In honor of my new mem­ber­ship in the Jazz Jour­nal­ists Asso­ci­a­tion, it’s time to offer reviews of a bunch of new and recent releases, discs from some of the smaller labels that may oth­er­wise be over­looked in the shadow of notice­able releases from big names like Pat Metheny and Brad Mehldau (reviews to come of each of those), but are all high qual­ity of exam­ples of the breadth and depth of con­tem­po­rary jazz.

Arbi­trar­ily start­ing on the out­side edge of jazz and work­ing toward the cen­ter, first up is Ini­ti­ate, the new release from The Nels Cline Singers. This is top level gui­tar band music along the lines of Wayne Krantz, in a styl­ish pack­age, with a heav­ier empha­sis on a blues and rock qual­ity. It’s not even remark­able today that music like Cline is pro­duc­ing on this two CD set (one stu­dio and one live disc) is labelled jazz, but it’s worth tak­ing a moment to exam­ine what is really going on, because that’s part of the strong qual­ity of the recording.

The music is jazz in sen­si­bil­ity, not in tech­ni­cal style. There’s very lit­tle con­ces­sion to the clas­sic ele­ments of jazz, espe­cially swing and, for gui­tars, a cer­tain sonic cool­ness, but you can hear it promi­nently on the live ‘Blues, Too,’ a musi­cal homage to gui­tarist Jim Hall. The tune is com­pletely con­tem­po­rary, though, full of musi­cal inter­ac­tion and coun­ter­point in the head, and then full on exploratory impro­vi­sa­tion after that. Take that approach, give it a strong, straight beat and sup­ply gen­er­ous help­ings of crunch and feed­back, and you have the sound of this band. This is music that delib­er­ately gives fusion a good name, and doesn’t shun pro­gres­sive rock. The open­ing track on the stu­dio disc, ‘Into It,’ is a sonic amuse bouche that, with it’s gui­tar loops and chat­ter­ing nature sounds, places Cline’s sen­si­bil­ity into a world that includes Yes’ clas­sic Close To The Edge. The way Cline, Devin Hoff and Scott Amen­dola impro­vise and keep the mate­r­ial fresh and sur­pris­ing is impos­si­ble with­out the his­tory of jazz, and the way they sound is impos­si­ble with­out the legacy of con­tri­bu­tions of musi­cians like John McLaugh­lin, a great and impor­tant gui­tarist who was spawned rock fol­low­ers who don’t under­stand him musi­cally, and musi­cians like Cline, who com­pletely incor­po­rate the fun­da­men­tals of blues and jazz and seek a crack­ing inten­sity, as on ‘Floored.’ The music also explores the legacy of Sonic Youth with equal vigor and suc­cess on ‘Red Line to Green­land’ and the live title, ‘Thurston County.’ And it’s both sat­is­fy­ing and musi­cally impor­tant to hear the cover of Joe Zawinul’s ‘Boo­gie Woo­gie Waltz’ at the close of the live disc. That tune marked the point where Weather Report found it’s future, and their impor­tance has been an open secret ever since. The Singers begin their ver­sion with a spooky, note-for-note, gesture-for-gesture recre­ation of the orig­i­nal, before set­tling into the deep groove and devel­op­ing their own ideas on the music as an impro­vis­ing group. Ini­ti­ate is a plea­sure to lis­ten to and to contemplate.

Out­side the changes but inside the world of jazz is Cyril­lic, from the sax and drums duo of Dave Rem­pis and Frank Ros­aly. This is a strong album of ener­getic, expres­sive, clearly orga­nized impro­vi­sa­tions. It’s ‘out­side the changes’ in the clas­sic sense, as there’s no har­mony instru­ment, but the cre­ative intel­li­gence and sen­si­bil­ity of the musi­cians keeps the direc­tion and pur­pose of the music clear. This is not exis­ten­tial angst, but a con­stantly devel­op­ing and sym­pa­thetic dia­logue between Rem­pis and Ros­aly, and they have a lot of con­fi­dent, inter­est­ing things to say.

