Festival Report

The Guelph Jazz Festival
By Ken Waxman

A spectre was haunting the 2012 Guelph Jazz Festival (GJF), but it was a benign spectre: the ghost of John Coltrane. The influence of Coltrane, who died in 1967, was honored in direct and indirect ways throughout the five days of the festival which takes places annually in this mid-sized college town, 100 kilometres west of Toronto.

This year’s edition (September 5 to 9), featured two live performances of Ascension, Coltrane’s free jazz masterwork from 1965, one with the original instrumentation by an 11-piece Toronto ensemble at the local arts centre; the other on the main stage of the soft-seated River Run Centre concert hall featured the Bay-area ROVA saxophone’s quartet reimaging of the work, scored for 12 musicians adding strings and electronics to the basic ensemble.

Coltrane’s legacy was also apparent in the improvising of Reggie Workman, bassist in one version of Trane`s quartet, with the Brew trio with kotoist Miya Masaoka and percussionist Gerry Hemingway, as well as in the impassioned playing of alto saxophonist Darius Jones, whose duo with pianist Matthew Shipp split the bill with Brew during an afternoon concert in the River Run`s smaller concert hall. Coltrane’s commend of the saxophone was not only recalled in the wide ranging work of many other reedists present, including a trio of saxophonists in the jazz-jive-R&B Shuffle Demons band, one of the high points of the GJF’s 12 hours of free outdoor concerts in a large tent in front of Guelph City Hall, but in a more profound fashion by the incisive tenor soloing by Peter Brötzmann and Larry Ochs. Those two gigs were part of the more than six dozen other performances during the GJF’s third annual dusk-to-dawn Nuit Blanche extravaganza. The ghostly forms visible during Nuit Blanche, were those of festival goers moving at interval s among sites throughout the city ranging from art galleries, yoga studios to parks attending as many shows as possible.

True to the shape of the composition, Rova’s Electric Ascension – cornetist Rob Mazurek; saxophonists Larry Ochs, Jon Raskin, Steve Adams and Bruce Ackley; violinists Carla Kihlstedt and Jenny Scheinman; guitarist Nels Cline; Fred Frith on electric bass; drummers Hamid Drake; Ikue Mori and Chris Brown on electronics – used prompts and hand signals to pilot Trane’s amorphous score. With Drake’s backbeat plus Brown’s and Mori’s processed oscillations and juddering vibrations constant presences, the performance frequently was transported from dense tremolo crescendos for all, to measured solos, duos and trios. An impassioned, double-time alto solo for instance would be paired with opaque guitar distortion and sluicing electric bass runs; or a phrase would toggle between Mazurek’s looped triplets and Raskin’s stretched tongue stops; or unison guitar and violin plinking would presage a cacophonous sound-shard explosion

Frith’s characteristically witty guitar playing was better exposed during a Nuit Blanche show at the intimate Guelph Youth Music Centre (GYMC). Instrument resting on his knees, bare feet manipulating effects pedals, Frith pummeled and bowed his strings more often than he strummed them; showed drum stick between strings and the neck and used an e-bow to create chiming vibrating while picking up snatches of local radio programs. Although processing as well, Masaoka was similarly restrained at the Brew set, relying instead on her koto command able to replicate anything from harp-like glissandi to isolated guitar picking on her multi-string instrument; she even used chop sticks on the bridge for different effects. Committed to three-way dialogue, Hemingway smacked, rotated, patted and tapped his drums and cymbals. Meanwhile Workman maintained pulsating, jazz-defining bass lines when he wasn’t rubbing his strings or bowing and stroking them in one fluid motion. At one point he achieved a rhythmic effect knee-slapping and foot-banging.

