marksaleski.com

It was a long time ago, probably in mid-1970’s. There had been fights about Why-do-I-have-to-go-if-I-don’t-believe-any-of-it and all of that. Mom just couldn’t accept that I wasn’t a believer. At some point not long after those arguments, I stopped going to church. It was a relief, as my thoughts on the subject of the existence of a supreme being made me feel out out place in a supposed house of worship.

But this isn’t about me and my lack of religion. It’s about attitudes toward the religious. More closely, it’s about the crust of hardened clichés, reductive thought, and the Internet.

Earlier in the week, I was reading this article at Salon.com entitled Why I finally joined a church. A self-described religious skeptic, writer Jane Roper had a minor change of heart after having twins and deciding that she wanted to seek out an organization that would help her and her children to deal with the many issues of life, death, and community. So she joined a Unitarian Universalist church. My one sentence distillation of her family’s needs and subsequent decision is truly inadequate, so I urge you to read her article.

Roper’s ideas seemed reasonable enough to me. The company of like-minded individuals is almost always good thing. Her desire for her kids to be witness to an active, working community is admirable. It wouldn’t be my choice, but I’m so not a joiner that my opinion on the matter isn’t relevant.

By Monday afternoon, the article had received nearly 150 comments. A day later, almost 250. The amount of vitriol, snottiness, arrogance, and just plain rudeness was spectacular. Yes, I know, it’s the Internet. Was I to expect anything different? After all of these years, I should never be amazed at the things people will say when they can hide behind their net moniker. They would never say this stuff in person (despite their silly protestations to the contrary).

Somehow, the all-knowing goons on the Internet managed to take Roper’s calm and even-handed ideas and twist them around into phlegm-coated accusations of: brain-washing, wishy-washy thinking, poor logic, lazy thought, and selfishness. It’s didn’t stop there though as Jane Roper, the evil parent, is apparently engaging in child abuse, religious indoctrination, and lying to her children. Can bestiality be far behind?!!

The commentary devolved into usual web poo-fling, with posters giving themselves verbal hernias in the attempt to find the next clever way to dump on the author (and other writers as well), her apparent lack of parenting skills, and religion in general. Everybody has the right answer. Everybody knows that right way. The Christian commenters know that the true way can only be found in “the word.” The atheists know that everybody else is full of shit. All of it without a single molecule of empathy. Heck, one poster even said that Roper shouldn’t have had children. Amazing.

There were some defenses here and there, and I’m going to quote a bit of the best one:

So what has happened to us in the US that we are so harsh to each other, that we can so blithely write such negative comments to each other because someone has joined a church (not a “correct” church??), that we excoriate someone for simply stating her desire that she and her family meet with people they feel comfortable and connected with, joining a group of other similarly minded (and non-judgmental) people to build their sense of community?

We can look down our smug noses at the rest of the world as we crow that this is the “greatest country on earth.” And yes, a great country is open to all sorts for viewpoints. I’m not here to squelch any of them. But this lack of empathy extends far, far beyond religion. It’s one of our biggest problems, and I’m not even sure that we’re aware of it.

---

First published as The Friday Morning Listen: Elvis Costello - Spike on Blogcritics.org

I have decided that’s it’s never not fun to talk about what is and isn’t music. The discussions can be thought-provoking, plus there’s always the chance that somebody will lose it and tell the rest of the crowd that they’re ignorant and don’t know what they’re talking about. Yeah, the possibility of that sort of free entertainment keeps me coming back to the scene of the crime.

So let’s talk about process music of a sort. For further proof that music can be generated from nearly any source material, I present Cortical Songs. John Matthias and Nick Ryan took the rhythmic patterns of firing neurons and used them as guideposts for an improvised performance by a string ensemble.

Without getting super-technical, the ensemble and solo violinist were partially controlled by a software simulator that mimicked a neural network, which in turn controlled 24 LEDs, one for each musician. Players would have parts written out but would play when their lights went on. The four movements represent various levels and configurations of improvisation and live interaction. Hmmm…maybe that was too technical.

