Postcards of Jazz as a Living Music

Thoughts on new and upcoming jazz releases worth checking out

Welcome music lovers to a new edition of ‘Listening Sessions’!

This time around, it's something a little different. My focus here is almost exclusively older music. It’s what I listen to most and what I know most about but it’s important to also try to give an ear to new music which is what I’ve been trying to do more of, especially jazz. There is a lot of exciting stuff that’s recently been released and also soon to come out. The below essay highlights six new and upcoming jazz recordings worth checking out with a brief shout-out to two additional records that I have enjoyed. This type of piece may be something I do on a recurring basis but in the meantime, I hope you enjoy what I have put together and will share your thoughts as well.

For my next edition of ‘Listening Sessions,’ I am turning things over to Tim Riley of the riley rock report for a back-and-forth on the Eagles’ Hotel California. His contribution—a biting, forceful piece of music criticism—will appear here. Mine will appear on his Substack. To get both, be sure to subscribe to the riley rock report if you haven’t already.

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To keep abreast of what’s new in recorded jazz, as in any other type of music, one needs to be proactive these days. Reading the tastemakers (many of whom are here on Substack), staying on top on social media without getting sucked into its vortex, scanning the playlists of your streaming service of choice, keeping tabs on what’s coming out soon and being able rely on a local radio station that has a pulse on the latest goings-on all help. For me, a writer trying to find a path to cobbling together some sort of a living out of this work, getting on the mailing lists of publicists (tip of the hat to Phil Freeman of Burning Ambulance for invaluable assistance here) is a major lifeline. Within the steady stream of emails is a sliver of the riches being released by both artists of renown as well as those whose names may not be household yet but whom are driven to create and express something tangible. To say that it is a privilege to get to hear these recordings and learn more about those behind them is an understatement. It is, in a very small way to be sure, to be a participant in jazz as a living music.

The seven musicians who make up the new collective Something Else! have all been breathing it for a generation or more now. Led by alto saxophonist Vincent Herring, the aggregation is all-star caliber and includes, in addition to Herring, trumpeter Jeremy Pelt, tenor saxophonist Wayne Escoffery, guitarist Paul Bollenback, pianist David Kikoski, bassist Essiet Essiet and drummer Otis Brown III.

Their debut release on Smoke Sessions Records comes out on June 14. Soul Jazz is a salute to just that: soul jazz, hard bop at its earthiest, a strand of the music that hinted at the coming fusion of jazz with rock rhythms. Tribute is paid with a program that never goes for the obvious. For example, the requisite Horace Silver composition is ‘Filthy McNasty’ and not ‘Doodlin’ or ‘Song for My Father.’ Seemingly axiomatic choices like ‘The Sidewinder’ or ‘Alligator Boogaloo’ take a backseat. It adds up to a mostly engaging listen.

The album opener, the aforementioned ‘Filthy McNasty,’ has the front line and Kikoski blowing compact solos, relishing the opportunity to burn a bit on the classic Silver line. But what’s even more interesting here is how the counterpoint line of the opening ensemble, played by Herring and Bollenback here, punches through. More distinctly heard than on Silver’s original recording from the Village Gate in 1961, a light bulb goes off and Eddie Harris’ ‘Cold Duck Time’ (on Soul Jazz, Harris is given his due through a boogaloo cover of his ‘Mean Greens’) emerges clearly as a very hip elaboration of it.

For another example, I don’t ever recall before realizing the similarity between Donald Byrd’s slinky ‘Slow Drag’—given an extra-slinky rendition here—and Bobbie Gentry’s ‘Ode to Billie Joe’ by way of altoist Lou Donaldson’s cover of her chart-topping smash. Both melodies move in the same direction, something that Byrd and Gentry would almost certainly have only arrived at independently of each other.

Soul Jazz is not simply, however, a celebration of past glories. The inclusion of Roy Hargrove’s ‘Strasbourg / St. Denis’ is another example of the astuteness at play on the album and Hargrove’s composition receives an appropriately hip interpretation here. The decision to close the album with a souled-up version of John Coltrane’s ‘Naima’ is less so. The admittedly intriguing attempt to make it danceable only seems, in my opinion, to make ‘Naima’ banal when it is anything but. The shift half-way into all-out fusion furthers the cheapening of Coltrane’s line. It’s a misstep, for sure, but one that doesn’t negate all that comes before it. In particular, it’s a joy to hear a player like Kikoski dig into the funkier side of town.

