Pierre-Antoine Badaroux

Composition No. 6
Umlaut Records umfrcd-06

Yoni Kretzmer’s 2 Bass Quartet

Weight

OutNow Records ONR 008

Using the textures of two double basses to enhance the rhythmic and descriptive qualities of ensembles has its antecedents in both large group and combo music of the mid-1960s onwards. However common usage is limited by the necessity of finding sympathetic bull fiddlers, not to mention economies of scale. These CDs – one mostly French, the other mostly American – demonstrate how two basses can be utilized in different contexts. Unsurprisingly neither sounds remotely like the other.

Arriving steadfastly from the Jazz side of the equation is Weight, in some ways a hefty extension of the two-double-bass, Free Jazz experiences of John Coltrane, Archie Shepp and others in the mid-1960s. Front man here is Israeli-born, Brooklyn-based tenor saxophonist Yoni Kretzmer, assisted by polymath drummer Mike Pride and two bassists – Sean Conly and Reuben Radding – who between them have worked with everyone from reedists Anthony Braxton and Daniel Carter to pianist Russ Lossing.

Aleatoric in character, but with more than a passing commitment to contemporary composed music is Paris-based alto saxophonist Pierre-Antoine Badaroux’s Composition No. 6. Someone who moves between improv ensemble such as Peeping Tom and r.mutt and Ensemble Hodos, dedicated to graphic music, Badaroux’s nine-part invention is of indeterminate duration and strongly influenced by Avant-Jazz. One bassist, Sébastien Beliah is the co-founder of Ensemble Hodos; the other Swede Joel Grip, plays with Badaroux in Peeping Tom. Clarinetist Pierre Borel is a freelance reeds player; drummer Antonin Gerbal is part of r.mutt; while pianist Eve Riser divides her time between improv, song-based music and a position in the French Orchestra National De Jazz.

Both CDs are concerned with spacious textures of atonal sound experiments, but Composition No. 6 has more of a formalistic cast. With the nine selections – all titled with a “6” plus another added numeral – intermingle the initial narrative is maintained. Throughout, the bassists sometimes double up, but more often each pursues a separate strategy. Usually one sticks to jagged, spicccato arco work, while the other creates percussive string stops and vibrating thumps. At one point early in the proceedings, an additional bow is shoved between one of the bull fiddle’s strings to create extra vibrating tension. But neither that nor the infrequent walking bass lines heard are used rhythmically.

Gerbal is no time-keeper either. His cymbal resonations, moderated pops as well as drum shuffles are mostly there for coloration. What that means is that what percussiveness heard is usually associated with Risser’s hard-handed pumps. But at the same time she too is rarely concerned with comping underneath anyone’s solo. Instead her approach encompasses micro-tonal key clipping, high-frequency glissandi, processional expositions, metronomic patterning and long tones which keep the pulse linear. As for Badaroux’s and Borel’s reed strategies, at points it appears as if the two can never find a note they can’t bend or a reed bite they can swell to altissimo. Significantly even their highest-pitched tones retain a jam session-like coherence, especially when teamed with Riser’s staccato chromaticism and tough dual bass stopping.

Further confirmation of the composition’s linear and circular connections happens on “6.3”, on which a variation of the piece’s jumping theme re appears. After long clarinet glissandi, sliding reed tones, clip-clops from the drummer and double string strokes, a comprehensive climax ends the composition.

Obviously less formally constituted, the eight tracks on Weight, highlight a singular game plans from Conly and Radding. As a purely rhythmic function the two sometimes blend their eight strings for positioned walks or thumps. Elsewhere, one concentrates on strident and spiccato timbres sourced from the instrument’s highest range while the other uses col legno and additional bow or finger technique to come up with equally descriptive earth rumbling tones. Meanwhile Pride maintains a Jazz drummer’s expected role, feeding the others clanks, clumps, ruffs and cymbal claps at appropriate spots to keep the tunes chromatic.