Still, the results are certainly not what I expected. I thought for sure that there would be more jagged edges and uncomfortable rhythms. Instead, there are slowly-developing landscapes of sound, with swelling walls of dissonance, tensions that build and then suddenly vaporize, and even a few moments of roiling emotion. This is particularly true of the fourth movement, where it feels like a passionate story is being unfolded.

What I thought I would hear on Cortical Songs actually occurs during the wide-ranging set of remixes that follow. These re-imaginings take Cortical Songs to some places far, far away from their sources. A good remix is like that. You get to hear how the remixer frames the music in the mind. Dominic Murcott’s “The Bipolar Shuffle” is exactly what I was looking for: edgy, skittery rhythms that percolate & never sit still. There’s the spooky mood fog of Jem Finer’s “The Squid’s Terror of Dry Land” and the cinematic “Brain Bumper Remix” by Gabriel Prokofiev.

For a while, I thought that Thom Yorke’s “Neuron Trigger Mix” would win the day. In fact, it is a fine piece of disjointed rhythm that’s reminiscent of Photek. But Marcus Coates’ “0.2 - 20,000%” gets my vote. It sounds like music bounced off a slightly malfunctioning satellite. Much of the flavor of the original material is there, but it’s distorted in a foreboding way…and yet is still quite beautiful. Great stuff.

A tip ‘o the pencil to the label Nonclassical, who are doing the musical world quite a service by smooshing together new music and DJ-isms. Who knows, maybe a fight will break out.

---

First published as Music Review: John Matthias & Nick Ryan - Cortical Songs on Blogcritics.org

Imagine a musician who was totally immersed in his craft. Imagine that person setting down his instrument for 45 years. All of those decades away (and I’m sure Mort is tired of hearing about this story), all of that bad living. A reasonable person might think that attempts at a return to music-making would result in either a sad, watered-down facsimile of a former career or a puffy, nostalgia-filled look back. The story did not end that way for Mort Weiss. Collaborations with guitarist Ron Aschete and B3 legend Joey DeFrancesco were similarly stunning.

On Raising The Bar, Weiss puts his solo clarinet directly into the spotlight. The results are anything but cliché’d, presenting a musician both confident in both his abilities and in love with jazz.

Let’s look at the program first, because this is no set of easily digested swing tunes. There gorgeously-rendered jazzified pop standards (”Tea For Two,” “Love Is A Many Splendored Thing,” “Alfie,” “Smile”), jazz classics (”Just Friends,” “Sketches, “My Shining Hour”), and some intriguing original material.

The approach that Weiss takes on some of these selections is to take the melodic and harmonic content and explore it’s implications. By this, I don’t mean that he starts out in the usual manner, presenting the melody and then slowly taking it in different directions. Instead, the destination is often presented early on, with the music working it’s way back to more “normal” (read: familiar) confines. Give the classic “Just Friends” a listen. Ideas splatter all over the place as you begin to think “Hmmm…wait, I know this….do I?” Just when you really do begin to doubt yourself, the fog clears and that old friend really does show up. On other songs, Weiss takes a more “traditional out” (Hey, I just made an oxymoron!) tack by laying out the tune before visiting the harmonic possibilities of each phrase. It’s both respectful and exhilarating.

My favorite track here is the incredible take on “Sketches.” My ears were used to hearing the wide sound palette presented on Miles’ Sketches of Spain. Weiss investigates first the searching melodic theme before taking off on a high-speed chase through the harmonic landscape. With music this athletic, it’s hard to believe that Mort Weiss is going on 76 years old!

Wait, maybe that’s not my favorite song. It might be “Blues For Håkan.” It was named for Håkan Rosengren, one of the world’s best classical clarinet players and Weiss’ son-in-law. Weiss mixes in bluesy passages, divebombing chromatic runs, and a little extended technique too. It’s one of the many tracks that makes Weiss’ of return to form so amazing.