I once saw him play up close at Smalls in New York with an ace quintet led by drummer Victor Lewis. The music was fiery post-bop, bold and declarative. I was sitting right behind Kikoski, watching as he would dig into a solo with two-handed abandon, moving his body into a dance and then, at the conclusion of each tune, genially getting up from the piano bench to switch Lewis’ mic on so he could introduce the next tune. Smalls engenders this kind of do-it-yourself ethos. The audience bumps up again the musicians. The seating is a mix of chairs and benches—nothing fancy. It is a special place.

A new release from the club’s Living Masters series from Cellar Music Group explores the spirit of spending a night there. Trumpeter Jack Walrath is a musician I confess I had not heard of before Live From Smalls came onto my radar but who I probably should have given his associations with Ray Charles and Charles Mingus as well as his forty-years-plus of putting out solo recordings. On Walrath’s latest, there is much to savour in the recording’s six originals with ‘Left Turn on 86th Street’ of special note.

It’s a cyclical thing, moving from a kind of slow, extravagant blues that was a specialty of Mingus to a chipper, lively line that reminds of the constant motion of New York—that no matter where you are, something is happening. Walrath has a brittle, lyrical tone and on this recording, he is always playing well outside the confines of cliché. ‘Left Turn on 86th Street’ also spotlights the other musicians supporting Walrath: tenor saxophonist Abraham Burton, pianist George Burton, bassist Boris Koslov and drummer Donald Edwards.

Cross the street to the left of Smalls on West 10th Street and you’ll hit Mezzrow, the club’s jazz lounge counterpart. It brings to mind the languid, cocktail-hour spirit of Ahmad Jamal’s live recordings from the fifties and sixties, and there is that feeling of relaxation on pianist Roger Kellaway’s new album, Live at Mezzrow, also on Cellar Music Group for the Smalls Living Masters series.

Kellaway is the kind of musician that almost any music fan has heard even if he or she may not know it whether through his sideman appearances on classic recordings by Wes Montgomery (Bumpin’) and Sonny Rollins (Alfie) or with Joni Mitchell on the latest volume of her outstanding Archives series or his work as a soundtrack composer (the Streisand version of A Star is Born, for one example). This kind of familiarity by association seems at play with the decision to include not one, not two, but three tunes from Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue on the recording.

All three: ‘So What,’ ‘Blue in Green’ and ‘All Blues’ receive interpretations that bring something fresh to them. How Kellaway does so is paradoxical. On ‘So What,’ it’s through hewing to the spaciousness of Davis’ original recording. Supported by bassist Jay Leonhart and drummer Dennis Mackrel (guitar Rani Ben-Hur augments the trio on a couple of tracks), Kellaway picks and chooses his notes with elegant care during the first part of his improvisation. He then contrasts with a vigorous motif. Leonhart and Mackrel’s support are also critical to the mood. They never rush. They let the pulse breath. They similarly capture the mood of the original recording of ‘All Blues.’ On ‘Blue in Green.’ Kellaway begins with a long solo introduction before nestling in with Leonhart and Mackrel to a romantic contour that is equal parts Kind of Blue and the version Bill Evans—almost certainly the tune’s true composer—recorded at the end of 1959 for his remarkable Portrait in Jazz.

Also remarkable is the opening ‘Try to Remember,’ the signature song of The Fantastiks, played solo by Kellaway. It’s good to have a new version to savour of the song which has somewhat receded in prominence. A vigorous ‘Good Morning Bahia,’ written by the Italian composer and conductor Ettore Stratta makes good use of a recurring and very hummable figure.

Kellaway reminds that past can also be present. Alto saxophonist Sarah Hanahan is a reminder that out of the past can come the future. Established as a formidable player on the live circuit—I caught her last November at Smoke Jazz & Supper Club on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and left deeply moved—Hanahan has finally gotten the opportunity to make a record of her own. Among Giants will be released on Blue Engine Records on June 21.

Hanahan is a devotee of Jackie McLean as well as the spiritual side of jazz. Among Giants favours the latter and tempers the influence of the former. She additionally dials back some of the excesses of the music when it attempts to reach the divine, finding a sweet spot that is locked into the pocket.