The disc rips open on the first tune, ‘Antiphony,’ with the sax­o­phon­ist toss­ing off frag­ments of seem­ingly famil­iar Bop licks under a rolling drum beat. They’re estab­lish­ing their lan­guage, which takes seem­ingly main­stream ges­tures, removes them from their accus­tomed con­text and recom­bines them in new ways. The meat of the music is this heady dis­place­ment of musi­cal his­tory into mus­cu­lar explo­rations of rhyth­mic grooves and phras­ing. Ros­aly lays down meaty, force­ful pulses. The bal­ance between what’s hap­pen­ing at the feet and how it anchors the widest explo­rations of the head is the kind of thing that William Parker and Hamid Drake do so well and is fur­ther proof that a groove is always in good hands with the avant-garde. There are wist­ful moments on ‘Thief of Sleep,’ jux­ta­po­si­tion of clas­sic Be-Bop and free on the sub­stan­tial ‘How to Cross When Bridges Are Out,’ haunt­ing pen­sive­ness on ‘Still Will’ and some sharp, swing­ing funk on ‘In Plain Sight.’ This CD is an impres­sive and sat­is­fy­ing lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ence for pro­gres­sive ears.

Amir ElSaffar’s Two Rivers estab­lished him as a new, indi­vid­ual voice in jazz, and the new record­ing he appears on is a stun­ning pro­gres­sion. Radif Suite is a col­lab­o­ra­tion between ElSaf­far and sax­o­phon­ist Hafez Modirzadeh, in a quar­tet with Mark Dresser play­ing bass and Alex Cline on drums. This is a gor­geous, mov­ing and impor­tant recording.

The CD has two pri­mary qual­i­ties, one sonic and the other emo­tional. The con­fig­u­ra­tion of the band, their sound and style of play­ing are con­sciously in the tra­di­tion of the clas­sic Ornette Cole­man quar­tet, as updated via Masada. ElSaf­far and Modirzadeh are not aping that sound and style, though, they’re expand­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ties and actu­ally get­ting closer to the roots than sim­i­lar con­tem­po­rary groups like Mostly Other Peo­ple Do The Killing. The key is not to think of being mod­ern, but to being old-fashioned, via the blues. If Cole­man has always been fun­da­men­tally a blues musi­cian, than ElSaf­far and Modirzadeh are as well, their blues just have a dif­fer­ent loca­tion in the geog­ra­phy of the mind, in a place where the West and East meet as wary antag­o­nists and part­ners in pos­si­bil­ity. The horns here play in a highly vocal­ized style, mak­ing use of the expres­sive oppor­tu­ni­ties of micro­tonal into­na­tion, the result being more of a cry than a shout. The sound of the band play­ing is fas­ci­nat­ing; dark, soft, a lit­tle sour, the pulse mov­ing flu­idly through dif­fer­ent paces, at times fre­netic and at oth­ers still.

The chang­ing treads and the cries at the heart of the music are the vehi­cles for the emo­tional expres­sion. In this the music is as sim­ply and hon­estly made as any can be. This is pro­foundly sad music and pro­foundly pow­er­ful in the strength and clar­ity with which it expresses itself. ElSaf­far and Modirzadeh seem to be con­fronting the world they see around them and cod­i­fy­ing their reac­tions to it. There is no inter­pret­ing of real­ity, no offer­ing of blan­d­ish­ments, no attempt to change that world. It’s hon­est report­ing, bear­ing wit­ness, an incred­i­bly heart­felt and com­plex expres­sion of things that can’t be put into words. It is mov­ing to lis­ten to, but not sad, as the music is darkly beau­ti­ful and the sen­sa­tion of hear­ing artists who have so much to say and do so with such unflinch­ing hon­esty is thrilling. In the great jazz tra­di­tion, there is a con­stant sense of under­state­ment, the idea that what could be said with a scream is instead said with a whis­per. And rather than a scream being all there is, the whis­per hints at many more secrets inside, just under­neath and sur­face. The ear avidly seeks these out and also gladly fol­lows at the pace ElSaf­far and Modirzadeh set, as the music is so wor­thy of trust and com­mit­ment. A clear con­tender for one of the best record­ings of 2010.

There’s a sim­i­lar sense at the heart of vet­eran pianist Steve Colson’s new CD, The Untar­nished Dream. This is a fine, sub­tle, com­plex record­ing by a mas­ter musi­cian and a dream band, made up of the rhythm sec­tion of Reg­gie Work­man on bass and Andrew Cyrille on drums, with the leader’s wife Iqua Col­son singing on sev­eral tracks. The music is fresh, offer­ing both expected sat­is­fac­tions and intrigu­ing sur­prises, and that’s partly a result of the seam­less, expe­ri­enced musi­cian­ship and partly the par­tic­u­lar, and won­der­ful style these play­ers express.