I’ve been listening to this record for many, many weeks now, and there’s something about the play that struck me as “different,” though I couldn’t come up with a description that could be held in the hand. This collection doesn’t just sound like someone playing songs. It’s more like a presentation of a life, as in “Hey, this is very important to me…can you listen for a little bit?” You might think that you’d rather do something else but you were raised to be polite. So you sit down…and you’re shocked. You had never met this person before and, after one intimate session, you feel like you know them. What do you call that? Give Raising The Bar a listen and get back to me. Thanks.

---

First published as Music Review: Mort Weiss - Raising The Bar on  Blogcritics.org

“I’ll be a genius of some kind or other, probably in literature…Either I’m a genius, I’m egocentric, or I’m slightly schizophrenic. Probably the first two.”

The late poet Allen Ginsberg wrote that. When he was 14.

Ginsberg did have a kind of screwed up home life, but did that squeeze so much extra egocentrism out of him that this proclamation felt logical? Very interesting. When I was 14, I was trying to deal with the combined intimidations of the scary teachers at school and the even scarier girls there. Genius? C’mon, I wasn’t thinking past Tuesday.

I suppose super-creative types are just wired differently. Though there are documented cases of creative later-bloomers, most artists/writers/musicians have their greatest productive years early on in their careers. I’d be willing to bet that most of them knew very early on what direction they would take.

Me, I had no clue. Statements from my friends made no sense to me. Yeah right, you’re going to be a fireman, a policeman, a professional baseball player. It was like they were speaking a different language, or knew something I didn’t know. I could see the words coming out of their very certain mouths, but the sounds coming out were all garbled.

It wasn’t so much lack of ambition or interest as the absolute necessity of spending all of my energy just coping with the present. The idea of looking that far into the future just never occurred to me. How was I supposed to know what I wanted to be when I grew up when I was so concerned about my parent’s imminent announcement that I was an orphan? Or that the doctor had some bad news…that I had a mysterious disease that would cut my tender life short? Or that test tomorrow that was sure to ruin my grades forever? Or that dark-haired girl who would surely reject me in front of all of her friends?

I was frozen between two worlds — the kid world was confusing and difficult and the adult world was one big, ominous mystery. Pete Pan didn’t want to grow up and I sort of understood that…and I didn’t too.

There is quite a bit of writing out there about how a life well-lived can be thought of as a work of art. Unfortunately, modern life has a tendency to crush that spirit. We get so caught up in dealing with our problems that everything else gets shut out. We forget to play. We work too much. We spend a lot of time staring at that blue light.

Long before I became that teenage neurotic, there were endless summers of baseball, bicycle riding, and the ice cream truck. I don’t really want to go back there but I sure could use a little bit of that carefree vibe that made it so great.

---

---

First published at Blogcritics magazine

If you’ve listened to enough pop music over your years of taking in culture, you’ll eventually come to realize that things just can’t be the way you’d want them to be. Yes, there is some truth in the existence of the lowest common denominator. Hey, it’s “popular” music for a reason. A pretty big majority of listeners aren’t all that interested in being challenged. They just want to have fun. Lady Gaga, Justin Beiber, Rihanna — fun is the word. Same as it ever was.

Every so often there are surprises, when music of a little more complexity and subtlety breaks through to the top. The last huge one was probably Norah Jones. I thought for sure that Regina Spektor was going to be next. She’s done well but hasn’t turned out to be the huge commercial phenomenon that Norah was.

Maybe this is all for the good. Not that it always happens, but I sort of hate to see artists pressured by their fame to maintain a certain direction and speed. It’s also disheartening to read of the inevitable pile-on that follows after somebody hits it big. Sometimes it seems like the public enjoys knocking down the successful artist more than reveling in their good fortune.