Hanahan’s alto is tart yet warm. When she adds a slight vibrato, she brings to mind late-era Coltrane as well as Albert Ayler. There is a hypnotic quality to her solos on such tracks as ‘NATO,’ a tribute to one of her mentors, bassist Nat Reeves, who appears on the album along with pianist Marc Cary, drummer Jeff “Tain” Watts and, on four of the recording’s eight tracks, percussionist Bobby Allende.

On a hopeful cover of Bacharach and David’s ‘A House in Not a Home.’ she plays the melody with playful delight and ends with an emotional and extended cadenza. Cary, Reeves, Watts and Allende are supportive of Hanahan, doing what they can to elevate her. That she meets the moment—she explores and deconstructs a warhorse like ‘Stardust’ with incisiveness—makes Among Giants a major release.

Equally so is drummer Matt Wilson’s Good Trouble, dropping on June 14 on Palmetto Records. The album is the kind whose impact is immediate on the first listen. By the end of the opening track, the humourous and Monkish ‘Fireplace,’ there’s already the sneaking suspicion that Good Trouble will be darn good. It is.

‘Be That As It May’ is a graceful ballad on which pianist Dawn Clement also sings. Clement’s voice is clear and cozy—her tone inviting. In short, it’s a classic sound. Wilson’s use of a chime throughout adds to the delicate beauty of the number. Clement also sings a bouncy cover of John Denver’s ‘Sunshine on My Shoulders.’

These appealing offerings of the lighter side of jazz contrast well when Wilson and Clement along with alto saxophonist Tia Fuller, tenor saxophonist and clarinetist Jeff Lederer and bassist Ben Allison raise the temperature. Their take on Gary Bartz’s ‘Libra’ has passion and drive, harkening back to the Civil Rights era when jazz was often a music of protest. Indeed, Good Trouble takes its name from the enduring lesson of John Lewis. Raise your voice. Get involved. Get into good trouble.

The three-part suite situated in the middle of album concludes with Wilson’s salute to Lewis, a gospel-shuffle shouter with a fun stop-and-start. The beginning of the suite, ‘RBG,’ gives thanks to Ruth Bader Ginsburg through a kind of calypso of all things. At the end, the whole group chants, “Ruth Bader Ginsburg / Ruth Bader Ginsburg / follow her plea / serve your community” and they do so with gusto with Fuller good-naturedly chiding Wilson for his exuberant singing at the end.

Such a thing may seem trite these days, almost naïve. We are in an age of cynicism and mistrust. Yet hearing something like ‘RBG’ and the honesty with which it is played and sung has a sort of corrective quality. If we would stop endlessly carping at each other, channeling that energy instead to, I don’t know, “serve your community,” we would all probably feel better. Wilson’s message is hopeful, at the very least, and reassuring in its faith that someone will hear the song and act accordingly.

That motivation also animates an ambitious new work by pianist and composer Mike Holober and his Gotham Jazz Orchestra, This Rock We’re On: Imaginary Letters, also coming on June 14 on Palmetto. Dedicated to the urgent importance of environmental stewardship and the peril we face because of the lack of it, the two-CD recording is divided between lengthy orchestral pieces of melodic riffs, lyrical solos and gorgeous harmonic writing with chamber songs of imagined letters from notable figures such as the prescient writer Rachel Carson and photographer Ansel Adams.

Holober’s pieces run the gamut, from the lift of the opening ‘Lay of the Land,’ the cool of ‘Dirt Lover’s Almanac,’ the urgent seventies vibe of ‘Tower Pulse’ and the fusion of ‘Erosion.’ It’s good to hear music that is keeping the tradition of orchestral long-form jazz alive. In addition to Holober’s latest, there’s the Jihye Lee Orchestra’s Infinite Connections and the Christopher Zuar Orchestra’s Exuberance on which Holober appears as conductor.

This Rock We’re On: Imaginary Letters forgoes preachiness for thoughtfulness. It’s another call to block out the noise and get to the heart of an issue. The title track, which concludes the work, is from the perspective of a letter written by a young person. It starts, “this rock we’re on / the air we breathe / this is our home / be good to her please.” At the risk of getting political here, who can argue with this? This is music that is both profound in its depth—among the soloists featured are Chris Potter on tenor saxophone, John Patitucci on bass and Marvin Stamm on trumpet—and its message.

Music reaches when words often fail. Perhaps it is because music implies motion which is a prerequisite for action. There is a lot happening in jazz today. All you got to do is listen to the living music.