Rhythmic beats were present in abundance during a well-attended church-basement set by Norway’s Huntsville – guitarist/banjoist Ivar Grydeland, electric bassist Tonny Kluften and percussionist Ingar Zach – joined by Cline and drummer Glenn Kotche. Although there were sequences during which Kluften’s pedal point joined Grydeland, jangling guitar runs or bowed banjo twangs plus Zach’s contrapuntal tap, wiggle and pops on miscellaneous percussion gave new impetus to the buoyant folk-like melodies the trio uniquely reconstruction. Cline and Kotche may have spent too much time in rock bands. Flashy and busy in the guitarist’s case or overwhelming percussive in the drummer’s, the two exacerbated a tendency to leadenness only lessened when Kotche withdrew for Zach’s beat manipulation and Cline concentrated on vibrating a shruti box.

Simple, folk-like melodies were also prominent during a morning recital at the (GYMC) by Scheinman and pianist Myra Melford. Melford frequently also squeezed accordion-like tremolos from a harmonium as Scheinman used glissandi friction and flying spiccatto to build up dramatic sequences from what sometime threatened to turn into a hoedown. But the detours away from fiddle tunes with accompaniment towards compositions that allowed the pianist to exhibit spiky intonation and a slippery blues time sense were more notable. Melford’s 12-bar command also appeared 24 hours later in the same location as her encore following a rapturously received solo piano showcased was a pumped-up version of honky-tonk. Her skill digging into blues chord progressions was as obvious as her playing of a series of emotional miniatures she previewed, composed to reflect a series of artist’s sketches. Using assertive elbow pushes on the keyboard plus jocular stops and variously weighted climaxes, she composed a series of interludes that threatened to fragment into dissonance but never did.

Another pianist skillful in exhibiting the broad strokes of dissonance is Shipp. His recourse to glistening arpeggio runs, processional chording, kinetic patterning and waves of impressionistic color was notable in itself. Evolving in parallel fashion to Jones’ reed invention was another highlight. With his all-encompassing and fluid blowing approaching the intensity of late Coltrane, Jones often compressed distended cries and altissimo screams into aggressive almost impenetrable glossolalia; elsewhere he built solos out of key percussion, distended slurps and reed bites or churned so many splintered runs that Shipp relied on foot pedal pressure to meet him.

Ochs and Brötzmann were two other extenders of Trane’s spirit, the former in a duo with Drake in a yoga studio and the latter with vibraphonist Jason Adasiewicz at the (GYMC). Weaving his tenor or soprano saxophone above the packed crowd seated on the floor, Ochs mixed moderato and agitated tones as he slid from harsh reflux to shofar-like bays, swallowed breaths, vocalized altissimo riffs or nephritic cries. Connecting these disjointed vibrations, Drake used windmill-like patterning as he rapped on a wood block, strokes drum tops and cymbals with brushes and gauged exactly when to clobber his bass drum for maximum effect. If Ochs/Drake recalled Trane’s celebrated duets with Rashied Ali, then Brötzmann, who created an unparalleled Euroimprov variant around the time Ascension was recorded, boisterously pushed each one of its four horns to its limits backed only by an instrument he professed to dislike. Favoring four mallets, vibraphonist Jason Adasiewicz held his own however emphasizing his instrument’s chordal and percussive qualities. With marionette-like jerks, sometime balancing on one foot, the vibist rang out enough polyphonic chords or hard-hitting single notes to match Brötzmann, whether he was producing blues-based multiphonics from his alto, angled smears from his tárogató or stacking intense blasts ridden with even tougher split-tone shrieks from his tenor.

Like Coltrane or nearly every one of the featured performers at the 2012 festival, Brötzmann balanced absolute sound experimentation with sonic story telling. His breath-taking textural display helped pinpoint why the GJF has become a major international festival. Participants are now anxiously awaiting 2013’s edition to find out what the GJF’s significant 20th anniversary edition will highlight.

--For New York City Jazz Record October 2012

October 7, 2012

Lotte Anker/Sylvie Courvoisier/Ikue Mori

Alien Huddle
Intakt CD 144

Lotte Anker/Craig Taborn/Gerald Cleaver

Live at the Loft

ILK 148 CD

Germinating notable improvised music is more a function of intellect and emotion than gender, race or geography – as these sessions led by Danish reedist Lotte Anker demonstrate. Live at the Loft, recorded in Köln, finds her playing with pianist Craig Taborn and drummer Gerald Cleaver, both American and male. Alien Huddle on the other hand, was recorded in New York, and features the Dane in the company of two other non-Americans or aliens: Swiss-born pianist Sylvie Courvoisier and Japanese-born electronics-manipulator Ikue Mori, both of whom, like Anker, are female.

