The Pacific Jazz Group

Mixing Memory and Desire
Strange Destinations
WLJWC MM23

Now an accepted Jazz genre like Dixieland, Bop or Free Improv, the alternated praised and parodied West Coast sound of 1950-1960 has become another implement that can be used in a musician’s tool kit. Variants of that style’s light harmonies, unforced beat and counterpoint can be employed in various ways through. The choice, like adaptors of other Jazz genres, is to go for full-out recreations or blend West Coast textures with those of others genres. Each quartet here has chosen one or the other path.

New York pianist Dred Scott, who has worked with everyone from Liza Minelli to Anthony Braxton rounded up a trio of Bay area associates, who work in similar creative, commercial and studio situations to recreate some of Cool Jazz’s greatest hits by Shorty Rogers, Gerry Mulligan and others on The Pacific Jazz Group. His vehicle is the genre’s second favorite combination: piano, bass (John Wiitala) and (drums) Smith Dobson, with a horn soloist: tenor saxophonist Eric Crystal. Ironically while Mulligan composed four of the seven tunes on the Scott project, it’s Dutch baritone saxophonist JanWillem van der Ham, who plays in the David Kweksilber Bigband among many other projects, whose Mixing Memory and Desire adapts the classic Mulligan piano-less quarter configuration on the other disc. The players’ nationality on his Strange Destinations’ compositions is also more varied. Bassist Raoul van der Weide is the other Netherlander. Cornetist Felicity Provan is Australian and drummer George Hadow British.

Recorded in California, the Pacific Jazz Group expands and slightly update the tunes, which mostly date from the early 1950s. Crystal’s tone is more wide-open and funkier than any Cool saxist, for instance. He proves it on “Casa De Luz” where its sophisticated Latin beat from wood block smacks and keyboard hammering is moved into Hard Bop territory with harmonized reed wails and pianism in different keys. Mulligan’s “Utter Chaos” almost become a honky-tonk finger-snapper with double bass thumps, drum backbeats, tinkling Blues piano and thickened tenor saxophone intensity that projects bracing reed flutter at the end. Overall some of the tune reharmonization involves adding stop-time interludes to straight-ahead swing, adding upper keyboard glissandi to lighter expositions and, on a tune like “Festive Minor”, emphasizing shaking treble sax tones and minor key patterns while retaining the canon-like theme. Still the sunny ways which characterize the music are always present. So are constant recap of the heads on each tune. no matter how many splayed piano or round robin sax slurs are heard.

There’s a different weather forecast on Strange Destinations and not because it was recorded in Amsterdam. Some tracks, especially at the beginning, take off from the standard Mulligan Quartet ethos. Slowly evolving bass-and-drum pulses ground the narratives and many tunes end with head repetition. However even those in which expositions balance on chalumeau-register reed scoops matched with brass flutters, plunger brass blat and clarion reed bites often sabotage pat harmonies. More crucially, van der Ham’s notation often uses the West Coast style as a jumping off point. The most spectacular instance of this is on “Rondolette.” The piece, a contrafact of a Cool Jazz and a Thelonious Monk line, is emphasized in alternating sequences from the horns as the bassist walks steadily and the drummer thumps. Meanwhile “Mist” is the most inventive recasting of the Werst Coast Jazz trope. Without losing the steadying near lullaby advance, the narrative is based on smooth saxophone vibrations surrounding Provan pushing unaccented air without valve movement through her horn’s body tube. Hadow’s inventive solo on “The Gap” mixes woody nerve beats with bass drum ruffs after using pointed paradiddles to back muted cornet portamento and thickened reed undulations. Overall each track stretches the tradition just a little bit, yet never makes a sharp break.

Just like other Jazz genres Cool Jazz, West Coast Jazz or Pacific Jazz still deserves to be explored with many approaches. Eschewing replication, these quartets show how well the music can sound when stretched slightly or cannily revised.

–Ken Waman

Track Listing: Pacific: 1. Bernie’s Tune 2. Maid in Mexico 3. Line For Lyons 4. Casa De Luz 5. Festive Minor 6. Nights at the Turntable 7. Utter Chaos

Personnel: Pacific: Eric Crystal (tenor saxophone); Dred Scott (piano); John Wiitala (bass) and Smith Dobson (drums)

Track Listing: Strange: 1. Strange Destination 2. Be my Guest 3. Bullets and Drones 4. The Long Goodbye – for Theo Verbey 5. Where do you come from and where do you go? 6. The Gap – for Renato Ferreira 7. Mist – for Lars Gullin 8. Essay 9. Rondolette – for Oscar Jan Hoogland 10. Ulicoten – for Eric Boeren

Personnel: Strange: Felicity Provan (cornet); JanWillem van der Ham (baritone saxophone); Raoul van der Weide, (bass) and George Hadow (drums)