Col­son is a long­time mem­ber of the AACM, one of the few pianists in that orga­ni­za­tion, and he’s some­thing of a book­end to Muhal Richard Abrams. Those two men both start with deep roots in jazz. Abrams has explored the lim­its of com­po­si­tion and free play­ing in the jazz idiom, while Col­son has incor­po­rated both those con­cepts into an unshake­able jazz con­text, with sophis­ti­cated ideas and the intrigu­ing sen­sa­tion that com­plete free­dom is merely a small shift away focused through the lenses of stride piano and the legacy of Bud Pow­ell. While Pow­ell had a fiery, highly neu­rotic energy, Col­son is more ami­able, more inter­ested in seduc­ing than shat­ter­ing, but he has the same charm­ing qual­ity of a kind of key­board naiv­ité; a care­free aban­don­ment of the stan­dard rules for piano play­ing when the expres­sion calls for it. The result is a child­like sense of joy­ous aban­don, as the fin­gers lope helter-skelter over each other.

The music swings at all tem­pos, the musi­cians sup­port each other com­pletely and sen­si­tively, and con­tained within the stan­dard struc­tures and bar-lengths, the head-solos-head arrange­ments, is a tremen­dously relaxed sense of free­dom. It’s the simul­ta­ne­ously tight and loose feel that is arguably the high­est goal in jazz play­ing, the kind of sound that is so excit­ing in Elling­ton and Min­gus and the Miles Davis Quin­tets but is so hard to achieve. The CD ben­e­fits from the group sound­ing like a work­ing band, and they are play­ing pieces Col­son has had in his reper­toire for years, if not decades, which gives the music a com­plete lack of self-consciousness, a focus on play­ing rather than pro­duc­ing a record.

There is much warm, lovely music here, like ‘Iqua’s Waltz,’ with it’s per­fect tempo and a struc­ture that is both log­i­cal and sur­pris­ing; the melody moves in unex­pected direc­tions and across sur­pris­ing sets of inter­vals, the har­mony keeps the tonic tucked away for a long time before return­ing to it with­out fuss, and the bridge into the solos hints at sonata-allegro form. The open­ing track, ‘Cir­cum­stan­tial,’ wraps a lot of inter­est­ing rhyth­mic spar­ring into an updated hard-bop pack­age. Iqua’s vocals are as refresh­ing as the rest of the music, def­i­nitely part of tra­di­tion stretch­ing back through Abbey Lin­coln, but seek­ing to cre­ate the future, rather than recre­ate the past. She keeps a lovely bal­ance between the beauty of her tone and clar­ity of artic­u­la­tion, con­vey­ing both mean­ing and pure musi­cal­ity. The lyrics are smart, sur­pris­ing yet totally com­fort­able inside the music. Songs like ‘Digres­sion’ and ‘The Untar­nished Dream’ express a sen­si­bil­ity that is both out­side the main­stream but not eccen­tric in any way, just solidly cre­ative, like the rest of this recording.

Greg Burk’s Many Worlds is more delib­er­ately and ambi­tiously mod­ern. The CD describes a larger scale con­cept and com­po­si­tional form. The title comes from the ‘Many Worlds’ suite which takes up six of the eleven tracks, but the inte­grated feel of all the tracks and the spe­cific musi­cal style binds together all the entirety of the CD into a coher­ent artis­tic state­ment. Burk is explicit about the influ­ence of Paul Bley on his work, espe­cially Bley’s style of inter­ac­tive, coher­ent group impro­vi­sa­tion. Burk’s way of orga­niz­ing his mate­r­ial is to work heav­ily with rubato, main­taing rhythm, har­mony and impro­vi­sa­tional inter­play while anchor­ing all the musi­cians to a pulse that is stretched back and forth through time, giv­ing the music the feel of a sub­stan­tial weight, sway­ing for­ward and back­wards as it itself is car­ried through time and space. This gives it con­sid­er­able emo­tional power, a deter­mined, search­ing qual­ity. The musi­cians clearly have the free­dom to play as their mutual inter­ac­tion inspires them, but there is a tonal cen­ter of grav­ity on each track, some­thing the notes, like the time feel, pull away from then back to.

There’s a nat­ural heft to this use of pedal tones and rubato tempi, and even intro­duc­tory pieces like ‘Sonny Time’ are involv­ing. Along with Bley, I hear Monk as fil­tered through Anthony Brax­ton in the play­ful, be-boppish ‘BC,’ and more than a touch of Weather Report in the lyri­cal ‘Look to the Lion.’ That track most closely fits the stan­dard idea of a tune, with it’s clear cut har­monic pro­gres­sions, tune, begin­ning and end. It’s a wel­come oasis among the rest of the music, as is the swing in ‘Waves/Scattering Mix’ and the blues color in the con­clud­ing ‘The Spirit Will Take You Out.’ The only fault on the record­ing is that the music is a bit too unre­lent­ingly pow­er­ful, there is so much empha­sis on res­o­nant minor key state­ments that pro­fun­dity becomes sten­to­rian with­out some con­trast­ing col­ors and moods; even A Love Supreme has it’s gen­tle stretches, and Paul Bley, along with being an aston­ish­ing impro­viser, is a fan­tas­tic blues­man and player of stan­dards. But we all need emo­tional envel­op­ment at times, and this CD ful­fills that admirably, and is spec­tac­u­larly well recorded.