Itemizing these differences adds up to approximately nothing, since each of these stimulating dates takes a different path to notoriety. Unfolding through 11 shorter improvisations – the lengthiest is a shade over 5½ minutes – the three women trace, stroke and caress the multiple textures that results from the properties of each instrument. Sonic exposure is more varied as well, since Anker plays her soprano, alto and tenor saxophones; Mori relies on a panoply of electronic settings, loops and add-ons; and Courvoisier’s hands are as often inside her piano as playing on it.

Meanwhile Live at the Loft is a Free Jazz session which pinpoints the cohesive talents of the trio members, who have been playing together as a group on-and-off since 2003. Individually, each of the tracks is longer than any on the other CD, with the two most impressive clocking in at slightly longer than 20 and more than 26½ minutes respectively.

The later, “Magic Carpet” aptly demonstrates this long-standing aggregation’s sonic sensitivity. There’s no lead instrument, musical narrative is developed by each player in turn, but full cohesion is the result of interaction. Early on Anker’s barely-there adagio tones are strengthened by low-frequency runs and soundboard echoes from Taborn plus minimalist drum rumbles from Cleaver. When the reedist finally unleashes long-lined andante trills, the pianist – whose playing throughout is more upfront than Courvoisier’s on Alien Huddle – turns his wobbly comping to steady, two-handed chording, decorating with a rolling carpet of chromatic notes Anker’s bravura breaths and theme restatements. Summing up with what in other circumstances would be the shout chorus, the pianist octave jumps into near-honky-tonk runs and the drummer concludes with spectacular rolls, rim shots and ratamacues.

Switching from the alto of the former track to tenor saxophone on “Real Solid”, Anker’s strategy emphasizes circles of guttural notes and glottal punctuation. Broad, fortissimo split tones from the saxophonist meld with galloping, repetitive note clusters from pianist, sometimes emphasizing similar tremolo note patterns simultaneously in either hand. While Cleaver’s sensitive pops, rebounds and flams echo in the background, Anker and Taborn concentrate on adding tension into the performance, which only dissipates when her solipsistic tongue pressures are subsumed by a cross-sticking summation from the drummer.

Meandering – in a contradictory though positive fashion – the sounds on Alien Huddle ripple, wiggle and slither, when compared to Live at the Loft’s direct exposition. Discordant at points, the only time the three reach full cry is on the appropriately titled “Ostrich War”. On tenor, Anker overblows as if she was in rehearsal for a revival of the Machine Gun session, embellishing her solos with guttural honks, double-tongued runs and animalistic cries. Meantime Courvoisier plinks and plunks on her piano strings and Mori, who began her musical career in the1970s as drummer of the No Wave band DNA, directs her instrument’s buzzing oscillations and blurry signal processing towards a percussive space. With shaking cymbals vibrating on the piano’s internal strings for additional opaqueness, the piece’s climax involving echoing Woody Woodpecker-like cries from the saxophonist.

Despite that uncharacteristic noise detonation, most of the rest of the CD revolves around low-frequency keyboard fantasia, choked sighs and peeps from the saxophones and crackles, growls, pulses and loops from the electronics.

Among the knob-twisting and patching on a track like “Robins Quarrel” – a fowl battle that’s definitely more restrained than the ostriches’ conflict – irregular vibrations from Mori’s watery signal processing face off with rumbles and what appears to be a discordant reorganization of “Tea for Two” from the pianist. “Woodpecker Peeps” on the other hand doesn’t directly relate to the rat-tat-tats of that bird, but instead suggest quacking discord pulled from Mori’s programs.

Anker gets her chance to exhibit fortissimo multiphonics on “Dancing Rooster Comp” – continuing the aviary references – as she modulates from coloratura vibrato up to altissimo screams. All the while the other two use stopped and strummed piano innards or modulated flanged whooshes to provide the rhythmic bottom.

