Shelly Berg & David Finck - The Deep (CHESKY RECORDS 2017)

The duo album has tremendous lineage throughout Jazz history and on Chesky Records. The Deep adds another timeless pairing with Shelly Berg and David Finck complimenting each other on fourteen stunning new cuts, many of which were improvised on the spot. We are hearing them react to each other and create in real time with no discussion other than with their instruments, showcasing a lifetime of masterfully honed skill and experience. That this improvised material works so well with the standards they chose is further testament to the musicianship of Berg and Finck.

GRAMMY Nominated Shelly Berg is widely known for his collaborations with vocalists. He has performed, recorded, or arranged for Gloria Estefan, Patti Austin, Bobby McFerrin, Kurt Elling, Michael Feinstein, Renée Fleming, Gregory Porter, Aretha Franklin, Tierney Sutton, Janelle Monáe, Queen Latifa, Lorraine Feather, Monica Mancini, Rita Moreno, Ricky Martin, Kevin Spacey, Dionne Warwick, Carmen Bradford, and many more. Shelly is also the music director of The Jazz Cruise and maintains a busy, worldwide schedule of jazz festival and club performances.

Music can only be described with words, but for David Finck, music is a language all its own. He has played and recorded with Dizzy Gillespie, Aretha Franklin, Sinead O'Connor, Natalie Cole, Rod Stewart, Herbie Hancock, Ivan Lins, Al Jarreau, Tony Bennett, Paquito D'Rivera, George Michael, Rosemary Clooney and Andre Previn, to name just a few. Over the years, David has become one of the most sought-after musicians in Manhattan, equally revered for his work in jazz, popular, Brazilian and classical music. He's bridged musical diversity through his skills -- but even more so through his ability to hear music as language in an almost literal sense.

Part of the Chesky Binaural + Series, all recorded with a single microphone, the band appears right before you with this spacious, lush and multi-dimensional recording. Now headphone users will hear the same three-dimensional sound and imaging as audiophiles have for the past 25 years with Chesky Recordings. Also these new Binaural+ Series albums capture even more spatial realism for the home audiophile market, bringing you one step closer to the actual event. You will hear some of the most natural and pure music ever recorded.

01. Fellini's Waltz 05:39

02. Solar 02:32

03. For Gunther 06:37

04. Dindi 08:00

05. For John Lewis 02:26

06. Peri's Scope 04:53

07. Why Did I Choose You? 05:11

08. Glacier Lake 03:43

09. 3rd World 03:42

10. Whistling Away The Dark 06:04

11. Lunar 02:32

12. If You Never Came To Me 05:52

13. The Deep 04:20

14. Just You Just Me 05:13

Shelly Berg: piano

David Finck: bass

HDtracks: http://bit.ly/2tQnEpL

iTunes: http://apple.co/2tp1ium

Amazon: http://amzn.to/2tZGMSP

br>

Fink - Fink's Sunday Night Blues Dubs (2017)

1. Hour Golden (FSNBDUB) 06:53

2. Black Stetson (FSNBDUB) 09:14

3. Little Bump (FSNBDUB) 05:01

4. Hard To See You Happy (FSNBDUB) 04:32

5. Cold Stetson (FSNBDUB) 04:39

‘Fink’s Sunday Night Blues Dubs’ Out Now -

R’COUP’D / Stream / Download: https://fink.lnk.to/fnbdYO

Listen to the official playlist: http://fink.lnk.to/playlist

Follow Fink -

Facebook: http://found.ee/fink-fb

Twitter: http://found.ee/fink-tw

Soundcloud: http://found.ee/fink-sc

Spotify: http://found.ee/fink-sp

Peter Evans / Agustí Fernández / Mats Gustafsson - A Quietness of Water (NOT TWO RECORDS 2017) - A Quietness of Water (NOT TWO RECORDS 2017)

On their first album as a trio, Korpos Lithos (Multikulti Project, 2009), and on their new album of free improvisations, A Quietness of Water, Peter Evans, Agustí Fernandez, and Mats Gustafsson borrow their song titles from the American poet Robert Creeley. Creeley makes an interesting, and apt, muse for these musicians. For some, Creeley’s poems, despite their direct and simple beauty, lack the traditional moves they presume a “good” poem ought to make. Once, after a poetry reading, a puzzled audience member asked Creeley, “Are those real poems, or did you just make them up?” A Quietness of Water also puzzles at first, and might make one to wonder: “Is this real jazz, or are they just making it up?” The answer to such a conundrum is: keep reading; keep listening. The answer is yes; yes.

