VOID

In reference to last weekend's post, here are a couple of clips of Void.

List: Best Working Groups in Jazz

One of the things I like about jazz is the ease with which total strangers can come together and play quality music with little or no rehearsal, thanks to the shared language of jazz. As a result, supergroup recordings abound in this art. If a few star performers want to get together to produce an album, the only thing standing in their way is scheduling. However, though the possibility of fantasy groupings will perpetually tantalize jazz fans, the fact remains that in jazz, the intimacy afforded by regular work together facilitates artful music. As such, much of the best jazz produced comes at the hands of a longstanding working groups, whose musicians know each other as well as they know themselves.

So without further ado, below are my favorite current working bands, in a completely random order, with a recommended recording thrown in for good measure:

1. Dave Holland Quintet (Robin Eubanks, trombone; Chris Potter, saxophone; Steve Nelson, mallets; Holland, bass; Nate Smith, drums): The lineup has shifted a bit in the past few years, with Smith replacing Billy Kilson on drums, but the fact remains that this group plays some of the most exciting music in jazz. The group excels at collective improvisation, and the interplay between Eubanks and Potter is often exquisite. Check them out on Extended Play, a double live disc from 2003.
   
2. Medeski Martin & Wood (John Medeski, keyboards; Chris Wood, bass; Billy Martin, drums, percussion): Though some may argue that this group does not actually play jazz, I disagree. Electric or acoustic, this trio can swing with the best of them (in their inimitable way) and brings an incredible sense of energy to their music. I recommend Tonic, a live acoustic album from 2000.
3. The Bad Plus (Ethan Iverson, piano; Reid Anderson, bass; Dave King, drums): The band has yet to release a live album in the U.S., so I've embedded a YouTube clip below of a live performance. I also heartily recommend the band's blog.
4. Wayne Shorter Quartet (Shorter, saxophone; Danilo Perez, piano; John Patitucci, bass; Brian Blade, drums): Like many of the other bandleaders in this list, Wayne Shorter has pulled off the impressive coup of hiring sidemen who all lead stellar groups of their own. Whether reimagining Shorter's compositions or playing newer material, this quartet is not afraid to explore and reach outside of their comfort zone to produce great art. Shorter's quartet excels on the live discs Footprints Live! and Beyond the Sound Barrier.
   
5. Void (Troy Roberts, saxophone; Tom O'Hallaran, keys; Dane Alderson, bass; Andrew Fisenden, drums): You probably have not heard of them, but this group from Australia can play. They do not perform regularly anymore (which should disqualify them from the list, but I make the rules, so they're in), but when they do get together, it is an event of epic proportions. Check out their website, and give them a listen.
6. Pat Metheny Trio (Metheny, guitar; Christian McBride, bass; Antonio Sanchez, drums): As I've written in this space before, Pat Metheny thrives in the trio setting due in no small part to the fact that he can surround himself with some of the best musicians around. I saw this trio play in Gainesville, Florida in 2005, and it totally hooked me on Metheny. I had never been a huge fan of his, but after seeing him live (for $10 - thanks UF student government!), I could not get enough Metheny. Be sure to check out the recent live EP Tokyo Day Trip.
7. Keith Jarrett Standards Trio (Jarrett, piano; Gary Peacock, bass; Jack DeJohnette, drums): When Jarrett is not being an insufferable ass, this group produces more moements of surprise and genius with well-worn standards in one night than most groups could hope to make over a career. Along with Wynton Marsalis' championing of standards around the same time, this group made standards cool again, and we have them to thank for reinvigorating the genre. They have so many quality live performances out there for sale, but two of my favorite are Whisper Not, from 2000, and Inside Out, from 2001.

The Bad Plus: Flim

Friday Album Cover: Blue Note Special

John Coltrane

Blue Train

This week, let us examine one of Blue Note Records' most widely-employed album-cover motifs. For simplicity's sake, I will refer to the motif as the "Blue Note Special." The ingredients for the Blue Note Special are quite simple: One black-and-white photograph, tinting, and text. In-house graphic designer Reid Miles often utilized the photography of Blue Note co-founder Francis Wolff, who was often in the studio during recording sessions with his camera in hand. Wolff's collection is full of candid shots of musicians playing and thinking, like the shot used above on the cover to John Coltrane's Blue Train. Miles often employed these shots in his cover art, often giving the photo a tint (with blue being one of the most frequent choices) and using a sans-serif font for the album credits.