Going his own way, Kretzmer can be praised as one younger reedist who doesn’t think the tenor saxophone came into existence circa 1960. Tunes such as “Giving Tree” and “A Bit Of Peace” find him outputting heavier Coleman Hawkins-style smears and slurs, On the former his improvising is given additional heft as the dual bassist echo and parallel his reed exposition. As for the second, while his solo eventually accelerates to obtuse atonality, he begins in a mellow tone, stretching out spiky tones in the centre as bull fiddlers toss the broken-octave accompaniment back and forth.

Splint-tone glossolalia and references to Trane, Sonny Rollins and Albert Ayler are apparent in the saxophonist’s work elsewhere, especially on a track like “Again And Again”, when Pride’s tough pops and heavy backbeat help Kretzmer transition from story-telling mode to pure Energy Music bluster. Even more forceful is “Number Three”, which is almost a dual between the saxophonist’s overblowing and triple-tonguing and the drummer’s cracking cymbal runs and doubled press rolls.

All and all it appears that both groups have created bass hits by showing off varieties of string and reed interface with originality and skill.

--Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Composition: 1. 6.7 2. 6.5 3. 6.4 4. 6.8 5. 6.1 6. 6.9 7. 6.3 8. 6.2 9. 6. 6

Personnel: Composition: Pierre Borel (clarinet); Pierre-Antoine Badaroux (alto saxophone); Eve Risser (transportable Klein piano); Sébastien Beliah and Joel Grip (bass) and Antonin Gerbal (drums)

Track Listing: Weight: 1. Number One 2. Giving Tree 3. Smallone 4. Again And Again

5. Number Three 6. A Bit Of Peace 7. Detail 8. GT Reprise

Personnel: Weight: Yoni Kretzmer (tenor saxophone); Sean Conly and Reuben Radding (bass) and Mike Pride (drums)

February 2, 2013

Peeping Tom

Boperation
Umlaut Records umfr-002

Viktor Tóth

Popping Bopping

Budapest Music Center Records BMC CD 191

Decoding Jazz’s history so that it’s relevant for contemporary musicians has become one of the concerns of this century. While it’s obvious that those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it – in an inferior fashion – conversely those who know only history can’t contribute to the music’s evolution.

With the same quartet instrumentation, saxophonist Viktor Tóth’s combo and the Peeping Tom group have come up with CDs that attempt to fashion Bop-influenced sounds according to their own concepts. Both bands are Pan-European, which in itself says something about dealing with a music that was almost 100% American-dominated until the end of the 20th century. However each is recalculating the tradition according to its own ideas. Boperation takes 10 Bop and Hard Bop standards and subtly reconfigures them with post-modern interpretations. Popping Bopping is another matter. While the six tunes here are all originals by Budapest-based alto saxophonist Tóth, most of the time the combo voicing and arrangements sound almost identical to that of post-Bop alto saxophonist Ornette Coleman’s quartet with trumpeter Don Cherry circa 1960-1962.

There are judicious differences in emphasis as well as geography though. Besides Tóth – Hungary’s most promising young saxophonist who has worked with Americans bassist William Parker and drummer Hamid Drake – the front-line is filled out by Belgian trumpeter Bart Maris, known for his membership in avant Jazz-Rock experimental outfits like the Flat Earth Society, and who often adds electronic effects to his horn. The Charlie Haden-like bass role is taken by Magyar Mátyás Szandai who has played with local heroes such as saxophonist Mihaly Dresch and American saxist Archie Shepp. Holding down the drum chair is Turkish percussionist Robert Mehmet Ikiz, who played in band with Cherry’s son David Ornette Cherry in the U.S., and among other combos is a member of Swedish trombonist Nils Landgren’s Funk Unit.

Peeping Tom’s bassist Joel Grip is Swedish. Founder of Umlaut Records, he works with different continental musicians in bands such as Je Suis and SNUS. Alto saxophonist Pierre-Antoine Badaroux is Paris-based as is drummer Antonin Gerbal and is in bands such as r.mutt and megaton. Meanwhile Trumpeter Axel Dörner is a Berliner and seems to be a part of half the avant bands in Europe, working with everyone from pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach to violinist Angharad Davies.

