The New Year may be only a few days old, but Chicago’s jazz artists have wasted no time in making their mark on 1995, with a spate of new recordings.
Pianists, trumpeters, drummers, avant-gardists, neo-conservatives, big bands, octets, sextets, quintets, quartets-a remarkable assortment of ensemble and solo forms have been addressed in this wave of releases.
The most stunning of the new recordings comes from 8 Bold Souls, an adventurous, long-running Chicago band led by reed player/composer Edward Wilkerson Jr. “Ant Farm” (Arabesque Jazz) stands as a multi-faceted accomplishment, its compositions epic, its ensemble improvisations spontaneous yet logical, its solo flights virtuosic and beyond.
This is a recording that consistently keeps the listener on edge, for one never knows where Wilkerson and colleagues will take an idea. “Half Life,” which opens the recording, for instance, defies traditional jazz forms from its opening bars, yet before long Wilkerson is playing a fire-breathing tenor solo that, in its fury and fervor, draws on 60-odd years of solo tenor tradition (even if the musical material is decidedly cutting-edge).
In the recording’s title track, which also is its tour de force, Wilkerson has managed to create an epic 16-minute composition that is as structurally lucid as a classical symphony yet accommodates vast jazz solos from cellist Naomi Millinder, trombonist Isaiah Jackson and trumpeter Robert Griffin. Only a bandleader/composer as seasoned and as daring as Wilkerson could have made this sprawling work hold together.
Trumpeter-bandleader Malachi Thompson won accolades around the world in 1993 for his “Lift Ev’ry Voice” (Delmark), which offered a dramatic view of the history of jazz and its musical precursors. The work’s radiant horn choirs, life-affirming solo passages and sublime choral sections suggested that “Lift Ev’ry Voice” will endure as one of the landmarks of Chicago jazz in the ’90s.
This time around, Thompson works on more intimate and introspective terms with “New Standards” (Delmark), featuring his superb Freebop Band. Dedicated to the memory of tenor saxophonist Carter Jefferson, a longtime Thompson collaborator who died in 1993, the recording carries an unmistakable sense of lyric melancholy, even in its full-throated passages.
Certainly Thompson’s elliptical and mystical lines in music of Wayne Shorter and Victor Feldman represent a pensive counterpoint to roaring tenor solos by Sonny Seals and, on several tracks, Jefferson himself.
Yet for all of Thompson’s focus on small-form compositions in this CD, he apparently cannot resist at least one epic statement, and the vivid, 13-minute “Chicago Soundscapes” is the strongest work on the album.
Percussionist Damon Short and his band haven’t yet achieved quite the renown of Thompson’s Freebop Band or Wilkerson’s 8 Bold Souls, but Short’s new recording, “All of the Above” (Southport), should help put this intrepid avant-gardist on the map.
The five compositions on this disc are unique to Short in that they can communicate easily and directly with the most general audience, even though each bristles with new, daring and experimental ways of building ensembles and improvisations.
Innovation is not the only arena in which Chicago musicians are making strides, however. Several of the new releases take pains to reaffirm traditional values, though some do so with more success than others.
Among them, pianist Jon Weber makes the most impressive recorded debut with “Jazz Wagon” (IMI Records). Listeners familiar with Weber from his work as a sideman around town already know of his fluidity at the keyboard; those who have heard Weber playing solo in various hotel lobbies have noted the size and scope of his repertoire.
With “Jazz Wagon,” however, Weber establishes himself as one of the most accomplished keyboardists in the business. His astonishing digital virtuosity in the recording’s title cut; his ability to quote a dozen different tunes in the midst of most any improvisation; his mastery of stride, ragtime, pre-bop, bebop and post-bop styles easily places him in the rarefied company of such erudite senior pianists as Dick Hyman and Dave McKenna.
Weber’s protege, the 21-year-old pianist Reginald Robinson, made his own record debut about a year and a half ago with the remarkable ragtime CD “The Strongman” (Delmark).
Now Robinson is back with his followup, “Sounds in Silhouette” (Delmark), and it establishes beyond doubt that he is far more than a one-hit wonder. Here, as on his earlier CD, Robinson plays original ragtime compositions that evoke the spirit of this turn-of-the-century form even while incorporating more modern ideas on harmony and rhythm.
The innovative textures and chords that Robinson articulates in the recording’s striking opener, “The Ragtime Pauper”; the remarkable technical accomplishments that he shows on tracks such as “To Mimic”; and the strange and exotic chord progressions and intricate voicings he offers in “Jack Johnson Rag” suggest that he’s one of the most original keyboard talents to come along since Marcus Roberts did, roughly a decade ago.
Two Chicago trumpeters also have clung to musical tradition on their new records, though with mixed results.
Orbert Davis, clearly a rising star on the Chicago and the national scene, never plays less than ravishingly well on his record debut, “Unfinished Memories” (Copia Records). The understated elegance of his solos on “My Funny Valentine” and the vulnerable and sighing qualities of his sound on “Chelsea Bridge” underscore his virtues as a soloist.
But the arrangements and instrumental backdrops on several of the album’s cuts come dangerously close to lite-jazz and urban-dance cliches that often diminish the effect of Davis’ sublime solos. A player of his depth and accomplishment ought to work in more substantial musical idioms; perhaps he will on his next recording.
Trumpeter Steve Schneck hews even closer to tradition in “Together Again” (Lake Shore Jazz), offering mostly well-worn standards. His solos on fluegelhorn and trumpet prove pleasant but inconsequential, as the soloist covers familiar ground in familiar ways.
Jazz traditions are much more nobly upheld by two fine ensembles, Barrett Deems’ Big Band in “How’d You Like It So Far?” and Roy Rubenstein’s Chicago Hot 6 with “Shout ‘Em!” (both on Delmark).
The latter evokes the flavor of Roaring ’20s Chicago jazz, with glorious instrumental counterpoint from Rubenstein’s trombone, Bob Nabors’ cornet and Norrie Cox’s clarinet. Yet this band puts its own spin on vintage forms, playing with a more relaxed approach to rhythm and a more easygoing tempo than one is accustomed to hearing in early repertoire by Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington.
Deems, who, incredibly, has been playing jazz since the ’20s, propels his Big Band mightily in his recording. The ensemble’s crispness in “Air Mail Special,” Audrey Morrison’s deep-blue solo in “A Night in Tunisia” and “Angel Eyes” and Mike Levin’s gritty tenor work all distinguish this CD.
By any measure, it’s a treasured document of a jazz master who still swings like mad at age 81.