If one track provides summation of the trio’s interaction, it’s “Blackbird” which alternates quiet and noise. The former encompasses slapped piano keys, narrowed reed timbres and ring modulator-like whooshes and clangs. Spluttering and whistling electronic timbres, heavy syncopated piano chords and strident soprano sax squeals characterize the opposite mood.

Although it may merely be a woman’s prerogative to change her mind, anyone confronted by the talents of Anker and company on both discs can be forgiven for being indecisive as to which to choose.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Alien: 1. Morning Dove 2. Woodpecker Peeks 3. Sparkling Sparrows 4. Night Owl 5. Robins Quarrel 6. Dancing Rooster Comp 7. Whistling Swan 8. Crow and Raven 9. Blackbird 10. Ostrich War 11.Great White Heron

Personnel: Alien: Lotte Anker (soprano, alto and tenor saxophones); Sylvie Courvoisier (piano) and Ikue Mori (electronics)

Track Listing: Live: 1. Magic Carpet 2. Real Solid 3. Berber

Personnel: Live: Lotte Anker (alto and tenor saxophones); Craig Taborn (piano) and Gerald Cleaver (drums)

May 20, 2009

Lotte Anker/Craig Taborn/Gerald Cleaver

Live at the Loft
ILK 148 CD

Lotte Anker/Sylvie Courvoisier/Ikue MoriV

Alien Huddle

Intakt CD 144

Germinating notable improvised music is more a function of intellect and emotion than gender, race or geography – as these sessions led by Danish reedist Lotte Anker demonstrate. Live at the Loft, recorded in Köln, finds her playing with pianist Craig Taborn and drummer Gerald Cleaver, both American and male. Alien Huddle on the other hand, was recorded in New York, and features the Dane in the company of two other non-Americans or aliens: Swiss-born pianist Sylvie Courvoisier and Japanese-born electronics-manipulator Ikue Mori, both of whom, like Anker, are female.

Itemizing these differences adds up to approximately nothing, since each of these stimulating dates takes a different path to notoriety. Unfolding through 11 shorter improvisations – the lengthiest is a shade over 5½ minutes – the three women trace, stroke and caress the multiple textures that results from the properties of each instrument. Sonic exposure is more varied as well, since Anker plays her soprano, alto and tenor saxophones; Mori relies on a panoply of electronic settings, loops and add-ons; and Courvoisier’s hands are as often inside her piano as playing on it.

Meanwhile Live at the Loft is a Free Jazz session which pinpoints the cohesive talents of the trio members, who have been playing together as a group on-and-off since 2003. Individually, each of the tracks is longer than any on the other CD, with the two most impressive clocking in at slightly longer than 20 and more than 26½ minutes respectively.

The later, “Magic Carpet” aptly demonstrates this long-standing aggregation’s sonic sensitivity. There’s no lead instrument, musical narrative is developed by each player in turn, but full cohesion is the result of interaction. Early on Anker’s barely-there adagio tones are strengthened by low-frequency runs and soundboard echoes from Taborn plus minimalist drum rumbles from Cleaver. When the reedist finally unleashes long-lined andante trills, the pianist – whose playing throughout is more upfront than Courvoisier’s on Alien Huddle – turns his wobbly comping to steady, two-handed chording, decorating with a rolling carpet of chromatic notes Anker’s bravura breaths and theme restatements. Summing up with what in other circumstances would be the shout chorus, the pianist octave jumps into near-honky-tonk runs and the drummer concludes with spectacular rolls, rim shots and ratamacues.

Switching from the alto of the former track to tenor saxophone on “Real Solid”, Anker’s strategy emphasizes circles of guttural notes and glottal punctuation. Broad, fortissimo split tones from the saxophonist meld with galloping, repetitive note clusters from pianist, sometimes emphasizing similar tremolo note patterns simultaneously in either hand. While Cleaver’s sensitive pops, rebounds and flams echo in the background, Anker and Taborn concentrate on adding tension into the performance, which only dissipates when her solipsistic tongue pressures are subsumed by a cross-sticking summation from the drummer.

