Steve Elcock’s String Quartets

ELCOCK: The Cage of Opprobrium. The Girl From Marseille. The Aftermath of Longing. Night After Night / The Tippett Quartet / Toccata Classics 0688

As I noted in the very first review I wrote of Elcock’s music, a little over a year ago (March 2022), his style is difficult to pin down:

Modern in harmony, rhythm and melodic lines, yes, but it seems to move along as if gliding on a slick surface…water or ice, take your pick. Despite occasional rhythmic devices to ground the listener, the music has a flow similar to the “free pulsative” style of Leif Segerstam; but being British, Elcock has a surprisingly lyrical streak that runs through his music, always seeming to bring it back to some semblance of tonality and melodies that can be followed by the listener while only occasionally being “tuneful” in the conventional sense. He thus occupies an outlier position in terms of style in addition to his pride (which I heartily endorse) of being an outsider of the classical academic community.

This disc presents his string quartets, and even from their titles he presents himself as a maverick. There is no “String Quartet No. 1, No. 2,” etc., but pieces with titles. They are not presented sequentially on this CD, however; the order in which they were written was Girl From Marseille (No. 1), Cage of Opprobrium (No. 2), Night After Night (No. 3) and Aftermath of Longing (No. 4). In addition to these fine performances by the Tippett Quartet, there is a live performances of The Cage of Opprobrium and Girl From Marseilles by the Czech Philharmonic Quartet from 2015 (the world premiere performance, in fact) available on YouTube that are even more intense than the studio versions.

When listening, then, I chose not to try to analyze this music section by section, but let it wash over me as a complete whole. This was, I think, a wise decision, because Elcock’s music takes its own time to say what it has to say, with each movement connected to the one following and even some out-of-tempo or tonality episodes within each movement.  In the slow sections of The Cage of Opprobrium, a piece inspired by a mediaeval “isolation cage” into which offenders were locked up for 24 hours or more at a time, I again heard a strong kinship with the chamber music of Leif Segerstam, the only real difference being that Elcock always leans towards tonality whereas Segerstam is always trying to avoid tonality. And once again, his themes are lyrical but their melodic contours are not “tunes” that are memorable. I was particularly impressed by the way he linked the first two movements as well as the way he linked movements 4 and 5. Does he think it terms of the long line when composing, or does each section or movement come to him separately before he works at linking them? I don’t know. Elcock does say this in the liner notes, however:

In The Cage of Opprobrium I have not attempted to resolve these contradictions in any way, but have tried to express them in music that is by turns angry and heartbroken. The work is in five sections, played without a break, and alternating slow and fast music. The two fast parts are to some extent developments of the opening slow music. In the slow sections, making the voices overlap with one another and the use of superimposed fifths causes the instruments to sound old and strained, as if all the pain inflicted throughout the ages is keeping them from sounding in tune any more. The five sections may be heard as portraying how the captive girl occupies her time inside the cage.

Thus we understand why his quartets have titles and not numbers: they relate to objects or people, old or new, which inspired images in his mind which he then translated into music. This type of transition can also be experienced in the music of another composer, shamefully neglected by the classical community, and that is Charles Mingus.

Interestingly, however, The Girl From Marseilles was not inspired by any girl, from Marseilles or elsewhere, but by a mental challenge he set himself, to write a theme and then compose one variation per month for eight months. Thus its title is simply a fabrication made up out of thin air; he might as well have titled it String Quartet No. 2 and left it at that.

Perhaps because he worked in short spurts, Elcock’s music in this piece is more tense in feeling and rather edgier in tempo than The Cage of Opprobrium. There are also, at times, full stops in the music between variations. In this work, with its strongr rhythmic foundation and more tonal bias, I hear a closer resemblance to some earlier (but not much earlier) British music. In its form, but not its bold harmony, it is also somewhat related to Elgar’s masterpiece, the Enigma Variations. The almost constant restlessness of the music, often expressed by high, edgy violin figures and occasionally by rumbling low figures from the cello, makes it somewhat different from the long-lined form of much of his other music, but it is certainly a good, interesting piece. At one point, as a form of musical humor, he worked the Marseillaise in, which is probably where he got the idea for the title. Once the Marseillaise is heard, it becomes dominant in variation after variation; in one of them, he even “swings” it a little, which certainly surprised me. Eventually, he turns it into a fugue—also a surprise, but only because this is Steve Elcock, who usually avoids such traditional devices.

The Aftermath of Longing puts us back on the track of musical sobriety, an achingly heartfelt piece that has no programmatic association other than the suggestive title. Much of the slow first movement is tonal but with unusual underlying chords; short excursions outside the basic tonality att piquancy and tension, in part because they are brief and fleeting. My mind wandered, however, by the time I reached the fourth section: perhaps a bit of rewriting would help this passage, because in the fifth section I became deeply engaged once again.

Night After Night is based on a poem by Robert Louis Stevenson titled The Infinite Shining Heavens. The third and last verse begins with the words, “Night after night in my sorrow,” which gives the quartet its title. As Elcock puts it in the notes, the dissonances in this piece “tend to suggest that what is being said is closer to nonsense than to coherent thought.” I’m not sure that Stevenson would agree, but it makes for very interesting listening. A gentle rocking motion is set up in the first movement, both by the upper strings and, in a different rhythm, by the cello, which drops out for some time before returning. The rhythms are, as usual, not constant but vary in key and tempo throughout. The second movement, unusually fast and furious for Elcock, is one of his most interesting and exciting musical creations. Although the sound quality of the recording is miked fairly closely, allowing one to hear all the nuances in the music, I personally found it just a bit too dry to fully capture the excitement of his music or the realistic sounds of the strings. A little touch of reverb would have helped immensely. (Just my personal opinion; yours may differ.)

But there can be no mistaking the high quality of this music. Steve Elcock is, in my view, a musical genius, a man able to convey his feelings in music, and this is something that many modern composers either cannot or will not do, being too hung up on trying to be “edgy-modern” in what has become a sadly routine way of writing nowadays. I heartily recommend this disc to all and sundry. You will be impressed, that I guarantee.