Mike Reed’s new Peo­ple, Places & Things dics, Sto­ries and Nego­ti­a­tions, is com­pletely undog­matic and totally fab­u­lous. The first moments drift into focus on this live record­ing, seem­ing to hint at a sub­dued freeform exer­cise. That’s just a pre­lude to Reed’s hard-swinging drum­ming dri­ving a fiercely hot band in an an incred­i­bly tasty and sat­is­fy­ing set. This is a horn band, a mix of brass and reeds that includes greats like Julian Priester and Ira Sul­li­van, accom­pa­nied by bass and drums. The lack of a har­mony instru­ment gives the charts a fas­ci­nat­ing sound, almost a gos­samer del­i­cacy yet com­posed of some very tough play­ing from the musi­cians. Reed crafts very fine ensem­ble hits behind the tunes and the soloists, yet keeps them to a min­i­mum, defin­ing the har­monic struc­tures but con­fin­ing noth­ing. The ensem­ble sound is sim­i­lar to that of Dave Holland’s recent groups, but duskier, more bluesy and very much com­mit­ted to con­tem­po­rary mus­cu­lar hard-bop.

The tracks are a mix of orig­i­nals and not quite stan­dards. Not many band­lead­ers actu­ally do Sun Ra tunes, but Reed not only arranges ‘El is a Sound of Joy’ but makes it sound like it’s being played by a clas­sic Min­gus ensem­ble, and it’s great in every way. It’s also a plea­sure to hear the updated, cook­ing bop of Clif­ford Jordan’s ‘Lost and Found.’ Each note on the disc is a plea­sure, and the sound of so the dia­logue between so much jazz his­tory and so many new ideas and com­ments is tremen­dously excit­ing and ful­fill­ing. A great record­ing, and one that is sure to reveal increas­ing depths with each listen.

Full of his­tory by design, last but cer­tainly not least, is a doc­u­ment of and trib­ute to the New Eng­land Con­ser­va­tory of Music. Arti­facts, 40 Years of Jazz at NEC is a sub­stan­tial col­lec­tion of music made by musi­cians con­nected to that great insti­tu­tion as per­form­ers, teach­ers and alumni. The lineup of names hints at what must be a mas­sive amount of won­der­ful mate­r­ial that could not be included; Jaki Byard, Joe Maneri, Steve Lacy, Bob Brook­meyer, George Gar­zone, Ran Blake, and of course var­i­ous edi­tions of the Con­ser­va­tory Orches­tras. The music tells sev­eral sto­ries, one of which is a nar­ra­tive of the past, another pre­mo­ni­tions of the future. The open­ing and clos­ing big band arrange­ments of ‘Cot­ton­tail’ and ‘Maple Leaf Rag’ bind the Conservatory’s music mak­ing to Amer­ica, and his­tory, then Maneri’s evoca­tive, mys­te­ri­ous ‘Zeibekiko’ and a recre­ation of Jimmy Giuffre’s ‘The Train and the River’ add the true poly­glot color of Amer­i­can cul­ture to the story. The tracks all come from con­cert record­ings in front of under­stand­ably appre­cia­tive audi­ences. There is an equally under­stand­able and expected dis­tinc­tion between the stu­dent ensem­bles and the per­for­mances by the mas­ters (teach­ers). The stu­dents are on the long, ded­i­cated paths to their own mas­tery, and their ren­di­tions are bright, clear, lively — the big band is con­sis­tently swing­ing and pow­er­ful, just lis­ten to the excit­ing ‘All About Rosie’ — and also a lit­tle gen­teel, respect­ful of their elders. By con­trast, Byard and Blake play ‘Round Mid­night’ with a com­bi­na­tion of irrev­er­ence and poignance, and Lacy’s ‘Thelo­nious’ has the wit and tan­gen­tial sen­si­bil­ity that made the soprano sax­o­phon­ist such a rare musi­cian. Gar­zone, John Lock­wood and Bob Moses play Coltrane’s ‘India,’ and it is the sound of one mas­ter con­vers­ing with another. This CD is a wor­thy trib­ute to a great insti­tu­tion and the musi­cians who have made it what it is.