At its most insubstantial, Tóth band members sound as if they’re unearthing previous-unknown Coleman Quartet outtakes. Luckily this doesn’t happen too often; but it’s vaguely disturbing, with the results sounding like those tapes released years later of John Coltrane playing Coleman and Cherry lines with his regular rhythm section and Cherry himself. On these tracks whether the performance is leisurely or speedy Tóth’s sudden trilling upturns or buzzing snorts appear to clone Coleman’s style. Furthermore, during his solos on tracks such as “My Home” and “A Ballad for White Flowers” he interpolates references to other tunes before reaching the reed-biting recapping of the head. That reversion to old school song construction was a style from which Coleman was evolving. Furthermore there are also some points on Popping Bopping at which the horn lines are so clean and so harmonized that the results reference the original style of the 1960s and 1950s Bop charts on the other CD.

Far better are tracks such as “Hong Kong” and “A Ballad for White Flowers”. On the first, Maris’ electronic oscillations add multiple shudders to the trumpeter’s forward-motion extensions as Tóth’s echoing obbligato is shrill enough to encourage cross tones and reverberation flanges from the brass man. The latter is a non-sloppy ballad – if a ballad at all – that moves on from a flighty high-pitched head to atmospheric signal-processing from Maris. The repeated crackling then granulates expected brass tone so that the trumpeter’s shaking triplet notes multiple loudly. Articulating his response with soured multiphonics, Tóth leads Maris into a high-pitched call-and-response showdown. Meanwhile Szandai adds a walking ostinato and Ikiz clanks and clicks different parts of his kit – familiar stratagems throughout the disc. The only disappointment is when Tóth ends his showcase with a reed- biting riff that is not only out of place , but sounds more like a homage to 1950s Jackie McLean than the rest of this thoroughly contemporary tune.

Tunes by McLean, Herbie Nichols, George Wallington and other advanced Boppers and Hard Bopper are featured on Boperation, but never do the tone and timbres of Badaroux’s alto saxophone resemble those of his Bop forefathers. Dörner also lacks any electronic extension – he often uses it elsewhere – but at the same time his playing doesn’t reference rote Bop-isms. The band’s fundamental voicing also have Coleman-Cherry echoes. But they are used as contrast rather than comparison, since another anomaly of this CD is that it consists of compositions by pianists reinterpreted by a piano-less band. While this off-centre approach works most of the time, paradoxically it’s sometimes frustrated when the simple and familiar tropes of the material prelude post-modernist interpretation.

Demonstrative reconstruction occurs on tunes such as Wallington’s “Escalating”, Nichols’ “The Gig” and “House Party Starting” and a medley of Eddie Costa’s “Pile Driver” and Dodo Marmarosa’s “Dodo's Dance”. All of these lines were composed by pianists working on how to escape the Bop harmonic straightjacket without turning to what became Coleman’s radical solutions.

Case in point is “House Party Starting” which after a broken octave exposition becomes harsh and friction-ridden. While Grip spiccato slaps and bows thickly and Gerbal shifts ratamacues and rim shots, the trumpeter’s stratospheric peeps and the saxophonist’s pedal-point slurs open up to half-valve growls and snorting staccato runs respectively. This doesn’t preclude head recapitulation, but the repetition appears to be there not out of habit but for emphasis. Among pregnant pauses, single notes balance between the two horns as Dörner’s tremolo tones turn to squeals and Badaroux masticates irregular breath lengths. Percussion ruffs and woody bass stops maintain the interface.

Analogous bravado appears on the Costa/Marmarosa melody suture. Both more Bop-like than POMO contrapuntal, the compositions’ unexpected multiphonics mostly arrive from Badaroux’s glottal punctuation and intense reed splintering. Gerbal’s blunt drags and ruffs precede brassy juddering from Dörner as part of tune summation.

While other compositions don’t benefit s much from pointillist lengthening and muting, Pepping Tom’s avowed aim of refurbishing Bop lines with post-modern options is more satisfying than Tóth composing new melodies that closely resemble what has been played previously. While Boperation can be unreservedly praised, it appears as if the Hungarian saxman should turn his prodigious chops and talent for arrangement to material that is more challenging in performance as well as concept.

--Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Popping: 1. Pocket-Ticket 2. My Home 3. -34°c Sunny/+29°c Humid 4. A Ballad for White Flowers 5. Hong Kong 6. Stars’ Stairs

Personnel: Popping: Bart Maris (trumpet and effects); Viktor Tóth (alto saxophone); Mátyás Szandai (bass) and Robert Mehmet Ikiz (drums)

Track Listing: Boperation: 1. Boperation 2. Cromagon Nights 3. Escalating 4. Fantasy In Blue 5. The Gig 6. House Party Starting 7. Mo is on 8. Pile Driver/Dodo's Dance 9. Snakes10. Up Jumped the Devil

Personnel: Boperation: Axel Dörner (trumpet); Pierre-Antoine Badaroux (alto saxophone); Joel Grip (bass) and Antonin Gerbal (drums)

June 15, 2012

Peeping Tom

File Under: Bebop
Umlaut [lc-umcd01]

Mike Reed’s People, Places & Things

Stories and Negotiations

482 Music 482-1070

Respect for the Jazz tradition runs in cycles. In the early 1970s when Jazz-Rock Fusion claimed popular attention, it seemed that the only young musicians interested in tradition were so-called avant-gardists such as reedist Anthony Braxton and the Air trio. During the next decade when the musical Reganites appeared, Jazz standards had to be recreated in a certain style and were part of their protected turf. Now that many of the neo-cons have adopted hip-hop moves or concentrate on mainstream styled originals, the tradition has been jettisoned along with fade haircuts. Who is left to keep the tradition going then? Surprise, it’s the experimental musicians again.

Each of these fine sessions – one American, one European – outlines how to respect the tradition while making it new. But each does so singularly. Chicago drummer Mike Reed adds a trio of veteran Windy City-associated soloists to his People, Places & Things (PPT) quintet to renovate and re-harmonize some Chi-town Jazz classics on this live date. By placing them within a program of his original compositions, he pinpoints musical continuity.

Peeping Tom, a French-Swedish trio sets itself an even more difficult task. Playing some of the hoariest of hoary Bebop lines, the three deconstruct them down to bare bones once the head is played. By the end of this live date from Lyon, the eight 1940s classics sound contemporary. So do those lines from the 1950s and 1960s played by People, Places & Things.

A multi-stylistic drummer who knows when to push and when to lay back, Reed, who is vice chairmen of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), knows his Chicago history, and here celebrates unconventional vintage tunes composed by the likes of Sun Ra, Clifford Jordan and John Jenkins. Trombonist Julian Priester, who wrote “Urnack” for Sun Ra’s Arkestra, of which he was then a member helps play it here. The other 70-something veterans on hand are trumpeter and flugehornist Art Hoyle, whose experience encompasses the Arkestra and studio work, and tenor saxophonist Ira Sullivan who was part of the Jazz Messengers. The other PPTers are a mixture of AACM and Free Music stalwarts including trombonist Jeb Bishop, saxophonists Greg Ward (alto) and Tim Haldeman (tenor) plus Jason Roebke on bass.

Comparing Reed’s “Door #1” composed to feature Priester, and the octet’s version of the trombonist’s “Urnack” gives an idea of PPT’s cohesive approach. “Door #1” envelops the trombonist’s narrowed and breathy grace notes with chiaroscuro drum beats and pitter-patting bell pings, sul tasto bowed bass lines and wide harmonic vamps from the other horns. Taken andante, Priester’s flutter-tonguing and plunger cries probe the piece’s nuances with burry riffs and wide-bore coloration while leaving room for Hoyle’s rubato coloration. A near-intermezzo, “Urnack” alternates the loping swing which big bands like Count Basie and Gerry Mulligan specialized in with walking double-bass beats plus resilient Hard Bop-styled drum breaks and backbeats. Showcased on top are contrapuntal tongue flutters, honks and reed bites from the five horns.

Jordan’s “Lost and Found” features more pops and rebounds from Reed, more thumps from Roebke and triple-tonguing and stops from both Sullivan and Haldeman. Hoyle’s chromatic triplets, backing chords from the trombonist and hi-hat smacks from Reed take the tune out. Meanwhile, the trumpeter is suitably muted and lyrical, and surrounded by gorgeously harmonized overtone layers on his feature “Third Option” with the line extended with a near Cool Jazz tenor solo. Additionally Reed lets Ward and Haldeman trade licks and reed bites alongside his press rolls and patterning on “Wilbur’s Tune”, a 1950s drum feature brought up to date.