Don’t take this to mean that I’m necessarily dooming songwriter/pianist Misty Boyce to a career of obscurity and Ramen noodle dinners. I sure hope that’s not what happens, though she does fit right in that gray area with material that’s maybe too sophisticated for pop, too pop for the sophisticates.

Maybe.

On first listen, the opening track “Razor,” made me think that my finger would soon be wandering over to the “eject” button. Though my ears were drawn to the sprightly verse with its staccato piano chords as well as the windup to the chorus, the arrival of that refrain just screamed “Generic!!” That’s because I wasn’t listening yet. Repeated visits unearthed a wealth of pop detailing, including strings shadowing the vocal melody. One particular detail stood out, but I couldn’t quite figure out what it was. Then the name popped out: Olivia Newton John.

This is a good thing. Trust me. Read on.

This record is made up of songs that inhabit emotional landscapes that sway between pensive thought-pieces (”All You Need Is Here”) and seemingly randy pop nuggets — check out the infectious bounce of “Love You Down.” “Let’s Get Lonely” represents the other side, a soulful and serious trip.

OK, back to the Olivia Newton John thing. Yes, I was reminded of her voice as the chorus of that first song lifted off. Then again, I was also reminded (just a bit) of Regina Spektor during the quirky & jaunty “Be A Man,” especially when the piano doubled her vocal line. Comparisons to Tori are also inevitable. But at the end of the album, my ears were not left with remnants of those other artists. No, Misty Boyce is doing her own thing. Make fun of Olivia Newton John all you want, but nobody else sounded like her. Same thing goes for both Regina and Tori.

The standout track here is “Trouble.” A powerful lament over what the protagonist has become, it’s sung to simple piano accompaniment during the verses with a swelling of strings and guitar in the chorus. It also took me by surprise with its emotionally raw confession of personal decay: “cuz lately I’ve been fucking like a man/getting drunk and making plans…” Ouch. That’s some distilled and brutal honestly right there.

Pop music for adults, is how people tend to think of music like this. Lady Gaga might be fine for throwin’ down on a Saturday night, but we need something to take us through the rest of the week. I just hope that there are some adults still listening, because this is some fabulous stuff.

---

---

First published at Blogcritics magazine

Let’s talk about passion. There are days when I can’t decide exactly what it is that I have passion for. Is for music? Is it for words? Words about music? The “right” answer, one that can probably never hold much precision, is likely to be a combination of the three. Plus some other stuff. You might wonder why I care about this. Yeah, I wonder that myself. It has to do with periods of time when I spend too much time inside my own head. All writers know about this.

So I’m sitting around reading the first bits of Michael Kimmelman’s The Accidental Masterpiece. In the most general sense, the book is about how if we pay attention, we’ll find that art is all around us. It’s not just framed paintings in a gallery. It’s not even necessarily objects…it could just be a part of your life and how you live it.

Before the first chapter, entitled “The Art of Making A World” (about painter Pierre Bonnard and how he managed to shape his world despite his pained relationship with Marthe), the introduction ends with a powerful anecdote about Elgar Degas. When he was an old man, he visited the exhibition of his hero Jean-Auguste-Dominique-Ingres every day while it was at the Galerie George Petit. Degas was blind. He just wanted to be with the works and run his fingers over them.

That is passion.

A little bit before picking up the Kimmelman book, I had been listening to a CD called Cortical Songs by John Matthias and Nick Ryan. A piece of music created by taking the signals between human brain cells and rendering them as music, performed by a string ensemble. There are moments of incredibly beauty on this recording but there was one in particular that struck me. A figure ended abruptly, but with a fadeout that first revealed silence and then a morphed version of the original phrase, echoing off in a different direction.

For whatever reason, I was dumbstruck by that five seconds of sound. I immediately wanted to write about it. I wanted to hold it in my hand forever. What does that mean? I don’t know.