On the album’s first cut, “Once in a Rented Room,” Evans’ trumpet sounds like an Egyptian mizmar, a euphonium, a wounded animal, warning sirens. When he emits a hellish growl, one fears it may be, in fact, a howl from one’s own unconscious primal depths. Evans, at once, sounds like an air raid siren and a dive bombing kamikaze. He hums into his trumpet like a kazoo. He tongues the mouthpiece. He plays the spit collecting in the tubes. He holds a note past normal human capacity while its microtonal changes mess with our desire for resolution. And that’s just Evans. Fernandez pounds the piano keys occasionally, but mostly he is inside the piano, rending it like an industrial combine at a metal recycling plant. Gustafsson puffs, grunts, and desperately inhales and exhales through his stops.

Next, on “Persistent Hope,” Fernandez’s eerie scrapings remind us a haunted house. Gustafsson woo-wooo-wooos like a ghost. Evans’s trumpet whirls like a Hammond organ with a Leslie speaker playing the soundtrack for an old silent movie. Then things really get weird. The sax and trumpet snarl at each other until an entire angry animal kingdom wakes: elephants roar, zebras whinny, monkeys whoop and screech. For a moment, things calm down, yet soon enough the whole haywire jungle machine goes nuts again. There’s an end-of-the-world bedlam in the guts of Fernandez’ piano. Gustafsson sobs and wails and moans. Evans feeds back like a guitar flung in front of an overdriven Marshall stack.

“I Speak to Hear,” the third track, puts us in the mind of a gentle rain, at first, then, after a bang like a gunshot, Gustafsson whoops and hollers, thwump-thwump-thwacking percussively. Together he and Fernandez beep-beep-flurp-squawk. Evans overblows his trumpet. It squeals like he’s letting air out of a pinched balloon. He plays long, lippy, rising notes, makes kissy noises, and plates saucy smorgasbords of sound. Gustafsson’s playing alternately sounds like an upright bass plucked pizzicato, or like his stops have transmuted into bongos. Evans veers from sounding like a Theremin to blowing through a mouthpieceless trumpet, pistoning the valves, whistling, and choo-chooing.

On the fourth song, “Thoughts,” named after a tiny Robert Creeley poem — “Am I dying? / I am beautiful. / Either way.” — the trumpet and the piano sound, surprisingly, like a trumpet and a piano until the song begins to have too many simultaneous disquieting thoughts. They race and zoom. Gustafsson is a fog horn; Evans, an ocean liner sounding an alarm, which turns into thick static. Fernandez flogs the piano, which refuses to give up the ghost, even when it sounds like a downed powerline wildly jetting and sparking in the icy street. Gustafsson’s rather lovely, breathy solo transforms into thwumping and yelling as if he’s frightened by a nightmare. Evans blows through the trumpet which discovers it is a flute, whale song, a flock of ducks being mass murdered, and the suction tool at the dentist’s.

The final song, “A Quietness of Water,” finds Gustafsson sounding almost like a cello section. Fernandez’s piano plinks like an autoharp or a hammered dulcimer or sprung springs. Evans’s breath through the trumpet is white noise, which for a moment pierces like an oboe, then turns into a pervert’s heavy breathing into the phone, a suitcase dragged across Berber carpet, a NASA radio signal fizzling before the crew is lost, a fire alarm, a Tour de France ambulance, a teakettle at the boil . . .

As I listened again and again to A Quietness of Water, I noticed how often Evans reminded me of the flute section in the second movement of Béla Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra, and how the trio, with all its manic bravura, suggests the entirety of an orchestra. There are emotional swarms that leave the imagination reeling, dark dramatic swells, trilling notes that float above the rest, hectic conflicts as if a violin section were bowing tremolo, and rumbles from bass drums like a dark night of the soul descending. There is vigor and joy; anguish and ambition. There are rude, blatting raspberries, terrifying explosions of sound, and an epic sweep.