Most notably PPT illuminates the linkage between the large group stylings of Fletcher Henderson, Charles Mingus and Outer Space when recreating Sun Ra’s “El is a Sound of Joy”. With a capella horn blasts and broken-octave concordance throughout, the piece advances full-throttle prodded by Reed’s kicks, jumps and pops.

The performance similarly jumps and pops on the ironically titled File Under: Bebop. But the unwary should know that this is Bebop as imagined with the polytonal approach of Free Jazz saxophonist Ornette Coleman and the extended techniques of Free Music saxman Evan Parker.

Concerned with sound and notation relations, Paris-based alto saxophonist Pierre-Antoine Badaroux is involved with graphic scores for contemporary music ensembles as well as improv. Drummer Antonin Gerbal moves between Jazz, Pop and Improv, while Swedish bassist Joel Grip has recorded with American tenor saxophonist Gary Thomas as well as French Free Music percussionist Didier Lasserre.

All this experience comes in handy when the three sonically masticate a set of Bop and Hard-Bop classics, chew on them for a while and spit them out somewhat altered but still retaining their basic shape. Ferocious in a praiseworthy fashion, Peeping Tom’s performance strategy encompasses pumping sul ponticello squeaks from Grip, rugged strokes and taunt beats from Gerbal and reed-biting, hard extended textures from Badaroux.

A Thelonious Monk medley such as “Locomotive/Light Blue/Evidence” for instance is taken super fast and fortissimo with thick press rolls, sawing bass lines and pumping string scrubs plus the saxophonist sounding as if he’s biting through his reed to bare the proper harsh notes. Eventually each theme is reduced to a series of sharp, tongue-splattered tones made up of fragmented air bubbles and atonal discord. When the initial theme is reconstituted at the end, Grip leaves out the final measure as he hammers on his strings.

A similar reconstitution takes place when Joseph Jarman’s “Old Time Southside Street Dance” is grafted onto Charlie Parker’s “Constellation”. Fluttering pulses from the toms, bass drum bops and snare ruffs and flams are heard before Badaroux sounds the initial theme, which quickly accelerates to triple-tonguing and growling. Grip scales his bass’s wood and Gerbal whaps riveted cymbals, as the saxophonist brings in the second tune at a staccato gallop, then precedes to shatter each melody into strident, fortissimo sound atoms, finally recapping the Jarman head at the finale.

Irony permeates Dizzy Gillespie “Bebop”, which initially appears to be played straight if super-fast; all walking bass and clanking cymbals. Yet the rhythm section lays out then responds with col legno sprawls from the bassist and speedy brush work from the drummer after Badaroux takes off, almost literally. Using unconnected honks and note shards his solo explodes into false registers with throat gurgles, between-the-teeth whistles and sharp squeaks. His head recapping at the climax includes parallel deconstruction of each line as he plays it.

Trading reverence for resourcefulness, both the trio and the octet offer cunning recasting of older classics. Mainstreamers may be frightened by these discs, but this is how the Jazz tradition will live on as a breathing entity rather than a fossil.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: File: 1. Koko 2. Locomotive/Light Blue/Evidence 3. Un Poco Loco 4. Constellation/Old Time Southside Street Dance 5. Mohawk 6. Bebop 7. Shaw ‘Nuff/Parisian Thoroughfare/Four In One 8. Donna Lee

Personnel: File: Pierre-Antoine Badaroux (alto saxophone); Joel Grip (bass) and Antonin Gerbal (drums)

Track Listing: Stories: 1. Song of a Star 2. Third Option 3. El is a Sound of Joy 4. Wilbur’s Tune 5. The And of 2 6. Door #1 7. Urnack 8. Lost and Found

Personnel: Stories: Art Hoyle (trumpet and flugelhorn), Julian Priester and Jeb Bishop (trombone); Greg Ward (alto saxophone); Tim Haldeman and Ira Sullivan (tenor saxophone); Jason Roebke (bass) and Mike Reed (drums)

October 1, 2010