—© 2023 Lynn René Bayley

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Steve Smith’s Stunning Musical Journey

VALERA: Emergence. No Qualm.* B. POWELL: Tempus Fugue-It. Un Poco Loco. GWIZDALA-VALERA-GARZONE-SMITH: Time Flies. VAN HEUSEN-DE LANGE: Darn That Dream. M. MAINIERI: Self-Portrait. TYNER: Inception. VALERA-SMITH: Choreography For Six. MONK: Ugly Beauty. PORTER: What is This Thing Called Love? GWIZDALA: Erdnase. COLTRANE: One Down, One Up. GWIZDALA-VALERA-GARZONE-SMITH-ZAWINUL: Prayer for the Generations / Steve Smith, dm & Vital Information: George Garzone, t-sax; *Mike Mainieri, vib; Manuel Valera, pno/kbds; Janek Gwizdala, el-bs / Wounded Bird Records WOU-9998

Here is yet another excellent jazz musician I hadn’t heard of before. Steve Smith, who was apparently the drummer for some rock band called Journey, was apparently a jazz musician deep down like Charlie Watts of the Rolling Stones, but whereas Watts only takes “jazz vacations” from the Stones, Smith has apparently filed his divorce papers from rock and now pursues jazz full time—definitely to our benefit. This album, due for release on May 5, is without question one of the most creative I’ve heard that still works primarily within a “centrist” jazz style. Spread over two CDs, the second of which is devoted entirely to Prayer for the Generations, is highly original in its musical concepts without trying to lose the mainstream jazz listener. This set is scheduled for release on May 5.

Probably due to his rock background, Smith plays very “heavy” drums—think of Art Blakey in addition to Charlie Watts—but like Blakey’s group, The Jazz Messengers, Smith’s Vital Information has a sort of funky hard-bop vibe about it, even when, as in the opening selection, the music is both rhythmically and harmonically complex. Pianist Manuel Valera’s style has a certain vibe about it that sounds like “Vince Guaraldi Meets Horace Silver.” He keeps things clean and simple—no fancy flash for him—yet manages to say quite a bit in his solos.

Once one gets past the heavy, rock-influenced style of Smith’s drumming, one will note what an excellent musician he really is. He can manage to play fast figures and irregular meters while at the same time driving his group with steamroller-like power. He also shows, in Bud Powell’s Tempus Fugue-It, the ability to play delicately when called upon. Bassist Janek Gwizdala has an absolutely phenomenal technique on the electric bass, and his solo here, played almost entirely in the instrument’s upper register, is as musically clean (not reveling in electronic distortion) and stunning in its conception as one could imagine. Here, too, Valera plays in a fast bop style that recalls Powell without doing an out-and-out imitation. This is a group that not only has killer chops, they all understand what jazz is all about, which is communication with the listener. Even on the group composition Time Flies, another funky-groove sort of piece, there is always substance beneath the simple form of the music. Here, too, we finally get to hear tenor saxist George Garzone for the first time, and although he, too keeps his contribution sparse, he says a lit with a minimum of notes.

One of the most interesting transformations on this album is their arrangement of Jimmy Van Heusen’s old standard, Darn That Dream, converting it from its original ballad form to an uptempo romp. Here, Valera and Gwizdala do a superb job of not only adding a few chords not in the original song but of often altering the chord positions of those that were, which keeps the whole performance light and fluid. Smith’s drumming on this track isn’t heavy at all; on the contrary, it’s light, fluid and highly colorful. He really is a heck of a percussionist. Valera’s later solo really takes wing and flies.

Un Poco Loco is an uptempo romp in fractured rhythm, sounding to me a bit like a cross between Sergio Mendes and Dave Brubeck from the ‘60s. Once again, we have a piece in a different style from those that preceded it, and this is yet another nice thing about this group. They don’t get bogged down into just one style of playing. Check out that piano solo in the middle, where Valera is playing an entirely different rhythm that Smith—in fact, almost playing the rhythm “backwards” against the drums. That takes tremendous talent as well as concentration! Self-Portrait is a ballad, played mostly solo by Valera, but you don’t mind it because it provides contrast to the high-energy pieces that preceded it and is not the primary “vibe” of the album. In fact, it is followed by the distinctly Blakey-flavored hard bop piece Inception by McCoy Tyner, in my view one of the most underrated jazz pianists of his time. (To me, Herbie Hancock is the most overrated.) Garzone really screams on this one. and Smith’s drum breaks once again attest to his rock-solid technique.

The album thus progresses from number to number, each one interesting and the tempi varied. Only No Qualms is really a “nothing” piece—no melody, uninteresting changes and busy but uninteresting solos. All the rest are excellent music, brilliantly played. Once again, their transformation of Thelonious Monk’s Ugly Beauty is surprising and creative, as is their very uptempo rendition of What is This Thing Called Love?(if you didn’t see the title on the track listing, you’d never recognize it).

I should point out that tenor saxist Garzone is not a regular member of Vital Information, but appears here as a guest artist. Smith and Garzone met when they were both music students at Berklee and, in the parlance of today, Smith “reached out” to Garzone and invited him to be a part of this project. (In the old days, we’d have said he just called him or rang him up, but these phrases are apparently no longer in the American vocabulary.) When the music for the first CD was in the can, they all decided to keep on recording. According to the publicity sheet, Garzone called for John Coltrane’s One Down, One Up. (Hmmm…why didn’t they say that Garzone “reached out” to Coltrane?) Then they decided to do, as Monty Python would say, something completely different, a suite of pieces improvised into being by the entire group with the exception of Part 4, which is a piece by Joe Zawinul called Directions.