Which is to say, A Quietness of Water is, finally, beautiful.

Part of what makes music enjoyable are the pleasures of what Peter Kivy calls its “plot without content.” Thinking of the genre and structure of jazz, we enjoy the statement of the theme. We desire its return but feel titillated by its delay. We love the entanglements of the grammar of the song’s unfolding. We crave the riddles the interplay creates and the pointed variations of the theme. Our ravenous conjectures hunger for what happens next. The “better” the song, the more often it mystifies our anticipations, toys with our expectations, tricks us in alluring ways. A “great” song generates an ever-increasing adoration for the unexpected. Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue demonstrates this: modal jazz seemed strange and unwelcome at first, yet the album fulfilled expectations about jazz tunes while teaching us to listen closer and to appreciate what had seemed unpredictable. It was so skillful it became the most popular jazz album of all time and what many consider the very definition of “good jazz.”

A Quietness of Water tantalizes us with its strangeness and its teasing refusals to satisfy what we thought we were supposed to expect—or even want. Evans, Fernandez, and Gustafsson wield a variety of extended techniques, playing their instruments in untraditional, unconventional ways. It isn’t so much that they are playing jazz as they play the trumpet, the saxophone, and the piano for all they’re worth. They ignore, or transcend, the expected uses not only of their instruments but of their breath and bodies. They smash the iconic twists and turns of the jazz tune. They are not producing “special effects”; this is just the way they play. It is how they say what they must say. Their songs exist outside plot structures. Their music develops circuitously, like thinking does, and when these three think together, things get too complicated for even a battalion of critics and therapists to unravel. This is pugnacious music. It affects its listener physically, physiologically. The song is an arena; the playing an event. Like all great music, it rewards a listener who listens carefully and often. It is a new translation of the language of “jazz” that requires immersion to develop fluency.

Robert Creeley wondered, on a rainy day, “What am I to myself / that must be remembered, / insisted upon / so often?” A Quietness of Water asks equally existential questions. It poses problems about the nature of our desire for jazz and the ways we define it. It joins a profound improvisatory conversation that is unceasing. This is not music to “enjoy.” It defies usual satisfactions. It provides no rest for our perturbed spirits. This is jazz as experience—as pathos. I don’t know if there are aesthetic categories to judge whether the music or the playing are “good” or “bad,” but Evans, Fernandez, and Gustafsson leave me thinking that the music they make is beautiful because of the sublime ways they just make it up.

(review courtesy of Rick Joines and freejazzblog.org)

1. Once In A Rented Room (11:40)

2. Persistent Hope (10:28)

3. I speak To Hear (10:10)

4. Thoughts (12:19)

5. A Quietness Of Water (12:00)

Peter Evans – trumpet

Agustí Fernández – piano

Mats Gustafsson – sax

​

Recorded September 17, 2012 at Garnison7 Studio, Vienna, Austria

Mixed July 21, 2013 at FCM Studio, Barcelona

Titles inspired by Robert Creeley

Playlist for Tom Ossana – The Thin Edge – July 12, 2017 MST 7:00 to 9:00p.m.

http://www.kzmu.org/listen.m3u ~ Use this link to access the show online.

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

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)

SESTETTO INTERNAZIONALE features some of the most original and sincere voices in contemporary improvised music scene.

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

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.”

Improvisation plays a central role in the band’s arrangements, too, though it unfolds according to a unique set of rules and understandings. “Improvisation is a tool, not a departure. It’s entrenched. It depends on what we need to get across,” Baxter says. “And it’s not just instrumental; Quiana will sing a phrase over and over. When there's a message being communicated, a spirit being conveyed, that’s key to cultural trance music like this music. These are rhythms for people to shout and praise on. It’s about how deep you want to get into it. It’s not about novelty or harmonic substitutions. You stay with the folk of it, and that gets you back into earlier improvisational skill sets.”

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