I do know that sometimes it bugs me that it seems like nobody else cares about this stuff. Not this music in particular, but well…anything. Does anybody have a passion for something outside of sports, celebrity gossip, and complaining about the government? I suppose this doesn’t matter and, on most days, the thought doesn’t occur to me at all. I’m too busy listening and writing…or wishing that I was listening and writing.

---

First published at Blogcritics magazine

On paper it looks like a mess. A mess that has been done before. For lyrical source material, take a bunch of words written by a cast of poets both famous and not. Set the poetry to music. Then, record the songs with a huge assortment of musicians, again both famous and not. We’re talking over one hundred players here…a year in the making. Though there have been a few counterexamples, pop music history is littered with failures of this sort. It sounds like another train wreck in the making.

I’m glad to report that my skeptical side was completely wrong. Not only does Leave Your Sleep work, it just might be the best thing that Natalie Merchant has ever done as a solo artist.

Ms. Merchant says that the words and stories of the poets evoked their own musical themes. What again seems like a potential problem — a batch wide-ranging styles, tending to work against a cohesive statement — is spun into a glorious victory. Yes, there are tunes with Celtic flair alongside orchestra-draped waltzes, country & bluegrass, jazz, reggae, klezmer, R&B, Cajun, Balkan, and Chinese folk. In the end, Merchant’s musical ideas and their inspired realizations draw it all together. She does this with help from the likes of the Ditty Bops, Hazmat Modine, the Chinese Music Ensemble of New York, members of the New York Philharmonic, Wynton Marsalis, Medeski, Martin & Wood, and many others.

The poetry employed here originates from the famous (Ogden Nash, e.e. cummings, Robert Louis Stevenson) to the fairly obscure (William Brighty Rands…though hey, this is the United States. Arent’ all poets obscure?). Unknown poets are even represented here by a handful of lullabies.

It’s quite obvious that Merchant’s great love of both words and various musics drove her to make this statement. This isn’t to say that it’s all straight-backed-chair serious. Not at all. Waltz’s such as the (beautifully orchestrated) “Equestrienne” are counterbalanced by the jaunt of tunes like “Calico Pie” and the klezmer strut of “The Dancing Bear.” What’s so great about this recording is that Merchant makes it all sound very natural. She may be visiting genres that are new to her catalog (Merchant has said her musical interests go far beyond what we’ve heard from her so far), but there’s not a hint of discomfort in her new surroundings.

With all of these songs spread over two discs, it’s really tough to pick out standouts (let alone favorites) as there are just too many. If I had to choose, I’d feel obligated to mention: the modern pop (by way of The Beach Boys) sounds of “It Makes A Change,” the Eastern vibe of “The King of China’s Daughter,” the country blues of “The Peppery Man,” the slinky reggae of “Topsy-turvey World,” the swanky, old-world jazz of “The Janitor’s Boy” (thanks Wynton), and the strut of “Bleezer’s Ice Cream.” There’s a single-disc version of Leave Your Sleep available. Don’t do it. Yes, there’s a lot of material here, but all of it is essential.

On first listen, I was struck by how this recording held together, despite its varied styles. It’s like these melodies and poems had been waiting around all of these years for Natalie Merchant to notice them. “It’s about time,” they all said, “Let’s tell a story.”

---

First published at Blogcritics magazine

I didn’t really know much about Malcolm McLaren, except that he had some sort of fashion boutique called “Sex” and that he put the Sex Pistols together. A Rolling Stone article marking his death referred to him as a “Punk Renaissance Man.” Yeah, that works. Before the Pistols he was the manager of the New York Dolls. That’s one hell of a fraking noise pedigree if you ask me.

But it was about more than noise. McLaren seemed intent on pissing people off. Yeah, right, so stupid. Eh, whatever. I’ve always thought it was kind of funny. Putting together a band that could barely play. Choosing the most abrasive individual he could find to front them. Johnny Rotten. The whole “God Save The Queen” stunt on the river Thames. Gawd, they were a mess.

