dusted

In a year once again diminished by the machinations of bloviating demagogues and rancorous religious death cults, music remains a reliable means of maintaining psychic solace. I’m keeping the preamble short this time and the count to a comfortable twenty-five capsules, although there are obviously many more deserving of mention. In a perfect world… 

It feels a little perverse putting this one at the top since Rollins isn’t reaping a dime from its release, but the revelatory nature of the music pretty much mandates a pole position. Six discs and nearly seven hours in near-studio quality sound of the saxophone colossus, Don Cherry, Bob Cranshaw and Billy Higgins turning jazz inside out and upside down. I’ve been thinking a Kickstarter campaign might be in order to assuage compromised consciences, with a sawbuck to going to Sonny from every person who’s guilty pulled the trigger on the box. Paging Sonny’s publicist to get the damn thing set up. 

One AACM doyen paying tribute to a dearly departed other. Also much more than that as seventy-five year old Mitchell and his crew ink a fresh page on jazz improvisation in the 21st century in real-time and without fix-it-in-the-mix recourse. Colleagues Tomeka Reid, Junius Paul and Mike Reed manage a collective hat trick of deference to and active engagement with their captain in front of a fortunate Chicago club audience. The fact that it’s on the revered Nessa imprint speaks volumes too.  

Another AACM-associated dignitary leading his long-standing Zooid ensemble in what looks likely to be their last hurrah on record. Threadgill’s already moved on to the mapping of fresh musical territory so this time-capsuled set recorded in December of last year is already antiquated in a sense. It’s math jazz that doesn’t make cranium ache and instead encourages the mind to marvel at what a working group of crack improvisers is capable of under the auspices of a master. 

McPhee’s had an enviably assiduous year as usual with a number of releases that could’ve made this particular grade. My nod goes to this seven-disc box as it presents a seven year-spanning trove of recordings from one of his most protean partnerships. Even with two discs containing previously released material the value here is stellar from the obvious musical fireworks to the accompanying notes which find the pair laconically interviewing each other to both comedic and heartfelt effect.

Wadada’s pretty much a lock for my year end considerations in one musical guise or another. This duo set came out late in the year and is the end product of nearly three decades of the principals playing in a multitude of contexts together. Instrumental virtuosity gives way to deep, spontaneous communication and a blurring of composition and improvisation into an all-encompassing gestalt. Definitely worth the wait it took the two to get it all down on record.

Another year, another considerable page count of the calendar spent on the road by the indefatigable Herr Brötz bringing his brand of free jazz to the corners of the globe. The solo side of his catalog grew by a few with this German date a standout not so much for what he played or how he played it, but rather for the precedent-setting clarity by which it was all captured. Every gradation and texture of his reed ministrations is audible from the rarified murmuring caress to more commonplace caterwauling howl.

Cornetist Stephen Haynes is an easy musician to offer encomiums. His abiding respect for his many peers and those who have come prior is in daily evidence and the collaborative manner in which he approaches his projects is exemplary. In these respects, this set of composition-grounded ensemble music influenced by the bass register fantasias of deceased mentor Bill Dixon is right in line with quality measures of his past work. 

As with its American counterpart Criss Cross, Steeplechase is an exemplar in building and sustaining a roster. Haunted Heart, tenorist Stephen Riley’s set of intimate and often ethereal duets with pianist Peter Zak, topped their release cache to these ears. But strong discs by cornetist Kirk Knuffke in the company of Jamie Saft and Hamid Drake (Little Cross) and Danish guitarist Pierre Dørge, also with Knuffke and Drake along with regular New Jungle Orchestra bassist Thommy Andersson (Blui) took the label out of its usual stylistic comfort zone of the Great American Songbook.

Another slightly suspect entry given the differing legal strata between Europe and the States when it comes to copyright decorum, but for my money there’s no one else out there doing to justice to the music in question like the Fresh Sound label. Gil Melle’s The Blue Note Years, 1952-1956 does now a several years out-of-print package one better by adding a 1957 air shot from the Café Bohemia by the forward-thinking Melle’s quartet. Trumpeter Don Ellis’ How Time Passes + New Ideas + Jazz Jamboree 1962 and altoist Lenny Hambro’s Complete Sessions 1953-1957 are close runner-ups.

