Dogs Trio - Shades of Colors (NOT TWO RECORDS 2017)
01. Shades of colors
02. Kraljeva slika
03. Kosovelovo domotožje
04. Zemlja (Suite of Crngrob)
05. Volcano — The Steamer
06. Thieves came quietly
07. Agitación natural
08. Satellites
09. Articulation complete
10. Conversations that never stop
Cene Resnik – tenor saxophone
Giovanni Maier – double bass
Zlatko Kaučič – drums, cymbals
Brötzmann / Swell / Nilssen-Love - Live in Tel Aviv (NOT TWO RECORDS 2017)
1. The Greasy Grind
2. Ticklish Pickle
Steve Swell – trombone
Paal Nilssen-Love – drums, percussion
Peter Brötzmann – saxophone, clarinet
Sigurdur Flosason & Lars Jansson Trio - Green Moss Black Sand (STORYVILLE RECORDS 2017)
Along with the Lars Jansson Trio, Flosason captures the Nordic nuances with fervour and precision. Lars Jansson is a Swedish jazz pianist and a composer, and the Lars Jansson Trio counts Jansson as well as the Dane Thomas Fonnesbæk on double bass, and the Swede Paul Svanberg on drums. Flosason is from Iceland and is trained as a classical alto saxophonist. Although he primarily plays jazz, he has worked extensively with various Scandinavian musicians such as Cathrine Legardh, Kjeld Lauritsen, and Kristian Leth, and has composed both jazz music and classical pieces. The musicianship, generosity and friendship of the group make the musical images of rural Iceland come to life.
01. Fragile Growth 5:23
02. Serenading the Moon 5:05
03. Black Sand 8:01
04. Stillness in the Storm 5:15
05. Green Sky 4:56
06. Lava 7:22
07. Spring Water 6:23
08. Slanting Rain 5:57
09. Moss 4:56
10. To the End of the World 6:35
11. Wasteland 5:30
Sigurdur Flosason: Alto Saxophone
Lars Jansson: Piano
Thomas Finnesbæk: Double Bass
Paul Svanberg: Drums
Monday, July 10, 2017
Bren Plummer - Moldy Figs (2017)
Employing sonic simplicity hand-in-hand with harmonic complexity, Bren Plummer makes chamber music conceived in a vivid imagination and founded in rigorous musicianship. His imagination extends to the titles of his compositions and descriptions of the pieces.
The name “Sycophantic Chanteuse” echoes an uneasy truce maintained by musicians and singers for decades. “It’s a difficult relationship between instrumentalists and vocalists in jazz,” Bren says. “As far as singers go, I’m really into Sarah Vaughan. She’s my favorite of all time.” Having established that high standard, he observes of the title, “I’m not actually mad at anybody. It’s just a code name for a tune.”
Preparing for the recording, Plummer wrote parts that could have been adapted to a variety of instrumental combinations. When he decided on vibraphone as one of the chordal instruments, he researched possible players. “Susan Pascal’s name came up,” he said. ”She is a really good reader, her touch is amazing; her dynamics, her sense of balance. The musical choices she made were delightful.”
“Yellow 5, Yellow 6” is another code-name title. It captures a feeling Plummer had when he was hotel-bound in a strange city substituting in the bass section of a symphony orchestra. “It’s like what you might see on a painting’s title card at a museum,” he said, “so it’s reminiscent of fine art, which is one of my great passions.”
Plummer assured the album’s drummer that the title “Albin DeVonne” has nothing to do with him. It’s the name of a character Bren imagined—a con artist with a fake name based on syllables meaning “of” that are adapted from various languages. There’s nothing fake about the piece’s expansive feeling, its suspended chords and openness.
In jazz, “Moldy Figs” is what beboppers once called traditionalists and then, ironically, what boppers themselves were sometimes called as musical trends changed. Not easily categorized, Plummer’s “Moldy Figs,” goes its own straight-ahead way with rewarding solos and a stimulating exchange of four-bar phrases between Bren and guitarist Frank Seeberger. They were students at the New England Conservatory when Plummer was earning his bachelor’s degree. “Frank played in one of George Russell’s bands and I played in the other,” Bren recalls of studying with the great composer and arranger. His master’s and doctorate are from the University of Washington.