The Coltrane performance is tremendously exciting even though Garzone’s tone is closer to Zoot Sims’. Everyone is really cooking, as we used to say (do they now say “exploring the kitchen facilities”?), the result being one of the most exciting tracks on the album. As for the “Prayer” suite, it is quite interesting, using conventional rhythms and harmonies in a freely composed setting. This in itself is unusual. Every since the days of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, freely improvised jazz has adopted both fluid/shifting meters and amorphic melodic lines, but this suite clearly falls into more normal parameters without pandering to commerciality. It is quite an achievement, showing how one can create improvised works that do not sound as if every musician in the band was trying something entirely different from every other member. Considering Smith’s former occupation as a rock drummer, it’s not surprising that some of the rhythms here lean towards rock, but as I’ve argued for quite along time, there is a difference between a rock beat that is at least close to R&B, which was on of the offshoots of jazz in the 1940s, and the kind of acid-funk-rock of the Jimi Hendrix variety, which fits jazz about as well as a hippopotamus fits into a Volkswagen. Don Ellis, The Electric Flag, Chicago, early Chick Corea and late-period Stan Kenton all come to mind when listening to this music, and this is the only kind of fusion I really enjoy because it is creative, does not wear on one’s nervous system, and allows for jazz improvisation in a jazz sense. My sole caveat, and I hope he will forgive me saying this, is that at times I felt Smith was a bit too loud for the mood intended in this music. No, he’s not pounding the drums like Ginger Baker or Buddy Miles, he still plays like a jazz drummer, but I intuitively felt that he was a shade too heavy in context.

You can definitely tell the Joe Zawinul composition when it comes along because it is closer to the funk-fusion style that I don’t like, but this group is so good that they manage to make something creative and interesting out of it. The extraordinary creativity of Garzone (who does a bit of Ivo Perelman-type squealing in the upper range here) and Valera help quite a bit. Fortunately, in Part 5 they get back on track, presenting a fairly attractive jazz waltz. Although the beat in Part 6 is a tad aggressive, it still has what I would call a meditative quality about it. In the very uptempo Part 7, Valera seems to be channeling his inner Chick Corea while Garzone plays some fascinating individual notes, shot into the musical mixture like pellets from a BB gun.

All things considered, this is clearly one of the most outstanding and original jazz albums I’ve heard in quite some time. I’ll just bet you that Down Beat, All About Jazz, Jazziz, Jazzwise and Jazz Times ignore it, but you shouldn’t. Moreover, I guarantee that you’ll hear something different in it the second and third times you play it…that’s how rich and complex this music is.

—© 2023 Lynn René Bayley

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Discovering “The Three T’s”

THE THREE T’S / Theme: ROBINSON-CONRAD-LEWIS: Singin’ the Blues/S. WILLIAMS: Basin Street Blues (3 tks). ALTER-MITCHELL: You Turned the Tables on Me. Medley: RODGERS-HART: You Took Advantage of Me/YOUMANS-CAESAR: Tea for Two/G. & I. GERSHWIN: Oh, Lady Be Good (2 tks). G. WHITING-BERNIER: ‘Tain’t Good. G. & I. GERSHWIN: ‘Swonderful (2 tks). GREER-DIXON: Did You Mean It? MERCER: I’m An Old Cowhand (From the Rio Grande). G. & I. GERSHWIN: Liza. ‘Swonderful (2 tks). MERCER-HANIGHEN: Fare Thee Well to Harlem. TRUMBAUER: Eclipse. J. TEAGARDEN: Mr. T From Tennessee. Ode to a Chimney Sweep. CARMICHAEL-ADAMS: Little Old Lady. Medley: ARLEN-KOEHLER: Between the Devil & the Deep Blue Sea/G. & I. GERSHWIN: I Got Rhythm. SCOTT-PARISH: Christmas Night in Harlem. PORTER: I’ve Got You Under My Skin. Medley: WARREN-DUBIN: With Plenty of Money and You/YOUNG-AHLERT: There’s Frost on the Moon. HUBAY: Hejre Kati. LAYTON-CREAMER: Way Down Yonder in New Orleans. Medley: HILL: In the Chapel in the Moonlight/McHUGH-ADAMSON: Where the Lazy River Goes By / The Three T’s: Charlie Teagarden, tp; Jack Teagarden, tb; Frank Trumbauer, C-sax; Casper Reardon, hp; Adele Girard, hp/voc; Herman Crone, pno; Min Leibrook, bs; Stan King, dm / Jazz Oracle BDW 8056, out of print but available for free streaming on YouTube

I first heard of “The Three T’s” while reading jazz harpist Adele Girard’s account of how she came to play jazz. She had started out as a classical harpist but couldn’t find work during the Depression, so she latched onto a “society” band that ended up their tour at the Hickory House nightclub in New York in 1936. When the band left, they abandoned her because they had to cut payroll, and she was stranded. It was winter in New York City, she was all alone in the world, and had nowhere to go.

Luckily for her, she was approached by “a distinguished-looking gentleman” who asked if she could fill in with his band, since their harp player, Casper Reardon, had just left them to go back to his full-time gig with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. She explained that she knew nothing about jazz, but the gentleman, who turned out to be C-melody saxist Frank Trumbauer, said he would teach her. After a few rehearsals and at least one broadcast, Girard learned how to swing, although she admitted that her improvisation skills really didn’t really reach a professional level until after she started working with clarinetist Joe Marsala, who married her.

This account led me to search the Internet for recordings by Trumbauer’s band, named “The Three T’s” because it also included trumpeter Charlie Teagarden and his more famous brother, trombonist Jack, but in vain because they never made a single commercial disc. Then I ran across this surprising album which includes part of one broadcast with Reardon on harp and two full broadcasts with Girard.

The Three T’s were, you might say, an experiment in swing, a septet with only three horns plus a harp and rhythm section. They were, in fact, the very first jazz combo to include a harp on a regular basis, which gave the ensemble an interesting texture even when the harpist didn’t solo. They were formed during a period of down time for the Paul Whiteman Orchestra, for which both Teagardens worked without very much in the way of exposure—typical for Whiteman, who talked big about his “concert jazz” but always presented more pretentious concert arrangements than the real thing. Trumbauer, who had joined Whiteman along with his Jean Goldkette band cohorts Bix Beiderbecke, Steve Brown, trombonist Bill Rank and arranger Bill Challis in November 1927, had finished his “tour of duty” with the band in 1935, but the Teagardens signed a five-year contract in 1934 and so were still beholden contractually until December 31, 1939. They, too had limited exposure in concerts and on records with Whiteman, and were fed up with it, thus they eagerly took up Trumbauer’s offer to join him in a band where they could shine more often and make a good impression on the new Swing Kids.

