Art Pepper - Promise Kept: The Complete Artists House Recordings (Omnivore/Widow’s Taste)
Inadequacies, imagined or illusory, are the enemy of any artist. Fixate on what’s missing or perceived as faulty and one runs the real risk of relinquishing access to the beauty that’s manifest in unalloyed expression. Art Pepper masked his struggles with self-doubt in bouts of temerity and masochism. He was forever measuring himself against the false yardstick of his peers, particularly those who took a dim view of the numerous examples of self-sabotage that checkered his career. Promise Kept: The Complete Artists House Recordings makes for a convenient and compelling case study in that conflicted side of Pepper’s psyche while simultaneously delivering over six hours of the altoist in almost uniformly prime form.
Charles Gayle/ John Edwards/ Mark Sanders – Seasons Changing (Otoroku)
“When the building is still standing in the end, we’ve failed.”
Advancing years and eroding hyperbole have forced saxophonist Charles Gayle to revise his once (in)famous rejoinder. Now officially an octogenarian beset by the occasional ailments and infirmities the distinction can entail, the ear-scalding free jazz blowouts of his younger days are no longer the default setting. That shift from lion in autumn to one in winter is part of what makes Seasons Changing such an engaging and ultimately edifying listen. Gayle’s iconoclastic rep of old, curiously seasoned with equal dollops of artistic and religious dogma, could feel mesmerizing or off-putting depending on the audience. Here he’s forced to contend with and adapt to senior physiology that no longer guarantees marathon, altissimo tongues-speaking as God-given right.
Jay Anderson – Deepscape (Steeplechase)
The Sideman’s Curse: a condition when one’s docket remains full of gigs supporting others, perpetually precluding a turn in the driver’s seat. Jay Anderson is certainly afflicted, but he also wouldn’t take umbrage. Deepscape marks his 92nd(!) session for Steeplechase. Somewhat astonishingly, it’s the first as a leader for the 63-year old bassist. He’s racked up an incredible resume in the service others over the past forty years, anchoring the outfits of bandleaders ranging from Woody Herman and Lee Konitz to Frank Zappa and Tom Waits. His venerated tenure at the Danish label also means a deep bench of colleagues eager to answer the sideman call when placed in the service of an Anderson (ad)venture.
Dudu Pukwana, Han Bennink & Misha Mengelberg – Yi Yole (ICP/Corbett vs. Dempsey)
Apartheid ranks highly in the vast and unforgivable inventory of Twentieth-century crimes against humanity. Countless people suffered and died under its racialist yoke. Societal repercussions are still felt today. One of the few solaces extant is the art that arose out of and in direct response to its nearly half-century as official policy. Saxophonist Dudu Pukwana and a handful of his countrymen expatriated to Europe and in so doing encountered like-minded improvisers throughout the continent thirsty for collaboration. The creative cross-pollination that ensued created a wealth of projects and performances. Thankfully, some of those encounters took place in the presence of recording equipment and found places in posterity. Yi Yole is one such artifact teaming Pukwana with Dutch improvisers Han Bennink and Misha Mengelberg.
Rodrigo Amado & Chris Corsano – No Place to Fall (Astral Spirits)
Partnerships are plentiful in improvised music and always have been. The intimacy and immediacy of the art form practically demand it. First encounters often yield memorable results too, and there’s a historical contingent famous for contending that repeat encounters can only lead to diminishing returns. That familiarity and fecundity invariably breed predictability and stasis. The musical relationship between saxophonist Rodrigo Amado and drummer Chris Corsano preserved on No Place to Fall endures as incontrovertible evidence regarding the fallacy of this claim as an aphorism. There are certainly examples where it holds true and preexisting pairings revert to rote exchanges, but it’s a far cry from a hard and fast rule.
Thelma Gracen & Milli Vernon – The Best Voices That Time Forgot (Fresh Sound)
Tirelessly active in the increasingly thankless realm of classic jazz reissue stewardship, producer Jordi Pujol is deserving of both copious thanks for his efforts and no small amount of consternation at how he keeps at it. The Best Voices That Time Forgot embodies the latest in a long line of series proffered under his Fresh Sound banner. The mission is to mine the work of abandoned jazz singers of yore, aspiring talents who for whatever reasons failed to reach the professional heights of peers from their own era. The format is that of the two-fer, pairing vintage albums by singers who may or may not be stylistically similar. In the case of Thelma Gracen and Milli Vernon, names who fit the mantle of the forgotten without argument, the common ground is that of a combination of tiny label contracts and songbooks of standards.
Whit Dickey & Kirk Knuffke – Drone Dream (No Business)
Drone Dream isn’t Whit Dickey and Kirk Knuffke’s first dance together. The drummer and cornetist met under similar studio circumstances several years ago for a session released under the auspices of the Clean Feed label. This time the commercial conduit is the Lithuanian No Business imprint and it’s an equally apposite fit for the spontaneous investigations that are their parlance. The title of the earlier outing colorfully emphasized the duo’s shared skill in lacing segments of silence through their dialogue. The old musical adage arguing parity of importance between what is played and what isn’t echoes regularly in the give and take between their instruments.
Steven Herring – Introducing (Steeplechase)
Introducing is an intentional misnomer, at least in terms of title, as Steven Herring’s been a professional vocalist for most of his adult life. Up until recently, his purview was almost exclusively opera and classical. A creative partnership with Kirk Knuffke along with a guest spot on an album project by the cornetist where Herring plied his voice in song contexts as varied as Billy Strayhorn and Sun Ra helped expand that. It also solidified a long-gestating desire to place his pipes in the service of selections from the Great American Songbook, a desire realized through the contents of this disc.
Detail – Day Two (No Business)
Idiomatic allegiance in improvised music still holds a surprising amount of sway, at least when it comes to commercial concerns. Norwegian saxophonist Frode Gjerstad found out the costs of deviation firsthand with his early enterprise Detail, a multinational ensemble with a curtailed longevity that feels tragic with hindsight. Day Two documents an October 1982 studio date from relatively early in the band’s run. Keyboardist Eivin One Pedersen had cut ties due to creative differences leaving South African bassist Johnny Dyani and British free improv pioneer John Stevens to gel even closer with the fresh-faced Gjerstad in an intimately attuned unit. The saxophonist released the music on LP several years later, adding to a scattered, mostly cassette discography.