As mentioned earlier, blue is one of the most common hues added to Blue Note albums. This has a dual effect. Not only does it present a nice branding synergy with the label name, but it adds a certain amount of feeling to the photos. Blue is often associated with jazz, both because it has roots in the blues and because the mood created by blue light often matches the feeling of jazz. Even now, Blue Note continues to use this theme on its album art (see Greg Osby's 2000 album The Invisible Hand, below). However, Miles was not afraid to adjust the Blue Note Special for variety, whether it meant using different colors on the hue, adding some white space to juxtapose the photo, or using a tinted photo against geometric figures. All these treatments share one common characteristic, they place the musician in the forefront of the album, and display the musician as an artist at work or in contemplation, lending credibility to jazz as an art form. Being such a useful template, it is no surprise that the Blue Note Special became one of the defining archetypes in jazz album art.

Greg Osby
The Invisible Hand

Review

Miles Electric: A Different Kind of Blue

Like any other art, jazz has had its fair share of artistic controversies. Think of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and the creation of bebop. Or Ornette Coleman's 1959 debut at the Five Spot in New York. No controversy compares, though, to the one that greeted Miles Davis when he decided to incorporate electronic instruments and rock-and-roll rhythms into his music at the end of the 1960s. It is in this context that filmmaker Murray Lerner presents Miles Electric: A Different Kind of Blue. Lerner, through interviews with former bandmates and footage of Davis' performances, seeks to examine Davis' shift from jazz titan to rock star, pairing his short documentary with a complete take of Davis' 38-minute performance at the 1970 Isle of White festival.

The film opens with two opposing views of Davis the Rock Star. Carlos Santana describes Miles as the ultimate searcher, looking for new avenues of "musical orgasm," as he quotes Davis. He is followed by Stanley Crouch, who essentially calls bullshit, and argues that Miles turned to jazz-rock fusion simply for the money and popularity. After presenting the controversy that surrounded Davis at the time and afterwards, Lerner largely leaves this narrative behind, instead focusing on the ins and outs of Davis' then-new style. The film is littered with interviews with a variety of Davis associates from that era: Santana, Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, Dave Liebman, Gary Bartz, Dave Holland, and more. These musicians together describe and dissect different aspects of Davis' music at this time. After 35 minutes of dissection, Lerner concludes the film with Davis' Isle of White performance.

Clip from Davis' Isle of Wight Performance

The film is at its best when Lerner's interview subjects discuss what it was like to play with Miles at this time. Hancock, Corea, and Keith Jarrett all describe their experiences as Davis forced them to play electronic instruments in his band; Hancock remembers that he had never seen an electric piano before Miles brought one into the studio for him one day. Santana describes Davis' relationship with himself, Jimi Hendrix, and other young lions of the late-sixties rock world as a symbiotic one, noting that just as Hendrix intrigued Davis with his sprawling psychedelic rock, so did Davis shake up Hendrix when he recorded A Tribute to Jack Johnson. All these musicians describe Davis both as an astute, if laconic, teacher, who guided their development of a new sound and instilled a necessary sense of fearlessness into their artistic selves.

Davis in 1973 with Dave Liebman, left, and Michael Henderson, background

Where this documentary falls short, however, is in its incomplete portrayal of the uproar which accompanied Davis' turn to jazz-rock fusion. Aside from two clips of Crouch (Crouch entertainingly tells of how he listened to Bitches Brew in various states of consciousness in an effort to like the music), Lerner does not include any critical commentary on Davis' music from this period. This poses two problems, the first being that the film assumes the viewer already knows about both the controversy and Davis' own stature and history up to the late sixties. Lerner could do better by explaining how Miles had come to represent the epitome of sophistication and cool by the mid-sixties, both through his music and style. There is no context relative to the rest of the jazz world in the film. Is it not too much to ask for even a cursory discussion of the state of jazz in the late-sixties?

Secondly, Lerner's skimping on the Miles Davis controversy presents to much of a dichotomous depiction of Davis' music: it is either groundbreaking art, as Santana argues, or pop-shlock, as Crouch argues. A more nuanced portrayal would have served Lerner well here. Many people (including Crouch) have noted that Davis was wary of turning into a nostalgia act, but as John Szwed notes in So What, it is tough to charge Miles Davis with trying to make a quick buck when he was releasing albums with tracks that would stretch on for ten minutes or more. Davis' Isle of Wight performance consists solely of a 38-minute long jam that ebbs and flows in and out of tonality and melody. Were he totally selling out, surely he would have presented less challenging music on stage than that. Also, unlike the Tony Williams Emergency, John McLaughlin's Mahvishnu Orchestra, or other fusion bands of the era, Miles spliced songs together out of different group improvisations cut in the studio, tunes which did not translate into a stage repertoire. Of course, you would not know that from watching Miles Electric.