According to one account online, the band received poor reviews at first, but after a couple of weeks they hit their stride and were swinging with great ease and a joie-de-vivre they lacked when playing for Whiteman. Of course, they had superior jazz instincts to begin with, but working with a real jazz musician like Trumbauer brought out the best in them. The orchestrated passages combining their three horns were cleverly and expertly written (probably by Trumbauer but also possibly by Jack T), and the rhythm section, anchored by the superb yet sadly forgotten drummer Stan King, rolled underneath them like ball bearings. This band didn’t just cook; they glided. It also didn’t hurt that they had a built-in male vocalist in Jack Teagarden who was a true jazz singer and not some stiff studio cornball, and once in a while Trumbauer chimed in with a bit of singing himself. (There’s also one song on which Girard sings, but this is unfortunate; she had almost no singing voice to speak of and should have stuck to the harp.) One online commentator, apparently impressed by Trumbauer’s own composition Eclipse, raved about its “classical” form, but to be honest it’s just another flashy showcase for his technique, like his 1928 recording of Trumbology, and doesn’t really make a good musical impression.

Two things struck me as I listened to these broadcasts. The first was that they repeated several numbers, including George Gershwin’s ‘Swonderful and two medleys with the same tunes in the exact same order, during this one-month period, which leads me to think that they didn’t have a very large book. The second, which might just be a coincidence but which struck me oddly, was how many songs they played which were also features by Benny Goodman’s large swing band: You Turned the Tables on Me, Did You Mean It? and Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea. Of course, Goodman was a huge fan of Jack T’s playing and had been since they were both members of the Ben Pollack Orchestra in the late 1920s, and Jack had already made a guest appearance on one of Benny’s RCA records (You’re a Heavenly Thing), but still, it’s a little suspicious.

Stan King

By the end of December 1936, The Three T’s were really clicking both within themselves as a band and with audiences, but then Whiteman came back from his vacation in January and pulled both Teagardens back into his band. Apparently Jack balked, saying he wanted out of his contract since he was finally being recognized by the swing music public-at-large. Paul refused but promised that he would soon be featuring both his vocals and trombone much more often in the near future. Whiteman did keep this promise, forming a small Dixieland-styled band which he called his “Swing Wing,” hiring a fairly hip vocal group—then unknown—called The Modernaires, and scoring at least one big hit with Jeepers Creepers, but by that time most swing fans had learned to ignore Paul Whiteman and didn’t buy or listen to those records in large numbers.  Small wonder that when the Whiteman band was playing a New Year’s Eve concert in 1939 and the clock struck 12 midnight, Jack and Charlie immediately took their instruments apart, cleaned the spit out of them, packed them away in their cases and walked off the bandstand…right in the middle of Auld Lang Syne, Whiteman was stunned that they wouldn’t even finish the traditional New Year/s Eve tune, but as Jaxk pointed out to him, once that clock hit 12 he was no longer on the payroll, so out he and Charlie went.

Unfortunately, it was too late to pick up the thread of The Three T’s. Trumbauer had pretty much faded from view by then after re-forming the band with two different and substandard brass players, Adele Girard was permanently ensconced in her hubby’s band, and Stan King had begun to fade from view as his alcoholism became more and more of a problem (he died in 1949). Thus what could have been one of the most interesting small jazz bands of the 1930s ended up being just a memory for those who were lucky enough to have caught them in person at the end of 1936.

This CD was issued by a small Canadian label in 2007 and is long out of print. Fortunately, you can find each and every track on YouTube, BUT in a mixed-up order. The correct sequence is this:

Dec. 4, 1936:

1. Theme: Singin’ the Blues (Robinson-Conrad-Lewis)/Basin Street Blues (Spencer Williams) and Opening
2. You Turned the Tables on Me (Louis Alter-Disney Mitchell)
3. Medley: You Took Advantage of Me (Rodgers-Hart)/Tea for Two (Youmans-Caesar/Oh, Lady Be Good (G. & I. Gershwin)

4,  Closing and News Bulletin

Adele Girard, hp/voc repl. Reardon

Dec, 11, 1936:

5,  News Bulletin, Theme and Opening

6. ‘Tain’t Good (George Whiting-Buddy Bernier)
7. ‘Swonderful (George & Ira Gershwin)
8. Did You Mean It? (Jesse Greer-Mort Dixon)
9. I’m An Old Cowhand (Johnny Mercer)

10, Liza (George & IUra Gershwin-Gus Kahn)

11. Fare Thee Well to Harlem (Johnny Mercer-Bernie Hanighen)
12. Eclipse (Frank Trumbauer)
13. Mr. T From Tennessee (Jack Teagarden)

14, Little Old Lady (Hoagy Carmichael-Stanley Adams)

15. Medley: Between the Devil & the Deep Blue Sea (Arlen-Koehler)/I Got Rhythm (George & Ira Gershwin)
16. Closing Announcements

Dec. 25, 1936:

17. Theme and Opening
18. ‘Swonderful (George & Ira Gershwin)

19, Christmas Night in Harlem (Raymond Scott-Mitchell Parish)

20. Ode to a Chimney Sweep (Jack Teagarden)
21. I’ve Got You Under My Skin (Cole Porter)
    22. Medley: Between the Devil & the Deep Blue Sea (Arlen-Koehler)/I Got Rhythm (George & Ira Gershwin)
22. Medley: With Plenty of Money and You (Harry Warren-Al Dubin)/There’s Frost on the Moon (Joe Young-Fred Ahlert)
23. Hejre Kati (Jenö Hubay)
24. Way Down Yonder in New Orleans (John Layton-Henry Creamer)
25. Medley: In the Chapel in the Moonlight (Billy Hill)/Diane (Ernö Rapée-Lew Pollack)/Where The Lazy River Goes By (Jimmy McHugh-Harold Adamson)

27, Medley: You Took Advantage of Me (Richard Rodgers-Lorenz Hart)/Tea for Two (Vincent Youmans-Irving Caesar)

28. Closing Announcements

I hope you enjoy listening to them as much as I did!