Meandering – in a contradictory though positive fashion – the sounds on Alien Huddle ripple, wiggle and slither, when compared to Live at the Loft’s direct exposition. Discordant at points, the only time the three reach full cry is on the appropriately titled “Ostrich War”. On tenor, Anker overblows as if she was in rehearsal for a revival of the Machine Gun session, embellishing her solos with guttural honks, double-tongued runs and animalistic cries. Meantime Courvoisier plinks and plunks on her piano strings and Mori, who began her musical career in the1970s as drummer of the No Wave band DNA, directs her instrument’s buzzing oscillations and blurry signal processing towards a percussive space. With shaking cymbals vibrating on the piano’s internal strings for additional opaqueness, the piece’s climax involving echoing Woody Woodpecker-like cries from the saxophonist.

Despite that uncharacteristic noise detonation, most of the rest of the CD revolves around low-frequency keyboard fantasia, choked sighs and peeps from the saxophones and crackles, growls, pulses and loops from the electronics.

Among the knob-twisting and patching on a track like “Robins Quarrel” – a fowl battle that’s definitely more restrained than the ostriches’ conflict – irregular vibrations from Mori’s watery signal processing face off with rumbles and what appears to be a discordant reorganization of “Tea for Two” from the pianist. “Woodpecker Peeps” on the other hand doesn’t directly relate to the rat-tat-tats of that bird, but instead suggest quacking discord pulled from Mori’s programs.

Anker gets her chance to exhibit fortissimo multiphonics on “Dancing Rooster Comp” – continuing the aviary references – as she modulates from coloratura vibrato up to altissimo screams. All the while the other two use stopped and strummed piano innards or modulated flanged whooshes to provide the rhythmic bottom.

If one track provides summation of the trio’s interaction, it’s “Blackbird” which alternates quiet and noise. The former encompasses slapped piano keys, narrowed reed timbres and ring modulator-like whooshes and clangs. Spluttering and whistling electronic timbres, heavy syncopated piano chords and strident soprano sax squeals characterize the opposite mood.

Although it may merely be a woman’s prerogative to change her mind, anyone confronted by the talents of Anker and company on both discs can be forgiven for being indecisive as to which to choose.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Alien: 1. Morning Dove 2. Woodpecker Peeks 3. Sparkling Sparrows 4. Night Owl 5. Robins Quarrel 6. Dancing Rooster Comp 7. Whistling Swan 8. Crow and Raven 9. Blackbird 10. Ostrich War 11.Great White Heron

Personnel: Alien: Lotte Anker (soprano, alto and tenor saxophones); Sylvie Courvoisier (piano) and Ikue Mori (electronics)

Track Listing: Live: 1. Magic Carpet 2. Real Solid 3. Berber

Personnel: Live: Lotte Anker (alto and tenor saxophones); Craig Taborn (piano) and Gerald Cleaver (drums)

May 20, 2009

Maybe Monday

Unsquare
Intakt CD 132

Expanding the long-running Maybe Monday (MM) trio to seven musicians – most of whom manipulate electronics as well as acoustic instruments – adds an additional layer of polyphony to the proceedings, creating distinct and unique dimensions. Still, the five instant compositions here are only memorably realized because the septet members are canny enough to place waveform pulsation into an already established context.

Anchor for these tracks is the initial trio, which has been together since 1997. Voltage expression was organically introduced to MM before this CD, due to the electric guitar adaptations from Fred Frith plus the electronics linked to Miya Masaoka’s 25-string koto. Although sopranino and tenor saxophonist Larry Ochs is the only acoustic hold-out, he has demonstrated his familiarity with electronic interface in his past orchestral works and often as a veteran member of the ROVA saxophone quartet.

Recorded in New York, since MM member Masaoka now lives there – Frith and Ochs are still in the Bay area – Unsquare’s guests impart a mixed East-West sensibility to their improvisations. Transplanted westerner fiddler Carla Kihlstedt, at points replicates the role cellist Joan Jeanrenaud filled in an earlier MM session – adding traditional string harmonies when her instrument is paired with the guitar and koto. Elsewhere however wave-form add-ons create the sort of spiccato runs and multiphonics that associate her instrument’s subsequent output with the pitch mutation and careening tones that are emanating from New Yorker Zeena Parkins’ electric harp and electronics.