And yet…

I do remember that night when I saw the segment about the Sex Pistols on the newscast (pretty sure it was Walter Cronkite). The hair stood up on the back of my neck as Lydon brayed “God Save The Queen” over the band’s squall. I’d never heard anything like that. My parents hoped they never would again. They did not get their wish. The album hit the States and I sure as hell got my hands on a copy. The band never really went anywhere, with a tour that imploded in true punk rock fashion.

Still, depite the mess that they were, that one record was truly influential. There will always be debates about who the first punk rock band was. My money is on The Ramones, but it doesn’t really matter. So many of that generation were influenced by the mass of garage rock that came before them. They don’t call Iggy the Godfather of Punk for nothin’. The Pistols surely influence me to check out all sorts of other punk noisemongers including the Ramones, The Dead Boys, The Dictators and The Clash.

All of these years later, Never Mind The Bollocks, Here’s The Sex Pistols still hold up. It’s probably the only coherent statement that came out of that camp. But hey, if you want to sample the mayhem, you owe it to yourself to give The Great Rock ‘n Roll Swindle a listen. Not only does it have the (iconic?) version of Sid’s cover of “My Way,” but it’s got a hilarious rehearsal recording of “Roadrunner.” It’s totally worth the purchase price to hear Rotten trying to get Jones to cut the session short by bleating “AWWWWWEFULL!!!!”

I had never paid all that much attention to what McLaren was really about, so I discovered in the Times obit that he followed the French Situationists, who employed provocation as a tool for social change. I know that some folks think that made McLaren a jerk. Maybe so. All I know is that I owe him a debt of gratitude for the Sex Pistols thing.

So in the spirit pissing people off, how about a Sex Pistols/Lady Gaga mashup? Poker Face-meets-Pretty Vacant. Hell yeah! Rest in peace, Mr. McLaren. 64 is too young. Ever feel you’ve been cheated?

---

---

First published at Blogcritics magazine

Being the musical egghead that I am, I tend to be very fond of Frank Zappa’s thoughts on composition. In particular, the idea that anything can be music. Yes, anything — “Anything can be music, but it doesn’t become music until someone wills it to be music, and the audience listening to it decides to perceive it as music. Most people can’t deal with that abstraction — or don’t want to.”

Zappa goes on from there to his complaint about people wanting what they know. It’s sort of true, although I don’t really get as worked up about it as he did. Hey, some people just want to have some fun, challenge not being a requirement for every listening experience. Count me in that camp too. Heck, I finished out the work day a couple of days ago with some Commander Cody. Who needs high art when you’re only looking for a smile and a shot of the energy of the familiar?

Somewhere in between these ghettos of art (both low and high) lies the loft of music concrete. It’s a form (hmmm…almost hate to use that word here) of composition that gets its source material, concepts, and sounds from the real world and its goings on. The screech of subway brakes, the chirp of birds, the rattle of industrial equipment. The RPM Orchestra reminds me that these concept have always held a lot of resonance. Not only do I experience unusual things as music, but often I hear bits of “normal” music emanating from their intersections.

The idea of extending the definition of music so that it pushes back into everyday objects and situations isn’t all that outlandish. Not too many years ago, Steve Reich built a composition based on words being spoken about a train trip to Chicago. Yes, Different Trains was quite an ear-opener. More recently, there is Nico Muhley’s Mothertongue.

On Afterglow, collages of samples are move around and glued together to create distinctly dreamlike suites of found sound. The combinations are quite moving, even if they don’t always tell a direct story: an old jazz band with spooky messages from an espionage “counting station” running underneath, a classical composition played in the background as it is subsumed by flames in the fore, the natural reverb in large, public spaces. The sound of rain, mid-downpour, trying to drown out the wind chimes, one single muted piano note far in the background…an operatic voice can be heard off in the distance, television dialog colliding with cycling radio signals, the refrain of participants at a religious service just before breaking out into song…a song that itself generates disturbing synthesized echoes.