—© 2023 Lynn René Bayley

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The Amazing Bruno Räberg

LOOK INSIDE / RÄBERG: Island Pathways. Chennai Reminiscence. A Minor Excursion. Gyrating Spheres. A Space in Between. June Poem. Ode to Spring. Stillness – Epilogue. MEDLEY–RÄBERG: Kansala/M. DAVIS: Nardis. ELLINGTON-GORDON-MILLS: Prelude to a Kiss. G. & I. GERSHWIN-HEYWARD: My Man’s Gone Now / Bruno Räberg, bs / Orbis Music OM-1222

It has boggled my mind over the past 30 or so years how European jazz musicians, once lionized in the American jazz scene (i.e., Django Reinhardt, Stéphane Grappelli, George Shearing, Jutta Hipp, Martial Solal, Rolf Ericson, Toots Thielemans, Joe Zawinul, Johnny Dankworth, Cleo Laine, Alice Babs, Willem Brueker…the list goes on and on) are now completely marginalized, never even reviewed in either the American or British jazz press UNLESS they have a fairly big American career. THEN it’s OK to promote them.

Swedish-born bassist Bruno Räberg is one such. Now 68 years old, with a career spanning nearly a half-century behind him, this is the first time I’ve ever heard of him—and it boggles my mind to consider this, because he is clearly a fascinating and highly creative musician who, as he puts it in the liner notes, he likes to “make the bass sound like other instruments whose sound I love.” More importantly, he is an astonishingly creative player whose work I would rank on the same high level as that of Jimmy Blanton, Oscar Pettiford, Charles Mingus (as bassist), Scott La Faro, Charlie Haden and Eddie Gómez. For me, personally, this album’s impact reminded me particularly of Gómez, who I heard live in the 1980s at CCM playing a solo bass concert. Like Räberg, he faced the same problems of how to make completely solo bass solos both interesting and appealing to a large audience. Gómez succeeded, and so here does Räberg.

The album due for release on May 19, is a tour-de-force of significant proportions. Räberg is capable of working with fully fleshed-out tunes such as Prelude to a Kiss and My Man’s Gone Now or pieces comprised primarily of small musical gestures, such as the opening piece, Island Pathways, and getting outstanding results. This is because his mind works like a composer’s; he is not only thinking ahead to the next phrase he will play but also towards the evolution of the piece as a whole. In addition, in fact equally important, he has an absolutely gorgeous tone. Even when playing lightly, as he does in most of these tracks, his bass has a rich, full sound, avoiding the sometimes hollow or thin sound that less skilled bassists get from their instruments. He also has a wide-ranging set of musical ideas that he uses here, such as the somewhat African-sounding Kansala in which he tries to make his bass sound like a kalimba, at the same time using this music as an introduction to Miles Davis’ tune Nardis. The amazing thing is not that it works, but that it works so well that listeners unfamiliar with Nardis will have a hard time figuring out where the one piece ends and the other begins.

Räberg plays bowed bass in Chennai Reminiscence, based on a South Indian classical piece he heard while studying in that country. (I always envy people who have the money to travel to other countries, let alone be able to afford to stay there for a while and absorb the local culture.) Eventually, the bowing becomes drone-like, creating a hypnotic effect, but it doesn’t get stuck in just one place; Räberg then breaks up the rhythm in a way that suggests Middle Eastern percussion. (Listen to some of Rabih Abou-Khalil’s recordings for something similar.)

Räberg follows this up with A Minor Excursion, which he tells us is a through-composed piece with just a bit of improvisation towards the end—there’s a certain J.S. Bach-like precision to the exact note placement and its logical development—before launching into his version of Duke Ellington’s A Prelude to a Kiss. His many years’ experience as a jazz bassist has given him an excellent sense of how ti program his pieces to create maximum contrast, a skill which, even today, not all that many groups or soloists have. Moreover, the way he turns Prelude to a Kiss on its hear, especially in terms of the substitute harmony, will leave you speechless. There were only a few bars here and there when even I, how knows Ellington backwards and forwards, would recognize the original song, yet he does not significantly change the tune’s structure, just that he has indeed written a contrafact on Prelude to a Kiss.

Gyrating Spheres is something entirely different, an abstract piece which he uses to show off “three different ways of creating sound on the bass.” It is a less linear piece than his previous compositions, but as a one-off in the midst of this recital it’s quite fascinating. I admit, however, to being far less impressed with his improvised piece A Space in Between, written for a film his daughter was making. Like so much film music, it may well indeed work in context with the images one watches, but as a purely aural experience I found it rather empty. Fortunately, he follows this with June Poem, a through-composed piece that has both structure and musical interest, the two things lacking in the previous piece.

As with the Ellington song, Räberg completely rewrites George Gershwin’s My Man’s Gone Now from Porgy and Bess, again creating a contrafact on the original melody—and, I might add, making it a subtly swinging piece in the process. I’ve heard many a jazz interpretation of this song without once hearing anything even faintly resembling jazz swing, yet Räberg does so. (A side note: to my ears, much of what he plays here sounded like an excellent but somewhat obscure swing tune from the late 1930s, recorded by Artie Shaw’s band, called Cones Love by Sam Stept and Charles Tobias. Check it out and you’ll hear what I mean.)

Ode to Spring has a definite melody of sorts, but the meter over which it is played is highly irregular, which can confuse the casual listener. I advise that you simply absorb what Räberg is playing and not try to count beats or bars while listening. The album concludes with Stillness – Epilogue, a wholly improvised piece that provides a quiet finale,

No two ways about it, this album is pretty much a gem from start to finish. Very highly recommended.

—© 2023 Lynn René Bayley

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Kopatchinskaja Plays Religious Music

HOLST: 4 Songs for Voice & Violin: I. Jesu Sweet. VOGELWEIDE: Palästinalied. CRUMB: Black Angels: Return: I. God-Music. DUFAY: Ave Maris Stella. MARTIN: Maria-Triptychon: Ave Maria; Magnificat; Stabat Mater. DE VICTORIA: Ave Maria. KURTÁG: Kafka-Fragmente: Teil I: Berceuse; Teil IV: Wiederum Wiederum; Teil III: Der Coitus als Bestrafung. ANON.: Adventslied: Maria durch ein Dornwald ging. LOTTI: Crucifixus. L. BOULANGER: Pie Jesu. PATKOP (KOPATCHINSKAJA): Felino. VON BINGEN: O rubor sanguinis. HAYDN: The Seven Last Words of Our Savior on the Cross: Sonata III: Mulier, ecce filius tuus; II: Terremoto. EISLER: Kuppellied. CALDARA: Maddalena al piedi di Cristo: Aria Per il mar del pianto mio / Patricia Kopatchinskaja, vln/cond; Anna Prohaska, sop; Camerata Bern / Alpha 739

My readers know that I not only dislike a great deal of religious music but in fact despise all organized religions because they are, quite simply, lies based on myths, but music is its own message and clearly the great religious works of the Bachs, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Boulanger, Messiaen and Martin contain some extraordinary music that transcends the words being sung.