Concentrating on her laptop and samples, fellow Manhattanite Ikue Mori – who fulfills equivalent roles in bands led by saxophonist John Zorn and pianist Sylvie Courvoisier – is firmly wedded to the transformative impulses created by her machines. It’s a compliment to the others’ instrumental versatility however that her electronic triggered flutters and drones often can’t be distinguished from the mutated electro-acoustic timbres of the other players.

Completing the bi-coastal interaction, is another easterner, percussionist Gerry Hemingway, whose comfort level with patches and signals has been expressed in other sessions involving synthesizer players such as Earl Howard and Thomas Lehn. Irregular thumps and splattering ruffs peeping through the humming and clicking drones on this session sporadically announce the percussionist’s presence. Eschewing time keeping and flashy solos, Hemingway busies himself with moving the proceedings forward using contrasting pulses or moderated rhythmic suggestions.

Layered and focused intonation appears most intricately and extensively on “Unturned”, which initially seems to cluster every electronic whoosh and flanged oscillation into one extended piercing chord. Luckily, soon afterwards, the miasma dispels enough to expose diaphragm-vibrating reed timbres and chromatic slack-key guitar runs, plus abraded tones that sound as if they’re produced by scuffling a collection of scrub brushes against the massed strings.

As the triggered pulsations retreat, Ochs introduces high-pitched split tones, Frith trebly, single-string snaps and Masaoka gentling runs. Cat-gut heft is added to the guitar-koto duet when Kihlstedt appends flowing fiddle harmonies. Meantime, Masaoka’s attempts to replicate the violinist’s single-string action is detoured by strident canine-like splutters from the electronics, with tuning static and just-out-of-earshot radio voices further interjecting unexpected timbres. Shoring up the koto’s output, Hemingway adds ruffs, bounces and pops from his kit, that are then checked-mated by triggered circuitry that eventually strips out their human-created textures and transforming them into further percussive impulses. Plugged in as well, one of the string players – perhaps Masaoka – bonds these signals with watery echoes that mirror similar timbres on “G”, the introductory track. A concluding postlude reintroduces fluttering electronic wave forms. But these oscillator-like hums soon take on the properties of low-frequency electric piano-like pulsations, music-box-like tinkling and machine-driven splutters.

Other tracks emphasize reed multiphonics, pressured guitar frails, plus fungible contrapuntal textures among the strings. For the duration of the CD, particular resonances lock into appropriate places in the performances. Overall however, the shifting spatial arrangement necessitated by the introduction of more instrumental sound patches suggests an uncompleted gelling process, and that MM’s definite sound is still in flux.

Still an expanded MM is an interesting departure for the group. Metaphorically as well, this CD demonstrates how varied note clusters and pulses from three established and four newly introduced players can merged in such a way that the result is more than un-square – more like a hip circle. Or as the saxophonist phrases it: “way cool music”.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. G 2. Nitrogen 3. Saptharishi Mandalam 4. Septentrion 5.Unturned

Personnel: Larry Ochs (tenor and sopranino saxophones); Fred Frith (guitar); Miya Masaoka (25-string koto and electronics); Carla Kihlstedt (electric and acoustic violins); Zeena Parkins (electric harp and electronics); Gerry Hemingway (drums, percussion and voice) and Ikue Mori (electronics)

September 13, 2008

ROVA:ORKESTROVA

Electric Ascension
Atavistic ALP159CD

Giving the symbolic finger to the museum-quality preservationists who make up most of jazz repertory companies, Rova, the Bay Area sax quartet, has audaciously created its own version of “Ascension”, John Coltrane’s seminal work from 1965. Then as further nose-thumbing to the crowd that prefers polite Duke Ellington or Miles Davis-Gil Evans style recreations, the band plus eight helpmates, has conflated the piece still further into a noise and electronic extravaganza.