Plummer and Thomas Marriott have known one another since middle school, when they were both members of a Seattle Public Schools all-star group. Later, both were in the Garfield High School band that over the years Clarence Acox has led to championships in dozens of national and international competitions. Of Marrriot’s burgeoning success, Bren says, “I moved away for college, but when I’d come back for the holidays and seek Tom out, he was famous. He’d walk into a room and get a standing ovation, and he wouldn’t even have his horn with him. Tom can go to New York to play for a week then come back here, and he’s accepted equally in both places.”
Scott Brown’s Roosevelt High School jazz program is the counterpart of Acox’s across town at Garfield, equally successful in competitions. Plummer says, “Stuart McDonald was the ace tenor at Roosevelt High when I was at Garfield. ‘Wow,’ we used to say, ‘this guy is really good.’ He and I have been playing a lot lately. He’s still totally killer.”
Of “Hard Time,” Bren says, simply, “It’s a hard tune, hard to improvise over.” The ascending melodic line emphasizes the tune’s character. “There may be a bit of extra-musical narrative in the title,” he grins, “but I’m not doing anything that would wind me up in prison.” “Cockroach” came to Bren after he watched a gritty movie about a Harlem gang war. “ILK” tells how he feels about his wife, Kathryn. “Maitasun” is the Basque word for love.
—Doug Ramsey
Doug Ramsey blogs about jazz and other matters at Rifftides, www.dougramsey.com
Sycophantic Chanteuse
Yellow 5, Yellow 6
Albin Devonne
Moldy Figs
Hard Time
Cockroach
Ilk
Maitasun Itsasoa
Bren Plummer: double bass
Thomas Marriott: trumpet
Stuart MacDonald: alto saxophone
Frank Seeberger: guitar
Susan Pascal: vibraphone
D'Vonne Lewis: drums
Sestetto Internazionale - Aural Vertigo (AMIRANI RECORDS 2017)
The 2015 tremendous Finland tour Harri Sjöström set up made this band play in several venues and theatres.
The recordings of the two concerts at Kanneltalo theatre in Helsinki and at Sibelius Museum in Turku are on this album.
The combination of SESTETTO INTERNAZIONALE
instrumental voices (a really unusual line-up!!!) looks as designed to generate an original creative process that involves the listener to observe the multiple, sometime mirroring, interplay, the collective timbral palette, the different and simultaneous sound consistencies and the single, respective paths.
Reciprocal listening, intelligible architecture, lyrical streams and seamless orchestration: the music, simply beautiful.
At times it looks detailed as an astral map crossed with a high degree of liberty showing distant connections, lyrical lines, dramatic changes, different depths.
At times it is intimate and chamber scented. Suddenly, angular collective pulses gently merge to splendid dialogues in a natural transparency, sound vertigos land on flowing microtonal backgrounds.
Aural
Vertigo
Harri Sjöström: soprano and sopranino saxophones
Gianni Mimmo: soprano saxophone
Alison Blunt: violin
Achim Kaufmann: piano
Veli Kujala: quarter tone accordion
Ignaz Schick: turntables
Sunday, July 9, 2017
Get Funky! Ranky Tanky! (release date: September 15, 2017)
Ranky Tanky (the loose equivalent of “Get Funky!”) draws on these lineages on their debut album Ranky Tanky (release date: September 15, 2017)
Improvising Tradition: Charleston’s Ranky Tanky Gets Funky with Gullah Songs and Ways
When trumpeter and vocalist Charlton Singleton heard “Watch That Star,” he knew it well. It shared a few verses with his grandfather’s song, a song the elder had received after “seeking”, a key moment in a young Gullah person’s spiritual development.
“The method of seeking when he was growing up was to go out into the woods and seek the Lord while trying to be with the creator, be one with the heavens,” recounts Singleton. The process often ended with a person finding a song that became their own. A song they would go on to “raise up” at every Sunday service, and a song that the entire community would associate with that person alone.
These songs and practices are part of the Gullah tradition, an African-American community which maintained strong African elements in language, music, and lifeways from the coastal communities of North and South Carolina, Georgia, and northeast Florida. Charleston, SC’s Ranky Tanky (the loose equivalent of “Get Funky!”) draws on these lineages on their debut album Ranky Tanky (release date: September 15, 2017), the ring shouts, praise songs, games, and nature tales, approaching them with serious jazz chops and a deeply-rooted heart.
“These are songs often created on the spot, at play, or in church,” explains Singleton. They sometimes become part of a person’s contribution to worship, to be passed down to a family member with time. This direct transmission kept the music alive and ever shifting.