Such is the case with this album, conceived by soprano Anna Prohaska and violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja as a program of music for voice and violin. As a result, there are a few pieces included which do not have religious connotations, such as Kurtág’s Kafka-Fragments and Hanns Eiler’s Kuppellied, but the bulk of the music is faith-based and thus craves some indulgence from those who don’t buy into the concept. The liner notes indicate that the centerpiece of the album is Frank Martin’s Maria-Triptychon for voice, violin and orchestra, but although Martin was a devout Huguenot. his music was always highly individual and avoided the preachy-churchy sound of old-time religious music. Interestingly, both Martin’s triptych and Kurtág’s Kafka Fragments are broken up in the programming, and not performed sequentially.

As for the album’s title, that too is somewhat complex. Christine Lemke-Matwey explains it thus in the liner notes:

The belief is widespread that emancipation and equal opportunity have finally been achieved, at least in western societies. The reality – even today – often looks quite different. This is the theme of this album, Maria Mater Meretrix – a study of the three classical female phenomenologies into which, since time immemorial, the (un-female!) eye and ear have divided up the complex being of ‘Woman’: as Saint, Mother, and Whore.

So there you have it. A social conundrum wrapped up in a religious enigma.

As to the music, the performers and, eventually, the performances themselves. Kopatchinskaja, as is her wont, clings to another religion, the Gospel of Straight Tone, in virtually everything she plays. Generally, however, her unique means of phrasing and musical accents make the music lively rather than dead-sounding, although it was really bizarre for me to hear straight tone in the 20th-century pieces presented here. Anna Prohaska has what one would term a “pure” soprano voice, yet even she has some vibrato in her sound whereas Patkop (the violinist’s nickname) has none. Yet somehow, they blend their talents in a superb program that grabs your attention from the outset and holds it throughout. I was particularly taken by the strangely Celtic-sounding (or possibly Sephardic-sounding) music of Wolfgang von der Vogelweide, from the early 13th century, no less, and here Patkop doesn’t play the violin much, but rather leads the Camerata Bern behind Prohaska in an arrangement that focuses on the horns and percussion (though I did hear her violin sneaking in at one point). So far as I know, this is Kopatchinskaja’s debut as a conductor on records, and she elicits, as one would expect from her, high-voltage playing from her forces.

Perhaps the most unexpected moment for me came in her performance of the excerpt from George Crumb’s Black Angels, which, by some strange alchemy, she somehow makes sound like old music, at the very least like a kind to Vogelweide’s strange piece…and here, she actually does use some vibrato in the sustained notes, a rare departure for her. But this is a solely instrumental piece,, so Kopatchinskaja uses it as an introduction to Guillaume Dufay’s Ave Maris Stella—and, you won’t believe this, it works! I seriously doubt that you’ll ever hear Crumb and Dufay juxtaposed in live performances like this, so enjoy it. I should point out, however, that most of the early music pieces presented here are arranged (read: re-orchestrated) by modern minds, some by Michi Wiancko and the others by Wolfgang Katschner. Noah Greenberg’s old arrangements of early music for the New York Pro Musica are hereby forgiven. It’s about time that SOMEONE realized that making older music sound colorful is not a crime against music!

I did not have Martin’s Maria-Triptychon in my collection, thus this was my first hearing of it. Despite my aversion to the subject matter, I absolutely loved the music: not so much serial or atonal as simply existing in a soundspace without a truly fixed tonality, it is music that passes through your mind like a dream vision that you can’t quite get a grasp on, but you find to be utterly fascinating. Each of its three sections is different, yet all three are mind-expanding and emotionally powerful in a way that completely transcends their religious texts. It makes me appreciate Martin even more than I thought I could. In fact, I can’t think of any composer born in the late 19th century who sounds so much more like a contemporary of Ligeti and Crumb than even of Stravinsky or Bartók. De Victoria’s Ave Maria is likewise used as a prelude to one of Kurtág’s Kafka-Fragments…and again, it works. There is a wide stylistic chasm between Lotti’s  instrumental Crucifixus and Lili Boulanger’s very strange-sounding Pie Jesu, but sometimes juxtaposition can be as effective as finding complementary pieces. For those who are curious, Patkop’s own Felino is a fast, virtuosic, almost schizophrenic piece, lasting less than a minute. Thankfully, it almost (but not quite) makes the ensuing Hildegard of Bingen piece sound tolerable. (Sorry, Folks, I really hate her music in addition to considering her a hypocrite—a woman who brokered abortions for nuns impregnated by priests but didn’t have the courage to report the S.O.B.s to the Church.) The only performance on this disc that I didn’t care for a lot was the (instrumental) excerpt from Haydn’s Seven Last Words, not because of any lack of energy by the performers but rather their cold, thin manner of playing. More importantly, this music’s early-Romantic style had almost nothing in common with the early and modern music, two schools that complement each other. (But to be fair, Hanns Eisler’s obviously Kurt Weill-influenced song also wasn’t really a comfortable fit.)

In fact, one should realistically view this entire program as what we old Hippies used to call a “happening”—a blend of old and new in a way that makes each piece flow into and out of each other. This, of course, makes it a little hard to describe in words because music has its own language, and by mixing and matching pieces this way Prohaska and Kopatchinskaja have created an extraordinary tapestry of sound and feeling in which every piece has its own place and meaning. It’s not so much analogous to a mosaic as it is a kaleidoscope. You’ll understand when you hear it. The bottom line is that it is simply extraordinary, a musical tour-de-force that eludes a real verbal description. Perhaps the only thing I can say other than that is that it was wise of them to make the Martin triptych the centerpiece of the album.