What’s more, this is the second time the Rova crew has honored “Ascension”. In 1995, adding a rhythm section and additional stellar soloists such as trumpeter Raphe Malik and the late tenor saxophonist Glenn Spearman, the band created a lengthy acoustic version of Trane’s original suite. Still convinced that “Ascension” is a master work that deserves to be played even more often, Rova members Larry Ochs and Jon Raskin decided on another go round, radically changing the instrumentation without losing the composition’s essence.

Nonetheless, nay-sayers may wonder why another run at the piece is necessary. No one seems to question the seemingly endless re-recordings of Beethoven symphonies and other classics of so called serious music. Then when it comes to jazz, recording more of Ellington’s, Monk’s Mingus’ or Goodman’s most popular compositions doesn’t seem to bother anyone either. In terms of Coltrane however, while different versions of “Giant Steps” and “Equinox” are de rigueur for many sax men, “Ascension” still frightens.

After all the recording was the only time Trane surrounded himself with a large group of younger Free Jazz improvisers and it signaled for the hard-bop sentimentalists that the John Coltrane of “My Favorite Things” and the BALLADS LP had changed forever.

As unable to remain complacent in its achievements as Coltrane was in his, the four members of Rova – soprano saxophonist Bruce Ackley, alto saxophonist Steve Adams, tenor saxophonist Ochs and baritone saxophonist Raskin – have never shied away from a challenge and they meet this one with skill and equanimity. Replacing Coltrane’s ensemble of five saxes, two trumpets, piano, two basses and drums are Rova, Tin Hat Trio member Carla Kihlstedt on violin and effects; Jenny Scheinman on violin, Wilco and Vinny Golia associate Nels Cline on guitar; Fred Frith, who has worked with Ochs on many projects as a guitarist, on electric bass; and the Bay Area’s paramount Free Jazz drummer Don Robinson, a longtime associate of Spearman. Additional rhythm and noise comes from New Yorker Ikue Mori on drum machines and sampler, Japanese-based electro-acoustian Otomo Yoshihide on turntables and electronics and Chris Brown, Ochs’ associate in the band Room, with electronics.

So what’s the result? Well for a start, Robinson’s offbeat patterning and percussion exploration is as important – perhaps even more important – for this “Ascension” as Elvin Jones’ drumming was for the original. Not a polyrhythmist like Jones, he nonetheless serves as this creation’s heart beat. As distorted echoes from the electronics mix with multiphonic vibratos from the strings and power shifting from the saxophones, it’s Robinson’s accented bounces, ruffs and rebounds that serve as bonding glue.

Another standout is Raskin. With many of the sax passages and solos constituted in screaming altissimo here, his basement tones maintain their individuality, and there’s even a point midway through, when his tremolo snorts mix it up with the rough snickering of Yoshihide’s pulsating sine waves to stretch the sound development. It sort of makes you wish a baritonist like Charles Davis or Pat Patrick had made the original date.

Definitely finding a place for themselves on this one are the violinists. Scratching and side-slipping, both fiddlers make full use of sul tasto and sul ponticello runs to mark their sonic territories, sometime adding to the slurred fingering of the other strings with pizzicato fills. Scheinman has a particularly satisfying exchange with Ackley at one point, as she turns from speedy multiphonic bowing to shrilling upper partials, while he works out sour soprano tone variations. All the while Frith is proffering a thick, steadying bass pulse and Robinson detonating disconnected drum cadences and bell ringing.

Distinctive in a sideman’s role that gives him proper strictures, Cline contributes cascades of slurred fingering and pinpointed tones, infrequently using knob-twisting and whammy bar finesse to cut through the hiss and flutter of the electronics. His judicious use of distortion extends his flat picking, while the final section has him pumping out a melodic line which builds up to Spanish-styled rasgueado before the final appearance of the tune’s head. Instructively, Adams use rapid-fire phrasing and split tones to make his point against Cline’s chromatic picking. But this is merely more double counterpoint, like Ochs’ squealing exchange with scratchy violin jettes.