Gullah traditions have seeped into American popular culture, from Brer Rabbit to children’s hand games to “Kumbayah” (Gullah for “come by here”). Many of the songs performed by Ranky Tanky will feel like old friends to many listeners--though these friends have come dressed to the nines, ready to shake things up. (“O Death,” “Go to Sleep”)
Ranky Tanky sprang from close musical friendships formed over 20 years ago. There bassist Kevin Hamilton, guitarist Clay Ross, and 2x Grammy-nominated drummer/producer Quentin E. Baxter were all finishing composition degrees, just as Singleton had moved back home after graduating from South Carolina State University.
Singleton jokes that they first came together to help Ross impress girls, but eventually formed a jazz quartet. They gigged for a few years, before Ross moved to New York. The foursome kept in touch, however, and played together as often as they could. Singleton, Baxter, and Hamilton have established themselves as formidable jazz musicians, educators, bandleaders, composers, and producers in Charleston and beyond.
Ross’ exploration of music from other parts of the world, most notably Brazil, led him to consider his own roots and investigate the music of his home state of South Carolina. Back in Charleston, he talked to his former bandmates. They were skeptical at first--“I thought everyone knew about this stuff,” remarks Hamilton--they started to work on some Gullah songs, arranging them in a way that kept the spirit but sounded all their own.
They unanimously decided to invite powerful vocalist Quiana Parler (whose American Idol appearance won her a spot in Clay Aiken’s touring ensemble) to join them, and Ranky Tanky was born.
“When I write songs for jazz gigs, I’ll have a melody and the chords in my mind, but I also know that I want Quentin to play, so I’ll leave it to him to come up with a rhythmic foundation. I might suggest some bass line ideas for Kevin, but I leave it up to him. That’s how we collaborate,” notes Singleton. “We start with the songs and games, but it’s our personalities that help drive these arrangements.”
The dialogue between voice and drums (“Been in the Storm”), and vocal call and response with instrumental reprise (“Knee Bone”) reflect some of the musical techniques absorbed from childhood by many of the band members. Ranky Tanky employs them to create striking contemporary arrangements. There are resonances with other deeply Afro-diasporic traditions (think zydeco), with old-school gospel, with the guitar-centered popular music of Mali, Senegal, and Ghana.
“Knee Bone,” for example, demonstrates a direct link to ancient West African religious belief that rigidity is next to death and one must keep the body moving to feel alive. The playing and singing can get down and dirty, but it’s always guided by a delicacy of feeling, of commitment to something greater. (“Got to Move”)
“My approach to these songs when I perform live, it’s all about what I'm feeling at the moment in collaboration with what the band is playing.” I’m from the country and was introduced to Gullah language and culture about 16 years ago through my son’s father. I had no idea what he was saying or speaking when I first met him,” reflects Parler with a laugh. “Our connection to the songs’ spiritual aspect is through church. So when I approach these songs, I take a spiritual approach. It’s all about feeling for me.”
“We are a leaderless group and a musical family. There is a constant give and a take, giving each other shit, and knowing it’s all in love,” muses Ross. “At the core is something real, and a process that filters truth. Most members of this band were born Gullah, and I’m an adopted son, digging deeper with a book. Our different perspectives give us an opportunity to find mutual understanding. We just laugh through the process.” That laughter and close connection is palpable on Ranky Tanky and whenever the band gets on stage.
About
“Gullah” comes from West African language and means “a people blessed by God.” “Ranky Tanky” translates loosely as “Work It,” or “Get Funky!” In this spirit this Charleston, SC based quintet performs timeless music of Gullah culture born in the southeastern Sea Island region of the United States. From playful game songs to ecstatic shouts, from heartbreaking spirituals to delicate lullabies, the musical roots of Charleston, SC are “rank” and fertile ground from which these contemporary artists are grateful to have grown.
South Carolina natives Quentin Baxter, Kevin Hamilton, Charlton Singleton, and Clay Ross first came together in 1998, fresh out of University, to form a seminal Charleston jazz quartet. Now, united by years apart and a deeper understanding of home, these accomplished artists have come together again, joined by one of the low-country’s most celebrated vocalists Quiana Parler, to revive a “Heartland of American Music” born in their own backyards.
01 That's Alright
02 Turtle Dove
03 Been In The Storm
04 Ranky Tanky
05 Oh Death
06 Knee Bon
07 You Gotta Move
08 Watch That Star
09 Sink Em Low
10 Join The Band play
11 Go To Sleep
12 You Better Mind
13 Goodbye Song
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