Though conventional wisdom holds that a conservative, neo-classical mood dominates and defines jazz in the ’90s, those retro forms of jazz improvisation represent but one facet of the music.
For every Roy Hargrove and Joshua Redman and Wallace Roney, to name just a few gifted traditionalists, there’s a young performer searching for new idioms, new sounds and utterly new directions in jazz. Thanks to these nascent experimenters, as well as many of their elders, jazz today is pushing out into bold areas, some undreamed of just a few years ago.
A recent wave of recordings, in fact, underscores the breadth of activity among fearless jazz improvisers of the ’90s.
One of the most startling of the experiments took place last April at HotHouse, a Chicago bastion of avant-garde music on North Milwaukee Avenue. The Women of New Music Festival, which attracted an international field of performers and listeners, offered a sweeping range of performances. But the most eagerly anticipated show had to be the collaboration of Chicago tenor saxophone legend Fred Anderson, Chicago percussionist Hamid Drake and East Coast pianist Marilyn Crispell.
Because of Anderson’s long-standing and global reputation as a “free jazz” pioneer, because of Drake’s prolific work around Chicago in a variety of avant-garde settings and because of Crispell’s rising popularity in new-music circles, these artists together attracted an overflow crowd to HotHouse. That Anderson, a septuagenarian, would be riffing with performers roughly half his age only enhanced the appeal of this event, in which radical performers would be speaking to each other across the generations.
The live performance transcended expectations, a fact reaffirmed by a newly released recording of the event. “Destiny,” on Chicago’s emerging Okka Disk label, does something more than preserve and document a historic evening: It stands as a profound piece of music-making and attests to the musical range and expressive depth of the most inspired avant-garde improvisers.
Divided into several extended improvisations, titled “Destiny 1” through “Destiny 6,” the recording details the deeply personalized musical language that these three players forged. In the opening track, for instance, Anderson’s blistering lines on tenor find an appropriately explosive accompaniment in Crispell’s fast-flying bursts of dissonance on piano and Drake’s profusion of sound on percussion.
The acuity with which these players listen to one another, the urgency with which Anderson drives this performance, the remarkable sonic clarity of the band-even as it plays at full tilt-are astonishing.
But there was more than just sound and fury to this evening. Anderson’s doleful blues lament in “Destiny 2,” supported by Crispell’s Expressionistic waves of sound on piano, ultimately conveyed a deeply spiritual message. Crispell’s rich harmonic vocabulary, Drake’s shimmering cymbal work and Anderson’s lyrical phrases on “Destiny 3” represented a tour de force of avant-garde ensemble playing, as did the musicians’ intricate rhythms on “Destiny 4.”
The music is more ethereal but no less daring in “Friday Afternoon in the Universe” (Gramavision), by the promising young trio Medeski, Martin and Wood. If Anderson, Crispell and Drake epitomize a dense and often cerebral approach to new music, Medeski, Martin and Wood might be considered a more soft-spoken, sensual and pop-oriented alternative.
Indeed, keyboardist John Medeski, percussionist Billy Martin and bassist Chris Wood (all of whom play other instruments on the recording, as well) draw heavily on funk backbeats, campy old pop tunes, weird electronic sound effects and other bits and pieces from the junkyard of pop culture. This sets the trio apart from much of today’s jazz avant-garde, which tends to be more dour in mood, thick in texture and angry in gesture than Medeski, Martin and Wood care to be.
Theirs is an idiom that embraces pop culture even while using its elements in intellectually sophisticated ways. The thumping dance beat that drives the recording’s opening track, “The Lover,” for instance, is joined by some of the most chic and meticulously detailed jazz organ playing you’re likely to hear.
Similarly, the juxtaposition of easy swing rhythms and sophisticated pitch distortions in “We’re So Happy,” the merging of hard-bop language and church-inspired piano in “Chinoiserie,” the fusion of modern funk rhythms and ’50s organ riffs in “Sequel” all gleefully ignore traditional musical boundaries and barriers.
The masterstroke of this project, though, is the way all of these musical elements seem to float freely, as if in space. The nature of the balances among the instruments and the generous amount of reverberation of the recording technique make this album sound fully three-dimensional, with sounds bouncing and echoing, appearing and disappearing as if careening haplessly through the universe.
It’s an intellectually intriguing, instantly appealing idiom that, in some ways, brings the space music of Sun Ra, stripped down, right into the ’90s.
The young East Coast percussionist Gregg Bendian pursues a more introspective music in “Definite Pitch” (Aggregate Music), in which the soloist plays soliloquies on various tuned percussion instruments. The exceptional lyricism that Bendian evokes in “Ararat,” on chimes; the lucid musical structure he articulates in “Immediately Pealed,” on marimba; and the remarkable variety of sound, texture and attack he expresses in “For Steve McCall,” on a lone snare drum, establish Bendian as a formidable percussionist/inventor.
Though listeners are becoming familiar with percussionist Leon Parker through his work with rising-star pianist Jacky Terrasson, Parker is beginning to establish an identity of his own with “Above and Below” (Epicure). If his musical experiments are somewhat more commercial than those described above, they’re still intriguing for the range of sources from which he draws inspiration.
The fat backbeat and vocal scat passages that his band offers in “All My Life”; the bamboo flute lines, mesmerizing melodic ostinatos and other hints of African antiquity of “Celebration”; the lean, stripped-down approach to such Thelonious Monk standards as “Bemsha Swing” and “Epistraphy” all suggest a restless spirit who’s beginning to search for new approaches to timeless themes.
It’s not only the youngsters, however, who are pressing for new sounds. Many of their predecessors, who have been at it for decades, still are inventing and refining novel methods of improvisation.
Veteran pianist-composer Randy Weston, for instance, has released “The Splendid Master Gnawa Musicians of Morocco” (Antilles), in which he has brought together elder musicians whose group improvisations on folkloric instruments represent ancient sources of the jazz tradition. Though the first two, epic tracks of this recording are essentially archival, documenting a prehistoric music, the most revolutionary track is the last, “Chalabati.”
Here, Weston dares to play a modern piano along with the singing, clapping, drum-beating Gnawa musicians. In this track, ancient and modern idioms meet head on.
Finally, iconoclastic violinist Leroy Jenkins, who launched his career in Chicago, has come up with a beguiling series of works in “Themes and Improvisations on the Blues” (CRI). Jenkins’ pieces for string quartet and for larger ensemble are part composed and part improvised, each expressing the modern jazz vernacular in largely classical terms.
But where most composers working in this hybrid area tend to end up with the worst of both worlds, Jenkins has bridged the two idioms more successfully. Or at least there’s no tug of war between blues/swing elements and classical structures here.
The most individualistic works are “Panorama 1” and “Monkey on the Dragon,” in which bold improvisations energize classical forms.
Here Jenkins clearly establishes that there are new sounds and ideas to be found even in the most time-honored forms.