The CAM Jazz campaign to reissue remastered editions of Black Saint and Soul Note catalog releases in box set form continues apace with several that filled crucial gaps in my collection. Prior to procuring the Ran Blake set, my only exposure to that period of the eclectic pianist’s career was the pivotal Short Life of Barbara Monk. Six more discs, two solo and four duets, fill out the picture beautifully. Similarly, the Andrew Hill set presents a pair of gripping solo recitals alongside small-group sessions. Both are essential. 

Eskelin and horn uninterrupted and in front of an audience for an hour’s worth of indispensable improvisation.  It’s also a welcome reunion of artist with label, the Swiss imprint having served as the tenorist’s principal commercial outlet during the aughts. Eskelin mostly avoids extended techniques, preferring instead to plumb the more familiar sonorities his instrument without sounding the least bit orthodox. A quick word of gratitude to hatOLOGY also for bringing both Anthony Braxton’s, Santa Cruz 1992 and Cecil Taylor’s Garden back into circulation with remastered 2-disc sets. 

LA-based pianist Castro is the common denominator in the chronology of sessions collected on this six-disc box, but it’s no slight to suggest that the historical import of the contexts overshadows his journeyman competency the keys. Affluent almost beyond measure through his romantic connection to heiress Doris Duke, Castro faced his share of opprobrium from those who considered dues-paying and scuffling essential parts of the jazz life. He also attracted jazz royalty like Stan Getz, Buddy Collette and Zoot Sims for the wealth of jam sessions collected here. 

Here’s one I heard about years ago and gave up hope of hearing after a cursory safari yielded scratch in the way of viable options for obtainment. Out of sight, out of mind as it were. Ware, pianist Cooper-Moore (then Gene Ashton) and drummer Marc Edwards, riffing tangentially on Cecil Taylor’s classic Montmarte trio and bringing classic free jazz into a Seventies-saturated realm. AUM’s acquisition of clearance from the Swiss Hat label also allowed for the issuance of an entire disc’s worth of additional material. Fire music at its most flammable. 

Like many of his peers, Larry Ochs harbors a deep read on the history of improvised music. His work with ROVA regularly mines the horological repository with grand scale works by the masters commissioned for reinterpretations on a regular basis. The Fictive Five targets a particularly conspicuous scope: The New York Contemporary Five, recast as a 21st century ensemble of younger players, among them Nate Wooley, Pascal Niggenkemper and Harris Eisenstadt, all steeped in the aesthetics of free improv and free jazz. 

Continuing a reliable release schedule of discs through his Pine Eagle imprint, Oregon based tenorist Rich Halley maintains a self-contained cottage industry. Two came down the Portland pike in 2015, Creating Structure and Eleven. As with earlier entries in the catalog each highlights the industrious activities of his working quartet with trombonist Michael Vlatkovich, bassist Clyde Reed and son Carson on drums. The first celebrates the free improvisation end of the band’s playbook while the second balances a suite with eight more of the saxophonist’s improv-ready compositions. 

The catalogs of Carter and Bradford got a boost this year with the release of two archival concert projects and a welcome reissue of their 1970 tandem effort for Flying Dutchman, Self Determination Music. The latter album, returned to circulation by the Ace Records offshoot BGP, features the pair in an early quintet setting with two basses. No U-Turn on the French Dark Tree imprint preserves a Pasadena concert hit from five years later and contains some epic work from Carter on soprano. Echoes From Rudolph’s on the Lithuanian No Business label uncovers a trove of prime Carter trio material from ’76-’77. Terrific sounds all around. 

After a hiatus of several years two improvised music imprints are back with welcome late-in-the-year releases. Forgoing the past practice of a box set format for tour documentation (2006, 2008 & 2010), Trio X (Joe McPhee, Dominic Duval and Jay Rosen) put out four stops from their 2012 peregrinations in single disc editions on CIMPoL. The fidelity is in the usual unvarnished form favored by producer Bob Rusch leaving the music free from interference. Too Marvelous for Words, a five-disc set compiling solo performances by pianist Sal Mosca from 1981 flipped the “on-switch” for renewed Cadence Jazz activity. I’m only a fraction into the releases, but feel secure in including them there. 