I’m not sure what it takes to enjoy this kind of music. It has a certain ambient nature, but is so full of detail that a person can easily lose the aural image if they’re not lending their full attention.

The RPM Orchestra leaves a succinct note on their MySpace page: “Musique Concrète for the masses.” Cute, in a musical egghead kind of way.

---

First published at Blogcritics magazine

Sometimes, you never quite know what’s going to work. You’ve got two ingredients that maybe you don’t thing are so great, but put them together and you get the big surprise. Subtle combinations can often surprise.

---

Tom Harrell - Roman Nights

My favorite Tom Harrell record is actually a Jim Hall record. These Rooms was a Jim Hall Trio album featuring Tom Harrell. Really great stuff. There was a certain synergy between Harrell’s flugelhorn and Hall’s guitar. Some of that kind of thing is evident on Roman Nights. Danny Grissett’s beautiful piano introduction on the title track leads into Harrell’s smokey theme. On the higher end of the energy scale is the closing “Bird In Flight.” As usual, I am hooked by inspired unison play and this song is full of it. When Harrell and tenor player Wayne Escoffery start trading solos, you know you’re onto something.

Eric Reed & Cyrus Chestnut - Plenty Swing, Plenty Soul

To my ears, the reference standard of piano duo recordings has to be that Chick Corea/Herbie Hancock thing. Monstrous, is what it is. This is a little different though. First it’s Reed and Chestnut (duh). Second, there’s the presence of bass and drums (Dezron Douglas, Willie Jones III). The title gets it right. There is mad swing going on here. The intertwined introduction to “All The Things You Are” is just so fine. The rest of the piece swings in it’s own sweet, restrained way. My favorite track “Two Bass Hit.” Their take on it just burns.

Dave Glasser - Evolution

Sax, piano, bass, & drums. Staples in the jazz world. Sometimes, that combination can be bland. If the players don’t add a little spice to the proceedings, you quickly realize that you’ve been here before. (”What? Intro-head-solos-head again?!) Thankfully, Dave Glasser knows how to apply the leverage to that alto and his band knows how to react. The angular introduction to “Monk’s Blues” builds just the right amount of tension before the launch into a very swinging piece built on a series of widely-spaced intervals. It’s a nice tribute to Monk and a kindred spirit to their version of the man’s “Rhythm-A-Ning.”

Earl MacDonald - Re: Visions

Subtitled “Works for Jazz Orchestra,” this album showcases the arranging talents of Earl MacDonald as well as a stellar cast of cohorts. I have to be honest here and say that big-ish bands are not usually my thing. That is, unless they’re doing something “odd” (see: Carla Bley, The Either Orchestra). This recording grabbed me from the first note, specifically, the giant horn blast that opens “Friday Night At The Cadillac Club.” There are a lot of styles to consider here, from the blues of that opening track to the joyous swing of “Bu Who.” The ears must always be trusted though, and they pick “Character Defect” as the standout. It’s one of those pieces that has a lot of inner detail. There’s a lot going on and yet the theme, built over time, is never lost to the individual moments. MacDonald’s piano playing is terrific here.

Joe Chambers - Horace To Max

There are drummers who can keep time, who stay out of the way in the effort to enhance their fellow musicians’ sound. Moving a step beyond that are people like Joe Chambers, who play with so much nuance and obvious consideration for the ongoing moment that what you’re hearing is no longer mere percussion, but a living part of the music. Just listen to the comping that Chambers does during bassist Dwayne Burno’s bass solo on “Asiatic Raes.” It’s like he’s filling all of those little cracks that neither musician knew existed. Just check out the subtle support given to Nicole Guiland during “Lonesome Lover,” or the thermonuclear swing of “Evidence.”

---

First published at Blogcritics magazine