—© 2023 Lynn René Bayley

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Park & Pöntinen Inhabit Szymanowski’s World

SZYMANOWSKI: Mythes. Violin Sonata. Romance. Notturno & Tarantella. La Berceuse d’Aïtacho Enia / Sueye Park, vln; Roland Pöntinen, pno / Bis SACD 2652

I keep hoping that someday, the classical world will wake up and realize that Karol Szymanowski, not Frydryk Chopin, is the greatest Polish composer of all time, but I’m not holding my breath. True, there have been many more recordings of Szymanowski’s music issued in the past 20 years than ever before, but the number of live performances still lag behind drippy old Chopin by a few light-years, and this because Szymanowski wrote in an advanced version of the French and Russian modern styles that were in fashion during the 1910s and ‘20s.

This latest incarnation features what is probably his most famous music for violin and piano, Mythes, which even Yehudi Menuhin played as far back as the 1940s. The Violin Sonata is also pretty well known to musicians, but the other pieces, particularly the Romance and La Beceruse d;Aïtacho Enia, are fairly rare on records and almost nonexistent in violin recitals.

Prior to hearing this recording, I had no idea who Sueye Park or Roland Pöntinen were, but I’m happy to say that they are not only well-trained technicians—everyone is nowadays—but also, more importantly, musicians who “get” the feel of Szymanowski’s music and thus present it in its best light. The piece in which I judge this quality is, of course, “Dryades and Pan” from Mythes, which requires a very eerie sound quality which is not all that easy to achieve. Moreover, this feeling is not only important to achieve in the violin part, although that is the “lead voice,” but also in the piano part, which requires a balancing of style between the light and ethereal and driving and exciting in turn, and I’m happy to report that Pöntinen has exactly what it takes to put these scores over well. (Prior to hearing this recording, by all-time favorite performance of “Dryades and Pan” was the old recording by Yehudi and Hephzibah Menuhin.)

I’ve read numerous descriptions of Anton Bruckner’s music as being somehow “spiritual,” but to my ears it is just pompous, poorly-written rubbish. Szymanowski’s music, on the other hand, nearly always strikes me as “spiritual” because there is always an underlying feeling of nature-worship, which is the only real physical manifestation of our creator in the physical world. In his almost constant use of extended, rootless chords, even in such pieces as his dance-inspired Mazurkas, Szymanowski never lost sight of that mental image of his creator and thus, to my ears, brings us closer to him/her/it than almost any other composer. By suing such exotic harmonies and knowing how to write “top lines” which always complemented and enhanced them, he was somehow able to present nature as it is, seemingly stable yet always in flux, a slow-moving but never-ending change which. in its own way, also reflects stability.

And both Park and Pöntinen understand this, thus this recording is an absolute treasure to listen to. In addition to her many fine qualities, I would also like to praise Suyeon Park in particular for her use of a constant light vibrato in her playing instead of opting for the moronic and aurally disgusting “straight tone” which has so defiled the violin-playing world in recent decades. Particularly in the upper register, this gives her playing a certain quality of sound that brought to my mind the flickering of fireflies in the dark—one might say an aural illumination which simulates a visual one. Even as a seasoned, somewhat hardened critic, I simply sat and listened to these performances in awe and admiration. Not only was there nothing to complain of, but they so overwhelm you with their passion and musical truth that you cannot criticize. You can only enjoy.

Moreover, there is an underlying sensuality in these performances which is not phony or “put on,” but real, stemming from the very psyches and interior feelings of the performers. Everything is thus so perfectly played and interpreted that it renders even the hardest-hearted critic speechless in its wake. You feel as if you are enveloped by something warm and beautiful and loving yet somehow elusive, like a magnificent butterfly illuminated in the glow of a setting sun that is just beyond one’s reach. It is there, it is real, and it overwhelms you with its beauty, but you cannot touch or capture it—you just enjoy the moment.

For those who haven’t heard it, Szymanowski’s Violin Sonata is a tad less sensuous and more structural in its makeup than Mythes, yet it clearly inhabits a similar world. The underlying sensuality of the music is always present, just not always to the fore as it is in Mythes, though cut from the same cloth. Although the Romance is a lightweight work, not on the same level as the previous two pieces, it is a masterpiece compared to many of the drippy Nocturnes that Chopin wrote. Note, for instance, the impassioned middle section where Szymanowski once again, and by somewhat different means, takes you out of the mundane world and lifts you up to a higher plane where not only your emotions but your very soul seem enhanced to a point of ecstasy. There is absolutely NOTHING of the sort in a single note that Chopin wrote. Not one. Just listen to Szymanowski’s Nocturne and tell me that it doesn’t transport you to a higher plane. If it doesn’t, you have no soul.

Although I don’t find that SACD sound makes that big of a difference in intimate chamber music recordings, I will say that sound engineer Martin Nagomi did an spectacular job of placing both violin and piano, but particularly the violin, in a soundspace that added just enough reverb to make her  instrument shimmer like a bright star in the sky. This is especially evident in the third movement of the sonata, but it is audible to a certain degree in every track.

—© 2023 Lynn René Bayley

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Ivo Perelman’s “Molten Gold”

PERELMAN-ANDERSON-MORRIS-NICHOLSON: Warming Up. Liquid. Aqua Regia. Gravity / Ivo Perelman, t-sax; Ray Anderson, tb; Joe Morris, bs; Reggie Nicholson, dm / Fundacia Sluchaj, digital album available at Bandcamp

Although I have reviewed a large number of Ivo Perelman’s CDs on this blog, I’m well aware that his music only has a niche appeal in the jazz community. Free jazz of this sort is a hard sell; even if the end results are fascinating and musically interesting, outside playing which does not follow the normal pattern of chord changes and has a loose structure simply does not appeal to the average jazz fan.

But of course this is a pattern that has been true since the emergence of the first somewhat free jazz group in history, the Ornette Coleman Quartet of the late 1950s. One of their Atlantic albums was titled The Change of the Century, and a change it was, but as I pointed out in my book From Baroque to Bop and Beyond, once modern jazz finally came close to modern classical music, no one was really very happy except for those who understood what it was all about. It’s one thing to go well out of the tonal center occasionally, and quite another to live outside of a tonal center. More importantly, even the best-trained ear must perceive some sort of musical direction in completely free improvisation or it doesn’t make sense to us, either.