Arguably the Buddy Rich of the bongos, Jack Costanzo leveraged speed and chops on the skins with a penchant for populist bombast. He also moonlit as a “bongo teacher to the stars” with Marlon Brando, Rita Moreno and Tony Curtis all benefiting from his tutelage. Career retrospectives have been scarce over the years, making this 25-track Jazzman compilation an affordable one-stop shop with a skew toward his dance-oriented Fifties oeuvre. Some of the arrangements admittedly border on bachelor pad pap, but Costanzo’s consistently propulsive beats make it a terrific party disc. 

Rich vs. Krupa (or even Rich vs. Roach), this ain’t. Instead, it’s the antithesis of combative bombast and ego-stoked one-upsmanship. Drake and Zerang go at it for the better part of three quarters of an hour, building a loose, nuclear narrative from their respective corners that’s very nearly the epitome of percussive compatibility and creative comportment. Careening press rolls, funk-stamped second line syncopations, tom tom tattoos and a catalog of other rhythmic dialogue all mustered in the service of celebrating the titular drum doyen. I defy anyone with ears and legs to resist dancing along. 

Faced with but a fraction of the name recognition accorded other Sixties house rhythm sections like the Wrecking Crew and the Funk Brothers, The Fame Gang are equally important in my personal soul cosmology. This timely Ace comp runs down 25 of their (mostly instrumental) studio sides and while there are admittedly a couple clunkers (“Sax Appeal” and “Turn My Chicken Loose”, I’m lookin’ at you) the bulk more than adequately bring the funk. 

Companion compendium to last year’s Strings, this 17-track survey plunders record collector John Ward’s library of 78s for a globe-spanning aural itinerary shaped around the common theme described by its title. Far-flung locales in Europe, Africa and Asia yield an eclectic cast of locals plying their instruments in public spaces not for posterity, but for pure enjoyment. The effusive energy and audible élan regularly on display moves the project out of the musty museum associations and into the populist domain of party music.

Purveyor of the “high lonesome sound” and life-long resident of Kentucky hill country, Roscoe Holcomb was a bit of a late-bloomer on the folk revival circuit so it seems somewhat poetic that his live concert debut on disc is similarly dilatory. Recorded in front of receptive audience, Holcomb ranges freely, if briefly, over a songbook steeped in the melancholic grandeur of his birthplace and on a closing number of duets with fellow mountain music scholar Jean Ritchie.

Several years in the offing, here’s a second salvo from a “lost” Senegalese club band under the helm of guitarist Pape Seck that sadly never cut a formal album. It’s a bittersweet affair given that it and the earlier volume are all that remains on record of the group’s initial work, although the success of the project has reportedly led to a reunion and tour. This set centers attention on vocalist Bassirou Sarr with five out of seven cuts featuring his by turns soaring and soul-indebted singing atop a sonorous blend of Afro-Cuban, funk and psychedelic-fringed jams. 

The Robert Quine repository from which these tapes originate isn’t virgin territory, having been plundered repeatedly over the years. But this lavish four-disc set does mark their most comprehensive presentation in the best fidelity to date. Sour-pussed Lou sounds unusually sweet throughout and the distortion-kissed guitar improvisations deliver consistent crunch alongside blunt functionality of Moe Tucker’s cans. Perhaps the most extreme litmus, a nearly 37-minute trance-sprawl rendition of “Sister Ray” even manages to sustain interest.  

The last couple of years I’ve closed out with a Criterion Blu-ray release with some musical component to recommend it. Satyajit Ray’s Apu Trilogy doesn’t require the conceit. The visuals alone encompassing the three films are worth endless encomiums, not to mention the deeply humanist arc that connects them. Ray conscripted Ravi Shankar to compose for the first, Panther Pachali and the sitarist would go on to record an album containing improvisations on film theme for World Pacific in the company of jazz musicians. Ray handled the subsequent two himself and while the results aren’t on par with his prestigious predecessor they’re still well worth hearing.

Derek Taylor