Lerner also does himself a disservice by presenting Stanley Crouch as the stand-in for all criticism of Davis. While he presents an important vantage point in the jazz wars (his essay on the post-Bitches Brew Davis is a must-read for the student of jazz history), by no means is his view gospel for the anti-fusion factions in the jazz wars. We also don't hear from any of his associates from the sixties who avoided fusion and electronic jazz; there is no Ron Carter, for instance. Certainly, the debates that still rage about Davis' turn to fusion are one of the reasons his music from this period remains so captivating today. At an hour and thirteen minutes, there is certainly more time in the documentary to hear more of the critical take on Miles Davis.

Review

Pat Metheny
Tokyo Day Trip - Live EP

Despite the widespread popularity and critical successes of Pat Metheny Group, his collaboration with the pianist Lyle Mays, much of Pat Metheny's greatest work has come in a trio setting. Beginning with Bright Size Life, his first album which also featured Jaco Pastorious, Metheny has thrived in the setting. This is partly because he has surrounded himself with the ablest of sidemen, including Charlie Haden, Billy Higgins, Bill Stewart, Dave Holland, and Roy Haynes, among others. However, while Metheny is undoubtedly spurred on by his skilled sidemen, one cannot understate how well-suited he is to the trio setting. Because Metheny is such a free player, both melodically and rhythmically, the bass-and-drums trio setting allows him ample room to explore, which he does to a very satisfying effect. He explores the outer limits of harmony and rhythm much like Ornette Coleman, one of his chief influences. Of all living musicians, only Coleman and Sonny Rollins are on par with Metheny's skill in the trio setting. Metheny's trio albums (including Bright Size Life, Rejoicing, Question and Answer, and Trio 99 → 00) are among the highlights of late-twentieth-century postbop.

With that in mind, you can imagine how much Tokyo Day Trip, piqued my interest. The EP is comprised of various live recordings originally issued as bonus tracks on different projects. Metheny is accompanied by the same men on his recent critical success, Day Trip, bassist Christian McBride and Mexican wunderkind Antonio Sanchez. I saw this trio in Florida when I was still in college, and the experience remains one of the five best concerts I have ever attended. McBride is one of the few bassists who can keep up with Metheny, and a giant of jazz in his own right, while Sanchez is a master at layering complex rhythms against Metheny's melodic lines.

The EP, comprised completely of Metheny compositions, is pretty evenly balanced between slower lyrical pieces and uptempo barnburners. The slower pieces, "Tromsø," "Inori," and "The Night Becomes You," are all well-done tunes full of expression by Metheny and company. But the real highlights of the set are "Traveling Fast" and "Back Arm & Backcharge." Traveling Fast opens up with a series of open fifths that harken back to Metheny's first album, Bright Size Life. After quickly dispensing with the melody, Metheny works into a frenetic solo which exhibits the characteristic Metheny sound: furious runs and tricky intervals in a display of dexterous fingerwork combined with sophisticated harmony. Not to be outdone, McBride presents an impressive solo himself before Sanchez gives a melodic drum solo reminiscent of Max Roach's inimitable style. Metheny and company close out the tune with a slow fade, juxtaposed against the thrilling previous ten minutes.

"Back Arm and Backcharge" opens with a flurry of hard strumming by Metheny and McBride, and commences with a thoroughly energetic and serpentine melody. The tune itself is a series of convoluted figures landing on the same root, giving the disorienting melody a sense of grounding. The melody works into a spontaneous exploration of harmony before reasserting the opening figure. Afterwards, Metheny plays a solo that combines Ornette Coleman's adventurous harmonic exploration with a melodic construction that could only come from his own mind. Simply put, this solo is among the most exhilarating ever put down in the history of jazz; on par with Charlie Parker's solo on "Koko" and John Coltrane's solo on "Giant Steps." Simply thinking about the solo gives me goosebumps. Much like Tommy Flanagan on "Giant Steps," Christian McBride is given the task of following the master. Also like Flanagan, McBride asserts himself with authority, with assistance from Metheny's comping, which evokes both Jimi Hendrix and Herbie Hancock. All the more impressive is the fact that McBride can match Metheny's overdriven intensity on an acoustic bass. Underlying the two are Sanchez's deft polyrhythms. Just as soon as it has started, though, the tune is over, as Metheny, McBride, and Sanchez are content to leave you wanting more rather than overdoing it.

Fans of Metheny have been given a rare treat by Metheny and his record label, Nonesuch. Tokyo Day Trip exhibits one of the best working groups in jazz today in its natural setting, creating art of the highest order.

Personnel: Pat Metheny, guitars; Christian McBride, bass; Antonio Sanchez, drums
Track Listing: Tromsø ; Traveling Fast; Inori; Back Arm & Blackcharge; The Night Becomes You