Ochs himself has some irregular pitched, reed-splitting demonstrative outbursts, emphasizing the honking potential of his axe with glottal punctuation. Together the four saxes push the material every which way, though true to their role as preservationists, theme snippets appear every so often.

Anti-electronic traditionalists shouldn’t despair either, since the most noticeable electronic interface occurs when curved oscillations from either Brown or Yoshihide answers Cline’s quivering semi-tones built up with delay and slurred fingering, or when Mori adds her drum-machine textures to the acoustic ones created by Robinson’s kit.

As a postlude, drums and guitars produce longer and broader strokes, violins and higher-pitched electronics shrill like the missing brass of the original LP, and everyone joins with the sax choir to gather the disparate strands for a climatic finale.

More please.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Ascension, Parts 1 through 13

Personnel: Rova: Bruce Ackley (soprano saxophone); Steve Adams (alto saxophone); Larry Ochs (tenor saxophone); Jon Raskin (baritone saxophone); plus Carla Kihlstedt (violin and effects); Jenny Scheinman (violin); Nels Cline (guitar); Fred Frith (electric bass); Don Robinson (drums); Ikue Mori (drum machines and sampler); Otomo Yoshihide (turntables and electronics) and Chris Brown (electronics)

October 10, 2005

MARINA ROSEFELD/THE SHEER FROST ORCHERSTRA

Drop, Hop, Drone, Scratch, Slide & A for Anything
Charhizma 018

Will the big bands ever come back was a standard question asked in the jazz press during the 1950s and 1960s. The idea of gathering many individuals together to play arranged improvised music is certainly still viable in terms of excitement, if not acceptance. However, fans of such Swing Era icons as Benny Goodman, Glen Miller or Ina Ray Hutton and her “all girl band” would certainly be baffled by this disc.

There are 17 musicians present, all right, but 12 of them play some version of electric guitar, while the other five work out on laptops. Lindy hoppers and hep cats will very likely be disappointed. But for those interested in the future of large scale improvised music, rather than nostalgia, this singular, almost 48 minute composition, created by Marina Rosenfeld, has a lot to offer.

Brooklyn, N.Y.-based Rosenfeld, who has a background in classical piano theory and composition plus audio-visual art, first conceived of this all-women ensemble as a way to mix her interest in turntable experiments with real instruments. This performance, recorded live at New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art features the guitarists kneeling beside their instruments and using bottles of nail polish and other items to coax and force different sounds from their instruments. When that happens the laptoppers mix the results still further with a combination of real-time sampling, prepared loops and their own improvisations.

Indexed as 27 tracks on this CD, the creation is actually one long continuous creation that twists and turns at different pitches, tempos, speeds and volumes. Sometimes, especially in single string passages, you can relate the resonances you hear to the guitars. Other times you just know that the pulsation is being altered by the laptop in a way that brings to mind Dr. Frankenstein waiting in his laboratory for a heavy thunderstorm.

Happily, as well, because of the multiplicity of minds of the real people behind the instruments, nowhere do you get the uncomfortable feeling of some other laptop dates, which often sound like coffee break time at the robots’ cafeteria. The Sheer Frost may not fit the orchestral idea of someone committed to Herman Herds, Bands of Renown or Innovations in Modern Music, but the improvisations created are actually more ground breaking and contemporary than anything created by those bands. Jazz and improv has always been about the adoption of new timbres, and the innovations captured here prove that coupled with acoustic instruments, electronica in the right hands produces aural vibrations as legitimatize and memorable as anything else.

But no, you can’t dance to it -- at least not physically.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Drop, Hop, Drone, Scratch, Slide & A for Anything Tracks 1. to 27.

Personnel: Hrafnhildur Arnardóttir, Andrea Claire, Nilsa Colon, Barbara Ess, Chiara Giovando, Daniella Fabricius, Zhenya Merkulova, Kari Mckahan, Josephine Meckseper, Marina Rosenfeld, Yvonne Senouf, Brooke Williams (electric guitars); Alexandra Gardner, Kaffe Matthews, Ikue Mori, Kristin Norderval, Keiko Uenishi (laptops)

February 1, 2002