What’s happening in Jazz?

With a hundred or so years of recorded music, it’s sometimes easy to forget that new jazz bands and approaches are popping up all the time.  Right now, in 2008, it feels like something’s happening.

I remember when my fresh ears stumbled into a Gold Sparkle Band gig some ten years ago. I’m not sure who they were playing with and it may or may not have been at a loft somewhere in DUMBO or at Avenue B Social Club (which is now that bar run by Handsome Dick Manitoba, or maybe some condos for all know, I live in Jersey).  At any rate, I thought something was happening then as well; the punk/psychedelic energy of these jazz kids was exhilarating.  It seemed to me noise/punk/whatever bands were making their music in the spirit of the loft jazz scene of the ‘70s.  Gold Sparkle Band was an example of jazz musicians drawing on that kind of energy.  I figured a cadre of new jazz dorks would start coming at it from a younger, post-everything perspective, expand the idiom, right?  There were some examples (TEST, Tenor Rising, Drums Expanding, Chicago Underground Duo/Trio, Mishegas featuring the future Kid Millions from Oneida) For the most part, though, younger musicians were folding jazz in as an element, one of a thousand, for modern noise/rock bands to draw on.

So is something happening?  I can’t remember the last time I was more excited for a new release date than Tyshawn Sorey’s double-disc debut album on Firehouse 12, That/Not (Tyshawn Sorey - "Seven Pieces for Trombone Quartet" from That/Not).   This was to be a special record. For starters, Tyshawn himself, known as one of the finest young jazz drummers around, stated that he had nothing to prove and would not feature drums as a main compositional component on the record.  Beyond that, much of That/Not’s double-disc length would be made up of a solo piano composition.  Nice.  One late night at WFMU I was screening a pile of CDs and unexpectedly encountered That/Not along with a self-titled record by the Peter Evans Quartet, also on Firehouse 12, and scanned through both.  To my surprise, That/Not was expansive and slow and confusing, a ship abandoned at sea and left to drift. The Peter Evans Quartet on the other hand, was a fine-tuned scorcher (Peter Evans Quartet - "Bodies and Souls" from The Peter Evans Quartet).

I guess it should not have come as a total shock.  I had heard Peter’s solo record, More is More (on Evan Parker's Psi label), a frightfully compelling journey into the innards of a trumpet (I’m a big fan of solo trumpet records, maybe a future BotB post there somewhere?), but honestly I didn’t expect such a straightforward record.  This was a young band steeped in tradition, playing attacking Ornette Coleman-style jazz with courage and precision.  In the liner notes, Evans explains that the album is his attempt at creating “jazz” without prejudice, utilizing familiar chord changes based on standards.  He should have added “and swinging like a motherfucker.”  To top it off, Tyshawn Sorey’s album proved to be a shapeshifting mutating thing, rewarding the patient.  The focal point is the 42-minute slow-morphing solo piano composition that evokes visual artists like Elsworth Kelly or Donald Judd way more than than Earl “Fatha” Hines.  In both cases, I can’t stop thinking of the classics, Ornette Coleman or Cecil Taylor, not because of the sonic similarities (though Peter Evans IS a spiritual descendant of Don Cherry), but because these bands have the same landscape in mind where jazz becomes a multidimensional force disassociated from style or preconception.  The best jazz refuses to eat its own tail.

Here's where it gets interesting.  As mentioned, both records come courtesy of Firehouse 12, a club and label based in New Haven, CT, the label of which is part-owned by Taylor Ho Bynum.  Bynum’s a seasoned trumpet player probably best known as a member of Anthony Braxton’s recent circle, and indeed, one of Firehouse 12’s initial releases is a mammoth 9 CD box documenting Braxton’s run at the Iridium in 2006.  The drummer on Peter Evans’s record is Kevin Shea of Storm and Stress and Talibam!.  Evans himself plays on the totally amazing post-rock (post-jazz?) Talibam! record from last year, Ordination of the Globetrotting Conscripts.  Bynum’s sextet released a solid record in 2007 on F12 as well, The Middle Picture (Taylor Ho Bynum Sextet - "Brooklyn with an E" from The Middle Picture).  His band includes Jessica Pavone and Mary Halvorson, both also alumni of Braxton’s bands, and both of whom play in various configurations and are kicking some dust off the scene in a big way.  Sorey’s trombonist is Ben Gerstein, who played on last year’s crucial glitch/jazz tour de force Commuter Anthems by Opsik & Jennings.  Anyway, you get the picture.  With Firehouse 12, Taylor Ho Bynum, purposefully or not, is at the center of some serious action.  Maybe something IS happening. 

Notes:

- Tyshawn Sorey has an additional CD-length download-only addendum to That/Not available on the F12 site here. 
- Ben Ratliff from the New York Times profiled Mary Halvorson last week.
- Visit the WFMU archives to hear Jessica Pavone and Mary Halvorson live on the Stochastic Hit Parade with Bethany Ryker.
- Taylor Ho Bynum's blog SpiderMonkey Stories is worth checking out.
- I only scratched the surface when alluding to all these musicians playing together and in various configurations.  Check dates on Sorey's or Evans's MySpace for specifics.
- Thanks to Firehouse 12 for permission to post the tracks.
- Personnel on The Peter Evans Quartet: Peter Evans: Trumpet; Brandon Seabrook: guitar, electronics; Tom Blancarte: bass; Kevin Shea: drums.
- Personnel on That/Not: Ben Gerstein: trombone; Corey Smythe: piano, wurlitzer organ; Thomas Morgan: bass; Tyshawn Sorey: drums, piano.

Comments

[tony c]

Speaking of Taylor Ho Bynum, check out the Fully Celebrated Orchestra.

http://celebratefully.squarespace.com/

Alto, cornet, bass, drums. Alto sax man Jim Hobbs deserves more recognition. The range of the rhythm section is astounding.

[gold sparkle band]

Andrew here from Gold Sparkle. Thanks Scott for the kind words. We've been doing it for nearly 15 years as a band, and it's great to read acknowledgement like this when it comes around. I'm glad you got to check us out back in the day! GSB is still "happening" now! New Gold Sparkle Trio record "puzzle phase" coming this spring, along with ACID BiRDS (Andrew Barker & Charles Waters (GSB) with Jaime Fennelly (The Peesseye)).

[illlich]

These are solid records, I wish more people were hip to them, it's an uphill battle for bands like this today to sell records.

Agreed on Tony C's assessment of Jim Hobbs-- I saw them perform at a private party in Jamaica Plain (Boston) years ago and they blew me away. That guy Django is a hell of a drummer.