Thus I have occasionally passed on some of Perelman’s CDs for review. And all things considered, he seems to live in the recording studio. He has well over 100 albums out, more than any other figure in jazz history, period, and the number keeps on growing.

This latest incarnation, however, caught my ear because it seemed to jell in a good way. Possibly the presence of trombonist Ray Anderson had something to do with this; there’s a certain synergy between Perelman and Anderson going on here that I find particularly intriguing. Indeed, the trombonist’s bluesy blare which opens Warming Up is almost a battle cry, and although Perelman enters with a sad, almost neurotic response on tenor sax, the music more or less holds together, thanks in large part to the incredible work of bassist Joe Morris. How on earth Morris manages to find the right notes (and, more importantly, rhythms) to fit into the evolving musical melee created by Anderson and Perelman, I don’t know, but I often felt the same way about bassist Charlie Haden in the old Coleman quartet. The music in Warming Up becomes quite complex and, at times, violent, but through it all Morris remains “centered” and manages to provide the kind of “grounding” that Shipp usually provides in his work with the saxist. I don’t wish to make light of the others’ contributions—Perelman, for instance, pays an extraordinary chorus beginning at about 4:38 on this track that is one of his finest creations—only to point out that Morris is the glue that holds the sometimes chaotic effusions of the two horn players together. The result is a performance that has an ebb and flow that seems exactly right despite a few moments where even I could not quite ascertain why Anderson and/or Perelman played the way they did here.

For me, personally, the most frustrating thing about this track is that only once, in the section beginning around the 7:30 mark, did Perelman take a lyrical idea and develop it as he usually does his more outré ideas. When bass and drums stop playing, around 8:52, the two horns then create a polyphonic interchange that becomes ever faster and more complex. This is one of the finest examples of free jazz I’ve ever heard, and when Nicholson returns at 10:01 he is right on top of things, playing in double time to match what the others are doing…but then Perelman starts squealing out what were, to me, incomprehensible overtone figures that didn’t fit in and didn’t go anywhere until he brought the music down in range.

But then there is Morris’ solo, a real gem. Not a single note is superfluous or incomprehensible; this is a spontaneously created free musical structure that contains so much substance that it bears repeated listening. Drummer Reggie Nicholson then follows with a nice drum solo, but being a percussion instrument he’s not as expressive as Morris.

The second piece, Liquid, opens up at a slower tempo with almost minimal playing by Anderson using a plunger mute while Morris creates a superb, complex web behind him. At one point he begins playing a repeated rhythmic lick which proves to be the dominant rhythm in which Perelman enters. Here, the saxist is more controlled and coherent than in Warming Up though no less creative; indeed, this is one of the best solos I’ve heard him play despite his later excursion into the “squeal” register. Anderson follows with a very rapid, playful solo of his own, then the two horns begin an almost incredible fast-paced interplay in which they manage to complement each other without either of them ever really touching tonality (although Perelman comes close a couple of times). This is followed by a sort of blues moan theme by the saxist while the others sort of fill in around him. Morris, surprisingly, switches to playing bowed bass, and his work in this section is absolutely incredible.

What ensues is mostly rhythmic rather than harmonic improvisation, but it’s on a very high level and utterly fascinating despite its atonal bias. All four musicians participate in this section, though Perelman clearly takes the lead and Nicholson’s drums only add a few light touches here and there, mostly on the snare or cymbal. Although I’ve said less about Nicholson’s work here than the others, his association with musical genius Henry Threadgill clearly helps him negotiate his way through this complex web of music. Towards the end, Morris sets up an almost Middle Eastern sort of rhythm on a single note (Gb) which then inspires the other three to fall in line with some exquisitely quiet, sparse music. All in all, I enjoyed this piece better than the opener.

Aqua Regia opens with soft, slow, low-range bowed bass by Morris, followed by Perelman and Anderson interacting in an interesting way while Nicholson fills in behind them with little snare drum flutters. This piece, too, seems to evolve more coherently and less chaotically than Warming Up, creating an interesting mood even when the actual notes being played are challenging. At around the three-minute mark, Perelman and Anderson speed up the pace and begin playing more fragmented, pointillistic figures which eventually become quite angry, but Perelman tries to defuse the trombonist by inserting a few lyrical bits into the mix. But Morris picks up on Anderson’s aggression and accentuates it with menacing bowed figures in the middle of the bass’s range. This is where musical chaos sets in. Some people may like this sort of thing, but I don’t respond well to it. The notes played are not particularly interesting or musically structured, and to me it just signifies macho-oriented anger. It’s a shame, too, because the opening of this track was so promising, and after this chaotic section, at about 7:20, things calm down again and the music becomes quite lovely and, for me, fascinating. Indeed, as it progresses it actually becomes somewhat playful. (Interestingly, another online review of this CD, written by a man, liked these more chaotic, squealy sections more than the lyrical passages. To each their own, I suppose.) Morris’ bass solo, though repeating the same lick over and over, nonetheless represents an island of calm amidst the chaos. This serves as an underpinning when Anderson returns on trombone, then eventually Perelman.

Gravity again opens with Morris on bass, here playing fast bowed tremolos on the edge of his strings while Nicholson fills in with ominous low rumbles behind him, setting a wonderful mood. Perelman does not disturb this mood; even when he goes into his upper range, he does so quietly (would that he did this more often!), creating a tension that would not exist were he playing more loudly. Anderson does his best to emulate him on trombone. For the most part, this entire long opening section is utterly fascinating as well as structured in its own quirky way. Then the chaos begins anew, eventually calming down around the 10:30 mark, when it again becomes more coherent and thus more attractive.

There’s an old expression, “Music hath charms to soothe the savage beast.” In those moments when I’m not particularly fond of Perelman’s playing, he sounds like a savage beast, but this is exactly what many others respond to most favorably. Let’s just say that I agree to disagree. There are several moments in these performances that said nothing to me, but for much of the time I was captivated by what they were able to accomplish considering that they started out improvising on nothing.

—© 2023 Lynn René Bayley

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